by The Rogue
Jane cocked her head at him. “Bess,” she said in a normal voice. “Will the guard notice I’ve lost a stone in bosom?”
Bess popped up behind Jane, peeking between the bars. “Too right he will. I doubt the bloke ever even looked at my face.”
“What do you think then?” Jane was still talking to Bess, her voice calm as if she were discussing the weather in her own parlor. “Have we something I can fluff myself up with?”
Bess considered her with narrowed eyes. Ethan gave up on the ribbons. He suddenly felt a bit left out, even though Jane still stood within the circle of his arms.
“I know,” Bess said. She crouched on the floor for a moment, fumbling beneath her hem. Then she stood with twin bundles of fine knitted silk in her hands. “My stockings,” she said as she handed them through the bars to Jane. Then Bess quirked a brow at Ethan. “They cost fifteen pence apiece. You can add them to my account.”
Ethan nodded. “I will, Bess.” He looked down at Jane’s freshly altered bodice. “Heavens, those are fluffed. Do you lot do that sort of thing often?”
Both Jane and Bess snickered. “If they only knew, eh, duchess?” Bess said to Jane.
Ethan looked up to see the guard approaching again. “Time to go.”
Jane reached a hand through the bars to clasp Bess’s. “Be safe,” she urged her.
Bess blinked. Ethan could imagine her surprise. Usually women like Jane would cross the road before they’d allow their skirts to brush Bess’s. “I will that,” Bess said huskily. “Best you be off, duchess.”
Jane tucked a last strand of hair beneath the bonnet and tied the ribbons with swift precision that mocked Ethan’s attempt. She took a deep breath and smiled at Ethan nervously. “Do I look all right?”
She looked beautiful, bizarre gown, shadowed eyes, and all. She looked like everything he’d ever wanted and knew he’d never have.
Ethan smiled softly down at her. “You look—”
“Oy! I seen it all, you know!” They all turned to stare at the woman in the next cage. She had her arms crossed over her flat chest and a smug look in her eye. “What’s to keep me from telling that guard what you done?”
Ethan’s breath left him. Damn and blast. The old cow was going to give it all away.
Bess bridled. “Mayhap the fact you’re as mad as a gin tinker?”
Jane held up a hand to quiet Bess. The guard was close enough now to hear them. She leaned closer to the other woman’s cage. Ethan could barely hear her—something about “bread” and “every day.”
The woman nodded and sneered at Bess, who rolled her eyes in response. “Yes, the old sot can ’ave my bread,” she agreed. Then she ducked down to the back corner of the cage, assuming the leave-me-be position that Jane had held most of the day. The approaching guard didn’t so much as spare her a glance.
“I’ve got to put you out now, sir,” he said diffidently.
Ethan wasn’t fooled. Damn right he ought to be diffident. Earlier, Ethan had slipped the fellow half a crown to be left with his inamorata.
If he slipped him any more, the man might become suspicious that something more than public licentiousness was going on. So Ethan merely nodded dismissively and offered Jane his arm.
Her hand was trembling when it came around his bicep. He noticed that she kept her face down and her chest high. The guard seemed duly appreciative and they passed him by without incident.
At any moment, Ethan expected discovery and outcry. Down the stairs, along the lower gallery to the heavy double doors to the anteroom. No cry came. The two statues loomed over them like the final guards preventing their escape. Ethan pressed one hand over Jane’s as they stepped through the front door of Bedlam to the top of the grimy marble steps outside.
He was surprised to see that the watery afternoon sun was still quite high. What had seemed like suspenseful hours had only been minutes.
And now Jane was free—or at least she would be once they drove out through those menacing gates.
Uri was waiting in the drive with the carriage, one hand ready at the door. Ethan felt Jane pull at his arm. He could feel the urgency in her, the compulsion to run for the carriage in a final race for escape.
“Easy, love,” he said softly. “You’re a bored demirep, remember. You’ve got all evening to cross that drive.”
He felt her inhale carefully and her death grip eased. She descended the stairs with an air of ennui worthy of the stage.
