Chapter Six
Jack looked for the flask. She truly did. Or so she told herself. The truth was a bit more . . . complicated.
Per Aunt Abigail, the heart was the most important organ in the entire body. If it failed to function properly, death was sure to follow. And while Jack didn’t feel sickly, she wondered if it was but a matter of time before she fell ill. Because her heart was not working as it should.
For one thing, she couldn’t stop thinking about Byron.
His touch.
His kiss.
His laugh.
Even when she closed her eyes and covered her ears, she saw. She heard him. She wondered what he was doing. And she blamed her heart.
Her traitorous, foolish, malfunctioning heart.
The same heart that beat faster when his calling card arrived the next day, and the next, and the next after that. Every visit starting the same as the last.
“Have you found my flask?” he’d ask her, his eyes twinkling.
“No, go away,” she’d tell him.
Then he’d take her for a carriage ride in the park, or to watch the horse bidding at Tattersall’s, or a stroll through Cuper’s Gardens. All outings she thoroughly enjoyed, blast him. And when they weren’t stealing away to kiss, there were their conversations.
While walking arm in arm with Kitty trailing dutifully behind, they discussed topics as inane as their favorite color and as serious as the right of all citizens, not just the landed gentry, to vote.
She found Byron to be intelligent, perceptive, and stubborn.
Most of all, he was interesting. A lively combatant that could pull as hard as she pushed and wasn’t deterred by her sarcasm or sharp edges.
She enjoyed every minute of the time they spent together, even when she pretended that she didn’t.
There was also no denying the smoldering flame of their desire for each other.
And yet . . .
And yet there was a part of her heart that Jack was still instinctively guarding. A piece she was reluctant to give up because it would mean he’d have the whole of her heart, and then what would she do?
If Byron sensed she was holding back, he didn’t say anything.
But one morning, with rain pattering at the windows, Kitty did.
Finding Jack sitting in the library with a closed book on her lap, she sat down beside her and cleared her throat.
“Very well, let’s have it,” she said without preamble.
“Have what?” Jack asked warily.
“All of the reasons you have for why the Duke of Bradford isn’t the perfect suitor.”
Jack hugged the book to her chest and scowled. “For one thing, he’s a duke.”
“He is,” Kitty acknowledged. “He is also handsome, entertaining, kind, thoughtful, polite, and in possession of a good wit. Wit is important, Jack. Without it, a marriage will quickly turn dull.”
“Marriage?” She all but yelped the word. “No one said anything about marriage.”
“That is where courtships traditionally lead.”
“Not this courtship.”
Kitty’s smile strained at the corners. “Then inform me what is so wrong with him that you cannot picture a future where the two of you might be together. Every young girl has dreamed of her love—”
“That’s just it,” Jack cried as she threw the book to the side and leaped to her feet.
“I’m not every young girl. When I was a child, I was dreaming of where my next meal might come from.
Not dukes in shining armor. I’m not like you and I never will be, no matter how many dresses you make me wear.
Byron doesn’t see that now, but he would if we were married.
And when he got to know me, really know me and where I came from, he would realize how ill-suited we are. Why would I put myself through that?”
“Oh,” Kitty said quietly, “I believe we may have more in common than you think. I’ve never told you about where I came from, did I? Not in a way that wasn’t purposefully vague. Come sit back down.”
Jack’s cheeks filled with air. “You’re a marchioness and your sister is a duchess. I’m pretty sure I have a fair idea of what your upbringing was like.”
“That is who we are now, but it’s not who we were then. Come sit back down,” she said, patting the seat cushion beside her, “and I’ll tell you the entire sad, sordid tale.”
Sad?
Sordid?
Kitty?
Kitty was pretty, petite, and perfect. An exquisite example of what every lady of the ton aspired to be.
She was married to a marquess. She had an enormous manor, a country estate, and too many carriages to count.
She was everything that Jack would never be, and it was hard to believe that their pasts were anything alike.
But there was love there, and trust built on top of it, and with a grumble and another puff of air through her cheeks, Jack sat down. “Whatever you’re going to tell me, it won’t change my mind about Byron.”
“Just listen, and maybe you’ll learn something.
