Scandals of an Innocent

“I do not want you paying court to me,” Alice said. She was flushed with indignation now. “I loathe the idea. It…it makes a mockery of the whole concept of love and marriage.”

Miles laughed. “Miss Lister, you are so charmingly naive. Accept it.”

Once again he watched her struggle with her temper. “I suppose I have no choice,” she said angrily. She took a deep breath, recovered herself. “Mama will, of course, be present on all occasions to chaperone me, so that will at least ensure that you cannot try to circumvent the conditions and seduce me into marriage.”

“Excellent,” Miles said cheerfully. “I cannot help but feel that Mrs. Lister will support my suit.”

“Pray do not take that as personal approval,” Alice said sweetly. “If a duke comes along Mama will no doubt change her allegiance.”

Miles laughed. “I have no illusions, Miss Lister.”

“Nor indeed any principles,” Alice said.

“Naturally not,” Miles said. “But I can adopt some on a temporary basis.” He bowed again. “Good day, Miss Lister. Until tomorrow night.” He kissed the back of Alice’s hand and let her go, noting with satisfaction that she clasped one hand in the other, unconsciously running her fingers over the place his lips had touched her skin. She might detest him, he thought, but she was far from indifferent to his touch. This was going to be the perfect arrangement. He would have Alice in his bed, and her money would save him from the debtor’s prison. Everything was within his grasp.

Three months.

Total honesty.

The words echoed ominously in Miles’s head as he went out, down the steps of the house and onto the gravel sweep, but he told himself that he could do it to save himself from ruin. It would be easy.

Chapter Five

ALICE STOOD BY THE WINDOW and watched as Miles walked away up the drive. There was a casual assurance in his gait that spoke of utter confidence. He turned to look back and raised a hand in farewell, and she chided herself fiercely at having been caught watching him. Miles Vickery was the sort of man that women watched all the time and he knew it. She wished she had not been the one to confirm it.

With a sigh she dropped into the armchair that she had only recently vacated. She felt exhausted from the pressure of withstanding Miles’s blackmail and drained by an anger so deep and intense that she had thought it would consume her alive.

Miles Vickery. He was despicable.

He was just like all the rest. Men like Miles took what they wanted with a coldhearted disregard for the feelings of others.

She thought of Miles, and of Tom Fortune, who had ruined Lydia and callously abandoned her, and of all those nameless, faceless, careless sons of the nobility who saw any woman as fair game and who believed that a servant girl in particular was placed on earth to clean their boots and tend to their pleasure, to be picked up, used and discarded at whim, and she felt the fury well up in her again. She remembered Jenny, the sixteen-year-old scullery maid at the house next to Lady Membury’s in Skipton, whom she had found crying on the area steps, having been turned out for being pregnant.

Jenny had sworn the master of the house had forced himself on her and that the mistress had turned her out in a jealous fury. Alice often wondered what had happened to Jenny. She had tried to find her when she had come into her money, but like so many other disgraced servant girls, Jenny had vanished without a trace. Then there was Jane, who had worked for the Cole family. Alice’s brother, Lowell, had found Jane lying in a ditch near Cole Court, raped, bleeding and bruised. He had taken her to the farm at High Top and Alice had sent for the doctor, but it had been too late to save Jane. No charges had even been brought against anyone for Jane’s assault. Alice had known the constable did not really care. It was as though because Jane had served others she did not count as a person. She did not matter. She had died and no one had paid any heed.…

Restless with anger, Alice got to her feet and walked across to the window again, where she stood tapping her fingers on the sill. It was blindingly obvious, she thought bitterly, staring blankly out at the bright, sunny day, that had she still been a maidservant, Miles would only ever have looked at her with seduction in mind if he had noticed her at all.

Seduction, conquest, desertion…

The man was beyond despicable. He was unforgivably selfish and callous. Now that she was rich, he wanted both her money and her body, but his lack of respect for her was exactly the same as if she were still the housemaid she had been two years before. He wanted her only for what she could give him.

She was in the devil of a coil now, blackmailed into an engagement to a man she detested in order to protect those she loved. She could only hope that Miles would fail utterly to meet the requirements of Lady Membury’s will. He ought to fail, since he was congenitally incapable of honesty. He had proved it time and again. And yet…She shivered. There was something utterly single-minded about Miles and she had the dreadful conviction he was going to succeed.

He wanted her money.

He wanted her.

Alice wrapped her arms about her, cold now even with the fire burning hot in the grate. She didn’t understand the way Miles made her feel but she didn’t like it. How could she be so drawn to a man she despised, how could she tremble when he kissed her, how could she feel his touch echo through her whole body, when she hated him? Miles’s behavior only served to prove the arrogant disregard with which he went about taking whatever it was that he wanted. She was not going to succumb to this insidious desire, fall into his arms and give herself to him when he deserved nothing from her other than that she should tell him to go to hell.

For a moment she considered going to the authorities and telling them the truth about the theft and begging for clemency, but before the thought was even formed she realized that it would not serve. She could never take the risk of leaving her family ruined, and of leaving Lydia unprotected and alone for a second time.

Her skin flushed with heat as she thought about her encounter with Miles. He was so dangerous, predatory and utterly merciless in taking what he wanted, and she was so ridiculously naive and inexperienced. It was richly ironic that she was such an innocent, for she was no pampered heiress who had grown up cosseted and protected by wealth and privilege. She had gone out into the world and worked until her bones ached and her head had spun with tiredness. She had seen much of life, but she had never before had to deal with a man like Miles Vickery and she knew now that she was far, far out of her depth.

