It Started with a Scandal (17 page)

And if ever there was a virgin, it was Alexandra.

But Philippe knew he remained a prize. He was still a Bourbon, if a Bourbon more distant from the French court. And it was something Alexandra had always aspired to be.

“Such a splendid touch, your footmen wearing livery so similar to that of Les Pierres d’Argent, Philippe.”

“Yes, it does make it feel more like . . . home.”

He was surprised to realize that this was exactly true.

“Nothing is as magnificent as Les Pierres d’Argent, Philippe. I always imagined myself living there.”

It was certainly an opportunity to say,
And one day soon perhaps you will.

A few months ago, during this same conversation, he might have said it.

He couldn’t quite force the necessary words, and so a funny little silence ticked by.

Her smile grew slightly strained.

“I did hope you’d share a waltz with me,” he said instead.

“Surely there will be more than one waltz to share.” She sounded a trifle uncertain now.

“Ah, but you must not be greedy, my dear Alexandra. I am the host and I am in demand, and surely you of all people know how delightful I can be. And surely one or two of the gentlemen here would cherish for a lifetime the memory of dancing with you?”

It returned to him so naturally, the flattery, the charm. He found himself hoping he couldn’t manipulate her so easily with it.

She pouted a little, charmingly and entirely unconvincingly. “Very well.”

“I shall, however, save the best for last, Alexandra.”

Best not to let Alexandra become
too
sure of herself.

He bowed over her hand and went off in search of the Earl of Ardmay, because they needed to bring to a close a certain matter. And what the earl had to say would come to bear on whatever happened with Alexandra.

And even though he was a brilliant navigator, somehow his search for the earl led him to the lady’s withdrawing room.

E
LISE AND HER
staff had transformed a small room near the ballroom into a cloak and lady’s withdrawing room by hanging a large horizontal mirror and arraying chairs before it, then fashioning a closet of sorts by cleverly partitioning the corner near the door with a curtain. Elise began her evening here, greeting ladies who streamed in in their finery, accepting cloaks and shawls and pelisses to hang, while Kitty and Mary put finishing artistic touches on the sandwiches and tarts heaped on tables in the ballroom.

“Good evening, Mrs. Fountain,” came a low voice from behind the curtain.

Her heart leaped and Elise whirled toward Philippe just as a guest was thrusting a shawl at her. The woman toppled forward, her destination the floor, arms flailing. Philippe lunged out and caught her before she landed on all fours.

He set her upright, and Elise gave her a warm smile.

“You won’t want to miss the waltz,” he confided to the woman. “They’ll play it soon. Best run!”

The woman was so startled that she obeyed him and took off at a dash.

Elise was struggling not to laugh.

“You see, the women are already falling all over me.”

She ignored this. “Good evening, Lord Lavay. You slipped in quite stealthily. You look very dashing.”

He in fact looked heart-stoppingly, breath-stoppingly handsome.

“Don’t I?” He smiled. “I believe I smell wonderful, too.”

If he was going to smile at her like that, and say things like that, they would be off again, enjoying each other as if no one else in the world existed, and that would simply never do. She took an unconscious step back as if to make room for all the
feelings
he brought into the room with him. She reflexively thrust out an arm to accept another cloak handed over to her.

She strived for dispassionate distance. “Do you have a cloak for me to collect, Lord Lavay? Have you questions, or do you need assistance?”

“The hall looks beautiful. Thank you for your hard work.”

“You are welcome.”

“And I want to thank you again for your assistance with the waltz, as I shall embark upon it any number of times this evening with confidence. But I believe that you and I, Mrs. Fountain, are now engaged in something like a reel.”

She sucked in a surprised breath.

Because she understood.

Meeting and parting. Meeting and parting. Meeting and parting.

Their eyes met.

And just like that, all at once they might as well have been the last two people in the world, even as cheerful assembly-goers milled around her.

Another cloak was extended to her.

She didn’t see it.

The woman gave it a shake in an attempt to get her attention.

Elise snatched it from her. Then turned a warm smile on the startled woman.

“Do you intend to be French tonight?” she murmured to Lavay.

It was a parry of sorts.

“Isn’t that what you wished for me, Mrs. Fountain?” he countered softly.

Something complex sizzled instantly between them.

Every reel eventually ended.

The notion of an ending jarred Elise back into awareness. She turned to find a veritable bouquet of arms holding shawls out to her. The owners of those arms might even have spoken to her. If they had, neither she nor Philippe had heard it.

