If the Viscount Falls (17 page)

H
ALF AN HOUR
later, as they left York headed for Newark, Dom stretched his legs out in Max's spacious and comfortably appointed traveling carriage. Another carriage behind them carried the ladies' maids and the duke's valet. It was all very civilized and proper, the very epitome of how gentlemen like them should travel.

A pity that Dom wasn't feeling particularly civilized and proper just now, and he certainly wasn't feeling like a gentleman. How could he, when the woman he ached to possess sat directly across from him, ignoring him?

Jane looked so pensive and aloof and pretty in the violet walking dress he'd wanted to strip off her earlier, that just gazing at her made his chest hurt.

The years had been kinder to her than to him. Not a single line creased her features, and not a thread of ­silver appeared in her unfashionably red hair . . . her beautiful, unruly red hair that he still itched to unpin and take down, to tangle between his fingers as he
tasted again those lush breasts of hers, with their pert russet nipples hardening while he . . .

He bit back an oath as his cock stirred. Jerking his gaze to the window, he fought for mastery over it. He had to stop thinking about her naked! Otherwise, he was going to be giving quite the show to his companions.

Clearly, after all these years, he had finally lost his mind. This infernal lust wasn't like him at all, and acting on it as he had earlier certainly wasn't. All right, perhaps he'd enjoyed a few intimate encounters with Tristan's actress friends in Paris some years back, but generally Tristan had always been the only one to do things like that.

Yet even now, Dom burned to touch Jane, caress Jane,
know
Jane. Even in the biblical sense.
Especially
in the biblical sense.

Meanwhile, she wanted nothing to do with him. Since their discussion in the inn, she hadn't said more than two words to him.

And before that, she'd flat-out refused to answer his question about her fiancé. What did that mean? That she didn't love the man? If her bloody fiancé was so bloody important to her, she'd certainly hidden it well while Dom was kissing and caressing her.

Unless she'd been using his lust against him, tormenting him for what she saw as his throwing her away years ago. Punishing him for refusing to apologize for doing what he'd had to in order to ensure her happiness.

That's the problem. You still really believe that.

Yes, damn her, he did! Though it was getting harder to do so, with the scent and taste of her filling his mind. That was probably what she intended, to show him what he'd lost. To make him regret it.

If that was her purpose, it was certainly working, blast it.

“There's one thing I've been wondering about, Jane,” Max said from beside him. “Why on earth did your cousin choose to marry George in the first place? I met the man once, and he didn't strike me as the sort to make a woman's heart quicken, if you know what I mean.”

Dom glanced furtively at Jane. Would she reveal the truth of what had prompted George's interest in Nancy? Would she tell his family what had actually happened that blasted night in the library?

If it was revenge she wanted, then that would certainly be a fitting one. Lisette would never let him hear the end of it.

“George could be very charming when he wished.” Jane looked pointedly at Dom. “I believe they grew interested in each other one night at a ball when he behaved very gallantly in defending Nancy from some . . . untoward fellow. That made a great impression on her, and apparently she made an even greater impression on George.”

Dom just stared at her. So it wasn't revenge Jane sought. Then again, perhaps she just felt that the truth of that “one night at a ball” would somehow not reflect well on either of them. She might be right.

“So, was Nancy's marriage to George a happy one?” Lisette asked. “Because I don't see how it could have been, if she's been engaging in an affair with the likes of Samuel Barlow.”

“She has not been engaging in an affair with anyone!” Jane cried. When the others fell into an uncomfortable silence, Jane tipped up her chin. “She hasn't, or I swear I would have known it.”

“Forgive me for saying so,” Max remarked, an edge to his voice, “but women can be adept at hiding such secrets, even from their families.”

Ah, yes, Max's mother had cuckolded his father, hadn't she? Dom had forgotten that. Max himself hadn't known it until Tristan uncovered it last year.

“Perhaps so,” Jane said hotly, “but not Nancy. I can imagine her flirting with Samuel, perhaps, but sharing his bed while also married to George? Never.”

