Love in the Time of Scandal (24 page)

Chapter 23

“W
hat a surprise,” she said, trying to recover her poise and not show how rattled she was. “No one warned me we’d see monsters on the journey.”

He laughed. “Still very free with your tongue, I see.” His dark gaze slid over her. “And not such a virginal young lady anymore.”

She glared daggers at him, retreating toward the stove. Her dress was wet, and since she’d unthinkingly donned a light-colored one, it was also more revealing than it should have been. “I am sure my husband, Lord Atherton, will be just as gratified as I am by your kind felicitations on our marriage.”

“Will he?” Clary smirked. “He damned well owes the marriage to me, so perhaps he will be.”

“Oh dear!” She widened her eyes innocently. “Here I thought he owed it to my acceptance of his earnest proposal.”

“If Atherton had half a thought to marry you before that night, he’s a bigger fool than I thought.” Again his eyes moved over her figure with rude speculation. “Unless you gave him what you refused to give me.”

No, Penelope thought furiously, she was the fool. Benedict had known Stratford’s invitation was suspect, but she had said they should go. She hadn’t believed a father could be so heartless, so uncaring; surely there must have been some kernel of affection deep in his breast. Surely he must have wanted them to visit for a reason that might, possibly, have been considered generous or concerned. Now she knew better. It was possible Stratford had no idea what Clary had done to her, or that he’d started the gossip that led Benedict to marry her. But there could be no good reason for the earl to have manipulated them onto this yacht with Clary concealed belowdecks waiting to waylay her. “What do you want?”

His mouth curled in derision. “So direct! Very well. Where is Olivia Townsend?”

Penelope blinked. Olivia? Not for the first time she wished she knew what he wanted with Olivia, but it didn’t really matter. Under no circumstances would she tell him even if she did know. “She’s away from town.”

“I know that.” He came closer. “Where?”

“Far away, I believe.”

Clary’s face darkened. “Don’t toy with me,” he warned in a soft voice. “I want something from her, very badly. When I want something badly, I get it.”

“But she is a person, not a thing,” she replied politely. “You cannot have a person just because you want her. And if she has something you want, you can only make an offer for it in good faith and hope to strike a bargain.”

His laugh was ugly. “Bargain for it? No, my lady, I don’t think so. Perhaps I wasn’t clear—it already belongs to me. She knows this, and yet she won’t give it to me. What would you call that? It sounds like stealing to me.”

“I would say that it sounds like you’re lying, because Olivia isn’t a thief.”

Clary went very still. “Watch your words, girl.”

“You may call me Lady Atherton if we ever meet again—which I sincerely hope we do not. I think I will rejoin my husband now. Good day to you, sir.” She turned toward the door, trembling with fury and fear. The last time she found herself in a room with him, it had almost ended very badly . . . But Benedict was only one deck away. She just had to get back to his side.

And after this, she would never argue one word against avoiding his father. Clary was a monster, but Stratford had schemed to put her at Clary’s mercy, aboard a boat where she couldn’t walk away, and for that she tossed out every notion she’d ever had that she ought to try harder to think better of the earl since he was family now. He would never be her family.

Clary didn’t stop her from opening the door, but he followed her. “You can run back to your husband, if you think he’ll save you,” he taunted, crowding indecently close behind her. Penelope clutched her skirts and tried to walk faster, but the wet floors made it treacherous. “Of course, he may not take your side as eagerly as he did before. After all, he already got what he wanted from you. And Stratford wants to find Olivia Townsend nearly as much as I do. Why do you think he came to London to get you?” Penelope glanced over her shoulder in shock before she could stop herself. Clary’s thin smile widened, gloating. “You should be flattered. An earl and a viscount both hanging on your every word! A clever girl would think carefully about what that means, and about how she should answer their questions.”

“Given the earl and viscount in question, I am sure it means nothing good for Mrs. Townsend, and that’s why I won’t tell either of you anything.” She turned her back on him and grabbed the rail to climb the stairs to the deck. The rain had stopped, although the sky was thick with dark clouds. It might have been late twilight instead of midday. The wind was quieter, but she shivered as it cut right through her damp skirts. Her cloak was still in the cabin. It made her hate Clary even more; she ought to have been drying off in the snug, warm cabin, not rushing back out into the elements even less dressed for it than before.