She retrieved all of them. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said to the ladies. “You all look so very beautiful. Thank you.”

The ladies then clustered about the mirror to pat coiffures and shake out dresses crushed in carriages. Then they sailed out, wreathed in smiles and radiating anticipation.

Elise squared her shoulders. “Lord Lavay, your guests will find ratafia and fruit punch in the ballroom, sandwiches enough to feed an army, jam tarts that would impress any palate, I believe, and a fair enough orchestra that might play a little quickly unless you give the violinist enough to drink, but if you give him too much to drink, he might become maudlin and then fight. Ramsey and James will patrol the ballroom and help eject anyone who becomes too obnoxious, as well as monitor the state of the food and drink. You best hurry, or you will miss the first waltz.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Fountain. Whatever would I do without you?”

“I assume the question is rhetorical.”

He smiled at her, and her heart turned slowly over in supplication.

He made no move to go.

So she did what she knew she had to do: she turned her back on him and walked away, toward the mirror, in a great pretense of fussing with her hair.

As if she was releasing him back into his habitat.

P
HILIPPE AT LAST
restlessly made his way back to the ballroom, which now seemed duller and dimmer by contrast to the small cloakroom—or any room, really—that contained Elise Fountain.

He fortuitously found the Earl of Ardmay helping himself to ratafia with something less than enthusiasm.

“Do you remember a ball nearly two years ago, Flint, where I overheard a group of young women speculating about the size of your . . . what was it . . . ‘masculine blessing’?”

Flint nearly spit out his ratafia.

“It’s
best
spit out,” Lavay sympathized. “I will not object.”

“Where I first danced with my wife. Of course.”

“More accurately,
I
first danced with her. And then you danced with her.”

“Perverse creature that she is, Violet preferred me.”

“Proof that destiny is on your side, my friend, as no one else would have either of you.”

“If destiny is a wheel, it was bound to turn in my direction eventually.
And
yours. And speaking of destiny, Lavay . . .”

The pause, with its hint of reluctance and apology, was all that was necessary for Philippe to know the truth.

“You don’t have to say it, Flint. I know.”

Philippe had been prepared for the answer, yet it was no less unwelcome:

The earl didn’t want to participate in the latest assignment from the king.

“I’m sorry, old man. Truly.” Flint knew exactly what that money, and the assignment, meant to Lavay. “A large part of me wants to do it, and not just because of the money. The rest of me, the part that never had a family, never wants to leave their side again.”

“You don’t have to explain.” But Philippe said it abstractedly. He was still absorbing the impact of the decision.

“And I know how to keep us from starving, Lavay. Even prospering, eventually. We can join Jonathan Redmond’s new investment group. Right now they’re looking at cargos of Indian spices, teas and silks, and we can use the
Fortuna
for transport. We wouldn’t have to crew the ship, but we can hire our own captain and crew. But potential profits are months away. I do know you need them sooner.”

An understatement, to be sure. Monsieur LeGrande would sell Les Pierres d’Argent if Philippe didn’t have the funds inside a month.

Lavay almost unconsciously turned toward Alexandra. Who was occupied in enchanting some young man whose name Philippe had already forgotten.

Odd, but he didn’t feel a twinge of jealousy.

“Will you do the assignment now? Search out a substitute for my role in it? As if any could be found.” Flint tried for a jest.

“I don’t know,” Philippe said absently. He truly didn’t.

“You should marry, Philippe,” the earl said, following the direction of his gaze. “You’re lonely.”

As a matter of formality, Philippe snorted at such an unmanly assertion. They both knew the earl was right, however.

They said nothing for a moment.

“Do you think,” Philippe said slowly, “that marrying the wrong person can make you feel lonelier?”

This made the earl turn his head slowly to study Philippe.

Philippe carefully did not meet his eyes.

“All I can tell you is this. I was an orphan. And remember, I married the only person who would have me. But I can tell you that it’s infinitely better to feel as though you belong to something. Or someone. And I think you know that all too well, too.”

Philippe said nothing. His eyes flicked toward the withdrawing room, and just the thought of Elise was like a taste of something sweet and narcotic. It made him feel better, freer, more peaceful, for just that moment.

“You’re smiling now at something. What is it? Who is she?” the earl demanded.

Philippe turned to him, resignation and surrender on his face. Confirmation.

