Authors: Arpan B
He
should have thought of this method years ago. All he'd ever needed to
do to get a woman naked was to rescue her from Bedlam.
Finally
Jane managed the sleeves and rose to her feet completely. Her head
popped out and Ethan released the dress enough to do the tiny buttons
up the back.
Oddly,
his hand shook far more this time than when he'd undone them for
Bess.
Jane
was looking down at herself in dismay. Ethan tried not to be irked
that she ignored the fact that she was wrapped in his arms.
"I've
not half the bosom to fill this bodice," she hissed.
Ethan
finished the buttons at last and clapped the fallen bonnet on her
head.
"No
one will notice," he said absently, as he tried to tie the
ribbons beneath her chin to hide her face. Damn his trembling hands!
What the hell was wrong with him?
Jane
cocked her head at him. "Bess," she said in a normal voice.
"Will the guard notice I've lost a stone in bosom?"
Bess
popped up behind Jane, peeking between the bars. "Too right he
will. I doubt the bloke ever even looked at my face."
"What
do you think then?" Jane was still talking to Bess, her voice
calm as if she were discussing the weather in her own parlor. "Have
we something I can fluff myself up with?"
Bess
considered her with narrowed eyes. Ethan gave up on the ribbons. He
suddenly felt a bit left out, even though Jane still stood within the
circle of his arms.
"I
know," Bess said. She crouched on the floor for a moment,
fumbling beneath her hem. Then she stood with twin bundles of fine
knitted silk in her hands. "My stockings," she said as she
handed them through the bars to Jane. Then Bess quirked a brow at
Ethan. "They cost fifteen pence apiece. You can add them to my
account."
Ethan
nodded. "I will, Bess." He looked down at Jane's freshly
altered bodice. "Heavens, those are fluffed. Do you lot do that
sort of thing often?"
Both
Jane and Bess snickered. "If they only knew, eh, duchess?"
Bess said to Jane.
Ethan
looked up to see the guard approaching again. "Time to go."
Jane
reached a hand through the bars to clasp Bess's. "Be safe,"
she urged her.
Bess
blinked. Ethan could imagine her surprise. Usually women like Jane
would cross the road before they'd allow their skirts to brush
Bess's. "I will that," Bess said huskily. "Best you be
off, duchess."
Jane
tucked a last strand of hair beneath the bonnet and tied the ribbons
with swift precision that mocked Ethan's attempt. She took a deep
breath and smiled at Ethan nervously. "Do I look all right?"
She
looked beautiful, bizarre gown, shadowed eyes, and all. She looked
like everything he'd ever wanted and knew he'd never have.
Ethan
smiled softly down at her. "You look—"
"Oy!
I seen it all, you know!" They all turned to stare at the woman
in the next cage. She had her arms crossed over her flat chest and a
smug look in her eye. "What's to keep me from telling that guard
what you done?"
Ethan's
breath left him. Damn and blast. The old cow was going to give it all
away.
Bess
bridled. "Mayhap the fact you're as mad as a gin tinker?"
Jane
held up a hand to quiet Bess. The guard was close enough now to hear
them. She leaned closer to the other woman's cage. Ethan could barely
hear her—something about "bread" and "every
day."
The
woman nodded and sneered at Bess, who rolled her eyes in response.
"Yes, the old sot can 'ave my bread," she agreed. Then she
ducked down to the back corner of the cage, assuming the leave-me-be
position that Jane had held most of the day. The approaching guard
didn't so much as spare her a glance.
"I've
got to put you out now, sir," he said diffidently.
Ethan
wasn't fooled. Damn right he ought to be diffident. Earlier, Ethan
had slipped the fellow half a crown to be left with his inamorata.
If
he slipped him any more, the man might become suspicious that
something more than public licentiousness was going on. So Ethan
merely nodded dismissively and offered Jane his arm.
Her
hand was trembling when it came around his bicep. He noticed that she
kept her face down and her chest high. The guard seemed duly
appreciative and they passed him by without incident.
At
any moment, Ethan expected discovery and outcry. Down the stairs,
along the lower gallery to the heavy double doors to the anteroom. No
cry came. The two statues loomed over them like the final guards
preventing their escape. Ethan pressed one hand over Jane's as they
stepped through the front door of Bedlam to the top of the grimy
marble steps outside.
He
was surprised to see that the watery afternoon sun was still quite
high. What had seemed like suspenseful hours had only been minutes.
And
now Jane was free—or at least she would be once they drove out
through those menacing gates.
Uri
was waiting in the drive with the carriage, one hand ready at the
door. Ethan felt Jane pull at his arm. He could feel the urgency in
her, the compulsion to run for the carriage in a final race for
escape.
"Easy,
love," he said softly. "You're a bored demirep, remember.
You've got all evening to cross that drive."
He
felt her inhale carefully and her death grip eased. She descended the
stairs with an air of ennui worthy of the stage.
Uri
bowed and helped her into the carriage. Ethan nodded at the footman
as he climbed in after her. Jeeves trusted Uri and, for whatever
reason, Ethan trusted Jeeves.
"Take
us home," he ordered.
