“So why did you marry her?”
Jasper had been asking himself the same question since he’d left Annabel in her father’s library after their odd betrothal negotiations. He’d gone there intending to apologize and offer to help find her a place somewhere the gossip wouldn’t reach. Then he’d seen Spencer’s carriage near the house and decided, instead, to give her a piece of his mind.
But she’d been in tears, which reminded him of Fiona and the muddle she was still trying to climb free of. The difference was that Fiona’s scandal was based on fact, and her family had money the ton couldn’t ignore. Annabel didn’t. “Fiona tore a strip off me for being a careless, heartless lout.”
“Fiona.” Kit rolled his eyes. “Her redemption is becoming a pain in the arse.”
The phrase took Jasper back to the library, where he’d sworn without thinking and Annabel hadn’t reprimanded him for his manners. Surprisingly, it seemed to put her at ease. There had been something about her honesty and wry humor that had done the same for him, despite her association with Spencer.
“Annabel is the best path toward learning Spencer’s game.”
“You could have simply asked her,” Kit said.
“She wouldn’t have told me.” Jasper didn’t believe she knew. Spencer had proven to be wily prey because he kept his own counsel.
“Everyone has a price, Jasper.”
Annabel’s had been the chance for her sisters to find suitable husbands and an allowance for her mother. He put the wax over the candle. “Her loyalty is not for sale.”
“Goddammit, Jasper.” Kit pushed himself from the chair and ambled to the liquor cabinet. After filling a glass, he stood at the window. The afternoon light spilled over his shoulders and onto his back. “You’ve yoked yourself to someone who depends on your enemy for safety.”
Jasper was wagering that Annabel didn’t depend on Spencer for anything. She was smarter than that. He was hoping vows in a church and keeping his word would buy him the time to win her to his side.
Or his ego was getting the better of him. “Perhaps.”
“You say that the way you did at Eton when you were convinced of your answer, even if it didn’t match the lecture.”
The indigo wax pooled in the crucible. “What did you find in Cardiff?”
“The miners are all whispering about a new company, fronted by Abel Collins.”
“What do we know about him?”
“Da’s known him for years. He’s strong as an ox and as determined as a man has to be to go down a shaft every day and come out black inside and out. And the word is that you’d rather have him on your side in a fight. But Da has never trusted him. He definitely has a price.”
“Do you know what he’s doing?”
“Not yet,” Kit said. “Everyone whispers, but there’s nothing solid. What I do know is that he’s got a pub he favors and a table in the corner that’s always full of foremen and shift leaders. He always picks up the tab.”
“Not his money?”
Kit shook his head. “No way in hell. He’s always paid his own way, but just his own way. Someone is bankrolling him for something.”
Jasper poured the wax over the envelope and placed his seal in the center.
I have Some exploSive goSSip to Share when I arrive in London, Gareth had written.
The letter had arrived, but he hadn’t. He also hadn’t returned to his wife in Paris. No one had seen him riding in a coach or aboard a ship. Their friend had vanished. More likely, his body was yet to be found. “Could Gareth and Collins have crossed paths?”
“The pub is near the docks and is attached to a reputable inn. There’s also a post service across the street.” The ice rattled in Kit’s glass. “It’s why I started there.”
Jasper lifted the seal from the envelope. The ram’s head with curved horns that was part of his family crest stared back at him. “The S’s in Gareth’s letter could simply mean he was in a hurry to make the post.”
“Claudette can produce numerous letters, written in battle, where he never made that error,” Kit argued. “He meant Spencer. I’m certain of it.”
I never should have told him anything about Sir Reginald Spencer and why he needed to be stopped. His involvement—his death—lies squarely with me.
“And even if he didn’t, he still discovered something that someone killed him to hide,” Kit said.
The front door opened, and the hall echoed with the chatter and giggling of four young women all rushing to speak at once.
Kit scooped the letter from the desk and slipped it into his coat pocket. “We’ll talk more later.”
“As you wish.” Jasper rose from the desk. Given the noise in the hallway, he could have shouted their plot and not been heard. That was one of the problems with sharing his mother’s home while Ramsbury House was under repair.
The benefit, however, was that the presence of his family helped ease the awkwardness of newlywed life as he and Annabel got better acquainted.
He stopped at the door. His new wife was flanked by his mother and surrounded by his sisters and hers in their colorful day dresses and large-brimmed bonnets, but her wide smile and sparkling eyes made her stand out. Her alto-pitched laugh harmonized with the girls’ shrill giggles.
If Jasper had ever seen her like this near the ferns in a ballroom, he wouldn’t have forgotten it. And, predictably, it faded when she saw him.
“Do it again, Annie. Do it again!”
The family name made her seem younger, but her cheeks flushed in a way that Jasper recognized from experience. The shortened name agitated her.
“Here now.” He waded into the fray to reach Annabel’s side, leaving Kit behind. “Lady Ramsbury, if you please, Miss Pearce.”
Rebecca, Annabel’s next oldest sister, bobbed a quick curtsy, but her eyes flashed. “Yes, your lordship.” Her frown made the end of her sentence pop like a pebble against a window.
