After the Scandal Read online

  But he wasn’t looking at her as if she were mad. He was nodding, as if he were reassuring and calming her, the way her father might do with a trembling gundog. “It’s quite all right,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”

  No, he didn’t look like he would, though he did look rather inscrutable, with those narrowed eyes she could not read staring at her so intently.

  But Lord Peter Rosing’s warm brown eyes had seemed charming not five minutes ago.

  “Oh, God.” Clearly, she knew next to nothing about assessing the true character of a man.

  Claire calmed her battered breathing enough take the proffered square of precisely folded linen from his hand. But her hands shook, and the brick floor beneath her feet wobbled unevenly, as if she were standing upon a floating dock, and not on solid stone.

  She leaned against the wall for balance, and pressed the starched handkerchief to the part of her face that stung the most. She immediately withdrew it to see the dark staining of her own blood.

  Her head began to ache as if someone were scratching at it with an out-of-tune violin. “How bad is it?”

  He shook his head, a kind negation. “Not too bad,” he said, though the serious look in his dark eyes said the opposite. “But it were better if we removed ourselves immediately to a less dangerous, less illicit, and better-lit position. Especially before he comes to.”

  He ducked his head out the open door of the boathouse, before he closed it, and he looked back to her. “Can you move on your own?”

  As if the Duke of Fenmore knew she would rather do anything than be touched.

  Claire stiffened her legs with several hundred years of inherited Jellicoe pride, and tried to push herself away from the wall.

  Only to find the bricks shifting precariously underfoot again.

  The enormity of it all—of what had just happened and what had yet to happen—rocked her back against the wall.

  “No.” Heat built like a bonfire in her throat and behind her eyes, and her breath was see-sawing in and out of her chest, but she pushed the tears away with the back of her shaking hand.

  “Stay there a moment. So you might recover. I will stand here, and make sure he doesn’t move.”

  His Grace took a place on the other side of Rosing’s bleeding head, where he was at a more than respectful distance.

  If anyone should chance upon Claire and the Duke of Fenmore in the boathouse at the bottom of the garden, they would only be seen to be conversing politely. Albeit across the unconscious form of her would-be rapist.

  Yet, tongues would wag even if she were seen to be only conversing politely with the Duke of Fenmore. The Duke of Fenmore did not converse politely with young ladies. He had never conversed politely with any young lady in all the time that Claire had observed him looming around the edges of ballrooms.

  He looked and he brooded and he judged, but he never conversed.

  And he looked so intent now, she felt the need to explain how she had gotten herself into such a God-awful predicament.

  “His father asked me to dance a couple of country dances with Lord Peter. That’s who he is, Lord Peter Rosing.”

  Her voice sounded thin and small. So unlike the girl she had been until three minutes ago.

  “His father said he’d be obliged if I would make myself agreeable by dancing with his son. So I did. And then he asked—Rosing—if I’d like to take a turn on the terrace.”

  To cool the roses in those beautiful cheeks, he had said with just the right amount of warm feeling when he had offered Claire his arm. “I thought he might try to steal a kiss.”

  The duke made an exceptionally unducal, rude sound of disgust. “Steal a kiss.” Fenmore’s gaze dropped to the inert man heaped on the floor. “Rosing was obviously intent upon larceny of an altogether grander design. As is his habit.”

  The duke’s tone was strangely vehement. As if it were some sort of a personal affront to the dukedom, that Rosing had tried to rape her on Fenmore family property.

  There it was again, the awful, horrible, brutal word.

  “I said no to him. I said—” She could hear her voice try to scale the icy cold that was just now seeping into her bones.

  “I know,” he said shortly, though he did not look at her. “I heard you. And now I reckon, so will he have done. And past bloody time. He has grown altogether too brazen.”

  In the strange fitful light that came from the wavering reflection of the moon off the water beneath the boathouse docks, she took a closer look at the duke’s face. At the rage which was only barely concealed behind the off-putting veneer.

