More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (33 page)

The man was still in town, though, and still at the Pulteney, Jocelyn discovered when he called there in the middle of the morning. And willing to receive the Duke of Tresham, though he might have been puzzled by the request. They had never had more than a nodding acquaintance, after all. He was standing in his private sitting room after Jocelyn had first sent up his card and then been escorted up by the earl’s man.

“Tresham?” he said by way of greeting. “How do you do?”

“Very well, I thank you,” Jocelyn replied, “when it is considered that I might at this moment be lying in my
bed at home with my throat slit. Or in my grave, more like, since Lady Sara Illingsworth has been gone from my house for longer than two weeks.”

“Ah, yes, have a seat. Let me pour you a drink.” The Bow Street Runner had clearly reported to the earl recently, then. “Do you know where she is, Tresham? Have you heard something?”

“Nothing, thank you,” Jocelyn said of the drink while his stomach churned unpleasantly. He availed himself of the offer of a chair. “You must understand that when she was in my employ she dressed the part of a servant and used an alias. She was a mere employee. It did not occur to me when she left to ask where she was going.”

“No, of course not.” The earl poured himself a drink and sat at the square table in the middle of the room. He looked disappointed. “Those damned Runners are not worth a quarter of what they charge, Tresham. Devilish incompetent, in fact. I have been kicking my heels here for well over a month while a dangerous criminal runs loose among an unsuspecting populace. And for three weeks of that time she was at Dudley House. If I had only known!”

“I was fortunate indeed,” Jocelyn said, “to escape harm. Murdered your son, did she? My condolences, Durbury.”

“Thank you.”

The man looked distinctly uncomfortable. So much so, in fact, that Jocelyn, gazing keenly at him while giving an impression of almost bored indolence, drew his own conclusions.

“And robbed you to add insult to injury,” he said. “Having spent three weeks at Dudley House, Lady Sara must be well aware that it is full of costly treasures. I
have been apprehensive since learning her identity yesterday morning that she might attempt a burglary and murder me too if I am unfortunate enough to stumble upon her at the wrong moment.”

The earl looked keenly back at him, but Jocelyn was long practiced in the art of giving nothing whatsoever away with his facial expression.

“Quite so,” the earl agreed.

“I quite understand your, ah, ire,” Jocelyn said, “in having had a mere female relative—and a dependent one too, I daresay—cause you such personal pain and expose your authority to such public ridicule. If I were in your shoes, I would be waiting as impatiently as you for her capture so that I could put my horsewhip to effective use about her hide before the law takes its turn. It is the only way with rebellious women, I have heard. I would mention two things to you, though—my reason for coming, in fact.”

The Earl of Durbury looked unsure whether he had just been insulted or commiserated with.

“I have questioned some of my servants,” Jocelyn explained—he had done no such thing, of course, “and they assure me that the nurse I knew as Miss Jane Ingleby had only one small bag of possessions with her at Dudley House. Which leaves a question in my mind. Where has she hidden the fortune in money and jewels that she took from you? Has the Bow Street Runner you employ thought of approaching the search from that angle? Find the treasure and there will surely be a clear trail to the woman.”

He paused, eyebrows raised, for the earl to respond.

“It is an idea,” his lordship conceded stiffly. Jocelyn
was confirmed in his suspicion that there
was
no treasure, or at least not any significant amount of it.

“He would certainly be better employed looking for the money and jewels than following me,” Jocelyn added amiably.

The Earl of Durbury looked sharply at him.

“I suppose,” Jocelyn continued, “he concluded from his interview with me yesterday morning that I am the sort of man who would derive a certain titillation out of bedding a woman who might rob me of my last farthing while I sleep and split open my skull with the sharp end of an ax for good measure. One can understand his conclusion. I do have a certain reputation for reckless, dangerous living. However, although I found it rather amusing yesterday to be followed wherever I went, I do believe I would find it tedious to have the experience repeated today.”

The earl clearly did not know what his Runner had been up to most of yesterday. He stared blankly.

