A Little Scandal (30 page)

“That,” Burke declared, from the window to which he’d strode, “wasn’t spying. I was concerned for her safety. Miss Mayhew possessed a glaringly obvious naivete concerning men.”

“Please, Papa. Just admit it. You love her. That’s why you’ve been going about like a bear since she left; growling at everyone, and practically snapping their heads off. That’s why you haven’t shaved, or washed, or even changed clothes since the morning we discovered she was gone. That’s why you’ve been getting into fights, and drinking so much. You love her, and you know it’s entirely your fault that she left, and your heart is breaking.”

“It isn’t,” Burke said, with as much dignity as he could muster, being, as she’d claimed, unshaved, unwashed, unlaundered, and considerably drunk. “My heart cannot be breaking, because I have no heart.”

Isabel rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, I know. You have no heart, because Mamma broke it seventeen years ago. I’ve heard the rumors, too, Papa. Only unlike you, I do not believe them. You have a heart, and it’s hurting you very much right now, and deservedly so, since I am sure you were very wicked. But Papa, I assure you, from the bottom of my own heart, Miss Mayhew will be back. She has to come back.”

Burke looked at his daughter curiously. “Why?”

“Because,” Isabel said with a shrug. “If she loves you anywhere near as much as I do, she won’t be able to stay away.” Then, with a brilliant smile, Isabel turned, and left the room, leaving her father alone with that completely unsatisfying consolation.

Frederick Bishop, the ninth Earl of Palmer, was quite fond of his club. It was a highly prestigious club, admitting only highly prestigious individuals. Only titled peers—those of the finest discretion, and oldest families—roamed the heavily paneled halls, and partook of the roast beef luncheon. Politicians and intellectuals were strictly banned, so that the conversation never strayed from the subjects of sport, cigars, and … well, sport. Membership was so selective, in fact, that Freddy could take a seat in one of the deep leather chairs by the fire in the main room, and not be disturbed by a single soul for hours at a time.

For a man who lived with a woman like his mother, this was not something to be taken for granted.

Which was why he was so surprised when one of the club’s staff members approached him, bowing obsequiously, and whispered, “I beg your pardon, my lord, but there is a man in the hallway—”

Freddy, conscious that he had become the recipient of a number of unpleasant looks from his fellow club members, whispered back quickly, “Well? What has that to do with me?”

“The man, my lord, insists upon seeing you. He says if he does not see you, he will light fire to the place. He has already struck down three employees I sent out to get rid of him. He is quite insistent, my lord … and I might make free to mention, a little drunk, I think.”

Freddy, curious to see who could possibly have struck down three club employees—all of whom had been hired for their enormous girth, one of the most important functions of an exclusive club being its exclusivity—and wondering, as well, why on earth such a person should insist upon seeing him, rose from the comfortable chair in which he had been dozing, and followed the manservant to the club foyer.

There, he saw the Marquis of Wingate methodically destroying the place, primarily by lifting club employees by the throat and pounding them against the walls. Portraits of the club’s prestigious founders swayed. There was a baronet crouched behind the elephant-foot umbrella stand, and a duke behind a potted fern, both apparently hoping to escape the marquis’s notice.

“For heaven’s sake,” Freddy said disgustedly, as Traherne lifted a six-foot-two footman and tossed him over a banister. “Is it really necessary, Traherne, for you to make a scene everywhere you go?”

The marquis looked up.

“Good Lord,” Freddy burst out. “Is that even you, Traherne? You look utterly wretched. Put that boy down, and step in here—” Upon noticing the startled expressions of the club employees, Freddy said sourly, “Yes, yes, I know ’im. You wouldn’t believe it to look at him now, but he’s actually a marquis, and usually quite a bit better groomed. Put ’im in here, and for God’s sake, one of you fetch some whiskey.”

The Earl of Palmer’s orders were quickly carried out. Burke was escorted into a small private office, where club members usually sat to draft their monthly checks to their stewards, mistresses, and cigar-makers. There, Burke was directed to take a seat, which he did, feeling suddenly rather exhausted. The sofa was a leather one, and very soft. It seemed to envelop his body, embracing him in its buttery confines. Burke told himself not to give in to the couch’s comforting embrace. It was all a ruse, no doubt, to get him to forget his purpose in being there.

“Here, now,” Palmer said, after messing about with a bottle and some glasses one of the cretinous club waiters had brought in. “Drink this down.”

