A Lady’s Code of Misconduct Read online

  As the first course, a julienne soup, was laid, Atticus broke the silence. “One of those doctors has loose lips. The news was all over Westminster today. You can expect a steady stream of ruffians at your door, Mother, starting at three o’clock tomorrow. Or earlier,” he added with disgust. “Crispin’s friends do not stand on ceremony.”

  “Then they will be turned away with thanks for their well-wishes,” Lady Sibley said. “Politics can wait while he mends.”

  “I’ll receive them,” said Crispin. “But not here. I assume I must keep a residence of my own? And Jane, of course, will be eager to establish the household.”

  Soup splattered into Jane’s lap. Carefully, she returned her spoon to the bowl. Live alone with him?

  “So soon?” Lady Sibley looked aghast. “Crispin, really. You have every comfort here—and staff who’ve known you since childhood! I can’t trust that majordomo of yours.”

  “The sooner I catch up, the sooner I can return to my routine.”

  “But you don’t remember your routine,” Charlotte said.

  “A great blessing,” muttered Atticus.

  “Pray tell,” Crispin purred, “what does that mean?”

  “Not tonight,” bit out Lord Sibley. “If you please, Crispin.”

  Jane hid a frown. It was Atticus, currently glowering, who had made the first jab. But nobody else seemed to remark on the injustice, save perhaps Charlotte, who shifted in her seat.

  “In fact,” Crispin said, “I would welcome news of my routine, provided Atticus can manage an objective view of it.”

  Lady Sibley’s laugh sounded strained. “Why, Atticus is a scientist,” she said. “If he is not capable of objectivity, then I despair for his experiments!”

  “I believe experiments are easier to analyze than people,” Charlotte said lightly, but Atticus cut her off.

  “Oh, I’m quite objective. Conspiracies for breakfast, bribery for lunch, and backstabbing over dinner, Crispin. That’s about the whole of it.”

  Charlotte sat straight and looked ripe to object, but Crispin forestalled her. “Dear me. That seems an uncharitable way to view a representative of government.”

  Atticus snorted. “You have forgotten, haven’t you? You represent nobody but yourself. You’re a muck who runs with the wolves.”

  The viscountess slammed down her wineglass. “I will not endure slang at my table!”

  As though slang were the main complaint here! Jane looked around the table, amazed. Atticus was still glaring. One would think his brother had just slunk home from some ill-advised lark rather than risen from his sickbed.

  The servants cleared the bowls, most of them still full. Now came lamb cutlets, their fragrance so rich and savory that Jane paused to breathe it in.

  Charlotte noticed. “Cook is a marvel, isn’t he? I’ve warned my brothers that I mean to steal him one day. That is the only inheritance I demand!”

  “Cheerful thought,” said Atticus. “Have you any other plans dependent on our parents’ demise?”

  Charlotte flinched, and her husband, jaw tense, fixed Atticus with a stony look.

  Lady Sibley cleared her throat. “It seems to me that we must hold a proper celebration to return Crispin to society. A ball, I think—”

  “Us?” Atticus straightened in his seat. “This family?”

  “It’s quite all right,” Crispin said flatly. “No celebration required.”

  “Then to announce your marriage, certainly.” Lady Sibley’s voice, steel sheathed in silk, matched the smile she turned first on Crispin and then on her elder son. “Surely no one can object to that.”

  I can, Jane thought with horror. But how? On what grounds?

  She had never planned to continue this masquerade for longer than a week. That was all the time the doctors had given Crispin to live. But now, she saw with sudden crushing clarity, she was locked into the role.

  If the truth came out, the loss of her fortune would be the least concern. People went to prison for forgery and fraud.

  “I am not certain we wish to advertise an elopement,” said Atticus.

  “I think it a fine idea,” Charlotte said brightly.

  Atticus turned to the viscount. “Father? What say you?”

  Lord Sibley lowered his silverware, looking between his sons with a grave, assessing squint. “No,” he said finally. “I can see no cause for objection.”

