Whisper of Scandal (25 page)

“Why are you here?” he repeated.

She looked up at him and her eyes were that same clear candid blue that he remembered from the meeting in Churchward’s office. It seemed so long ago.

“I came to find you,” she said simply. She held his gaze fearlessly. “I thought that you might need me.”

He squeezed his eyes tight shut. Her words hurt and it was his turn to flinch.

“I don’t. I do not need you.”

“Yes, you do.” She spoke very calmly.

He shook his head. “Blame me. Argue with me.” He ran a hand over his hair. “We always argue.”

“Not this time.” She moved from beneath his hands and went to sit down on the villa steps.

He had wanted to see the real Joanna Ware, the woman he had glimpsed beneath the facade of dashing society hostess. Here she was. And he realized that he had made a fundamental mistake; there was no facade. The darling of the ton, the Lady of the Fancy and this
woman were one and the same. The style, the clothes, the balls and parties were simply aspects of a character that could also embrace a warmth and generosity toward those she cared for. He had not seen it before because he had been determined to believe her to be fickle and shallow. Ware’s hatred of her and his own obstinacy had blinded him.

I thought you might need me…

She had cared about him, about how he might be feeling, putting aside her own pride and anger to offer him comfort. He felt humbled. He looked at Joanna. She was staring out across the bay with a fierce concentration and a very stubborn set to her chin. Alex felt a pang of emotion so poignant and powerful that he rocked back on his heels.

His wife. With a shock he realized that that had been what he had thought of as Amelia’s role, not Joanna’s. Although Amelia had died five years before, she had still been enshrined in his heart as his wife. It did not matter that he had married Joanna, that he had made love to her, that he wanted her to be the mother of his heir. Somehow he had still thought of Amelia as his real wife.

Until now…

He sat down next to Joanna. She cast him a sideways glance but she did not speak. After a moment he took her hand. He saw a little smile touch her lips. He wanted to kiss her.

“I want to tell you about Amelia,” he said abruptly.

He heard the tiny catch of her breath and thought he saw a fleeting look of fear in her eyes.

“You never speak of her,” she said.

“Well, I am doing so now.”

She avoided his eyes. “You loved her?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “Yes, I did. I loved her very much. We had known one another since we were young. I wanted her to travel with me where and when she could. She was not anxious to do so, but I insisted. I thought, in my arrogance, that it was a wife’s place always to be by her husband’s side.”

Joanna’s bright blue gaze was fixed on his face now. “What happened?” she said softly.

“We had been married five years when I was posted to India,” Alex said. “The ship came under attack from a French squadron under Admiral Linois. We were escorting a couple of merchant ships that were anchored out of Vizagapatam.” He paused. “There was an accident with some loose gunpowder in the magazine. It had not been doused down. There was a spark—” Alex stopped. He could still hear the explosion echo through his head, still taste the smoke and gunpowder gritty on his tongue, still smell the blood. He shuddered. Joanna’s fingers tightened on his, her hand, small and warm, lying within his.

“There was a terrible fire that ravaged the ship,” he said tonelessly. “I fought my way below to find Amelia. I found her, but…” He hesitated. “She was horribly burned. I knew she was going to die. With almost her last breath she asked me to forgive her for failing me.” His voice roughened. “She kept apologizing to me, over and over again, because she had not been able to escape the flames. But I was the one who failed. I had insisted that she come with me. If she had stayed at home in England she would not have died.”

There was silence. The wind was starting to rise, whistling through the spars of the ancient hut.

“She was pregnant with my child,” Alex finished. “And I never wanted another wife nor another child until you came to me that night in London to make your bargain.”

For a moment he saw vivid emotion in Joanna’s face. Her fingers trembled in his. A moment later she bent her head and her bright hair fell forward, shielding her expression.

“You lost a child as well,” she said. “Oh, Alex…” Her voice was so soft he had to strain to hear it. “I am so sorry. So very sorry.”

“I never told anyone about the child,” Alex said. The memory of Amelia had always been strong within him. He had clung to it, he realized, because he had felt in some way that if he started to forget her that would mean that he had started to feel less guilty, less responsible for her death. For years he had not wanted anyone else in her place. Balvenie could not have an heir because he had lost the wife and the child who should have stood beside him. But then Joanna had come to him and everything had started to change.

“Amelia was very gentle and sweet,” he said. “She had no core of steel. She was not like you.” He realized that until very recently he would have thought Joanna to be the weak one. He had been very mistaken in her.

“She would never have ridden all the way here to find me,” he said. “She would have waited until I came back to her.”

“She sounds like a woman of great good sense,” Joanna said. She glanced down at her Esquimaux boots. “What sane woman would choose to ride out here, ruining her boots and her riding habit in the process?”

