“I hate to disappoint you, but I came in through the front door—opened by Wycliffe,” Raleigh said, relieved when she transferred her questioning gaze to her husband.
“I had but recently arrived home, having been delayed by the weather,” Wycliffe explained, “and Richardson was the only one about. I dismissed him since it was so late, and so when the knock came, I answered it myself. Seeing that Raleigh was in no state to communicate, I sent him up to the guest room. No one told me Jane was there!”
“What about your valet?” Raleigh asked.
“I do not use Levering at night,” Wycliffe answered, a slight flush climbing up his neck. Raleigh’s budding grin was forestalled by the earl’s grim visage. “But what of you? Couldn’t you tell the…room was occupied?”
“Not when that deep in my cups!”
“’Cups?’ You mean he was…drunk?” his heretofore silent bedmate asked in shocked tones. Eyes open wide behind her glasses, Jane Trowbridge shivered visibly, though Raleigh couldn’t see that his sobriety—or lack thereof—could have affected her in the slightest.
Unless he’d done something while blissfully unaware. Alarmed, Raleigh surveyed her up and down, from her prim hair, pulled back tightly from her face, down the length of her drab gown to her sensible shoes. No, surely he was never that inebriated. Leaning back against the settee cushions, he studied her closely. “Yes, I admit that I was castaway, but what is your excuse? Didn’t you notice someone crawling in beside you?”
Raleigh had the distinct pleasure of seeing her gasp and flush before Charlotte hastily broke in. “At the vicarage, the younger children often came to us during a storm, so Jane would hardly mark it as unusual to have…uh…company.”
Choking back a sharp retort, Raleigh found he did not care to be likened to one of the vicarage children. He was about to protest that he in no way resembled those shabby youths when Jane looked down into her lap and uttered a low admission. “The bed was soft, the house quiet, but for the rain, which was rather comforting. I suppose that I slept like a stone.”
Hmm, Raleigh thought. From what he had seen of the noisy, crowded vicarage, he could hardly fault the chit for seeking peace, and he could take some small comfort in the knowledge that if he was indistinguishable from one of her siblings, at least he didn’t snore.
“Well, the damage is done,” Wycliffe said. “Now we must decide what we are going to do about it” He gazed straight at Raleigh, who experienced another queasy, sinking feeling as he looked into his friend’s face. Although his glib tongue could probably be induced to spout out a variety of remedies, it suddenly felt thick and stuck to the roof of his mouth. A sense of doom enveloped him as Raleigh realized only one answer would satisfy Wycliffe.
Darting a quick glance at Jane, he sucked in a sharp breath to right his reeling head. Surely the girl was too young for what he suspected Wycliffe had in mind? Clearing his throat, he found his voice. “I think that all depends on several factors,” he said, watching Wycliffe’s expression darken. “For instance, just how old is the, uh, lady in question?”
Charlotte sent him a sympathetic look that made him feel even more like a man bound for the gallows. “Jane is eighteen now, Raleigh,” she said, and his stomach rolled. He turned to blink at the bespectacled chit in astonishment When had she grown up? He remembered her always as one of Charlotte’s innumerable child siblings, who often frequented Casterleigh during his visits. Eighteen?
His palms began to sweat, and a cold, clammy feeling echoed in his gut, for Raleigh knew well what a stickler Wycliffe was for honorable behavior. The two maids who had woken him with their shrieks had, no doubt, spread the tale throughout the house by now. And from there it would go through the village and back to the girl’s father, the vicar himself.
Raleigh thought of kindly John Trowbridge and stifled a groan. It appeared that he could either lose his respect and his friendships or his freedom, and so he forced his groggy thoughts toward his mouth, eager to have the business concluded before his stomach rebelled further.
“I suppose there’s nothing else for it but to come up to scratch,” he declared. Then, turning to Jane, he bowed his aching head. “I say, Miss Trowbridge, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
Having at last forced out the question he had never entertained in connection with Plain Jane, Raleigh had a glimpse of shocked eyes behind rounded glass before he proceeded to cast up his accounts all over Wycliffe’s prized parquet floor.
Jane was aghast, her normally placid disposition so highly agitated that she paced back and forth across the thick Aubusson carpet in the yellow bedroom while trying to reason with her sister. “You cannot truly expect me to marry him!” she exclaimed once again, but the look of compassion on Charlotte’s face made her turn aside.
It was all her own fault. Rain or no, she should have gone home to her hard, narrow cot at the vicarage. Usually, Jane disdained her sister’s luxuries, but last night she had weakened, giving in to the temptation of the huge, soft, sweetly scented feather bed. And now she was paying the price of her lack of character!
She had slept like a rock, cradled in the cushioned warmth, the wind and rain only a faint sound against the tall windows. There had been no arguments from James and Thomas in the next room to be shushed, no night cries from Jenny to be soothed or worries over what Kit might be up to—only an odd sort of comfort that she had never expected to find in such a lavish setting.
She had not even marked the presence of someone else until all the shrieking started this morning. Goodness knows the bed was large enough for half a dozen people to rest without disturbance. “It was all a mistake. Nothing…happened,” she muttered.
“I know, dear, but I’m afraid that doesn’t have much to do with it,” Charlotte said. “Believe me, in society, it is all outward appearances. A married woman can carry on all sorts of dalliances if she is discreet about it, while a miss must not even be touched by a hint of impropriety!”
“But Charlotte, this isn’t London—only a tiny corner of Sussex! It was an honest mistake, no harm done, and who will be the wiser?”
Charlotte shook her head, her lovely face full of sympathy, but Jane also recognized the set of her chin. As sweet as she was, Charlotte could also be determined. Witness her marriage to an earl far above her station, Jane thought glumly. And now she looked frightfully resolute.
“You were seen, Jane. The servants are already spreading the tale, presumably, and you know how gossip flies through Upper. It will be all over the countryside in a trice, and if you don’t marry him, you will be ruined, Jane. Ruined!”
Jane turned away, her thoughts bleak. “Does it really matter?” she asked softly.
“Of course, it matters!” Charlotte took her by the shoulders and turned her around. “Why would you say such a thing?” she asked, genuinely bewildered.
Jane could not meet her eyes. “I am well aware that I am not the beauty of the family,” she said, swallowing hard against the truth she had always known.
“Neither are you a gorgon!” Charlotte protested. “And believe me, beauty does not guarantee happiness. It is more of a burden than anything else.”
Jane shook her head, unconvinced. “You were always surrounded
