More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (31 page)

Michael Quincy stepped into the library thirty minutes later. Jocelyn was already there.

“Well?” He looked at his secretary with raised eyebrows. “Some crisis at Acton, Michael?”

“There is a person, your grace,” his secretary explained. “He is in the kitchen and has been there for two hours. He refuses to go away.”

Jocelyn raised his eyebrows and clasped his hands at his back. “Indeed?” he said. “Do I not employ enough footmen to pick up this—this
person
and toss him out? Am I expected to do it myself? Is this why the matter has been brought to my attention?”

“He is asking about Miss Ingleby, your grace,” Quincy explained.

Jocelyn went very still. “About Miss Ingleby?”

“He is a Bow Street Runner,” his secretary told him.

Jocelyn merely stared at him.

“Hawkins referred him to me with his questions,” Quincy explained. “I told him I knew nothing about any Miss Ingleby. He said he would wait and speak with you, then. When I told him he might have to wait a week before you found a moment to spare for him, he said he would wait a week. He is in the kitchen, your grace, and shows no sign of going away.”

“With questions about Miss Ingleby.” Jocelyn's eyes narrowed. “You had better show him up, Michael.”

M
ICK
B
ODEN WAS FEELING
uncomfortable. Only very rarely did his work bring him to any of the grand mansions of Mayfair. Truth to tell he was rather in awe of the aristocracy. And the owner of Dudley House was the Duke of Tresham, reputedly the sort of man even his peers feared to tangle with.

But he knew he was close. The servants were all lying their heads off, every last one of them. None of them knew any Miss Jane Ingleby, including his grace's secretary, whom, to his shame, Mick Boden had taken for the duke himself at first, so grand a nob was he.

Mick knew when people were lying. And he knew why these people were lying. It was not that they were protecting her or hiding her but that they were servants who valued their employment. And clearly one rule of that employment was that one did not open one's mouth to strangers about any inhabitant of the house, even fellow servants. He could respect that.

And then the butler, a man who had the habit of
sniffing the air as if to catch the dirty odor of lesser mortals, appeared in the kitchen and fixed his disdainful eye upon Mick.

“Follow me,” he said.

Mick followed him, out of the kitchen, up the steep stairs, and through the baize door that led into the back of the hall. The sudden splendor of the main part of the house fairly took his breath away, though he concentrated upon not showing that he was impressed. The secretary was waiting there.

“His grace will give you five minutes,” he said. “I will show you into the library. I shall wait outside to show you off the premises when you have been dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mick Boden said.

He was a little nervous, but he strode purposefully enough into the library after the butler had opened the door. He came to a halt six steps inside the door and planted his feet wide on the carpet. He held his hat with both hands and bobbed his head civilly. He would not bow.

The duke—he supposed it must be the duke this time—was standing in front of an ornate marble fireplace, his hands clasped at his back. He was wearing riding clothes, but they were so well tailored and fit so perfectly that Mick immediately felt conscious of the cheapness of his own clothes, on whose nattiness he prided himself. He was being regarded steadily from eyes so dark Mick would swear they were black.

“You have a few questions for me,” the duke informed Mick. “You are a Bow Street Runner?”

“Yes, sir. Mick Boden, sir.” Mick resisted the urge to bob his head again. “I have been informed, sir, that you have a Miss Jane Ingleby in your service.”

“Have you?” His grace raised his eyebrows and looked very forbidding indeed. “And who, may I ask, did the informing?”

“Madame de Laurent, sir,” Mick Boden said. “A milliner. She employed Miss Ingleby until a month or so ago, when the young lady gave her notice and explained she was coming here to work for you.”

“Indeed?” The duke's eyes narrowed. “And what is your interest in Miss Ingleby?”

Mick hesitated, but only for a moment. “She is wanted, sir,” he said, “for dastardly crimes.”

His grace's fingers found and curled about the handle of his quizzing glass, though he did not raise it to his eye.

