“I might ask you the same,” he growled. “I’ll remind you, no ladybirds in my office.”
“It’s our office now, ain’t it?” Rafe’s stubborn side emerged. “If I’m doing your share of the work, then I can decide what else to do in this damned room.”
“No fucking ladybirds in my office,” he repeated firmly, not bothering to cast a second glance toward the woman. “You may go, madam.”
She scurried hastily from the office.
“We weren’t fucking,” Rafe countered, glowering at him when she had gone.
“Yet.” Jasper glared right back at him. “We both know you’ve never stopped at kissing a lady, brother.”
“You’re one to talk.” Rafe moved toward him, shoulders going back. “I ain’t the one of us with twins, am I?”
The barb was unwelcome but not entirely unfair. He had made mistakes. While he loved his daughters and was damned thankful to have them in his life, he did regret his follies in not taking more caution when he should have. He would not trade Elizabeth and Anne for all the right decisions in the world. But he knew he had wronged them, wronged their mother. He ought to have been a father to them from the first, or taken more care when he was in his cups.
“I love the girls,” Rafe said hastily, regret shadowing his voice. “I didn’t mean to say otherwise. What I meant was that you’ve hardly been a vicar yourself.”
Jasper nodded. “I made mistakes. I ain’t perfect.”
Far from it. He was no saint, but rather a sinner. Filled with darkness and pain and broken, jagged shards. But love had changed him. Made him feel whole for the first time in as long as he could remember.
“I’m sorry,” Rafe said, voice low. “I respect you, Jasper. I do.”
“Then show it,” he snapped. “Follow the bloody rules.”
“Aye.”
Jasper sighed. “Now tell me the reason for the note.”
His brother’s brow furrowed. “Note?”
“The summons I received,” he repeated, his frustrations mounting. “Trouble, it said. Come to The Sinner’s Palace.”
Rafe shook his head. “I didn’t send a note.”
“Nor did I,” Hugh offered from somewhere behind their unfolding spectacle.
“What of the others?” he demanded, his gut clenching as new fears descended upon him.
“I was in the public rooms but ten minutes past,” Rafe said. “The lads have everything in order. No troubles at all. And if there would’ve been, we would control it, Jasper. You don’t need to keep us all under your bloody thumbs.”
Later, he would fret over his brother’s words. Wonder what it meant, wonder if everyone truly believed he was a tyrant who kept his siblings beneath an iron rule. For now, the truth had hit him in the chest with the force of a speeding carriage.
“I need to get back to Octavia,” he said. “She and the girls are in danger.”
“Then I’m coming too,” Rafe said.
“No.” Jasper’s first instinct was to return to the townhome unencumbered, as fast as he bloody well could. “The sender of the note could intend to cause trouble at The Sinner’s Palace too.”
Rafe looked to Hugh. “Tell the others to be on alert.” He turned back to Jasper. “I’m coming with you, brother. Try to stop me.”
“Who are you?” Octavia managed to ask, pleased with herself for the lack of hesitation in her voice.
The blade was still tight to her neck, another hand on her shoulder in a tight, punishing grip. Desperation was in the air.
“You don’t know?” the female voice at her back slurred, then cackled, the laughter turning into a deep cough.
“No.” Trying to calm her wildly racing heart, she struggled to make sense of what was happening.
One moment, she had been alone in her library, and the next, there was a knife at her throat and a strange woman making demands of her. The scent of spirits and the unpleasant aroma of sweat and garments desperately in need of laundering reached Octavia.
“I’m their true mother,” said the woman at her back. “Their only mother.”
Oh dear heaven.
Anne and Elizabeth’s mother. The woman who had abandoned them.
“I love your daughters as if they are my own,” she said calmly, hoping to ease the other woman out of her rage. “I would never do them harm.”
“He’s keeping them from me. Told me I could never see them again,” the voice at her back said, the knife biting into her skin. “How dare he? I’ve done everything for them for all these years.”
