Scandal. Julie Kistler
sane.”
“Jordan?”
Recognizing the voice, she looked up, hastily shoving the photos back inside her drawer as Daniel edged into her office. Daniel. Her boyfriend. Sort of her fiancé. Really just her boyfriend, though. And she needed to get a grip and stop thinking about Nick and the tree and his thighs and her thighs and his lips and his…
Yeah, time to get a grip.
2
How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 2:
Gossip is great. It’s when they’re not talking about you that you have to worry.
1893
N ICHOLAS B ONAVENTURE T EMPEST was bored. Bored down to the soles of his fine leather boots.
Alone in the third-floor music room of his family mansion, leaning back with his feet propped on a wooden table, Nick aimed and then tossed a souvenir Columbian Exposition half-dollar into an empty china cup he’d set on a piano stool about five feet away. Clink. In again. Just like the past eleven times he’d played this game. After an even dozen, he supposed he ought to move on.
Not for the first time, he reached for the brandy decanter at his elbow. He’d already had quite enough to be thoroughly sloshed, but in the mood he was currently in, there just wasn’t enough liquor in the world. Tedious dinner parties, tedious women, tedious conversation…Even his father’s best Napoleon brandy wasn’t enough to make that nonsense palatable.
“Ah, well. I’m done with it for one more night, at any rate.” He saluted himself with his glass. “Until tomorrow.”
“Nick, darling, it’s already tomorrow,” his sister, Isabella, noted sweetly as she swept into the room.
Nick sat up straighter. One look told him something was up. Trouble was pretty much the norm with Isabella, but the sparkle of mischief in her pretty blue eyes was even more ominous than usual. He hoped she hadn’t fallen in love again. He didn’t need to get into any more fights defending Isabella’s honor. Not that there was any honor left as far as he could tell, or that she cared. Still, a good fistfight might provide a diversion.
“Are you just getting home?” he asked. “A bit late, isn’t it?”
“Not for me. I don’t believe in living my life by the clock. Besides, you’re hardly one to talk,” she pointed out. “You’re the one who has to make an appearance at the store bright and early.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Isabella was clearly too wrapped up in her own good mood to pay attention to his gloom. She discarded her cloak and gloves, dumping them on a nearby music stand. “It’s not my fault you’ve become such a respectable citizen. I warned you time and again that Father would turn you into a drudge if you let him.”
“I’m hardly a drudge. I run the place.”
“You’re a drudge. And you’re much too good for that.”
She began humming some cheery tune, dancing around in her loose artist’s smock, the kind she always wore over her gowns when she was working on a sculpture. That explained why she was coming in so late. When she was in the middle of a project, she didn’t notice anything else. It did not, however, explain her good spirits. Ever since she’d come home from Europe, Bella had been moody and unhappy about her future as a sculptress.
Spinning around to look at him, she set her pretty face in a pout. “Play something on the piano for me, will you, Nick? You’re so much better at it than I.”
“And wake up the entire household? I don’t think so.”
“Not just a drudge but a shriveled-up old prune,” she mocked him. “I want the old Nick back. My dashing brother, always running off after some fast woman or fast horse. He would’ve played me a tune in the wee hours if I asked him.”
“One of us had to grow up,” he commented dryly. “It certainly wasn’t going to be you.”
She shrugged. “I hope I never grow up. It’s quite disgusting.”
Nick managed a smile. Lightly he said, “If everyone in this family were an artiste like you, you’d have no pretty dresses, there would be holes in our shoes, our stomachs would be empty, and we’d all be living in a shack in the middle of the woods.”
“You stole that from Father. I’ve heard him say that a hundred times.”
“Yes, well, he’s right. Don’t waste your time worrying about me. I’ve decided that if it’s my destiny to mind the store, at least I’ll do a good job of it.” Nick purposely changed the subject, both because he was bored with that one and because he was still trying to figure out what mischief Isabella was up to. “What are you working on, Bella? Haven’t seen much of you lately. Must be something big.”
“Not that big,” she murmured.
She unbuttoned her smock and tossed it on top of her cloak, revealing a frilly green dress with a nipped waist and the huge, pouffy sleeves that were all the rage. Isabella might consider herself a rebel and an artist, but she still liked to wear the latest fashions.
“Did you hear that, Nick? The grandfather clock in the hall just rang five. That means it’s not late. Why, it’s positively early. Almost time for you to do your duty and report to the store to play Lord High Pooh-bah.” She raised an eyebrow as she picked up his still-burning cigar resting in a cut-glass ashtray. “Mother will have your hide for smoking up here.”
“Mother never comes up here,” he said coldly, rescuing the fine Cuban before she snuffed it. “Besides, cigars are a mere misdemeanor in the record book of my crimes.”
“Ah. Ducked out of the Trents’ dinner party early, did you?” She made a sympathetic face. “Father won’t like that. He’s determined to deliver you to Lydia Trent all wrapped up like a Christmas package.”
The idea sent Nick straight to the brandy decanter again. “Yes, well, he has visions of a department-store dynasty. Tempest & Trent, purveyors of fine luxury goods, a step ahead of anything Marshall Field can come up with.” Nick scowled, knocking back his drink. “All he needs is for me to marry Lydia.”
“So that’s what’s got you up here at all hours, swimming in brandy and cigars? The specter of a future hog-tied to Lydia Trent?”
“I suppose. It was a dreadful party. Dreadful people. I stayed approximately five minutes past dinner before I pleaded a headache and got out of there.”
“And then what?”
Putting aside his drink for the moment, Nick swung his legs off the music table and took a long puff on his cigar. “And then what, what?”
“Well, you can’t have escaped from the Trents and come right here. You’d have been drinking for, oh, the past seven hours. Even you don’t hold your liquor that well.”
“I checked in at the club, played a few hands of poker, won an outrageous amount of money, tried again to convince Freddy Montgomery to sell me his new horse, tried again to convince Freddy Montgomery to buy my old carriage…It’s so dull, I’m boring even myself.” Nick tried not to sigh. “Someone’s got to find something more interesting to do in this town or I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Face it, Nicky,” his sister said, fingering the strings of a violin no one ever played. “You’re just not cut out for the workaday world. You need to take me to Paris again. We’re overdue for an adventure.”
He eyed her warily. “When are you going to tell me what your new project is?”
Her lips curved into a very smug little smile. Now he knew he was in for trouble. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean whatever it is you’re working on that has you so excited. So excited you lost track of time and came wandering in at 5:00