She cocked her head and stared expectantly back at him.
“I—” Could not say it here. He registered the stares trained on them. She deserved this moment but away from the peering eyes of gossips and unkind lords and ladies. The music drew to a halt and they stopped. Couples politely clapped about them and he closed his mouth. “I will lead you back to my family,” he said lamely.
Jane nodded. “Of course.”
As Gabriel turned to lead her to the side of the dance floor, he froze. His gaze collided with a pair of familiar blue eyes—Jane’s eyes. From where he stood at the opposite end of the hall, the man skimmed his bored, ducal gaze over the crowd, as though he felt Gabriel’s frigid stare. And then their gazes collided.
He once believed he could never hate a soul more than that of his monstrous father. In this instance, he realized there was another. With every fiber of his being he detested the Duke of Ravenscourt who, with his pomposity and disdain, had forced Jane alone in a world in which she relied upon only herself. And for that, a seething hatred coursed through him and licked at his senses until it was all he could do to keep from storming the room and taking the man apart for his crimes.
“What is it, Gabriel?” Jane asked, concern in her voice as she followed his stare to the duke. She looked back to Gabriel. By the lack of recognition in her eyes, however, she did not know the man who sired her was just a floor’s length away.
He steeled his jaw, and jerked his attention away. “It is nothing. My family is motioning,” he lied. Wordlessly, they made their way back to his family and, of course, his sister paced relentless as usual. “You cannot keep the lady to yourself all evening,” Chloe chided. “Lord Primly is here to claim his set.” She motioned to blasted Lord Primly who stood in wait.
Jane beamed as the earl sketched a bow.
Bloody hell. The ladies seemed to adore Primly. Granted, he was an easy-going, mild-mannered chap, but did his wife have to smile at him in that manner?
“M-my L-lady,” Primly said with an arm outstretched.
With a last look for Gabriel, Jane allowed Primly to escort her back onto the dance floor. Gabriel stared after them as the orchestra struck up another waltz. His brother stuck a glass of champagne under his nose and he grabbed the glass. “Isn’t there some manner of etiquette and rules in playing two waltzes together?” he groused and then took a sip while from over the rim he stared at Primly, with his hands upon Jane. And this was far worse than bloody Mr. Wallace whom she’d been all frowns for.
“I suspect there is,” Alex drawled at his side. “But then, when one is a duke, I’m sure rules of etiquette in terms of dance sets do not apply.”
“I heard the duchess has always loved to dance and adores the waltz,” Imogen said with a softness in her expression. “And the duke orders orchestras to play those waltzes so they might be in each other’s arms.”
Gabriel shifted his gaze away from Jane and damned Primly with his…with his…hands, and glanced momentarily at the duke and duchess in question. Hard, unflappable and coolly aloof, nothing struck Gabriel as warm or sentimental about such a man. No, one would never take the aloof duke for the romantic sort.
Gabriel found Jane once more. His heart swelled. A loose golden tress wound down her back, the pink of her satin shimmered in the candlelight. But then, one would never say there was anything warm or sentimental about Gabriel…and he’d gone and fallen hopelessly in love with his wife, a mere stranger three weeks ago.
So, one never truly did know where matters of the heart were concerned. It had taken Jane to show Gabriel just how much he’d been wrong about in the course of his life. Just then Lord Primly said something that raised one of Jane’s unfettered smiles.
A growl rumbled up his throat.
“Stop glaring at Lord Primly,” Chloe scolded.
“I’m not glaring at him,” he said from the corner of his mouth. If he was glaring, it was certainly permitted with the way the man had his hands upon Jane.
“No, not a glare,” Alex said with far too much humor in his tone. “I’d say more a glower than anything else.”
At that precise moment, Jane stumbled and Primly caught her to him. He said something that raised another smile, a smile that should be reserved for Gabriel. And he suspected would have been if he’d merely been honest with himself and her. But now there was smiling Primly. Jane laughed and even in the crowded room with the din of the orchestra, the bell-like sound carried over to him. He snapped the delicate stem of his champagne flute. A servant rushed over to attend to the mess. “What are they talking about?” he muttered to himself.
