The Scandals Of An Innocent

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“IT DOES NOT FEEL RIGHT coming out to a musicale when Lydia and Tom have not been found,” Lizzie said dolefully to Alice two nights later, as they sat in the Pump Rooms and waited for the orchestra to tune up. “I do not think I will dance tonight. I am far too cast down.”

They were sitting in the front row, with Lady Vickery and Celia to Alice’s right and Mrs. Lister and Lowell to Lizzie’s left. Miles had paused on the way in to exchange a few words with Nat Waterhouse. He had kissed Alice’s hand and told her he would join her shortly. Nat had pointedly made no such promise to Lizzie, who had glared at him.

“I feel monstrous sad, Alice,” Lizzie was saying. “If they find Tom then he will be clapped in prison and hanged for sure this time, and if they do not we cannot be sure that Lydia is safe, and meanwhile there is some madman on the loose with a rifle who might take a potshot at us at any time.” She sighed. “I think I preferred it when Monty was here inflicting his ghastly medieval taxes on us! At least that was more fun!”

“Talk of the devil,” Alice said. She looked at the portly figure who was standing in the doorway to the Pump Rooms with all the preening self-importance of a cock pheasant. “I do believe your brother has returned, Lizzie. Is that not Sir Montague in the entrance, chatting to Mr. Pullen?”

Lizzie swung around in her chair. “Goodness!” she said. “So it is! He must have come back from London for Mary Wheeler’s wedding. I heard he had asked Lord Armitage for a cut of her fortune because he claimed they would not have wed without the Dames’ Tax, and Lord Armitage told him to go hang!” She sighed, slumping back in her chair. “Drat! I suppose Monty will be all stuffy now and demand that I return to live with him at the Hall, and it has been so much more fun with you, Alice. Good Lord!” she added, grabbing Alice’s arm as her brother came into the room accompanied by a lady. “Has Monty attached himself to some female?” She screwed her face up tightly. “Surely she cannot be a…a lightskirt? Have you ever seen a gown like that in the Fortune’s Folly Pump Rooms before, Alice?”

“Not on a lady, certainly,” Alice said. She was torn between horror and amusement at the spectacle Sir Montague was making. “Gracious,” she said, “I do believe the lady is about to lose the bodice altogether!”

Sir Montague Fortune’s fair companion was waiting quite blatantly until everyone in the room was looking at her. Dressed-barely-in a glittering gown of dampened silver gauze, she looked exotic and disdainful. The murmur of voices in the room rose to a crescendo and then died away to a shocked whisper as the couple came forward.

“Oh, my!” Lizzie whispered irrepressibly in Alice’s ear. “My brother is about to introduce me to his mistress, here in front of everyone! I always knew Monty was a ramshackle fellow, but this! What shall I do, Alice?”

“Nothing,” Alice said. “Wait. I think there may be something else going on…” She had started to feel a little anxious, for she had seen that Miles and Nat Waterhouse had also spotted Sir Montague. Nat was saying something to Miles, and a rather strained look had come over Miles’s face all of a sudden. A cold premonition tiptoed down Alice’s neck and a slightly sick feeling was turning her stomach.

“She does have a certain style,” Lizzie was murmuring. “I wonder what she can possibly see in Monty? And what on earth possessed him to bring her here? She looks like a bird of paradise in a farmyard!”

“That is Louisa Caton,” Lady Vickery whispered, waking from what seemed to be a scandalized trance. “Look away, girls! Whatever can Sir Montague be thinking to bring the most notorious courtesan in London here? Look away, I say,” she said again, catching Alice’s arm. “Really, this is most vulgar and an utter disgrace.”

“That is Monty for you,” Lizzie said irrepressibly. “Dear ma’am, have no fear! I do not think we shall be corrupted simply looking at a courtesan-” She broke off. “Oh, but…wasn’t Miss Caton the one-” She stopped again, looking at Alice. “Oh dear,” she said, stricken. “Oh, Alice.”

“Yes,” Alice said. She realized her voice was shaking. “I do believe that Miss Caton was the courtesan with whom Lord Vickery was involved when last he was in London.”

“Alice!” Mrs. Lister snapped. “You are not supposed to know such things. And if you do know, you are to pretend that you do not know!”

