Chapter Fifteen

Joanna Thorncroft was the illegitimate granddaughter of a duke.

The knowledge resonated within Kincaid’s head like a gun being shot, its bullet tearing through any number of bodies before it reached its intended target.

Over tea and cucumber sandwiches, Lady Ellinwood explained to him in brisk, no-nonsense terms of what had transpired when Anne Thorncroft came to London for her Season debut…and the fallout that occurred after she had left.

It was, Joanna’s great-aunt told him, the worst kept secret in all of the ton. People had since forgotten, naturally. There’d been far too many scandals over the past two decades to keep track of this one in particular. But she remembered. And she had no compunctions in revealing everything she knew.

“I was glad when Mabel returned to London with Anne. My sister and I were always close, and I was devastated when she ran off with that American scoundrel. Mabel’s daughter deserved a proper come out. She was half-British, after all. Unfortunately, I learned too late that that side didn’t take.”

“You did mention she was rebellious.” Although he’d placed a sandwich on his plate, Kincaid did not eat. Instead, he dined on Lady Ellinwood’s every word, using them to form a picture of Joanna’s mother. A woman who, for better or worse, had obviously passed her traits on to her eldest daughter.

“Oh, worse than that,” said Lady Ellinwood, rolling her eyes. “The girl was too independent for her own good. Everyone agreed. Mabel needed to take a firm hand with her, but she never did. Never dared to, if I am being honest. When Anne found herself caught up in an affair with the Duke of Caldwell’s eldest son, I was not surprised.”

“What was his name?” Kincaid asked. “The son.”

“Jason Weston, Marquess of Dorchester.”

JW.

“He’d buried his wife a month before the Season began,” Lady Ellinwood continued. “She died in childbirth. Twins, you understand. A boy and a girl. They both survived, but Lady Dorchester, may her soul rest in peace, did not. A tragedy, really. The ton agreed as a collective to give the marquess his year of mourning before he remarried. Even though there were plenty of eligible young ladies who could have benefited immensely from such a match. But what are we, as a Society, if we do not uphold our word?”

A bunch of greedy lemmings,Kincaid thought silently.

“Quite right, Lady Ellinwood.”

“Well, as you can probably guess, Anne did not adhere to our unspoken agreement. Within a week of her arrival, she was seen everywhere with the marquess. In the park. At the theater. They attended a private musicale at Kensington Palace! In the presence of a chaperone, naturally, but still.” Lady Ellinwood paused to take a sip of her tea. “It was the very height of scandal. Especially after it became clear that the little chit was expecting.”

“Why didn’t the marquess offer to marry her?” Kincaid frowned. He knew that in Lady Ellinwood’s retelling, the Marquess of Dorchester was the victim and Anne was the perpetrator, but he saw it in a very different light.

Kincaid saw a young woman in a new country. Who missed her home, and the sweetheart she’d left behind. Whose headstrong nature did not permit her to fit in with the ton’s simpering elite. Who was lost, and lonely, and so far out of her depth she was all but drowning. He saw an older man. Titled, experienced, a new father who should have been home with his infant children. Perhaps the marquess’ interest in Anne began innocently enough. A harmless flirtation to take his mind off the death of his wife. But as soon as he put his hands on an innocent, it had devolved into something else.

“The pregnancy was not common knowledge,” said Lady Ellinwood before she stuffed a cucumber sandwich into her mouth and use a linen napkin to neatly brush the crumbs from her chin. “I only suspected it because I accidentally walked in on Anne after she was sick in a chamber pot. Still, I’m certain the marquess would have done right by her had she not run off. Do you know Mabel didn’t even tell me they were leaving? I was humiliated. Humiliated.”

“I can only imagine how difficult this all was for you,” Kincaid said blandly. “What happened then?”

“You mean after my sister and deflowered niece returned to America?”