His brother leaned over and spoke in a low whisper. “If I know Primly it is entirely scandalous, inappropriate—”
Gabriel turned a glare on him and his brother dissolved into a fit of laughter. He found Jane once more. He was bloody pleased that everyone was having a good time at his expense, but blast and damn, this being in love business was as trying as he’d expected it would be.
She laughed once more and he curled his hands at his side. What were they talking about?
Chapter 27
With Lord Primly’s stammer and his easy nature, Jane came to an almost immediate conclusion—they related more than she’d ever expected she would with a peer.
“Th-they judge a person quite unfairly d-don’t they, Lady W-waverly.” His was more a pronouncement than anything else.
She grew guarded and looked up at the earl as they made their way through the waltz. “Er—”
He snorted. “D-do I take you a-as one welcomed i-into their fold?”
“No,” she said automatically.
A slight frown played on his lips.
“You are too nice,” she said honestly.
Her words raised a grin. How very blessed the Edgertons were. They had not only family, but also friends. It was wrong to begrudge people who’d given her everything, this special something, and yet, she’d trade a portion of her soul for such luck. “Thank you for your support. I imagine it cannot be easy to dance attendance with,” a bastard. “One such as me.”
He snorted. “D-don’t be silly.” Lord Primly jerked his chin. “Who would you rather me spend the evening with?”
She started with surprise at the steady deliverance of those words. Gone was the man’s stammer.
“There is Lord Albertsley, rumored to be cruel to his servants.” He motioned discreetly to a stout lord with a bulbous nose.
Jane frowned. “That is horrid.”
He continued. “Or there is Lady McAtwaters, who won’t speak to anyone who is less than a baron.”
A shocked laugh escaped her. “Surely you jest?”
He winked. “Well, perhaps a bit. I’ll not tell you what they say of Lady McAtwaters.” Some of his lightness was replaced by seriousness. “Th-these people are not better than you. They might disparage you and treat you as less worthy, but you are not, and do not give them the satisfaction of thinking they are.” Jane suspected the earl spoke to the both of them and the kindred connection between them grew. He cleared his throat. “M-more worthy that is.”
He fell silent and Jane looked out at the dance floor once more, contemplating Lord Primly’s words. The whole of her life she’d been told she was inferior because of her birth. It was difficult to shrug off years of those very reminders. Yet, in the time she’d spent with Gabriel and his family and now Lord Primly, she’d come to realize—she was not different than these people and they were not different than her. They were all broken people in some way, moving through life, carving out happiness when and where they could. The muscles of her throat worked. And she wanted to carve out that happiness with Gabriel. Jane squared her jaw. Whether he wished it or not. She was going to fight for him.
She located Gabriel with her gaze and found his stare trained across the room, upon an older, vaguely familiar stranger at the opposite end of the hall. The same man he’d been staring at earlier. “Who is that?”
Lord Primly followed
her stare. “The unsmiling fellow?” That could be very nearly everyone present. “The Duke of Ravenscourt.”
A loud humming filled her ears. She stomped on the earl’s feet once more. “The Duke of Ravenscourt,” she repeated back dumbly.
He nodded once.
The Duke of Ravenscourt. Her father. A man she’d caught but two glimpses of during her childhood. The blonde of his hair had been replaced by a steely gray and his form had more weight to it than she remembered. But it was him. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. How odd to attend the same social function as one’s father but still have no idea that the man who’d sired you was just fifty feet away—until a chance look across the ballroom floor.
The music drew to a stop and Lord Primly made to escort her from the floor. “If you’ll excuse me,” Jane murmured. And of their own volition, her legs carried her those fifty feet to the figure she’d spent the course of her life hating. A man who’d never acknowledged her existence but who’d settled funds upon her regardless. Such a man must have cared—if even just a bit.
