One Night Of Scandal (21 page)

"I'm sorry," Lottie whispered, suffering the full ramifications of her mischief for the first time.

"For what?" he asked, turning his hat in his hands. "Making a mockery of my wishes? Deliberately encouraging my daughter to defy me? Driving yet another wedge between the two of us with your meddling?"

"If you think me such a terrible influence on your daughter, then I don't understand why you brought me to Oakwylde in the first place."

Hayden slammed a fist down on the top of the piano. "Because I wanted her to be like you!"

Lottie gazed at him, stunned by his words.

"I wanted her to use her mind to think her way out of situations instead of being a slave to her moods. I wanted her to be clever and strong and resourceful and confident!"

As Lottie gazed into his fierce, dark-lashed eyes, she felt a curious melting sensation in her midsection — as if she'd just swallowed a mouthful of Cookie's warm spice pudding. She came aroundthe piano, drawing as near to him as she dared. "I swear to you that I didn't mean any harm by bringing her here. Didn't you hear her when you walked in? She was singing and laughing like any ordinary ten-year-old child. For just a few short minutes, she was happy!"

"Her mother liked to sing and laugh, too. Unfortunately, Justine's happiness invariably preceded everyone else's misery, including her own."

"And yours?" Lottie ventured.

Hayden did not reply.

She sighed. "So how are you going to punish me for my transgression? Send me to bed without supper?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Although you persist in behaving like one, you're not a child."

"I'm not a servant either," she shot back. "Although you persist in treating me like one."

As he turned and started for the door, coolly dismissing her challenge, Lottie suddenly wanted to throw an Allegra-sized tantrum. She wanted to snatch up one of the exquisite porcelain shepherdesses smirking down at her from the mantel and hurl it at the back of his head.

"Maybe it wasn't madness that drove your wife into another man's bed," she called after him. "Maybe it was your own insufferable indifference."

Hayden froze, allowing Lottie only about half a second of regret. Then in one abrupt motion, he turned and came striding back toward her, the fire in his eyes scorching away the frost. She wouldn't have been surprised to see steam come rolling off thedamp wool of his coat. He backed her right up against the piano with his hard, muscular body, curling the powerful fingers of one hand around her nape.

But instead of strangling her, he brought his mouth down hard on hers. She expected him to punish her with his kiss, not pleasure her. Which was why it was even more affecting when its violence was tempered by the beguiling swirl of his tongue through her mouth. He kissed her as if she belonged to him, as if she always had and always would. He was the lover from her dream and the dark power of his kiss left her teetering on the edge of a dangerous precipice, on the brink of taking a fall that would surely prove fatal to both her body and her heart.

She was still clinging helplessly to him when he tore his mouth away from hers. Tangling his fingers in her tumbled chignon, he gazed down at her, his eyes heavy-lidded and glittering with desire. "I can assure you, my lady, that it's not indifference keeping me from your bed."

He freed her as abruptly as he'd seized her, striding from the room and slamming the door behind him with such a thunderous bang that the harp strings twanged in protest.

As Lottie collapsed against the piano, shaken to the core, Justine gazed down at her, her knowing eyes sparkling with amusement.

* * *

Lottie huddled in her bed that night, her every nerve tingling with tension. A peaceful hush had fallen over the sleeping house, but perversely enough, the quiet only deepened her growing sense of unease. Even one of Allegra's tantrums would have been a welcome distraction. She briefly considered wandering across the hall, but the last time she'd peeked in on Harriet, her friend had been sleeping like a lamb.

She threw herself to her side, kicking away both her blankets and a startled Mr. Wiggles. She grabbed for the cat, but it was too late. He'd already jumped down from the bed in a feline huff, his tail jutting straight into the air. He nudged open the door and trotted from the bedchamber, obviously in search of better company.

Lottie flopped back among the pillows. "It seems I can't make anyone happy these days," she muttered to Mirabella, who was curled up on the pillow beside her. "Especially not anyone of the male persuasion."

She closed her eyes, then quickly opened them again. In truth, she was more afraid of sleep than wakefulness. For with sleep would come dreams. And in those dreams, she just might find herself back on the edge of that windswept cliff in a stranger's arms. A stranger whose kiss tasted exactly like her husband's.

