“You are cruel, Tresham,” she said. “I have been worried half to death about you. I have been languishing for a sight of you.”
“Which you have now had,” he said briskly. “Good day to you.”
“Tell me you have been pining for me too,” she said. “Ah, cruel that you make me beg for one kind word.”
He looked at her with something like loathing. “Frankly,” he said, “I have scarce spared you a thought since I last saw you—at the Georges’, was it? Or on Bond Street? I do not remember. And I daresay I will not spare you another thought once you have gone.”
She was holding her handkerchief to her mouth again and looking at him reproachfully over the top of it.
“You are angry with me,” she told him.
“My feelings, I assure you, ma’am,” he said, “do not go beyond irritation.”
“If you would let me explain—” she began.
“I beg you will spare me.”
“I came here to warn you,” she said. “They are going to kill you, you know. My brothers, that is, Anthony and Wesley and Joseph. In defense of my honor, which they do not believe Edward did convincingly enough. Or if they do not kill you, they will find another way to hurt you. They are like that.”
Behaving with a ruthless disregard to honor must be a family trait, then, Jocelyn thought.
“Miss Ingleby,” he said, “would you please conduct Lady Oliver to the door and see her on her way? And instruct Hawkins that I will have a word with him.”
Lady Oliver was weeping in earnest. “You are hard-hearted, Tresham, as everyone warned me,” she said through her sobs. “I thought I knew better. I thought you loved me. And I do not need a maid to show me out. I can see myself out, thank you.”
Which she proceeded to do in a tragic performance that surely would have brought whistles from the pit of any theater had she been on stage, and a demand for an encore.
“Well, Miss Ingleby,” Jocelyn said after an unseen hand had closed the library door, “what do you think of my paramour? Can you blame me for climbing into the lady’s bed, married or not?”
“She is very lovely,” she admitted.
“And your answer to my second question?” He glared at her as if she were somehow to blame for Lady Oliver’s continued indiscretions. He would have expected the woman to avoid him above all others for the next lifetime or two.
“I am not your judge, your grace,” Jane Ingleby said gravely.
“You condone adultery, then?” he asked, looking at her with narrowed gaze.
“No, of course not,” she said. “It must always be wrong. Nevertheless, you were cruel to her just now. You spoke to her as if you loathed her.”
“I do,” he said. “Why pretend that I do not?”
“And yet,” she said, “you lay with her and made her love you. But now you have spurned her when she braved propriety in order to come and see you and warn you.”
He smiled. “Is it possible,” he asked, “to be so incredibly naïve? I made Lady Oliver love me, Jane? The only person Lady Oliver loves is Lady Oliver. And she has braved propriety so that thebeau mondewill believe that she and I are flouting convention and danger by continuing our liaison. The woman is an exhibitionist. It pleases her to be notorious, especially with someone like me. It delights her to have it said that she has tamed the heart of a Dudley—of the Duke of Tresham himself. She would love nothing better than for me to be compelled to shoot into the air three more times while her brothers use me for target practice. Five times if the other two brothers should descend upon town.”
“You trivialize the lady’s sensibilities,” Jane said.
“I thought,” he said softly, “you were not my judge.”
“You would tempt a saint,” she told him tartly.
“I hope so.” He grinned. “But tell me, what has you so convinced that I have lain with Lady Oliver?”
She stared at him blankly for a few moments. “Everyone knows it,” she said at last. “It is why the duel was fought.Youtold me.”
“Did I?” he asked. “Or did I just allow you to make the assumption?”
“I suppose,” she said, sounding indignant, “you are going to deny it now.”
