How could a mask of enchanting friendliness hide such wanton cruelty? The girl he had fallen in love with did not exist.
Unseeing, unknowing, he found that his rapid stride had carried him to the river, to the Whitehall Stairs. Here he had embarked with Jane—with
Lady
Jane—for that delightful day at Richmond. That was the day he had first suspected that she might be illegitimate. How wrong he had been, a pathetic fool from first to last!
He stood, brooding. Below the embankment, the dark Thames slid past, glinting here and there with reflected light. Many a troubled soul had sought oblivion in those black waters, but that craven escape was not open to him. He was the Earl of Wintringham. Pride in his family and his rank was all that was left to him. He swung away from temptation and retraced his steps up Whitehall.
At Charing Cross he took the righthand fork, then turned up St. Martin’s Lane. In the mean streets, alleys, and yards around Covent Garden, a mass of humanity swarmed in abject misery. Among them, surely, he ought to be able to count his own blessings. But, lost in a different sort of misery, he scarcely noticed the ragged waifs, the crippled beggars, the painted, half-naked, gin-reeking whores, who whined as he approached and jeered as he passed.
He walked until the short May night ended in a misty dawn. It was still too early for the City’s clerks and shopgirls to be about, but a watchman on his rounds stared at the tall, bareheaded, forbidding gentleman in evening dress.
Returning homewards, Edmund trudged past St. Paul’s—
Jane! Today we were to visit the bookshops of Paternoster Row. Today I was going to ask you to be my wife. Today, would you have ended the farce? Would you have mocked me to my face?
Alone, he made his way through the noisy bustle of Covent Garden Market, through the quiet, empty streets of Mayfair, and let himself into Wintringham House.
She had left him at Lady Wintringham’s mercy. The special licence, his defiant symbol of freedom, lay useless in a drawer in his dressing-room.
The servants were still abed. Edmund sought his own, tossed and turned for a couple of hours, then rang for Alfred.
“Good morning, my lord.” The valet marched across to the window, flung back the curtains to admit a flood of inappropriate sunshine, and said in a voice quivering with reproach, “My lord, Lady Jane cried herself to sleep.”
“What flummery is this!” cried Edmund.
Alfred turned round. “It’s no more than the truth, my lord. Upset already, she was, and then you ups and takes to your heels without so much as a how-de-do. It’ll be a nine days’ wonder, mark my words. Lady Jane Brooke rushing out of Almack’s in a fit of weeping.”
“So you are part of this conspiracy?” he asked bitterly. “My own servant laughing at my credulity! It is too late, Alfred. I am past believing any more lies.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you, my lord, honest, nor laugh at you. Haven’t I been with you near twenty-five years and stuck by you through thick and thin? Only, Ellie—Miss Ella, that’s Lady Jane’s abigail—she wouldn’t never have walked out with me, let alone told me nowt, if I hadn’t’ve promised I’d keep mum. It weren’t my secret, my lord, nor yet Ellie’s, and she’s as fond of her mistress as I...as I am of you, my lord, begging your pardon.”
The passionate speech, the need to believe in the one person who had never let him down, convinced Edmund that Alfred spoke the truth as he knew it. Whether he had the truth from Ella was another matter. Jane running from Almack’s in tears? Crying herself to sleep? His heart turned over at the thought.
Fitz would know, but he could not trust Fitz. Who was left to him? Selwyn must be aware of Lady Jane’s deception, yet it was impossible to imagine the sober lawyer willingly lending himself to a cold-hearted trick. He, if anyone, might help Edmund separate lies from reality.
“Have my curricle brought round.”
“But my lord, it’s only just past six!”
“At once.”
When he reached the house in Hart Street, the flustered maidservant showed him into the library.
“The master’s not down yet, my lord,” she said, wringing her hands.
“I shall wait.”
He paced for a few minutes, oblivious for once of the books surrounding him, until Mr. Selwyn arrived, swathed in a red and green tartan dressing gown. After one glance at his visitor’s face, the lawyer said over his shoulder, “Coffee.” Shutting the door, he took Edmund by the elbow, made him sit down, and poured him a glass of brandy.
