by Mary Balogh
“Take your damned hands off me and go to the devil,” she was saying when a quiet voice somehow penetrated the noise of the scuffle.
“Dear me,” it said, “am I interrupting fun and games?”
By that time Parkins was hanging on to one of her arms while the Runner had the other twisted up painfully behind her back. Jane, panting for breath, her vision impaired by the hair that had fallen across her face, glared at her savior, who was lounging against the frame of the open door, his quizzing glass to his eye and grossly magnifying it.
“Go away,” she said. “I have had enough of men to last me at least two lifetimes. I do not need you. I can do very well on my own.”
“As I can see.” The Duke of Tresham lowered his glass. “But such atrocious language, Jane. Wherever have you acquired it? Might I be permitted to ask, Durbury, why there is a male person—neither one a gentleman, I fear—hanging from each of Lady Sara Illingsworth’s arms? It appears to be a strange, unsporting sort of game.”
Jane caught sight of Mrs. Jacobs hovering outside the door, looking as if she were bristling with indignation. And Jane herself was feeling no less so. Why was it that two grown men, who had been quite ferocious enough to overpower her just a minute before, were now standing meek and motionless, looking as if for direction to one languid gentleman?
“Good day, Tresham,” the earl said briskly. “Cousin Sara and I will be leaving for Candleford before dark. Your presence here is quite unnecessary.”
“I came of my own free will,” Jane said. “You are no longer responsible for me in any way at all, your grace.”
He ignored her, of course. He addressed the Bow Street Runner. “Unhand the lady,” he said gently. “You already have a nose that is painful to behold. Are you responsible, Jane? My compliments. I would regret to have to give you eyes to match, my fine fellow.”
“Now see here—” Mick Boden began.
But the ducal glass was to the duke’s eye again and his eyebrows had been raised. Much as it was a relief to have her arm suddenly released, Jane could feel only indignation against a man who could rule merely through the power of his eyebrows and his quizzing glass.
“Dismiss this man,” the duke instructed the Earl of Durbury. “And your servant. Should this contretemps draw the attention of other hotel guests and employees, you might find yourself having to explain why a supposedly murdered man is alive and well and living at Candleford.”
Jane’s eyes flew to the earl’s. He was looking thunderous and rather purple in the face. But for the moment he said nothing. He did not protest. He did not contradict what had just been said.
“Exactly so,” the Duke of Tresham said softly.
“One would equally hate it to become public knowledge,” the earl said, “that you have been harboring a common felon in the guise of mis—”
“I would not complete that sentence if I were you,” Jocelyn advised. “You will dismiss the Runner, Durbury? Or shall I?”
Mick Boden drew audible breath. “I would have you know—” he began.
“Would you indeed?” his grace asked with faint indifference. “But, my good man, I have no wish to hear whatever it is you would have me know. You may wish to leave now before I decide after all to call you to account for the arm-twisting I witnessed a short while ago.”
For a moment it seemed as if the Runner would accept the challenge, but then he replaced his length of rope in his pocket and stalked from the room with a great show of bruised dignity. The earl’s valet followed him out willingly enough and closed the door quietly behind him.
Jane turned on the earl, her eyes blazing. “Sidney is alive?” she cried. “And well? Yet all this time you have been hunting me as a murderess? You have allowed me to believe since I arrived here in this room that he is dead? How could you be so cruel? And now I know why we were to return to Candleford instead of facing a magistrate here. You still believe you can persuade me to marry Sidney. You must have windmills in your head—or believe that I do.”
“There is still the matter of a vicious assault, which kept my son hovering between life and death for many weeks,” the earl retorted. “And there is still the matter of a certain sum of money and a certain costly bracelet.”
“Ah,” Jocelyn said, tossing his hat and cane onto a chair just inside the door, “it is gratifying to know that my guess was correct. Jardine is still an active member of this vale of tears, then? My congratulations, Durbury.”
Jane turned her indignation on him. “It was a guess?” she said. “A bluff? And why are you still here? I told you I did not need you. I will never need you again. Go away.”
