Almost a Scandal (43 page)

She would have included Sally’s recovery, but one look from Sally—her own version of that low-browed bit of silent thunder Col had perfected—was enough to stop Grace in her tracks.

Everything was as right with her world as Sally could hope. Her father had come home, and the last of her trepidation, which had eased under Grace’s cheerful onslaught, survived only until the moment he stepped across the threshold, and grabbed her up in a crushing embrace.

“There she is. There’s my girl. Home safe.” He all but squeezed the breath from her, just as he had when she was little.

Captain Alexander Kent ignored the hubub of greetings swirling about them and smiled down at Sally as he cradled her face. “Now, what’s all this?”

The worry and fear inside her spilled the heat gathering behind her eyes at his gruff tenderness.

He brushed her tears carefully away with his thumbs. “Why, you’re right as rain. A little frayed at your seams, perhaps, but right as rain. The devil take me, my Sally, but it does me good to look at you. You do remind me so of your mother.”

“Papa. I am so glad you are home.” Sally smiled away her tears.

“So am I, my girl, so am I. Glad you are home as well. You gave me quite a fright.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Oh, I think you did. You meant to show me the error of my ways.” He patted her cheek gently.

“No, truly. I only meant to preserve the Kent family honor and good name.”

“Oh, I’m sure you did,” he agreed as he let her take his sea cloak. “I have your letter.”

Sally could hardly recognize the folded missive he pulled from the inside of his coat, so worn and battered it had grown. But it was her own letter that she had written at Trafalgar. Pinky must have given it to Captain McAlden.

“But I also think you meant to show me you were suited for other things than staying put in this house,” her father went on.

Sally had no desire to lie to her father. She’d seemed to have worn that impulse out with Col. “You’re right. And I am sorry for the pains that letter must have given you, because if you read it you must have thought I was dead. I hope Captain McAlden also wrote immediately from Gibraltar to tell you I was recovered?”

“Oh, I have had any number of interesting correspondents, including Captain McAlden, who did write to me from Gibraltar, just as you suggest. And also Angus Pinkerton, who scratched out a few lines to tell me he was looking after my young Kent, whom I did not realize at that point was you. Yes, many interesting correspondents, with the notable exception of you. And this letter.”

“I am sorry, Papa.”

“As you should be. But now that I can see you are fine, I am not exactly sorry. I learned a great many things about you, and about myself, that I never would have learned otherwise. And it all came right in the end.” He looked around him at his house, and drew Sally in to his shoulder. “Such adventures you have had. And there are more to come, for I understand we are to have a Christmas ball.”

For the ball, Sally let Grace have free rein—to be honest, there was no other choice. Her sister-in-law was as swift and decisive as Nelson himself in bringing the affair about, and taking every one of them in hand. All Sally could do was to put herself in Grace and her maid’s powers, and submit herself to be powdered.

“Sit still, Sally, before you give poor Dawkins fits.”

“I don’t have fits, my lady,” Dawkins disagreed pleasantly. “I simply endure.”

Grace laughed at her maid’s dry sarcasm. “You are so droll, Dawkins. That is why I love you so.”

“The only reason I love you,” the maid attempted to grouse, “is because you pay me so well. And you do justice to my handiwork. Just as Miss Sally here will, if she would kindly stop twitching like a choirboy with a sneeze up his nose.”

“That’s because I
have
got a sneeze up my nose,” Sally countered. “I’m going to—”

“Don’t you dare,” cried Grace, as she shoved a huge linen handkerchief into Sally’s face. “You’ll ruin it, and there isn’t time to start again.”

“Almost done.” Dawkins stepped back, and stared at Sally with the same meticulous appraisal Col had used aboard
Audacious
. “Just a dab more— What do you think, my lady?”

Grace joined Dawkins in staring down at her, like an artist in front of a canvas “Just a bit more pink, right there, for warmth. Just a touch— No more! There.” Grace smiled as she inhaled. “Well done, Dawkins, well done.”

“I thank you, my lady. If you do the honors”—Dawkins handed Grace a small mirror—“I’ll get the dress.”

“Have a look at yourself, Sally, and see what you think.”

