Chapter Fourteen

J ess stood in front of her easel with the tip of her paintbrush raised in the air. But instead of applying any brushstrokes, she it held unmoving less than an inch from the canvas. She’d been standing like that, still as a statue and staring at her unfinished painting, for a good ten minutes. Then she heard the long case clock in the hall strike ten and knew—she’d been standing there like that for more than half an hour.

She didn’t know whether to be furious at Lucien or furious at herself, whether to pound her fists against the wall or crumple to the floor in sobs. So she simply stood there, staring at the watercolor of white orchids she couldn’t bring herself to finish.

Viscountess Bromley was right about him. His spots would never change.

Her shoulders slumped, and she let out a soft cry. She put down the brush and stepped back, then pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead and the headache that had been pounding away there for the past two days, ever since her encounter with Lucien at the garden party.

Oh, she was a perfect fool! How could she have fallen for his charms? When he’d spoken about his father and his past, she was certain she’d glimpsed something real in him, something… human beneath the blackguard’s surface.

But she’d been so very wrong. His heart wasn’t black or dead.

He possessed no heart at all.

She wiped her hands on her apron, giving up on working any more today. Any more today ? La! It wasn’t yet ten o’clock. But then, a person’s mind played all kinds of time tricks when she hadn’t slept in two days. Or when she couldn’t drag her mind away from a terrible, horrible, utterly no good, impossibly handsome, irritatingly intriguing man.

With a soft curse, she untied her apron and threw it over a nearby wooden chair. She should have known better than to fall for his charms. After all, everything she’d learned about him only proved that he was nothing more than the despicable scapegrace and rakehell society knew him to be.

I never want to see you again… Of course, he hadn’t cared that she’d flung such a horrible resolution at him. Caring would imply that he felt guilty, and she wasn’t at all certain he felt remorse over anything he did.

“Unless it was paying too much for a prostitute,” she muttered beneath her breath.

“Pardon, dear?” Aunt Matilda paused in the doorway, a tray in her hands.

“Nothing.” She forced a smile for her aunt and waved her into the room, then gestured at the tray. “What do you have there?”

“Your breakfast.” Matilda set the tray down on the small card table where Jess often sorted her art materials and finished her sketches. “You didn’t join me yesterday morning either. This morning, I thought I’d bring the food to you.”

Guilt pricked her. “I haven’t had much of an appetite lately.”

When her stomach churned after a quick glance at the plate of sticky rolls, bowl of strawberries, and toast, accompanied by a small pot of chocolate, she knew she still hadn’t. So she shook her head and crossed back to her easel, to stare down at her illustration. It was beautiful, a perfect likeness of the delicate yellow flowers she’d seen at Kew. But her heart simply wasn’t in her work.

“I’ve noticed.” Matilda plopped down onto the other chair and gestured at Jess with her chocolate cup as she set out the plates. “So has Simms. The man’s practically beside himself with worry about you.”

Jess didn’t believe that for a moment. Amanda had always been his favorite.

“And I’ve noticed,” her aunt added, her lowered eyes fixed on the silverware as she put it near the plates, “that you haven’t been at all yourself since Lady Holkham’s tea party. Could it have something to do with the flowers you saw in her garden…or a particular duke who surprised everyone by dropping by to return a necklace that isn’t yours—again?”

With a sigh, Jess deflated into her chair. “It wasn’t my fault this time, I promise you.”

“The Duke of Crewe seems to think it was.”

“Well, he is wrong.”

“Please tell me that Mrs. Peterson and Lady Bromley are also very much wrong that you’ve somehow become secretly engaged to him.”

“Of course they are!” Jess was appalled by the idea. “I know exactly the kind of man Crewe is, and I would never marry a man like him.”

“Yet you want your sister to.”

She froze before the answer could snap from her tongue. The hell that Amanda would go through in giving birth to a baby she could never openly love was unimaginable.

But it would have been nothing compared to the hell of marriage to a man who didn’t love her.

Her heart sank to the floor. “No,” she admitted quietly. “Not anymore.”

“So you’ve given up all that nonsense about threatening to cleanse his filthy reputation, then?”

“Yes.” She stared at the empty plate in front of her, doubtful she’d have the appetite to eat breakfast ever again. “He didn’t like it very much and threatened to retaliate.”

“Imagine that,” Auntie mused as she slathered marmalade on her toast. “A man being upset that someone was nosing around in his private affairs.”

Jess rolled her eyes. “Sarcasm does not become you, Auntie.”

