Part 20 (1/2)

”Why, yes, of course. I've seen how the baron looks at you. He's truly smitten. What other reason could there be, since the man is Tanner's friend, and clearly persona non grata in London at the moment? That business about killing a man, remember? Where else could he court you? And you don't seem to mind at all that he killed someone.”

”Sometimes you amaze me, Jasmine,” Lydia said quietly. ”But you have it all worked out in your head, don't you?”

”Oh, yes. Papa expects Tanner to propose to me within days. Why else did you think I couldn't sleep last night at the inn? Each turn of the coach wheels brought me closer to this destiny I have dreaded for nearly two years. I am only glad that you, my new friend, will be here to support me in this time of-”

”Oh, please, stop it. Just stop it,” Lydia said, putting down her cup with some force. ”You met your Bruce Beattie last night when you sneaked out of the inn. Are you planning an elopement, Jasmine? Or did you refuse him, having decided that being a d.u.c.h.ess wasn't a fate more terrible than saying your farewells to a near-penniless schoolmaster? Is that why he struck you? You couldn't believe I would be so gullible as to believe that farradiddle about tripping on your hem, did you? Not with the imprint of a hand so clear on your face. Not with your slippers wet from having been out in the rain. You met your Mr. Beattie, your lover, and you argued. He hit you.”

Jasmine's face went deathly white. ”You...you promised you wouldn't say anything. In the coach, when you whispered to me that you'd seen the note in my reticule, you promised. If I was good you wouldn't say anything.”

”And I won't,” Lydia told her, already regretting giving in to impulse. This wasn't like her, she was never vindictive. Or was this different; was she protecting her own now? ”But I find I can't keep that promise if you are going to insist on lying to me every time you open your mouth. You're not even keeping your lies straight, you've told so many of them. You don't love Tanner, you're glad he doesn't love you, and then you will marry him, because he will ask you. You make no sense.”

Jasmine looked at her with wounded eyes. ”But Papa does want me to marry Tanner. That's not a lie.”

”I'm sure it's not. But all this business about believing Tanner is on the brink of asking for your hand? You know that's not true, no more than any thought that Justin and I are to be paired together this week. You know you'll never marry Tanner because he is going to-oh, let's not have this conversation. Just don't lie to me anymore. No matter what, you're Tanner's cousin, and your lies make it difficult for me to like you as I know I should.”

Lydia folded her hands together in her lap. She was like an alley cat when it came to Tanner. She hadn't known she possessed so much temper, or that she couldn't control it, tamp it down...not where Tanner was concerned. Still, if she had to listen to Jasmine lie to her one more time, prattle on about marrying him while indulging in a torrid affair with her lecherous schoolmaster, why, she might not be responsible for her actions.

Jasmine burst into tears, speaking between sobs, so that she was difficult to understand. ”Oh, all right, Lydia, I admit it. I've told so many lies, most of them to myself. But I can't lie to you. You're so good, just like Tanner, and I want to tell you the truth. I need to tell someone. I know what you were going to say. Tanner wants you, not me. I've known that for days. But when I told...when I told Br-Bruce, he said I had failed in our plan by not being nicer to Tanner, making him fall in love with me. He said I'd cost him everything.”

Lydia realized she had become quite nervous, and reluctant to hear anything more. Whether it was Jasmine's tears, or the girl's wish to tell the truth, she couldn't know. But, for Tanner's sake, she would listen. ”Your plan? What plan, Jasmine? I...I don't understand.”

The girl sighed deeply. ”But it's all so simple. Tanner was to propose to me once I'd made him feel as if he was in love with me. I can be very charming you know, and I am pretty. Much prettier than you. Oh, I'm so sorry!”

”Don't be. I asked you to tell me the truth, and the truth is the truth. Please, continue. Tanner was to propose to you...?”