Uri bowed and helped her into the carriage. Ethan nodded at the footman as he climbed in after her. Jeeves trusted Uri and, for whatever reason, Ethan trusted Jeeves.
“Take us home,” he ordered.
Uri nodded and soon the carriage began to roll. Ethan looked down to discover that at some point in the last few moments, Jane had taken his hand in hers, fingers entwined. Though she stared out the window, her expression apathetic, her fingers clutched his with all the power of her fear.
Ethan marveled. She’d seemed so cool during the escape from the cage and the donning of the dress, he’d almost forgotten how frightened she must be.
And rightly so. Bedlam was no place for a lady. Nor for Bess, for that matter.
They drove sedately beneath the arched iron gateway and the gatekeeper closed the gates behind them, shutting out the sane world from that of madness for yet another day.
Jane started slightly at the deep clang of the closing gates but otherwise remained still as they drove toward the river and the bridge.
Ethan leaned over but could not see her face for the depth of the bonnet. “Janet? Are you all right?”
Slowly, she unlinked her fingers from his and raised her hands to the bow beneath her chin. She calmly undid the ribbon and pulled the bonnet from her head, setting it carefully aside on the seat beside her.
Then she flung herself into Ethan’s arms.
Chapter Twenty
“I knew you’d come,” Jane cried. “I knew it!” Then she leaned back and glared tearfully at Ethan. “How could you leave me there?”
He pulled her close. “Shh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Janet. I didn’t know. I thought it was a good place, a safe place. I only wanted to get you away before your uncle did something terrible—”
She shuddered. “I think I would almost rather have been killed,” she said, her voice low and horrified.
He pushed her bonnet back to cup her cheeks in his hands. “You don’t mean that. You should never, ever mean that.”
Her face crumpled. “You don’t understand, you don’t know . . .” Her wails disintegrated into nonsense as she dissolved into sobs.
“What? What don’t I understand? I know it was an awful, frightening place, but you knew I was coming back for you, didn’t you?”
She shook her head furiously, wiping at her face with the back of her hand until he pulled out his handkerchief. For several long moments, she sobbed helplessly into it as he held her, stroking her hair and saying he knew not what to comfort her.
Finally, she drew a deep broken breath, and then another. She stiffened a bit in his arms so he released her. Wiping her eyes and nose with his handkerchief, she straightened to gaze at him with reddened eyes.
He smiled gently. “Your nose is running, Janet.”
She laughed damply and dabbed at it. “I fear this is ruined,” she said about his handkerchief.
“Better it than you,” Ethan told her.
She shook her head. “You must think me the most ridiculous infant.”
“Why?” He stroked a damp strand of hair back from her cheek. “Because you held on with gritted teeth and iron will until after you were out of danger? There are soldiers on the battlefield who cannot claim that.”
She sighed. “It was not so bloody and awful as that . . . only grim and loud and cold. I think I was safer in the cage than out, to be truthful.”
“Then what is it? Tell me, Janet. Help me understand.”
She took a deep breath. “It is something of a family secret. Lor
d Maywell did not want anyone to know, for it could have hurt my cousins’ chances for marriage . . .”
“Yes?”
She looked him in the eye. “My mother went mad. After my father died and his brother Christop became marquis. She lost everything that she’d built her life around.
“We were sent to the Dowager House—a grand name for the hovel that awaited us. Since the practice of keeping the previous duke’s wife out of sight on some distant estate had fallen by the wayside a hundred years ago, it quickly became apparent that no one had put one penny into the property since then. It was a damp and rotting ruin.”
Jane shrugged. “Mama simply never accepted it. She would pretend—or believe—that nothing had changed, that my father was only briefly away, that we still lived in the grand house on the estate, that we still had servants to take care of every little thing, that we were not near starving and freezing every winter—”
She shook her head as if to erase all that. “I did my best to take care of her and to pick up after her. I traded everything in the Dowager House that I could, trying to keep us in food and coal.” She laughed shortly. “What I couldn’t trade or sell, I burned in the hearth for heat. It was difficult at first, but then my uncle stopped sending even the smallest stipend—” Jane clenched her fists. “Then it became much worse. And Mama couldn’t help. Her will was too weak, and her mind.”
