Jack peered at Cian. “You look like a different man. Has something happened?”
Cian shook his head. “Now isn’t the time.”
Everyone sat down again and listened to Paulson and his staff run up and down the stairs, carrying water and bowls and linens and other items, but no news emerged.
Natasha got to her feet. “Paulson is too distracted. I will speak to the cook and see if we can’t arrange a meal and some tea. If you don’t mind, Will?”
Will looked startled. He glanced around the room, as if he was seeking his father, only Vaughn was upstairs with Elisa. Will tugged at his pointed beard. “I suppose, yes. Thank you, Aunt Natasha. I failed to notice the hour. There is brandy in the study, if anyone would prefer that?”
“I’ll get it,” Peter said, getting up.
“I’ll come and help carry glasses,” Daniel said.
Annalies turned to face Blanche and Emma. “Do you two ladies know where the cutlery is kept in the dining room?”
“Of course,” Blanche said. Her voice was high and tight.
“Very good,” Annalies told her, with an approving tone. “How well do you think you could set the table for luncheon?”
Emma’s eyes grew wide.
“For how many, Aunt Annalies?” Blanche asked.
“There are eighteen of us here, not counting Vaughn and Elisa,” Lilly said.
“Eighteen…” Blanche frowned. “We’ll need the extra silver,” she told Emma.
“I’ll get it.” Emma said and hurried from the room. Blanche followed.
Natasha stirred the staff to life. Within a short time, cream of cauliflower soup and roast beef sandwiches were served in the dining room, with tea and fruit cake with a rum drizzle for dessert. Although there was little conversation at the table, everyone ate well except for Jenny.
She could barely swallow a bite, so tight was her throat and her chest. Even though the trial had been abandoned, she did not feel that anything had truly been resolved.
The one small comfort was that in the eyes of the world she had never been Burscough’s wife for true. Only, she did not know where that left her, exactly. What was a concubine? How would she be received in society now?
It didn’t help that Jack sat at the other end of the table with Will and Cian and Peter, their heads together, talking quietly. Even Jasper leaned in and offered the odd comment, which they listened to gravely.
Once, Jenny caught Jack looking at her. His gaze moved away from her quickly, his attention drawn back to the conversation at that end of the table.
As soon as Will stood, signaling the end of the meal, Jenny rose to her feet and escaped the dining room. She must move or evaporate on the spot!
“Jenny!” Jack called from the other end of the room. “A moment, please?”
Jenny slowed her steps.
Jack curled his fingers around her arm. “We must talk, you and I.” He led her toward the drawing room, ahead of everyone else. “Let’s find a quiet corner in here before—”
Jenny’s other arm was grabbed and nearly wrenched from her shoulder. She lost her footing and staggered sideways, her hoops swaying. As she struggled to find her balance once more, she saw who was squeezing her arm so painfully.
It was Burscough. Behind him, the drapes over the tall window next to the fireplace billowed in the night breeze.
Jenny barely recognized Burscough. He had dispensed with his jacket and cravat, even his waistcoat. His collar and cuffs were gone, and the shirt was open at the neck. His face worked with fury, his eyes filled with a mad light that frightened her.
He had a peculiar-looking gun in his right hand.
“You!” Jack shouted and lunged for Burscough. Burscough stepped around him, letting Jack stagger past, then he lowered the barrel of the gun and fired at Jack’s back.
Jenny clapped her free hand to her head and screamed, as Jack was thrown against the far wall of the drawing room. He grasped the drapes, then slid to the floor and lay still.
Burscough turned Jenny around to face the door. The end of the pistol he was holding pressed against her head.
The rest of the family streamed into the room. Jasper was one of the first through the door. He instantly spun and caught Lilly around the waist and swept her out of the doorway, as Cian and Daniel moved slowly into the room proper.
Jasper pushed the women away from the door, whispering quickly. Peter, the fastest runner in the family because of his long legs, raced to the front door. Jasper had sent him to find a policeman.