  “Why are you so angry?”

  “Ah.” His dark gaze flicked to hers only momentarily, before he looked away again. “I am not angry. I am outraged. Contrary to popular opinion, I happen to be a nice man. Rosing is not.” He snapped the word off as if he could break it as easily as he had Rosing’s leg. “And you needed help.”

  Another ridiculous understatement. But she could only be grateful.

  “Yes. Yes, I did. Thank you.”

  He waved off her thanks with an elegant gesture of his hand. “And you still need it. Your hair has come down from its pins. You’ll want to restore yourself a bit before you return to the house. Or would you rather I brought your parents down here? I would have done—brought them, or sent them to find you—but I reckoned time was of the essence.”

  It had been. A few moments more and—

  The realization hit Claire like a shovel to the back of her head. Sick pain snaked its way around the dark edges of her skull—sharp pinpricks of light stabbed at the soft sides of her vision.

  Fenmore must have anticipated what had almost happened.

  “Did you know he was going to—” She stumbled over the detestable word—it was like an anchor, dragging her down, down, down. Drowning her in the doubt and shame.

  “To rape you? Yes. I did. Rosing is a rapist, Lady Claire. Behind those angelic looks lies a dark, twisted heart of rapine. He has made a rather execrable habit of it.”

  A habit.

  A hideous hive of an itch that had to be scratched.

  Lord Peter Rosing might have picked anyone, anyone else in the ballroom, but she had been foolish—and maybe even, if she were honest with herself, desperate—enough to smile at him, and consent to the dance. Even on the ballroom floor, Lord Peter Rosing must have been thinking and planning what he would do to her.

  “Were he not the son of a peer, Rosing would have twisted at Tyburn long before now.” Fenmore brought his dark gaze back to hers, before he went on relentlessly, nearly spitting out the words, as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. “I do not know if it will comfort or disgust you to know that you are not the first young woman Lord Peter Rosing has raped, or attempted to rape. But I do mean you to be the last.”

  The calm surety with which he spoke sucked the last of the air from her lungs. “You mean to kill him.”

  Again that obsidian gaze came back to hers, so sharp it was nearly cutting. “I meant to cripple him. I mean that in the future, if he isn’t hanged, he should find it so difficult to walk that he will find it utterly impossible to shove young ladies up against brick walls.”

  The same feeling of powerless shame, of helpless, hopeless, choking despair, tightened around her chest.

  But she fought it back. It had not happened. Lord Peter Rosing had not raped her.

  But only because His Grace, the chilly Duke of Fenmore, had come in time.

  She meant to thank him again, not only for herself, but also for the greater population of London’s women, it seemed.

  But she could not. The words were stuck tight in her throat, trapped there by the casual violence of both men’s actions.

  Within her skull, her head began to ring like a church bell.

  “You are not yet recovered.”

  Again, she could not tell if the strange, dry ordinariness of his observation was an attempt at humor, or censure.

  But pride was the last r
efuge of the weak. And Claire felt desperately weak. So she put up her chin.

  “Yes. Thank you, Your Grace. You do have a penchant for the obvious.”

  “And you have a penchant for the dangerous,” he shot back. Some of that vehemence had leapt back into his tone. “Planning to let a man like Rosing steal kisses.”

  That was condemnation in his low voice.

  Claire felt the thoughtlessness of her action burn a trail of heat down her face. She swallowed down the hot embers of her shame. “Yes. Stupid. But I think Lord Peter Rosing has cured me of stupidity.”

  “Good.” Fenmore took an audibly deep breath, as if he were as fraught as she. “Though I suppose you could not be expected to know what he is.”

  “No.” The admission gave her some small measure—a very small measure—of comfort. “Though if you did know what he is, why did you not tell anyone? Why is he still allowed to show his face in polite company? Why was he invited to your grandmother’s ball?”

