by Mary Balogh
He paused, eyebrows raised, for the earl to respond.
“It is an idea,” his lordship conceded stiffly. Jocelyn was confirmed in his suspicion that there was no treasure, or at least not any significant amount of it.
“He would certainly be better employed looking for the money and jewels than following me,” Jocelyn added amiably.
The Earl of Durbury looked sharply at him.
“I suppose,” Jocelyn continued, “he concluded from his interview with me yesterday morning that I am the sort of man who would derive a certain titillation out of bedding a woman who might rob me of my last farthing while I sleep and split open my skull with the sharp end of an ax for good measure. One can understand his conclusion. I do have a certain reputation for reckless, dangerous living. However, although I found it rather amusing yesterday to be followed wherever I went, I do believe I would find it tedious to have the experience repeated today.”
The earl clearly did not know what his Runner had been up to most of yesterday. He stared blankly.
“Not that it has been happening yet today,” Jocelyn admitted. “I daresay he is camped out again before the house of a certain, ah, lady whom I visited last night. The lady is my mistress, but you must understand, Durbury, that any mistress I employ is under my full protection and that anyone who harasses her will have me to answer to. You will perhaps consider it pertinent to explain this to your Runner—I am afraid his name escapes my memory at the moment.” He rose to his feet.
“I most certainly will.” The Earl of Durbury looked thunderous. “I am paying the Runners an exorbitant amount to watch your mistress’s house, Tresham? This is outrageous.”
“I must confess,” Jocelyn said as he picked up his hat and gloves from a table beside the door, “that it is somewhat distracting while one is engaged in, ah, conversation with a lady to know that the window is being watched from the outside. I will not expect such a distraction again tonight.”
“No, indeed,” the earl assured him. “I shall demand an explanation for this from Mick Boden, believe me.”
“Ah, yes,” Jocelyn said as he let himself out of the room, “that was the name. Wiry little man with well-oiled hair. Good day to you, Durbury.”
He felt satisfied with the morning’s visit as he sauntered down the stairs and out of the hotel, despite the headache that had settled in for a lengthy stay just behind his eyes. The morning was almost over. He just hoped that, untrue to form, she would not poke as much as her nose out through the door of her house before the watchdog was removed. But it was unlikely. She never went out except into the back garden. And now, of course, he understood why.
DURING A MORNING OF ferociously hard work tackling a corner of garden wilderness she had not worked on before, Jane convinced herself that the end had come. He had spoken of it himself—the infatuation, the gradual loss of interest, the final severance of all ties.
The infatuation was over, killed by his own indiscretion—or what he apparently saw as an indiscretion anyway. The loss of interest, Jane suspected, would not be gradual but sudden. Perhaps she might expect a few more night visits like last night’s. But one day soon Mr. Quincy would arrive to make arrangements for the ending of the liaison. Not that there would be much to discuss. The contract took care of most details.
Then she would never see Jocelyn again.
She tore recklessly at a clump of nettles, which stung painfully even through her gloves.
It was just as well, she told herself. She was going to turn herself in to the Bow Street Runners anyway. Soon she would be able to do it without any encumbrance. Soon her fate would not much matter to her, though she would, of course, from sheer principle fight to clear herself of the ridiculous charges against her. Ridiculous except for the fact that Sidney was dead.
She reached for another clump of nettles.
She had convinced herself so well that she was surprised when Jocelyn arrived early in the afternoon. She heard the rapping of the door knocker as she was changing into a clean dress upstairs. She waited tensely to hear his footsteps on the stairs. But it was Mr. Jacobs’s hesitant knock that sounded on her door.
“His grace requests the honor of your company in the sitting room, ma’am,” the butler informed her.
Jane’s heart sank as she set down her brush. They had not used the sitting room for over a week.
He was standing before the empty fireplace, one arm propped on the high mantel, when she stepped into the room.
“Good afternoon, Jocelyn,” she said.
He was looking his usual dark, cynical, arrogant self, his eyes quite inscrutable. His mood had not improved since last night, then. And suddenly she realized why he had come. He would not send Mr. Quincy, of course. He would tell her himself.
This was the end. After just a week and a half.
He inclined his head but did not return her greeting.
“It was a mistake,” she said quietly. “When you asked if you could see the room next door, I should have held firm and said no. You want a mistress, Jocelyn. You want an uncomplicated physical relationship with a woman. You are afraid of friendship, of emotional closeness. You are afraid of your artistic side. You are afraid to confront your memories and admit to yourself that you have allowed them to blight your life. You are afraid to let go of your image of yourself as a pure man. I should not have encouraged you to indulge your inner self. I should not have been your friend. I should have kept our relationship to what it was meant to be. I should have entertained you in bed and encouraged you to live all the rest of your life beyond the confines of this house.”
“Indeed?” There was pure ice in his voice. “Do you have any other pearls of wisdom for me, Jane?”
“I will not hold you to our contract,” she said. “It would be criminal of me to insist that you support me for four and a half years when our liaison has lasted a mere week and a half. You are free of me, your grace. As of this moment. By tomorrow I shall be gone. Even today if you wish.”
