Whisper of Scandal (14 page)

“Thank you, sir,” Alex said. “That is exactly what I was hoping.”

“Rum business about David Ware’s sideslip,” Bickerton said, rubbing his chin doubtfully. “You do realize that the story will be all round the ton within the hour? It’ll be the
on dit
in every ballroom in London. Yorke will lose no time in turning it to his advantage.” He looked at Alex. “Dashed bad form of Ware to leave Lady Joanna in such a situation. I’m surprised at him.”

“Indeed,” Alex agreed.

“What does Lady Joanna think of your plan to escort her to Spitsbergen?” Bickerton pursued.

“She does not wish for my escort,” Alex said, “but now she will have no choice in the matter.”

Bickerton pursed his lips on a soundless whistle. “Well, rather you than me, Grant. I would not choose to incur Lady Joanna’s disapproval.” He frowned. “Mind you, I do not think this escapade of hers will play well in society. All very well for you to go off to the Arctic on some mission of mercy—you’re a damned explorer, a hero, it’s what you do! But for a woman alone, a widow, to go to the ends of the earth to rescue her husband’s bastard child…” He shook his head. “Some will consider it eccentric and others a downright disgrace.”

Alex drove his hands into his pockets. “Lady Joanna
is stubborn,” he said. “She will not change her mind about going.”

“Then it is good that she has you to protect her,” Bickerton said gruffly. “Damned fine woman. Plenty of mettle.”

“So everyone keeps telling me,” Alex said. He hesitated. “Did you know David Ware, sir?”

Bickerton gave him a shrewd look from his blue eyes. “Not well,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“I wondered what you thought of him,” Alex admitted. He was not really sure why he was asking. Perhaps, he thought wryly, he wanted to reassure himself that David Ware had been a good man so that the disloyal doubts that he was starting to harbor could be put to flight.

“Splendid fellow, by all accounts,” Bickerton said. “Absolute hero, which makes this business with the bastard brat all the more surprising. But then—” He shrugged. “Great men must be allowed their weaknesses and Ware’s was most certainly women.”

He shook Alex’s hand and went back inside Somerset House, and Alex walked along the Strand, and turned down Adam Street toward the Thames. The fresh breeze from the river was cold and clean and cutting even in the warmth of a London spring. Alex watched the ships on the river and felt relief and pleasure to be out in the open air and to have escaped the gilded trap the Admiralty had prepared for him. He wondered what would happen when Lady Joanna Ware learned that he had set himself up as Nina’s savior, the dashing explorer who had selflessly offered to travel back to Spitsbergen to rescue Ware’s baby daughter. Bickerton was right; Yorke
would milk this for all it was worth and use it to boost both Alex’s popularity and that of the navy itself.

Alex’s lips twisted into a parody of a smile. He had done it to save himself from the disaster of the Admiralty grounding him in London. He had done it out of a need to escape the impossible, unbearable role of celebrity explorer, lionized by society, fawned over by the Prince Regent himself.

He knew that Lady Joanna Ware would despise him for using her.

I
T WAS A PERFECT AFTERNOON
for a drive in Hyde Park.

“Shopping is such an exhausting business.” Lottie sighed, flinging herself back in abandoned pose on the plush green cushions of her landau and smiling flirtatiously at the footmen in their livery. “I would go home to rest before the ball tonight were it not for the fact that I simply cannot miss being here to see and be seen!” A tiny frown marred her brow as she looked from them to Joanna, who was sitting opposite her, a frothy pink parasol tilted against the sun. “Darling Joanna, are you sure I cannot buy your twin footmen from you? These two are all very fine, but they do not look the same and I have asked and asked at the employment agency but they cannot seem to find twins for me.” Her mouth turned down at the corners. “It is most disappointing.”

“I am sorry, Lottie,” Joanna said, smiling. “I don’t want to sell. It gives me too much pleasure to excite so much envy over them!”

“Oh, well, I can understand that.” Lottie pouted. She smoothed her fingers over the heraldic embroidery on the hammer cloth. “I thought I might try to persuade
you, for what else is there for me to do in life? You know that I live to spend!”

