Inevitably a Duchess Page 10

  “It wasn’t very nice what you did,” Jane said, collecting her winnings from Mathers.

  Straughton dropped a check on the layout. The piece skittered to Mathers’ side of the table, and he carefully returned it to Straughton.

  “I do not know what you mean,” the woman said, her voice rushed, the syllables crashing into each other.

  Mathers dealt, and Jane collected another win. Straughton’s hands shook now as she placed a check on another exhausted card. There were four markers left on the casekeeper, and Straughton had not placed her bet on any card that could win. Jane smiled.

  “Je pense que vous faites,” Jane said, and Straughton knocked her meager pile of checks from the table.

  The woman stood so abruptly her chair fell over backward, knocking into a footman carrying a tray of champagne that fell in a waterfall of sparkling spirits. The commotion barely caused a ripple in the room as seasoned players focused on the game at hand. For a brief moment, Jane feared she had gone too far. She had wanted to upset Lady Straughton, unnerve her, even put her on edge, but she did not want to make the woman so manic that she lost coherent thought. If Lady Straughton did not retain some control, a confession was unlikely.

  But then Lady Straughton swept her checks from the floor where they had fallen and snatched up her overturned chair, taking a seat before a footman could so much as offer assistance. Jane did not dare look at Mathers then. For the first time, she felt her heart rate pick up, felt the the palms of her hands grow damp in her gloves. She almost had her prey.

  “I do not know what you speak of, but I think you speak of lies, Lady Haven,” Lady Straughton whispered, her voice vacillating as her anger simmered.

  “Lies?” Jane said, “I do not think I could tell a lie when it comes to someone taking my life.”

  Lady Straughton looked at her then.

  “Perhaps you should not be listening where you are not welcomed,” she said, her voice suddenly heavy with her French accent.

  Jane raised an eyebrow.

  “Do you mean in drawing rooms or in cemeteries?”

  Jane watched as Lady Straughton’s eyes grew wide, and her mouth formed a perfect Oh of astonishment. Jane smiled and returned to the game.

  There were only four cards left. Mathers quickly dealt the next hand, and Straughton actually won. There wasn’t a chance that the woman could catch up to Jane, but she knew that the last play held a certain amount of pride for Straughton. Now that Jane had made her aware of exactly where they stood, Straughton must feel the absolute need to win the next play.

  Jane studied the casekeeper. There was an ace of hearts and a queen of diamonds left. She waited until Straughton quickly placed a check on the ace enameled on the baize. Jane placed her last check next to Straughton’s on the ace, but before Mathers could deal, she also set a copper on top of the chip. Straughton let out a strangled gasp as Jane brought back her hand from the table. By placing the copper on the card, she was essentially calling Straughton an idiot for Jane expected to see the ace show up in the banker’s pile and not the players’ pile. Nothing could have been more of an affront than the placement of that copper, and Straughton knew it.

  Mathers dealt, and the ace of hearts fell onto the banker’s pile.

  Lady Straughton did not move at first. The woman was perfectly still as Mathers collected the bets and gave Jane her winnings. Jane felt her heart beat suddenly slow, and she drew in a deep breath, looking at nothing but the pile of checks in front of her.

  And then Lady Straughton stood, leaning in so that her face was mere inches from Jane’s. Jane saw the way the other woman’s nostrils flared and her pupils dilated.

  “When the time comes for the revolution, you will be sorry you were so nosy,” Lady Straughton hissed.

  Jane raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “The revolution that those bodies I snatched will pay for!”

  Although a whisper, her statement was given with such force Jane knew Mathers had heard it as well.

  Jane smiled.

  “You’ll have to tell me how that revolution goes for you. It seems to be working out so well for the French.”

  Lady Straughton recoiled as if Jane had hit her.

  “Make note, Lady Haven, my revolution will succeed. For me and my countrymen!” Now Lady Straughton was near to shouting, but the room was already abuzz with the conversations from the other game tables, and Jane doubted anyone had heard the woman.

  “And which country would that be?” Jane asked, but Lady Straughton appeared to be finished with her.

