Once Upon a Scandal Read online

“I need someone who is a quick study. Someone who is intimately acquainted with precious gems.”

  She felt staggered by his confidence in her. In truth, the notion of examining the boxes gave her an exhilarating lift, as if it were Christmas and these were her gifts. Yet she peered suspiciously at him. This had to be a trick. “You can’t have forgotten the tiger mask. Why would you trust me with your treasures?”

  Shrugging, he caressed her cheek. “It’s a way of keeping you out of trouble. I’m too much the gentleman to lock you up, and too busy to watch over you every minute.” He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “In fact, the sooner I depart, the better. I’ll return later in the afternoon to check on your progress.”

  Emma watched, stunned, as he walked away from her. Where did he disappear to every day? Did he meet his mistress? He had found no satisfaction in his wife’s bed.

  Emma’s heart gave a curious little twist. Was his foreign woman beautiful, a perfect match for his tall, handsome form? Or perhaps her beauty was of the soul, for he professed to love her dearly. She was the reason he did not wish to marry another English lady.

  So let him go, Emma told herself as he neared the door. She didn’t care. Let him slake his lust in some other female. Let him ply her with peacock feathers and rub her with scented oil … .

  “Wait!” she called.

  In the doorway, he turned on his heel, his head cocked inquisitively. The lock of hair that had tumbled onto his brow gave him a dashing air. “Yes?”

  “Where—” Her courage fled, and she waved her hand at the crates. “What are you planning to do with all these things?”

  “To open a new exhibit at the Montague House Museum. A tribute to Asian antiquities, by the patronage of Lord and Lady Wortham.” With a small smile and a click of his heels, he strode out of the library.

  He would commemorate her? No, surely he must mean his mother.

  Yet an odd little hope warmed her well into the morning. Emma found herself humming as she dug through the crates and carefully placed a variety of artifacts on the desk. The straw tickled her nose and made her sneeze. An apron would have protected her gown from dust streaks. But she was too fascinated by her gargantuan task to leave the library.

  What had Lucas done during those seven lost years? Each new discovery revealed a bit more about his travels and fed her hungry curiosity.

  She lifted out a sandstone carving of a fierce goddess with many arms, and imagined Lucas exploring a ruined stone temple. She opened a mother-of-pearl box filled with gold and copper coins, and fancied him bargaining with a merchant in a bazaar. She uncovered a bronze ewer inlaid with silver and sapphires, and saw him accepting it from a turbaned prince in an ivory palace.

  But when she came upon a statue of a bare-breasted maiden holding a peacock fan, Emma’s daydreams took a decidedly different turn.

  Clutching the figurine, she sank cross-legged to the floor and relived the memory of her encounter with Lucas the previous night. How delicately he had stroked the feather over her skin, how extraordinary the sensations he had wrought in her. It was almost as if she were awakening from a long, deep slumber. Even now, the secret glow of pleasure warmed her innermost place—

  “Mama! Mama, look what I’ve found.”

  Emma’s eyes snapped open as fantasy faded to reality. Jenny trotted toward her, weaving through the litter of straw and boxes and chairs. A bundle of white fur filled her small arms. Toby.

  The little dog wagged his tail and licked Jenny’s face joyfully.

  Concealing a stirring of disquiet, Emma smiled and set aside the statue. She rose to her feet, kissed her daughter on the top of her sweet-scented head, and then scratched Toby behind the ears. “Good morning, you two. I didn’t know you knew each other.”

  “We met on the stairway just now.” Jenny giggled in delight as the dog licked her nose. “Oh, Mama, I do think he wants to be my friend.”

  “It certainly would seem so.”

  Her blue-green eyes sparkled. “Do you suppose I could take him up to the nursery and introduce him to my cousins?”

  Thinking of the crotchety dowager, Emma hesitated. Instinct warned her to keep Jenny ensconced in the nursery. “Lambkin, I’m afraid Toby already has an owner who loves him very much. She might worry about him if you took him away, even for a short while.”

  “But Mama—”

  “I’ll take him back while you run along to your lessons.” Detesting the necessity of hiding Jenny away, Emma guided the girl toward the door of the library. “And you know what I told you about wandering through the house. You must be careful not to disturb anyone—”

  Emma stopped abruptly as the elder Lady Wortham walked into the library. Regally imposing in a gown of violet poplin, she took the careful steps of an invalid and clutched a lace handkerchief in one hand.

