The Wicked Governess (Blackhaven Brides Book 6)(70)

“Javan, don’t,” she pleaded.

“Give him up to me now, sir,” the runner said authoritatively.

Javan gave a last squeeze and almost hurled Swayle into Bolton’s grip. “Of course.”

Only then, with Swayle safe and choking in his hold, did the runner turn to Miller. “You still here?”

Miller shrugged. “I could have legged it while you wrestled with him. Didn’t seem right when the colonel there saved my life. I take it kindly, sir.”

“Don’t,” Javan said. “I need you to send this dog to prison, if not to the hangman.”

“Happy to oblige.”

“We got it written down and witnessed,” the runner said carelessly. “Magistrate don’t care if he’s there or not.”

“Then I’d no need to hurry,” Javan said flippantly.

“Very glad you did,” Miller admitted, jerking his head at the runner, “for he was no help, blabbing before he was meant to. Just cause a man looks like a cowardly weasel don’t mean he’ll come quietly.”

Bolton had the grace to look sheepish, muttering that no harm had been done.

“No,” Javan agreed, his fist clenching once more. “It gave me the chance to hurt him, to feel the breath leaving his body.”

“I never laid a finger on Rosa,” Swayle gasped. “She’s lying if she says I did.”

Sparks flew from Javan’s eyes. Caroline couldn’t prevent him stepping closer. “No, you didn’t need to,” he uttered with searing contempt. “You just threatened her, frightened her into never revealing your pathetic plan to kill me when I came home. She overheard you and Louisa discussing it, and you scared her, a child of eight, who didn’t even understand most of what you’d planned, with vile threats I will not repeat here. You told her she’d never see either of her parents again if she ever opened her mouth. Children can be literal. She never did open her mouth. If she never said anything, she’d never say the thing you’d kill us for. Louisa dying only reinforced your threats in her mind.”

Javan’s fingers curled reassuringly around Caroline’s pleading hand. He took a breath and even smiled, though it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “But here’s the thing, Swayle. She beat you without speaking. She wrote it all down.”

She had. On their return to Blackhaven this afternoon, they’d called first on Dr. Lampton to get him to look at Caroline’ wound. Afterward, he’d shown them his notebook where Rosa had written her answers to his questions on their last meeting. And where she’d drawn a picture of what had frightened her.

“I didn’t think anything of it at first,” Lampton had told them. “I thought it was just her doodling, a way of avoiding what I’d asked her to think about. For the answers she wrote down were evasive and uninformative in the extreme. But it was a good drawing for a child of her age, and I began to think I’d actually seen this fellow. Have I? Have you?”

And Rosa had come and taken the book from them, and without urging, had sat at Dr. Lampton’s desk and written down a long, terrible stream of words. By the end, tears were dropping onto the paper, blotting the ink, and she’d clung to her father, trembling and weeping silently into his coat.

If Caroline had not already loved him to distraction, she would have fallen for him just for the way he comforted Rosa, a mixture of gentle explanations and praise and a secure, constant embrace. Caroline’s throat constricted all over again at the memory, at the thought of the child’s pain. And Javan’s fury, so tightly controlled that his hand trembled as soon as it stopped stroking Rosa’s hair.

Bolton opened the door to haul his prisoner out.

“And him?” Swayle asked, as though he couldn’t help it. “How did you get a runner here so fast?”

“Actually, it took some time,” Javan said. “I wrote to Bow Street as soon as I saw you at Braithwaite Castle. It wasn’t my first discussion with the runners about you, but a year ago I had no proof. This time, because they thought you’d followed me, they were more interested.” He swung away, dragging Caroline’s hand through his arm. “For Rosa and for Caroline, I hope they hang you. Take him away, Bolton, before I kill him myself.”

Inevitably, perhaps, it was Serena who lightened the moment. At the head of the throng that had spilled out of the ballroom to see the “fight”, she gave a pleased little clap at Javan’s parting line. And the applause was taken up by several people and then by everyone in the vicinity.

Javan looked startled, then amused in a slightly embarrassed way. He bowed dramatically before the company, like a stage actor, which delighted them further. Then he led Caroline through the throng and back into the ballroom.

“You’d better dance with me now to let the noise die down,” he muttered.

“It won’t die down if you dance with your own wife,” she warned humorously. “You’ll be shunned.”

“Oh well,” he said, taking her into his arms, for it was a waltz which had struck up. He held her carefully, allowing her injured arm to lie across her breast. “They might as well know that the wicked governess who set her cap at an earl and a baronet before me, has finally caught her lesser man.”

“There is nothing lesser about you, Javan,” she said warmly. “There never was.”