But he wasn’t about to give up her name.

The earl gave a soft snort.

“This is another thing I know, Lavay. There was a time when I thought I would need to live without Violet, and you know this, too. She was worth the sacrifice.”

“Every man has a different definition of sacrifice, I believe.”

“Agreed,” Ardmay said easily enough.

“Do you think Lyon Redmond still loves Olivia Eversea, Flint?”

“Did we always have these kinds of talks before we became old men?”

“We’re not old. Just a bit worn.”

Flint laughed. “I think loving Olivia Eversea has been a part of who Lyon Redmond is for so long that even he likely doesn’t know. Why?”

Lavay gave a short nod. “Since we’re talking of love and sacrifice, I simply wondered.”

They fell silent again.

“Limbo is a horrible place to be,” Flint said. It sounded like commiseration.

Lavay wondered if Olivia Eversea was in limbo.

“Agreed,” Lavay said. “Go dance with your wife, Ardmay. I’m going to dance with Olivia Eversea.”

Chapter 18

H
E FOUND HER BY
a process of deduction: she was surrounded by Everseas he recognized—Colin, Marcus, Chase, and their wives.

From a distance, the storied Olivia was petite and porcelain-skinned, fragile yet somehow regal, like a fairy queen, in deep blue. Closer he could see that she was a bit too thin, which made her eyes large and bright in her face. She was like a jewel, faceted, sparkling, hard, remote.

“Lavay!” Lord Landsdowne, her fiancé, greeted him. “Thank you. Such a pleasure to see you looking well.”

Philippe exchanged bows with all of them.

“Thank you, Landsdowne. And thank you, Miss Eversea, for coming this evening. I wondered if you would be so kind as to give me this dance?”

“To reward you for interrupting the winter doldrums with an assembly, there’s little I wouldn’t do. I would be delighted. You won’t mind?” she said to Landsdowne.

“Of course not.”

He probably did, but the woman was going to be his for the rest of his life, and Philippe wanted to know why Olivia had said yes to that proposition.

Because this was the woman for whom Lyon Redmond was engaged in staggeringly dangerous heroics. The woman who had allegedly broken his heart and caused him to disappear, stirring the centuries-old enmity between the Redmonds and Everseas, and making her the subject of the alleged curse: that an Eversea and a Redmond were destined to fall in love once per generation, with disastrous results. Lyon Redmond had abandoned his family and birthright to prove himself worthy of this woman.

And Lyon Redmond, as of two months ago, had been in London.

“May I congratulate you again on your engagement, Miss Eversea?”

“Thank you, Lord Lavay. And are congratulations for your own in order?”

He’d heard that she was disconcertingly direct, Miss Eversea, which, combined with her alarming good looks and her penchant for passionately taking up causes, particularly antislavery causes, frightened off all but the most stalwart of men. A tactic she’d employed in part as a defense, Lavay suspected, as Lyon Redmond had taken her heart when he’d left and she wished to be left alone so that no one would notice her heart was gone.

The little orchestra was surprisingly competent, and a man with dramatic dark curls was teasing pathos from the “Sussex Waltz” with a violin. Philippe and Olivia had circled the ballroom twice now. In his peripheral vision, other couples spiraled around them. Like clockwork gears.

She hadn’t once looked at Landsdowne.

Not a single glance toward him.

Landsdowne had never truly taken his eyes off her, even as he exchanged pleasantries with other guests. As if she was true north.

“Have you chosen a date for the wedding yet, Miss Eversea?”

“Spring, which will allow for all of our guests to travel comfortably. The second Saturday in May.”

“Will you be married here in Pennyroyal Green?”

“So many questions about my nuptials for a man who claims his aren’t imminent. Yes.”

“One must prepare for the inevitable by doing the proper research.”

She laughed.

It was easy to see how Olivia captivated. A sort of effortless intelligence, and charm, a hint of impatience that suggested she would never gladly suffer fools, that suggested she knew so few men who were anything other than that.

He wondered what Olivia Eversea would do if he told her that no less than two months ago, by the dark of the moon, Lavay had looked up into the blue eyes of Lyon Redmond from the ground where he lay bleeding. ”You won’t die.” Redmond had issued the words with steely calm. He was a man accustomed to commanding all manner of things, even death. A man much like Philippe. A man to whom Lavay owed his life.

And he would never truly know peace until he’d discharged that debt.

