Poetic Justice, a Traditional Regency Romance (Regency Escapades)

by Alicia Rasley

She bent her head, but not before he saw the glow in her eyes and cursed his unprecedentedly wayward tongue. She was taking that as a promise, not just a prediction. And even out-of-practice knights errant knew better than to break promises made to distressed damsels.

  Gently he took the classical volume out of her hands. "That's the last of it in this section. Where do we look next?"

  Recalled to the present, Jessica said, "Oh, have we time to search more? She liked Robert Herrick and the other Cavalier poets, but those volumes are scattered all over the library."

  He checked his watch. It wasn't midnight yet. "Another half-hour, perhaps. The watch will come by at one, and we'd best be gone by then."

  Their search through the Cavaliers was fruitless, and Jessica grew hesitant when he pressed her to come up with some new possibility. "Oh, I don't know! It's been so long since she died, and sometimes I hardly recall how her voice sounded…Perhaps it's just that you—I mean we—are mistaken, and she made no index."

  "She made an index," John said firmly. "Now think. Whom did she wish to hide it from?"

  "My father, I suppose. If she meant it as part of the test..."

  "Was there some favorite author or book that she kept secret from your father? Where he wouldn't think to look?"

  She gave it some thought, her brow furrowing prettily in the lamplight. "There was some playwright he disapproved of…let me think. A scandalous sort, I think, of the Restoration theatre."

  "All the Restoration playwrights were scandalous."

  "This one was a woman. That was why my mother liked her, and why my father disapproved. He didn't think women should be scandalous in public. Oh, what was her name? I recall that she was a friend of John Dryden—" She shot him a quick look. "The first John Dryden."

  "Aphra Behn."

  "That's it! How did you know?"

  "Oh, I've come across her name before. She was a spy for the Foreign Office, did you know? They treated her badly." In fact, they had abandoned her in Holland, preferring not to believe her prediction that the Dutch would take Chatham and burn the fleet. They were wrong; she was right. And in his experience, the Foreign Office hadn't changed much in a century and a half. "No one reads her any longer. Tell me, where would she be shelved?"

  There were no Behn scripts in the shelf devoted to Restoration theatre, though there were several cookbooks and an angler's companion. John closed his eyes wearily, imagining searching through every one of eight thousand volumes in the next quarter hour. Wiley, he thought, not for the first time, should be excommunicated by the Royal Society.

  But Jessica was staring off into the distance, her blue eyes dark with concentration. "I once came across Maman pasting a Behn novel into the casing of another book, so that Papa wouldn't know what it was she was reading in the evenings. She just laughed and told me it was our secret. I think he would have been more upset to know that she had torn out the inside of a book to do it, of course. It must not have been a valuable book. Now what was the title?"

  He held his breath so that she could muse on this in utter stillness. It sounded right, a hidden book, a secret marital defiance, just the sort of action that Jessica's infuriating mother would take. And he knew he could count on Jessica to puzzle it out.

  "A gray-blue cover, with a bit of floral gilting in the corners." Her eyes squeezed shut; even her fists clenched with the effort. "A slender volume, folio-size. Quite new. I can see it right before me...oh, what does the spine say?"

  John could not answer this, nor do anything but keep his silence so she could concentrate. Hurry, hurry, he thought, stealing a look at his watch.

  As if in answer, she said, "Hannah More."

  Naturally. It was a clever trick, for More was another woman playwright, a century later, an evangelical religious writer, far more proselytizing than provocative. And in due course, they found her works in the middle of a grouping of sermon books. John saw the gray-blue leather volume first, grabbed it, and then paused gripping it, testing with his thumb for the slight empty rub that meant a loose binding. Then with enormous resolve, he handed it to Jessica.

  She held it for a moment, studying the cover. "Percy. By Hannah More." Then she opened it. "The Lucky Chance. Aphra Behn." Tentatively she held the book open with her thumb and forefinger, and gave it a little shake. A thin white packet fell to the floor.

  With one mind, they knelt to pick it up, their hands colliding on the folded, sealed paper. Then they sat down together on the floor, their backs against the shelves, their heads touching, to examine it in the circle of light cast by the lamp.