  “A mistake.” The vehemence was back. “One for which I will never forgive myself. Nor ever make again. And he was not invited.” He spoke with such low, savage heat, she was taken aback. But his anger was all for himself.

  “It wasn’t your fault.” The words came out of their own volition—a forgiveness she could not grant to herself.

  “Wasn’t it?” He seemed unconvinced. “I should have anticipated that they would come, even uninvited.”

  It gave her another small measure of comfort to see him doubt himself. “They?”

  “Rosing and his father. Hadleigh.”

  “I don’t see how you could have anticipated that.” She was happy to find she could take a rather more normal breath. “My parents would never dream of going someplace they weren’t invited.”

  “Yes, parents. We ought to be getting you back to your mother, so she can take you home.”

  Yes. She wanted her mother. She wanted to be safe in her arms, and forget this had ever happened. But it had.

  “We’re not meant to go home to London—we’re meant to stay the night, as guests.” The worry and doubt and shame and anger wrapped itself ever tighter, and tighter. “Oh, God. I don’t think I can bear the questions.”

  “No one will question you. I’ll make sure of that.”

  “Will you?” It was probably not the wisest thing, to allow herself the relief and sanctuary of hope. But it was already too late.

  “Yes.” This time the vehemence sounded more like surety. More like a promise.

  Which she could only be grateful to accept. “Thank you.” Another small measure of comforting relief tiptoed its careful way into her lungs. And she took the opportunity to take a long look at him, this vehement man she had thought so aloof. “Contrary to popular opinion, you are a nice man.”

  A nice man who had crippled Rosing, still splayed upon the pavers.

  For her. This time the heat in her chest was something more comforting than mere relief.

  But there was still a man on the ground. “We can’t just leave him here, can we?”

  “Yes. We can. I’m not that nice. Someone will find him. In fact—” He came to an alertness, livid with stillness, rather like one of her father’s hunting dogs scenting the air.

  And then he swore. “God’s balls. Someone is coming. Now.” He turned that implacable gaze upon her. “Lady Claire, you have approximately three seconds to decide what comes next. Stay here and be discovered with Rosing—and bear all the possible and different consequences of that. Or you can come with me.”

  “What?” Her heart started pounding in her ears again.

  Claire pushed off the wall, and found she needed to move. To get air back into her lungs. To get away from Rosing.

  But not back to the house and the ball. Not with her face like this, still scratched and blotted with blood.

  Fenmore had crossed to the narrow wooden decking that projected out over the water, and unwound a line to one of the boats from its cleat.

  “I can take you away in the skiff. We can slip away, out onto the river, with no one the wiser.”

  The idea was astonishing.

  And she was truly astonished. Astonished to find the events and words and feelings of the past few minutes swirling and twisting through her head, trying to sort themselves out into something approaching logic.

  Going in a boat with His Grace the Duke of Fenmore would undoubtedly be just as rash and stupid as walking into the garden with Lord Peter Rosing had been.

  But the Duke of Fenmore was not Lord Peter. He looked across the narrow dock at her, and he understood, because he reached behind his back, under the tail of his beautifully tailored coat, and pulled out an elegant, well-polished pistol.

  The shifting moonlight glanced off the slick metal barrel as he held it out to her, handle first. “So you’ll feel safe. But choose. Now.”

  Astonishment was too tame a word for the rush of alarm and something else—something unfamiliar and altogether off-kilter—that gripped her, once more stealing the air from her lungs. “Is it loaded?”

  “Yes. Do you know how to use it properly?”

  Claire didn’t answer. But she did take the gun. Because it gave her her answer.

  “Yes.” She scrambled into the narrow boat. “Let us go then and escape. Just for a little while, at least. Until I’m ready to come back.”

  “Yes.” The Duke of Fenmore gave her an oddly boyish smile that crinkled up the corners of his eyes, and softened his narrow face, and made him appear young and almost vulnerable.

  As if he were taking as big a chance as she. “Yes. Just for a little while.”

