“Why not tell me?” Jeanette retorted. “Why not give me the chance to take more of a role in the girls’ situation? I am still the rubbishing marchioness. I’ve made more than one match, and I know well the perils of a poor choice.”
“You?” Beardsley’s dismay was palpable in a single syllable. “Involve yourself with my finances? You’re a woman.”
Viola had aged a decade in the course of this conversation. She gathered up her reticule and scooted to the edge of her seat. “We should be going. I trust all and sundry will forget this unfortunate meeting ever occurred. Jerome, your hand, please.”
Sycamore rose and scooped up the papers from the floor. “Nobody is going anywhere until we resolve the little matter of felony attempts to kidnap his lordship—two attempts, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Kidnap me?” Trevor straightened. “Kidnap me?”
“For ransom, I gather?” Jeanette’s gaze on Beardsley narrowed. “The street toughs who set upon you when you were alone or in your cups. Jerome knew your schedule, and Beardsley apparently was in Jerome’s confidence.”
“Papa,” Jerome expostulated, “is this true? You had your own nephew set upon by rogues? Are you out of your mind?”
“He’s out of money,” Sycamore said. “For some younger sons, that does equate to a loss of wits.”
“You can’t prove anything,” Beardsley said. “London’s streets aren’t safe, and Tavistock was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“There,” Goddard said, “you would be wrong. I keep some interesting company, Beardsley, as does Mr. Dorning’s brother-in-law Worth Kettering. Between our various minions and their friends, we know exactly how much you paid to see Tavistock spirited away. The criminals you hired were smart enough not to take anything from Tavistock’s person and not to forcibly make off with a peer, though they did keep your money, didn’t they?”
Jeanette was on her feet. “You couldn’t content yourself with menacing my brother and Mr. Dorning’s sole livelihood, you had to go after my step-son? That young man,”—she waved a hand at Trevor—“is among the most decent and honorable people I know, and you thought to steal from him and me both. I should let Mr. Dorning and each of his brothers go ten rounds with you at Jackson’s.”
Ah, there was the glimmer of the true Jeanette that gave a man hope. “Tavistock deserves first crack,” Sycamore said. “Head of the family and all that. I suspect Goddard might want to teach the old man a few lessons as well, and I wouldn’t mind having a go at him.”
Lady Viola should probably have been invited to join the queue as well.
“I want a go at him,” Jeanette said. “What I don’t understand are the notes. Were you just trying to frighten me, Beardsley? Were you planning to have me kidnapped on the Great North Road and held for ransom?”
Viola shrank back into her wing chair. “I sent the notes. I wanted you away from Town because I knew Beardsley was up to something. The modistes were humoring me, pretending to take an order for Diana’s carriage dress, then never delivering it. I knew the situation was growing dire. Beardsley has a temper, though he usually guards it well. I did not want that temper turning in your direction, Jeanette.”
Jeanette resumed her seat beside Sycamore. “You don’t even like me. Why protect me like that?”
Trevor and Jerome both turned at the same moment to regard Viola. Whether it was the angle of their heads, the shared look of expectation, or the resemblance to the nincompoop in the portrait, an explanation for Viola’s behavior popped into Sycamore’s head.
“Viola’s conscience is guilty,” he said. “She had the one thing you, Jeanette, could not produce. She had the old marquess’s son.”
A silence stretched, broken by the jingle of the harness on a passing gig.
“I do not understand,” Jeanette said as Trevor and Jerome turned speculative gazes on each other. “Somebody explain this to me.”
Beardsley dropped onto the love seat, while Viola clutched her reticule in her lap and said nothing.
“It’s all right, Viola,” Beardsley said tiredly. “I’ve known all along, and when Dorning is underfoot, there is apparently no keeping secrets in this family. You have nothing to be ashamed of. It was my idea.”
Sycamore’s aim in confronting Beardsley had been to win Jeanette free of a coerced marriage and stop the plundering of her financial security. Honor demanded that much of him, and love demanded that he then leave Jeanette free to enjoy her life as she saw fit.
That she chose that moment to reach for his hand was thus a fierce and dear consolation. “Explain yourselves,” Sycamore said, closing his fingers around Jeanette’s. “Her ladyship and the young men are due the truth. You are family, after all, and you owe each other that much.”
Jeanette shifted closer. “You heard Mr. Dorning. Somebody start talking, and don’t think to dissemble, or there will be consequences that make ten rounds at Jackson’s seem like a toddle in the park.”
Jeanette knew two things.
First, she had had a very narrow escape. Her signature on a lot of legal papers would have created a tangled web of binding obligations that even Sycamore’s ferocious determination would have been hard put to cut through.
Second, she should have married Sycamore when she’d had the chance. He’d sensed the complications swirling around her, when all she’d seen was Beardsley’s need for coin and one of his plans to extract it from her. Attempted kidnappings, Viola’s notes, legitimate bastards… Jeanette had had no clue how complicated the tangled web had grown and still did not entirely grasp the details.
“The late marquess had a certain gruff charm,” Viola said. “Or he did twenty-odd years ago. He’d been married for years by that point. His wife was in good health, and they’d had no children. I was fertile. If the Vincent family knew nothing else about me by then, they knew I was fertile.”
“You were also lonely,” Beardsley said, “and your consequence married to me was far less than you’d envisioned.