Sally could not help but think of the last time she had taken a good look at herself in a mirror, and took a deep, steadying breath. But instead of plummeting, her spirits began a cautious soar.

Somehow, some way, they had made her look as soft and fresh as a newborn cygnet.

“How do you like it?” Grace was nearly hopping from one foot to the next. “We’ve subdued your freckles only a little bit. So they’re still the focus. But up here, on your temples—”

“You made it almost go away.” Sally pulled the mirror nearer, to examine her reflection. “It’s hardly noticeable.”

“You see! I told you the powder would take some of the most obvious redness away. Will you trust me now that you can finally see yourself?”

On close inspection, the lattice of lines was just visible under the dusting of powder. It was her own self, only better. Much better. In all her life she had never looked like this. “I trust you, Grace. But you are wrong. I can’t see myself at all. I see someone much better.”

“Ha and la. Not better, but perhaps prettier. Or at least, more aware of your own prettiness. Just as you should. Now, there will be some curiosity to see you, as people do know you’ve been away, but so will they want to see your father and brothers. And me. There is nothing odd in all you Kents coming and going and always being away. So, if people do see your scar, you must let them look, and soon they’ll find there is nothing to see. And now the dress. Put your hands up,
handsomely
now—I know you will like that navy talk—for it’s already pinned together, and it needs to go over your head in one piece.”

Fabric settled over her and Sally carefully pushed her arms through the lace-edged sleeves. “Orange?”

“It is
not
orange. It’s apricot. Apricot silk gazar, with threads shot through with a hundred different variations on the color to make it spark. Don’t touch.”

“How am I to wear it if I can’t touch?” Sally grumbled, just for form’s sake. She couldn’t always let Grace have her way—there’d be no living with her if she did. “I will look like a tall winter orange. I will lay you a groat my brothers will immediately pounce upon the words ‘tall tangerine.’”

“They will not, if they know what’s good for them, and I mean to make sure they find out. You do not look like an orange.” She took Sally’s hands in her own and spread them out wide. “You look like a deep drop of sunshine. Or a tall, flickering candle flame. Oh, yes, I like that. So much more dramatic and suitable. Perhaps a more dramatic look—some darkening around her lids?” Grace consulted with Dawkins.

“Nope. None of it.” Dawkins held firm. “Needs to be all coltish and fresh first time out of the gate. You mark my words. You’re a go, Miss Sally, just as you is.”

“Thank you, Dawkins. And you, Grace. Thank you.” She laughed to dispel the little jangle of excited nerves. “I feel ridiculously like a ship, about to be launched. Perhaps one of you ought to shout ‘well away.’”

“Well away!” Grace and Dawkins chimed.

And so she was. Except that the first person she met at the bottom of the back stairs was her missing youngest brother.

“Richard!” Sally had no inkling that he would be there. She ran down the stairs to greet him.

But Richard, already dressed in the somber black of the clergy—though at fifteen there was no way he could yet have taken holy orders—stepped away from her intended embrace and bowed to her with a solemn dignity and enough condescension to get her back up.

Damn pup, playing at charity. And the juxtaposition of his blazing red hair with the light-eating black of his garments was nearly ridiculous—as if the devil himself were masquerading as a preacher. But he was her brother, and she had missed him so very much. And she had so much to ask.

But Richard was not yet ready for reconciliation. “I don’t see how you could have hoped to get away with it.”

Devil take him. He’d come up to speed awfully fast. But whatever Richard’s greeting lacked in familial warmth, it certainly made up for in familial candor. And it prompted her to answer in kind.

“Hoped?” Sally blew out a long breath and strove to keep a humorous, albeit slightly sarcastic, tone. “I did get away with it, Richard. Though little good it did me. For all the world knows, Richard Kent and not his sister, Sally, is now late of His Majesty’s Navy. So you’ll have to learn to take pride in your exemplary record, Richard. You’re a hero.”

There was undoubtedly more teeth in her tone than was nice, and Richard felt bitten. “So my brothers have already informed me.”

Ah. That accounted for a great deal of the petulance. “I don’t doubt they have, for they can be bully boy bastards at times. But they’re our bully boy bastards, Richard. And it’s very good to see you.” She hugged him anyway, even though he held himself stiffly.