He gave a clipped nod. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain a passive expression while Lady Ellinwood besmirched Joanna’s mother, but he was doing his best. With the exception of the Marquess of Dorchester, he was unlikely to find another source of such credible information. Because of Lady Ellinwood, he already knew infinitely more than he had, and he intended to present what he’d learned to Joanna as soon as he figured out a way to soften the shock that was certain to come when she discovered who her real father was.

A lord would have been remarkable enough.

But to be the offspring of a marquess…granddaughter of a duke…

Some–most–would have been elated by the news. But he wasn’t sure how Joanna, who seemed to put no value in the peerage or titles, was going to take it.

Would she be happy or sad? Calm or overwhelmed? Excited or nervous?

Whatever her reaction, he knew one thing.

He wanted to be there.

Because he never should have left.

“I received a letter when Anne married that doctor,” Lady Ellinwood said. “And when she had her bastard. A girl, so I was told. Judith or June or something or rather. I really cannot recall, it was so long ago.”

Kincaid dropped his plate. It hit the table with a loud clatter, spilling his uneaten sandwich onto the floor. “Careful,” he said icily. “That is my client you are speaking about, and her name is Joanna.”

“I assure you I do not care what her name is. She is meaningless to me.”

“Well she isn’t meaningless to me!” Kincaid shouted. The admission caught both of them off guard, but he did not regret his impassioned words. Not when they rang with truth. “Joanna may not be a member of the peerage,” he continued through gritted teeth, “but as far as I am concerned, that is a quality, not a flaw. You may not have liked your niece, Lady Ellinwood, but you would do well to learn a thing or two from her daughter. Joanna has more courage and integrity in her little finger than the ton has within its collective body. You should be grateful to have such a remarkable young woman in your family.”

Lady Ellinwood’s lips all but disappeared as she pressed them together. “I believe it may be time for you to see yourself out, Detective.”

“I believe you’re right.” There was nothing more he could learn here, and he feared what else he might say if he remained. Retrieving the sandwich, Kincaid slapped it onto the plate and then stood up.

With the use of her cane, Lady Ellinwood did the same. As if he were a criminal she needed to keep an eye on lest he make off with the silver, she followed him all the way to the door. “When you see my grandniece, you might mention that I have no interest in meeting her. It’s clear the chit has woven a spell over you, the same as her mother did to the poor Marquess of Dorchester, and I want no part of it. I have been charged with raising my grandchild, and I will not have my grandniece exposing my darling Rosemary to her wicked ways.”

“You’ve actually three grandnieces,” Kincaid informed her, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek to refrain from saying what he really wanted to. He’d never felt such an overwhelming wave of protectiveness before. Not for anyone. It was a primal urge that tinged the edges of his vision red and made him want to beat his chest like a bloody madman. Instead, he settled for a flinty stare. “Joanna has two sisters, Evelyn and Claire.”

Lady Ellinwood sniffed. “Not all from different fathers, I hope.”

With that, she closed the door in his face.

* * * *

“What happened to you?” Evie asked, her eyes widening with alarm when Joanna swept past her and marched into their shared room with all of the righteous anger exclusively reserved for a woman spurned.

“Thomas Kincaid,” Joanna fumed as she tossed her frock coat onto the bed. “And a milk wagon.”

“A milk wagon? You’re bleeding!” Wetting a towel in one of the buckets they’d been using to collect rainwater, Evie motioned for Joanna to sit in a chair and began to tend to her wound.

“It’s nothing more than a scratch,” Joanna said, holding out her arm. “I don’t even feel it.”

It was true, she didn’t. She couldn’t. Not over the anger pulsing through her veins. She didn’t know if she’d ever been this enraged in her entire life. Her whole body was vibrating with fury. Or maybe those were tiny aftershocks of all the adrenaline still making its way through her bloodstream. She had, after all, nearly died.

And Kincaid had walked away.

The bastard had walked away, leaving her humiliated...and hurt.