“Oh, I think it does. A great deal.” She crunched a bite of toast between her teeth. “After all, there should be some benefits of reaching my advanced age, and if sarcasm isn’t one of them, then I shall be deeply put out.”

Jess knew what Auntie was doing. Flippancy instead of an outright I told you so . Yet it didn’t make her feel any better. “I hope never to see His Grace again, in any capacity.”

Matilda paused, her jam knife pointed in the air. “You told him that? To his face?”

“Yes.” And a lot more besides. Or at least she’d wanted to. In retrospect, the blasted devil had gotten off far too easily. He deserved a tongue-lashing that would have left him humbled. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be able to slap him again!

No. Her shoulders sank. She was the one who’d mistakenly saw more good in him than what truly existed. His leopard spots hadn’t changed at all.

So far, though, her wish had been granted. Lucien hadn’t tried to contact her in the two days since the party, and she hadn’t seen him at all. Of course, she held no fear of accidentally running into him. As Auntie was fond of pointing out, they didn’t exactly move in the same social circles, and as far as she could tell from the gossip rags, he didn’t seem to be in London at all. Perhaps he’d gone to Ealing where that urgent message had come from.

Or perhaps he’d finally crawled back into the fires of hell that had birthed him.

“I’ll write to the newspaper office which publishes that gossip rag,” Jess said, defeated, “and explain to them that they were very much wrong in thinking that His Grace and I had any sort of understanding whatsoever. Then they won’t need to print—”

“You’ll do no such thing!”

Jess straightened at Auntie’s unexpected outburst, then frowned. “Why not?”

Matilda’s lips parted, then slammed shut as she thought better of whatever it was she had been about to say. She answered instead, “Because it is his responsibility to do that. He is a duke and should be gentleman enough to defend your honor in such a situation.”

Jess nearly laughed. Auntie didn’t know him at all! He certainly hadn’t been a gentleman when he’d been kissing her breast. As for defending anyone’s honor, as far as any of the St Clair women were concerned, that was still Jess’s responsibility.

“Maybe neither of us will have to do that.” Jess pushed an unwanted strawberry around her plate with her fork. “Maybe everyone will realize what stuff and nonsense that rumor was and stop believing any bit of it.”

“You hold too much faith in the mental capacity of the ton .” Auntie poured chocolate into Jess’s cup, then topped off her own. “You need to contact His Grace and ask him to—”

“No.” I never want to see you again… She meant it, too, no matter that her foolish heart still yearned to be in his arms.

An odd expression that Jess couldn’t quite read crossed Auntie’s face.

“Soon, Amanda will reply to my letter and explain everything, and I trust in her to tell me the truth,” Jess asserted. “She will stay in Ireland as long as she needs to, and then, when she returns to London, we will help her however she needs.” She folded her hands in her lap. “The Duke of Crewe will have no part in any of that.”

“Are you certain you want that, my dear?” Auntie asked gently.

When Jess raised her gaze to meet Matilda’s, she knew her aunt could see the glistening of tears in her eyes. They simply couldn’t be held back.

Jess nodded, unable to find her voice around the tightening in her throat, and looked away.

She stood and walked back to her easel. She might not have a man who found her as beautiful and challenging as Lucien Grenier claimed to—which was the cruelest part of all, to know those wonderful things he’d said about her were nothing but lies—but she had her art. Her love for it would keep her going. Somehow.

A soft knock sounded at the door, and Jess turned to find Simms with a letter in his hand.

He held it out to her with a slight incline of his head. “This just arrived for you, Miss.”

It was from Mr. Stevenson, her investigator. Her stomached tightened as she snapped the plain wax seal. Had Lucien contacted the man and paid him to break off working for her? Or simply threatened him to stop?

She pulled in a deep breath and read it.

Miss St Claire –

Please come to my office right away. I have made a terrible mistake. Crewe is not at all who you think.

Please do not delay.

— Mr. Jonas Stevenson

“What is it, dear?” Matilda pressed. “Has it something to do with Amanda?”

“No.” Not really. At least, not anymore. Jess forced a smile as she folded the message. “Mr. Meade forwarded this to me. I have to go into the city today.”

“Then I’ll come with you.”

“No need.” She waved away Auntie’s concern. “You know how many complications can arise with a book like the one I’m helping with.” Helping with. La! The one she was practically creating herself. But since she was already lying to Auntie, what was one more lie to herself? “I’ll be back before lunch, and we can take a stroll through the park after.”

