by Claudia Dain
“It has, hasn’t it?” Jane countered. “Though I’m still waiting to hear what I’ve won. Silly of me not to have heard the terms of your challenge before I went off and won it within minutes of its being issued, but then violent, quick action is most decidedly an Elliot trait. I trust you’ll never forget that, Louisa.”
Louisa, far from looking startled, or frightened, which would have been ideal, looked pleased in some strange fashion. What an odd girl.
“I’m completely confident that no one will ever forget this day,” Louisa said. “Edenham’s beating—”
“And my marriage,” Penelope interrupted grimly. “Why does all the violence happen at my affairs? I’m such a calm, reasonable sort. It doesn’t seem at all logical.”
“The fault must lie with your guest list,” Louisa said breezily.
“Oh, come now,” Amelia said lightly, “to have your affair be remembered for years? Why is that black news?
I’d be flattered. Just as I’d have been flattered if the Duke of Edenham had even bothered to remember my name. And he hadn’t, not until the creation of the duke list, which was Sophia’s idea completely.”
“He’d barely even speak to me, even with Sophia’s help,” Penelope said, looking at Jane in admiration. “How did you manage it, Jane? You brought him to his knees without any effort at all that I could see.” She leaned in close, her black hair brushing against Jane’s shoulder. “Or is it something unseen? Some trick of conversation? Tell me, what did you discuss?”
“I have no idea,” Jane said, completely distracted about the terms of the wager. Again. “About Sophia, you used her? She helped you get married?”
The three women looked at each other briefly, and then, by some unspoken agreement, looked at Jane squarely.
They smiled. Even Louisa, which was flatly alarming.
“Yes,” Penelope said. “She’s very good at it, you know.”
“That became perfectly obvious with her daughter, Caroline,” Louisa said on the heels of Penelope’s remark.
“It was all accomplished in a matter of hours, and if she could do that for her daughter . . .” Louisa let her voice trail off. It was a slightly damning silence regarding Caroline.
Having never met her, Jane could not decide if that remark were more reflective of Caroline or Louisa. She was leaning toward Louisa.
“It was simply a matter of one thing leading to another,”
Amelia said, looking deeply into Jane’s eyes.
“But it didn’t turn out at all as I expected,” Penelope said, “but I am delighted that it didn’t because I have Iveston, you see. Without Sophia, I’m certain I wouldn’t have got him.”
“Got him? You would never even have noticed him if not for her,” Louisa said.
“You didn’t want to marry Iveston?” Jane asked. “Then why did you go to her?”
“To get Edenham, of course,” Penelope said, without any shame whatsoever. As it was the very day of her wedding to Iveston, Jane found that highly peculiar. The other women didn’t, however.
“Edenham was on your list, wasn’t he, Amelia?” Jane asked, her thoughts swirling. These women were raving.
Small wonder that English society was in the tattered shape it was in.
“Certainly,” Amelia said, nodding. “All the dukes and heirs apparent were. That was the whole point, wasn’t it?”
“Was it?” Jane asked. “But you married Cranleigh. He’s not a duke or an heir apparent.”
“But how was I to spur him to action without the dukes, Jane?” Amelia countered, looking at Jane as if she were a complete imbecile. “It was all Sophia’s idea and it was brilliant, worked beautifully and so very quickly.”
Jane felt herself blinking, which was odd in and of itself.
Her eyes blinked, her brain slogged along, trying to make sense of it all.
No, it didn’t make sense.
“Did you want to marry Edenham as well?” she asked Louisa.
“Of course not, Jane,” Louisa bit out, a bit annoyed.
“Then you wanted to marry Henry,” Jane said, feeling the world right just the slightest bit.
“Oh, certainly not,” Louisa said. “I was all for the Marquis of Dutton. Absolutely mad for him, for year upon year.
What to do but go to Sophia for help in bringing him to heel?”
“But you married Henry!” Jane said.