Just as she reached the top step, Clary caught her arm. “Perhaps you ought to think of your husband instead of Mrs. Townsend.” He tilted his head toward the helm, on the other side of the ship behind the billowing sail. “He’ll tell you what it costs to cross Stratford—and be assured, refusing me in this is the same as crossing Lord Stratford. Do you want to bring down his wrath on your dear husband?” He sneered the last two words.

“I know my husband,” she said, low and furious. “I know he wouldn’t hand over a defenseless, innocent woman to your grasp, no matter what his father said.”

A muscle twitched in Clary’s jaw. “Where is she?”

Penelope twisted loose of his grip and started across the deck. It wasn’t that large a boat but she couldn’t see Benedict; the sails, straining at the lines, obscured everything from this position.

Clary pursued her. “I won’t ask again,” he said, raising his voice. “Where is she?”

“Somewhere you can’t hurt her!”

He swore. This time when he grabbed her, she couldn’t wrestle free. The wind drove his hair straight back from his face, emphasizing the sharp hook of his nose and the point of his chin. He looked like a demon, and the cold hatred in his eyes made her suddenly afraid. “Last chance,” he said, looming over her.

“Let me go,” she said, biting off every word.

For a moment he didn’t move. His fingers bit into her arms. “As the lady wishes.” He released her with a little push, so that she staggered a step backward. Her leather half boots slipped on the wet deck. Penelope reached for the railing to catch her balance. The yacht was tacking hard, canted over at a good angle, and the rushing water was very near.

Then Clary put one hand in the middle of her chest and shoved, sending her head over heels backward into the Thames.

“R
eally, Benedict, I’m disappointed. I trust her father paid you a pretty penny to take her. She’s a stubborn, headstrong female with little delicacy about her.”

Benedict tried not to let his father’s careless insult goad him. “I’m very well pleased with the marriage.”

Stratford cut him a narrow-eyed look. “Not much of a beauty, is she?”

In spite of himself, a faint smile curved his mouth. Penelope might not be the earl’s idea of a beauty, but she shone with vitality and verve and Benedict thought he’d never seen anyone more bewitching. “I couldn’t disagree more.”

The earl sniffed. “I take it that means she’s as loose and wanton as gossip holds. I’m astonished you would make such a woman your bride.”

“Every word of that gossip was a lie.” Not that Benedict wasn’t deeply, quietly elated by her wantonness in
his
bed. The smile lingered on his face.

His father saw, and it displeased him. Benedict realized that, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. In fact . . . let Stratford know that his marriage wasn’t a disaster. Let him realize that Penelope was no shrinking violet to be cowed and intimidated. Let him be very aware that his influence was waning, almost to the point of nothingness.

Stratford faced forward again, into the wind. “I never thought I’d see the day a common chit got my son by the ballocks.”

“Penelope,” said Benedict, “is my wife, not a common chit. It doesn’t become you to speak so coarsely of the future Countess of Stratford, sir.”

“What a proud day it will be when a coal miner’s daughter presides over Stratford Court.”

“I quite agree,” he said, as if the earl had expressed approval.

His father exhaled, his breath steaming faintly in the cooling air. Penelope would probably say it was the smoke of brimstone. Benedict’s lips twitched. He shouldn’t find her irreverence as amusing as he did. “Then perhaps you will begin educating her on her duties.”

Something about that word “duties” always made his shoulders tense. In Stratford’s world, duty meant something beyond its ordinary meaning. Benedict had learned, through painful years of experience, that when his father brought up duty, it portended a disagreeable task or an unreasonable demand. “The only duty she has is to me.”

“And your duty is to me.”

Benedict’s hands clenched. Everything always came back to the earl’s demands. “I’ve fulfilled that duty many times over.”

“And you would deny your own father a simple request?” Stratford raised his brows. “I find that hard to believe. It is a small thing; there’s no need to grow snappish and petulant,” he went on before Benedict could reply. “You need only exercise your husbandly authority over your wife and persuade her to be cooperative.”

