by Mary Balogh
“That you will never walk again,” his brother said, throwing himself down onto the chair on which Angeline had sat. “That you had to wrestle old Raikes down onto the floor to prevent his hacking off the leg. Honestly, Tresham, physicians these days would just as soon pull a saw out of their bags as take the time to dig around for a bullet.”
“You may rest assured,” Jocelyn told him, “that I was in no mood for wrestling anyone to the ground yesterday except perhaps that nincompoop of a surgeon Oliver took out to Hyde Park. Raikes did his job admirably well and I will certainly walk again.”
“Just what I said,” Ferdinand said, beaming at him. “It is in the betting book at White’s. I have fifty pounds on it that you will be waltzing at Almack’s within a month.”
“You will lose.” Jocelyn raised his quizzing glass to his eye. “I never waltz. And I never show my face at Almack’s. All the mamas would instantly assume I was in the marriage mart. When are you going to dismiss that sad apology for a valet of yours, Ferdinand, and employ someone who can refrain from cutting your throat every time he shaves you?”
His brother fingered a small nick under his chin. “Oh, that,” he said. “My fault, Tresham. I turned my head without warning him. The Forbes brothers are after your blood. There are three of them in town.”
Yes, they would be. Lady Oliver’s brothers had almost as bad a reputation as hell-raisers as he and his siblings did, Jocelyn thought. And since the lady was the only sister among five brothers, they were more than usually protective of her even now, three years after her marriage to Lord Oliver.
“They will have to come and take it, then,” Jocelyn said. “It should not be at all difficult since it seems my butler will admit anyone to my house who deigns to step up and rap on the knocker.”
“Oh, I say!” Ferdinand sounded aggrieved. “I am not just anyone, Tresham. And I must protest your not asking me to be your second or even informing me that there was to be a duel. Is it true, by the way, that it was a servant girl who caused all the fracas? Brougham says she came storming into the house after you and got all the way to your bedchamber and gave you a tongue-lashing because she had lost her job.” He chuckled. “I daresay that it is a very tall story, but it is a damned good one nevertheless.”
“She is standing over there by the curtain,” Jocelyn said, nodding in the direction of his nurse, who had stood like a statue ever since his brother’s arrival.
“Oh, I say!” Ferdinand leaped to his feet and gazed at her with the keenest curiosity. “What the devil is she doing here? It is really not the thing, you know, girl, to interfere in a matter of honor. That is gentlemen’s business. You might have caused Tresham’s death, and then you would have swung for sure.”
She was looking at Ferdinand the way she usually looked at him, Jocelyn saw. He recognized the signs—the further straightening of already straight shoulders, the thinning of the lips, the very direct stare. He waited with a certain relish for her to speak.
“If he had been killed,” she said, “it would have been by the bullet of the man with whom he was dueling. And how foolish to call such a meeting a matter of honor. You are right to call it men’s business, though. Women have a deal more sense.”
Lord Ferdinand Dudley looked almost comically nonplussed as he took a scolding from a hideously clad servant.
“She comes equipped with a mind, you see, Ferdinand,” Jocelyn explained with studied boredom, “with a double-edged tongue attached.”
“I say!” His brother turned his head and looked at him, aghast. “What in thunder is she doing here?”
“Conan did not complete the story?” Jocelyn asked. “I have employed her as my nurse. I do not see why the rest of my servants should be at the receiving end of my temper for the coming three weeks while I am incarcerated in my own home.”
“Devil take it,” his brother said. “I thought he was funning!”
“No, no.” Jocelyn waved one careless hand. “Meet Jane Ingleby, Ferdinand. But do have a care if it ever becomes necessary to address her again. She insists upon being called Miss Ingleby rather than Jane or girl. Which point I have conceded since she has stopped calling me nothing at all and has begun occasionally addressing me as your grace. My younger brother, Lord Ferdinand Dudley, Miss Ingleby.”
