Good Earl Gone Bad (29 page)

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The next afternoon, after checking in on her father, whom she found sleeping peacefully, Hermione came downstairs to find the dowager Lady Mainwaring seated in the drawing room with a needlepoint frame before her.

“I hope you are feeling better after your unhappy encounter in the stables, my dear,” her mother-in-law said with a frown. “To think that someone was so bold as to attack a countess like that. It's shocking.”

“Aside from a small headache,” Hermione said, hiding a smile at the other lady's indignance, “I am feeling much better, thank you.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” the dowager said, not looking up from her embroidery. “I don't know what this world is coming to when thieves and brigands feel free to attack ladies like that. It makes me quite frightened for the state of things.”

“It is troubling, indeed,” Hermione said. Then, hoping to change the subject, she asked, “I don't suppose you know what has become of Jasper? He was already gone when I came down to breakfast.”

“I believe he said something about going to speak with the Bow Street runner,” the dowager said, looking up with a questioning gaze. “You aren't already bickering, are you?”

Thinking back to their lovemaking and heartfelt conversations of the night before, Hermione blushed. “Certainly not. I must admit that I slept later than usual thanks to the bump on my head, though, and I had hoped to ask Jasper if he had learned anything about the attack on Papa.”

“Not that he told me,” said the older lady with a scowl. “I hope that these ruffians are caught soon. How we are to sleep soundly knowing that such villans are roaming around the city, I do not know.”

Hermione was saved from reply by the arrival of Greaves, who informed her that Ophelia had come to call.

“Oh, do send her in,” Hermione said with relief.

Looking up, the dowager gave Hermione a short nod and rose from her place before her sewing. “I will leave you to your friend's tender care. Please do let me know if you hear anything from my son. I cannot like that he is out and about while those fiends are still at large.”

Impulsively, rose and hugged her. “Thank you. Truly.”

“I'm sure I don't know what for,” the older lady said, but she looked pleased.

She greeted Ophelia as they crossed each other in the doorway, and was gone.

“I am so relieved you are getting along with her,” Ophelia said with a sigh. “I was concerned that you were trapped here with no one for comfort but Jasper.”

“And what is the matter with Jasper?” asked Hermione with a raised brow.

“Oh, I mean him no ill will,” the other lady said with a shake of her head. “It's just that he's a man. And he has his estates to run and his masculine pursuits. I know you have not been used to having a mother and sisters, but having other ladies to confide in makes one's day-to-day life so much easier. If you get along. And I am pleased to hear that you do.”

“I suppose you have a point,” Hermione said with a frown. “But never having had them, I don't know that I'd have known the difference. At any rate, I am quite pleased that we will not be constantly at daggers drawn for I might be able to endure it, but I'm not sure Jasper would,”

“Where is Jasper?” Ophelia asked, unable to disguise the censure in her voice. “I thought after what happened to you yesterday he would be watching you like a hawk.”

“Pray do not fly into the boughs,” Hermione said dryly. “He did not abandon me in my hour of need. He left to go speak with the Bow Street runner, Mr. Rosewood.”

“I won't apologize,” her friend said, her lips pursed. “I cannot help but look out for you. I only have so many friends in this world, and you are one of them.”

“And I do appreciate it,” Hermione said with a fond smile. “But you may as well know that Jasper and I have progressed quite a bit from the first time we met. Indeed, one might even go so far as to say we care for each other.”

“Oh, that is interesting,” Ophelia said with a raised brow.

To Hermione's annoyance, she felt her cheeks heat.

“Yes, well,” she said defensively. “We are married, you know.”

“Oh, I am well aware of the fact,” said Ophelia with a knowing smile. “And in the interests of friendship, I would like you to expound on that a little.”

Hermione laughed. “Not for the wide world. I will leave that to your mama once you are betrothed.”

“You're just as bad as Leonora,” Ophelia groused. “I had hoped that you'd see the logic in letting me know what to expect.”

