Educating Caroline (37 page)

35

“
F
or God’s sake, Jacks,” Hurst said, irritably. “Get away from the window. Someone will see you.”

Jacquelyn stayed where she was, gazing down at the pedestrians on the street below. “What does it matter?” she asked, bitterly. “Granville’s broken it off. Who cares if anyone sees me here?”

“I care.” Hurst glared at her in annoyance from the chaise longue upon which he reclined. “You know
la
Bartlett’s been in and out all day. She’ll have another one of her fits if she looks up and sees you here. You may have lost your fatted calf, my sweet, but I still have mine. And I intend to keep it that way. I would think you’d support me in that. After all, you’re to benefit from the Linford coin as well.”

Jacquelyn sighed and moved away from the window, sitting down in the chair she’d pulled up close to the edge of his chaise longue.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Jacquelyn said. “Why would he shoot you like that, if he didn’t know about us?”

“I told you, Jacks,” Hurst said, for what felt like the hundredth time. He had uttered this lie so often, he could do it by rote now. “The fellow came stalking in, and quite without preamble, shot me in the leg. There was no discussion.”

Hurst twisted uncomfortably on his couch. He couldn’t, of course, tell the truth. If he told her that he had been the one who’d gone for his pistol first, Jackie would call him ten kinds of a fool. Because of course Granville was faster with a pistol than any man in England. Going for his gun had been a mistake. A grave mistake.

But a worse mistake would be telling Jackie what had caused him to go for his gun in the first place: Granville’s warning that he knew all about what the marquis had been up to with The Duke, and that he had better get out of town, if he knew what was good for him.

No, he could never tell anyone that, not even Jackie. Especially not Jackie. If she knew that her lover was actually a notorious murderer’s boot-licking lackey . . . well, her pretty derriere would not warm that seat cushion a second longer. Daughters of dukes—even penniless ones— did not rub shoulders with petty criminals like himself.

“I tell you, Jackie,” Hurst said, raising his voice querulously. “I tell you, I’ve never been more surprised in my life. I ought to go to the law.”

“Then why don’t you?” Jacquelyn asked, flatly.

“Don’t want to distress the in-laws,” he said. “Looks bad and all, right before the wedding, me draggin’ Granville through the courts. Embarrassing, and all that. Fetch me another glass, will you, darling?”

Jacquelyn complied, though with ill grace, going to his sister’s sideboard and pouring him a glass of his brother-in-law’s best sherry. “You aren’t telling me the whole story,” she complained. “There’s something missing from all this. It defies logic. Why should Braden Granville stride into your room and shoot you? There’s only one explanation for it.”

“Jackie,” Hurst said, tiredly, taking a sip from the glass she brought him. “He never uttered your name.”

“Well, it’s the only explanation that makes sense.” Jacquelyn settled back into her seat. “He broke it off with me the night before. He came after you next. He must know the truth about us.”

“Impossible,” Hurst said.

“Someone must have seen us. And I wager I know when. I
told
you it was too risky, meeting like that in the old woman’s sitting room. But no, you simply
had
to see me.”

Hurst, forgetting his anxiety for a moment, relived their touching reunion in Dame Ashforth’s sitting room. “It
was
lovely,” he said, with relish.

“But hardly worth your losing your plumber’s daughter,-and me my gunsmith.”

Hurst, brought back to the moment, stirred uncomfortably on his couch. His leg was smarting rather badly, for all he’d kept off of it, as Lady B’s surgeon had recommended.

“I haven’t lost my plumber’s daughter,” Hurst said.

“Not yet,” Jacquelyn said. “But it shouldn’t be long. I swear she’s in love with Granville, and it’s clear he returns the feeling. In fact, that might even be why he did it. Shot you, I mean.”

Hurst restrained a snort at the idea of anyone being in love with Caroline Linford, who was a pleasant, but thoroughly dull girl—compared to his Jackie, anyway.

“It’s too late for me, barring a miracle,” Jacquelyn went on, “but if you do anything to jeopardize this match with the Linford girl, I’ll shoot you myself, so help me God . . . and you can be sure
I
won’t spare any vital organs.”