Uri
nodded and soon the carriage began to roll. Ethan looked down to
discover that at some point in the last few moments, Jane had taken
his hand in hers, fingers entwined. Though she stared out the window,
her expression apathetic, her fingers clutched his with all the power
of her fear.
Ethan
marveled. She'd seemed so cool during the escape from the cage and
the donning of the dress, he'd almost forgotten how frightened she
must be.
And
rightly so. Bedlam was no place for a lady. Nor for Bess, for that
matter.
They
drove sedately beneath the arched iron gateway and the gatekeeper
closed the gates behind them, shutting out the sane world from that
of madness for yet another day.
Jane
started slightly at the deep clang of the closing gates but otherwise
remained still as they drove toward the river and the bridge.
Ethan
leaned over but could not see her face for the depth of the bonnet.
"Janet? Are you all right?"
Slowly,
she unlinked her fingers from his and raised her hands to the bow
beneath her chin. She calmly undid the ribbon and pulled the bonnet
from her head, setting it carefully aside on the seat beside her.
Then
she flung herself into Ethan's arms.
"I
knew you'd come," Jane cried. "I knew it!" Then she
leaned back and glared tearfully at Ethan. "How could you leave
me there?"
He
pulled her close. "Shh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Janet. I didn't
know. I thought it was a good place, a safe place. I only wanted to
get you away before your uncle did something terrible—"
She
shuddered. "I think I would almost rather have been killed,"
she said, her voice low and horrified.
He
pushed her bonnet back to cup her cheeks in his hands. "You
don't mean that. You should never, ever mean that."
Her
face crumpled. "You don't understand, you don't know…"
Her wails disintegrated into nonsense as she dissolved into sobs.
"What?
What don't I understand? I know it was an awful, frightening place,
but you knew I was coming back for you, didn't you?"
She
shook her head furiously, wiping at her face with the back of her
hand until he pulled out his handkerchief. For several long moments,
she sobbed helplessly into it as he held her, stroking her hair and
saying he knew not what to comfort her.
Finally,
she drew a deep broken breath, and then another. She stiffened a bit
in his arms so he released her. Wiping her eyes and nose with his
handkerchief, she straightened to gaze at him with reddened eyes.
He
smiled gently. "Your nose is running, Janet."
She
laughed damply and dabbed at it. "I fear this is ruined,"
she said about his handkerchief.
"Better
it than you," Ethan told her.
She
shook her head. "You must think me the most ridiculous infant."
"Why?"
He stroked a damp strand of hair back from her cheek. "Because
you held on with gritted teeth and iron will until
after
you were out of danger? There are soldiers on the battlefield who
cannot claim that."
She
sighed. "It was not so bloody and awful as that… only
grim and loud and cold. I think I was safer in the cage than out, to
be truthful."
"Then
what is it? Tell me, Janet. Help me understand."
She
took a deep breath. "It is something of a family secret. Lord
Maywell did not want anyone to know, for it could have hurt my
cousins' chances for marriage…"
"Yes?"
She
looked him in the eye. "My mother went mad. After my father died
and his brother Christoph became marquis. She lost everything that
she'd built her life around.
"We
were sent to the Dowager House—a grand name for the hovel that
awaited us. Since the practice of keeping the previous duke's wife
out of sight on some distant estate had fallen by the wayside a
hundred years ago, it quickly became apparent that no one had put one
penny into the property since then. It was a damp and rotting ruin."
Jane
shrugged. "Mama simply never accepted it. She would pretend—or
believe—that nothing had changed, that my father was only
briefly away, that we still lived in the grand house on the estate,
that we still had servants to take care of every little thing, that
we were not near starving and freezing every winter—"
She
shook her head as if to erase all that. "I did my best to take
care of her and to pick up after her. I traded everything in the
Dowager House that I could, trying to keep us in food and coal."
She laughed shortly. "What I couldn't trade or sell, I burned in
the hearth for heat. It was difficult at first, but then my uncle
stopped sending even the smallest stipend—" Jane clenched
her fists. "Then it became much worse. And Mama couldn't help.
Her will was too weak, and her mind."
Ethan
listened in horror. "Jane, how old were you?"
She
folded the battered handkerchief neatly. "My father died when I
was fourteen."
"Good
God." Ethan was devastated. He had thought his childhood stark
and unloving, but he'd never gone hungry in his life. He could see
her, thin little strawberry-blond child, picking up after her mad
mother, keeping the poor woman from harm, carrying silver and china
and whatnot to trade for food…
"Oh,
Janet." He pulled her into his arms again, tucking her head
beneath his chin. "Oh, poor little Janet."
He
could feel her shake her head. She pulled away. "No, I survived.
I know how to master hardship." She looked away, biting her lip.
"It is madness which frightens me. To fade away like that…
that I could not bear."
God,
what had he done to her? He had thrown her into her own personal
hell. If he lived forever, he swore he would never let anyone hurt
her again.
Especially
not him.
"Yet
your mother recovered," Ethan reminded her. "I saw that
letter. You weren't writing to a madwoman. She recovered her mind,
and you recovered your fortune, did you not?"
Jane
looked down at her hands. "I am considered to be quite the
heiress now," she said obliquely.
She
raised the handkerchief to her eyes again, then smiled damply up at
him. "I'm sorry. It is only that I am so very weary…"