Chapter Twenty-Three

J ess watched through tear-blurred eyes from inside the hackney as Lucien turned his saddle horse onto Park Lane toward Brixton House and rode away, leaving her to travel on alone down Oxford Street toward home. He had followed behind her all the way from Ealing to make certain she traveled safely, yet now he had to leave her so she could arrive alone.

“Because a handsome, muscular, and brooding rake escorting home an unmarried miss with tear-reddened eyes couldn’t be ignored,” she mumbled to herself as she collapsed back against the squabs. “Not even by Aunt Matilda and Amanda.”

Although what excuse she would give her aunt and sister for being out all night, and then arriving home in such a sorry state, she had absolutely no idea. The truth certainly wouldn’t do.

The irony of that was not lost on her. She couldn’t marry the man who loved her because of lies and secrets, yet here she was, contemplating her own fresh lie to the people she loved.

“I was distraught yesterday over Amanda’s return and our argument.” So far, not a lie. “And I needed to be away from the house for a little while.” Not technically a lie. “So I spent the night at Mary Beecham’s house.” And that would set her hair on fire.

Oh, she gave up! With an anguished cry, she pressed her palms against her eyes. In less than twenty-four hours, everything she thought she knew and wanted had been turned on end. Her world had changed forever. The man she loved also loved her and had proved it by making such tender love to her that she’d been certain she’d flown away to heaven in his arms, only to come crashing back to the hard earth when he proposed.

Lucien, Duke of Crewe, had proposed! Moreover, he wanted to marry her, not because he felt obligated. For one precious moment, she had let herself believe such a future could be possible.

Then her dream became a nightmare.

The jarvey pounded his fist against the roof of the hackney, and Jess jerked up her head with a gasp. They’d arrived in front of the townhouse. She was home.

Numbly, she climbed down from the compartment. Lucien had insisted on paying the driver when he hired the carriage in Ealing. Thank God, because she didn’t think she had the strength left inside her to linger even a moment more on the footpath for fear of breaking down. So she tucked her head to let her bonnet cover her red, patchy cheeks and nose and hurried to the house. She didn’t knock, didn’t wait for the butler—the door had been left unlocked, and she sent up a prayer of thanks to whichever saint cared enough about her now that she could slip unnoticed upstairs.

She opened her bedroom door and froze. Aunt Matilda sat on her bed, waiting for her to return.

Wordlessly, Auntie held open her arms.

A grief-stricken cry left Jess’s lips, and the last of her remaining strength vanished. She collapsed onto the bed next to Matilda and fell into her motherly arms, but for the first time all morning, tears refused to fall. Most likely, she’d already used them all up.

“You were gone all night,” Matilda said quietly as she hugged Jess to her. “I was so very worried.”

“I’m sorry.” About so many things!

“Are you all right?” she asked gently.

“No.” She squeezed shut her tear-roughened eyes against the burning behind her eyelids and somehow managed to force out, “I spent the night with Lucien.”

“I know.”

She lifted her head, but despite not having enough tears left, her vision blurred as she stared at her aunt. No surprise showed in Auntie’s expression. “How did you know?”

“Where else would you have gone after your sister returned like that?”

Oh, she had it all wrong! “Lucien isn’t the father of Amanda’s baby.”

Her eyes softened as she untied Jess’s straw bonnet and removed it, tossing it aside to the foot of the bed. “I know that, too.” She rested her check against the top of Jess’s head, as she’d done since Jess was a little girl. “I am not feeble-minded, you know. I know a lot more than you and your sister give me credit for.”

Auntie unbuttoned her pelisse, then slowly pulled it down her arms and off. Yesterday’s dress revealed itself, complete with well-worn wrinkles. Thankfully, Matilda made no comment about it.

“Your sister would never have been na?ve enough to let herself be seduced by a man like Crewe,” Auntie mumbled. “She would only have given her body to the same man who had given her his heart, and that was not Crewe. Never would have been. She simply isn’t his sort, and he isn’t hers. But you…you charged after him like a vengeful wraith, and that was something he simply could not ignore. I knew the moment I saw the two of you at the Hawthorne ball, with you staring daggers at him for the rest of the evening and him pretending not to notice, that a storm was brewing. I did everything I could to prevent it.” She paused. “But then I realized it was inevitable. The two of you were simply too drawn to each other to ignore it.” She cupped Jess’s face between her hands so she couldn’t look away. Or lie. “You fell in love with him, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” The word was a breathless, hoarse confession, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain burning in her chest.

“And he fell in love with you.” Before Jess could confirm that, Matilda continued, “But of course, he did. You’re nothing like any other woman in his world, and I’m certain you shook him to his core. Oh, certainly, he knows how to make young misses flee in fear, but he simply had no idea what to do with one who didn’t. You challenged him, and he enjoyed it.” She pushed herself away from the bed to cross to the wash stand and poured fresh water into the basin from the pitcher. “But you both knew he would never marry you.”

“He wants to,” Jess whispered. Despite the desolation pounding inside her, her foolish hope clung to a last tendril of pleasure and pride at knowing that. “He asked me to marry him.”

Matilda froze, her back toward Jess. “And you said…?”

“No.”

Auntie’s shoulders slumped in mutual sadness. “Is there any chance you might change your mind?”

The single word fell from her lips, no louder than a breath—“No.”

Matilda remained silent as she dunked a cloth in the water and wrung it out. She carried it back to Jess so she could clean her face. The coolness of the wet cloth soothed her hot cheeks, so did Auntie’s compassion and understanding. Jess wasn’t certain she deserved either.

