Simply Scandalous (16 page)

"Who?" Horatio demanded. "Do you mean to say
he actually accused someone?"

"Yes," said Juliet, recalling just in time that Lord
Redfylde was Horatio's patron. To spare him pain, she
said quickly, "You will forgive me if I do not repeat his
accusation. There really is no proof, you see."

"Then it does you credit not to repeat it, Cousin,"
said Horatio warmly. "What sort of fellow is this Swale
to accuse someone without proof?"

"He is the very worst sort," Juliet told him confidently. "If you will excuse me, Cousin, I should write
to my brother Sir Benedict. I should ask him what he
knows about this strange matter. If I hurry, I can
send it by the afternoon post."

Horatio caught her arm. "If the Marquess of Swale
has not come to make love to you, Cousin Juliet, and
he has not come to swear his innocence, why is he
come to Hertfordshire?"

Juliet flushed. Under no circumstances could she tell
her cousin that Swale had come to satisfy himself that
she had no designs upon his aged father. "You had
better ask Ginger that," she said. "Lord Swale, I mean."

Horatio was given an early opportunity for doing
so when the Marquess, in defiance of Miss Wayborn,
arrived at the Vicarage promptly at six o'clock, looking like he meant to eat. Juliet was astonished when
he walked into the drawing room where she and
Cynthia were sorting fragments of china plates and
figurines into their respective piles. The parlormaid, Mary, sketched a curtsey and announced belatedly,
"My lord, the Marquess of Swale! "

"Very good, Mary," Swale congratulated her, smiling so amiably that Mary blushed and Juliet scoffed
indignantly.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, getting
to her feet.

"Miss Cary," he said warmly, bending over Cynthia's hand. "My dear child, you look perfectly charming this evening."

"How very good of you to come after all, my lord,"
Cynthia whispered, trembling. "If you will-Oh!"
She broke off in confusion as he pressed his lips to
the back of her hand. "If your lordship will please
excuse me," she hurried on, "I do not suppose my
mother knows you are coming."

"But why should she not, my dear child?" Swale inquired pleasantly, still holding her hand. "Your father
graciously has asked me to dine, and I graciously
have condescended to be fed."

"Let her alone, you monster," Juliet said coldly.
He turned to her, and Cynthia vanished from the
room in a flurry of pink muslin. "I told you you're not
welcome here."

He looked at her. She had changed into a fitted
gown of Tuscan red cambric for dinner. The short,
tight sleeves and the deep decollete were trimmed
with rows of silky golden fringe that shimmered
provocatively with her slightest movement. The cut
and color suited her dark hair and brought out the
dusky gypsy tint of her skin, which he had not noticed
before. A heavy gold Etruscan-style bracelet worn
above the elbow of her right arm was her only ornament. While not as pretty as her elfin cousin, she was
definitely a handsome girl. He wondered, with a flash of annoyance, if she had chosen that dress especially
to please her cousin Captain Cary.

Carefully averting his eyes from the smooth round
tops of her breasts, he paused at the mantelpiece and
stooped down to pat the spaniel curled up in its
basket. "If one only went where one was welcome, Miss
Wayborn, one would never go out," he told her gravely.

"Well, you had jolly well better behave yourself," she
said. "Don't you dare play the overweening aristocrat here. You will eat everything put in front of you,
and you will like it, sir. And you will tell Mrs. Cary it
is the best roast mutton you ever had in your whole
life, or I shall kick you under the table."

"As long as it is not dressed as lamb," he returned
coldly, "I like mutton above all things. Except possibly cheese. Also rabbit pie."

"Cheese! Rabbit pie!" Her lip curled in distaste.

"Don't you like rabbit pie?" he inquired innocently.

"I have certainly never eaten it!" she snapped.

"To say the truth, it is only good with a tankard of
ale," he admitted with a sigh.

'Well, there's no ale or rabbit pie here," she said impatiently. "So you had better go back to your room at
the Rose. And you had better not walk out on the
Sprigges without paying your bill."

He squatted down to scratch the dog behind the
ears. Her skirts, he noticed, were fashionably short,
and they were trimmed with more of that seductively
swaying silky fringe. Her slim ankles were clad in ruinously expensive white silk stockings, and on her feet
were high-heeled slippers, the velvet tongues of which
were threaded into little heart-shaped diamond buckles. Rather overdressed, he decided, for dinner at a
small country vicarage.

