Sins and Scandals Collection. Nicola Cornick
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He poured for her and clinked his glass softly against hers in a mocking salute, two adversaries meeting and acknowledging that the game was going to be a fierce one. She waited for him to make the opening move. Garrick obliged.
“Does Lady Grant know that when you pretend to be attending lectures and concerts you are actually stalking innocent noblemen in their own homes?” he asked. “Does she know you have been sleeping in my bed?”
A hint of color, rose-pink like her gown, stole into Merryn’s cheeks. “I don’t stalk noblemen in the plural,” she said.
“Then it’s just me,” Garrick said. “How flattering.” He waited until she had taken the window seat then sat down opposite her and stretched out his long legs. The leather wing chair was comfortable, enveloping.
“So,” he said again. “Does Lady Grant know?”
Merryn took a sip of her champagne. He knew she was buying time. A pulse beat in the hollow of her throat, betraying her nervousness.
“No,” she said, after a moment. “She knows nothing of what I do.” She looked up. Her eyes held a mocking spark. “What are you going to do about it?” she said.
“I could tell her,” Garrick said thoughtfully. “I could tell everybody.”
Merryn looked thoughtful. She caught her lower lip between small white teeth. “No one would believe you,” she said politely. “I am Lady Merryn Fenner. I am a bluestocking. I am above suspicion.” She held his gaze, her own steady and bright.
“Except that a woman’s reputation is so vulnerable,” Garrick said gently. “Was vulnerable not the word you used when you warned me at the library? A whisper of scandal and a reputation dies. Your reputation, Lady Merryn.”
Merryn’s gaze narrowed on him. “That is true, of course,” she said. She dangled her half-full champagne glass between her fingers. “If you want to frighten me, though,” she added, “you will have to use something more powerful than society’s censure. I don’t care for it very much.”
A point to her.
“You don’t seek to wed?” Garrick asked. “A tattered reputation might well put paid to your chances.”
She flicked him a look of contempt. “I’d rather become a nun.”
“I assure you,” Garrick said, “that you do not have the least aptitude for it.”
She blushed at his reference to her unrestrained response to his kiss but the look in her eyes was still one of deep disdain. “Oh, well,” she said, “if I change my mind I am sure that your thirty thousand pounds will repair any tatters in my reputation, your grace.” She shrugged. “That is if I find a man I prefer to my books. I confess I have not done so yet.”
“You are meeting the wrong men, then,” Garrick said.
She laughed. “Which is hardly surprising, I suppose, if I frequent the bedchambers of men like you.” She gave him a very direct look. “And you, your grace? Do you seek to remarry?” She paused. “I suppose not. It is not exactly your forte, is it?”
Ouch. Two points.
“I wondered whether you wished me to return your possessions to you,” Garrick said, upping the stakes. “Return the evidence of your midnight wanderings, if you like? Your book, your spectacles … Can you see without them?”
“Perfectly, I thank you,” Merryn said.
“Then they are for disguise only?”
She gave him another pitying stare. “You have too vivid an imagination, your grace. My glasses are for reading, not for disguise. Fortunately I have two pairs.”
“There is also your underwear,” Garrick said.
She stiffened. “You have been rifling through my underwear?”
“You left it in my drawers.”
“Then I think perhaps you had better keep it,” Merryn said icily “I don’t really want it returned secondhand.”
“I haven’t been wearing it,” Garrick pointed out mildly. “Merely looking at it.”
“How singular of you.”
“Not really,” Garrick said. “If you know anything of men, Lady Merryn—”
“I don’t.” She cut him off. There was something defensive in the way that she withdrew from him as though he trespassed on forbidden ground. Her voice was soft but her fingers, rubbing ceaselessly over the embroidery of the window cushions, betrayed her agitation. Merryn Fenner, he suspected, was not accustomed to people getting close to her and stripping away her defenses.
“I know nothing of men,” she said, “nor do I wish to know.” Her tone eased a little. “My sisters … They are the ones to whom you should address your gallantries, your grace. They are wasted on me.”
Garrick wondered if she resented being in the shadow of Joanna Grant and Tess Darent, both such beautiful, charming women. Had she deliberately taken this step back, refused all competition, made her world in books and libraries, lectures and scholarly research where they could not and did not want to follow? And could she not see that she, too, was beautiful and oh so desirable, like a tiny pocket goddess with her tumble of silver gilt hair and those wide blue eyes? It seemed not. Or perhaps she simply did not value good looks. Perhaps she did not even want to be beautiful.
He shifted in the armchair, studying her thoughtfully.
“What do you really do when you are pretending to attend your bluestocking soirees?” he asked. “And when you are not stalking me?”
She considered him for a moment. Her eyes were a smoky-violet in the shadowed room. “I lead a blameless life, your grace,” she said. “I really do attend bluestocking soirees. I read and I study. I go to Professor Brande’s lectures at the Royal Institution and to poetry readings and concerts.” She took another sip of champagne. She sounded cool and amused.
Garrick smiled slowly. “You also work for Tom Bradshaw,” he said.
Merryn jumped. A drop of champagne fell on the rose gown, staining the material to a deeper pink. They had been fencing before, testing each other’s defenses. Now the nature of their exchange had altered. Garrick sensed this was really important to her.
“How did you know that?” She spoke abruptly. Garrick was interested that she did not try to deny it, even for a second.
He shrugged. “I have been asking questions about you, of course.” He tilted his head and studied her, watching her closely. “You know how the system operates, Lady Merryn. I pay someone to find out about you.”
He saw her fingers tighten on the stem of the champagne glass. “You paid someone to do your dirty work for you,” she said. Scorn tipped her words. “Yes, that fits.”
“It’s quicker,” Garrick said. “Bradshaw is corrupt,” he added. “But surely you know that?”
Her gaze flashed to his face. “He is not!” She sounded outraged at the slur. “Tom works for justice! He helps people—” She broke off, as though she realized too late that she had revealed too much.
“No,” Garrick said gently. “That is why you work for Bradshaw.” He paused. He could see it all, her blind quest for justice and the determination that drove her. She felt a burning need to set right perceived wrongs and he would wager his entire fortune that it had been initiated by her brother’s death at his hands.
“It is, isn’t it?” he persisted. “You do it because you believe in justice and fighting for what is right, and to help the underdog?”
“I do it for the money,” Merryn said defiantly. She tilted her chin up, her look defying him to contradict her. He had trespassed, Garrick thought.