Lords of Scandal: The Beleaguered Lord Bourne / The Enterprising Lord Edward

“There’s no time for that, Bundy. I’m late as it is,” Jennie said in reply, already moving toward the door. Now that she had made up her mind about the direction she wished this marriage to take, she was all at once bursting with the necessity to share her decision with Lord Bourne—whom she graciously acknowledged to possibly have some slight interest in the business.

THE EARL OF BOURNE was pacing the main saloon, glass in hand, looking about him with what he hoped was bored disinterest. This place is a far cry from your bachelor digs in the Albany off Piccadilly, even if Byron, Macaulay, and Gladstone shared the same address, Kit, my lad, he mused, positioning himself with one arm propped negligently (he hoped) upon the mantelpiece.

If only he could get over the disquieting feeling that at any moment some long-lost Wilde with a better claim to the title would come bursting through the door and roust him outside and back into the real world.

Kit had never dreamed he would one day inherit his uncle’s title, lands, and great wealth. In fact, the most he had hoped for—when he dared to hope at all—was for the old boy to leave him a broken pocket watch or some such useless trinket.

But fate works in strange ways; in this case by eliminating all close heirs by way of accident or unfortunate illness. And while Kit had been striving to make a name for himself as a soldier, his male relatives had all been conveniently dropping like flies in order to pave his way to the earldom.

And fate hadn’t stopped at the earldom either. Dame Fate, not one to indulge any mere mortal to the point where he might tend to get cocky, had then leavened Kit’s triumph a bit by saddling him with a totally unnecessary gift—a wife.

He abandoned his studied pose—his lordship reclining at his ease—to check the watch at his waist. His late wife, he pointed out to himself, just as there came a noise at the doorway and Jennie entered with more haste than decorum, skidding to an ignominious halt about three feet inside the double doors.

“I…um…I mean, Bundy…er…that is…you wanted to see…um, talk to me?” Now that’s an auspicious beginning, Jennie berated herself mentally, her outward grimace bringing a pained smile to the earl’s face.

Yes, infant, Kit replied silently, I do want to see you—waving goodbye as you ride out of my life. But he did not say the words. Jennie was his wife now, for good or ill, and they were just going to have to make the best of the cards Dame Fortune had so capriciously dealt them.

“Sit down, Jennie,” Kit said gently, then waited impatiently as she took up her seat on a straight-backed chair positioned at the far side of the room. “Would you like me to ring Renfrew for some tea? No? Then I suggest we get right down to it.”

Jennie jumped slightly—just as if he had suggested they lie down on the Aubusson carpet and proceed to make mad, passionate love—and Kit hastened to explain the reason for his summons. “We must organize this household, Jennie, as Renfrew and the skeleton staff my late uncle kept here are not sufficient to our needs if we mean to entertain during the Season.”

“We mean to entertain?” Jennie asked, trying to imagine herself in the role of hostess of this great mansion and failing dismally.

“We do. Unless that presents a problem?” Bourne inquired, deliberately needling her.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Jennie assured him through clenched teeth, wanting nothing more than to box his lordship’s ears. “I’ll set about hiring extra staff as soon as possible.”

“Renfrew will arrange things with a reputable agency, and you will only have to select from a group of eligible applicants.” Kit saw no possible way Jennie could land in the briers with the resourceful Renfrew to guide her.

“Oh,” Jennie murmured confusedly. “I had thought to place an advertisement about, as we do at home sometimes if the need arises.”

Kit quickly explained the folly of ever advertising for domestic help—heaven only knowing what sort of riffraff might then show up in Berkeley Square looking for a handout. At Jennie’s nod he promptly considered the matter to have been satisfactorily settled and went on to discuss a more delicate topic—one he had been secretly dreading to broach.

“Jennie,” he said gently, dropping to one knee beside her chair, “after giving the matter a good deal of thought, and with due consideration of your sensibilities and the uniqueness of our situation, I have decided not to ask for my husbandly rights just yet. I believe we should first become more comfortable with each other.”

“Oh, good!” Jennie exclaimed happily, before she could temper her response. “That is, I mean, why?…No! Don’t answer that. I don’t mean why, exactly. Disregard that if you will, please. What I mean to say is—thank you.” As Kit’s eyebrows shot up, she stumbled on hastily, “No! I didn’t mean that either, did I? I’m sorry I interrupted you, my lord,” she said, belatedly striving to behave like something more than completely brainless. “Please, continue. You were saying—”

“Actually, pet, I was done saying,” he told her, stifling his amusement at her obvious agitation. But this amusement changed rapidly to confusion as Jennie’s eyes took on a hard glint and her chin lifted in determination. “Now what?” he was then foolish enough to inquire.

