A Lady's Code of Misconduct (Rules for the Reckless #5)(8)



He would overtake her uncle one day, and eat him alive. That Uncle Philip did not foresee the danger to himself amazed her.

Burke laughed, a low and beautiful sound that made her swallow. “Certainly,” he said. “Far worse things than this, to be sure. And more useful things, too. For whatever reason, I’m feeling benevolent tonight.”

“How fortunate for me,” she said, full of sarcasm.

His sigh sounded impatient. “I’ll spare you the midnight ruination. In return, you will listen for a single name and tell me whatever you hear spoken of it. Are we agreed?”

That did seem a simple trade. But Jane knew better than to trust such simplicity. Whosever name it was, it would lead her down a twisted path. “Oh,” she said softly, bitterly, “to be free of all of you!”

Burke snorted. “You are not on a stage, darling. Spare me the melodrama. If freedom is your aim, then do what you must. Otherwise, I’m off.”

She took a deep breath. What choice did she have? “Yes,” she said. “Tell me the name.”

*

Crispin considered his unwilling companion. “Would you really have married Pine?” he asked.

Jane Mason sat across from him, clutching the hand strap as his carriage lurched down the flooding road. Crispin half expected her to refuse to answer. But her ordeal tonight, of hope dashed and defeat postponed, seemed to have left her too tired to assemble her usual restraint.

“Of course,” she said. She gave him a brief, wondering look from beneath the shadows of her hood. The damp had undone her carefully pinned coiffure; curls rioted freely at her temples and brow. She shed pins as regularly as trees shed leaves; he was holding one in his hand right now, turning it over and over as he studied her.

“What did you imagine?” she asked. “That I’d arranged the whole business for the pleasure of jilting a seventy-year-old?”

Her bluntness amused him. “Seventy? You certainly were desperate.”

“Or practical,” she said. “In a marriage of pure convenience, an elderly groom is far preferable to one bound to live fifty years.”

His laughter startled him. This made three times tonight that his view of Jane Mason had twisted to reveal new angles. She made such a convincing show of drifting ghostlike through Marylebigh that one would never guess her soft-spoken demeanor concealed such a sharp tongue.

“And?” he asked, for he was genuinely curious now. It was so rare to find himself mistaken about a person’s mettle. “After the marriage, what then?”

She shrugged. “I would have provided him with a handsome settlement so he could live out his days in the style he desired.”

“But you would not have lived with him.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Convenience, sir, works both ways. Mr. Pine would have gone his way, and I mine.”

For a woman so cloistered and coddled, she seemed quite confident that she would have faced no difficulties in setting off alone. “And where would you have gone?”

But he had reached the end of her generosity. She turned her face toward the window, the stony set of her profile warning him not to prod her.

She’d formulated some plan for herself. What could it be? Mason occasionally intercepted the letters she wrote to newspapers, earnest pleas to care for the poor, to reform the educational system, all manner of women’s concerns. Perhaps, then, she dreamed of a house in Bloomsbury, charity work, a life of noblesse oblige.

Or perhaps, for all Crispin knew, she hungered for Parisian bohemianism. He no longer trusted his instincts about her; until this evening, he had discounted her entirely. In company, she always kept to a script of murmured neutralities that communicated both her polite attention and her overarching disinterest in the conversation.

Today, however . . . He’d been amazed when he’d overheard Philip Mason discussing his ward’s midnight assignation. Only Mason’s rage—which, unlike his muffled words, had translated clearly through the door—had convinced Crispin that he was hearing correctly.

He’d not intended to interfere with Mason’s plan. After all, Jane’s money was what made Philip such a useful ally. But tonight, in the drawing room, she had caught his attention. She’d been listening too closely to his brawl with Mason. Later, as Archibald had produced Jane’s embroidery, Crispin had glanced over at her again. The golden goose, she had called herself earlier—he had wondered then if she referenced the less kind nickname her uncle used for her, the brown goose, his tired joke about her dull wit and homely airs.

But in the drawing room, caught off guard by her cousin’s prank, Jane Mason had forgotten to restrain herself. The malicious delight on her face had been Crispin’s first inkling, in all the time he’d known her, that she restrained herself at all. Indeed, that single moment had revealed more of Jane Mason than years of casual acquaintance. In one glance, Crispin had realized not only the strength of the passions underlying her wan mask but the ferocious strength of will that she had wielded in order to present such a bland front to the world.

Astonishing. His entire life had been a firsthand lesson in how badly others could misjudge a person. Yet he’d still overlooked her.

No longer. A woman capable of such restraint and anger was far more interesting to him than any commonplace beauty. Brown goose, indeed. The brown goose could prove very useful, and Philip Mason’s carelessness had given Crispin the single opportunity he needed to place her in his power.

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