  “There you have it,” Lady Sibley exclaimed. “Only we must time it carefully. I want nobody to have the excuse of another commitment.”

  “The end of this month is still quite thin,” said Atticus’s wife—and then, catching her husband’s look, cast her gaze downward to her wineglass and drank deeply.

  “Mason,” said Atticus through his teeth, “has been prating to all and sundry that his niece was seized by force. Better to send them abroad for a time, don’t you say? Until the gossip dies down.”

  “Abroad?” Crispin’s voice was bland. “When Parliament is sitting?”

  “You can’t mean to retake your seat. Not in your condition! You’d be quite overtaxed.”

  “And I suppose your concern has nothing to do with your opposition to the bill I’ve authored,” Crispin drawled. “I saw your very interesting editorial in today’s Times.”

  Atticus flushed. “And I suppose that same editorial is the reason you know you authored a bill at all!” He looked incredulously around the table. “Am I the only one who sees the madness in this? He remembers nothing! Imagine what people will think! They’ll talk of lunacy—our family name will be smeared—”

  “Amnesia is not lunacy,” Lady Sibley said sharply. “It’s a known condition, Atticus, with no bearing on one’s sanity.”

  Charlotte nodded vigorously. Lord Sibley, meanwhile, appeared immersed in a censorious study of his lamb cutlet.

  “Oh?” Atticus sat back. “Had we thought Crispin sane beforehand? For he eloped with a perfect stranger—”

  Crispin’s hand came over Jane’s, startling her. For the first time, she noticed the absence of his ruby cabochon ring. His hand looked bare without it, but somehow more graceful. His fingers were long and thick, but well shaped, strong looking.

  Who was this man? His altered manner made her feel increasingly flustered and uncertain of herself.

  “I will thank you,” he said in a low and dangerous tone, “to speak kindly, or not at all, of my wife.”

  The viscount looked up. “Well said.”

  This mild remonstrance made Atticus flinch. “Very well. My apologies, Mrs. Burke. But . . . do let us speak of that bill, then! It is a travesty—a black mark on this family’s proud legacy of reform. It has nothing to do with sound law, and you know it. Nothing to do with justice, and everything to do with fattening his friends’ pockets!”

  “I will not discuss politics at the table,” their mother said stonily.

  Thus were Atticus’s aspersions against his brother recast as political debate. Jane felt disoriented. Before Crispin had awakened, she had gathered a picture of the Burkes: Lady Sibley was high-strung, her flightiness steadied by her husband’s gruff, taciturn dignity. Atticus’s filial loyalty, Charlotte’s concern for everyone’s comfort, had painted an enchanting picture for Jane.

  Now a different angle revealed itself. Crispin had a role in this family as well. He had been cast as the black sheep, the younger son gone rotten, whose faults only emphasized the virtues of the heir.

  But . . . that was right. Crispin was rotten. Jane stared at her plate. She could not judge Atticus for maligning his brother.

  But couldn’t he reserve his complaints for some later date? Did it not bother him that his brother had nearly just died?

  “Atticus is correct in one point,” Lady Sibley said. “Crispin, I hope you will take care in whom you trust with the details of your . . . indisposition. Certain of your friends may abuse the knowledge. Meanwhile, we will do our part—all of us”—she fixed a gimlet eye on Atticus—“to show how delighted we are with Cri
spin’s recovery, and his marriage besides. A ball will serve that aim nicely.”

  Atticus snorted. “How is that?”

  “Why, by displaying the true love and affection between Crispin and Jane.”

  Everybody turned to look at them—Charlotte and Lady Sibley smiling, Atticus squinting dubiously.

  Viscount Sibley’s expression was guarded.

  Crispin made some small noise in his throat, scorn or amusement, perhaps both. “What do you imagine, Atticus? That my heart is too black for love?”

  Jane found herself the focus of Atticus’s probing gaze. Paired with his similarity to Crispin, the cold shrewdness of his look made her pulse trip. It reminded her too vividly of the man hiding beneath Crispin’s amnesia, the merciless and vengeful intelligence that he would turn on her once he knew what she’d done.

