Proof by Seduction (35 page)

“I
lied
to you, Ned.”

He reached out and gently took the knife from her grasp.

“Sisters usually do.” He opened the blade and switched it, awkwardly, to his other hand. And then he held out his right hand. The knife scored his flesh, cutting a thin red line down his palm. Blood welled up.

Ned held out the knife expectantly. “You told me to take this one step at a time. Well? Here I am.”

Jenny hesitated. It was too much. He offered truth in exchange for lies. Loyalty, for fraud.

And then he bounced expectantly on his toes, and he was impatient Ned again. Ned, who offered, quite simply, love for love. If she couldn’t believe she was worthy of it
now,
she might as well give up on the whole thought of finding any place on the face of the earth where she could command respect.

Jenny’s fingers trembled as she took the knife in her left hand. The sharp blade slid into her flesh. At first, she didn’t feel a thing—not the cut, nor any attendant pain. Then Ned reached out and clasped her hand in his. He squeezed, and the wound stung. Her eyes smarted. Her heart swelled, and suddenly, her echoing rooms seemed neither desolate nor empty.

She’d waited thirty long years for a little brother. It had taken him a while to appear, but he’d been worth the delay.

“I know you’re leaving,” Ned said softly. “Truth be told—I’m not sure I can do this, either. Be her husband. Live a normal life.”

A thousand reassurances swam through Jenny’s head. But he squeezed her hand. “I’ll manage,” he said. “At least now, I believe that.”

“I’d rather see you happy,” Jenny whispered. “But I suppose I won’t see you at all.”

“America. England. What does a little thing like a few thousand miles matter, among family?”

“Nothing,” Jenny said. “It’s nothing at all.”

G
ARETH’S JOURNEY HAD BEEN
long and jolting, but after two miserable days on the road, he arrived.

Three solid graystone buildings made up Elland School in Bristol. The trees on the grounds gathered naked, gray branches primly about their trunks, as if they were preparing for winter instead of participating in the spring that had arrived everywhere else. A few stray handbills were strewn about the streets, but not one dared mar the strict order of the yard. Even the cobblestones the carriage clattered over seemed laid in a geometric pattern. The formal grounds were in such contrast to everything Gareth knew about Jenny that it seemed impossible he would find any trace of her here.

He strode to the main entrance and gave his card to the hunchbacked gentleman who answered the door. He was shown into a dim, drab parlor, the striped paper on the walls faded but clean. A coal-fire smoked fitfully in the hearth.

A few books stood at attention on a shelf. Gareth peered at their spines.
A Brief History of Western Etiquette
stood next to
The Rules of Precedence.
The thin volume on the end was imprinted with the illuminating title of
Forks, Spoons, Knives and the Proper Use of a Serviette.

Gareth would have been willing to bet that Jenny, his mischievous, exuberant Jenny, had never set foot in the room.

The door opened behind him. Of course, it did not do anything so uncouth as creak; instead, it sighed, a dim sound.

“Lord Blakely. How can I be of service? What can I tell you of our school? Would you like to sit?”

The voice was old. The words formed questions, but the tone was dry command. It was the voice of a woman who had ordered young girls for so long she knew no other way to communicate.

Gareth turned. The woman who stood there was as exact as every other aspect of the school. Not one strand of gray hair escaped her precise bun. Her colorless face blended into the tired, pressed gray of her dress. Her lips formed straight lines, as if any bend or kink would offend her orderly nature.

“You must be Mrs. Davenport,” Gareth said. “You wrote me.”

Her eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“In answer to the inquiry my man of business made,” he continued. “I’m here about Jenny Keeble.”

It would have been gauche for Mrs. Davenport to show emotion. But the emotion she very carefully didn’t show—not even a hint of surprise that a strange man would ask after a pupil who attended her school more than a decade before—was all too telling. It was the decorous, hopeful blankness of a gossipy woman who had a scandalous story to tell, and who expected to receive a juicy tidbit in exchange.

“Is there some problem? Is Miss Keeble…” Mrs. Davenport paused delicately.

“Dead? Convicted? Wanted for fraud?”

Mrs. Davenport’s eyes grew wider with every possibility Gareth listed. Satisfaction radiated from her.