Joanna had never been hurt by a man before. Exasperated; more times than she cared to count. Bored; it went without saying. But she’d never felt her heart wrench inside of her chest. Never felt her throat swell with emotion, or the pit of her stomach fill with despair.

If this was what rejection felt like, she wanted no part of it.

“What happened?” Evie repeated. Having finished cleaning the scrape, she wrapped it with a linen handkerchief, secured the makeshift bandage with a ribbon, and then picked up a brush. “Your hair looks as though it’s been through a windstorm. Hold still.”

Joanna set her jaw and glared forcefully at the wall as Evie pulled the pins from her hair and carefully began to work the comb through the tangled curls “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, and was nearly run over by a milk wagon. Kincaid saved me. Then, in an act of complete and utter idiocy, I poured my heart out to him.”

Evie’s hands stilled. “Why on earth would you do that?”

“Because that is what you do when you’re falling in love. All the books say so.”

“Oh, Jo,” her sister said in quiet dismay. “You’re not, are you? Falling in love with him, that is.”

“Well not anymore.” Even as she spoke the denial out loud, Joanna knew it wasn’t true. Love wasn’t a faucet to be turned off and on. Even when you shoved the handle down as hard as you could (and she was really putting all her weight into it), water continued to drip.

Kincaid may have walked away, but her heart hadn’t gone with him.

It was still inside her chest.

A little cracked. A little bloody. But still beating.

For him.

A man with the emotional range of a turnip.

Why couldn’t she have felt this way for Charles? Or any of her other suitors who, in Evie’s words, would have been “perfectly practical in every single way”? At the very least, they had never made her tremble with fury. But they’d never made her tremble with desire, either.

“Ouch,” she exclaimed when her sister tugged on a snarl a little too hard.

“Sorry.” Putting the brush down, Evie began to attack the knot with her fingers. “I can see that you’re upset. Which you have every reason to be. But…”

“But?” Joanna asked.

“Maybe this is for the best. You know it never would have worked. You and the detective. A bit of flirtation is all well and good. I could have done with a harmless dalliance myself during our time here. But it wasn’t ever going to go any further. There.” Holding up the lock of hair she’d been untangling for inspection, Evie gave a satisfied nod and let it fall before moving on to the next. “Mrs. Benedict has invited us to join her for dinner at the Claridge Hotel. Apparently it is the place to meet–”

“Wait,” Joanna interrupted. “What do you mean Kincaid and I weren’t ever going to go any further?”

“Exactly what I said. Tilt you head forward. No, too far. There. Perfect.” She began brushing again. Long, slow strokes of the comb that would have felt wonderful if Joanna’ stomach wasn’t twisted in knots. “From what you’ve described, Kincaid appears like a nice enough fellow. His boorish behavior notwithstanding, he did save your life. He also agreed to find the ring without requiring so much as a pittance. A good thing, as we’re nearly out of money as it is. How is that going, by the by?”

“Finding the ring?”

“Yes.”

“I…I don’t know.” Joanna touched her bandage, her fingers absently tracing across the smooth satin ribbon. “Kincaid has not brought it up lately, and I have not asked.”

“You haven’t asked? That ring is the entire reason we’re here!”

“I understand that,” she said defensively. “I’m sure he is working on it.”

“He had better work fast. We haven’t an infinite amount of time and resources to spend here, Jo. We will have to return home eventually. Which is another reason why you and Kincaid would never suit. You live an ocean away from each other. Would you stay in London, or would he return with us to Boston?”

“I am half-British.” It was the first time she had acknowledged her heritage out loud. Surprisingly, it did not feel nearly as strange as she had been expecting. “We could remain here, at least for a while. It is where Kincaid has made a name for himself, and I’ve always wanted to travel. To see new sights. To get out of Somerville. This could be the chance I’ve been waiting for.”

If only Kincaid had the ability to see what was right in front of him, she added silently.

How could a detective miss something so obvious?

