Scandal of the Year (14 page)

“Spike is impossible, my dear Aidan,” Eugenia told him as she lifted the teapot. “Shall you have tea?”

At his nod, she proceeded to pour him a cup, and Aidan, defying a possible bite in the leg, passed Spike and his mistress and sat down in the empty chair beside Miss McGill.

“Not only does Spike growl at all the gentlemen,” Eugenia added as she stirred lemon and sugar into his cup, “he frightens the chickens down at the farm and chases my poor cat at every possible opportunity.”

“Perhaps he needs training,” Aidan suggested with a meaningful glance at Julia.

“Hear, hear,” Paul endorsed, lifting his teacup in salute.

“But Spike doesn’t chase the cat anymore,” Geoff put in, laughing. “Mama’s wrong about that. He’s grown too fat. Perhaps that’s the ticket, Trathen. Feed him crumpets under the table until he’s too stout to jump. That way, he can’t clamp his beastly jowls around a chap’s arm.”

“Won’t matter,” Paul put in. “We all have ankles.”

“I think you’re all very cruel to my poor Spike!” Julia cried. “He is trained, at least well enough to suit me. He’s my guard dog.” She looked at the animal, smiling fondly, and the bulldog bounded up to a sitting position at this sign of encouragement from his beloved mistress. He placed his forepaws on her thigh, and though his tail had been docked, his backside wiggled against the grass beneath his bum with ecstatic happiness as she patted his broad, wrinkled head. “He protects me, don’t you, boy?”

“Protects you?” Aidan echoed, surprised by her choice of words. “Protects you from what?”

There was a sudden, awkward silence. Aidan was watching Julia, saw her hand go still on the back of Spike’s neck and her fingers curl into the deep creases of the animal’s fur. He could feel her sudden tension, though he did not know its cause. “Are you in danger, Lady Yardley?” he asked.

“In danger?” Julia laughed. “How dramatic that sounds, rather like a gothic novel.”

Her voice was light, but her smile seemed artificial and her laughter forced, and though the others laughed with her, Aidan did not. He continued to study her thoughtfully, and she looked away, flushing slightly beneath his scrutiny. “You mustn’t take what I say so literally, Aidan,” she said after a moment. “Of course I’m not in danger. What an idea! But Spike is a loyal fellow, and he feels duty bound to look after me.” She resumed petting the dog. “Don’t you, sweetums?”

That particular nickname seemed singularly inappropriate for a man-hating, teeth-bearing beast, but Aidan kept that opinion to himself.

Conversation eddied around him, and though Julia participated, he did not. Instead, he wondered why a woman might choose to own a dog that possessed a particular animosity toward men. But as he looked at Julia, as he studied her artificial smile, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what her reasons might be.

Chapter Twelve

A
large house party was a somewhat informal affair, particularly on the first day. Guests arrived by various means at various times, and the hosts were compelled to rush about at a frantic pace to make sure everyone was comfortably situated. Julia dashed off with her aunt just after Aidan’s arrival to see to other guests, he was shown to his room by the butler, Groves, and it was not until just before dinner that he saw Julia again.

When Groves sounded the Chinese gong in the staircase hall to signal that the evening meal would commence in fifteen minutes’ time, Aidan was already downstairs. Because he’d forgotten about the gong ritual at Danbury, and because he was in the library, which was within twenty feet of the immense Oriental instrument, and because Groves always sounded the gong with particular relish, Aidan dropped the book of Henley’s poetry he’d just pulled from the shelf and clamped his hands over his ears with a grimace the moment Groves put hammer to brass.

By the time Groves reappeared to sound the second gong announcing five remaining minutes, Aidan was more prepared. Open book in hand, he was leaning against one of the marble columns that flanked the gong’s enormous black lacquer frame. The moment Groves had done his duty, Aidan stretched out his arm and clamped his fingers around the edge of the four-foot disk to stop the resonation, looking up from Henley’s “When I Was a King in Babylon” to meet the butler’s puzzled stare with a meaningful glance of his own. Groves gently hung the hammer back on its dragon-head hook without a word and departed.

Aidan let go of the now blissfully silent gong, and vowed to talk with Paul before the end of this visit about that useful modern device, the electric bell. He then returned to the library as hurried footsteps sounded along corridors overhead and various voices echoed down the staircase.

“Was that the second gong or did I imagine it?”

“It can’t be eight o’clock already.”

“I do believe it was the second gong.”

“It sounded so queer, not at all like the first.”

Smiling a little, Aidan returned to the library as members of the house party began pouring into the staircase hall from various other parts of the house. Uncaring that he’d been the cause of uncertainty among other, less punctual guests, he began searching for the place on the shelf to return the book he’d pulled out before joining the gathering throng in the staircase hall.

