No speech could have been more expertly designed to shame her. Worse, Jane could not disbelieve it. Everything Charlotte said matched the man she had come to know in recent weeks.
But not the man who had lied to her. “I am not that woman,” Jane said softly. Why, she was not even the woman whom her parents had raised her to become. Crispin was right: she was as much a liar as he. Why should he trust her?
But for some reason, he did.
“Perhaps you aren’t that woman.” Charlotte paused, making a cool, thoughtful study of her. “Or perhaps, despite your brave words to my parents, you’ve forgotten what love and loyalty look like. They aren’t sacraments, Jane, for only God is perfect, only God deserves our love without judgment. Men—women—we make mistakes. We judge those we love. But we keep loving them anyway, because we know that mistakes can be repaired, and that tomorrow, our love will be deserved again. It only takes faith—or loyalty, as you called it. Those are what tie a family together, through thick and thin. And they tie a husband and wife together, too. There is no happy ending, you’re right—not in the singular. But in a marriage, there might be countless happy endings and even more sweet beginnings, if loyalty and love are what guide you.”
Jane felt tears prick her eyes. She ducked her head, but Charlotte sank down and embraced her, so generous even in her frustration.
But then, Charlotte imagined her to be family. She was offering loyalty and love, regardless of whether or not they were deserved.
“Why are you crying?” Charlotte asked very softly as she rubbed Jane’s back.
Jane took a deep breath. Was her imagination failing her, or did Charlotte wear the same perfume that her mother had favored?
Perhaps every person on this earth was haunted by something, but the haunting did not always have to be a curse.
“I feel . . .” Her voice broke. I feel my mother here. No doubt this was a speech her mother would have given, had she survived.
Her parents had loved each other deeply and intensely. But Charlotte was right: they had been human, too. Jane could remember their disagreements, their sharp looks and quarreling nights. And she could remember just as clearly their forgiveness, their fondness, their tenderness, as together they found a path back toward each other.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said as she eased away. “I shouldn’t have said such things. I didn’t mean to upset you. Or . . . perhaps I did,” she confessed with a sheepish laugh. “Only I see you and Crispin together, and I hope so much that . . .” She wiped Jane’s cheeks, her face solemn. “I hope for both of you to be happy.”
Jane kissed her cheek. “Thank you.” Her voice was ragged. “No woman could wish for a better sister, Charlotte.”
Blushing, Charlotte rose. “Well, you say so now. But you will mean it once you’ve tried my cook’s morning chocolate.”
They both laughed, an effortful but kind sound. And then Charlotte stepped back. “I’ll let you sleep,” she said. “I hope you dream sweetly, Jane.”
* * *
Crispin rapped the knocker again, his impatience mounting, fueled by anxiety. If Charlotte’s servants were such laggards, then he could not trust them in any regard. But if he hired guards to stand watch outside this house, Jane would no doubt misinterpret it as an enemy surveillance. She had made clear that when she looked at him now, she saw only the man he’d once been.
To hell with it. He would hire guards and let her stew.
The morning sun was hot on his back. He rapped with his fist now. At last, the door swung open. He pushed past Charlotte’s butler and found his sister hurrying into the hall.
“Is she still here?” he asked.
“Of course,” said Charlotte, giving him a wondering look. “Where else should she be?” Her mouth tightened. “Well, aside from your house, of course—”
“It’s good that she’s here.” He’d had a visitor before noon. Auburn had made inquiries. He was persuaded. “Where is she?”
“In the library.” Charlotte turned in that direction, but he was already striding ahead; this was his sister’s house, he would not stand on ceremony.
Jane was sitting at the middle of the large table that filled the center of the library, a magnifying glass in one hand, a fountain pen in the other. He locked the door; she did not seem to hear. Charlotte’s husband had a hobby of designing buildings; the table had been crafted to hold three unrolled blueprints side by side. The entirety of its broad, flat surface was covered in newspapers. Great stacks of them sat piled in the chairs on either side of her. She was taking notes as she moved the magnifying glass down the page.
She did not look up until he stood opposite her. Even then, her absorbed expression barely flickered. “I had these ordered from the office of the Times,” she said, as though continuing an ongoing conversation. “This business . . . Crispin, I don’t think Lockwood and Clark and Smith are the end of it. I know warehouses burn with regularity, but it’s not simply that—every year, some disaster has befallen the fleet in such a way that another company was forced to provide a substitute vessel. It only happens once or twice in every year, but the timing always aligns with a shipment of prisoners. The trick is, it’s never the same company . . .”
“I know.” He sat down across from her. “A dozen or more corporations, each of them registered to a ghost. Jane, I did not want you looking into this. Tell me you didn’t fetch these records yourself.”
She waved aside this question. “This ghost,” she said briskly. “Have you made inquiries at the Exchange? If any of these companies were publicly traded—”
“They weren’t.” He saw how she wanted it to go between them, impersonal and businesslike. Well, for the moment, he would play along. “I met again with Auburn this morning. The man behind those companies, all of them, is Patrick Burton.” He paused. “Burton’s wife reported his disappearance to the police the morning after my attack.”
