Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress (19 page)

“Lord Chatfield,” Joss spoke up suddenly, “is of the opinion that the question matters more than the answer. But I believe in some cases the answer is of great importance indeed.”

He stood, then turned to face her. “Do you love me?”

***

For a moment, as Joss stood mostly clothed, painfully aroused, and ridiculously vulnerable, he thought she wasn't going to answer him.

Then she drew up her knees, making herself a tight ball of crushed silk and flowing hair, and asked, “Do you love me?”

Maybe Chatfield had been right. The question told him all he needed to know: that her answer was not
yes
. “God help me,” he said, “I think I do.”

The admission was both more and less than he had expected. It slipped from his lips easily, but the silence that succeeded was leaden. He had never loved before, never trusted a woman with so much of himself. It seemed it was too much for her.

And though this realization slashed and burned within him, he would not betray her trust. He would hope only that she might one day bestow it.

He pulled forth the chair from his desk and sank into it. If he sat with her on the bed again, he would never be able to restrain himself from pulling back that curtain of hair to see her beautiful skin, lightly freckled at the shoulders. He could never resist touching her, and if she reached for him once more, begged him to make love to her—

Well. That was just the problem. If she didn't love him, it would not be making love.

“What do we do now?” Her eyes were wide and puzzled.

“What I
want
to do is not in question.” He shifted his weight; his erection made his breeches uncomfortable. “What you want to do, I've no idea. And what
we
shall do? I don't know about that either.”

When her hands lifted, her breasts raised and bobbed enticingly. She twisted her hair again into a fat rope, exposing her peachy nipples to his view. “Can I not persuade you?”

“I'm sure you could. It takes every bit of my control not to remove your gown entirely and feast upon you again and thrust into you until we both scream with pleasure.”

A choked sound issued from her throat, and she dropped her rope of hair. “Why will you not, then? What's wrong?”

He shut his eyes and tried to remember every reason he could not. There were so many; a lifetime. “If you really want a reason—if this isn't just petulance—then it's because of my birth.”

In a few quick sentences, Joss sketched out the family history: his arrival so shortly after the hurried marriage of Kitty Sutcliffe to the charming wastrel Jack Everett, who had soon left his wife and son to pleasure-seek himself to death in France. “And so I believe that women should not be dallied with,” he finished. His past lovers, graceless and brief, had dallied with him. The encounters had slaked lust but left him feeling low.

“Not even if I want it?”

“Not even then.” He sighed. “If anything should happen—if there should be a scandal or a child—you would suffer far more than I. You would bear the loss of reputation or the burden of an unwanted child. I will not risk tying you down in that way. I won't have you forced into a choice you don't want.”

For if she suffered, he now knew, he would too. He would feel it as his own. And it was suffering enough to know that she did not love him back.

“But it's my choice to make,” she insisted.

“Not only yours,” he said. “It's mine too.”

And that would be the end of it, he knew. He had pressed his love upon her, and she had pulled away. She wanted a quick tumble; he wanted a lifetime.

Augusta Meredith could buy the world, and the possibilities radiating from her made him forget the shape of his own life. What should a man such as he wish for? His dreams were small out of necessity. When he overreached, he was sure to get pounded down.

“Come, let us do up your dress,” he said. “I should see you home now.”

Her only reply was silence; he could not tell whether it was wistful or angry or disappointed or…God only knew. Unresisting, she tolerated his hands at her waist, her chest, as he tugged her rumpled clothing into place. The hairpins were quite another matter. He picked up the scattered pins from the floor, but he had no notion how to fasten them into her hair again. In the end, he found a clean handkerchief and wrapped them up for her, setting the bundle in her lap.

“That's everything,” he said.

“Yes,” she said faintly.

And then the door slammed open. “Everett! I remembered how to find your lodging all by myself!”

Only one person could be so proud of such an inanity. “Sutcliffe.” Joss turned to greet his cousin.

The baron—now dressed in a coat of red-and-white pinstripes, like a candy stick—clapped Joss on the shoulder. “I got another of those blackmail letters, and I spied on the person who delivered it. And now I know where they're coming from!”

Just as abruptly as he had entered, he abandoned this topic to peer past Joss. “Your landlady said your cousin was here, but I knew it wasn't me, because I wasn't here yet. So I thought one of my sisters must be here instead. I wasn't expecting to see you, Miss Meredith. Wait, that's not right. What's your name?”

“She likes to be called Mrs. Flowers.” Joss had tried to block Sutcliffe's sight of the woman sitting on his bed, but it was no use.

“Is she an Indian cousin of yours?”

“I am no relation.” Augusta spoke up in a colorless voice.

Sutcliffe grinned. “You were fornicating! I say, were you finished? I brought my spyglass, but I never thought to turn it to your window.”

