It Started with a Scandal (15 page)

The boy giggled.

Lavay did smile reflexively at that, because one would have to be made of stone to not smile in the face of a child’s giggle.

And as Mrs. Fountain had pointed out, he was most assuredly not made of stone.

Oh, most assuredly not.

“I’m not a giant, young man. I’m merely very tall. You will be one day, too.”

“Do you think so?”

“It’s inevitable.”

Children were merely young humans, and he didn’t believe in speaking down to them.

“Because I think I need to get a little taller to get up a beanstalk. That would be grand.”

“Has someone given you magic beans, then?”

“Ohhhh!” Jack breathed. “Do you know the story, too? My mama named me for Jack. She sings a song about Jack before we go to sleep.”

Philippe closed his eyes briefly as realization sank in, peculiarly sharp, like an arrow.

The soft dark eyes, the curls, the dark slashes of brows.

The little dimple in his chin.

A peculiar cold knot solidified in Philippe’s gut.

It felt like betrayal.

He could not for the life of him have said why.

He heard the frantic clicking and skidding of the slippers on the marbled hallways, the huff of her breath. “Jack, where have you—”

Elise came to a halt when she saw two men, one very small, one very tall.

Young Jack’s face went brilliant.

“Mama! I found the giant!”

“So I see.” Her voice was cheerful, if wary.

“This young gentleman says he’s your son,” Lavay said.

“He is indeed, and a luckier mother never lived.”

Jack glowed up at her, and she dropped her hands like epaulets on his shoulders and gripped him tightly. Two against the giant.

“Jack, I am pleased to present you to Lord Lavay, who owns this beautiful house that I look after, but I am disappointed that you disobeyed me. We live at the top of the house, and this part belongs to Lord Lavay, and it’s impolite to intrude. Have you made your bow to him?”

“No, Mama. Sorry, Mama. I was looking for you, and here he was. It was an accident, Mama.”

“Do make your bow now, if you please.” She lifted her hands from his shoulders.

Jack bowed so low that his forehead nearly touched his knees.

“A handsome bow, Master Jack. Thank you,” Lord Lavay said gravely.

Jack glowed, then began to fidget happily.

She dropped her hands back onto his shoulders and he went still, leaning against her.

“Please go and return to your room now, my love, while I speak with Lord Lavay. Do you know the way?”

“Follow the cupids on the banister, the wallpaper with the pattern a bit like pretty eyes, go all the way down the stairs, wait for the smell of apple tarts and then go into the kitchen, down the hall and up the stairs.”

It was like he was describing the vast distance between their social stations.

“You are quite correct and very clever, Jack.”

“All right, Mama. Good-bye, Giant Lord Lavay.”

“Until we meet again, Soon to be Tall Master Jack,” he said gravely.

Jack laughed and turned, poised to bolt.

“Walk!” she admonished.

He adopted a mockingly sedate pace that made her smile after him.

They watched him until he was out of sight.

Or rather, she watched him.

Lavay watched her.

Her expression stole his breath.

“I was unaware you had a son,” he said softly, as if hesitating to wake her from a beautiful sleep.

Her attention returned to him abruptly.

She looked worried. “I apologize if you feel I excluded this information, my lord. I didn’t think it would interest you or that it would be a condition of my employment.”

“It is not,” he said shortly.

Another silence.

“I’m terribly sorry if he troubled you.”

“He did not.”

He feared he sounded quite brusque.

“He is charming,” he added.

And then they stood regarding each other in silence, in the now well-lit and dusted hallway.

The air was so aswarm with unspoken things that he felt he could reach up a hand to swat them. There were questions he had every right to ask, given that he was her employer, and he was arrogant enough to do it. Then again, he had no right to wonder about them, because she was his housekeeper for a house he intended to live in after he could gracefully waltz again, and in his hierarchy of concerns she ought to rank a step or two above the furniture.

But it was even more damning and awkward that he didn’t ask the questions.

“He’s a handsome child.”

“He’s beautiful,” she said instantly, in a rush, and then flushed, because it sounded like a correction.

There was a silence.

