“ ’Ere now!” crashed through the violence that gripped Jack. “Just who do ye think ye are? This be a respectable neighber’ood.
Git on wi’ ye!”
Jack shook off the hand that banded his arm: It did not loosen.
Two men had grabbed Rose, one on either side. She hadn’t struggled, the housekeeper had said. But it had not been the two men who had paralyzed her, Jack realized. Jonathon Clarring had taken the fight out of Rose.
She loved Jonathon Clarring. And he had betrayed her love.
Jack wanted to beat the bobby bloody with the raw emotion that coursed through him.
“Let go of me,” he coldly enunciated through gritted teeth.
“Not ’til ye git in that cab an’ get on,” the helmeted man belligerently returned.
But Jack couldn’t get on.
I need to say good-bye.
But he couldn’t say good-bye.
Not to Cynthia. Not to Rose.
But he had to say good-bye: He could not help Rose when ruled by emotion.
Jack took a deep breath, inhaling heavy, wet moisture overlaid by garlic and onions, the bobby’s breath.
“Let go of me,” he repeated more quietly. “And I’ll leave.”
“I’ve a mind to take ye down to gaol.”
The bobby’s desire for violence danced on raindrops.
Jack voided his face of all expression and stared down into eyes that were dark pits screened by slashing silver.
Uncertainty replaced the bobby’s bullishness.
“Git on wi’ ye.” Jack staggered at a forceful push; quickly he regained his balance, hands fisting to prevent himself from reciprocating. “I’ll be keepin’ me eyes open fer ye, that I will.”
Jack did not look back.
Rose’s watching eyes followed him.
The step up onto slippery iron. The water-streaming platform that tilted with his weight.
The rigidity of his body, fighting not to turn and meet her gaze.
Jack gave the cabby two silver crowns.
The hansom did not wait when Jack next stepped down.
Dimly he realized he had left his umbrella inside the escaping cab: He did not feel the cold and rain that kept on falling.
The town house was larger than the one owned by Jonathon Clarring. Unlike at Jonathon Clarring’s house, the owner answered the door.
Jack stared into the eyes of James Whitcox. “I need to know.”
Chapter 32
“How did you find my address?” James Whitcox feinted.
There was no emotion inside the shadow-darkened eyes.
The two men could be facing one another over the bench in a court of law. In a sense, they were: Tonight would result in a woman’s liberation or perpetual confinement.
“I’ve known the address since you purchased this house,” Jack replied, rain dripping off the brim of his hat. “My clerk is as good at ferreting out information as your clerk is at hiding it.”
“Yet you lost.”
In court.
“I didn’t prosecute to convict the defendants,” Jack said flatly.
It was as close as he would ever come to apologizing for his actions inside the courtroom.
He had argued to prove he was a better man. A better barrister.
A better husband.
He had failed.
James Whitcox’s voice was equally flat. “What do you need to know?”
Every night he lay awake, wondering: “How did she die?”
The woman who had been James Whitcox’s wife and Jack Lodoun’s lover.
Lightning flashed, turning shadow-blackened eyes into hazel. “It was in the papers.”
Every newspaper in London had printed the story: “Barrister’s Wife Struck Down by Clarence.”
But the papers had not detailed what Jack needed to know.
“Did she suffer?” Jack asked, icy water trickling down his cheek.
Brows snapping together, James Whitcox closed his eyes.
Jack imagined Rose had worn the same look of pain when Jonathon Clarring had called out her name.
Perhaps, even, she had closed her eyes against the safety of her door that was only three steps away.
Lashes abruptly lifting, James Whitcox opened the door and stepped aside.
Jack entered the home that the barrister had purchased for another woman.
His house was much like Jack’s house: the best that money could buy. Unlike in Jack’s house, the crystal chandelier that illuminated the foyer was electric.
A woman with tousled red hair and a wrinkled green frock stood at the foot of a marble staircase, hand to her throat. “Mr. Lodoun.”
Jack took off his hat; water spilled onto veined marble. “Mrs. Hart.”
James Whitcox purposefully blocked Jack’s view of Frances Hart, the woman he loved. “I’ll be up shortly.”
