“Egad, that’s a strong claim, Miss Forsythe.” Sir Richard wandered to the sideboard and helped himself to a generous brandy.
The duke wasn’t so impressed. Another supercilious arch of dark eyebrows. This man had the aristocratic mien down to a T. “I’m sure Mr. Merrick has engaged competent solicitors. You should take your proof, whatever it is, to them.”
She could hear he doubted the existence of any proof. “I don’t know who they are.”
“Would you like me to find out?”
“No, thank you, Your Grace. The information is… private to Mr. Merrick. He needs to know the details before I pursue the matter.”
Over tapping fingers, the duke contemplated her for a bristling interval. Her stomach knotted as she prayed he wouldn’t dismiss her. If he did, she’d turn to Sir Richard. If he wouldn’t help, she’d track down Jonas’s solicitors, although right now she had no idea how to do that. Perhaps someone at Newgate might know. She’d already tried Jonas’s offices in the city, but they’d turned her away. Tomorrow she’d go back and stage a more determined siege. She wasn’t giving up.
“Miss Forsythe?”
She turned at Sir Richard’s voice and realized he extended a glass of water toward her. She smiled gratefully. “Thank you.”
“Perhaps we should order tea?”
“N… no, thank you,” she said shakily after taking a sip. “I… just need to see Mr. Merrick. His release is all that matters.”
The duke’s gaze sharpened and she flushed, knowing she confirmed her personal interest. Shakily she placed the glass on the desk in front of her.
“That’s a devilish queer expression, Cam old fellow,” Sir Richard said suspiciously. “What are you thinking about?”
The duke’s lips relaxed almost into a smile and he didn’t shift his regard from Sidonie. “Mice.”
Sidonie flushed to her hairline and gulped some more water to hide her embarrassment. Surely he hadn’t guessed that she’d been at Castle Craven when he warned Jonas about William’s mental instability.
“Sirius likes her,” Sir Richard said in what seemed a non sequitur. At the sound of his name, the dog raised his head and surveyed the room’s occupants.
The duke cast Sir Richard an impatient glance. “Unlike you, I don’t base my whole acquaintance on a mongrel’s good opinion.”
“Harsh words, sirrah.” Sir Richard dropped into the leather chair beside Sidonie’s and slouched picturesquely. “You should, you know. The dog’s a confounded genius.”
“He’s brighter than his owner, I’ll give him that,” the duke muttered, and Sidonie caught an unexpected glimmer of humor on that austere face.
“No brains, no brains at all. Never claimed to have a thought past dinner. You’re the one with the head on his shoulders, Cam. Always have been. That’s why you and Jonas were such chums at school.”
Sidonie suspected Sir Richard wasn’t the fribble he purported. So far, he’d done a remarkable job of getting everybody to jump to his wishes and with little apparent effort. She couldn’t forget that moment he’d decided to help her. The gaze that swept her had been sharply perceptive.
“That’s not entirely why,” the duke said, no hint of a smile remaining.
The ebullient Sir Richard briefly sobered. Again, the change was so fleeting that Sidonie would have missed it if she hadn’t watched him closely. She recalled Jonas’s tale of scandal shadowing each man’s birth. “No, not entirely.”
The duke sighed and leaned back in his chair. Her heart sinking, Sidonie wondered if she’d imagined his fleeting lightness. His features were all severity now. “I suppose Sirius, confound him, wants me to haul Merrick out of jail.”
Sir Richard shrugged. “You can do it. Wave that blue-blooded hand and Merrick’s a free man before breakfast.”
The duke’s mouth flattened. “I’m not sure about that. Pelham George is on the case, I hear.”
Sir Richard clicked his fingers to indicate dismissal. “You run rings around that George fellow. Dash it, Cam, you run rings around everybody I know—and not just because you’re a duke.”
“I can certainly arrange for Miss Forsythe to see Merrick. I’m just not sure I should.”
“I mean to help Mr. Merrick.” Her hands clenched in her skirts.