He was about to slide the book back into its place on the shelf when the French doors nearest him were suddenly flung back. He paused, looking up as Julia, dressed for dinner in ice-blue silk and long white gloves, stopped in the doorway. She didn’t see him, for she was looking back over her shoulder. “Spike,” she called, and gave a whistle, patting her hip. “C’mon, boy.”

She turned to come inside and stopped again at the sight of him standing only a few feet away. The bulldog waddled up to the doorway and stopped beside her, giving a low growl at the sight of Aidan, and then sitting back on his haunches as if quite satisfied he’d put this evil man in his place.

“Julia.” Ignoring the animal, Aidan turned to her with a bow.

“Did the second gong go?” she asked, coming in.

“It did.” He paused and glanced over her, frowning in pretended bewilderment. “But I fear Groves must be running late.”

“Groves? Never! I’m the one who’s always late.”

“Exactly.” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out his pocket watch. “But not tonight, for there are still three minutes until dinner.” He shook his head, looking at her again as he tucked the watch back into place. “Yet you are already downstairs. You are even dressed.”

Her lips twitched. “Well, I should hope so! I don’t mind being the last one to the table, but as much as I adore scandalizing people, even I haven’t the nerve to come down to dinner
naked
.”

“That would certainly make the meal more interesting.” He glanced down at the shadowy cleft of her low, heart-shaped neckline. “And more delicious.”

She blushed. He watched it happen, a soft wash of delicate pink that started beneath her gown and spread upward. He followed it with his eyes—over her clavicle and across her shoulders, along her throat, and into her cheeks. Her lips parted, but no words came out. Her enormous eyes stared back at him, and their violet-blue color seemed even more vivid now in the dusky twilight of evening than it had in the bright light of the afternoon. As Aidan looked at her, he saw something in her startled expression and wide, pretty eyes, something that took him utterly by surprise, something he realized, to his chagrin, that he’d never seen in her face before.

Desire.

His body responded at once—a tensing in his muscles, a quickening of his pulses, but then she was giving him a wink and a smile, and he thought perhaps he’d been mistaken.

“Why, Aidan,” she drawled, her voice light and teasing, “I do believe you are flirting with me.”

“No,” he denied gravely. “I don’t flirt, Julia. You know that. I always say what I honestly mean.”

She stirred, lifting a gloved hand to touch the side of her neck in a self-conscious gesture, and her blush deepened, but before she could reply, Phoebe Marlowe appeared behind her in the doorway, Geoff Danbury on her heels. “Are we late?” Phoebe asked, sounding a bit out of breath, pressing a hand to her ribs.

Aidan saw Julia smile, but as earlier today, there was an artificial quality about it—reminding him of a marionette whose strings had just been pulled.

“Not yet!” she answered her friend, turning her head with a laugh, “but we will be if you two keep dawdling.”

“This from the person who never arrives anywhere on time.” Phoebe looked past Julia and spied him standing by the bookshelves. “Oh!” she exclaimed, and dipped a curtsy. “Your Grace. I didn’t see you. My apologies.”

He bowed. “Miss Phoebe.”

“Aidan,” Julia said, nudging Spike aside with her foot and turning sideways as she gestured her friend into the library, “will you escort Phoebe into the hall?”

“Of course.” Reluctantly, knowing it was far better for both their reputations if he walked to the staircase hall with another woman on his arm, he turned to Phoebe. “Shall we?”

She moved to his side, and Geoff entered through the French doors, earning himself a growl from Spike as Julia pulled him to her side. “And Geoff can escort me,” she told him, hooking her arm through his.

“What?” Geoff scoffed, for at nineteen, he was somewhat inclined to be cavalier about social niceties. “That’s just silly. We’re only twenty feet away. You girls hardly need escorting that far, and it’s not as if we’ll be paired this way to go into dinner.”

“That doesn’t matter, Geoff,” Aidan told the younger man over his shoulder as he started with Phoebe toward the door. “A lady’s request is reason enough.”

They joined the other two dozen people gathered to go in to dinner, and he parted from Phoebe to join Eugenia, for as the gentleman of highest rank present, he was duty-bound to escort his hostess into the dining room. As he waited beside her at the table, he watched the other guests file in, and Julia passed him on the arm of Sir George Debenham. She took her place on the other side of the table, and though she was not directly across from him, he could see her face plainly. When she glanced in his direction, he saw none of the desire he thought he’d seen earlier, and he could only conclude that he’d imagined it.

That was probably just as well. He was here to stop wanting her, and if she started wanting him, that resolution would become far harder to keep.

As Julia had predicted, he was groped beneath the dining table by Lady Esterhazy, who sat on his other side, but once she’d been allowed an appreciative feel of his thigh and knee, the elderly lady proved a surprisingly interesting dinner companion. Her late husband had been a diplomatic attaché in Ceylon, and their conversation centered on her life there with her husband. He was grateful for the distraction. If his dinner companion had been dull, he doubted he could have managed to keep up a pretense of disinterest in the violet-eyed woman across the table.