  “Tell me, Jane,” said Atticus. “How did you fall in love?”

  Crispin had not let go of her hand. His grip tightened now, as though to lend her strength.

  How idiotic to feel comforted. She had made him her greatest enemy; he simply didn’t know it yet. But Atticus’s look was so mocking, so cold. Crispin, too, could wield this look with suffocating intensity—but now she knew where he had learned it. His contemptuous brother had taught it to him.

  “Well?” prompted Atticus. “Do share how the mouse caught the cat.”

  “Atticus,” hissed his wife.

  “You must forgive my brother,” Crispin said smoothly to Jane. “He never had any manners, but he did once know how to pretend to them.”

  “Quite right,” Charlotte put in—ever the peacemaker, mindful of fairness. But Atticus snorted.

  “Forgive me, I’d imagined all women enjoyed recounting love stories. Of course, if the lady doesn’t have one . . .”

  “Don’t be foolish, Atticus.” Viscount Sibley spoke gruffly, but his dark eyes were no less penetrating than his son’s. “Give her a moment.”

  It was no less a challenge, although subtler.

  Meanwhile, Crispin’s grip had gone rigid. His family’s criticism, their skepticism, wounded him, even if he fought not to show it.

  It made no sense! Nothing hurt Crispin Burke. He was immune to tender feeling.

  Or so he had been. But not, it seemed, now.

  “We . . . certainly did not expect to fall in love.” Oh, heavens, she was going to lie for him. For him! “But as you know, Crispin is—was—a close friend of my uncle’s. He often came to Marylebigh to pay his respects.” Lord Sibley had turned back to his plate, but Atticus was nearly sneering. She felt a hot wave of dislike for him. She had wondered how such a family created a man like Crispin Burke. Atticus clearly had a hand in it! “I suppose, over long nights of conversations, anything may happen. Why, the star of London politics might even come to love a mouse.”

  “Oh, well done,” said Charlotte warmly, as a muscle ticked in Atticus’s jaw.

  “You understand I intended no offense with that term,” he said. “It was . . . metaphorical only.”

  “It was a clumsy metaphor, then,” snapped the viscount. He’d rarely spoken tonight, Jane realized, save to reprimand or support Atticus—as though his eldest son were the only one in view.

  Crispin lifted Jane’s hand to his mouth. With his lips against her knuckles, he murmured, “No mouse, I think, but a lioness.”

  Startled, she felt a peculiar sensation wash through her. The heat of his breath, the softness of his lips . . .

  She had never seen him wear such a smile, a true smile. He was impossibly handsome.

  And in ten minutes, for all she knew, he might remember everything and ring for the police.

  Well, and if he did, she would produce the license, and tell the authorities how Crispin Burke had conspired with an archbishop to create a forgery. She would have company in her march to prison.

  The thought did not calm her, precisely. She pulled her hand from his and retrieved her wineglass, drinking the rest straight down.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Crispin fumbled for a match, struck it with shaking hands. As the wick caught, his bedchamber came into view. Long dark carpet. Looming shadows of heavy furniture crowding the walls. A squat bookshelf in one corner, shoved beneath the window.

  He carried the candle over to the shelf, pulled out a book at random. Gulliver’s Travels. He remembered reading this as a boy. But now, in his current predicament, it held no appeal. He knew well what it was like to be dropped into a strange universe in which one no longer seemed to fit.

  He replaced the book. His legs felt steadier, at least. He turned back toward the bed.

  He did not think he would be able to sleep again. That dream . . .

  He’d been kissing a woman. Naked, entwined with her. But it hadn’t been his wife. He’d driven his fingers through blond hair, tightened his grip when teeth closed on his shoulder. The woman’s laughter had been low and husky, somehow . . . malicious.

  And in his lust, he had felt the same. Such a savage, inhuman feeling, as he’d thrust into her—

  It had been Laura.

