Oh,
Caroline thought.
Oh God!
Because it was true. It was true, what Jacquelyn was saying. She did love Braden Granville. Loved him as she had never loved before. The silly schoolgirl crush she’d had on Hurst had only been just that—a pale, pathetic slip of a feeling, as easily torn in two as the lace she was gripping as she clung to the table. What she felt for this woman’s fiancé was as strong and as sturdy as the thick taffeta of her skirt. It would never tear, never break. Only shears could rend it.
Oh, God, what had she done?
Shame followed quickly on the heels of the dizziness. For she knew now what she ought to have realized all along: she wasn’t any better than Jacquelyn Seldon. Hadn’t she been behaving just as reprehensibly yesterday in Braden Granville’s carriage as Jacquelyn and Hurst had behaved that night at Dame Ashforth’s?
There was no difference. No difference at all.
“I can see that I’m upsetting you,” Jacquelyn said. “But you must know, darling, for your own good, that Granville . . . well, he’s only playing with you. He doesn’t mean it. He only finds you . . . well, interesting, I suppose. He hasn’t had much experience with virgins, you know.”
Caroline had to once again tighten her grip on the table, because all of a sudden it seemed to her that the floor might rush up to meet her face. She wished very hard for a chair.
Oh, God,
she prayed.
Whatever else happens, don’t let me faint in front of Lady Jacquelyn Seldon. Don’t let me faint.
Jacquelyn, noticing Caroline’s white-knuckled grip, cried, “Oh, the dog! He
has
been playing with you, hasn’t he? Poor, poor Caroline. Well, you’ve been warned. And I know how sensible you are. You’ll go back to your adorable marquis now, won’t you? Of course you will. Think how much you owe him. Why, he saved your brother’s life, I understand. Imagine the scandal if you were to break it off with him, after all he’s done for you and your family. You’d have to leave town, I imagine.”
Caroline, fully aware that she had not uttered a sound to dispute any of Jacquelyn’s charges, tried to make her lips move.
I’m sorry,
she wanted to say.
But you must be mistaken. I’m not in love with Braden Granville.
But no sound came from her throat. It was as if the words stuck there, the way her badminton birdie sometimes stuck in the net.
Jacquelyn raised her eyebrows. She seemed to realize Caroline was trying to say something. “Yes, my dear?”
A lie. That was why Caroline could not say the words. Because they were a lie.
But she had lied before. Many times, in fact. So why couldn’t she do it now, when it really mattered?
Jacquelyn reached out and laid a comforting hand upon her shoulder. This time, Jacquelyn’s smile reached almost all the way to her eyes. “Caroline.” The smile widened. “I know what you’re trying to say. I know you are a very good sort of person, who prides herself on things like loyalty and honesty and kindness to fourlegged creatures and the like. But there’s no point in denying it. You are in love with Braden Granville. It is perfectly obvious to anyone who looks into your eyes. You love him so much, it’s tearing you up inside. But fortunately, there’s still time to put a stop to it, before any real harm is done. Forget him, Caroline. Before you do anything stupid, anything that might damage your chance at happiness. Before he breaks your heart, like he’s broken the hearts of so many girls all across London. All right?”
Damage your chance at happiness.
What chance at happiness did Caroline have? Married to a man who didn’t love her, for whom she could feel nothing— nothing except gratitude. What kind of chance at happiness was that?
Once it had been enough. But not now. Not now that she had come to know Braden Granville.
What was she going to do? It was despair that made her clutch the table now, hanging her head and staring down at the finger on her left hand, the one wearing Hurst’s grandmother’s ring. A ring she didn’t doubt would look far better on Jacquelyn’s hand.
Suddenly she heard her name called. Looking up, Caroline saw Violet approaching her, holding a sealed envelope.
“Oh, my lady,” she said, hurriedly. “This just arrived for you, by private messenger. It is marked urgent.”