“Oh,” she whispered. A softness flickered over her face. After a moment, she reached for his hand, but he withdrew it. Her pity was not what he wanted.
“I don’t remember killing the man,” he said flatly. “It won’t keep me awake at night.”
An awkward silence followed. She pulled her hand out of sight, into her lap, and looked down.
He blew out a breath. “The point is this: Burton worked as a dockhand for the Bastland Shipping Corporation. But not regularly, and not well. He was let go after several warnings. His employer said he seemed to show no care for his living, but always had a spare coin for a drink, which he spread very freely. ‘A bad influence on the others,’ the man called him. So where did the money come from?”
She shook her head. “A dockhand would not have had the means to organize this kind of plot.”
“Precisely. Burton’s widow told the police that her husband had fallen on hard times. That before they married, he’d been in the employ of a great man.”
“Who is?” she whispered.
“Not your uncle.”
Her reaction was curious. She sighed, her disappointment plain. “Oh, well.”
He smiled despite himself. “Bloodthirsty, aren’t you?”
She went pale. And then, haltingly, she said, “Yes. I am. I can be. You were right, last night. I’m no saint. I am . . . flawed.”
He took a sharp breath, restraining every predatory instinct that wished to leap on that small admission, to exploit it and turn it to his advantage. He would not manipulate her. Honesty would have to serve. “I do not want a saint, Jane. I want you. All of you. Your flaws as much as your virtues.”
She bowed her head. She had combed her hair into a viciously tight chignon. He fisted his hand against the urge to fix that atrocity, to pluck out all her pins.
“A less flawed woman,” he said, “would be married to your cousin by now.”
“I know,” she said, very low. “And had you been a less flawed man, I might have had to marry him, regardless. I am . . . indebted to your flaws, Crispin.”
He loosed a slow breath, willing her to look at him.
She cleared her throat. “Well. It would have been easier if it were my uncle behind this plot. Neater.” She glanced up. “Who was it, then?”
Very well, he could bide his time. He would not push her just yet. “When your uncle lost your father’s old seat, he was invited to campaign for a different district—by one Daniel Marlowe.”
“The inventor?”
He hesitated. “You know him?”
She grimaced. “He made the most horrible toys for Archibald.”
“He also made a fortune with inventions for the military—first in field technologies like the chronometer, then, more recently, smokeless powders and weapons. The Crimean War solidified his fortune. But in the aftermath, if you recall, Britain was weary of war. Aggressive expansionism lost favor. And so, in your uncle, Marlowe spotted a natural ally; Mason has never hesitated to propose the military as the solution to every problem.”
“My uncle’s opponent in that campaign was said to have run off with a lover,” Jane said softly.
“Yes. More damning yet is the fact that our itinerant dockhand once worked on Marlowe’s yachts. So there is the connection.”
“That’s enough, then,” she said. “To have Marlowe arrested. Surely, with the proof—”
“Burton is dead,” Crispin said. “The evidence is circumstantial at best. More to the point, we have no way to know who else Marlowe disappeared. As you say, he’s been at this for some time. He would have no cause to confess anything.”
“So . . . what?”
“So Auburn and I mean to make him talk.”
She looked troubled. “How?”
He stared at her. “I think you know how.”
“Don’t underestimate him. If my own uncle was afraid—”
“He keeps a townhouse on Park Lane, pretensions to civility. It won’t require storming a castle.” He allowed himself a smirk. “No matter what he calls it.”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Surely this is what the police are for. Even if the evidence is only circumstantial—”
“Is this concern?” He paused deliberately. “For the villain, Jane?”
She recoiled. “That’s unfair.”
“You really must make up your mind,” he said. “One moment fearing me—the next fearing for me. Which is it to be?”
“I never feared you.”
“Sorry. Loathed me.”
“I didn’t loathe you.”
“Did the amnesia prove catching? Or are you inventing a new history?”
“Stop it.”
“No, I’m quite curious. You clearly felt unsafe sharing a roof with me. What was the cause, if not fear or hatred?”
“Confusion,” she whispered.
A dark, calculating pleasure ran through him. Yes, that was what he wanted to hear. But he kept his voice pleasant, bland. “Ah. Confusion, is it? Perhaps I can help with that.”
“No, I don’t think you can.” She hesitated. “The confusion is . . . all in me, Crispin.”
“Yes, that I know.” He was not confused at all. He wanted her. He wanted to keep her. He had said so. “My own mind is clear. That makes me a fine teacher in this matter.” He rose, and she flinched backward, her hands locking on the arms of her chairs. “Unless you mean to run away from me again?” he asked lightly. “I thought you weren’t afraid.”
“I’m not,” she said tightly. “But I don’t know what you can teach me.”
He stepped around the table toward her. “No student ever does until she’s shown.”
