It Started with a Scandal (2 page)

In the silence, a log tumbled from its perch and the fire gave a vehement pop.

“Circumstances,” he said ironically at last, “have an unfortunate tendency to do that.”

His mouth dented at the corner. If this was a smile, it hadn’t reached his eyes. Irony seemed his native language.

She was stunned.

She feared she stared at him dumbly in the silence that followed.

Which was so taut that when he gave his fingers a single drum on the table, she almost jumped.

“The current staff is lazy and recalcitrant, and because I have had sent to me a few possessions I value, such as silver and porcelain, thievery is a concern. But then good servants are always difficult to come by, even for such a one as me. I have high expectations and low hopes of seeing them met. What qualifies you to command loyalty and efficiency from a staff, and what makes you think you will be able to meet my expectations?”

The unspoken words being,
where others have departed sobbing
.

And “such a one,” was it? Surely the world could not withstand another such man.

She drew in a long breath.

“I’ve taught classrooms full of unruly children possessed of a variety of natures, and I know how to make them listen and learn and like it. I understand the concerns and politics of household staff and am prepared to address and manage them. I have experienced a number of, shall we say, economic conditions, and can adjust to any of them. I am scrupulously organized. All in all, I have a very good brain. And I am afraid of nothing.”

Except you
.

She’d just told a brazen lie to the man who claimed he would not tolerate them.

She suspected he looked at men just this way before he decided whether or not to run them through: it was sort of a mildly interested, fixed expression. She was not a woman to him; she was a problem to address, a code to decipher, a decision to coolly make. At one time her vanity might have been wounded.

Now nothing else mattered apart from what Lord Lavay did next.

“You may have the position on a trial basis for a fortnight, Mrs. Fountain.” He said it almost idly. “You will start immediately.”

She froze.

And then an almost violent relief sent heat rushing into her face and blurred her vision. For a merciful second, an infinitely safer, softer version of him swam before her eyes.

He drew one of those crumpled-then-smoothed sheets of foolscap toward him and perused it. As if he’d already forgotten her.

She freed her hands from their demure knot and absently swiped her damp palms along her skirt before folding them again.

She was proud that her voice was clear and steady.

“Thank you. You shall not regret your decision, Lord Lavay.”

“I seldom have cause to regret my decisions.” He said it coolly, almost absently, eyes on the correspondence, not on her. Indulging a serf just this once. “You may leave now, Mrs. Fountain.”

As she departed, she surreptitiously dragged her hand across the top of the chair as if it were an exotic pet. A thank-you for the comfort.

P
HILIPE
GLANCED UP
in time to see Mrs. Fountain take a quick little extra step at the doorway of his study as she departed.

It looked suspiciously like the beginning of a . . . frolic.

He frowned.

God, how the little details of running a household bored him. Odd, when the details involved in running a ship were so very similar and he relished those. It was just that one was a job for a man, and one was a job for a woman.

He doubted Mrs. Fountain was that woman.

Why should she succeed when three others had already failed? He’d sacked two of them, and the third had fled.

He of course already knew certain things about her, the things the worthy Mrs. Winthrop had chosen to divulge, anyhow—that she was capable of the job, at the very least, and the fact that the quality of her character had allegedly been endorsed by the Redmonds. His closest friend, the Earl of Ardmay, happened to be married to a member of that esteemed family.

If there was any advantage to all of the people and events that had led to his convalescent exile in Pennyroyal Green, Sussex, England—cutthroats and kings, seductions and beheadings, exquisite pleasure and excruciating pain, sword fights, gunfights, pirate fights, the utter destruction of his way of life until all that was left of him was the stony-cold, ruthless determination to restore it—it was that he could read people as fluently and swiftly as he read five languages. Questions were merely a way to distract his subject while he quietly summed them up.

Mrs. Fountain’s posture, her diction, her ability to look him in the eye and string together formal, persuasive English sentences, to use a word like “politics” . . . all of it betrayed more breeding than the usual housekeeper possessed. She was proud. Proud people often did excellent work; proud people often thought they were above their work. Proud people would find it difficult to use the servant’s stairs. His intuition told him she had a temper.

And she blushed and pet the furniture, as if she’d never seen velvet before.

Mrs. Fountain was also, he suspected, a trifle desperate.

He knew a bit about desperation.