He smiled faintly. “Yes,” he said gently. “That is the word I was thinking. Thank you, Madame Je-sais-tout.”

“Thank you,” she said faintly, which is what she ought to have said the first time.

Her face was pink.

“Will there be apple tarts soon?”

“Yes, of course. I will go see to them.”

They could always take refuge in apple tarts, it seemed.

Chapter 16

H
USBAND.

He’d of course been contemplating becoming one, but now he thought it was a surprisingly distasteful word.

Made even more distasteful with the addition of another word:
her.

As in
her
husband.

He returned to his study, settled his sauceboat on the desk, and paced—how gratifying to be able to pace again—as he repeated the word in his head, as if it were a purgative or a hair shirt. Was that the reason she kept the best of herself back?

Because she was
Mrs
. Fountain, and surely there must be a husband somewhere? Housekeepers were often given the honorific of “Mrs.,” even if unmarried. But there was, after all, a son.

Her. His. That was the point of pronouns, after all—to indicate ownership. Perhaps “ownership” was wrong. Perhaps “belonging” was a better word. A more painful word, in a way, because it implied choice. She’d chosen to belong to someone else.

He’d never been one to shy away from hard truths, because once he knew the truth, he could do something about it.

And so, as if to flagellate himself, this is what “belonging” meant: some man knew what it was like to see that shining black hair spread out over a white pillow, and knew what it felt like to feel her bare limbs tangled with his, and to hear her laugh in the dark. Someone woke next to her every morning and knew whether she sprang from bed cheerful or grumpy and needing coffee or tea—or was it chocolate?—to start her day.

He didn’t know. He didn’t know. So many things he didn’t know. All the mundane things seemed absolutely the most important of all, suddenly.

And he hadn’t realized until now that he wanted to know them.

This made him pace to the window and yank back the curtains as if they were poised to leap and attack him. He glowered accusingly out at the day.

If there was a child, there was a man, because of course she was not, after all, the Madonna, exquisitely run household and flawless apple tarts notwithstanding.

Then again . . . the man in question
might
be dead.

He was absurdly buoyed by this hope, and suddenly the day was beautiful again and he fancied he could hear birds singing, even from this distance.

“Pah!” he said to himself, and shrugged and pushed away from the window.

And
all
of this was ridiculous: the strange pressure in his chest that felt like someone was in there trying to pry apart his rib cage, the histrionics involving the curtains, the wishing fatherlessness on that sweet child, that thirst to know, know, know.

He was . . .

He was jealous.

That
pedestrian word.

Ah.
So this is what the peasants feel like
, he told himself dryly.

He didn’t like it. He didn’t know what to do about it: he couldn’t muffle it with laudanum or numb it with willow bark tea. He couldn’t reason it out of existence. He couldn’t shoot it or sail away from it.

It needled in a peculiar way.

He’d thought he was inured to all of that.

It seemed he’d simply been numb. But now that feelings had begun to recirculate,
this
was the one that decided to reassert itself? Were there no end to the torments to be rained upon the House of Lavay?

She now knew so many things about him, yet she had never once mentioned what was clearly the most precious thing in the world to her.

He snorted. “You’re being ridiculous, Philippe!”

Perhaps it was just his vanity that was wounded. Perhaps he had come to think of Mrs. Fountain as something that belonged to him.

He was probably bored. Surely in other circumstances a man of his station would not be so disrupted by his housekeeper, albeit a . . . comely one? Comely servants abounded in houses everywhere, tempting heirs and causing all manner of trouble.

He had been too long confined and too long out of the context of his real world, where beautiful, charming women abounded, none of whom made his pulse hammer uncomfortably or tempted him to throw things in a fit of jealous pique, like a scorned mistress.

It was time to hold that ball.

And like a reflex or a lifeline, he rang the bell.

“
T
HANK YOU FOR
coming,” he said inanely when she arrived in his study.

“Yes. Of course. It’s what I typically do when you ring the bell.”

She was jesting, or trying to. But it sounded nearly as stilted as his greeting. Suddenly they were strangers.

He felt as gauche as a boy. He fumbled for what to say next.