  "My mother's hand." Jessica's hand trembled as she pointed to the first line scrawled on the front: "If you are truly honorable and truly love me, Godfrey, you will put this back unopened." And her father's reply: "Annette: If you ever again question my honor or my love, I will show you this."

  It was an eerie moment, this dialogue between lovers long-dead, and John sensed that Jessica was close to tears. It seemed natural, imperative in fact, to take her face in his hand and bend to kiss her—a distraction from sorrow for her, from desperate curiosity for him.

  And inevitably it became more than a distraction. Her lips parted under his—no, this was no green girl, he thought, closing his eyes and letting the paper drop so he could pull her closer. He slid his hand across her back, every nerve telling him that there was nothing between the rough linen and her skin. It was so very sweet, the taste, the feel of her, the radiant moment in the darkness.

  And inevitably it was only a moment. He had been too long at sea, acute to every slight change in the rigging's song, to let even this block his hearing. He drew slightly away from her, and when she murmured some inarticulate protest he laid a finger across her lips. There it was, the creak of a door opening from the hall. He grabbed up the paper, stuffed it in his shirt, and in one fluid motion rose and tugged her to her feet. "Douse the lamp," he whispered. "Take the More book too. We'll go out the way we came in."

  They were out the window and scrambling down the tree as the heavy steps echoed in the main bookroom. John left the casement open behind them, though the book dealer part of him argued the malignant effect of soot. Already a plan was forming in that other part of his mind, the felon part.

  As they landed on the ground, Jessica whispered that she had left the kitchen door off the latch. "Tomorrow," she said, and rose on her tiptoes to kiss him boldly if lightly on the mouth. Then she vanished into the dark house.

  He waited by the door until the sound of her footsteps faded. But he left it too late. The French doors flew open and three footman erupted from the back of the house. One caught sight of him and shouted for the others to follow, and like brawny ghosts in their white nightshirts, they thundered towards him.

  John took off through the kitchen garden, his boots digging into the soft dirt and uprooting plants as he set his sights on the back wall. Behind him a pursuer stumbled on a cabbage or a beet and went down with a curse and a thud. But the other two kept coming on. As he passed a tree, John reached out and grabbed at a branch. A soft fruit—a pear?—came off in his hand. Without breaking stride, he twisted and threw it backwards at the nearest footman. He got a glimpse of the pear squashing against the man's pristine nightshirt, then focused his attention ahead, where the wall stood high and inviolate.

  Sucking in a lungful of air, John jumped at the wall. He hung there for a long instant, grasping for purchase on the rough granite. Someone grabbed at his boot; he kicked backwards, freeing his foot, and hauled himself up on the wall. A hand swiped at him, but he sprang to his feet, balanced there, and then, laughing, launched himself into the darkness.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

  Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe.

  Richard III, V, i

  Jessica was nightgowned and hugging herself, thinking of John's hard eloquent mouth, when the pounding of feet in the hallway told her she could legitimately awaken. Rubbing her eyes,
feigning drowsiness (though she had never felt more awake), she emerged from her room. Her aunt was in the bright-lit hall, clutching a wrapper around her and holding a brass candlestick high as a threat to anything that might come up the staircase.

  "Jessica! There's been a burglary!" she cried.

  "Oh, aunt, no! Where is he, the burglar?" Jessica cried back, enjoying herself enormously. "Surely not in the house still!"

  "I think not," Aunt Martha said, with a bare hint of disappointment. "There's no trace of him, except in the library, your uncle says. The footmen chased him through the back garden, but couldn't catch him. The watch have been alerted."

  Jessica knew a moment's unease, thinking of John trapped in the street when the alarm was up. But then she remembered the flash of silver in his eyes when he heard the library door open. It might have been pleasure in that kiss they shared—certainly he'd responded in other ways—but it was just as likely excitement at the thought of a chase. She reminded herself that he had eluded excise police and French privateers and Barbary pirates and Vatican priests. A few footmen and watchmen would pose him no great peril.