But while she’d spoken, a spiral of glossy black hair had escaped from its bondage of hairpins and settled against her temple like a treble clef. She hadn’t seemed to be aware of it. It had been so at odds with her precise speech and rigid spine that his mind had blanked and he’d almost forgotten what he’d been about to say. He’d almost forgotten to even think.

He sighed. He’d unnerved her. It didn’t matter. She would doubtless be gone within a fortnight, and hopefully the desperate Mrs. Fountain wouldn’t take the rest of his silver with her.

Charm had begun to seem superfluous in light of other urgencies. Certainly it had been no defense against the band of cutthroats who’d attacked him in London and left him with a lot less blood, a little less money, a few more scars, and in debt to the last person on earth to whom he wished to owe his life.

And he always, without fail, honored his debts.

He stood again, slowly, stiffly, and turned toward the window.

The rain had ceased, and the sun was beginning to drop, and the sky was blushing.

Pink had rushed into Mrs. Fountain’s cheeks when he’d told her she could have the job. It had been rather like the sun rising to illuminate a delicate landscape. He’d ducked his head, feigning distraction, to spare her dignity.

But not before he’d noticed a tiny impression, a dimple, in her chin. He’d imagined pressing the tip of his finger into it, just so.

Perhaps further indication that he was right to ease up on his laudanum.

Chapter 2

“A
LL RIGHT.
S
HOW ME
the Starry Plough, now, Jack.”

They were sprawled on her bed in the dark, their heads aimed toward the window, the night brilliant and thick with stars. Her arm was draped around him, his hard little head rammed into her armpit, and he was drumming his heels on the bed and making flatulence noises with his mouth.

He was never really still. He was just six years old, and she supposed he was still discovering all of the things he could do with his limbs—dance, leap, create, destroy, annoy. And he was never really quiet, except when he was asleep. And then he slept with a loose-limbed, flushed-cheeked abandon that humbled and astounded her. Ever since he was born, life had been exquisitely beautiful and terrifying all at once, and probably would be forever. He was the gift that had cost her nearly everything else.

“It’s riiiight . . .
there
, Mama.” He pointed up through the dormer window.

“Oh,
very
good. But shhh. What did I tell you about those noises? Perhaps we can sing a song instead if you must make noise. Quietly.”

“The song about Colin Eversea?”

“Where on earth did you—
definitely
not that song.”

“From Liam,” he benignly answered her unfinished question.

Of course. Young Liam Plum worked at the pub and helped out at the vicarage. He was allowed to ring the church bell, which filled Jack with awe and envy, and he cheerfully helped out with odd jobs about the village. He was quick and clever, and he wasn’t much older than Jack. He’d been rescued from life in the London slums by Captain Chase Eversea and his wife, Rosalind, and his education at the hands of the streets was, diplomatically put, diverse. Jack took lessons with Liam held by the vicar at the vicarage, and he was allowed to help with chores there, too.

“He’s famous, Colin is,” Jack told her with a superior, confiding air. “I saw him once, riding a horse. Big cove.”

“Cove” sounded like another word he’d learned from Liam. She would have a discreet word with the vicar, who had such exquisite manners and a refined vocabulary.

Colin Eversea was indeed famous for being the most dashing man to ever escape the gallows, in an explosion and in front of an audience of thousands, no less. A flash ballad had been written about him, and it had proven so popular that it was still sung in pubs and on street corners by cheery drunks and by university students and anyone who felt like singing while they worked, it seemed. New verses were added all the time, most of them quite prurient.

“You’re quite correct. I remember when we saw Colin Eversea on the horse. The Eversea family is everywhere here in Sussex, rather like the Redmonds. They’re very important people in this town, and every time you see them you will treat them with great politeness and respect. If you see him again, bow and call him Mr. Eversea, not Colin, and you certainly won’t refer to him as a ‘cove.’ Or sing that song to him.”

“
Mr
. Eversea,” Jack tried dutifully.

“Well done. Just like a gentleman.”

She could feel him beaming. He squirmed a little, pleased to be praised.

“And now that we’re speaking of large and important people, I’ve something exciting to tell you, Jack. We are going to move from here into a large, beautiful house that’s rather close by, and I am going to look after it for a . . . for a large man.”

Jack took this in silently.

“We’re going to leave Miss Endicott’s and this room forever?”

If he’d sounded more plaintive than curious, her voice might have cracked when she spoke next.