“I am sorry, Mama,” Alice said. “No doubt you are correct and that a lady would pretend ignorance. But you have always known that I am no lady.”

Mrs. Lister made a little sound of abject misery. “Oh, what are we to do?” She turned to Lady Vickery. “In front of his mama, too!”

“In front of his betrothed,” Lady Vickery said hollowly. “In front of the lawyers!” She glanced across at the row of chairs that contained Mr. Churchward and Mr. Gaines. Gaines had a look of extreme interest on his face as he watched Louisa Caton approach Miles. Mr. Churchward, in contrast, looked as shocked as though the courtesan had sat herself down on his lap. His face was red, his eyes as round as dinner plates behind his spectacles and his mouth was an equally round, scandalized circle of shock. Alice knew exactly how he felt.

“Whistling away an heiress-and before the knot is tied, too!” Lady Vickery wailed. “Stupid, stupid boy.” She turned to Alice. “Miss Lister, I appeal to you to give Miles a chance to explain-”

“I do not think so,” Alice said. “Events are rather speaking for themselves, are they not?”

She watched in fascinated horror as Sir Montague accosted Miles. It almost felt as though she was watching a play, seeing the moves, hearing the lines. In the moment she felt nothing but she knew that at any point the chill carapace that held her might crack and the pain would rush in and she was afraid she could not bear it. This was the gilded creature with whom Miles had had a torrid affair. This was the woman whose bed he had sought after he had jilted her the previous year. This was the salt in the wound.

She tried to tell herself that it was all a terrible coincidence, that Miles knew nothing of this, that Sir Montague was probably Miss Caton’s lover now and with his typical disregard for good taste and propriety was set on thrusting her into Fortune’s Folly society. The thoughts and words and images jostled in her head, the anger and fear stung her and then she heard Sir Montague’s greeting:

“Vickery! Got your letter!” Sir Montague slapped Miles on the back. His stentorian tones seemed to bounce off the ceiling of the concert room so that every person present could hear his words with excruciating clarity. “Happy to oblige, old chap, and escort this gorgeous creature to Yorkshire. A rather splendid present for you, what!”

He stood aside beaming and Miss Caton reached up and in view of the entire company kissed Miles full on the mouth.

There was a scandalized silence in the room.

Alice stood up. Her fan and reticule clattered to the floor, but she did not bother to stop and retrieve them. She was conscious of nothing other than the need to escape. Up until that moment she had been so determined to believe that the whole scene had been either a mistake or a rather unpleasant coincidence. She had fiercely resisted the whispered thoughts in her own mind that said that Miles was bored of courting a virgin heiress, bored because he did not have a sophisticated woman in his bed, and so he had sent for his mistress. She had refused to accept it. She had not wanted even to think it because she had hoped against hope that Miles’s outward coldness was a mask that would one day crack and she would be the one to reach the man beneath.

Now she saw her hopes for the naive dreams they were, for Miles had always told her the truth with the brutal honesty that the terms of her inheritance had demanded. He had wanted her for her money. She was the one to save him from the debtor’s prison not the one to win his heart.

Got your letter! Happy to oblige…

Damn Sir Montague and his thoughtless masculine bonhomie! Damn him and the beautiful painted creature at his side whom Miles was even now putting away from him as he turned toward her…

“Alice,” Miles said.

Alice ignored him. She started to walk, very slowly and carefully, toward the door. She could see that people were staring at her. It felt dreadful. Her confidence was suddenly wafer thin. Every last one of her insecurities rose to mock her, the scorned little housemaid turned heiress, courted for her fortune, humiliated by her fiancé and his mistress in full public view.

“Of course he has to go after her,” she heard Miss Caton say with languid lack of interest. “She is very rich, after all, so I hear, and he is very poor and I am very expensive.” And she gave a small trill of affected laughter.

Alice’s face flamed with absolute fury to think that her money would be paying for Miles’s pleasure in some harlot’s bed. Perhaps, she thought, through the haze of anger, the aristocracy were so sophisticated, so debauched, that a wife would not even blanch at subsidizing her husband’s amorous activities. It was only another entertainment, after all, like gambling or drinking. But such aristocratic cold-bloodedness was foreign to her nature. She could not be so complacent.

