Dom sighed. “No. As Jane says, Samuel is a master of deception.”
Nancy glanced at Jane. “But you would never have been so foolish, would you?”
“I believed that silly charade you and Dom cooked up.” She smiled ruefully. “People in love don’t always think straight.”
Nancy shook her head. “I think I knew in my heart. It felt so wrong, writing that note about going off with Mrs. Patch to Bath. I knew it was foolish to travel to London if I might still have a baby growing in me.” She started to cry. “I just so . . . wanted Samuel’s attentions to be real. George never really loved me; he only married me because he thought it was a way to get back at Dom.”
“You knew that?” Dom said, startled.
“He told me in one of his rages. And Samuel was always . . .”
“Enamored of you, I know,” Jane said, cradling her cousin’s hand in hers. Her voice hardened. “Some men are blackguards.”
The words gave Dom pause. She was thinking of her late father.
Then Jane looked up at him, and her angry expression melted and she gave him a soft smile full of love. “It takes a great deal of time and effort to separate the good ones from the bad ones. But the good ones are out there, if you know where to look.”
Dom’s heart swelled. She considered him one of the good ones. Her past really was finally in the past.
“Well,” Nancy said in a small voice, “I don’t think I want to look anymore. I’m done with men.”
Something in Nancy’s tone made alarm flash in Jane’s face. “You said Samuel didn’t . . . force you. That was the truth, wasn’t it?”
Gulping down tears, Nancy nodded. “But once we reached London, and he got me into that house, I could no longer pretend he was in love with me. It was clear we weren’t going to see Papa. We weren’t going to see any doctors.”
She screwed up her face as if fighting the urge to cry, and even Dom felt sorry for her.
“Then he explained his whole . . . nasty plan about how my child, or rather, Meredith’s child could still inherit, and I realized he was quite mad, and I told him so. That’s when he got mean and nasty, and locked me up in that room and brought Meredith to . . . to torment me . . .”
She broke into sobs, and Jane held her, soothing her with soft words and sympathy as only Jane could.
A lump lodged in his throat. He was reminded of how Jane had behaved with him when he’d told her about Peterloo.
And it finally, really sank in what he’d lost by not having Jane all these years. Because she always knew exactly what to do and say when someone’s heart was breaking. She knew how to heal the scars that ran beneath the surface.
If she’d been there with him after Peterloo, would he have spent so many years in pain? Somehow he didn’t think so. He had truly been mad to let her go.
Thank God he had come to his senses at last.
Nancy’s sobs finally subsided to a few sniffles. Jane was still holding her when Nancy murmured, “What will happen to Samuel?”
It took Dom a second to realize Nancy was speaking to him. “He’ll be charged with kidnapping, since he carried you away ‘by force or fraud’ and kept you against your will. He’ll also be charged with certain offenses relating to his attempt to steal my title. You’ll get your justice,” he promised her. “I can swear to that.”
And he would get his. There would be no impostor to worry about. George was truly laid to rest.
Dom’s past was finally in the past, too.
As he choked down the emotion welling up in his throat, Jane rose to look at him. “Is that all you need to know?”
He nodded. “I’ll go see the magistrate so we can discuss what’s to be done. I know you want to stay here and comfort your cousin.” Then he headed for the door.
He’d just reached the hall when Jane ran out after him. “Dom, wait.”
He smiled at her. “What is it, sweeting?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
She came up to press a kiss to his cheek. “For letting me question her. For not turning all investigator-like and bellowing questions at her. I know she’ll have to face plenty of that at the trial.”
“I’ll keep her out of it if I can, but if the choice is sending him to prison or covering up the scandal—”
“You should send him to prison,” she said fiercely. “No question about that.”
He chuckled. “You are far more bloodthirsty than I ever would have guessed.”
“And more hardy, I hope?”
“Definitely.”
Her eyes sparkled at him. “Does this mean you’ll make me an honorary Duke’s Man, after all?”
