One Night Of Scandal

Chapter Two

‘I s there something the matter, Deborah?’ Olivia Marney enquired of her sister when, later that day, they were sitting on the veranda at Midwinter Marney Hall partaking of tea. ‘You have barely sat still for five minutes at a time this afternoon and you seem most agitated. What can have happened to upset you?’

Deborah pumped herself down on the cushioned seat of the wicker chair and toyed with the spray of lilac that she had wrenched from a nearby bush. Its bruised petals gave off a sweet perfume. Deb laid the spray aside with a sigh. No doubt Olivia, who had put years of effort into the gardens at Marney, would be watching her with concern in case she destroyed her life’s work in one fell swoop. The way Deb was feeling, it was a distinct possibility.

‘I am sorry I am such poor company,’ she said. ‘I feel quite liverish today. Maybe it is the sun.’

‘Hmm.’ Olivia poured her sister another cup of tea and pushed the plate with the homemade fruitcake in Deb’s direction. ‘It has never bothered you before. I thought that you went out riding this morning?’

‘I did.’ Deb moodily swallowed a mouthful of tea. It tasted too strong and she wished that she had asked for lemonade instead. She put her cup down and studied the prospect across the lawns to the ornamental shrubbery. It was cool and leafy, and should have been soothing to the spirits. Deb found that it was not.

‘Did you not enjoy yourself?’ Olivia was enquiring. ‘Usually riding puts you in such a pleasant frame of mind.’

Deb frowned. ‘No, I did not enjoy myself. I was plagued by that rogue, Richard Kestrel. He insisted on accompanying me for some of the way. He quite spoiled my outing.’

Olivia’s brow cleared. ‘Oh, I see. It is Lord Richard who has put you in this vile mood! I should have guessed. No one else has his talent for upsetting you.’

‘He kissed me,’ Deb said. ‘Can you believe the audacity of the man?’

There was a clatter as Olivia dropped her silver spoon on the tiled floor. She bent to retrieve it, sitting up with a slight flush on her face. ‘Good gracious, Deb, you should warn me before you make an announcement like that! Nothing half as exciting ever happens at Midwinter Marney Hall.’

Deb was momentarily distracted from her own thoughts. ‘Do you mean that Ross never kisses you, Liv?’

‘Never,’ her sister said. ‘We have been married six years, you know, so it is hardly to be expected. Besides, we quarrel so much that there is never time for anything else. But we were not speaking of my situation, were we, Deborah? Tell me what happened.’

Deb shrugged slightly. She found that she did not wish to confide the whole tale of her encounter with Richard Kestrel, for it might involve some awkward explanations and she was not at all sure of the precise nature of her feelings. Olivia was famously perceptive, and would hit at once on the idea that Deb was in some strange way attracted to the rakish Lord Richard. Indeed, when Richard had tried to seduce Deb the previous year and Deb in a flurry of outrage and shock had unburdened herself to her sister, Olivia had merely smiled in a maddening way and said that she had been expecting it for several months. She had seemed a great deal less surprised than Deb was herself, and not particularly shocked.

‘It was no great matter,’ Deb said now, glossing over the ill-advised race and the fact that she had lost it. ‘We were riding through Winter Wood and Lord Richard took the opportunity of the secluded surroundings to steal a kiss.’

She sighed sharply. ‘I suppose that it was my fault for lowering my guard. After all, I know what type of man he is.’

A tiny frown touched Olivia’s face. Looking at her, Deb wished that she could achieve Olivia’s effortlessly cool façade. Such an outward show of composure would be of great use when dealing with the advances of a rake like Lord Richard Kestrel. Alas for her, Deb felt that she wore her heart on her sleeve, and, no matter how she tried, she was incapable of hiding her feelings. When a scoundrel like Lord Richard provoked her she reacted impulsively. It always got her into trouble.