Hermione thought about her own worries regarding wifely duties—at least, her worries before Jasper had kissed her for the first time.

“I will tell you that it is nothing to fear,” she said, hoping that Ophelia would take what she said to heart. “And it is quite … ah—”

She was saved from continuing by a knock on the door followed by a footman with a note.

Thanking the young man, she ripped it open.

“It's from Miss Fleetwood,” she said to Ophelia with a frown. “She asks if I might meet her at her house. Alone.”

“That's odd,” Ophelia said, her brows drawn together. “What do you think she wants?”

“I did inform her that she could find me here,” Hermione said thoughtfully. “Perhaps she wishes to talk about Lord Saintcrow or the Lords of Anarchy.”

She didn't say that she now knew the lady's brother was suspected of wrongdoing by the Home Office.

“I don't like it,” Ophelia said, frowning. “You were attacked yesterday, and today you get a note from a lady you don't know very well asking you to leave your protected home to visit her alone? It is suspicious.”

Hermione secretly agreed, but she was tired of sitting still while Jasper did all the work. And she'd genuinely liked Miss Fleetwood the day she came to call in Half-Moon Street. If the lady was ill, and left to the tender mercies of a brother who had shown himself to be a ruffian—as the dowager would call him—then Hermione wasn't sure she could let her request for company pass unheeded.

But she had an idea for how to stay within the bounds of Jasper's request that she stay away from Fleetwood, and yet still check in on Miss Fleetwood.

“I need to go get some of Papa's things for him,” she told Ophelia after a moment of thought. “What if I go to Papa's rented house and ask Miss Fleetwood to come next door? That way, I won't be endangering myself needlessly, and if she is too unwell to come, then I will simply send my regrets and use the opportunity to get some work done.”

“Hm. That does sound better than going to the Fleetwoods' by yourself, but I don't really know how remaining next door will be all that different,” Ophelia said. “Though they are two separate houses. And I suppose you lived there for months before Jasper even warned you about them.”

“I will be right as rain, I promise you,” Hermione said.

 

Twenty-one

“What do you mean she's gone?” Jasper demanded, his fear for Hermione's safety overcoming his good manners.

“She took a footman,” Trent said patiently as he and Jasper discussed Hermione's disappearance from the house in her husband's absence. “Ophelia said that she tried to dissuade her from going, but that Hermione was insistent. You know how persuasive she can be.”

He did know, and that's what made him so damned afraid. Not only was she persuasive, but she'd use that skill to convince the footman to let her go inside the Fleetwood house on her own just to issue the invitation for the lady to join her next door. After all, it was only a visit to a sick friend, he imagined her saying with that winsome smile she used when trying to wheedle. Damnation. He should never have let her out of his sight this morning.

“Don't think the worst, Mainwaring,” said Trent, whose calm was quickly becoming an open invitation for Jasper to plant his fist in his face. “Fleetwood is a questionable character, I agree, but if the note really did come from his sister, then Hermione is very likely only visiting a sick friend as Ophelia said. Let's just go after her now and you can see that for yourself.”

With a grim nod, Jasper climbed up into Trent's curricle with no hesitation whatsoever. He needed to find his wife and he was damned if he'd wait for his horse to be saddled, no matter how much he might dislike traveling by coach.

When they arrived in Half-Moon Street after a brisk drive that saw Jasper holding onto the sides of the vehicle to keep from being thrown out, the two men hurried up the stairs of the Upperton town house and their brisk knocks were rewarded with a confused Greentree.

“Where is my wife?” Jasper demanded before the man could even speak. “She should be here with Miss Fleetwood as her guest.”

“I'm sorry, my lord,” said the butler with a frown, “but we haven't seen her today. Perhaps she called next door and was detained?”

Not waiting for the older man to finish his query, Jasper turned and hurried over to the house next door, followed by a grim-faced Trent.

In answer to his knock, the Fleetwoods' butler opened the door.

“Where is my wife?” he asked.

“And who might that be, sir?”

