Читать книгу Tall, Dark... Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Carole Mortimer - Страница 51

‘Are your tears because your lover has failed to arrive for your tryst, or because as yet there is no lover?’

Jane stiffened as she easily recognised the Duke of Stourbridge’s deep, slightly bored voice coming from above and behind her as she sat among the dunes. Her chin was resting on her drawn-up knees, the hood of her cloak having fallen back to reveal the wildness of her hair, now free of the confines of its pins, as she stared out at the wildly beating waves upon the shore, tears falling unchecked down her cheeks.

She pulled her cloak more firmly about her before answering him. ‘The reason for my tears is not your concern, Your Grace.’

‘And if I choose to make it my concern?’

‘Then I wish you would not. In fact, I would prefer it if you left me.’ She was too miserable at that moment to even attempt to be polite. Even—especially?—to the exalted Duke of Stourbridge. Though polite was not a word she would have used to describe any of their encounters to date!

‘You are ordering me to leave, Jane? Again?’ he mocked lightly.

Jane was dimly aware of his having now moved to stand beside her in the shelter of the dune, probably ruining his evening slippers in the process. But she did not care. She was too unhappy, too desperately low, to consider the Duke’s discomfort at that moment. After all, she had made no invitation for him to join her here.

‘I am, Your Grace.’ She nodded tersely.

‘I am afraid that will not be possible, Jane.’ He gave a sigh as, completely careless of his expensively tailored clothing, he lowered his considerable length to sit down on the dune at her side. ‘It would be most ungentlemanly of me, having discovered a lady in such distress, to simply walk away and leave her here, where anyone might come along and, discovering that she is alone, attempt to take advantage of the situation.’

Jane glanced at him frowningly in the darkness. ‘Even if she has asked you to do so? Even if she is not a lady?’ She turned her face away so that he wouldn’t see the anger that was quickly replacing her tears.

‘Is this about the gown, Jane?’ Impatience edged his voice now, and he continued with disdain. ‘Because if it is then you only have to look at Lady Sulby, to engage her in a moment’s conversation, to know that a fine gown does not make a lady.’

Jane made a choked sound, caught somewhere between a sob and a laugh. ‘That remark is certainly not that of a gentleman, Your Grace!’

The Duke gave another sigh. ‘I am finding it increasingly difficult to behave like a gentleman since arriving here in Norfolk.’

Jane gave him another sideways glance. The moonlight was throwing into stark relief the sharp edges of his aristocratic profile, his high cheekbones, his strong and determined jaw.

He was dressed meticulously in black again this evening, with a high-collared white shirt and his cravat tied neatly at his throat, a pale grey satin waistcoat beneath his jacket. But the force of the wind had ruffled the dark thickness of his hair into disarray, giving him a somewhat piratical appearance and, strangely, making him appear less like the haughty and unapproachable Duke of Stourbridge who had arrived at Markham Park earlier this afternoon.

But she must not forget that was exactly who he was, Jane reminded herself firmly, and that no matter how disconsolate she might feel, however much he might appear in sympathy with her plight at this moment, at the end of his week’s stay he would leave to return to his privileged life in London—while she would still be here under the tyrannical rule of Lady Sulby.

Just the thought of that was enough to cause the now angry tears to fall anew.

‘Come now, Jane.’ The Duke turned to her. ‘Whatever is wrong? It really cannot be so bad—’

‘And how can you possibly know that, Your Grace?’ Misery and, yes, a certain despair gave her the courage to lift her head and glare at him. ‘You are not the one who has been made to feel unwanted and less than you know yourself to be!’

Hawk stared at her. The moonlight chose that moment to come out from behind a cloud, clearly illuminating the tangled wildness of her hair, the deep sparkling green of her eyes, and the full sensuality of those pouting lips.

Dear God, he wanted to kiss those lips!

He did not just want to kiss them, he wanted to devour them!