Alone, with a crowd of nobles likely too fearful to approach the austere lord, he sipped from a crystal champagne flute and eyed those in attendance with a kind of boredom from above the rim. Jane came to a stop before him. He flicked a cool gaze up and down her person.
She smoothed her palms along the front of her skirts. Of course, there was all manner of dictates on the rules of etiquette in terms of introductions. Yet this man was her father. Surely because of that, a different set of rules applied?
He broke the impasse. “May I help you?” Icy derision coated his question.
A shiver snaked down her spine and her impetuousness in coming here set off the first stirrings of uncertainty. Only, he was the one who’d wronged her through the years. She was, as Gabriel and Primly and Chloe had reminded her, worthy of being here. “I—” Jane angled her chin up. “My name is Jane Mun—Edgerton,” she amended. “I am the Marchioness of Waverly.”
He flicked an imaginary piece of lint from his sapphire coat sleeve. “I know who you are,” he drawled in thick, bored tones.
She wrinkled her nose. The duke likely heard the scandalous tale of her hasty wedding. “No,” she tried again. “I am…” She dropped her voice and spoke in hushed tones for his ears alone. “I am your daughter.” The duke gave no outward reaction that he’d heard or cared about her admission. Coldness spread throughout her frame and she resisted the urge to fold her arms and rub warmth back into them.
“As I said, I know who you are.”
Jane rocked back on her heels. This was the man her mother had loved? This unfeeling, remote being is who her mother had died of a broken heart for? She eyed him a moment and expected more of the burning vitriol she’d carried all these years. Where was the consuming hatred? The scathing words she’d wanted to level upon his head? It was gone. Instead, in its place was a freedom—a freedom from her past. She didn’t need his recognition or his love. And there was something freeing in that revelation. A tremulous smile turned her lips. “I have hated you for so long.” He stiffened at her words. “You are no father. Not in the ways that matter,” she said more to herself. Jane squared her shoulders. “But you settled funds upon me that sustained me and gave me purpose. For that, I thank you.”
He peered down the length of his hawkish nose at her. “Funds?”
The first stirrings of alarm set bells rang within her ears. “The three thousand pounds upon my birthday. This year.”
His brow furrowed in deeper confusion and the bells chimed all the louder. “I didn’t settle funds upon you. I told Waverly I’d not see a pound go to any bastard claiming to be my child.”
The floor fell out from under Jane’s feet and her world tilted.
With his words blaring in her ears, Jane spun on her heel and rushed from the hall.
She skirted the edge of the floor and weaved between couples and when she’d put the ballroom behind her, and with only her father’s words for miserable company, she raced down the corridors. Her heart thundered in her breast and threatened to beat outside her chest. Lies. All of it. Lies. There had been no funds. She ran all the faster. Her breath came in harsh spurts that filled her ears.
Why would Gabriel do this? Why…? On a sob, she shoved open a door, stumbled into a dimly lit room, and then quickly closed the door behind her. Jane leaned against the wood panel and closed her eyes. A tear slid down her cheek, followed by another and another. There had never been any funds. No three thousand pounds with which to shape a life for herself. He had known as much and yet he’d come to her, with the promise of those funds, given up his freedom and the vow he’d taken to never wed—all for her.
“Wh-why would you d-do that, you silly man?” she rasped. Not of love. But of some misbegotten sense of guilt; a need to take care of others while never caring for himself—even her, a stranger who’d lied to him. And she’d taken the greatest something of all—his name. Then, it appeared they both had based their entire relationship on deception. Jane covered her face with her hands and tried to suck in breaths, but they caught as broken sobs until she had nothing left to cry.
She scrubbed her hands over her cheeks to drive back the remnants of useless tears and absently wandered about the empty library, replaying every moment since she’d tumbled from the alcove at the London Opera House. Gabriel’s offer, their wedding, the terms of their marriage. All of it. Jane stared down into the cold, empty grate of the fireplace. She preferred a world in which she’d perceived him as the pompous and arrogant nobleman. Those sentiments fit neatly into the views and beliefs she’d developed all these years about noblemen. Those powerful nobles weren’t supposed to care about anyone except themselves. But Gabriel did and that truth now shook the foundation she’d constructed all her beliefs, goals, and hopes upon.