Hurst licked his lips. “You can be very cruel when you want to be, Jacks,” he said, admiringly.

She leaned forward to run a finger along his jawline. “You haven’t,” she purred, “the slightest idea. . . .”

A low tap sounded on the door, and a second later, a mob-capped parlormaid appeared, bobbing an apologetic curtsy.

“Beggin’ your pardon, my lord,” the child said, “but Lady Caroline Linford’s here to see you.”

If someone had prodded her with a stick, Jacquelyn would not have moved more quickly toward the door to an adjoining room.

“Good God,” she cried. To the maid, she said, “Show her in. Show her in at once.” To Hurst, she hissed, “Don’t bungle this, Hurst, do you hear? She’s our only hope.”

And without another word, Jacquelyn slipped out of the room.

Hurst, on his chaise longue, sighed. Jacquelyn had never spoken a truer word. The problem was, she didn’t know just how dire the situation had become.

Caroline appeared, looking as she always did, virginal and sweet in blue and white. He had the satisfaction of seeing her pause on the threshold, quite taken aback by his altered looks. Well, and why not? While the bullet had gone right through the fleshy part of his thigh, quite missing bone and a vital artery—almost as if his opponent, Lady B’s surgeon had remarked, had purposefully tried to spare him undue damage—it was still a wonder he was alive. Few who’d faced Braden Granville’s pistol could make that claim.

“Hurst,” Caroline said, as she recovered herself, and hurried to his couch. “Oh, Hurst, I’m so sorry. Are you very badly hurt?”

Hurst fingered the blanket he’d pulled up over his injured leg, its bandage being not quite as impressive as he would have liked. “I’m all right, I suppose,” he said, weakly. “It’s a flesh wound, really.”

Caroline, who’d sunk down onto the chair Jacquelyn had recently vacated, paused in the act of stripping off her gloves. “A flesh wound?” she echoed. “But my mother intimated it was much more serious than that.”

Hurst—remembering that this was the image he’d hoped to convey to the Lady Bartlett when she’d appeared in his rooms literally minutes after Granville had left them, wondering if the marquis had seen her son— allowed his head to loll back against the chaise longue’s velveteen cover.

“Well, I did lose a good deal of blood. . . .” he murmured.

Caroline removed her gloves, and looked at him sorrowfully.

“And it was Braden Granville,” Caroline said, “who did this to you?”

“Indeed,” Hurst said. “He must have been having an off-day, to have missed my heart by such a degree. He’s quite a good shot, I understand.”

Caroline’s lips, which were quite unlike Jacquelyn’s, being neither full nor rouged, pursed. Hurst recalled having seen her mother wear the exact same expression, whenever a dish that was not to her liking was served to her at dinner parties.

“You’re lucky,” Caroline said, “that he didn’t kill you.”

Hurst nodded. “I know it. I didn’t even have a chance to defend myself. He simply walked in and—and began slapping me about. He said a good many ugly things, slandering my person—and . . . and yours, Caroline.”

Caroline blinked at him. “Me? Mr. Granville was slandering me, you say?”

“Quite. I couldn’t stand for that, of course. No man speaks that way about the future Lady Winchilsea. I almost challenged him then and there. But instead, next thing I knew, he’d drawn one of those pistols of his, and shot me.”

Caroline looked down at the ring on her finger—his grandmother’s ring. “How perfectly horrid for you,” she said, tonelessly.

“I didn’t get really angry,” Hurst said, “until I heard the drivel he was spewing about you, Caroline. All about how I was lowering myself, marrying you, a girl whose title was only a generation old.”

“I see,” Caroline said.

Hurst reached out, and took one of her hands in both of his, and laid upon it what he fancied was quite a passionate kiss. “There’s nothing,” he said, emotionally, “I wouldn’t do to protect your honor, Caroline.”

He had turned her hand over and begun to rain kisses down upon her palm before Caroline was able to withdraw her fingers.

“I see,” she said again. “Well, the whole thing sounds as if it were very trying. I’m sorry it happened to you. Did the surgeon say how long it would be before you could walk again?”

