There was not enough aspirin in the world for this headache. Scandal Runs in the Family, one headline trumpeted. And that was one of the mildest.
“There’s just enough truth in all of these, isn’t there?” Enough so that it would be difficult to sue the publishers, even if he did know a good lawyer. Maybe Eliza’s Mr. Hurst would help.
Thank the gods Alec was on his honeymoon. The last thing his brother needed was to have his past dredged up and the accusations that he was responsible for his first wife’s death. He finally had a chance to be happy now with the interfering Mary Evensong, who had somehow soothed the beast that was his big brother.
Nick had learned there was quite an incident last June on the estate, with the diminutive Mary saving the day, and Alec’s soul to boot. The scandalous details had been suppressed, but the London Ledger had hinted that the late and unlamented Dr. Josef Bauer had a hand in Edith Raeburn’s demise the year before.
The awful truth—Edith had killed herself, something loyal Alec was loath to reveal. Even with the new evidence of Bauer’s complicity, there was still enough of a sting to the Raeburn clan that the family’s reputation might never recover from it.
“What are you going to do? We can’t stay imprisoned in the house indefinitely,” Eliza said. “Not to mention no one will want to walk through the gauntlet to work here. Mrs. Daughtry brought the papers, but she’s left by now.”
“Don’t need the old bat anyhow,” Nick said. Was he feeling better? Hard to tell. He heard the blood singing in his ears and wondered if his brain was about to explode. His stomach was not altogether placid, either.
“I will have to call the agency when it opens.” Eliza looked grim. Of course—she didn’t care about his reputation. She just wanted her replacement to be hired. And no respectable female would want to be employed by “Nude-loving Nicky,” no matter how sweet Sunny was.
“You don’t have to stay. Didn’t you tell me Mrs. Quinn was taking care of Sunny? We were fine before you arrived. We’ll be fine after you go.” He heard the truculence in his voice, but it was too much of an effort to be cheery.
But they would be all right. Nick had been caring for his child for weeks on his own. She was bright and mostly clean when he could persuade her to wash behind her ears and had a generous little heart.
“That wouldn’t be right. I promised Mary I’d remain until you could hire someone. But even if you felt well enough to interview the candidates, they would be appalled at the commotion outside.”
“Maybe the reporters will give up and go away. Someone else is bound to do something far more interesting any minute now.”
Eliza stared at him with a most governess-like aspect. She might think of herself as a secretary, but he would bet most recalcitrant little boys would flinch at her gaze. “The papers say this Cross fellow was arrested for attempted murder.”
“Well, he had a gun, didn’t he? The policeman Tubby dragged back saw it. It wasn’t my idea to press charges. I would have been happy if old Phil just promised to stop beating Maisie.”
“Why would she say such things about you to the reporters if you tried to defend her?” Eliza asked.
Nick expelled an exasperated breath. “Women. Who can understand them? And I don’t suppose it says anywhere that I gave enough her money to keep herself together for at least a year. Phil should be out of jail by then. His attorney will bargain the charges down to simple assault. I have no objection. I don’t want Cross’s punishment on my conscience. I was a fool to try to interfere, and now I’ve brought disgrace on my brothers. I shouldn’t have come home.”
On the whole, it probably wasn’t fatal to his reputation to be splashed about the newspapers. He was an artist—he was supposed to be wild and unconventional. But Alec didn’t deserve any more misery now that he had his Mary, and Evan was miserable enough running the family business in the isolated Highlands.
He threw off the bedcovers. “I’ll have to get rid of them before my new neighbors try to evict me.”
“How?”
“My brothers always said I could talk my way out of anything.” Into anything, too, but he wasn’t going to brag about his prowess with women. Eliza Lawrence seemed immune to him, even after last night’s spectacular kiss.
Nick put one foot on the ground, and then the rest of him toppled forward onto the carpet.
“Blast.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Get back into bed.”
He must be having a relapse. After all, he’d made it up the stairs to the bathroom, and the walls had only wobbled slightly.
Eliza was fussing and clucking over him, tucking him in as if she were swaddling a helpless baby, when Mrs. Quinn coughed delicately at the door.
“I’ve brought up your breakfast.”
“Oh, thank you! Mr. Raeburn is light-headed and no doubt some sustenance will do him a world of good.”
“Yes, thank you for coming up all this way.” The thought of food turned his stomach, however. “How are you, Mrs. Quinn? And how is Sunny?”
“I’m much better, sir. It will take more than a little upset to lay me low for any length of time. I’m lucky, I am, always have been. Constitution like an ox. And the little girl is getting peevish, which is a sure sign she’s feeling better.”
