"The same honor that allows you to live beneath your cousin's roof and lie to his face? Tell me what you did. Perhaps you didn't even realize you were helping Mrs. Lemont."
"It's nothing like that! You must believe me."
Jude wanted to believe him, for Marissa's sake, if nothing else. "What is it then?" he asked quietly.
Harry shook his head. "Edward mustn't know. I owe him so much, and I've taken every precaution to protect the York name, I swear to you. It's only that I felt so unimportant. A useless extension of the family tree. For a time, I cared for Aidan. I was
needed.
But then ..."
Jude felt more confused than ever. "What is it, man?"
"'Twas boredom, I suppose. I thought no one would know."
Jude wrapped his hand around Harry's arm to draw his attention. "What did you do?"
Harry's gaze met his, eyes wide with shock as if his own confession was a surprise. "I wrote a book," he murmured.
Jude shook his head. "You what?"
"I wrote a book. I never expected... but it was accepted by a publisher, and he wanted another. So I wrote a second hook, and then a third."
Jude dropped his arm. "A book? What type of book?"
Harry's flush was back. He grimaced. "Nothing edifying, I'm afraid. But I took great care to keep my identity a secret. I worry though. I never expected they'd be so popular. Still, the money goes to an account in my solicitor's name. No one will ever connect William Wicket to the York family, I swear. I'd rather die than bring dishonor on my cousins."
"William Wicket," Jude murmured. "Why does that sound familiar?"
"If I'd known they'd be so widely read ..."
And then Jude realized. "The book," he said. "The book I read with Marissa!"
"Oh, God," Harry groaned. "Please don't tell the family. After everything they've done for me ..."
The dark worry burning in Jude's stomach disappeared in an instant. His scowl turned to a laugh. "You write
love stories?"
"Shh!" Harry shot a terrified look toward the door.
"That's not so awful. I quite enjoyed the story. What are you worried about?"
"The gossip. The tittering. The scandalized measuring of every line of every book ... It would awful."
Jude considered it a moment. "I suppose you're right. It would create a sensation."
"That's putting it mildly. Listen, I just sent off the last manuscript. I won't write any more, I promise. I feel disloyal asking you to lie to my family, but would you see lit If I keep this to yourself?"
Jude shrugged. "I don't see why not. You're not hurting anyone. Aside from the tender minds of young Englishwomen, I suppose."
Harry swiped a shaking hand over his forehead. "I can't thank you enough."
"It's nothing. I apologize for my suspicions."
Harry shook off the apology and drained the glass of brandy Jude had handed him earlier. "Consider it forgotten," he rasped.
Jude was happy to oblige him. There'd be other worries to face in the morning, and the trip to the Lemont estate seemed the least of them.
Jude rode through the early morning fog, ignoring the looks of the men traveling on either side of him. The mist bit into the exposed skin of his face, turning his cheeks to ice, but Jude didn't mind the cold. It matched his mood and helpfully froze his scowl into permanent place.
Aidan cleared his throat, but Jude continued to ignore him. They were nearly to the LeMont estate, if he could only keep their curiosity at bay for a short while longer.
"I say, Jude," Edward ventured, "are you in love with our sister?"
Jude, disturbed by the directness of the question, lowered his chin and urged his horse to a quicker pace.
The York brothers kept up, and Aidan pulled slightly ahead so he could look back and catch Jude's gaze. "Jude, are you in love with her?"
"Christ, what business is it of yours?"
"She's our sister."
"She's my fiancée! You've already given your approval for our marriage, and that is where your involvement should end."
Aidan glared as if Jude had done something wrong. "Falling in love with a woman is a far cry from simply marrying her. We both know full well that there are plenty of couples who live separate lives. But a husband in love ... that can be the start of endless troubles."
"This is a ridiculous conversation," Jude answered. "You've no idea what you're talking about."
"Yet you haven't denied anything."
"And," Edward added, "You've been decidedly foul-tempered for days. Scowling and snapping, yet when Marissa appears you become cool and silent."
Jude chose to remain cool and silent at that point, but Aidan wouldn't allow it.
"You're in love with her," he barked. "Admit it!"
"I'll do no such thing. You two are fools."
Aidan slowed his mount and let it draw even with Jude's again. He stared straight ahead and said quietly, "She doesn't love you, Jude. This can't end well. You're from two different worlds."
The sympathy in his voice didn't improve Jude's mood at all.
Two different worlds.
As if he hadn't lived half his life in a duke's household. He clutched the reins too tightly, and the horse shied and bumped Aidan's. Jude murmured something soothing and patted the horse's neck.
