Mr. Hardy simply eyed her. “But if that babe is not his own, and I have that to hold over his head—”
“If I find out that you are using this information for your own purposes, I shall turn the tables on you, sir, and tell everyone in town what sort of man you are, a man who resorts to blackmail. I shall go directly to Mrs. Dittleswith and I shall spin it in such a way that the devil himself will look as if his soul is less black than yours. You know what the proper application of feminine rage can do, do you not, Mr. Hardy? If I make it the mission of every woman in this town to keep people out of your sphere of influence and your practicallySatanictavern, I can end your entire business.”
He blinked at her. “You’re a bit devious, are you not, Miss Austen?”
“Well, I hope my deviousness will not be necessary,” she said. “Are we in agreement, sir?”
“It shall be done, madam,” he said, nodding at her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
JANE AWOKE WITHa feeling that she was not alone in her room.
It was dark in the bedchamber, very dark. It was the middle of the night. She blinked hard, looking about at the shadowy elements of her room, taking note of all of her furniture, everything where it was supposed to—
No, that shadow had moved.
“You’re awake.”
She sat straight up in bed. “My lord! You cannot just break into our house and force your way into my bedchamber—”
“Your house was not locked, and your servants are all abed, and I know the way, and I hardly would call it breaking and forcing.” And now, Lord Byron was sitting at the foot of her bed.
She sniffed, pulling the blankets up to her chest, feeling rather strange, noticing stupid things, like the fact that she was only wearing her nightclothes, no structured garments under them, that he might see that her breasts sagged, that he might notice just how very much older than him she was. “Get out,” she breathed.
“Oh, I’m already here,” said Byron. “And I came for answers, anyway. What have you done to Beaumont?”
She didn’t answer.
“Light a lamp, would you, Miss Jane? Don’t tell me there isn’t one at your bedside. I am sure you are one for reading in bed.”
“We shall meet tomorrow and discuss this in the sitting room, both properly dressed and with some tea and some biscuits, like civilized creatures, and—”
“I can’t,” said Byron. “I am on my way back to London. I can’t very well stay with Beaumont if he has been sent packing himself, now can I? His wife, for whatever reason, is not entirely fond of me.”
Jane smirked. “I can’t imagine why.”
He chuckled. “Light a lamp, Miss Jane. It’s dreadful to be speaking in the dark.”
Jane reached over and removed the glass cover, struck a match, and lit the wick on the lamp by her bed. She adjusted the wick and then put the glass cover back in place. When she looked back, she took Byron in. He was disheveled, his hair mussed, his cravat half untied. He looked sort of rakish, and she scolded herself for thinking that word, and then she noticed the way he was looking at her.
“Stop that,” she breathed.
“It’s only that it occurs to me that I’ve never snuck into your bedchamber before.” He smiled at her, a curved and wicked smile, a smile of sin.
“Lord Byron, if you do not stop this instant—”
“What? You’ll have Mr. Hardy blackmail me too?”
She huffed.
“All the things that Beaumont has done, I have done too, you know.”
“You have never murdered anyone!” she countered.
“Oh, God knows, I probably have,” he said. “Not on purpose, I suppose, but people are so very fragile. We all leave bodies in our wake, do we not? We get women with child and they diebringing them into the world. We make children and many of them don’t even survive. We—”
“That is not what I meant,” she said. “You have never taken someone’s life on purpose.”