“I shall not appreciate this as it should be appreciated,” Edmund said, attempting to smile.
“It will warm you. What has made you look as if you have seen a ghost?”
The syllables emerged with difficulty. “Lady Jane Brooke.”
“Ah.” Selwyn appeared to be oddly pleased with himself. “You had no suspicion? I had my doubts, even before we reached Wintringham Abbey, and when I voiced them I was enlightened by Miss Gracechurch, Lady Jane’s governess and companion—and soon to be my wife.”
“Your wife!” Edmund was jerked out of his absorption in his own troubles. “Yesterday I should have congratulated you most sincerely.”
“You need not scruple to do so now. I count myself extremely fortunate to have won the affection of an admirable woman.”
“Then I... Wait! You doubted Jane’s story
before
you reached the Abbey? She was already playing a part?”
“I understand that her carriage broke down, and being forced to continue on the Mail she thought it best, with Claudia...Miss Gracechurch’s concurrence, to travel incognito. Would you have believed a shabby young woman, arriving by Mail, to be the daughter of a marquis?”
“No,” he admitted, then frowned. “But why did she not tell me when we met here? It was then no more than a joke.”
“A joke?” Selwyn regarded him shrewdly. “I cannot feel that it is my place to explain Lady Jane’s motives. Put it down to a lawyer’s discretion, if you wish. Ah, here is our coffee. And toast, excellent, thank you.” He poured them each a cup and passed the plate of buttered toast. “You will feel the better for a bite to eat. And then, my suggestion is that you go to St. James’s Place and request an interview with Miss Gracechurch.”
His mouth full of toast, Edmund stared, shrugged, and nodded. Brandy, food, and coffee in their turn made him feel slightly more human; however, they helped his uncertainty not at all. He did not know what to think so, as he drove to St. James’s, he endeavoured not to think at all.
“Miss Gracechurch!” The butler’s jaw dropped. He reread Edmund’s card, consulted the long-case clock, glared at the footman who had summoned him from his breakfast, and, his face restored to proper woodenness, enquired aloofly,
“Now,
my lord?”
“Miss Gracechurch, now.” Despite Edmund’s haughty demeanour, despite the doubts that tormented him, the man’s perplexity almost amused him. Jane’s influence, no doubt. How could he live without her?
The Chinese salon he was shown into reminded him painfully of her liking for his Chinese chess set. The extravagance of red silk hangings and false bamboo reminded him that the daughter of the Marquis of Hornby must have countless eligible suitors who paid court to her in this room. Even if she did not despise him, the wealthy, captivating Lady Jane had no reason to choose an unsociable fool like himself.
He crossed to the window and looked out. The flower-filled garden reminded him of their first meeting in Hart Street. Nowhere could he escape her.
He turned as the door opened and Miss Gracechurch came in, her cap awry. The honey colour of her dishevelled curls reminded him of Jane’s sleek tresses, and of his absurd apprehensions that they might be mother and daughter.
“I understand I am to wish you happy,” he said harshly.
“Thank you, my lord. Will you be seated?”
Though she sounded calm, her hands were tightly clasped before her, white-knuckled. For the first time he recognized the difficulty of her position, as little better than a servant trying to curb the starts of a minx like Jane. He held one of the bamboo and ivory-brocade chairs for her and sat down opposite.
A minx like Jane—was that the whole story? Mischief gone awry, not cruel mockery? His anguish burst forth. “Why?” Unable to sit still, he strode back to the window, then flung round. “Why did she not tell me? At least when we met at Selwyn’s. We could have laughed together about her masquerade at the Abbey.”
“Would you have laughed, sir?’’
The quiet question arrested him. Again he cast his mind back to that meeting. Stiff, frowning—she had teased him about the frown—he had apologized for kissing her. If she had revealed then that she was
Lady
Jane, would he have thought it a joke? “Probably not,” he conceded. “But she had a hundred opportunities to explain later, after...after we became friends.”
