Mick knew he had just slammed into a brick wall. He had come so close.
“That will be all?” his grace asked. “The interrogation is ended? I confess an eagerness for my breakfast.”
Mick would have liked to ask more questions. Sometimes, even when people were not deliberately hiding information, they knew more than they realized. Perhaps the girl had said something about her future plans, dropped some hint, confided in some fellow servant. But it was unlikely, he admitted. She knew she was a fugitive. Doubtless she had heard, during her weeks in this house, that the Runners were after her.
“Well?” There was a force of arrogant incredulity behind the one word.
Mick bobbed his head again, bade the Duke of Tresham a good morning, and took his leave. The duke’s secretary showed him out through the front door, and the Bow Street Runner found himself on Grosvenor Square, feeling that he was back where he had started.
Though perhaps not quite.
He had heard about the duel even before Madame de Laurent had mentioned it. The Duke of Tresham had been shot in the leg and incapacitated for three weeks. The rest of London’s nobs had probably beaten a path to his door to keep him company. The girl had been his nurse. She must surely have been seen by some of those visitors. Some of them might be more forthcoming than the duke himself.
No, he had not come up against a brick wall after all, Mick Boden decided. Not yet at least.
He would find her.
ALL THE EVIDENCE HADbeen staring him in the eyeballs, Jocelyn thought as he stood at the library window watching the Bow Street Runner make his slow way out of the square. Staring so closely, in fact, that it had thrown his mind out of focus and he had just not seen it.
She had clearly been brought up a lady. She had demonstrated all the attributes of a lady from the start except genteel dress. She spoke with a refined accent; she bore herself proudly and gracefully; she was literate; she could play the pianoforte with competence if not with flair; she could sing superbly—with a trained voice and a knowledge of composers like Handel; she could command and organize servants; she was not awed by a man with a title, like himself, even when he was overbearing by nature.
Had he for one moment believed her story that she had been brought up in an orphanage? Foronemoment, perhaps. But he had realized for some time that she had lied about her background. He had even idly wondered why. There was something about her past that she wanted to keep private, he had concluded. He had never been unduly curious about the secrets people chose to keep hidden.
Lady Sara Illingsworth.
Not Jane Ingleby, but Lady Sara Illingsworth.
His eyes narrowed as he gazed out onto the now empty square.
He had consistently misinterpreted the biggest clue of all—her reluctance to be seen. She had not wanted to venture outside Dudley House when she was here except into the garden; she did not want to venture outside the house where she was now. She had been very reluctant to sing for his guests. She had chosen to become his mistress rather than pursue what could undoubtedly be a brilliant career as a singer.
He had thought she was ashamed, first of what people would think her relationship to him might be and then of what that relationship really was. But she had shown no other sign of shame. She had negotiated their foolish contract with practical good sense. She had redecorated her house because she would not be made to feel like a whore living in a brothel. There had been no shrinking from her fate the afternoon of the consummation of their liaison, no tears or other sign of remorse afterward.
His mind should have worked its way around to understanding that she was afraid to be seen in public lest she be recognized and apprehended. He had simply not seen the obvious—that she was in hiding.
That she was wanted for theft and murder.
Jocelyn stepped back from the window, paced to the other side of the room, and set his hands flat on top of the oak desk.
He did not care a fig for the fact that he was harboring a fugitive. The notion that she was dangerous was patently absurd. But he cared the devil of a bit over the fact that he had discovered her identity too late.
Offering employment as his mistress to a penniless orphan or even to a destitute gentlewoman was a perfectly unexceptionable thing to do. Offering the same employment to the daughter of an earl was a different matter altogether. Perhaps it should not be. If they lived in a perfect society, in which all people were seen as equals, it would make no difference.
But they did not.
And so it did make a difference.
He had had the virginity of Lady Sara Illingsworth, daughter of the late Earl of Durbury of Candleford in Cornwall.
He was not at this particular moment feeling kindly disposed toward Lady Sara Illingsworth.
Damn her. He thumped one fist down hard on the desk and clenched his teeth. She should have told him. She should have enlisted his aid. Did she not realize that he was exactly the sort of man to whom she could openly admit the worst without fear that he would have a fit of the vapors and send for the Runners? Did she not understand that he must hold men like Jardine in the utmost contempt? The devil! He pounded his fist hard onto wood again. What had the bastard done to her to provoke her into killing him—if hewasdead? What had she suffered since in guilt and fear and loneliness?
Damn her all to hell! She had not trusted him enough to confide in him.
Instead she had locked and bolted a shackle about his leg and thrown away the key. Even if it had been done unwittingly—in fact,undoubtedlyshe had not intended it since she trusted him so little—it had been done effectively indeed.
For that he would find it hard to forgive her.
