Nicola Cornick - One Night Of Scandal

There was a flare of light as someone whipped the sheet from about them. Deb made an incoherent sound against Richard’s mouth but he did not relent, continuing to kiss her with a purposeful pleasure that drew a roar of shock and scandalised comment from their audience. Eventually he let her go, and Deb blinked in the light. The ballroom was packed with people and illuminated with a hundred candles. In the long mirrors at the end of the ballroom, Deb could see their reflection. They looked utterly indecent, she tied with her hands behind her back and Richard with his arms about her in the closest and most private of embraces. Deb rested her head against Richard’s shoulder in appalled resignation.

For once, Lady Sally Saltire looked shocked and was entirely silenced. For once, Justin Kestrel also lost his customary aplomb.

‘Good God, Richard-’ he began.

‘Thank goodness you are here, Justin,’ Richard said coolly to his brother. ‘Untie these bonds so that I can kiss my fiancée properly, there’s a good fellow.’

With superb aplomb, Justin Kestrel loosened the ropes that bound his brother to the easel and shook him formally by the hand once he was freed.

‘Congratulations on causing a sensation, Richard,’ he said.

Richard grinned. ‘Thank you, Justin.’

Lady Sally hastened to help Deb and the biting ropes fell away, leaving her rubbing her wrists. Before she had time to feel any of the mortification that the situation surely demanded, Richard had scooped her up in his arms and kissed her with pent-up passion and a dizzying love that made her head swim. Lady Sally’s guests started to applaud.

‘I imagine that you will wish to continue your celebrations in private,’ Lady Sally said, looking as though she was trying not to laugh. ‘I will send for your carriage.’

‘And I will send for the Bishop of Ipswich,’ Justin said, ‘with a special licence!’

Richard kept his arm protectively about Deb as he ushered her through the crowd and eventually they found themselves out on the steps of Saltires with the carriage waiting.

‘What a shocking night,’ Deb said, sighing, as she collapsed on the seat. ‘Should you not go back and tell your brother what has happened?’

‘I told Justin that I would talk to him later,’ Richard said, drawing her close into his arms. ‘I am all for neglecting business in favour of pleasure tonight.’

Deb sighed, snuggling close. ‘Do you think that we might manage one more night of scandal before the bishop arrives with the special licence and I am at last respectably married?’ she asked, a little wistfully.

Richard smiled as he drew her closer still. ‘I think we might,’ he said, ‘and though I cannot wait for us to marry, Deb, I assure you that we shall never, ever be respectable.’

‘What an extraordinary business that led up to your brother’s marriage,’ Lady Sally Saltire said, a fortnight later as she shared a late-night glass of brandy with Justin Kestrel in her study at Saltires. ‘Although I had predicted that Richard and Deborah would marry, I had not imagined that it would come about in such a sensational manner. The whole of Woodbridge is still agog!’ She cast him a thoughtful glance. ‘Who could have played such a trick on them?’

‘I am sure that I have no notion,’ Justin Kestrel said, his dark gaze betraying nothing but blandness.

Lady Sally knew him too well to be deceived. ‘Nonsense, my dear Justin. There is something havey-cavey going on in Midwinter and you know it!’

‘Mayhap so.’ Justin’s tone was as unrevealing as his expression and Lady Sally sighed.

‘I can see that you mean to tell me nothing.’ She fidgeted a little with her glass. ‘Just so long as you do not suspect me, Justin.’

There was a flash of feeling in Justin Kestrel’s eyes that looked oddly like pain and Lady Sally found her heart beating a little faster. It was surely a very long time since she and Justin Kestrel had had the power to hurt each other and yet it seemed that she still had feelings for him. No, she knew that she did. Feelings too complicated to give a name, too late to act upon…

‘Tell me something, Sally.’ Justin spoke slowly.

There was a tension in the room. It caught at Lady Sally’s nerves, making her tremble. She wanted to tell Justin not to ask her anything too difficult, yet she was obliged to admit that she owed him any explanation that he cared to request.

‘Why did you choose Stephen Saltire over me?’ Justin asked.

There it was, the one thing that she had dreaded. She looked up from the amber swirl of brandy in her glass to meet his steady regard.

‘He asked nothing of me,’ she said, as lightly as she could. ‘I was young and not very brave, and you…’ she swallowed the lump in her throat ‘…you were too much of a risk, my dear. I sensed an intensity in you I was uncertain I could match. Whereas Stephen-’ she smiled with affectionate memory ‘-Stephen was easy, straightforward, accepting. He made life easy for me too.’

The silence lingered until Lady Sally broke it by fiddling restlessly with the seam of her gown.

‘So Richard and Deborah are wed within three months and I win my wager,’ she said brightly. ‘You had not forgot that we made a bet at Lord and Lady Newlyn’s wedding, Justin?’

‘No, indeed,’ Justin said. ‘What do you demand in payment?’

Lady Sally put her head on one side thoughtfully. ‘Oh, merely that you attend the ball to celebrate the launch of my watercolour calendar, I think,’ she said. ‘Having lost one of my greatest attractions in the person of your brother, I need the cachet a duke will bring to gain the attention of the ton!’

‘Nonsense,’ Justin said. He smiled. ‘I shall be there, nevertheless. That was a very easy stake to agree, my dear. You could have asked a deal more of me.’

‘I dare say,’ Lady Sally said. ‘I did not wish to tempt fate, however.’

Once again a ripple of tension seemed to spread through the room. Lady Sally found herself unable to meet the Duke’s eyes and this time it was Justin who changed the subject.

‘I seem to remember that your prediction was that Lucas would be next to fall in love,’ he remarked. ‘Do you stand by that, Sally?’

Lady Sally bent her sparkling smile on him. ‘Of course! I assure you that I am never wrong on matters of matrimony!’

‘Another wager, then?’ Justin suggested, with the shadow of a smile.

For once Lady Sally seemed reluctant. ‘I am not certain-’

‘Then you do not really have faith in your own prophecy?’

‘It is not that.’ Lady Sally flashed him a look. ‘Lucas is less predictable, for he has not yet met the lady of his heart. Nevertheless, I believe that when he does-and it will be soon-the matter will be arranged in the shortest time.’

Justin nodded sagely. ‘So why not take the wager?’

‘Because I may-just may-lose this one and…’ Lady Sally hesitated ‘…I am not certain what payment you would demand, Justin.’

Justin gave her a flicker of the wicked smile that had turned her heart inside out when she had been a débutante of eighteen.

‘Take the gamble,’ he said softly.

After a moment, Lady Sally held out her hand and his own closed about it to seal the deal. This time he did not kiss the back of her hand as he had done at the Newlyns’ wedding, but turned it over and kissed the palm.

‘Do you wish to win or lose?’ he asked her.

Lady Sally stood up. She felt very strongly that it was time he should be gone, or she could not foretell the outcome of the evening. She had no wish to do something that she might later regret, and talk of the past was notoriously dangerous.

‘I always win, Justin,’ she said sweetly. ‘Surely you know that, my dear.’

But when the Duke had left and Lady Sally was all alone in her big four-poster bed, she admitted to herself alone that this time a certain whim in her made the thought of losing almost more attractive than that of winning.

‘I rely on you, Lucas,’ she said as she blew out her candle. ‘Do not let me down, or I very much fear that your brother will catch me at last, and I have outrun him for these fifteen years. Well, we shall see…’

And she fell asleep, to dream of the past and the as yet unpredictable future.