Season for Scandal Read Online Free Page B

then removed a bit of fluff from one coat sleeve.
    “I would,” Edmund said. “And Jane would. Or she ought.”
    Edmund was not surprised when Withey ignored this, as he did most of the unaccountable things Edmund said. The valet only pronounced his master acceptably dressed and summoned the carriage.
    Now that the day was here, Edmund was eager to get the wedding over with before some accident could ruin everything. A bite from a rabid dog. A bolt of lightning. Collapsing buildings. A savage with a poisoned dart.
    No one had ever accused Edmund of being unimaginative.
    But the drive to Xavier House was blessedly brief and free from accidents. And as soon as he entered the house, he was greeted by a small group of familiar faces, none of which appeared to be rabid or lightning-struck.
    Jane’s ruddy little mother had trundled in from her country cottage, and in honor of the occasion, had stuffed her round body into a heavily starched gown. Xavier was here, of course, as dark and fashionable as always. His elegant wife, too: a quiet brunette with a mischievous smile. The Countess of Irving, Lady Xavier’s aunt. Edmund had met her the previous year and had found her to be overly blunt and deeply loyal. Not surprisingly, Jane liked Lady Irving a great deal.
    “Where is the bride?” Edmund craned his neck to look past the clergyman and the few other guests in the drawing room.
    “Making herself beautiful,” huffed Lady Irving. “None of us thought it would take so long.”
    “Aunt,” hissed Xavier’s wife.
    Just then a light tread sounded at the doorway to the drawing room, and the guests turned toward it as one. Edmund followed their gaze.
    There was Jane, whom he was accustomed to seeing in heavy, fussy gowns. Jane, who was rarely without a belligerent expression or a wicked gleam in her eye. She stood now in frail white silk and gauze, her light brown hair twisted back from a face as sweetly pale as a blossom.
    She looked very pretty, and very unlike herself. As she accepted greetings in a quiet voice, she seemed fragile. Yet Edmund knew she was not; not this woman who had tried so valiantly to forge her own independence, only to wind up in a leg shackle.
    The ceremony was quick. The ancient vows made Mrs. Tindall sniffle. The ring went onto Jane’s finger without a hitch. So they were married.
    And then into the dining room for a wedding breakfast. Xavier was generous with the champagne and sweetmeats, and it wasn’t long before the event turned rollicking. Lady Irving waved her champagne flute around while she held forth on how Xavier House ought to be redecorated. Mrs. Tindall giggled at everything, then began the slow blink of tipsiness turned drowsy. A suntanned man in early middle age—Edmund had never met him before, so he must have been a guest of Mrs. Tindall or Lord Xavier—began regaling them with tales of life in India.
    “ Droit du seigneur is the way of things there,” he said. “When a servant woman is to be married, her master visits her the night before the wedding.”
    Edmund had never heard of such a custom in India, but he was hardly an expert.
    “As though a new bride doesn’t have enough to deal with,” said Jane to the man. Daniel Bellamy, that was his name. “Why must her master add to her list of chores? The timing is too burdensome. Let him visit her some other time.” She took a sip of champagne. Above the glass, her cheeks had gone pink.
    “It won’t be a chore if he does his part well, my lady.”
    Jane blinked at him. “You called me ‘my lady.’ Oh, someone say that again. It sounds so strange.”
    The table erupted in a chorus of my lady -ing, and the salacious subject was left behind. Though the ghost of it stayed in Edmund’s head and drifted through his body—the right of a man to his wife, the duty of a woman to her husband. Could it be more than a duty and a right? Even in a marriage of convenience?
    Jane caught his eye then, and the look she gave him was so