  Her heart pounding, Emma stepped in front of Jenny. “Good morning, madam. Should you be out of bed?”

  “I am in the pink of health. Besides, it is well past noon, and you missed luncheon.” Her mother-in-law’s expression lightened as she asked, “Now where is Toby? I heard him barking and then a little child’s laughter. Which of my naughty grandchildren has escaped the nursery?”

  “None of them,” Emma said quickly.

  “But I was certain—I recognized that laugh. Who is that behind you?”

  “Only my daughter, I’m afraid. She came to visit me for a few minutes.”

  The dowager’s mouth pinched tightly. All semblance of polite good humor vanished as she drew herself up with hauteur. “Your daughter.”

  “Yes.” Resenting the woman’s demeanor, while anxious to defuse a volatile situation, Emma turned to fetch Toby.

  But Jenny popped into view with the dog in her arms.

  Her lips parted in awe as she gazed up at the dowager. She smiled with the trust of the innocent. “I have him, ma’am, He only wanted to play.”

  Lady Wortham stared at the girl. A look of utter confusion arched her silver brows and eased the tension from her mouth. Very slowly, she braced her hand on the back of a chair and knelt before Jenny. With a hand that visibly trembled, Lady Wortham reached out and touched the crown of Jenny’s hair. “My child,” she whispered in wonder.

  Her voice broke the spell of agonized suspense that gripped Emma. She swiftly moved to her daughter. “Give me Toby, darling. You mustn’t bother her ladyship any longer.”

  “Nonsense. She isn’t bothering me.” Amazingly—alarmingly—a smile gentled the dowager’s face as her keen gaze studied Jenny. “You run along, dear. Bring Toby back in half an hour, mind, and we’ll have a little visit.”

  “Thank you.” Jenny bobbed a curtsy and then darted out of the room.

  The dowager stood up by degrees, a strange warmth on her fine-lined face. Her gaze was piercing, assessing, questioning. “Well, Emma, you have some explaining to do. Why have you kept my granddaughter from me all these years?”

  A chilling frost swept through Emma. It could not be. She could not have been found out.

  She turned away and blindly touched the books on a shelf. “I—I don’t understand. Jenny is not Lucas’s daughter. For that very reason, you banished me from this house the day after the wedding.”

  Silk rustled as the dowager came closer. Her quivering, birdlike hand alighted on Emma’s shoulder. “My dear, if only you had confided in me, I would have helped you smooth things over with Lucas. The very moment I saw the girl I knew.” Anguish roughened the older woman’s voice. “Jenny is the daughter of my son Andrew.”

  “You need only to identify him and leave the rest to me,” Lucas said, holding Shalimar’s cool hands. “Are you certain you’re ready?”

  A white veil draping her dark hair, his mistress sat beside him in the Wortham coach. She kept her head bowed. “Yes, my lord. I am not afraid.”

  Yet a tremor ran through her, and Lucas knew she feared not her former lover, but the fate of her only child, Sanjeev. Many months had passed since her son had
been kidnapped by his ne’er-do-well sire. Today, they were investigating another actor who fit O’Hara’s description.

  “Hajib, you’ll stay with Shalimar,” Lucas said. “Behind me.”

  The servant’s chocolate eyes gleamed in woeful sympathy at her. “As you wish, master. It is an honor to escort the lovely Lotus of Kashmir.”

  Lucas unlatched the door of the coach and stepped out into the bright sunshine. Drays and wagons rattled down the narrow street in the Covent Garden district. The sour smell of the gutters melded with the pungent odor of horse droppings. On the corner, a pieman shouted out his wares to the common folk passing by. A little boy dodged in and out of the pedestrians, chasing after a squawking rooster. Across the street, on a seedy brick theater, the marquee announced a revival of the popular old play The Way of the World.

  Spotting a break in the traffic, Lucas struck out for the playhouse, Hajib and Shalimar at his heels. The pair in their foreign robes garnered a few stares from the passersby. To Lucas’s relief, one of the front doors was unlocked, and he led the way into the dimness of the deserted lobby.