“Certainly not,” he said in a falsely stern voice. When she lifted an eyebrow at him, he swept his gaze down her and grinned. “There is nothing remotely manly about you, sweeting. So you’ll have to be an honorary Duke’s Lady.”
She beamed at him. “I’m going to remind you of that when I ask you to teach me how to shoot.”
His grin faltered. “Teach you to what?” he said as she headed back into Nancy’s room. “Have you gone mad?”
Her laughter wafted back to him as she closed the door, and he realized with relief that she was joking.
Or was she?
Good God. As a wife, Jane was clearly going to be a joy and a trial, a blessing and a curse. Once they married, she was going to throw all his plans into disarray, and all his careful control right out the window.
He smiled. He couldn’t wait to begin.
EPILOGUE
London
September 8, 1831
THE DUKE OF Lyons’s drawing room was full to overflowing as Jane came downstairs from nursing her darling Ambrose. Jane had never seen the town house so crowded. Of course, it was rare for them to have all the Duke’s Men—and their families—in one place. Usually the Rathmoor Park contingent spent time with the Winborough contingent, while the Cale contingent socialized in London.
But they had all needed to be here for William IV’s coronation. Dom, as the Viscount Rathmoor. Zoe, as the designated heir to the Earl of Olivier. Max, as one of the highest dukes in the land, of course. And even Victor, as cousin to one of the highest dukes in the land, though he hadn’t marched in the procession of peers. He and Isa had taken seats in the special section reserved for those with invitations to the ceremony.
Fortunately, His Majesty, a more practical and frugal king than his late brother, had eschewed the expense of a grand banquet afterward in favor of having a dinner with intimate friends, so Max and Lisette had hit upon the plan of having their own family dinner on coronation night.
Now, as Jane scanned the room for her husband, she was reminded of that evening at Winborough when Dom had warned her to expect chaos. This was chaos times three. Victor and Tristan were in a corner, probably discussing the latest in investigative techniques. Isa sat beside Tristan’s father-in-law on the settee, examining his broken pocket watch with a jeweler’s magnifying glass.
The children had been allowed to join everyone for a few moments before dinner, so Lisette was trying to explain to three-year-old Eugene why he couldn’t drag his one-year-old sister, Claudine, around the room by her feet, even if it did make her giggle. Meanwhile, Victor and Isa’s twelve-year-old, Amalie, was dancing with her second cousin Max to a jig being played on the pianoforte by Zoe, as the pages were turned by—
Dom. Jane grinned. Of course. She should have known he’d be at the pianoforte. She reached it just as Zoe finished the piece.
“There you are,” Dom said. “How was Ambrose?”
“Starving, as always. I swear he wants to nurse every two hours.”
Zoe grinned. “It’s because he’s a boy.” She pulled out some sheet music and began hunting through it for another selection. “Lisette says that Eugene nearly drove her m
ad. Even the wet nurse she used when she and Max came up to Winborough complained that she’d never seen a babe so lusty. But Claudine didn’t give Lisette a bit of trouble. My little Drina was never a problem, either.”
“Just as I always suspected,” Jane said. “Men are insatiable from birth.”
Dom’s eyes twinkled at her. “In some things, anyway.”
Her stomach flipped over. Dr. Worth had only yesterday told her that they could resume marital relations, but in all the chaos of the coronation preparations she hadn’t had a chance to tell Dom.
“Oh, look, a waltz!” Zoe said, pulling out a piece of music. “And I do so like the Dettingen Waltz.”
Dom rose. “Shall we dance, sweeting?”
“Absolutely,” she said brightly and took his hand.
The music began, and they attempted to waltz, no small feat in the crowded drawing room. The tune seeped into her brain, sparking a memory. “Do you know that I danced to this with Samuel right before I jilted you at Edwin’s?”