Jess placed a kiss to Auntie’s cheek, then quickly hurried through the house to her bedroom to change.

In a fresh day dress of sprigged muslin and her lucky straw bonnet, Jess hired a hackney to take her to Covent Garden and to the investigator’s office, which was located just off Bow Street. Mr. Stevenson was a former runner, and she didn’t blame him for wanting to be close to his Bow Street acquaintances. Besides, she loved this part of the city, passing the old medieval market where flower vendors filled buckets and barrels with bouquets and cloth merchants displayed beautiful bolts of silks and damasks. Best of all, it took her near Somerset House where the Royal Academy held its annual summer exhibition, one of her favorite spots in all the world. Someday, she hoped, one of her paintings would be displayed there.

The hackney stopped at the street corner near Mr. Stevenson’s office. She paid the driver, then sent him away rather than ask him to wait because she had no idea how long she would be. Besides, a niggling suspicion told her she’d want to walk a ways after the meeting, if only to calm her pounding heart. That was one of the few joys of being middle-class and socially unimportant. No one cared if she ventured out by herself.

A bell jingled over the door as she stepped into the old storefront that had most likely once served as a pawn shop, given its location.

Two assistants glanced up from their desks, both looking as if they’d spent the night before prowling London’s underworld. Knowing Mr. Stevenson’s clients, they most likely had done exactly that.

The door to his office in the rear of the storefront opened, and he smiled as he came forward to greet her. Yet his expression struck Jess as tense, and lines on his face proved he’d gotten as little sleep last night as his men.

“Mr. Stevenson.” She extended her gloved hand. “Your message sounded urgent.”

“Indeed.” His smile faded into grim solemnity as he held the door open to let her pass. “Please—come inside.”

He left the office door partially open to give them privacy yet maintain propriety as Jess sank onto the chair in front of his large mahogany desk.

She took a deep breath and steeled her spine. “So you’ve learned more about the Duke of Crewe?”

Circling the desk, he gave a terse nod and settled into his leather chair. “I’ve done more investigating. When a man has worked in my field for as long as I have, he develops a sixth sense about people, and there was something that struck me as odd about the way Lucien Grenier conducts his affairs. So I dug deeper.”

“And what did you discover?”

“He isn’t at all what you’ve been led to believe.”

She held her breath, prepared for the worst. “How so?”

“He’s nice.”

He was… Jess blinked. “Pardon?”

“I led you to the wrong conclusions about him. In actuality, he’s quite respectable.”

“But…but…” She didn’t know whether to lean forward and demand answers or sag back into the chair in utter disbelief. “He’s a terrible person! He fought as a mercenary during the wars, was expelled from university—frequents brothels and wagers fortunes on horses and cards. You’ve confirmed as much.”

“I did. But that appears to be only the surface.” With a chagrinned grimace, Stevenson reached for a file from the pile on his desk. “He was a mercenary, but only because his father made it impossible for him to gain a commission with the British. If he wanted to save Europe from Napoleon, that was his only way to do so.”

“Yes, I know.” Lucien had admitted as much to her at the garden party.

“But do you also know that he was a war hero?” He removed a piece of paper from the file and slid it across the desk to her. “This is a sworn statement from an officer who served with the Prussians alongside Crewe. He claims the man was a hero many times over, saving countless soldiers as well as women and children. Apparently, Crewe volunteered for the most dangerous missions to keep other men from having to do them, including reconnaissance deep behind French lines.”

Her head swam. She couldn’t imagine Crewe doing something so selfless. He must have craved violence. His past proved it, for heaven’s sake! “You said he became a mercenary when he was expelled from university for fighting.”

“He was expelled, that was true, and it was for fighting.” He placed another sheet of paper in front of her. “But he entered that fight to protect another student who was sickly, frail, and unable to defend himself. A group of older boys from the town had been picking on him for weeks. Crewe made it stop. When the dean wanted answers, Crewe took all responsibility and was expelled for it.”

She pressed her hand against her belly. She wasn’t prepared for this new picture of Lucien, not on the heels of the way he’d wounded her so callously in Lord Holkham’s garden.

“His good deeds continued after his return to London.” Mr. Stevenson added another piece of paper to the growing pile of unwelcome news. “He used the family fortune to make all kinds of charitable donations, especially to organizations dedicated to helping children and women. Clothing to the poor in rookeries, scholarships for orphans, donations to the New Lying-In Hospital—he completely outfitted a grammar school in Limehouse, right down to the desks and globe, then paid for the school’s two oldest boys to go into the navy once they finished their studies.” He tapped the piece of paper with his forefinger. “He even recently paid for a prostitute to travel to Yorkshire to return home to her family.”