Caroline looked at the folded piece of foolscap in her maid’s hand. It was exactly the same size and shape as the one she’d received earlier in the day from Braden Granville. How, she wondered, had he managed to track her down at Mr. Worth’s? And then, more worryingly, another thought occurred to her. Had he failed? Had he failed to convince Tommy to stay in town?
But then Violet handed it to her, and Caroline saw it wasn’t from Braden Granville at all.
“Not bad news, I hope?” Lady Jacquelyn said, watching Caroline’s face carefully as she tore open the seal.
Caroline scanned the familiar handwriting quickly.
Caro,
it read.
Rally at Trafalgar Square at three this afternoon. Chaining myself to the statue of the lion. Bound to get arrested. Pay my penalties again? See you then. E.
Caroline glanced at Violet. “Do you have the time?”
The maid looked at the clock face pinned to her apron. “It’s half three, my lady.”
Caroline crumpled the note in her hand.
“I do hope it isn’t bad news,” Jacquelyn said, sweetly.
“No,” Caroline replied. “My maid of honor’s been arrested again. That’s all.”
Then she turned and ran back to her fitting room without remembering to say good-bye to Lady Jacquelyn.
But Lady Jacquelyn, truth be told, did not care in the slightest whether or not Caroline had said good bye to her. She had far more important things to worry about.
“
I
don’t want to hear another word about it,”Jacquelyn snapped. “You’ve got to do it, Hurst, and you’ve got to do it at once.”
Hurst, slumped in an uncomfortable chair that, though re-lined recently in pale blue silk, had been in the Seldon family for nearly a century, said only, “Must you shout so? I’ve a wretched headache.”
“It appears I must shout,” Jacquelyn said, as she paced before his chair. “For you are clearly insensible to reasoning. I’m telling you, Hurst, it’s the only way.”
“Yes, but, darling—” He raised his face from the hands into which he’d sunk it, and eyed her miserably. “It’s so
drastic.”
“Drastic times call for drastic measures.” Jacquelyn crossed to the marble-topped mantel and corrected the position of a Dresden milkmaid before turning around and facing her lover again. “I tell you, Hurst, you’ve got to do it.”
Hurst pushed himself up from the chair and threw himself, instead, facedown across the more comfortable brocade of a chaise longue. “But you know I can’t stand Spain.”
“Well, then take her to France.” Jacquelyn, beautiful as ever in pale pink muslin, stood above the marquis’s head, her hands on her hips. “Take her to Belgium. I don’t care where you do it. Just
marry
the stupid cow, now, before she calls it off. I’m telling you, Hurst, she’s going to. She’s in love with Granville. Any fool could see it—with the possible exception of Granville himself, who’s so besotted with her he can’t see anything at all.”
Hurst rolled over on the chaise longue and gazed up irritably at his lady love. “I don’t see what makes you think Caroline’s in love with the brute. She seemed quite fond of me, still, when last I saw her. Even wanted me to kiss her.”
Jacquelyn’s look of disgust, which she’d aimed in the marquis’s direction, deepened. “Of course she did,” she said. “The silly girl doesn’t know what she’s feeling. That’s why time is of the essence, Hurst. You’ve got to elope before she realizes what’s what. You’ve still got a chance with her, if you act fast.”
Hurst stared at the cheerful cherubs painted on the drawing room ceiling overhead. He hated the way they leered down at him, mocking him. For he knew there could be no elopement. The wedding itself would doubtless be postponed—if there were any wedding at all, after the funeral.
“You’ve got to do it tonight,” Jacquelyn went on, relentlessly. “I’ll make the arrangements. You go home now, and pack up a bag.”
Hurst said, carefully, “It can’t be tonight. I’ve something planned for tonight.”
Jacquelyn stamped a slippered foot. She was not the sort of woman it was wise to anger. Had Hurst been looking at her when he’d made his reply, and not at the ceiling, he might have put it a bit differently. As it was, however, he’d still been staring at the ceiling mural, and so he hadn’t seen the thunderclouds gathering on the horizon.
