Page 22 of The Duke's List
“Nana is fine.” She interrupted him in sharp tones. “If you don’t love that woman, there is someone here who will. Don’t wait too long.”
“Hawley knows better than to go near her again.” Now he was so incensed, he probably would not be able to sleep that night.
“I’m not talking about young Joseph.”
He gave her another puzzled look and was going to demand she tell him what she knew when she nodded off and fell back against her pillows.
Sidmouth fetched a warm velvet quilt from her bed and covered her where she lay before dousing her candles and letting himself back out into the hallway. He locked the inside latches of the windows for good measure. Nodding to the footmen as he left, he thanked them for carrying out the difficult duty of keeping his grandmother safe.
Chapter Sixteen
Jane punchedher pillow a few times, curled up on her side, and was asleep in minutes. A few minutes later, she was rudely awakened by someone throwing pebbles against her window. Her eyes flew open and she stared at the ceiling for a few moments.
After the day she’d endured, she could not imagine who’d be outside her window disturbing her slumber by trying to get her attention with such a childish trick. She finally determined she didn’t care who was beneath her bedroom window. They were going to regret ever messing with the Duchess of Sidmouth.
She padded over to her bathing tub still full of cooling water. She’d sent Elsie to bed before she was done soaking. Jane picked up one of the heavy pails the servants used to fill the tub, dipped it half full, and marched over to the window. She did not bother to light a candle since she didn’t particularly care who was in the stable yard below trying to get her attention.
Pushing the casement window out as far as it would go, she emptied the pail down over whatever annoying person was beneath her window.
At a deep, masculine yelp, she froze in anger. “Hawley-what are you doing under my window? Do you want my husband to run you through with one of the jousting pikes in the Great Hall? I should have my footman march you to the magistrate. Go away before I change my mind.”
“But you want me, I know you do.”
“What fool told you that?”
“I don’t want to say.”
“Christina. Christina Sparrow put you up to this nonsense. Didn’t she?”
There was a deep silence out in the stable yard, followed by slow footsteps leading away from the cottage which told her everything she needed to know.
Sidmouth could not fallasleep for the life of him after his disturbing discussion with Nana. Maybe he’d go out to the stables and check on Lucy and his other mounts. His horses were the only things that could calm him at times like this.
He decided to slip out through the kitchen garden, which would take him past the actors’ wagons. Perhaps they’d need some help packing up costumes for the trip back to Falmouth. He was fairly certain the Algernons’ troupe would be sound asleep by this hour, but he needed an excuse to be useful.
The gaudy wagons gave off strange shadows in the moonlight. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw some movement near one of the wagons used for living quarters. A woman in a flowing robe was climbing the steps and disappeared inside the door.
His heart plummeted to the vicinity of his stomach and kept on going. He couldn’t breathe for a few seconds. Jane. She’d rejected his arms for the comfort of another man’s attentions. The worst of his fears were confirmed. The sensible side of his brain insisted that could have been any woman entering the actors’ quarters, but the wild Cornishman in his soul wanted to shed some blood.
But first he had to give her the benefit of the doubt. He blundered wildly toward the stable master’s cottage. When he pounded wildly at the entrance, a footman flung open the door, his hair standing on end from sleep.
Sidmouth could coax no words from his throat except, “Where is she?”
“Her Grace has been asleep for some time.” He could tell by the fear in the man’s eyes, he must seem like a lunatic pounding on the door in the middle of the night.
A familiar voice penetrated his swirling thoughts. Sidmouth-get in here before you wake up everyone on the estate and shame us all.”
He gaped at her in dumb wonder. “You’re here.”
If he hadn’t paid attention to the sharpness in her tone before, he now saw the sparks of anger in her eyes in the light of the candle she held.
“Exactly where else did you think I would be?”
When he opened his mouth, the biggest mistake of his life rolled off his tongue. “I thought I saw you sneaking into the actors’ wagon.”
When he finally sidled in, she slammed the door behind him and sent the footman back to his pallet in the cottage kitchen.
“How could you?” She fumed in barely contained anger.