Poetic Justice (19 page)

No, it was too dangerous. She swallowed hard and managed a smile. She even patted Mr. Wiley's hand—or fist, rather, for it was bunched on the settee between them. "How brave of you, Mr. Wiley! But someone broke in last night. He escaped, didn't he? And my aunt said he got clean away, without being identified. What if he didn't get all he wanted? He might be back!"

"What did he get, by the way?" John asked with a casualness that must have fooled everyone but her. "Have you done an inventory to determine what's missing?"

Lord Parham shot a sharp look at the librarian. "We can't tell if anything is gone. None of the Bacon, that's all we know."

"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten. There's no current catalogue. My word, that will make it difficult, won't it?" John came over to retrieve the parchment, carried it back to the desk, and as he added to the list there he murmured to himself, "Task number 13. Inventory of major pieces."

When he returned the plan to Lord Parham, he added, "Miss Seton's right. If the burglar means to return, Mr. Wiley won't be safe there. You need trained, trustworthy guards, especially at night."

"A guard will be little protection," Mr. Wiley observed, his eyes sharp behind their lenses, "if the threat is an internal one."

"Internal?" Lord Parham and Jessica echoed.

Mr. Wiley subsided into a remote silence until John said roughly, "Out with it, Wiley. What are you implying here?"

The librarian sat up straighter and smiled. "Implying? I mean to imply nothing. You are uncommon tetchy, Dryden. I wonder why."

"Well, I wonder why you looked at me when you spoke of an internal threat. If you've an accusation to make, make it."

"If you insist...It's just that, anticipating Lord Parham, I sent a messenger to your flat early this morning. And you were not there. The doorman told me you hadn't come home."

Sir John's smile went steely. "I shall have to thank the doorman for paying such close attention to my whereabouts, and keeping you apprised. Or perhaps you would prefer that the next time I decide to spend the night elsewhere, I consult with you first, Mr. Wiley?"

"It's just that I can't help but wonder why you would spend the night elsewhere. You show an uncommon interest in the collection, Dryden. And we know about dealers. Tell him, won't you, about how you procured the Mesa Royale manuscript? The story was the talk of the Royal Society. There was a rope ladder involved in that, wasn't there?"

"Why don't you tell the story, Mr. Wiley, since you know it so well?"

The librarian waved a dismissive hand. "The particulars are of no account. But your absence from home last night worries me. I can't help but wonder what would have drawn you from home."

"Wonder all you like. But keep it to yourself, if you please. There's a lady present."

But, as Jessica rather hoped, Mr. Wiley seemed to have forgotten that she was sitting next to him. "You mean to say, that you spent the night with your mistress? Her name might not be amiss then."

He could not, however, ignore Parham's outraged exclamation. And John, his voice tight with anger, said, "Lord Parham, if you have need of it, I will furnish the name of the friend in whose home I spent the night—but elsewhere. This conversation cannot be of any interest to Miss Seton, and we shall, if necessary, resume it in a more appropriate setting."

Jessica opened her mouth to protest, but her uncle overrode her. "I shouldn't ask anything of the sort from you, Dryden. A man's nights are his own. Wiley, what are you thinking of, making such a suggestion with my niece present? And to the Regent's own consultant here?"

With his patron glaring at him, Wiley could do nothing but murmur an apology—to Jessica, not to the man he had insulted. And Uncle Emory was mollified enough to try to compromise between the two divergent security plans. He agreed to Mr. Wiley's suggestion of a single guard, stationed in the garden at night, while a footman sat up in the hall outside the library door. "Bars too, I suppose. No doubt you have some recommendation on a firm to install that, Sir John?"

John shrugged, as if unconcerned that his sage advice had been mostly disregarded. "I will send a trustworthy man for you to interview. He worked on Carlton House. If he does not satisfy, I will give you other names. If there is nothing more, I'll take my leave of you."