  And so she was able to take pleasure in the chaos he had left in his wake, trailing along behind her uncle as Mr. Wiley, his voice quavering with outrage, said he had returned to the library for a forgotten volume and found the open window, the misplaced lamp. Jessica didn't let herself worry that the lamp's position by the shelf of religious works was any evidence—John surely knew what he was doing, and anyway, the telltale More volume was even now stowed safely away in a box under her evening wraps.

  As they gathered again at breakfast, her uncle was still unsettled, made more so by Aunt Martha's oft-pronounced fear that they would all be murdered in their sleep. Jessica thought to soothe and provoke both. "It was the library the burglars entered, not the living quarters. And there was no evidence they got any further than the bookroom. I think they must have been after something in there—oh! Perhaps the Baconalia! Or who knows what!" She added craftily, "Poor Mr. Wiley is so distrait, I know he can't think of what to do. He must be in terror that the burglars will return. And he won't have any way to prevent it."

  Her uncle peremptorily waved away the footman who had come to pour more coffee. "That tears it. I'm going to call in that Dryden fellow for a consultation. If he advised the Regent on setting up the royal library, he'll know what to do to secure this one."

  And so it was that when Jessica entered the drawing room on some flimsy pretext, she found the cool Sir John bending over the table, drawing plans on a parchment sheet, with Uncle Emory watching and nodding sagely. Mr. Wiley was sitting apart on the settee, his face set, his arms crossed at his chest.

  John rose as she approached. Gone was the dark dashing outlaw of the night before, though danger still emanated from his slim form. In his subdued impeccable clothes, he was cool again, remote, as if their crime and their kiss had never occurred. But just as she felt her spirits plummet, he took her hand. It was a formal, public gesture, but one he made intimate, by stroking her palm with his callused thumb before releasing her.

  It was like a secret kiss, like the kiss they had shared only hours earlier, daring and sweet and tantalizing and temporary. As Jessica bent her head to hide the color that rose in her cheeks, she told herself that this intimacy was only a bit of excitement, a flirtation with danger like their criminal activity. He wasn't for her; he was too alien, too apart. It couldn't last. But while it did, she meant to delight in it.

  So she glanced sidelong at him, letting her eyes show her inquiry, knowing that only he would see it. His response was a slight shake of his head before he returned to his consultation with Uncle Emory. And she was left to puzzle that out. Did it mean the index didn't contain what he'd hoped? No. If his hopes were dashed, she would know it; she would see the loss in his eyes no matter how he tried to conceal it. She would have to wait for a more private moment to learn what he had found.

  That moment came soon, when Uncle Emory rose to show the parchment to Mr. Wiley. Jessica poured a cup of tea, keeping her gaze focused on the liquid leaving the spout, and whispered, "So tell me!"

  John took the cup from her and shook his head warningly. "Not today. Wiley's keeping watch on me. I will get a note to you tomorrow. And we are supposed to be at odds, recall."

  To further that impression, Jessica did not have to invent any annoyance. It's my index, she wanted to remind him, but instead she poured another cup and carried it to Mr. Wiley. He took the tea with a distracted polite murmur, and went back to scowling at Sir John's drawing. In a show of fellow-feeling, Jessica peered down at the plans and then sank gracefully down beside the librarian, hand on her heart, as if overcome with dismay.

  "Really, Sir John! Bars on the windows? An armed guard in each room? This is not the Tower of London, you know, but a library!"

  Mr. Wiley stared at her, no doubt astonished to have so unlikely an ally. But he soon recovered, and pointedly addressed his own remarks to Lord Parham. "Miss Seton is right, my lord. Surely such contortions aren't necessary. I would find it impossible to work in such an atmosphere, with guards peering over my shoulder and rifling through the shelves."

  John regarded him with that assessing gaze that seemed to take his measure to the inch. "You have an alternative plan, Mr. Wiley?"

  "Yes, I do. It was merest luck that sent me back to the library last night for the document I had forgotten, but that is the right approach, to be there at all times. I mean to move my quarters into the backroom."

  Jessica bit down hard on her protest. The flash in John's eyes told her he had the same thought. Wiley in the backroom, with the vault, with the trunk.