“Dastardly crimes?” he repeated softly.

“Theft, sir,” Mick explained. “And murder.”

“Fascinating,” the duke commented just as softly, and Mick, a good judge of character, knew without any doubt that this could be a very dangerous man indeed. “And a Banbury tale?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Mick said briskly. “It is quite true. The name is an alias. In reality she is Lady Sara Illingsworth, who murdered Mr. Sidney Jardine, son and heir of the Earl of Durbury, and then ran off with the earl's money and jewels. You might have heard about the incident, sir. She is a desperate fugitive, sir, and it is my belief she is here in this house.”

“Dear me,” his grace said after a short silence. “I perceive that I am fortunate indeed not to have woken one morning during the past month to find my throat slit from ear to ear.”

Mick felt intense satisfaction. At last! The Duke of
Tresham had as good as admitted that she was at Dudley House.

“She is here, sir?” he asked.

The duke raised his quizzing glass halfway to his eye. “Was here,” he said. “Miss Ingleby was employed for three weeks as my nurse after I was shot in the leg. She left a couple of weeks ago. You must pursue your search elsewhere. I believe Mr. Quincy is waiting in the hall to show you out.”

But Mick Boden was not ready to be dismissed just yet.

“Can you tell me where she went, sir?” he asked. “It is very important. The Earl of Durbury is beside himself with grief and will not know a moment's peace until his son's murderess has been brought to justice.”

“And his jewels returned to his safe at Candleford,” the duke added. “Miss Ingleby was a servant here. Am I to know where
servants
go after they leave my employ?” His eyebrows rose haughtily again.

Mick knew he had just slammed into a brick wall. He had come so close.

“That will be all?” his grace asked. “The interrogation is ended? I confess an eagerness for my breakfast.”

Mick would have liked to ask more questions. Sometimes, even when people were not deliberately hiding information, they knew more than they realized. Perhaps the girl had said something about her future plans, dropped some hint, confided in some fellow servant. But it was unlikely, he admitted. She knew she was a fugitive. Doubtless she had heard, during her weeks in this house, that the Runners were after her.

“Well?” There was a force of arrogant incredulity behind the one word.

Mick bobbed his head again, bade the Duke of Tresham a good morning, and took his leave. The duke's secretary showed him out through the front door, and the Bow Street Runner found himself on Grosvenor Square, feeling that he was back where he had started.

Though perhaps not quite.

He had heard about the duel even before Madame de Laurent had mentioned it. The Duke of Tresham had been shot in the leg and incapacitated for three weeks. The rest of London's nobs had probably beaten a path to his door to keep him company. The girl had been his nurse. She must surely have been seen by some of those visitors. Some of them might be more forthcoming than the duke himself.

No, he had not come up against a brick wall after all, Mick Boden decided. Not yet at least.

He would find her.

A
LL THE EVIDENCE HAD
been staring him in the eyeballs, Jocelyn thought as he stood at the library window watching the Bow Street Runner make his slow way out of the square. Staring so closely, in fact, that it had thrown his mind out of focus and he had just not seen it.

She had clearly been brought up a lady. She had demonstrated all the attributes of a lady from the start except genteel dress. She spoke with a refined accent; she bore herself proudly and gracefully; she was literate; she could play the pianoforte with competence if not with flair; she could sing superbly—with a trained voice and a knowledge of composers like Handel; she could command and organize servants; she was not awed by a
man with a title, like himself, even when he was overbearing by nature.

Had he for one moment believed her story that she had been brought up in an orphanage? For
one
moment, perhaps. But he had realized for some time that she had lied about her background. He had even idly wondered why. There was something about her past that she wanted to keep private, he had concluded. He had never been unduly curious about the secrets people chose to keep hidden.

Lady Sara Illingsworth.

Not Jane Ingleby, but Lady Sara Illingsworth.

His eyes narrowed as he gazed out onto the now empty square.

