Chapter Twenty

Jocelyn smiled at each guest who was presented to her at Grayson’s masquerade until her lips ached from doing so. She made excuses for Devon’s absence until she ran out of both breath and conviction. She had no idea how to explain his disappearance; she only knew that his older brother Drake was watching her as if there were some mischief afoot.

Well, whatever the reason Devon had disappeared, there was definitely mischief at work inside her body. She was not at all herself, she realized in the middle of a waltz with one of Devon’s cousins. She felt queasy and tempted to weep all of a sudden, prompting her young dance partner to stare at her in concern.

“Perhaps you ought to eat,” he suggested under his breath. “They never feed you enough at these formal affairs. All this dancing works up the appetite.”

“Perhaps a bite or two would help,” she agreed, surprised that the thought of food sounded tempting.

“Let’s find Jane,” he said, taking her hand. “There’s no fun in waltzing about on an empty stomach.”

A few minutes later Jane sought Jocelyn out in the refreshment room. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked with a smile of concern, motioning the footmen in attendance to close the door.

Jocelyn put down the bowl of rose jelly she was in the process of finishing. “Tell you what?”

“I craved jellies like a fiend when I was carrying Rowan,” Jane whispered. “And cake. And custard.”

“But I can’t be…it’s too soon.”

“No, it’s not,” Jane said with a wistful laugh. “As a matter of fact, we could announce it at the end of the party. Grayson loves that sort of surprise, although on second thought, perhaps we shouldn’t. Not quite yet.”

“When will I know?” Jocelyn wondered aloud.

“Soon enough, believe me,” Jane replied. “I wonder whether you shall have a son or a daughter. There’s an apothecary in town who swears he can tell what gender a child will be before it is born. But it does require passing water into a pan of ashes, I’m afraid. I never told Grayson that I went, mind you. I made Weed swear to keep it secret.”

Jocelyn released her breath. Pregnant. She had conceived a child, one with a lustful appetite it would seem. At least that explained her moody reaction to Devon’s behavior, but it did not explain his behavior at all. He wasn’t enceinte, tearful, and eating like a battalion of soldiers. He simply wasn’t here.

“It would not be kind to share such news while Chloe is still grieving her loss,” she said reflectively.

Jane nodded. “And one never knows. Those first months are precarious as the baby takes hold in the womb. Oh, Jocelyn, I am happy for you—would you like to come up to the nursery and sit with my son? I shall send the nurse to the kitchen for pastry and chocolate for a private celebration.”

Jocelyn could not refuse her sister-in-law’s offer, even if pastry seemed a poor substitute for Devon’s presence. “Let me tell Drake first where I am going. He’s guarded me so diligently that I fear Eloise has been quite ignored.”

Indeed, Drake was watching her from the doorway as she wended her way through the crowded room to inform him of her plans. Jocelyn had the sense that he had not taken her out of his sight for even a minute.

She understood that the Boscastle family only meant to protect her, to cover for Devon’s absence, but all their attention only heightened her anxiety because she had no idea where her husband had gone. And then she overheard a group of young guests talking at the refreshment table, and her worry seemed to multiply.

“Where is Devon, anyway?”

“He and Gabriel went to the club.”

“And he left his wife, looking as fetching as she does in that costume? Damned arrogant devil. He’s asking for her to enter an affair.”

“Well, he’s made it no secret that he never considered himself a man for marriage. One wouldn’t expect him to stay chained to her side.”

Jocelyn backed away, straight into the arms of her brother-in-law Drake. He glanced at the guests standing around the table. The group fell into an awkward silence.

“Is anything wrong?” Drake inquired, his eyes narrowing as he guided her toward the door.

“No. I’m—” She did not trust herself to behave for another minute. She felt cross, concerned for her husband, and concerned that she was proving to be such a bother to the Boscastle family. “If you don’t mind, I shall heft my ball and chain back upstairs to the nursery and remove my dull presence from the party.”

“As you wish, Jocelyn.” He sent a withering stare over his shoulder at the guests who still had not resumed their conversation at the table. “Although I do not think it is your presence that should be removed.”

“I wish you’d all stop,” she whispered as he began to walk her to the stairs.

He frowned. “Stop what?”

“Watching over me as if something is wrong. There isn’t anything wrong, is there?”

He came to a halt at the bottom of the staircase. “Devon and Gabriel have gone to confront the man responsible for the personal attacks upon you and my brother. My brother is pursuing honor, not another woman, if that’s what you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t wondering that at all…. Do I know this person?”

“I doubt it,” Drake said somberly. “His name is Matthew Thurlew.”

She strained her memory for only a moment before another thought beset her. “There won’t be a physical confrontation between them, will there?” she asked, recalling how Devon had flown into the boughs at the park. “Shouldn’t you have gone with him instead of watching over me?”

He guided her onto the staircase, a man evidently comfortable with calming females. “Will there be a physical confrontation? I should be surprised if there were not. Should I have gone with him? He deemed it more important that I stay with you.” His blue eyes smoldered with dark humor. “And as deeply as it pains me to admit it, I believe that with Devon and Gabriel joining forces, I would only be in the way.”