Jasper strolled into the room, Will behind him. Everyone else stayed beyond the doorway.
“Jack’s hurt!” Jenny cried. “I can’t see—”
“Shut up, woman!” Burscough snarled, his fingers grinding her arm against the bone, making her moan.
“He’s already fired one shot,” Cian said. “He didn’t have time to reload.”
Daniel shook his head. “I recognize the gun he’s holding. It’s one of the new Colt revolvers. He has five more shots.”
“You’re sure?” Jasper said, without turning to look at Daniel. He was watching Burscough, who breathed heavily just behind Jenny. She could feel his hot breath on her cheek and shuddered at the touch.
“I’m perfectly certain,” Daniel said. “I saw thousands of them in the war in America.”
Jasper considered Burscough again. “You realize that you have trapped yourself in a corner, don’t you, Burscough? You’re a military man. You understand the concept of always leaving yourself a back door.” Jasper didn’t seem nervous or upset. He was icily calm.
“I have a window behind me,” Burscough said, his voice twisted with fury and other emotions that Jenny did not recognize.
She supposed she should feel afraid with the revolver pressed against her head. Yet the only thing she could think about was Jack, who lay behind them, injured and possibly dying. Burscough had been so indifferent about raising the gun and deliberately injuring a man. She hated him for that callousness. Worse, she despised him.
Jasper didn’t react to Burscough’s snarl. “I am afraid the window offers you no egress, Burscough. If you try to use it, you will force me to deal with you. Be a good chap, and don’t try, hmm?”
Burscough’s breathing grew heavier. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“He’s a decorated officer,” Jenny told him. “He received the Victoria Cross for his valor in the Crimea War.” She paused. “You ran away from war, didn’t you?”
Jasper raised a hand. “Jenny, no,” he breathed.
Burscough gave the same snarling growl as before. “You damn people and your morals and your ethics…you’re all two-faced liars. And you, my little harlot—” Burscough’s grip on her arm deepened, making her cry out. “I have dreamed of this moment, you know. When I pull the trigger, I will see the same despair in your grand family’s eyes that they put in mine.”
Ben moved into the room at a pace that wouldn’t alarm Burscough. “I’d be very interested to hear more about that,” he told Burscough. “We never could determine why you subjected Jenny to such a public display of contempt.”
“Or where you got the money to do it,” Dane said from the doorway. He stood with the back of his shoulder against the frame, his arms crossed.
Burscough shifted to encompass them in his view. “Money?” His voice was full of contempt. “This stupid little girl thought we had no money. I watched her scrimp and suffer, just to put bacon on the breakfast table for me. Every morning, each slice tasted better for knowing she had none. Each month I would collect the rent from the farmers and it never occurred to her to wonder how my family had survived before the tin mines opened.”
Dane dropped his arms. “Shoot the bastard, Jasper,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anything so monstrous.”
Ben’s jaw worked. “Don’t kill him yet, Jasper. There’s much I want to know, first.”
Jenny moaned as she thought of all the deprivations she had put herself and her children t
hrough to keep Burscough comfortable and food on the table. Clothes, warm shoes, wool for stockings and blankets. Sugar.
Her rage built. Burscough had made her children suffer for his scheme. “Why?” she breathed. “Why even marry me?”
“Stupid, as I said,” Burscough growled. “For this very moment, I married you. Because your precious Jack destroyed my family. Because Raymond humiliated me at Eton, then kept it to himself, holding it over me for years. Your precious brother William, who had me tossed from the club for a slight of which every member there is guilty. I was the newcomer and not one of them, so he had me turfed on the most insubstantial grounds and everyone laughed about it afterward.”
Will’s eyes widened.
Burscough was not finished, yet. “Then your father refused to sanction the marriage,” he added. “Your entire great family, full of scandals and secrets and conspiracies…you all consider yourselves too good for me—for most of society and I hate you for it. All of you. You have been thorns in my side for years. Well, no more.”
The gun ground into the side of her head and Jenny moaned.
“You did this because you don’t like us?” Ben asked.