Burke looked suspiciously at the balon the earl held out toward him. “That’s not whiskey,” he said.

“No, it’s brandy. But what in the hell do you care? It’s still alcohol, old man. And you look as if you need it rather badly.”

Grudgingly, Burke took the oversized goblet, into which had been poured only the tiniest amount of liquid, and pelted it down. Brandy. Oh, yes. He’d had brandy before. He used to have brandy quite a lot, as a matter of fact, back before his life had become a blur of whiskey hangovers. A reassuring warmth rose up from his gullet.

Well, Bishop had been right about one thing. It was still alcohol. He held out the empty glass.

“All right, all right.” Bishop refilled the balon. “Not so fast, now. They charge me by the bottle, you know, and this stuff’s twenty years old.”

Burke downed more of the stuff, feeling it burn a familiar path down his throat, straight to his gut.

“I hope you don’t mind my saying so, old man,” Bishop said, taking a seat in the leather chair opposite Burke’s couch, “but this bursting into places and throwing people about is getting rather old. I thought we’d settled all this, anyway, last time we saw one another. What was it, two months ago now, wasn’t it? You’ll see the old proboscis has recovered nicely.” Bishop turned to give him a profile. “You notice the lump, of course. Everyone notices the lump. But you know, I rather like the lump. I think my face was frightfully feminine, you know, before you broke my nose. Really, Traherne, you did me a favor. Rather disappointed to see I wasn’t able to cause you any permanent scarring whatsoever. But you look wretched enough that I’m willing to overlook it.” He took a sip from his own balon. “So. I assume you’re going to tell me why you’re here. Only don’t, I beg of you, ask me to tell you where Kate is. She still hasn’t given me leave to say.”

“She’s gone,” Burke said. And as he said it, he felt as if his heart constricted to half its usual size inside his chest. It was as if some kind of internal fist kept gripping him round his vitals, and squeezing. Squeezing until he hadn’t any air to breathe, or blood to his head.

Bishop cleared his throat. “Well, of course she’s gone, old boy. We went over that last time we saw one another, you know.”

“Not Kate.” Burke spoke in short, grunting bursts. It was the only way he could get out what he had to say without knocking anyone’s face into the wall. “Isabel.”

“Isabel?” Bishop’s jaw dropped. “Lady Isabel? Your daughter?”

“No.” Burke flung himself from the too comfortable couch, and strode toward the hearth, upon which a merry fire was crackling, although it was not cold outside … at least, insofar as he’d been capable of feeling the weather. “No,” he said again, with barely suppressed rage. “Lady Isabel the dancing ice monkey, you fool. Of course my daughter. She’s gone. She’s left me.”

Bishop let out a low whistle. “They seem to do that a lot on you, don’t they, old boy? Leave, I mean.”

A second later, he regretted both the whistle and his flippancy, when the marquis seized him by his coat lapels and hauled him out of his seat and up into the air.

“You’re going to tell me,” Burke said, enunciating carefully, so the earl would understand, “where she is.”

Bishop’s feet were several inches off the ground. He looked down at them regretfully, as if he missed the floor. “Uh, Traherne,” he said, enunciating just as carefully as the marquis. “How in hell would I know where your daughter ran off to?”

“Not Isabel,” Burke said shortly. “Kate.”

Bishop coughed. “But, um, really, Traherne, I don’t see—” He broke off with a strangling noise as Burke tightened his grip.

“She’s run off.” Burke’s voice was now nothing more than an extremely menacing growl. “Isabel’s run off with that bastard Craven.”

“Craven?” Bishop burst out. “Daniel Craven?”

“You know any other?”

“But—” Bishop shook his head, truly flummoxed. “What about Saunders?”

What about Saunders? Even as he stood there holding two hundred pounds of earl in midair, Burke was traveling back, in his mind’s eye, to the night before, when Isabel had confronted him in his study. He’d been slumped before the fire, as had become his nightly custom, a glass of whiskey in his hand, a bottle of the stuff placed at a convenient distance from his elbow. He’d heard her step on the threshold, but he hadn’t thought to prepare himself for the confrontation that was to follow.

Isabel had been nothing if not sympathetic during the weeks that had gone by since Kate’s cruel—that’s how Burke perceived it, anyway—desertion. He’d expected her to utter some soft words of encouragement, or maybe suggest, as she had once or twice, that he get his hair cut. He had not expected her to launch into him as if he were an errant message boy.

