Jane felt bleak almost to the point of despair as she folded the letter and set it beside her plate. She had not thought specifically of Charles since coming to Aunt Harriet’s. She had known, of course, that a match between them was now impossible, but only now, this morning, had she been forced to face that reality before she was quite ready to deal with it.
She felt as if somehow a comfortable lifeline had been finally severed. As if she were now thoroughly and eternally alone.
And yet he was coming to London.
She would write immediately and tell him not to, she decided, getting to her feet even though she had eaten no breakfast. It would be a waste of time and expense for him to come all this way. And breaking the news to him that she could not marry him would be more easily done on paper than in a face-to-face encounter.
***
IT TOOKJOCELYN Afew days to realize fully that there was no more imminent threat of death, that the Forbeses and apparently Lord Oliver too were satisfied that Lady Oliver had told the truth during her dramatic interruption of the duel.
When Jocelyndidrealize it, in the library one morning while he was reading over the latest report from Acton Park, he discovered that he was somewhat short of breath. And when he rested his elbows on the desk and held up his hands, he found with some fascination that they were shaking.
He was very thankful that Michael Quincy was not present to witness the phenomenon.
It was strange really since none of his previous duels had succeeded in bringing him eyeball to eyeball with his own mortality. Perhaps it was because he had never before come face-to-face with life and the desire to live it to the full. For the first time reading the dry, factual report of his steward brought on a powerful feeling of aching nostalgia. He wanted togothere, to see the house again with adult eyes, to roam the park and the wooded hills, remembering the boy he had been, discovering the man he had become.
He wanted to go there with Jane.
He ached for her. He would leave her alone until after her presentation, he had decided. He would dance with her at her come-out ball and then pay her determined court until she capitulated, which she would surely do. No one could defy his will forever.
But there was still a whole week left before the ball. He could not wait that long. He was too afraid that she would be the one to defy him, if anyone could. And while he waited, the likes of Kimble and even his own brother were squiring her all over town, oozing charm from every pore, and drawing from her the sort of dazzling smiles she had been very sparing of in her dealings with him. And then he was furious at himself for admitting to jealousy of all things. If she wanted another man, let her have him. She could go to the devil for all he cared. He amused himself with mental images of fighting Kimble and Ferdinand simultaneously—with swords. One in each hand.
And a cutlass between his teeth, he thought in self-derision. And a black patch over one eye.
“Deuce take it!” he told his empty library, bringing the side of his fist down onto the desktop for good measure. “I’ll wring her neck for her.”
He presented himself at Lady Webb’s that same afternoon but declined her butler’s invitation to follow him to the drawing room, where other visitors were being entertained. He asked to speak to Lady Webb privately and was shown into a salon on the ground floor.
Lady Webb, he knew, did not approve of him. Not that she was ill bred enough to voice her dislike, of course. And it was perfectly understandable. He had not spent his adult years cultivating the good opinion of respectable ladies like her. Quite the contrary. She did not like him, but she clearly recognized the necessity of his making her goddaughter an offer.
“Though if she refuses you,” she told him before sending Jane down, “I will support her fully. I will not allow you to come here bullying her.”
He bowed stiffly.
Two more minutes passed before Jane appeared.
“Oh,” she said, closing the door behind her back and keeping her hands on the knob, “it is you, is it?”
“It was the last time I glanced into a looking glass,” he said, making her an elegant bow. “Whom did you expect?”
“I thought perhaps it was Charles,” she said.
He frowned and glared.“Charles?”All his good intentions fled. “The milksop from Cornwall, do you mean? The bumpkin who imagines he is going to marry you? He is in town?”
Her lips did their familiar disappearing act. “Sir Charles Fortescue,” she said, “is neither a milksop nor a bumpkin. He has always been my dearest friend. And he is coming as soon as he is able.”
“As soon as he is able,” he repeated. “Where has he been during the past month or so? I have not noticed him dashing about London searching for you, rescuing you from the clutches of your uncle or your cousin or whatever the devil Durbury is to you.”
“Where would he have looked?” she asked. “If the Bow Street Runners could not find me, what chance would Charles have had, your grace?”
“I would have found you.” He narrowed his gaze on her. “The world would not have been large enough to hide you,Lady Sara, if I had been searching.”
“Don’t call me that,” she told him. “It is not my name. I am Jane.”
His mood softened and for the moment he forgot the irritation of Sir Charles Fortescue, milksop and bumpkin.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, it is. And I am not ‘your grace,’ Jane. I am Jocelyn.”
