She did not answer for a while. “It is always easier to look at someone else’s life and see its pattern,” she said, “especially when one cares.”
“Do you care about me, then, Jane?” he asked, kissing the top of her head. “Even now you know those most sordid of all details about my past?”
“Yes, Jocelyn,” she said. “I care.”
They were the words that finally broke his reserve. He did not even realize he was weeping until he felt wet drops drip onto her hair and his chest heaved convulsively. He froze in horror. But she would not let him push her away. She wrapped her free arm about his neck and burrowed deeper. And so he sobbed and hiccuped ignominiously with her in his arms and then had to search for a handkerchief to blow his nose.
“Dammit, Jane,” he said. “Dammit.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Do you have any kindly memories of your father? Anything at all?”
Hardly! But when he thought about it, he could remember his father teaching him to ride his first pony and playing cricket with him and Ferdinand.
“He used to play cricket with us,” he said, “when we were young enough to saw at the air with our bats and hurl the ball all of six inches ahead when bowling. It must have been as exciting for him as watching grass grow.”
“Remember those times,” she said. “Find more memories like that. He was not a monster, Jocelyn. He was not a pleasant man either. I do not believe I would have liked him. But he was not a monster, for all that. He was simply a man. And even when he betrayed you, he thought somehow that he was doing something necessary for your education.”
He kissed the top of her head again, and they lapsed into silence.
He could not quite believe that he had relived those memories at last. Aloud. In the hearing of a woman. His mistress, no less. But it felt strangely good to have spoken. Those ghastly, sordid events seemed less dreadful when put into words.Heseemed less dreadful. Even his father did.
He felt peaceful.
“Skeletons are dreadful things to have in our past, Jane,” he said at last. “I do not suppose you have any, do you?”
“No,” she said after such a long silence that he thought she was not going to answer at all. “None.”
“Come to bed?” he asked her with a sigh almost of total contentment. “Just to sleep, Jane? If I remember correctly, we were rather energetically busy most of last night. Shall we just sleep tonight?”
“Yes,” she said.
He almost chuckled aloud. He was going to bed with his mistress.
To sleep.
His father would turn over in his grave.
18
OCELYN WENT STRAIGHT HOME THE FOLLOWINGmorning, as he usually did, to bathe and shave and change before sallying forth to his clubs and engaging in his other morning activities. But Hawkins was waiting for him as he crossed the threshold, bursting with important information. Mr. Quincy wanted a word with his grace. At his earliest convenience.
“Send him to the library in half an hour,” Jocelyn said as he made his way to the stairs. “And send Barnard up to me. Warn him that I feel no burning need of his personal company, Hawkins. Suggest to him that I will need hot water and my shaving gear.”
Michael Quincy stepped into the library thirty minutes later. Jocelyn was already there.
“Well?” He looked at his secretary with raised eyebrows. “Some crisis at Acton, Michael?”
“There is a person, your grace,” his secretary explained. “He is in the kitchen and has been there for two hours. He refuses to go away.”
Jocelyn raised his eyebrows and clasped his hands at his back. “Indeed?” he said. “Do I not employ enough footmen to pick up this—thispersonand toss him out? Am I expected to do it myself? Is this why the matter has been brought to my attention?”
“He is asking about Miss Ingleby, your grace,” Quincy explained.
Jocelyn went very still. “About Miss Ingleby?”
“He is a Bow Street Runner,” his secretary told him.
Jocelyn merely stared at him.