Every thought, every feeling, seemed to hurt. She recognized the sensation with some shock. She had not expected to feel such pain. She might have expected anger at so public a humiliation, or embarrassment to be shown to be so painfully naive in contrast to Miss Caton’s brazen worldliness. But this naked, piercing grief that seemed to skewer her heart-that was something both unexpected and deeply painful, and it could only mean that she had compounded all her other follies by falling in love with Miles all over again, far more deeply and hopelessly than she had realized.

“Alice, wait!”

She heard Miles’s step behind her and then he had caught her arm and was bundling her through a doorway and into a room beyond. It was the spa baths. At this time of night they were deserted but for a servant stolidly folding towels and tidying up in preparation for the morning. A lamp glowed on a low table, its red heart a match for the embers that glowed in the wide fireplace. The steam rose from the water in the square stone bath like eerie fingers of mist. During the day the communal baths were packed with Fortune’s Folly visitors. Now the cushioned benches with their pretty carvings designed to resemble Roman baths were empty and the room echoed to the soft bubble of the waters. Alice saw the warmth around her but she could not feel it in her bones. She felt chilled through and through.

Miles looked at the maid and jerked his head toward the door. “If you would be so good…” The courtesy of his tone was belied by the look in his eyes. The girl dropped a frightened curtsy and fled.

Alice heard Miles turn the key in the lock.

“You can’t do that,” she said, rousing herself from her cold stupor. “It isn’t proper.” Then she laughed, a bitter sound to think of herself pleading for propriety when Miles’s mistress had just accosted him in the concert hall in front of everyone in Fortune’s Folly.

“Alice, listen.” Miles ran a hand over his hair, disordering it. Alice noted with detachment that it was the first time she had seen him looking anything less than immaculate. There was strain in his face and deep lines about his eyes. His expression was pale and set.

“I suppose she is your mistress,” Alice cut in, wondering even as she spoke why on earth she had to prolong this agony. She sighed. “Actually, I don’t think you need to answer that, Miles. Of course she is.”

“She was my mistress,” Miles said.

Alice looked sharply at him. “Sir Montague said he had brought her as a present for you.” Her face twisted. “Did you…did you send for her like he said?”

“No,” Miles said. “No,” he repeated more forcefully. “I had no notion Monty was bringing her. I think he probably did it on purpose to try to wreck my betrothal to you. You know he has always wanted to wed you himself or failing that to claim half of your money under the Dames’ Tax.”

Alice’s gaze searched his face. Her heart felt sore, torn. “So you swear you did not know?” she whispered.

A rueful, boyish smile touched Miles’s lips. “You have never doubted that I was telling you the truth before, Alice,” he said. “Why now?”

“Because you are a rake,” Alice said, “and I-” She stopped. “I am jealous,” she said with some surprise. The feelings scored her again with the painful intensity of cats’ claws. “Very jealous,” she added. “I hate it. It feels horrible.”

Miles was watching her intently. “You always knew I was a rake,” he said. “I never concealed my past from you.”

“No,” Alice agreed, “but I had not thought it would ever matter to me. I had not thought I would care.”

Miles’s eyes darkened. He took a step toward her, put out a hand. “You care?” he said.

“About some lightskirt from London coming in and kissing you in front of half of Fortune’s Folly?” Alice retorted. “Yes, I care about that! It hurts my pride.”

“Pride,” Miles said. “I see.” His hand fell to his side. “There is nothing between Miss Caton and me,” he said. “I care nothing for her. I never did. It was over before I came back to Yorkshire.”

“Then why is she here?” Alice demanded. The pain twisted inside her, tighter than a knot. The room was hot and steamy, and her gown was sticking to her skin. No lady should perspire, of course, but Alice felt her shift and petticoats absorb the moist heat of the steam, felt her body start to heat and the sweat run. The tiny curls of hair that nestled in her neck were clinging to its nape. Her physical discomfort seemed only to mock her mental misery.

“I don’t trust you,” she said, and the words fell quietly into the silence of the room.

“I can see that,” Miles said. She sensed the anger in him as she had done that day on Fortune Row when last she had shown how little trust she had in him. This time it felt different though. She sensed an edge of something else to Miles’s fury, something that felt oddly like unhappiness.

