Tall, Dark... Collection

‘I know how upset you were that day, Jane.’ His tone gentled slightly. ‘I appreciate that Lady Sulby had deeply wounded you in some way—’

‘How dare you?’ Jane cut in furiously, angry colour having returned to her cheeks now, and the green of her eyes glittering with that same anger. ‘How dare you stand there as my accuser and my judge on the word of a woman who on the last occasion we met expressed nothing but hatred towards me?’

The last thing Hawk wanted to do was judge Jane, or condemn her. He wished only to help her. But he could not do that if Jane would not tell him why she had left the Sulbys’ that day.

‘It is not only Lady Sulby’s word, Jane,’ he told her softly.

‘Who else accuses me?’ she demanded angrily.

‘Miss Olivia Sulby—’

He was interrupted by Jane’s dismissive snort. ‘She is of the same mould as her mother, and her opinion does not count.’

‘In that you are wrong,’ Hawk told her impatiently. ‘I can assure you that Olivia Sulby’s testament against you is as valid as any other. And Olivia Sulby claims that on the day prior to your sudden flight she remembers accompanying her mother to her bedchamber, and that both of them chanced upon you there, in possession of Lady Sulby’s jewellery box.’

Jane thought back to that day a week ago. It was the day the guests had been arriving for Lady Sulby’s house party. The day Hawk himself had arrived…

She remembered going upstairs to collect Lady Sulby’s shawl and noticing the jewellery box had been left out on the dressing table before being totally distracted by the arrival of the magnificent black coach bearing the Duke of Stourbridge.

Then there had been that momentous first meeting with the Duke on the stairs, followed by Lady Sulby’s scathing comment that Jane had brought her the wrong shawl and she was to return to her bedchamber at once and collect the correct one—and Jane’s own embarrassment when she had returned up the stairs and realised that the Duke had stood on the gallery above as silent witness to the whole exchange.

Jane also remembered Lady Sulby’s reaction when she had burst into the bedroom a short time later, Olivia behind her, and found Jane loitering in the room, the jewellery box still sitting on the dressing table.

Jane recalled how bewildered she had felt—how Olivia had looked at her with such triumphant satisfaction when the older woman had questioned Jane accusingly as to whether or not she had looked at the contents of her jewellery box.

But the following day Jane had learnt the reason for Lady Sulby’s sharpness when the other woman had acknowledged that she had hidden there the letters Jane’s mother had written to her married lover…

And now Hawk—the man who had made love to Jane so intimately the evening before—chose to believe the word of the two vindictive Sulby women over her own…

‘Jane, I cannot even attempt to help you if you will not be honest with me,’ he reasoned frustratedly.

Jane drew herself up proudly, determined not to show how hurt she was by his lack of faith in her complete innocence in this matter. ‘I do not remember asking for your help, Your Grace.’

‘You prefer to be arrested and imprisoned?’ Hawk could barely contain the anger he felt at her stubborn refusal to confide in him.

Her mouth twisted scathingly. ‘For something I did not do?’

Hawk was a local magistrate. He knew far better than Jane how the law worked. And with two such credible witnesses against her as Lady Sulby and her daughter, coupled with her own sudden flight from Markham Park, Jane would be found guilty before the case was even presented in a court of law.

He stepped forward to grasp her shoulders impatiently and shake her into looking up at him. ‘Can you not see, Jane, that it will not matter whether or not you are guilty of the crime?’

‘Of course it will matter!’ she assured him fiercely, the glitter in her eyes not just from anger now, but also unshed tears. ‘I know nothing of the theft of Lady Sulby’s jewellery. Nothing!’ she repeated vehemently. ‘I do know that Lady Sulby hates me, as she hated my mother before me—’

‘Your mother, Jane?’ Hawk probed softly, when she broke off abruptly. ‘Did you not tell me that your mother died when you were born?’