“Drunk again,” Isabel had said in disgust when she’d come close enough to get a look at the bottle, which was very nearly empty—no matter, though, since Vincennes would bring him another whenever he rang for it.

“Is this,” his daughter demanded, “how it’s going to be from now on, then? You’re going to drink yourself to death? Is that the plan?”

He looked up at her through bloodshot eyes. “That,” he said, “is all I’ve come up with so far. Do you, perhaps, have some other suggestion?”

“Yes,” Isabel said. “Actually, I do. Why don’t you get up off your ass and go look for her?”

Burke eyed her disapprovingly. “Don’t,” he said, “use language like that in my house.”

“Or what?” Isabel, dressed to go out, shook her head. “What will you do to me?”

“Turn you over my knee.”

Isabel laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. It was quite scornful, as a matter of fact.

“I should like to see you try,” she said. “I doubt you could lift a mouse, in your present condition. When’s the last time you ate a decent meal? Or got some fresh air?”

Burke only scowled into the fire. There was no use, he knew, in telling her that to him, all food tasted like sawdust, and that the air, indoors and out, smelled fetid. Instead, he said, “I’m still whole enough to cut off your allowance.”

“Certainly you are,” Isabel agreed dryly. “But I’ll only go through your wallet the next time I find you insensible from drink. Which, if the level of what’s in that bottle there is any indication, should be in about a quarter of an hour.”

“Isabel,” Burke said impatiently. “What do you want? Is it money you want? You’re going out, I take it.”

“Indeed, I am. By myself, I might add. I’ve become quite the scandal of the season, going about chaperoneless, as I have been recently, thanks to you.”

“Thanks to yourself,” Burke corrected her. “I am not the one who spent three months throwing myself at that young jacka—”

“Do not,” Isabel said, holding up a gloved hand, “disparage Geoffrey. I am perfectly aware of your feelings toward him.”

“Are you? And yet why do I get the feeling that you are still seeing him, behind my back?”

“Come out with me tonight,” Isabel said, “and see for yourself. I think you’ll be happily surprised. I no longer have an interest in simple little boys like Geoffrey. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you see who I’m keeping company with now.”

Burke looked at her. She did not look as well as she had back when Kate had been supervising her wardrobe and hair. Left to their own devices, seventeen-year-old girls sometimes made ill-advised fashion decisions. Tonight’s was a fringe of frizzed hair over Isabel’s foreheard that had not been there, near as Burke could remember, last time he had seen her. It might have been all the rage as far as London coiffures went, but on Isabel, it looked ridiculous. He wondered if it was her real hair, and was tempted to reach up and tug on it. But that, he decided, would require too much effort.

Quite like going out

“No, thank you,” he said, and turned back to the fire.

“Oh!” Isabel cried, with a stamp of her slippered foot. “Really, Papa! What’s happened to you? I remember a time when you would not sit idly by and allow a woman to treat like you this. I don’t understand why you simply don’t go to her and—”

“Because,” Burke interrupted, through gritted teeth. “I don’t know where she is.”

“Oh, and a man of your wealth and connections hasn’t the means to find out?”

He hissed, to the fire, “I fail to see the point in searching for her, when she’s made it perfectly clear she doesn’t care to see me again.”

“Papa, she was angry when she wrote that. I am sure, now that she’s had time to reflect, she doesn’t still feel the same. She’s probably sitting there, wherever she is, thinking you don’t care to see her again.”

“And,” Burke said, taking a healthy sip of whiskey, “she’d be perfectly correct in thinking so.”

“No she wouldn’t. If Miss Mayhew walked through the door right now, Papa, you’d fall down and kiss her feet.” Isabel tugged on her glove with a disgusted expression on her face. “Though I highly doubt she’d think much of you, seeing you as you look now, so untidy and scratchy-faced. And I wouldn’t blame her. You’ve turned into a perfect beast. Why, Daniel says—”

“Daniel?” Burke peered at her through his murky, alcoholic haze. “Who is Daniel?”

“Daniel Craven, of course,” Isabel said.

Suddenly, Burke was on his feet. And suddenly, he did not feel a bit drunk. And he wasn’t mooning over Kate anymore, either. Anger had a delightful way of taking over, and making everything else seem to matter very little, when compared to the object of one’s wrath.