“Again, I’m so sorry you had to witness the . . . unfortunate incident with Dolly Farmer,” she ventured into the awkward silence. “I searched her valise. She stole nothing else.”

“I’m not sorry I witnessed it. I now understand a bit more about the miracle you’ve wrought with the staff. I don’t think I fully grasped the nature of the challenge.”

“It was noth—”

He gave his head a rough shake. “It was everything. You see . . . for most of my life, in every house I’ve ever lived in, I never even saw most of the servants. You noticed them only when they failed to work properly. They were like . . . oh, the circulatory system of a house. That would make you, I suppose, the heart.”

It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself, and for a second the words all but throbbed like an actual heart.

Her eyes widened in astonishment.

“As I said earlier, I’ve sacked men before, but I’m not certain I’ve ever sacked one as big as Dolly,” he added hurriedly, very nearly flustered.

She smiled at that, mercifully. But only briefly. She couldn’t sustain it amidst the tension of what remained unspoken. They were both still skirting the real reason he’d rung for her, and they knew it.

He cleared his throat. “I think I understand now where you get your courage, Mrs. Fountain,” he said gently. “Mothers are fierce.”

And there it was.

She went still. Bracing herself, apparently.

“Your son . . . Jack, his name is?” he said softly.

“John. But we’ve come to like ‘Jack’ better.”

“After the boy with the magic beans.”

“Yes,” she said shortly. She inhaled at length, as if gathering strength, then exhaled. “Lord Lavay—I apologize again if he troubled you. He wasn’t meant to go . . . perhaps I should have told you about . . . I never meant for him to—”

“Elise.”

She fell silent.

As surprised by the use of her name as by his tone. Intimate. Impatient. Warm.

They let the word ring there, both of them quietly marveling at it.

She smiled softly at him, in gratitude.

It was easier to think about balls, and beautiful women, and Alexandra, and flirtation and debauchery, when Elise wasn’t standing in front of him. Those things seemed superfluous and not part of his real world anymore, when in truth sanity dictated that he ought to feel the other way around.

And yet he always felt so much better when she was standing near.

“His manners are lovely, even if he is a bit loquacious,” he teased gently. “A clever child, clearly. Takes after his mother.”

She glowed. “Thank you. I do try. He usually spends his days at the vicarage. Reverend Sylvaine gives some time to his tutelage along with Liam Plum, a local boy, and some of the other boys of limited means. Between us, with luck, he will not grow up to be either a heathen or stupid. I hope one day he’ll find a profession he loves. His current ambition in life is to ring the church bell.”

“He also wants a lion. And a horse.”

“Yes, well.”

“He’s welcome in all of the house, truly. I do like children, you know. They have that combination of honesty, innocence, savagery, and wit all tied together with unpredictability common to all my favorite people.”

She laughed again, delighted.

He could stand here all day saying things to make her laugh.

“If the weather remains this inclement, send him in to me and I’ll use the globe”—he gave it a spin with one finger—“to teach him about geography, if he’d like. For I, like you, enjoy imparting information, and I’ve been to many places. Or we could . . . string up a hammock. On clearer days.”

She smiled again. “The offer is too kind, but I know Jack would love it. Thank you.”

He simply nodded.

The question he wanted to ask, and the one she knew he wanted to ask, swung silently in the air, almost as tangible as a hammock.

He didn’t want to say it aloud. It was a bit like taking a tentative first step on a sprained ankle.

He made it sound as casual as possible, but he knew they were both waiting for it, so it gave the words the false, jaunty air of a pantomime.

“The boy’s father . . .”

Her face shuttered instantly.

Something was amiss, because it was clear she was deciding how to answer. Which meant he wasn’t going to get the entire truth.

“He’s gone,” she said shortly.

“Gone?”

“Yes. Six years now.”

Gone? Was “gone” a euphemism? Had he gone to the great beyond? London? Africa? Was she a widow?

Why was it so critical to know?

It wasn’t. He didn’t need to know.

And it ought not matter.

Get a hold of yourself, Lavay
, he told himself.