“Of course I married Henry, Jane,” Louisa snapped, scowling at her. “I’d loved him for simply ages, just never got round to realizing it, that’s all, not until I’d aligned myself with Sophia Dalby.”
“Can’t you see how simple it is, Jane?” Amelia said.
“Sophia does make it all turn right in the end. Happily ever after and all that.”
“Simple? It’s absurd,” Jane said.
“I do agree with you, Jane,” Penelope said, looping her arm through hers. “It’s not at all logical, unless one measures logic by results. Then, naturally, it becomes entirely logical. You can see that, can’t you?”
No, she couldn’t see it, but she could see that they were all looking at her with something approaching sympathy in their eyes. Sympathy and perhaps hope. Hope for what?
“What’s happened?” she asked, panic rising like a flood in her veins.
It was Penelope who answered her. Trust Penelope to say what needed to be said without hesitation.
“Now, Jane, it’s nothing at all alarming. You must know that. Edenham is simply wonderful.”
“He truly is, Jane,” Amelia interrupted. “He was a tre-mendous help to me in bringing Cranleigh up to snuff.
Knew exactly what he was doing and did it brilliantly.”
Jane could feel her breath tightening in her chest, a vise around her lungs.
“The thing is, Jane,” Penelope said, shooting a frustrated glance at Amelia for being interrupted, “Edenham is quite obviously taken with you. I was standing right there when you met and it was like watching a house on fire.”
“And I’m the house?” Jane whispered.
“No, no, you’re the fire,” Penelope said. “I think. Anyway, he saw you, he fell instantly and deeply in love with you, which is so convenient, don’t you agree? But then, to make it all perfect, to set the seal into the wax, he immediately sought a private word with Sophia, and there you are.”
“And there I am where?” Jane asked, starting to actually feel the fires of anger nudging her ribs, which was lovely as it loosed the tightness of panic in her chest instantly.
“Married,” Louisa said with a cunning smirk. “To the Duke of Edenham. Congratulations, Jane. You’ve got him.”
“I don’t want him!” Jane snapped, causing three or four people to turn and stare at her. She ignored them fully.
“But he’s already talked to Sophia,” Penelope said.
“What’s to be done? Besides, won’t it be lovely to be the Duchess of Edenham?”
“No, it will not be lovely!” Jane said sharply. Eight people jumped and turned to stare at her. She stared back with such a hot look in her eyes that they each jumped again and turned hurriedly away from her. Quite rightly. “I am not going to be a duchess. Ever.”
“But he’s already spoken to Sophia,” Amelia said, “and once that happens . . .”
“If talking to Sophia is all that’s required,” Jane said stiffly, “then I shall just have to have my own little talk with her.”
Penelope and Amelia stared at her in wide-eyed silence.
Louisa, however, smiled and said, “Do that, Jane. Good plan.”
It was suspicious, to be sure, but what did it matter?
If Edenham had asked Sophia to arrange for Jane to somehow marry him, then all Jane had to do was ask her to kindly desist. She didn’t put any serious consideration into what Sophia could or could not do in getting two unlikely people married who’d had no notion to marry before her involvement, that was too absurd, but it didn�
�t hurt to be cautious.
Besides, let Edenham wonder what she was talking to Sophia about. If that beating hadn’t loosened his brains, he might even figure it out. What a delightful insult to deliver to a duke.
Arranging to marry her, indeed. He didn’t even know her!
Pompous ass.
Twelve
“Why do all my entertainments have these problems?”
Molly, the Duchess of Hyde asked no one in particular.
It was good that she asked no one in particular for what was there to be said? “I invite the very best people, or at least those whom are considered to be the very best, which means nothing, I’ll allow, and some perfectly horrid display of bad manners and complete loss of self-control erupts in the middle of my very expensive and very well-planned event. And it always seems to directly involve someone in my family! What can that mean but that I’ve failed?”
As she was speaking to members of her family, there didn’t seem to be any right answer to that question. They all stood in the wide stair hall, one floor above the blue reception room, light spilling down from windows on the uppermost floors, the white marble of the floor gleaming like the floor of heaven. It felt, however, nothing like heaven, not this setdown.
