Whisper of Scandal (15 page)

Lottie, who had been deep in conversation with John Hagan, made a moue. “But, Jo darling, we are the
on dit!
Don’t spoil my fun!”

“No,” Alex said, shaking off the youths and leaning over to put his hand on Joanna’s arm. “Lady Joanna, we must speak—”

“As always, you choose precisely the wrong moment, Lord Grant,” Joanna snapped. “We have nothing to say to each other apart from goodbye!”

She was not entirely sure what happened next. One minute she was sitting in the landau and the next, Alex had leaned down from his horse, put an arm about her waist and scooped her up out of the seat to ride before him on the big black hunter. He turned the horse and cut a path through the milling crowd, leaving them almost delirious with excitement. One lady screamed, a debutante swooned with shock and another had the vapors out of what Joanna suspected was pure envy.

“What the devil was that?” Joanna was flustered and annoyed as Alex reined in a considerable distance from their rowdy audience.

“An old Russian Pomor trick.” Alex sounded grim. “Very showy and easier to do when you are moving than standing still.”

“You seemed to manage it just fine,” Joanna said, “damnation take it.”

Alex threw her a glance. “Your language is most unbecoming to a lady. I noticed it before.”

“Oh, did you?” Joanna still felt ruffled. Alex’s proximity was not helping. She could feel the hardness of chest against her back and the strength of his thighs cradling her. His breath stirred the hair at the nape of her neck. She shivered, feeling the goose bumps rise all over her body. “I learned my language from my uncle,” she added. Her voice sounded slightly husky. “He was a clergyman with a vast vocabulary for hellfire.” She sighed. “What do you want with me that you have to abduct me in front of a crowd?”

“I want to talk to you,” Alex said. “Without an audience. I want to explain.”

“There is nothing to explain,” Joanna said. She half turned toward him. It proved to be a mistake for they were very close together, his arms holding her like steel bands, his face set and hard. There was a frown between his brows. The line of his mouth was grim.

“You exploited the situation for your own gain,” she said. “You used your celebrity to try to force me to accept your escort.” She felt angry, but more than that, she felt betrayed. She and Alex might always disagree, but she had believed him to be straightforward and above this sort of duplicity. Now she felt a naive fool, confused by her physical attraction to him, deceived into thinking him a good man.

“I said that it wasn’t like that.” Alex’s tone was fierce, his Scots accent suddenly strong. Joanna’s heart skipped a beat to hear the passion in his voice.

“Lady Joanna—” He stopped. “They were going to
give me a desk job at the Admiralty,” he said bluntly. “Parade me about the ton as their pet hero and explorer. I will not be their tame celebrity. I’d rather resign my commission.”

It was the truth, stark and unvarnished. Joanna knew that as soon as she heard it. There was so much in his voice, so much he was not putting into words. He did not beg; he would not. He simply looked at her and she felt as though her entire world was shifting. All her senses seemed acutely aware of him. She could feel his gaze like a physical touch caressing her face. She could hear the sound of his breathing.

“Joanna,” he said, and she had to repress a shiver.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t take advantage of my damnable susceptibility to you to try to get what you want.”

She saw him smile, his teeth a white slash in the tan of his face. “Devil take it, you read me so well.”

“I want to refuse you again,” Joanna said. “I really want to.”

“I know.” She felt him shift, felt his arms hold her a little closer, a little tighter. She knew he could sense the conflict raging inside her. Awareness swirled in her, sharp, sweet lust underpinned with the desire for his strength and protection.

“Damn it to the pits of hell and back,” she said feelingly. Why could she not simply refuse him, dismiss him to that future that he had so tellingly described? Surely he deserved it. She hated her own weakness, but she could not deny the strange sense of affinity she felt for him.

“Very picturesque,” Alex said. “Another of your uncle’s epithets?”

“Yes.” She half turned to look at him. “You know that I do not like you?”

“I could hardly be more aware of it.”

“There would have to be certain rules between us.”

She felt him go very still as he realized that she was about to capitulate.

“Very well.” He sounded cautious.

“Neither of us will ever speak of David to the other one,” Joanna said. “Not ever. This agreement of ours is for Nina’s sake only.”

She felt his surprise. She knew he thought she had been about to make quite a different demand.

“I thought,” he said slowly, “that you would one day wish to tell me your side of the story in relation to Ware.”

“Well, I do not.” Joanna spoke emphatically. “There would not be the slightest point in that, Lord Grant. If you agree to adhere to that stipulation, then you may accompany me to Spitsbergen.”

She saw the expression leap in his eyes and he smiled, that wicked adventurer’s smile, and she felt as dizzy as a pea-brained debutante.

“Thank you.” His voice was smooth, all trace of his previous emotion banished. If she had not seen and heard for herself how passionate he had felt at the prospect of being trapped in London, she would not have believed it. Once again that inscrutable reserve was in place.

