Season for Scandal (29 page)

Jane squeezed past a heavy Georgian corner cupboard, abandoned in place as soon as it had been muscled up the stairs. Light filtered dimly here through small windows, half blocked by the accumulated discards of more than a century of inhabitants. Cold leaked in beneath the rafters.

And to one side stood Edmund. Absolutely silent; perfectly still. His left hand gripped a canvas covering; his right fist was clenched at his side. Pale dust smudged his dark coat, surely unavoidable in this close, cluttered space. Far more unusual was the expression on his face.

If Jane had to put one word to it, it would be
wistful
.

She had never seen Edmund wistful. Not when a dance came to an end. Not when she had departed last night. Not when, those few endless weeks ago, she had admitted she loved him.

Wistfulness meant you wanted something you couldn’t have. She’d never been able to figure out what he wanted before.

Unable to resist learning the truth, she sidled past a pair of tea tables, one stacked facedown atop the other. The unsteady affair rocked as Jane brushed past, and a board betrayed her with a squeak.

Edmund whirled at once. He squinted; the light filtering from behind him must be casting Jane into shadow. “Pye? Is something amiss?”

“Why you always mistake me for Pye, I’ll never know.” Jane edged a step closer, keeping a wary eye on the stacked tables. “It’s not as though we resemble each other.”

“Jane.” His clenched fist relaxed. “I didn’t realize you meant to call today.”

“I didn’t.” Was his heart pounding as quickly as hers? “Today we both find ourselves in an unexpected place.” With a sweep of her arm, she indicated the storage area.

“You didn’t expect to visit?” His other hand released the wadded canvas, letting it fall over the picture that had made him look so wistful.

“I thought I ought to come today.”

“Yes.” He looked down at the painting. “I did, too.”

So focused was he on the painting, she couldn’t bring herself to pepper him with questions. Except for one. “May I see it?”

“It’s hardly worth looking at.” But he pulled at the edge of the canvas drape again, drawing it back from the painted surface. Jane stood at his side.

The portrait was large, more than five feet in height. A family was arrayed in oils amidst a garden cluttered with Roman columns and stonework. The standing figure of a man at the center of the image was almost at her eye level. Though his hair was powdered and pulled back in a queue, his straight nose and brilliant blue eyes proclaimed his relationship to the man at Jane’s side.

“He has your eyes,” she murmured. “Is this your father?”

“Yes. And my mother and sisters.” Edmund’s voice was clipped.

Jane ventured a glance at him; his jaw was set, lips pulled tight. And when she looked back at the portrait, she saw the essential difference: that mouth, that chin. His father’s was slack, even with the flattering brush of the portraitist to give it strength.

The woman’s features held all the decision her husband’s lacked. Her chin was lifted, a firm jaw that added to her austere beauty. Like the man’s, her hair was powdered in the fashion of the previous generation. Her seated figure was swathed in rich reds, with jewels about her wrists, throat, fingers. Perched on one knee, almost painted in as an afterthought, was a very young child with fair hair, wearing the full-cut gown and ringlets of an infant. Two other children were tucked into the edges of the portrait. A girl with fair hair, about five years of age, and a boy on the left. He was only partially shown, his shoulder and one arm out of the picture. His other hand reached up for his father’s shoulder; his face appeared at the level of the weak-chinned man’s upper arm. The boy’s expression was stern, as though he’d been ordered
be a little man.

“This was the last portrait done of my family,” Edmund said quietly. “In truth, it was the only one done. My parents realized that they’d never managed to get us painted, so the year before my father’s death, the three of us children were daubed into the wedding portrait of my parents.”

“Why not commission a new one?” Jane wondered. “You look like such handsome children, but there’s hardly room for you in this painting.”

“There was hardly room for us anywhere.” He made as though to release the canvas cover again, but Jane stilled his hand. Warm fingers under hers; the same hand that had been painted, so long ago, clutching his father’s shoulder.

“Why do you never see them?”

He scuffed a boot along the floor, looking for all the world like a bull ripping up its pastureland. “I don’t wish to return.”