“It can simply mean that they’ve failed, Molly,” Hyde said, patting her on the shoulder. “Don’t take so much on yourself. The boys can shoulder their own failings without any aid from you.”
And he said that with a very forbidding look in his pale blue eyes, the sort of look that had controlled armies. His sons dropped their heads and stood contritely, looking at the floor. All except Cranleigh, who had escorted Edenham out of the blue reception room into a less public room of the house, which everyone considered a duty well performed, most particularly Edenham.
“That’s very thoughtful, Hyde,” Molly said, her steely blue eyes regaining some of their sparkle. “Very insightful, as well. I can’t think what Edenham was doing, grabbing poor Jane that way. My own niece, in my own home! Of course, Jed and Joel, you might have behaved with some hint of restraint, but I shan’t fault you for defending your sister. No, you had the right, but you might have chosen a more appropriate place. It did not have to be in the middle of my home, did it?”
Molly’s voice rose stridently as she voiced the last sentence or two. Jed and Joel, standing with their hands clasped in front of them, their heads bowed slightly, gave every indication that they were remorseful. Or in prayer.
The fact was, they had hurried to tell Hyde what they had done to Edenham the moment they were finished doing it. They hadn’t apologized, but they had informed. It did count for something.
“I lost my head, Molly,” Jed said. “It was unexpected, and I reacted.”
“Yes, reacted,” she said, shaking her head. “You know I can’t throw Edenham from the house. He’s a duke! One does not toss dukes out upon the street. It’s not done.”
Jed said nothing, but his face gave every indication he thought it a shame that England had such strange standards.
“Perhaps he’ll leave on his own,” Joel offered with a smile. Of course he could smile; he didn’t have a bleeding duke in his home.
“Would you like us to leave?” Jed offered in his deep-voiced, master of the ship manner. “I’m sure Jane wouldn’t mind, not after what she’s been put through.”
Molly had always suspected that Sally’s children were clever. Now she knew it for a fact. Take Jane from the house, when she had the Duke of Edenham in the palm of her hand? That would hardly do. Jane must stay, and the boys must stay out of her way. She was managing Edenham quite well on her own, even with her brothers in the room.
Just imagine what she could do without their hovering.
It gave her chill bumps. Her niece, the Duchess of Edenham. They’d have the most glorious children between them, and Jane would live through it, too. None of this fading away, childbed fever nonsense. She was a good American girl from a strong American family; she’d produce the most lovely English children.
“Leave? My own family shunted off on Iveston’s great day? I should say not,” Molly said.
“It is touching how you think of me, Mother,” Iveston said with the barest of smiles.
Molly gave him a hard look, this eldest son of hers, to which he merely smiled more fully. Molly sighed inwardly.
Penelope had changed him. It was what women did to their husbands, the mothers watching on in bemusement.
Yes, well, she would indulge in being bemused another day. Today, she had to get Jane a duke for a husband. Edenham was just the thing.
Jane finally located Sophia after a much longer search than she’d anticipated. Did the English have to live in mon-uments? Couldn’t they enjoy life in more reasonably sized housing? Sophia was finally found in the yellow drawing room, a very large and luxurious room, as indeed they all were, talking with a very elegant woman with warm brown hair and stunning features. Probably trying to arrange a marriage for her, if everything she’d heard about Sophia held true, and Jane had no reason to believe it wouldn’t.
Normally, she’d never think of interrupting what was clearly a private and perhaps emotional conversation. However, as her marital status was apparently about to change, she barged right in. It was a day for barging.
The yellow drawing room was far from empty. There were clusters of people talking in quiet tones. A very disreputable- and rakish-looking man, his dark hair falling forward over his brow, sat in the middle of one of the sofas, clearly deeply in his cups, mumbling something about ginger-haired widows and intemperate wagers. Everyone kept well away from him and Jane was more than willing to follow that lead. The last thing she needed was another Edenham situation, and who knew what that mumbling fellow might do? He could well decide he wanted to marry the next brown-haired girl who walked by him and then where would she be?