Jennie, who should have been feeling nothing less than tremendous relief, had suddenly decided that the man in front of her was nothing less than the greatest beast in nature. How dare he decide not to exercise his rights? How dare he tell her anything? It was she who would do the telling!

As Kit watched, Jennie’s face did its little chameleon trick yet again and became soft and almost pleading in its woebegone expression. “Then you do not want me, my lord? I do not appeal to you—perhaps even repel you?”

Looking up at her, his heart touched by her wide, sad eyes, Kit protested passionately, “Of course I want you, infant. You appeal to me immensely. Isn’t that how we found ourselves in this situation in the first place?”

Now Jennie smiled in earnest. Rising to look down on her still-kneeling husband, she informed him brightly, “That is a great pity, my lord husband. For I do not want you, which is why I was so glad you requested this meeting. I was looking forward to telling you that you may have taken my hand in marriage, but that is all you will take from me.” So saying, and with her gape-mouthed husband looking on, she swept out of the room, at last looking every inch the countess.

CHAPTER FOUR

KIT ENTERED the dim main room of the Guards Club and cast his eyes about in the gloom with the alert, roving gaze of a man who has served on the Peninsula. He quickly spotted and nodded to several acquaintances, but it was not until his scrutiny was rewarded with the sight of one fellow in particular that he smiled and started across the uneven sanded floor of the converted coffeehouse.

“Ozzy, you old dog,” he called out loudly as he advanced on a painfully stylish young man of fashion sprawling at his ease at a table in the corner. “I knew I could count on you to be here.”

Ozzy Norwood, who had just then been profoundly contemplating a fly walking backward up the table leg and wondering that such powers would be given to a mere insect and yet denied one such as himself, was so startled at this violent intrusion upon his thoughts that his legs—which had been propped on a facing chair—slid from under him and his rump took up a closer association with the hard floor.

His mood, as he had over the years become accustomed to his own clumsiness, was not darkened by his ignominious position, and he swiftly if not gracefully regained his feet in time to be caught up in Kit’s enthusiastic bear hug of a greeting.

“Kit! Kit by damn Wilde! I’d heard you cashed it in at Badajoz,” Ozzy exclaimed when he could get his breath. “You’re no ghost, though. My bruised ribs can attest to that, by God! Let me loose, you great hairy beast, and let me look at you. What a sight you are, man.”

What Ozzy saw was his old friend and fellow officer: a little leaner, perhaps; a little tougher, most definitely; but those smiling eyes were still those of the Kit Wilde Ozzy had hero-worshiped since they were both in short coats. “You look wonderful, friend, and I mean it truly. Sit down. Where did you spring from? Last I heard you were wounded and not expected to make it. I took a ball in the shoulder in a damn silly skirmish in some benighted Spanish slum village soon after Badajoz and sold out—my heart just wasn’t in it, what with you gone and all—but I couldn’t get word of you anywhere. It was as if you fell off the face of the earth. Girl! Bring us a bottle of your finest! Sit down, I said, Kit, and stop standing there grinning like a bear. Have you nothing at all to say for yourself?”

Kit could only laugh and shake his head. “I find it gratifying in the extreme, Ozzy, that some things never change. You’re still chattering nineteen to the dozen, and woe betide anyone who dares to attempt to slide a word in edgewise.” Seating himself across the table from his friend, he took up the bottle the servant wench had brought and drank from it, saying, “Best order another for yourself, old man, as I’ve got plans for this one.”

“Girl!” Ozzy bellowed, thinking Kit was out to make a night of it and more than willing to match him drink for drink. “Bring a bottle. Bring a dozen bottles! Eh? Oh, yes, Kit, of course. And two glasses, you silly chit; what kind of heathens do you think you’ve got here?”

Three hours and more than a half-dozen bottles later, Kit and Ozzy were still sitting at the table, their reminiscences of the Peninsula having brought tears as well as smiles as their thoughts passed over events past and friends lost, and they were at last ready to speak about the present.

“Earl of Bourne, is it?” Ozzy repeated, clearly pleased for his old friend. “Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch. And there you were hobnobbing around the muck of Spain like the rest of us, just as if you was ordinary folk. Why ain’t you rubbing shoulders with the rest of the nobs at White’s or Boodle’s, instead of this lowlife at the bottom of St. James’s?”