“I think that as we are in agreement, we should put on a show of unity,” Alex added.

Joanna glanced over her shoulder at the indiscreet tidal wave of people who were variously running or
riding across the park toward them, anxious to be the first with the next celebrity
on dit.

Alex followed her gaze, a frown between his brows. “You will permit me to escort you to Lady Bryanstone’s ball tonight,” he said.

He did not appear to anticipate a rejection, Joanna thought. How quickly he took control.

“I am already promised to Lord Lewisham for this evening,” she said haughtily. “And I think you should let me down now.”

Alex swung from the saddle and lifted her down with as much ease as he had originally picked her up. For a moment Joanna felt the press of his body against hers, hard, muscular. Her feet touched the ground but he did not let her go.

“Lewisham, is it?” He spoke low in her ear. His hand tightened on hers. “Do you always choose escorts who are so old and harmless?”

Joanna looked at him. She knew that she did choose gentlemen who were safe, inoffensive and practically sexless. Held tight in Alex Grant’s anything-but-safe embrace she could recognize that she had chosen them because they were not a threat to her. They were the opposite of Alex, who possessed the infinite enticement of the dangerous adventurer.

“Tell Lewisham you have a better offer,” Alex pressed softly. “Tell him you will be attending with me.”

Joanna shivered. After the encounter she and Alex had had at the boxing club she knew it would be madness to allow him to escort her that night. Alone together in the intimate dark, in the heat of a London night, she might forget those scruples that had driven her to refuse him. She swallowed hard.

“When I do have a better offer,” she said, “then I shall dismiss Lord Lewisham.” She stepped out of the circle of his arms. She wanted to regain control and step away from this tumult of emotion that Alex evoked in her. Now that she had accepted his escort to Spitsbergen the most difficult thing would be keeping him at arm’s length.

“I do not need an explorer to help me find my way to Lady Bryanstone’s ball, my lord,” she said. “Your protection is not required. Good day.”

T
WO HOURS INTO HER
preparations for Lady Bryanstone’s ball, Joanna was still in her negligee and was discussing different hair arrangements with Drury, her personal maid—should it be the psyche knot or ringlets that night?—when John Hagan burst into her dressing room without so much as a knock. He was very red in the face and was brandishing a piece of paper.

“It is too much!” he proclaimed. “Look!” He thrust the sheet under Joanna’s nose so that she had little alternative. “You have made the family name a laughingstock, madam, and it has to stop!”

Joanna dismissed her maid, who scurried out as though her skirts were on fire. “What on earth can be so serious that you burst in here with so little courtesy?” she demanded of Hagan. “This is shocking conduct, sir!”

“
My
conduct is shocking?” Hagan spluttered. “You speak to me of my conduct when you are sprawled all over the scandal sheets like an abandoned whore in a brothel?” He gave the papers another shake. “Never in all my born days has a Ware so besmirched the family name!”

Joanna calmly took the paper from him and spread it out on her dressing table. It was true that it was one of the more outrageous of the scandal sheets and the
cartoon in the center was not designed to soothe the ire of an acerbic man such as John Hagan. In the middle of the picture was Alex bestriding the earth like a colossus and wielding his flag in one hand and his sword in the other very much in the style of the ice sculpture at Lottie’s ball. Joanna wondered fleetingly whether the satirist had been present at that event. Alex was looking stern and distant, an adventurer surveying the far horizon. At his feet scurried various tiny figures in naval uniform; she could recognize Charles Yorke’s fair hair and rounded face and his brother’s lantern jaw and envious expression. There was a grandstand stuffed with cheering supporters who included the Prince Regent and his brothers, and a number of boxers and Pinks of the Fancy. And there was she, her hair tumbled, her clothing sliding off, hanging on to Alex’s leg and begging to be taken with him on his travels. It was a witty, clever and very cruel caricature.

“Oh, dear.” Joanna pressed her hand to her mouth.

“Precisely,” Hagan said, rocking back on his heels, hands behind his back and his favorite look of self-righteous smugness firmly on his face. “Oh, dear, indeed.”

“It
is
very funny,” Joanna ventured.

Hagan gave her a black look. “You can say that? And you looking like a strumpet?”

“The Prince Regent is depicted as Humpty Dumpty,” Joanna pointed out. “And Lord Yorke as a gnome. I think I have got away relatively lightly.”

Hagan looked disdainful. “It does not surprise me that you should say that. It is all of a piece with your behavior. You make a fool of me and of your late husband’s memory and you think that it is funny.” He snatched the
paper from out of her hands. “This flighty life of yours is over, madam. You will go to Maybole.”

“I beg your pardon?” Joanna said. Shock clutched at her.

“A period of rustication in the country is just the thing for you,” Hagan said. “You will retire from town.”