Not married, that was certain.
“Lady Dalby,” Jane said as delicately as she could. “I am sorry to intrude, but if I could have a word?”
“Miss Elliot,” Sophia said, turning to face her fully, laying a hand upon her arm, “how perfectly timed. We were just speaking of you.”
Of course they were. She’d just kissed a duke in the middle of her uncle’s home and then seen him beaten bloody by her brothers. What else was anyone going to talk about for the next decade? She only hoped Aunt Molly wasn’t sobbing in her bedchamber, writing an angry, detail-ridden letter to her mother.
Actually, Aunt Molly wasn’t the sobbing sort, not if she was anything like her sister.
“I find I am not surprised by that, Lady Dalby,” Jane said with a wry smile. “If you would give me just a few moments? I do apologize,” she said to the beautiful woman studying her.
Jane took the occasion to study her in return. She was stunning. Warm brown hair glimmering with golden strands, light brown eyes shot with green, the most delicate features imaginable . . . and no jewels. That was odd, wasn’t it? Jane wasn’t given to wearing jewelry on most days, but for a wedding breakfast of this grand scale and formality, she’d worn a pair of long red jade earrings that Jed had brought back for her after his first voyage to China. This woman wore only her hair as an adornment. It was nearly biblical.
“Miss Elliot,” Sophia said, “I don’t believe you’ve met Lady Richard. The Duke of Edenham’s sister.”
“Oh,” Jane said.
That was all she could think to say. She wasn’t going to apologize. She simply wasn’t. What had she done, after all?
He’d kissed her. She’d asked him to, of course, but he could have refused, and should have refused, if he had any sense at all. What sort of man went about kissing a woman he’d just met? Pompous, conceited, overbearing ones, and those were just the first three traits that sprang into her mind. Give her an hour and she’d have a list that would choke Louisa. If only.
“Miss Elliot,” Lady Richard said, “I am most pleased to meet you.”
She
said it softly and calmly, but what was that? Jane braced herself for a slap that she was half convinced was coming.
“As you may imagine, Miss Elliot,” Sophia said, looping her arm though Jane’s, the image of girlish confidences—
Jane was instantly more alarmed than she had been just the moment before—“Lady Richard is determined to know how you accomplished it.”
“It?” Jane asked, wondering if Sophia were holding her arm to keep her from defending herself.
“What other it can there be?” Sophia said on a chuckle.
“The taming of Edenham.”
Jane shook her head, watching Lady Richard, who did not look angry, only curious. “He looked tame to you? You must have been standing very far off.”
Sophia laughed and even Lady Richard smiled. “Miss Elliot, may I call you Jane? My name is Katherine.” Jane was dumbfounded yet again, but she managed to nod. “My brother knew his first wife socially for three years before he made the first step toward reaching an agreement with her father. They were married a year after that. He is not a man given to . . . impulse.”
That was one word for it. Jane would have chosen another, but she considered that Katherine was more than slightly biased.
“Darling,” Sophia said, smiling at her, “as you must be aware, Edenham is behaving like a man very much in love.
He’s thrown aside all his training and his dignity to toss his heart into your hands. I believe you could ask anything of him and he would do it without hesitation and certainly with no regret.”
Jane felt a sliver of guilt slide down her spine. She had asked him to kiss her, and he had done it quickly enough, thinking he was doing it for her. And he had been, but not in the way he supposed. Did he regret it now? He should.
She was beginning to.
“What Katherine wants to know is, how have you accomplished it?” Sophia asked.
“I don’t want you to worry, Lady Richard,” Jane said.
“Katherine,” she amended, feeling very much the roughly tutored American she’d been afraid to be called, “I don’t want your brother. I don’t . . . want him,” she finished, feeling that it was an entirely inadequate explanation, but unable to furnish a more eloquent one.
