Blackburn, on the other hand, wore the clean clothing he left at his sister’s home for just such an emergency.
The contrast between his good grooming and her own slatternly appearance made her hate him more.
“I’ll take that chance,” he replied.
With Lady Goodridge, Jane confined herself to tact. With Blackburn, she felt no such compunction. “I don’t want you.”
“You made that abundantly clear last night.” His half smile ironed a cleft in his cheek. “After such a crushing setdown, you may be sure I can keep my hands off of you.”
He didn’t look crushed, blast him. Nor did he look inflamed with passion. He looked predatory, like a wolf on the trail of a dove.
But she was no dove, no helpless, chirping, gray chick. She was more of a phoenix, rising from the flames of scandal. “See that you do,” she said.
“That’s the girl.” Lady Goodridge clenched her fist and nodded. “You’ll set the hook with your defiance.”
Which had the effect of withering Jane’s bravado and making her wish, desperately, that she were anywhere but here, getting into this luxurious carriage for another ordeal by Blackburn.
The cleft in his cheek deepened. “Susan, you’re incorrigible.” He dropped a kiss on his sister’s cheek. “You’ll be back in London soon?”
“I don’t know.” For the first time in Jane’s experience, Lady Goodridge looked uncertain. “There is much to be done here.”
Blackburn looked at her sharply. “You’re not feeling well.”
Lady Goodridge straightened her already rigid shoulders. “I am fine.”
“Nothing less than ague has kept you from the season before.”
“I’m getting too old for such frivolity.”
“Too old to meddle in my affairs?” Blackburn pulled a skeptical face. “I shall need your help with my courtship.”
“Courtship?” Jane couldn’t believe his gall. “Don’t you take no for an answer?”
“No.”
“No? You would dare to once again assault my—”
“Spinsterhood?” He bowed. “Indeed, yes. I’m not so enfeebled I would allow a mere refusal to thwart me.”
“Miss Higgenbothem, you look much like a fish out of water.” Lady Goodridge made shooing gestures. “We Quincys have that effect on people, but as you become a part of the family, you will settle nicely.”
“And speaking of family,” Blackburn said, “if you’re gone from London as Jane’s disappearance yesterday becomes fodder for gossip, she will be ostracized.”
“Oh, damn.” With uncharacteristic rawness, Lady Goodridge swore and put her palm to her forehead.
“So if you’re not back in town by tomorrow night, I’ll send my own physician to bleed you.”
“Ransom, you’re insufferable,” Lady Goodridge snapped.
“I learned from the best.” He dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Tomorrow.”
Taking the footman’s hand, Jane stepped into the cramped quarters of the carriage. A lemon scent pervaded the coach, inviting her memories, resurrecting the sensation of being close to Blackburn.
His coach, brought to Lady Goodridge’s while last night’s storm raged. His coachman had been frantic to find him, desperate that the great Blackburn not be troubled by the discomfort of a ride in a strange vehicle. Everyone groveled before Blackburn. Everyone gave him his way.
No wonder he didn’t believe she had the audacity to reject his suit.
She stared resentfully as he squeezed himself through the door. He sat opposite from her, tapped the ceiling, and they were off.
He smiled.
She turned her head to look out the window.
He said, “Actually, riding backward makes me queasy. You won’t mind if I join you?”
Before she could protest, he’d scooted her aside and settled beside her on the well-cushioned seat.
“This is silly,” she said. “Two such large people cramped together in such a small space. I’ll sit backward.”
“And be queasy in your turn?”
She didn’t answer. She would be queasy.
“Quite the quandary, eh? To sit next to me and suffer my closeness, or dare the threat of nausea and know I would hold your head.”
She half rose, furious at the mockery in his tone, but his fingers clamped on her thigh and pushed her back down again.
“Enough of that. Two such large people fit quite comfortably on this seat, although ‘large,’ I fancy, is not the correct term.”
She scraped his hand off her leg. “What is, then?”