He half expected her to curtsy. He half expected his brother to explode. This must surely be the first time he had been presented to a servant.
Jane Ingleby inclined her head graciously, and Ferdinand flushed and made her an awkward little bow and looked downright embarrassed.
“I say, Tresham,” he said, “has the injury turned you daft in the head?”
“I believe,” Jocelyn said, setting one hand to the aforementioned head, “you were about to take your leave, Ferdinand? Some advice, my dear fellow, though why I waste my breath giving it I do not know since Dudleys are not renowned for taking advice. Leave the Forbeses to me. Their quarrel is with me, not with you.”
“Damned rogues and gangsters!” His brother bristled. “They would be better employed giving their sister a good smacking. How you could have got involved with plowing that particular piece of skirt, I do not know. I—”
“Enough!” Jocelyn said coldly. “There is—” He was about to say there was a lady present, but he caught himself in time. “I am not answerable to you for my affairs. Take yourself off now, there’s a good fellow, and send Hawkins in to me. I intend to attempt to make clear to him that his future employment in this house depends upon his letting no one else beyond the doorstep for the rest of the day. If my head does not explode before nightfall and cause my brains to rain down on the books, I shall be very surprised.”
Lord Ferdinand left and the butler stepped into the library a minute or two later, looking apprehensive.
“I do apologize, your grace—” he began, but Jocelyn held up one hand.
“I will concede,” he said, “that it would probably take a whole regiment of seasoned soldiers and a battery of artillery to keep Lord Ferdinand and Lady Heyward out when they are determined to come in. But no one else today, Hawkins. Not even the Prince Regent himself should he deign to come calling. I trust I have made myself clear?”
“Yes, your grace.” His butler bowed deferentially and withdrew, closing the door behind him with merciful quietness.
Jocelyn sighed aloud. “Now, Miss Ingleby,” he said, “come and sit here and tell me how you plan to amuse me for the next three weeks. You have had plenty of time to think of an answer.”
“YES, I PLAY ALL the most common card games,” Jane said in answer to a question, “but I will not play for money.” It had been one of her parents’ rules—no gambling in their home for higher stakes than pennies. And no playing at all after half a crown—two shillings and sixpence—had been lost. “Besides,” she added, “I have no money with which to play. I daresay you would derive no pleasure from a game in which the stakes were not high.”
“I am delighted you presume to know me so well,” he said. “Do you play chess?”
“No.” She shook her head. Her father had used to play, but he had had strange notions about women. Chess was a man’s game, he had always said with fond indulgence whenever she had asked him to teach her. His refusal had always made her want even more to be able to play it. “I have never learned.”
He looked at her broodingly. “I do not suppose you read,” he said.
“Of course I read.” Did he think her a total ignoramus? She remembered too late who she was supposed to be.
“Ah, of course,” he repeated softly, his gaze narrowing. “And write a neat hand too, I daresay. What sort of an orphanage was it, Miss Ingleby?”
“I told you,” she said. “A superior one.”
He looked hard at her but did not pursue the matter.
“And what other accomplishments do you have,” he asked, “with which to entertain me?”
“Is entertaining you a nurse’s job, then?” she asked.
“My nurse’
s job is exactly what I say it is.” His eyes were looking her over as if he could see beneath all her garments. She found that gaze more than a little disconcerting. “It is not going to take you twenty-four hours of every day to change my bandage and lift my foot on and off cushions after all, is it?”
“No, your grace,” she admitted.
“Yet you are eating and living at my expense,” he said. “And I believe I am paying you a rather handsome salary. Do you begrudge me a little entertainment?”
“I believe,” she told him, “you will soon be heartily bored with what I have to offer.”
He half smiled, but rather than softening his face, the expression succeeded only in making him look rather wolfish. He had his quizzing glass in his hand, she noticed, though he did not raise it to his eye.
