A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal (15 page)

Simon laughed. “My God, Daughtry. Have you been hiding a sense of humor all these years?”

“Never,” Daughtry said. “However, assuming you intend to shelter the lady …”

“I do.” He wouldn’t risk losing track of her in some rat warren in the slums. “What of it?”

“You must realize that her miraculous recovery will become a matter of public interest. If Lady Katherine and Sir Grimston prove obstinate, it may require an examination at the Law Institution.”

“I’d expected as much.” Her disappearance had filled the newspapers sixteen years ago. Her reappearance would prove no less notorious.

“There will be a great deal of speculation about her whereabouts prior to her reappearance. If you could find a less remarkable place to lodge her … perhaps with Lady St. Maur …?”

Simon loosed a snort. “My mother?” She would want to dip Nell in lye and then boil her for good measure. Of all people, she’d be the last to believe that Cornelia might turn up in the guise of a waif from the slums. She’d always had great difficulty with the idea that the truth might be a separate quantity from the appearance. “Absolutely not. Besides, she’s in Nice until the end of the summer.”

“I see. But if her ladyship is to be lodged in your custody …” Daughtry paused. “Forgive me, but you must understand how it will appear to others.”

“Quite scandalous, no doubt. What matter? No need for her to go courting. I’ll make a satisfactory husband, I believe.”

“You intend to marry her at once, then?”

“Once it seems clear that the inheritance will be hers, yes. Without delay.”

Lips pursing, Daughtry nodded, then turned his attention to smoothing the edge of his cuff.

From a man usually no less rigid than a five-day corpse, this distracted gesture presented an extraordinarily loud statement of doubt. “Speak your mind,” Simon said.

“As your legal advisor, I must contemplate all possible outcomes.” Daughtry shrugged. “Once she’s acknowledged as Lady Cornelia, her care will fall to Sir Grimston, and he will no doubt prove eager to … discharge his duties, as it were.”

To profit from her, more precisely. She was only twenty-two; Grimston would enjoy three years of controlling her not-inconsiderable allowance, provided she remained unwed. “He’ll do his best to remove her,” Simon said.

A dark vision arose before him: having invested a good deal of money in facilitating Lady Cornelia’s resurrection, he might succeed only to watch Nell be swept from his grasp. Grimston would want to postpone her marriage as long as possible. Encourage her to debut, perhaps.

“And if I marry her at once?” he asked. “Before, say, she is introduced to society?”

“That would aid our case,” Daughtry said
immediately. “Should it come down to the courts, you can imagine that a judge would find it easier to acknowledge the noble birth of a countess than a woman of uncertain repute, found to be living in questionable circumstances with … a gentleman.”

With a man of your reputation
, he did not say, but Simon heard him clearly all the same.

“And yet if something were to go awry,” Simon replied, “I would find myself a bankrupt lord saddled with a penniless guttersnipe for a wife. Hardly ideal, is it?”

“Oh, no.” Daughtry looked surprised. “Indeed you would not. Should she be found to be other than Lady Cornelia, you would have no choice, I think, but to petition for an annulment.”

Caught reaching for his coffee, Simon froze. “Would it be granted?”

“If her fraudulent self-representation was deliberate, it would vitiate your consent to the marriage. This is one of the most dependable grounds for annulment. I can’t think but you would find the court in full sympathy with your plight.”

Simon laughed under his breath. “But that’s … thoroughly wicked of you, Daughtry.”

The solicitor offered up a sly smile. A man didn’t need a sense of humor to be a smug, gloating bastard. “It would be unfortunate,” he allowed. “Nevertheless, it would be entirely within the law.”

“The law is an ass,” Simon murmured. Who’d written that? Shakespeare. He took a long drink. More accurate to say that the law was an
upper-class
ass. Who else had any hope of using it to his advantage? “She’ll never have a chance.”

Daughtry smiled again. “No, she won’t.”

Simon looked away toward the window. Pretty day, the early sun shining cheerfully through the glossy leaves.

Toying with the rag-and-tatters set wasn’t his usual style. One didn’t play with those who didn’t know the rules or weren’t equipped to abide by them.