Deb sighed and stirred her tea, forgetting that she had already done it once and that she did not take sugar anyway. She wished that she could achieve Olivia’s levels of serenity. Her sister seldom lost her temper and always appeared tranquil. Occasionally Deb would wonder if Olivia had no warmer feelings at all, for she never saw evidence of them. She had even wondered if this was responsible for the estrangement between Olivia and her husband Ross. Ross was by temperament quite similar to Deb herself for he had a quick temper. Deb had always thought this was one of the reasons why they dealt together so well. Olivia, in contrast, was tranquil and self-possessed. She reminded Deb of violets and cool water, whereas if she had to characterise her own temperament she would have thought of hot coals and scarlet roses.

Olivia’s frown had deepened slightly. ‘Is it possible to kiss on horseback?’ she enquired now. ‘I had always imagined it would be a little difficult. I take it that you were on horseback at this point?’

‘Of course we were!’ Deb tried not to sound too sharp. ‘You do not think that I dismounted so that he could kiss me properly, do you?’

Olivia raised her brows at her sister’s tone. ‘There is no need to be snappish. You might have been tempted.’

‘Well, I was not,’ Deb said untruthfully. ‘Lord Richard takes the most shocking liberties and I do all I can to discourage him.’

‘So you were on horseback and it is possible to kiss properly in that situation,’ Olivia mused. ‘How interesting!’

Deb sighed crossly. For once she did not feel that her sister, normally so sympathetic, was giving her appropriate support.

‘It was not interesting, Liv,’ she said. ‘It was quite outrageous.’

‘Oh, pooh,’ Olivia said. ‘Outrageous, indeed! I wish I had your difficulties, Deb. You would not hear me complaining.’

‘Liv!’ Deb was genuinely scandalised. Despite the unsatisfactory state of her marriage, Olivia had never indicated for a second that she would look elsewhere for consolation.

Olivia shrugged, but her blue eyes were twinkling. ‘No need to sound so huffy, Deb. I did but wish to point out that most ladies would give their best gown to be in your shoes as far as Lord Richard Kestrel was concerned-yes, and throw in their jewels as well, into the bargain!’

Deb snorted. ‘What nonsense-’

‘You protest too much,’ Olivia said, plucking a grape from the silver bowl of fruit at her elbow. She looked back at her sister and her gaze was shrewd. ‘Cut line, Deb. You know that you like him. There is no point in trying to gammon me-or yourself either.’

There was silence that fizzed with indignation and then Deb subsided with a little sigh.

‘Oh dear, I confess that you might be right. How is it that you know me so well, Liv?’

‘Years of observation,’ her sister said calmly. ‘You are easy to read, Deb. You like Lord Richard Kestrel, you enjoyed his kisses and, though you are shocked at yourself for even considering it, you are wondering just how far you could let him go before you got into difficulties.’

‘Liv!’ Deb said again. The colour flooded her face. Her sister’s assessment was uncannily accurate.

‘Well?’

Deb rubbed a hand across her forehead. ‘I admit that I enjoy Lord Richard’s company,’ she said, feeling a certain relief that she could discuss her feelings honestly with Olivia. ‘He has a very engaging manner, in an impudent sort of a way…’

‘And his compliments are very pretty.’

‘True, but very practised.’

‘And are his kisses practised too?’

Deb traced patterns on the top of the wicker table. For all her belief that Lord Richard was nothing more than a rake, there had been something sweet about his kisses, something that had evoked a shockingly strong response from her.

‘I do not know,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I have very little means of comparison. I imagine that a man of his reputation must be very good at kissing, which is why I felt so…’ She waved her hands about descriptively.

‘So…’ Olivia prompted.

‘So dizzy and shivery and excited…’ Deb shivered again now, thinking about it. She was obliged to admit that there had been something between the two of them from the moment that they had met on the bridleway. It had been like flint striking steel; a spark, a flare and then the flame caught. It mattered not whether she liked Richard or not. Something had ignited as soon as their eyes had met.