He wondered if Olivia Eversea, who had remained in Sussex while Redmond had taken to the seas, would recognize the man Lyon had become.

Was love something you helplessly fell into, like quicksand? Was love for another person something you could learn, like Latin? Or was love for one particular person something you were born with, or, like a fever, lay dormant, until that one person for you happened along and released it?

He didn’t know, and he suspected Olivia didn’t, either. Not knowing absolved neither of them of making the choices life forced them into making, so that life could move, as was its nature, ever forward.

“
I
F YOU WOULD
hold this please while I see to my hair.” Lady Prideux thrust a shawl at Elise without looking at her or waiting for a response. It was not a question.

This made it easier to study Lady Prideux up close. Her nose was a perfect incline ending in an insouciant tilt above a pale blossom of a mouth. She had a slight and quite fetching overbite. Her skin was Sevres fine.

She was absolutely stunning.

For an evil person.

And then Alexandra looked up sharply, as if she’d felt the heat of Elise’s gaze.

She froze.

Ah, so she recognizes me, after all.

To the credit of her conscience at least, Lady Prideux went a little pink.

“Oh, it’s you, Mrs. . . . Fountain.”

“Yes. We meet again, Lady Prideux.” Elise curtsied.

“My apologies. I didn’t recognize you out of context. This is quite a different position for you, isn’t it?”

There was a hint of cold glee in her tone.

“I suppose it is.”

“I didn’t know you were working for Phil—that is, Lord Lavay. I call him Philippe, of course.”

“Of course,” Elise said smoothly. Her back teeth clamped down. The word felt wrong, wrong, wrong when Lady Prideux said it. The word belonged to
Elise
.

“I’m so glad to see you landed on your feet,” Alexandra enthused insincerely. Confident, apparently, that Elise was now invisible because she was a servant.

Lady Prideux settled in at the vanity and turned her head this way and that, either admiring herself for the five hundred thousandth time, or seeking any imperfections that might have sprung up between her trip from her home to Alder House.

Elise studied her, too, imagining with relish where she would first jab Lady Prideux with a pin, if she was so inclined.

Lady Prideux whirled, and Elise schooled her face to stillness.

“I trust there are no hard feelings over what transpired about my sister,” Lady Prideux said with a gushing and wholly manufactured warmth. “It is just that our family is so very particular about the moral education of our girls, and Colette is so very, very sensitive. I’m sure you understand why I did what I did. Given that you’re a . . . mother.” She purred all of this.

Colette was in fact a beautiful, stupid, and mean little girl, and Elise normally gave the benefit of the doubt to her students at least a dozen times before drawing any such conclusion about any of them. There
might
be hope for her. She refused to believe there wasn’t, but with a sister like this one, Elise despaired of this.

But this wasn’t why Lady Prideux had gone to such cold and calculated lengths to ensure that Elise was removed from her position. As she had told Lavay when he’d probed, Elise had indeed spoken out of turn, in the heat of caring about a student, and had apparently gravely insulted Lady Prideux. Who, not content with being merely beautiful, wanted also to be thought intelligent.

“Let us put it all behind us, shall we?” Lady Prideux didn’t wait for Elise to agree to that. “I expect to become engaged very soon,” she confided on a girlish whisper. “Perhaps even tonight. I should like to look my best.” She gave a self-conscious little laugh. “What do you think?”

“Your coiffure is
beautiful
, Lady Prideux.”

“It took four maids and half an evening to achieve it,” Alexandra said with some satisfaction. “And still it seems to be coming loose.” She fussed with one of the diamond-tipped pins. “If you would assist?”

She said this imperiously. And likely just for the pleasure of giving Elise an order.

With shaking hands, Elise took the proffered pin and slid it back where it belonged, though she sincerely thought it belonged jabbed somewhere into Lady Prideux’s soft skin. Her stomach turned, imaging Philippe touching this woman’s hair, which presumably he would do if he married her.

“Well, I’m off to dance with Philippe,” Alexandra said. She studied Elise, as if to make certain she was still more beautiful. Elise had noticed that women like Lady Prideux often did this, assessing where their beauty fell in comparison to other women’s beauty.

Apparently satisfied, Alexandra turned to leave.

Elise stopped her. “Oh, Lady Prideux—I fear your hair is still sliding a bit in the back.”

Alexandra halted.

“Oh, dear. Would you please, Mrs. Fountain?”

