Page 41 of My Deceitful Duchess
“You may call meYour Grace, Mr. Knight. I am still a duchess, whatever that is worth.” Her hands flexed where they had fallen to her sides. “Do you know,” she said slowly, “I think I always knew you would be my downfall.”
“Then why did you ever get involved with me?”
“Because I am just as much a fool now as I wasthen, it seems.” Her head tilted up, and he could just imagine that stubborn little chin firming. “You may tell them to hang me with whichever sort of rope they like—but I will notgiveit to you.”
∞∞∞
Sebastian came back the next day. And the next. And the next. Time had passed in a blur, and there had been no point in counting the days when each was the same. But each new one was marked by another visit, another interrogation. She had no choice but to see him, since every day a member of the staff conveyed her to the same little room, where Sebastian peppered her with question after question, which she steadfastly refused to answer.
“Miss Amberley said you made off with jewels belonging to the estate,” he said. “What did you do with them? Did you sell them?”
She fixed her gaze somewhere over his left shoulder and tried to imagine herself somewhere very far away. In France, perhaps. Once, she had lived in a place where the late spring air was fragrant with the scent of lavender growing in the fields. If she closed her eyes, she could picture it—the marvelous sea of purple stretching far into the distance, viewed from the hill of the tiny village where she had lived when she was very small.
There was the drumming of fingers upon the surface of the table between them. Probably he simply hadn’t brought anything with him to otherwise occupy his fingers. “Jenny, I need you to help me. I need to understand. Why did you do it?”
Sometimes, just lately, it felt like her life had simply—stopped. As if she had ceased to be entirely that morning just weeks ago. As if she were already a ghost. But if the truth were told, she had been nothing more than a ghost for years. Less even than that; she had been a woman with no name, no past, and no future.
“Damn it all, Jenny—I amtrying. But I need you to help me.” There was an aggravated sound, and she pushed her mind away from it. “I was meant to catch a murderer, you know, but I haven’t caught the one I meant to. And now I cannot even concentrate on anything else. They want to remove you to jail until your trial, and I—I do not know how long I can keep you from the gallows.IfI can keep you from the gallows.”
Why would he bother? There was so little life left within her anyway. Always—always—there was that thread of anger in his voice. As ifshehad been the one who had betrayedhim. She did not understand why he kept coming, when he so clearly resented it.
She had long accepted that this was her inevitable fate. She had wearied of the constant struggle to avoid it. Perhaps she would simply give them the confession they sought and end it all at last. The truth was buried so far in the past. Did it really even matter anymore?
“You owe me an explanation,” he snarled. “Youoweit to me.”
Why, when he would not believe one? Why, when his mind was already made up? No—she owedherself. She owed herself peace at last. And it would come—one way or another.
∞∞∞
Sebastian had been surprised that Lady Clybourne had received him, but he expected that she had done so only for the opportunity to plant him another facer. The black eye she’d given him roughly a month ago had healed—but it had been a slow process, producing a terrible swelling and an ugly bruise.
Jenny had not remarked upon it once, though she could hardly have failed to notice it.
“Mr. Knight,” Lady Clybourne said tightly, as she swept into the room. “You will tell me for what purpose you have come, and then you will leave.”
Straightforward and to the point. He respected it; respected that she did not try to disguise her distaste for him. Honesty—even when unflattering—was eminently preferable to polite lies.
“I need you to talk sense into Jenny,” he said. “They want to send her to jail to await trial. I need to know thetruth.”
“Has it ever—evenonce—crossed your mind that you might already have it?” She made a terrible, scathing sound in her throat, and the ugliness of it, the fury from which it had been borne, seared the air between them. “She has made her statements, sir. Perhaps you ought to examine them more closely.”
He hadn’t even read them. Beckett had pronounced them a packet of lies, and he—he had not wanted to read any more of her falsehoods. “She refuses to speak to me,” he said. “Every day, she sits and she stares and she says nothing at all in her own defense.” Every day she grew thinner, weaker, and paler. Every day he had to watch her waste away before his very eyes. Withering. Fading.
“It almost sounds, Mr. Knight, as though you have regrets.”
Ofcoursehe had regrets. Every day he had regrets. Every hour, every minute, everymomenthe had regrets. But it was too late for them; he had made his choice and it could not be rescinded. Now it was all he could do to keep her from the hangman’s noose.
“Venbrough is all butscreamingfor her demise,” he said.
“Perhaps you should have considered that before you turned her over to the authorities,” Lady Clybourne said. “Perhaps you should have thought with your heart instead of your head. Because if you had—if youhad—” A little choked sound escaped her; she turned her face into her hand and breathed deeply to stave off the encroaching tears.
If hehad, she meant to imply, then Jenny would not be facing such a fate.
A fate, judging by the sob the had escaped between the fingers Lady Clybourne had laid over her mouth, that not eventheycould find a way to save her from.
∞∞∞
“It’s nothing.” Jenny whispered the words to herself as she swiped her hand across her mouth. She tucked herself into the very corner of her cell and tipped her head back, willing the last of the nausea to pass. “It’s nothing. Anyone would be ill in my situation. Nerves. It’s only nerves.”