         

Devon and Gabriel drove southeast to Thurlew’s Downing Street lodgings only to discover not their quarry in residence, but instead one of their mutual acquaintances, a harmless fop named Gilbert Amherst, dozing on the sofa. He opened his eyes and swallowed in speechless horror upon realizing that a pair of pistols were pressed at the ready against either side of his head. “I don’t have any cash,” he whispered. “Nor jewels except for my grandmama’s pearl ring sewn in my—”

“Shut up, you blithering idiot,” Devon said between his teeth. “Where is Thurlew?”

“Boscastle?” He blinked and glanced from one corner of his eyes to the other in recognition. “And Boscastle? We’re friends, aren’t we? I’ve never done either of you a wrong. Aren’t we all friends?”

Devon lowered the pistol in disgust.

Gabriel laughed. “That depends. Do you know where Thurlew is?”

Gilbert swallowed. “Isn’t he here?”

“No,” Devon said roughly. “He isn’t, but if you know where he is you damned well better tell me.”

“He must have gone to the masquerade,” Gilbert said meekly, leaning his head back on the sofa.

Devon wrenched him up by the ruffles of his shirtfront. “What masquerade?”

“The-the one at your brother’s house. You invited him, didn’t you?” His lower lip quivered. “Shouldn’t you be there?”

Devon released him instantly and sprang to his feet, Gabriel right behind him. “He’s right. I should have stayed with her.”

“Drake is there.”

“So are a hundred other people, one of them Matthew Thurlew. And nobody invited the bastard, either.”

         

Drake escorted Jocelyn to the nursery with a glance inside to note Mrs. O’Brien dozing in her chair by the low-burning fire, and Rowan asleep in his cradle. There was a pot of chocolate and a plate of orange-cream cake sitting on the two-tiered table.

He grinned. “Not exactly the makings of an exciting evening, but it looks safe enough.”

Jocelyn smiled. “I don’t mind the quiet.”

“Well, just be warned that Mrs. O’Brien is prone to singing lullabies when the whimsy strikes. Jane and the baby find her crooning pleasant. Grayson does not.”

Jocelyn settled down on the stool that sat beside the cradle. “I feel sleepy enough as it is. I should hate to shame myself by dozing off like an old dog.”

“Another warning,” Drake added, hesitating at the door. “Rowan is an infamous farter.”

“A what?” she asked.

He rubbed the side of his nose. “For a small blighter, he breaks copious amounts of wind. I wouldn’t want it to frighten you. He almost put out all the gaslights in the city not long ago.”

She got up, trying not to laugh. He looked so serious. “I shall bear that warning in mind.”

“Fine then. I suppose you’re safe enough here. I’ll send Weed or another footman up to stand outside for your convenience.”

“Quietly, please,” she said with an amused glance at the unmoving nursemaid. “I wouldn’t want to awaken either of them.”

She closed the door without a sound and returned to the cradle. She could not explain it, perhaps it was because she truly was pregnant, but the sight of Rowan in all his plump innocence lured her irresistibly to gaze upon him.

A child. She peered over the cradle into Rowan’s blue eyes. His lids drifted downward as if he were fighting sleep. She wondered whether Devon’s baby would be a boy or a girl, and how he would react to the news. Hadn’t he warned her of the possibility on their wedding day? But then he’d grown up in a large family.

Unexpectedly, Rowan turned his head and looked up at her with an engaging smile. She put her finger to her lips, whispering, “Ssh. We don’t want to wake up your nursemaid. She’s—”

At the mention of her name Mrs. O’Brien moaned and made a weak attempt to raise her arm. The mug from which she’d been drinking fell from her lap to the floor.

Jocelyn’s skin crawled with forewarning.

“Mrs. O’Brien?” she whispered, turning her head toward the woman’s slumped form. “Are you all right?”

The nursemaid responded with another moan, a deep-throated unnatural quaver of sound. Jocelyn placed her hand instinctively on the cradle, studying the shadows of the room. Something…somebody…was here.

The gold damask curtains rippled, firelight glinting in the deep folds. Jocelyn edged sideways to stand in front of Rowan’s cradle. The shadowy movement was not, as she’d hoped, her imagination. There was someone by the window. Even if she could back to the door and cry for help, she could not leave the baby and Mrs. O’Brien at the mercy of whoever was hiding in the room.

She told herself to remain calm.

Jane or one of her sisters-in-law would come up in a minute to check on Rowan. All the women in the family doted on Grayson’s cherub. No female could resist a Boscastle male.

And hadn’t Drake promised to send a footman up to stand guard at the door?

Of course, he’d only just gone, and even if he hurried he’d barely had time to make it down the stairs himself, which left her to defend the baby.

And the child she carried.

She stopped her thoughts from running to the horrific. Perhaps this was just a drunken guest who had wandered upstairs by mistake, or who craved a bit of peace. It happened all the time at parties. But no one wandered into a nursery by mistake. There was nothing peaceful about a crying child and vigilant nursemaids.

“What do you want?” she demanded softly.

In truth, her throat was so constricted it was a miracle she could get the words out at all, let alone continue to sound as if she possessed any courage.