The dog he was petting suddenly whimpered, startling him. As he bent down to look at the
spaniel's paw, the animal cringed.

"Get away from him," Juliet said angrily, prodding
him with the pointed toe of her slipper. "Can't you
see you're frightening him?"

"Can't you see he's got something stuck in his
paw?" he retorted.

"Oh!" she said, kneeling down to look.

Swale spoke gently to the dog, and gradually, the
animal allowed him to touch his front paw. "What's
his name?"

"Sailor," she answered. "It looks like a sliver of
china," she added, bending her head over the dog.
One long, dark curl fell across her shoulder, following the curve of her breast and disappearing like a
snake into her cleavage. "He must have gotten into the
room before the pieces were all swept up, poor thing."

"It is my fault then, Sailor," he said softly. "Go and
fetch me tongs or something, can't you?" he told the
girl curtly. "And something to wash the wound. And
a bit of bandage."

They were joined at this moment by Captain Cary.
Juliet performed the introductions hurriedly. "Horatio,
Sailor is hurt!" she cried, rushing from the room.

Swale looked the other man over with a critical eye
as he continued to stroke the spaniel's head. The Captain was not so very handsome, he told himself. And
the fungus on the upper lip-that was hardly the
height of fashion. Quite unlike his own magnificent
sideburns, which plunged in fiery splendor down
the length of his jaw. Had the Wayborn truly decked
herself in golden fringe and diamond buckles for this
pretty coxcomb?

"How do you do, my lord?" said Horatio, bowing correctly. "What brings your lordship to our little village? Besides the practice of veterinary medicine?"

Swale could scarcely admit that he had come there
to break the heart of Miss Juliet Wayborn. He fell
back on the excuse he had used at the Tudor Rose.
"I am looking for a small country place convenient to
London," he said as Juliet returned with the necessary
items tucked into a small enamel basin. "I understand that Mr. Cary Wayborn owns Tanglewood Manor.
It sounds just the thing."

Juliet blinked at him in surprise.

"Tanglewood is not for sale, my lord," Captain
Cary said.

"Indeed, it is not," said Juliet, finding her tongue.
"It was my mother's girlhood home. I should die
before I see it leave the family. My brother will never
sell you Tanglewood." She knelt down beside him at
the hearth and gave him the tweezers.

"Oh?" said Swale. Carefully, he removed the shard
from the soft pad of the dog's paw while Juliet held
the poor animal still. "I heard at the inn that Mr. Wayborn does not concern himself much with the place.
Neglects it, one might say."

Juliet flushed hotly. "How dare you!" she said, keeping her voice hushed for Sailor's sake. "When my
brother marries, I expect he will settle there. In any
case, what business is it of yours?"

'Why, none," he said mildly. "If it is not for sale, even
my enterprising mind cannot tell how I may buy it,
so there I must leave the matter. There are other
places. I am not one of these overweening aristocrats, my dear Miss Wayborn."

He finished cleaning the spaniel's paw and watched
asJuliet wrapped it in a bandage. "Your finger, my lord,"
she said, and he thought he detected a softening in her wide gray eyes. Or was she playing the demure little
angel to catch Captain Cary's heart?

"What about my finger?"

"If you could just put it there for the knot? It needs
to be good and tight." He obliged, and she pulled the
ends of the knot tight over his fingertip. "You can pull
it out now," she said gently, almost shyly, but in the
next moment, she turned to the dog. "There now,
Sailor. Next time, tell us when you are hurt." And she
left the room to put away her basin.

Dinner was not the simple mutton affair that Juliet
had led Swale to anticipate. The Vicar prided himself
on a good table, and Mrs. Cary, without any pretensions to elegance, provided it. Dr. Cary was quite
shocked when Swale said carelessly, "Oh, do not throw
away your claret on me, sir. I don't object to Madeira."

Mrs. Cary, thinking that Madeira must be the
height of sophistication if Lord Swale preferred it,
silently berated herself for all the Anjou, Beaujolais, and Amontillado upon which she had squandered her husband's money.

"Let me assure your lordship," Horatio said dryly,
"that we do." He watched with his lip curled as Swale
swilled the fine wine and smacked his lips.