He bowed to Jessica. That momentary acknowledgment of camaraderie was gone now, and, ignoring her silent signal to wait, he started for the door. But Uncle Emory, at his most imperious, accomplished what she with her eyes and expression could not. "Just a moment more, Dryden. Jessica, you may stay too, this concerns you. Thank you, Mr. Wiley, you may go back to the library now. You might start that inventory Sir John suggested."

Mr. Wiley left, muttering about inventories and upstarts. John's gaze followed him, and the chill hadn't left his when he turned back. Jessica suppressed a shiver as he looked at her. She knew how kind, how gentle he could be. She doubted not his essential goodness. But when he looked like that, she remembered how little she knew of his life, his past, the experiences that had made him alternately so approachable and so aloof.

And when she saw her uncle's expression, awkward but resolute, she knew with dread that John was about to live through another of those experiences. "Don't, Uncle," she hissed, but he silenced her with an impatient chop of his hand.

"Dryden, I hope you won't take offense at what Mr. Wiley says. He's a scholar, you know, not much for the social graces. Seldom sets foot outside that library."

John inclined his head without comment, but that was enough to encourage Uncle Emory. "I mean you to know that I appreciate your counsel on this matter. It is most conciliating of you."

John still did not speak. Even his eyes were at their most unrevealing, opaque and reflective.

And Parham, seeing himself in the other man's eyes, cleared his throat and shifted nervously. "But—well, I think it's in your interest that you know right now. If you have designs on this collection—on my niece—"

"Uncle..." Jessica's agonized whisper wasn't enough to cut him off.

"You'd do best to understand that won't serve. I'm sure you realize that I cannot approve of such an unequal match. You are a creditable man, I have no doubt, but you are ineligible."

Instinctively Jessica started towards John, to beg his pardon, to pull him out the door, to make it right somehow. But he raised his hand to stop her. The chill had faded from his eyes, and his glance hardly brushed her. Then he never looked her way again.

Instead, he addressed her uncle in a voice as hard as ice. "I give you no leave to declare me eligible or ineligible, or declare me anything at all."

"Give me leave? Give me leave? I am the girl's uncle! I'll take leave to warn you off, I will, and be damned to your arrogance!"

"It is not arrogance, Lord Parham, to resent such a charge. I came here at your behest, to do you a service. I have no designs on your niece or her collection."

Distractedly Jessica thought that the first part of John's statement, that he was here at her uncle's behest, was only half-true. The second part might be similarly ambiguous. But where would that leave them?

"Well," Parham said, visibly relieved, "that's fine then. We'll need speak no more of it."

But John was too angry to leave it at that; she saw the resolve he had to bring to loosing his clenched fists. "I don't think you understand. If I wanted a woman, and she was of the same mind, nothing you could say would gainsay me. I mean no insult, but I do not accept that you have any right to dictate to me."

Uncle Emory took a step back, as if he finally felt the force of John's chilly anger. "By God, you are a slippery one, Dryden. I'd call you insolent, but you're too damned polite, even when you insult me." He regarded the younger man with something close to astonishment. "I'd call you an upstart, but you don't ask for any favor. You aren't anything I know, and I don't know what to make of you."

"It isn't your place to make anything of me." John gathered up his riding gloves, jamming them into his pocket. His voice was level, though, as if he were giving instructions to a crewmember. "You will not treat me as a servant, or as a thief, or whatever it is you prefer me to be. If you have no use for my aid, tell me so, and I will leave. But I am an Englishman, and no man's lesser at that. I suggest you keep that fixed fast in your mind."

He bowed to Jessica and left without another word. As the door closed behind him, she turned on her uncle. "How dare you! He has been nothing but good to us, and you insult him so!"

"Well, he insulted me, too, did you hear?"

"He told you that you had no right to order him about, and he's correct. As you have no right to tell me I can't see him if I wish."

"Your father left you in my charge! That gives me the right!"

"No. You have only the right to withhold my inheritance from me." Jessica covered her mouth with her fist, remembering what great power that right gave him. But it was not enough to control her, no matter what he thought. Her hand dropped to her side. "No more than that."

