Whisper of Scandal (8 page)

Joanna had turned even paler, so deathly white that Alex thought she might faint. “He abandoned a baby girl in a monastery,” she whispered. “How could he do such a thing?”

Alex got up and threw open the door into the outer office, calling for a glass of water. One of the clerks scurried away to fetch it.

“Fresh air,” Churchward said, pushing open the window and causing a draft to blow in that scattered the papers on his desk, “burnt feathers,
sal volatile
—”

“Brandy,” Alex said grimly, “would be more effective.”

“I do not keep spirits in my place of work,” Churchward said.

“I would have thought that you would need them sometimes,” Alex said, “for the benefit of both yourself and your clients, Mr. Churchward.”

“I am perfectly all right,” Joanna interposed. She was sitting upright, still very pale but with a dignity drawn about her now like a cloak. Alex pressed the glass of water into her hand, holding it steady with his hand clasped about hers. She raised her eyes thoughtfully to his face before she drank obediently. A shade of color came back into her cheeks.

“So,” she said after a moment, “my late husband manages to manipulate me from beyond the grave. It is quite an achievement.” She met Alex’s gaze. “Were
you aware that David had an illegitimate daughter, Lord Grant?” She placed the glass gently on the table.

“No,” Alex said. “I knew that he had a mistress but not that the woman bore him a child. She was a Russian girl who claimed she was Pomor nobility. I thought she had returned to the mainland, but she must have died shortly before Ware if the baby is now an orphan.”

Joanna’s gaze was cloudy and disillusioned. “A Russian noblewoman,” she said slowly. “David would have loved that. How that would have enhanced his prestige!”

“The girl was young,” Alex said, “and wild. Her family had cast her out, washed their hands of her, I believe.” He looked at Joanna’s tight expression and felt something shift inside him. “I am sorry,” he said. He realized that he meant it. Whatever his opinion of Joanna Ware, he knew that this must be an immensely difficult issue for her to confront. He had to reluctantly admire her unflinching acceptance when most women would be having the vapors to have been bequeathed their husband’s bastard child.

“I am not naive enough to think that David was not capable of such a thing,” Joanna said slowly. “Indeed, perhaps I should be grateful that there are not more of his offspring scattered about the globe, or at least not as far as I am aware.” She looked at him. “Are you aware of any more of his sideslips, Lord Grant?”

“No.” Alex shifted. “I am truly sorry.” Ware’s profligate tendencies were the one aspect of his friend’s character that Alex had always had difficulty accepting. Some had seen Ware’s dissolute whoring as part of his heroic, charismatic persona. Alex had, in contrast, considered it the single weakness that David Ware had
possessed, but a weakness he could condone because Ware’s marriage bed had been so cold and his relationship with his wife so fraught with dislike.

He looked at Joanna. She did not look like a woman who would wither a man to nothing in her bed. She looked warm and tempting and eminently appealing. Whatever the quarrel with Ware had been, it must have been so bitter and deep that she had driven him away.

“You do not try to soften the blow.” A faint smile touched Joanna’s lips. “There is no comfort to be had from you, is there, Lord Grant?”

“Very little, I fear,” Alex said. “But I am also sorry that Ware saw fit to do this.”

“Well, that is something, I suppose,” Mr. Churchward interposed huffily.

“Because,” Alex finished, “I fear his judgment must have been severely lacking to leave the future of his daughter in Lady Joanna’s hands.”

He saw Joanna’s eyes open very wide in shock. “You think me an unsuitable guardian?”

“How could I think otherwise?” Alex said. “Ware mistrusted you. He told me so. I cannot see why he would leave his daughter’s upbringing to a woman he disliked so strongly.”

Joanna chewed her lower lip hard. “Always you fall back on David’s judgments, Lord Grant,” she said. “Do you have no independent thoughts of your own?”

Alex brought his hand down flat on the table with a slap that made the piles of legal documents jump and flutter. He was furious—with Ware for involving him in his unpleasant personal vendetta against his wife, with Lady Joanna for forcing him to question his judgment and with himself for doubting his loyalties for even a
second, for doubt them he did, the suspicions and misgivings wreathing his mind as unsubstantial as smoke and yet somehow impossible now to dismiss.