“Oh, cut line, Ozzy. You belong to both those clubs, and Almack’s to boot, as I remember your tales of that woeful excuse for a select gathering spot for the haut ton and the ugly ducklings your mama forced you to bear-lead around the floor.”

“Snicker all you wish, you cynic,” Ozzy shot back, thinking to trump Kit’s ace, “but you’ll soon be hounding me to get you a voucher—need one, you know, if you’re on the hangout for a wife. Stands to reason you’ll be wanting to settle down now that you’re a blinkin’ earl.”

Kit drank deep from his glass. “I’ll take you up on that offer of securing a voucher, but I have to tell you, friend, I have been nothing if not thorough since last we met. Within a week of hitting these shores—having happily put those months of convalescence in Portugal behind me—I acquired a title, a large estate, a, I must say, considerable fortune, and a wife.”

Ozzy sat up straight in his chair, knocking his halffull glass over into his lap in the process. “Ain’t you the downy one! How could you get yourself tied up so fast? It’s not like you was hanging out for a wife so soon—no rich young bachelor would be so dense as to forgo the joy of wading through the debutantes for at least one Season on the town. Tell you what, you were in your cups—or suffering from some lingering fever caused by your wound. I’m right, aren’t I? Say I’m right, Kit, and then tell me her name. Is she pretty?”

“Put a muzzle on it, Ozzy,” Kit implored, his head beginning to reflect the combined assault of drink and his friend’s garrulous tongue. “Her name is Jane Maitland, and her father’s land runs alongside my estate.”

“Greedy bugger, ain’t you?” slipped in Mr. Norwood, earning himself a hard stare from the earl, who had hoped to find more sympathy from his oldest and best friend.

“That’s an insult, Ozzy, damned if it ain’t,” the new earl declared, slurring his words only slightly. “Damned if I won’t cut you dead when next we meet. Besides, Jennie’s a charming enough nitwit; I might have pursued her anyway, without her father threatening revenge if I didn’t do right by her.”

“You did wrong by her? And who’s Jennie? Thought you said her name was Jane.” Clearly Ozzy was perplexed. “You know, Kit, sometimes you don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“I’ve been known to have that reputation,” Kit said ruefully. “Ozzy,” he continued, leaning forward across the table confidingly, “I need your word of honor that this goes no further.”

“Word of a gentleman!” Ozzy swore, then hiccupped. “I’ll be quiet as a tomb, I swear it.” He leaned forward to put his nose smack against Kit’s. “Spill your guts, my friend, Ozzy’s here.”

And so, as the dusk gave way to darkness, and before drunkenness turned to near insensibility, Kit told his tale to his awestruck audience.

When the story was done and Ozzy had commiserated with his friend’s ill luck, the question was raised: “And what are you going to do about the chit? Can’t wish her gone, can’t do her in, not without the father kicking up a fuss.”

“Do with her?” Kit repeated, concentrating on the mighty task of directing his hand in the general direction of the bottle before him. “I don’t see that I have to do anything with her. After all, Ozzy, how much trouble can one small female be?”

FOR THE NEXT WEEK, Kit was conspicuous in Berkeley Square only by his absence—a fact Jennie duly took note of, sent up fervent thanks for, and secretly credited to her masterful handling of that single interview the day following their hasty marriage. Sure that her parting shot had put her firmly in the position of power—with the tenor and direction of their marriage to be dictated solely by her—she felt she had left the earl with no option but to cool his heels while she became “more comfortable” with their delicate situation.

And she had been immensely “comfortable” in his absence, as Kit had seemed to abandon even his half-hearted suggestion that they get to know one another better. If the truth be told, there were times Jennie almost forgot she was married at all, pretending instead that she was in town for the come-out her father had promised, then conveniently forgotten to deliver. If only Renfrew would refrain from calling her “my lady” every time she so much as passed in the hallway. And if Bundy would only cease her endless sermons on the behavior befitting a countess (and the folly of thinking one could play with fire without being burned—as if Jennie’s inadvertent compromise was the act of a misbehaving child with Kit cast in the role of a highly combustible match). And if only Goldie would stop dropping into a comical knee-cracking curtsy each time Jennie looked her way—which had driven Jennie to walking about with her eyes averted in some other direction, leading to more than a few stubbed toes and bruised shins.