“And Mr. Knight—”
Jenny averted her gaze. “I don’t wish to speak of him, if you please.”
A tense silence pervaded the carriage.
“You will have to,” Lord Clybourne said. “Eventually. Jenny—”
“Why?” she inquired, and hated the short, clipped sound of her voice, the tremble of emotion within it. “Why ought I, whenheis the reason I have spent the last month in jail?”
“Because,” Clybourne said softly, “he’s also the one who got youout.”
Chapter Twenty One
Abath had been the very first thing in order, and it had been glorious. Never had Jenny thought she could possibly be quite so grateful for something so simple as a tub of hot water—but after a month with only a pitcher and a cloth, it had been lovely for once to wash thewholeof her body.
The maids had kept cans of water on the stove for her, and had replenished the water no less than three times—but then, she had beenfilthy. She had scrubbed her skin until it was pink and gleaming, and still she felt as though the aura of jail, the pathos of it all, clung to her skin. Possibly it had penetrated so deeply that it could never be scrubbed away. But at least now she had those creature comforts she had been denied this past month—her sweetly-scented bar soap and attar of roses—to mask it.
The murky grey gown that had been provided to her in the jail had been burned, for which she was appreciative. She would have burned it herself, had she not been shuffled so quickly up to her room. It was, after all, still quite early in the day.
She had offered to take her place once again as Ambrosia’s manager, but Lottie and Harriet both had insisted that she take the day at least to rest, and so she had practically been sent up to bed like a child.
She had tried to eat from the tray that had been sent up to her for supper, but such rich fare after so long on just thin broth and porridge had turned her stomach. She’d managed a few nibbles of tender chicken, perhaps a half a sprig of fresh broccoli that had been lightly sautéed in butter and garlic.
From the floors below came general sounds of merriment—perhaps a bitmorecelebratory than usual. And she wanted tobethere amongst them…for however long she had left.
Damn. She wasn’t going tocryabout it. She had long known this was coming. She had just never thought she would have so very much to leave behind. It would have been so much easier to leave the world if she had kept to herself, if she had eschewed things like friendship—love.
Her hand drifted to her stomach, to that tiny little flutter oflifeinside her, which felt like the worst possible irony. That she would leave the world as her child entered it.
The court of public opinion might find itself swayed to sympathy—but the court oflawwould not. And she wasn’t afraid of death, but she did not want to leave something so small, so helpless, to an unmerciful world.
The only blessing was that Sebastian could have no claim upon her child. But she had money saved; money that would avail her nothing where she was headed. So perhaps Lottie or Harriet could be persuaded to care for her child in her stead.
Don’t think of it. There were things changeable and things unchangeable, and there was no sense in confusing the two, or in allowing her emotions to get the better of her. A good cry might temporarily make her feel a bit better, but it would ultimately serve no purpose.
She had so little time left. She would be best served inlivingit. One moment at a time, until she ran out of them at last.
Neither would she trouble herself with thoughts of Sebastian. Whatever had bloomed between them had withered just as quickly—a flash in the pan, unworthy of her consideration.
And still, as she dressed in her favorite nightgown and enjoyed the softness of the silk against skin that had too long been abraded by coarse linen, she paused by the side of her bed and glanced toward the window, and wondered what she would see if she flicked up the curtains and glanced across the mews.
∞∞∞
There was somethingoffabout Jenny’s statement. Since he had decided at last to read it, Sebastian had gone over it time and time again, reading it over and over until he’d nearly memorized it. But still, like her, it lacked so much context. He could sense it there, lingering unseen beneath the words scrawled across the page. Those that had been printed in her neat, careful hand were just—dandelion fluff. The barest tip of an iceberg protruding from the waters, concealing the worst of it beneath.
A ship could sink on all the words she’d left unsaid.
The Duke of Venbrough’s statement, in comparison, had been florid in its assertions. He’d expounded upon everything from Jenny’s offensivelyFrenchdemeanor, to her unsuitability to her role as his late cousin’s duchess, to her callous disregard for said cousin’s love and affection.
He’d described her as a shrill harpy, full of constant complaints and unpredictable flares of alamentable temperament. By turns he had accused her of a penchant for tantrums when the former duke had denied her some jewel which she had coveted, and also of a cold, calculating shrewdness—the latter of which he suggested had led her to murder her husband.
A pretty young wife of a much older man, bored with her seclusion in the countryside, he had said—was it any wonder she had taken it in her head to make of herself a wealthy widow instead? The woman he had described was practically a caricature of vileness, possessed of an evil spirit. Little wonder polite society had been outraged, despite the fact that the former duke had not been well-liked. Sentiment against the French had still been high, and theTonalways loved a good scandal.
The current Duke of Venbrough had given them that in spades. But every bit of it flew in the face of what he knew of her. Geneviève Amberley had been painted as a high-spirited, vulgar, contrarian bit of brainless fluff, too selfish and stupid even to wait for a more opportune moment to murder her despised husband.
But Jenny was none of those things. It was possible, he supposed, that her circumstances had changed her…but he’d never seen anyone undergo such adrasticchange. Someone might change their mannerisms—say, for instance,pretendinga terrible French accent to avoid detection. But to change one’scharacterso severely?
The more he examined the two statements side by side, the more he thumbed through the old newspaper clippings he'd saved from years before, when the crime had been fresh, the more confused he felt. Two disparate versions of the same crime had been presented, and he doubted now whethereitheraccount was truthful.
