Jane watched wide-eyed as Jocelyn took a few leisurely strides forward. A moment later the earl’s toes were scraping the floor for something against which to brace his weight while his cravat in Jocelyn’s hand converted itself into a convenient noose. His face turned a deeper shade of purple.
“I sometimes believe,” Jocelyn said softly, “that my hearing is defective. I suppose I should have it checked by a physician before punishing a man for what I merely suspect he said. But lest I find that I am unable to restrain myself despite good resolutions, I would suggest, Durbury, that in future you speak very clearly and very distinctly.”
The earl’s heels met the floor again and his cravat resumed its former function, though somewhat more crumpled and askew than before.
Jane would not have been human if she had been able to resist a purely feminine rush of satisfaction.
“Your permission must be granted before I may arrange my nuptials with Lady Sara Illingsworth?” Jocelyn asked. “I will have it then, in writing, before you leave for Cornwall, which I believe you will do no later than tomorrow morning?” He raised his glass to his eye.
“ThatI will not be bullied into doing,” the earl said. “Sara is my responsibility. I owe it to her dead father to find her a husband more suited to providing her lasting happiness than you, Tresham. Remember too that she assaulted and almost killed my son. Remember that she robbed me of both money and jewels. She must answer for those actions in Cornwall, even if only to me. I am her guardian.”
“Perhaps,” Jocelyn said, “these charges should be made in London, Durbury. Lady Sara will doubtless prove a difficult prisoner on the long journey to Cornwall. I will help you haul her off to a magistrate now. And then theton, desperate for novelty at this stage of the Season, will be able to enjoy the entertainment of witnessing a gently nurtured lady being prosecuted for whacking and felling a man twice her size with a book. And for taking fifteen pounds from her guardian, who had deprived her for longer than a year of the allowance to which she was entitled. And for removing from a safe a bracelet that was her own while leaving behind what is doubtless a costly hoard of jewelry that will be hers at her marriage or on her twenty-fifth birthday. Thebeau monde, I assure you, sir, will be vastly amused.”
The Earl of Durbury’s nostrils flared. “Are you by chance attempting to blackmail me, Tresham?” he asked.
Jocelyn raised his eyebrows. “I do assure you, Durbury, that if I were attempting blackmail, I would choose to hold over your head the threat that my betrothed will charge you with neglect of your duty to protect her in your own home and your son with attempted ravishment. I am sure at least one of the witnesses could be persuaded to tell the truth. And I would add for good measure that if by some misfortune Sidney Jardine’s path should ever cross mine during the remainder of both our lives, he will, within five minutes of such a meeting, be picking his teeth out of his throat. You may wish to convey that observation to him.”
Jane felt another rush of unwilling satisfaction. It ought not to have been so easy for him. It was not fair. Why could no one stand up to the Duke of Tresham? All the bluster drained out of Cousin Harold when he understood that his plan to catch her, to lure her back to Cornwall, and to blackmail her into marrying Sidney was not going to work. And that even withholding his consent to her marriage would have consequences far worse than the loss of much of her father’s property and most of his fortune.
While Jane sat in indignant silence, totally ignored as if her very existence were irrelevant, permission for the Duke of Tresham to marry Lady Sara Illingsworth was duly given in writing after Mrs. Jacobs and the valet had been summoned as witnesses.
After that, there was nothing left for Jane to do but smooth the creases from her cloak, put on her bonnet and gloves with slow deliberation while Mrs. Jacobs picked up her bag, and then march out of the room and down the stairs and out to the waiting carriage, with its ducal crest and cluster of servile sycophants waiting to bend and scrape and pay him homage. Jane climbed inside and seated herself, Mrs. Jacobs beside her. If it were really possible for a human being to burst with fury, Jane thought, she would surely do it. And serve him right too to have blood and brains and tissue raining down on the plush interior of his expensive town carriage.
He vaulted in and took the seat opposite.
Jane sat with straight back and lifted chin. She directed her gaze beyond the carriage windows. “I will avail myself of your escort to Lady Webb’s,” she said, “but we will be perfectly clear about one thing, your grace—and Mrs. Jacobs may be my witness. If you were the last man on earth and you were to pester me daily for a million years, I would not marry you. Iwillnot do so.”
“My dear Lady Sara.” His voice was haughty and bored. “I do beg you to have some regard for my pride. A million years? I assure you I would stop asking after the first thousand.”
She pressed her lips together and resisted the urge to answer him with some sufficiently cutting remark. She would not give him the satisfaction of a quarrel.
He had come to her rescue—of course he had. It was the sort of thing the Duke of Tresham would do. She had left the house without his permission. She had been his mistress. He had determined that he would do the honorable thing and marry her. She was his possession.
But he did not believe she had been his friend.
He did not believe she would have made him hers by telling him the full truth about herself.
He did not trust her. He did not love her.Of course he did not love her.
Fortunately the journey to Lady Webb’s was short. But it was only as the carriage drew to a halt that Jane really thought about her. She must know that Jane was on the way. Did she know everything else? Would she welcome her?
But she had her answer even as a footman was opening the carriage door and putting down the steps. The door of the house opened and Lady Webb came outside, not just onto the doorsill, but all the way down the steps.
“Aunt Harriet!”
Jane scarcely noticed Jocelyn descending from the carriage and handing her down. It seemed that within a single moment she was enfolded in the safe arms of her mother’s dearest friend.
“Sara!” she exclaimed. “My dear girl. I thought you would never come. I have quite worn a path in the drawing room carpet, I declare. Oh, my dear, dear girl.”
“Aunt Harriet.”
Jane was sobbing and hiccuping suddenly and being led up the steps into a brightly lit hall. She had been taken up the staircase to the drawing room and seated in an elegant chair beside the cheerful fire there and handed a lace-edged handkerchief to dry her eyes before she realized that they were alone, she and Lady Webb.
He had gone.
Perhaps forever.
She could not have been more emphatic in her rejection of him.