“Is Mrs. Daughtry gone?” Eliza asked.
A look of distaste flitted across Mrs. Quinn’s face. “Oh yes. She snuck out the back way. I told her about the man in the garden, but she went anyway, and he pounced upon her. Serves her right.”
Eliza picked up a piece of buttered toast and tore off a corner. “I am going to get dressed and then go outside.”
Mrs. Quinn drew a sharp breath. “No!”
Nick agreed with the housekeeper and said so, warning Eliza of the pitfalls of talking to the press. It would make a bad situation worse, since they would seize on the least little thing and blow it out of proportion. They should be ignored like the worms they were.
“Someone must talk to them,” Eliza replied. “If we give them what they came for, they’ll go away. I’ll tell them to speak to your friend Sir Thomas if they need more information about the other night.”
Nick lifted a brow. “He might like that. Tubby thinks there is no such thing as bad publicity. He’s always doing something outrageous to get attention for his various projects.” And Nick was usually right by his side when he was in the country.
Mrs. Quinn excused herself. After Eliza ripped her toast to shreds, eating very little of it as she argued with him, she left, too. Nick stared at ramekin holding his cooling egg and knew it was beyond him to try to swallow any of it. He made do with his coffee, just the way he liked it.
He didn’t approve of Eliza talking to the press by herself, but had been unable to talk her out of it. It was true that she seemed an eminently capable female, but she had yet to interact with a news corps that made its own rules and its own facts.
As a gentleman, he couldn’t let her face them alone, even if he tumbled down the stairs and broke his neck trying to stand by her. That would make for a juicy story, he thought, as he buttoned his shirt with shaking fingers. It was too much to manage his cravat—they would just have to take him in his waistcoat and jacket.
It took him ages to get dressed. Even bending over to pull up his stockings was agony, the room spinning like Sunny’s favorite top. Nick frightened even himself when he looked in the mirror to brush his hair—his face was mottled with a myriad of colors that he’d have trouble duplicating with his paint box. The black stitches holding his forehead together were formidable as well.
Good. Let the jackals seen him in his pitiful state and then tell him Phil Cross was a poor innocent.
It took him another age to creep down the stairs, gripping the banister with white knuckles. He could hear the shouting on his front doorstep—the bastards weren’t even letting Eliza get a word in edgewise. Nick selected a cane from the rack as much to rattle as assist him in walking, and pulled open the door, nearly stumbling over Eliza.
“It’s Naughty Nicky! Naughty Nicky!” There was a plume of smoke from a camera and a swarm of men tried to mount the steps.
“Get back this instant!” Eliza cried, sounding most Boudicca-like. Something in her voice must have resonated, for some of the reporters froze in place.
“Don’t you dare come a step closer, unless you wish to become as ill as Mr. Raeburn. I have explained he has a concussion, but he also has the influenza.”
“That’s what that nurse said,” a fox-faced man called out from the clot on the sidewalk. Or did he resemble a weasel? “Probably just a ruse to get you in bed with him.”
Eliza turned white as a sheet. Even her rosy lips faded to bloodlessness. “I beg your pardon.”
“You ain’t really a governess, are you? Probably one of his nibs’s fancy pieces. You can call yourself a model, but we all know what that means, don’t we, boys?”
“I told you not to come outside,” Nick muttered. Black spots danced before his eyes. By the gods, he wasn’t going to faint, was he? Misguided Miss Lawrence needed him. She looked ready to faint herself.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, his voice scratchy. “Although I don’t believe you are behaving with much propriety to be called such. Apologize at once to Miss Lawrence.”
“How do you spell that? L-A-U or L-A-W?”
“If you print so much as an L, you’ll have me to answer to. The lady—and she is a lady—has nothing to do with my little dustup with Mr. Cross. Leave her out of it.”
“Is she your new lover?”
Nick felt Eliza’s tremors even though he stood a full foot away from her. He mustn’t touch her. Mustn’t.
“As I said, the lady has nothing whatever to do with why you are here. She is my daughter’s governess, new to my employ, and kindly came out to speak to you as she deemed me too ill to speak for myself. For her generosity, you are vilifying her. I won’t have it, do you hear? You know what happens to people who get on my wrong side.” Nick’s voice grew stronger, and by the end, he hoped they understood his threat. He’d have them locked up, too.
“Is it true Phil Cross tried to kill you? Are you having an affair with his companion Maisie? Why did you come back to England?”
There were a dozen more questions, all of which Nick declined to answer. He was keenly aware that Eliza was shaking like a leaf beside him, and the urge to wrap his arm around her was strong. Likely she would knock him down the steps into the throng if he tried to touch her.