“She betrayed me for one of you!” Burscough screamed.
Everyone grew still, as the edge of madness sounded in Burscough’s words, for the first time quite clear and chilling.
“You said you hated her, that you married her only to hurt the family,” Will said, sounding confused.
“He did,” Ben said. “Only he fell in love with her instead.”
Jenny closed her eyes. Burscough’s obscure joy at her pregnancy. The retreat to Lancashire, away from society, which they both hated. For those few months, he had been oddly attentive in ways that had unsettled her.
Now it made sense.
“I should have known better than to let down my guard with a whore seed of this family,” Burscough said and now the mad hate twisted his words. His grip tightened again, making Jenny cry out. Her arm was numb below his fingers. “Well, tit for tat, whore. I’ve killed your lover.”
Jasper pushed Ben out of the way, looking toward the door. “Now, Jack!” he cried, falling toward the door himself. As Jasper landed on his shoulder, the cold tip of the gun tore away from Jenny’s head, yanking stray hairs.
Burscough howled.
At the same time, someone threw a pistol to Jasper, through the door. He reached out and caught it, then turned on his shoulder to aim at Burscough.
Burscough’s fingers were ripped from her arm.
“Jenny, to the door,” Jasper said, his voice remote but inarguable.
Jenny staggered to the door and Ben and Dane pulled her through it. She couldn’t leave, not now. She twisted in their grip and looked back.
Jack was struggling with Burscough. His shirt front was covered in blood, yet he was alive. His big hand held Burscough’s wrist, the one with the gun in it. His other hand gripped Burscough’s shoulder.
Burscough’s unnatural strength had met Jack’s natural power.
“Damn you,” Burscough ground out. “Why didn’t you die decently?”
“You first,” Jack said. He reached up with his spare hand and yanked the gun away from Burscough’s grip.
At the same time, Jasper fired.
Jenny saw the black hole appear in the side of Burscough’s head. Then the black turned red.
Burscough dropped to the floor with an impact that made the floor tremble and was still.
Jack looked down at Burscough, then lifted the revolver in a saluting gesture to Jasper. “Thank you, sir.”
“I should thank you,” Jasper said, getting up brushing the dirt from his clothes. He dropped the pistol onto the table. It made a heavy, clattering sound. “That was very fast and clear thinking, Jack. You made my job much easier.”
Jack took a step forward. His knee didn’t straighten. He looked down at the uncooperative knee, puzzled. Then his eyes closed. He sank to the ground.
“Jack!” Jenny cried. She wrenched herself from Ben’s grip and threw herself against the bodies of all the men trying to enter the drawing room at once. “Jack!” She pummeled backs and wedged herself between them and abruptly, she was through.
Jasper already had Jack on his back and his jacket open. He looked up as Jenny sank next to him. Horribly, he smiled. “He’ll be quite alright,” he told her. “Shock and blood loss. The bullet went straight through his shoulder. Burscough wasn’t nearly as good a shot as me, thank God.” He got to his feet. “Will, Daniel, close your jaws and help me lift Jack to the sofa.”
“The doctors in Georgia would pack the wound with gauze,” Daniel said as the three of them lifted Jack up.
“No need,” Jasper said. “Clean the wound and a few stitches and Jack will be right as rain in a few days.”
“What do we do with Burscough?” Rhys asked from behind them. Raymond stood next to Rhys and both looked down upon Burscough with indifference.
Jenny moved over to the sofa and hovered at the end, out of the way, yet where she could watch Jack’s white face.
Jasper shook his head. “Nothing, for now. Leave him there so the police can see everything. Peter should be back with an officer soon enough.”
“Mary, mother of Christ, save us!” The breathy, moaned plea came from the doorway.
Jenny looked up. Lady Victoria stood in the doorway, with Natasha right behind her. The ladies stared into the room.
Victoria’s mouth turned down. “You people are the utter end,” she declared. “Gun fights and…and…brawls in the drawing room! How working class you are. All of you.”