Joanna sighed. She knew that Lottie was bored, bored by her life in the ton with its emptiness and extravagance, bored with the entertainments and events even as she grasped greedily after some new experience to fulfill her. Joanna loved the social whirl of the season—it was familiar, distracting, safe in some odd way because it occupied her and kept her thoughts from dwelling too much on the failure of her marriage and her failure to have a family of her own—but deep down she also knew that life in the ton was shallow and empty. Unlike Lottie, though, she had her work, her drawings and designs. Alex Grant might disparage them, but they gave her a purpose as well as an income. Though whether she would still have a clientele when she returned from Spitsbergen remained to be seen. Already that morning she had had to tell Lady Ansell that the redecoration of her dining room would be delayed by at least six months. Her ladyship had not been pleased and had scurried away to complain to her bosom bows in the ton.

“My dears!” Lady O’Hara, an inveterate society gossip, brought her barouche alongside them. “I have just heard the news!” She put one gloved hand on the edge of Lottie’s landau in a confiding gesture. “How noble you are, Lady Joanna, how truly courageous to rescue your husband’s bastard child and bring her home!” She leaned closer to Jo, her gray eyes sharp and not in the least friendly. “Of course, it is difficult to travel abroad—especially to so far-flung a place as the Pole—and to maintain your reputation as a lady of quality.”

“I shall do my poor best,” Joanna said. She glanced at Lottie. “Word has spread fast,” she added dryly. “I only heard the news of David’s daughter myself yesterday morning.”

“Well, you cannot blame me,” Lottie said with a toss of the head. “You have been shopping in my company the entire day today, so you know I have not had the chance to gossip about you! More is the pity,” she added, “for I love to be first with the
on dit
and I see I have been pipped to the post now. Perhaps the servants were listening at the keyhole when we talked yesterday, or Mr. Jackman has passed on word that we have ordered very special Esquimaux boots for our trip—”

Lady O’Hara, whose carriage was now being jostled out of the way by those of Mrs. Milton and Lord and Lady Ayres, gave a little shriek. “Esquimaux boots? Oh, how marvelous! They will be all the rage this winter!”

“How gratifying it will be to bring them into fashion,” Joanna agreed, “for they are the most elegantly cozy footwear imaginable.”

“I shall tell everyone to order some,” Lady O’Hara promised.

Lottie’s dark eyes were sparkling as she looked around the park. “No wonder there is such a crush today,” she said. “Evidently we are the talk of the town, Jo darling! How splendid this is!”

“I am not sure that everyone approves,” Joanna murmured. A little shiver ran down her spine as she remembered Lottie’s prophetic words the day before:

“You are the darling of society
,
but I wonder if even you can carry this off… Think of the whispers of scandal…”

How infuriating it was that the qualities of daredevil risk taking, of adventure and exploration, were lauded in men like Alex Grant and yet were considered utterly unbecoming in a woman.

“Lady Joanna!” Now it was Lord Ayres hailing them. He was a thin, dyspeptic man who looked as though he spent his life disapproving of things. “Surely the gossip cannot be true,” he said plaintively. “Curiosity about travel is a most ill-bred trait in a woman.”

“And in a man?” Joanna queried gently.

“It is not to be encouraged,” Lord Ayres said, “unless the traveler is a heroic explorer such as Lord Grant. Now,
he
is equipped to deal with all manner of peril.” He shuddered. “But indeed, travel in general is a fearful and fearfully vulgar business. I would not like you to encourage people to try it, Lady Joanna. God forbid that you should set a new fashion.”

“But you travel to Brighton and Bath every year, my lord,” Joanna protested as Lady Ayres nodded to reinforce her husband’s view.

“Brighton is not abroad,” Lady Ayres pointed out. “It is far more difficult to uphold one’s standards abroad. For a start, there is an unfortunate preponderance of foreigners—”

“Ghastly accommodation and utterly inedible food,” Lord Ayres added with gloomy relish. “What do they eat at the Pole anyway? Fish?”

“Pickled eider-duck eggs,” Joanna said, “or so I believe. My late husband claimed them to be a great delicacy.”

Lady Ayres was so pale at the thought of a pickled egg that she looked in danger of swooning. Lottie was finding it difficult to keep a straight face. “How
marvelous that there will be eiders,” she said. “We may use the duck down in our mattresses and then our accommodations shall not be so ghastly.”