“I’m sure, dear lady. But these are matters for men of the world. Would you tell me the nature of the proof or, even better, show it to me? I promise on my honor, I’ll take the matter as far as I can.”
Sidonie’s jaw tightened at his patronizing tone but she kept her voice even. “I’m sorry, Your Grace. I can’t do that.”
“At the risk of leaving Mr. Merrick languishing in prison?”
She raised her chin. “I need to see Mr. Merrick. It’s of the utmost urgency. If you can’t arrange a visit, I’ll find someone who will.”
The duke’s chilly green gaze focused on her as if she were a rare scientific specimen on a glass slide. He didn’t answer her.
“Come, Cam. Get the girl in to see the chap. We can take it from there. You know you’re going to help,” Sir Richard drawled, raising his glass so the brandy caught the light. “I only had an evening at Crockford’s ahead. I’d wager more than I meant to lose there that you planned to bury your head in blasted paperwork. Wouldn’t you rather assist a valiant lady in a mission of mercy?”
“You make me sound poor spirited if I say no.” The duke’s deep voice was neutral. Sidonie couldn’t guess his intentions. Her heart raced with dizzying suspense as she waited for him to offer support or send her away.
Dear God, don’t let him send her away.
“Well, confound it, you are.” Sir Richard drank his brandy as nonchalantly as though a man’s life didn’t hinge on the decision.
Sirius rose with a yawn and padded across to lay his head on Sidonie’s lap. Absently, she scratched his ears while watching the duke. Would Sedgemoor come down on her side? Would his loyalty to Jonas endure? Or would he decide that he owed Jonas nothing and that Sidonie was merely an inconvenient petitioner?
The pause extended. In the silence, the fire crackled and popped. Under her ministrations, Sirius gave a canine groan of pleasure.
The duke sighed heavily and stood. He didn’t smile as he stared down at her. “Very well. Miss Forsythe, Sirius has his way. You and I are off to Newgate.”
“No such luck, Cam, m’dear.” Sir Richard rose, disturbing Sirius, who turned to watch his master. “I’m in on this reunion.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jonas lay reading The Essays of Elia on the luxurious bed brought, like all the furnishings in his prison cell, from his London house. When he heard keys rattle at his door, he set the book aside with a sigh of irritation.
What the hell did his jailer want at this late hour? After three days in prison, Jonas knew the routine. And the routine was that mostly he was left to himself, unless he was discussing the conduct of his trial with the ruinously expensive solicitors he’d employed. The turnkey was paid well to stay away and keep the curious, who were legion, at bay.
Sitting up, Jonas ran his hands through his untidy hair. The door swung wide to admit his jailer. Behind him was a woman. Not just any woman. The woman who haunted his dreams. The woman he’d missed like the very devil in the week since he’d seen her.
“Sidonie…” he breathed, wondering if he’d gone mad. Surely he hadn’t. Everything in his cell was how it always was. Her presence alone transformed it into paradise. His heart somersaulted with sudden, unexpected happiness.
“Half an hour, miss.”
She pushed back the hood of her hideous cloak and cast a nervous glance at the jailer. “Thank you.”
“I take it you’re happy for the lady to stay, Mr. Merrick?” The man’s expression was blatantly salacious.
“Mind your manners, Sykes,” Jonas said in a dangerous tone. “The lady is a member of my family.”
“Aye, sir.” The man’s head bobbed and he scuttled away, locking the door behind
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jonas strode across the Turkish rug to clasp her hands. Seeing her was like standing in sunlight after a long, hard winter, but he couldn’t be easy meeting her in such surroundings.
“Oh, Jonas,” she said in a broken voice and started to cry.
“Tesoro… sweetheart… my love,” he choked out, cradling her in his arms. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”
So many times since his arrest, he’d remembered holding her. So many times since his arrest, he wondered if he’d survive this latest crisis and hold her again. The reality of having her here surpassed all fantasy. He drank in every detail. Her warmth. The scent of her hair and skin. The way her hands curled around his arms to keep him close. In his lowest hours, he’d wondered if he imagined the passion and joy of those days at Castle Craven. They were so divorced from current bleak reality.