  She turned and left the room, but before she could make it into the corridor, Hobbs stepped through the door and latched a hand onto the woman’s shoulder.

  “Lady Straughton, I will need you to accompany me. It seems you have an appointment with the authorities.”

  Jane let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and beckoned to the nearest footman. When he approached, she took a glass of champagne from his tray and drank the entire thing in one gulp.

  ~

  Richard pulled her closer against his body, cradling her in his arms. They lay there, spooned together on his bed, the bedclothes scattered about them as they had gotten into bed only to get as close to the other as possible. The bedclothes had become an unintentional casualty.

  And in that moment, he swelled with pride, absolute pride that Jane was his. When he had heard what she’d done with the last bet, heard how she had undone Lady Straughton, he could do nothing but smile. The move was so classically Jane, he could not even be surprised by her actions. But he could be proud.

  And now although Richard held Jane as if she were a precious, fragile object, he knew now that Jane wouldn’t break. Jane could not be broken. He had seen her physically damaged, emotionally crushed and mentally challenged, and nothing had even seemed to graze her delicate skin. Nothing. She was still Jane. She still smelled of lavender and lilacs and vanilla. She still smiled, her mouth wide and her cheeks full. She still laughed with the boys, the sound an undefinable pleasure.

  She was still Jane after all of that, and she would still be Jane no matter what. But although he knew it, he also knew that it would take him time to adjust to it. He had only let himself see the battered and hurt Jane, a Jane that needed his protection. He had never let himself see the one that could protect him.

  He knew he would slip up. He knew there would be times when he made mistakes, when he thought her incapable of something he should not. And even as he knew it, he felt that Jane would forgive him, would teach him, would change his mind until he no longer made those mistakes. And he knew there would be time to let him.

  “Marry me,” he said then, feeling the words more deeply than he ever had before. “Marry me, Jane.”

  She stirred against him, turning her head to look at him, her eyes flashing in the firelight. Richard saw the bone aching tiredness there, saw the will to stay awake, to stay there in his arms. She smiled softly, and he saw in that smile satisfaction. She had not only secured a confession from a traitor, she had done so in close enough proximity to another agent so her story could be collaborated. Jane’s first mission as a spy had been a resounding success, and he returned her smile there in the near darkness of his bedchamber. But then Jane’s smile turned into something else. Something far more…dangerous.

  “Is that the best you can do, Your Grace?”

  Richard raised an eyebrow.

  “I beg your pardon, my lady?”

  He had felt a niggling of fear when with the second time he proposed, she had still not given him a definitive yes, but there was something about Jane right then that was just the slightest bit mischievous. She nestled against him, bringing her hands up to stroke the hair on his chest. He found the touch distracting and swatted at her hands to keep her on task.

  “Well, it’s like this, Richard. My first marriage was arranged between my father and some old, stodgy patriarch I never met. And here I am on the verge of my second marr
iage, and all I get is a weak marry me?” She paused here to lick her lips, the gesture completely unnecessary, and he knew she was doing it to distract him. “It seems I require…more.”

  “More?” he heard himself say, but the voice seemed unusually far away.

  Her hands moved down his chest now, lower and lower, until he snatched at one of them.

  “More,” was all that she said with the tiniest of shrugs.

  She pulled her hand free and resumed its trail down his stomach and across his hip.

  “More, my lady?” he said and pounced.

  ~

  Jane could not decide what was more unusual. The fact that for the second morning in a row she was having breakfast at the Lofton House without a care in the world for her reputation or that just the night before she had been an integral part in the capture of a notorious traitor. That last bit may have been a touch exaggerated, but she was sure to be forgiven. Green spies were likely to get intoxicated on the rush of their first successful mission.

  Jane felt a sigh come up on her as she descended to the main floor on her way to the morning room. If she were thinking of it as her first successful mission, it meant she was also thinking of more successful missions to come. And not once did the thought cause her panic or concern. Lady Jane Haven was indeed a spy for the War Office, and that was just a simple fact of circumstances. There was nothing odd or complicated about it. It was as if she had been a spy all along. She just hadn’t signed on to the proper authorities yet.

