It certainly stole their appetites. Julia watched her sister move the roast chicken and vegetable croquettes around her plate just as she was doing, while hardly taking a bite. Indeed, it seemed like a long and somber evening, causing them both to retire by eleven.
After dousing the lamp on her bedside table, Julia snuggled beneath the bed linens, feeling unsettled by the strange news. As she closed her eyes, something struck the side of the house close to her window. If she didn’t know better, she would say it was a pebble.
When another one hit, she sat upright. She’d read about this in more than one fanciful, improbable novel, involving simpering females, strapping men, and secret trysts brought about by stone-throwing at some mansion window. Yet right then, it seemed perfectly real. She swiftly re-lit the oil lamp.
Slowly, giving time for another stone to be tossed, she went to the window, drew back the curtain, and pushed up on the sash to raise the lower panes. When she was sure the weight and balance was holding and she wouldn’t be beheaded, she leaned out, surveying the darkness.
Standing in the small yard that buffeted the Worthington home from the mews behind, was none other than the Earl of Marshfield, his visage lit by a lantern.
“Come down here,” he ordered.
Was he a madman or merely in his cups?
“Decidedly no,” she called down, although sorely tempted because the man had become her weakness.
“I have important news,” he said, “and I was passing by on my way home.”
“Indeed!” She was sure now he was spoony drunk. “Can it wait, my lord, until tomorrow?”
“Are you ‘my lording’ me after what we’ve done together?”
His voice had grown louder. If Sarah was listening, Julia was going to be in trouble. If her neighbors were listening, she could be ruined after all.
“Hush, please,Jasper,” she said his name to appease him. “Go home and go to sleep.”
“You cannot order me. I’m an earl. And I’m not impoverished, no matter what those men think of me at Rundell, Rundell, Bridge, and Bridge, and Rundell.”
Then he laughed.
Oh dear! Who would tuck him into bed and give him some quinine for his aching head come the dawn?
“Lady Chandron passed away earlier tonight,” he told her out of the blue, sounding cheerful.
Julia gasped, grasping the windowsill to stop herself tumbling out in shock. She was a vicar’s daughter and had prayed for a way out of that woman’s clutches, but she hadn’t wanted her to die.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
He nodded, barely visible in the darkness except he was doing it so enthusiastically.
“She was at the Tavistock Arms pub in St. Giles.”
He paused and let the words of a lady being in a common pub sink into Julia’s brain. She was about to ask why when he spoke again.
“The pub offeredspecial servicesgreatly enjoyed by the viscountess in one of the basement rooms. I shan’t describe them. The services I mean, not the rooms.”
Julia nodded. She didn’t particularly want to know.
“Did her heart give out?” For Julia had imagined hers could explode it beat so hard and fast when Jasper put his mouth upon her—
“She drowned.”
“In a pub?” He was talking nonsense again. For all she knew, Lady Chandron was perfectly healthy and at home thinking about whom next she would blackmail. Then Julia recalled the news and gasped again.
“Are you saying she drowned in beer?”
“Yes!” he exclaimed. “You did hear!” And then he started to laugh. His loud guffaw would wake every member of the Worthington household.
“Please hush, Jasper. And don’t laugh. It’s not civilized considering what happened.”