“I’ve been so afraid,” she muttered into his shoulder, sliding her arms around his waist.
He kissed wherever he could reach. Her hair. The side of her face. Her shoulder. Her neck. All the while the litany of endearments flowed. He was helpless to resist calling her every sweet name he knew.
After too short an interval, she sucked in an unsteady breath and started to withdraw. He tightened his hold. “Not yet.”
When she raised her face, her eyes were swollen with crying and her cheeks were flushed. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “Jonas, we haven’t got long. We must talk.”
“I’d rather touch you.” He held her slender shoulders and feasted his eyes on her. She caressed his scarred cheek. He no longer minded her touching his scars, so much had he changed.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” He pressed his face into her hand. She was here. She was here. He hardly believed it. “Now I am.”
She glanced around the extravagantly furnished room. “I’d imagined—”
He found it in himself to be wryly amused as he took her hand and drew her toward the bed. He’d never imagined he’d laugh in this bleak prison where every stone whispered that his luck had run out and he wouldn’t escape execution.
“I know. Manacles. Racks. Fetid water seeping from bare stone walls. There are advantages to being a rich man, carissima. This cell costs a fortune, but I won’t be here long. The evidence is circumstantial at best. I’m paying through the nose for my lawyers. They’d better damn well earn their keep.” He hoped his completely false optimism convinced her. He couldn’t bear to think his fate troubled her.
They sat on the bed facing each other, holding hands. “What happened? Everything was going so smoothly.”
“Don’t you know? I thought the gossip would be all over Barstowe.”
“I left as soon as I heard of your arrest. Luckily Roberta had her carriage at Barstowe Hall. I tried all day yesterday to see you but they wouldn’t let me.”
“Bless you.” Her loyalty touched him. He didn’t underestimate her difficulties getting to London. She had no funds, rushing away would make her a target of local talk, and he couldn’t picture Roberta supporting Sidonie’s efforts to reach him.
“Why did they even think to arrest you?”
“A combination of old scandal and bad luck. A neighbor riding along the back lane saw me crossing Barstowe Hall’s grounds the day William died. Then one of the maids at Ferney got hysterical under questioning and started blabbing about me coming home bruised and disheveled the day of the murder. William’s latest legal case against me about the emerald mine didn’t help either. Seemed to give me a fresh motive for wanting the miscreant dead.”
“That all seems… flimsy.”
“It is.” He refrained from saying how old, public enmity might still condemn him. Pelham George was no fool and he’d only prosecute if he thought he had a good case to send Jonas to the gallows.
Sidonie’s eyes were somber in the lamplight. “Jonas, I can save you.”
“I doubt it.” His voice deepened into irony. “Unless Roberta signed a confession.”
Sidonie’s grip firmed. “Roberta was… against me coming to London.”
Roberta was afraid suspicion might shift from Jonas to her. “I’m sure.”
“You could have turned her in.”
He laughed humorlessly. “Nobody would credit any accusation against her.” He paused. “She doesn’t deserve to die for what she did. And there are her sons to consider.”
Her hands clenched hard around his. “You could hang.”
“We’re not at point non plus.”
Although in his heart he acknowledged he was far from innocent. He hadn’t shoved the blackguard down the stairs, but he’d frequently wished William dead. Not just because of the attack at Eton. He’d wanted William dead for stealing the heritage Jonas had always believed was his.
Now Jonas rotted in jail and nobody lifted a finger to help. He’d always known society tolerated rather than liked him. His bastardy stuck in people’s craw, even those eager to take advantage of his financial acumen. Still, to have it confirmed so categorically that, for all his wealth, he remained persona non grata was a salutary lesson. He’d assumed some business associate might offer aid, but nobody had stepped forward. So much for his youthful dreams of having so much money, he was invulnerable. Money hadn’t saved him from the humiliation of prison. Money hadn’t rallied hordes to his support.
Everyone abandoned him to his fate.
Except gallant Sidonie.
“Jonas, please listen to me. Please.”