Such an uncontrolled longing shocked Hawk intensely, as he had not felt it once since assuming the title of the Duke of Stourbridge ten years ago, all of his actions and words since that time had been measured and well thought out as he thoroughly considered and weighed any possible repercussions.

But at this moment Hawk found he could not think of anything else but kissing the lush ripeness of Jane Smith’s inviting lips, of crushing the slenderness of her body to his, under his, as his mouth plundered hers and his hands became entangled in the thick fire of her unconfined hair before he explored the creamy swell of her full breasts, that slender waist and curvaceously welcoming thighs. Hawk realised with even more shocking clarity that, to him, Jane Smith was neither unwanted nor less than she knew herself to be. In fact, he could not remember ever wanting any woman as hotly, as immediately, as he now wanted the inadequately named Jane Smith!

Instead of acting on that impulse, and shocked at the intensity of his sudden desire to taste and hold Jane Smith, he moved abruptly to his feet and stepped away from her. ‘I will leave you to your solitude, then, Jane.’

‘I hope I have not offended you, Your Grace…?’ She grimaced as she too rose to her feet, her cloak falling back further to reveal that she did indeed still wear the detested yellow gown. The gusting wind moulded its thin material to that slender waist, and the long, shapely length of her legs.

‘I am not in the least offended.’ Hawk stood rigidly, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw as he kept his gaze averted from the temptation she represented to his normally rigid control. ‘I am merely acknowledging my intrusion—’

‘I did not—’

‘Do not come any closer, Jane!’ Hawk found himself warning her from between clenched teeth as she reached out a hand towards him, the heat in his body, the throbbing of his loins, telling him just how dangerous this situation had become.

Had he been so long without the warm comfort of a woman—that brief, physically unsatisfying liaison with the Countess of Morefield excluded—that he was in danger of forcing his attentions upon a vulnerable and unprotected young girl? Was this what years of restraint and enforced solitude as Duke of Stourbridge had brought him to? If so, it was intolerable, and Hawk made a vow to see to the tiresome business of taking a mistress as soon as he returned to London.

Jane had come to a stricken halt as she heeded the Duke’s warning, staring up at him in the darkness. Did he too think that because she was only the orphaned daughter of an impoverished country parson she was unworthy of his notice? That she was beneath even the politeness of the high and mighty Duke of Stourbridge?

‘Go then,Your Grace.’She faced him proudly, her head back defiantly. ‘And I will endeavour to ensure that you are not bothered any further by my unwelcome presence for the remainder of your stay at Markham Park!’

‘Jane, you misunderstand me—’

‘I do not think so, Your Grace.’

‘Jane, you will cease “Your Gracing” me in that contemptuous tone.’

‘I most certainly will not!’ She was beyond reason, beyond caution, wanting only to hurt as she was being hurt.

‘Jane, you are playing with fire,’ the Duke warned harshly, his hands now clenched at his sides.

‘Fire, Your Grace?’ Jane echoed tauntingly. She was tired, so very tired. For the last twelve years she’d always been meek and submissive, never being allowed to have a mind or will of her own. ‘What would you know of fire? You, who are cold and haughty and look down your disdainful nose at everyone. What are you doing, Your Grace?’ She gasped incredulously as the Duke moved to grasp her arms and began to pull her forcefully towards him.

‘Hawk, Jane.’ His face was only inches away from hers now, his breath warm against her cheek, those haughty features hard and predatory in the moonlight. ‘My name is Hawk,’ he explained harshly.

She looked up at him questioningly.

Hawk?

The Duke of Stourbridge had been named for a bird of prey?

A dangerous bird of prey. Jane dazedly recalled her assessment of him earlier today even as she stared up at him in shocked fascination.

‘A fanciful notion of my mother’s.’ His tone was grim as he held Jane easily against the hard strength of his body.

