by Mary Balogh
“Good God!” he exclaimed, sounding appalled. “Does the wretched thing mean that much to you?”
“It is mine!” she said vehemently but with a lamentably unsteady voice. “I bought it and one other just two days ago. They cost everything I had. I will not allow you to cut them up for your own amusement. You are an unfeeling bully.”
Despite the anger and bravado of her words, she was crying and sobbing and hiccuping quite despicably. She swiped at her wet cheeks with the cap and glared at him.
He regarded her in silence for a few moments. “This is not about the cap at all, is it?” he said at last. “It is because I forced you to remain in the room with a horde of male visitors. I have hurt your sensibilities, Jane. I daresay in the orphanage the sexes were segregated, were they?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I am weary,” he said abruptly. “I believe I shall try to sleep. I do not require your presence here to listen to me snore. Go to your room and remain there until dinnertime. Come to me again this evening.”
“Yes, your grace,” she said, turning from him. She could not say thank you even though she knew that in his way he was showing her a kindness. She did not believe he wished to sleep. He had merely recognized her need to be alone.
“Miss Ingleby,” he said when she reached the door. She did not look back. “Do not provoke me again. In my service you will wear no cap.”
She let herself out quietly and then raced upstairs to her room, where she shut the door gratefully on the world and cast herself across the bed. She was still clutching the cap tightly in one hand.
He was dead.
Sidney Jardine had died and there was no way anyone on this earth was going to believe that she had not murdered him.
She clutched a fistful of the bedspread in her free hand and pressed her face into the mattress.
He was dead.
He had been despicable and she had hated him more than she had thought it possible to hate anyone. But she had not wanted him dead. Or even hurt. It had been a pure reflex action to grab that heavy book and the pure, mindless instinct of self-defense to whack him over the head with it. Except that she had swung the tome rather than lifting it and bringing it down flat, because it had been so heavy. The sharp corner had caught him on the temple.
He had not fallen but had touched the wound, looked down at his bloodied fingers, laughed, called her a vixen, and advanced on her. But she had sidestepped. He had lost his balance as he lunged and had fallen forward onto the marble hearth, cracking his forehead loudly as he went down. Then he had lain still.
There had been several witnesses to the whole sordid scene, none of whom could be expected to tell the truth about what had happened. All of whom doubtless would be eager to perjure themselves by testifying that she had been apprehended while stealing. The gold, jewel-studded bracelet that would seem to prove them right was still at the bottom of her bag. All those people had been Sidney’s friends. None of them had been hers. Charles—Sir Charles Fortescue, her neighbor, friend, and beau—had been away from home. Not that he would have been invited to that particular party anyway.
Sidney had not been dead after the fall even though everyone else in the room had thought he was. She had been the one to approach him on unsteady legs, sick to her stomach. His pulse had been beating steadily. She had even summoned a few servants and had him carried up to his room, where she had tended him herself and bathed his wounds until the doctor arrived, summoned at her command.
But he had been unconscious the whole while. And looking so pale that a number of times she had checked his pulse again with cold, shaking fingers.
“Murderers hang, you know,” someone had said from the doorway of the bedchamber, sounding faintly amused.
“By the neck until they are dead,” another voice had added with ghoulish relish.
She had fled during the night, taking with her only enough possessions to get her to London on the stagecoach—and the bracelet, of course, and the money she had taken from the earl’s desk. She had fled not because she believed that Sidney would die and she would be accused of his murder. She had fled because—oh, there were a number of reasons.
She had felt so very alone. The earl, her father’s cousin and successor, and the countess had been away at a weekend house party. They had little love for her anyway. There was no one at Candleford to whom to turn in her distress. And Charles was not home. He had gone on an extended visit to his elder sister in Somersetshire.
Jane had fled to London. At first there had been no thought of concealment, only of reaching someone who would be sympathetic toward her. She had been going to Lady Webb’s home on Portland Place. Lady Webb had been her mother’s dearest friend since they made their come-out together as girls. She had often come to visit at Candleford. She was Jane’s godmother. Jane called her Aunt Harriet. But Lady Webb had been away from home and was not expected back any time soon.
For more than three weeks now Jane had been well-nigh paralyzed with terror, afraid that Sidney had died, afraid that she would be accused of his murder, afraid that she would be called a thief, afraid that the law would come looking for her. They would know, of course, that she had come to London. She had done nothing to hide her tracks.
Worst of all during the past weeks had been knowing nothing. It was almost a relief to know at last.
That Sidney was dead.
That the story was that she had killed him as he had been apprehending her in the process of robbing the house.
That she was considered a murderess.
No, of course it was not a relief.
Jane sat up sharply on the bed and rubbed her hands over her face. Her worst nightmares had come true. Her best hope had been to disappear among the anonymous masses of ordinary Londoners. But that plan had been dashed when she had so foolishly interfered in that duel in Hyde Park. What had it mattered to her that two gentlemen who had no better use for their lives were about to blow each other’s brains out?