Annalies brushed past Victoria. “Oh, save your sermonizing, Victoria,” she snapped. “See to your son instead. Or don’t you care that he is wounded?” She sailed over to where Jasper was bent over Jack and rested her hand on Jasper’s shoulder. “Let me see,” she said softly. “Natasha, please fetch Elisa’s sewing box!” she called out.
Jenny watched Jack’s mother assess the room one last time, her contempt and her disgust increasing. Then, silently and unremarked by anyone, she turned and left.
Chapter Twenty
Present day: The Wardell House, Grosvenor Square, London. March 1867—a short while later.
No one wanted to go near Lady Victoria’s room, or risk disturbing Elisa and Vaughn and the doctor who was still enclosed with them in the master suite, so Jack remained on the sofa while Annalies cleaned his wound and stitched it with a competence that she explained with a shrug. “I have seen too many doctors complete too many stitches over the years. I watched closely.”
She had just finished and Jack was being eased into a clean shirt, the bloody one lying in a forgotten heap on the floor close by Burscough’s body, when Peter returned with three police officers in tow. One of them was the station chief, his uniform starched and his buttons gleaming.
He looked around the room, considered Jack, who was struggling to sit up, the undisturbed pools of blood by the window and beneath Burscough, and the bloody shirt. Then he peered closely at Burscough’s face. “Why, this be the Duke disgraced in court this morning, yes?” He got out his notebook and looked at his two officers. “One of you run back and fetch Superintendent Jenkins, please. We can deal with this all at once.”
He looked around the room. “Now, who would like to tell me what happened here?”
Everyone in the room raised their hands.
In the end, Ben was the one to do the telling. He knew the captain slightly and when the Superintendent arrived, he shook Ben’s hand and looked around the room and whistled. “Did a client take exception to a decision, Mr. Davies?”
“That’s very close to exactly what happened,” Ben told him.
The police questioned everyone, with thorough care and attention. It took several hours. Finally, though, the captain put his notebook back in his pocket. He paused to look down at Burscough. “We’ll send the wagon around for the body,” he said. “In the meantime, if you have a cellar to put it i
n, it will be out of the way.” He nodded and headed to the door with a satisfied air.
Annalies looked at Will. “The blood should be cleaned immediately, Will, or it will congeal and you’ll have a devil of a time removing it.”
Will nodded. “Paulson is still helping with my mother.”
Natasha rose to her feet. “I’ll talk to the staff. Everyone else should repair to the morning room for now.”
Will came over to Jack. “Let’s get you moved,” he said and hauled Jack to his feet. Jack groaned but looked alert. His gaze moved to Jenny. “Come with me,” he said.
She nodded and followed Will and Jack’s slow steps across the hall to the morning room. Paulson was at the front door and had it open. He turned to Will as the shuffling pair passed behind him.
“Lord Rothmere,” Paulson said, drawing Will’s attention.
Jenny moved to Jack’s side, where she could see the door. On the steps outside stood nearly a dozen men and women in coats and hats. In front of them was Aunt Natasha’s butler, Travers.
“They say they are here to…er…help,” Paulson told Will.
“Good heavens,” Will breathed.
“Mr. Thomsett suggested it, my Lord,” Travers explained. “We heard about the fuss here this morning. I do apologize for landing upon the front doorstep, only we tried the servants entrance. No one is answering.”
“That’s quite likely,” Will told him. “We are a bit beset at the moment, Travers. Your help would be very much appreciated. Yes, Paulson?”
Paulson looked as though he wanted to refuse. Then his brow wrinkled. “I would prefer to be on hand for whatever the doctor requires to assist Lady Elisa,” he admitted.
Will patted his shoulder. “You go back upstairs, Paulson,” he said kindly. “You’d better come in, Travers. Can I leave you to take care of whatever is needed? We really are quite distracted.”
Travers stepped in and pushed open the door that Paulson had left to swing slowly shut. “You rest easy, my Lord. We’ll have everything sorted out in a jiffy. I presume that no one has given any thought to dinner?”
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