The Scandals Of An Innocent

pretending that it did not matter.

But it mattered to Alice because she had trusted Miles and thought that she knew him. It mattered because she loved him and thought that he loved her. It mattered because he had sworn himself honest and yet he had not told her.

“I need to think,” she said. “Excuse me…”

She went out into the gardens. The day was fine and the early spring buds were starting to show on the trees, new leaves unfurling bright green. The cool air kissed her face. A bird sang in the hawthorn.

A maidservant, Alice thought. That could have been me.

Miles had once told her that there would have been desire between them whether she was an heiress or a servant and it was true. Was that what had happened with Susan Gregory, the maid in his father’s house? Perhaps they had been drawn to each other in mutual desire, for despite this betrayal, Alice still believed stubbornly that Miles was not the man to force an unwilling woman.

That could have been me, she thought again, except that I am rich and so I am Marchioness of Drummond, and Susan Gregory and her bastard child have nothing but a cottage to live in and their upkeep paid quarterly. It was something, she thought. At least Miles had not abandoned them as Tom Fortune had abandoned Lydia.

She found she was in the walled garden. She sat down on the bench close to where she had walked with Miles only a few weeks before.

Her heart was so sore she wanted to cry. He had not lied to her, she thought. He had simply omitted to tell her the truth. You know that I have been a rake. I have never concealed my past from you…

But neither had he exposed it. He had kept an enormous secret from her. It was no wonder that he had never wanted to tell her the truth of his quarrel with his father.

“Alice?”

She turned. Miles had come into the walled garden and was standing a few feet away, looking at her. For a moment his face seemed so dear and familiar to her that Alice wanted to throw herself into his arms and forget all she knew. She wanted to forge a future that was un-troubled by the past. But even as she grasped after it she knew that it would be a fraud, based on lies and deception and pretence. She could not close her eyes, as her mother had suggested, and pretend that she did not know. Perhaps others would do that in her place. She could not.

“What is it?” Miles said. He came to sit beside her and took her hand. “Your mother said that Frank Gaines had said something to upset you.” He was frowning. Alice wanted to reach up and smooth the lines from his brow, as though touching him would reassure her that he was hers and hers alone. Except that he was not because there was a woman and child who had a claim on him.

“Mr. Gaines-” Her voice was so faint she had to clear her throat and start again. “Mr. Gaines told me about Susan Gregory and her child,” she said. “Why did you not tell me, Miles?” She looked up from their entwined hands to his face. He had turned chalk pale beneath his tan. “Why did you not tell me?” she said again. Her heart was breaking. “Why did you not tell me about your mistress and your child?”

“SHE WASN’T MY MISTRESS. Clara isn’t my child.”

Even as he spoke Miles knew, with a feeling of utter desperation, that there was absolutely no way in which he could prove to Alice that he was telling the truth. If she chose not to believe him-and his failure to confide in her, his failure to open up and trust her, condemned him louder than any words-then there was nothing he could do except, perhaps, to break his word and force his father’s former mistress out of her retirement and into the light. The damage that such a course of action would cause would surely expose all the secrets that he had striven to hide for the past eleven years.

Alice was watching him and he could read nothing in her face other than blankness and pain. She had not really heard him. She was hurting too much. His love for her stole his breath. From the very beginning he had been afraid to lose Alice and he had told himself it was because of the money, but now he knew the thing that he could not bear would be to lose Alice herself. The money was nothing in comparison. It was Alice’s warmth and generosity of spirit and love that he craved. He was terrified of being left in the cold again.

The thing that he feared the most was about to come true.

“I should have told you,” he said. “I should have told you about my father and our quarrel and why I have been estranged from my family for so long. Susan was my father’s mistress. Clara is his child.”

Some shade of expression came back into Alice’s eyes and a little color into her face. “Your father’s mistress,” she repeated.

“I cannot prove it,” Miles said rapidly. “I cannot prove to you that I am telling the truth, Alice. My name is on all the documents.” He felt wretched. His future hung on the slenderest thread, that of Alice’s trust, and what was so appalling to him was that he knew he did not deserve to keep her because he had not trusted her with the truth. He had never even told her that he loved her. He had meant to do it. Each day he had tried out his feelings a little further, testing his love for her and his ability to feel it, letting go of the dark past. But now the past had caught up with him and it had happened too soon because he had not told Alice the one thing that she needed to know.

“Tell me,” she said, and he could not judge from her voice whether he had a chance or not.

“I was almost eighteen,” Miles said. “I had finished at Eton and there was talk of me going to Oxford in the autumn to study theology.” He grimaced. “Not a natural choice for me, but my papa wished me to follow him into the church.” He shrugged. “Truth to tell, I was enjoying London too much to care much either way. I was young and I had a little money, and…” He looked at Alice and shook his head. “Well, even then I was no saint.”

He had not been. There had been women and drinking and gambling, all the temptations of town so new and so exciting for a youth who thought that he knew everything and in truth was young and naive and knew nothing at all.

“I arrived home early after a long night at the gaming tables,” Miles said. “I had not lost too heavily. I hadn’t even tumbled a lightskirt that night. Life was good-simple, easy. I wanted my bed, but as I walked in I heard a sound in my father’s study and I thought someone might have broken into the house, so I went over to investigate. I wish…I had not.” He looked up and met her eyes. “I had to break the door open,” he said. “The noise roused half the household.”

“Who was in there?” Alice said. “Your father?”

“My father,” Miles said. His tone was harsh. “His sanctimonious Lordship, the Bishop Vickery. The man I had admired and respected, the man who preached against sin, was fornicating with a maidservant on the study desk. You can imagine what I thought when I saw him. For all my supposed sophistication I was an eighteen-year-old boy and I could scarce believe my eyes.” He stopped. “It was a disaster,” he said, after a moment. “People were coming running, alerted by the noise I had made breaking the door down. My mother, my sister…” He swallowed hard. “My father assessed the situation very quickly for a man in the throes of passion. He reacted far more quickly than I. He saw that we had an audience and promptly denounced me for my debauchery. He claimed to have been roused from his bed by the sounds of my fornication and to have come down to put a stop to his son’s wanton licentiousness.”

“But the girl,” Alice whispered. “The servant girl. Did she say nothing?”

“She was afraid of him,” Miles said. “I could see her fear. She did not say a word.”

He saw Alice close her eyes for a moment as though to ward off the image, and he knew she was imagining Susan Gregory’s terror and misery because it could have been her.

“What did you do?” she said. “What did you say?”

“I said nothing to contradict him,” Miles said. “At first it was because I could not quite believe what my father was doing. I thought I had misunderstood him, that it was all some terrible mistake. I waited for him to tell the truth, but instead he railed at me for my depravity and shameless lust. It was quite a sermon.”

Alice was staring at him and he was afraid that it was disbelief he could read in her eyes. “But surely,” she said. “He was your father. Why would he do such a thing?”

Miles’s lips twisted bitterly. “He was a bishop. He had his position to consider. Think of the scandal. There was my mother to think of, as well. Her family were most influential in the church.” He looked down at their joined hands and suddenly he realized that he had been gripping Alice so tightly that it must have hurt her. He tried to ease his hold but as soon as he let go of her he felt bereft.