Jacquelyn strode swiftly toward him, reached down, and pinched his nose very hard between two perfectly manicured fingernails.
“You’ll . . . elope . . . with . . . the . . . girl . . . tonight,”
she hissed, fiercely, “or suffer the consequences, my friend.”
Alarmed, Hurst swung out an arm, and broke Jacquelyn’s grip on his nose. He leaped to his feet, and, fingering his now tender proboscis, wailed, “Ow! What did you have to do that for, Jacks?”
Jacquelyn’s eyes were narrowed to twin slits. “I told you. You’re going to marry her, and soon, or else.”
Mournfully holding his nose, Hurst asked, “What’s the bloody hurry, Jacks?”
“She’s in love with Granville, don’t you see? And I fear he returns the feeling. And she isn’t to have him! Only I.
I
am the only one to have him.”
Hurst looked at her curiously. He was not prone to brilliant thinking, but at that moment, as he stood gazing at Jacquelyn Seldon, something happened in his handsome head, and he blurted, like someone coming out of a trance, “Why, Jackie! You’re in love with him!”
Jacquelyn went red. “I’m not. What drivel.”
But Hurst, unused to ever having inspirations of any kind, was too impressed with himself and his newly discovered insight to leave well enough alone. “No, no. You are. I can tell you are. You’re blushing. And you never blush. My God, Jackie! How
could
you?
Granville?”
Jacquelyn crossed the room so swiftly, he didn’t even have time to duck when he saw the outstretched hand sailing in the direction of his face.
Smack.
Jacquelyn glared up at him with eyes that were darker and yet brighter than he’d ever seen them.
“There’ll be more of the same,” Jacquelyn snapped, “if you ever say anything like that again. I am
not
in love with Braden Granville. I’m
not!”
Hurst, cradling his stinging jaw in his hand, looked down at Jacquelyn with disbelief in his robin’s-egg blue eyes.
“You are!” he cried, in a voice that was close to hysterical. “You’ve fallen for him! The Lothario of London! My God, Jackie.
My God.”
But Jacquelyn only screeched, “Stop saying that!” And when Hurst didn’t, she dashed to the fireplace, lifted the Dresden milkmaid from the mantel, and hurled it at him with all her strength.
This time Hurst had the foresight to duck. The figurine smashed harmlessly against the wall behind him.
“That’s it,” Hurst said, when he’d straightened again.
“That’s it, Jackie. I’ve had as much as I can take. Braden Granville. Braden bloody Granville. He hasn’t any right to set foot in the homes of decent folk. You know that. The man is Seven Dials gutter trash, and hasn’t the slightest idea how to behave around his betters. Why no one has taken that upstart out and given him the thrashing he so richly deserves—”
Jacquelyn, her face still mottled with rage, cried, “If you lay one finger on him, Hurst—just one finger—I’ll tell the Linford girl! I swear I will. She’ll never marry you then. Never.”
Hurst turned around and went to the door.
“Where are you going?” Jacquelyn looked bewildered. “How dare you turn your back on me while I’m speaking. Hurst!
Hurst!”
He slammed the door so forcefully on his way out that the Dresden milkmaid’s Dresden cow trembled on the mantel, then finally plunged headlong toward the hearthstone, where it met the same fate as its mistress. Jacquelyn, observing this, let out an anguished shriek that summoned the maid, who was promptly slapped in the face for obsequiousness.
24
T
here was something of a circus atmosphere outside the Old Bailey that afternoon. Braden wasn’t surprised. Where the criminal element gathered could usually be found the men who were paid to prosecute, defend, and hang them, and the mixing of these two crowds tended to inspire an air of sustained hysteria. Pushing his way past a bewigged judge and a lame pickpocket, who carried, for some reason, a shrieking monkey on his shoulder, Braden asked himself, for what had to be the hundredth time, what he was doing at the Central Criminal Court, a place he had not been since, as a youth, he himself had been held there.