She gazed up at the shadows flickering across the ceiling. Perhaps she should add a new scene to her novel. A scene where her feisty heroine fights off the carnal advances of the blackguard who has tricked her into marriage. A scene where she haughtily informs him that she'd rather die than suffer his kiss. For surely a noble death would be preferable to enduring the indignities of his hard, hungry mouth on hers, the dark and delicious thrust of his tongue, the caress of his fingertips against her throat as he coaxed her to open wider, take him deeper…

Biting her bottom lip to stifle its treacherous tingling, Lottie flung herself to her stomach. She'd nearly drifted into a fitful doze when, without so much as a plaintive wail to herald it, the first notes of piano music came drifting to her ears.

Lottie's eyes flew open. Her first instinct was to dive beneath the blankets. But all she could do was hold her breath and listen.

The distant music was at once both beautiful and terrible — an uncontrollable deluge of passion, its every note shadowed by madness.

"Justine," she whispered. Seeing the woman's portrait had somehow made it impossible to think of her as simply "the ghost."

What force could be powerful enough to drag a woman back from the grave? Was Justine trying to frighten her away because she believed her to be a rival for Hayden's affections? Or was she trying to warn Lottie not to make the same mistake she had, not to trust her heart or her life into Hayden's hands?

Lottie dragged her pillow over her head and pressed it to her ears. But there was no escaping the music's relentless fury. It could not and would not be ignored.

As the piece reached a fiery crescendo, she tossed aside the pillow. Rising, she strode to her dressing table and pawed through the tangled snarl of ribbons and garters until she found what she was looking for — a long and particularly lethal-looking silver hatpin.

She held it up to the firelight, admiring its gleam. Apparently, Justine had forgotten one thing. Lottie now possessed the keys to the kingdom. And if that kingdom turned out to be hell, then running into the devil himself was a chance she'd have to take.

* * *

Hayden was in the very devil of a temper. He wandered the lonely corridors of the manor, cursing himself for being such a fool. He might have sought to punish Lottie with his kiss, but he had succeeded only in punishing himself. Even his bed had become an instrument of torture, its icy embrace a bitter contrast to the beguiling warmth of Lottie's arms.

She had released these demons herself when she had dared to throw open the door of the music room. It was almost as if some part of him had been entombed in that room right along with Justine's memory. But Lottie hadn't been content to let him rot there in the shadows with the rest of the ghosts. She had marched in with her silly songs and giddy laughter and dragged him into the light.

Even Justine had fled before her bold determination. In that moment when they'd kissed, there had been only Lottie — her mouth a living flame beneath his — hot and sweet and irresistible. When her small hands had clutched at the front of his coat, urging him closer instead of pushing him away, he'd felt dangerous stirrings of life, not just in his body, but deep in his soul.

Even more damning than their kiss had been that moment when he had confessed that he wanted Allegra to be like her. That he admired her courage, her cleverness, and her unwillingness to abide by the stifling rules of society. He might have just as well blurted out that he was falling in love with her.

Hayden stopped in his tracks, the notion more horrifying than any wailing specter from the past. The last time he'd lost his heart, he'd nearly lost his mind right along with it.

As if to remind him of the cost of such folly, a wild torrent of piano music came rushing down the corridor toward him, its raw power derived from both its beauty and its madness.

Hayden moved inexorably toward the sound, fearing Lottie had unwittingly unleashed a force that could destroy them both.

* * *

Lottie strode through the darkened manor, the skirt of her nightdress billowing out behind her. Knowing the servants would all be cowering in their beds by now, she hadn't even taken the time to don her dressing gown. The music swelled with each step that brought her closer to the west wing. But she refused to be dissuaded from her mission. She was no longer driven by courage or curiosity, but by a fierce desire to confront the woman who refused to relinquish her claim on Hayden's heart.

In truth, Lottie was more terrified than she'd ever been in her life. By the time she reached that long, lonely corridor, not even the surging music could completely drown out the chattering of her teeth. As she approached the doors at the end of the hall, she half expected them to swing open all on their own, a trap disguised as an invitation.

