Season for Scandal (9 page)

Lady Alleyneham batted him on the arm. “You newly wed couples. So devoted! You must run off and find your bride, then. You were very good to give me a dance, Kirkpatrick.”

Of course, my lady. I’m good to everyone—except the people who deserve it most.

“It was my very great pleasure,” he said instead, then went in search of his baroness.

Despite her lack of height, she was easy to find, for at the moment she possessed no corresponding lack of volume. Once more, her laugh rang above the chatter in the ballroom, and he soon found her in conversation with a familiar man. Edmund pawed through his memories, trying to place the square-jawed fellow before him.

“. . . slid directly into the Ganges,” said the man to Jane. “Can you credit it? A river of mud, and I was riding atop it just like a child sledding down a snowy hill.”

Bellamy, that was who it was. The
sahib
who had attended their wedding. That friend of Xavier’s or whatever the case might be.

Edmund lurked at Jane’s side, waiting for her to notice his presence as her companion continued his thrilling tale about surviving a mudslide into the Ganges River.

“Again, though, an elephant came to the rescue,” said the older man. “It wrapped its trunk about me and lifted me as if I was no more than a baby. I rode back to my home on its back and kept it as a pet. Why, the beast followed me everywhere, it was so devoted. I do believe it was sadder than I when I had to leave it behind in India. But one can hardly bring such a pet to London.”

Edmund had to interject at this point. “You kept an elephant as a pet? Don’t they eat a great deal?”

Jane turned to him, her expression turning from rapt attention to reproach at once. “Hallo, Kirkpatrick. You’ve missed the beginning of the story.”

“Not at all, not at all.” Bellamy’s teeth flashed brilliantly white against his sun-browned skin. “Unless you’ve been to India, my lord, you wouldn’t realize just how easy it is to care for an elephant.”

“I’ve not had the pleasure of going to India.” Edmund shrugged off the subject. “Jane, would you care to join—”

“Do you recognize me, my lord?” The man’s smile widened.

“Yes, you were at our wedding.” Edmund quashed a flicker of annoyance at the man’s interruption. “Bellamy, isn’t it?”

“Indeed. My congratulations on a most lovely bride, my lord.” Bellamy turned to Jane. “I was just about to ask Lady Kirkpatrick if she would do me the honor of joining me for the supper dance.”

Edmund frowned, but before he could protest, Jane spoke. “I’m sorry, Daniel. I’ve already promised my husband.”

“Ah.” A flash of regret crossed the man’s face; Edmund wanted to wipe his features clean for him.
Daniel.
“Well. Such devotion is to be expected in these early weeks. Enjoy it while it lasts, my lord. Lady Kirkpatrick.”

With a bow to each of them, he slipped away through the crowd, and Edmund rounded on Jane. “You call him
Daniel
? He’s all but a stranger, Jane. You don’t even call
me
by my Christian name.”

She shot him a Look. “I did once. You didn’t seem to like it.”

Edmund, I love you.

“I liked it fine,” he said, keeping his voice gentle with an effort. “Henceforth, please address me with at least the same degree of intimacy that you use with recent acquaintances. Especially those who spout ridiculous tales about elephants.”

“They were
exciting
tales. Since I’m interested in travel, he was telling me about his life in India. And he offered to let me use his Christian name. Did you notice,
Edmund
, that I did not make the same offer to him?”

Edmund felt every sentence as a reproach. This odd wedding guest had captured his wife’s imagination, swiftly endeared himself to her. With his stories, he had brought her to India, while Edmund had taken her nowhere but a ballroom.

“Besides,” she added, so low beneath the hubbub that Edmund bent his head to catch her words, “it was not as though you required my company. You were dancing holes in your boots with every other woman here.”

“Are you jealous?” His brows knit.

“What do you care?”

“I care a great deal,” he said stupidly.

She made an impatient gesture. “If you insist. Look . . . Edmund. I didn’t ask you for any of your time this evening. You volunteered it.”

“Yes,” he said. “And I wanted—”

“You wanted to dance with everyone else and leave behind your absurd little wife who doesn’t even know how to curtsy to a countess. Fine, Edmund. That’s fine. I don’t expect anything different.”

