One Touch of Scandal (21 page)

The fear was stealing over her again. Grace sank onto her bed, remembering her last meeting with Royden Napier.

“
I wanted a family quite desperately,
” she had said to him. “
Ethan offered me that—to be my family. To try to love me, and to share his daughters with me. I would have done anything to preserve that.
”

Even to her ears, those words now sounded vaguely damning. Napier had undoubtedly written them down in his black leather folio so he might quote them against her at will. No wonder Ruthveyn had ordered her to
say nothing.
Sometimes it felt as if the only thing that was keeping Grace from falling into a swamp of grief was his faith and strength. And today, when she had feared for one instant she might lose that faith, she had—for the very first time—felt like giving up.

But his strength did sustain her. Indeed, it sometimes seemed as if everything that had happened between them really had been fated. Ruthveyn had even suggested as much on the day they met. Perhaps Grace was beginning to believe it, simply to have someone and something
to
believe in. Or perhaps she imagined that it somehow excused the deep and undeniable desire she felt for him. Rance, as usual, had not been wrong.

On a sigh, she rose and gathered her things, then went down the passageway to the marvelous bathtub for a long, hot soak. Afterward, she tried to read, having taken from Ruthveyn's library a worn copy of
The Muses Threnodie.
But soon gave it up again as too deep and too philosophical for her comprehension.

At ten, she went to bed, only to toss sleeplessly between the night constable's cries. At “twelve o'clock and all is
well!” she came bolt upright in bed, suddenly certain that all was
not
well—and it had nothing to do with Royden Napier.

“
Pssst, Miss Gauthier?
”

This time the small, disembodied voice cut through her mental fog.

“Tom?” She whipped back the covers. “Tom, what's wrong?”

“Ma'am, Teddy's sick,” he whispered from somewhere near her footboard. “I think you'd better come.”

But Grace had already slid from the bed to feel about for her slippers. “Sick how?” she pressed, snatching up her wrapper. “Sick to his stomach? Or feverish?”

“He's retching. Can you come? Please? And not tell Mamma?”

Grace felt for his hand and headed toward the door. “Tom, you know I can't promise that,” she said quietly. “Has Teddy eaten something he oughtn't? Please don't hide anything from me.”

But Tom would say no more.

In the boys' bedchamber two doors down, Teddy had managed to light a lamp, and now lay curled in a ball upon his sheets. At her entrance, he looked at her a little plaintively and managed to sit up.

“I puked again,” he said as if to reassure her. “I'm all better now.”

“Teddy, what's happened?” Grace hastened toward him, and sat down on the edge of his bed. “Are you feverish?”

Teddy looked away, the scar on his forehead angrily red against his chalky skin. “I just puked,” he said. “It's nothing. I'm fine now. Truly.”

“Let's say you vomited,” Grace gently corrected—and indeed, the front of his nightshirt was soiled with the proof of it.

But there was a good deal more wheedling in the boy's voice than she liked to hear from a child. Suspicious, and still gravely concerned, she stroked the hair back from his face to better feel his forehead, and it was then she realized the hair was matted with something disgustingly sticky.

“Teddy, dear, what have you got into?” she said. “I think you'd best tell me.”

“He ate Uncle's sweets.”

Grace looked around to see that Tom had perched himself on the adjacent bed and pulled his knees up to his chin.

“Sweets?” she echoed.

Tom just shrugged his narrow shoulders, then pointed at the floor.

Grace glanced down to see an old chamber pot had been pulled from beneath the bed—kept to hand, no doubt, for just such a contingency. On an inward groan, she got up and lifted the lamp over it. The pot was a third filled with a disgusting, pale yellow sludge bobbing with lumps of something that looked suspiciously like melting sugar.

Like lemon drops.

Lots and lots of lemon drops.

Grace set a hand to her forehead. “Teddy, you didn't.”

“Yes he did,” said Tom's small voice.

“Tattletale,” said Teddy nastily. “You ate some, too.”

“I ate twelve,” Tom piped. “And I didn't pu—er,
vomit.
”

Grace turned to face him, still holding the lamp aloft. “And how many did your brother eat?”

Tom shrugged again, and pointed at the empty jar on their night table. “The rest,” he said simply.

