A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal Read online

  And what had they won? The wrath of the police. Broken ribs and shattered noses. A couple of days’ notice in the newspapers … and then it had been over, and the toffs had gone back to their tea parties, and Michael had turned to gin.

  No. Best to forget such things.

  “I will,” Hannah said, giving Nell a start. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. But it had been the right thing to say, for Hannah’s grip gentled, and she gave Nell a real smile this time, then launched into a popular ballad making the rounds on the street. Nell joined in, and together they set a brisk pace for home.

  Nell woke that night to the sound of footsteps stopping next to her head. Her eyes opened on a silhouette looming over her. Not an arm’s reach away, Mum loosed a wet, choked breath.

  “She’s done for,” said Michael from above. “Death rattle.”

  That made the hundredth time he’d said the same. She could smell the gin on him. The floorboards creaked under his feet; his balance was failing.

  She pushed herself up on an elbow. “Where’s Suzie?” she whispered.

  “Where’s Suzie,” he mocked. “Where in bloody hell do you think?”

  To her right, she heard her mother murmur something. Don’t speak, Nell willed silently. Keep sleeping. She’d seen Suzie’s state earlier this evening—eye blackened, face red and puffy from weeping. Michael could go days without the drink, but none of them rejoiced when he did. His abstinence invariably ended in a glut that lasted for days.

  If he wanted a fight, he could have it in the back room. Mum needed her sleep.

  Nell pushed aside the blanket and got up. The back of her neck prickled as he fell in step behind her.

  A thin sheet separated the two rooms. On the other side, a kerosene lamp sat on the small table beside the hearth. Thinking to light it, she felt for the matches.

  His sudden grip on her wrist pulled her around. Hot, moist, his hand was twice the size of hers. “Don’t,” he said. “Leave it dark. I don’t want to have to look on your ugly face.”

  “All right,” she said on a breath. Mum said he had a demon in him that fed on the drink. Nell rarely paid her much mind when she took to raving of devils, but nights like these, it was easy to believe such things.

  With her free hand, she felt behind her for the long iron fork she used to grill sausages over the fire. It fit nicely into her palm, a solid weight, reassuring. She’d sharpened the tines a week ago. “Where’s Suzie?” she asked again. Not dead, pray God. Once a man took to using his fists, he rarely stopped. One day, she feared, Michael would hit one of them too hard.

  “Mott’s.” His laugh was low and nasty. “Knee-deep in the lads, wouldn’t you know. Made me sick to watch her.”

  She wished that she could see his face. He took after her stepfather, brown in his coloring as dirt, but he was well built, a boxer, handsome and proud of it: he didn’t let himself sneer or twitch unless he’d given over to his temper. If she could see the line of his mouth, she’d have clearer intentions about this fork in her hand. “It’s part of her job, Michael. She makes good money there.”

  “Don’t she? I wonder how she manages so much. Maybe I know.”

  “I know she loves you.” Pathetic but true. Suzie had been a properly pretty girl with a dozen suitors. Most of them would have treated her better than Michael did. Like countless women before her, she’d thrown her fortune into the slops by following her foolish heart. When Nell married, she’d choose a man for better reasons: kindness, decency, a solid roof to shelter her. A lad who loved her more than she did him: that was the safest way to happiness.

  “Sure and she loves me.” Michael’s voice was starting to slur, but his grip on her wrist didn’t slacken. “Awfully worried for Suzie, ain’t you? I’d worry for myself instead.”

  “I will, when there’s reason for it.” As far as she could tell, she was the only one in this flat that kept her wits about her.

  “I’d say there is. I heard about that little talk you had with the labor-mistress. You’ve got a powerful wealth of ideas, don’t you?”

  She caught her breath. Were people speaking of that? All she’d asked was for Mrs. Plimpton to speak with the master about a few windows for the workrooms. Much good it had done—the woman had fallen apart with laughter. You’re not paid to breathe, she’d said. Back to work with you.

  “Didn’t do any harm,” she whispered. “Just a brief chat.”

  “You’re a fool. You think they give a damn about your comfort? They look at you, they see one of us. Just another rat for the slaughter.”