“I didn’t ask you to do that for me, Sally.” Frustration, and perhaps embarrassment, colored his voice. “You always try to do that. Solve everything. I was perfectly happy to defy Pater on my own. You needn’t have gone off like that. Like…”

Sally found she wasn’t as prepared to forgive and forget as she had thought. Certainly she didn’t like being condescended to by Richard, any more than she had liked it from Grace. Thank God they were in the back corridor and not in the drawing room, so they could simply have it out. “Like what, Richard? A man who knows what is due to his family? Or at least thinks he does?”

“You don’t understand.” For all his attempt at playing the preacher, he still sounded like a sullen fifteen-year-old boy.

It made her feel older, and perhaps a touch more charitable. And it was ridiculous to continue to rehash the same argument they’d been having for years. “No. I don’t suppose I did.”

He straightened at her calm, conciliatory tone. “Well, you could hardly be expected to, with your education as it has been.”

“Careful, Richard.” She used Col’s voice on him, that low, softly adamant tone. “Don’t come the preacher with me. Because no matter what you wanted to do, you violated trust. You violated Father’s trust, and the trust of the service as well. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“No. I never said I would go. Quite the opposite. But you implied it, all of you, because it was what you wanted to hear. But the only trust I have ever striven to keep is God’s. It’s God first and duty second, and not the other way round.”

His tone was more than sincere—it was passionate. And that was something she did understand. Sally thought again of Ian Worth, and his inexperienced misery aboard the ship. Richard would have been even more miserable, despite all his family experience. Perhaps more so, because of it. “And is that what you’ve been doing all these months, your duty to God?”

“I am trying to do so. I found a teacher who consented to take me as a pupil. Though I hope, now that Father has come home, to convince him to let me study at Cambridge. My teacher says— But no matter. I can’t go to Cambridge without money. I had hoped that after what has happened, and with this baronetcy, he might be more amenable to giving me enough funds.”

And there was her answer. She had to smile at the strange irony of it all. “Well, Richard, it turns out you already have the money. Your prize money from
Audacious
is waiting to be collected from the Court of Admiralty. As Sally Kent, I can’t touch it, so you might as well have it, to put to good use. Perhaps it shall be your recompense for letting me use your good name.”

Richard was nearly speechless to have the object of his long desires so easily and so unexpectedly given to him. “Really? Are you quite sure?”

“Absolutely. It can be paid out only to you, Richard Kent, and I am clearly no longer he.”

“Thank you. That’s … very thoughtful and generous of you. I—” He shook his head and sat down in the chair next to the garden door where she changed her boots, and then looked at her, perhaps differently. “You always work something out, don’t you? I suppose that’s why I was so mad, before. Because for once, you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, work something out with Father to keep me from having to go. So I thought I would try and do it on my own. That’s why I disappeared. You’d never have let up otherwise.”

“Yes.” Sally sat herself down on the bottom stair, disregarding Grace’s potential outrage for her abuse of the dress. “I do see now, you had to do it on your own, Richard. I didn’t understand. And I was wrong not to help you. I should have. But I was mad, too, you see, because I
did
want to go. So I took it into my own hands, and solved the problem my own way as well. A fine pair we are.”

“But why did you do it, Sally? How did you even think to try?”

Sally shrugged. How could she possibly explain? “The sea possessed me. It always has and it always will. And perhaps I shall go back, perhaps even while Owen is still ashore. With the French off the water, it seems the perfect time. I want to visit a … friend in the Bahamas. I begin to find myself very much
de trop
at the moment here, with Grace and Owen so in love. Entirely unnecessary. So I’ll go off and try to find my own way in the world, just as you have done.”

“But on the sea, anything may happen. And the Bahamas … The heat and the diseases—”

“I’m not worried,” she assured him. “I find I’m rather hard to kill.”

“Oh, Sally, you joke, but you’re not invincible. And you are not unnecessary. But you
are
irreplaceable. Lord help me, I could never forgive myself if something had happened to you.”

“Something did happen, Richard. Life is like that.”

He had the grace to flush, but it only made him look more earnest as he peered at her face, trying to see her scar. “Yes. So I see.”