He pursed his lips and took his time about answering. “No, I think not,” he said. “To deny it would be to give the impression that your good opinion matters to me, you see, Jane. I could not have you believing that, could I?”
She came closer and sat down on her chair again. She arranged the book open on her lap without any apparent care that she turned to the right page. She set her hands flat on the pages. She was frowning.
“If it is untrue,” she asked, “why did you not deny it? Why did you fight a duel and risk death?”
“Jane, Jane,” he said, “is a gentleman publicly to contradict a lady?”
“But you loathe her.”
“I am still a gentleman,” he said, “and she is still a lady.”
“That is ridiculous!” Her brows snapped together. “You would allow her husband to believe the worst of you and her without telling him the truth? You would allow all of fashionable society to believe the worst of you?”
“Ah,” he said, “but they love me for it, Jane. I am the bad, dangerous Duke of Tresham. How I would disappoint thetonif I were to insist that on this occasion I am as innocent as a newborn lamb. Not quite, of course. I did flirt with the lady on a few occasions. I often flirt with married ladies. It is expected of me.”
“What nonsense you speak!” she said crossly. “And I do not believe you. You are telling me all this only so that you may laugh at me later and tell me what a simpleton I am to believe in your innocence.”
“Ah, but, Miss Ingleby,” he said, “I have already told you that your opinion matters not one whit to me.”
“You are despicable,” she said. “I do not know why I remain in your employ.”
“Perhaps, Jane,” he said, “because you need a roof over your head and food in your stomach. Or perhaps because you enjoy scolding me and chastising me with your barbed tongue. Perhaps because you are growing just a little fond of me?” He deliberately made his voice into a caress.
Her lips were set in a thin line. She stared grimly at him.
“Just remember one thing,” he said. “I do not tell lies, Jane. I may acquiesce in other people’s lies, but I do not tell lies of my own. You may believe me or not as you wish. Now put down that book and go and fetch me some coffee. And my mail from Michael Quincy. And the chess board.”
“You willnotcall me Jane,” she said, getting to her feet. “One day I will beat you at chess again even when you are concentrating. And wipe the complacency from your face.”
He grinned at her. “Go and do what you have been told to do,” he said. “Please, Miss Ingleby?”
“Yes, your grace,” she said vindictively.
Why, Jocelyn wondered as she left the room, had it seemed so important to him, despite his denial, that she know the truth about Lady Oliver? He did not care tuppence what anyone thought. Indeed, he had always reveled in his rakish reputation even on the rare occasion like this when it was unearned.
Lady Oliver had boasted to her husband, probably during a quarrel, that the Duke of Tresham was her lover. And said husband, in high dudgeon, had issued his challenge. Who was Jocelyn to contradict the lady?
Why had he wanted Jane Ingleby to know that he had never bedded Lady Oliver? Or any other married lady, for that matter?
If Barnard did not have those crutches by tomorrow, Jocelyn thought suddenly, he would beat the man about the head with them as soon as they were in his possession.
8
HAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?” JANEasked, startled, when she walked into the library the following morning to discover the Duke of Tresham standing facing the window, propped on crutches.
“IthinkI am standing at the window of the library,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at her, his eyebrows raised haughtily. “In my own home. Deigning to answer an impertinent question from an impertinent servant. Fetch your cloak and bonnet. You may accompany me outside into the garden.”
“You were told to keep your leg still and elevated,” she said, hurrying toward him. She had not remembered that he was quite so tall.
“Miss Ingleby,” he said, without changing his expression, “go and fetch your cloak and bonnet.”
He was a little awkward with the crutches at first, she noticed later, but that fact did not deter him from strolling outside with her for half an hour before they sat side by side on a wrought-iron seat beneath a cherry tree. Her shoulder was almost touching his arm. She sat very still while he breathed in slowly and audibly.
“One takes many things for granted,” he said, more to himself than to her, it seemed. “Fresh air and the perfumes of nature, for example. One’s health. One’s ability to move about freely.”
“Deprivation and suffering can certainly act like wake-up calls,” she agreed. “They can remind us to stop squandering our lives in unawareness and in attention to mere trivialities.” If she were ever free again…
Her mother had died after a shockingly brief illness when Jane was barely seventeen, and her father had taken to his bed and died a little over a year later. She had been left with memories of happiness and security, which she had been young and innocent enough to expect to last forever. She had been left with Papa’s cousin inheriting his title and taking over Candleford. And resenting her and courting her favor all at the same time and devising plans for her future that suited his vision but not her own. If she could have back just one of those days of her innocence…
