The Bluestocking and the Rake (Hearts in Hiding 2)

“Did she tell you why Lord Griffith was pursuing her? Did she confide in you, for it can only be the same woman. Jemima? Did she use that name? Miss Jemima Percy?”

Miles jerked up his head. What the hell did John think he knew that Miles didn’t?

Jemima had come to see Miles for no other reason than that she loved him. Keeping this sacrosanct meant more to him than solving any mystery right now.

“Jemima was her name but it’s not the same woman.” He needed to believe this. Needed to believe that Jemima was motivated by what he wanted to think was love for him.

John thrust out his chin and narrowed his eyes. “I very much believe it must be, m’lord.” He put up a hand to stay Miles’s protest and said, “The last time I saw Miss Percy she had taken refuge in this house. A year ago today, in fact. Your brother rescued her. She was being pursued by the man who’d murdered her father to gain possession of a valuable clay tablet, with a script or code that only Miss Percy, in all probability, could decipher.” John raised the fragment to study it better and shook his head. “This is part of it. I recognize it.”

“My brother? Miss Mordaunt did not know my brother!” Miles’s confusion and a growing sense that he was beginning to look a fool were making him terse.

Yet, why had Jemima rushed into his room pursued by Lord Griffith? Slowly he conceded, “She came for a clay tablet, you say? She knew it was in the vase?” And then, the words that were harder to say than any others for he was beginning to wonder if indeed John and he spoke of the same Jemima. “And she knew my brother?”

John nodded as he rubbed his chin. “She has waited a year to return. Your brother and I left her amidst a company of wassailers who were making their way to this house when we knew she was in danger from the man who’d killed her father but whose identity we did not know. He’d tried to kill her but your brother had rescued her. Saved her from being thrown over a cliff, as it happens.”

Miles shook his head. No, this couldn’t be the Jemima he knew. She’d confided nothing of this to him.

“The three of us were at an inn, preparing to remove Miss Percy to a safe place when we heard someone was looking for her in the tap room. So, your brother was taking no chances. He hurried her into the carriage and when we passed the wassailers, and knowing her pursuer was not far behind, it was decided to set her out to join the ragtag gathering making their way to Griffith House and she’d meet your brother in the woods behind two hours later. Master Richard would continue in the carriage in the hopes of drawing her pursuer— her father’s murderer—away.”

“But my brother was killed and was unable to meet her,” Miles went on slowly. Disquiet had turned to horror, now churning in his gut. “He charged me with the important task of meeting her in London on the sixth day of Christmas—those were his words. But…” His throat felt dry. “I didn’t make the time. And although I returned each day, she didn’t come back, and I assumed she’d returned to her family.”

John leveled a steady look at Miles. Full of condemnation. “Many times I have been in contact with Miss Percy’s aunt to inquire as to whether she had made contact. But she has not. Not since her father was murdered and Sir Richard told her that for as long as the identity of her father’s murderer remained unknown, she’d be putting her relatives in danger as well if she went back.” He leaned against the back of the bed as he ran a hand across his eyes. “Her family believes she is dead and that is the conclusion I had come to, also—until tonight..”

Miles stared into the fireplace and closed his eyes briefly. He didn’t want to believe it. “My brother described the young woman in his last letter. It does not sound the same person.” He wasn’t about to put into words the fact that Jemima was the mistress of Lord Deveril. A courtesan and not the pure creature whose maidenly virtues had enslaved his brother. He tried to stop himself from shaking. Was it disappointment? Or revulsion—at himself? His voice shook. “Why didn’t the young lady…this Miss Percy… seek me out? She only had to find Richard’s brother to know she’d be safe.”

John stared at Miles as if he thought him mad. “Why didn’t she seek you out? Miss Percy never learned your identity. And you know that your brother often traveled using an assumed name. He called himself Sir Richard de Vere on this occasion, and that is how he introduced himself to Miss Percy. I never heard him mention you by name, either, unless he did so in the heat of the moment as they fled for their lives! My belief is that Lord Griffith promised harm to Miss Percy’s loved ones if she made contact, bearing up Master Richard’s cautions. His lordship is ruthless and he wanted that clay tablet because of the rich bounty that would be his if the inscription could be transcribed.”

With a determined squaring of his shoulders, he said, “Granted, I did not see the woman who fled moments ago but I do know that exactly one year ago, Miss Percy was in this room, and this must be where she hid the clay tablet because why would she return one year later to claim it? And why would Lord Griffith be so enraged or excited to find but a section of it?”

Miles put the palm of his hand to his forehead and pressed, as if that might dull the pain in his chest. Jemima had come back, not to be with him but to try and reclaim the missing part of the tablet. And that’s when Lord Griffith had nearly caught her. It was like a kick in the guts.

He swung round to face the cupboard. Now was the moment Jemima must explain everything. Even if the truth nearly killed him. The fact was, he wasn’t sure he could live with the truth that he meant nothing to Jemima and that she’d only given herself to him to…What? Reclaim a piece of clay? Save her life?

“Jemima!” he shouted.

When there was no response, he clasped the knob of the cupboard door and wrenched it open.

“You won’t find ‘er there, sirs.” They turned at the sound of the fire irons ringing in the grate, and a small voice intruding. “Scuse me for interruptin’, but I know where the lady wot was ‘ere a year ago might a gone.”

Astonished, they found themselves staring at a grimy-faced housemaid tending the fire. She must have slipped into the room unnoticed, following John. In the gloom she resembled a scrawny, dirty little bird, not much more than twelve or thirteen.

Still crouching, she said in a small but determined voice, “I ‘eard yer talkin’ ‘bout the lady wot were ‘ere last Christmas when Lord Griffith done her great ‘arm an’ she ‘ad ta flee. I ‘elped her escape. Through the secret passageway.” She jabbed her thumb at the back wall. “So if she were here in this room before, that’s where she’d a gone this time.” She rose and sent a dismissive look at her master still lying unconscious on the floor. “Reckon it won’t cost yer much for me to show yer for I ain’t putting her in harm’s way since you already decked Lord Griffith.”

John moved forward towards the girl who looked wary until Miles handed her a pound note.

“Show us the secret passageway,” demanded John. “If that’s how she escaped last time then it’ll be where we find her this time, I hope to God. Though lord knows where she vanished to when she left this house all those months ago.”

The housemaid sniffed. “Reckon I know that, too. Only it’ll cost yer, I’m afraid.”

Miles proffered another pound note which she took, open-mouthed with shock, before she added, “I gave ‘er the address of a family I knew wot my sister who lives in Thomas Town said were lookin’ fer a governess.”

Miles licked his dry lips and swallowed past the lump of premonition lodged in his throat. “And who was this family?”

“The name was Graves, sir.”

Jemima didn’t consider herself lucky, after what had happened to her in the space of one short year, but she considered herself fortunate in finding a buyer for her necklace, so she was able to outfit herself with some rather drab and serviceable clothes that wouldn’t draw attention to herself. She would keep her ball gown. One never knew when that would come to good use, though she never intended flaunting herself in high society again to gain a male protector. Not if she could help it.

Now she had to concentrate on forging ahead with her life, though how she could do that, alone, and with little money, she had no idea. Everything she’d planned to use to aid her escape was contained in her carpetbag in the chamber she was to have shared with Lord Deveril.