Not that he had been done so badly by the Central Criminal Court, all those years ago. He had been lucky—far luckier than most of the boys with whom he’d grown up.
Only Josiah Wilder—the gunsmith to whom Braden had been appointed apprentice by the courts, and whose widow Braden supported and still visited regularly, fifteen years later—had taught Braden much more than the inner workings of firearms all those years ago, back in his busy little shop. For Braden, it was the lessons Josiah taught him outside of the shop that had mattered most. Josiah Wilder taught Braden Granville everything he knew that was of any sort of importance, from how to dance the Sir Roger de Coverley, to the correct way to hold a newborn baby. It was Josiah Wilder to whom Braden felt he owed everything he had, and it was that great man’s memory to which he silently raised a glass at supper every night.
But that did not mean Braden particularly relished the spot where he had first met the man who changed his life.
But there was nothing for it. He’d had to come. He’d received Caroline’s note, penned in obvious haste, reiterating the fact that she would not be requiring any more “lessons,” and that she would not be able to meet him as he’d asked her both the day before and in his reply to her letter concerning her brother, because her presence was required at the courts.
He’d sent immediately for his carriage.
Well, what other choice had he had? Her note had maddened him. No more lessons. She had said as much the day before, but he had tried not to listen. Would not listen. Without the lessons, what hold did he have upon her? None. She would marry that blackguard Slater— whom Braden was convinced was not as perfectly innocent as her brother claimed—and be lost to him forever.
Because he had promised. He had promised not to tell her what he knew. Which meant he certainly couldn’t tell her what he merely suspected, which was that to him, her fiancé’s heroism smacked of a guilty conscience. Slater might be better acquainted with The Duke than he let on. Braden knew that one way Hawkins had been able to lure high rollers to his establishment in the Dials had been by employing impoverished but highly regarded members of the gentry to vouch for the authenticity of the place. Was Slater one of those pawns?
Not that it would make much difference if his suspicion was proved true. He had promised. In the Dials, a man lived and died by his word. Braden would not go back on his promise.
But nor would he give her up. Not that easily.
Which was why he was here, at one of his least favorite places in London. Old Bailey, as he knew only too well, was unpleasant enough for anyone, but it was absolutely the last place on earth a young lady like Caroline Linford ought to have been showing her face. What, he wondered for the thousandth time, could that idiot mother of hers be thinking, allowing her daughter to go there? If ever there were two things that were completely incongruous, those two things were Caroline Linford and the Old Bailey.
And yet he saw, as he strode across the squalid yard, the Bartlett carriage, pulled off to one side and with maid and driver waiting patiently atop it for their mistress. It didn’t seem possible, but here was the proof: Caroline Linford was somewhere in this seamy crowd. He shouldered his way through a throng of prostitutes—creating quite a stir by politely excusing himself afterward—and approached the brougham. The maid, he saw, was, by some stroke of good fortune, Violet. He called up to her, and she looked down, clearly frightened by all that was taking place around the calm island of leather and steel upon which she sat.
“I say, isn’t that you, Violet?” Braden used his deepest, most reassuring voice.
The maid spun around on the high seat, looking startled. When her gaze lighted on Braden, she brightened considerably.
“Oh,” she said, looking pleased. “It’s you, sir.”
“Lady Caroline is still inside, I take it?” he asked, nodding his head toward the steps to the Old Bailey, which teemed with the sort of riffraff that was necessarily attracted to such places, criminals and their families and supporters, gawkers and missionaries, fruit sellers, dogs, hordes of street urchins, hoping to profit by a picked pocket or two, and, most regrettably of all, lawyers.
Violet nodded her head so forcefully that the artificial flowers on her bonnet swayed. “Yes, sir,” she said. “An hour she’s been already.”
“She asked me to meet her here,” Braden lied, reaching into his waistcoat pocket. “There’s no need for you to stay. I’ve brought my carriage. I’ll take her home. Why don’t you two go and have yourselves a nice cup of tea somewhere?”
