One Night Scandal

“Go away, Jennette. I am not accepting calls.”

“This isn’t a call.”

He laughed hoarsely from the other side of the door. “Then what is it?”

“We need to talk about what happened.”

“Nothing happened. Sophie left, that is all.”

“Nicholas, let me in,” she insisted.

“Just go away.”

“Maybe she had a reason for leaving.” Jennette listened as the room seemed to go strangely quiet. She stepped backward when she heard his footsteps clomping closer.

The door swung open and he stood there in just his trousers and white linen shirt. Looking behind him, she noticed the rest of his clothes strewn across the room. She looked up at him and wanted to cry. The pain in his brown eyes made her remember all the pain she had gone through with her own husband.

“What exactly do you know about her leaving?” he demanded.

“May I come in?” Even as she asked the question, her stomach roiled from the stench of brandy. While she could out drink many men, the smell of alcohol nauseated her terribly when with child.

“Tell me what you know.”

“You’re trying my patience.” She shoved past him and kicked at his waistcoat on the floor. “Lovely,” she muttered.

“Jennette, if you don’t start talking you might as well leave me to my brandy.”

She picked up his cravat from a chair and dropped it to the floor. “Lane is not going to be happy when he sees this room.”

“I don’t give a bloody damn about what Lane thinks. What do you know of Sophie?”

With deliberate slowness, she sat down and straightened her skirts. “Well, Nicholas, I received a letter today from Sophie stating she felt she had to leave the country because she could not stand to watch you marry Miss Littlebury.”

“That is basically the same thing she wrote me.” He hurled the crystal brandy snifter at the fireplace. Shards of glass splintered against the firebox.

“Destroying your house won’t get her back,” Jennette whispered.

He stalked across the room. His anger and frustration emanated from every pore. “I don’t even know where she is!”

Jennette smiled as he passed her chair. “You have no idea where she might have gone. Indeed? I should think it was perfectly obvious.”

He stopped his pacing and stared at her. “You know? She told you?”

She laughed softly. “No, she did not tell me. And I doubt she told anyone. Nonetheless, I know where I would go.”

Nicholas rubbed his face with his hands, trying to clear some of the muddled feelings from his brain. “Jennette,” he said, attempting to control his impatience with her, “I have no idea where she went.”

“Now you see, that is what too much brandy will do to you.” She rubbed her belly and smiled. “Among other things.”

He glared at her.

“Oh, all right,” she said. “Sophie is a very romantic person. She loves you dearly.”

“I’m not so certain of that,” he interrupted.

“I am. She loves you, Nicholas. So much, in fact, that she preferred to leave you than ruin your reputation by marrying you. Being a romantic, she would travel where she can remember the first time she met you.”

“Venice,” he said with a long sigh. “I should have thought of that. Her mother is there.”