“Not that it has been happening yet today,” Jocelyn admitted. “I daresay he is camped out again before the house of a certain, ah,
lady
whom I visited last night. The lady is my mistress, but you must understand, Durbury, that any mistress I employ is under my full protection and that anyone who harasses her will have me to answer to. You will perhaps consider it pertinent to explain this to your Runner—I am afraid his name escapes my memory at the moment.” He rose to his feet.

“I most certainly will.” The Earl of Durbury looked thunderous. “I am paying the Runners an exorbitant amount
to watch your mistress’s house
, Tresham? This is outrageous.”

“I must confess,” Jocelyn said as he picked up his hat
and gloves from a table beside the door, “that it is somewhat distracting while one is engaged in, ah,
conversation
with a lady to know that the window is being watched from the outside. I will not expect such a distraction again tonight.”

“No, indeed,” the earl assured him. “I shall demand an explanation for this from Mick Boden, believe me.”

“Ah, yes,” Jocelyn said as he let himself out of the room, “that was the name. Wiry little man with well-oiled hair. Good day to you, Durbury.”

He felt satisfied with the morning’s visit as he sauntered down the stairs and out of the hotel, despite the headache that had settled in for a lengthy stay just behind his eyes. The morning was almost over. He just hoped that, untrue to form, she would not poke as much as her nose out through the door of her house before the watchdog was removed. But it was unlikely. She never went out except into the back garden. And now, of course, he understood why.

D
URING A MORNING OF
ferociously hard work tackling a corner of garden wilderness she had not worked on before, Jane convinced herself that the end had come. He had spoken of it himself—the infatuation, the gradual loss of interest, the final severance of all ties.

The infatuation was over, killed by his own indiscretion—or what he apparently saw as an indiscretion anyway. The loss of interest, Jane suspected, would not be gradual but sudden. Perhaps she might expect a few more night visits like last night’s. But one day soon Mr. Quincy would arrive to make arrangements for the ending
of the liaison. Not that there would be much to discuss. The contract took care of most details.

Then she would never see Jocelyn again.

She tore recklessly at a clump of nettles, which stung painfully even through her gloves.

It was just as well, she told herself. She was going to turn herself in to the Bow Street Runners anyway. Soon she would be able to do it without any encumbrance. Soon her fate would not much matter to her, though she would, of course, from sheer principle fight to clear herself of the ridiculous charges against her. Ridiculous except for the fact that Sidney was dead.

She reached for another clump of nettles.

She had convinced herself so well that she was surprised when Jocelyn arrived early in the afternoon. She heard the rapping of the door knocker as she was changing into a clean dress upstairs. She waited tensely to hear his footsteps on the stairs. But it was Mr. Jacobs’s hesitant knock that sounded on her door.

“His grace requests the honor of your company in the sitting room, ma’am,” the butler informed her.

Jane’s heart sank as she set down her brush. They had not used the sitting room for over a week.

He was standing before the empty fireplace, one arm propped on the high mantel, when she stepped into the room.

“Good afternoon, Jocelyn,” she said.

He was looking his usual dark, cynical, arrogant self, his eyes quite inscrutable. His mood had not improved since last night, then. And suddenly she realized why he had come. He would not send Mr. Quincy, of course. He would tell her himself.

This was the end. After just a week and a half.

He inclined his head but did not return her greeting.

“It was a mistake,” she said quietly. “When you asked if you could see the room next door, I should have held firm and said no. You want a mistress, Jocelyn. You want an uncomplicated physical relationship with a woman. You are afraid of friendship, of emotional closeness. You are afraid of your artistic side. You are afraid to confront your memories and admit to yourself that you have allowed them to blight your life. You are afraid to let go of your image of yourself as a pure man. I should not have encouraged you to indulge your inner self. I should not have been your friend. I should have kept our relationship to what it was meant to be. I should have entertained you in bed and encouraged you to live all the rest of your life beyond the confines of this house.”

“Indeed?” There was pure ice in his voice. “Do you have any other pearls of wisdom for me, Jane?”

“I will not hold you to our contract,” she said. “It would be criminal of me to insist that you support me for four and a half years when our liaison has lasted a mere week and a half. You are free of me, your grace. As of this moment. By tomorrow I shall be gone. Even today if you wish.”

