All Through the Night

by Connie Brockway

  “Be wary her talons, sir,” Griffin said, troubled. “I don’t like women. Don’t trust them. They complicate matters.”

  “Don’t they though?” the colonel murmured, affixing his fob to his waistcoat. “Now what news do you have for me?”

  “Miss Sophia goes to manteau makers and libraries, adding occasional unchaperoned visits to Lord Vedder’s town house and not-so-respectable coffee houses. With quite a variety of gentlemen, too. Mrs. Wilder has been keeping close to home, though she regularly visits that charity haunt she set up.”

  “Fine,” the colonel said. “What of Jeanette Frost and Lady Dibbs?”

  “Jeanette Frost giggles. Her father drinks more each day. Vedder’s his favorite companion. He is also Lady Dibbs’s newest lover.”

  “Vedder?” The colonel’s interest sharpened.

  “Aye. But don’t get your hopes up, Cap. They don’t go wandering over the rooftops when they’re together. Besides, Lady Dibbs is too plump to fit through some of those windows the Wraith must have entered.”

  “Yes,” the colonel agreed. “There has to be something to go on, somewhere.”

  “Jamison been at you?”

  “He’s given me a fortnight to find the thief.” The colonel frowned. “Something’s more to this letter than I understand and that I do not like, Griff. Jamison became nearly apoplectic when I reminded him I am under Lord Knowles’s directive.” He worked the fingers of his gloves on. “What is in this cursed letter that has him so deviled?”

  “I’ll find out, Cap. I’m making some progress. I discovered that the letter originally came from Windsor.”

  The colonel paused and looked up. “That’s interesting.”

  Griffin frowned. The set of the colonel’s jacket didn’t look right.

  “Where in the palace?”

  “Don’t know yet.” Griffin tugged the offending lapel straight. “But I have a man there that’s good at ferreting things out.”

  “There’s no one even in residence there now. Except the old king,” the colonel said. “And he ceased to be a political factor long ago when he went mad and his son became regent.”

  Griffin stood back to survey his attempts at valeting.

  “The diamond was definitely the right choice, Cap.”

  Anne sat staring stonily at her image in the mirror. Her dress was new, the product of a rare free afternoon and a canny shopkeeper’s window display. It had been delivered this morning, along with crystal-studded shoes, delicately embroidered silk stockings, and a net shawl sprinkled with tiny gold beads.

  Against the rich Forester’s green, her hands looked interestingly pale, ivory instead of their usual waxen shade. Gold silk edged the hem and piped the low décolletage and short puffed sleeves. Yesterday the dress would have pleased her. Today it might as well have been sackcloth.

  Could she love Jack? Ever since that horrendous idea had arisen, she’d been unable to think of anything else. And it was absurd. Love? What did she know of love? she thought bitterly.

  She’d once been “in love.” She’d married the man and spent the next two years being taught the deficiency of her heart, because her love had withered even as Matthew’s had grown. Try as she had to love him, to give back to him some part of the enormous burden—gift, she thought wildly, the enormous gift of his adoration—she hadn’t been able to do it. And he’d died because of it.

  In his last letter to her he’d made it clear that he was freeing her from their marriage in the most complete way possible. By dying. Only she wasn’t free, was she? She’d never be free.

  She swayed forward, her head throbbing, and pushed her fingertips into her temples. She wouldn’t call this thing she felt for Jack love. She wouldn’t.

  How dare she think of loving Jack? When he discovered who she was, he would despise her.

  Her head snapped up and she stared at the woman in the mirror with brilliant, burning eyes. That was it. Jack Seward was an opiate, an addictive peril, like leaping across ten-foot spans a hundred feet above the ground. Loving Jack simply raised the stakes, made it more stimulating, more perverse, more dangerous.

  No! From within something struggled to repudiate the ugly accusation, but she would not listen. Self-loathing and hopelessness spurred her on, away from the avalanche of loss threatening her.

