A Christmas Scandal
Read A Christmas Scandal Online
Authors: Jane Goodger
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General
He kept his eyes on hers, his gaze holding a strange, dark intensity that made a flood of heat nearly consume her.
Oh, dear God.
They danced without speaking, without smiling, and a casual observer might think they were a couple who was bored, with life, with each other. But someone who was watching intensely might have seen Maggie’s parted lips, the way her breath was catching oddly in her chest, the way his arms pulled her subtly closer and closer until they were nearly fully embracing.
When the music stopped, Lord Hollings pulled her out of the ballroom and to the empty veranda. He didn’t say a word. Neither did she.
Even when he pressed her against the cold stone of the mansion, even when he brought his mouth against hers, even when he pressed his body to hers, even then, they were silent.
New York, 1893
Margaret Pierce sat in the pink parlor, a whimsical room her whimsical mother loved, hoping it would somehow calm her. She rocked back and forth, her hands clutched together, as she prayed fervently for her father.
She heard the front door open, the murmurings of her mother talking to one of their few remaining servants, and listened as her footsteps sounded, tap-tapping, on the marble floor. Her heart beat a slow, sickening beat in her chest.
“There you are, Maggie,” Harriet Pierce said, looking unusually drawn. “It’s done with now.”
Maggie looked at her mother, afraid to ask what had happened to her father, a gentle, wonderful man who was going to prison. She could not bring herself to go to the hearing, unable to bear the weight of all that had happened, unable to look in the eyes of the man who held her father’s fate in his filthy hands.
She was afraid to ask her mother how long her father would be in prison, even though she knew what the answer would be. She’d made sure of that.
“Oh, my dear,” her mother said, rushing over to sit by her daughter, embracing her tightly, and Maggie realized she hadn’t been trying quite hard enough to hide her feelings. “This has been difficult for you, I know. The two of you are so close. I think that is what is so upsetting to him, not being with you on your wedding day. For your children when they are born.”
Maggie pushed her mother gently away, staring at her with the beginnings of terror gripping her. “It’s only a year. He’ll be home with us for the wedding and certainly in time to see his grandchildren.”
Her mother’s eyes welled up and she shook her head. “Whatever gave you that idea? Oh, Maggie, it’s to be five years. Five years was always what we thought. What on earth made you think otherwise?” Her mother straightened her spine. “But we’ll get through it. Your father is a relatively young man. He’ll still be in his early fifties by the time he’s home with us. Not so old.”
“No,” Maggie whispered, feeling as if she might faint, feeling as if the world were tilting crazily around her. “One year. It’s to be
one
year,” she said, her voice taking on the edge of desperation.
“Oh, darling,” her mother said, trying to pull her into another comforting embrace. “The years will fly by. You’ll see.”
Maggie stood up, agitated beyond bearing. “It’s impossible. He promised.”
Her mother smiled up at her. “Who promised? No one promised any such thing. Certainly not Papa. Oh, he didn’t, did he? I do declare that man would say anything to make you feel better.”
Maggie looked at her mother, her eyes wild, her breathing erratic.
“Maggie, what are you doing?” her mother asked sharply, looking at her wrist.
She looked down to see a row of neat little red crescents on her wrist where she’d been digging her thumbnail into her skin. Distractedly, she pulled down her sleeve, then took a bracing breath. She’d nearly lost control, which would have upset her mother terribly. Sitting down, she grasped her mother’s hand and smiled shakily. “I’m sorry. I had this crazy hope is all. I’m just so worried about Papa. About everything, I suppose.”
Her mother visibly calmed when she saw her daughter’s smile, and Maggie vowed to never let her mother see how terrified, how very distraught she was. Harriet had always been an emotionally fragile person, and Maggie had always tried to keep her life as calm as possible. With all that was happening around them, keeping calm was hopeless, but she did not want to add to her mother’s torment. It was almost as if the devil, having decided to pick out one poor family to have fun with, had picked Maggie’s and was enjoying himself immensely watching them all suffer. For never had a family’s life gone from idyllic to nightmarish in the space that Maggie’s had. Indeed, it was difficult to believe that just three months before she had had everything a young woman of twenty could ask for: friends, loving parents, two protective brothers, a beautiful home, and a brilliant future.