Alex heard the briskness in her words but underneath
it some strong emotion. He put a hand against her cheek and tilted her face up to his. Her skin was warm beneath his touch and so soft he wanted to kiss her. Suddenly, fiercely, the impulse gripped him. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her that he admired her for what she had done.

“I am glad you came,” he said gently.

Her gaze clung to his. He pulled her close, his arms going around her. She felt so warm and so strong that again he was startled. How could Joanna Ware, who had seemed so brittle, instead prove to be so resilient? He rested his chin against her hair. It smelled of earth and felt dusty against his lips.

“Today,” he said slowly, “when I saw the bear coming, I could not move. It was the most damnable thing.” His hands tightened on her, she winced, and he eased back a little. He did not want to let her go completely, though. The need to keep her very close to him was strong.

“I knew what I had to do,” he said. “I wanted to fire, but somehow I could not seem to move. I cannot explain it. All I seemed to be able to think was that I had failed before and now it was going to happen again in a different way…”

Joanna turned her face against his jacket in a little caress. “You did not fail Amelia, Alex,” she said quietly. “You did your very best to save her. Dev said that you almost died, yourself, as a result. And today, well, you did not fail me either.”

“I left it too late,” Alex said. “I should have killed it.” The anger swept through him again, but the hot, shaming tide seemed less powerful than it had before. Something was easing inside him, loosening its grip, starting to let go.

“Then I would have been really angry with you,” Joanna said. “How could you kill something so magnificent?” She sighed, shivering a little in the wind from the sea. “We should go back. The others will be worried about us.”

“Soon,” Alex said. “I just want you to myself a little longer. Not only is there no privacy on the ship, there is no privacy on this expedition.”

Joanna gave him a smile. “We managed well enough yesterday,” she said demurely. Then, as he moved to kiss her: “However, I do draw the line at making love in this disgusting villa. I am certain it must be infected with fleas.”

“It is too cold for them,” Alex said. He kissed her again. Her lips clung to his for a brief moment, soft and sweet, and then she pushed him away.

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh, very well,” Alex said. He stood up and helped her to her feet. He stood still, looking down into her face for a moment.

“Joanna Grant,” he said slowly, “you are the most surprising woman I have ever met.”

Once again, for a fleeting second, he saw that shadow touch her eyes again and then she smiled. “I am glad that you realize it,” she said lightly. She looked down at her feet, where the sole of the Esquimaux boot flapped. “You mentioned before that sailors were talented at shoe-making,” she said. “Do you think any of them could fix my boot?”

I
T WAS ON THE MORNING
of the following day that they rode along the coast toward the settlement of Bellsund. Alex had insisted that Joanna rest when they returned to the village and given the soreness and bruising of her body she had not argued with him. She had sat in a sheltered spot in the sunshine and listened to the women chattering as they washed the clothes, and she had cradled the babies and played with the children and had thought about the tragedy of Alex losing not only Amelia but also his unborn child as well. She had not thought it possible to feel worse about her betrayal of Alex’s trust, but now the remorse hammered at her with no respite. He did not deserve such deceit.

He had asked her, the previous day, why she had come to find him and she had told him that it was because she had thought that he might need her and it had been true, but it had not been the whole truth. She had gone to him because instinct had driven her to do so. She had known that something terrible was paining him. She had wanted to ease that hurt because she loved him.

She was in love with him, utterly and completely.

She was in love with Alex Grant, the explorer, the adventurer, the man who wanted no ties and no respon
sibilities, who had offered her a bargain and whom she was cheating every step of the way.

“You can see now why Purchase could not bring the ship this far,” Alex said, breaking into her unhappy thoughts. They were cantering along the shingle toward Bellsund. The cart, with Lottie and the luggage, was lurching along behind, and Lottie’s squawks of complaint rose in the air to mingle with the cries of the seabirds.

“When the wind is from the east it blows the ice into the inlet and then it piles up and blocks the way through,” Alex said.

Joanna reined in for a moment to study the view, glad of the distraction. Huge blocks of ice were heaped up higgledy-piggledy against one another as though thrown there by monstrous hands. She had never seen anything like it, not even in the harshest English winters when the rivers sometimes froze. It was easy to see how a ship might be crushed, the timbers creaking with strain and eventually cracking under the enormous pressure. She shuddered.

“That is what would have happened to us if you had not cut the
Sea Witch
out of the ice, isn’t it?” she said. “We would have been trapped in the middle of something like that and crushed to death.”

“Either that or driven onto the rocks and broken up,” Alex said. “These are dangerous seas. The power of nature here is profound.”

Joanna nodded. “When will it clear?” she asked.

“It could be any time,” Alex said. “In the summer months the ice can shift and change within hours. You saw that yourself. When the wind veers, the current will sweep the ice away. You can see Bellsund
Monastery now,” he added. “Over there, on the edge of the promontory.”