Joanna’s heart started to race. “I will go to the Arctic and fetch my late husband’s child,” she corrected carefully. “You have no jurisdiction over my behavior, Cousin John. I regret that I cannot do as you request, but Nina’s welfare must be my priority now.”

Hagan’s face was a mottled red. “You do not behave as a respectable lady should,” he said. “It is a disgrace. You will cease this ridiculous plan to go to the Pole and rescue Ware’s bastard child. You will not adopt her.” He caught her wrist in a grip that made her wince. “If you persist with this fool’s errand, madam, I shall have no option but to wash my hands of you. You will have no home to return to in London. I shall make sure that no one will receive you, even less employ you.”

He let go of her with an exclamation of disgust and paced away from her. In his fussy evening dress he looked hunched and malignant.

Joanna’s nails dug into her palms. She tried to keep calm, tried to find a way out of this tangle. Hagan was, she knew, a man who was happy only if the proprieties were observed. Until Alex Grant had arrived in London, until David’s letter had dropped like a pebble into a calm pond, he had been content enough with her way of life. He had in fact viewed her as a decoration to the Ware name with her style and elegance, her following in society and her popularity. Joanna was sure that those were the reasons that had prompted John Hagan
to propose to her in the first place. He was not a man driven by strong passion other than for matters to be conventional and tidy. He had seen David Ware’s elegant widow and thought she could be an ornament for his home, perhaps. He had buried two wives already, he had his heir, now he had Maybole and wanted a fashionable hostess to put in it.

That had all changed now, of course. Joanna knew that there would be no more marriage proposals from John Hagan, not now she had proved herself to be a disappointment rather than an asset. He would try to force her to conform and when she refused he would disown her.

“Cousin John, please!” she said. “You know that I have nowhere else to go and that Merryn depends upon living here as much as I do, as will Nina once we return from Spitsbergen. We depend upon your charity.”

Hagan turned. There was an expression on his face compounded of calculation and lust. Joanna’s stomach tightened when she saw it. She should have known, she thought bitterly, that there was no point in appealing to his better nature when he had none.

“Perhaps,” he said slowly, his tone so unctuous it felt to Joanna as though oil was seeping out of his pores, “we may come to an agreement about the child—and about your home.”

“An agreement,” Joanna echoed. She felt a little sick. She did not need to ask what sort of arrangement Hagan had in mind. She could see it in his eyes. He had come across to her now and was toying with the fastenings of her negligee. Joanna felt despairing. She could feel Hagan’s breath hot and rapid on her neck. She thought of
David, and the way he had taken her with cold cruelty, and felt her stomach curl up with revulsion.

“Cousin John—” she began.

“My dear.” Hagan’s smile was vulpine.

“I really do not want—” Joanna began.

“You do not want to lose your home, do you?” Hagan murmured. “Or to be destitute. And you will be, my dear, if you do not see the sense in pleasing me.”

Joanna froze. If she refused him she would lose her home, her place in society. She would be shunned and turned out, she would have no money and no means to make any. David’s relatives were mostly dead and they had thought he was marrying beneath him anyway. There was no help there. And her remaining family were poorer than she was. Lottie might give her and Merryn a home if Hagan threw her out, but she would be less eager to have Nina to live with her. The first time the child put her little sticky fingers on the Exeter carpet or the Indian-print wall hanging, Lottie would surely have a fit of the vapors. It would not serve.

While she had been thinking, Hagan had slipped his hand inside her negligee and his hot, sweaty fingers were now rubbing over her nipple with disgusting intimacy. Joanna felt his wet mouth against the side of her neck. She screwed her eyes tight shut as he pulled the negligee open. She was doing this, she reminded herself urgently, so that she could not only save Nina but also give her a good home and defend her from those who would denounce her as a bastard throughout her life. The desperate maternal need twisted inside her. She simply had to claim and protect this child. David had already deserted Nina; she could not do the same.

Yet the price was so very high. A shudder racked
her body. What guarantee did she have anyway that Hagan would not double-cross her once he had taken her? Could she really succumb to his blackmail and do this? And if she refused, might he force himself on her anyway, as David had done? The thought paralyzed her. She remembered David’s viciousness and her limbs felt weighted with lead.

Hagan was urging her toward the bed now. Joanna tried to absent herself from her body and fixed her gaze on the splendid Chinese silk of the cover as Hagan’s busy hands moved over her body. The Chinese silk really was a beautiful piece of work. She felt a sudden pang of loss. She loved beautiful things. She did not want to give up her elegant home and all her collection of paintings and china and her matching footmen and be thrown out on the street. Nor could she live as a governess or a servant of some kind. A different sort of shudder shook her. Of course she could not be a governess or servant. She had no intellectual accomplishments and she did not want to have to do manual work for a living. She knew it was shallow of her, but at least it was honest.

