Chapter Ten
By breakfast the next morning, Jackson had received word from Roberts that he had verified the movements of Lord Brixby in the days leading up to his disappearance, including a promising tidbit that William had visited a local brothel in a rougher part of St. Giles that was known to house a weekly high-stakes game of poker.
There’d been no need for Jackson to send a reply; Roberts would know to run down the lead with all haste.
Many of the bawdy houses in the rookeries had ties to local gangs, people who wouldn’t hesitate to pluck a viscount off the streets for walking out on his debts. The news wasn’t great, but it was news.
The investigation into the Lyon’s Den, on the other hand, had halted to a standstill. Roberts’s men had the gaming hell under watch night and day, but there was yet no suspicious movement, no bank notes collected by their undercover agents that didn’t pass muster.
All was quiet.
And it made Jackson long to put his fist through a wall.
A violent undertone his brother must have picked up, because Figaro slapped the breakfast table and said with indecorous gusto, “Tomorrow, I wish for tarts. Large ones smothered in clotted cream.”
“Are the eggs, fruit, and kippers not to your liking?” Jackson asked, finding new ways to appreciate his younger brother’s need to stir up the household.
“It is not about liking,” Figaro said. “It is about eating an entire dish without any benefit to my health.”
“Sarcasm is the Devil’s humor, and a horrible affliction,” their mother complained, for once not rising to the challenge to scold further. “You get it from your father.”
“Father had a sense of humor?” Figaro threw Jackson a comedic expression. “Look at that, brother. We did inherit more than chiseled cheekbones from our patriarch.”
The dowager duchess scoffed, the bait too tempting to pass up a second time around. “As if your dear brother would enjoy such tactless remarks. Do not lower His Grace’s character to suit your own common interests.”
“No, of course not.” Figaro’s lips quirked. “Pray, do you wish to know where I learned to enjoy such vulgar attentions, Mother?”
“I most certainly do not!”
Jackson coughed into his hand. His brother was in fine form. Figaro always excelled with an audience.
Said audience sat, unperturbed, eating her eggs without sparing the rest of the table a glance and showing uncharacteristic restraint.
Jackson grinned. “And are the eggs to your liking, Miss Greene?”
“Yes, Miss Greene,” Figaro carried on. “Are the yolks to your consistency preference?”
“Don’t be droll,” their mother chided. “A lady does not remark on the food unless it is to compliment her host.”
“I prefer my eggs runny, Lord Figaro,” Anna said, her gaze on the plate in front of her. “I also enjoy my bread untoasted and my pudding underbaked.”
All reasonable ways to take the dishes. And all contrary to popular opinion.
Figaro was, naturally, intrigued. “I see I shall need to steel myself for a more rebellious menu in the near future.”
“Or for endless visits from the physician.” The dowager duchess’s expression pinched, her irritation over Anna’s easy acceptance by the Widows clear.
“Do not think your unrefined palate will be a source of interest for the rest of the beau monde. It would do you well to keep your preferences to yourself.”
Anna raised a brow, a slight arch with a steep curve of impertinence behind it. “Even when I am asked directly?”
The dowager duchess ignored her and demanded, “Why on earth would you wish to consume underbaked pudding?”
“Because she’s too impatient to wait.”
Three sets of eyes fixed on Jackson . . . because he’d spoken out loud. And his brother was beaming.
Damn!
“You are quite familiar with Miss Greene’s character to speak with such authority,” Figaro said.
Double damn!
Finding his own eggs less appealing with the topic, Jackson pushed his plate away. He’d been granted a stay of execution yesterday with the Widows’ descent. That reprieve had come to an end.
“Miss Greene spent a good deal of her childhood staying with a close family friend in Widmore,” Jackson said. “It was upon visiting the town that we became acquainted.” The first time, anyway.
The glint in Figaro’s eye was dangerous. “So, you are old friends? One could say childhood friends. And now betrothed. How serendipitous.”
Considering his younger brother knew everything about Jackson’s past with Anna, the meddlesome rascal must have been playing to their mother’s benefit.
“Widmore is little more than an honorary borough.” His mother’s gaze narrowed, still on the hunt to dismiss Anna’s merits. “What was the family friend’s name?”
Anna raised her chin. “Lady Crews.”
The dowager duchess’s expression opened, surprised, no doubt, by the prestigious connection. Suspicion soon pinched her lips together. “How would a common locksmith come to be on such friendly terms with a marchioness?”
“They were siblings,” Anna said.