“I have come to escort you to Lady Webb’s,” he told her.
Her eyes widened. “Aunt Harriet’s? She is here? She is back in town?”
He inclined his head before turning away to address her cousin. “It will be an altogether more convenient place than Candleford at which to call upon my betrothed,” he explained.
Jane drew breath to speak. How dare he! But Sidney was alive and well. Aunt Harriet was back in London. She was to go there. It was all over, this nightmare with which she had lived seemingly forever. She closed her mouth again.
“Yes, my love,” Jocelyn said gently, observing her.
“Your betrothed?” The earl was pulling himself together. “Now see here, Tresham, Lady Sara is twenty years old. Until she is five and twenty she may not marry or betroth herself to any man who does not meet with my approval. You do not. Besides, this betrothal nonsense is humbug if ever I heard any. A man of your ilk does not marry his whore.”
Jane watched wide-eyed as Jocelyn took a few leisurely strides forward. A moment later the earl’s toes were scraping the floor for something against which to brace his weight while his cravat in Jocelyn’s hand converted itself into a convenient noose. His face turned a deeper shade of purple.
“I sometimes believe,” Jocelyn said softly, “that my hearing is defective. I suppose I should have it checked by a physician before punishing a man for what I merely suspect he said. But lest I find that I am unable to restrain myself despite good resolutions, I would suggest, Durbury, that in future you speak very clearly and very distinctly.”
The earl’s heels met the floor again and his cravat resumed its former function, though somewhat more crumpled and askew than before.
Jane would not have been human if she had been able to resist a purely feminine rush of satisfaction.
“Your permission must be granted before I may arrange my nuptials with Lady Sara Illingsworth?” Jocelyn asked. “I will have it then, in writing, before you leave for Cornwall, which I believe you will do no later than tomorrow morning?” He raised his glass to his eye.
“That I will not be bullied into doing,” the earl said. “Sara is my responsibility. I owe it to her dead father to find her a husband more suited to providing her lasting happiness than you, Tresham. Remember too that she assaulted and almost killed my son. Remember that she robbed me of both money and jewels. She must answer for those actions in Cornwall, even if only to me. I am her guardian.”
“Perhaps,” Jocelyn said, “these charges should be made in London, Durbury. Lady Sara will doubtless prove a difficult prisoner on the long journey to Cornwall. I will help you haul her off to a magistrate now. And then the ton, desperate for novelty at this stage of the Season, will be able to enjoy the entertainment of witnessing a gently nurtured lady being prosecuted for whacking and felling a man twice her size with a book. And for taking fifteen pounds from her guardian, who had deprived her for longer than a year of the allowance to which she was entitled. And for removing from a safe a bracelet that was her own while leaving behind what is doubtless a costly hoard of jewelry that will be hers at her marriage or on her twenty-fifth birthday. The beau monde, I assure you, sir, will be vastly amused.”
The Earl of Durbury’s nostrils flared. “Are you by chance attempting to blackmail me, Tresham?” he asked.
Jocelyn raised his eyebr
ows. “I do assure you, Durbury, that if I were attempting blackmail, I would choose to hold over your head the threat that my betrothed will charge you with neglect of your duty to protect her in your own home and your son with attempted ravishment. I am sure at least one of the witnesses could be persuaded to tell the truth. And I would add for good measure that if by some misfortune Sidney Jardine’s path should ever cross mine during the remainder of both our lives, he will, within five minutes of such a meeting, be picking his teeth out of his throat. You may wish to convey that observation to him.”
Jane felt another rush of unwilling satisfaction. It ought not to have been so easy for him. It was not fair. Why could no one stand up to the Duke of Tresham? All the bluster drained out of Cousin Harold when he understood that his plan to catch her, to lure her back to Cornwall, and to blackmail her into marrying Sidney was not going to work. And that even withholding his consent to her marriage would have consequences far worse than the loss of much of her father’s property and most of his fortune.
