It Started with a Scandal Read online

  Dedication

  TO THE FT’S

  Acknowledgments

  MY GRATITUDE TO MY delightful, insightful editor, May Chen, who unfailingly gets me, which is such a luxury; to the gifted, hardworking staff at Avon; to my Agent, Steve Axelrod, and to all my amazing readers who make my job such a pleasure.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  By Julie Anne Long

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  “IN LIGHT OF YOUR . . . circumstances . . . Mrs. Fountain, I’m certain you’re aware that it is a bit unusual for you to be granted an interview at all. But this is an exceptional . . . situation . . . and the Redmond family did put in a good word.”

  So many words requiring delicate choosing and pillowing with little silences. Circumstances. Situation.

  Withstanding all of them the way she had for years, Elise gritted her teeth. “I understand,” she said somberly.

  “ . . . that is not to say that you could not satisfactorily perform the duties, and I should hope you would not be influenced by Mrs. Gordon, whose temperament proved unequal to the job . . .”

  Mrs. Gordon must have been the sobbing woman Elise had passed as she’d come up the walk. Mrs. Gordon had been carrying a valise and muttering “heartless bastard” viciously under her breath.

  “ . . . because the successful candidate will possess a clear head and a mature outlook . . . ,” Mrs. Winthrop continued. She paused briefly in her torrent of words to narrow her eyes at Elise.

  Elise had donned her most severe gown and ruthlessly pinned her hair motionless with approximately three hundred pins. She nodded, serenely confident that she looked mature and that nothing as frivolous as a curl would escape.

  And she kept her fingers laced tightly in her lap, as if this alone could keep her nerves from shattering. It had at least disguised the trembling.

  Would that she’d managed to keep her stays laced just that tightly six years ago.

  Alas, spilt milk, and all of that.

  “ . . . and as you know, I’m employed by the Earl of Ardmay, and they have volunteered me to undertake the selection process as a special favor to their family . . .”

  Mrs. Winthrop had not ceased speaking since Elise arrived fifteen minutes ago.

  “ . . . and as for the current staff, there will be no steward or butler, as this is a relatively small household and the tenant is temporary. So you would head the small entire staff, which is comprised of—­”

  Something unmistakably large and glass, hurled from a considerable distance with considerable force, exploded into thousands of jingling fragments.

  Both women froze.

  It was exactly what Elise expected her nerves would sound like when they finally shattered.

  In the stunned silence that followed, the rain hurled itself at the window like a warning. Get out! Get out while you can!

  Ah, if only she’d a choice.

  Mrs. Winthrop cleared her throat at last. “He likely won’t ever aim at you. All the same, there’s naught wrong with his arm and it’s best to be well clear of him if you think he might be in a throwing mood.”

  Elise hoped this was black humor. How on earth to respond? She glanced down at her bloodless knuckles as if they were crystal balls. No help there.

  She decided to nod sagely.

  “I understand they’re blessedly rare. The throwing moods,” Mrs. Winthrop expounded.

  “And we must always count our blessings.”

  It emerged more quickly and dryly than Elise intended.

  In other words: More herself than she had intended.

  This she knew, because Mrs. Winthrop’s eyebrows launched like birds flushed from shrubbery.

  She eyed Elise sharply for a moment.

  Elise held her breath.

  Then Mrs. Winthrop smiled a vanishingly swift smile. It was like a cinder thrown off a distant campfire, when Elise had been lost in the metaphorical dark woods for weeks.

  “All right then, Mrs. Fountain, I should be pleased to introduce you to his lordship, Lord Lavay, who is a prince of the House of Bourbon. If he’s . . . amenable.”

  THE LOQUACIOUS MRS. Winthrop went curiously silent as she led Elise through a labyrinth of Alder House’s too-­dark hallways. The candles hadn’t been trimmed; a few were fitfully, smokily, burning in their sconces. Elise frowned. The house was handsome enough, but in the rooms they swiftly passed, the fires burned low or not at all. She surreptitiously dragged a fingertip along the top of the wainscoting; she could feel dust cake it.

  She saw no evidence of the rumored household staff.

  They scaled a flight of marble stairs with a smooth, modest banister, and Mrs. Winthrop finally paused on the threshold of what appeared to be a study.

  It was as dark and soft as a cave, but a huge leaping fire picked out glints from around the room, and Elise’s eyes tracked them reflexively: the polished legs on a plumply upholstered settee and a pair of gorgeous chairs, the inlay on a small round table, the gilt on a framed map and the stand of a handsome globe, an empty crystal decanter, a tiny bottle of Sydenham’s Laudanum on a sideboard, only half full.

  She stopped when she reached the mirrorlike toes of a pair of Hessians by the hearth.

  And followed them all the way up.