“Ware was my friend and colleague for over ten years,” he said through his teeth. He wondered if he was trying to convince Joanna—or himself. “He was an inspirational leader to his men. He never let me down. He saved my
life
on more than one occasion. So, yes, I trust his word and his judgment.”

They glared at one another until Mr. Churchward raised a pacifying hand.

“Lord Grant.” Mr. Churchward’s voice brought them back to the point. “Perhaps we could postpone the discussion until I have finished?” He polished his glasses, replaced them on his nose and resumed: “‘Further, I hereby appoint my friend and colleague Alexander, Lord Grant, as joint guardian with my wife to my daughter, Nina, to share
all
the responsibilities and decisions relating to her upbringing.’” Mr. Churchward cleared his throat. “‘Lord Grant will in addition be sole trustee, controlling all financial aspects relating to my daughter’s rearing and education.’”

“What?”
Alex exploded. He felt trapped, baffled and angry. He could barely believe what he was hearing. Ware had been his friend since childhood. Alex had thought they had known one another well. Yet despite knowing his history, his way of life and the demands of his profession, Ware had put him in this invidious position, burdened him with the responsibility for his child, her welfare and upbringing, a duty Alex would be obliged to share with the wife that David Ware had hated… Truly, Ware
had
lost his mind. Either that or he had embroiled Alex in his game of revenge against his
wife with a callous disregard for the feelings of everyone but himself, and Alex could not, would not believe that a man of Ware’s honor would do such a thing.

He looked at Joanna. Her eyes burned as hard and bright as sapphires. “So,” she said slowly, “I am to have the child reside with me but
you
will hold the purse strings for both of us, Lord Grant.”

“So it seems,” Alex said. He could feel Joanna’s gaze riveted on his face with such intensity that he could sense the power of her fury and distress no matter how well she strove to hide it.

“You said at the start of this interview that you did not know the contents of this letter, Lord Grant.” Her tone was dry, skeptical and hard. “I find that difficult to believe when you and David were evidently so deep in each other’s confidence.”

“Believe it,” Alex said. He was struggling with his own response to Ware’s outrageous behavior and was in no mood to be gentle. “I had no notion. I want this burden as little as you do.”

“Then just as you think that David was mistaken to leave a child’s welfare in my hands,” Joanna said very politely but with the anger burning though the words as hot as a furnace, “so I cannot imagine why my late husband thought for
one moment
that
you
were the appropriate person to have care of a small child nor control of her fortune.”

“At least I have proved that I can provide materially for my family,” Alex said, giving her a contemptuous look that brought the color flying into her cheeks. “I do not shirk my responsibilities. In contrast, your rackety lifestyle in the ton is hardly suited to the stable existence Miss Ware will require, Lady Joanna.”

Joanna’s eyes were icy with outrage. “I
beg
your
pardon? Rackety? You know nothing of my way of life, Lord Grant, other than what is based on David’s lies and your own arrogant assumptions!” Her tone dripped disdain. “If it comes to that, you are the one who
rackets
about the world like a poorly aimed cannonball. You may provide materially for your family but you have no interest in engaging with them in any emotional sense!”

Alex’s anger and guilt kindled to a blaze at her words. He had inherited little in the way of fortune but had plowed every penny he had back into his estates and into ensuring his cousins were well provided for financially. It was enough. It
had
to be enough because it was all that he could give. Amelia had been the one who had been warm and loving. When she had died he had cut that emotion from his life. The thought of Amelia twisted a bitter knife in him again. He had failed once before; he could not fail Ware in this obligation. He was hog-tied, compelled by honor and his own guilty conscience to assist Ware’s orphaned daughter.

“I am sure that your objections spring only from the fact that I am to be your treasurer,” he said, venting a cold anger. “I imagine you would give a great deal to alter that situation, Lady Joanna, given that Ware apparently left you without the means to support your extravagant lifestyle.”

Joanna’s piquant face sharpened into contempt again. “I have no need of the money, Lord Grant. As I said, I earn sufficient for my needs and have inherited more. Besides, money is no substitute for love—the love that you so singularly fail to give to those who rely upon you and which David’s daughter will also need in her life—”

“Lord Grant! Lady Joanna!” Churchward was remonstrating with them like a fussy governess. “Please! This is most unbecoming!”