But the prospect rarely carried such a dazzling reward—and not simply for him. Nell would profit, too. In most views, she stood to profit far more than he did. The money would allow him to maintain his accustomed life, but it would give her the chance to create a far, far better one. She would be able to live as she pleased: Simon had no intention of demanding anything from her but a share of the inheritance.

And if this bid failed? A few months spent living here wouldn’t harm her. She’d leave his house well fed and well clothed. A happy holiday from hard labor, he thought. If she liked, she could take a few more pieces of silverware upon her departure.

“Put the investigators to work at once,” he said. “I expect the key will lie in proving that the woman who raised her was Jane Lovell. Lady Cornelia called herself Nell Whitby, but she admitted that she took the surname from a stepfather. If Jane’s marriage was legitimate, the parish registers would be the place to start.”

“Very good. And shall I arrange a visit to Faculty Hall?”

For a special license, Daughtry meant.

“Go ahead,” Simon said. “Nothing to lose, apparently.” And everything to gain.

The door opened. His future wife entered the room—dressed, he saw in astonishment, in something very near to rags.

“Good heavens,” he heard Daughtry mutter.

Long-ingrained manners overcame his amazement. He rose, as did Daughtry.

“Morning,” she said brightly, dividing a chipper smile between them.

“Good morning to you,” he replied. The sight of her put a rude period to the heady enthusiasm raised by plotting strategy. He’d forgotten how very much she did
not
look like a missing heiress. There was the issue of her boniness. And then, mysteriously, the trappings she’d somehow located: a drab, dark skirt, uneven at the hem; a long black jacket whose sleeves ended above her knobby wrists; a bowler hat. For God’s sake, where had she gotten a
bowler
hat?

Amid the quiet luxury of his drawing room, she looked like the point to a joke. Or, better yet, an exclamation point: her eyes had found the breakfast dishes on the sideboard, and every line of her body strained toward it.

He took a breath and got hold of his anger. “Help yourself,” he said.

She nodded and strode forward.

He sat slowly into his seat. Across the table, Daughtry managed an impassive look that should have won him an award. Silverware clattered against china; a tuneless hum reached his ears. In very high spirits, Nell was shoveling food onto her plate.

Silence held until she sat down at the table.

“Where did you get those clothes?” he asked.

She lifted her brows. “One of your sukeys brought them. Thanks much.”

He bit his tongue. Apparently she was blithely unaware that she’d just become the butt of a cruel joke.

Daughtry sent him an unreadable look. He felt his anger sharpen, lent a new edge by embarrassment. Someone was going to be sacked before the morning was out. He had no tolerance for petty rebellions in his servants, much less their ridiculous little snobberies.

With an effort, he retrieved his fork and set to his sausage.

A wet splat drew his attention upward. A quarter of an egg now lay by Nell’s place.

Her table manners would need … improvement.

She certainly did not lack for appetite, though.

Daughtry laid down his fork and commenced a close study of the tablecloth. Simon didn’t blame him. It felt almost obscene to witness Nell eating. She hunched over her plate as though to guard it while she forked up the contents in a rapid, continuous motion. As she chewed, she flicked narrow looks toward the both of them—monitoring their intake, he realized with shock: adjudging if they would require more food from the sideboard, or, more precisely, how much food would be left for her once her own plate was emptied.

Through the opening door, one of the footmen appeared to gauge that very question. Nell startled at the entrance, then visibly relaxed when the man left without taking what dishes remained.

Pity, Simon thought, felt like an illness, a growing malignancy, the sort of painful cancer that made a patient welcome the cut of the scalpel that would remove it forever.

He looked away from her, toward the paintings along the wall. Old Rushden glowered down from the far corner, stiff as the corpse he’d become, but smug, somehow—his lips frozen in that slight curve that was not so much a smile as a sneering smirk. It had rarely
left his lips: in his eyes, most of the world had been his inferior.

Perhaps his daughter was lucky that he’d not lived to discover her. Simon had no faith that the old man would have looked on her kindly.

The thought increased his discomfort.
He
was not looking on her too kindly. He, who had just decided to fire a servant for mocking her.