Parham must have sensed they were on the brink of some terrible confrontation, for his tone became more conciliatory. "Now Jessica, surely you are not interested in that man. Oh, he's handsome enough, least your aunt thinks so. He looks like a damned foreigner to me. But he isn't our sort, not in any way. He couldn't make you any kind of husband!"

It angered her, and hurt her too, to think that he could disdain a man like John Dryden. And that anger took shape in hot words. "He's a good man. Better than most! He would never have insulted a man as that supposed gentleman Alfred Wiley insulted him! And he would never have insulted me, either, by making unwanted advances, and yet that is what you accused him of doing!"

"I accused him of no such thing! I merely meant to warn him that if he thought to improve his lot with marriage, he should look elsewhere!"

"But that is an insult! To him, and to me!" In despair, she turned away and started for the door. But she halted with her hand on the knob. She had to try to explain, at least, even if it would do no good. "Oh, Uncle, don't you see? You as much as called him a fortune hunter, and me a prize only desired for my fortune!"

"I said nothing of the sort. But he's no fool. He can see where the main chance is—and you're the likeliest target for him, if he's looking for a fortune."

Jessica drew in her breath to protest this, but then just raised her hands to rub her aching temples. She got nowhere arguing with her uncle; she never had persuaded him of anything. Sometimes she thought he didn't even hear her. Softly, as if to herself, she said, "I am real to him, at least. As I have never been real to you."

"That's nonsense, girl, and you know it! You are my own brother's daughter, my niece."

"No. I can't say I feel that's true, that you look at me and see your niece. I feel that I was never more than Trevor's bride. The future mother of your grandchildren. And now, I don't know. Vestal virgin at his tomb."

Parham drew back at this, his face whitening. "How can you speak this way, Jessica? After all I've done, given you a home, to give me such offense!"

"It's because I don't care any longer, do you see? I realize you might offer me a home, but you haven't really any room for me after all. I wish—oh, I wish Father had just appointed a solicitor for me. Then I shouldn't have fooled myself that my guardian cared what became of me. I would have known I was just a case to him, a file in his cupboard. And though he might not have stirred himself to make me happy, he wouldn't have actively worked against it."

Parham raised his hands to his ears, as if he wouldn't even let himself hear this. "Well, if you think your happiness lies with such a one as John Dryden, you are beyond foolish. Beyond foolish! Any of those others would have been better than this one. At least they are all of gentle birth and good families!"

Jessica released the breath she had been holding and forced back the furious comment she had been about to make. "Well," she said, opening the door, "they weren't good enough for you either. So I expect it doesn't matter what I do. I've given up trying to please you."

She let the door close behind her, then sagged back against it, too weak to go up to her room. She could hear her uncle pacing about in the room behind her, back and forth, back and forth, as he used to in those days after Waterloo. For a moment, guilt weighed her down. Her uncle never meant to hurt her, or anyone else. It was just that he had his own narrow view of how the world was supposed to be.

Then she pushed away from the door. No. She wouldn't make excuses for him anymore. He was her uncle, and she loved him despite it all, but she wouldn't, couldn't let him dictate her future any longer.

She thought of John's face when he realized that he was facing another insult, the latest in a lifetime of them. That's what he resisted most of all, being trapped in an identity he hadn't made. His need for freedom was so strong, to do as he wished, to be as he wished, that he must hate to be labeled tradesman or ineligible or, worst of.. all, bastard. So he surrounded himself with that deliber ate distance, pushing her and everyone else away.

She had crossed that distance, once or twice. He might deny it—in fact he did deny it, when he denied he had any designs on her. But she knew the truth. She might be a maiden, but she was experienced enough to know when a man desired her, no matter where he spent the night later. But desire wouldn't be enough to cross that distance again.

She was sorry that an insult had made him retreat, sorrier still to discover within herself a fierce protectiveness. He would not welcome that, she thought, and neither did she. This was a man who could fight his own battles, and didn't need her help at all.

CHAPTER TEN

And keep you in the rear of your affection,

Out of the shot and danger of desire.

The chariest maid is prodigal enough

If she unmask her beauty to the moon.