“We will see,” he said. “Remove that cap, Miss Ingleby. It offends me. It is remarkably hideous and ages you by at least a decade. How old are you?”
“I do not believe, your grace,” she said, “that my age is any of your business. And I would prefer to wear a cap when on duty.”
“Would you?” He looked suddenly haughty and not a little frightening with his eyebrows raised. His voice was softer when he spoke again. “Take it off.”
Defiance seemed futile. After all, she had never worn a cap before yesterday. It had just seemed like a good sort of disguise, like something beneath which she could at least half hide. She was not unaware of the fact that her hair was her most distinctive feature. She reluctantly untied the bow beneath her chin and pulled off the cap. She held it with both hands in her lap while his eyes were directed at her hair.
“One might say,” he said, “that it is your crowning glory, Miss Ingleby. Especially, I daresay, when it is not so ruthlessly braided and twisted. Which poses the question of why you were so determined to hide it. Are you afraid of me and my reputation?”
“I do not know your reputation,” she said. Though it would not tax the imagination overmuch to guess.
“I was challenged to a duel yesterday,” he said, “for having, ah, relations with a married lady. It was not the first duel I have engaged in. I am known as an unprincipled, dangerous man.”
“Spoken with pride?” She raised her eyebrows.
His lips twitched, but whether with amusement or anger it was impossible to tell.
“I do have some principles,” he said. “I have never ravished a servant. Or assaulted any woman beneath my own roof. Or bedded any who were unwilling. Does that reassure you?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Since I believe I qualify for sanctuary on all three counts.”
“But I would give a monkey,” he said softly, sounding as dangerous as he had just described himself, “to see you with your hair down.”
THE LILLIPUTIANS WERE SWARMING all over the Man Mountain, securing him with the greatest ingenuity—even his long hair—to the ground.
She was reading Gulliver’s Travels to him, a book to which he could hardly object since he had left the choice of reading material up to her. She had wandered about the library shelves for a half hour, looking and fingering and occasionally drawing out a book and opening it. She handled books with reverence, as if she loved them. She had turned to him finally and held up the volume from which she was now reading.
“This one?” she had asked. “Gulliver’s Travels? It is one of those books I have always promised myself I would read.”
“As you wish.” He had shrugged. He was perfectly capable of reading silently to himself, but he did not want to be alone. He had never particularly enjoyed his own company for any length of time—no, that was not true. But for the past ten years or so it had been.
He had been feeling considerable irritation as the true nature of his plight had become clearer to him during the course of the day. He was a restless, energetic man, who engaged in a dozen or more activities every day, most of them involving physical exercise like riding and boxing and fencing and—yes—even dancing, though never the waltz and never at that most insipid of all institutions, Almack’s. Making love was a favorite activity too, of course, and that could be the most energetic exercise of all.
Now for three weeks, if he could bear the torture that long, he was to be inactive, with only visiting friends and relatives for company. And the prim, shrewish Jane Ingleby, of course. And pain.
He had distracted himself by dismissing his nurse and spending the afternoon with Michael Quincy. The monthly reports from Acton Park, his country estate, had arrived that morning. He had always been conscientious about them, but he had never before pored over them with quite such determined attention to detail.
But the evening threatened to be endless. The nights were the time when he did most of his living and socializing, first at the theater or opera or whatever fashionable ball or soiree was likely to draw the greatest crowd, and then at one of his clubs or in bed if the sport offered there seemed worth the sacrifice of a night with his male friends.
“Do you wish me to continue?” Jane Ingleby had paused and looked up from the book.
“Yes, yes.” He waved one hand in her direction, and she looked down and resumed her reading.
Her spine, he noticed, did not touch the back of her chair. And yet she looked both comfortable and graceful. She read well, neither too fast nor too slowly, neither in a monotone nor with theatrically exaggerated expression. She had a lovely soft, cultured speaking voice. Her long lashes fanned her cheeks as she looked down at the book she held with both hands close to her lap. Her neck was long and swanlike in its elegance.