A good while later, Edward cleared his throat. "I want to thank you, Jude. Your suspicions were spot on. II you hadn't been here, Aidan and I would have blamed Peter White without exception."
"Once again, my base beginnings prove useful."
Edward cleared his throat again, but couldn't seem to think what to say. Jude wished he could pull the petty words back and swallow them as easily as he'd so often swallowed his pride.
In the end, both he and the horse were saved by the landscape. They topped a small hillock, the drive of their destination came into view, and all three men pulled to a stop to stare down on it.
All uncomfortable visit awaited.
'Jude," Aidan tried again, but Jude held up a hand.
"Whether this story with Marissa ends well or not," he finally said, "I don't doubt there will at least be a moral in it. That's all I mean to say."
Aidan snorted and slapped him on the back, and the horses started down the hill in response.
"So... what if Charles LeMont is here?" Jude asked.
Edward set his jaw. "Then I suppose he will hear an unwelcome truth."
"She'll deny it."
"Of course."
When they readied the doors, Edward instructed the boy to walk their mounts. They didn't anticipate a long visit. Still, they found themselves pacing the morning room for a good half hour. The mistress was still dressing, the maid explained, seeming nervous in their presence. Jude supposed they must look forbidding, at best. He certainly felt as if he were attending a hanging.
Edward was right. Mrs. LeMont would deny it, and none of them were relishing the prospect of browbeating a woman. The maid had been a trying experience. What to do with a gentlewoman with a child in her belly? If she feigned illness, they had no defense against that. He had a sneaking suspicion this ambush would end with all three men gathered around the fainting couch, fanning their enemy and offering strong tea.
His stomach burned at the thought, and it wasn't alleviated by the sight of the smiling Mrs. LeMont breezing into the room. She rested one elegant hand on her rounded belly. "Gentlemen! What a pleasure to see you again so soon."
She was, as Aidan had said, a handsome woman. Dignified and glowing with good health. But as Jude moved closer, he saw that the flawlessness of her skin was enhanced by powder that did only a passable job of hiding the circles beneath her eyes. And though she smiled in happy welcome, her eyes glittered a bit too brightly. She was nervous, and no wonder. The maid had disappeared, and now there were wolves in her morning room. But he could understand that the York brothers had not been able to see past her belly. It was a distraction, and a sympathetic one.
"My husband is off this morning to oversee the clearing of a field, so I'm embarrassed to say you've missed him once again! You did find him last night though, right? Yes, of course, you did. I remember now."
"We did," Edward said.
"Has your horse not improved, then?"
"Mrs. LeMont..." Edward's voice was too serious to mistake it for anything less than somber, but her smile did not so much as fade at the edges. If Jude hadn't known the truth already, he would have suspected her involvement now. Edward cleared his throat. "We are not here about the horse."
"No?" That simple word rose at the end like a bird taking flight. "Oh, forgive my rudeness, gentlemen. Let us all have a seat. Let me pour you a cup of tea."
Tea had been delivered upon their arrival, but the cups sat empty and untouched, and even after she waved them to the gathering of chairs, she did not reach for the pot.
"Mrs. LeMont," Edward tried again, "We have spoken to Tess."
"Tess?" she asked.
"The maid."
She shook her head in blank denial.
"The one you sent last night to retrieve the money. My money."
'What a very odd thing to say!" she chirped past her smile.
"Mrs. LeMont..." Edward said hopelessly.
Jude was done with this. "We know you were behind the threat to Miss York, so if you care for your dignity at all, you will cease this ridiculous playacting and tell the truth. This game is over, madam."
Her smile snapped away like a sheet popping in the wind. "Sir," she growled. "I do not know you."
"I am Miss York's fiancé, and that is all you need to know, I'd wager. I consider your threat to her as a threat to me, so here I am to see that it goes no further."
For a moment, her face was frozen in vicious outrage. All the color in her skin gathered in two spots of scarlet high on her checks.
"Perhaps," Jude murmured, "We should take this up with your husband?"
There was her weakness. Her outrage melted into stark fear over the course of several long seconds.
The mad brightness in her eyes suddenly revealed itself as swimming tears, trapped by her lashes. "Don't," she whispered.
"Madam," Edward said, leaning forward a bit, "You must stop this dreadful assault against my sister. I don't know what you think she's done to you—"
"He loves her," she hissed, and Jude felt the shock of those words as if she'd just stripped him bare.
It took more than a few heartbeats for Jude to realize that she wasn't speaking of him.
"He has always loved her."
Edward frowned. "Your husband?"
"If he finds out about this, he will hate me. Please ..."
