One Night Of Scandal (18 page)

"A magistrate?" As Martha went stumbling backward, Cook shoved a chair beneath her.

The old woman sank heavily into it. Judging from the bruises on Harriet's arms, some faded and some fresh, it wasn't the first time she'd been pinched for one infraction or another. And judging from Martha's glazed eyes, she was already entertaining visions of herself imprisoned in the stocks of some idyllic English village.

Although Mrs. Cavendish clucked disapprovingly, her eyes glinted with triumph. "You should have listened to me. I warned you that nothing but trouble would come from hiring the silly— " As Lottie turned her glare on the housekeeper, Mrs. Cavendish smiled through clenched teeth. "— the dear girl."

Two more chairs were quickly provided for Lottie and Harriet. Lottie gently guided her friend into one of them and sat down across from her.

She chafed Harriet's trembling hands between her own. "I thought you'd gone home to Kent. How on earth did you come to be here?"

"I'd be very interested in hearing the answer to that question myself," Hayden said, fishing a handkerchief out of his waistcoat pocket and handing it to Harriet. He leaned against the stone hearth, looking even more infuriatingly masculine than usual in this feminine domain.

"I ran away," Harriet blurted out between breathless hiccups. "I let the duke and duchess believe I was returning to my family, but I just couldn't bring myself to go back there. I knew how disappointed my parents would be to find me back on their doorstep. They were so hoping I'd find a husband in London to take me off their hands!"

"But how did you get all the way to Cornwall without even a servant to look after you?" Lottie asked.

"Your sister put me on the coach to Kent, but I crawled out the other door and traded my best brooch for a ticket on a mail coach traveling to Cornwall." Harriet honked loudly into Hayden's handkerchief. "I knew no one would miss me."

"You poor dear." Lottie brushed a limp lock of hair from Harriet's eyes. "What happened to your spectacles?"

"I took them off on the coach to polish them and this rather large gentleman climbed in and sat right on top of them. Instead of apologizing for crushing them, he yelled at me for being stupid and careless." Fresh tears flooded Harriet's eyes.

Lottie squeezed her friend's hands before she could start wailing again. "Why didn't you come to me right away? Why did you feel you had to masquerade as a maid?"

Harriet shot Hayden a furtive glance. "I was afraid he'd send me back to my family." She leaned closer to Lottie, lowering her voice to a stage whisper clearly audible to everyone in the room. "Or make me disappear."

Hayden rolled his eyes. "As fascinating as your adventures may be, Miss Dimwinkle, you still haven't explained how you came to be in possession of those broadsides and scandal sheets."

Harriet lifted her damp brown eyes to him. "They were selling the horrid things in the street in front of the inn while I was waiting for my coach. I spent my last shilling buying up as many as I could afford so no one else would see them. I was going to burn them the first chance I got."

"But you didn't," Hayden gently reminded her.

"To be honest, I forgot all about them. What with all the dusting and sweeping and shouting…"

"And pinching." Lottie shot Martha a reproachful look.

Harriet shrugged helplessly. "I've no idea who stole them out of my valise and left them out for the other servants to find. Who would do such a cruel and wicked thing?"

"Who indeed?" Lottie murmured, feeling her mouth tighten.

Too late, she realized Hayden's speculative gaze was locked on her face. When he pushed away from the hearth and strode from the kitchen without a word, she had no choice but to follow.

* * *

They found Allegra in the schoolroom, sitting at her little wooden desk in a pool of sunshine. She was copying numbers from her primer into a blank ledger in neat columns. Her dingy stockings were both pulled up and a faded lavender ribbon held her cloud of dark hair out of her face. Lottie's doll was propped at the desk beside her, wearing a matching ribbon in her scorched yellow curls.

As Lottie entered the schoolroom, Allegra beamed up at her. "Good afternoon, Mummy. Is it time for my lesson?"

"You might say that," Hayden said, stepping around Lottie in the doorway.

As his imposing figure cast a shadow across her desk, Allegra's smile faded.

"Have you anything to say for yourself, young lady?" he asked.

