More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (37 page)

He looked at her with dislike. “I would have her trussed up hand and foot if I were you, my lord,” he said. “And gagged too. And hire a guard to travel with you. I know a woman who would be willing to take on the task. My lady here would not play any of her tricks on Bertha Meeker, believe me.”

“How ridiculous!” Jane said.

But the earl was looking uneasy. “She always was headstrong,” he said. “She was never biddable despite all the kindnesses we showed her after her father’s passing. She was an only child, you know, and spoiled atrociously. I want her back at Candleford, where she can be properly dealt with. Yes, do it, Boden. Employ this woman. But she must be here within two hours or it will be dark even before I leave London.”

Jane had been feeling an enormous sense of relief. It had all been a great deal easier than she had anticipated. Indeed, she had been finding it hard to imagine that she had been so unexpectedly craven for so long. She should never even have been tempted to go into hiding, to give
in to the terrors of what might happen if none of the witnesses was willing to speak the truth of what had happened at Candleford that night.

Now once again terror assailed her. They were going to tie her up and send her back to Cornwall as a prisoner with a female guard. And then she was going to be tried for murder. The air felt suddenly cold in her nostrils.

“In the meantime,” Mick Boden said, his gaze fastening nastily on Jane again, “we will confine my lady to that chair so that you may have your dinner in peace. Your man will help me.”

Anger came to Jane’s rescue. She shot to her feet. “Stay where you are,” she commanded the Runner with such hauteur that for a moment he halted in his tracks. “What an utterly gothic suggestion! Is this your idea of revenge? I have just lost the final vestiges of respect I felt for you and your intelligence. I will accompany you to Candleford of my own free will, Cousin Harold. I will
not
be hauled there like a common felon.”

But the Runner had that length of rope out of his pocket again, and the valet, after one uneasy glance at the earl, who nodded curtly, took a few steps toward her.

“Tie her down,” the earl said before turning away to shuffle the papers on his desk.

“Very well.” Jane gritted her teeth. “If it is a fight you want, a fight you will get.”

But this time she could not scream. It would be too easy for the earl to convince would-be rescuers that she was a murderess resisting arrest. And of course she would lose the fight—she was pitted against two men with her cousin to add his strength to theirs if it became necessary. Within a few minutes she was going to find
herself back on her chair, tied hand and foot and probably gagged too. Well, she would not go down without leaving a few bruises and scratches on each of her assailants. All fear had vanished, to be replaced by a strange sort of exhilaration.

They attacked her together, coming around both sides of the chair and grabbing for her. She hit out with both fists and then with both feet. She twisted and turned, jabbed with her elbows, and even bit a hand that came incautiously close to her mouth. And without even thinking she used language with which she had become familiar in the past few weeks.

“Take your
damned
hands off me and go to the
devil,
” she was saying when a quiet voice somehow penetrated the noise of the scuffle.

“Dear me,” it said, “am I interrupting fun and games?”

By that time Parkins was hanging on to one of her arms while the Runner had the other twisted up painfully behind her back. Jane, panting for breath, her vision impaired by the hair that had fallen across her face, glared at her savior, who was lounging against the frame of the open door, his quizzing glass to his eye and grossly magnifying it.

“Go away,” she said. “I have had
enough
of men to last me at least two lifetimes. I do not need you. I can do very well on my own.”

“As I can see.” The Duke of Tresham lowered his glass. “But such atrocious language, Jane. Wherever have you acquired it? Might I be permitted to ask, Durbury, why there is a male person—neither one a gentleman, I fear—hanging from each of Lady Sara Illingsworth’s arms? It appears to be a strange, unsporting sort of game.”

Jane caught sight of Mrs. Jacobs hovering outside the door, looking as if she were bristling with indignation. And Jane herself was feeling no less so. Why was it that two grown men, who had been quite ferocious enough to overpower her just a minute before, were now standing meek and motionless, looking as if for direction to one languid gentleman?

“Good day, Tresham,” the earl said briskly. “Cousin Sara and I will be leaving for Candleford before dark. Your presence here is quite unnecessary.”