“We were quite finished,” Joss said firmly.

“Are you sure? I could give you a shilling.” The baron winked.

“There is no price,” Joss said, “that you could set on this encounter. Please go, Sutcliffe. I shall meet you at your house directly.”

Still craning his neck, the baron hesitated. Augusta said, “Do
you
want a shilling?” When he laughed, she rummaged for her reticule and tossed him a coin.

This did the trick: Sutcliffe bowed, then turned to depart. “I'll see you back at Queen Square!” Then he thundered down the stairs, whistling.

Joss strode to the door and banged it shut, then leaned against it. “I'm sorry. I forgot to lock the door. I must have been…distracted. When I saw you waiting within.” Sentences stumbled slowly; his head thudded with fatigue and thwarted desire and the heaviness of an unwanted heart.

“There's no point in shutting it now, if I ought to leave.”

“Stay if you like. As long as you like. I will let a servant know you'll require a Bath chair later, if you wish some time to compose yourself. I must go, though. If Sutcliffe has truly identified his blackmailer…”

There would be no more reason for Joss to stay in Bath.

Augusta spoke up in that same colorless voice. “You leave me very easily.”

This hurt, like a punch thrown after the fight was supposed to be over. “For what reason ought I to stay? He has a purpose for me right now, which you have made quite clear you do not. At least nothing with which I can assist you.”

“I'm not sorry for what I want of you.”

“And I'm not sorry for what I've done or what I haven't done. I can manage a bit of sorrow about the aftermath, though.” He needed to get away from her, now. Had she brought a cloak? Yes, there it was, tossed over his trunk. Impatience and anger welled up within him—she had everything, yet she wanted
more
—and he grabbed up the cloak and flung it in her direction. “I know you've never wanted anything from me but to own me. Other men, you might buy, but the cost of my pride is too high. Instead, I decided to give myself to you, and I was the one who paid.”

She stood, shrugging on her cloak and shoving the handkerchief full of hairpins into a pocket. The hood covered her tumbled hair; no one would know what had passed between them. “I could say the same to you,” she said. “But you would not take what I wished you to. Do you not think of what that costs me?”

That was too much; he laughed bitterly. “You're an heiress. You can afford it, can't you?”

For a long moment, she stared at him with those amber eyes. And then, without another word, she gathered the cloak about her and turned toward the door.

As she passed by the desk, the heavy fabric of her cloak brushed his glass vial of sandalwood oil. It teetered and rolled, then fell to the floor and shattered.

As he strode through the twilit streets of Bath, Joss's arousal was replaced by a deep gray feeling. If he had to put a word to it, it would be disappointment, maybe. Disappointment in Augusta for trusting him, but not enough. Disappointment in himself for hoping for a beginning, when what passed had instead felt like the end. He offered his heart, but because she could not decide its value, she had no use for it.

There was no time to lick his wounds and pity himself, though. He had work to do.

Once admitted to the baron's Queen Square house, Joss refused to meet with Sutcliffe in the spying room.

“I shall see him in the drawing room,” Joss told the flabbergasted butler. “That is, after all, where barons customarily entertain callers.
Not
in a random bedchamber that serves as host to nothing but a spyglass.”

When he established himself in the flower-papered drawing room, he requested a pot of tea, a plate of biscuits, and a tray of sandwiches from a servant. Why not a bit of gluttony? He was already full of lust, pride, wrath, and envy. Greed too, if one counted his wish for Augusta Meredith, heart and hand, mind and body.

Sloth was the only deadly sin of which he was not guilty today. At least that.

As an afterthought, he ordered a pot of hot water for the baron.

When Sutcliffe entered the lamplit drawing room, petulant about having to abandon his post at the spying room's window, Joss stood. “The hour is too dark for spying, Sutcliffe, and I am in a dreadful mood. But as it's not your fault that everything is horrible right now, I ask you calmly: what have you learned today about your blackmailer?”

“Oh, ho. I have a secret from you!”

“If you do, it is much more difficult for me to help you. And I did promise to help you.”

“I don't need your help anymore. I figured everything out all by myself, using my spyglass.” The tea tray arrived just then, and a confused expression crossed the baron's thin face. “What's this, then? I didn't order all this food. Take it away, servant.”

“Wait. Please.” Joss caught the eye of the footman balancing the tray above a tea table. “I ordered this, and you may leave it. Thank you.”

As the liveried young man bowed out, Joss added, “There's hot water for you, Sutcliffe. I know how you do enjoy a steaming cup of grass clippings.”

“By Jove, yes.” He drew out his ever-present pouch and shook forth the dry blades.

Once this oft-repeated process was complete, Joss prodded. “And the blackmail letter?”

