Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)(88)

“You need,” Ned prompted.

“I need a fresh start,” she finished quietly.

Ned nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets. He walked around the room, and Jenny wondered if he, too, was seeing echoes of his former entrapment.

Finally, he looked up at her. “I’m to be married in a week.”

“Congratulations, Mr. Carhart.” She looked down. They’d talked once before, about his antipathy for the state of matrimony. Marriage could not have been a hastily made decision on his part. But she did not know if they could fall back into the easy state of conversation they’d once enjoyed. She bit her lip, holding in the questions that bombarded her.

But she no longer had the right to pry into his affairs. “Gareth is pleased, I’m sure. I hope you are, too.”

Ned stepped back, a puzzled expression on his face. “So Blakely is Gareth and I am Mr. Carhart?”

There was no real way to respond to that. No way, except the truth. “Yes. I give you leave to call him by his Christian name, by the way. Someone must continue to do so once I am gone. He needs to be reminded, you see, that there’s more to him than Lord Blakely. He’ll forget otherwise. And he mustn’t forget.”

“Jenny,” Ned interrupted, “I came here to ask you to come to my wedding. It’s a small affair. Family only.”

A lump formed in Jenny’s throat. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not? I just asked you.”

“No, I really mean that I can’t. My packet leaves in five days.”

“Can’t you change to the week after?”

She could. But there was another reason. “G—I mean, Blakely will be there. And I’m not part of your family, Ned. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“You’ve faced my cousin before. Why can you not do so now?”

Because I cannot bear to see him again. Jenny let out a sigh. “Must I really spell it out?”

Ned searched her face and must have found the answer. “Really? Blakely?”

She blushed, and bent to rummage in her valise for her one last memento. “That,” she said, straightening, prize in hand, “and he’ll likely set the law on me once he realizes I absconded with his penknife that night in the gaming hell.”

Ned stared at the elegant knife. The weapon was as much Jenny’s connection to Ned—loyal, trusting Ned—as it was to Gareth. Her memories of the knife were bound up with Ned. Ned stabbing the orange. Jenny piercing the cards in front of him.

Ned speaking up, telling Gareth that Jenny was more his family than anyone else he knew.

Jenny sighed wistfully.

But Ned did not speak of the knife. Instead he said, “When I was very young, I told my mother I wanted an older sister. She laughed at me and told me that nature didn’t work that way. But a younger sister was not forthcoming, either. There was always only me. I have had my problems—of my own devising, you understand. And at one point, I thought there was no hope for me. No encouragement. Then I met you.”

“I lied to you, Ned.”

He reached out and gently took the knife from her grasp.

“Sisters usually do.” He opened the blade and switched it, awkwardly, to his other hand. And then he held out his right hand. The knife scored his flesh, cutting a thin red line down his palm. Blood welled up.

Ned held out the knife expectantly. “You told me to take this one step at a time. Well? Here I am.”

Jenny hesitated. It was too much. He offered truth in exchange for lies. Loyalty, for fraud.

And then he bounced expectantly on his toes, and he was impatient Ned again. Ned, who offered, quite simply, love for love. If she couldn’t believe she was worthy of it now, she might as well give up on the whole thought of finding any place on the face of the earth where she could command respect.

Jenny’s fingers trembled as she took the knife in her left hand. The sharp blade slid into her flesh. At first, she didn’t feel a thing—not the cut, nor any attendant pain. Then Ned reached out and clasped her hand in his. He squeezed, and the wound stung. Her eyes smarted. Her heart swelled, and suddenly, her echoing rooms seemed neither desolate nor empty.

She’d waited thirty long years for a little brother. It had taken him a while to appear, but he’d been worth the delay.

“I know you’re leaving,” Ned said softly. “Truth be told—I’m not sure I can do this, either. Be her husband. Live a normal life.”

A thousand reassurances swam through Jenny’s head. But he squeezed her hand. “I’ll manage,” he said. “At least now, I believe that.”

“I’d rather see you happy,” Jenny whispered. “But I suppose I won’t see you at all.”

“America. England. What does a little thing like a few thousand miles matter, among family?”

“Nothing,” Jenny said. “It’s nothing at all.”

GARETH’S JOURNEY HAD BEEN long and jolting, but after two miserable days on the road, he arrived.

Three solid graystone buildings made up Elland School in Bristol. The trees on the grounds gathered naked, gray branches primly about their trunks, as if they were preparing for winter instead of participating in the spring that had arrived everywhere else. A few stray handbills were strewn about the streets, but not one dared mar the strict order of the yard. Even the cobblestones the carriage clattered over seemed laid in a geometric pattern. The formal grounds were in such contrast to everything Gareth knew about Jenny that it seemed impossible he would find any trace of her here.