Jane didn’t care at that moment how he had come by his unusual name. She was only concerned with the fact that the Duke of Stourbridge—the haughty and arrogantly aloof Duke of Stourbridge—was holding her tightly in his arms as he moulded the softness of her curves against his much harder ones and his gaze became fixated on her mouth.

In fact, everything about the high and mighty Duke of Stourbridge gave every indication that he was about to kiss her!

It was unthinkable.

Unimaginable…

And yet Jane found she could imagine it. Could already feel the hardness of those perfectly moulded lips on hers as his mouth plundered and claimed. Possessed. For surely any woman the Duke of Stourbridge chose to kiss would know the full force of the ardour he was normally at such pains to hide from his fellow beings, but which Jane could now see so clearly in the fierce glitter of his eyes? Just as clearly she could feel the tense hardness of his body as it pressed intimately against her own…

‘You should not have come here alone, Jane.’ The Duke’s gaze, that fiercely golden gaze, moved searchingly, hungrily, over the pallor of her face. ‘You should not, Jane!’ He began to lower his head towards hers.

Jane was held in motionless fascination for several long seconds as her lips parted instinctively to receive his.

A kiss.

One kiss.

Her first ever kiss.

Surely it was not too much to ask? To take for her own? After twelve long years of being denied the touch, the warmth, of another human being?

But a deeper, more knowledgeable instinct told her that Hawk St Claire, the powerful and forceful Duke of Stourbridge, would not stop at one kiss. His years and experience would demand he take more, much more. He was a man who would take and take again, while giving nothing of himself in return.

‘No!’ She turned her head away to avoid his kiss and at the same time pushed against his restraint, fighting to escape the steely band of his arms, but only succeeding in pressing herself more intimately against him. ‘No!’ Again she protested, fearing the desire that she could clearly see still held him in its grip. ‘You must not! Please, Hawk, you must not…!’

Her pleas pierced the fierce desire that raged through Hawk’s body, causing him to pause, to blink dazedly as he stared down at her in stunned disbelief.

This woman—this girl—was the ward of his host. The unmarried ward of his host.

He released her abruptly to step back, jaw tight, eyes gleaming a glittering, inflexible gold. ‘You should not have come here alone, Jane,’ he repeated harshly.

Her throat moved convulsively in the moonlight. ‘No, I should not. But I had not expected anyone to follow me—’

‘No, Jane?’ Hawk’s voice was hard, inflexible. ‘Are you sure that your present indignation is not due to the fact that it was the wrong man who responded to your invitation?’

She looked bewildered by his accusation. ‘The wrong man? I do not understand—’

‘Was it not James Tillton who was supposed to attend you here tonight rather than myself?’ Hawk had realised belatedly, as he remembered the flirtation he had witnessed during dinner, that this must be the case—that Jane’s dismay when he had joined her here had really been due to the fact that her lover—James Tillton?—had not arrived for their arranged tryst.

‘Lord Tillton?’ Jane gasped at his accusation. ‘I detest Lord Tillton! He behaved most disgracefully towards me during dinner—to such a degree that in the end I had to pierce his wrist with my fingernails in order to stop his pawing of me beneath the table. Besides which, he is a married man!’ she added frowningly.

Hawk’s mouth twisted scathingly. ‘Summer house parties like this one are notorious for the night-time assignations of people who are indeed married—but not to each other.’

‘Indeed, Your Grace?’ Her voice was icily cold. ‘And which female guest’s bed have you chosen to grace with your own illustrious presence tonight?’

Even now, in her pride and anger, Hawk could appreciate how beautiful, how tempting the inaptly named Miss Jane Smith truly was. Admittedly, her years spent under the guardianship of the forceful Lady Sulby seemed to have cowed the more spirited parts of her nature, but they were still there nonetheless—in the way that Jane challenged him, in the way that she never flinched from contradicting him. Two things that rarely, if ever, happened to the Duke of Stourbridge.