Olivia laughed. ‘Yet you wish to run away from him? Oh, Deb!’

Deb drank some of her cooling tea. ‘I find it disturbing to be so attracted to a man whose way of life I utterly reject,’ she said.

‘I imagine,’ Olivia said shrewdly, ‘that you find it disturbing to be attracted to a man at all when you swore you would never trust one ever again.’

Deb shrugged awkwardly. ‘At the time-after Neil’s betrayal-I could not imagine ever finding a man I could like.’ She looked out across the cool green acres of the garden. ‘Now I am not so naïve as to believe I could not have feelings for someone, but…’ she frowned ‘…I could never act on them.’

‘Never?’ Olivia looked quizzical.

Deb fidgeted. ‘I could never contemplate marriage…’ She fidgeted with her teacup again then looked up to meet her sister’s level gaze. ‘I cannot quite believe it, Liv, but lately I have had thoughts…’ she hesitated, then continued more firmly ‘…thoughts of what it might be like to take Richard Kestrel as a lover. What could be more shocking than that?’

A quiver of breeze ran along the veranda, sending ripples across the little ornamental pond where the fat goldfish basked and stirring the branches of the lilac so that its scent suffused the air.

Even now, Olivia’s calm was not impaired. ‘There are plenty of things more shocking,’ she said. ‘I can see that you would not be much taken with marriage but you might find that to take a lover would be far more pleasurable…’

Deb stared at her. ‘How would you know?’

‘I do not,’ Olivia said calmly. ‘I am only speculating.’

Deb shook her head. ‘It is a scandalous plan. I do not support such behaviour and neither do you.’ She sighed. ‘Goodness knows, after the huge outrage over my elopement, I simply should not be thinking of compounding my folly with this. It is the sort of fantasy that is all very well in theory, but must never be made a reality. It is far too dangerous.’ She wriggled in her chair. ‘Anyway, Lord Richard is not the sole cause of my ill temper. I had a letter from Papa today.’

‘Ah, I see.’ To Deb’s relief, Olivia let the subject of Richard Kestrel drop. ‘Is Papa pressing you to return to the fold?’

‘More than that, he is commanding me.’ Deb licked her finger and picked up the cake crumbs from the plate in most unladylike fashion. ‘He threatens to cut off my allowance if I do not return to live at Walton Hall.’

Olivia made a little sound of distress. ‘That is harsh, although I know he only wants what is best for you, Deb. I do not suppose you can countenance it?’

‘No.’ Deb put the plate down. ‘It is not simply the difficulty of returning home after three years away, Liv. That would be restrictive and unpleasant, but nowhere near as difficult as refusing the match with cousin Harry-again.’

Her sister shuddered. ‘Is that what Papa is proposing?’

‘I fear so,’ Deb said. ‘I spoilt his plans when I eloped with Neil and now he sees an opportunity to make the match that I rejected the first time around.’

Olivia’s gaze was troubled. ‘Surely Papa would not force a match? I know that he can be very autocratic but, if you were unwilling, surely he would not persist?’

Deb looked at her, but did not say anything. The silence was eloquent. They were both remembering their father’s determination to marry all his children off advantageously, a determination that brooked no opposition.

‘If not cousin Harry, then someone else,’ Deb said bluntly. ‘You know that he will not be happy until he sees me safely-and legitimately-married.’

Olivia grimaced sympathetically. She tilted the brim of her straw hat against the sun, which was creeping round the edge of the roof.

‘So what will you do? You cannot avoid returning to Bath for Guy’s wedding, unless you invent some fictitious illness.’

It was on the tip of Deb’s tongue to tell her sister that it was not an illness she planned to invent but a fictitious betrothal. She just managed to hold her peace in time. Despite Olivia’s surprisingly broadminded stance on the subject of taking a lover, Deb knew that she would be shocked to know that her sister had advertised for a fiancé. It simply was not done. It would be time enough to tell Olivia what she planned when she had found a suitable gentleman, even then, she was certain that her sister would cut up rough.