Dom blanched. “Good God, I had no idea. I wasn’t exactly listening to the music that night. Do you want me to have Zoe play something else?”
“Certainly not.” She smiled at him. “All that is past.”
It was true. She knew Dom top to bottom and inside and out. She trusted him. She loved him, and not with the girlish adoration of apparent perfection that she’d felt in her youth, but with the messy kind of love that could accept a man, flaws and all.
Because his flaws were nothing compared to his fine character. He was good and honorable, with a generous heart and a lively intelligence. He was an excellent manager of his estate and a wonderful father to their son. Compared to all of that, the past was a distant memory.
Dom pulled her closer to press a kiss into her hair. She couldn’t wait until later, when she would spring Dr. Worth’s news on him.
“Speaking of Samuel,” she said, “Nancy was relieved to hear that he received a sentence of transportation. She was afraid that Edwin would use his influence to get Samuel’s sentence commuted, and she couldn’t bear the idea that she might one day stumble across Samuel in the street. With Edwin supporting Meredith and her babe, Nancy wasn’t sure what to expect from him, even though I told her he’d washed his hands of Samuel years ago.”
“Blakeborough has never struck me as the kind of man to overlook criminal behavior, even in his brother.”
“True. He has a strong moral sense, even if he does hide it beneath an equally strong aversion to people.”
He drew back to stare at her. “Forgive me, sweeting, but I cannot imagine you married to him. His melancholy would give you fits within a month.”
“Right,” she teased, “because I’m much better off married to a man who follows plans so slavishly that he stays awake half the night for fear of oversleeping and missing the coronation.”
He arched an eyebrow. “I couldn’t sleep for watching you nurse Ambrose. It’s been some time since I . . . well . . . saw your charms unveiled in any other capacity. I have to take my pleasures where I may.”
“Aw, my poor dear,” she said in mock concern. Deciding to put him out of his misery, she added, “I ought to say that’s what you get for being so unfashionable as to share a bedchamber with your wife, but as it happens, Dr. Worth—”
The music abruptly ended, and the sound of a gong being struck broke into everyone’s conversations. They fell silent as Max went to stand at the entrance to the room with Victor and Isabella at his side.
“Attention, everyone!” Max clapped his cousin on the back. “I am proud and pleased to introduce to you the new owner of Manton’s Investigations.”
Cheers and applause ensued.
When it died down, Tristan called out, “So the legal machinations are finally done? Dom has actually let go of the thing at last?”
“I signed the papers yesterday,” Dom told his brother. He gazed fondly at Jane. “I decided I’d lost enough of my life to finding other people’s families. Now I’d rather spend time with my own.”
“I’ll bet that didn’t stop you from writing a contract of epic proportions.” Lisette grinned at her husband. “How many stipulations did Dom make before he agreed to complete the sale?”
“Only one, actually,” Max said.
Everyone’s jaw dropped, including Jane’s. She gaped at her husband. “Only one? You didn’t dictate how Victor is to run the thing and when and where and—”
“As you once said so eloquently, my love, ‘you can set a plan in motion, but as soon as it involves people, it will rarely commence exactly as you wish.’ There didn’t seem much point in setting forth a plan that wouldn’t be followed.” Dom smirked at her. “I do heed your trenchant observations, you know. Sometimes I even act on them.”
She was still staring at him incredulously when he shifted his gaze to Victor. “Besides, Victor is a good man. I trust him to uphold the reputation of Manton’s Investigations.”
Jane glanced at Victor. “You’re not going to change the name to ‘Cale Investigations’?”
Victor snorted. “I’d have to be mad. Who wants to start from scratch to build a company’s reputation? It’s known for excellence as Manton’s, and it will always be known as Manton’s, as long as I have anything to say about it.”
“So what was the one stipulation that Dom required?” Tristan asked.
Dom scowled. “That it never, in any official capacity, whether in interviews or correspondence or consultation, be referred to as ‘the Duke’s Men.’ ”
As everyone burst into laughter, Jane stretched up to kiss his cheek. “Now, that sounds more like you, my darling.”