Grace set the lamp down and seized the jar. “Oh, Teddy!” she whispered. “Not the
whole jar
?”

Teddy set a hand to his stomach, which was beginning
to look distended. “I guess,” he said morosely. “And it all came up, too.”

Grace sat back down on the bed. “Tom, fetch your brother a fresh nightshirt,” she said, turning to Teddy. “Come here. I want to see your hair.”

The boy bent forward. Two yellow lumps were caught in his dark blond hair, matting great knots of it together. “Oh, Teddy!” said Grace on a sigh. “Do you feel well enough to get up and let me change your sheets?”

As if resigned to his fate, Teddy slid from the bed.

Fortunately, the yellow goo was limited to the pillow slip, Grace soon discovered. The boy had obviously fallen asleep with his mouth stuffed full. Grace tried not to laugh, remembering Lady Anisha's horror at Ruthveyn's having bought a whole jar. She had sensed, correctly, the potential for disaster.

Teddy seemed to read her mind. “Are you going to tell Mamma?” he asked miserably.

“My dear, I have to,” said Grace. “She is your mother, and you are very sick.”

“Not anymore,” he said on a heaving sigh. “But I will be when you tell her.”

Grace set a hand to his forehead again and found just what she expected: nothing. The boy did indeed seem himself. But the room was cold, and the fire banked.

In a trice, she had exchanged the pillow slip for a fresh one from the linen press, and wiped the worst from Teddy's face. “Come along with me to the scullery,” she said, holding out her hand. “We are going to have to work those wads of goo from your hair and get you out of that nightshirt.”

Together, they went along the passageway and down the first flight of stairs. Near the landing, lamplight leached
from a cracked doorway. It was Lord Ruthveyn's private study, a room she'd never entered. Curious, Grace slowed just as one of the silvery cats nosed the door open a few inches wider and went slinking through.

Within, Lord Ruthveyn sat reclined upon a long leather sofa in a roiling cloud of smoke, his head propped in one hand, the other holding a cigarette. His eyes were closed. On a tufted ottoman before him sat a tray with a decanter and an empty glass. Attired in a sort of loose-fitting banyan, and a pair of baggy white trousers, he appeared unaware of their presence. Indeed, he looked the very picture of wanton repose.

Grace swiftly tugged Teddy past, at last recognizing the sweet, smoky smell that sometimes clung to Ruthveyn's coat. Someone else, it would appear, had overindulged tonight—and on something a little less benign than lemon drops.

“Uncle Adrian looks scary again,” whispered Teddy, as they went down the stairs.

“
Shh,
” said Grace. “He's tired. He has a lot of responsibilities.” And he also, according to his sister, never slept—which perhaps explained that incessant look of world-weariness etched upon his face.

Once inside the kitchens, she set Teddy up on the edge of the kitchen table and deftly stripped off his nightshirt. Unlike the upstairs rooms, here the old stone floor still radiated with warmth.

“You mustn't be scared of your uncle,” she chided, tossing the shirt and the sticky pillow slip into the basket kept for kitchen laundry. “He just hasn't slept.”

“He never sleeps,” said the boy. “And I didn't say I
was
scared, silly. I was just explaining. 'Cause you're new. And I thought
you
might be frightened.”

Grace seized the poker. “Good heavens, Teddy. I am not”—here she knelt to poke up the fire a little too vigorously—“
frightened
of Lord Ruthveyn.”

The boy lifted his bony shoulders. “Everyone else is,” he said evenly. “Well, not me. And not Tom. But all the servants are—except Higgenthorpe.”

“What nonsense.” Grace went into the scullery to fill a pan with warm water. “Why should anyone be afraid of your uncle?”

“Because he has the Gift.”

Temporary distracted by positioning the pan, Grace glanced over her shoulder. “What gift, Teddy? Who gave it to him?”

Teddy was clutching both hands between his knees. “I don't who gave it to him,” he muttered. “I just know he's got it. I heard Mamma say she didn't know why the Scots called it a Gift when it was nothing but a curse.”

“A curse? What sort of gift could be a curse?”