Jane Smith was unusual in that she did not seem to see him as just a duke. She saw past his title to the man beneath, and it was to that man that she spoke during her moments of rebellion. It was to that man that her beauty appealed. To such a degree that Hawk had briefly forgotten all the caution that had served him so well these last ten years.

It would not—it must not!—happen again.

‘I have no interest in bedding any of the ladies now residing at Markham Park,’ he said disdainfully, knowing by the way Jane stiffened that she had heard his intended rejection of her own charms in that carefully worded dismissal. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I believe I will make my excuses to the Sulbys before retiring to my bedchamber for the night.’ He bowed abruptly before turning to leave.

‘Not without first making me an apology,Your Grace!’

Hawk turned slowly back to her, his narrowed gaze taking in the taut lines of her body and the challenge in her defiantly raised chin.

‘For almost kissing you…?’

She gave him a contemptuous glare. ‘For wrongly accusing me of encouraging Lord Tillton!’

Was it possible Hawk had mistaken the events he had witnessed earlier at the dinner table? Had Jane not been encouraging Tillton after all, but rather, as she claimed, fighting off the other man’s unwanted attentions? Attention towards a young woman about whom it was obvious her guardians did not care, let alone offer protection to?

‘If I was mistaken—’

‘You were!’

‘If I was mistaken then I apologise.’ Hawk nodded abruptly. ‘But in future I would advise you not to come here alone. You might find yourself in much graver danger another time than you have this evening.’

‘Until now these dunes have always been my place of refuge!’

Until Hawk had intruded.

Until he had held her in his arms and attempted to kiss her.

But that was a temptation she had not demanded apology for…

She was magnificent. Hawk could acknowledge that even with his inner determination not to initiate any further intimacy between them. Her unconfined hair blew in the wind, a thick curtain of flame, her eyes were wide and challenging, and those perfectly pouting lips were set defiantly.

All of those things told Hawk that she would be a formidable lover. that this woman was more than capable of matching the depths of his own passion, which he was always at such pains to hide from others and which Jane, instinctively, was able to touch and ignite.

Jane Smith, he decided determinedly, was a definite danger to the icy reserve of the Duke of Stourbridge.

Jane Smith was even more of a danger to the inner man that was still, at heart, the sensual Hawk St Claire.

‘They obviously no longer offer such refuge,’ he pointed out coldly, unpityingly. ‘I will bid you goodnight, Miss Smith.’ He turned away, and this time he did not look back, did not hesitate as he strode purposefully back to Markham Park.

Jane watched him go—a tall, forbidding shape that finally disappeared into the darkness—knowing that it wasn’t only the refuge of the dunes that the Duke of Stourbridge had invaded this evening. When he had touched her, when he had looked in danger of kissing her, he had awakened a hunger deep inside her, a desire she had never known before, which had caused her breasts to swell and harden, and which had ignited a fiery warmth between her thighs that had made her want to forget all caution as she met and matched the passion she had been sure would be in his kiss. At that moment Jane knew she had wanted to lie down with him amongst the sand dunes, to strip away every vestige of the haughty coldness of the Duke of Stourbridge even as they stripped away their clothing, to explore, to kiss, to caress—

There Jane’s heated thoughts came to an abrupt halt. Because she had no idea what came after the kissing and caressing!

She did remember Lady Sulby’s cautions to Olivia at the start of her Season concerning her behaviour with the more roguish members of the ton—the main one being, ‘A lady may take as many lovers as she wishes after she is married, but not a single one before she has the wedding ring upon her finger.’

Did Jane’s wanton longings concerning the Duke of Stourbridge mean that she was not, after all, the lady she had always thought herself to be…?

‘You sent for me, Lady Sulby?’ Jane stood obediently in front of the other woman the following morning as Lady Sulby sat at the table in her private parlour, reading through the correspondence strewn across the table in front of her.

The blue gaze was ice-cold as Lady Sulby swept her a disparaging glance before answering. ‘You are completely recovered this morning from your headache, Jane?’