‘She did. But—’ Jane broke off again as she realised she had been about to tell more than she wanted him to know. Bad enough that he believed her to be a thief and a liar, without adding illegitimacy to that list of sins. ‘Lady Sulby was acquainted with my mother.’Jane chose her words carefully. ‘She told me she did not like her—that she did not approve at all when Sir Barnaby accepted guardianship of Janette’s daughter.’ Jane paled as a sudden thought—truth?—hit her with the force of a blow.

Her mother’s letters to her lover confirmed Lady Sulby’s claim that he had been a married man.

Twenty-three years ago Sir Barnaby had already been married to Lady Sulby for two years. Lady Sulby hated and despised Jane, she had told her, as she had hated and despised her mother before her.

Could it be that it was Sir Barnaby who had been Janette’s lover twenty-three years ago? That Jane was his illegitimate daughter?

It would explain so many things if that were the case—most of all Jane being left to the guardianship of a man she had never even heard her adopted father mention, let alone one whom Jane had actually met before he and Lady Sulby had come to collect her from Somerset on that desolate day twelve years ago.

Could it be that Jane’s mad flight to find her real father had been completely unnecessary? That she had been living under his guardianship all along…?

It was difficult to imagine the rotund Sir Barnaby as the dashingly handsome lover who had swept her mother off her feet all those years ago, whom her mother had so described in her letters when she had expressed the hope that her unborn child would resemble him. But Sir Barnaby could have—must have—looked far different twenty-three years ago…

‘Jane…?’

She blinked dazedly as she focused on Hawk. On the condemning Duke of Stourbridge. ‘I will leave Mulberry Hall immediately.’

‘No, Jane, you will not!’ Hawk cut in forcefully, having been angered seconds ago at Jane’s sudden distraction of thought. What could possibly be more urgent for her to contemplate than the dire situation she found herself in?

And, no matter how Jane might choose to dismiss the whole incident, it was dire. An accusation of theft had been made against her, her arrest ordered, and mere claims of innocence on Jane’s part would not suffice to cancel that order.

But as the powerful Duke of Stourbridge Hawk did have some influence. ‘I am willing to help you, Jane—’

‘As I said before, I do not remember asking for your help, Your Grace,’ she cut in coldly.

Hawk looked down at her searchingly. Did Jane really not see how precarious her position was?

‘Neither do I ask for it now, Your Grace,’ she continued haughtily as she attempted to shake off his hold on her shoulders. ‘Release me, sir,’ she ordered coldly when she was unsuccessful in that attempt.

He shook his head impatiently. ‘Jane, if you leave Mulberry Hall without my protection you will be exposed to immediate arrest and imprisonment.’

She gave him a pitying look. ‘I am willing to take my chances.’

Even the thought of Jane exposed to the harshness of a prison cell, to the cold and the rats and the untender mercies of the turnkey, was enough to make Hawk shudder.

She would rather suffer all that than accept his help…?

His hands dropped from her shoulders before he stepped back. ‘Then you are a fool, Jane!’ he assured her harshly.

Her eyes glittered challengingly. ‘I would rather be thought a fool than live any longer under the protection of the Duke of Stourbridge!’

Hawk flinched as if Jane had physically struck him. Was that really how she felt? Did Jane despise him—hate him so much after what had occurred between them yesterday evening that she was willing to suffer imprisonment rather than accept his help?

The defiant expression on her face, the scorn directed towards him that she made no effort to hide, was answer enough…

He drew in a ragged breath before speaking again. ‘Jane, I advise you to put aside your feelings of enmity towards me and instead concentrate on the matter at hand.’ His expression was grim. ‘I can intercede for you with Sir Barnaby. I have found him to be a kind and reasonable man, and I am sure—’

‘No!’ Jane cut forcefully across the Duke’s reasoning speech. ‘I will speak to Sir Barnaby myself, when I return to Markham Park.’

‘You mean to go back there?’ The Duke looked incredulous.

Yes, Jane intended going back to Markham Park.