“Because she
loved
him?” Dom said sarcastically.

“Because by then, she feared him.” Jane leveled him with a dark look. “Surely you can understand that, knowing him as well as you did.”

“Then she shouldn't have married him,” Dom said.

And she shouldn't have maneuvered that encounter in the library so that George saw her supposedly being assaulted by me.

Dom couldn't say that in front of the rest of them. But when he got the chance to be alone with Jane again, he would be sure to point it out.

“She was foolish to wed him, I'll admit,” Jane said. “She was swept up in the idea of becoming Lady Rath
moor. Sadly, my uncle's concerns over George's character could never convince her, because she thought him merely overcautious. Considering what had happened to—”

Halting abruptly, she jerked her gaze from Dom.

“To you?” Dom snapped, insulted that her uncle could have spoken of him and George in the same breath.

“Of course not,” Jane mumbled, but color stained her cheeks, making her freckles stand out, and he wasn't sure he believed her.

“Then to whom?” he snapped.

Myriad emotions crossed Jane's face, so many he couldn't sort them out. She opened her mouth, closed it. Paused a moment.

Then she squared her shoulders, as if coming to a decision. “To his sister—my mother. Considering what happened when Mama drowned.”

Lisette gaped at her. “Your mother
drowned
?”

“She fell into a swollen river,” Dom answered. What did Kitty Vernon's drowning have to do with anything? “Jane's father jumped in to save her, but he was pulled under, too, and they both perished. It was very tragic.”

“Oh, Lord,” Lisette said. “You didn't witness it, did you?”

“No, I was with my nurse.” Jane's gaze shifted to his. “But as it turned out, events weren't quite as I was led to believe when I was a child.”

The haunted look in her eyes struck a chill to Dom's bones. “What do you mean?”

“Mama did not ‘fall' into the river. She was pushed.”

“By whom?” Dom asked, though he began to fear he knew.

“My father.” Her voice held an edge. “He flew into a rage—not for the first time, I might add—over some misstep he fancied that Mama had made. Only after he realized what he'd done did he jump in to save her. But neither survived.”

A shocked silence fell on the carriage.

Dom could hardly take it in. Her mother was killed by her father? “But the official story—”

“Uncle Horace convinced the constable that with both parties dead, there was no point in dragging the rest of the family through a scandal. The two servants who'd witnessed the attack agreed to keep quiet, and it was ruled an accidental drowning.”

Jane tipped up her chin. “That's why Nancy would never,
ever
have cuckolded George. She knew just how dangerous an angry, unpredictable man can be when he's crossed. She wouldn't have risked having the same thing happen to her.”

Dom's head reeled. Her father had been such a monster? And she'd lived with the man until she was eight. Good God. Had he ever hurt
Jane
?

“Why did you never tell me this?” Dom asked.

“I only learned of it after you and I parted ways. It's not as if my uncle and aunt were going to admit such a thing to a mere child. But once George began courting Nancy, my uncle grew concerned. He begged me to keep her from making the same mistake Mama
had. That's when he told me the truth about his sister's death, about what Papa did to her.”

First she'd been saddled with what she'd thought was Dom's betrayal. Then she'd learned the truth about her parents. And he hadn't been there to help, to ease her way.

A tendril of guilt crept around his heart. He tried futilely to ignore it.

“I wasn't entirely surprised to hear it,” Jane went on coldly. “What little I did remember from my childhood was of Papa bullying Mama.”

“And you?” Dom asked hoarsely. “Did he ever—”

“No.” She released a shaky breath. “It was Mama he always . . . pushed around. I was shielded from most of their arguing by my nurse, but the few times I dined with them were very upsetting. He spoke so harshly to her, it made me cringe. Only years later did I come to understand that not all men treated their wives that way. Uncle Horace certainly didn't.”

“But still . . . good heavens, Jane,” Lisette said, grabbing her hand. “That sounds dreadful.”