Ethan listened in horror. “Jane, how old were you?”
She folded the battered handkerchief neatly. “My father died when I was fourteen.”
“Good God.” Ethan was devastated. He had thought his childhood stark and unloving, but he’d never gone hungry in his life. He could see her, thin little strawberry-blond child, picking up after her mad mother, keeping the poor woman from harm, carrying silver and china and whatnot to trade for food . . .
“Oh, Janet.” He pulled her into his arms again, tucking her head beneath his chin. “Oh, poor little Janet.”
He could feel her shake her head. She pulled away. “No, I survived. I know how to master hardship.” She looked away, biting her lip. “It is madness which frightens me. To fade away like that . . . that I could not bear.”
God, what had he done to her? He had thrown her into her own personal hell. If he lived forever, he swore he would never let anyone hurt her again.
Especially not him.
“Yet your mother recovered,” Ethan reminded her. “I saw that letter. You weren’t writing to a madwoman. She recovered her mind, and you recovered your fortune, did you not?”
Jane looked down at her hands. “I am considered to be quite the heiress now,” she said obliquely.
She raised the handkerchief to her eyes again, then smiled damply up at him. “I’m sorry. It is only that I am so very weary . . .”
Gently, careful to be completely brotherly, Ethan pulled her closer to lay her head upon his shoulder. “Then rest on me. I’ll see you safe.”
She allowed it, remaining there until he felt her go limp with exhaustion. Only then did he put his arm around her to support her against the jostling of the carriage. As night fell on them, he remained unmoving all the long way back from Moorfields to Mayfair, unwilling to wake her from her peaceful slumber.
When the carriage arrived on his street, he rapped on the trapdoor. “Drive past to the alley in the rear,” he told the man. Someone might be watching the house, but Ethan thought they just might be safe enough going in through the back in the dark.
Jane was still quite limp. Ethan didn’t rouse her, but lifted her into his arms. When he disembarked in the alley, he was unsurprised to see Jeeves there, holding a lantern with one hand and the garden gate open with the other, without a trace of surprise on his face.
“Uri can take the young lady, sir,” Jeeves said, as if he often took delivery of unconscious women in the evening.
Ethan let out a small gust of laughter. “What did you do in your former employ, Jeeves—work for a circus?”
Jeeves nodded serenely. “One could say that, sir.”
Uri, a giant blond fellow, Cossack by the look of him, stepped forward to take Jane. Ethan strode right past him. “I shall manage.”
“I’ll have a room made up in a moment, sir,” Jeeves said.
“Don’t bother,” Ethan muttered. “She’ll be in mine.”
Jeeves’s brows shot up at that. “Yes, sir. Shall I make up the sofa in your study for you, sir?”
Ethan didn’t answer, for he was already on the stairs. In his chamber, he found a fire in his hearth and his covers already turned down. He turned from the bed and placed Jane gently in the chair.
Jeeves appeared in the doorway with a tray holding a steaming teapot and a plate of biscuits. “Will the young lady be requiring a physician, sir?”
“No.” Ethan straightened and gazed down at her. Her hair spilled tangled and lank over the ugly, outdated gown. She had lost a slipper somewhere in the rescue and her bare foot was filthy and scratched.
“She’s only weary.” Ethan turned. “But I think she would like a b—”
Uri appeared behind Jeeves toting two huge steaming buckets.
“Bath,” Ethan finished weakly.
Mrs. Cook bustled in. “Uri, fetch the tub and put it next to the hearth. Mr. Jeeves, would you find something for the miss to change into? I’m set to burn that awful gown, I am.” She turned to Ethan, her round face crinkling into a smile. “Good evening, sir. Now, go on. Get out.”
Ethan blinked. She waved her apron at him as if she were shooing chickens. “Go on with you now. You didn’t think you were going to help her bathe, did you?”