The door opened and Lydia Cole stuck her head around. “Has Lord Vickery left? Your mama tells me that you are going to marry him.”

“Mama is imagining things, as usual,” Alice said quickly. She did not want to have to tell anyone about the agreement between herself and Miles yet. They all knew her so well that none of them would believe she had agreed to marry him voluntarily. She had to think of a convincing excuse. Madness sprang to mind.

“You know that Mama wants me to marry a lord,” she said. “Which one is immaterial—and so she imagines that every man who calls is a potential husband.”

“Well, to be fair, most of them have called to press their suit,” Lydia said, “and you know how desperately she wishes you to be settled.” She came into the room and eased herself into the other armchair, sighing heavily as she sat down. “Oh, I am so tired these days! I swear I could sleep the whole day away.”

“At least you have a better color today,” Alice said approvingly. “I was very worried about you yesterday. Has your sickness improved?”

“No,” Lydia said. “I feel wretchedly ill morning, noon and night!”

Alice privately thought that a part of Lydia’s suffering might well be caused by the mental anguish of having loved Tom Fortune so dearly and having been so horribly disillusioned in him. He was another reckless gambler like Miles Vickery, an out-and-out rake and philanderer who had taken Lydia’s love and smashed it to pieces. He had seduced her, made her pregnant, abandoned her and wound up in prison for his criminal activities. Lydia never spoke of her feelings for Tom, and Alice did not push her into it. She knew that Lizzie sometimes tried to get Lydia to open up, but Lydia remained adamantly silent.

The other matter they never discussed was what would happen when the baby was born. Alice had every intention of making over to Lydia the house in Skipton that Lady Membury had left her, so that Lydia and the baby could have a secure future. She had already instructed her lawyer to draw up the papers and she hoped desperately that her betrothal to Miles could not alter the arrangement. Lydia had once been an heiress herself but it seemed unlikely that her parents, the current Duke and Duchess of Cole, would settle any money on their disgraced daughter now, so Alice thought it imperative that she should protect her friend.

Lydia lay back in her chair with a heartfelt sigh and closed her eyes. She was now well advanced into her fourth month of pregnancy, and her slight body looked swollen and a little ungainly already. Mrs. Lister had commented that Lydia was increasing at so great a rate that she might be carrying twins.

“I will go and make you some dry toast,” Alice said, getting up. “Lady Membury told me that when she was increasing she found it was the only thing she could manage to eat.”

Lydia waved a hand to stop her. “That would be kind—in a moment. I did not realize that Lady Membury had had any children,” she added. She looked at Alice, hesitation reflected in her eyes. “If she had children of her own, why did she leave her fortune to you, Alice?”

“Her daughter died and she had no other relatives,” Alice said. Her former employer’s eccentric decision to leave her vast fortune to her housemaid had caused uproar in the tight-knit local society. It had been a shock to Alice, too, but it was also understandable and deeply poignant for her. “You know that she had been a recluse for many years,” she said. “She had no family or friends and she had turned against the local vicar years ago, so there was no way in which she would choose to leave her money to the church.”

“I can see myself ending like that,” Lydia said, with a flash of bitterness. “Alone and with no one in the world…”

“No, you will not,” Alice said fiercely, grabbing her hand. “You have friends about you, and anyway, this baby of yours thrives and is strong. Perhaps when he or she is born your parents will relent—”

“God forbid,” Lydia said involuntarily, and they both burst out laughing. “Lady Membury must have loved you,” Lydia added. “You would have been a great comfort to her, Alice. I imagine she was very lonely and saw you as the daughter she had lost.”

“Perhaps she did,” Alice said. There was a lump in her throat. “We used to talk about all manner of things,” she said, thinking back, “and go driving together, and drink bohea tea and gin, and play cards together.”

“And I suppose you let her win,” Lydia said.

“Well, of course,” Alice said. “She was my employer—and she had a fortune of eighty thousand pounds!”

They both burst out laughing again but then Alice sobered. “All the same, Lydia,” she said, “I sometimes wish that she had never left me her money. It can be a curse as well as a blessing.” She stopped, finding that she was on the verge of blurting out the truth of Miles’s blackmail to her friend. “I’m sorry,” she said, with a little constraint. “That sounds most appallingly ungrateful when my life is materially so much easier now than it was a few years ago.”

“Being an heiress is not always a fortunate thing,” Lydia said bitterly. “Look at the depths of greed it has driven Sir Montague to, with his ghastly plans to fleece us all with the Dames’ Tax and all his other medieval laws! And then there is Tom…” Her voice faltered a little, and Alice saw her knuckles whiten as she pressed her hands together in her lap. “I do not think he would have paid me the slightest attention had I been penniless. I think he knew that as he is a rackety younger son, Mama and Papa would never countenance his attentions to me. He deliberately sought to get me pregnant so that I would be obliged to marry him. The plan only went wrong when his criminal actions were exposed and he was arrested.”

“Oh, Lydia!” Alice was appalled at the heartless tale her friend was outlining. The same thoughts had occurred to her but she had hoped that Lydia had kept at least a few of her illusions. “I am sure that Tom cared for you—” she began, knowing that she did not believe it but wanting only to give comfort.

“Oh, pish!” Lydia said. “Tom cared for no one but himself. Which is why you should be careful of Miles Vickery, Alice.” Her gaze sought Alice’s and there was anxiety in the depths. “I know he is different in that he is a marquis, even if an impoverished one, and so has a title to trade for your money, but in terms of character I think him even more of a rake than Tom, more ruthless, more dangerous.”

“How right you are,” Alice said with feeling.