“I shall be able to walk down the aisle on our wedding day,” Hurst said, letting his blue eyes rest warmly upon her. It was a look that had driven the chambermaids at Oxford quite frenzied with lust, and he supposed it ought to work just as well on the Caroline Linfords of the world. She was, after all, a plumber’s daughter, and that was quite near a chambermaid, in Hurst’s way of thinking. “Never you fear, my love.”

“Well,” Caroline said. Rather to his astonishment, she did not seem at all frenzied by his loving look. “That’s what I’ve come here to talk to you about. I had heard, of course, that you were rather more ill than you appear to be. And while I am delighted to find that you are not, as reported, at death’s door, I fear the fact that you are not means I must discuss something rather . . . unpleasant with you.”

“Unpleasant?” Hurst laughed, as if he could not imagine-any such thing. But his laughter had a nervous quality to it. Because inwardly he was thinking,
Oh, no. She knows. Tommy must still be alive. Alive and hiding out somewhere. He must have gotten a message to her. He must have seen the pistol. Stupid. Stupid to have missed!

“I’m afraid, Hurst,” Caroline began, in apologetic tones, “that our wedding is going to have to be called off.”

Hurst stared at her. It was his own fault, of course. He shouldn’t have missed. How could he have been so stupid as to miss? If only the idiot boy hadn’t tripped!

“But.” Hurst managed to rouse himself from the paralytic stupor into which her words had sunk him. “But the invitations . . . five hundred of them . . . already sent out.”

“Yes, I know,” Caroline said. “And that
is
a shame. I am having a letter drawn up that we’ll send to our guests, of course. As for the gifts, I think it would be best if we returned them—”

“No,” he said, in a low voice.

She looked up, her brown eyes questioning. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.” And Hurst, who had never felt anything much at all for Caroline Linford, felt such an overwhelming dislike—maybe even hatred—for her, he nearly shook with it. “You are marrying me, Caroline, next week, and that’s the end of it.”

Was he imagining things, or had there been a flicker of anger—actual
anger
—in those normally gentle brown eyes?

“No,” Caroline said, with admirable calm. “No, Hurst, I’m afraid not. You see, I know why Braden Granville shot you.”

He felt as if an icy bucket of water had been thrown over him. He lay there, utterly stunned.

“You . . . you
know?”
he managed to stammer.

“Yes,” Caroline said. “Not that I am in any position to blame you.”

This was more than he could reasonably assimilate. He had
shot
at her brother—the boy still hadn’t come home, according to Lady B, and might, for all anyone knew, be wandering the streets of London with a head wound—and she didn’t consider herself in any position to
blame
him for it?

“Wh—” he stammered. “Wh—wh—”

She was tugging his grandmother’s ring from her finger. “Yes,” she said. “You see, Hurst, I haven’t been faithful to you, either.” She placed the ring on the small table beside his glass of sherry. “I am quite ruined,” she announced, flatly. “I know you shan’t want me now, anymore than I want you.”

Hurst stared down at the ring. Ruined? Caroline Linford was
ruined?

“Who—” The words were hardly more than a ragged whisper through his bloodless lips. “—was it?”

“Oh,” Caroline said. “It doesn’t matter. But it’s better like this, don’t you think, Hurst? I know people will talk, of course, and Ma will be inconsolable, and Tommy— well, poor Tommy, will be furious when he hears. But I don’t think I was ever really meant to marry, you know. And now you’ll be free, and can wed your Jacquelyn. I know she hasn’t any money, Hurst, but there are more important things—”

“J-Jacquelyn?” He shook his head.
“Jacquelyn?”

“Yes, of course.” Caroline was completely unemotional, simply businesslike. He had never, he realized, seen her like this, so brisk, so sure of herself. It was as if . . . it was almost as if overnight, she’d become . . .

Well, a
woman.

“I saw you two together, you know,” she said, with a shrug. “On a divan at Dame Ashforth’s. I probably ought to have made my presence known, but it seemed better to avoid a scene at the time.”