If her heart didn’t still hurt, it would have been comical.

Instead, it was just wrenchingly ironic.

Evie tapped the comb against her palm. “You’d never see Grandmother, or Claire, again.”

“There are these things called ships. Surely you’ve heard of them.”

“Don’t be difficult. And move your head back.”

Joanna complied, then felt a gentle tugging on her scalp as Evie twisted her unruly mane into a long braid. “Regardless, it is a moot point,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “Kincaid has made it clear he wants nothing to do with me outside of a professional capacity, and I can hardly force him.”

“His loss and your gain,” Evie said dismissively as she twisted the braid into a bun and secured it with pins. “It is not as if he is titled, or even exceedingly wealthy. You can do far better. There. All finished.”

“Thank you.” Wincing, Joanna stood up. Now that her anger was beginning to subside, her aches and pains from being thrown to the ground were starting to catch up to her.

In like a lion, out like a lamb, was how their father used to describe his eldest daughter’s temper. While Evie could brood for hours (sometimes even days) when riled, Joanna rarely stayed mad for more than five minutes. It was both a blessing and a curse, for anger allowed her to ignore her emotions. Releasing it forced her to confront them. And she wasn’t ready to accept Kincaid was capable of treating her with such callousness. Because it meant she was wrong. It meant she’d been wrong all along.

There wasn’t anything between them.

There’d never been anything between them.

And she was just his secretary.

“Are you all right?” Evie asked when Joanna limped to the old wooden dresser they were both forced to share. Evie had claimed the vast majority of space, but Joanna had managed to retain the top drawer. In it, she kept an extra pair of gloves, stockings with the heels rubbed bare, a handkerchief painstakingly embroidered with her initials (the patience and attention to detail sewing required had always proven to be a challenge), a vial of perfume, two spare buttons, and a bar of chocolate wrapped in wax paper that she’d brought with her all the way across the Atlantic.

“Yes,” she replied as she snapped off a tiny piece of chocolate and popped it in her mouth. It was deliciously sweet, with undertones of black cherry. Precisely the treat she needed to help restore her spirits. “Only a tad sore.”

If she were home, she would have drawn a hot bath. But as they were only allotted a certain amount of water per day courtesy of Mrs. Privet’s draconian rules (and none of it was particularly hot), she would have to make do with some mild stretching and rainwater.

She was leaning down to touch the scuffed toes of her leather ankle boots when there was a loud, staccato knock at the door.

“Is rent due again already?” she asked Evie, who shook her head.

“Not for another three days. It’s probably Mrs. Benedict.” But when Evie opened the door, it wasn’t their kindly neighbor standing on the other side of it.

“Hello,” came Kincaid’s deep, somber voice. “You must be Miss Thorncroft’s sister.”

Her heart in her throat, Joanna jerked upright.

“And you must be Kincaid,” Evie said with all the warmth of a snowstorm in the middle of February. “Come to check on Joanna after you abandoned her in the street, have we?”

Kincaid’s piercing stare shot past Evie and landed squarely on Joanna. Behind the clear lenses of his spectacles, his eyes were as dark as coffee and, above them, his brows were drawn together in a taut line. “Are you all right?”

Why did everyone keep asking her that?

She’d taken a tumble, not fallen off a bridge.

And the pain she felt in her body was nothing compared to the aching in her heart.

“I am fine.” She pursed her lips. “Not that you care.”

“I do care, Miss Thorncroft,” he said roughly. “I care too damned much.”

Evie’s gaze darted between them. “If you need me, I’ll be, ah, down the hall.”

Off she dashed, leaving Joanna and Kincaid to stare at each other across the room.

“What do you really want?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to make sure you made it back.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “You mean after you stormed off and left me.”

“Yes, I…” His Adam’s apple bobbed in a hard swallow. “I have no excuse, Miss Thorncroft. No reason to do what I did. It was wrong, and I apologize. If I could go back and change my behavior, I would have escorted you to the boarding house as any gentleman should.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “You’re no gentleman, Thomas Kincaid.”