It would be better today. To leave without having any time to think about it. To go to the Pulteney Hotel. Or to seek out the Bow Street Runners if the earl was not there.
“You are quite right,” he said after staring at her in silence for an uncomfortably long time. “Our contract is void. It has a fatal flaw.”
She lifted her chin a notch, realizing only as he spoke that she had been desperately hoping he would argue, try to persuade her to stay, be simply Jocelyn again.
“I believe,” he said, “contracts are void if one of the parties uses an alias. I am no legal expert. Quincy would know. But I believe I am right, Sara.”
Foolishly, she did not notice for a moment. There was only a strange chill at her heart. But it was only a moment. The name he had used seemed to hang in the air between them as if the sound of it had not died away with his voice.
She sat down abruptly on a chair close by.
“That is not my name,” she whispered.
“I beg your pardon.” He made her an ironic half bow. “I forget that you insist upon formality. I should have said Lady Sara. Is that better?”
She shook her head. “You misunderstand. It is not my name. I am Jane.” But she spread her hands over her face suddenly and found they were shaking. She lowered them to her lap. “How did you find out?”
“I had a visitor,” he said. “A Bow Street Runner. I understand that in his search for Lady Sara Illingsworth he called at the milliner’s shop of a certain Madam Dee Lorrent. I suppose he meant Madame de Laurent. Coincidentally your former employer, Jane, as well as Lady Sara’s. The Runner came to the intelligent conclusion that you were one and the same.”
“I was going to tell you.” She realized even as she spoke how lame her words sounded.
“Were you?” He raised his quizzing glass and regarded her through it with cold hauteur. “Were you indeed, Lady Sara? Pardon me for not believing you. You are as accomplished a liar as I have met. I am afraid of friendship and emotional c
loseness, am I? You ought not to have become my friend, ought you? To my shame I became your dupe. For a short while. No longer.” He dropped his quizzing glass and it swung on its ribbon.
The temptation was to beg him to believe her, try to explain that after the emotional intensity of his own disclosures two evenings ago she had decided to wait to tell her own story. But he would not believe her. She would not believe him if the situation were reversed, would she?
“Does he know where I am?” she asked. “The Bow Street Runner?”
“He followed me here last night,” he told her, “and stood outside while you were pleasuring me upstairs. Oh, do not be alarmed. I have called off the hunt, at least in this particular place, though I do not imagine he is deceived. He is more intelligent than his current employer, I believe.”
“Is the Earl of Durbury still at the Pulteney?” she asked. “Do you know?”
“He was there this morning when I called upon him,” he said.
Her face felt cold and clammy. There was a ringing in her ears. The air she breathed felt icy. But she would not faint. She would not.
“Oh, I have not betrayed you, Lady Sara,” he told her, his eyes narrowing.
“Thank you,” she said. “I would rather turn myself in than be dragged in. If you will give me a minute to fetch my bag from upstairs, you may see me off the premises and assure yourself that I am gone. Unless you have told anyone that I am your mistress, no one need know. I daresay Mr. Quincy and the servants here are discreet. It would be a condition of their employment, would it not? The scandal need not touch you too nearly.” She got to her feet.
“Sit down,” he told her.
The words were so quietly spoken but with such cold command that she obeyed without thinking.
“Are you guilty of any of the charges against you?” he asked her.
“Murder? Theft?” She looked down at the hands clasped in her lap. Her fingers, she noticed dispassionately, were white with tension. “I hit him. I took money. Therefore, I am guilty.”
“And jewels?”
“A bracelet,” she said. “It is in my bag upstairs.”
She would offer no explanations, no excuses. She owed him none now. Yesterday it would have been different. He would have been her friend, her lover. Now he was nothing at all.
“You hit him,” he said. “With an ax? With a pistol?”
“With a book,” she said.
“With a book?”
“The corner of it caught him on the temple,” she explained. “He was bleeding and dizzy. If he had sat down all might have been well. But he came after me, and when I stepped aside he lost his balance and cracked his head on the hearth. He was not dead. I had him carried upstairs and tended him myself until the doctor arrived. He was still not dead when I left, though he was unconscious.”
There, she had given in to the urge to explain after all. She was still watching her hands.
“He kept coming after you,” Jocelyn said quietly. “Why was he coming after you in the first place? Because he had caught you stealing?”
“Oh, that nonsense,” she said contemptuously. “He was going to ravish me.”
“At Candleford?” His voice was sharp. “At his father’s home? His father’s ward?”
“They were gone,” she told him, “the earl and countess. They had left for a few days.”
“Leaving you alone with Jardine?”
“And with an elderly relative as chaperone.” She laughed. “She likes her port, does Cousin Emily. And she likes Sidney too—liked Sidney, that is.” There was an uncomfortable churning in her stomach. “He got her drunk and sent her off early to bed. There were only a few of his friends there that evening and his own servants.”
“The friends did not defend you?” he asked. “And were not to be depended upon to tell the truth in an investigation into the death of Jardine?”
“They were all inebriated,” she said. “They were urging him on.”
“Was he not afraid,” Jocelyn asked, “of the consequences of ravishing you after his father had returned?”