Edward handed her a handkerchief, and Jude felt a brief moment of vertigo. All the niceties must still be observed, even if the lady was a blackmailer. Among his mother's circle, things would've been handled with a bit more honesty.
Jude interrupted the tender scene as she dabbed at the corners of her eyes. "To put this more bluntly, madam, you dislike Marissa, so you decided to ruin the reputation of the York family and steal from them as well?"
"No! It's not that I wanted to steal from you, but I thought the culprit would be less...
identifiable
if money was involved."
"But you did mean to ruin the family? Or her, at least."
She stiffened, and her jaw trembled with outrage. "It's not fair! He's my husband. He took me as his wife! I always suspected that he was hesitant to love me. At first I didn't know why. And then I saw them. ..."
"What do you mean?" Aidan barked.
She jumped and pressed the handkerchief to her mouth as she calmed herself. "At a harvest feast. I looked up at him and caught an expression on his face... yearning. Heartbreak. And when I followed his gaze... there was Miss York, strolling by with some other gentleman."
Jude scowled. "And you blamed her for that?"
"Who else was I to blame? My husband? I love him! And she seemed so cool, as if his love hardly affected her at all. I knew that one cruel word from her could've cut him loose, but she was always kind enough to keep him enraptured." "Still—"
"I asked around, and I found they had been sweethearts. I saw the way she was with other men. So flirtatious and bold. I knew ... I assumed she and Charles had... and then ..." She glanced up as if jarred from a secret thought, but when her gaze fell on Jude, her eyes hardened. He knew he looked scornful, but he could not help it.
"Don't look at me that way. I could've lived with it. I told myself it was my imagination. I let myself believe my own eyes had lied. But then he... then he whispered her name. He whispered her name in my bed!"
Heat burned through Jude at that. Jealousy and a horrible, sudden sympathy for this woman's heart.
"He didn't even realize it. He called me by her name, and he didn't even realize." Her soft words broke on a sob, and Edward shot Jude a glare as if he had done something awful.
Aidan rescued him by being just as hard-hearted. "So you decided to have your revenge?"
"I love him," she wailed. "And when I discovered my condition, I felt desperate that he should love me as well. I will be the mother of his children. How could he not love me? I hired Tess away, thinking I could at least reveal some of Miss York's secrets to him. Tear her down with idle gossip. Then when I heard the recent whispers about her, and well, it seemed to good to be true. I just wanted him to see her for what she was! I wanted him to scorn her. To
hate
her."
Jude leaned back in his chair, relieved that the whole story was finally out. "Where have you spread your lies?"
"Nowhere. Not yet."
"Not yet?" Edward asked.
Though the woman's hands shook with startling force, she did not look away. "I... Tess, the maid ... she told me your sister had some intimacy with Fitzwilliam Hess, but if you promise not to tell my husband, I swear to you, I'll never say anything.
"For God's sake," Aidan roared. "Are you threatening us even now?"
"Please!" she cried. "I'm sorry, but I love him! If you tell him what I've done, he'll never forgive me. Please, just give me that. You may cut me dead at the next ball, but please do not tell Charles." She was sobbing now, both arms wrapped around the firm bulge of her pregnant belly.
"What you are doing is unforgivable," Edward said.
She nodded frantically, eyes shut.
"Christ," he bit out. "Do you swear you will never so much as imply a foul hint about my sister?"
"I swear. On the life of my child. Just grant me this mercy."
Jude was inclined to he done with this mess, and when he glanced at Aidan, he found that the other man had averted his eyes. Despite his had temper, Aidan had a good heart, and no taste for cruelty toward women.
Edward, of course, had the softest heart of all three of them, and he actually started to reach toward the woman's hand before he caught himself and sat back. "All right," Edward finally said. "You will have to earn your husband's attention in some other way. I won't tell him."
"Thank you," she sobbed, her body curling in as if she meant to protect her child. "Thank you. I'm sorry. I don't... I feel I've gone a little mad."
Well, Jude had heard that tale about pregnant woman often enough from his mother's friends. They laughed over their moods and manic tempers later, but he did not think Mrs. LeMont would laugh over this.
Aidan walked out, and Edward followed, but Jude hesitated for a moment.
He almost left without saying a word, but then she looked up at him with a question on her face.
"Your husband," he said carefully. "He danced with Miss York last night. And she told me she's never seen him happier."
Her brow crumpled in doubt. "She did?"
"She said he spoke of you and the babe and nothing else."
Her face cleared, and for a heartbeat or two, she looked hopeful, so Jude left her with that. He understood what it was to love someone who could not love you. He hadn't resorted to criminal activity, but surely he'd made a fool of himself at least.