You also left them, she wanted to say. But Octavia held her tongue. The woman at her back seemed volatile as fireworks which had been lit, destined to explode at any moment. She knew she needed to take care. The weapon pressing into her flesh was very sharp.
“My husband has a generous heart,” Octavia said, her stare darting around the library in search of a weapon. Nothing but walls of books, wall sconces, and a brace of candles. A divan. Not a single object sufficient enough to defend herself with. “I’m sure he will allow you to see the girls again.”
“He told me they’ve a new mother now. The only way to have my daughters back is to get rid of you.”
Get rid of her?
The panic in Octavia grew. Her furiously churning mind had supposed the woman had come for Anne and Elizabeth. She’d thought she had time to escape, catch the attention of a servant, or otherwise distract and overpower her adversary. But the twins’ mother intended to murder her instead.
“You don’t have to get rid of me,” she said, her voice coaxing. “Please, put down the knife and let us speak to each other. We both love your daughters very much, that is plain.”
“Shut up,” the woman ordered her, increasing her pressure on the knife until it sliced into Octavia’s flesh. “I love them. They’re mine, and no one will take them from me.”
Pain seared her, blood trickling down her throat from the wound. “You do not need to hurt me. If you won’t speak to me, then wait for Jasper to return. Speak to him. Please, I beg you.”
“I don’t want to speak to him. I tried, and the bastard refused to listen,” the woman hissed into Octavia’s ear. “There’s only one way to get my daughters back, and that’s if you’re dead.”
Her chilling words gave Octavia the motivation she needed to act, using her elbow to deal a blow to the woman’s midsection and simultaneously stomping on her foot. Another bolt of pain shot through her as the knife cut into her skin, but Octavia was able to wrestle herself free. Heart galloping in her chest, she ran, bolting around the divan and placing it between herself and her attacker.
The woman was unkempt, her gown stained and ragged, her hair a wild bird’s nest. The blade she held in her hand was long and dripping with blood. She snarled as she advanced on Octavia.
“You’ll pay for that.” She pointed the knife toward Octavia and lunged.
Octavia screamed and leapt away from the divan, hoping some of the servants would hear her. Praying for a miracle. The knife slashed into the upholstered back of the divan. And then, Octavia was running. Feet flying. Desperation granting her a speed she had never known she possessed. She fled the library and raced down the hall, calling for help.
The other woman followed, screaming at her. “Come back here! Give me my daughters!”
Servants came scurrying, and everything seemed to blur together in the terror of the moment. Octavia was dimly aware of a man ordering everyone to stand back. Then the report of a pistol. Masculine arms around her. Not familiar, but somehow reassuring. A face, hovering over hers. He looked like Jasper and yet…not.
“Send for a doctor,” he yelled.
How strange. There was something warm on her neck. And pain. The man’s face swirled, and Octavia’s vision went dark.
Chapter 14
Jasper paced the hall outside Octavia’s chamber, feeling like a damned creature in a menagerie cage. Barnaby, Motley, and Drunkard followed him each step, aware that something was ami
ss and on guard, their protective instincts aroused.
He was nearly out of his mind with worry. He’d returned to his greatest fear. Octavia wounded, a house in an uproar. He had carried her in his arms himself to the room and had held a cloth to her wound as they waited for the surgeon to arrive.
“Going to wear a hole in the floor,” Rafe told him as he approached from the opposite end of the hall, having reached the top of the staircase.
“I don’t give a damn if I do,” he shot back. “My wife is being sewn back together as we speak.”
“The surgeon said the wound ain’t deep,” Rafe reminded him.
That was true. But it also didn’t mean Jasper wasn’t out of his damned mind with worry and fear. His wife had been attacked. She had been cut. The sight of her, pale and bleeding, had nearly brought him to his knees.
“I won’t stop pacing until I can see and touch Octavia.”
Rafe clapped him on the shoulder. “She’ll be fine.”
No amount of reassurance would convince Jasper of that. He longed to cry and rage, to hit something with his fists. But that would solve nothing.
