Page 44 of My Deceitful Duchess
“It doesn’t matter. I will not be exiled. England is my home.” She pushed back her chair and strode for the door, rapping her knuckles upon it, even knowing that no one would come until Sebastian was ready for them to do so.
“I can protect you,” he said, almost desperately, rising from his seat. She could feel his presence at her back. Too close.Fartoo close.
“Why would you care to?” Another sharp rap of her knuckles; they burned with the effort to make herself heard. “You think I’ve killed a man already—and hewas myhusband. Why would you care to offer me your protection, when by all rightsyouought to seek it fromme?”
He made no response, and she knew the truth. It wasn’therhe sought to protect. It was only his child. She could have laughed at the irony of it. Her husband had thought of her as just a vessel for his seed which had never taken root, but Sebastian—Sebastian had succeeded inmakingher into one.
Now he offered her his protection. But who would protect her fromhim?
Chapter Twenty
The last time Sebastian had seen his mother, he’d all but admitted to a relationship with Jenny—who had quite abruptly become perhapsthemost notorious figure in London. Possibly in all of England. Naturally Father and Charles would have had numerous condemning things to say of him, and so he had contrived to visit during the day, while they would be at the bank in which they both worked.
“Sebastian,” Mum said, pulling him in for a cinnamon-scented hug the moment he came through the door. A whisk of a kiss across his cheeks, and then she was pulling him toward the drawing room and calling for tea and biscuits—lots of biscuits. “I had wondered if you would come,” she said. “I thought about sending a note round to ask you, but I didn’t want to press you.”
And that was Mum, after all—she had always known just how to manage him. To let him alone and give him the time he required to process his feelings, never prodding or pushing. Only waiting until he was ready.
“You’ve heard, then,” he said, although it was quite impossible that she hadnotheard, given the proliferation of gossip, the coverage in the newspapers.
“Oh, darling, of course I have.” She reached out to pat his knee. “How is she?”
How isshe? Good Lord—mother’s first concern was forJenny? A woman she did not evenknow? Something of his astonishment must have shown on his face, for Mum settled deeper into her chair and added, “I’m certain you must be worried.”
“Mum,” he said. “I was the one who turned her in.” In fact, he had not explained this to his family the night more than a month ago that he had come to dinner—he had simply taken his hatbox full of newspaper clippings andleft, too conflicted to do more.
“Oh, Sebastian,” Mum sighed, in that tone he remembered well from childhood. The same one she had used whenever he had done something that had merited her disappointment—muddy footprints tracked across her precious Aubusson rug, or a half-finished experiment he’d failed to clean up. “I hope you did not leap to some sort of premature judgment in advance of the facts.”
Premature judgment? “The facts are what they are, Mum. Set in stone for over a decade now.”
“Would you ever have expected such a thing of her?” Mum asked. “Sebastian, youknowthis woman.”
“Apparently, not so well as I had thought.” And that was particularly grating—that he had become soobsessedwith her, so foolishly in love, that even now he was tempted to overlook her criminal proclivities. As if murder was simply abad habitto be tolerated.
As a maid brought a tea service into the room, Mum began preparing a cup of tea for him, and her lips were pursed as if she were attempting to hold some words back.
“Whatever you’ve got to say, Mum, I wish you would justoutwith it.” He’d had quite enough of wordless women just lately. He bit into a crisp biscuit and chewed loudly.
“Darling, do you remember those—those scientific symposiums you used to attend as a boy? The lectures and such that I could never quite keep you out of, no matter how frequently you were ejected from them?” She slid a teacup on a saucer across the table to him.
“I remember.” They’d been one of his favorite pastimes, whenever he’d been home from school. He’d attended nearly every one he’d learned of, fascinated by the process of scientific discovery, of patterns and trends emerging from data collected. Thrilled at the prospect of obtaining answers to questions he hadn’t even yet posited—of acquiringnewquestions to be answered.
“You had a…pattern,” she said, tactfully, “of getting yourself thrown out. Do you remember why?”
“Questioning authority,” he said.
Mum managed a light laugh. “Yes, but—notquitejust that. It was a frequent complaint of yours that those presenting their findings often started from a spurious origin. That they had begunfrom a conclusion rather than a supposition, and then had collected only data to support it. And thus their findings were suspect, because one can’t begin with ananswer—one must begin with aquestion.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose in between his fingers and heaved a sigh. “It’s a common problem, unfortunately. Most people lack the distance, the objectivity—”Oh. So hadhe. Ofcoursehe could not beobjectivewhen it came to Jenny.
He had been too close to all of it. Too close to have started from the objective premise ofifshe had committed a murder. He had simply assumed shehad, because she had been so secretive, so full of lies and half-truths and obfuscations. He had been so caught up in his sense of fury, of betrayal, that he had been entirely unable even to entertain the possibility of her innocence.
He hadn’t even bothered to read her statement, which sat now upon his desk in its neat leather folio. He hadn’t wanted to read what he had assumed would be naught but lies—he hadn’t thought to examine it fortruthinstead.
Lady Clybourne had accused him of thinking too much with his head and not enough with his heart. It had notonceeven crossed her mind that Jenny might be guilty.
“Don’t you think you owe it her—and to yourself—to start from anobjectivepremise?” Mum inquired. “You have such a magnificent mind, Sebastian. Surely you could put it to use here.”
God, he was going tohaveto. Because if there was even the slightestchance—