“I came of my own free will,” Jane said. “You are no longer responsible for me in any way at all, your grace.”

He ignored her, of course. He addressed the Bow Street Runner. “Unhand the lady,” he said gently. “You already have a nose that is painful to behold. Are you responsible, Jane? My compliments. I would regret to have to give you eyes to match, my fine fellow.”

“Now see here—” Mick Boden began.

But the ducal glass was to the duke’s eye again and his eyebrows had been raised. Much as it was a relief to have her arm suddenly released, Jane could feel only indignation against a man who could rule merely through the power of his eyebrows and his quizzing glass.

“Dismiss this man,” the duke instructed the Earl of Durbury. “And your servant. Should this contretemps draw the attention of other hotel guests and employees, you might find yourself having to explain why a supposedly murdered man is alive and well and living at Candleford.”

Jane’s eyes flew to the earl’s. He was looking thunderous and rather purple in the face. But for the moment he said nothing. He did not protest. He did not contradict what had just been said.

“Exactly so,” the Duke of Tresham said softly.

“One would equally hate it to become public knowledge,” the earl said, “that you have been harboring a common felon in the guise of mis—”

“I would not complete that sentence if I were you,” Jocelyn advised. “You will dismiss the Runner, Durbury? Or shall I?”

Mick Boden drew audible breath. “I would have you know—” he began.

“Would you indeed?” his grace asked with faint indifference. “But, my good man, I have no wish to hear whatever it is you would have me know. You may wish to leave now before I decide after all to call you to account for the arm-twisting I witnessed a short while ago.”

For a moment it seemed as if the Runner would accept the challenge, but then he replaced his length of rope in his pocket and stalked from the room with a great show of bruised dignity. The earl’s valet followed him out willingly enough and closed the door quietly behind him.

Jane turned on the earl, her eyes blazing. “Sidney is alive?” she cried. “And
well
? Yet all this time you have been hunting me as a
murderess
? You have allowed me to believe since I arrived here in this room that he is
dead
? How
could
you be so cruel? And now I know why we were to return to Candleford instead of facing a magistrate here. You still believe you can persuade me to marry Sidney. You must have windmills in your head—or believe that I do.”

“There is still the matter of a vicious assault, which kept my son hovering between life and death for many
weeks,” the earl retorted. “And there is still the matter of a certain sum of money and a certain costly bracelet.”

“Ah,” Jocelyn said, tossing his hat and cane onto a chair just inside the door, “it is gratifying to know that my guess was correct. Jardine
is
still an active member of this vale of tears, then? My congratulations, Durbury.”

Jane turned her indignation on him. “It was a
guess
?” she said. “A
bluff?
And why are you still here? I told you I did not need you. I will never need you again. Go away.”

“I have come to escort you to Lady Webb’s,” he told her.

Her eyes widened. “Aunt Harriet’s? She is here? She is back in town?”

He inclined his head before turning away to address her cousin. “It will be an altogether more convenient place than Candleford at which to call upon my betrothed,” he explained.

Jane drew breath to speak. How dare he! But Sidney was alive and well. Aunt Harriet was back in London. She was to go there. It was all over, this nightmare with which she had lived seemingly forever. She closed her mouth again.

“Yes, my love,” Jocelyn said gently, observing her.

“Your betrothed?” The earl was pulling himself together. “Now see here, Tresham, Lady Sara is twenty years old. Until she is five and twenty she may not marry or betroth herself to any man who does not meet with my approval. You do not. Besides, this betrothal nonsense is humbug if ever I heard any. A man of your ilk does not marry his whore.”

Jane watched wide-eyed as Jocelyn took a few leisurely strides forward. A moment later the earl’s toes
were scraping the floor for something against which to brace his weight while his cravat in Jocelyn’s hand converted itself into a convenient noose. His face turned a deeper shade of purple.

“I sometimes believe,” Jocelyn said softly, “that my hearing is defective. I suppose I should have it checked by a physician before punishing a man for what I merely suspect he said. But lest I find that I am unable to restrain myself despite good resolutions, I would suggest, Durbury, that in future you speak very clearly and very distinctly.”