  No, it was too dangerous. She swallowed hard and managed a smile. She even patted Mr. Wiley's hand—or fist, rather, for it was bunched on the settee between them. "How brave of you, Mr. Wiley! But someone broke in last night. He escaped, didn't he? And my aunt said he got clean away, without being identified. What if he didn't get all he wanted? He might be back!"

  "What did he get, by the way?" John asked with a casualness that must have fooled everyone but her. "Have you done an inventory to determine what's missing?"

  Lord Parham shot a sharp look at the librarian. "We can't tell if anything is gone. None of the Bacon, that's all we know."

  "Oh, yes, I'd forgotten. There's no current catalogue. My word, that will make it difficult, won't it?" John came over to retrieve the parchment, carried it back to the desk, and as he added to the list there he murmured to himself, "Task number 13. Inventory of major pieces."

  When he returned the plan to Lord Parham, he added, "Miss Seton's right. If the burglar means to return, Mr. Wiley won't be safe there. You need trained, trustworthy guards, especially at night."

  "A guard will be little protection," Mr. Wiley observed, his eyes sharp behind their lenses, "if the threat is an internal one."

  "Internal?" Lord Parham and Jessica echoed.

  Mr. Wiley subsided into a remote silence until John said roughly, "Out with it, Wiley. What are you implying here?"

  The librarian sat up straighter and smiled. "Implying? I mean to imply nothing. You are uncommon tetchy, Dryden. I wonder why."

  "Well, I wonder why you looked at me when you spoke of an internal threat. If you've an accusation to make, make it."

  "If you insist...It's just that, anticipating Lord Parham, I sent a messenger to your flat early this morning. And you were not there. The doorman told me you hadn't come home."

  Sir John's smile went steely. "I shall have to thank the doorman for paying such close attention to my whereabouts, and keeping you apprised. Or perhaps you would prefer that the next time I decide to spend the night elsewhere, I consult with you first, Mr. Wiley?"

  "It's just that I can't help but wonder why you would spend the night elsewhere. You show an uncommon interest in the collection, Dryden. And we know about dealers. Tell him, won't you, about how you procured the Mesa Royale manuscript? The story was the talk of the
Royal Society. There was a rope ladder involved in that, wasn't there?"

  "Why don't you tell the story, Mr. Wiley, since you know it so well?"

  The librarian waved a dismissive hand. "The particulars are of no account. But your absence from home last night worries me. I can't help but wonder what would have drawn you from home."

  "Wonder all you like. But keep it to yourself, if you please. There's a lady present."

  But, as Jessica rather hoped, Mr. Wiley seemed to have forgotten that she was sitting next to him. "You mean to say, that you spent the night with your mistress? Her name might not be amiss then."

  He could not, however, ignore Parham's outraged exclamation. And John, his voice tight with anger, said, "Lord Parham, if you have need of it, I will furnish the name of the friend in whose home I spent the night—but elsewhere. This conversation cannot be of any interest to Miss Seton, and we shall, if necessary, resume it in a more appropriate setting."

  Jessica opened her mouth to protest, but her uncle overrode her. "I shouldn't ask anything of the sort from you, Dryden. A man's nights are his own. Wiley, what are you thinking of, making such a suggestion with my niece present? And to the Regent's own consultant here?"

  With his patron glaring at him, Wiley could do nothing but murmur an apology—to Jessica, not to the man he had insulted. And Uncle Emory was mollified enough to try to compromise between the two divergent security plans. He agreed to Mr. Wiley's suggestion of a single guard, stationed in the garden at night, while a footman sat up in the hall outside the library door. "Bars too, I suppose. No doubt you have some recommendation on a firm to install that, Sir John?"

  John shrugged, as if unconcerned that his sage advice had been mostly disregarded. "I will send a trustworthy man for you to interview. He worked on Carlton House. If he does not satisfy, I will give you other names. If there is nothing more, I'll take my leave of you."

  He bowed to Jessica. That momentary acknowledgment of camaraderie was gone now, and, ignoring her silent signal to wait, he started for the door. But Uncle Emory, at his most imperious, accomplished what she with her eyes and expression could not. "Just a moment more, Dryden. Jessica, you may stay too, this concerns you. Thank you, Mr. Wiley, you may go back to the library now. You might start that inventory Sir John suggested."