  She rounded the corner and came into the morning room to find it completely empty. Richard had left the bedchamber nearly an hour earlier to see to the boys, and she looked about the room as if he were hiding in it somewhere. She put her hands on her hips and looked up to the ceiling as if she could see what Richard and the boys were up to, but as she obviously could see nothing but the plaster ceiling, she shook her head and moved to her place at the table.

  And stopped, her hands slipping from her hips.

  Neatly arranged at her place setting was a piece of parchment, folded in half and set atop her plate like a tent. She picked it up carefully, taking in the details of the painting on the front of the paper. It seemed to be watercolors, a child’s watercolors in particular. In clumsy strokes of paint were a man, a woman, and two boys, one smaller than the other. And next to the smallest boy, there appeared to be a dog. Jane raised an eyebrow at that part, but unfolded the parchment to see what was inside. There was a simple message. One she had heard twice before in a slightly different manner. The words Marry us were scrawled in a penmanship that looked strikingly like Nathan’s handwriting, and below these words, three signatures in three different scripts were written.

  Richard, Nathan and Alec.

  The tears came to her eyes and burned the back of her throat before she could draw another breath. She refolded the parchment on the words, but it did nothing to help her regain her composure. She reopened the parchment, taking in the simple message once more.

  “Well, what’s your answer?”

  Jane spun around at the sound of Alec’s small voice to find the three of them standing in the doorway, Richard with this two sons, each smiling more broadly than the next. Except Richard looked absolutely scared to death. And Jane’s tears turned into a burst of laughter.

  “Yes,” she said, “Yes is my answer.”

  She crossed the room to Richard, wrapping her arms about him, feeling his arms close around her, stronger than they ever had before. She released him only long enough to pull the boys into her arms, squeezing them just as tightly. When she straightened again, she was pleased to see Richard no longer looked so terrified. Jane smiled and took one of his hands in hers before she remembered something. Holding up the parchment, she turned to the boys.

  “Is this a dog?” she said, indicating the creature next to the smallest boy.

  Alec grinned.

  “It’s a goat,” he said. “I had Nathan add him.”

  Richard stilled beside her.

  “A goat?” he said.

  Alec nodded, his grin growing bigger with every moment.

  “A brown goat. We should get one of those.”

  Nathan stood beside his brother, nodding affirmatively.

  “I agree. We should definitely get a goat,” Nathan said.

  Richard looked at her, his expression confused and lost. But then something moved over him, and a smile returned to his face. He looked back at the boys.

  “You must ask your mother,” he said.

  Jane gasped before she could stop it, swinging her gaze to his as he fought back the laughter.

  “Richard Black, if you think you can start-“

  “Mother, can we get a goat?” Alec interrupted, and everything in Jane stilled.

  She looked at the small boy who had just called her the very thing she had thought she would never be, but that same little boy was already shaking his head.

  “I don’t think I want to call you mother. You’re much more fun than the mothers I’ve met,” he said, his tone deeply serious, and Jane couldn’t help but laugh.

  She knelt taking Alec’s hands into her own.

  “Alec, you may call me whatever you wish. And of course, you can have a goat. But you’ll have to think of a name for it.”

  She squeezed his hands and stood, but Alec was already hopping impatiently on his feet.

  “Oh, but I have. We’ll call him Biscuit,” he said.

  Jane looked down at the smiling boy as his older brother tried to convince him that Biscuit was a terrible name for a goat. And then she turned to Richard, looking up at the man she would marry, free of doubts and concerns and fears. She loved this man, and nothing would ever change that.

  “It appears your new wife comes with a goat,” she said, stepping closer as his arms came around her once more.

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said and kissed her.

  ~

  Don’t miss the next Spy Series book:

  Son of a Duke:

  Book One of the Spy Series

  Visit jessieclever.com now to learn more.

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  Thank you for reading Inevitably a Duchess. Please consider leaving an honest review where you purchased this book.

  Other books by Jessie Clever:

  Son of a Duke: Book One of the Spy Series

  For Love of the Earl: Book Two of the Spy Series

  A Countess Most Daring: Book Three of the Spy Series

  To Save a Viscount: Book Four of the Spy Series

  Shake Down Your Ashes