“Yes. It’s time to go.” She said this with a lilt. To make it sound like a game.

He stopped drumming his heels. “Why, Mama?”

“Because the gentleman knows we’ll do the best job caring for the house and for him, and I shall make a handsome salary. And we’ll have rooms just as lovely as this one, and you’ll even have one of your own. It will be better and so much
fun
.”

Jack took this in thoughtfully.

“It was better when Charybdis lived here, anyway.”

They’d shared this small room at the very top of the house. The teacher who had last occupied it married a marquess, of all things, and had taken her soft and temperamental cat, Charybdis, with her.

“Will we be able to see the stars?”

“Most definitely. We can watch the stars through our windows there, and maybe in the spring go outside at night to watch them, too.”

If she lasted in the position that long.

By God, she
would
last that long.

“He’s large? Is he a giant? Has he a goose what lays golden eggs?”

It was typical of Jack to sound hopeful, rather than concerned, about the prospect of a giant. She suspected he got that sort of courage from her, given that his own father was hardly an example of it. Then again, she’d never thought of herself as particularly courageous until Jack had come along.

And now
he
was her courage.

“A goose
that
lays golden eggs is how we’d say it if he did have one, but he does not. He’s quite imposing.” She never chose smaller words for Jack when she could find a grander, better, more specific one, because he was clever and he adopted new words the way some people adopted puppies or kittens. “He’s grand and wealthy. Not quite as grand and wealthy as the one on the beanstalk. He’s a prince, however.”

Now, in the dark of her room, the title struck her as almost absurd. Not even in her wildest imaginings had she ever gone to work for a prince of any kind.

Then again, she would never have imagined what had happened with Edward Blaylock.

Or Jack.

Jack took this with equanimity. He was a child, and as far as he was concerned, anything could happen. He hadn’t yet had the word “impossible” inflicted upon him. A unicorn could appear in the garden and he wouldn’t make a fuss. He’d ask to bring it a carrot.

“If he’s prince, will he be king?”

He
ought
to be, with an ego like his,
Elise thought. Perhaps that was the trouble. All that power flowing in his blood, built up over generations, and currently no place to wield it except upon household staff.

Her predicament (the word she had come to prefer in her mind, rather than “circumstances”) had turned her into quite a philosopher, when by nature she’d always been a pragmatist. For instance, one allegedly wasn’t rewarded for all of the good one did until one departed the Earthly Plane. But if you committed
one
(albeit epic) transgression, a lifetime of damnation seemed required. Surely she was a cautionary tale for all those unruly young ladies at Miss Endicott’s academy, and they ought to have kept her on as a teacher for that reason alone?

She’d tried that logic on Mrs. Endicott, who was accustomed to Elise’s leaps of reasoning and usually enjoyed them.

Alas, there had been nothing either of them could do this time. Elise had been Elise one too many times; she’d said the wrong thing to the wrong person, and the wrong person had been subtly, nastily vengeful. It didn’t matter a whit that Elise had been in the right.

And Elise, pragmatist to the bone, had understood this. It had likely only been a matter of time, anyway.

Mrs. Endicott had called in a favor from a particular Redmond family member who’d felt he owed her a favor—she’d been under great pains not to say
which
Redmond—and was able to secure Elise an interview for this position.

And this housekeeping position for the surly prince was all that remained between Elise and destitution and a life she refused to imagine.

Because she couldn’t go home again.

If she was careful, Lord Lavay need never see Jack at all. The servants quarters and the rest of the house were parallel worlds. Some underservants of larger houses lived a lifetime without ever seeing the lord of the manor.

“He’s not that sort of prince, Jack. The sort who will become king. But he
is
very important and he has chosen us, which is an honor. He knows we will do the very best job of caring for his house. And for him.”

“Is he nice?”

She quirked her mouth wryly.

But here in the dark, with the person she loved most in the world and the promise of a roof over her head for at least another fortnight, it was easier to be charitable. But now she wondered whether the prince had ducked his head to allow her to turn a scorching red and subtly fall apart without a witness. Though such graciousness seemed at odds with his otherwise pitiless scrutiny.

“He’s well spoken and well bred. If you’re very polite, too, you may grow up to have a big house.”

It was never a mistake to seize an opportunity to instill incentive in the child, she thought dryly.