The hooded figure detached itself from the curtains. Her heart began to pound as she looked up into the mocking countenance of a man she knew only vaguely from her brother’s stern warnings about avoiding bad company at parties.

“Captain Thurlew,” she said.

His name is Matthew Thurlew.

She detected a glint of metal between the layers of his voluminous sleeve and robe. She could not discern whether it came from a dagger or a pistol. Certainly whatever the source, it was not part of a pious man’s apparel.

A calm head, she thought, even as her nerves screamed and tension knotted her muscles into immobility. Strange that now, of all times, it was her father’s voice that counseled her. Calm head, girl, when approaching an unbroken horse….Why would it now be her father’s memory that gave her strength? He had always made her feel weak—No, he had wanted to make her feel weak and easily cowed. But he’d failed. His bullying had forced her to stand up for herself.

“Are you perhaps lost, Captain Thurlew? May I help you find your way?”

He laughed. “To Babylon? ‘Can I get there by candlelight?’ ”

She stood her ground, despite the fact that he was moving toward her, that her heart was thundering, and that Rowan had screwed up his face as if he were about to cry. “This is the nursery, Captain.”

“And that is the nursemaid,” he said with a mocking nod in Mrs. O’Brien’s direction. “See how she sleeps all snores. She drank all her laudanum-laced chocolate like a good girl.”

Drugged. That explained it. He had drugged Mrs. O’Brien. Unable to stop herself, she glanced back in horror at the child in the crib. He wouldn’t have drugged the baby, would he? Rowan seemed so alert and wakeful.

“You didn’t—”

She couldn’t bring herself to ask. She was terrified to even draw his attention to Rowan. Better to lure him out of the room before he took it into his head to harm the helpless Boscastle heir.

Where was Drake?

Where was the footman he’d promised?

Why hadn’t Jane come up to check on her son?

Why wasn’t Devon here?

Rowan opened his guileless blue eyes and gurgled. She glanced down at him inadvertently only to look up and find Thurlew directly before her.

“If you have a grudge against me or my husband, sir,” she managed to whisper, “pray let us remove ourselves to a more comfortable place than the nursery to discuss it.”

“A grudge?”

She swallowed. Time. She needed time. “Wasn’t it you who wrote those letters at Alton’s party, Captain?”

At that moment Mrs. O’Brien released a low unearthly moan and gave a spasmodic kick with her left foot against the firescreen. It wobbled and fell to the hearth with a clatter.

Thurlew uttered a curse and caught hold of Jocelyn’s bare elbow. Rowan whimpered in protest. She put her free hand back to comfort him, a gesture to which the baby responded with a full-bodied wail that surely would attract the notice of anyone approaching the hallway.

“You’re right, of course.” Thurlew jerked her away from the cradle. “We’ll have to go somewhere more private, or that devil’s spawn will cry the house down.”

She was so grateful he seemed disinterested in hurting Rowan that she had little time to fear for herself. “Quickly,” she said. “He’s about to squall—”

“He’d better not,” he said roughly.

“He’s going to whether you like it or not.”

He’d dragged her halfway across the nursery before she realized that his destination was not the door to the formal hallway used by the family.

In fact, it was only as he forced her against the wall that she perceived a concealed service door behind the curtains where he had been hiding.

She flinched as the heavy swathe of damask drapery threatened to smother her face.

A cry of anger, of raw fear rose in her throat.

“Don’t,” he whispered harshly, shoving her forward.

She twisted her wrist and hit him across the cheek. His hand lifted; she flinched, thinking he would strike her back. Then the length of rope he’d worn as a belt suddenly looped around her neck to subdue her.

No longer able to see his face, she demanded indignantly, “What is this thing around my neck? Where are we going? Why would you do this? What—”

He pushed her, and she stumbled, her senses disoriented, her thoughts arrested.

For a few moments of blind panic she fought the sense of falling into a void before her heel scraped a hard step; regaining her balance, she realized he was leading her down a private servants’ staircase, which, by the musty smell that offended her nose, had seen little use in recent months.

He tugged the rope to prod her into moving. “Every royal prince has his secret escape route.”

She swallowed against the band that constricted her throat. “You’ll hang for this,” she said, her foot catching in the hem of his robe. For good measure she lifted her knee up between his legs, but he drew back, thwarting her hope of disabling him.

His voice echoed in the hollow void. “Your husband is the one who should hang. His entire family should hang for their abuse of privilege and power.”

“What did Devon ever do to cause you to hate him?”

Even as she asked, she remembered the rumors about Devon and Thurlew’s younger brother. The gossip papers had thrived on their pranks, on the mayhem they had unleashed on the city of London, the most prominent incident being her husband’s infamous if fleeting stint as a highwayman. To her recollection a footman had been wounded, but had survived.

Scandal had ensued, but she didn’t think there had been any other violation of person or property. Devon and his friends had held up the wrong coach in the course of an ill-planned joke. She’d thought the whole affair had blown over.

“Madam,” he said, his voice without inflection, “you would do better to ask what I intend to do to you than to dwell on the harm your husband has caused.”