After a quick squeeze of Lisette's hand, Jane released it. “And in the end, telling Nancy the truth about it didn't stop her from marrying George. She craved the chance to be a viscountess, and she thought him gravely misunderstood.”

She slanted a glance at Dom. “Uncle Horace could always see George for what he was. He knew about George burning the codicil, because I'd told him. He understood how heinous that was. But Nancy didn't see
it. And to her, George and my papa were nothing alike, anyway.”

“But she learned otherwise later?” Max asked, his eyes full of sympathy.

“I'm honestly not sure,” Jane admitted. “I'll grant you that George was prone to fits of temper, but I don't think he ever struck Nancy. Certainly he never did in my presence, and she never complained of mistreatment. Mostly he just . . . berated her. I suppose that can be just as bad.”

A troubled frown creased her forehead as she gazed out the window. “It seemed so to me, whenever Papa spoke cruelly to Mama. My uncle told me that Papa dictated every aspect of Mama's life—what she should eat, where she should go, to whom she could speak.” Her voice turned brittle. “She never did anything without his criticizing it or wanting to control it.”

“Oh, God,” Dom said as something occurred to him. “That's why the terms of your father's will were so strict. The bloody arse wanted to control
your
future from beyond the grave.”

She bobbed her head. “Papa intended to run my life as he'd run Mama's,” she said bitterly. “Of course, I didn't realize that until later. I just thought Papa had been overly protective, and Uncle Horace was being equally so.”

Steadying her shoulders, she lifted her gaze to Dom. “So you see, Nancy wouldn't have been foolish enough to take Samuel as a lover during her marriage. She might have ignored her father's warnings as a girl intent
on marrying a lord, but not after she'd experienced life with George.”

“On the other hand, that might have made her yearn for some happiness,” Max pointed out. When Jane scowled at him, he added, “I'm just saying that a woman, when pressed to the wall, sometimes reacts perversely.”

Jane bristled. “Perhaps, but no one has found any proof that she did.”

Dom conceded that with a nod. “Neither have we found any proof that she did not. And there's still the possibility that she became intimately involved with Barlow
after
George died.” His voice softened. “You can't ignore that, Jane.”

“No, but I don't know when she would have done so. I came to Rathmoor Park only a short while after George's death.” She flashed Dom a pleading glance. “And even if Nancy
did
have an affair afterward, it wasn't because she wanted to steal your inheritance for her child. She wouldn't do that.”

When Dom snorted, Max flicked a look at him. “But I gather that Barlow might.”

Jane sighed. “It's possible he would attempt it. Though he would never convince Nancy to go along with it.”

“So you know Barlow well, then?” Max asked. “I mean, you must. You're engaged to his brother.”

That made Jane bristle. “Neither Edwin nor I have seen Samuel in years,” she said frostily.

Lisette patted Jane's knee. “Max isn't accusing
you
of anything criminal.”

“I should hope not,” Jane said. “I realize that Nancy is my cousin and Samuel is my fiancé's brother, but I assure you I had nothing to do with it.”

The defensiveness in her voice cut through Dom's anger at this situation with Nancy. He hadn't meant to treat her as if she were somehow guilty of something. But between the way he'd tormented her about not telling him of the pregnancy and the way he'd taken advantage of her in the inn room, she probably didn't know what to think.

“No one blames you,” Dom said. “You've done nothing wrong, and I, for one, would never think that you had.”

An uncomfortable silence fell on the group that was all the more awkward because they knew they had a full day's journey ahead of them.

After a short while, Max flashed Jane a smile. “So, Jane, why don't you tell us how you met your fiancé? I've chatted with Blakeborough a time or two at my club. He seems a decent chap, if a little surly.”

“Max!” Lisette protested, with a furtive glance at Dom. “That's hardly an appropriate subject under the circumstances.”

“No, I'd like to hear it,” Dom said, keeping his eyes trained on Jane's face. “Blakeborough and Jane were already friends when I first met her, so I never knew what brought them together.”

And perhaps she would finally reveal the truth about what she felt for Blakeborough.