  The bitterness in his voice struck at her. She heard his whole history in it, and it made her soften a little. Before jail, he’d had ideas of his own about what workers deserved. He’d put his money toward the cause of reform and all he’d gotten for it was misery and abuse. She could understand if he thought her a fool for following in those footsteps.

  “I won’t say anything more,” she said. “But I’m right, Michael. It was the air in the factory that made Mum sick. And they could change it so easily—”

  His nails dug into her. “Am I meant to care?”

  She tightened her grip on the fork. If he made her stick him, it’d be a long and ugly night. “No.”

  “You get sacked and I’ll care. I’ll be fixing you up with Dickie, no matter your thoughts.”

  “All right,” she said evenly.

  “He was asking after you in the street tonight. Two crowns, he had in his hand. Said he’d be as glad to spend them on you as on another girl.”

  The darkness felt like a hand pressing over her mouth, stopping her breath. Damn Dickie Jackson. He knew very well what he was doing with such remarks. Like waving a flag in front of a bull: he thought himself so clever in baiting Michael. Thought it was only a matter of time before her stepbrother forced her to it.

  From the other room came the sound of a strangled cough. Oh, God, don’t let her get up. Let her be too weak to get up. “I brought in twice that amount this week.” Her voice sounded hoarse. Her wrist was starting to throb.

  “Or you could make two crowns in a quarter hour. You think you’re too good for it? Fancy yourself better than the rest of us, maybe? Somebody special?”

  She swallowed. Sometimes lately she asked herself the same. So many girls she’d known had earned a quick coin up against the wall. Why should it be different for her? Aye, she could read and write and she’d worked hard to educate herself, but that didn’t make her special. Everybody starved the same way. In the end, everybody died.

  Two crowns for a quarter hour. It would be a handsome profit.

  But not for her. Wasn’t logic or reason that drove her, but something gut deep, hard as diamond: she could consider such a turn, but she’d never agree to it. There was another way. She’d find it, somehow. If not the moneylender, she’d go thieving before she laid down for Dickie bloody Jackson. “I earn my keep here—”

  “Ha! Mason down the street says I could have twelve a week for the space you take up—”

  The anger leapt up from nowhere. “Your father promised we could stay here!”

  His grip fell away. “Your bloody mum, not you. And she’s dying, do you hear that?”

  “You’re drinking away the coin that could save her!”

  The blow came out of the darkness. Agony like lightning knifed through her jaw. The floorboards slammed into her. She opened her eyes, hearing her own strangled gasp, the rough wood burning beneath her cheek.

  In the background, Mama called out. “Cornelia! Are you … quite fine?”

  “Are you quite fine?” Michael mimicked. “The bloody queen in there!”

  Nell held still. Her brain seemed to be rattling in its casing, but her jaw still worked when she wiggled it. He’d used the back of his hand, not his fist, thank God.

  “One good kick,” Michael said softly. “That’s all it would take, you uppity bitch.”

  Anger swamped the pain. This stupid, useless fork she still clenched in her
hand—she should have stuck him when she’d had the chance.

  “But you’ve got money to earn,” he continued. “So get used to lying on your back.”

  I’ll kill you first, she thought.

  She saw the broad shape of his shoulders silhouetted against the curtain before he pushed it aside. The cloth ripped and fell. His footsteps clomped across the floorboards, setting them to shuddering. Hinges squeaked. The front door slammed.

  A quavering voice called from the next room. “Cornelia? Cor—”

  The cough that punctuated that call roused Nell to sit up. The room was spinning around her. She wiped blood from her nose. Rage tasted bitter as bile. She hated him. She hated Dickie Jackson. Hate, hate, dizzy, hot; she hurled the useless fork aside.

  Cloth rustled in the next room: Mum was trying to sit up.

  Nell took a large breath. “I’m all right,” she said, forcing herself to her feet, hurrying past the torn curtain, crossing the distance to the pallet. “Shh, Mum, lie back. I’m all right.”

  “No,” Mum said. Her graying hair was a pale nimbus around her shadowed face. “God save you. God spare you. God keep us all …” She turned her head aside to cough.