The door opened again: more food being delivered. Nell turned in her seat, obviously riveted by the sight of baked mushrooms, mutton chops, fried perch, and boiled tomatoes. As the servant placed these dishes onto the sideboard, she sat back, took a deep breath and, for the first time since commencing, laid down her fork.

He cleared his throat. “There is always more. And if you long for something in particular, you need only ask for it.”

She gave him an intent, measuring look. “I will ask,” she said, and the words seemed edged with some note of challenge. Did she think the offer false?

“Ask,” he said. “What would you like?”

She took up her fork again, twirling it as she considered the matter. “Let me think on it,” she said. A strange smile crept over her mouth as she returned her attention to the food.

No: she began to
commune
with the food.

First her bites slowed. The next French roll took all of a minute to disappear.

Then came the small noises from her throat as she moved on to a dish of berries and fresh cream.

Finishing these, she paused to lick her fingers.

And then she sighed, a full-bodied sound, breasts lifting and falling. The corner of her tongue came out
to delicately lick a spot of cream from the corner of her mouth.

Another French roll started the cycle over again.

He sat very still, once again feeling the fool—albeit distantly, dimly, in a distracted kind of way. She did not notice his regard. Why should she? She was being seduced by strawberries. Ravished by rolls, overcome by Devonshire double cream. Every inch of her was rosy and vibrant with epicurean passions. She had no energy to spare on him.

Which was well and good, he thought, because he had no idea what his face might have revealed had she bothered to look into it. His pity had dissipated—vanished all at once—into something far less spiritual.

He darted a sideways glance toward Daughtry. The man looked appalled.

Which, absurdly, made him smile. Ah, well. Daughtry was an upright sort. But he was not.

Yet it wasn’t simply lust that gripped him. This growing sensation felt like revelation. He’d never seen someone …
enjoy
herself so. And over what? Breakfast.

She picked up a cup, sniffed, and smiled. His enterprising cook had remembered his request that she be brought chocolate for her breakfast. Nell showed no hesitation to drink it now: she lifted the cup and the pure, white arc of her throat as she swallowed all but begged the brush of the back of his hand.

When she set down the cup, it was empty.

He felt—he felt as if his revelation somehow concerned envy. Chocolate might be uncommon in Bethnal Green, but bread and berries could not be novel to her. Bizarre, but he envied her the delight she took from them. It was no small talent to know how to immerse
oneself in mundane pleasures. It had been a very long time since he’d experienced the feeling that he saw on her face.

Curious to consider that he might have something to learn from her. Years, perhaps, since he’d found a novelty able to keep all his senses occupied.

Perhaps she was such a novelty in herself.

Her eyes met his. “You’re staring,” she said.

“Am I?” He couldn’t feel too concerned.

She reached up and brushed off her mouth, then glanced down, following the path of the crumb she’d dislodged. A flush bloomed on her cheeks: it wasn’t just the one crumb in her lap, he suspected, but several.

But if she was gathering now how sorely she’d abused etiquette, it didn’t stifle her. She looked back up to meet his eyes. Hiked her chin and glared down her nose at him. Down
Kitty’s
nose.

He felt a small shock. God above, she looked so much like Katherine Aubyn.

“You must see the likeness,” he said to Daughtry. It made his head ache. One moment he managed to forget it; the next, it slapped him in the face.

The solicitor darted her a reluctant glance, as if frightened of what he’d see. “There is a remarkable similarity. I can credit that they are twins. However, I will say that the unsuspecting eye
might
be forgiven for …”

“Overlooking it, yes.” Asking the courts to recognize this woman as the legitimate daughter of an earl would test every polite sensibility. Justice would require a touch of persuasion, a small sleight of hand. A proper corset, Simon thought, and a good deal of starch. “We’ll have to groom her, of course. Modistes,
a proper lady’s maid, perhaps someone to school her in deportment—I’ve started to make the arrangements.”

“Very good,” Daughtry said in tones of relief.

Nell reached toward her ear and snapped her fingers. “No, not deaf,” she said. “Just invisible, I take it.”

“Indeed not,” Simon said instantly. “Forgive us. In fact, Mr. Daughtry here will be coordinating our efforts to see you restored to your birthright. And as for today …” He trailed off, observing suddenly the rather … jaundiced flavor of her regard. She did not look friendly.