‘I do not know what I shall do,’ she said, ‘though I am certain that I will think of something. Oh, if only there was not this annoying threat of invasion to add weight to Papa’s argument! It is most inconvenient.’

Olivia laughed. ‘What is inconvenient? Bonaparte’s plans? Do you think that he should have consulted your convenience before he assembled his fleet off Boulogne?’

Deb gave a little giggle. ‘No, of course not. How absurd you are! I merely mean that Papa does not consider it safe for me to be living alone with only Clarrie and the servants, for all that you and Ross are but a few miles away.’

‘You may come and live here with my blessing,’ Olivia said drily. ‘You would not be getting in anybody’s way and it would be nice to have someone to talk to.’

Deb gave her a troubled look. ‘Truly, Liv, is it so bad? I know that there was a time when you hoped to give Ross an heir…’

‘Not much chance of that now,’ Olivia said, even more drily. ‘I have yet to learn that it is possible to conceive an heir when the husband spends all his time improving his estate and the wife spends all her energies on her garden. We may be designing a most elegant home, but we are not propagating a future generation to appreciate it-’

She broke off, looking flustered for the first time in Deborah’s memory. Ross Marney had come through the folding French windows and out on to the veranda just as his wife was speaking. It was impossible to tell how much of the conversation he had heard.

‘Good afternoon, Ross,’ Deb said, seeing that Olivia was rendered temporarily speechless. She got to her feet. ‘May I pour you some tea?’

Ross bent to kiss her cheek. He was of sturdy build, with black hair and intense blue eyes. When Olivia had first married him, Deb, then an impressionable sixteen-year-old, had had quite a crush on him. These days she could laugh at her girlish infatuations, but she still considered him a handsome man.

‘I think that you should allow your sister to dispense the refreshments,’ Ross said, with an unfathomable look at Olivia, ‘since she is complaining that that is all the propagation that she is permitted to do.’

An awkward silence fell. There were two spots of colour high on Olivia’s cheekbones as she poured the tea. The spout of the pot rattled against the china as her hand shook slightly, and Deb felt a rush of sympathy. It was too bad of Ross to make his wife feel so uncomfortable. He should have pretended that he had not heard.

‘We were speaking of our trip to Somerset,’ she said, trying once again to break the silence. ‘It is only two months until Guy’s wedding.’

‘Plenty of time for him to reconsider, then, before he makes a decision he may live to regret,’ Ross said. He took his cup with a curt word of thanks and strolled away down the grassy slope on to the lawn.

Deb was halfway out of her chair when Olivia put her hand on her sister’s arm.

‘Deb, do not!’ she implored in a whisper. ‘I know that you only mean to help, but it does not do any good…’

Deb subsided back in her chair. She picked up her own cup and drank the cooling liquid. Sometimes in the past she had interfered in Ross and Olivia’s disagreements when her sister’s refusal to stand up to her husband had so infuriated her that she could not let a subject pass. Olivia had never reproached her, but sometimes Deb had had the impression that her intervention had made things worse rather than better. She felt exasperated. Olivia was a pattern card of goodness and Ross Marney was a nice man, handsome, generous and kind. So why, oh, why was it not possible for the two of them to co-exist in harmony? She wanted to bang their heads together.

‘I suppose that I should go,’ she said slowly.

‘Do not hurry away on Ross’s account,’ Olivia said, and Deb heard the note of bitterness in her voice ring clear as a bell. ‘He won’t speak to me of this. We never do talk.’

Deb wrinkled up her face. Her knowledge of married life was small, consisting of five weeks before Neil Stratton had departed to the wars. That month had hardly been the bliss that she had been expecting. Even so, she knew that if a husband and wife never spoke to each other then they could hardly expect other aspects of their relationship to improve. She opened her mouth to offer some advice, saw the expression on Olivia’s face and closed it again.