He had consistently misinterpreted the biggest clue of all—her reluctance to be seen. She had not wanted to venture outside Dudley House when she was here except into the garden; she did not want to venture outside the house where she was now. She had been very reluctant to sing for his guests. She had chosen to become his mistress rather than pursue what could undoubtedly be a brilliant career as a singer.

He had thought she was ashamed, first of what people would think her relationship to him might be and then of what that relationship really was. But she had shown no other sign of shame. She had negotiated their foolish contract with practical good sense. She had redecorated her house because she would not be made to feel like a whore living in a brothel. There had been no shrinking from her fate the afternoon of the consummation of their liaison, no tears or other sign of remorse afterward.

His mind should have worked its way around to understanding
that she was afraid to be seen in public lest she be recognized and apprehended. He had simply not seen the obvious—that she was in hiding.

That she was wanted for theft and murder.

Jocelyn stepped back from the window, paced to the other side of the room, and set his hands flat on top of the oak desk.

He did not care a fig for the fact that he was harboring a fugitive. The notion that she was dangerous was patently absurd. But he cared the devil of a bit over the fact that he had discovered her identity too late.

Offering employment as his mistress to a penniless orphan or even to a destitute gentlewoman was a perfectly unexceptionable thing to do. Offering the same employment to the daughter of an earl was a different matter altogether. Perhaps it should not be. If they lived in a perfect society, in which all people were seen as equals, it would make no difference.

But they did not.

And so it did make a difference.

He had had the virginity of Lady Sara Illingsworth, daughter of the late Earl of Durbury of Candleford in Cornwall.

He was not at this particular moment feeling kindly disposed toward Lady Sara Illingsworth.

Damn her
. He thumped one fist down hard on the desk and clenched his teeth. She should have told him. She should have enlisted his aid. Did she not realize that he was exactly the sort of man to whom she could openly admit the worst without fear that he would have a fit of the vapors and send for the Runners? Did she not understand that he must hold men like Jardine in the utmost contempt? The devil! He pounded his fist hard onto
wood again. What had the bastard done to her to provoke her into killing him—if he
was
dead? What had she suffered since in guilt and fear and loneliness?

Damn her all to hell! She had not trusted him enough to confide in him.

Instead she had locked and bolted a shackle about his leg and thrown away the key. Even if it had been done unwittingly—in fact,
undoubtedly
she had not intended it since she trusted him so little—it had been done effectively indeed.

For that he would find it hard to forgive her.

Damn the woman!

And something else. Oh, yes, there was something else. He had bared his soul to her last evening as he had never done to any other human being. He had trusted her that much.

But she did not return his trust. Ever since he had first set eyes upon her, she must have been suffering unbearable torment. Yet she had kept it all from him. Even last night.

Skeletons are dreadful things to have in our past, Jane
, he had said to her.
I do not suppose you have any, do you?

No
, she had replied.
None
.

Damn her!

Jocelyn's fist banged onto the desk once more, causing the inkpot to jump in its silver holder.

J
OCELYN SPENT THE DAY
at his clubs, at Jackson's boxing saloon, at a shooting range, at the races. He dined at White's and spent a couple of hours at an insipid soiree, at which his sister informed him that he had become quite the stranger and that she had talked Heyward into
taking her to Brighton for a few weeks in the summer to mix with Prinny's set and sample the pleasures of the Pavilion. His brother, who also commented that he had become a stranger, was seething with indignation.

“The point is, Tresham,” he said, “that the Forbeses are still hiding yet are still spreading the word that
you
are the one afraid to meet
them
. Not to mention what they must be saying about me hiding behind my big brother's coattails. What are you planning to do about them? That is what I want to know. I have never known you to drag your feet like this. If they do not show up within the week, I am going in search of them myself. And bedamned to that toplofty elder brother pronouncement that they are your concern. It was me they tried to kill.”

Jocelyn sighed. Yes, he
had
procrastinated. All because of an infatuation for a woman.