She presented her slender back to Elise.

Elise slid a pin from its place, carefully detached one of the fine braids from its latticed position, pulled it gently, surreptitiously upward, and pinned it very, very carefully so that it thrust vertically up from the center of Alexandra’s head.

“There. Now you look
perfect
,” Elise said warmly.

Perfectly like a unicorn.

“Thank you, Mrs. Fountain,” Lady Prideux said, as if there had never been any doubt. Then she sailed back into the ballroom.

“
I
FIND
I
should like a breath of fresh air. I don’t suppose you can call your gathering a crush, Philippe, but I find I am breathless anyway. Perhaps you can escort me to an open window, or . . . the garden?”

Philippe gave a start when he saw her.

A narrow braid rose up from the middle of her head, not unlike a cobra preparing to strike. Then again, the caprices of fashion often eluded him, and she was, after all, fresh from Paris.

“
Certainement
,” he agreed warmly. His eyes warily on the rearing cobra braid, he extended his arm.

He led her toward the crowd to the French doors that opened out on the garden.

“
Aarrgh!
It’s looking at me!” a young man said, pointing at Alexandra’s vertical braid. “It has an antenna and it’s looking at me!”

“Don’t mind him—he’s drunk,” his friend said. But he eyed Alexandra uneasily.

“Splendid,” Philippe said smoothly. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the evening.”

“What was he talking about, Philippe?”

“Probably an hallucination of some sort.”

Heads turned and eyes widened as they proceeded through the room, but Alexandra took all of it as flattery.

A
FTER
L
ADY
P
RIDEUX
departed, Elise fled the cloakroom—leaving an excited Mary and Kitty in charge of it—and scrambled up the stairs to peer in at Jack.

She exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and paused to watch him. Jack’s even breathing was the best song in the world. She lingered for a stolen moment, basking in the perfection of him and in a pure cleansing blast of love.

She moved to her own chamber, dragging her hand across the back of her friend and beautiful gift, the brown chair, then paused to look out the window.

A pair of shadows was strolling in the garden below.

Carefully, slowly, she raised her window a few inches.

The voices became audible. Not the actual words; just the low rumble and lilt of conversation.

She heard laughter.

A woman’s laughter.

She saw the tip of a lit cheroot move in the dark, like a firefly. A man was gesturing broadly about something.

Being French.

The night was cool and clear and stars hung like tiny icicles, an echo of the chandeliers inside.

She felt as isolated from those aristocrats in the garden as one of those stars, suspended millions of miles away from them, up in the quarters of a housekeeper. Powerless to do anything but watch.

So she watched them, almost as a form of penance.

She had no doubt that was Lady Prideux. Elise wondered if the moonlight made her vertical braid cast a shadow at her feet as they walked.

How many times had Philippe done this throughout his life—how many parties and balls had he attended, how many women had he held in his arms, taken into his bed, walked with in gardens?

He might find happiness with the awful Lady Prideux, who was, after all, a member of his species. But Elise didn’t want to witness it. The very thought made it feel like the ground was opening up beneath her feet like a trapdoor into oblivion.

“Fallen woman.” The term made a sort of poetic sense. Once the fall started, it seemed it never stopped.

She closed her eyes and remembered the kiss, and how his eyes had been hot and bewitched and uncertain, and how he had tasted, and how he had trembled when he’d touched her, and how hurt and closed his face had gone when she’d pushed him away.

And as the sensations surged through her, hot and bright and as dangerous as the edge of a blade, she brought her fingers to her mouth, pressed her lips against them, and closed her eyes.

As if kissing him good-bye.

P
HILIPPE AND
A
LEXA
NDRA
trod along the moonlit path toward a bench between a pair of tired shrubbery.

A distant giggle told Philippe they weren’t the first couple to have this idea.

“Philippe, I haven’t yet asked—how are you enjoying Pennyroyal Green?”

“How do I like Pennyroyal Green . . . let us say it’s no wonder the Eversea family is known to be so wild. They’ve gone wild out of necessity, due to boredom.”

She laughed softly.

“Surely it’s not as awful as all of that. The pretty hills, the view of the sea, the picturesque buildings, the picturesque villagers . . . the picturesque housekeepers.”

He shot her a sharp sidelong look.

“
Certainement
, the Redmonds and Everseas are easy to look at,” he said evenly.

“And cannot you go out and do manly things? Shoot creatures, and the like?”