* * *
Some part of her was not surprised. Some part of her had noticed the click of the lock as he’d stepped inside, and had been waiting to discover what he intended to do with their privacy.
A very large part of her, in fact, wished only to be persuaded. No, more than that: decided for.
He set her against the wall very gently. Held her there, studying her, his fingers flexed on her upper arms, as though straining to break free of the inner restraint that disciplined them. He was not hiding his intentions now; had he not told her that he’d remembered, she would have known it with one glance. She recognized the calculating look he wore as he studied her.
She lifted her chin and stared back at him. “This won’t help,” she said. “This is a lesson I already know.” Their bodies, together, made a kind of sense that bypassed logic. But it offered no answers to her doubts.
“You don’t look afraid,” he murmured. “So you spoke the truth about that, at least.”
“I am done lying to you.” But there was a breathless note in her voice that made her wonder. The closeness of his body against hers, the warmth of it, was speaking to her. Drawing her skin tight. She could say she did not want this. But that would be a lie.
“So there is some small measure of trust,” he said. “And will you trust me in this?” He leaned forward, and as his hair brushed her cheek her eyes closed of their own volition. So lightly he kissed her ear. “Yes?” he asked, very low.
She bit her lip. She would not answer him. Trust had nothing to do with this—the sudden hollowness in her stomach as he nuzzled the tender spot hidden beneath her ear, the feathery brush of his mouth down her neck. This was need, not trust. He had already taught her about hunger, she had learned that lesson thoroughly. Had she ever denied it?
But when his hand slipped over her breast, she moaned.
“Do you trust me to do this?” he whispered, his clever fingers sliding beneath her neckline. Dipping inside to find her nipple, which he thumbed lightly, almost casually, toying with her as his mouth came back to her ear.
She screwed her eyes shut more tightly. Some stubbornness like a knot drew taut in her chest. It felt like resentment for him—for pushing the question on her like this. And resentment for herself—because she could break away in a moment, and she didn’t want to.
“So quiet.” His voice was husky, hypnotic. “Could it be you don’t wish to argue?” His hand smoothed down her body, over her hips; she felt cool air on her ankles as he began to lift her skirts. So few of them to lift: she had not expected company. She was not armed against him.
Perhaps she had expected him, after all.
His hand slipped around the back of her thigh. Palmed between her legs. She shuddered, her knees giving way.
He caught her by the waist. His mouth came into her hair; she felt his deep breath. “And you trust me to hold you.”
“Yes.” The admission slipped from her. It was only the truth. But she felt its effect on him; the almost imperceptible pause, the coiled tension releasing.
“Well, then,” he whispered. “That’s a start.”
He lifted her. She fought the urge to open her eyes, to look out for where he carried her. Yes, here was trust: she knew she would land softly.
A solid surface—the crackle of newspaper as he laid her back onto the table. Cold air on her calves. He hooked his hands behind her knees, urging them apart, then stepped between her thighs, coming hard against her. Her body answered, arching into his, finding anchor against the hard solid length of him as he bent down over her and opened her mouth with his lips.
She would not push him away. The revelation, inevitable, snapped some leash inside her. She wrapped her arms around him and dragged him against her, crushing his lips, devouring his mouth.
It was never she in danger of leaving. That was the real lie, the one she had continued to tell herself. It was he who would go—if not today, then eventually. Did he not see that? There was nothing to hold him but this.
This was enough, though, was it not?
What would be enough, if not this?
Love does not last. Life steals it away. Had she not learned that when her parents died?
The thought startled her. It awoke some animal desperation. Her hands made claws, raking down his back. Closed over the bunching muscled power of his buttocks. She could hold him right now, force him harder against her.
He growled into her mouth, nipped at her, licked her. When he started to ease away—to move down her body—she felt panicked. She pulled him back to her and reached between their bodies, fumbling for him. He would not go anywhere now.
He caught her hands, his kiss gentling. Flavored perhaps by puzzlement. He drew back from her, and no, she did not recognize his face at all now; she had never seen this man clearly before, save in her dreams. It was a face worth risking everything for—even bottomless, soul-eating grief. His dark beauty took her breath away. Hard, sharp bones, a mouth so much softer than it looked. This was the face in her old dreams, before she’d had cause to long for him. Beauty’s terrible power, she’d decided, but that wasn’t right. The miracle of intuition: her dreams had found him worthy.
Worth any risk.
“Do you trust me?” he asked very softly.
Faith did not require reasons at every moment of the day. Faith was a great leap, regardless of the possible cost.
“I trust you,” she said.
He loosed a long breath and then bowed his head. Watching his own thumb trace her lips. Grave, sober mien. A man beholding a charge that he intended to keep.
He leaned down to kiss her mouth. A strange, solemn kiss, less passionate than ceremonial. But then she moved against him, and he made a noise in his throat, and she put her tongue in his mouth and he came against her below, hot bare flesh, and she twisted her hips and he pushed inside her.
A Lady’s Code of Misconduct Page 30