Whisper of Scandal. Nicola Cornick
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handsome then as he was now, though with a softer edge to him. And he had had a wife in tow, a pretty little blonde creature, all giggles and flounces. Annabel, Amelia? Something beginning with A. Joanna could not quite recall her name but she had looked at Alex adoringly and had been as charming and as superficial as thistledown.
Guilt stirred within her. Generally she did not make a habit of kissing other women’s husbands since she detested the fact that so many other women had kissed hers. David’s infidelities had been no secret, but she had no intention of emulating him. Kissing Alex had been a mistake in more ways than one, it seemed. Already reeling from her startling physical reaction to his touch, she now felt angry with him for being just another philandering bastard.
Alex bowed. He did it elegantly for all that she had tried to dismiss him as no more than an uncouth sailor in his faded navy captain’s uniform. No matter that the uniform suited him rather too well, fitting his broad shoulders most flatteringly and emphasizing his muscular physique. He was a man of great physical presence with strength and authority in every line of his bearing.
Just as David had been … She shivered.
“Alexander, Lord Grant, at your service, Lady Joanna,” he said.
“More at my service than I require, I think,” Joanna said coldly. “I have no desire for a lover, Lord Grant.”
He smiled, a flash of white teeth in his tanned face. “I am desolate.”
Liar. She knew that he disliked her as much as she disliked him.
“I doubt it,” she said. “Whatever made you suggest such an outrageous thing?”
“Whatever made you kiss me as though you meant it if you did not?”
Once again the air between them hummed with tension as taut as a spun thread. Ah, the kiss. He had a point. She had never before kissed a stranger with such a degree of enthusiasm. She gave a little flick of her fingers, dismissing the question.
“Had you been a gentleman, you would have pretended that we were betrothed rather than lovers.” She stopped, glared. “Though I suppose that having a wife already made such a course of action an impossibility for you.”
For a moment he looked puzzled and then his face cleared. “I am a widower,” he said.
He was succinct, Joanna conceded. Unlike David, who had always tried to buy popularity with wordy compliments, this man seemed brief to the point of abruptness. Clearly he did not care for anyone else’s opinion, good or bad.
“I am sorry.” She uttered the formal condolence. “I remember your wife. She was charming.”
His expression snapped shut like a door slamming. Cold, forbidding … Clearly he did not wish to discuss Annabel … Amelia or whatever her name had been.
“Thank you.” He sounded brusque. “But I thought that I was here to condole with you rather than the reverse.”
“If you wish to be conventional.” Joanna could be succinct, too, especially when she was angry.
“You do not mourn him?” His voice held both censure and anger.
“David died over a year ago,” Joanna said. “As you know. You were there.”
Alex Grant had written to her from the Arctic, where David’s final naval mission to find a northeast trade route via the Pole had-literally-died in the endless frozen wastes. The letter had been as short and to the point as the man himself, though she had been able to discern through the words his deep sorrow at the loss of so noble a comrade. It was not a sorrow she could share and Joanna had made no pretense of it.
Alex’s dark gaze flickered over her. She could feel how tightly he was holding his temper in check now. The air was alive with his contempt.
“David Ware was a great man,” he said through his teeth. “He deserved more than this—” His gesture encompassed the bright room, devoid of any gesture of mourning.
He deserved better than you …
Joanna heard the words even though they were unspoken.
“We were estranged,” she said, her light tone masking the pain beneath. “You were his friend. Surely you knew.”
His mouth tightened to a thin line. “I knew he did not trust you.”
Joanna turned a shoulder. “The feeling was mutual. Do you think, then, that I should add hypocrisy to my sins and pretend to care that he is dead?”
She saw something feral and violent flash across Alex Grant’s face and almost recoiled before she realized that it was loyalty, not anger, that drove him.
“Ware was a hero,” he said.
Oh, she had heard that so many times it made her want to scream. In the beginning she had believed it, too, plucked from an obscure vicarage in the country, swept away by David’s swashbuckling spirit, betrayed by him before the ink was barely dry on the wedding register and betrayed again more deeply years later. She clenched her fists; her palms were hot and damp. Alex Grant was watching her and his dark gaze was far too perceptive. She forced her tense muscles to relax.
“Of course he was,” she said lightly. “Everyone says so, so it must be true.”
“Yet it seems that you are already considering replacing him,” Alex said. “I hear tales in the clubs of your suitors falling over themselves to win your hand.”
For a moment his outspokenness silenced Joanna, then she was furious, driven to a whole new level of anger. She wondered what David had told this man about her. Enough to make him dislike her intensely-that was for sure. His aversion to her was not overt, but she could feel it like a constant current beneath the surface, no matter how skillfully, how wickedly, he had kissed her.
“If you listen to gossip in the clubs you will hear all manner of lies,” she said. “You mistake, Lord Grant. I have no desire to remarry.”
Never.
He raised one black brow. “Merely to kiss random strangers, then?”
Oh, this man was provoking. More than that, he was infuriating. Because she knew she did not have a leg to stand on. She had kissed him, after all, not the other way about. It had been an impulse, a desperate attempt to dissuade John Hagan, her husband’s cousin, who had been becoming ever more persistent and disturbingly importunate in his attentions over the past few weeks. Trust her to choose the one man in London who not only called her bluff but also raised the stakes by claiming her as his mistress.
“I think you will find,” she said coldly, “that in announcing our apparent liaison you will have created quite a stir in the ton. John Hagan will waste no time in spreading the scandal. I cannot believe that was what you intended when you came to condole with me.”
“I merely took my cue from you.” His dark eyes studied her, again disconcertingly keen and thorough. There was no liking in them nor the admiration to which she was accustomed, nothing but cool, calculating consideration. Had he really been David’s friend? It seemed extraordinary to her. He was steady where David had been quicksilver, slipping through the fingers. The set of his mouth was firm and decisive where David had been weak and easily swayed. Every angle of Alex’s face looked hard, as though chiseled from the rock of his Scots heritage.
“So why did you kiss me then?” His voice had the faintest of Scots lilt, too. It sounded exotic. “I asked you before but it seems you have a bad habit of failing to answer those questions you dislike.”
Damn him, he had noticed that as well, had he? She raised her chin.
“I needed to … persuade John Hagan to cease his attentions to me,” she said. She folded her arms tightly about her body in an attempt to ward off the fear that chilled her whenever John Hagan was close by. “He is David’s cousin,” she explained, “and as such he claims to be the head