“Tall. We are tall. Which is one of the things I most admire about you. You’re not some little dab of a thing.” He turned his head and looked at her. “When I kiss you, I don’t have to bend until I have a crick in my back.”
She stared straight ahead. She was tall. If she faced him, their mouths would be close. She had no doubt he would take her movement as an invitation.
She would douse his fire. “I had wondered which of my beauties attracted you most, and why. It is good to know for certain.”
“There are a good many of your beauties which attract me, Jane.” His voice deepened with amusement, and his breath touched her cheek. “Not the least of which is your independence. You never cling to me.”
“Why would I? You seem an unlikely candidate for any clinging at all, much less mine.”
“On the contrary, most women believe that clinging gives them a feminine allure that provokes my protectiveness.”
Jane snorted. “You? Protective?”
“Yes, protective. I am probably also possessive, although that has never been put to the test. But I choose my women, I am not chosen by them.”
“How very manly of you,” she muttered.
He ignored that. “And I find clinging tedious. I have discovered, however, my protectiveness is definitely aroused by a woman who knows her strength, yet is overmatched by circumstances or—”
She couldn’t bear it anymore. She looked directly at him to deliver her rebuke. “Brute force?”
“Yes.” His smooth-as-butter lips caressed the word.
She swallowed and found herself pressed against the sidewall of the carriage. Not by him, but by her own apprehension.
Blast him for making her act like a quivering idiot with a simple “yes.” Just when she’d been steeling herself to be totally autonomous, he made her imagine how it would be to have him protecting her, possessing her, making her his own. His wife.
She thought she had gained possession of her wayward emotions, but no. The threat of passion, the lure of security that she knew to be false, they conspired against her. She wanted those things, and at the same time, it infuriated her that he could so easily manipulate her.
And did he really think he could conceal his deception from her? She didn’t know what it was, she didn’t know why he was lying, but she had studied him too long not to recognize the signs. Yes, he had proposed to her, but for what reason? What was he hiding?
Leaning toward him, she draped herself over his arm. “But I can cling, too, Lord Blackburn.” She smiled a siren’s smile and in a breathy, helpless tone, so much like Melba’s, she said, “Oh, Lord Blackburn, won’t you rescue me from the dreadful straits I’m in?”
Now he leaned back against the wall, studying her in surprise. “What are you blathering about?”
“I’m accepting your marriage proposal, of course. You haven’t withdrawn it, have you?” She batted her eyelashes in an exaggerated flutter. “That would be the act of a cad, and you haven’t been a cad for…oh…at least the last minute.”
“Jane, tell me at once what you mean,” he snapped.
She sensed the urgency in him, and dropped the enticing facade. “I mean I’ve been turned out of my home. I have nowhere to go, and if I were the kind of woman you disdain, I would indeed accept your proposal. It is, after all, preferable to the streets.”
Chapter 22
“Am I mad, sir? Do I see conspi
racies where there are none?” Blackburn had rushed to the Foreign Office as soon as he’d dropped Jane at Tarlin House, hoping that his recitation of the events of the week and his conclusions would bring a bout of mockery from the insightful old man.
But Mr. Smith did not mock him. He didn’t insist Blackburn give the name of his mysterious lady. Instead, the man behind the desk stroked his palsied hand over his chin and said, “No, you’re not mad. You say this lady visits de Sainte-Amand, that at first she acted guilty, and now she is simply gleeful.”
“So my watchers tell me.”
“You said that in her youth her reputation was ruined by a cad who refused to marry her.”
“Yes.” Blackburn had been a cad. “Yes.”
“She has labored for years in obscurity and poverty, and now, when her youthful bloom has fled and the disintegration of old age awaits her, she has been ejected from her home and has nowhere to go.”
“She’s not old!” Blackburn instinctively protested.
“Unimportant.” Mr. Smith dismissed that with a wave. “From among the flotilla of English ships, she chose to sketch the one carrying commands to Wellington on the Peninsula, and she tried to give it to de Sainte-Amand.”