‘You do not understand,’ Olivia said rapidly. ‘Please let it go, Deborah.’

Deb got up and hugged her sister hard, spilling Olivia’s tea in the process. Her sister bore the embrace stoically, even going so far as to give Deb a brief, convulsive hug in return. She dabbed at the tea stains on her dress, head bent. All the animation that Deb had seen in her earlier in the afternoon had vanished.

‘Would you care to take the carriage back to Mallow?’ Olivia enquired. ‘It is hot to be walking.’

‘No, thank you,’ Deb said. ‘I shall go through the woods. It will give me time to think.’

A faint spark of amusement lit Olivia’s face again. ‘About Richard Kestrel? You do not fear to find him lurking behind a tree waiting to pounce again?’

Deb laughed. ‘If he does, he will get all the odium that should rightly be reserved for Ross. It would be poetic justice.’

Olivia put out her hand quickly. ‘You will be here for my musicale tonight?’ she asked, and Deb could hear and understand the pleading tone in her voice. It was the first time she had seen a crack in Olivia’s perfect façade and it made her fearful. The marriage must be in dire straits indeed.

‘I was not planning to be here,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Is it that Estelle creature from the theatre in Woodbridge who is coming to perform?’

‘Miss Estella La Salle,’ Olivia said reprovingly. ‘It is quite a coup for me that she has agreed to sing for us, Deb. She is much sought after and very fashionable in the Prince of Wales’s circle.’

‘Only because the Hertfords have made such a fuss over her,’ Deb said. ‘They must be tone deaf! I love you dearly, Liv, but I am not sure that even for you I can sit through Miss La Salle’s caterwauling.’

‘You are the one who is tone deaf,’ Olivia responded. Her tone changed. ‘Oh please, Deb…’

Deb caught sight of Ross disappearing into the shrubbery. He was swiping at the tops of some of the rose bushes and looked to be in a very bad mood indeed.

‘Oh, very well,’ she said hastily. ‘I shall be here for as long as I can stand it!’

Olivia gave her another brief hug and Deb went down the shallow bank and on to the lawn in the same direction that Ross had gone. She was not intending to speak to him for she was not certain that she could be civil, but as she made her way down from the veranda, Ross came across the lawn and fell into step beside her. After giving him one angry, speaking look, Deb tolerated his company in silence. In this manner they walked across the lawn and reached the wooden gate that led out of the garden, across the ha-ha and into the surrounding park.

‘You may leave me here, Ross,’ Deb said tightly. ‘Thank you for your escort.’

Ross put his hand on the gate to prevent her exit. ‘Deb, I am sorry.’

‘I am not the one to whom you should be apologising,’ Deb said, raising a hand to shade her eyes from the sun so that she could glare at him all the better. ‘I do not know how Liv has endured your behaviour for so long, Ross. If I were in her shoes, I would have taken my gardening shears to you before now.’

‘I know,’ Ross said. There was a look of deep unhappiness in his blue eyes.

‘And you would deserve it!’ Deb added.

‘I know that too.’ A rueful grin touched Ross’s mouth, lightening the tired lines of his face for a moment. ‘Dear Deborah, it is so refreshing to have these sisterly chats with you! You go straight to the heart of the matter instead of pretending that there is no difficulty.’

‘Well, do not expect me to give you absolution,’ Deb said sharply. She drew him into the shade of a spreading oak that bordered the garden. ‘That is better. I cannot judge how repentant you are if I am squinting into the sun.’ She scanned his face. ‘Hmm. You do look a little bit cast down, I suppose. Well, you have only yourself to blame, Ross. I could shake both you and Olivia, you know. I am so fond of you both and I cannot comprehend why you cannot like each other.’

‘Oh, I like Olivia,’ Ross said wryly. ‘I like her a lot. That is half the trouble!’