Sutcliffe sipped at his teacup. “With my spyglass, I saw a young woman deliver it. She was dressed like a maid. Since she was pretty, I ran down the stairs and gave her a shilling.”

“Of course you did.”

“Then she went into the house next door. She didn't see me because I had closed the door and run back up to my spying room. I'm very fast on my feet.”

“Of course you are.”

“So,” the baron concluded, “the blackmailer must be Lady Tallant. Or one of her servants. It might even be that redheaded woman you were fornicating with.”

“I was
talking
. I was
not
,” Joss ground out, “fornicating.”

Well. Maybe he had been. Did it still count as fornicating if his mind was clouded by love, marriage, forever? Or if he had slaked his own passion not a bit?

“What were you talking about, then?” Sutcliffe asked.

“Nothing of significance.” True enough for the purposes of an answer. Joss's feelings for Augusta were not significant to her, and certainly her feelings for him were nothing of the sort.

Moving toward the fireplace, he stretched out his hands and let the warmth lick his fingertips. An eggshell-thin porcelain vase atop the mantel held a few hothouse blooms in shades of orange and red. Their scent struck him as heavy and oversweet; Joss turned his face away.

A spark popped from the too-high fire. Joss stepped from its embrace toward the settee of which Sutcliffe had once complained because its velvet upholstery dared show a bit of wear. Its frame was built of satinwood, decorated with acanthus carvings and gilt.

For all that costliness, it really wasn't comfortable to sit on. Or maybe his discomfort seeped out from within. “Nothing makes sense, Sutcliffe.”

“I agree,” said his cousin.
Second
cousin. “What reason would Lady Tallant have to blackmail anyone? She has pots of money.”

Joss shook himself back to the subject at hand. “Are you absolutely certain of the house the woman entered?”

“I can see everything with my spyglass.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

Sutcliffe blinked, then set down his cup on the tea tray. “You are a dreadful grump, Everett.”

“Habitually? Or only at the moment?”

Sutcliffe gave the question careful thought. “Habitually. But extra much at the moment.”

Joss had to smile at this. “Yes, I'd have to agree with you. Show me the letter the maid delivered, won't you?”

The baron tossed over a wadded paper which he had, apparently, stuffed into his coat pocket next to his precious pouch of herbs. As he'd indicated, it bore no marks of having been handled by the post. The hand-delivered note was gummed shut with a wafer; when unfolded, the text was simple.

On the last day of March, your lady learns all. You should hope, reckless fool, that she is more forgiving than I.

“No demand for money,” Joss mused. “Very odd.”

“It's good news, though, isn't it? If there's no more trouble over money, we can leave Bath at once.”

Joss refolded the paper, then rose to hand it back to the baron. “You are free to leave anytime. But if a maid from Lady Tallant's household is depositing threatening notes at your doorstep, then I ought to speak with those servants.”

“Or the redheaded woman.”

“She likes to be called Mrs. Flowers,” Joss said. “But as a matter of fact, I know the lady's writing, and this is not it.”

So easily, his thoughts flew back to Augusta. Had she made her way to Queen Square yet, or did she remain in Trim Street? He had left her behind in his lodging, a jewel amid dross. And he had fled her to sit on velvet in Queen Square, only a spyglass's span from where she belonged.

For the time being, they had switched worlds, though they would switch back soon enough. But he was not dross among jewels, and it was time to make that clear. Starting with Sutcliffe.

First he poured himself a cup of tea, adding lump after lump of sugar. Then he piled up a plate of food. And then he spoke. “At the end of the month, Sutcliffe, I will leave your service.”

The sentence was as easy to speak as had been his words of unwanted love to Augusta. This time, he didn't need to wait on an answer. It was not a question.

Sutcliffe stared at Joss for a long moment, then he laughed. “And here I thought you were in a gruff mood! Everett, you are a funny man.”

“Thank you. If you would like to hire a successor at once, I will do my best to train him in your”—
eccentricities, whims, addictions—
“preferences before I leave your service.”

The baron laughed again before gulping the rest of his beverage. Joss took a sip of fragrant tea. He grimaced—he had added too much sugar, an unaccustomed luxury. But who could pass by a chance for unaccustomed luxury? Drinking it down, he then turned his attention to his plate of food.

Sutcliffe followed his every gesture with wary blue eyes. “You're serious?”

“Quite serious.” Joss bit into a sandwich, savoring the fine-textured bread, the salty meat. Why had he never ordered his own tea tray before? The baron did not mind. He did not protest beyond his initial confusion. Why had Joss resigned himself to being starved in any way?

He had been party to his own servitude. He had let himself be pushed to the side, not pushing back.

He set the sandwich down, appetite gone.

Sutcliffe's usual armory of fidgets stilled, his shoulders slackened. He looked like a marionette whose strings had been dropped. “Everett, how
could
you?”

