When Dom didn’t answer right away, Tristan went on, “I told Ravenswood you’d always brushed off the question with some nonsense about a fight you got into. But that isn’t true, I assume.”
Dom ventured a glance at his brother and winced to see the hurt on his face. Jane had said, Every time you refuse to reveal your secrets, Dom, I assume that you find me unworthy to hear them. Apparently, that was how he’d made all of them feel. As if he were somehow too important to let them into his life.
Only God could have stopped that disaster, and contrary to what you think, you aren’t God.
When she’d said it, he hadn’t understood why she would accuse him of such a thing. Why she sometimes called him “Dom the Almighty.”
But he understood now. By shielding his guilt from the world, he’d shut himself off from his family. From her. He’d pushed away the very people he should have embraced.
Having just watched Jane retreat into fear and shut him out, he now knew precisely how painful it could feel to be on the receiving end.
If he wanted to change all that, he would have to start opening his heart, letting his family—and her—see the things he was most ashamed of, most worried about. He would have to trust them to understand, to empathize, to love him in spite of everything.
The only other choice was to keep closing himself up until, as she’d said at that ball last year: One day that church you’re building around yourself shall become your crypt. He didn’t want that.
He took a steadying breath as he and Tristan walked up the steps to Ravenswood’s manor house. “As it happens, I did receive my scar in a fight. But it was a fight against the militia at the Peterloo Massacre.”
When Tristan shot him a startled look, Dom halted at the top of the steps to face him. “If you want to hear the story, I’ll tell you all about it. Right now, if you wish.”
Tristan searched his face, as if not quite sure he believed what he was hearing. “I’d like that very much.” Then he broke into a grin. “But only if we do it over a glass of Ravenswood’s brandy. That’s the best damned brandy I’ve ever tasted.”
“One of the privileges of being a spymaster is that you can get your hands on the good stuff,” Dom said lightly, though his stomach churned at the thought of revealing his most humiliating secret, even to his brother.
Still, as they headed inside, Tristan clapped him on the shoulder, and that reassured him. Telling Tristan about Peterloo represented a beginning of sorts, toward a closer friendship than Dom had allowed himself to have with his brother in recent years.
Jane would be proud.
16
JANE HAD AN awful night. First, there was the nightmare that began with Papa calling Mama “ignorant” and “willful” while Jane hid behind her mother’s skirts. It ended with Dom assuring Papa that he would take Jane in hand.
After Jane awoke gasping, she lay there shaking, unable to go back to sleep.
Did she really believe that Dom was like Papa? He was certainly arrogant, and he could drive her mad with the firmness of his pronouncements. It still rubbed her raw that he’d ordered her to marry him rather than asking her.
But he had bowed to her request not to let Tristan catch them together, even though he’d clearly realized that putting her in a compromising situation would inevitably lead to a marriage. That was something, wasn’t it?
And she had seduced him, after all. She could see how he might interpret that as a tacit agreement to marry him. Especially since she’d meant it as such. Indeed, she’d been more than eager to become his wife, until he’d taken it for granted and started ordering her about like . . . like . . .
Dom the Almighty.
She blew out a breath. That was the trouble. She had no way of knowing which Dom she’d be marrying. The one who said he’d been lost ever since he’d let her go? The one who took such care with bedding her?
Or the one who dictated to her? Who wouldn’t even have revealed his most recent discoveries about Nancy’s situation if Jane hadn’t eavesdropped to get them?
A sudden scratching at the door of her bedchamber startled her. Could that be her lady’s maid so early? She sat up, surprised to see from the clock that it was already six A.M. They were to leave Saffron Walden at seven; Lady Ravenswood had told her so last night.
For the next hour, Jane thankfully didn’t have to think about her and Dom at all. By the time she did her ablutions, dressed, packed up, and had a bit of toast with tea, it was time to head off for London. Indeed, she was the last person to appear on the steps of the manor house where everyone else was assembled, saying their goodbyes to the viscount and his wife.
“So, you’re heading to the Earl of Blakeborough’s in London, right?” Lord Ravenswood asked Tristan.
“Yes. Dom and Max and I agree that it’s our best course of action.”
The four men briefly discussed the quickest routes to London. Though she could feel Dom darting glances at her the whole time, she couldn’t face him, couldn’t even look at him. Not just now, when she was still in turmoil about what they’d done.
About what he’d said to her at the end. It will also give you a chance to decide what you want.
That was the trouble. She didn’t know what she wanted. Well, she did know—she wanted to marry Dom the courteous gentleman. But not Dom the Almighty. She wanted the Dom who mourned for the six children who’d lost their mother needlessly, not the Dom who was sure Nancy was a whore because she’d married his bastard of a brother.
But what if both parts were him? What if she couldn’t have one without the other? Why, he hadn’t even said he loved her!
Then again, neither had she, so she could hardly fault him for that. Their past was still too raw, and they were both still afraid. Perhaps he’d been waiting for her to say it. She’d certainly been waiting for him. Because then she might really believe he meant to make a life with her again, and not go running off at the first sign of disaster.