Inside his voice was the tenderness Jack had not been able to publicly express to the woman he had loved.
A whispered, “Will you be all right?” drifted upward to sparkling crystal.
“Yes.” James Whitcox briefly leaned forward. Jack could not see the kiss, but he felt it, a man’s promise. “It’ll be all right.”
Frances Hart climbed the marble stairs. Jack followed James Whitcox.
The tap of their heels diverged, Frances Hart going up, James Whitcox and Jack laterally advancing.
Whitcox stepped underneath white enameled wood; Jack stepped over the threshold behind him and closed the door.
The masculine den looked unused, black leather chairs unworn, mahogany wood freshly stained, green Oriental carpet bright and unspoiled.
Silver glinting in crisp chestnut hair, the forty-seven-year-old barrister leaned over a lacquered Chinese table: glass clinked, liquid gurgled. Turning . . . meeting Jack in the center of the room . . . he offered a brandy-filled snifter.
James Whitcox was two inches taller than Jack. He wore a white shirt that was open at the neck; it had been hastily tucked into black wool trousers. Hair that was thicker and darker than the hair that matted Jack’s chest showed through the V of starched cotton.
Jack had a curious sensation of déjà vu.
“She knows,” he said, cupping brittle glass.
Frances Hart.
The hazel eyes were expressionless. “About you and my wife, yes.”
Familiar emotion churned inside Jack.
“Does she know about the women you fucked while you were married to Cynthia?” he bit out.
“Yes.”
“Does she know you didn’t love the mother of your children?”
There was no apology in the cold hazel eyes, but neither was their condemnation.
James Whitcox had not loved his wife. But Jack had not loved her enough to seek a divorce.
“Yes,” Whitcox said. Regret flickered inside his eyes. Or perhaps electric light flickered, just as did gaslight. “She knows.”
Jack drank brandy, swallowing the useless anger.
“Tell me.” He lowered the snifter and met waiting hazel eyes. “How Cynthia died.”
“The coroner said the wheel severed her spine.” Whitcox lifted his arm; dark hair protruded from underneath a starched white cuff. His gaze, when he lowered the snifter, was stark with the death of the woman they had shared. “He said she didn’t suffer.”
But no one would know her final moments.
Neither Jack nor James would know if she had been frightened. They would not know if she had called out in her fear, or even to whom she would have called.
They would never know if she had welcomed death to end the lies and subterfuge. Or if she had fought death to gain a final opportunity to say: I’m sorry. Or, I love you.
Jack’s throat tightened. “Was she disfigured?”
Cynthia had been self-conscious about the stretch marks left from pregnancy: She had thought they made her undesirable.
“Her face wasn’t,” Whitcox said, remembering damage Jack had not seen.
Still Jack could not say good-bye.
“What did she wear”—his fingers tightened around fragile glass that could so easily break; in his right hand soggy felt yielded cool water—“when she was buried?”
“She wore red,” serrated Jack’s control. “She requested in her will that she be buried in her red silk ball gown. So that is what I buried her in.”
Jack turned away from the probing hazel eyes and downed the remainder of the brandy.
The scalding heat stinging his eyes traveled down his esophagus.
It was a good brandy—a Napoleon brandy—flavor fruity and floral, body soft and smooth. Rose would enjoy it.
But Rose was locked up inside her husband’s house. A living reminder of every dream Jonathon Clarring had ever dreamed.
Jack had been attorney general: He knew of what men were capable.
Good men. Gentle men.
Men who made women smile with happiness.
I need your help, Rose had said.
But Jack could not help her.
Jack stared at the door he had closed.
“I need your help.” The word Rose had five times spoken pushed through the barrier of masculine pride. “Please.”
Chapter 33
Frances fell into wakefulness.
James caught her, prickly heat spooning her back and thighs.
Over the creak of metal springs rain pummeled the windows.
She cupped James’s tunneling hand and shaped it around her breast. “It’s late.”
Warm fingers molded her flesh; at the same time hot, moist air combed her hair. “It’s early.”
Pale marble gleamed in the darkness: The ashes inside the fireplace were cold and dead.
When Frances had slipped into bed, alone, blue-and-yellow flames had illuminated the night.
The hour was indeed early.