“I see,” he said, though he didn’t. “Mrs. Fountain,” he continued briskly, “I rang for you because I think the time has come to hold the ball we discussed earlier. Perhaps more accurately, an assembly featuring dancing, since a ball sounds a bit ambitious for the hall of this particular house. I suppose we’ll have that insipid drink that pleases the ladies so—ratafia. Perhaps sandwiches and the other things people enjoy having at balls, too. Bring in some plants for drunks to vomit in and lovers to hide behind, that sort of thing. Some flowers and perhaps bunting, if it could be had. I imagine if you could outfit the footmen in livery, you can find bunting. A fortnight hence? There isn’t a good deal to do in the country, so I imagine invitations will be welcome.”

“A ball! Oh, that’s wonderful news!” She sounded relieved the topic had changed.

He scowled.

She laughed. “Surely balls are happy occasions, my lord. The dancing, the music, the beautiful gowns, the company, the drunken revelry. I’m certain your staff is equal to the task. I’ve only attended country dances.”

“I do like them,” he admitted. “I excel at them, as a matter of fact.”

“May I inquire as to the cause of your scowl?”

“I am concerned about my dancing.”

There was silence.

“You are struggling not to laugh, Mrs. Fountain.”

“I’m not!”

She was.

“I am a bit stiff, you see, and a bit out of practice, and I hesitate to bring shame upon my family by tottering about like an old man. I wondered if you would find it in your heart to assist me by practicing the waltz?”

It was utterly impulsive, yet the notion came to him as a gift.

His idle tone was in inverse proportion to how important her answer was to him.

The clock swung off several more seconds as she considered this, her head tipped a little.

“‘Find it in my heart.’ So very florid,” she murmured.

He just waited, a peculiar pressure building in him. Probably because he was holding his breath.

Suddenly the fate of the world hinged on what she would say next.

“We’ve no music,” she mused softly.

“You can make up a song about waltzing with Lord Lavay, who trod upon your feet today. Or we can count it off. We’ve certainly established that we both know how to count.”

She laughed at that.

She drew in a long breath and exhaled. But said nothing.

“If you have other responsibilities to attend to now, Mrs. Fountain, of course you must excuse yourself. I simply wanted to make the best impression possible.”

There. He’d just done what was right and fair. He’d given her an opportunity to bow out. To claim Jack, or apple tarts. And he’d delivered it with a small dose of guilt, because he knew she couldn’t resist helping him.

She studied him a moment longer, her eyes soft and wary. Something sharp and bright flickered in there. Surrender? But it looked a bit like anger. A flare and gone.

And then she sank into a deep, slow curtsy.

He felt triumph surge through him, not unlike a welling of strings in a symphony overture. He’d never had a thought quite like that before in his entire life.

He bowed with the same elegant gravity.

He held out his hand, a brow arched, and her own hand reached out. He could have sworn time slowed painfully in order to torture him. Perhaps their hands would never meet. Perhaps she would snatch it back before he touched it.

And at last it was in his grasp. He closed his fingers over hers, gently but emphatically.

There was a stunned moment of stillness and silence when they finally met again, skin to skin.

And it wasn’t until then that he was willing to admit this entire waltzing nonsense was simply an excuse to touch her again.

He didn’t know why. It didn’t matter why. It only mattered that he held her hand, and he would have an excuse to lay his other hand on her waist, and soon she would be close enough to him to feel the heat from her body.

He settled his hand at her slender waist. He couldn’t read the expression in her eyes, but her cheeks were already rosier.

Her hand came up to light on his shoulder, as delicate as a songbird.

“Shall we?”

She simply nodded.

And he eased them into a waltz.

“
One
, two, three,
one
, two, three,
one
, two, three,
one
, two, three, one . . .”

“Two . . .” was a murmur.

And then he forgot to count.

Because the silence itself sang. The soft, soft sound of their breathing, the rhythm of her breath as it lifted her rib cage beneath his hand, their feet sinking into the (freshly beaten) carpet were enough music. The flush in her cheeks. The heat in his own. She was so light that he felt as though he’d grown wings during his convalescence, rather than scars. He certainly couldn’t recall ever feeling so weightless.