This was so unexpected, so suddenly vehement, that he could only stare at her. “No. I never—”

“I never asked you to make me any promise at all. So don’t go out of your way to make one if you won’t keep it.”

If she didn’t let him complete a sentence in the next
five seconds
, he would cover her mouth.

“I get the distinct impression,” he said in a carefully restrained voice, “that you are displeased with me. I’m sorry I didn’t return at the precise moment I said I would. And I’m glad you found someone congenial to speak with.”

“Ha.” She wrapped both gloved hands around her folded fan, holding to it like a sailor might clutch a rope.

“I’m sorry, Jane.”

“That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? ‘I’m sorry.’ That doesn’t make it right.”

“No. It doesn’t.” He had the feeling that she, like he, was talking of much more than an evening’s entertainment. But what was on her mind, he had no idea. “Come, Jane. Join me in the supper dance, won’t you?”

All the fight went out of her. “I can’t. I don’t know how to dance.”

He blinked at her. “Come now. Surely you—” This time, he cut himself off before Jane could. Surely she . . . what? If Lord Xavier’s country cousin, who lived alone with a widowed mother, had never learned the intricacies of social greetings, when would she have learned to dance?

Even so, this made no sense. “You never learned to dance, yet you encouraged me to bring you to a ball.”

She grimaced, then nodded.

“Jane, how would attending a ball possibly be an amusing evening for you? I’d never have suggested it if I’d known.”

She muttered something he didn’t catch, though the movements of her lips hinted at impolite terminology.

“What was that?”

She looked away, hands clutching her fan tight. “Since you offered to bring me to this ball, I was willing to come along. It was nice to have you suggest something you wanted to do.”

Oh.

She had been trying to please him, as he had tried to please her. As he’d tried to please every woman sitting on the fringes of the ballroom.

They probably
could
have worked more at cross-purposes if they had tried. But for an unintentional effort, it had been most effective.

“Let’s sit out this dance, then,” he suggested. “I’ll still take you in to supper.”

“If you don’t care to, that’s fine. I could easily fake a sick headache or a torn flounce and disappear for a while.”

“Nonsense. You’ll join me for supper, or I’ll fly into a towering rage.”

Her smile looked sad. “We can’t have that.”

They stood at the edge of the ballroom, not far from the refreshments and near a line of gilded chairs that held many of the same ladies with whom he’d stepped through dances earlier. With nods and smiles, he acknowledged them as he handed Jane into a chair.

“Not that one,” she muttered. “Someone left a plate on it.”

She sidled to an empty chair; Edmund seated himself next to her. Once side by side, though, she avoided his eyes. Looked at her gloved hands and her fragile little fan. Down the row of chairs. Anywhere else.

“Something still weighs on your mind, Jane.”

She shook her head. Jerked her chin in a nod. Then blurted: “Why do you flirt with all those women?”

Her question surprised him as much as her hesitation, and he parried it with one of his own. “Do my attentions to them bother you?”

“No. I just wondered why you bother paying them so much notice. They’re the women that no one else flirts with.”

Edmund tried to settle back in the chair, but it was spindly and frail. “Just for the reason you said: no one else pays them any heed. They like knowing that someone remembers them once in a while. And really, it’s the least I can do.”

Fortunately, she seemed too distracted to press further. She smoothed her skirts over her thighs—Edmund shook off a sudden flare of heat—then regarded him again. “What about what
I
like?”

“What
about
what you like?” Edmund repeated. “What do you mean? We came to this ball because you said you would like to attend a ball.”

“No, I agreed when you suggested it. It’s not the same thing.”

“Explain to me what you mean, please.”

“I already did.” She sighed. “Never mind. We don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

Edmund counted to ten before he spoke. “Do you mean that you were trying to please me by agreeing to attend tonight? And that I have not yet found an activity that will please you?”

“Not an activity, exactly.” She looked up at him, her eyes tawny as topaz. “You give a piece of yourself to everyone who sits at the edge of a ballroom. But . . . Edmund . . . you married
me
.”

“True.”

