‘Compromising me is the least of it, Lady Northam. It is a lady’s reputation which must be protected.’
‘Oh, this is so stupid. Call me Guinevere, please.’ Good heavens, the man knew her history, her reproductive state, the books she read and her taste in decorative braid. What more did it take to be on first name terms?
‘I hardly think – ’
‘You are not required to think, Mr Hunt! Oh, I am so sorry. What a horrible, catty thing to say. I never thought this would be so difficult.’ I need a friend.
‘Suffering the kind of attacks you have been subjected to would shake anyone’s nerves.’
‘I do not mean that.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper and Guin lifted her chin and made herself speak clearly. ‘I mean my marriage.’
‘Should you be saying such things to me?’
‘There is no-one else I can talk to,’ she said and heard the bleakness in her own voice. Yes, I need a friend very badly. ‘I thought I could offer something in return for Augustus rescuing me from the plight I found myself in. I thought I could be an attentive wife, a companion in his old age. I had not realised that he was still so very active – we are constantly attending parties and balls, lectures and drives. I am in the public gaze far more than I ever expected, or am used to. And of course everyone assumes I have married him for his money, for the title.’
‘Why did you marry Lord Northam?’ Jared Hunt asked, straight out.
‘For security,’ she admitted. ‘I was desperate. It was marriage or selling myself, frankly. If I was not arrested first for murdering my husband, that is. I had no friends, no references that might have secured me a post as a companion or a governess. I was sick with worry, I had no money, no time to try and establish myself somewhere. Augustus was like a good angel, arriving in the nick of time to save me.
‘But now I find myself mistress of an estate – which is not so hard – and living in a London Town house. And that is hard. I have been well brought up, but not to navigate London Society, to weather the gossip and the cliques and the rivalries. People acknowledge me because they
like Augustus. He is very much respected, so they are not unkind because it would hurt him. But they simply do not accept me, not as a friend. I have none you see,’ she finished miserably. ‘No-one to call me by my name, any longer.’
‘Your husband – ’
‘Calls me Guinnie as a pet name. He means it affectionately but I feel as though I am nothing but a pet. I am losing myself and I hate it.’
‘Guinevere.’ The sudden warmth in the look he gave her would have cured frostbite. ‘You are being stifled by your doting husband who does not realise you are being slowly pecked to death by the slights and whispers of the world he so proudly shows you off in and you do not tell him because that would wound him. You are a good wife, Guinevere. But that name is only for when we are alone.’
And I want to be alone with you rather too much. ‘Mr Hunt – ’
‘Jared.’
She fell silent, merely curling her hand more snugly into the crook of his elbow. After a few minutes, after they rounded the end of the reservoir and strolled on towards the centre of the park, she said tentatively, ‘Will you be able to obtain invitations to all of the events we will be attending, do you think?’
‘Yes. There are advantages to having a duke as a close friend. What Calderbrook wants, he gets. A few invitations on my behalf are nothing.’
Another silence. She wondered if it hurt his pride to have to ask his friend for such help. ‘Augustus says there is no record of you before the age of seventeen, Jared. Have you no family?’
‘I have relatives,’ he admitted. ‘I would not call them family now. There was a breach, irrevocable. You are not the only person who found themselves with no way back.’
‘What… what did you do that was so dreadful?’ She tipped her head to one side, finding she was tall enough not to have to look up far to study his face. ‘Can you tell me?’
Jared bit back the instinctive refusal, searched for a way to explain. ‘I did nothing, except to deny lies and refuse to forgive those lies.’ He was a grown man now and the hurt and the betrayal had changed, become a cold, hard anger that had not softened for understanding his brother’s motives, the fears of the girl he had dreamed might love him, the immediate prejudice of his father. Cowardice he could forgive, momentary panic was understandable. Planned betrayal was neither.
‘At seventeen, was it not? So young. And then you made a new life for yourself, from nothing?’
‘I had a rapier, a background of sound training in fencing, a few coins in my pocket and a great deal of luck.’ He had never ignored the power of luck after that. Admittedly you had to put the work in, or the Lady would turn a scornful shoulder your way when you needed her most, but when everything seemed hopeless a belief that maybe she was on your side this time gave you the guts to keep fighting. ‘I fell into the company of one of the best swordsmen in Europe and he saw something, lord knows what, in me. I was a sullen, difficult youth at that point.’
She gave a little smile, as though she still thought him difficult. ‘We will find out who is doing this, won’t we, Jared?’
‘Of course.’ A group of well-dressed ladies were strolling towards them and he turned casually, before they were within conversational distance, and took another path that curved round to the gate they had entered by. ‘You simply need to hold your nerve and we will find him.’ Unless this was someone completely deranged who had fixed their sights on Guinevere, was obsessing about her. It did happen and then they really would need luck and, perhaps to catch the man in the act, which would be unpleasant for Guinevere and possibly dangerous.
‘It will be a man, I suppose,’ she mused as they paced back along the path, closer now to the sound of the traffic on Piccadilly. ‘It is particularly unnerving not to be able to imagine even the shape of my enemy, a glimpse of their face.’
‘A man would have easier access to criminal elements, men who could enter a house unnoticed, climb a roof, not flinch at tipping fireworks down chimneys,’ he agreed. And a man was far more likely to be behind this if a completely irrational fixation was the motive. But he did not say that. Guinevere would probably find that even more frightening than a sane attacker.
Against his side he felt the little shiver go through her again and walked faster. ‘I will take you home and go in search of my invitation for tonight.’ And beg the assistance of Michael Flynn, Cal’s valet and their companion in the travels and adventures, to turn him out looking respectable. He rather thought his evening clothes were still jammed at the bottom of a hastily-packed trunk.