For his part, Swale watched with a sneer as Captain
Cary mixed the ladies' wine with water. Juliet, who
knew that his scorn was directed chiefly at her, glared
at him.

As she had ordered him, he ate everything put in
front of him-loudly. He slurped his soup, then
picked up his bowl in his hands to drink the dregs.
He wolfed down the next two courses greedily, either
swallowing his food whole or chomping it lustily, all
the while moaning and rolling his eyes in exaggerated
delight. Anything that fell from his plate was fed to the dog under the table. He twice spilled his wine,
apologized profusely, and begged for more. His snowy
neckcloth and waistcoat were soon speckled with
crumbs and gravy, and he licked his greasy fingers with
unprecedented enthusiasm.

Cynthia and her parents watched him almost in disbelief, neglecting their own plates. Horatio turned
away in disgust. Juliet, well aware that he was attempting
to provoke her, pretended not to notice, but when he
actually asked Mrs. Cary for a little honey to make his
peas stick to his knife, she could take no more.

"Carrots!" she said sharply.

He frowned at her. "What did you call me?"

"Why nothing, my lord." She smiled innocently as
she held up a pretty celadon bowl full ofjulienned carrots. "May I offer you some carrots? A little specialty
of mine. I glazed them myself with ginger and ... oh,
all sorts of good things. May I serve you, my lord?" She
was already on her feet. "It would be such an honor
if you would tell me what you think. You are obviously
an authority on food."

He leaned back from the table and patted his belly
lovingly. "Serve away, Miss Wayborn, and I'll give you
my honest opinion," he said magnanimously.

She came around the table and set the bowl on the
sideboard behind his back. "I think you'll find it's
rather a special dish, my lord," she said cheerfully,
adding liberal amounts of black pepper and brandy
to the innocent carrots. In the drawer she found the
old brass candlelighter.

Smiling sweetly, she set the dish before him, then
set it ablaze just as he leaned forward to begin shoveling it down.

As the brandy ignited, a tall flame leaped from
the bowl, causing Mrs. Cary to shriek in dismay. The Marquess of Swale nearly fell over backward in his
chair, the tips of his precious sideburns sizzling. In the
pretty celadon bowl, the flame petered out, leaving
behind a glistening burnt orange mass.

"I find that a little brandy makes a marvelous foil
for the ginger," Juliet said serenely, returning to her
seat. "Unless my lord objects, I shall call it carottes flambeaux a la Swale. "

`Juliet!" Horatio rebuked her as Cynthia tried desperately not to giggle. "How could you? You might
have injured his lordship!"

Swale spared him a look of scorn. "Nonsense," he
said, forcing himself to smile at the gray-eyed pyromaniac who was now seated across from him with a look
of triumph pasted on her patrician face. He picked up
his fork. "Yum, yum. Looks absolutely delicious!" he
commented while stretching out his foot to grind
those pretty heart-shaped diamond buckles into her
foot with his heavy shoe. As he cautiously felt around
under the table, he forced a blob of her cooking down
his throat, smiling grotesquely. In the next instant, he
was reaching for his water glass, draining it in one
gulp, and holding it out for more and choking.

"Not too much pepper, I hope?" the cook inquired
with pretended anxiety.

"No, indeed," he assured her, despite the fact that
his tongue felt as though a hive of bees had stung it
and he knew he would never get the filthy taste out of
his mouth. "Perfectly perfect! Just what I like." As he
spoke, he extended his leg under the table until he
felt a foot on the other side, then bore down on it with
a vengeance.

Horatio started up in his chair and frowned at him.

Juliet, of course, would keep her pretty velvet slippers tucked underneath her chair, well beyond the reach of even long-legged Viking giants. Realizing his
error, Swale hastily withdrew his foot, saying, "I
thought it was no longer the fashion for nice young
ladies to meddle in the kitchen. Not ladylike."

"Not ladylike to cook?" Dr. Gary shook his head, and
Swale could tell this was going into the old boy's
next sermon. "Too many ladies live lives of vanity
and indolence. Not ladylike to cook indeed! My dear
Mrs. Cary, did you not make the trifle?"

"You're not eating, my lord," Juliet said with apparent distress. "You don't like my cooking after all.
I am excessively sorry I have failed to please you."