Page 4 of A Season for Scandal

I took a quick step back.

“Just something for you to think about,” he said easily, while I stood and stared. “Good day to you, Miss Bloom.” And with that, he lifted his hand to the brim of his hat and strolled off as though nothing had happened.

My blood was cold. That uninvited touch, brief as it had been, lingered, made me feel like scrubbing my skin with soap and water. Had that really just happened? Had Simon’s father propositioned me? Here, in the middle of a busy street, outside my own shop? I rubbed my hands over the tops of my arms. It was still sunny, and people rushed by me, going about their business; the scene was almost painfully ordinary, but I felt chilled, hollowed out.

I found myself walking back through the door. I took a deep, steadying breath. The cold feeling eased a little.

Home. I would go home.

CHAPTER THREE

“The man is a pig!” Daisy exclaimed, pushing her hands through her blonde hair, messing up the careful style that I knew would have taken a good hour in front of the mirror, demonstrating just how upset my sister really was.

She was speaking about Simon. I hadn’t got around to telling them about his awful father yet. I was easing myself into it. (And it comes to something, doesn’t it, when the fool who broke off your engagement for no good reason is only the second worst man you’ve dealt with that day?)

“Daisy!” my mother chided gently, pouring the tea that she insisted would make everyone feel better. “That language is not appropriate.” There was a pause while she replaced the teapot in the centre of the table and turned it clockwise so that the floral design faced forward. “Although in this case it is not inaccurate.”

The three of us were arranged around the sitting room in our home above the shop, and the pretty, feminine space was doing almost as much to soothe me as the righteous, fiery outrage that sparked in my mother’s and sister’s eyes. I was still unsettled about the scene with Earnshaw, but being here with them chased some of the shadows away.

Daisy’s delicate fingers were already straightening her hair, but her blue eyes blazed as she gave a short, humourless laugh. “He’s a pig and he didn’t deserve Mari – and speaking the truth is never inappropriate.”

“Well, it’s done now,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “Perhaps Simon was right. Perhaps it was just a childish infatuation.”

“If you feel like that, then it’s for the best.” Mother sighed. “You shouldn’t marry someone unless the thought of them leaving shatters your heart into a hundred pieces. I want that for both my girls.”

“You want us both to have our hearts shattered into pieces?” I asked over the top of my teacup.

“Yes!” Mother exclaimed instantly. Then she frowned. “I mean no, no, of course not. I meant…”

“I know what you meant!” I laughed. “I was only teasing. And you’re right – I never had any great passion for Simon, but then I never expected to. I thought we’d be happy.”

“Happy with a worm like him?” Daisy huffed. “Doubtful.”

“Is he a worm or a pig?” I asked thoughtfully. “Or some sort of hybrid? A pig-worm, perhaps? A porm?”

Reluctantly, Daisy chuckled. Then she tilted her head to the side and observed me thoughtfully. “At least you’re taking it well, Mari,” she said. “I’m sure I’d be a weeping, wailing mess if someone broke off my engagement – even if I had been engaged to a pig. But that’s you all over. You’re just so … steady. Not like me.”

It was my turn to laugh. I appreciated Daisy’s self-awareness. At fifteen she was very pretty – small and slender with a mop of guinea-gold curls and wide blue eyes, and she existed on a steady diet of fashion periodicals and penny dreadfuls. The more gothic and ridiculous the love story, the better, as far as Daisy was concerned. She could happily make a melodrama out of the tiniest domestic wrinkle. (Take, for example, the time Mother denied her a new and quite unflattering hat and Daisy drew a straight line from this event to her untimely demise via several increasingly outlandish coincidences, including a seagull and a one-eyed man with a pipe. Needless to say, she wore the hat to church the following Sunday.)

I would have said it was something she’d grow out of, but she was so precisely a copy of our mother in both appearance and temperament that when they stood side by side they looked like the sort of little wooden dolls that stacked one inside the other.

“Well, exactly,” Mother agreed with Daisy, only proving my point. “I, for one, would have taken to my bed immediately.” She sighed again, heavily. “Probably wasted away, all pale and interesting.” Her face looked a bit wistful at this, clearly imagining the picture she’d make lying prone across the bed in her nicest nightgown. “It’s fortunate that you take after your father, Mari. He was such a dear, reliable man.”

As my father had died shortly after Daisy was born, when I was only three, I would have to take Mother’s word on that. I knew that my parents had loved each other deeply – Mother was always clear on that matter, had even written several flowery sonnets on the subject that Daisy and I had listened to with different levels of enthusiasm. My grandfather always said that when his son brought home a Rose, he knew their match was destined.

Even so, the way she often spoke about my father in relation to his similarities to me was not so much poetic as it was like a depressingly dull advertisement for a clock. Reliable. Steady. Dependable. Sometimes it made me feel more like a sturdy shire horse pulling a plough than an eighteen-year-old girl.

“Yes, well, I don’t have much interest in wasting away.” I took another sip of my tea, picked up a lavender shortbread biscuit and crunched into it with satisfaction. I had found the perfect balance of floral sweetness with this batch; it was time to offer them for sale in the shop. “And there’s far too much for me to do to take to my bed.” I hesitated but decided to take the metaphorical bull by the horns. “My engagement to Simon – or lack thereof – may have implications for the business.”

Mother had been stirring sugar into her cup and the silver teaspoon halted in its lazy circles. She lifted her eyes to mine. “Do you think… Will his father…” She trailed off.

“Will he raise the rent on the shop?” I said. “Yes, I’d imagine so. He… Well, I ran into him before I came up here.”

I gave a brisk account of what had happened. Mother’s face was pale, Daisy’s gaze murderous as she almost vibrated with anger.

“He would dare—” my sister started, but I wrapped my hand around hers, gently prising the teacup from her fingers.

“It’s no good flinging Mother’s best china at the fireplace,” I said, setting the cup back on its saucer. “Yes, he did dare, and none of us can pretend to be surprised that the man is an awful, lecherous—”