When news of her father’s arrest for embezzlement hit the
New York Times,
friends disappeared, invitations dried up, servants quit. Once on the fringes of the elite New York Four Hundred, now the Pierces were shunned at best. For the worst of it was that her banker father had embezzled money from the very people they depended upon for the social status they had so enjoyed. One brother, an attorney in one of the most prestigious law firms in New York, was fired and was now working in a tiny firm in Richmond, where no one had heard of Reginald Pierce. Thankfully, her oldest brother was in San Francisco, far removed from the scandal.
After her father’s arrest, creditors immediately began knocking on their door and the state demanded repayment of an impossible sum. Everything was gone, including their fashionable home on Fifth Avenue. They were to be out in three days, leaving behind a lifetime’s accumulation of wealth. Everything would be auctioned.
Arthur Wright was their last hope. How many times had Harriet thanked God for him? Thank God, thank God. Arthur Wright, who bored Maggie to tears, whom she didn’t love, but who loved her. “I suppose it won’t do for Arthur to see me tonight with a red nose and watery eyes,” Maggie said in an attempt at levity.
“Do you think he’s going to ask today? That would be a wonderful ending to an absolutely horrid day,” her mother said, fretting her hands in her lap. Her mother, never the calm and collected one, had lately looked rather like a harried wash maid, her hair a mass of messy curls, her clothing always slightly askew. Once they’d let go of almost all of their servants, poor Mama could not handle the daily ablutions required of her. She was clean but looked as if she’d just come in from a violent windstorm. And her eyes always darted about a room, as if the miseries that had struck this family were tangible things she could duck away from.
“I’m almost certain that is why Arthur is coming over tonight,” Maggie said, smiling. This, at least, was a genuine smile, for Arthur had more than hinted that tonight was the night they would formalize their engagement. She knew her mother would worry until she was safely settled, just as she knew their worries were over. She and Arthur were already unofficially engaged; she was awaiting only the ring and a formal announcement in the
Times
. She should be ecstatic, but the truth was, Maggie didn’t want to marry anyone. At least not anyone in New York.
“I’m so glad,” Harriet said. “We really shouldn’t hold out hope any longer.”
“Hold out hope for what?”
“Oh. I meant about the earl, dear. I was holding out hope that he’d return or write.
Something.
A title would have been so very nice.”
Maggie let out a laugh even as her heart gave a painful wrench. She had met Lord Hollings over the summer in Newport. He’d been friends with the Duke of Bellingham, who’d married her best friend, then taken her away to England, away from her. Maggie had been stupid and naive enough to fall in love with the earl, though thankfully she hadn’t been foolish enough to let anyone know, including him. “The earl was just being kind to me because I am Elizabeth’s friend. You know that.”
“But those dances,” Harriet said, letting her voice trail off.
“It was great fun but nothing more than an innocent flirtation. What Arthur and I share is far deeper. Far more meaningful.” Goodness, she was getting so good at doing anything to make her mother feel better—which apparently included marrying a man she did not love.
As she thought back, it seemed as if her life took a sudden and desperate turn for the worse when Elizabeth married her duke. Maggie was left with a world crumbling around her, with her flailing and trying with all her might to stop it.
“I should probably get ready,” she said, attempting to sound like her old, perky self. “Arthur is coming for supper and he’ll be here within the hour. Could you help me with my dress?”
Only the most loyal servants had stuck with the Pierces after it became clear there would be no more money forthcoming. It was something they would all have to get used to, fending for themselves, dressing themselves, cooking their own food. Maggie had always thought of herself as a modern independent woman until the day she realized she could not dress herself without help. Without Arthur there would be no balls, no new dresses every season, no French chef in a grand kitchen. Her mother was far more upset about their change in fortune than Maggie was, though she was greatly affected by her mother’s despondency.
Without Arthur, her mother would have had to move to her sister’s home in Savannah, Georgia. It was a dreaded alternative, for neither wanted to live in Savannah.
Once she was dressed for supper, Maggie glanced at the mirror, noting absently that it needed a good polishing. She looked exactly the same. Exactly. No one could know what was inside her, the secrets, the shame. She smiled brilliantly, her teeth white and straight, her eyes sparkling.