  Inside them stood a man.

  A very tall man.

  He in fact all but loomed; the firelight threw his shadow nearly to where she stood at the door.

  Elise took an unconscious step back from it, as though it were a spill of lava.

  His face was aimed rather pointedly at the window, as if he was expecting someone.

  She followed his gaze curiously.

  She just saw the same ceaseless slanting rain, like bars on a cell.

  A spray of sparkling shards surrounded his feet. The remains of a vase, from the looks of things.

  “Lord Lavay . . .”

  Elise shot Mrs. Winthrop a worried look. The seemingly indefatigable Mrs. Winthrop’s voice had gone faint. As if she suddenly didn’t have enough air to form words.

  The man turned. Slowly, as if he was the earth itself on its axis. Or as if an invisible sculptor was rotating him to present a finished work.

  Voilà! Elise thought to herself. An attempt at bravado.

  It was too late. She’d already sucked in her breath and tightened all of her muscles, like a creature who had stumbled across a predator in a clearing and wished to make herself unnoticeable.

  He was so clearly of that singular species, The Aristocracy, that she might as well have bought a ticket to see him, the way she had once when her father had brought her, as a little girl, to see the Royal Menagerie in London.

  He wasn’t young. There was no softness to his face—­not in the set of his mouth, or the burn of his ga
ze, or the severe right angles of his jaw. His beauty was austere and inarguable, and there was a palpable force to him, as if he had sprung from the earth due to violent underground activity, a bit like a mountain range. She thought about the things she’d been told about him.

  Privateer. Soldier. Prince.

  Power, violence, privilege.

  He looked like all of the things he was purported to be.

  Do we carry around our pasts so visibly? she wondered. Because if so, she was certainly in trouble.

  There was no denying that he frightened her.

  And after a moment, this made her angry. She’d been so certain she was impossible to frighten after the events of the last five years. She could not afford to be frightened. She thought she deserved never to be frightened again.

  She squared her shoulders.

  Life is full of tests, children, she’d once primly told her students.

  That was before she’d been tested.

  THE WOMAN MRS. Winthrop had brought into his study was petite and colorless. Her face and the folded knot of her hands were twins, both white and tense. Her dress was demure, long-­sleeved, high-­collared, fashioned of ser­viceable gray wool. Her hair was dark. She could be any age.

  Her eyes dropped instantly upon meeting his. It was deference or fear, or perhaps fascination. He was accustomed to all of them. None of it interested him.

  She was, unsurprisingly, unremarkable in every way.

  Apart, that was, from her posture, which was almost aggressively rigid. It reminded him of a drawn saber.

  This made him smile faintly.

  He sensed it wasn’t a pleasant smile when both women gave a little start.

  “I’d like to introduce Mrs. Elise Fountain, my lord.”

  Miss Fountain dropped an elegant enough curtsy.

  “You may leave us,” he said to Mrs. Winthrop without looking at her.

  Mrs. Winthrop bolted like a rabbit released from a trap.

  Mrs. Fountain’s gaze rose again, rather like a man struggling up the side of a cliff, then it wavered and held.

  IT TOOK ALL of Elise’s fortitude to resist craning her head after the fleeing Mrs. Winthrop.

  “Please sit down, Mrs. Fountain.”

  She went still. His native French still haunted his consonants and turned the vowels into veritable caresses. She could almost see the elegant, endless spill of a fountain when he said her name.

  “Mrs. Fountain. Has Mrs. Winthrop brought to me an applicant who does not speak English?”

  The tone was silk over steel, exquisitely polite. And yet she could easily imagine him ordering, in the very same tone, the beheading of whoever had brought him such a stupid and mute candidate.

  “Forgive me, Lord Lavay. I do know how to sit.”

  She tried a little half smile. She knew she possessed a portion of charm, though it was a trifle rusty from disuse, given that she’d locked it away after it had gotten her into trouble.

  “If you would be so kind as to demonstrate your ability to do so.”

  He gestured to a chair upholstered in chocolate-­colored velvet. She might as well have been a chair herself for all the charm he exerted. She felt positively neutered. Which was perhaps all for the best.

  She sat gingerly and, she hoped, gracefully, on the very edge of it, the better to bolt if necessary, and folded her hands.

  Oh God . . . the chair was so soft. It cradled her bum almost lasciviously. Its tall, spreading fan of a back beckoned like a lover’s arms. And her life had seemed so narrow and spiky for so long, in every direction she’d turned, that the comfort surprised her by nearly doing her in.

  She slid a tentative inch backward as Lord Lavay lowered himself into the chair opposite her, slowly.

  He’s in Sussex recovering from an attack, she’d been told.

  She began to think it was an attack of apoplexy.