”Yes. And I was to accept. Papa would be happy, beg to be dismissed from his duties because of his old injury caused by the late duke, and take himself off to gamble away the allowance Tanner would give him. He really is disgusting, my Papa, and very weak, I suppose. But he's still my father, and I must love him. Then, just before the wedding, I was to tell Tanner I simply couldn't go through with the marriage because my heart belonged to another. And then he, being such an honorable man, and loving me, wanting what is best for me, would release me from my promise. He'd settle a generous allowance on me as he had done with Papa, and Br-Bruce and I would be free to leave here forever. Together.”

And then the girl actually had the audacity to smile. ”We thought Paris would be a delicious place to settle. My allowance, in good English sterling, would be more than ample in Paris, which is still very poor as it recovers from the war.”

Now Lydia smiled, the smile widening as the sheer ridiculousness of this idea sank into her head. ”That was your schoolteacher's plan? Jasmine, that's ridiculous. Only a complete fool would believe such nonsense.” Beginning, she thought, with the idea that you can make anyone fall in love with you. Love comes unbidden, or not at all.

Jasmine immediately took recourse to her handkerchief, sniffling. ”I know. I am a fool. The plan only seemed logical when I was in his arms. Everything seemed logical when I was in his arms. You can't know what it's like to be so...so intimate. A woman needs to believe, has to believe, or else it's all just...dirty...and base.”

”It's all right, Jasmine,” Lydia said, embarra.s.sed for the girl. ”I don't think you're...base.”

”Oh thank you! But...once I was in London, away from him, I began to doubt him. What had seemed so reasonable didn't seem reasonable any more. And then I finally knew it for certain, last night. I'm so ashamed.”

”You believed yourself in love. I understand. When you're in love, anything seems possible.”

”Then you don't blame me? He swore he loved me. And I loved him so much. The way he kissed me...the way he made me feel. But it was all a sham. He never loved me. He lied to me, Lydia, he lied to me all along. B-both of them lied to me.”

Lydia looked at her sharply. ”Both of them?”

Jasmine nodded her head furiously. ”Yes. It was Papa and B-Bruce together, all along. I meant nothing to either of them. I was just a, just a-”

”Dupe?” Lydia supplied helpfully, and then felt bad again. For a moment, she'd thought Jasmine had two lovers. Really, the silly girl was almost impossible to follow, and some of what she'd said was very embarra.s.sing to hear.

Once again, Jasmine nodded furiously. ”It was all about the Malvern jewels, you see, and not at all about me. It wasn't about either of them loving me. No, it was always about...about those awful jewels. Papa had been stealing them, you see, replacing the stones with paste. He'd been doing it for years, one stone at a time, to cover his gambling debts, although he said he'd only seldom done it, and with only a very few pieces.”

Lydia sat back against the cus.h.i.+ons, completely shocked. One moment they'd been speaking of false lovers, and the next they were speaking of stolen jewelry? That's what all this had been about all along? The famous Malvern jewels? But how, why? She had to keep Jasmine talking, that much was obvious.

”I see,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. ”And you knew about these...exchanges.”

”That's why I couldn't bear to wear any of the pieces longer than I had to in London. I was never so relieved as when I could hand them back to Tanner each evening. I knew they might be the few that were fakes, and just knowing that made them burn against my skin, as if I had been the guilty one. I had to pretend I would marry Tanner so that Papa could stay on the estate, keep on stealing jewels as he needed them. And I knew what he was doing, and didn't tell Tanner. If Papa was found out, I could go to gaol! Br-Bruce was to be my salvation, take me away to Paris, where I'd be safe.”

”Except that he never planned to take you to Paris. He was working with your father.” As seemed to be the case whenever she was in Jasmine's company for too long, Lydia was developing the headache. ”No, I still don't see how your Bruce Beattie fits in here, beyond the role of your lover. Oh, wait. Did he help your father with the jewels? Perhaps sell them for him?”