Her numb fingers failed to budge the knob. The doors were locked, just as she and Allegra had found them earlier. Lottie's hands were sweating so badly that she dropped the hatpin twice before finally managing to pick the lock.

Still she hesitated. If she threw open the doors without warning, would she find some malevolent vapor hovering over the piano? Or would the keys simply play themselves, guided by an unseen hand?

Utterly unnerved by that image, she slowly turned the knob, halfway hoping the music would cease as abruptly as it had her first night at the manor. But as she eased open the door, it swept over her in such a thundering wave that Lottie could feel her very heart take up its rhythm.

Shadows draped the spacious room. The rain had ceased hours ago, but clouds still scudded across the circle of sky visible through the skylight, veiling the alabaster face of the moon and casting Justine's portrait in shadow.

The lid of the piano was up, shielding its keys from her view.

Lottie slowly circled the instrument, promising herself she would not scream no matter who — or what — she found on the other side. The heady fragrance of night-blooming jasmine swept over her, making her feel dizzy and slightly drunk.

She rounded the piano to find a woman garbed all in gauzy white, her long, dark hair rippling down her back.

Justine.

Lottie could not have screamed if she had wanted to. Her throat was paralyzed with fright.

A gust of wind scattered the clouds. Moonlight came streaming through the skylight to reveal not a woman, but a child wrapped in a nightdress twice her size.

Allegra.

Awestruck by the beauty and power of the child's playing, Lottie had to grip the edge of the piano to keep from staggering.

Allegra's small fingers flew over the piano keys, pouring out a litany of fury and heartbreak no child her age should ever have to know. Tears streamed down her pale cheeks as she played, yet her fierce concentration never wavered from the sheet of music before her, not even when Lottie came drifting into her view, unable to stop herself from creeping closer to the source of that astonishing music.

Allegra's hands pounded the keys, bringing the nocturne to a close with a crashing flourish.

"How?" Lottie whispered into the ringing silence that followed.

Allegra curled her hands in her lap. They were suddenly the hands of a child again, clumsy and unsure of themselves. "There's a secret passage behind the mantel that leads up to the second floor. Mama and I used to play hide-and-seek there all the time. Papa"— she stumbled, but quickly recovered — "Father could never find us when we hid there."

"I meant how did you learn to play the piano?" Lottie gestured toward the keys, shock robbing her of all eloquence. "Like
that
?"

"Mama was teaching me when she died." The girl shrugged her slender shoulders. "It was never hard for me the way it is for some people."

Lottie shook her head. The child was a prodigy and she didn't even realize it. "I thought you didn't remember your mother."

"Oh, I remember her!" Allegra's gaze grew fierce again. "He doesn't want me to, but I do. She was kind and funny, always laughing and singing. She would spend hours just sitting on the floor with me, drawing pictures or teaching me a new song. She would let me wear all of her hats and we would serve tea to my dolls together."

Lottie smiled wistfully, wishing she had such memories of her own mother. "You must miss her very much."

Allegra rose from the piano bench. She paced back and forth across the parquet floor, bunching up handfuls of the fine linen to keep from tripping over the hem of the oversized nightdress. "I never meant to become a ghost, you know. Whenever Father would go away, I would sneak in here and play the piano. I didn't even realize the servants could hear me until one morning when I overheard Meggie and Martha whispering about the manor being haunted."

"But you didn't stop."

"No," Allegra admitted, her gaze openly defiant."I didn't. After a while, I even started playing when Father was home. He was in Yorkshire on business when I first found the trunk in the attic where he kept Mama's things locked away. I put on her nightdress because it smelled like her."

Lottie nodded. That must explain the jasmine, although oddly enough, the fragrance seemed much weaker than it had only a few minutes ago.

Allegra turned pleading eyes to Lottie. "I didn't have anything of hers, you see. He'd hidden it all away. And he refused to speak of her at all. It was as if she had never existed, and I couldn't bear it!" The girl's voice broke as fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. "Oh, I hate him! I hate him with all my heart!"