Her tone and demeanour were surprisingly mild. Instantly increasing Jane’s wariness. She had been expecting further retribution for what Olivia had warned her Lady Sulby perceived as Jane’s ‘flirtatious behaviour’ with the Duke of Stourbridge the evening before. The mildness of the older woman’s tone now did not in the least deceive her into dropping her guard.

‘I am quite recovered, thank you, Lady Sulby.’

The older woman gave a gracious inclination of her head. ‘You slept well?’

‘Fitfully.’As expected, Jane had found her dreams full of images—not of the Duke of Stourbridge, but of the man who had held her in his arms and ordered her to call him Hawk. Those images had been so erotically arousing that she had awoken suddenly in the darkness, gasping, her body shaking, her nipples hard and aching to the touch, and an unaccustomed dampness between her thighs.

‘Indeed?’ Lady Sulby sat back in her chair, the once beautiful face hard and unyielding as she looked at Jane from between narrowed lids. ‘Could that possibly be because you failed to sleep alone…?’

Jane gasped at the accusation even as she felt the colour drain from her cheeks. Surely Lady Sulby had not misunderstood Jane’s response to Lord Tillton’s advances towards her the evening before in the same way the Duke had?

Or could Lady Sulby possibly be referring to the Duke himself…?

Coming so soon after the memory of Jane’s erotic dreams about him, the thought made her cheeks now suffuse with colour.

‘Do not trouble yourself to answer, Jane,’ Lady Sulby snapped, before Jane had recovered sufficiently to refute the accusation. ‘It will serve no purpose for me to hear any of the sordid details—’

Jane’s shocked gasp interrupted her. ‘But there are no sordid details—’

‘I said I did not wish to hear!’ The older woman looked at her with unguarded dislike. ‘It is enough that, despite all our efforts, all the guidance and care that Sulby and I have so generously given you these last twelve years, you have still grown into a woman exactly like your wantonly disgraceful mother!’

Every drop of blood seemed to drain from Jane’s head and she felt herself sway dizzily. ‘My—my mother…?’

Lady Sulby’s top lip curled back disgustedly. ‘Your mother, Jane. A woman much like yourself. That is, completely lacking in morals and—’

‘How dare you?’ Jane had known when the maid had informed her that Lady Sulby wished to see her that she was about to bear the brunt of that lady’s displeasure, but she had been in no way prepared for the vitriol of this attack on her mother and herself. ‘My mother was good and kind—’

‘And who told you that, Jane?’ The other woman eyed her with scorn. ‘That fool of a parson who married her?’ She shook her head contemptuously. ‘Joseph Smith—like every other red-blooded man, it seems!—never could see any fault in his beautiful Janette. But I knew. I always knew that she was nothing but a shameless wanton.’ Her eyes glittered fanatically. ‘And in the end was I not proved correct about her immoral character?’ Lady Sulby surged to her feet, her face twisted and ugly in her fury.

Jane staggered back from the attack, all the time shaking her head in denial of the dreadful things Lady Sulby was saying about the woman who had died shortly after giving birth to her. ‘My mother was sweet and beautiful—’

‘Your mother was a harlot! A temptress and a whore!’

‘No…!’ Jane recoiled as if from a physical blow.

‘Oh yes.’ Lady Gwendoline glared at her contemptuously. ‘And you are exactly like her, Jane. I warned Sulby when he insisted we take you into our household. I told him what would happen—that you would only disgrace us as Janette disgraced us. And last night I was proved correct in my misgivings.’

‘But I did nothing last night of which I am ashamed!’ Jane attempted to defend herself, totally stunned at the things Lady Sulby was saying to her, and shocked to the core by the raw hatred she could clearly see in the other woman’s face.

‘Janette was not ashamed, either.’ Lady Sulby shook with rage, that wild glitter in her eyes intensifying. ‘She did not even apologise for being three months with child when she married her gullible parson!’