The hint of a smile broke the severe line of his mouth. “Not around you, at any rate.”

“Is that a compliment or a complaint?” she said coyly.

“I honestly don’t know.”

“You can come in, if you’d like.” Grabbing the chair she’d sat in while Evie repaired her hair, she turned it to face the bed and then retrieved what remained of her slab of chocolate. “It’s not as fancy as your office, but there’s someplace to sit, and sweets.”

“I’d hardly describe my office as fancy,” Kincaid said with a snort.

“It’s better than it was. Come on,” she coaxed, waving the chocolate at him. “I’d like to clear the air between us, and there are things we need to discuss.”

His expression wary, he took one step into the room, then another, before he stopped short.

“All the way. You can sit here,” she said, gesturing at the chair. “And close the door. Mrs. Holden, three doors down, is notorious for eavesdropping.”

“I really don’t think–” he began tersely.

“Oh for heaven’s sake. I won’t bite.”

The mattress creaked as she rested on the corner. After a moment’s hesitation, Kincaid reluctantly nudged the door shut, but did not sit.

“Chocolate?” she offered, cracking off a piece.

“No, thank you. Miss Thorncroft–”

“I was very angry with you, Kincaid.” She met his gaze without blinking. “For what you said, and what you did.”

His shoulders tensed. “I understand, and as I said, I am–”

“Fortunately for you, it’s not in my nature to stay angry for long.”

Goodness, but he was handsome. Standing there, all flustered and flushed. He hadn’t bothered to change his clothes since the last time she’d seen him, and there was a hole torn in his trousers as well as a dirt stain on his shirt. At least he’d cleaned the cut above his brow and on his chin. They weren’t deep, and they wouldn’t scar. But they did give him an air of reckless danger that she found very becoming.

“Why did you leave?” she asked. “You said you had no excuse or reason, but I know that isn’t true. You were upset by what I shared with you. About my personal feelings.”

“Yes,” he said without further explanation.

“Why? And this time, I deserve an answer. It’s the least you can do for what you did.” She bit off a piece of chocolate and waited while it melted on her tongue.

Kincaid ran a hand over his mouth. “I…”

“It is all right,” she said softly. “You can tell me.”

He sat in the chair. Heavily, she noted, as if he carried an enormous, invisible weight. Removing his spectacles, he slid them into the front pocket of his vest and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I was still working for Scotland Yard when I met her. I’d just been made an inspector, and given my own division. I had two dozen men under my command, which meant I could delegate the smaller cases and pursue the larger ones myself. Lord Townsend was such a case. Someone was stealing from him. A servant, he suspected. Though he had no proof. Over the course of my investigation, I stayed at his country estate. That was where his wife and I first struck up a…rapport, I suppose you could call it.”

Joanna’s eyes widened ever-so-slightly, but she didn’t interject. This was Kincaid’s story to tell, and having waited this long, she wasn’t going to risk giving him a reason to stop telling it.

“Lady Townsend told me things about her marriage. At the time, I believed they were true.” Kincaid’s hand dropped from his face. He spread his knees apart and rested his elbows upon them, his eyes on the floor between his feet as he continued to speak in the low, impersonal tone of someone recalling the weather. “She implied that her husband was cruel. That he shouted unnecessarily, and drank too much, and struck her where he was certain no one would see the bruises. All lies,” Kincaid sat flatly as he straightened in his chair. “But I did not realize that at the time, and I…I developed feelings for her. I wanted to protect her.”

Of course he had, Joanna thought. Because that was what Kincaid did. He protected people. And shame on this Lady Townsend for taking advantage of his giving nature. For using what came naturally to him and twisting it into something perverse.

