Last Night's Scandal (The Dressmakers 5)

She supposed he’d applied the same diligence and persistence to the art of kissing that he’d employed to improve his drawing. The same way he’d trained himself to strike fire in an instant with a tinderbox.

And when he bedded a woman . . . but this was not the time to speculate.

She pushed the door open and walked into the hall.

Lisle followed a moment after.

There were all the servants, exactly as they’d been before, waiting in what once had been the screens passage.

They didn’t look depressed anymore.

They all wore the same look of keen interest.

She drew herself up, once again the chatelaine of the castle.

“Back to work,” she told the kitchen servants.

They filed past her through the door into the kitchen area.

She gave a few final instructions to the others, and they quickly scattered to attend to their duties.

The great hall emptied, but for a pair of servants at the opposite end, near the fireplace, who were carrying furnishings into the Harpies’ quarters. The door was open and she could hear the ladies arguing about who ought to get the first-floor bedroom and who ought to get the one above it.

She’d let them sort that out for themselves.

When she turned back to Lisle, he was saying something to Nichols. The valet nodded and glided away.

“They heard,” Lisle said in a low voice.

“I supposed that was why they looked so attentive,” she said.

“Not us,” he said. “They heard your encounter with Aillier.” He nodded at the kitchen door. “The door’s cracked. That, added to chinks in the mortar and broken windows, means sound travels more easily than it will once we’ve completed repairs. They heard him roaring at you. They heard something of what you said in answer. They heard his reaction. Then, in a very short time, they heard things return to normal. You saw how the kitchen servants didn’t hesitate to return. And the rest of the staff is properly impressed.”

She smiled. “I slew the dragon.”

“You were brilliant,” he said. He paused. “I should have realized. I’m sorry I doubted you. Mind, I’m still not happy to be here—but you’ve made it a degree less dismal.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I find you diverting, too.”

His eyebrows went up. “Diverting.”

“All the same, what happened in the kitchen passage must not happen again,” she said. “You know I’m lacking in moral fiber. And I know you have a great deal—all sort of principles and ethics and such.” She gave a dismissive wave.

“Yes. And such.” The haunted look came into his eyes. Guilt was eating at him. Drat her stepfather, for fitting him up with a conscience and strict notions of Duty and Honor.

She leaned in closer. “Lisle, it’s perfectly natural. We’re young, we’re beautiful—”

“And modest, too.”

“You like facts,” she said. “Let’s face them. Fact: Intellect has an uphill battle against animal urges. Fact: We’re badly chaperoned. Conclusion: The situation is ripe for disaster. I shall do my best not to err in that way again, but—”

“Wonderful,” he said. “Then it’s all up to me to protect your honor. Such a fine job I’ve done so far.”

She grabbed his lapels. “Listen to me, you high-principled thickhead. We cannot make that mistake again. Do you know how close we came to the Irrevocable?” She let go of him, to hold her right hand up, thumb and forefinger a quarter inch apart. “This close we came . . .” She paused for dramatic effect. “. . . to playing into your parents’ hands.”

His head went back as though she’d slapped him.

Someone had to do it. Someone had to do something. She hadn’t planned for this. She’d thought she could manage him the way she managed other men. But she couldn’t, and she saw that they were racing down a slippery slope. If he left it to her, she’d wave her hands and shout, “Yes, faster, faster!”

His voice broke the taut silence.

“What did you say?”

She had his full, concentrated attention now. “They’re trying to keep you home by hanging this millstone of a castle about your neck,” she said. “They hope that the longer you’re home, the less you’ll think of Egypt, and by and by you’ll forget about it and take a fancy to a proper English girl and marry and settle down.”

He stared at her. “I don’t . . .” She saw the realization dawn in his grey eyes.

“Yes,” she said, “they don’t even care if it’s me.”

It took Lisle a moment to absorb it. Then he saw it in his mind’s eye: his parents’ smiling faces, the conspiratorial looks cast up and down the table, the dowager’s smiles and indulgent looks. Like a play.

“Olivia,” he said mildly, his heart thudding, “what did you tell them?”

“Tell them? Don’t be absurd. I should never be so careless as to actually say it. I merely encouraged them to think it.”

“That you’d . . .” He could hardly bear to say it. “That you’d set your cap for me?”

“It’s the sort of sentimental nonsense they’d believe,” she said. “And the one excuse they’d accept for my traveling with you, and staying here with you.”

“To trap me,” he said. “Into marriage.”

“Yes.” She beamed at him. “I know you’re shocked.”

“There’s an understatement.”

“After all, we both know they’ve never really liked me. But as I told you, rank and money will buy almost anything, and I’m very well connected as well as disgustingly rich.”

He put his hand to his head and leaned against the table. Really, she was beyond anything. To stand there, so cheerfully explaining this monstrous lie she’d told . . . implied. “You take my breath away.”

She moved to lean against the table next to him, as casually as though they hadn’t done what they’d done a moment ago. In the kitchen passage, of all places!

“The only thing I hadn’t bargained for was that we should have this inconvenient attraction,” she said.

“Inconvenient.”

“As infuriating and thickheaded as you are, you’re my dearest friend in the world,” she said. “I don’t want to ruin your life, and I know you don’t want to ruin mine. We have so many fine examples about us of good marriages. My mother found her own true love twice. I should be happy to find mine once. And that’s what I wish for you. But you know we should never suit in that way.”

“Gad, no.”

She scowled at him. “You needn’t agree so enthusiastically.”

“It’s a fact,” he said. He knew it was. She was a wonder of nature, but the simoom was a wonder of nature, too. So were hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. He’d grown up in chaos. Rathbourne had given him order. Lisle needed order. He’d spent the last ten years making an orderly if occasionally exciting life. He’d been fortunate to discover early what he wanted, and he’d pursued that goal patiently and determinedly.

With her, everything flew out of control. Worst of all he lost control. Look what he’d done. Again and again and again.

“Well, then,” she said.

“Right.” He straightened away from the table. “I’m going up to the roof now.”

“The roof! I admit that my plans have gone a bit awry, but there’s no reason we can’t master this.” She came away from the table. “Matters got out of hand, but it’s not the end of the world. There’s no need to do anything so extreme as throw yourself from the roof.”

For a moment he could only gaze at her in wonder.

Then, “I’m not going to throw myself from the roof,” he said patiently. “I’m going up to complete my survey of the house. Because of the downpour, I wasn’t able to measure the roof area or assess its condition or

draw the layout.”

“Oh,” she said. She stepped back two paces. “That’s all right, then.”

“Throw myself from the roof,” he muttered. “Really.”

“You look so upset.”

“That’s because I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or hit my head against the wall,” he said. “What I need is calm. I need, desperately, to do something very, very boring.”

Later that evening

Though it wasn’t his most elaborate dinner, Aillier contrived to put a very good one on the table.

It was the first proper dinner Lisle had eaten since he left London, he realized. A proper, civilized dinner, at a proper dining table, with diners conversing in a relatively intelligent manner. It was, too, the first dinner he’d presided over in one of his family’s homes.

By the time he and the ladies of the household left the table and gathered at the fire, the day’s tumult had subsided somewhat. Not altogether. His loss of control with Olivia still haunted him. And he still couldn’t see how this Idea of hers would get him to Egypt by the spring. Still, he was calmer, thanks to the work he’d had the good sense to undertake.

His usual remedy for confusion or upset of any kind was to work. Measuring and evaluating and making notes, he was on familiar, peaceful ground—even here, in this primitive structure in this miserable climate.