Jane really felt as if she were going to faint dead away at this last accusation. Her mother had been with child when she had married her father? With Jane herself?

But that did not make her mother a harlot or a whore. It only meant that, like many couples before them, her parents had precipitated their marriage vows. Jane was far from the first child to be born only six months after the wedding…

She shook her head. ‘The only person that should concern is me, and I—’

‘You would think that.’Lady Sulby glared at her. ‘You who are just like her. With never a thought for the disgrace you bring on this family with your wanton actions.’

‘But I have done nothing—’

‘You have most certainly done something!’ Lady Sulby’s hands were clenched at her sides. ‘The Duke’s valet has informed Brown, the butler, that they are leaving this morning, and—’

‘The Duke is leaving…?’ Jane repeated hollowly, surprised at how much this knowledge managed to distress her when the rest of her world appeared to be falling apart—when she already felt as if she were in the middle of a nightmare without end.

‘Do not pretend innocence with me, Jane Smith,’ Lady Sulby told her sneeringly. ‘We all witnessed the way in which you deliberately set out to attract the Duke yesterday evening—to tempt him to your bed, no doubt with the intention of trapping him into marriage. But if that was your hope then his hasty departure this morning must tell you that it was a wasted effort. The Duke is not a man to be trapped into anything—least of all marriage to a wanton chit like you. Oh, you are a wicked, hateful girl, Jane Smith!’ Lady Sulby’s voice rose hysterically. ‘A veritable viper in our midst! But I see from your rebellious expression that it bothers you not at all that you have totally ruined any chance of Olivia becoming the Duchess of Stourbridge!’

Jane very much doubted, after the Duke’s comments yesterday evening concerning Lady Sulby, that there had ever been the remotest possibility of Olivia finding herself married to the Duke, and was sure that any hope that Olivia would do so had only ever been Lady Sulby’s own misguided fantasy after Lord Sebastian St Claire had failed to arrive.

‘I want you out of this house today, Jane,’ Lady Sulby told her shrilly. ‘Today—do you hear?’

‘I have every intention of going.’ After this conversation, and the things Lady Sulby had said about her mother, Jane knew that she could not stay here a day, an hour, a moment longer than absolutely necessary.

‘And do not imagine you can come crawling back here if, like your mother, you find yourself with child!’ Lady Sulby scorned. ‘There is no convenient parson here for you to marry, Jane. No besotted fool you can beguile into marrying you in order to give your bastard a name!’

Jane became very still, all the pain she had felt at the unfairness of Lady Sulby’s accusations concerning the Duke fading, all emotion leaving her as she stared at the other woman as if down a long grey tunnel.

Lady Sulby’s eyes narrowed with spite as she saw the shocked disbelief Jane was too stunned to even attempt to hide. ‘You did not know?’ She trilled her triumph at having shaken Jane’s composure at last. ‘Even after she died giving birth to you Joseph Smith could not bear to sully the memory of his beloved Janette by telling you he was not your real father!’

‘He was my father!’ Jane’s hands had clenched at her sides. ‘He was…’ Tears of anger blurred her vision at the terrible things this dreadful woman was saying about her mother and father.

She had never known her mother, but her father had been everything that was gentle and kind. Jane did not believe he could have been that way with her if he had not been her real father.

Could he…?

‘He most certainly was not.’The older woman looked at her with triumphant pity. ‘Your mother seduced your real father, a rich and titled gentleman, into her bed, hoping that he would become so besotted with her he would discard the woman who was already his wife. Something he refused to do even when Janette found herself with child!’

‘I do not believe you!’ Jane shook her head in desperate denial. ‘You are simply trying to hurt me—’

‘And am I hurting you, Jane? I hope that I am,’ Lady Sulby crowed triumphantly. ‘You look very like Janette, you know. She had that same wild beauty. That same untameable spirit.’