  The hollow sound of upraised voices echoed from the amphitheater. As Lucas motioned to his companions to be silent, the soreness in his arm made him grimace. He’d never have thought dainty little Emma capable of delivering such a blow. But then, he had underestimated her before.

  Was she still in the library, classifying his artifacts? He gritted his teeth, thinking of her having free access to his priceless antiquities. What madness had seized hold of him?

  He was a bloody fool to let the vixen into the proverbial chicken coop. Right now, she might be falsifying his records and pocketing a valuable relic. Not since he’d succumbed to her pretty pleading and married her posthaste had he made a decision with his loins rather than his logic. If Emma took it into her mind to have revenge on him, she could vandalize his life’s work.

  But he had to trust her. Or at least pretend to do so. Because then, she might be inspired to trust him. In bed.

  God, yes. In bed.

  “Pssst, master,” Hajib whispered. “Look.”

  With no memory of having entered the amphitheater, Lucas realized they stood in the shadows at the back of the immense room. Rows of seats formed a half-circle around the stage. Above the common area, the more expensive, giltpainted boxes were dark, empty of patrons. The curtains were lifted to reveal the wooden stage, where the drop scene showed the interior of a house. Lamps flickered over a small group of actors rehearsing their lines.

  Bloody damn. Lucas frowned. He didn’t know which one of them might be O’Hara. The actors wore elaborate costumes, with the painted faces and white wigs of the previous century.

  “‘Gad, my head begins to whim it about—why dost thou not speak?’” one man boomed. “‘Thou art both as drunk and as mute as a fish.’”

  Another actor staggered out of the wings and swayed in front of an actress in a massive hooped gown. “‘Look you, Mrs. Millamant—if you can love me, dear nymph—say it …’”

  The new actor gave a passable performance of an inebriated sot. Big and burly, he wore a powdered bagwig and old-fashioned breeches of shiny violet satin. A black patch dotted his cheek.

  Shalimar made a sound of distress. Her anguished eyes were luminous in the gloom. Struck by concern, Lucas touched her smooth hand. The veil stirred around her dark features as she gave a jerky nod.

  He felt a jolt of success, tempered by the grimness of anger. The bastard in the purple pants was O’Hara.

  “Stay here,” Lucas muttered. “Both of you.”

  Without a backward glance, he stalked along the perimeter of the theater until he came to a door in the shadows beside the stage. The actors were quarreling now in raised voices, and no one noticed him slip backstage. He threaded his way past piles of props, ropes for the curtains, and canvas backdrops. Musty smells hung in the air: sweat and cosmetics and smoke from the lamps. In the wings, he found a vantage point near a rickety screen that formed a dressing area. Costumes were flung over trunks and stools.

  O’Hara minced around the stage in his role as a foppish drunk. Lucas knew better than to mistake the Irishman for a weakling. The villain had torn a son from his mother.

  You intend to do the same to Emma, his conscience jeered.

  Lucas clenched his jaw. The circumstances were different for him. Worlds different. Emma knew—and agreed even before conception—that she would give up their son to him. So what if he’d coerced her into the bargain? She’d done her share of coercing him.

  Yet guilt fueled the violent rage within him.

  On stage, O’Hara intoned, “‘Go flea dogs, and read romances! I’ll go to bed my maid.’” He hiccuped loudly and then reeled off into the wings.

  Lucas stepped out of the shadows. “Patrick O’Hara.”

  The actor’s demeanor sobered as he shed his onstage persona. He arched one bushy, white-powdered eyebrow. “That I am,” he said gruffly, looking Lucas up and down. “And just who might be askin’?”

  “Your nemesis.”

  Seizing the brawny man by his purple lapels, Lucas shoved him up against the back wall. His wig tumbled off and bits of broken plaster rained down on his short, carroty hair. “Here now!” O’Hara blustered. “If you’ve come to collect on a bill, you’ve only to ask—”

  “Where is Sanjeev?”

  O’Hara’s brown eyes narrowed warily. “Sanjeev?”

  Lucas shook him. “Don’t play the dolt. He’s your son.”

  “What’s he done now? I’ll have you know, I’m not liable for the brat anymore. Not since he run off.”

  “Ran off. Where? When?”