A few hours later, Jane came out of her boudoir to find her husband in his dressing gown, stretched out across the bed reading the newspaper and idly petting their spaniel Little Archer, a pup from Mrs. Patch’s brood.
Seizing the moment, Little Archer leapt off the bed and into her dressing room, where he could chew up slippers to his heart’s content. Dom, however, didn’t even look up as she entered.
“They’re calling this the most elegant coronation in history.” He snorted. “I noticed there’s no mention of its being the most interminable.”
“Dom,” she purred as she closed the dog into the dressing room for the moment.
“All that pomp and circumstance is so tedious.” Still reading, he turned the page of the newspaper. “Ravens-wood told me that King William is determined to make sure that parliamentary reform is enacted.”
She walked languidly forward. “Dom.”
He snapped the paper to straighten it. “It’s about bloody time. I should think—”
“Dom!” she practically shouted.
“Hmm?” He glanced up, then frowned. “Why are you wearing your coronation robe?”
“I was cold,” she said with a teasing smile. She let the robe fall open. “Since I have nothing on underneath.”
Dom stared, then gulped. Unsurprisingly, his staff jerked instantly to attention. “If you’re trying to torture me,” he said hoarsely, “you’re doing a good job of it.”
She sashayed toward the bed, letting the velvet and ermine robe swing about her. “No torture intended.” She put one knee on the bed. “Dr. Worth said I may resume relations with my husband whenever I am ready.”
He blinked, then rose to his knees and seized her about the waist. “May I assume that you’re ready?” he rasped as he brushed a kiss to her cheek.
“You have no idea.” She met his mouth with hers.
They kissed a long moment, a hot, heavenly kiss that reminded her of how very talented her husband was at this aspect of marriage. She untied his dressing gown and shoved it off his shoulders. He had just finished tearing off his drawers when she shoved him down onto the bed.
His eyes lit up as she hovered over him. “Ah, so it’s to be like that,
is it, my wicked little seductress?”
“Oh, yes.” She grinned at him. “I do so enjoy having a viscount fall before me.”
She started to remove her robe, but he stayed her with his hand. “Don’t.” He raked her with a heated glance. “Next session of parliament, I’ll endure the boredom of the endless speeches by imagining you seducing me in all your pomp and circumstance.”
“My pomp is nothing to yours, my love,” she murmured as she caught his rampant flesh in her hand. “Yours is quite . . . er . . . pompous.”
“That’s what happens if the viscount falls.” He thrust against her hand. “His pomp always rises.”
And as she laughed, they created a pomp and circumstance all their own.
Want even more sizzling romance from New York Times bestselling author Sabrina Jeffries?
Don’t miss the first book in her sexy new Sinful Suitors series,
The Art of Sinning
Coming in Summer 2015 from Pocket Books!
LADY YVETTE BARLOW stood at the edge of the duke’s ballroom, watching the dance with a hollow ache of envy in her stomach. She loved to dance. And the chances of her being asked were slim to none. She towered over half the men in the ballroom. Not to mention that the whole world had recently learned of her brother Samuel’s perfidy. Even her eldest brother, Edwin, the Earl of Blakeborough, couldn’t avoid being tarred by that brush.
As if she’d conjured him up, Edwin’s voice sounded behind her. “Yvette, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Good Lord. He’d been trying to cheer her up ever since they’d arrived, and he was very bad at it. Heaven only knew whom he thought might serve the purpose.
Pasting a smile to her lips, she faced him and his companion. Then her heart dropped into her stomach.
Standing beside Edwin was the most attractive man she’d ever seen—a golden-haired Adonis with eyes as deep a blue as the estate’s prize delphiniums. Indeed, the man stared at her with an intensity that quite sucked the air from her lungs.
If the Viscount Falls Page 28