“So. Don’t you think we . . .” She trailed off. When she spoke again, her voice was carefully flat. “I thought we’d be together this evening. Not for the whole evening. Just part.”

“I’m with you right now.”

“Are you?”

Her gaze held him, deep and skeptical, and his stomach gave a twist of pain. No, he wasn’t with her. He was always half in Cornwall and half in the past, which left nothing for Jane, here and now.

If only she didn’t love him, he could have made her so happy.

“Of course I am.” He was certainly lying a great deal this evening, but as the lies were kindly meant, he hoped the Almighty would forgive him.

“I would have been one of those women, too, Edmund,” she said. “If I’d ever had cause to attend a ball before, I’d have been sitting at the side of the room. Would you have given me a bit of your time?”

“I did at the beginning of the ball. Then you told me to go away.”

From the way she pulled in a deep, impatient breath, he guessed that this response was not to her liking.

He tried again. “You’re the cousin of my old friend Xavier. It would have been my pleasure to look after you.”

She made a choking sound. As she didn’t fall upon him and smother him with kisses, he assumed this was not the good sort of choking sound. As she hadn’t been eating, it couldn’t be the dangerous sort. Which meant . . .

“You’re angry with me.” He turned his head, studying her from the corner of his eye. “Why?”

“If you don’t know—”

“Please, I beg of you, do not let the ending of that sentence be, ‘I’m not going to tell you.’”

Jane went white about the nostrils. “As a matter of fact, it was going to be, ‘then you’re a bigger fool than I thought.’”

His head reared back. “You think that of me?”

Her posture crumpled. “No more than I think it of myself.”

That was not precisely the robust denial he’d been hoping for.

Nor was it any assurance that he had made her happy, as he’d promised. As he’d tried to do.

Sort of. In easy ways.

“Jane,” he said softly. He knew she was listening to him; her head turned, just the slightest amount, toward him.

The sliver of movement reminded him of a flower tilting toward the sun. But she was hardly so fragile, and he, certainly not that bright.

How to finish the sentence? How to fix this new hurt, however he had caused it?

She had asked him to consider what she liked. A ball wasn’t the right answer; it had only reminded her of how recent a graft she was onto the spreading branches of society.

What else, then? She liked the truth. And travel, apparently. Two things he couldn’t give her right now.

But he could give her clothing. Jewels. Anything that could be found in a shop, in these weeks before Christmas. He could wrap her in luxury so she would never have cause to regret choosing him. So she would enjoy their life together, while it lasted.

“Tomorrow, Jane,” he said, “we shall go driving in Bond Street, and you shall pick out whatever gift you like. Spare no expense.”

When he finished speaking, she looked up at him. He smiled, waiting for her to brighten, but her expression was a cipher.

“Do you know,” she finally said, “I don’t believe I’m hungry after all. You need not accompany me in to supper. If you’ll excuse me, my lord, I’ll have the carriage summoned to take me home.”

He felt as knocked off balance as if she had slapped him. Still, the reflex of manners made him speak. “Please, allow me.”

When she nodded her assent, those same manners lifted Edmund to his feet, bent him into a bow, and carried him off into the crowd before deserting him. Puzzled and more than a little annoyed, he looked back over his shoulder in Jane’s direction.

Her back was straight, her gaze fixed on some point in the middle distance. In her green silk, with emeralds clasping her ears and throat, she looked as confident and proud as she had in Sheringbrook’s makeshift hell. When she had pretended to be a countess. When she’d lost a fortune.

As he watched, her jaw clenched; she swallowed. And then she drew herself up even straighter.

Such pride. Such terrible pride. Edmund turned away, his annoyance melting. As it vanished, it left behind a hole, an aching sense of failure.

He kept going wrong with her, and he’d no idea how. Did she want more from him, or less? She let him into her bed each night, yet during the day, she rejected his every polite attention.

If she truly loved him, why would she not take everything he offered?

He had no answer to that. And perhaps he shouldn’t hunt too hard for a solution. As long as she allowed him to bed her, he might get an heir from their dreadful bargain. He had hoped to give her something she might want in exchange, but she’d just made it clear he had no inkling how to do that.