“I don't know that either,” said the boy. “I just know the servants aren't allowed to touch him on account of it. And Mrs. Henshaw told the tweeny never to look Uncle square in the eyes, or he'd know when she was going to die.”

“That's just servants' nonsense, Teddy.” Still, Grace mulled it over as she set the pan on the table, then rummaged about for a tub of lard.

“What's that for?” asked Teddy suspiciously.

Grace set it beside the pan. “I'm going to work a little into the goo,” she explained, “so we don't hurt you combing it out. Afterward, we'll use soap, and dip warm water over your hair. Then we'll dry you by the fire before putting you back to bed. Having braved a whole hogshead of lemon drops, it seems pointless you should expire of a chill.”

“It wasn't a whole hogshead,” Teddy corrected. “That's
a lot.
”

The kitchen fire was catching now, bathing the room in a warm golden light. Grace reached over to rub a little lard into his gummy hair. It was then that she noticed the strange markings on the boy's shoulder. She caught his upper arm and turned him.

“Teddy, what is this?”

“Nothing.”

Grace studied it. Rough, smudged, and crookedly done though it was, it suddenly jogged a scrap of memory. She'd seen it before, and not on the pediment of the St. James Society. No, it had been far longer ago than that.

“Teddy, this isn't nothing,” she murmured. “Did you draw it?”

The lad's shoulders fell. “It's just ink,” he said. “It'll wash off.”

Grace turned him a little to the right. It looked vaguely like a family crest, but instead of a shield, it was a sort of thistle-shaped cartouche bearing a cross within, and something that—with a generous stretch of the imagination—might have been a crossed quill and sword. It was undeniably the same strange symbol engraved on Ruthveyn's gold cravat pin. The only thing missing were the letters below.

“Why did you draw it on your arm, Teddy?”

Again, he gave his childlike shrug. “Sometimes people have it.”

“Like who?”

“Grandpapa,” he said. “But he died. Besides, it's just a mark.”

And he was right. It was just a mark. Moreover, the room was as warm as it was going to get. “All right, Teddy,” she said. “Let's lean over this pan, shall we?”

Thirty minutes later, Grace was seated in Mrs. Henshaw's favorite chair, which she'd pulled closer to the
kitchen hearth. Teddy sat in her lap half-asleep, tucked into his clean nightshirt with his short hair nearly dry. Grace had not needed to cut any of it away, thank heaven. Now she gave it one last ruffle, then stood and carried the boy from the kitchens.

“I can walk,” he muttered in protest. Then he tucked his head beneath her chin and went promptly back to sleep.

Upstairs, the light still spilled from Ruthveyn's study. Grace glanced in to see he still sat upon the leather sofa in his cloud of smoke, but this time, his legs were drawn up and crossed, his arms at repose, and his eyes closed. The brandy glass on the ottoman was half-full, and the silver cat—Ruthveyn's familiar, perhaps—had vanished.

Little Tom was sound asleep by the time Grace tucked his brother back into bed. After pulling up the covers, she put out the lamp and went down the passageway, telling herself that Ruthveyn was none of her concern. She knew, too, that going back downstairs was just asking for trouble. Something more than trouble, perhaps.

And yet, at the entrance to her bedchamber, her hand already on the doorknob, Grace turned around. She told herself that the least she could do was throw open a window and order the man up to bed. She told herself that it was fate.

Inside the study, a lamp burned on the desk, the wick turned down to a mere glow. His hands relaxed on his knees, Ruthveyn still sat in his strange pose, seeming unaware of her presence.

Tentatively, Grace stepped a foot inside. It was a beautiful, intimate chamber, clearly the most exotic in the house, lined with books and dotted with exotic pieces of art. A lethal-looking jezail was mounted to the wall above the hearth, its long barrel stretching the width of the mantel, and what looked like a solid gold statue of some four-
armed Hindu deity with the head of an elephant sat on one corner of a carved mahogany desk. On the opposite corner sat a pierced brass bowl of potpourri; beautiful, but useless in the face of Ruthveyn's smoke.

Gathering her courage, Grace closed the door and tiptoed across a carpet as luxurious as soft spring grass. “My lord?” she whispered.

His eyes opened at once, though they looked heavy-lidded and dreamlike. “Grace,” he said quietly.