While Jane sat in indignant silence, totally ignored as if her very existence were irrelevant, permission for the Duke of Tresham to marry Lady Sara Illingsworth was duly given in writing after Mrs. Jacobs and the valet had been summoned as witnesses.
After that, there was nothing left for Jane to do but smooth the creases from her cloak, put on her bonnet and gloves with slow deliberation while Mrs. Jacobs picked up her bag, and then march out of the room and down the stairs and out to the waiting carriage, with its ducal crest and cluster of servile sycophants waiting to bend and scrape and pay him homage. Jane climbed inside and seated herself, Mrs. Jacobs beside her. If it were really possible for a human being to burst with fury, Jane thought, she would surely do it. And serve him right too to have blood and brains and tissue raining down on the plush interior of his expensive town carriage.
He vaulted in and took the seat opposite.
Jane sat with straight back and lifted chin. She directed her gaze beyond the carriage windows. “I will avail myself of your escort to Lady Webb’s,” she said, “but we will be perfectly clear about one thing, your grace—and Mrs. Jacobs may be my witness. If you were the last man on earth and you were to pester me daily for a million years, I would not marry you. I will not do so.”
“My dear Lady Sara.” His voice was haughty and bored. “I do beg you to have some regard for my pride. A million years? I assure you I would stop asking after the first thousand.”
She pressed her lips together and resisted the urge to answer him with some sufficiently cutting remark. She would not give him the satisfaction of a quarrel.
He had come to her rescue—of course he had. It was the sort of thing the Duke of Tresham would do. She had left the house without his permission. She had been his mistress. He had determined that he would do the honorable thing and marry her. She was his possession.
But he did not believe she had been his friend.
He did not believe she would have made him hers by telling him the full truth about herself.
He did not trust her. He did not love her. Of course he did not love her.
Fortunately the journey to Lady Webb’s was short. But it was only as the carriage drew to a halt that Jane really thought about her. She must know that Jane was on the way. Did she know everything else? Would she welcome her?
But she had her answer even as a footman was opening the carriage door and putting down the steps. The door of the house opened and Lady Webb came outside, not just onto the doorsill, but all the way down the steps.
“Aunt Harriet!”
Jane scarcely noticed Jocelyn descending from the carriage and handing her down. It seemed that within a single moment she was enfolded in the safe arms of her mother’s dearest friend.
“Sara!” she exclaimed. “My dear girl. I thought you would never come. I have quite worn a path in the drawing room carpet, I declare. Oh, my dear, dear girl.”
“Aunt Harriet.”
Jane was sobbing and hiccuping suddenly and being led up the steps into a brightly lit hall. She had been taken up the staircase to the drawing room and seated in an elegant chair beside the cheerful fire there and handed a lace-edged handkerchief to dry her eyes before she realized that they were alone, she and Lady Webb.
He had gone.
Perhaps forever.
She could not have been more emphatic in her rejection of him.
And good riddance too.
There had perhaps not been any bleaker moment in her whole life.
IT WAS A BUSY morning. Jocelyn rode in the park, where he met Baron Pottier and Sir Conan Brougham. The latter had already spoken with the seconds of the two Forbes brothers and made arrangements for the duels to be fought on successive mornings one week hence in Hyde Park. He would single-handedly be bringing the park back into fashion as a venue for meetings of honor if he did not soon change the family of his dueling partners, Jocelyn thought wryly.
It was not a pleasant prospect. Two more men would be given their chance to snuff out his life. And he did not believe that the Reverend Josiah Forbes, at least, was one to be given the trembles by the famous black Tresham stare.
But Viscount Kimble joined them and then Ferdinand, and Jocelyn put the thought of the duels firmly behind him.
“Word spread last night like fire in a woodshed,” Ferdinand said with a grin. “Miss Jane Ingleby turning out to be Lady Sara Illingsworth! It is the sensation of the hour, Tresham. Those people who were at your soiree and heard her sing were preening themselves at Lady Wardle’s, I can tell you. Old Hardinge was trying to convince all who would listen that he had guessed it all along. She was far too genteel, he said, to be anyone but Lady Sara.”