Gareth drummed his fingers against the leg of his trousers. “No. She’s not.”

A subtle tension entered the woman’s shoulders. “Well. That child gave me more trouble than any other girl in my twenty-nine years here. If you know her, you know she has a predilection for…” Another delicate pause.

“Lies,” Gareth supplied helpfully.

“Mistruths,” finished Mrs. Davenport. “And indirection. Often involving money. But you seem to have news of her. I dare not hope she has adopted an honest profession?”

Mrs. Davenport raised one perfectly formed eyebrow. Hidden behind the brittle cold of her censorious glare lay a spark of avaricious desire.

“My God,” Gareth said. “You really
are
a vulture, aren’t you?”

Her lips pursed. “If it would please you, my lord. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. There are young girls here, and they
will
repeat every last naughty word they hear.”

“I’m here to find out more,” he said. Once he’d imagined that if he could uncover her deepest secrets, he’d be able to put her behind him. He didn’t fool himself that was still the case. Now, he just wanted to
know.
“What was she like? Who were her friends?”

“Friends?” Mrs. Davenport scoffed. “A girl of
her
like doesn’t have friends among proper women. I made sure of that. I protested her admittance, I did. No good can come of girls with uncertain parentage. They come from shame, and can bring only shame upon themselves and those they associate with.”

Gareth swallowed. “Do tell.”

Mrs. Davenport looked off into the distance. “But she was a tricky little thing. She’d get the other girls talking to her, friendly like, every time she had half the chance. If I hadn’t watched, she’d have wrapped them all ’round her finger. She had them fascinated, she did. I told them over and over, stay away from that Jenny Keeble. They listened, mostly. But…”

But Jenny had done her best to win them over anyway.

“She was four when she came here,” Gareth observed mildly.

“You can’t fight nature, my Lord Blakely. What’s bred in the bone will bear fruit in the character. What do you suppose happens to a girl who never knows her parents?”

A girl who was lied to from the age of four and told she was formed for ill-behavior from birth? Gareth could only imagine. And yet…it hadn’t happened to Jenny.

“I suppose,” Gareth said quietly, “you did your duty by the girl and informed her what to expect from life.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Davenport said with relish, leaving little doubt about precisely how she’d performed that responsibility. “And—just in case—” She crossed over to a desk, shuffled around in a drawer. And then she pulled out a yellowing sheaf, the edges of the papers crackling. “There. I recorded all her misdeeds. I saved these, in the event I was ever asked to testify as to her character, and the magistrate was inclined to foolish lenience.”

Gareth held out a hand. “She was damnably silent about her childhood.”

Mrs. Davenport’s eyes narrowed, but she handed over the papers. “Language, Lord Blakely. Watch your language. Tell me, did she become a…”

“A whore?”

Mrs. Davenport sniffed. “Language! A soiled dove.”

“She’s spent the last twelve years pretending to be a mystic with the power to foretell the future.”

Mrs. Davenport raised a hand to her mouth, the proper picture of horror. “Not exactly a life of virtue. How do you know her?”

“My cousin went to see her. I believe that over the course of their acquaintance, he paid her a good bit of money.”

The woman’s face grew gleefully gluttonous. She clutched at her handkerchief. “Fraud! A felony, to be sure. Will she hang? Be pilloried? Transported?”

Gareth glanced down at the paper in his hand.

14 August 1815. JK told two lies and shirked washing behind her ears.

He flipped through more pages, all filled with minor infractions. Some did not even count as that.

12 May 1820. JK, sick with fever, infected three other girls. Likely intentional.

Gareth had suffered his grandfather’s cold and cutting comments. But underneath his grandfather’s chill, there had always been high expectations. He’d always assumed that Gareth would, and could, perform his duties as capably and honorably as every Blakely before him. Money and rank had bought him every privilege.

But Jenny had grown up in this cold place. Instead of a mother, she’d had this frightening woman who whispered lies about her, ostracizing her from the only companions who could bring her comfort. How desperate for affection must she have been, when she ran away at eighteen?

And how devastated when she discovered that first lover, like the rest of the world, valued her at nothing? No wonder she’d turned to fraud.

“Lord Blakely?” Mrs. Davenport intruded on his reverie. “Will there be a prosecution?”