“Why should I?” Alice demanded. “You have never done anything to earn my trust! You have tried to blackmail me into marriage-”

“Well, that is all at an end now,” Miles said. “Now that my ex-mistress has kissed me in front of your trustees, thereby proving irrevocably that I am not worthy of you.” He shrugged. “You are free, Alice. They will never let you wed me now.” He drove his hands into his pockets. His gaze was hot and dark and angry as it rested on her. “Why don’t you go?”

Alice did not know. His words-and the realization that Louisa Caton had shattered the conditions of their betrothal-broke over her with the force of a tidal wave. She felt light-headed and free and yet so dreadfully unhappy.

She could not pull away from the expression in his eyes. “It was not your fault,” she whispered. “She kissed you.”

Miles’s expression was contemptuous. “Do you think that will have any influence with the lawyers? Gaines has been ceaselessly searching to find a reason to reject my suit. This is a gift to him. And to you.” He clenched his fists. “Go, Alice!” He sounded murderous. “Go and tell him the betrothal is at an end.”

“But you will be imprisoned for debt,” Alice whispered.

“So why would you care? I tried to blackmail you.” Miles turned away as though he could not even bear to look at her.

Alice put her hand on his arm. He felt as tense as a strung bow. She could sense despair and violence in him and she wondered why she did not run as fast as she could, but still she did not go.

“Have you taken a mistress since our betrothal?” she whispered.

A muscle moved in Miles’s jaw. “I have not.”

She could read him too well by now and almost hated herself for it. “But you have thought about it?” she persisted, wondering even as she did so why she needed to know and to give herself more pain. Why could she not just run, back to the light, back to the lawyers, and tell them it was all over…

“I never sent for Louisa Caton but I did think about slaking my lust with a willing maidservant,” Miles said, with a brutality that shook her. His deliberate use of the word maidservant flicked her on the raw and she flinched. Miles saw it and shrugged.

“I don’t need to tell you the truth anymore,” he continued mercilessly, “but I will. Courting a virgin was proving frustrating work and the girl at the Morris Clown offered her favors, so…”

“So you thought about accepting her offer?” Alice forced the words out past the tears blocking her throat.

“I wanted to.” Miles’s eyes met hers. She could see at last that the anger in him was for himself, not for her, and her heart missed a beat. “Give me no credit,” he said bitterly. “I would have bedded her if I could.”

The fury flicked at Alice again like a whip. “Then I cannot see why you held back.”

Something flared in Miles’s eyes, dark, primal and fierce. His fingers gripped her wrist. “How could I take her,” he ground out, “when I burn for you?” He gave her a little shake. “It would not be wise to push me any further, Alice, unless you can take the consequences. Do you understand me? I have wanted you a long time.”

Alice thought about it. She really thought about it for several moments. Sensible Alice, practical Alice would draw back, of course, play safe, preserve what was left of her innocence. She was free now. She could leave and Miles could not force her into marriage because he had been proved the unworthy man that she had always known him to be. His past had caught him out, betrayed him and delivered her. And yet she did not want to flee. Trapped there in the complicated web of anger and desire she wanted nothing but him and that was the honest truth between them.

She pressed her fingers to Miles’s lips and saw him close his eyes. A muscle flickered in his cheek. She rubbed the stubble of his lean jaw with gentle, experimental fingers and slid her hand around to the back of his neck to bring his head down to hers in a kiss.

Her lips touched his, inexpert, hesitant, and suddenly Alice was afraid because for all the things she had learned from him and everything they had done, there was still an enormous leap between imagination and experience, and she felt woefully inadequate. She made to draw back, anxiety gnawing her stomach, but then Miles angled his head and took her mouth with ruthless precision, and her fear was flattened by a need so great it stifled everything else.

She could feel the anger still in him and the tension and a driving desire that burned up everything in its path. She did not understand it but she clung to him and felt the material of his jacket beneath the desperate clutch of her fingers. His arms went about her and then suddenly she was down on the stone slabs of the floor and they felt hot and slippery beneath her back, as hot as her body felt within the damp evening gown. She gasped and Miles covered her mouth with his and his tongue invaded deeply, and his hand moved to cup her breast and her senses swam.