But deeper, far deeper than that, was the knowledge that there would be no possible way she could claim Nina without a home to offer her. That was the truth that cut her to the bone; that would be the inconsolable loss.

Hagan was breathing so hard now that she was afraid he might be ill. His moist lips were trailing down her neck to her breast. Oh, this was a very, very high price to pay to keep all the things that she valued. She had only ever slept with one man in her life and she had
not wanted the second one to be John Hagan. She had wanted…

She had wanted Alex.

The thought burst into her head with the power of an explosion. She could well imagine what Alex would say if he were to see her now; she could almost hear his denunciation, feel his blistering contempt for her lack of moral fiber. Alex was strong. He would not compromise as she was compromising, so desperately, so cravenly.

That thought was followed by one that was even more extreme. She would ask Alex to give his protection to her and to Nina. He had persuaded her to accept his escort to Spitsbergen—she would trump his suggestion with an even more outrageous one of her own. She would ask him to marry her. That would protect her from Hagan’s venom and mean that she could offer Nina a safe home into the bargain. It was her only hope, for once she had rejected John Hagan’s advances he would see her ruined.

She wrenched herself out of Hagan’s grip, grasping for her tattered robe. “I am sorry, Cousin John,” she said. “I cannot do this.”

Hagan gave a roar of rage and thwarted lust and grabbed at her. “Oh, yes, you can, you little whore! You’re not getting away from me now!”

Joanna scooped up a vase from the windowsill and hit him over the head with it. The vase broke and Hagan staggered like a wounded beast, swearing with words Joanna had never heard before, even after nine years of marriage to a sailor.

The bedroom door burst open. Merryn stood in the doorway holding another blue porcelain vase, this time with a dolphin motif on it. She had such a fierce
expression on her face that Joanna almost quailed to see it.

“Don’t break that one as well!” Joanna called, securing her negligee around her as Hagan lurched past Merryn and down the stairs. “I have already smashed one piece of Worcester porcelain and it is frightfully expensive.” She looked at the shards on the floor and shook her head. “What a waste!”

“Drury said that Mr. Hagan burst in and was going to rape or murder you,” Merryn said, lowering the vase. She looked at Joanna’s rumpled hair and skewed robe. “I hope I was not too late,” she added.

“Not at all,” Joanna said. “I am still alive, as you see, and he wasn’t really going to rape me.” She hesitated. “Well, perhaps he might have done. He suggested an…arrangement, but at the last moment I could not go through with it and I fear that my refusal angered him.”

“An arrangement?” Merryn wrinkled up her face. “Is that what you call it?” She placed the vase carefully on the dresser. “Surely your virtue is worth more than a piece of china.”

Joanna laughed. “I am not sure. I have never had to make the comparison before. It all depends upon what one wants and I do love my porcelain collection.” She saw Merryn’s expression and pulled a face. “I know. You think me shallow.”

“No,” Merryn said. “I think you are making light of this on purpose because you do not wish to alarm me. It sounds to me as though Mr. Hagan tried to blackmail you into sleeping with him, the insufferable toad!”

“Indeed,” Joanna said. “And as I have both refused
him and offended his pride, I need to act quickly before he throws us out into the gutter.”

Merryn sat down heavily on the bed, crushing the exquisite Chinese-silk cover. Joanna, touched that her sister had rushed to her rescue, managed not to protest.

“Is that what he threatened?” Merryn asked.

“He did,” Joanna said a little bleakly.

“Toad,” Merryn said again. “What are we going to do?”

“I am going to persuade Lord Grant to marry me,” Joanna said. Her heart was beating hard, but she knew she sounded confident. Of course she did—she had had years of practice at perfecting her social facade when beneath it any number of emotions might be running riot. At the moment her chief feeling was one of terror; ever since the idea of marrying Alex had popped into her head she had been vacillating between fear and…well, an even greater fear.

Merryn had given a little gasp at her words. “Marriage? But you do not even like him!”

“That is nothing to the purpose,” Joanna said. She hurried on, as much to repress her own doubts as to convince her sister. “Look at all the alliances that are forged for convenience. All I have to do is marry Lord Grant for the protection of his name and for that, my love, I do not need to like him at all.”

Merryn stared. “But you swore never to remarry! You said it was the last thing you wanted.”

“I lied,” Joanna said. “The last thing I want is to lose all this.” She gestured around the opulent room with its rich red carpet and exquisite decoration. “I
am very superficial,” she explained, seeing Merryn’s uncomprehending look, “and this makes me happy.”

“Having a child is what will make you happy,” Merryn said incontrovertibly. “You pretend to be frivolous, Jo, but you are not really.”

“Yes, I am,” Joanna corrected. She smiled at her sister. “Oh, I concede that being able to care for Nina and giving her a good home will make me very happy, but I am not prepared to do it on a pittance. I have a certain style to maintain.”