“I stopped her.”
“I expected no less of you, Lord Blackburn,” Mr. Smith snapped.
“I always do my duty, sir.” Except last night, when he had forgotten Jane could be a spy, and had proposed to her. And this morning, when he had told her he wouldn’t give up.
“Of course you do,” Mr. Smith said bracingly. “The weight of evidence is heavy against this lady.”
“What about the Monsieur Chasseur I told you about?” Blackburn offered the young French tutor as a distracting bone.
“I’ll have someone investigate him at once, of course, but I’ve had no reports of the man. Even if he was the one who murdered the Cunningham girl, he could have done it for reasons other than espionage.” Mr. Smith snickered. “Lover’s quarrel, perhaps.”
“Oh, definitely.” What a horrible word—love. Could it be that he himself…? Blackburn shook himself. No. Impossible. No.
Mr. Smith continued, “Someone is getting information out of the Foreign Office and into France. De Sainte-Amand is a link in the chain, and it makes sense he would have recruited a woman disenchanted both with England and with society.”
“She has reason to be disenchanted,” Blackburn said glumly.
“Of course she does. I was not born a gentleman, and I have myself been known to indulge in bitter moments when one of those idiotic noblemen fancies himself above me because of the cut of his coat or the blue tinge in his blood.” Mr. Smith’s sharp gaze raked Blackburn. “Present company excepted.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Other…contacts have made it clear that the messages are being passed through the ton. There are a lot of links to this chain, but with your help we are close to finding them all, especially the traitor within the Foreign Office.”
“If the traitor is part of the ton, can’t we question those who work here?”
“Oh, do think a little more clearly, Lord Blackburn,” Mr. Smith said. “How do we find out which one? Any lord or gentleman who wishes may take a desk. Not to mention the younger sons who work as secretaries in hopes they’ll get ahead in politics. I can’t stop them, or their silly conceit that they’re making a contribution to the war effort.”
“Do any of them have too much money?”
“Several, but they inherited it. The others—well, they’re wise enough not to flaunt any extra blunt.” Mr. Smith leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingertips together. “Is this certain lady dressing rather better than she should?”
Blackburn remembered the silk ball gown, then the dull wool of yesterday. “She does wear some fine pieces she can’t afford.”
“Very suspicious.”
“I spoke to her. She’s putting up a good front, but she’s desperate.” Damn Jane. Because of her, he’d been angry, baffled, ruthless, and worst of all, insightful. Yes, when he’d looked at her as she taunted him in the coach, declaring she would wed him for security, he had seen the panic beneath. “Perhaps she can see no other recourse.”
“Than treason? A woman of that class can always go live with a relative. Failing that, she can work as a governess. Or a scullery maid, or a prostitute, or she can go to the workhouse for all I care.” Mr. Smith’s faded gaze blazed with contempt. “Young man, there is no excuse for treason!”
“You’re right, of course.” Jane. Blackburn had seen her watching Adorna with affection. Frowning at him in censure. Smiling…only rarely.
Yet now another picture superseded those in his mind.
Jane, thin and threadbare, the typical English governess. Jane, toiling in the workhouse. Jane, walking the streets.
He swallowed painfully.
“The lack of support, the visits to de Sainte-Amand, combined with the drawing of the ship, does not bode well for this unnamed lady.” Mr. Smith nodded. “Good work. You’re on the verge of exposing another rat, and in only three days. I knew I was right to send you.”
Dismissed, Blackburn stood and walked slowly toward the door.
Mr. Smith must have seen his aversion, for as Blackburn stepped over the threshold, he said, “Lord Blackburn, I assume by your reluctance to name this woman that you are feeling queasy about betraying one of your own, and a lady at that.”