  A corner stabbed into his thigh. He’d lost his balance, lurched backward against the bookshelf. He braced himself against it, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

  What a foul fantasy. It could not have been a memory. He refused to believe so. Laura had never said such vulgar things to him—speaking to him of her hatred, her misery. And he had never bedded her. Nor had he ever, in his life, bedded any woman with such cold-blooded, cruel feelings brewing in his chest.

  He swallowed. Cast a glance toward the washstand. No pitcher. The bellpull was . . . somewhere. He slowly made his way toward it, caught his balance on it before he tugged. Then sat on the bed to wait.

  A clock ticked nearby. His clock, his house, a gloriously grand Georgian townhome that had astonished and delighted him only this morning, when he’d arrived to take possession again. Marble staircase, handsomely carpeted rooms, brocaded furniture. Silk wallpaper and embroidered swags. Even his wife, not given to exclamations, had gaped at the luxury of their new abode.

  Only now did it occur to him to wonder how he afforded it. MPs did not receive salaries. His small trust from his late uncle had barely covered his bachelor’s flat while a student.

  After a few minutes, when he still heard no footsteps in the hall, he forced himself up again. The staff was in shambles. They had not been prepared to receive him this morning. Half of them absent, including Crispin’s valet. So much for loyalty! The butler had stammered apologies. His wife had promised to take it in hand.

  He stepped into the hallway. The balcony was lit in a dim warm light, the sconces along the walls turned to their lowest. He started for the stairs—then halted again, as the world seemed to turn around him.

  Where was he?

  He clutched the railing and turned back to look the way he had come.

  The balconied hallway showed two doors in front of him, and a third to the left, where the hallway turned sharply.

  He did not know which door he had emerged from.

  For the first time—since awakening, since entering into a year he did not remember, a life he could not explain—he found himself truly afraid.

  Amnesia is not lunacy, his mother had claimed.

  But finding oneself lost after ten steps? What else could one call that?

  He glanced again toward the stairs, which vanished downward into darkness. The kitchen would have water. But would he manage to find his way back again?

  His heart was pounding. Exertion, he told himself. Not panic. He considered the three doors again, wrestling with himself. Only a child—a babe in leading strings—would be unable to retrace his own steps.

  He gritted his teeth and chose the door directly in front of him. It opened soundlessly. Too dark to make out the features. The carpet felt right.

  He passed through the dressing room. There stood the bed, the curtains drawn back. All right, he’d done it. His thirst had died. He could ring for water in the
morning.

  When he sat, a sound soft came from nearby.

  This wasn’t his bed.

  As his eyes adjusted, he made out the figure of his sleeping wife, her hair snaking along the pillow in a long, thick braid, the beribboned end an inch from his hand.

  Her face came into focus. Dark brows knitted tightly, a horizontal wrinkle scoring the bridge of her nose.

  Her dreams weren’t pleasant, either.

  His pulse was starting to slow. He struggled to keep his breathing silent. If she woke and found him sitting here staring at her, he’d not blame her for shrieking. She was nervous around him, despite her best efforts to seem otherwise. It would take time to persuade her that he meant to do right by her, that the failure of his damnable brain would not undo her happiness. He owed her that.

  He knew in his gut that he owed her a great deal more.

  After Laura had spurned him, he’d vowed not to love again. He was sick of disappointing people. He would not give another person a chance to disapprove.

  But this woman had somehow changed his mind. With such a fortune, she might have married almost anyone, but she had chosen him.

  He could not recall what he had done to win her. But he felt a great swelling gratitude as he gazed at her now. Whatever he’d done, she had found it praiseworthy. She had chosen him.

  The ticking of a clock pressed again on his ears. Where was it coming from? He looked around, did not see it. But was there any lonelier sound, in the barren stretch of night, than this reminder of time slipping away?

  So much he had forgotten. So much he had lost. He did not know what to make of his disorientation in the hallway. Could an MP afford such weaknesses? Atticus was right: men would dismiss him as a lunatic if they knew what ailed him. He had woken up to miracles, accomplishments beyond anything he’d ever dreamed. Would he manage now to lose them one by one?

  His wife murmured in her sleep, tossed to one side. Her sharp movements carried her braid onto his hand.