  She no longer knew what she did or why. From the spinning, disconnected thoughts jumbling for expression in her mind, only one emerged clear and imperative: She had to escape from him.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Chinoiserie vases brimming with Michaelmas roses cluttered the tables. Polished sideboards reflected the buttery glow of beeswax tapers and the sweet strains of a string quartet drifted from upstairs. The Norths’ fête had begun.

  Only a dozen or so guests had arrived, Jack Seward among the first. He went in search of Anne. He needed to see her, speak to her, find out what he had done with his impulsive kiss. Though, he amended wryly, that faint meeting of lips, that brief exchange of breath would hardly qualify as a kiss, yet it had stirred him more deeply than any other such exchange had ever done. Except perhaps one. And that had stirred him in another manner altogether.

  “Colonel Seward!” Sophia had found him. She bore down on him, shepherding a tall, brown-haired woman before her.

  “Miss Sophia.”

  “Julia, dear.” Sophia secured the arm of the gentlefaced woman. “This is Colonel Seward. Colonel, our good friend, Miss Julia Knapp.”

  “A pleasure, Miss Knapp.” Jack inclined his head.

  “I can’t think but there must have been some sort of accident on one of the main thoroughfares,” Sophia said, looking around. “So few people have arrived.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Jack agreed. The party was light on guests, Jack noted, and of those present not a duke or earl among them. Poor Sophia had been mistaken in her self-assessment. In someone else’s home she might be flirted with as a comely wench. To accept an invitation to dine in hers would declare one’s willingness to take her aspirations seriously.

  “Have you been in town long, Miss Knapp?” Jack asked. The necessity of making idle conversation chafed. He wanted to see Anne.

  “No,” Miss Knapp replied. “I came down with my brother’s family last week. I met Sophia at the museum yesterday. She kindly invited me here tonight. My brother and his family had prior engagements.”

  Her gaze slid away from his. So, Miss Knapp had not been invited to join her brother, Jack thought. “Have you known Miss North long?”

  “Since she was a child and spent her summers at Mill End.”

  “Mill End?” Jack asked.

  “My cousins, the Wilders, country house,” Sophia answered for Julia. “I spent summers there. The Knapps own the property adjoining Mill End. They’ve been neighbors for generations.”

  Julia had known Matthew Wilder, Jack thought. Just what sort of man was his dead rival? What about him was so exceptional that Anne had prolonged her mourning so far beyond what decorum demanded?

  “Then you are acquainted with Mrs. Wilder,” Jack said.

  “Oh, yes, Julia knows Anne,” Sophia said with a purr.

  Julia shook her head and her soft brown ringlets bobbed lightly. “Not so very well, Sophia. I met Mrs. Wilder the year of her come-out. She was so spirited and self-assured. We all strove to emulate her.” Her voice reflected only the sincerest admiration.

  “Yes,” Sophia said in a pensive voice. “Anne was splendid. I thought her the most fascinating creature on earth.” Then, unwilling to be caught in so unfashionable a mood as sentimentality, she opened her fan with a snap. “I only meant she once had a fine sense of style. But she’s forsaken style for all those tiresome gray things.”

  “Oh, dear,” Julia said. “Do not tell me she still mourns?”

  “I suggest you ask her. Colonel Seward, punch?” She did not await his answer but beckoned a servant over.

  “I’m sorry.” Julia colored. “I have been forward.” She darted an apologetic glance
in his direction. “Forgive me. I had … It is just that I hoped Anne had found peace.”

  “Not at all, Miss Knapp,” he said. “Your concern does you credit.”

  “Ah.” Sophia’s expression intensified, her smile grew tense. “Lord Vedder has arrived. I must go greet him.” She swept by them, her chin high, her eyes glittering.

  “Sophia has certainly grown up since her mother’s passing away,” Julia said, watching Sophia greet Lord Vedder with a high, artificial laugh.

  “You were telling me about your friendship with Matthew and Anne Wilder,” Jack responded casually.

  “Oh, yes,” Julia said. “I was a childhood friend of Matt—of Captain Wilder’s.”