“The girls?” he asked his brother, for the mayhem in the house had roused everyone from their beds.
“Doing well under the care of Miss Wren,” Rafe said.
Jasper paced the length of the hall once more. “And what of Tess?”
“The charleys took ‘er away,” his brother responded.
“Did you find any answers about the man who saved Octavia?” he asked next, trying to distract himself from his intense worry over the length of time the surgeon was taking to stitch his wife’s wound.
“Butler says ‘e appeared out of nowhere,” Rafe said. “Like a ghost. Looked like you. Shot Tess when she was coming after Octavia, and then disappeared same way ‘e came.”
A ghost who looked like him.
Jasper refused to believe it.
“It must have been one of the servants,” he said.
“Or it was Loge,” Rafe offered. “Think on it, Jasper.”
“Ghosts ain’t real,” he snapped.
What was real, however, was that Tess had attacked Octavia. She had deliberately led him away to The Sinner’s Palace, determined to murder his wife. He would never forgive himself for falling into her trap. Nor for failing to see the threat she represented to those he loved. It had been Tess who started the fire that burned The Sinner’s Palace II, Tess who had been attempting to hire someone to kill Octavia in the delusional belief that doing so would bring Anne and Elizabeth back to her. And then, she had decided to take matters into her own hands.
She was a madwoman. But thankfully, she could do no more harm to anyone he loved.
“I swear to you that I saw ‘im,” Rafe pressed.
Before Jasper could respond, the door to the chamber opened at last, and the surgeon stepped into the hall. Jasper ordered his dogs to sit and stay, and they did, Barnaby offering a sneeze and Motley a whine in protest. Drunkard barked. They had been sleeping in the nursery when Octavia had been attacked, but they had been as desperate as he was to be by her side ever since she had been taken from their sight.
“You may see Mrs. Sutton now,” the surgeon announced. “I’ve administered some laudanum to ease the pain, but she is awake.”
Jasper was already moving past him. Crossing the threshold and traveling as fast as his legs would allow.
Not stopping until he was there at her side.
She was pale, but she offered him a wan smile. The wound on her neck had been bandaged. Alive. Thank Christ she was alive.
He sank onto the bed at her side, resisting the urge to haul her into his arms for fear he would cause her further pain. “Octavia.”
“Jasper.” She sounded tired, and her eyes were heavy-lidded, but otherwise very much like herself. She reached for his hand.
Her touch was a balm to the agonizing fear and worry which had been eating him alive. She had survived the attack. She was still here, still with him.
He bowed his head, pressed a reverent kiss to the soft skin of her wrist above where her pulse beat, steady and sure. “Thank God you are alive.”
“She wanted to kill me, Jasper.”
He closed his eyes against a stinging rush of agony. “I know. I am so sorry I left you alone. If I’d known, I never would—”
“Hush,” she interrupted. “Of course you did not know.”
“This is my fault.” Jasper shook his head. “She came to me before we married, and she was cup-shot. My own father was a tosspot, and when ‘e drank…” He trailed off as unwanted memories surged, all the beatings he had received at the hands of his father. “It wasn’t good for my ma or me. I couldn’t allow Anne and Elizabeth to suffer as I did. I told ‘er she couldn’t see them until she stopped drowning ‘erself in poison. If I’d realized she would go after you…”
“Oh, Jasper. You couldn’t have known. She’s mad.” She paused, tears gathering in her eyes and clinging to her lashes before trailing down her cheeks. “Your father beat you and your mother?”
Even after the attack, the doctor stitching her back together, the laudanum, her first tears were for him.
How humbled he was to have this woman as his wife. To have her love.
“Don’t cry for me, love.” Tenderly, he caught the tears with his thumb. “I did what I could to take the beatings for ‘er, to keep ‘im away from my brothers and sisters. And I did what I could to protect our girls. If I’d supposed for a moment that she would try to murder you…”
He shuddered, unable to complete the sentence. It was too terrible to contemplate, and the guilt he felt for having brought Octavia, albeit unwittingly, into so much evil would never fade. If he had lost her… No, he could not think of it. Could not bear to contemplate his life without this wonderful woman in it.
