Whisper of Scandal Read Free

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’sface 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 of the family now.”
    “So he seeks to take his cousin’s widow as well as his place?”
    Joanna’s eyes narrowed at his tone. “As you heard.”
    “You came up with a somewhat extreme solution.”
    Joanna’s skin prickled with antagonism at the disbelief that rang clear in his voice. “He would not accept a more subtle dismissal. He has been importuning me for weeks.”
    “Then it is fortunate I was here. Or would you have called in one of the servants—one of your handsome matching footmen—and kissed him instead?”
    Temper flickered through Joanna. She had seldom felt so discomposed. There was something about this