Ethan stumbled back from her domestic vehemence. “No! No, of course not—”
The next thing he knew, he was out in the hall with Jeeves and Uri and the door to his own chamber was firmly shut in his face.
He turned to glare at Jeeves. “So that is Mrs. Cook?”
Jeeves nodded serenely. “Yes, sir. Isn’t she a marvel?”
Ethan was in no mood to agree, but even his protectiveness could not argue with the sense of letting a woman tend Jane. Mrs. Cook would cosset her, he could tell. Jane deserved a bit of cosseting right now.
So he bit back his irrational protest and went down to his study for a brandy—but of course, that was locked away from him as well.
He stood in the center of his study without tea, without brandy, and without Jane. “Oh, this is my house all right,” he said out loud. “I can tell from the lack of respect.”
Finally, Mrs. Cook came to tell him that she had put Jane to bed. “She’s a bit worn out, but I got some tea down her and she’s sleeping off all her troubles.” Then she folded her arms beneath her mighty bosom and glared at him. “What are you going to do about her things?”
Ethan blinked. “What things?”
Mrs. Cook nodded. “That’s right. What is she supposed to wear? She can’t live in your dressing gown.”
Jane was wearing his dressing gown? It would be too big for her, but the green velvet would look very well on her indeed—
Mrs. Cook interrupted his wayward musings with a pointed throat clearing.
“Can you find her some things tomorrow, please? Anything you think will do, just have it charged—” No. He’d forgotten. There would be no charging of feminine things to Diamond House. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but she’ll just have to make do . . . unless you have something to lend to her?”
Mrs. Cook looked at him as if he were not only miserly but mad. Ethan could hardly tell her the truth. She was a respectable woman, a quality servant. She would never put up with such nonsense, nor would Jeeves.
No, he would have to keep it secret for as long as possible that, as of this afternoon, he hadn’t a penny to his name.
Jane slept like a woman, not a child. Ethan looked down at her in the light of the single candle he held. There was really no other way to phrase it. She did not curl up small, nor did she fling her limbs out with abandon. She lay in a pose of strength
and grace, on her back with one hand at her neck, fingers curled loosely at her collarbone, and the other hand resting across her stomach, atop the green velvet covers. Her face was smooth and still, not at all like her usual vibrant flickering expressions. She looked beautiful and somber, like a Renaissance angel.
The kitten jumped up on the bed with that peculiar bursting suspended-on-a-string way it had. Ethan scooped it up before it could disturb Jane and cupped it to his side. A loud purr erupted from within his hand.
He ought to leave her be. He ought to go down to his made-up sofa in the study and get some rest.
Instead, he pulled the fireside chair closer to the bed and sat down with the kitten in his lap to watch Jane sleep.
The breakfast table groaned with savory treats. Apparently, Mrs. Cook felt that Jane was too thin.
Ethan sat across from her and they both did their best to compliment the cook by making some small dent in the plenty.
Ethan seemed to be trying to hide some of it in his pocket.
Jane was hard-pressed to define the precise cause for the awkward silence between them this morning . . . other than the fact that she’d spent the night in his house, in his bed, and now sat at his breakfast table clad in his dressing gown.
She’d never been in this strange half-intimate, half-wary position before. So she ate silently, hoping that Ethan knew what to do about it.
As the heavy hush stretched on, it became clear that Mr. Ethan Damont hadn’t a clue.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jane spotted Ethan’s hand again slipping surreptitiously to the pocket of his dressing gown.
“If you don’t like kidneys, why do you suffer them at your table?” she asked, unable to bear her own curiosity any longer.
He assumed an innocent expression. “I do like kidneys.” He popped a forkful into his mouth and chewed with every sign of enjoyment. “There.”
Jane gazed at him suspiciously for a moment, then returned her attention to her own plate.
When his hand slipped once more to his pocket, Jane sighed and put down her fork. “I cannot help it. I’ve tried my best to ignore it, but I must know.” She pushed back her chair before the butler could reach her and strode around the table. Ethan leaned back warily as she approached.