Joanna turned in the saddle. “It looks like a fortress rather than a monastery,” she whispered, staring across the bleak, barren ground. “I had no notion it would be like this.”

The sprawling monastery had gray walls built of huge boulders that looked to be at least forty feet high and ten feet thick. There were squat round towers with pointed roofs, massive gates and behind the wall a jumble of other roofs, spires and buildings. Stumbling over such an enormous community in so empty and desolate a land was breathtaking and extraordinary, and yet the forbidding dark walls seemed almost to spring from the landscape like the natural rock.

Joanna shivered. Now that she was almost at the end of her journey she felt sick and scared, exhausted with longing to see Nina at last, fearful of finally stepping up and claiming David’s daughter as her own. She straightened in the saddle and saw that Alex was watching her.

“Are you quite well?” His voice was soft. He put a hand over hers as they lay on the reins. “You do not have to do this, you know. I could go for you—”

“Thank you,” Joanna said, “but I do have to do this.” She dug her heels into the horse’s sides and set off at a gallop, suddenly desperate to reach their destination. After a second she heard Alex follow her, the horses thundering along the strand toward the monastery gates. The cart and its outriders were left far behind.

The gates swung open onto a wide cobbled courtyard surrounded by buildings. A groom came forward to take their horses. Alex jumped down and held out his arms
to help Joanna dismount. She slid down to the ground, suddenly aware of how stiff and tired she was, so grateful for his support that for a moment she clung to his arms before she dredged up the strength to release him and stand straight and alone.

Alex was talking in Russian to a young monk who had emerged from the gatehouse to greet them and Joanna stood by feeling both self-conscious and humble. She could see now how much Alex had smoothed this process for her, shepherding her safely across this empty and alien land, protecting her, guiding her and now dealing with the monks. Despite Merryn’s tutoring, she could speak so little Russian. Caught up in all the emotional turmoil of David’s legacy to her, she had overlooked so many matters—matters that Alex had made easy for her. For a moment her throat closed with tears as she realized how much she owed him.

“They are going to take us to see Father Starostin,” Alex said. “He is the archmandrite, the chief abbot, of the monastery. He is a great man and a great scholar. I believe he has lived here at Bellsund for almost forty years.”

Joanna nodded. “Thank you.” She could feel the monk’s gaze resting on her. Though he was young, he had an old man’s face, wise and contemplative. His scrutiny made her feel vulnerable. He seemed to see too much, all her hopes and her fears. But she was tired now, too tired to keep her feelings from showing.

The monk led them along a series of roofed and arched passageways between the buildings, past a magnificent church, a bell tower and a set of gates that opened onto a lush botanical garden.

“The climate is mild here because we are in a valley,”
Alex murmured as he saw her gaze take in the verdant trees and plants. “They also have a most cunning system of hot-water pipes that run underground and heat the soil.”

“Lottie will be pleased,” Joanna said. “She will see trees at last.”

“She will also be able to have a hot bath,” Alex said, “which will no doubt please her even more, since she spurned the sweat baths. The guesthouse is most comfortably appointed.”

Joanna’s bones ached for a hot bath, too.
Soon,
she thought,
we can have warmth and clean clothes and soft beds, and all will be well.

They turned a corner, ducked under a magnificently carved stone gateway and then the young monk was knocking on a huge wooden door and with a murmured word slipped inside, leaving them standing on the threshold.

“He will only be a moment,” Alex said. “He has gone to tell the abbot that we are here.”

Joanna’s heart was beating in her throat. Her thoughts were tumbling over themselves like butterflies trapped in a net. For the first time she wondered what Nina would look like. Would she be fair like David, or would she resemble her Russian mother? She wondered suddenly how Nina would feel, being taken from this environment that she knew, a child who was barely more than a baby and had already lost her mother, being taken so far from home to a new life. Why had she not thought of that before? Another wave of anxiety took her and she pressed her hands together and felt the slippery dampness of her palms.

The door opened.

“Abbot Starostin will see you now,” the young monk said.

Joanna hesitated, and Alex took her arm and drew her forward. “Courage,” he whispered.

They were standing in a study. It had wide glass windows looking out across the gardens to the sea. A huge fire blazed in the hearth. There were richly colored rugs scattered across the stone floor and a desk with a vast book upon it open to show illuminated writing and pictures of men and sea monsters, whales and mermaids. There was such a profound sense of peace about the room that for a moment even the excited pounding of Joanna’s pulse eased and she drank in the tranquillity.

A man rose from a chair beside the fire and came toward them. He was old and a little bent. In his hand was a letter and Joanna recognized David’s writing on it with a leap of her heart. So it was true. Up until that moment she was not sure she had really believed it. But her late husband had left instructions at the monastery as to the arrangements he had made for his daughter. He had told the monks that one day his wife would come for the child. And now she was here.