“Silence,” he snapped. “I’m thinking.” Gareth stood up and paced in front of the fire.

There was more to it than mere devastation. For all the coldness of her upbringing, it had been Jenny who’d seen the best in those around her. It had been Jenny who’d seen Ned’s clever loyalty, Laura’s quiet strength. She’d even seen something good in
Gareth,
for God’s sake.

With no reason to hope ever given her, she’d hoped. And if she’d been unwilling to take that last step—if she’d been unwilling to need him, to love him, when he’d thought to relegate her to the cobwebbed corners of his life—how could he blame her? Nobody had ever valued her as she deserved. Least of all Gareth.

Gareth was a scientist. When the evidence came together, sometimes, it showed truth so clearly that no rationalization could deny it. Now, in this lifeless room, with a horrid harridan watching him think, bloodthirst shining in her oh-so-proper eyes, Gareth realized the truth.

Jenny wasn’t his equal. She was his better.

And he was the world’s most gigantic ass. An ass, and an idiot. Because Jenny had seen the best in herself, too, and he’d denigrated that, because he’d not wanted to admit that anyone could be his superior. Least of all the woman he needed.

Everything receded from him, like a tide traveling out to sea. He’d held on to his superiority as justification for every solitary year of his life. But what if he wasn’t superior? The thought had once felt threatening. But now…If other people were better than him, he was not nearly so constrained by Lord Blakely as he’d thought. He was free. He could have everything he’d once wanted and shoved aside. Lord Blakely shrank in importance until he became a tool and a title, not an impenetrable barrier.

If any of this was going to work, it had to start with one person. Jenny. His Jenny.

Gareth’s limbs stung, as if his blood had suddenly returned to circulation. He stopped pacing and fixed Mrs. Davenport in his sights.

She rubbed her hands greedily. “Will she hang? Have you decided what to
do?
”

“Yes, I know what to do.” Gareth hefted the records in his hand. “I’m going to make sure you never speak of her again.”

He crossed to the fire and tossed the papers on before she could protest. The dry paper ignited. Mrs. Davenport’s faint cry made Gareth smile in satisfaction.

Jenny didn’t need his money. But if there was one thing Gareth was good at, it was wresting respect from others. He could give Jenny that protection. He’d be damned if he ever let anyone denigrate his Jenny again.

“Listen to me.” His voice dropped a register. “Whatever you think of Jenny Keeble, you will keep to yourself. If I hear you have breathed one word of the woman, I will destroy you. I will ruin this school and destroy the bank that holds your pension and bribe a magistrate to send you to Australia in a prison hulk. In the
men’s
prison hulk. Do not doubt I can do it.”

She shrunk away from him. “I thought you were going to give that Jenny Keeble what she deserves!”

Gareth thought this over. “As it happens, I will.”

But first he had to get back to London. Now.

I
T TOOK
G
ARETH
a frustrating forty-six hours to travel from Bristol to London. Despite his dust, he didn’t stop by his home to change. Instead, he ordered his driver to go directly to Jenny’s house. A thousand tremulous wings flapped in his chest as he jumped from the carriage. He banged on her door with his fist.

No answer.

“Jenny,” he called. “Jenny, are you there? Jenny!”

No answer.

Perhaps she had gone shopping. Perhaps—he looked at the door more carefully—damn it. She hadn’t removed the knocker from her door because she was out buying gloves. As if to underscore this point, the door above his head opened.

“You looking for Madame Esmerelda?”

Gareth whirled around and craned his neck upward. A woman stood behind another door. “Where is she?”

“She left. Took all her things, she did. Flat’s empty—and I should know, ’cause I wanted to pick through what she’d left behind, and there were none of it.”

“Well, where did she go?”

The woman shrugged. “She’s a Gypsy, ain’t she? Who knows where she went?”

A cold hand caressed Gareth’s heart. “But she left a message for me, didn’t she?”

The woman shrugged apathetically. “I can’t say as she did. If you’re wanting your fortune told, I imagine I could make shift. She told me how it were done the once.”

A second roaring sounded in his ears. He’d realized Jenny was too good for him. He hadn’t expected her to discover it, too. Foolishly, he’d hoped she would remain so deluded as to welcome his suit. But why should she sit at home? Jenny didn’t mope. She
acted.