  Nell laid a hand to her back, supporting her into easing back down to the floor. “It’s all right, Mum. Go back to sleep.”

  “You must ask … for help. He is wicked but he will help.”

  “All right,” Nell murmured. She brushed her hand over her mother’s hot, dry cheek. The fevers always got higher in the evenings.

  Mum turned her head away, fretful. “Listen,” she said. “Write to him. I hoped … I did it for you, Cornelia. His lust, he was a devil. Lewder, more prideful even than Michael. Lust and lewdness …”

  Brilliant. The last thing Mum needed right now was the exertion of one of her fits. “Calm down. Just lie quietly.”

  “No.” Bony fingers caught Nell’s arm and dug for attention. “Gird yourself. Ask God to protect you. But tell him who you are. Tell him … I thought to save you. Part of him for my own. To save a part of him.” A hack took Mum, wet and violent. The effort to breathe wracked her thin frame.

  “All right. I’ll tell him.” Damn Michael. Damn the Malloys upstairs, too, who’d taken it into their heads that Mum was a minor saint. They encouraged her talk of demons and angels; they asked her to intercede for them. “Mum, you need to sleep.”

  “I’m lucid.” For a startling second, Mum sounded as firm and sharp as she once had, back in the days when she’d boxed Michael’s ears for taking the Lord’s name in vain and forced him onto his knees beside the rest of them for three hours every Sunday. “You can go back now, Cornelia. I forgive you.”

  “I’ll go back. Just calm.”

  “You must go to your father. Lord Rushden is waiting.”

  Nell froze. Lord Rushden? The father of that girl in the photograph?

  The coincidence lifted the hairs on her nape. “Mum, what do you mean?”

  “Oh, the devil,” her mother said, sighing. “But I forgive you.”

  “Forgive me for what?” Nell whispered.

  “You must speak to your father.” Mum’s voice sounded peculiar, suddenly—queer and girlish. “You must speak to his lordship.”

  Her father? “Mum.” She barely dared to breathe. “What are you saying? You can’t mean that Lord Rushden …”

  “Never let him tempt you,” Mum murmured. “Resist sin.”

  “You’re raving.” Nell’s throat closed on a hard swallow. “Donald Miller is my father.” Mum had talked of him. A nice, respectable gentleman farmer from Leicestershire, who’d died of the cholera when Nell had been a babe in arms.

  “Never,” Mum said, still in that wispy, dreamy voice. “A lie. Only Lord Rushden, Cornelia. Long ago, before. He will help you. I took you for your sake. But I can help no longer. Only write to him.”

  Her heart was pounding in her throat. Impossible to think it, but she could find no other interpretation: her saintly mum was admitting she was a bastard. The bastard of a lord.

  No wonder she looked like that girl in the photograph.

  She leaned forward, gripping her mother’s hand hard. “Would he pay for a doctor for you?”

  “Oh, Cornelia …” Her mother’s high laugh sent a chill down her spine. “The devil will do far more than that.”

  Few pastimes were so tedious as a party thrown to prove the host’s depravity. Colton’s rout was no exception. The walls had been covered in dark velvet, the electricity shut off. The only light came from iron candelabras positioned throughout the room. A miserable-looking string quartet sat in the corner, sawing out what Simon belatedly recognized as Te Deum played backward. Over their heads, an upside-down cross dangled on a chain from a darkened chandelier. The hired girls in the room—those who still wore clothing, at any rate—were dressed as nuns.

  Simon laughed under his breath as he stepped inside. Why this enduring fixation on nuns? The faces in the raucous crowd were largely familiar to him, and as usual, he did not see a Catholic among them. He could only conclude that something in the Anglican tradition cultivated fantasies of popish defilement.

  At least he saw no black mass under way. Small mercy, that.

  As notice of him spread, greetings came right and left—an MP leaving off with a half-naked woman to sketch him a bow; three city magnates toasting him so enthusiastically that most of their whisky landed on the carpet. He replied with cordial nods as he looked through the crowd for his quarry. A babble of excited speculation reached his ears, mentions of his sins both real and imagined. Mostly imagined, of course.