She knew then, suddenly, that he was not going to stop. He was going to take her here, now, on the stone floor, with the steam clinging in wisps to her body and the heat of it in her blood and her clothes still on and no words spoken. The terror and the excitement made her heart pound so hard she thought the strength of it would lift her entire body from the ground. She could hear the blood drumming in her ears and feel her sweat mingle with the water vapor as she gave herself up to the seeking mouth that was demanding every last ounce of submission from her.

The command was in his hands as they moved over the bodice of her gown, skimming her breasts, stroking through the muslin that was soaking now and clinging to her like a second skin. Her nipples hardened and peaked unbearably tight and he lowered his lips to them and nipped and sucked through the muslin. Alice arched upward, obedient to that absolute demand, and felt him lick up the salty sweat that ran in the cleft between her breasts. He groaned and his mouth returned to hers, roughly now, and she responded eagerly, drinking deep of him, learning the touch and the taste of him even as the hard coiling desire within her threatened to explode. His hands moved blindly, bunching up the skirts of her gown, tugging her drawers aside, then moving to the fastening of his breeches.

The hot, moist air touched her bare thighs like a caress. She felt Miles’s hand push her legs apart and they fell open to the damp kiss of the air. The tight, whirling, painful spiral of need in her stomach intensified. She was frantic, desperate for something that felt so close but yet was still so elusive. She could feel the shimmer of it just out of reach and the painful tightening of desire like a ratchet twisting so taut that it was unbearable.

“Don’t stop.” The words were wrenched from her. “Please don’t stop now.”

And then his fingers were at the very heart of her, parting her, sliding over the slick, tight core and she felt him between her legs and then he was inside her in one smooth stroke.

The pain was fleeting. She noticed it and lost the sensation almost at once as others crowded it out. Her body, rippling with pleasure, seemed to move to accommodate Miles. She felt the size of him, filling her completely, stretching her, impaling her, the feeling so strange and yet so familiar that she felt she had always known him. She was claimed, taken, all innocence stolen, and yet she felt so wicked and wanton in her newfound knowledge that she writhed beneath him instinctively and heard him groan. Her fingers were deep in his hair, pulling his mouth back down to hers as he started to move within her, the rhythm gentle at first but so relentless, so inexorable, that she felt utterly ravished. The damp material of his pantaloons slid against her bare thighs as he moved within her. The stone was hard and hot beneath her, but Miles’s arm was about her, holding her up to meet the thrusts of his body and protect her from the unyielding solidity of the stone floor.

Her body grasped greedily after the pleasure he offered and sensations took hold in response to the slick thrust and slide of him within her. It built and built in shimmering bliss until the world came apart in a shocking, shattering explosion that gathered her up and utterly consumed her. She felt Miles grip her hips and bury himself so deep within her. She heard him groan and felt him shudder as the same intense force took him to tumble them both over the edge and into the whirling darkness below. And then he had gathered her close, his arms about her as though he would never let her go, and she felt completed and triumphant.

MINE. THE WORD ECHOED through Miles’s head.

He gathered Alice closer to him. Her body felt soft and utterly relaxed in his arms, completely trusting and surrendered. Her eyes were closed, the moisture beaded on her lashes. Her skin was rosy and flushed. Her curls tickled his chin. She smelled faintly of flower scent but also of sweat and the salt he had tasted on her skin. The scent drove another spike of lust through him. His desire for her was not diminished. He wanted to carry her out of there to some impossibly soft and comfortable bed and make love to her for the rest of the night and probably forever after. Yet at the same time he felt enormously, powerfully protective and possessive of her. The sensation ambushed him with all the unexpectedness and force of a tidal wave, and for a moment he felt lost and adrift in uncharted waters. This was the moment when he usually made his excuses to his lovers and left. He had never had the urge to cherish them and hold them and simply look at them with this mixture of awe and triumph.

It was only because Alice had been a virgin, he told himself. It was natural that he should feel some sense of responsibility for her pleasure, even he who had never cared a rush for anyone’s satisfaction but his own. He looked at Alice and felt a wash of regret. It really should not have been like this. He should have had more care for her than to have ravished her on the hard stone floor of the spa baths. Yet despite his regrets over the mode of Alice’s seduction it had been the most extraordinary and perfect lovemaking that he could ever remember. Although that, too, was no doubt an illusion brought on by this strange sense of responsibility he was feeling. Or so he tried to reassure himself. He shifted a little under the unaccustomed weight of the feeling. The reaction felt strange, almost unwelcome, and yet there was something about it that also felt inevitable, as though all his certainties were shifting and dissolving away and something new was taking their place.