“Then why don’t they come here?” She knew she was prodding and prying, but what had she to lose?

Her question had silenced him. His shuffling feet went still; even his breathing seemed shallower. “I’m used to things as they are.”

Jane’s nostrils flared. She was ready to rip up a pasture herself, or to shake Edmund by his sturdy, broad shoulders until his teeth rattled loose in his head.

But a quiet thought cut through her frustration:
used to things
. He hadn’t said he was happy, only that he was accustomed to the present state of affairs. And she knew she hadn’t imagined his wistfulness. A wistfulness that had nothing to do with Jane, yet made her feel closer to him all the same, because it revealed something that he wanted.

A family.

“Your sisters.” She paused, not wanting to press too hard and shatter the moment. “Did they like their gifts?”

“I’m not sure.” He rubbed the edge of the canvas between his thumb and forefinger. “I never hear from them. They used to send me little notes when they were girls, but I never knew what to write them in reply. I eventually just asked them what I could send them, and they told me. Now we simply communicate through my man of business in Cornwall.”

“How horrid.”

Edmund pulled in a deep breath. “It’s best for all of us. They get what they want of me, and I know they are taken care of.”

“If you think that giving someone a hat is taking care of her, yes.”

Why had she said that? She hadn’t come up here to pick a battle with him, but to pick up clues. What made Edmund happy or wistful. Why he never visited his family in Cornwall. What drove him to look at paintings he’d had hidden away long ago, judging from the dust motes shaken free of the canvas, floating in the weak light.

But he didn’t fight her. This man, who had inherited his mother’s determined jaw and his father’s deep eyes, only bowed his head. “It’s not. It’s nothing of the kind. But it’s all I can do.”

“Why—is that?” She changed her question to a milder one.
Why don’t you go back
, was what she’d wanted to ask.
What happened to all of you?

“We haven’t been a family for a long time. Were we ever? It took a painter to bring us together, and even then, only on canvas.”

This time he did let the painting’s cover fall over the image. “It’s no wonder I made a muck of our marriage, is it? If we learn by example, I’ve had very little to go on.”

“What rubbish. We cannot possibly learn everything by example.” She folded her arms against the cold that leaked in around the window frame. “If we did, I’d still be living in a poky little cottage like my mother. Probably
with
my mother. Seeing the same people every day, living my life in the same tiny rounds.” She took a deep breath. “Sometimes people don’t belong in the family they’re born into. And it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Or they are.”

“But you
do
belong in your family. With Xavier, I mean. Your cousin. You’re so much alike, in your stubbornness and daring.”

Yes, she thought so, too. And she knew herself to be lucky now. “One reprobate can always manage to locate another.”

He gave her a dutiful smile. “What I mean is, at your cousin’s estate, you found a place you felt at home. In that, I envy you.”

“Because you never have?”

The silence that followed was like a fine crystal: leaden and fragile. Jane fumbled to fill it, but everything seemed the wrong shape for her mind, her throat, her tongue.

Without a single word, he’d let her know how utterly their marriage had failed to take root. He’d let her know that there had never been anything for it to grow in. He regarded himself as too ignorant, too parched, to nurture any sort of relationship.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “You are so, so wrong.”

“I wish I were.” His anger, coming so rarely in quick flashes, would be far better than this. Now he seemed not wistful, but resigned. “Come downstairs, won’t you? I think we’ve both seen enough up here.”

“No.” Before she could think better of it, she’d drawn closer to him and twitched back the canvas covering over the old portrait. “You’re wrong, Edmund. And maybe I was, too. Sometimes people shape us by showing us what we
don’t
want to be like. I didn’t want a small life. And you don’t want to be like this. A fake family, putting on a show in public.”

“No, but that’s hardly meaningful. Who
would
choose such a thing?”

A harsh laugh broke from Jane’s throat. “I’ve lived among the
ton
for a far shorter time than you, yet I’d guess many people do.”

“Not you, though.”

She looked at the painted face of the boy, already handsome, already shoved aside. “No, not me. I’m too—what was it? Stubborn and daring?”

“Real disdain is better than a fake love.”