“Lady Mainwaring,” Jasper said through clenched teeth. “Is she here?”

“I'm sure I don't know—” the man began, but Jasper and Trent pushed past him into the foyer, which was the mirror image of the same room in the house next door.

As they hurried toward the stairs, Jasper saw Hermione coming down them, her arms akimbo. “What on earth do you mean causing such a ruckus in a house where there is a sick lady?” she demanded in a loud whisper. “Miss Fleetwood is quite ill. And you have upset the poor girl greatly.”

But Jasper was only interested in clutching her against him. “Thank God.” He sighed. “Thank God you are well. I thought … well, I cannot tell you what I thought.”

She was stiff in his arms at first, but as his worry communicated itself to her, she began to relax. “I am perfectly fine,” she said, patting his back. “Truly, fit as a fiddle. Nothing has happened.”

When he finally accepted the fact that her visit to the Fleetwoods hadn't, in fact, done her any irreparable damage, Jasper allowed her to pull away. Trent, he saw, was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched them. He gave his friend a sheepish look, to which Trent simply offered a shrug. As if to say “it could happen to any of us.”

“Do you mind telling me what that was all about?” Hermione asked, after she'd gone to assure Miss Fleetwood that the commotion had been a misunderstanding. “For I don't mind telling you that you frightened the life out of me.”

“Perhaps we should go next door?” Trent asked. “Or rather, the two of you can go next door. I will take myself off if you have no further need of me, Mainwaring.”

With a nod of thanks to his friend, Jasper slipped his arm through Hermione's and they all three left the house. Trent going back to his curricle and Jasper and Hermione going into the Upperton House.

They were greeted with welcome from the servants who asked after her father's health. After a few moments assuring them that he was resting comfortably, Hermione asked the housekeeper for a pot of tea and she and Jasper retired to the drawing room where they'd met with Rosewood only a few days before.

And almost as soon as the door closed behind them, Jasper pulled her into his arms and kissed her with every bit of the relief he felt on finding her safe.

When they came up for air, she pulled back a little to look into his eyes. “You were really frightened, weren't you?” she asked.

“Of course I was,” he said, leading her to the sofa and pulling her into his lap. “I came home to find you'd gone, and though I'd asked Trent to keep watch on you, you'd managed to slip through the net.”

“I didn't realize you were having me watched,” she said with a frown.

“For your safety,” he said firmly. “And I could trust no one but Trent to do it properly. Or couldn't as it turned out.”

“Don't blame Trent,” Hermione said. “I went out the back door so I could look at the scene of my attack. Just to see if I could remember anything else. And when I could not, I asked the coachman to bring me here.”

“Why would you go there alone when you've already been attacked there once before?” Jasper asked in exasperation.

“The reason for my attack—the coaching pair—was gone,” Hermione explained with a frown. “And you can hardly keep me prisoner. I am allowed to come and go as I please.”

“I don't want you to feel like a prisoner,” he said. “But I do want to keep you safe. It won't be forever. Just until we can catch these ruffians.”

“I don't understand,” she said with a frown. “Why in God's name is this person so willing to hurt—kill—other people over those horses?”

She shivered at the notion and Jasper took her hand in his, offering her comfort.

“I've learned,” he said, “that the mysterious Fleetwood happens to be the younger brother of Lord Payne.”

“Of the Lords of Anarchy?” Hermione asked, puzzled. “What an odd coincidence.”

“Does it not puzzle you that it was Payne's brother who sold them, then tried and failed to buy them back?” Jasper asked. Then, careful about the way he worded his next question, he continued. “And only a short time later Payne, his brother, offered you membership in his club?”

She gasped. “Are you implying that the only reason he invited me into the club was so he could have access to my horses?”

*   *   *

Jasper winced. There was simply no delicate way to put it. “Not to say that you couldn't drive circles around every member of that club,” he said, “but did it not strike you as odd that you are the only female member? If he really was interested in opening up the club to all sorts of people, would he not have welcomed more than just one lady into the membership?”