” Kitty sighed. It wasn’t a wistful sigh, but a resigned one.
The kind someone made right before they ripped off a bandage that they knew was going to stick to the wound.
“Mara and I grew up in a house much smaller than this, in a part of the city that wasn’t quite as terrible as the East End, nor was it was lovely as Grosvenor Square.
Our father was a viscount, a brute, and a drunkard.
The order depended on the day. He beat us, and he beat our mother.
One night, after an entire bottle of gin, he pushed her down the stairs and she died. ”
Kitty spoke so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that at first Jack was sure she’d misunderstood.
“Your father . . . killed your mother?”
“He did. Mara and I didn’t say anything.
Maybe we should have, and that’s a piece of guilt I live with to this day.
But while reporting the crime wouldn’t have brought our mother back, it would have ruined us, as our only chance of escaping our father’s brutality depended on making a good match, we kept silent. ”
“I . . .” Jack’s mouth hung open in shock. “I didn’t know.”
“Very few people do. My past is not a topic of conversation that I speak of lightly, if I ever speak of it at all.” Reaching between them, she squeezed Jack’s hand.
“But just because I don’t talk about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, or that it’s not a part of who I became.
When William and I were courting, I tried to hide the truth.
I thought, as you did, that he would be repulsed by my past. That he wouldn’t be able to understand it.
That he would think less of me because of it. I was wrong.”
William loved Kitty. Of that, Jack had no doubt.
She saw it every time he looked at her. Every time he touched her.
Every time she walked into the room and his shoulders shifted ever-so-slightly, as if an invisible weight had been lifted by her mere presence.
If he could love her that much, even knowing what dark secrets she possessed . . . could Byron love her?
Could two people, whose upbringings were opposite in every way, find common ground between them?
Or would she always be a fox, and he a farmer?
“It’s worth trying,” Kitty said, searching Jack’s gaze and seeing the thoughts she didn’t dare say aloud. “You’ll never know if you don’t.”
“And if I tell him who I am, and he doesn’t want anything to do with me?”
“Then he’s a fool, and we can stab him together.”
Jack snorted. “You would stab a duke?”
“You’re my daughter,” Kitty said simply. “For you, my darling, I’d do anything.”
*
The day Jack had been silently dreading came two weeks later.
All had been fine.
Better than fine.
It had been wonderful.
Why couldn’t it just keep being wonderful?
But just as spring always turned into summer, no matter what, there was no stopping her and Byron’s courtship from blooming into something more.
To begin with, he came to call earlier than he usually did.
And instead of waiting in the front hall for her, he went into Lord Kentwood’s private study where he remained for nearly an hour.
Even though she shamelessly held her ear to the door, Jack was unable to discern much more than a murmur of masculine voices.
When the door eventually opened, she barely had time to jump out of the way and feign interest in a painting on the wall before Byron emerged.
“Eavesdropping?” he drawled, rocking onto his heels as he regarded her with an amused arch of his brow.
“No,” she lied, frowning at him over her shoulder. “I’ve merely been admiring this artist’s work. Why would you accuse me of such a terrible thing?”
He walked up behind her and she quivered when he glided the back of his fingers up her neck. “Because,” he murmured, his mouth tantalizing close to her ear, “the side of your face is red from where you had it pressed against the wood.”
Drat.
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Come with me,” he interrupted, retreating to a respectable distance when a maid hurried through carrying a silver tray. “I’ve had something prepared for you in the garden.”
“In . . . in that garden?” She pointed in the direction of the rear terrace, bemused. “But you’ve only just gotten here.”
His dimple creased. “I must have planned ahead.”
It was then that she heard it. The musical strains of a violin. And out of the corner of her eye she saw Kitty and William standing inside the study, him with his arm around his wife and she with a white handkerchief clutched in her hand. As if she had been crying . . . or was about to.
“Oh no.” Her eyes widened with panic as she shook her head. “No, Byron, you can’t.”
He sighed. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
“But you’re going to, and I . . . I’m not ready.”
“Jacqueline—”
“Come in here,” she hissed, all but dragging him across the front hall and into the drawing room where she closed the door and locked it. While she had no qualms about eavesdropping, she didn’t want Kitty returning the favor.