“I suppose,” she said, “he counted upon my being too ashamed to say anything. He counted upon my meekly agreeing to marry him. And it would have been the earl’s solution even if I had told. It is what they both wanted and had urged upon me ceaselessly until I almost was ready to go at them both with an ax.”
“A reluctant bride,” he said. “Yes, that would appeal to Jardine. Especially when she is as lovely as a golden goddess. I am not well acquainted with Durbury, though I did not find myself warming to him this morning. Why did you steal and run away and go into hiding under an alias and make yourself look as guilty as sin? It seems uncharacteristic of Jane Ingleby. But then she does not exist, does she?”
“I took fifteen pounds,” she said. “In the year and a half since my father’s death, the earl had given me no allowance. There was nothing on which to spend money at Candleford, he told me. I believe he owed me far more than fifteen pounds. The bracelet was my father’s wedding gift to my mother. Mama gave it to me on her deathbed, but I asked Papa to keep it in the safe with all the other family jewelry. The earl had always refused to give it to me or to acknowledge it as mine. I knew the combination of the safe.”
“Foolish of him,” Jocelyn said, “not to have thought of that.”
“I was not running away,” she said. “I had had enough of them all. I came to London to stay with Lady Webb, my mama’s dearest friend and my godmother. Lord Webb was to have been my guardian jointly with my father’s cousin, the new earl, but he died and I suppose Papa did not think of having someone else appointed. Lady Webb was not at home and not expected back soon. That was when I panicked. I started to realize that Sidney might have been badly hurt, that he might even have died. I realized how the taking of the money and the bracelet would be construed. I realized that none of the witnesses was likely to tell the truth. I realized I might be in deep trouble.”
“All the deeper,” he said, “for your decision to become a fugitive.”
“Yes.”
“Was there no one at Candleford or in its neighborhood to stand your friend?” he asked.
“My father’s cousin is the earl,” she explained. “Sidney is—was—his heir. There was no one powerful enough to shield me, and my dearest friend was from home in Somersetshire on an extended visit with his sister.”
“He?” The question was asked with soft emphasis.
“Charles,” she said. “Sir Charles Fortescue.”
“Your friend?” he said. “And beau?”
She looked up at him for the first time in several minutes. Shock was beginning to recede. He had no business interrogating her. She was under no obligation to answer him. She was merely his ex-mistress. And she had no intention of accepting any pay for the past week and a half or of taking with her any of the clothes he had bought her.
“And beau,” she replied steadily. “We were to marry, but not for a long time. I am not permitted to marry without the earl’s consent until I am five and twenty. We would have married on my twenty-fifth birthday.”
“But will not now do so?” He had his glass to his eye again, but Jane would not be cowed by it. She continued to look steadily at him. “He will not fancy marrying a murderess, Lady Sara? How unsporting of him. And he will not marry a fallen woman? How unchivalrous.”
“I will not marry him,” she said firmly.
“Quite right too,” he said briskly. “The laws of our land prohibit bigamy, Lady Sara.”
She wished he would not keep calling her that.
“Bigamy?” Had Charles met and married someone else? she thought foolishly without even stopping to wonder how she expected the Duke of Tresham to know that fact even if it were true.
“Sir Charles Fortescue,” he said coldly, “would not be permitted by law to marry my wife. One hopes, I suppose, that his heart will not be broken, though I have not noticed him rushing about London, moving heaven and earth to find you a
nd clasp you to his bosom. One hopes, perhaps, that your heart will not be broken, though frankly I cannot say that I much care.”
Jane was on her feet.
“Your wife?” she said, her eyes wide with astonishment. “Your wife? How utterly preposterous. You think you owe me marriage just because you have suddenly discovered that I am Lady Sara Illingsworth of Candleford rather than Jane Ingleby from some orphanage?”
“I could not have phrased it better myself,” he said.
“I do not know what you have planned for the rest of the afternoon, your grace,” she told him, looking into his cold, cynical face and feeling the full chill of his total indifference to her as a person, “but I have something of importance to do. I have a visit to the Pulteney Hotel to make. If you will excuse me.” She turned resolutely to the door.
“Sit down,” he said as quietly as before.
She swung to face him. “I am not one of your servants, your grace,” she said. “I am not—”
“Sit down!” His voice, if anything, was even quieter.
Jane stood staring at him for a few moments before striding across the room until she stood almost toe-to-toe with him.
“I repeat,” she said, “I am not one of your servants. If you have something more to say to me, say it without this ridiculous posturing. My ears function quite well enough when I am on my feet.”
“You try my patience to the limit, ma’am,” he said, his eyes narrowing dangerously.
“And mine is already tried beyond the limit, your grace,” she retorted, turning toward the door again.
“Lady Sara.” His icy voice stopped her in her tracks. “We will have one thing straight between us. Soon—within the next few days—you will be the Duchess of Tresham. Your personal wishes on this matter are not to be consulted. I am quite indifferent to them. You will be my wife. And you will spend the rest of your life ruing the day you were born.”
If she had not been so white with fury, she might well have laughed. As it was she took her time about seating herself in the nearest chair, arranging her skirts neatly about her before looking up into his eyes, her own carefully cool.