“Of course I’ll marry you, Arthur,” she gushed to her reflection. Then she let out a sigh and for just a moment almost gave in to the tears that had threatened for weeks, that left her throat feeling perpetually raw. Arthur did not deserve what he was getting. He deserved the girl she used to be, carefree and innocent and full of hope, not the girl she’d become. Guilt assaulted her and she pushed it brutally away, knowing Arthur would be much happier to marry the girl he thought she was than be told the truth. With a start, she realized she was digging her thumbnail into her wrist again and she looked at the crescents with a bit of vexation. She’d ruined the sleeves of two blouses already with tiny spots of blood that would not wash away no matter what she tried.
She heard the rustling of skirts and her mother, her hair in wild disarray, peeked into her room. “He’s here,” she hissed delightedly. Maggie shook her head fondly at her mother’s complete glee.
“Arthur comes to dinner every Tuesday night, Mama. I don’t know why you have it in your head that tonight is the night he will propose.”
“Because if he doesn’t, we’ll both be on a train to Savannah,” she pointed out. “Not that it wouldn’t be wonderful to see my sister, but Catherine’s house is so small, especially with her children and that huge husband or hers. She’s still got two at home, you know. Children, not husbands.” Maggie wrinkled her nose, making Harriet laugh. “It’s not Catherine I worry about.” Harriet had often commented on the fact that she didn’t like her sister’s husband, found him coarse and far too opinionated. “And I may have hinted that you would be safely married soon. It’s not that she wouldn’t welcome us both. It’s simply that she’s not expecting two more females for an extended time.”
Maggie lifted her hand to stop her mother’s guilt-ridden monologue. “I understand completely. Besides, we don’t have to worry about Aunt Catherine or her children or Uncle Bert because we have Arthur. Now. How do I look?” she asked, swishing her yellow skirts back and forth. With her dark hair and flashing brown eyes, yellow had always been a good color for Maggie.
“You look like a girl who’s about to get engaged,” Harriet said, her eyes misting a bit. “Now hurry before he changes his mind. He’s in the pink parlor.”
“Oh, Mama, you didn’t. You know that men loathe that room. He’ll feel positively uncomfortable.” She followed her mother down the stairs, motioning to her silently to stay put and not eavesdrop at the door even though she knew her mother would.
“Hello, Arthur,” she said, closing the door firmly and walking toward the tall man sitting awkwardly in a delicate Queen Anne chair. He was all knees and elbows, her Arthur. He stood abruptly, almost as if surprised to find Maggie here in her own home.
“Good evening.”
He didn’t smile. Perhaps he was nervous, Maggie thought. Or perhaps he’d decided that a buoyant greeting would be inappropriate given that her father had just been sentenced to prison.
“I’m so sorry about your father,” he blurted out. Arthur Wright was a man who did not feel comfortable in the company of women, for he came from a family of five boys. He got on well with Maggie because she had older brothers and so knew how men ticked. He’d once told her that she was the only pretty girl he knew that he could spend more than a minute with. Maggie took that as the compliment it was intended to be.
Maggie swallowed heavily at the mention of her father. She had not allowed herself to think of him locked away in prison with all sorts of rough men. Her father, who loved the ballet and a fine port and cigar after supper, was not at all the kind of man who would thrive in such a place. “I miss him already,” she said, her throat closing on the last word. She cleared his throat. “But we shall all be fine. Mama says the time will fly.”
“Yes. Five years, I heard.”
It was supposed to be one. One year. He could have endured one year.
“Five years will go by so swiftly,” she repeated, her smile brittle.
“Yes. But there will always be the taint,” he said, and Maggie stiffened. It was so unlike Arthur to say such a thing, for if he was anything, he was kind to a fault.
“I suppose there will be.”
“And that’s the thing. That’s it, you see,” he said, sounding muddled.
Maggie didn’t understand until she looked at his face, filled with torment and real despair. And she knew, without a doubt, that Arthur Wright had not come that night to propose. He had come to break it off.
His face crumpled briefly, but he regained control of his features and stood there, making her say it because no doubt he could not bring himself to.
“You are breaking it off,” Maggie said dully.
He nodded, his eyes filling with tears, for Arthur did love her. She’d always known it, believed it.
“It’s our business. I know how that sounds. You cannot know how hard this is for me. How I fought…” He broke off, shaking his head miserably. “But my father can’t take the chance for his name to be associated with…with…”
“Mine.”
“Oh, Maggie, not yours. Your father’s. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said, trying desperately to hold it together and failing miserably. “I love you,” he cried, then pulled her to him and embraced her, kissing her hair in an almost frenzied way.