“I dreamed of you,” she murmured.
Semierect flesh nuzzled her buttocks. “Did I give you an orgasm?”
The desolation Frances had felt in her dream invaded her voice. “You lost.”
Because of Jack Lodoun.
“You won, Frances.” Warm lips seared her scalp. “No one can ever take that away from you.”
But she would not have won had it not been for one man.
Thunder rattled glass.
“What did he want?” she whispered.
But James did not answer.
Three bongs penetrated rain, brick and wood.
Frances remembered the first time she had awoken in James’s arms.
I have you, he had said. Stay with me.
Frances could not imagine being anywhere else.
“Rose Clarring and Jack Lodoun are lovers,” James said finally.
Shock crowded out the bittersweet memories of their past. “For how long?”
James pulled Frances closer, chest hair prickling her back, pubic hair tickling her buttocks, his sex a solid reality. “She approached him after the trial, hoping he would petition Parliament for a divorce.”
Frances did not know of divorces.
Men and women in the country lived in the same cyclical pattern as the land they tended: They married, they bore a fruitful harvest, they died.
But Rose Clarring was a London woman. Unlike Frances.
“Did he agree?” she asked.
“No,” James said, sighing voice ruffling her hair.
The pain Jack Lodoun had caused buffeted their home.
“He said such hurtful things to her,” Frances said.
“I’ve done far worse than accuse witnesses of adultery, Frances,” James said, fingers apologetically kneading her breast.
And he would do so again.
Because of the law.
Frances spoke past the sudden tightness inside her throat. “Does he love her?”
The man who had loved James’s wife.
“The very fact that he came to me tonight suggests he feels very strongly toward her.”
Slowly the heat James radiated relaxed the stiffness of her muscles.
“Why did he come?” she asked, breath a silvery plume in the chill dampness.
“He wanted to know about Cynthia’s death,” James said, voice suddenly devoid of emotion.
Frances soothed his wrist, his skin a prickly consolation.
Rain steadily pelted the window: life following death.
Fleetingly she thought about the man to whom she had been married for thirty-four years, and who now rested in the land he had all his life farmed.
“And he asked me to help liberate Mrs. Clarring,” James added, soothed by her touch as she was by his.
“What do you mean”—puzzlement replaced the memory of their deceased spouses—“liberate her?”
“Mrs. Clarring moved out of her husband’s home on the day of the trial.” James curled around Frances, his calves warming her feet. “Yesterday he abducted her off the street.”
As Frances could have been abducted. And would have been had the lunatic men caught her.
Now Rose Clarring—a woman who had testified on Frances’s behalf so that she might gain liberation from a son—had lost her own freedom to a husband.
Tears scalded Frances’s eyes. “You said once a woman is incarcerated inside a lunatic asylum, there’s no hope for liberation.”
“Nor is there. But he hasn’t committed her,” James replied. Yet slammed into wood, brick and glass. “He took her to his home.”
A home to the husband. A prison to Rose Clarring.
“If she were free,” Frances asked, “could she divorce her husband?”
Warm fingers stroked her hip. “Not as the law currently stands.”
“Because she’s a woman,” Frances said, remembering the pain she had felt upon discovering her son had signed a lunacy order. Because she was a woman.
“Yes,” James agreed.
Frances grasped his wrist; a pulse throbbed against her middle fingertip. “Not even you could win her a divorce?”
A man who had never lost a trial.
“Not even I, Frances.”
She stared into the cold darkness of morning: Heat blanketed her back, her buttocks, her thighs. The fingers that had explored her every crevice protectively curved around her breast, silently offering comfort.
But Rose Clarring had no one to comfort her.
“I remember the first time I met Mrs. Clarring,” Frances said.
James had one by one introduced Frances to the members of the Men and Women’s Club: They had not all been receptive to a forty-nine-year-old widow who had been educated in a one-room school.
“She smiled, and offered to show me her favorite London sites.” An offer Frances had yet to accept. Wet heat trickled down her temple. “There was such sadness inside her smile, James. Can you liberate her?”
“I don’t know,” vibrated her vertebrae.
Regret tinged Frances’s voice. She repeated: “Because she’s a woman.”