It would be better today. To leave without having any time to think about it. To go to the Pulteney Hotel. Or to seek out the Bow Street Runners if the earl was not there.

“You are quite right,” he said after staring at her in silence for an uncomfortably long time. “Our contract is void. It has a fatal flaw.”

She lifted her chin a notch, realizing only as he spoke that she had been desperately hoping he would argue, try to persuade her to stay, be simply Jocelyn again.

“I believe,” he said, “contracts are void if one of the parties uses an alias. I am no legal expert. Quincy would know. But I believe I am right, Sara.”

Foolishly, she did not notice for a moment. There was only a strange chill at her heart. But it was only a moment. The name he had used seemed to hang in the air between them as if the sound of it had not died away with his voice.

She sat down abruptly on a chair close by.

“That is not my name,” she whispered.

“I beg your pardon.” He made her an ironic half bow. “I forget that you insist upon formality. I should have said
Lady
Sara. Is that better?”

She shook her head. “You misunderstand. It is not my
name
. I am Jane.” But she spread her hands over her face suddenly and found they were shaking. She lowered them to her lap. “How did you find out?”

“I had a visitor,” he said. “A Bow Street Runner. I understand that in his search for Lady Sara Illingsworth he called at the milliner’s shop of a certain Madam Dee Lorrent. I suppose he meant Madame de Laurent. Coincidentally your former employer, Jane, as well as Lady Sara’s. The Runner came to the intelligent conclusion that you were one and the same.”

“I was going to tell you.” She realized even as she spoke how lame her words sounded.

“Were you?” He raised his quizzing glass and regarded her through it with cold hauteur. “Were you indeed, Lady Sara? Pardon me for not believing you. You are as accomplished a liar as I have met. I am afraid of friendship and emotional closeness, am I? You ought not to have become my friend, ought you? To my shame
I became your dupe. For a short while. No longer.” He dropped his quizzing glass and it swung on its ribbon.

The temptation was to beg him to believe her, try to explain that after the emotional intensity of his own disclosures two evenings ago she had decided to wait to tell her own story. But he would not believe her. She would not believe him if the situation were reversed, would she?

“Does he know where I am?” she asked. “The Bow Street Runner?”

“He followed me here last night,” he told her, “and stood outside while you were pleasuring me upstairs. Oh, do not be alarmed. I have called off the hunt, at least in this particular place, though I do not imagine he is deceived. He is more intelligent than his current employer, I believe.”

“Is the Earl of Durbury still at the Pulteney?” she asked. “Do you know?”

“He was there this morning when I called upon him,” he said.

Her face felt cold and clammy. There was a ringing in her ears. The air she breathed felt icy. But she would not faint. She
would
not.

“Oh, I have not betrayed you, Lady Sara,” he told her, his eyes narrowing.

“Thank you,” she said. “I would rather turn myself in than be dragged in. If you will give me a minute to fetch my bag from upstairs, you may see me off the premises and assure yourself that I am gone. Unless you have told anyone that I am your mistress, no one need know. I daresay Mr. Quincy and the servants here are discreet. It would be a condition of their employment, would it
not? The scandal need not touch you too nearly.” She got to her feet.

“Sit down,” he told her.

The words were so quietly spoken but with such cold command that she obeyed without thinking.

“Are you guilty of any of the charges against you?” he asked her.

“Murder? Theft?” She looked down at the hands clasped in her lap. Her fingers, she noticed dispassionately, were white with tension. “I hit him. I took money. Therefore, I am guilty.”

“And jewels?”

“A bracelet,” she said. “It is in my bag upstairs.”

She would offer no explanations, no excuses. She owed him none now. Yesterday it would have been different. He would have been her friend, her lover. Now he was nothing at all.

“You hit him,” he said. “With an ax? With a pistol?”

“With a book,” she said.

“With a
book
?”

“The corner of it caught him on the temple,” she explained. “He was bleeding and dizzy. If he had sat down all might have been well. But he came after me, and when I stepped aside he lost his balance and cracked his head on the hearth. He was not dead. I had him carried upstairs and tended him myself until the doctor arrived. He was still not dead when I left, though he was unconscious.”