Something in her frantic plea pricked his instincts. “What is it, bella? Some rash plan? A scramble down the walls at dead of night? A tunnel to the street? A pistol concealed under that atrocity of a cloak?”
To his regret, she tugged her hands free, then, even worse, she rose to stand a few feet away. He leaned back on his elbows, his gaze unwavering. Even if he couldn’t touch her, watching her was manna to a man locked away from her for days.
Her angry gesture dismissed his lightness. “Don’t joke.”
What the hell was going on? All desire to tease vanished. Her agitation reeked of fear. And wretchedness. Apprehension tightening his gut, he sat up and looked directly at her. “You’re making me nervous, Sidonie.”
She fumbled with the shabby reticule he hadn’t noticed tied to her wrist. He’d only seen her. He’d only ever seen her.
“Here.” She thrust something at him.
He ignored her gesture. Instead he watched her face. Her expression made him devilish uneasy.
“Jonas, look,” she said abruptly.
He glanced down to a yellowing paper in her shaking hand. Automatically he reached to take it. It took a few moments to realize what he held. His head whipped up and he stared at Sidonie in disbelief. “Is this real?”
She shrank under his shock, although he was too astonished to be angry. “Yes.”
Anger stirred. “How long have you known?”
That was all he cared about now, although he knew he’d care about much more once his mind came to terms with what she’d presented to him. He immediately dismissed any possibility that she’d found this document in the last day or so. She looked too guilty for that to be true.
“I… I discovered it in Barstowe Hall’s library a couple of weeks ago. It was… it was folded inside the back cover of the second volume of Don Quixote.”
“Of course you immediately recognized the document’s significance.” His tone was flat. He should be overjoyed. He held his parents’ marriage lines. All his childhood dreams came true.
Under the bite of his voice, she seemed small and vulnerable. Just at the moment, he couldn’t find it in himself to pity her.
“Of course.”
“It didn’t occur to you to tell me?”
She didn’t cringe, but nor was she the brave, defiant woman he knew. Except everything he knew about her turned out to be false. In a petty, mendacious world, he’d believed she was the one pure, shining beacon. How tragically wrong he’d been.
He rose on legs that felt shamingly unsteady and stepped toward her. She flinched away. His laugh was bitter. “Just because I’m now Lord Hillbrook, it doesn’t mean I’ve turned into William. I won’t hit you.”
When she bit her lip, it usually touched his heart. Damn her, it still did. She wasn’t what he’d thought she was. She was a liar. The woman he’d called his life and his soul and his beauty was a gorgeous shell over a pit of foul deceit.
“I… I had my reasons for keeping it from you,” she whispered.
His smile felt like a rictus grin. “I’m sure.”
She spoke in a rush. “You don’t understand what it was like living with William and Roberta. How… how terrifying it was when he beat her. Finding the marriage lines seemed like a gift from heaven. I… I planned to use them to blackmail William into letting Roberta go. They were the only power I had against him.”
“While the world continued to believe my father was at best a fool and at worst a liar. That my mother—” He paused and sucked in a shuddering breath. “That my mother was a whore.”
She paled and twisted her hands together. “I know… I know I was wrong to hide the discovery, but you and your parents were unknown to me. William went near to killing Roberta last time he beat her. Her need… her need seemed greater than yours.”
“And justice go hang,” he said sourly. He tried to make himself view her as a stranger. Because a stranger was just what she was. What a fool he’d been. What a pathetic, needy, gullible fool.
He could almost understand what she’d done. After all, her sister’s life had been at risk and nobody knew better than he just how destructive William’s temper was. He just couldn’t forgive the decisions she’d made. He couldn’t forgive that she’d made him believe she was honest to her soul when she wasn’t honest at all. Above all, he couldn’t forgive that by making him believe in her, she’d made him as vulnerable as that boy screaming under his cousin’s knife.
With a faint revival of spirit, she straightened. “You’re a grown man. I didn’t know… I didn’t know then how you’d suffered, how illegitimacy ruined your life.”
-->