‘I do not mean in that way,’ Deb said, frowning at him. ‘Men are all the same! You bring everything down to whether a woman is attractive to you or not and matters are never that simple.’

‘That is because men are simple creatures at heart,’ Ross said, looking out across Midwinter Marney land towards the sea. ‘All I desire is a home, a wife who cares for me and an heir…’

‘Try not to sound too maudlin,’ Deb said tartly. ‘You do not deserve those things unless you settle your differences with Olivia.’ Her face softened and she took his hand. She could never be angry with Ross for long, for she owed him a huge debt of gratitude and she knew what a very kind person he was at heart.

‘Dearest Ross,’ she said, ‘it grieves me to see you both so unhappy. You and Olivia have been so generous to me in the past. I do not know what I would have done without you after Neil died-’

‘Don’t,’ Ross said gruffly. His face set in hard lines. ‘You know that we would have done anything to help you, Deb.’ Anger darkened his eyes. ‘The only thing that I regret is that the fever got to Neil Stratton before I could call him to account.’

Deb sighed and freed herself. ‘Don’t, Ross. It is all over and done with now. But I do know that you are a kind and honourable man, and that very fact makes your estrangement from Olivia all the worse! If you were a boorish oaf then I could understand it, but you are not! At least, not most of the time.’

‘Thank you, Deb,’ Ross said ironically. ‘That vote of confidence encourages me.’

‘You deserve my censure,’ Deb said. ‘You were positively churlish to Olivia just now. Can you not be nice to her for a change? Talk to her! Take her flowers…’

‘She has all the flowers she needs in the garden,’ Ross said glumly. ‘I tried giving her a bouquet once and she made some remark about preferring to see flowers growing rather than dead in a vase.’

Deb sighed with exasperation. ‘That is unfortunate, but why give up as a result?’

‘Because I have no notion what it is that Olivia wants,’ Ross said, frowning heavily.

Deb sighed again. ‘Then why do you not ask her, Ross? Must I tell you how to do everything? Sit down and talk to her one day. Take her to the seaside. Buy her a present! I don’t know…’ Deb shook her head at him. ‘Olivia needs you, Ross. She may appear cool and composed on the surface, but underneath she is as vulnerable as anyone else.’ She gave him a little push. ‘Now go and talk to her!’

But when she reached the place where the path to Midwinter Mallow entered the beech wood, she looked back to see Ross striding away across the fields and could just make out the forlorn figure of Olivia still sitting on the veranda a quarter-mile distant in the opposite direction.

With an exasperated sigh, Deb called down a curse upon the heads of all men and vented her irritation by kicking up all the old, dry beech leaves from the ground beneath her feet. It made her feel better, but she knew that something had to be done to help Olivia. Unless radical steps were taken to reunite the Marneys, and soon, she could foresee years of misery for her beloved sister and brother-in-law as they lived their separate lives under the one roof.

In one way, however, she was obliged to acknowledge that Ross’s arrival on the veranda had been timely, for if he had not appeared, there was a chance that she might have blurted out to Olivia all about her decision to appoint a temporary fiancé and, even worse, about the newspaper advertisement. Deb frowned. For some reason, thinking of her fleeting fiancé made her think of Richard Kestrel again. She took a swing at an innocent spray of cow parsley beside the path. Lord Richard was exactly the sort of man who was the epitome of what she did not want in a counterfeit suitor. She needed someone who was moderate, agreeable and open to her guidance. Most certainly she did not need a man who was dangerous, forceful and devilishly attractive.

Deborah shook her head impatiently. Dwelling on Richard Kestrel’s attractions seemed a particularly pointless exercise at the moment and yet she seemed powerless to dismiss him from her mind. Nor was it helpful that the idle thought she had had of taking Richard as a lover had somehow taken root and would not be shifted. She knew it was a scandalous thought and one that she could not act on. It had better remain no more than a fantasy. And yet it still gave her no peace at all.