Her hair was pure spun gold. She had done an admirable job of making it look severe and insignificant, but the only way she could hope for success in that endeavor was to shave her head. He had noticed the beauty of her face and the loveliness of her eyes during the morning. It was only when she had removed her cap that he had discovered how far reality surpassed his growing suspicion that she was an extraordinarily handsome woman.
He watched her read as he rubbed the heel of his right hand hard over his thigh as if to ease the pain in his calf. She was a servant, a dependent beneath his roof, and without any doubt a virtuous woman. As she had observed in her usual pert manner during the morning, she was thrice protected from him. But he would dearly like to see that hair with all the pins and coils and braids removed.
He would not be totally averse, either, to seeing her person without the dreary, cheap, ill-fitting dress and anything else she might be wearing beneath it.
He sighed, and she stopped reading again and looked up.
“Would you like to go to bed now?” she asked him.
She could always be relied upon to return her own particular brand of sanity to a situation, he thought. Her expression was without the slightest hint of suggestiveness despite her choice of words.
He glanced at the clock on the mantel. Good Lord, it was not even ten o’clock. The evening had scarcely begun.
“Since neither you nor Gulliver is a particularly scintillating companion, Miss Ingleby,” he said brutally, “I suppose that is my best option. I wonder if you appreciate how low I have been brought.”
A NIGHT OF SLEEP without either liquor or laudanum to induce slumber had not improved the Duke of Tresham’s temper, Jane discovered early the next morning. The physician had arrived and she was summoned from her breakfast in the kitchen to the duke’s bedchamber.
“You have taken your time,” he said by way of greeting when she entered the room after tapping on his door less than a minute after the summons. “I suppose you were busy eating me out of house and home.”
“I had finished my breakfast, thank you, your grace,” she said. “Good morning, Dr. Raikes.”
“Good morning, ma’am.” The physician inclined his head politely to her.
“Take that monstrosity off!” the duke commanded, pointing at Jane’s cap. “If I set eyes on it again, I shall personally carve it into very thin ribbons.”
Jane removed her cap, folded it neat
ly, and put it into the pocket of her dress.
Her employer had turned his attention to the doctor.
“It was Miss Ingleby who changed the bandage,” he said, apparently in answer to a question that had been asked before her arrival, “and cleansed the wound.”
“You did an admirable job, ma’am,” the doctor said. “There is no sign of infection or putrefaction. You have had some experience in tending the ailing, have you?”
“Yes, a little, sir,” Jane admitted.
“She spooned purges into all the damned orphans when they overate, I daresay,” the duke muttered irritably. “And I am not ailing. I have a hole in my leg. I believe exercise would do it more good than coddling. I intend to exercise it.”
Dr. Raikes looked horrified. “With all due respect, your grace,” he said, “I must advise strongly against it. There are damaged muscles and tendons to heal before they are put to even the gentlest use.”
The duke swore at him.
“I believe you owe Dr. Raikes an apology,” Jane told him. “He is merely giving you his professional opinion, for which you summoned him and are paying him. There was no call for such rudeness.”
Both men looked at her in sheer astonishment as she folded her hands at her waist. And then she jumped in alarm as his grace threw his head back on the pillow and roared with laughter.
“I do believe, Raikes,” he said, “that a splinter from the bullet in my leg must have flown up and lodged in my brain. Can you believe that I have suffered this for a whole day without putting an end to it?”
Dr. Raikes clearly did not. “I am sure, ma’am,” he said hastily, “that his grace owes me no apology. One understands that his injury has severely frustrated him.”
She could not for the life of her leave it alone. “That is no excuse for speaking abusively,” she said. “Especially to subordinates.”
“Raikes,” the duke said testily, “if I could go down on bended knee in humble sorrow at my words, I would perhaps do so. But I may not so exert myself, may I?”