“We began an affair.” He met Joanna’s gaze and then looked quickly away as a cord of muscle stood out in his neck. “I am not proud of it. I knew she was married. That she was not mine to have. But we made plans to run away together. I was going to leave Scotland Yard. She was going to leave her husband. We were to meet at dawn. I already had a private coach arranged to take us to Edinburgh.”

“But she didn’t meet you,” Joanna said, unable to keep her silence any longer.

“No, she did not.” He closed his eyes, and her heart ached at the raw pain she saw flash across his countenance. “I waited in the rain for hours. When I finally came to terms with the fact that she was not coming, I returned to Scotland Yard. Where I promptly found myself arrested and thrown in a cell.”

“For what?” she said indignantly.

“Lady Townsend told her husband about the affair, and implied that I had…forced it on her.”

“But that’s not what happened!” she cried, aghast that a woman would lie about something so serious.

“Can you be that certain?” he asked hollowly. “Others weren’t. Good men I’d served beside for years suddenly could not look me in the eyes.”

“Then they did not know you as I do, Kincaid.” She sprang off the bed and was beside him in an instant, her hand on his thigh, her gaze imploring him to believe and trust in what she was saying. Even though now she finally understood why trusting was difficult for him. “What Lady Townsend did was wicked and cruel. Not only to you, but to all women who have the courage to bring their abuse to light only to find themselves doubted and disbelieved.”

He clenched his jaw. “I never should have become romantically involved with a client’s wife. That blame is mine, and mine alone.”

“No, you probably shouldn’t have,” Joanna agreed, ignoring the twinge of jealousy she felt at the idea of Kincaid with someone else. Of him caring for someone else. Of him loving someone else, when he refused to love her. “But if there is blame to be had, this Lady Townsend owns her fair share of it.”

“Lord Townsend agreed to withdraw the charges if I left Scotland Yard. My captain requested my resignation that day, and I gave it.”

Joanna’s lips parted in protest. “But if you were innocent–”

“A trial would have resulted in a scandal, no matter the outcome. A scandal which would have eroded the public’s faith in the peelers. It was the right decision.”

“So that’s why you became a private investigator.”

He gave a brusque nod.

“Did you…did you ever see Lady Townsend again?”

Beneath her hand, his leg stiffened. “Shortly after I opened my new business, she arrived unannounced. Even after everything had happened…I still asked if she was all right. If she needed anything. If her husband was treating her well.” He dragged his fingers through his hair. “What a bloody fool I was.”

“What did she say?”

His mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “She said that Lord Townsend never raised his hand to her. She said he was busy with his mistress, and she was bored, and she’d always wondered what it would be like to have an affair with a commoner.”

Joanna’s breath expelled in a shocked gasp that rocked her back onto her heels. The nerve of that woman! To nearly ruin a life because she was tired of her dull, perfect life and seeking entertainment. Had she any comprehension of what she had done to Kincaid? Of the hurt she’d caused? The hurt she continued to cause? For it was clear that even though years had passed, Kincaid was still affected by what had happened. And why wouldn’t he be?

He had loved Lady Townsend. Joanna heard it in his voice. Saw in his eyes. Felt it in the unconscious clench of his muscles whenever he spoke her name. He had loved her, and she had betrayed him. In one of the worst ways a woman could betray a man. Not out of desperation. Not out of necessity. But because she was bored.

It was almost beyond belief.

“I am sorry, Kincaid. I am terribly, terribly sorry. I had no idea.” Sliding her hand to his knee, Joanna shifted her weight until she was crouched directly in front of him. His head was down. His arms were limp at his sides. He appeared defeated. And she hated, she hated to see him this way.

Which was why she did something she probably shouldn’t have.

She stood up and stepped between Kincaid’s thighs. He lifted his head, his eyes dark and wary. But he did not say anything, and neither did Joanna. The only sound in the room was their ragged breathing as she slid her arms around his neck. She wet her lips. Swallowed once, twice, and her heart pitched inside of her chest.

And then she kissed him.