  Matthew, Jack thought. “Then you lost a friend of long standing. My condolences.” Odd. He’d never offered Matthew’s widow condolences. “What was Captain Wilder like?”

  Julia paused, not giving him the quick response to a simple conversational gambit that he would have expected but framing her response carefully. She wanted to talk about Matthew Wilder, Jack realized, and so knew that the past at Mill End had contained more than simple friendship, at least on her part, and that in speaking of Matthew Wilder, Julia Knapp made him live again if only in her memory.

  “He was exceptionally handsome and dashing, and yet not at all self-conscious about his looks. He was warm-hearted, gregarious, and generous. He was not clever in the way of Brummel, but he had charm. Great charm.”

  She tilted her head, as if picturing him in her mind. The image brought a smile to her plain face. She’d been in love with him.

  “Warm-hearted, generous … a most worthy man,” he said.

  His tone must have lacked some quality of appréciation because she darted a reproachful glance at him. “He must sound dreadfully proper to someone like yourself, Colonel Seward. But it was not a fault of his, only my lack of ability to describe him.”

  Damn. Even if he was jealous of a dead man, he needn’t advertise the fact. “He won your approval, Miss Knapp. That is high recommendation enough.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. It wasn’t just me, you know. I used to accuse him of quite ruthlessly seeking adoration.” She laughed. “The truth is Matthew made people strive for the best in themselves. He would accept nothing less.”

  “A great gift,” Jack said.

  “Yes,” Julia said slowly. “Except when people did not live up to his expectations. He hated that, as if failure or indifference in any form somehow reflected on him. It wounded him gravely.”

  “He must have spent a great deal of time hurt then.” He should not have spoken so cynically. He could not remember ever behaving so boorishly.

  Julia took no offense. She merely shook her head. “That’s just the thing of it, Colonel Seward. He rarely was, because, overwhelmingly, things and people were better for his association with them.”

  “Even Mrs. Wilder?” Once more, even though he knew his probing was vulgar, he could not help himself.

  Her gaze lifted. “Matthew loved Anne. He—” She looked away as if something in his face reminded her of a past hurt. “From the moment he met her, from the first time he saw her, Matt adored Anne.”

  He waited.

  “She wasn’t of his class, you know. She was quite open about it. Not that it mattered to Matthew. He wooed her as if she were royalty. And yes, to answer your question, she was better.” She spoke with a certain defiance.

  “In what way?” he asked, keeping his tone smooth, his manner interested but noncommittal.

  “Anne was”—she scrunched up her face, searching for the right word—“restless when she first came out. She shone almost too brightly. It was like watching a flame consuming a brand.”

  “I should have liked to have known her then,” Jack mused.

  “We, I confess, thought her perhaps a shade too wild, too spirited, but Matthew would have none of it. He thought she was perfect. She declined his hand at first. You didn’t know? He was determined though. He said that only if Anne agreed to marry him would he be complete. Perfect.”

  A servant stopped by their side, offering them punch from a silver tray. Julia Knapp accepted a cup, raising it daintily to her lips and sipping.

  Could this be the cause of the pain he saw in Anne? Had she fallen from Matthew’s pedestal? It puzzled him that Matthew Wilder, with no real naval experience, but with family and wealth and charm—and Anne—should have volunteered for such hazardous duty.

  Had Matthew, finding himself not married to a fairy-tale princess but a mere mortal, chosen to throw his life away rather than live less than a “perfect” existence?

  And if Jack was right, what of Anne? Had she felt the slow development of his disenchantment? Had she asked herself what she lacked, what quality Matthew imagined that she’d not in actuality owned? How would it fee! to be so well loved and then find, through no fault of your own, through no device you can fix, that you no longer inspired your spouse’s affection, perhaps not even his regard?

  He had to know if he was right.

  “I have never been married, but I would assume that the ardency of their courtship must eventually have been tempered with the familiarity of marriage.”

  “I’m a simple country woman, Colonel Seward. I assume that love, once given, grows. And certainly I saw nothing in their marriage to dissuade me from that opinion. Not that I saw them very often. Matthew loved taking Anne to new places, exotic locales. He had a huge appetite for travel and meeting new people.”

