Page 66 of My Deceitful Duchess
“Please, call me Mary.” The woman swept her hand toward the couch. “Your staff was kind enough to deliver a tea tray. Will you take it with me?”
NoMarysimmediately came to mind with which she would have taken exception to meeting. Perplexed, Jenny settled onto the couch, and began to pour herself a cup of tea. “Please forgive me, er…Mary,” she said, awkwardly. “Is there some reason you have come to call?”
“Well,” Mary said, selecting a tiny tea cake from the tray before her, “I have it on good authority that you happen to be carrying my grandchild. I thought that as good a reason as any other.”
The saucer wobbled in Jenny’s hand, the tea cup clattering against the delicate china. “Mrs. Knight,” she managed, the words high and tinny, grateful already to be seated. What must this woman think of her?
“Mary. Please.” A dainty nibble of the tea cake, and a sip of tea followed. “I don’t think you’re quite what I expected,” she said at last. “But, then, my son does seem particularly disposed to surprising me.”
“I see.” She didn’t know what else she was meant to say, how she was meant to react. “Is there—something I can do for you?”
“Nothing in particular. It is only that I wished to meet the woman my son would have left England to save.” Mary Knight had the same sort of inquisitive look as Sebastian—her head canted in precisely the same manner, as if she were taking Jenny’s measure. But it was only curiosity in her steady gaze, notdisapproval, despite the circumstances.
Jenny pursed her lips behind the rim of her tea cup. “My apologies, Mary, but I think you may have formed a mistaken impression.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. He told me quite clearly.” Another placid sip of tea. “He thought you would have to be exiled; he had determined to go with you. So of course I had to meet you.” Her lashes flickered over her dark eyes. “Given the fact that I have heard no news of a forthcoming wedding, I suppose you would still rather hang?”
It was an effort to arrange her face into a bland smile. “He told you that much, then, did he?”
Mary sighed. “Jenny—I hope I may call you Jenny?—my son is nothing if not honest. Often to his own detriment.” A tiny smile edged at the corner of her lips. “When he was a child and into some trouble or other, he never lied to me. Not once. His brother, Charles,despisedhim for it when they were children. He could never convince Sebastian to keep silence in solidarity, nor to lie when directly asked, for example, who had been responsible for breaking a window, or a vase—or whatever mischief had been afoot. All I had to do was ask, and he would tell me, in that very precise way of his, what had occurred. Even when he knew he would be punished for it.”
“That’s…interesting,” Jenny allowed, as she reached for a biscuit. “May I ask why you are telling me this, Mary?”
Mary offered a soft smile. “So that you will understand him a little better. Of course, it is regrettable that he ever thought you might be…what the papers said you were,” she said delicately. “But what is remarkable is that he worked so very hard to free you from the consequences of it, even thinking you guilty. I don’t believe it would even have occurred to him, before you, to do so.”
“And yet, he placed me in jail,” Jenny said. “Without a qualm.”
“Oh, I imagine there were a great many qualms. But Idobelieve it was the first time his head had had to overrule his heart.” Mary gently pried Jenny’s empty cup from her hands and began to prepare a fresh cup of tea. “You may have noticed,” she said, “that Sebastian is…a bit unusual.”
Jenny received the tea cup once more and took a sip. Perfect—just as she had made it herself. Like her son, Mary paid a great deal of attention to details. “I suppose you might say that,” she said. “He asked me to have an affair with him within moments of introducing himself.”
Mary choked upon a bite of biscuit. Weakly, she said, “I cannot imagine it—and yet, somehow, I am not surprised.” She took a bracing sip of tea and a deep breath. “To be honest, I never thought he would fall in love. But I suppose he simply had never found a woman he deemed worthy of it.”
“He doesn’tloveme,” Jenny said, but her voice quavered over the words despite herself. Only speaking them aloud pained her; it had been easier to let them lie, unacknowledged, than to speak them aloud.
“Oh, my dear.” Mary laid her hand gently over Jenny’s, her face wreathed in a sad smile. “Ofcoursehe does. And if you only asked him, I'm quite certain he would tell you. Sometimes, with Sebastian, youdohave to ask.”
∞∞∞
Jenny had largely been relieved to find that Sebastian had not been waiting at the servants’ entrance for her when at last she was able to usher the last of the ladies out of Ambrosia and slip out into the night herself. She had expected it, in the way that she had expected she would have found him waiting for her at the bakery had she bothered to go this morning.
But it had gone half past midnight by the time she had been able to leave, and there was no sign of him. And ofcourseshe was relieved—but it was the shred of disappointment that alarmed her. She did not want to bedisappointedthat he hadn’t appeared. Perhaps Mary’s visit had troubled her more than she had thought.
She had not walked this route in nearly two months—but her feet still knew the path, and she traveled it slowly, unaccustomed now to the silence that was her only company. Her hand was jammed into her pocket, clamped around the fistful of coins she’d brought with her, since it had been so many weeks since last the women she had asked to keep watch for her had received any payment for their troubles.
But she was grateful that they had kept at it, even in the absence of the coin. She rounded a corner, already retrieving a few coins for Louisa, who would likely be just ahead—and all at once a grey shape careened toward her through the darkness with a mad scrabble upon the pavement that burned her ears.
She flinched away, her eyes squeezing shut in surprise as her heart raced through a frantic series of beats—but there was only a soft whine, the flick of a tongue against her wrist. “Charlie,” she gasped. “You terrified me out of my wits, darling boy.” But as she favored him with a fond scratch behind his ears, she glanced up once more.
There, at the fraying edges of lamplight in the distance—it wasSebastian, his face drawn into thundercloud fury. “Jenny, what thehellare you doing out here?” he inquired, and there was such a tension in his voice that she moved back a step.
“I walk on Saturday evenings,” she said, baffled. He knew this already—and she did not owe him an explanation besides.
His hand jerked through his hair in that manner it had when he was anxious, catching on a few knots. “Not alone,” he said. “Neveralone. Not anymore.” Gradually his shoulders surrendered the tension that strung them tight, and he blew out an aggrieved breath. “I thought you weren’t coming. I would have waited longer, had I known.”
Now it washerturn to be angry. “I am not beholden to you,” she snapped. “I do not owe you an accounting of my activities. How I choose to spend my evenings—”
“Isreckless,” he interrupted fiercely. “But I was willing to bear it provided I could accompany you!”