“They are probably correct that it will be very uncomfortable,” Joanna said as Lord and Lady Ayres moved away to make space for more gossipmongers beside the carriage. “Lord Grant was right, you know, Lottie. We shall detest it. No hot water and no proper food and we shall probably freeze until our fingers drop off…”

“Faint heart!” Lottie was looking excited at the prospect of adventure, even a frozen one. “You will have to ask lovely Captain Purchase to keep you warm whilst I will cozy up to Lord Grant’s adorable cousin! Or perhaps I will have Captain Purchase, too,” she added on an afterthought. “I have not quite decided which one of them to favor yet.”

The crowd of people had been growing whilst they talked and now the press of riders and carriages about them was already becoming so close that the horses were in danger of taking fright. Joanna’s heart sank to see John Hagan pushing his way through the throng. She had hoped that after he had seen her with Alex a couple of days before, he might take the hint and remove himself and his unwanted attentions, but it seemed he was more persistent than she had given him credit. As David Ware’s cousin he had the spurious excuse of being concerned for her welfare, but Joanna knew this was no more than a ruse. Hagan had been making advances to her since before David’s death, which argued a complete disregard for propriety. It was only after she was widowed that his slimy suggestions had included marriage rather than a mere
affaire.

“The Ring is more blocked than Bond Street today,” Hagan said disagreeably, clinging tenaciously to the side of Lottie’s landau. “Dear coz,” he addressed himself melodramatically to Joanna, “what is this new scandal I hear? You are to visit the Pole? It cannot be! As a woman you are too precious and too poorly designed to travel. And as head of the family I simply cannot permit it.”

“Doing it too brown, Hagan.” Joanna’s head whipped round at the sound of Alex Grant’s sardonic voice. “There is nothing poorly designed about Lady Joanna.” Their eyes met and Joanna saw the gleam of wicked amusement in his. “Besides,” Alex continued, “she will have me to protect her on her journey.” He bowed. “Your servant, Lady Joanna.”

“Lord Grant.” Joanna inclined her head with frosty disdain as he brought his horse alongside. He had a magnificent seat; he looked as though he had been born in the saddle. She realized that she had not expected him to ride and now she wondered why on earth not. He had been born and raised in the Highlands of Scotland after all and had probably ridden all his life.

“I believe I must have missed that part of our discussions where I agreed to your accompanying me to Spitsbergen,” she said sarcastically. “Remind me.”

“Oh, but you cannot refuse Lord Grant’s generous offer to assist you on your quest!” Lady O’Hara put in eagerly. “I heard from Lord Barrow, who had it from Charles Yorke himself, that Lord Grant had begged the Admiralty Board to be permitted to offer himself as your protector!” She flashed Alex a sycophantic smile. “What a true hero! So good! So noble!”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” Joanna looked at Lady O’Hara in some confusion. “Lord Grant did what?”

“He begged the Navy Board to post him back to the Arctic,” another lady put in, pushing to the front of the crowd. “I heard it, too! Is that not so, Lord Grant?” She looked appealingly at Alex. “Lord Yorke said that you were so moved by the thought of Lord David’s orphaned daughter and so touched by Lady Joanna’s plight that you urged them to support your case!” She pressed her hands together. “I agree with Lady O’Hara, my lord—your nobility is astounding!”

There was a rustle of approval and agreement at this and shouts of “Good show, Grant!” from some of the gentlemen in the crowd. Joanna looked at Alex with growing incredulity.

“I am not sure that I quite understand,” she said slowly. “Can it be that you have expressly ignored my wishes in this, my lord?”

“I have,” Alex said. “You are outmaneuvered, I fear, Lady Joanna.”

“Well, what a hypocrite you have turned out to be, Lord Grant!” Joanna looked at the crowds of admirers and hangers-on trailing Alex along the Ring and felt a rush of fury. “So you were the one who made public the terms of David’s will! You pretend to be uninterested in fame and public adoration and then you use a dead man and an innocent child to boost your own reputation and to thwart my plans as well!” She found she was shaking with rage at his deceit. “You knew that I did not want you with me on this trip. I could not have made it plainer! Upon my word, I thought I had seen every trick that a self-aggrandizing adventurer might pull to pursue fame, but this crowns it all!”

Alex looked furious. “It was not like that—” he began, but then a group of excited young bucks grabbed his attention, begging him to tell them about his most recent expedition.

“Lottie,” Joanna said, taking advantage of the fact that Alex was distracted and slewing around on her seat, “pray give the coachman the order to move off. I would like to go home now.”