“Where did you find her, Tresham?” Baron Pottier asked. “And how did you discover the truth? When I think that every time we called on you at Dudley House, there she was. And we never so much as suspected.”
“Is it true,” Sir Conan asked, “that her name has been cleared, Tresham?”
“It was all a mistake.” Jocelyn waved one careless hand and then tipped his hat to a couple of ladies who were riding in the opposite direction. “I spoke to Durbury last evening just before he set out for Cornwall. Jardine is not dead. Indeed, he has fully recovered from his little accident. Durbury came to town and hired a Runner to find Lady Sara simply to tell her there was nothing to worry about. The rumors spread, as rumors will, quite independently of him.”
“But the theft, Tresham?” Baron Pottier asked.
“There was no theft,” Jocelyn said. “How susceptible we all are to gossip. It makes one wonder if we need to find something better to do.”
His friends laughed as if he had made the joke of the morning.
“But rumors have a nasty habit of lingering,” Jocelyn continued, “unless there is something to take their place. I for one will be calling upon Lady Sara at Lady Webb’s and even pursuing her acquaintance.”
Baron Pottier roared with laughter. “Ho, Tresham,” he said, “that will do it. That will create new gossip. It will be said that you are hankering after a leg shackle.”
“Quite so,” Jocelyn said agreeably. “One would certainly not wish the lady to be looked upon as someone who is somehow tainted, would one?”
“I will call upon her too, Tresham,” Ferdinand said. “I want to take another look at Lady Sara now that I know she is Lady Sara. I say, this is famous!”
“It will be my pleasure to call upon her too, Tresh,” the viscount said.
“I daresay my mother and my sister would be pleased to make her acquaintance,” Sir Conan added. “I’ll take them to call, Tresham. My mother has an acquaintance with Lady Webb.”
His friends understood, Jocelyn was relieved to find. Kimble and Brougham had the advantage of knowing the full truth, of course, but even the other two seemed to realize there was a certain embarrassment in his having employed the lady as a nurse for three weeks. All were willing to do their part in drawing Jane into society, making
her respectable, helping squash any vestiges of doubt about the charges that had been made against her.
The new sensation that would finally replace the old, of course, would be news that the Duke of Tresham was paying court to the woman who had once been his nurse.
All would be well. None of the few people who knew that Lady Sara Illingsworth had been his mistress would ever breathe a word of the fact. She would be safe, her reputation restored.
The conversation turned at length to a reliving of yesterday’s fight.
He was at breakfast later, having decided to remain at home to read the papers before proceeding to White’s, when Angeline arrived. She swept into the dining room unannounced.
“Tresham,” she said, “whatever could you have been thinking of, you and Ferdie, to have taken on three of the Forbes brothers in the park yesterday? I was all aflutter when I heard. But how perfectly splendid that all three of them had to be carried to the nearest carriage, two of them quite insensible and the other with a broken nose. What a shame it was not all five. That would have been a glorious victory for the Dudleys, and I daresay you could have done it too. I suppose it is true that you have been drawn into dueling with the other two. Heyward says such information is not for a lady’s ears, but he would not deny it so I daresay it is true. I shall not have a wink of sleep between now and then. You will be killed for sure, and what will I do then? And if you kill them, you will be forced to flee to Paris and Heyward still says he will not take me there, odious man, even though I would willingly forgo the pleasures of Brighton. And, Tresham, what is this I hear of the Ingleby woman’s turning out to be Lady Sara Illingsworth?”
“Do have a seat, Angeline,” Jocelyn said, waving one languid hand at the chair opposite, “and a coffee.” He raised one finger in the direction of the butler at the sideboard. “And do remove that more than usually ghastly pea-green bonnet, I beg you. I fear it will interfere with my digestion.”
“Is it true?” she asked. “Do tell me it is. It is just the sort of story we Dudleys revel in, is it not? You harboring an ax murderer as your nurse and presenting her to a select gathering of the ton as a nightingale. It is quite priceless.” She went off into peals of merry laughter as Hawkins bent over her to fill her cup with coffee.