Fanciful stuff. The simple truth was that in his anger and his selfish desire he had taken his virginal fiancée on the floor in the spa at the Pump Rooms and everyone in the entire building would know it by now. Which actually worked in his favor, for neither Mr. Gaines nor Mr. Churchward would stand in the way of a marriage now, not with the whole village talking scandal. It did not matter now that his ex-mistress had proved him to be the unworthy and unrespectable man he knew that he was. The disgrace of Alice’s ravishment was the greater dishonor and it worked to his advantage. He had Alice and he had her money, too.

He waited to feel triumph, relief and conquest. The feelings never came. He looked at Alice, and the vise of his need for her tightened impossibly. He had to marry her, not for the money but because it felt right and natural and absolutely the only thing to do.

Hell and damnation. He was losing his mind.

Alice opened her eyes. They were soft and unfocused, deep harebell blue. And then she smiled at him and the emotion thumped him in the gut and he felt as though he was falling.

“Miles.”

She raised a hand to his cheek and the same wallop of emotion took him again. He was beginning to recognize it now. He was even beginning to like it, and that was even more frightening. He opened his mouth to speak, but there came a heavy knocking at the door of the spa. Miles made to get up but Alice grabbed his lapels and held him close.

“Leave it.” The curve of her smile made him want to kiss her. He hesitated, but the knocking was becoming more insistent and then there was Dexter’s voice.

“Miles? For God’s sake, open up, man!”

Cursing under his breath, feeling a most unfamiliar sense of responsibility that he simply had to shield Alice from whatever happened next, Miles helped her to her feet. He looked at her. Her clothing was all still in place since he had not removed any of it to make love to her. On one level she looked quite respectable, though the muslin gown clung to her luscious curves, and her damp hair was starting to riot in tiny curls about her face, and she was flushed and pink. Theoretically one could not tell that she had just been tumbled on the floor by the worst rake in Fortune’s Folly. Except…except that in her eyes was a mixture of slumberous satisfaction and new discovery that Miles found utterly sensual and he knew everyone else would recognize it for what it was, too.

“Miles!” Dexter’s voice rose in urgency and Miles turned the key and opened the door.

“What the hell-” he began, then stopped.

What seemed to be the entire population of Fortune’s Folly was gathered on the other side of the door. As it swung wide, the deep silence was broken by a whisper of voices that grew to a torrent. He saw the expression on Alice’s face shift to appalled shock at this intrusion of reality and he stepped in front of her to shield her from the prying eyes. He felt murderously angry.

“I’m so sorry, Miles,” Dexter was saying quickly. “I did what I could, but the magistrate is here. Someone has laid evidence against Miss Lister.”

Mr. Pullen, the magistrate, pushed his way to the front of the crowd. “My lord,” he said. “There has been an accusation of the utmost gravity against Miss Lister. The suggestion that she robbed Madame Claudine’s gown shop of a wedding dress-”

“Outrageous!” Mrs. Lister interrupted, her feathered headdress wagging. “Madness!”

“And,” Pullen continued doggedly, clearly extremely uncomfortable, “that you were a witness to the event, my lord.” He drew a deep breath. “Can it possibly be true? Did you see Miss Lister outside the gown shop on the night of February seven, my lord?”

Miles turned and looked at Alice. Her gaze, wide with horror, clung to his. He felt a terrible stab of regret at what he was going to do and a helpless tide of tenderness for Alice even as he knew that he was going to betray her.

“Miles,” she said. “Don’t…”

Don’t tell the truth…

But he had to. Alice had wanted him to reform, and slowly, painfully, against his will, he was becoming an honest man. He could not go back now. He could not lie when it suited him and still claim to be worthy of her. Alice deserved the best, not some scoundrel who had barely found his principles before he decided to compromise them.

“Yes, Mr. Pullen,” Miles said, “I can confirm it.” He turned to the magistrate, who was looking at him, his mouth open in shock.

“My lord?” Pullen stuttered.

“It is quite correct,” Miles repeated. “I saw Miss Lister outside the gown shop on the night of February seven. I cannot tell a lie.”