  Chapter 2

  Tanner wasted no time. Before the rest of the restless, jangling energy still coursing through him was spent, he used it to shuck the detestable gloves that made him into a gentleman, wrap his itchy hands around the oars, and slip the skiff out of the boathouse.

  He pointed the bow into the stream of the river, and put his back into it.

  With luck, he might be able to get well away before she discovered his guile in exaggerating the nearness of the intruders.

  His ears had told him there had been at least one person coming for the boathouse with a purposeful stride, but as much as he wanted to appease his curiosity about whom that person might have been, Tanner stuck purposefully to his first and only object—to take Lady Claire to safety.

  He settled into a steady, hard rhythm, propelling them smoothly downstream on the slack tide, and calming the jangling excitement he always got when he’d stolen something and gotten away clean.

  He rowed them past the town on the south bank and toward Richmond Bridge at a rate designed to carry them well away from the house for long enough to safely compromise Lady Claire Jellicoe—albeit in a much more civilized and manifestly less criminal manner than the bastard Rosing had attempted.

  Just for a little while.

  Because a little while was all it would take. With that luck he had always been able to count upon—along with stealth and guile—neither Lady Claire nor her father, the Earl Sanderson, would object when Tanner silenced any hint of scandal by making his very handsome offer for her hand.

  But none of this did he share with Lady Claire. He saved his breath to cool his porridge, and acted the gentleman.

  He let the smooth simplicity of the river work its peace on the still-shaken young lady who gripped the thin rail of the small vessel so tightly the ridges of her knuckles stood out through her gloves.

  He wanted to tell her that it would be all right, that she was unharmed and whole and safe.

  But he knew such empty platitudes were not the truth—he wasn’t a rapist, but he was making his play for her just as surely as that bastard Rosing had.

  So he shut his gob, and rowed on for a mile or so downstream. Once past the dark eaves of Richmond Bridge, which marked the end of the town, the only sounds were the steady stroke of the oars, the lapping of the river against the banks, and the thick, peaceful hush of the summe
r night.

  There was enough of a moon so that as he sat with his back to the streaming moonlight, his face remained in shadow. He could gaze at her undetected, and watch the luminous oval of her face as the quiet of the river wrapped itself around her.

  She sighed as if she were trying to exhale her ordeal from her lungs.

  “Wouldn’t it be lovely if one could always just float away from one’s problems so easily?”

  “No.”

  Her bright, wounded gaze sought his through the shelter of the dark. “Why not? Are you so cynical and hard of heart that you wouldn’t allow yourself—wouldn’t allow me—the kindness of forgetfulness?”

  “I am not a cynic. I am a realist. You’ve still got blood on your face. And there”—he nudged his chin at her—“on your mouth. His blood, I should think. Did you bite him?”

  “Oh, God.” Her voice became smaller, hiding, as if she were not at all sure she should admit to such a vicious, unladylike action. “Yes.”

  He would disabuse her of such a ridiculous notion. “Good. That will mark him. With luck it might fester as well. Bites are notoriously septic things.”

  Even bites from immaculate young ladies like Lady Claire Jellicoe, who tore off her soiled gloves, and leaned over the gunwale of the narrow vessel as if she were about to shoot the cat.

  Tanner shipped his oars so he might be ready to assist her if she needed support being quietly sick over the side.

  But she did not vomit. She took another deep, shaky breath, and pulled her tattered composure together enough to dunk his handkerchief into the clear, dark water, and apply it to her face.

  She closed her eyes as the cool wetness settled against her abraded skin. “I do wish I could just float away. Float away and forget it. As if it never happened.”

  Tanner heard the hurt and bewilderment in her voice, and made his own gentler. “Then that is what we shall try to do. At least for a little while.”

  He took up the oars again, aiming to take them around the small island that shimmered darkly off the north bank. Beyond the island was nothing but empty countryside of pastures and woods. Too far for them to go this night.