Allegra slowly closed the primer before rising to face her father. She didn't waste her breath denying his unspoken accusation. "I won't say I'm sorry because I'm not. I thought they should know. I thought everyone should know just what sort of woman you'd married."

Lottie fought to keep her temper in check. "You might be too young and naive to realize this, but the stories they print in those sort of papers are not only unkind, but untrue. The only way they can turn a profit is by spreading lies about innocent people."

The girl reached beneath her primer and pulled out another pamphlet. Judging from its ragged condition and the dirty little fingerprints that stained it, it appeared to have been read more than once.

"What about this story? Is it a lie as well?" She began to read, both her voice and her hands shaking. "'Many still remember when Oakleigh employed his lethal charms to woo and win the heart of the exquisite Justine du Lac. His new bride had best beware. It seems that falling in love with the Murderous Marquess is only one short step away from falling over a cliff. Or being pushed.'"

For one terrible moment, Lottie couldn't even look at Hayden. All she could do was hold her breath and wait for him to burst out laughing, to rumple his daughter's hair and scold her for paying any heed at all to such nonsensical rubbish. All it took was one look into Allegra's stricken eyes to know that she was waiting for the same thing. And that she'd been waiting far longer than Lottie had.

Lacking the child's patience, Lottie turned and boldly looked at him.

"Go to your chamber, Allegra," he ordered, his face as striking and expressionless as a mask. "And remain there until I send for you."

A strangled sob tore from Allegra's throat. Hurling the pamphlet to the floor, she went tearing past them and out the door. Shooting Lottie an unreadable glance, Hayden turned on his heel and followed.

* * *

Hayden drove his horse across the moor through the gathering dusk. He knew he could ride until they were both lathered with sweat, but there would be no escaping that moment in the schoolroom when Lottie had turned to look at him. In the years since Justine's death, he'd grown accustomed to every sort of look imaginable — curious peeks, sly glances, suspicious glares. He'd even managed to steel his heart against the shadow of doubt that bruised his daughter's eyes every time she lifted them to his face.

But when Lottie had turned her uncompromising blue eyes on him, begging — no, demanding — the answer to the one question no one else had even dared to ask, he had felt the defenses around his heart shudder as if from some terrible blow.

Shifting his weight and tugging on the reins, he wheeled the bay around at the edge of a dank bog and sent him thundering back toward the manor. He might be willing to risk his own neck by charging through the marshy turf, but he was not willing to risk the horse's.

He should have known Lottie wouldn't flinch from any challenge. To a man who'd spent the last four years measuring his every breath by what it would cost him, her reckless courage was both infuriating and irresistible.

Hayden almost wished he'd seen some damning trace of fear or loathing in her eyes. Perhaps then he could dismiss her as coolly as he'd dismissed the rest of his passions. But the possibility that she might believe whatever he told her — might believe
in
him — posed a temptation he had not anticipated. A temptation even sweeter and more dangerous than the luscious curves of her body.

Leaning low over the horse's neck, Hayden drove his mount past the house and toward the cliffs, seeking to remind himself just how high the cost of surrender would be.

* * *

She stood at the very edge of the cliff, gazing down into the churning cauldron of the sea. Wave after wave crashed against the jagged rocks below, flinging sprays of spume high into the air. A cool cloud of mist rose to envelop her, clinging to her skin and molding the gossamer silk of her nightdress to her breasts and thighs. Although she shivered, she did not retreat. She'd dreamed of such unbridled wildness all of her life. While one part of her longed to escape the dark and windy night, another part of her yearned to throw her arms wide and welcome it, to give herself over to its all-encompassing embrace.

She slowly turned. He was there, just as she knew he would be, a darker shadow against the inky blackness of the sky. As he reached for her, she took one step closer to the edge of the cliff. But they both knew she would not flee. She could resist him no more than the tides could resist the relentless tug of the moon. Melting into his arms, she turned her face up to receive his kiss.