The unease that had hovered around him all day burst into full-blown alarm. “No.”

“No.” Stratford’s eyes glittered with pique. “Really, Benedict? After all these years, you must know that is not an acceptable answer.”

Once it would not have been. Once he would have been holding himself taut and still, praying that the request would be minor or at least easy to fulfill, never daring to refuse. Not that his father didn’t usually find some fault in his actions, no matter how hard he tried to please. He no longer remembered every beating—they had blurred together by now—but he acutely remembered the feeling of placing his hands on the earl’s desk, bowing his head, and bracing himself for the first blow of Stratford’s thin wooden cane. It was supple enough to bend without breaking, landing one stinging blow after another. In his mind, Benedict could still see that cane, propped against the frame of the wide windows in the earl’s study, an ever-present reminder of the consequences of defiance. Stratford’s only mercy had been that he used it over clothing, preferring to leave bruises and aches instead of scars.

Benedict closed his eyes a moment and inhaled deeply. Those whippings were a thing of the past. “After all these years, I am a grown man, no longer subject to being beaten for disobedience. How I choose to exercise my husbandly authority is strictly my right, and any man—
any
man—who interferes with that right will find his interference turned back on him.” He met his father’s furious eyes. “I mean it, Father,” he added, softly but with warning. “Leave her alone.”

After a moment the earl turned away. “I don’t wish to have anything to do with her. However, it appears she is in possession of some information I need. After she answers a single question, you may take your common strumpet of a wife and do what you will with her, far from my sight.”

Damn it. “What information?” he demanded, racking his brain. What could Stratford possibly want from Penelope?

Stratford’s expression revealed nothing. “See that she’s cooperative.”

Without another word Benedict turned to go belowdecks. He knew this had been a mistake; whatever Stratford wanted, he wanted badly. Benedict had known there was some unspoken reason the earl wanted them at Stratford Court, but he’d—stupidly—thought it would involve him. He was certain Penelope had no inkling of what Stratford might want. Benedict himself couldn’t begin to imagine what his wife could possibly know that Stratford would be desperate to discover . . . And then a man—a man Benedict didn’t want within ten miles of Penelope—came around the deck.

Bloody hell.

His heart bounded into his throat as he bolted across the slippery, tilting deck and flung himself down the stairs. Lord Clary’s presence alone would be enough to put up his guard, but they’d been at sail for two hours. That meant Clary had been waiting below, in the cabin where Stratford had urged Penelope to go. Benedict threw open the cabin door, praying she was safely within, but what he saw was worse: her wet cloak and bedraggled bonnet, but no sign of Penelope herself.

The sails snapped loudly overhead as he pounded up to the deck again, shielding his eyes against the rain to search frantically for her. The
Diana
was not a large craft; there weren’t many places to hide. He ducked under the boom to see around the straining sails, but she was nowhere.

His father and Clary were still behind the helm, having a fierce discussion. Benedict stalked up to them and seized Clary’s coat. “Where is my wife?”

Clary tried to brush him off, his face taut with fury. “Unhand me.”

Benedict gave him a hard shake. “Where?”

Clary wrested free and glared at him, then at Stratford. “She’s an obstinate creature—”

“You said you could persuade her,” cut in Stratford. “Must I do everything personally? Bring her up here and I’ll get the truth from her.”

A muscle twitched in Clary’s jaw. “I’ve already dealt with her.”

Benedict lunged at him again. “Where is she? The cabin is empty.
Where is my wife?
”

A hateful smirk spread over the man’s face. “Lost your bride, Lord Atherton? How convenient for you.”

“Fetch the girl, Clary,” said Stratford coldly. “My patience is running thin.”

Clary just kept smirking, and the reason dawned on Benedict with horrible certainty. He wheeled around, scanning the water off the starboard side of the boat, then off the port side. The river was choppy and turbulent, and the foaming of constantly breaking waves obscured anyone in it.

“Where is she?” snapped the earl.

“You should thank me, both of you,” retorted Clary. “Atherton has her fortune, and now you can choose a proper bride for him. I’ll find Mrs. Townsend another way.”