Like, perhaps, if Nancy proved to be bearing George’s son.
“Since it’s such a beautiful morning,” Dom said, “I was thinking that someone might prefer to ride in the phaeton with me. What do you think, Jane? Shall you join me?”
He was asking. Deliberately asking, not ordering. And she could feel his expectant gaze on her, indeed, feel everyone’s expectant gazes on her. But her thoughts were too jangled right now, and an enforced ride with him would only jangle them more.
Especially since they’d be trapped together for half the day. She wouldn’t be able to escape. Not that she necessarily wanted to escape. Did she?
Oh, Lord, she couldn’t handle this at the moment. “Actually, I was looking forward to chatting with your sister in His Grace’s coach. If you don’t mind.”
Only then did she meet his gaze. It showed nothing of his thoughts, which made everything worse. She’d begun to recognize that bland expression; he only wore it when he was protecting himself. And if he felt a need to protect himself, then she’d hurt him.
She swallowed hard. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him. Perhaps she should ride with him. Clear the air. Perhaps she was being a coward.
“Whichever you prefer,” he said curtly. Then he walked briskly down the steps to his waiting phaeton, leapt in, and set it going.
And the decision was made for her. Again.
No, she couldn’t blame this one on him. This one was entirely hers. She’d sent him running away.
Everyone knew it, too, which was nowhere more apparent than in the carriage once they were all settled in and headed off. Lisette was unusually silent. The duke’s wooden expression said that he wished he could be anywhere else but here. And Tristan was studying her with a cold gaze.
He did that for a mile or so before he spoke. “You’re a cruel woman, Jane Vernon.”
“Tristan!” Lisette chided. “Don’t be rude.”
“I’ll be as rude as I please to her,” he told his sister, with a jerk of his head toward Jane. “That man is mad for her, and she just keeps toying with him.”
Guilt swamped Jane. And she’d thought that spending half a day trapped with Dom would be bad? She must have been dreaming.
“It’s none of our concern,” Lisette murmured.
“The hell it isn’t.” Tristan stared hard at Jane. “Is this about Nancy? About the fact that if she has a child, Dom will lose the title and the estate?”
“No, of course not!” How dared he!
“Tristan, please—” Lisette began.
“That’s why you jilted him years ago, isn’t it?” Tristan persisted. “Because he no longer had any money, and you’d lose your fortune if you married him?”
“I did not jilt him!” Jane shouted.
An unnatural silence fell in the carriage, and she cursed her quick tongue. But really, this was all Dom’s fault for never telling his family the truth. She was tired of being made to look the villainess when she’d done nothing wrong.
“What do you mean?” Lisette asked.
Jane released an exasperated breath. “I mean, I did jilt him. But only because he tricked me into it.” When that brought a smug smile to Tristan’s face, she narrowed her eyes on him. “You knew.”
“Not the details. I just knew something wasn’t right. But since it was clear that neither you nor my idiot brother were going to say anything without being prodded into it, I . . . er . . . did a bit of prodding.” He smirked at her. “You do tend to speak your mind when you get angry.”
Jane scowled at him. “You’re just like him, manipulative and arrogant and—”
“I beg to differ,” Tristan said jovially. “He’s just like me. I taught him everything he knows.”
“Yes, indeed,” Lisette said with a snort. “You taught him to be as much an idiot as you.” She glanced from Tristan to Jane. “So, is one of you going to tell me what is going on? About the jilting, I mean?”
Tristan cocked an eyebrow at Jane. “Well?”
She sighed. The cat was out of the bag now. Might as well reveal the rest.
So she related the whole tale, from Dom’s plotting with Nancy at the ball to George’s involvement to how she’d finally discovered the truth.
When she finished, Tristan let out a low whistle. “Hell and thunder. My big brother has a better talent for deception than I realized.”
“Not as good as you’d think,” Jane muttered. “If I hadn’t been so wounded and angry at the time, I would have noticed how . . . manufactured the whole thing felt.”
Lisette patted her hand. “You were young. We were all more volatile then.” Her voice hardened. “And he hit you just where it hurt, the curst devil. No wonder you want to strangle him half the time. I would have strung him up by his toes if he’d done such a thing to me!”
To Jane’s surprise, the duke kept silent, though he appeared to be musing on something.
Tristan did not, however, keep quiet. “Now see here, sis, Dom thought he was doing right by her. You know what life was like for him then—running here and there for Ravenswood and Pinter, living in garrets, learning investigations from the bottom up. It wasn’t the sort of existence for a lady.”
Jane sniffed. “Lisette lived it. She helped you in Paris, didn’t she?”
“Not until I was much older,” Lisette admitted. “And not until Tristan had established himself with the French secret police and Eugène Vidocq. By the time I was working for Vidocq myself, Tristan and I had a very nice apartment adjoining his town house, and I was already twenty-three. You were, what, seventeen when you and Dom got engaged?”
“And you weren’t bred for such a life,” Tristan put in. “Whereas Lisette had been scraping by with me and Mother for years.”
Jane crossed her arms over her chest. “All right, so my circumstances were a bit different. But I had been managing the household for my aunt for some time by then.” Although Dom hadn’t apparently known that.