There was a silence, a very long, deep and stormy silence, broken eventually by Churchward muttering “oh dear, oh dear” under his breath, a rather ineffectual remark, which Alex could not help but feel added little to the situation.

“Mr. Churchward is right,” Joanna said. She made a visible effort to reassert her self-control. “Our being at daggers drawn does not help the situation, Lord Grant.”

They looked at each other, locked in a baffled hostility.

“Why?” Alex said fiercely. “Why would Ware do this?”

Joanna shook her head. “I have no notion why David should encumber
you
with such a responsibility, Lord Grant.” A bitter smile twisted her lips. “I understand well enough why he has done this to me. He wishes to punish me for being an unsatisfactory wife to him by forcing me to go to the ends of the earth to save his child.” Alex caught the tiniest waver to her voice. “He seeks to exploit what he knew was my desperate desire for a baby of my own by telling me that I can have Nina, but only if I go to fetch her myself, a journey he knows will terrify and endanger me…” Her voice faded and she turned her face away for a moment so that Alex could not read her expression. When she resumed, her voice was calm again.

“I cannot imagine what possessed David to embroil you in his revenge upon me, though. Perhaps he knew we would inevitably dislike one another, and so being
obliged to share the upbringing of a child would keep us at each other’s throats and make my life as difficult as possible.” She looked at him. “I am sorry he involved you in this, Lord Grant.”

She got to her feet, and Max the dog made a grumbling sound, struggled upright and shook himself, making the dust dance in the sunlight.

“If that is all, Mr. Churchward,” Joanna said, turning courteously to the lawyer, “then you must excuse me. I have urgent arrangements to make for my journey.”

Alex stood up, too. He was incredulous that Joanna could even consider leaving when so much was unresolved. “Wait a moment!” he said. He put out a hand to halt her. “You cannot simply walk away from this. We have to talk.”

Joanna shot him a glance. “I do not wish to talk to you at the moment, Lord Grant,” she said. “We will only quarrel further. I agree that we need to discuss arrangements, but I suggest that you make an appointment to see me.”

“You make it sound as though we are organizing a rout,” Alex snapped, “rather than ensuring the welfare of a defenseless child.”

Joanna ignored him. She gave the lawyer her hand. “Please accept my apologies, Mr. Churchward, on behalf of my late husband for placing you in such difficult circumstances,” she said. “I am always grateful for the service you have provided my family and I am so very sorry you have been drawn into this situation.”

“Madam—” Churchward sounded shaken “—you know that if there is any way in which I may serve you…”

“Of course.” Joanna took a deep breath and Alex
realized suddenly what it was costing her to maintain her innate dignity. “Be assured that I shall be in touch, Mr. Churchward, and thank you.”

“Wait,” Alex said again. He put out a hand to her as she started to walk toward the door. “I will escort you to your carriage, Lady Joanna.”

Her blue gaze flickered up to meet his again. “I do not require your escort.”

“I insist.”

“Pray, do not.” She turned on him fiercely and he saw how close she was to the edge now, how tightly stretched her control. “I know that you only wish to accompany me in order to speak with me,” she said, “but I
cannot
talk about this now. Please excuse me.”

The door closed behind her and for a moment there was a silence in the office. Alex realized that Churchward was watching him with an unreadable expression.

“Was there something else, Mr. Churchward?” Alex asked politely.

“No, my lord.” Churchward shut his mouth like a trap.

“It seems,” Alex said, “that you have a deal of sympathy for Lady Joanna.”

The lawyer’s eyes narrowed with disdain. He took off his spectacles and polished them violently on the edge of his coat. “I am impartial in my dealings with all my clients, Lord Grant,” the lawyer said. “Lady Joanna has always treated me with the utmost courtesy and consideration and in return she has my absolute loyalty.”

“Very commendable,” Alex murmured. “And David Ware? Did he have your loyalty, too?”

There was an infinitesimal silence before Churchward answered.

“I served Commodore Ware well,” he said.