  He felt his lips twist. Old Rushden had never understood that. He’d believed everything he’d heard of his heir, and even now, Simon could not regret that he’d never tried to convince the bastard otherwise. Even tonight, on the precipice of final ruin, Simon could not see how it might have gone differently. His guardian had judged and damned him from the get-go; he’d never had a chance.

  “Rushden!” Harcourt approached, skirting a pair of half-dressed dukes who were directing a girl’s gyrations atop a banqueting table. She looked no older than fifteen, still able to smile enthusiastically on idiocy. “You came!”

  “And so did you,” Simon replied, his gaze lingering on the girl. As one of the lordlings made an open-handed grab for her breast, he sighed. Very tempting to offer her a coin to fund her escape, only she wouldn’t take it. This gathering presented the best business opportunity she’d ever receive.

  He turned his attention to Harcourt. “And why are you here?” He was the last man to scruple at drunken revelry, but this lot wasn’t reveling as much as showing off for each other. Harcourt generally kept better company.

  “I know, a sad scene.” Harcourt drove an unsteady hand through his ginger hair, causing a curl to flop across his eye. “But the night is slow. And I thought you’d be at Swanby’s soiree! Wasn’t your newest pet performing there tonight?”

  Simon nodded. “It ended an hour ago.” He’d instructed Andreasson, the Swedish pianist whose talents he currently sponsored, to bang out several discordant pieces. Lady Swanby’s guests had pretended to enjoy the music and would be sure to report enthusiastically on it tomorrow, the better to advertise their attendance to those who’d not been invited. “Made quite a stir.”

  Despite his efforts, the blackness of his mood must have showed in his voice, for Harcourt narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. “Never say it went poorly!”

  The idea surprised Simon into a laugh. “Of course not.” His discoveries were always en vogue. To disagree with the Earl of Rushden’s artistic opinions was to risk being thought a bumpkin.

  Of course, that might change once it became known that he was all but broke.

  “Then what ails you?” Harcourt asked.

  He shrugged and took a drink from a passing servant’s tray. The liquor’s burn felt noxiously chemical. He didn’t see much point in keeping silent on the court ruling; the newspapers tomorrow would trumpet it ac
ross the nation.

  But as he lowered the emptied glass, he found he did not want to speak of it just yet. His disbelief still felt too large to put into words. Never mind that his predecessor, the ninth Earl of Rushden, had been insane. Never mind that only a madman would have commanded his fortune to be divided between a living daughter and a dead one; that only a madman would have designed a legacy that left the next earl penniless, the family estates to rot and crumble, the retainers to be sacked, and the lands to go to seed.

  Never mind all this. The court had decided to uphold old Rushden’s will anyway.

  Somewhere in hell, the bastard was enjoying his revenge.

  Simon let go of a long breath. No, he would waste no further effort on this nonsense. Let the journalists struggle to explain it. “Nothing ails me,” he said, and felt relatively certain, after a moment, that he meant it. Life was a great, big, ludicrous joke. Anyone who took it seriously was a fool.

  Harcourt still looked doubtful. Simon pulled up a smile for good measure. “Have you seen Dalziel hereabouts?” It hadn’t been a good day, but it still could end well.

  “Oh ho!” Harcourt broke into a grin. “Never say he’s still hiding the book from you? I can help you with that.” This offer was punctuated with an ostentatious cracking of Harcourt’s knuckles. Since retiring from the Fusiliers, he was at loose ends, and nothing cheered him more rapidly than the prospect of violence.

  Simon hadn’t anticipated needing to go to such lengths. But why not? That Dalziel had taken the money and failed to surrender the manuscript seemed, after this very long and inexpressibly irksome day, deserving of bloodshed. “By all means,” he said with a shrug.

  He started forward into the crowd, Harcourt at his elbow. Hail-fellow-well-met thumps buffeted his shoulders; waggling brows and slurred encouragements trailed in his wake. As he sidestepped a knot of men who’d gathered to watch the finance minister rip the habit off a brunette, he found himself suddenly, darkly amused. The middling classes prated so earnestly in magazines about the rewards of hard work, ingenuity, learning, right living. A look around this room would serve them the most effective rebuttal imaginable. Their nation was governed by horny, overgrown schoolboys.