After dinner, however, when he and the other gentlemen joined the ladies in the music room for entertainments, Julia became harder to ignore.

She was standing by the open doorway onto the terrace when he came in, talking to Eugenia, Phoebe, and Phoebe’s older sister, Vivian, but when she caught sight of him entering the room, she murmured something to her aunt, and a moment later, he found himself at Eugenia’s mercy. She bustled over to his side, issued a fervent promise to make his stay at Danbury as enjoyable as possible, and ushered him at once to a tête-à-tête sofa and a blushing Miss McGill. “There, my dears,” Eugenia said, thrusting him toward Miss McGill with all the delicacy of a freight train. “Now, do enjoy yourselves.”

With that, she departed in a flutter of ecru lace, leaving Aidan and the girl facing each other on the S-shaped settee. They both stared for a moment, seeming equally disconcerted, and then they both laughed.

“That was deuced awkward, was it not, Miss McGill?” he murmured.

“I should say. I feel like a card forced at bridge!”

“An apt description. Lady Danbury is not the most subtle hostess, I fear.”

Again they looked at each other, and there was a long, rather awkward pause. She glanced around the room and so did he, but when his gaze came to rest on Julia, who still stood by the terrace door with her friends, Aidan knew this wouldn’t do. He took a deep breath and forced his attention back to his companion.

“Is your family near here, Miss McGill?” he asked.

“Yes, at South Brent. My father has an estate there.”

“He is a man of property, then?”

“Yes, he is a squire.” At his urging, she began to tell him about her family, much to his relief, but it wasn’t long before his relief began to evaporate into dismay, for within half an hour, he found himself on the receiving end of a dissertation that could have been titled, “The Pranks of the Family McGill.”

All of them, he learned, had an inordinate fondness for practical jokes, including Miss McGill herself. Her initial awkwardness having evaporated, she confessed with relish to turning drawers filled with clothes upside down, slipping garden snakes between bedsheets, and putting salt in the jam pot, and despite his best intentions, Aidan’s attention soon drifted, sliding eventually back to the terrace door. Julia was no longer there, but a quick glance around located her on the other side of the room beside Paul at the fireplace.

He bent his head as if looking down at the glass of port in his hand, trying to be subtle as his glance slid sideways to the woman by the fireplace, even as he tried to resist, even as he reminded himself she’d never really wanted him, not even when she’d stood in front of him in a soaking wet dress. But such reminders were useless, for what kept coming to the forefront of his mind was how she’d looked earlier in the dusky shadows of the library, her lips parted and her cheeks flushed with color, and he wanted to believe she wanted him as much as he wanted her. For that, Aidan knew he ought to give himself a good swift kick in the head.

Once again he forced his attention to his companion. “Your family sounds quite mischievous,” he murmured.

“Oh yes, we’re all terrible, Your Grace, just too terrible for words! Particularly my niece.”

Desperate, Aidan grasped at that. “Ah, you have a niece. How old?”

“Ten. And when it comes to mischief, that child puts the rest of us to shame.”

Aidan did not point out just what a feat that truly was. His restraint, however, was rewarded with yet another story. “Let me tell you what Sally did only a few weeks ago,” Miss McGill offered, and, with the occasional murmured query from him, she proceeded to give him a detailed account of little Sally’s most recent prank, a long story that somehow involved the vicar of her village, a cuckoo clock, and a frog.

Aidan tried, he really did, to give her his full, undivided attention, but when Julia once more moved directly into his line of vision, sitting down at the piano, she was perfectly visible to him past Miss McGill’s right shoulder. Spike, never far from her heels, settled beneath the instrument, and Phoebe moved to her side to turn the pages for her.

“She vowed, most convincingly, that she’d put the frog back in the pond,” Miss McGill was saying as Julia ran her hands over the piano keys, “but one can’t ever believe a word out of that child’s mouth. She’d hidden it, the little imp.”

“Play ‘Maple Leaf Rag,’ Julie, do,” Geoff entreated from the card table, where he was playing bridge with three of his friends, but she shook her head. Beside her, Phoebe pointed to the sheet music on the stand and asked a question, but again she shook her head and Phoebe drifted away, obviously unneeded to turn the pages. She started to play, but then stopped, her gaze meeting his over the long, polished top of the grand piano. She glanced at Miss McGill, then back at him, and the corners of her mouth curved in an unmistakable smile, one he suspected was at his expense.

Recalling that Miss McGill had fallen silent, he jerked to attention again, striving to remember where their conversation about Sally’s frog had got to. “But where did she put it?” he asked, and feeling Julia’s amused gaze on him, he gave his companion his most charming smile. “You mustn’t keep me in suspense, Miss McGill.”

“Well, that’s where the vicar comes into it, Your Grace. You see, he was supposed to come to tea . . .”