  “’Twas nigh on a month ago,” the actor whined. “Devil if I know where.”

  “And you haven’t tried to find him? Bastard! You should never have taken him from Shalimar.”

  O’Hara stared. “So you’ve been to India and met the harlot. Faith, a more tender piece of ass never warmed me bed—ooph!”

  Lucas hurled him away. Arms wheeling, O’Hara staggered sideways into a dressing table and fell to the floor. Jars of cosmetics clattered and shattered. A snowstorm of spilled powder filtered down on his sprawled form. Gasps came from the other thespians who had gathered to watch.

  For a moment O’Hara lay like a grotesque marionette with his arms and legs flung wide. Then, with a mighty bellow, he leapt to his feet.

  Lucas met O’Hara with a fist to his belly. Pain blazed up Lucas’s bruised arm, but he scarcely noticed. He could think only of punishing the man who had abandoned his own child, of silencing his own conscience. Props and people scattered until Lucas’s arm went numb and he found himself pinned to the wall by fifteen stone of angry Irishman.

  “’Tis surprised I am that a fine gent like yourself would defend a strumpet,” O’Hara said between bursts of alestinking breath. “If you pay me well, I might just remember where you can find her brat.”

  Lucas answered by bringing up his left fist from outside and jabbing O’Hara in the ear. The actor loosened his stranglehold for an instant. It was long enough for Lucas to throw him off balance and wrest him to the floor.

  “If you value your life,” Lucas said, “you’ll tell me for free.”

  “Yes, sahib,” said Hajib. “Or my blade will pierce your black heart.”

  In a flutter of gray robes, the valet appeared out of nowhere to press a wickedly curved knife to O’Hara’s chest. A collective gasp eddied from the onlookers.

  O’Hara went still, though he glowered at Hajib. “Who is this cheeky Hindoo?”

  “I am no Hindu, but a follower of Mohammad. And you will meet your infidel God this day if you fail to tell the truth about Sanjeev.”

  Several wheezing breaths came from O’Hara. “Faith, ’tis caught in a farce, I am, and a badly written one at that,” the actor grumbled. “The lad boasted of earning his passage back to that godfersaken hellhole he came from. After all the opportunity I gave him, bringing him to Mother England!”
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  “You let him look for work at the docks?” Lucas said.

  “Aye. Though don’t blame me if the ungrateful wretch has taken ship already. Now get away from me, both you scurvy gents.”

  Lucas sprang to his feet and stalked away. The group of actors parted to give them wide berth, especially when Hajib brandished his curving knife.

  Shalimar stood waiting in the shadows outside the stage door. Her palms pressed together, she asked, “My son?”

  Lucas gently took her by the arm and steered her up the aisle. “He’s gone to find work at the docks. So that he might return home to you.”

  Her steps faltered. “My poor Sanjeev!”

  “We’ll find him,” Lucas said gruffly. “I promise you that.”

  “I will help,” Hajib said, sheathing his knife beneath his robe. “Even if the boy has stowed away aboard a ship, I will follow him to the ends of the world. For you, O Lotus of Kashmir.”

  Lucas vowed to leave no stone unturned until Shalimar held her son in her arms again. He owed her that much and more. She had brought him out of the darkness of despair. She had taught a callow boy how a man pleases a woman. She had given him serenity. So why did he long for Emma?

  As he crossed the busy street to his carriage, he felt no peace. Since the day Emma had sauntered back into his life with yet another scheme to manipulate him, he had been caught up in turmoil again—in an exhilarating tumult of passion and anger and yearning. Even now, he burned with impatience to return home and match wits with her.

  Bloody hell. He wanted a son, not a wife. He wouldn’t let Emma distract him. Except at night.

  Ah, yes. At night.

  Chapter 13

  Aghast, Emma stared at her mother-in-law. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece. In the corridor outside the library, a servant walked by with a swift tapping of footsteps. Emma wanted to bolt out the door, but her legs wouldn’t move. They were as paralyzed as her tongue.

  The dowager knew. She knew.

  Her blue eyes brimming with tears, the elder Lady Wortham groped for Emma’s hands. “Do not deny it,” she said in a pleading tone. “Have pity on an old mother. Tell me that little Jenny is really my Andrew’s daughter.”