The earl’s heels met the floor again and his cravat resumed its former function, though somewhat more crumpled and askew than before.

Jane would not have been human if she had been able to resist a purely feminine rush of satisfaction.

“Your permission must be granted before I may arrange my nuptials with Lady Sara Illingsworth?” Jocelyn asked. “I will have it then, in writing, before you leave for Cornwall, which I believe you will do no later than tomorrow morning?” He raised his glass to his eye.

“
That
I will not be bullied into doing,” the earl said. “Sara is my responsibility. I owe it to her dead father to find her a husband more suited to providing her lasting happiness than you, Tresham. Remember too that she assaulted and almost killed my son. Remember that she robbed me of both money and jewels. She must answer for those actions in Cornwall, even if only to me. I am her guardian.”

“Perhaps,” Jocelyn said, “these charges should be made in London, Durbury. Lady Sara will doubtless prove a difficult prisoner on the long journey to Cornwall. I will help you haul her off to a magistrate now.
And then the
ton
, desperate for novelty at this stage of the Season, will be able to enjoy the entertainment of witnessing a gently nurtured lady being prosecuted for whacking and felling a man twice her size with a book. And for taking fifteen pounds from her guardian, who had deprived her for longer than a year of the allowance to which she was entitled. And for removing from a safe a bracelet that was her own while leaving behind what is doubtless a costly hoard of jewelry that will be hers at her marriage or on her twenty-fifth birthday. The
beau monde
, I assure you, sir, will be vastly amused.”

The Earl of Durbury’s nostrils flared. “Are you by chance attempting to blackmail me, Tresham?” he asked.

Jocelyn raised his eyebrows. “I do assure you, Durbury, that if I were attempting blackmail, I would choose to hold over your head the threat that my betrothed will charge you with neglect of your duty to protect her in your own home and your son with attempted ravishment. I am sure at least one of the witnesses could be persuaded to tell the truth. And I would add for good measure that if by some misfortune Sidney Jardine’s path should ever cross mine during the remainder of both our lives, he will, within five minutes of such a meeting, be picking his teeth out of his throat. You may wish to convey that observation to him.”

Jane felt another rush of unwilling satisfaction. It ought not to have been so easy for him. It was not fair. Why could no one stand up to the Duke of Tresham? All the bluster drained out of Cousin Harold when he understood that his plan to catch her, to lure her back to Cornwall, and to blackmail her into marrying Sidney was not going to work. And that even withholding his
consent to her marriage would have consequences far worse than the loss of much of her father’s property and most of his fortune.

While Jane sat in indignant silence, totally ignored as if her very existence were irrelevant, permission for the Duke of Tresham to marry Lady Sara Illingsworth was duly given in writing after Mrs. Jacobs and the valet had been summoned as witnesses.

After that, there was nothing left for Jane to do but smooth the creases from her cloak, put on her bonnet and gloves with slow deliberation while Mrs. Jacobs picked up her bag, and then march out of the room and down the stairs and out to the waiting carriage, with its ducal crest and cluster of servile sycophants waiting to bend and scrape and pay him homage. Jane climbed inside and seated herself, Mrs. Jacobs beside her. If it were really possible for a human being to burst with fury, Jane thought, she would surely do it. And serve him right too to have blood and brains and tissue raining down on the plush interior of his expensive town carriage.

He vaulted in and took the seat opposite.

Jane sat with straight back and lifted chin. She directed her gaze beyond the carriage windows. “I will avail myself of your escort to Lady Webb’s,” she said, “but we will be perfectly clear about one thing, your grace—and Mrs. Jacobs may be my witness. If you were the last man on earth and you were to pester me daily for a million years, I would not marry you. I
will
not do so.”

“My dear Lady Sara.” His voice was haughty and bored. “I do beg you to have some regard for my pride.
A million years? I assure you I would stop asking after the first thousand.”

She pressed her lips together and resisted the urge to answer him with some sufficiently cutting remark. She would not give him the satisfaction of a quarrel.