The same question Augusta had once asked Joss when they were skating perilously through a conversation about lovers. His answer now was not much different. “There's no longer any hope of meaning.” He smiled. “I don't leave you with ill will, cousin. But I don't think we can do each other any good anymore.”

As Sutcliffe poured out another cup of hot water, his hand shook, rattling porcelain against porcelain. “You called me cousin. Why now?”

“It's what you are to me. It's what I am to you.” Joss set down his plate, leaning forward. “I should have called you cousin much more. I should have destroyed the
somalata
when you were a youth, as soon as your asthma no longer troubled you. I should have—well, I should have done many things differently. As should you have. But I suppose we formed each other over the years.”

The baron looked bewildered. “But…what will I do?”

What
will
I
do
, Sutcliffe wondered.
Not
what
will
you
do
. Well. One could not expect a perennial dependent to grow selfless all of a sudden.

“You'll be a baron. And I hope you'll go home to your baroness and treat her kindly. She's a good wife to you.”

Sutcliffe looked much struck. “She is, isn't she? Do you think—”

A knock at the door interrupted this sentence. It preceded the entry of the butler, who bore a note on a silver salver. “A message for Mr. Everett.”

“Thank you.” Joss took the note, insides dancing a cotillion. Augusta had written, she said yes, he would meet her tonight…

No, she had not written: the angular script across the note was unfamiliar. His insides dropped into sedation again, though his fingers tingled from the aftermath of the sudden dance as he cracked the seal.

To Mr. Everett, who is at this moment in company with Lord Sutcliffe—

In accordance with your request that I investigate the matter of Lord Sutcliffe's difficulty, I have made certain inquiries. As a result, I have summoned Lady Sutcliffe to Bath. She will arrive at the Pump Room by private carriage tomorrow morning. The matter of Lord Sutcliffe's difficulty will, I am confident, be sorted out at that time.

It is possible that the baroness will wish to remain in Bath following her journey; it is also possible that she will not.

At your convenience, we shall meet to discuss the matter of how you shall pay for the service I have provided.

Yours,

Chatfield

“Chatfield,” Joss murmured. “Good Lord, he works quickly. And he really does know everything.”

Such wonders could be achieved with determination and deep pockets. Working as an information hunter for Lord Chatfield would bring variety to one's life, to say the least.

“Let me see.” With a whoop, Sutcliffe snapped up the note.

“If Chatfield knows I am here,” Joss mused, “then he might also know about your most recent blackmail letter, or—hmm. No, it's too much to hope he has news of it.”

“Why would he not? The maid brought the letter before you arrived. So if he knows you arrived, then he knows about the maid, which means he probably knows about the letter.”

Joss's brows knit. “That…actually makes sense.”

“Do you know where he lodged? Do you think he's watching the house right now? Perhaps we should wave out the window.”

“No.” Joss caught Sutcliffe's wrist before the baron could parade before the lamplit window in his candy-striped coat.

Sutcliffe sank to the settee at Joss's side, the note dangling limply from his fingers. “I wonder whether Lord Chatfield has a proper telescope.”

“I wonder what you think of your wife's arrival.”

“What about my wife?”

“She will arrive in Bath tomorrow. And one way or another, Sutcliffe, the truth will come out.”

“Why?”

“Because somehow her arrival is tied to the blackmail. And you are quite sure someone next door is connected with it.” Joss shook his head.
The
first
letter
had
been
posted
in
London
. Impossible. “It must be one of the household servants. The blackmailer's penmanship is rather rough, isn't it? That might fit. Did any of them come from Lady Tallant's London household, or were they all hired in Bath along with the house?”

“How the devil should I know? I've no head for anything but magic tricks and pretty ankles.”

This was so suddenly honest that the two men blinked at each other, equally surprised.

“Yes, well.” Joss cleared his throat. “Lord Chatfield, who has a nasty habit of being correct about things, seems to think Lady Sutcliffe's arrival will unravel this whole mess.” He drew in a deep breath. “You'll have to tell your wife about Jessie. The
maid
who will bear
your
child
in about two more months,” he added sharply, seeing his cousin's expression turn bewildered.

“But Lady Sutcliffe will get angry with me and cut off my funds.”

“And so the means justify the end,” Joss murmured. When Sutcliffe looked yet more puzzled, he added, “She
should
get angry. And so should Jessie. You treated both women terribly; you betrayed their trust.”

So much, so many women. Was Jessie the first servant to carry a baby by Sutcliffe? Whether he promised her love or forced her—whether it began with a great lie or a great wrong—it ended in her suffering.

Joss's mother had died of measles when he was just a boy. Would she have died so young and lonely if Jack Everett had never got her with child? What if she had been able to marry someone wealthy and kind instead, someone who would cosset her and adore her?