“That’s still a far cry from garrets in Spitalfields,” Tristan said.
“I would have shared any garret with him if he would only have asked!” Jane cried. “But from the beginning, he urged me to jilt him. I told him I wouldn’t, yet he refused to listen!”
“In other words, you left him no choice,” the duke said, the first time he’d spoken since they entered the carriage.
It caught Jane off guard. “What do you mean?”
Max shrugged. “You just said he wanted you to end it. Well, he knew he couldn’t end it without damaging your reputation. So he must have thought he had no choice but to manipulate you into acting to preserve your future. He did it for you.”
“He did it for himself!” Jane cried. “So he wouldn’t have to be saddled with a . . . a gently born wife who might drag him down in difficult times.”
As the stark words echoed in the carriage, she realized that was exactly what hurt so much about their parting. That Dom hadn’t had the faith in her to believe her love would survive even a garret.
Lisette reached over to squeeze Jane’s hand, but it was the duke’s reaction that Jane most noticed. His eyes shone so kindly upon her. “That’s why you never went after him later. Why you never sought him out once you knew the truth. Because you were afraid that it was always about you and your ‘flaws.’ Not him.”
Tears clogged Jane’s throat. “I waited for years. I was sure he would come to his senses and seek me out. But he never did.”
“Not because of anything to do with you,” Lisette said.
“You can’t know that,” Jane choked out. “Once he established the agency, he could have approached me again. But he didn’t want me.”
“I doubt that,” Lisette said reassuringly. “He never married anyone else, did he?” She sighed. “What you don’t understand is that Dom, of all of us, was the one most hurt by Papa’s . . . lack of affection. Papa showed Tristan a great deal of attention and I was his only daughter, his little girl. But Dom—”
“Was the one whose birth killed your father’s wife.” Jane remembered that bit of their family history.
Lisette nodded. “If what George said before he died is true, then their mother bore Dom at great risk to herself, because she was jealous over our mother. So Papa must have looked at Dom as . . . well . . . a living representation of how he’d failed his wife.”
Tristan snorted. “Father didn’t feel deeply enough for that. He just saw Dom as the second son, like every other man of his ilk.” He glanced at the duke. “No offense, Max.”
“None taken,” the duke said. “But I think Lisette is mostly right. Your father doted on his bastards; that’s not typical. And for all that he and George didn’t get along, he certainly had him well educated and gave him plenty of responsibility.”
“Whereas he just stuck Dom off at school and ignored him.” Lisette glanced at Jane. “I know it’s no excuse for his behavior, but Dom has always blamed himself for too many things—his mother’s death being only the first. If he’d married you, he would have blamed himself for every moment of unhappiness the two of you suffered as a result of his being disinherited and your losing your fortune. Perhaps he couldn’t face that.”
Jane thought of Dom last night, brought low by the conviction that he’d caused a massacre, of all things, by not acting upon his conscience. Might he have been the same if in marrying her, he thought he’d made her life a misery?
“All the same, it should have been my choice, too.” Jane glanced at Max. “And he did have other choices. He could have consulted me on a plan whereby we would wait five years until he established himself, and then we would reconsider marriage. I might have agreed to that. But he didn’t even try.”
Max’s gaze held a trace of pity. “Perhaps he didn’t want you to wait. If he thought you’d be better off with
out him, then perhaps he believed you would come to think so, too, if he took himself out of your life.”
“Yes,” Jane snapped, “he thought me so shallow and foolish that I would fall out of love with him the minute things got hard. How flattering.”
“Or perhaps he just thought himself incapable of holding on to the love of a woman as fine as you,” Tristan ventured. “God knows I had my own doubts about holding on to the love of a good woman, after growing up with our feckless father.”
What had Dom said about why he hadn’t come for her? The point is, you would have been a fool to choose me over one of them. And I was astute enough to realize it.
When he’d told her all the reasons he’d been convinced that she would never accept him, she’d focused on his inability to believe her strong enough, determined enough, to share his trials.
But there were two ways to see it. Perhaps he hadn’t thought himself worthy enough to keep her love.
She didn’t want that to sway her emotions, but it did.
“I know it sounds as if we’re making excuses for him,” Lisette said, “and clearly he did act with great presumption toward you, but at the time he obviously thought he was doing the right thing.”
“He still does,” Jane said dryly. “He has expressed no remorse for what he did. He says he would do it again if he had the chance.”
All right, so last night he had murmured those special words that had prompted her to seduce him: Oh, God, Jane, why did I let you go? I’ve been lost ever since. But that was regret. Not remorse. Not exactly.
“That does sound like Dom,” Lisette said with a shake of her head. “Never admit you’re wrong, even when you are. Never let anyone too close. He doesn’t like to bare his heart to anyone for fear they will destroy it.”
“But I think he’s changing,” Tristan said. “Last night he told me how he got his scar.”
“He did!” Lisette cried. “Oh, Tristan, you have to tell us what he said. I’m sure Jane wants to know as much as any of us.”
If the Viscount Falls Page 21