“That’s good, then,” Jack said cheerfully, giving what amounted to his blessing. “Can we read ‘The History of Mother Twaddle and the Marvelous Achievements of Her Son Jack’ by Benjamin Tabart again?”

It was the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. She’d named him John, but they both preferred Jack because of this story. She’d also named him for his father and her father, neither of whom she’d seen in six years.

She leaned across him to light the lamp and opened the book.

“Make it a song, Mama!”

“Oh, very well. Let me think a moment . . .”

Jack’s breath seemed held.

And then she had it. As she tucked him snugly in, she sang:

When Jack went to market with his cow

And came back with beans instead

His mother cried, “
Oh Jack how

Could you be so touched in the head?”

But Jack planted the beans and one day found

A stalk soaring into the heavens.

He climbed up and . . .

He . . . climbed up and . . .

She’d sung herself into a corner, blast, with the word “heavens,” but that was all right, because Jack was asleep before he’d had a chance to say his prayers.

She’d say prayers enough for both of them.

She went to take one last look out the window. She wouldn’t miss the view when she looked onto the downs because, if she craned her head, she could see the trees that marked the clearing. She remembered the delicious surprise of the sun and breeze on parts of her body that had never been exposed to sunlight, let alone a man’s eyes. Edward’s eyes, so like Jack’s eyes, as he’d moved over her, and how perfect and simple her joy had been, and how very, very ill advised.

She supposed she’d done the metaphorical equivalent of trading her magic beans, as it were, and she’d gotten Jack in return.

And now all they had to do was win over the giant.

A
S ORDERED, SHE
arrived at Lord Lavay’s residence the very next morning. She eyed those servant’s stairs, her hand firmly gripping Jack’s.

How ironic that they should go irrevocably up and up to the very top of the house, when her social status seemed to be doing just the opposite.

Suddenly the reality of her “circumstances” gave her vertigo and there was a rush of blood to her head. She acutely understood the impulse to throw a vase.

She would do it. She could do it.

The little hand tucked into hers was the reason she did anything.

“Hurrah! We get to sleep at the top of the house, Jack, where the view of the stars is the best,” she said. “I’ll race you.”

Jack won, much to his gloating delight, and they patrolled their new home.

The room was spacious enough, at least compared to her former room at Miss Marietta Endicott’s Academy, and it might have been reasonably comfortable if it hadn’t been as cold as a tomb. The hearth was dead, dark, and dirty. The heavy curtains were flung open on the main culprit, a large window with an aging frame through which winter air squeaked; if she lasted longer than the fortnight, it would presumably allow in a lot of sun come spring; the aged, if thick, carpet bore witness to this. It had likely once been an unobjectionable deep green, but it was now a faded memory of that. She peered out on rain-soaked grasslands and soft rolling hills interrupted by clusters of oaks and birches. She could see all the way to the vicarage. The view had its charms.

When she gave the curtains a vigorous tug to close them, a little puff of dust rose, and she coughed irritably.

She knew the small staff was kept on by the owner of the house at reduced wages while the house was empty of a tenant. When it was let, the tenant—in this case, Lord Lavay—paid them full wages. He’d been here for more than a month.

But what the devil did the staff
do
, precisely?

She was going to enjoy finding out.

It was going to be lovely to have a long list of things to accomplish, to have people to order ab—er, organize. She didn’t have the constitution for limbo. And since the future was certain for at least the next fortnight, she could afford to be cheerful. She was going to be the best bloody housekeeper who ever lived.

She turned around, and that’s when she noticed the great cluster of keys on the desk, which seemed a rather insecure place to leave them, given that they would unlock the stores, the porcelain, silver, and linen cupboards, and every other important locked thing in the house. Symbol of her new status. She hefted them, and they jingled pleasingly and portentously.

She sat down hard on the bed, and it bounced promisingly. Her spirits bounced a little, correspondingly. There was a small writing desk, an unprepossessing wooden chair, a lamp, a modest little vase. A bit of polish and airing, some flowers stuffed in that little vase, a few of Jack’s drawings framed and hung—
voil
à
! Then, perhaps, this room would feel like home.

She sprang to her feet and peered into the little room adjoining hers.

Jack was standing on his bed, his knees bent in preparation for a good bounce.

He froze when he saw her.

“It would be such a shame to break the bed when you’ve only just arrived, and then to have to sling you up outside in a hammock. Perhaps you oughtn’t bounce?”