“She is ill,” Octavia said, her voice growing softer, her eyelids lowering. “Stay with me, Jasper. I’m so tired, and I want to sleep, but I want to feel you here.”
He laced their fingers together, then brushed a stray tendril of hair from her forehead. “Of course. I’ll not be leaving your side for the foreseeable future, minx. I love you.” The three words that had seemed so terrifying earlier in the day, which had remained daunting and unspoken, burning inside him for so long, were surprisingly easy to say. He kissed her brow, the tip of her nose, careful not to jostle her too much. Said them again. “I love you so damned much, Octavia. I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner. I should’ve done. I shouldn’t have bloody well waited until now to tell you what’s been in my heart all along.”
Her smile was faint but beautiful. “I love you, too.”
Jasper stayed where he was, pressed to her side, newly grateful for her every breath.
Octavia woke to early morning light filtering in the curtains at her bedchamber window, feeling fuzzy-headed and confused.
For a moment, terror filled her as memories of what had happened returned, and she jerked in a visceral reaction to the fear. The movement sent pain shooting through her, the stitches the surgeon had painstakingly placed the night before pulling until she recalled herself and stilled.
It was over.
She was safe.
At her side, still dressed in his clothes, Jasper stirred awake, instantly alert. “What is it, love? Is something wrong?”
She inhaled slowly, then exhaled, feeling the anxiety dissipate. “Nothing is wrong.”
Everything was right.
Jasper’s words returned to her, chasing all the terrible memories. He loved her.
She’d known he did, of course. His actions had shown it. But hearing it from his lips was priceless. In the time she had known him, he had changed so much. The icy, all-powerful rogue’s walls had fallen down. He was no longer an impenetrable bastion.
“Are you in pain, darling?” he asked next. “The surgeon left some laudanum.”
She was, but she did not want more laudanum; it left her feeling so tired and strange. “I am fi
ne.”
“You look beautiful,” he said, his warm hazel gaze traveling over her.
She sincerely doubted she could. She was wearing a bloodstained chemise, there was a bandage on her neck, and her curls were likely in ten thousand little knots. But she was alive, and he made her feel as if she was the loveliest woman he had ever beheld, and that was all that mattered.
She smiled at him, allowing her eyes to make a similar tour of his disheveled form. His cravat, jacket, and waistcoat were gone, the three buttons of his shirt undone, and his hair looked as if he had run his fingers through it at least a dozen times. He was wickedly handsome, and he was hers.
“Thank you for staying with me.”
“As if I would be anywhere else,” he said.
Something occurred to her then. Another memory, coming to the fore like a splinter. A strange man coming to her aid, the fiery blast of a pistol.
She frowned. “Someone helped me last night. Who was it?”
Jasper’s jaw tensed. “Did you see the man?”
“He looked quite a bit like you,” she remembered through the haze. “But he was not you. He was taller than you, I think, and his shoulders were a bit broader.”
Her husband shook his head slowly. “It can’t be.”
“What cannot be?” Octavia was lost, attempting to understand his words and his reaction. Or, for that matter, who it was that had come to her aid. It had not been one of the servants. She would have recognized such a face. “Is he someone you know?”
“Maybe.” Jasper pressed his fingers into his temples and rubbed, as if the thoughts in his mind were giving him pain. “It seems damned unlikely, and yet…”
“And yet?” she pressed.
“The man you’ve described sounds very much like my brother, Logan.”
“A brother I have yet to meet?” The news surprised her; she had believed there were only seven Suttons.
“He’s dead,” Jasper said. “At least, that’s what I’ve believed. Disappeared one day over a year ago, nary a word.”
“That’s terrible,” she murmured, struggling to make sense of this latest revelation. “But…do you think it possible your brother is alive and that he is the man who came to my rescue yesterday?”
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