Nick raised his hand, and a hush finally fell over the reporters.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you all, but there really is no story here. In my misplaced zeal to uphold the rights of the fairer sex, I went to speak to Mr. Cross about his treatment of one of my models. The young woman was beaten so badly that she could not work. Rather like me, except I do not rely upon my face for employment. I can assure you, I would do it again, no matter the consequences. No man should use his fists on a female, no matter how irritating she might be.” He gave Eliza an affectionate glance that she missed completely, staring off as she was at a bush in the tiny front patch of garden.
“Then why does Maisie accuse you of attempted murder? She says if you weren’t a toff, you’d be the one in the clink.”
“You’d have to ask her. If you need corroboration of the facts, you may speak to Sir Thomas Featherstone. He was a witness to the event and contacted the watch when my life was in danger.”
“All you rich nobs stick together,” the fox-weasel mumbled.
Nick had had enough. More than enough. If he didn’t get back inside, he was not going to be responsible for—
Why the hell not? He felt the beginnings of a smile, and the beginnings of something else deep in his gorge. With an apologetic shrug, he vomited on the feet of the reporters crowding in on him.
If he’d eaten his egg, the effluvium would have been more prolific, but one couldn’t have everything. The horror was comical as the men leaped away from the mess, howling in dismay.
“So sorry. Miss Lawrence did tell you I was ill. I do hope you won’t catch—”
But he was talking mostly to himself, the group of reporters hastening down Lindsey Street as if the devil himself were upon them.
All except for the photographer who had set up his tripod on the sidewalk. Nick would have talked cameras with him if he were feeling better, photography being still a relatively new art form for him. The man took one more shot of Nick and Eliza in front of the door, tipped his hat, and dismantled his equipment.
“There. I think that went well, don’t you?” Nick asked.
Eliza shook her head in wonder. “You did that on purpose.”
“Don’t be silly. One cannot make oneself vomit at will. If one could, the world would be a very treacherous place. No, I’m afraid my stomach is still a bit unsettled. I feel fathoms better now, though. But I believe I might need your assistance getting back upstairs to bed. The air has quite gone out of my balloon.”
“I’d say you have plenty of hot air to spare. You were very eloquent in your own defense, all that protection of women nonsense.”
Nick shut and locked the door behind them. “What do you mean, nonsense?”
“If you valued women, you would not subject them to pose for lascivious portraits.”
“Lascivious? May I suggest lasciviousness—is that a word?—is in the eye of the beholder. There is, as I stated earlier, nothing unnatural about the human body in its natural state. None of my models were importuned against their will to sit for me. They are working girls, just like you, Eliza. They need to make money, and I am a generous employer. What should they be doing? Walking the alleys of Shepherd Market? Depending upon some rough man like Phil Cross for their bread? Taking in sewing? Just what do you think is proper employment for young women of modest education and no fortune? I should think you’d want them to be given every opportunity.”
This heated speech cost Nick, and he slumped against the staircase. He was tired of Eliza’s disapproval—it seemed he could never win with her.
“Are you all right?”
“No, I am not all right. I find all this very tiresome. In every respect. If I were still in Italy—”
He sighed. Someone like Eliza would not appreciate hearing how lovely everything was when she was accustomed to the gray of England. What was the point of thinking of Italy? Sun-dappled walled gardens, ruby-red wine, and lemons fresh from the tree had not been enough to keep him there when his brothers had begged him to come home anyhow. He had a duty to his family, no matter how badly he was mucking it up. If he’d truly known how Alec had suffered after Edith died, Nick would have been home in an instant.
Daniel Preble would be enjoying his perfect villa soon now since they had traded houses. Of course in Nick’s case, he had paid well for the privilege. He’d be lucky if he ever saw any lira from Daniel toward his rent.
He was reminded he needed to pack up Daniel’s artwork and send it to him as he’d promised. Well, he was downstairs, was he not, and the thought of going upstairs all at once was not appealing. Let them go a floor at a time and get started inventorying Daniel’s paintings. He could manage to hold himself up for a while, couldn’t he?
“If you will stop haranguing me for half an hour, I need some help identifying my friend’s art. Then you can contact some removal men to crate them up and send them to him.”
“You are supposed to remain in bed,” Eliza reminded him.
“I can’t remain when I’m not there to begin with, can I? I promise I’ll be a good boy and go up when we’re finished.”
“I suppose these pictures feature more naked women.”
Nick was about to reply when he saw a miracle. One of Eliza Lawrence’s eyelids dropped, then rose, and her lips turned up. By the gods she was winking and smiling at him. Would wonders never cease?