“She did not dare.” In her agitation, Miss Gracechurch joined him and laid her hand on his arm, looking up earnestly into his face. “Once you were friends, she was terrified of losing you.”
He shook off her hand. “She has dozens of friends.”
“She has dozens of acquaintances, my lord. You cannot imagine how lonely her life has been. She was her mother’s pet until her brother was born. At the age of four—four! —she was exiled to the wilds of Lancashire, with none but servants for company. I went to her a year later, thank God, and then the marchioness tired of the boy, too, and sent him to us, until he was of age to go to school. Her father she saw at most once a year, her mother less often.”
Edmund turned away to hide his heartache. Four! All too clearly he remembered his own agony at eleven years old.
Miss Gracechurch took his silence for disdain. “Can you not understand that having come to...to be fond of you, she could not bear to risk your turning from her in disgust?”
“Disgust?” he exclaimed, startled.
“Did you not tell her once that you abhorred deceit?”
“Did I? Perhaps I did. You mean she feared my contempt as much as I feared hers?”
It was her turn to be startled, but as she sought for words, the door opened. The pale, wan face with reddened eyes that appeared around it was the most beautiful sight Edmund had ever seen.
* * * *
Five minutes earlier, that same sight, viewed in the mirror, had made Jane wince. “What a fright I look, Ella.”
“His lordship won’t care a groat, my lady, whether Miss Gracechurch has talked him round or no.”
“I cannot go down!” she cried, panicking. “I shall wait until Gracie sends for me.”
“Madam said get dressed and go down, my lady, and that’s what you’ll do. You’re in no fit state to think for yourself, that’s for sure. Now keep still, do, while I pin up your hair. There you go, you don’t want nowt fancy this morning.”
Starting down the stairs, Jane felt sick with apprehension. By the time she reached the first landing, she was certain her gay, periwinkle-blue muslin sprigged with white was quite the most inappropriate gown to wear on such a dreadful occasion. Mourning black would be more to the point. She half turned, ready to run back to the shelter of her chamber, but Ella stood there urging her on.
By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she had forgotten what she was wearing, forgotten her red-rimmed eyes. She stood shivering outside the door of the salon. Was he still there? What would he say? Would he look at her again with that bewildered hurt, quickly changing to cold fury, she had read across the width of Almack’s ballroom?
Squaring her shoulders, she pushed open the door.
And suddenly there was nothing to fear. His heart in his eyes, Edmund took two hesitant steps towards her and she flew into the safe haven of his arms.
For a long moment they simply held each other tight, her face pressed to his shoulder, his cheek resting against her hair. Then she pushed away a little, looked up at him, and asked, “Are you very angry?”
“I thought you were laughing at me, Jane.”
“I was, I do, you know I do, quite often, but only when you are odiously stiff and starchy,” she said hopefully. “And even when you are My Lord Winter, I love you anyway.”
His rueful smile reassured her. “I daresay I shall get used to your laughing at me, and even when you do, I love you anyway. I was going to ask you to marry me....”
“You
were!”
She stiffened in outrage, but he merely pulled her closer again.
“...And being an arrogant fool, I was quite certain you would have me.’’
“You really were going to ask plain Miss Jane Brooke to be your bride, your countess?”
“I went so far as to get a special licence. Then I discovered that your father is a marquis and I have scores of rivals.”
“Does that mean you will not ask me, now, in case I refuse?”
“I hate to waste the special licence,” he quizzed her.
“Hmmm. My mother would be pleased, I daresay, if we were to be married quickly and quietly and unobtrusively by special licence.”
“On the other hand, the banns read at St. George’s, Hanover Square, and a vast, elaborate, Society wedding would best please my aunt.”
“So the only question is, which of the two do we most wish to disoblige?”
He grinned, but said, “On the contrary, my dearest love, the only question is, how soon will you be my wife? Without you to laugh at me, I shall get stiffer and starchier until I cannot bend at the joints.”
“A telling argument, Edmund, and you are right, we must not waste the special licence. By all means, let us be married at once!”
Copyright © 1992 by Carola Dunn
Originally published by Harlequin
Electronically published in 2006 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228
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