  She could see their two faces reflected in the polished wood of the table. His clean-­hewn as wood itself. Hers small and white, looking a little too insignificant.

  “Splendid. We have established you do indeed know how to sit. A very good thing, as I do not tolerate liars.” He smiled again faintly here, which she supposed was meant to soften that little thrown-­down gauntlet of a statement.

  She offered a tight little smile of her own. Demonstrating my ability to smile.

  “What do you believe are your qualifications, Mrs. Fountain?”

  What an interesting way to put it. As if he alone would judge whether she possessed any qualifications at all.

  “I have been trained—­” She was shocked to hear her voice emerge as a reedy croak, probably due to the thin atmosphere his lofty presence created. She cleared her throat. “I have been trained in the managing of a fine residence, from adhering to budgets to deciding upon household purchases to preparing pastries and remedies and simples, to hiring and discharging—­”

  “Where?”

  She blinked. “I’m sor . . . ?”

  “The residence,” he articulated slowly. “Where was this, as you say, fine residence?”

  She’d been with the man for fewer than five minutes and she wanted to kick him.

  “Northumberland.”

  “For whom did you manage this residence?”

  She hesitated. Her heartbeat ratcheted up.

  “The home belongs to my parents. I was raised and educated there.”

  She did not say she was no longer welcome in it.

  If he wanted the whole story, he was going to need to drag it from her one question at a time.

  His gaze was so intense it was as though he held the tips of two lit cheroots to her skin.

  Perhaps he already knew, despite what Mrs. Winthrop had said. Sometimes it felt as though the entire world knew.

  But surely she wasn’t as important as all that?

  And surely there were enough Redmonds and Everseas about to keep the scandal mill fed?

  Her heart was thudding so hard it felt like someone was throwing angry kicks at her breastbone.

  She surrendered and slid those last few inches into the chair’s embrace. Lavay’s shoulders were vast beneath that sleek, flawlessly tailored coat. She wondered if any woman had ever taken comfort there. Or perhaps the sole point of his existence was to make women feel awed and insignificant.

  “And why do you now seek employment as a housekeeper for a fine residence?”

  She hesitated. At least she now knew a good use for that word she loathed.

  “My circumstances have since changed.”

  His brows flicked upward in apparent surprise.

  Since she was now convinced this would be the last time she ever saw him, she was emboldened to stare back, which wasn’t easy to do, because he somehow managed to be both exhilarating and terrifying. His eyes were an unusual color, russet and gold, a bit like brandy shot through with sunlight. She wondered if they brightened when he laughed.

  If he laughed.

  Faint mauve shadows curved beneath his eyes; his skin seemed stretched with fatigue. What appeared to be a new scar, faintly pink and narrow as a knife tip, scored his cheekbone for about two inches. How that must have hurt, she thought. Though it didn’t really mar his looks. It was more like an underscore: this man is beautiful and dangerous.

  She suspected she now understood what “attack” meant. Something like sympathy surged through her. There was, of course, always the possibility he’d been attacked by the last housekeeper for being insufferable.

  In the silence, a log tumbled from its perch and the fire gave a vehement pop.

  “Circumstances,” he said ironically at last, “have an unfortunate tendency to do that.”

  His mouth dented at the corner. If this was a smile, it hadn’t reached his eyes. Irony seemed his native language.

&nb
sp; She was stunned.

  She feared she stared at him dumbly in the silence that followed.

  Which was so taut that when he gave his fingers a single drum on the table, she almost jumped.

  “The current staff is lazy and recalcitrant, and because I have had sent to me a few possessions I value, such as silver and porcelain, thievery is a concern. But then good servants are always difficult to come by, even for such a one as me. I have high expectations and low hopes of seeing them met. What qualifies you to command loyalty and efficiency from a staff, and what makes you think you will be able to meet my expectations?”

  The unspoken words being, where others have departed sobbing.

  And “such a one,” was it? Surely the world could not withstand another such man.

  She drew in a long breath.

  “I’ve taught classrooms full of unruly children possessed of a variety of natures, and I know how to make them listen and learn and like it. I understand the concerns and politics of household staff and am prepared to address and manage them. I have experienced a number of, shall we say, economic conditions, and can adjust to any of them. I am scrupulously organized. All in all, I have a very good brain. And I am afraid of nothing.”

  Except you.

  She’d just told a brazen lie to the man who claimed he would not tolerate them.

  She suspected he looked at men just this way before he decided whether or not to run them through: it was sort of a mildly interested, fixed expression. She was not a woman to him; she was a problem to address, a code to decipher, a decision to coolly make. At one time her vanity might have been wounded.

  Now nothing else mattered apart from what Lord Lavay did next.

  “You may have the position on a trial basis for a fortnight, Mrs. Fountain.” He said it almost idly. “You will start immediately.”