Violet and the driver exchanged quick glances. Braden did not miss the appraising look the driver flicked at the wallet he’d drawn from his waistcoat pocket.
“Oh, sir,” Violet said. “That’s right kind of you, sir. Only we daren’t leave. If the Lady Bartlett were to find out—”
She broke off with a yelp. The driver had obviously kicked her.
“We’d be right happy to go for a cuppa,” the driver said, smiling politely down at Braden. “That’s very kind of you, sir.” And, when he noted the denomination on the bill Braden handed up, his eyes widened, and he added, “Very kind indeed!”
The carriage swung away a few seconds later, and Braden took up a position where it had stood, folding his arms and trying to ignore the ceaseless activity around him, much of which consisted of acts that, anywhere else in London, would have resulted in immediate arrest, but since they were in front of the courthouse, resulted only in guffaws, since all the constables were busy inside the building, restraining those who were receiving their punishments.
An ice cart pulled up, a rickety wagon drawn by a fleabitten nag, and its driver informed Braden that he was standing in his spot. Braden only looked at him, and after a little while, the iceman decided it wasn’t his spot after all, and stayed where he was, loudly hawking his product.
It couldn’t have been above a quarter of an hour later before Braden’s eye was caught by two spots of very bright color, and he saw Caroline and her friend, the Lady Emily Stanhope, emerging from the Old Bailey, their wide skirts cutting a swath through the crowd like sails on the open sea. He found, to his surprise, that he was waiting in some suspense to see what her reaction would be when she noticed him. Caroline Linford’s reactions to things were so varied—and so imminently satisfying— that he had begun to look forward to them rather the way a child looked forward to emptying a Christmas stocking.
He was not disappointed when Caroline, coming to the place where her carriage had been, stopped dead in her tracks and asked, “But where could Peters and Violet have disappeared to?”
Then her gaze fell upon Braden, and he saw those enormous brown eyes flare wider than ever. Then, like the windows of Westminster when the sun hit them, Caroline’s cheeks flared slowly redder and redder.
He grinned at her, inordinately pleased by her blush. It had been worth the wait.
“What,” she cried, her voice as hoarse as if it had been her, and not her friend, who’d been rallying at Trafalgar Square a few hours earlier, “are
you
doing here? And where are my driver and my maid?”
He shook his head at her. “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said. “So suspicious, for someone so very young. What makes you think I’ve done anything to your precious maid?”
“What else am I to think?” Caroline demanded. “She was here when I left her, and I come out to find her gone, and you in her place. Considering what you did to her last time—”
Lady Emily, who’d been watching the exchange with eyes only a little less wide than Caroline’s, interrupted.
“What?” she asked, eagerly. “What did he do to her last time?”
“I
didn’t do anything to her,” Braden replied, at the exact same moment that Caroline said, “He mesmerized her.”
Emily, glancing from Braden and then to her friend and back, finally said, “I think you two must want to be alone. Caroline, thank you, but I think I’d better find my own way ho—”
To Braden’s chagrin, Caroline reached out and seized her friend’s arm tightly. “I don’t,” she declared. “I don’t want to be alone with him at all.”
Emily looked as if she really would have preferred to have hailed a hack and been on her way. Braden didn’t blame her. He was certain he looked as desperate as he was starting to feel. Desperation was not something he was at all accustomed to experiencing when it came to women, but Caroline Linford seemed to have the ability to bring it out in him in droves.
Still, he tried to remember he was at least halfway a gentleman, and said, with a courtly bow, “I would be delighted to see the both of you home. I have my carriage, just over there, across the square. I’ll be happy to drop you—”
“What have you done with Peters and Violet?” Caroline demanded.
But before he could reply, they were interrupted yet again, this time by a hack that pulled up so abruptly beside the ice cart that the street urchins—who had gathered round the back of the wagon to steal fistfuls of the cool stuff—scattered like pigeons to all sides of the square.
