Chapter Ten
More than an hour later, Jack came across Mr. Bartholomew Yeo sitting alone on the terrace and looking rather white in the lantern light.
The moonlight dance had ended, and the young ladies swept inside for tea.
Jack, unused to quite so much company, had taken his tea outside for a moment’s respite.
Tabitha’s brother was about Jack’s own age. Though clearly much more experienced in Polite Society, he seemed at that moment more like a struggling and anxious schoolboy. He didn’t even notice Jack’s emergence onto the terrace, until he sat in the other chair next to him.
Barty gave a start, followed by a rather mechanical smile. “Oh, it’s your grace. Taking the air?”
“Just for a moment.”
“Me too,” Barty said and lapsed back into silence.
“Anything I can do?” Jack said casually.
Barty shook his head and clearly tried to pull himself together. “No. No, but I thank you. Just played a little too deep and lost. It happens.” The careless smile might have worked on a face like Durward’s, but on Barty it looked slightly sick.
“Isn’t Lord Carily a friend who’d be willing to wait for his dues?
” It was a guess, though a reasonable one.
Barty had been playing cards with Carily for a large part of the evening, at first in a group, and then just the two of them.
There had been a fixed look on Carily’s face that Jack did not like and it had crossed his mind that Carily was punishing the brother for the sister’s dismissal.
Barty’s eyes flickered. “I’ll come up with something,” he said with a false brightness.
“Of course you will,” Jack said. He gazed up at the sky. “I was fortunate enough to win on my brief flurry at the tables, so I’m in the happy position of being able to oblige a friend in temporary embarrassment.”
There was a pause.
“Very good of your grace to put it like that,” Barty said. “But in truth, you don’t know me from Adam, and even if we were longstanding friends, I would not take advantage.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. But the offer stands. Strictly between ourselves.” He lowered his gaze from the stars to find Barty regarding him with some curiosity.
“You’re an odd sort of a duke, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t believe I have met any others.”
Barty gave a snort of laughter and Jack smiled amiably back before rising and sauntering back into the drawing room with his teacup.
The company had thinned somewhat, with some guests having already retired and others preparing to do so. A few men and one of the dowagers were still playing whist. There was no sign of Carily. Or Tabitha.
When he had finished his tea, he bade the company goodnight.
“Past his bedtime,” someone murmured.
Perhaps Jack imagined the difference in tone, more of a friendly ribbing now than contempt.
He went towards his bedchamber by a somewhat circuitous route that involved a tour of the lower floor before turning the wrong way at the top of the stairs. A watcher might have imagined he was lost. He wasn’t. He was worried.
Not that he had any real reason to be. It was not even jealousy, for he had no claim on Tabitha and she certainly gave every impression of taking care of herself.
But there had been something in Carily’s manner that was both obsessive and spiteful.
He hadn’t necessarily cheated in his games with Tabitha’s brother, but he had certainly gone out of his way to beat him.
The bedroom passages were all lit and he occasionally passed other guests.
They wished each other polite good nights.
But he had no idea where Tabitha’s or Lily’s chambers were, and he could hardly ask a servant without starting the kind of rumours he wanted to avoid.
Nor could he wander the corridors all night on the off-chance she might need him.
And then, rounding a corner into what must have been the east wing of the house, he saw her.
She stood in a doorway, with light pouring out from the room beyond, and from the wall sconce behind her. She was very close to a man, her hands braced against his chest. Lord Carily held her with one arm around her waist, and one hand cupping her face.
For an instant, despite the light, Jack’s world went dark. Hopelessness and jealousy seemed to halt his life, and yet he kept moving forward like an automaton because he didn’t know what else to do. So many emotions battered him in that moment that he felt sick.
And then he saw the truth.
The pose that seemed so frozen in time for him, had in fact just occurred. She was straining away from Carily, her face blazing with anger. Her hands on his chest gave an almighty shove. He staggered back, apparently amused, drawing her with him, but she wrenched herself free and swung around.
She caught sight of Jack and stopped in her tracks. So did Carily, who had taken an urgent step after her. Her mouth was thin and set with fury, her turbulent eyes both appalled to see Jack and pleading with him.
And all this had happened in an instant of near silence.