Betraying one of his own? More than that, if he declared Jane a spy, he would be betraying the woman he declared he would marry. The protection of his name might keep her from the gallows, but was he so lost in lust he would break faith with his country for a lifetime between Jane’s thighs? Or was this awful, gut-wrenching sense of wrongness all the proof he needed of her innocence?
He had to be wrong about something. About Jane’s character. Or about his own conclusions.
Wrong. What an awful concept.
“I would be very suspicious of any attempt on her part to contact you. She, or her French superiors, may realize how she has jeopardized her cover by allowing you to see that drawing. She may try to seduce you out of your suspicions, or even seduce you to her side.”
Mr. Smith’s insight infuriated Blackburn. “That is not likely, sir.”
“I’ve seen men do stranger things for a woman they desired.”
“Not a Quincy.”
“As you say.” Mr. Smith’s faded gaze pumped iron into Blackburn’s veins. “Remember, if you would, that young man from Tourbillon who followed you into battle and died so slowly with a chunk of metal in his gut. Remember the drummer boy who today lives on your estate, his drumming days gone with the loss of both his arms. Remember, Lord Blackburn, why you started this.”
No matter how Blackburn wished it, Mr. Smith’s reminders could not be ignored. He grasped the door-frame in his hand and pressed until the sharp edges of the wood dug into his palm. “I remember. I can never forget.”
Chapter 23
Jane missed the step off the curb. A grubby hand caught her arm before she could fall, and the child who swept the crossing said, “Careful, miss.”
“Thank you,” Jane said. “I must watch where I am going.” Before she was crushed beneath a carriage’s wheels for remembering yesterday’s events, last night’s insulting proposal, and her own mocking acceptance today.
She waited while the girl—Jane thought she was a girl, although who could tell beneath those rags—used her broom on the gritty cobblestones.
Two days ago the child had positioned herself on this corner of Cavendish Square. Patiently she waited to sweep the street for any noble pedestrians who wandered by. Jane didn’t understand how she earned enough in tips in a place where almost everyone rode in a carriage or on a horse, but the girl seemed pleased enough with her station, and swung the worn broom vigorously every time Jane chose to walk out.
Which Jane had done twice since returning from Goodridge Manor this morning. Once to visit Lord de Sainte-Amand’s ho
me with its secret source of satisfaction, and once for a walk to escape Violet and Adorna and their endless questions.
And because every time she sat down to do needlework—not to sketch!—memories of the long ride back to London overwhelmed her.
After her flaming announcement of homelessness, Blackburn had—oh, dash it, she would call him Ransom. After all, their relationship had certainly gone that far.
Jane took her breath and closed her eyes against the admission.
But it was true. She knew him too well, and not at all. She knew his scent, his breath, his touch.
She didn’t know his mind. Not at all. Never.
She had said marriage to him was preferable to the streets, and meant it…but not really. In some secret, unacknowledged place in her mind, she had hoped he would snatch her to his bosom and overwhelm her objections. He would force her to take his name and accept his protection, and she wouldn’t have this horrible uncertainty dogging her every footstep.
Instead, when she said, “I have no home,” he had looked at her with such intense revulsion, she thought he had truly been overwhelmed by nausea.
Covering her trembling mouth with her gloved hand, Jane wished she could erase his expression from memory.
For she had thought he knew better than to judge a person, especially a woman, by her circumstances.
“Miss?”
Jane opened her eyes and jumped.
The child had stuck her face close to Jane’s and now examined her anxiously. “It’s swept, miss. Did yer little mishap shake ye more than ye realized? I can ’elp ye across.”
“Thank you. I’m fine.” Digging a copper out of her handbag, Jane presented it to her.
The girl took the coin, then gave the gap-toothed grin of a seven-year-old who had lost her two front teeth. “Welcome, miss. Watch where ye’re goin’!”
“I will.” Where she was going, not where she had been.
When Jane reached the top of the steps to Tarlin House and glanced wistfully back, the sweeper tipped her hat. Nice child, Jane thought absently.
That Scandalous Evening Page 18