Here she was in Mayfair, in one of the grand mansions on Grosvenor Square, as a sort of nurse/companion to a man who derived some kind of satisfaction out of displaying her to all his friends. None of them knew her, of course. She had lived a secluded life in Cornwall. The chances were that no visitors to Dudley House over the coming weeks would know her. But she was not quite convinced.
Surely it was only a matter of time.…
She got to her feet and crossed the room on shaking legs to the washstand. Mercifully there was water in the pitcher. She poured a little into the bowl and scooped some up in her cupped palms, into which she lowered her face.
What she ought to do—what she ought to have done at the start—was simply turn herself over to the authorities and trust to truth and justice. But who were the authorities? Where would she go to do it? Besides, she had made herself look guilty by running away and by staying out of sight for longer than three weeks.
He would know what she ought to do and where she should go with her story. The Duke of Tresham, that was. She could tell him everything and let him take the next step. But the thought of his hard, ruthless face and his disregard for her feelings made her shudder.
Would she hang? Could she hang for murder? Or even for theft? She really had no idea. But she had to grip the edge of the washstand suddenly to stop herself from swaying.
How could she trust in the truth when all the evidence and all the witnesses would be against her?
One of the gentlemen downstairs had said that perhaps Sidney was not dead after all. Jane knew very well how gossip could twist and change the truth. It was being said, for example, that she had been holding a pistol in each hand! Perhaps word of Sidney’s death had spread simply because such an outcome titillated the senses of those who always liked to believe the worst.
Perhaps he was still only unconscious.
Perhaps he was recovering quite nicely.
Perhaps he was fully recovered.
And perhaps he was dead.
/> Jane dried her still-hot cheeks with a towel and sat down on the hard chair beside the washstand. She would wait, she decided, looking down at her hands in her lap—they were still shaking—until she had discovered the truth more definitely. Then she would decide what was best to do.
Was there a search on for her? she wondered. She pressed her fingers against her mouth and closed her eyes. She must stay out of sight of future visitors just in case. She must remain indoors as much as possible.
If only she could continue to wear her caps.…
She had never been a coward. She had never been one to hide from her problems or cower in a corner. Quite the contrary. But she had suddenly turned craven.
Of course, she had never been accused of murder before.
6
ICK BODEN OF THE BOW STREET RUNNERS was standing in the Earl of Durbury’s private sitting room at the Pulteney Hotel again, one week after his first appearance there. He had no real news to impart except that he had discovered no recent trace of Lady Sara Illingsworth.
His failure did not please him. He hated assignments like this one. Had he been summoned to Cornwall to investigate the murder attempt on Sidney Jardine, he could have used all his skills of detection to discover the identity of the would-be murderer and to apprehend the villain. But there was no mystery about this crime. The lady had been in the process of robbing the absent earl when Jardine had come upon her. She had hit him over the head with some hard object, doubtless taking him by surprise because he knew her and did not fully realize what she was up to, and then she had made off with the spoils of the robbery. Jardine’s valet had witnessed the whole scene—a singularly cowardly individual in Mick’s estimation since the thief had been a mere girl with nothing more lethal than a hard object to swing at him.
“If she is in London, we will find her, sir,” he said now.
“If she is in London? If?” The earl fumed. “Of course she is in London, man. Where else would she be?”
Mick could have listed a score of places without even taxing his brain, but he merely pulled on his earlobe. “Probably nowhere,” he admitted. “And if she did not leave here a week or more ago, she will find it harder now, sir. We have questioned every coaching innkeeper and coachman in town. None remember a woman of her description except the one who brought her here. And now we are keeping a careful watch.”
“All of which is laudable,” his lordship said with heavy irony. “But what are you doing to find her within London? A week should have been time enough and to spare even if you put your feet up and slept for the first five or six days.”
“She has not returned to Lady Webb’s, sir,” Mick told the earl. “We have checked. We have found the hotel where she stayed for two nights after her arrival, but no one knows where she went from there. According to your account, sir, she knows no one else in town. If she has a fortune on her, though, I would have expected her to take another hotel room or lodgings in a respectable district. We have found no trace of either yet.”
“It has not occurred to you, I suppose,” the earl said, going to stand in front of the window and drumming his fingernails on the sill, “that she may not wish to draw attention to herself by spending lavishly?”
It would strike Mick Boden as decidedly odd to steal a fortune and then neglect to spend any of it. Why would the young lady even have stolen it, if she was living at Candleford in the lap of luxury as the daughter of the former earl and relative to this present one? And if she was twenty years old and as lovely as the earl had described her, would she not be looking forward to making an advantageous match with a wealthy young nob?
There was more to this whole business than met the eye, Mick thought, not for the first time.
“Do you mean she might have taken employment?” he asked.
“It has crossed my mind.” His lordship continued the finger-drumming while he frowned out through the window.