Jackson frowned at her. As children, Anna had spoken of her connection to Widmore House only in terms of close friends. He hadn’t known Lady Crews was her aunt.
Why would she not tell me?
The dowager duchess looked similarly stumped. “Why did you not remain with your aunt when your father passed?”
Anna’s face blanked, a loss of expression that Jackson felt like a blow to the gut. Henry Greene’s suicide had been printed in every paper in England.
“Not long after I lost my father, my aunt succumbed to a disease of the lungs,” Anna said, her voice small.
His insides ached. She’d always described Lady Crews with the utmost respect and affection. To lose her father and her aunt in such quick succession . . . and he’d known nothing.
“An unfortunate occurrence,” the dowager duchess said. “Your aunt’s presence at the wedding would have gone a long way into stilling wagging tongues. And seeing as Lord Crews had passed previously, the connection is all but lost.”
Anna’s arm flexed at her side, and Jackson could only imagine the fisted fingers hidden in her lap under the table.
“An absolute travesty,” Anna said, her voice matching her cold glare.
“Do not take that tone with me,” his mother snapped. “As a future duchess, you will be scrutinized on your family, your comportment, everything down to those odious boots you wear.” She sighed. “I have my work cut out for me.”
Anna’s gaze darkened. “I am not a problem to be fixed.”
“No,” the dowager duchess said, her mouth curled into a sneer. “You are a commoner’s daughter thinking to snag herself a title.”
“Mother—”
“Wasn’t Lady Crews’s father the baronet of Greenhill?” Figaro asked, his cup raised to his lips, that same mischievous glint in his eye. “Sir William Greene, wasn’t it?”
The dowager’s tone hit a shrill note. “A baronet!”
Jackson pinched the bridge of his nose. Figaro had to know a connection to lesser nobility would do more harm than good in their mother’s eyes.
Low-born laborers had their uses, after all—the floorboards which the peerage walked across—while lesser nobility was a blight encroaching on the entitlements of their betters. Windows seated higher in the wall with the nerve to overlook nobler horizons.
“We’ll be ruined,” the dowager cried. “Unfit for afternoon tea with a baron’s housekeeper.”
“Mother, that is enough,” Jackson said. “You will not speak to my—”
The chair squealed as Anna stood, cutting off Jackson’s words.
Her gaze was locked with the dowager duchess’s, and the will behind her words was granite.
“You can keep your title, your advice, and your insults to yourself. I would sooner ask the sow in the barn how to survive the constant muck I’ll be expected to trudge through, and how to tolerate the constant squealing pigs. ”
“H-How dare you?!” His mother raised her chin. “You will apologize this instant! And sit down. A lady does not lord over everyone like some ghoulish Renaissance statue.”
A second passed.
Anna raised her own chin, and Jackson braced himself for another set-down to rival a queen’s.
“No. I don’t think I will,” Anna said, her haughty tone worthy of her forthcoming ducal title.
“In fact, I believe I shall take a stroll through the woods. Where there is dirt and grass and all manner of wild animals and wriggling, slimy insects.” She shot a direct glare to the dowager, who sneered at the description.
“What a pleasant change it will be from the wilting round-leaved sundew demanding all the light in this dreadfully decorated room.”
Anna swept out of the room, and the door clicked shut behind her, the slight sound more grating than if she’d slammed the oak six by six.
It was a test of Anna’s skill at injury that it took more than five seconds for Jackson’s mother to exclaim, “The impertinence!”
Impertinent, true. And Jackson had never crossed paths with one so giftedly afflicted.
“Vile, contemptible, ill-spoken—”
“Now, Mother, that last one is unfair,” Jackson said, having to bring his teacup to his lips to keep his smile from view.
The dowager duchess turned her gaze on Jackson. “She will be a dark stain on our noble name. You cannot possibly find her acceptable?” Before Jackson could agree—or not—his mother shot Figaro a glare where he sat. “Not one word out of you.”
Figaro held up his hands. “I would not dream of contradicting you, Mother. You are right in every regard.” He lowered his brow, disapproving, but Jackson smelled mockery.
“Rude, outspoken, easily irate. A single woman of such improper countenance is unacceptable, indeed.” He gave Jackson a wink.
“I demand we replicate the woman in triplicate.”
The dowager duchess made a disgusted sound in her throat. “There was never any hope for you. Born to vex me, you were.”
Figaro bowed his head. “A task I take to with the utmost vigilance, Your Grace.”
Her Grace turned back to Jackson, knowing there’d be no reinforcements from her youngest. “You cannot marry that—that hoyden!”