“Amanda is planning on leaving by the week’s end to return to Ireland,” Matilda told her as she hung up the pelisse on the wall hook by the door. “I suggest we don’t tell her what happened between you and His Grace. She already has a lot on her mind. There’s no need to worry her further.”

In other words…no need for Jess to confess her embarrassment and distress. She would be allowed to keep her pain private. Gratitude made her eyes sting anew. “Thank you.”

Auntie gently tugged her to her feet and then undressed her down to her shift. Each layer of clothing was carefully laid across the foot of the bed.

“If he should pay us a call,” Matilda asked carefully as she placed a warm cashmere wrap around Jess’s shoulders, “what would you like me to say to him?”

“He won’t.” She knew that with as much certainly as she knew the sun rose every morning.

Matilda nodded slowly, then pulled back the coverlet on the bed. “You should rest now. Stay in bed as long as you’d like today. I’ll tell Amanda you have a headache.”

“And when she asks where I was last night?”

“Last night? Why, you spent the evening playing cards at your friend Sarah’s house, only to return home after Amanda had gone to bed and far too late to disturb her just to say goodnight.” Auntie placed a kiss to her forehead. “Hold on to your heart. Don’t let this stop you from holding dear the people you love and who love you. We can never have enough of those in our life.”

“And Lucien?” Her voice cracked with emotion. “Where does he fit into my life now?”

Auntie’s hands squeezed her shoulders. “Trust in him, my dear, to do the right thing in the end.”

Then she tightly hugged Jess and left, closing the door quietly behind her.

She choked down a tearful laugh. Trust in the Duke of Deceit?

Her world had inverted over the past few weeks so slowly she had barely felt it turning her head-over-heels, until she now dangled head-first above the precipice. Now bad was good, wrong was right, wickedness had become so divinely wonderful…and the only man she loved was someone who claimed to the world to be completely incapable of loving anyone at all.

How would she ever be able to set it all back to rights?

She sank down onto the bed and let out a long, tremulous breath, her shoulders sagging and her hands twisting in her shift. She was ready to crawl out of her skin! She couldn’t sit still, couldn’t find the energy to pace, couldn’t stop the swimming thoughts in her head so she could think—couldn’t bear to let herself think about what had happened. The only way she knew how to deal with the pain was to turn numb. But she couldn’t do that either. If she chased away the pain, what would be left of her heart, if anything?

Her heart.

She pushed herself off the bed and went to her pelisse. In the pocket was the folded paper she’d tried to give back to Lucien, the one on which he’d drawn a heart.

He’d given her his heart drawing. If only it could be that easy for her to accept the real thing!

She unfolded the paper, which was crumpled from when she’d crushed it in her hand. A tear escaped her stinging eyes and dropped onto the page. She tried to brush it away, but the water smeared the colored pencil outline, blurring and distorting it. A soft cry swelled up from her as she frantically swiped at it with her fingertip, but every attempt to save the drawing only made it worse.

“I’ve ruined it,” she whispered to herself, utter unhappiness consuming her as she sank to the floor in new sobs. “I’ve ruined everything.”

Only a few days ago, she thought Lucien’s heart was black, if he’d possessed a heart at all. She’d been certain nothing existed in his chest but a pile of ashes where a heart should have been, a cinder as charred as coal and icy-cold as Lucifer’s.

Now she knew better. His heart was good and warm, generous and kind.

And it would never belong to her.

*

Lucien dismounted his horse at the front steps of Brixton House and tossed the reins to the groom who jogged forward to meet him. He nodded curtly to the footman who opened the front door for him and tossed the man his hat, followed by his gloves one by one over his shoulder as he strode through the house toward his study with its well-stocked liquor cabinet. He needed a drink.

No—he needed to drink himself into oblivion.

“Tell McGregor and Dalton to leave me be this morning,” he ordered. “I won’t need them.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

He paused outside the study door to strip off his coat and throw it to the footman. “And absolutely no callers.” Although he knew the one person he wanted to see most wouldn’t venture to his door again.

“Yes, sir.”

Lucien yanked open the door and froze. The study was exactly as he’d left it two nights ago, right down to the glass and bottle still on his desk. The windows were still shuttered, the fireplace cold…even the desk chair sat out of place where he’d shoved it away when he’d stood to leave for Ealing. Nothing had changed.

His heart stuttered. Was this really what he was going to do—step back into the room as if the past two days had never happened? By doing that, he would erase the exquisite hours he’d spent with Jess, as if he’d not found the chance for salvation in her arms. He would be going back to the empty existence his life had been before she entered it.

If he did that, it would simply destroy him.

Jess wanted him to prove himself, to bring all the secrets to light and show the world that he was truly good. Just upend his world as he knew it.

But then, hadn’t she already done exactly that? She had brought true goodness into his life and washed color and warmth through his cold, black world. He could never go back to the empty life he’d led before.

He’d be damned before he lost his chance at a future with her.

“Martin!” he shouted over his shoulder.

The young footman hurried back down the hall toward him. “Yes, Your Grace?”

“I’ve changed my mind. Tell Dalton I’m going to need a hot bath, shave, and change of clothes. I’ll be paying several visits this afternoon, and I need to look the part.”

“Yes, sir!” The footman scurried away.

Taking a deep breath, Lucien finally stepped into the room, crossed to the windows, and pulled open the shutters. The morning sun cascaded into the room and brought with it instant light, warmth, and a golden glow. It was the promise of a brand-new day.

He smiled to himself as he turned back to survey the room, which no longer looked anything like how he’d left it. He took hope in that. After all… “How hard can it be to move the earth?”

If that was what it took to win over Jess, then that was exactly what he would do. Heaven help the man—or woman—who got in his way.