Page 39 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

Jacob didn’t believe for a minute that Vivian had decided this was the best moment to have a promenade. Or rather, she probably did need to clear her head, which he presumed was currently swirling with the exact sort of desperate, rash actions she normally cautioned against.

“Where to?” he asked suspiciously.

“Hyde Park,” she answered. “I’ve heard it’s the most popular place to stroll after noon, but I’ve always been too busy to see it firsthand.”

Not precisely the response Jacob had been expecting.

A brisk walk up and down the Islington street in front of them would have been more convenient.

To visit Hyde Park and back within the hour would require a carriage.

On the other hand, she was right: the crowds would provide more of a distraction, which was perhaps what she truly needed.

And if Viv thought it a likely place to “accidentally” stumble across Lord Leisterdale, she was thankfully mistaken.

Leisterdale’s gout kept him from participating in promenades.

He’d attended the spectacle in an open-top barouche precisely once, a fortnight ago, when his son first returned home from their Caribbean planation.

Leisterdale’s dedication to outdated politics kept him at his escritoire drafting arguments instead of rubbing shoulders with the young and beautiful, or the socially aspirational.

“We stay in the carriage,” Jacob warned Vivian. “You haven’t seen traffic like an afternoon promenade, and we want to be home in time to hear Graham’s news.”

She nodded, her unfocused gaze facing the general direction of the carriage window, though Jacob doubted she registered any buildings that passed outside of it.

Her spine snapped upright the moment they reached the famous gates, her brown eyes suddenly sharp and bright. Their carriage joined the long queue of conveyances inching forward amongst waves of well-heeled pedestrians.

Jacob narrowed his eyes. “Who are you looking for?”

“No one.” She scanned the dense crowd of fashionable lords and ladies like a hawk hunting its next meal.

“Vivian,” he warned.

She gasped and leaned across his lap to tap at his window. “Look! It’s Lord Uppington!”

“Leave him be,” Jacob advised. “We can’t just march up to Leisterdale’s son and start asking questions about whether his father is engaging in blackmail and abduction.”

“Watch me,” Vivian replied. “If Uppington’s father kidnapped Quentin, I’m putting an end to it this very day.”

“As much as we want to find your cousin, we cannot leap to conclusions. Let’s say Philippa is right, and our enemy is Leisterdale.

His heir could be a party to the crimes as well, in which case he’s not going to tell us anything.

Or he may have no idea what his father has done.

Or both men could be completely innocent, and we’re on the wrong track altogether. ”

“‘Completely innocent’? Tell that to the enslaved people toiling on their sugar plantations.”

“Innocent of this particular abduction,” he clarified. “There’s a place in hell awaiting both of them. But so far, we’ve no evidence linking any specific lord to your cousin’s disappearance. And whoever it is could be working with accomplices or intermediaries.”

Jacob could only imagine how he would feel if someone in his own family was being held hostage. He, too, would be ready to smash any wall and burn any bridge to rescue those he loved from danger.

He touched her arm gently. “Whoever has Quentin, we’ll find him.”

“But will we find him in time?” Vivian asked bleakly.

She launched herself from the carriage, leaving Jacob to scramble after her.

“Vivian, wait!” he hissed as he sprinted to catch up. “If anyone is to confront him, it should be Chloe and Faircliffe. They’d be the most likely to gain a peer’s confidence and the least likely to cause suspicion. We can discuss a strategy in the Planning Parlor—”

Vivian put on speed as she threaded the crowd. Jacob stayed on her heels. A few faces glanced at them askance, but most ignored them altogether.

The aristocrats, the nouveau riche, and those who aspired to be one or the other ambled along at an unhurried stroll, content to see and be seen at their leisure.

They’d promenade here for hours, moving at a snail’s pace as they called out greetings and bussed cheeks and fluttered fans and loudly mentioned their hunting lodges or theater boxes or personal invitations to coveted soirées.

Vivian shot past all of them.

“There he is!” She stormed straight into the sea of lordlings, who parted in her wake. “Lord Uppington! I humbly request a brief moment of your time.”

Upon sight of her, the earl’s lip curled and he deliberately turned his back.

“Shite,” Jacob muttered. This was the opposite of subtle.

Undaunted, Vivian pressed forward. “Please, my lord, just a few seconds to—”

Holding his body stiff and regal, Uppington shoved his nose higher into the air and dramatically refused to glance her way.

“Please.” Her voice cracked. “I’m begging you.”