A second later, the driver, looking delighted at having beat out his companions for this easy fare, was helping Emily, who’d flagged him down, then broken free of Caroline’s grasp, into the back of his cab.
Caroline abruptly abandoned Braden, and hurried toward her friend.
“Emmy,” she said, her face filled with confusion. “Mr. Granville said he would drive us both—”
Emily flung a glance at Braden over Caroline’s shoulder. “And it’s really very kind of him,” she said, quickly. “Thank you for your help, Caro, but I think the two of you ought to be alone to, er, work things out—”
Braden saw Caroline draw breath to argue, but Emily had already urged the driver to move on. When Caroline came back to him, her face was filled with indignation.
“Look what you did,” she said. “You frightened her.”
“Frightened her?” Braden was stunned. “How on earth could
I
have frightened Lady Emily?
She
frightens
me!”
Caroline glared at him. “Nonsense. You must have lifted your wretched eyebrow at her or something to scare her off, when you know—you know perfectly well—that I can’t be alone with you. Not ever again. In fact, I shouldn’t even be standing here talking to you. Someone might see us together—”
“Oh?” This was an interesting—a lesser man might have said alarming—turn of events. But Braden Granville said only, taking her by the hand, “Then we had better go. My carriage is—”
“No.” She pulled on the fingers he held. “No. Don’t you see? That’s all over. I was quite wrong ever to have come to you in the first place. I thank you for everything you’ve done—” She broke off, glancing up at him from under the shadow of her bonnet brim, then asked, almost shyly, “Did you have a chance to speak with my brother?”
“Indeed,” Braden said, gravely. “I did. You needn’t worry yourself any longer. He will not go to Oxford.”
“He will—” She turned to stare up at him wonderingly. “Really? Oh, thank you! Thank you so much. Only what did you say to him to make him agree to stay in London?”
“Oh,” Braden said, casually. “Nothing much. I don’t think he particularly wanted to go in any case, so it was just a matter of someone pointing out the advantages in staying put.”
Caroline knit her brow. “Well, I should think those would be obvious. But perhaps he needed to hear it from a man. Poor Tommy, with so many women clucking over him. He must feel quite henpecked.”
“He didn’t mention that,” Braden said.
“Oh.” Caroline seemed to realize with a start that he still had hold of her hand. She began to tug upon it again. “Well, I thank you. You’ve been very kind—especially about Tommy. But now I do have to go. You’ll have to forgive me. I—”
She was trying to wrench her hand from his, but he was too quick for her. In a second, he had her hand tucked into the crook of his arm, where he kept it tightly imprisoned.
“What,” he said, trying to sound calmer than he felt, “do we have here, then? Mutiny?”
She pulled ineffectually at her trapped fingers. “This isn’t amusing, Braden,” she said. “We haven’t any right to be doing what . . . well, what we’ve been doing. It’s better that we stop now and carry on as we were, and hope no one ever finds out how foolish we were being. . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she noticed the expression on his face, which must have been odd indeed, judging by the way she was staring at him. “What?” she asked, clearly alarmed. “What is it?”
He still hadn’t recovered from his shock, and could not, for the life of him, stop staring at her. Nor could he let her go. Not then. Maybe not ever. “What did you call me?”
Down went her eyelids as, abashed, she looked at the ground, her feet, anything but him. “Mr. Granville,” she said, breathlessly. “I meant Mr. Granville. Now let
go—”
“That’s not what you called me.”
“It’s what I
meant
to call you,” she said, still not meeting his eyes.
“Why
won’t you let go of me? I told you I can’t stay here with you—”
“Say it again.”
“Mr. Granville—”
“Say it again.”
“Oh, very well!” She stopped struggling and turned to face him, her cheeks pink now not from embarrassment, but the exertion of trying to break free of him. “Braden. Are you happy? I said it. Braden. Now, will you please let go of me?”