It looked, Jocelyn thought, gazing rather wistfully after the curricles and the throng of riders, rather like a cavalry charge. He turned toward Ferdinand’s curricle and exchanged a few pleasantries with some other spectators.
He wished then that he had brought his groom after all. He would have to go home in order to have his horses stabled and the curricle put away in the carriage house before proceeding to White’s. But he need not go inside the house. He had no reason to do so and every reasonnotto.
He had kissed her again last evening. And had admitted that they could not go on as they were. The matter had to be dealt with. She had to go.
The trouble was, he did not want her to go.
He should have driven around to the mews, he remembered as he drove into Grosvenor Square and approached the front doors of Dudley House. He was not concentrating. He would drive around the square and back out of it.
But just as he gave his horses the signal to proceed, a series of incidents, which happened so fast that even afterward he was not sure of the sequence, changed all his plans. There was a loud snapping sound, a sudden lurching of the curricle to the left, a snorting and rearing of the horses, a shout in a male voice, a scream in a female’s. And a painful collision of his body with something hard enough to knock the breath out of him.
He was lying facedown on the roadway outside his own doors when rational thought returned. With the sound of frightened horses being soothed behind him, with the feeling that every bone in his body must have been jarred into a new position, and with someone stroking his hair—what the devil had happened to his hat?—and assuring him in a marvelous exercise of utter female stupidity that he would be all right, that everything would be all right.
“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed ferociously, turning his head to one side and viewing from ground level the ruin of his brother’s curricle, which was listing sharply to one side on its snapped axle.
Every house on the square, it seemed, was disgorging hordes of interested and concerned spectators—had they all been lined up at the windows to witness his humiliation?
“Just catch your breath,” Jane Ingleby said, her hand still in his hair. “A couple of the servants will carry you inside in a moment. Don’t try to move.”
That was all he would need to cap the mortification of one of the most wretched months of his life.
“If you cannot talk sense,” he said, shaking his head irritably to rid himself of her hand, “I suggest that you not talk at all.”
He planted his hands on the ground—there was a ragged hole in the palm of one of his expensive leather gloves, he noticed, with raw flesh within—and hoisted himself upward, ignoring the silent screaming of muscles that had just been severely abused.
“Oh, how foolish you are!” Jane Ingleby scolded, and to his shame he was forced to set a heavy hand on her shoulder—again.
But he was gazing narrow-eyed at Ferdinand’s curricle.
“It would have snapped when he was out in the country driving at breakneck speed,” he said.
She frowned up at him.
“It is Ferdinand’s curricle,” he explained. “The axle has broken. He would have been killed.Marsh!” he bellowed at his head groom, who was still soothing the horses while someone from another house was unhitching them from the vehicle. “Examine that curricle with a fine-tooth comb as soon as you have a chance. I want a report within the half hour.”
“Yes, your grace,” his groom called.
“Help me inside,” Jocelyn commanded Jane. “And stop your fussing. I’ll have bruises and scrapes for you to tend to your heart’s content once we have reached the library, I do not doubt. I have not broken any bones, and I did not land on my right leg. At least, I do not think I did. Someone did this. Deliberately.”
“To kill Lord Ferdinand?” she asked as they went inside. “So that he would lose the race? How absurd. No one could want to win a bet or a race that badly. It was an accident. They do happen, you know.”
“I have enemies,” he said curtly. “And Ferdinand is my brother.”
He hoped fervently that the curricle was all that had been tampered with. This had the signature of the Forbes brothers all over it. Underhanded, sneaky bastards.
JANE HAD RISEN WITHa firm determination to take her leave of Dudley House that very day. Her usefulness here, what little there had been, was at an end. The three weeks were over. And what she had agreed to and done last evening for the entertainment of the duke’s guests had been the ultimate madness. Fifty members of thebeau mondehad seen her—reallyseenher—when she was dressed, if not quite in the splendor of evening garments that would have set her on a level with them, at least in a manner that set her noticeably above the level of a maid.
It was surely only a matter of time before the search for her led to the circulation among thetonof a description of her appearance. Indeed she was puzzled that it had not already happened. But when it did, a number of last evening’s guests were going to remember Jane Ingleby.
She had to leave Dudley House. She had to disappear. She would take the five hundred pounds—another madness, but she had every intention of holding the Duke of Tresham to his end of their bargain—and go into hiding. Not in London. She would go somewhere else. She would walk clear of town before trying to board any public conveyance.
Jane was determined to leave. Even apart from every other reason, there was last night’s lingering kiss, which had come alarmingly close to exploding into uncontrolled passion. It was no longer possible for her to remain at Dudley House. And she would not allow herself to indulge in any personal longing. For the moment at least she could not allow herself to have any personal feelings.
She fetched warm water and ointments and bandages as soon as she had settled him in the library. She was sitting on a stool before the fireside chair, rubbing ointment into his badly scraped palms, when his groom was admitted.
“Well?” his grace demanded. “What did you find, Marsh?”
“The axle had definitely been tampered with, your grace,” his groom told him. “It was not natural wear and tear that made it go like that.”