Jack walked steadily forward until he stood beside Tabitha and halted. He could feel the trembling of her body in the air between them.
Carily smirked at him, clearly waiting for him to walk on, to pretend he had seen nothing. He even bowed in an insolent, half-hearted kind of a way that was somehow contemptuous of both Jack and Tabitha.
Jack did not return the bow.
“Good night, my lord,” he said distinctly.
“Good night, your grace,” Carily returned in some amusement.
Jack waited, giving her time to flee if she wished. That she didn’t, hurt him unbearably. But it was Carily who was impatient, as though he couldn’t understand why Jack lingered.
For her own sake, Jack willed her to go.
Carily seemed to finally understand that Jack was waiting for him to close his bedchamber door, for he let out a mocking little laugh.
Then Tabitha moved. She turned so that she was facing Carily once more. And took Jack’s arm. Jack strolled on, as though it was just what he had expected. Behind them, Carily’s door slammed.
“Take me outside,” she said, low. “To where the air is clean.”
***
THE WORDS SPILLED OUT as she thought them. Utter madness. He would escort her stiffly to her bedchamber door and leave her there with all the contempt she deserved.
He didn’t. He kept walking until they reached the east staircase and turned down it with her.
She felt as though she were suffocating. She needed the cool, fresh air, though she could and should have gone alone. It was what she had intended. Only despite her shame in being discovered in such a position, by him of all people, his presence somehow soothed both her anger and her fears.
She had stayed with the Hawthorns several times. She knew the way out. She guided him to the side door, unlocked it and led him along the paths less visible from the house. Although the outside lanterns had been extinguished, there was enough light from the almost full moon to see their way easily.
“I have done you no favour,” she said abruptly. “I have made you his enemy.”
“I seem to have always been that,” he mused. She gave his arm an irritated little shake and he glanced at her in surprise. “I’m not afraid of him.”
“Perhaps you should be! Have you ever been in a fight in your life?”
“Oh, no. I am, sadly, protected by my rank.”
“Sadly?” she repeated, startled.
“I find myself with an unprecedented itch to knock him down and hurt him.”
Quite suddenly, all the tension seemed to leave her. She even sagged against him, holding tighter to his arm. “Then you do not believe I encouraged him?”
“I believe he assaulted you.”
Even to herself, she had not called it that.
Stupidly, her eyes prickled. “I had left Lily preparing for bed and was on my way to visit Louisa—Lady Hawthorn—I had something particular to say to her in private. Carily leapt out of his room as though he had been waiting for me and tried to embrace me. Apart from anything else, he startled me witless, so I boxed his ears. Unladylike behaviour, I know but he should not jump out at one.”
“No,” Jack said grimly. “He should not.”
Her lips tightened again. “He seemed to think it was funny, and that he had only to kiss me to get me into his room, and I would submit as I really always wanted to.”
“Did you?”
She frowned. “Did I what? Submit?”
“Always want to.”
She rubbed her fingers hard across her forehead where a headache was threatening.
“I thought about it,” she said dully. “In Brighton. I found him attractive then, and I was so confoundedly bored. But something always prevented me—perhaps that he expected it. Or perhaps I was tired of the whole thing.”
“What thing?”
She shrugged impatiently. “Being the wicked widow. Lovers. There was no love involved in any of my...flings, and I had finally recognized it. A little attraction, a little affection, but not love. It wasn’t enough and never had been.
I cared more about bringing Lily out respectably.
He wasn’t even supposed to be here, but he persuaded Louisa to invite him with the lie that he was madly in love with me. ”
“It isn’t necessarily a lie, by his own standards,” Jack said consideringly. “Though I would question his standards.”
She curled her lip. “I have repelled him every way I know how. With gentle civility, citing my care of Lily, by the cold shoulder and blunt words. He doesn’t seem to believe I mean any of it. Such a contemptible little act to make such a fuss over, but I won’t do it, Jack.”
He nodded as though he agreed, and it struck her that he did not quite understand. “I am not an innocent. I just need to choose. I have to be in control. No one will make me. Which is why I shall never marry again.”
Even as she said the words, she knew no man could truly understand them. He would never know the horrors of being a wife, of the necessary submission to strength, to custom, to the law. To be fair, few women seemed to understand either. They were either lucky, or they just accepted.