That Scandalous Summer (6 page)

“For the peace and quiet, in fact.” His eyes slipped down her body, returning to her face so quickly that she might have imagined it. But she hadn’t. Her skin burned where his gaze had wandered.

He was very aware of her as a woman. And he did not like it.

Her answering disappointment seemed to scrape along the raw wound opened by Nello’s betrayal. She had all the patience in the world for shyness, but no tolerance whatsoever for moralizing curmudgeons. She had vowed it over her late husband’s grave: she would never again apologize for herself to any man.

Tucking back her shoulders and arching her spine the smallest amount, she leaned forward. Granted, this formal gown was not suited to nuncheon teas, but it certainly displayed her bosom most admirably. “I hope I have not disrupted your peace too terribly, then.”

Now his eyes met and held hers with a steadiness that caused a little shock of warmth to explode in her stomach. He knew exactly what she was doing. “I expect I shall recover shortly,” he murmured.

That frank, appraising look could not belong to a prude. Her pulse began to thrum again. “I must thank you for your ministrations with an invitation to dinner—tonight, if you’re free.” It was her social duty, after all, to welcome newcomers to the district.

“Alas,” he said, “I’ve a prior engagement at the vicarage.”

This news gave her brief pause. She was not certain she was prepared to flirt with a man who willingly consorted with men of God. Such an undertaking would no doubt be riddled with lectures.

But . . . one must take risks to win rewards. A pleasant distraction, a harmless flirtation, would be very welcome. “Tomorrow, then?”

For the brief space of a moment he merely looked at her. And then he gave her a strange, knowing smile that utilized only half his mouth. “Mrs. Chudderley. I think that would be unwise.”

She blinked. The answer was so unexpected—and, if interpreted in a particular way, so frankly
impudent,
as though he assumed that if he did come, he would have his way with her over the dessert course—that it briefly took her breath away.

His smile widened into a grin. “And now I’ve shocked you,” he said, and set his cup back into his saucer with a definitive click. “I am bad company, I confess it. This is precisely why I must decline your invitation: I should not like to ruin your good opinion of the north.”

He rose then and sketched a bow that belied his own words, for it spoke of polish and breeding, and an education in the niceties of society. But before she could point this out—and she might have done; he was intolerably blunt, which meant she might be blunt in reply—he had turned on his heel, throwing over his shoulder the discouraging: “Mrs. Brown will show you out, ma’am.”

And then he was gone, leaving her puzzled about whether she should be terribly offended, or determined to answer what surely
must
have been intended as a challenge. For nobody said no to her—especially not men who were considered bad company.

At the house, in the entry hall, the rap of the butler’s heels echoed off the marble dome high above. Undoubtedly it was a remonstrance to Liza that neither he nor the footman seemed surprised by her bedraggled state, her lack of cloak and hat and gloves, her seven hours’ absence, or her failure to have appeared at breakfast.

“Good morning, ma’am,” said Ronson. The butler’s voice was terribly bland as he clicked his heels together in a bow. His face, hatched by lines that grew deeper when he frowned, currently looked as though it had been carved with an axe. Dear Ronson did not approve of her. “I see that Miss Mather does not accompany you.”

Her secretary? “No, of course not.” Mather tended to disappear when the liquor came out—last night being no exception.

Liza took up her mail from the salver proffered by a footman. A dozen envelopes, many of them invitations forwarded from London. She had closed up the town house three weeks ago, after that disastrous meeting with her solicitors. Creditors knocking right and left . . . they
all seemed to be in cahoots, for the crisis had manifested with such shocking suddenness. Her first instinct had been to flee to where she felt safest.
Hide and regroup.

Now she had a new reason to stay away. In London, the beau monde would make a sport of watching her reactions as Nello courted his heiress beneath her nose. She could not go back to town. It would be a summer in the country for her.

She cleared her throat, breathing deeply to stave off a welling loneliness.
It doesn’t matter. Let her have him.
She knew how much his promises were worth. Oh, he’d been full of sweet words at the beginning. He had promised her everything—the moon, the stars, marriage, and everlasting love. And in the wake of her mother’s death, she’d been desperate to believe him.

But she’d also been too recently widowed, and too well educated in how quickly marriage could go wrong, to commit herself so quickly.
Give me time,
she’d begged him.
A little time is all I need.

Thank God for that! For his motive had not been love, after all. No, what he’d been looking for was money.

She should probably do the same.

Her throat closed. What choice did she have? It wasn’t simply her own welfare that hung in the balance. Everyone who worked her land—though the value of their crops kept falling; everyone whom she employed—and the children whose educations she funded, and the parish, and the village school—

How could a handful of bad choices have sunk her so quickly? Her accountants had seemed amazed.
Can it be that your solicitors never reviewed your late husband’s investments?
But the solicitors said it had been the accountants’ duty to do so. For her own part, she might
have kicked herself for assuming that such matters didn’t require her oversight. But really, what did
she
know of stocks and bonds?

The silence felt heavy. She glanced up. Ronson’s lifted brow screamed with significance. “Ah, yes,” she said. “You were speaking of Mather?”

“Indeed, ma’am. When Mrs. Hull could not account for your whereabouts at the breakfast table, Miss Mather went in search of you.”

Liza sighed. A hundred times she had chided Mather, but the girl had a gift for fretfulness: at the slimmest possibility of trouble, she was off like a dog on the scent of a bone. “I do wish you had stopped her, then.
You
knew I was fine.”

“Of course,” Ronson said blandly. “Shall I dispatch someone to locate her?”

“Yes, tell her I’m well. Though I—”

“Elizabeth!” A figure appeared at the top of the staircase, hands clasped dramatically to heart. Jane Hull was a fellow widow and new friend whom Liza had encountered when taking the water at Baden Baden. Oh, glorious winter! She’d been so innocent then of the troubles to come.