Her mouth went dry. Had she truly been that wrong about him? And if she were wrong about this, what else had she been wrong about? “Then why doesn’t anyone know about this side of him?”

“He’s been keeping it secret.”

“Why?” she rasped out, unable to find her voice. “Why would he do something like that?”

“No idea.” Stevenson withdrew another paper and slid it across the desk to her. “Reports of his gambling have also been exaggerated. As far as I could calculate, he breaks even at the end of every evening.”

Her confusion deepened. “And the brothels? Is that information not true either?”

“No. Those he does venture into several nights each week.”

Relief washed over Jess. She knew it! Thank goodness . He truly was as black as she’d suspected. Otherwise, what she’d been doing to him these past weeks—

She would have deserved every bit of pain he’d inflicted in return.

“But he never—” Stevenson cut himself off, then cleared his throat. “He never engages with the women.”

She shook her head, confused. “Then what does he do there?”

He arched a brow. “Some of the women my men talked to claim he’s been teaching them to read.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

He smiled faintly. “Something like that is far too unlikely for any peer, even one with a charitable bent.” His amusement faded. “I have one more bit of information to share with you.”

She steeled herself as he placed a final sheet of paper on top of the growing stack. On it was written a single direction. In Ealing.

“What’s this?”

“The direction to a property the duke owns. A small, secluded farm he’s let for years to an older couple named Mr. and Mrs. Porter. He visits there often, sometimes coming back on the same day, at other times spending the night. Occasionally he remains there for days. My men were unable to discover why, but evidence suggests he stays there to visit the Ealing races.” He nodded at the paper. “That is the only speck of darkness I was able to confirm about him—that he likes to attend the Ealing races.”

Her chest tightened, afraid to admit the truth to herself. She asked, barely above a breath, “So what you’re saying…”

“Is that the Duke of Crewe is kind, heroic, and generous to a fault,” he finished. He took back all the pages and returned them to his file, then held it out for her to take. “But he doesn’t want the world to know about any of it.”

Her hand shook violently as she took the file, then she reached into her reticule. She didn’t know how she kept from dropping the bank notes on the floor as she put them onto the desk to settle her bill.

“Thank you, Mr. Stevenson.” She forced a smile for him as she stood on wobbly knees and made her way toward the door. Her body was numb, her mind roiling from trying to reconcile the man her investigator had uncovered with the one she knew—No, with the man she thought she knew. Nothing about him was as it seemed. “I won’t be needing your services any longer.” She forced a tight smile. “You’ve been quite helpful.”

Once she left the office, her shaking legs forced her to give up the idea of walking, and she waved down a hired hackney. When she climbed inside and sank back against the squabs, she screwed her eyes shut against the stinging burn and pressed the file tightly against her bosom.

Oh, what fool she’d been! She thought she knew him. True, she thought he was nothing more than a blackguard, a heartless man who cared for no one and nothing but his own pleasures, a rake who had ruined her sister—

She hadn’t known him at all.

“Why?” she whispered to no one, letting her feelings of betrayal bubble unbidden to the surface. “Why would he do things like this? Why would Lucien Grenier, of all men, be good ?”

Worse…

“Why would he lie to me about it?”

And if he’d lied to her about being a blackguard who was only one shade lighter than Lucifer himself, then why wouldn’t he have admitted to ruining Amanda, too, if only to make himself seem even worse? He should have reveled in it, then crowed his head off that he couldn’t be forced into marriage to right the wrong.

But he’d done no such thing. He’d always denied being intimate with Amanda.

Her head swam. With so much she thought she knew about him being turned on its head, was he lying or telling the truth? Was Amanda?

And worst of all, if he were truly a good man, why would he have humiliated her in the garden that way? What could he have gained from wounding her when she’d already declared a truce in their war?

She shook her head to clear it, but failed miserably. It was becoming harder to reconcile the heartless beast she thought had ruined her sister with the good man she was now discovering beneath the rakehell’s facade.

Harder? She stifled a laugh. Impossible.

She opened her eyes and looked down at the file in her arms.

All the good he’d done… Why? Was he attempting to find absolution for his part in the wars? Was he attempting to buy redemption for his black soul?

She had no idea. But was she determined to find out.