The excitement burst within her like an explosion of light. A shiver went through her and she knew that Alex had felt it, for he looked sharply at her. She started forward, no longer able to wait.

“Father Abbot—”

But the monk’s grave old face did not change to show a matching pleasure. His gray eyes, pale and shrewd, searched her face. He gave her his hand and his skin felt cool and papery and dry against her feverishly hot fingers.

“You are welcome at Bellsund, Lady Grant,” he said
in perfect English. He turned to Alex and gave a little bow. “Lord Grant, a pleasure to see you again.” A tiny frown marred his brow. “I understand, Lady Grant, that you have come from England to fetch Nina Ware, your late husband’s child, and take her home?”

“That is correct.” Joanna could barely form the words. Her heartbeats echoed in her ears and it almost felt as though they were audible, bouncing off the stone walls. She was shaking.

The abbot nodded slowly. “It is as Commodore Ware’s letter decrees,” he said. There was something hard to define in his tone. “I will take you to Nina at once since you have traveled so far and I can tell—” he smiled faintly “—that you are most anxious to see her.”

They followed him down the endless stone corridors again and out into the bright, cold air. Joanna, who had thought she would have so many questions, so many things that she wanted to ask, found herself silent as she walked beside the abbot. Her apprehension had a different quality now. It stemmed from the abbot’s quiet acceptance of what had happened. There had been no censure in his tone. It was not that he had forbidden her to see Nina or to take her away. But there was something else, something that she could not understand. Joanna could feel it and it breathed fear along her nerves and she knew Alex felt it, too, because he drew closer to her, offering her wordless comfort through the strength of his presence.

They turned a corner and then they were alongside a long low building and there was a garden and the sound of children’s voices on the air. Joanna blinked. It seemed so unexpected.

“We have a school here,” Abbot Starostin said, and Joanna remembered Anya telling her that she had learned her letters and her English at the monastery school. “The hunters and trappers come and go,” the abbot continued, “but there is always a place here for their children.”

The children were playing. There were ten or eleven of them, and they had hoops, bats and balls, shiny marbles made from the pebbles on the beach and painted spinning tops that shone brightly in the sun. Joanna thought of the crate of toys from Hamleys. They were so much shinier, newer and more expensive than these handmade playthings, so much better. She could give Nina lots and lots of games and dolls and spoil her with gifts and trinkets.

“That is Nina,” Abbot Starostin said, pointing to a little girl who was sitting with two other children, chattering as they threaded bright stones onto a leather strip. “She is almost six years old now.”

Dark, like her mother, Joanna thought, not fair like David…

She was a dainty child, with black hair and black eyes. She was wearing a faded pink dress with a tiny version of an embroidered white apron over it. Old clothes, Joanna thought.

I will buy her new ones, whatever she wants, dresses with sashes in every color of the rainbow and bonnets with ribbons to match…

She wanted to run to the child, gather her up and hold her close. The urge to do so, the consuming strength of it, stole her breath.

“The other boy and girl are her cousins,” the abbot was saying. “They are called Toren and Galina.”

Joanna looked at him sharply. “Cousins? But I thought that Nina was an orphan.”

“She is,” the abbot said, “but her mother came to Spitsbergen originally with a brother. He, too, has family here in the village and when Nina was orphaned and left with us they came to ask if they might take her in. Nina does not live here,” he added. “She lives with her family.”

Joanna watched as Nina held one of the perfectly round pebbles up to the sun, laughing as the light sparked colors of gold and russet and deep red in the stone. The other little girl, Galina, looked a solemn child. She placed another stone in Nina’s palm and their dark heads bent together as they looked at it.

Something hard and sharp lodged itself in Joanna’s chest and stuck there.

Cousins, playmates, friends… Family in the village, a school, a community, people who loved her…

It was so very different from all that she had imagined.

Nina looked well cared for, well fed. Happy.

The abbot was still talking, quietly, explaining about Nina’s family and the school and the sorts of lessons they offered there when the children were older. Joanna tried to imagine Nina in quite a different setting, walking with her governess in the park in London, riding in Joanna’s carriage, playing with Max. Nina would make new friends, Joanna thought. Perhaps she might even go to school, to one of the Bath seminaries. The horizons were wide, the possibilities endless, with a little money and a place in the world.

I will love her, too,
Joanna thought violently, watch
ing the two little girls laughing together.
I want her. I will give her everything that she needs.

But something inside her was cracking and breaking. She tried to shore it up, but the split grew wider and wider until it yawned with a despair that threatened to consume her.

In all her thoughts and plans she had never once considered what Nina would want. She had never imagined that Nina might have other relatives and that there were people who loved her and who would miss her when she was gone.