The tips of her outstretched fingertips brushed the elbow of the earl’s fine coat.

Quick as lightning, Uppington slapped her hand away, then scrubbed at his own hand and elbow with a monogrammed white handkerchief as though he had been irrevocably soiled from the brief contact.

Vivian’s face went completely blank as she lowered her slapped hand back to her side.

Jacob put his arms around her and turned her away from Uppington, whose fawning cronies crowded against their white knight as though he’d emerged victorious from a battle with a grotesque monster.

There was nothing Jacob wanted to do more than plant his fist right in the middle of Uppington’s smug, self-important face.

He knew better than to attempt such retaliation in front of this audience, however. Although “earl” was merely a courtesy title until Uppington inherited his father’s marquessate, a Black man assaulting the son of a rich white lord in a public park would not end well for Jacob.

Wynchester or not.

Nor would Jacob risk accidental injury to Vivian due to proximity.

“We’ll interview him,” he murmured softly as he coaxed her back toward the carriage. “Perhaps no lord in that family would lower themselves to speak to us , but we’re not the only weapons at our disposal. Chloe and Faircliffe will handle them both, and if there are any clues to glean—”

Vivian let Jacob tuck her back into the carriage with an uncharacteristic silence far more worrying than a well-deserved rant would have been. Either she was still reeling from Uppington’s hateful treatment of her, or she was plotting his untimely demise.

Probably both.

“I remember him,” she said quietly as she leaned her head against the carriage door.

Jacob’s eyebrows shot up. “You know Uppington?”

“I know men like him.” She didn’t look up. “I was born on Demerara. Born to a slave, which made me one, too. Property of Viscount Ayleswick, like a boot or a used handkerchief.”

A handkerchief like the one Uppington had used to “clean” her touch from his white skin.

Jacob cupped his hand over hers.

She met his eyes. “Reality was inescapable. I spent every moment of every day and every night focused only on survival. Mine, and others.”

He put the pieces together. “When you first came for help, you mentioned Viscount Ayleswick was Quentin’s father.”

She nodded. “Lord Ayleswick was enamored with my mother’s sister. Or rather, he took Aunt Kamia as mistress, like it or not, whenever he visited from London. It didn’t take long for her belly to grow.”

Jacob’s jaw tightened.

“I thought it was a cruel disaster, but Aunt Kamia saw a way out. Rather than allow her child to be born into the same mean life that she and the rest of us had, she convinced Ayleswick to take her and his soon-to-be bastard child to England.”

His heart went cold. “Leaving her own sister and enslaved ten-year-old niece behind?”

“Saving one of us was better than saving none of us. We didn’t blame her for choosing survival.”

Not blame, no. The horrific situation wasn’t Aunt Kamia’s fault. But Jacob could only imagine how complicated Vivian’s feelings were. Then and now.

“A year later,” she continued, “before my mother succumbed to a brutal punishment, she told me to find my own way. No matter what it took. Never to back down, no matter who or what I faced. She said it was better to die giving your best effort to thrive than to live under someone else’s thumb.”

Jacob paused. “Your mother was punished to death?”

“She wanted to lead an uprising. It might have worked if she hadn’t been caught recruiting co-conspirators before she could hold the final meeting. Ayleswick’s plantation overseer tried to make an example of her.”

“I’m guessing his attempt didn’t work?”

Viv gave a brittle smile. “I became the plantation’s worst nightmare.

I undermined everything I could and eventually organized an almost-successful uprising.

There were too many of us involved to punish us all, but I knew I wouldn’t be spared.

I had dared to break the rules—and would die for my boldness, just like my mother. ”

“How did you get out alive?”

“Quentin,” she said with a wan smile. “I told you he rescued me. I ended up on a boat instead of in a casket. Summoned to England by Lord Ayleswick, at my aunt’s request. It took years, but she managed to save another child, too.”

“That’s when you became your cousin’s governess?”

“Companion, first. Aunt Kamia taught me to read and write. That changed my life as much as leaving Demerara. I was insatiable. Read everything I could get my hands on. For all the good it did.” She winced. “When Quentin needed me most, I couldn’t save him.”

“You will,” Jacob said firmly. “It’s not over yet.”

She blinked rapidly and turned her head away.

“I’d never presume to know what it was like back then, but I’m here for you now.” He lifted her hands in his, caressing the skin softly with the pads of his thumbs. “You’re not alone.”