And suddenly Jane saw with sickening clarity that Lady Sulby had spent these last twelve years trying to break that spirit in Janette’s daughter. She had belittled the physical likeness she perceived to Janette by dressing Jane in gowns that did absolutely nothing to complement her. Lady Sulby hated Jane as fiercely as she had hated her mother before her…

‘Janette was spoilt and wilful,’ Jane’s nemesis continued coldly. ‘She had the ability to twist any man around her little finger in order to persuade him into doing her bidding. But she made a terrible mistake in judgement in her choice of lover,’ Lady Sulby sneered. ‘A mistake immediately brought home to her when he did not hesitate to dismiss her from his life when she told him of the child she was expecting. You, Jane.’

‘You are lying!’ Jane repeated forcefully. ‘I have no idea why, not what Janette was to you, but I do know that you are lying!’

‘Am I?’ Lady Sulby eyed her derisively even as she reached out a hand to her desk and plucked up one of the sheets of paper lying there. ‘Perhaps you should read this, Jane?’ She held up the page temptingly. ‘Then you will see exactly who and what your mother really was!’

‘What is that?’ Jane eyed the letter warily. Who could be writing to Lady Sulby now, twenty-two years after Janette’s death?

‘A letter written twenty-three years ago by Janette to her lover. Never sent, of course. How could she send it when her lover was already married?’ Lady Sulby sniffed disgustedly.

‘How do you come to have her letter?’Jane shook her head dazedly.

Lady Sulby gave a taunting laugh. ‘Think back to twelve years ago, Jane. Surely you remember that I came with Sulby when he came to collect you after Joseph Smith died…? Of course you remember,’ she scorned, as Jane flinched at the memory. ‘Just as I remember going through Janette’s things and finding letters she had written to her lover but never sent. Vile, disgusting letters—’

‘There was more than one letter?’ Jane felt numb, disorientated.

‘There are four of them.’ Lady Sulby snorted. ‘And in each one Janette talks to her lover of the child they have created together in sin—’

‘Give that to me!’ Jane snapped warningly, snatching the letter from Lady Sulby’s pudgy hand to hold it fiercely against her breast. ‘You had no right to read my mother’s letters. No right! Where are the others?’ She moved to the desk, sifting agitatedly through the papers there, easily finding the other three letters written in the same hand as the one she already held. Letters which Lady Sulby had obviously been reading when Jane came into the room. ‘Does Sir Barnaby know about these letters…?’

‘Of course he does not.’ Lady Sulby sniffed scornfully. ‘I have kept them hidden from him these last twelve years. Why do you think I was so concerned when I saw you with my jewellery box yesterday?’

Because the letters had been hidden there!

‘How dare you?’ Jane turned fiercely on the other woman, cheeks flushed, her eyes glittering deeply green. ‘You are not fit to even touch my mother’s things, let alone read her private letters!’

Lady Sulby recoiled from that fiery anger, her hand held protectively against her swelling breasts. ‘Stay away from me, you wicked, wicked girl.’

‘I have no intention of coming anywhere near you.’ Jane faced the older woman unflinchingly. ‘I would not want to soil my hands by so much as touching you. I have tried so hard to like you but never could. Only Sir Barnaby has ever been kind to me here. Now I can only feel pity for him, kind and loving man that he is, in having such a vicious and vindictive woman as his wife.’

‘Get away from me, you horrible girl!’

‘Oh, I am going—never fear.’ Jane’s head was up as she walked to the door, her spine proudly straight. ‘Let me assure you that I shall leave here as soon as I have packed the few things that truly belong to me.’ Including her mother’s letters!

Jane knew, as she hurried down the hallway to her tiny bedroom at the back of the house, that she was glad—relieved!—to at last have reason to leave Markham Park.

No matter what the future held for her—where she went, what she had to do in order to survive—Jane knew it could never be as awful as the years she had spent at Markham Park under the knowing and cruel hatred of Lady Sulby.