It wasn’t fake, you idiot.
“Well.” She made herself smile. “I hardly feel disdain for you.”

“But we still have . . . nothing.” His brows knit, and he, too, studied the faces. “You once said you loved me, but I didn’t know what to do about it. So I lost you.”

Still, always, he thought it was his doing when the people around him acted dreadful. What unutterable arrogance; what an unbearable burden. “You’re not responsible for the way I feel, Edmund. I’ve told you that before.”

He shook his head, and this time when he covered the painting again, she stepped back and let him have his distance. “I don’t understand love. I was a fool to think I could do better than they.”

“You’re a fool, all right.” She slashed the air, an impatient gesture. “I’m going downstairs, and I’ll see myself out. I’d say, ‘Enjoy your wallowing,’ but that would defeat the purpose.”

She had already turned away and eased by the facedown table before he spoke.

“Jane. Wait. Stay.”

“What do you want?”

“Tell me what you mean,” he said. “Tell me why you think I’m a fool.”

Slowly, she turned on her heel. The effect would be one of great exasperation, and therefore—she hoped—he would pay more heed to it. An answer one had to drag forth was far better than unsolicited advice.

“Oh, Edmund.” Her voice dripped with pity. “There are so many reasons. Where should I begin?”

Humor touched the corner of his mouth. “Stubborn,” he muttered.

“You’re a fool to think our marriage never had a hope simply because your parents were unhappy. You’re a fool to think you know nothing of love because you weren’t raised by a loving family.”

He lifted his brows, but before he could interrupt her, she charged ahead. “You know
everything
about love. You’re drunk on it. It’s your opium. For years, you’ve lived to make women love you in a thousand tiny ways. Every ball. Every conversation. You couldn’t let them rest until you’d squeezed out a bit more love, and returned it, too. You’re good to everyone, Edmund, and that doesn’t come from an empty heart.”

By the time her voice trailed into silence, her own heart was thumping, as if to say
I’ve had enough. Let me out; let me get away.
For whatever this revelation meant for him, if he took heed of it at all, it could mean only bleakness for her. This man, so full of love, could offer none to his wife.

“That’s not love, Jane. None of that. It’s more like—” He cut himself off, frowning.

“You already admitted that you didn’t know anything about the subject. I won’t argue with someone so ill-informed.”

Unwelcome tears were beginning to well at the corners of her eyes. “Excuse me,” she said, and turned away from him to blunder back through the cast-off furnishings.

Stop it
, she told herself.
You’re a baroness now. Have a little dignity.

By the time Edmund caught up to her at the stairs, her face was back under her control. The tears were banished. But as usual, his expression was a mystery. She never could tell if he was angry or hurt. Or whether he was a thousand miles away, not thinking of her at all.

“You,” he said, “have a most remarkable ability. You can say the kindest things and have them sound insulting. And you can also call me a fool, time and time again, and make it sound like a sweet endearment.”

He turned his head to the side, and light filtering through the open doorway to the catchall room caught his profile.

All at once—finally—she understood. Because that light caught him in the eye, contracting the pupil she could just barely see.

“You’re looking at me,” she said. “When you turn your head like that. You can see me. You—you look at things that you don’t want people to know you’re looking at.”

His mouth crimped. Turning his head to face her, he squinted a bit in the slice of light that came through the doorway. “I never could deceive you.”

“You deceive everyone.” She choked off a laugh. “Xavier thinks you’re trying to look like Byron when you snootle around like that.”

“Byron—snootle—I—” Failing to emit more than two syllables at once, he settled for shaking his head. “I am a fool, aren’t I?”

“Yes. You’re a fool.” She did her best to make it sound like a sweet endearment, as he’d said. This time she was the one who turned her head away. “I ought to be going now, I think.”

“I’ll see you out.” No argument. But then, it wouldn’t be good manners to argue.

In silence, they walked down stairs, more stairs, yet more, until they found themselves in the marble-tiled entrance hall. Jane remembered how gray it had been before she lived here. He’d lived with grayness for so long, he hadn’t realized things could be different.