How much money had been taken? Mick wondered. Surely it must have been a great deal if the girl had been willing to kill for it. But of course there had been jewels too, and it was time he explored that possible means of tracing the girl.
“I and my assistants will start asking at the employment agencies, then,” he said. “That will be a start. And at all the pawnbrokers and jewelers who might have bought the jewelry from her. I will need a description of each piece, sir.”
“Do not waste your time,” the earl said coldly. “She would not pawn any of it. Try the agencies. Try all likely employers. Find her.”
“We certainly would not want a dangerous criminal let loose on any unsuspecting employer, sir,” Mick agreed. “What name might she be using?”
The earl turned to face the Bow Street Runner. “What name?”
“She used her real name at Lady Webb’s,” Mick explained, “and at the hotel those first two nights. After that she disappeared. It has struck me, sir, that she has realized the wisdom of concealing her identity. What name might she use apart from her own? Does she have any middle names? Do you know her mother’s maiden name? Her maid’s name? Her old nurse’s? Any that I might try at the agencies, sir, if there is no record of a Sara Illingsworth.”
“Her parents always called her Jane.” The earl scratched his head and frowned. “Let me think. Her mother was a Donningsford. Her maid …”
Mick jotted down the names he was given.
“We will find her, sir,” he assured the Earl of Durbury again as he took his leave a few minutes later.
Though it was a strange business. A man’s only son was in a coma, one foot in the grave, the other on an icy patch. He might even be dead at this very moment. And yet his father had left him in order to search for the woman who had tried to kill him. But the man never left his hotel suite, as far as Mick knew. The would-be murderess had stolen a fortune, yet the earl suspected she might be seeking employment. She had stolen jewels, but his lordship was unwilling to describe them or to have them hunted for in the pawnshops.
A very strange business indeed.
AFTER ONE WEEK OF moving between his bed upstairs, the sofa in the drawing room, and the chaise longue in the library, Jocelyn was colossally bored. Which was probably the understatement of the decade. His friends called frequently—every day, in fact—and brought him all the latest news and gossip. His brother called and talked about little else except the curricle race that Jocelyn would have given a fortune to be running himself. His sister called and talked incessantly on such scintillating topics as bonnets and her nerves. His brother-in-law made a few courtesy calls and discussed politics.
The days were long, the evenings longer, the nights endless.
Jane Ingleby became his almost constant companion. The realization could both amuse and irritate him. He began to feel like an old lady with a paid companion to run and fetch and hold the emptiness at bay.
She changed his bandage once a day. He had her massage his thigh once, an experiment he did not repeat despite the fact that her touch was magically soothing. It was also alarmingly arousing, and so he rebuked her for being so prudish as to blush and told her to sit down. She ran errands for him. She sorted his mail as he read it and returned it to Quincy with his instructions. She read to him and played cards with him.
He had Quincy in to play chess with him one evening and instructed her to sit and watch. Playing chess with Michael was about as exciting as playing cricket with a three-year-old. Though his secretary was a competent player, it never took great ingenuity to defeat him. Winning, of course, was always gratifying, but it was not particularly exhilarating when one could see the victory coming at least ten moves in advance.
After that Jocelyn played chess with Jane. She was so abysmally awful the first time that it was a measure of his boredom that he made her try it again the next day. She was almost ready that time to have given Michael a marginally competitive game, though certainly not him. The fifth time they played, she won.
She laughed and clapped her hands. “That is what comes, you
see,” she told him, “of being bored and toplofty and looking down your nose at me as if I were a speck on your boot and yawning behind your hand. You were not concentrating.”
All of which was true. “You will concede, then,” he asked, “that I would have won if I had been concentrating, Jane?”
“Oh, assuredly,” she admitted. “But you were not and so you lost. Quite ignominiously, I might add.”
He concentrated after that.
Sometimes they merely talked. It was strange to him to talk to a woman. He was adept at chitchatting socially with ladies. He was skilled at wordplay with courtesans. But he could not recall simply talking with any woman.
One evening she was reading to him and he was amusing himself with the observation that with her hair ruthlessly scraped back from her face, her eyes were slanted upward at the corners. It was her little rebellion, of course, to make her head as unattractive as possible even without the aid of the cap, and he hoped uncharitably that it gave her a headache.
“Miss Ingleby,” he said with a sigh, interrupting her in the middle of a sentence, “I can listen no longer.” Not that he had been doing much listening anyway. “In my opinion, with which you may feel free to disagree, Gulliver is an ass.”
As he had expected, her lips tightened into a thin line. One of his few amusements during the past week had been provoking her. She closed the book.
“I suppose,” she said, “you believe he should have trodden those little people into the ground because he was bigger and stronger than they.”
“You are such a restful companion, Miss Ingleby,” he said. “You put words into my mouth and thereby release me from the necessity of having to think and speak for myself.”
“Shall I choose another book?” she asked.
“You would probably select a collection of sermons,” he retorted. “No, we will talk instead.”