With his sacrifice, he’d done something not her mother, nor her father, nor anyone else had ever done—he’d put her security and happiness first. She lowered her head to the cool mantel and pressed her eyes closed. All he would get from her was two months service as a companion until Chloe made a match.
How could she face him, a man she loved so deeply now knowing this? No wonder he wanted her gone. She stared absently down at her satin slippered feet.
A shimmery glint captured her notice and she welcomed the momentary diversion from her father, nay the duke’s revelation. Jane dropped to her knees and hesitated. Then, casting a glance about, she picked up the necklace. There was nothing remarkable about the bauble. It did not gleam or shine like the diamonds and rubies donned by the ladies whose employ she’d once been in, and yet… She trailed her fingertips over the intricate heart pendant. There was something majestic in its simplicity. She made to set it on the mantel when a click sounded in the night. Jane started and spun about, her heart thundering hard.
A young woman stepped into the room. Her heart sank to her toes at the familiar plump form of the young lady who’d stood at that receiving line earlier that night. The Duchess of Crawford.
The woman froze at catching sight of her. With the thick veil of darkness, Jane could not make out a hint of the woman’s thoughts. Whatever they were, they surely would not be kind ones for this interloper, her scandalous guest who’d snuck off and stolen a moment of privacy in her library.
Jane swallowed and was the first to break the silence. She cleared her throat. “Your Grace.” She executed a curtsy Mrs. Belden would have had a difficult time finding fault with. “Forgive me. I—” She closed her mouth. What could she say? That the truth of her father’s disdain coupled with her husband’s great sacrifice had driven her here?
The duchess angled her head and moved deeper into the room. As she came closer, her brown eyes glinted with curiosity and an unexpected warmth from one of her esteemed status. “You?” she prodded. Her Grace’s gaze lingered a moment upon Jane’s cheeks and she gave thanks for the cover of darkness that, at the very least, hopefully obscured a hint of her tears.
> Jane swallowed a sigh. Of course it would be too much to expect the woman would not want to know what had brought her to the duke’s private libraries. With all the lies she’d already crafted, she at last offered this woman truth. “I desired a moment away from,” the misery of my circumstances, “the festivities.”
The twinkle in the duchess’ eyes sparkled all the more. “You do not enjoy ton events?”
Perhaps the woman didn’t remember who she was. After all, there was a sea of guests in the crowded ballroom. What was one more lady, even if Jane was one of the most gossiped about figures present? Folding her hands together, the cool metal of the pendant pressed hard into the palm of her hand. “It is a lovely ball.” She prayed the other woman didn’t hear that for the weak lie it was.
A sharp bark of laughter escaped the duchess. “Your tone and eyes are unconvincing, Lady Wa?” So, she did remember her.
“Jane,” she hurriedly insisted as heat slapped her cheeks. Then didn’t everyone now know of the scandalous by-blow wed to the marquess. “Forgive me.” Mortification curled her toes in the soles of her slippers. “It was not my intention to offend.”
The duchess gave a wave of a hand. “I assure you, Jane, I would be least offended by your opinion of Society events.”
Those words suggested this woman, just a step below royalty, too, held an aversion to the frivolous pursuits of the ton, and gave Jane pause. A gentle smile lined the woman’s lips. “They are rather lonely affairs at times, aren’t they?” She turned her palms up. “I know that better than you might believe.”
Life was a rather lonely affair at all times. With a slight nod, Jane looked down at the tips of her slippers. “Still, I should not be here. It was unpardonable of me to have taken leave to wander your home, Your Grace.”
“Daisy,” she insisted. “Please, Daisy. The whole duchess, Her Grace, business gets very tiring.” The duchess took a step closer and then dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And I assure you, I’ve wandered a good number of homes in search of my own moment of solitude during tedious Society affairs.”
A Heart of a Duke Collection: Volume 1-A Regency Bundle Page 136