Clearing her throat, she made her voice bright. “Good morning,” she called. And the sight did cheer her. From this angle, Jane looked like a hovering angel, for as always she wore white, and her blond hair fell to her waist, unbound. A very winsome discovery. She would be great fun to introduce to everybody at the next party.
Provided I’m invited, once the news breaks.
She pushed that thought aside. “I hope you didn’t miss me too terribly last night.”

“Thank heaven you’re back safely!” Jane replied in a high, trembling voice.

A snort came from Ronson’s direction. Liza turned her smile on him, glad to see real life in his expression—but then he averted his face, the bulldog.

How absurd to feel wounded. He was only a servant, after all. She hiked up her chin and gave him her back.

Jane came rushing down the stairs to embrace her. “Did you find him?” she whispered into Liza’s ear. Her cheek was cool and smooth where it pressed against Liza’s, soft with youth, and she smelled unbearably wholesome: rose water, soap, and the lavender that the maids folded into the household laundry.

Conscious that she herself did not smell so sweetly, Liza pulled back—or attempted to; Jane would not permit it. “Come,” the girl said, clasping Liza’s waist and drawing her up the stairs. “Tell me all of it. Your maid says Mr. Nelson has left. Did you throw him out? Or”—Jane’s voice dropped, and a pretty pink stained her cheeks—“were you
with
him all night?”

Liza did worry about Jane’s ingenuous mannerisms. They would not be counted at all fashionable. “Neither,” she said. After their contretemps in the drawing room, Nello had left. Simply . . . walked out without so much as a backward look. So much for
his
heartbreak. Whatever beat in his chest, it was probably made of stone.

As for herself, she barely remembered her mad rush through the wood. Had she spent some time by the lake? Yes, that seemed right—staring at the moon and thinking of her mother as she wept, wretchedly and dreadfully, so that her throat, even now, seemed to ache in memory. And then . . . somehow she had found her way to Mr. Grey’s garden.

A shiver passed through her. Sometimes she frightened herself.

“What is it?” Jane asked as they crested the stairs. “The look on your face—”

Liza spoke quickly, for she did not wish to know about the look on her face. “In fact, I met a man.”

Instantly she regretted that confession, for the thought of the doctor triggered a physical throb, an echo of the attraction she had felt—which, in the cool, spacious elegance of her home, seemed all the stranger and embarrassing. A
country doctor.
Terribly dressed. Who had spurned her invitation to dinner!

“Oh!” Jane clapped. “Oh, do tell!
Who?
Is he in love with you already?”

Liza made herself shrug. “Quite the opposite, I think.”

Jane made a face. “Then he must be made of clay.”

“Or arrogant,” Liza said. “Full of self-importance.” To turn down her invitation so bluntly! “As for Nello, I imagine he caught the last train toward London. And good riddance to him.”

“Gracious!” Jane’s blue eyes opened wide with curiosity. “Such vehemence!”

“Yes.” The whole world seemed vexing, suddenly. “I’m done with him.”

“I see.” Jane sounded skeptical, which pricked. “Well, you must be exhausted. We’ll have a bath drawn for you, and a cup of tea for us both, and . . .” She lifted her brows. “The whole story, perhaps? Of this arrogant jackanapes?”

They turned into Liza’s rooms, where Jane released her to bustle toward an already-waiting tea tray. The sight gave Liza a moment’s pause: had Jane been waiting here for her? These were her private apartments!

Jane glanced up. “I saw you through the window
from the gallery, walking up from the lake. I thought you might like to take your tea in peace—I hope you don’t mind?”

“Oh! No, of course not. How perfectly thoughtful of you, darling.” Liza took a seat at the tea table, which pressed against the window to offer a view of the surrounding parkland. On clear days, one could see to the coast.

She fixed her eyes on the distant sparkle and sighed. Perhaps it was time she took a sea journey. Where would she go? America? Plenty of millionaires for the taking there. If she meant to do this—and she didn’t see she had much choice in it—an American husband would be as good as any other. More difficult to pry into her financial state from abroad, too. The key would be to make him fall in love before he learned the truth.

What a fool she’d been to tell Nello everything. If he did not keep his mouth shut, she was doomed.

“But tell me,” Jane said as she poured the tea. “Who is this mysterious, arrogant man whom you met?”

She cleared her throat. “Oh, just a doctor. A newcomer to the district.”

Jane nodded and crossed to the dressing table, uncapping a crystal decanter from which she splashed a bit of whisky into the steaming cup. “This will fix your head,” she said sweetly. “Is he married, then?”

“No.” Liza took the cup gratefully. “Much obliged, darling.”

“How old is he?”

“His thirties, I believe.”

“Oh, then he’s old,” Jane said dismissively—ignorant, Liza assumed, of the age of her hostess.

Yet it still irked. Jane had been married at nineteen, and widowed last year, at twenty-two. But not every
husband exercised such splendid good timing. Why, some of them monopolized a woman for years, though they showed no interest in her bed, her company, her desire to be a friend and companion . . .

No, her husband had taken a different course. His only interest had been in chiding her.
You mustn’t do this, you mustn’t do that, shameless, vulgar . . .
The next one would need to be far more manageable.

She took a large, bracing sip of her tea—sugarless, not as she liked, but as her waistline demanded. Jane had taken to following suit, though she was inches taller, and already slim as a whippet. “Yes, I suppose a man in his thirties
is
old,” she confirmed, by way of experiment.
Am I old now?
For if a gentleman was accounted old, a woman of nearly the same age—a woman of thirty-two—must be positively
ancient
.

The thought made her anxious. She needed to find a husband
quickly—
before news of her troubles broke; before her age started to show.