  “So he was as fond a husband as he was a suitor?”

  She nodded and gave a little sigh. “Oh, my. Yes. Matthew loved Anne more with each passing month, each year.”

  He cast about for some different answer to the enigma. “Surely a rarity. And the jealousies that such ardency produces in this case never arose?”

  The idea clearly surprised her. “Perhaps some were jealous. But then, who would not be jealous of living a fairy tale come true?” She ended with a small apologetic smile.

  But all fairy tales have an ogre, Jack thought. What, or who, was it in Anne’s story?

  “Matthew wanted her happiness above all things,”

  Julia said softly, looking about for a place to set her empty cup.

  “Then why did he ask for a command he was unfit for?” Jack murmured. Julia looked up, long years of confusion marking her countenance. Clearly she’d asked that question of herself many times.

  “I … I do not know.” The silence between them stretched into a long, empty moment and then many more as they stood together until Sophia found them again.

  “Look who I found,” she said. “And she’s not in gray!” Her laugh sounded brittle.

  Anne stepped from behind Sophia. Jack stared. She took his breath away.

  He had prepared himself for her effect on him, but no preparation would be adequate enough to temper the thick acceleration of his heartbeat. His senses heightened all at once, as if all of him were attuned to her, opening to her, thirsty to drink in every element: the look of her, the sound of her voice, the scent and heat of her.

  She wore some shimmering gown the color of pine boughs shot over with gold. Framed by the rich hues, her beauty was even more arresting, stronger and yet, conversely, far more vulnerable.

  She did not look at him. He would have wagered she did not even realize he was there. For an instant she stared at Julia Knapp as if seeing a ghost. Then the expression faded, replaced by irony and finally, fatalism.

  “Miss Knapp,” Anne said. “How wonderful to see you again after so long,”

  Julia came forward in a rustle of taffeta, her easy welcoming smile so at odds with Anne’s expression that the contrast could only hurt those who witnessed it.

  “My dear Mrs. Wilder! How fine you look.”

  Anne hesitated one telling second before embracing the much taller woman. “Malcolm said you were in town. You must have only recently arrived?”

  “Last week. I’ve been—”

  “—busy
. Of course! Isn’t the season always just so? Has Sophia offered you punch? But I recall you disliked punch. Lemonade, perhaps?” Anne said, her words coming rapidly. Her eyes glittering. Her smile brilliant and false and heartbreaking. We must—” She spun away from Julia, turning directly to face him. She froze. “Jack.”

  He barely heard her. It was not even a whisper. More an exhalation. A sound of finality.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Wilder.” He bowed.

  “Good evening, Colonel Seward. How pleasant you could come to our party.” Her tone was as sweet and unsubstantial as meringue. He’d never heard such tones from her before. “But you must meet Miss Knapp, Colonel. Oh, you already have? Ah! Excellent.”

  Something was terribly amiss. He stepped forward. She backed away from him. A constriction began in his chest, like an iron fist closing about his heart. Her gaze pulled away from his, like an animal dragging a trap, painful and awkward.

  He frightened her. He’d seen the look in her eyes far too often to mistake it. She had gone to her room last night appalled at his boldness and her submission to it.

  She wasn’t Lady Dibbs. She would not be well versed in averting unwanted attentions. He’d taken advantage. He felt ill.

  “Miss Knapp is residing with her brother,” Sophia said, her gaze darting between Anne and him.

  Anne smiled even more brightly, a pathetic eagerness in her expression. “Oh? For the season?”

  “He has kindly asked me to make my home with him,” Julia said. “My father passed away early last year.”

  Anne paled. “I … I am so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” Julia answered graciously. “Simon and his family have moved into the manor. He has kindly invited Mother and I to stay on. I can’t tell you how delightful it is to hear children in the house again.”

  “Miss Knapp is in the excellent position of being a doting aunt to her brother’s five children.” Sophia’s tone quite clearly told Jack that it was not an excellent position. “How are they all?”