“She won’t,” her husband soothed. “Whatever we must do for it, we won’t let her hang.”
But that was a promise he couldn’t possibly keep, and perhaps that was what had kept Sebastian’s stomach in knots for the past several hours. That there wereconsequencesfor what Jenny had done, and he—hehad cast her to them. He was furious with himself, furious withher…but death was so very permanent. He had made his decision with cold, perfect logic—or so he had thought. Jenny was a murderer, and her victim deserved justice; even justice over a decade removed from the crime. It hadn’t been until well after he had informed Mr. Beckett of the situation that he had realized that that cold logic he had told himself wasjustandrightwas only a rage so pure, so fine, that it burned like ice. And still he loved her anyway. Because she hadmadehim love her, perhaps? Manipulated him into it, the same as she had her deceased husband? Good God, it was like there were two minds that lived inside of him; the one that reviled her for what she was, and the one that loved her for what he had imagined her to be.
Seven kinds of a fool, he was.
“What do you intend to do?” he asked, pressing one hand over the eye that already felt hot and swollen. “You must know that she can’t escape the consequences of what she’s done.”
Lord Livingston caught his wife by the shoulders. “It’s none of your damned business,” he snarled. “Not any longer.”
“What—” The question had begun to emerge before he could stop it, and he made a rough sound in his throat and gave into it. “What makes you so certain of her?” he asked. “Why would you risk your own reputations for a murderess?”
“Because Jenny has never once hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it,” Lady Clybourne said promptly. “If you could believe otherwise, then you aren’t remotely the man she thought you were.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jail was not quite so bad as Jenny had expected it to be. Of course, she wasn’t preciselyin jail, given that there had been some furor in the Magistrates’ office over the prospect of sending aduchesseven to prison to await trial.
She had got a cell of her own, buried at the back of the office, and even a thin cot upon which to sleep. She was allowed a book, if she wished to read, and she was even fed, after a fashion—a kind of thin, soupy porridge that largely turned her stomach.
She had even been allowed visitors. Lottie and Harriet came to see her every day, which was a welcome change from the staff on the premises that routinely ignored her, except for when they pulled her from her cell to interrogate her.
Nobody knew precisely what to do with a murderous duchess, it seemed. So they had been angling after a confession to justify her imprisonment, and no doubt eventual hanging. Try as she might, she could not work up even a sliver of emotion about it. Not anger, not fear—nothing. As if her mind had simply shut down. As if a part of her—perhaps the most significant part—had already died.
And so each day was much the same. She woke. She read. She suffered various aspersions upon her character. She was implored and threatened by turns to confess for hours upon hours. She ate a little. And she slept. Usually poorly.
From Lottie and Harriet, she had learned that Ambrosia had suffered only a little—perhaps a dozen ladies had resigned their subscriptions when the news of her arrest had come out. But there had been far more ladies who had sworn their disbelief of it…even though both the Duke of Venbrough and Nerissa Amberley had gone weeping to the press to denounce her.
There was a particularly odious Runner who had gleefully passed her several newspaper articles, carefully clipped, so that she might see what exactly had been said of her. She could have told him that it had all been said before, that it was nothing Nerissa and her wretched brother hadn’t claimed years and years ago. None of it was new or in any way surprising.
In fact, the only truly surprising thing was that Lottie and Harriet had never once even asked her if she had done it. There had not been a shred of doubt in their minds but that she was completely and wholly innocent of the charges laid against her. It was touching, if misguided. She would almost have preferred to be abandoned, given the strain the situation had placed upon them. Ambrosia had lost its manager—and when she was hanged, there was every chance that their reputations would suffer for it because they had not condemned her.
She had always known that she was doomed, but she had no desire to drag her friends down into this mire of nastiness with her.
In the middle of her second week of incarceration, she was unceremoniously pulled from her cell and escorted down the hall—a walk she had made nearly a dozen times by now, and which brought forth a kind of weariness deep in her soul. Another interrogation, then. Another hours-long demand for a confession. She had told them all she could already, though they had not believed her.
But then, she had never expected them to. It was, after all, why she had stayed hidden in the first place. She had been quite common before her marriage, and a Frenchwoman besides, and her voice was not nearly as shrill as Nerissa’s, nor as powerful as the duke’s.
“In,” the man guiding her by the arm said roughly, shoving her through the open door to the tiny room she had occupied only too frequently for each interrogation. But he did not follow her—only slammed the door behind her the moment she had stumbled over the threshold. And it was neither a magistrate nor a Runner who sat at the little table within, awaiting her presence.
It was Sebastian.
∞∞∞
Jenny blanched. As soon as she’d righted herself from the rough shove, she turned on her heel and knocked upon the door. “I would like to go back to my cell,” she called.
“You’re a prisoner,” Sebastian said. “They don’t come at your call. They come at mine.” He watched her shoulders set and firm, saw, in profile, the tension settle in along her jawline. “You might as well sit. I have some questions for you.”
“I have nothing at all to say to you.” Her voice was utterly calm. She was wearing some godawful garish garment, a terrible grey dress that looked like it had perhaps once been some other color that had faded with too many washings. Not at all a dress for a duchess—nor even a dress for a former seamstress of some renown.
For some reason, her very serenity kindled anger in the pit of his stomach. Howdaredshe be so bloodycalmwhen he had spent so many fruitless days agonizing over her? Over what he’d done? Over whatshe’ddone?
For once, it had been something other thanjusticewhich had concerned him. It had beenher.
“Mr. Beckett tells me that you have fed him some sort of nonsense story about the death of your husband. Theduke,” he added, as if there had existed some possibility that she might have forgotten, somehow, to whom she had once been wed. “Venbrough and his sister are screaming for your blood, and he’s hard-pressed to find a reason not to give it to them.” Except for the fact that the execution of a peer—even one who had come into the peerage via marriage—was not usually the done thing.
“Then give it to them,” she said, still in that strange, uninflected voice. Still with her back to him. Another little skirl of fury, that somehowshefound it difficult to look uponhim, while he—he drank her in like he had been starving for her.
“I am trying to find a reason to keep them from hanging you, Jenny.” He hadn’t, precisely, meant to make that admission. It had simply popped into his mouth. He had needed her toknowit.
