Free hadn’t needed him. She hadn’t even asked for him. But Jane…
“Oliver,” Robert said, “is everything well? It’s not your sister again, is it?”
“No,” Oliver said, almost dazedly. “It’s not my sister.”
He could go to Jane. If it was Jane who had sent this message.
A stupid idea. He tried to dispel it with logic.
The world didn’t turn on Jane, he lectured himself, and everything would alter if the voting reforms were watered down. What were one woman’s problems when compared with the entire world? He wasn’t even in love with her. This might not even have come from her.
But for one second, he imagined seeing her again. He imagined spending a few days with a colorful, square block—a few blissful days without a single round hole in sight.
“I’m going to Nottingham,” he said.
And for the first time in four months, he felt right—as if he’d turned toward home after a long journey in a foreign land.
Robert blinked.
Oliver laughed, feeling almost giddy with relief. “I don’t know what I’m doing there,” he said. “Or why I need to go, or how long it will take. But I’m going.”
“You’re going now?”
Now seemed like a good time. An excellent time. After all, the sooner he went, the sooner he could come back. And maybe, just maybe, when he saw her, he could figure out how she managed to keep from being worn down. Maybe he needed a little dose of the impossible.
That was it. He wasn’t in love with her, but… God, he ached to see her.
“I’m going,” Oliver said, “as soon as I can put together a few things.”
He repeated that mantra on the train, chanted it in time with the rushing clack-clack-clack of the wheels.
He wasn’t in love with her; he was just fulfilling a promise.
He wasn’t in love with her; he was merely going to visit an old friend.
He wasn’t in love with her; he was simply going to set right a wrong.
The train steamed on through the afternoon, and Oliver let himself believe every word.
He wasn’t in love with her. He just wasn’t.
When he asked casually at the inn upon arrival, he was told there would be an assembly that night—starting in a mere fifteen minutes—and that all the eligible young ladies would attend. “Including,” the maid said, “an heiress.” She blinked at him. “I hear she has the most outrageous gowns. I do wish I could see them.”
So did Oliver. It had been her telegram, then. She needed him. He was going to see her, and the thought of it filled him with an electric anticipation. He wasn’t in love with her. He was just smiling because he knew she’d appreciate being called outrageous.
He wasn’t in love with her; he was just going to the assembly without taking the time to unpack his valise. Nothing wrong with that, was there?
He made excuse after excuse as he dressed, as he made sure his coat pockets contained all the necessary things one would need if a woman ended up in danger—money and a pistol pretty much covered it.
He wasn’t in love with her; he was just being careful.
He told himself those same lies when he joined the throng in the assembly. He was just looking for her—a perfectly normal thing to do, wasn’t it? To look for a woman you’d traveled a hundred miles to see. It was normal that his breath seemed heavy in his lungs, that the seconds without her seemed to weigh on his shoulders.
And then he saw her. The assembly doors opened, and she entered the room. She was dressed in a gown that clung to the curves of her br**sts and flared at the waist. It was green—the kind of green that a monk might have used in an illuminated manuscript of old to sketch out a venomous snake whispering temptation from an apple tree.
Someone else might have found that gold fringe at her ankles gaudy. They might have winced at the color of her dress or the sparkling beads that adorned it. They might have blinked at her garish headpiece.
But this was Jane. It had been four months since Oliver had last seen her. She was utterly gorgeous, from the bejeweled slippers that peeked out under the edge of her gown all the way up to the poison-green feathers plaited into her hair. Jane. His Jane. His breath caught, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, he felt as if he had landed precisely where he belonged. Here, in this assembly that he’d never attended, amongst a crowd of strangers.
He’d been lying to himself all these months.
He was in love with her. And he had no idea what to do about it.
Chapter Twenty
“That gown is hideous,” Jane’s aunt said for what seemed the fifteenth time. “Do you want everyone to think you a…” She paused, but as there was no particular social message that was sent by wearing a viper-green dress, she had no way to continue. “Are you trying to be a ninnyhammer?”
“A ninnyhammer,” Jane said, “sounds like a magic hammer. One that I can use to smite ninnies. I have a great need for one of those.”
Her aunt was struck dumb by this. She stared and sniffed, and finally shook her head. “How will you ever bring Dorling up to scratch dressed like that?”
Jane didn’t dignify that with an answer. She refused to talk about the man with her aunt. Instead, she stared blankly at the carriage wall. Dorling was the author of half of her current misery, and she cared approximately nothing for him. It was when she thought of Emily—of what her uncle might do, what he might already have done—that she began to worry.
The telegram might not have gone through. Even if it had, what she’d remembered writing on the card in a tearing hurry was utter gibberish. She hadn’t given him an inkling of what she needed, when she needed it, where they should meet, or any other pertinent information—such as, for instance, her own name. Oliver had an entire life to live, people that he cared for, things to do. He wasn’t going to rush off because he received a telegram that might or might not have come from a woman he might or might not have forgotten.
He was likely married by now. He had almost certainly put aside his foolish promise. Besides, there wasn’t any time. The telegram had gone out just before noon. Scarcely seven hours had elapsed, and her plan was already in motion.
God. It was all going to happen tonight, whether she was ready or not. She had nobody to rely on but herself, no weapons except two rolls of bills. One was strapped to her thigh; the other was lodged rather uncomfortably between her br**sts.
The assembly room was up a flight of stairs. The exercise made her too warm. With every step, those bills between her br**sts chafed. On the plus side, there was no way that the money would slide out on accident, wedged in there as they were. On the other hand, she feared they would leave a permanent, bill-shaped imprint against the sides of her br**sts. It was a good thing she didn’t need a pistol. That would hurt, stuffed down there.