He took her mouth, softly and tenderly at first, then wild and rough, his tongue plundering its eager sweetness. She clung to him, returning his ardor with desperate abandon, knowing it would never be enough until every inch of their flesh was joined, until she surrendered to his will and took him deep inside of her. She ached everywhere he touched — her lips, her breasts, the hot, damp flesh between her thighs. Once he might have been content knowing he possessed both her body and her heart, but tonight his kiss demanded no less than her soul.

The wind grew even wilder, seeking to wrest her from his arms. But she knew she had nothing to fear, for he would never let her go. At least that's what she believed until he tore his mouth away from hers and gave her a gentle shove. As she teetered there on the edge of that precipice, her arms still reaching for him, the last thing she saw was his face — both beautiful and chilling in its utter absence of regret.

Then she was falling, falling, falling into a vast abyss of nothingness, her own anguished scream echoing in her ears.

* * *

Lottie jerked upright at the writing table, her fevered flesh drenched in icy sweat.

Still trembling, she shoved aside the crumpledpages of her manuscript and buried her face in her hands. The dream must have been her punishment for writing so late into the night and dozing off in the middle of a chapter. After helping Harriet move her meager belongings from the servants' quarters to the bedchamber across the hall, Lottie had retreated to her writing table to pour all of her doubts and suspicions into another scene of her novel. A scene where her heroine first begins to suspect that the man to whom she has entrusted her heart is a heartless killer.

But the dream had been more vivid than anything Lottie had ever written. Although she'd never caught a clear glimpse of the lover's face, she could still taste his kiss on her lips, still feel the unfamiliar ache between her thighs.

She pressed her fingertips to her temples, struggling to make sense of it all. Had the woman on the edge of the cliff been her or had she been poor doomed Justine, betrayed by a faithless kiss? Had the dream been a vision from the past or a premonition of the future? Or had it simply been a product of her own distraught imagination, fueled by that disastrous encounter between Hayden and Allegra in the schoolroom.

Lottie started as her bedchamber door flew open. Harriet came rushing in, her nightcap sliding down over one bleary eye. "Can't you hear those terrible screams? What on earth could make such an ungodly noise?" She bounded into the middle of Lottie's bed, barely missing Mr. Wiggles, and tucked her bare feet beneath her nightdress. "Could it be the ghost the servants are always whispering about? Is the manor truly haunted?"

For the first time, Lottie realized she hadn't dreamed the bloodcurdling scream that had awakened her. As she cocked her head to listen, the distant screaming evolved into shrill screeches punctuated by the sound of breaking glass.

Lottie shook her head. "That, my dear Harriet, is no ghost."

Harriet blinked like a frightened owl. "Then what is it? Are we being set upon by smugglers? This is Cornwall, you know. Are we going to be ravished in our beds?"

Still suffering the feverish aftereffects of the dream, Lottie muttered, "We should be so lucky."

But she knew perfectly well that no ghost or smuggler could set up such a dreadful racket. As those outraged shrieks continued, she felt her own temper mounting. She'd spent the last three weeks keeping it in check — striving to be a genteel wife, a patient stepmother, a long-suffering governess. And what had it gotten her? She'd been defied at every turn by a ten-year-old tyrant, mocked and insulted by her own servants, and left aching for the touch of a man who refused to so much as deny that he may have shoved his last wife over a cliff in a fit of jealous pique. As far as she was concerned, virtue had yet to reveal any rewards at all.

She rose, shoving the pages of her manuscript back into her writing case and snapping it shut.

"Where are you going?" Harriet demanded as Lottie snatched her dressing gown off a chair and stormed toward the door.

Lottie spun around, her eyes glittering with a look her friend recognized only too well. "I'm going to show a certain young miss why they call me the Hertfordshire Hellion."

* * *

As Lottie hurried down the stairs to the second floor, tightening the sash of her dressing gown as she walked, the long-case clock on the landing chimed midnight. Usually at this time of night, there wasn't a servant to be found anywhere outside of their quarters, but tonight maids and footmen scurried like frightened mice through the corridors of the manor. Several of them slanted her curious glances as she passed, plainly startled to find their mistress marching through the house in her nightclothes with her hair unbound and streaming down her back.

Lottie rounded a corner only to nearly collide with the burly footman who had taken such delight in that cruel caricature.