”Yes of course. That's how I first met Bruce, one day when he visited the estate. Papa couldn't be seen selling jewels, now could he? I think that should be obvious to someone as intelligent as you, Lydia. Although I admit I was not so intelligent, because I never knew they were working together. But there was one problem, and that was the Malvern Pride, the real prize. Papa couldn't find it. All the other pieces were kept in Tanner's study, behind a portrait. But the Malvern Pride and all of the pieces that go with it weren't there. Papa didn't care, as he said it would be too dangerous to touch it, but Bruce wanted it. He wanted it badly. I...I didn't learn that, either, until last night. Until Bruce hit me.”

Lydia wished Tanner could be here to listen to all of this. But if she asked Jasmine to stop now, the girl might turn mulish, and refuse to tell anyone anything else. Especially once her father was on the scene.

”Yes, why did he hit you?”

”I...I'd promised him a key. Before I left for London, actually. But I didn't give it to him. Well, I didn't leave it under the rock down at the back of the garden, the way he told me to. I mean, he loved me, I was sure of that. But he kept asking for the key, and I didn't like that. He demanded it. So I didn't do what he said. I can be very stubborn, you know.”

Lydia's mind flashed back to the note she'd read, the one she'd found in Jasmine's reticule. The line she hadn't thought important had been the most important of them all: Remember what you promised. The key to our future, my darling.

”This key, Jasmine. What could Bruce Beattie have done with this key?”

”Let...let himself into Malvern, of course. With all of us gone to London and the servants going to bed early because there was no one here to care for, he felt he could sneak in at night and search for the Malvern Pride, since Papa had refused to help him.” She lifted her chin in some defiance. ”But if I gave him that key, and he found the Malvern Pride, then he might leave me. He said he loved me, but did he? Did he, really? Silly in love as I was, sometimes I felt as if the Pride was more important to him than I was. He never ceased talking about it, even...even in bed. What did it look like, had I ever seen it. On and on. So I didn't leave the key, but took it to London with me instead. I had to be sure he'd still be here when I returned.”

Lydia thought she could piece things together from there. ”So, once he saw your father was back at Malvern, he came to the inn where Tanner always stays, somehow got you to meet him...”

”I saw him several times. When I picked the wildflowers, and again later that day. That's when we arranged for me to sneak outside after midnight. I told him again, I would not give him the key. I told him Tanner would not ask for my hand, that he loved you, and that we had to leave together, just the way he'd promised. That very night. And that's...that's when he admitted that he'd never loved me. He said the only way he could bed me at all was to pretend he was shoving one of his socks in my mouth to stop my incessant talking.”

Lydia bit her bottom lip between her teeth. ”That was very mean of him. You...you don't have to tell me all this if you don't want to. It's very...personal.”

”Oh, but I feel better, telling someone. He also said that I was silly, and stupid, and how could I believe he was interested in more than the Malvern Pride. And then, when I flung myself against him, begging him to tell me he still loved me, he pushed me away. He slapped me. It hurt very much, but not...not as much as my breaking heart.”

”I'm so sorry, Jasmine.” So young, so beautiful...and so very gullible. Bruce Beattie should be horsewhipped, and Thomas Harburton, as well!

”I was such a fool, Lydia, and now I'm ruined. Forever. But I didn't want him to hit me again, you can understand that, can't you? I...I gave him the key to the French doors in Tanner's study.”

Lydia sprung to her feet, panic in her heart. Bruce Beattie, clearly a very bad man, a very desperate man, had a key to Tanner's study. ”We have to tell Tanner, Jasmine, the moment he arrives. You do know that, don't you?”

Again, the girl nodded, then blew her nose noisily. ”I may be ruined, but at least I saved Papa. He may not be the best of papas, and now he'll go to gaol for what he's done if Tanner won't forgive him. But at least I've saved him.”

Lydia turned to look at her in question. ”Excuse me? You saved your father? From what? From Bruce Beattie? Is that what you're saying?”

Jasmine wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. ”Yes, of course. Last night, B-Bruce said if I didn't give him the key right then and there, he would kill Papa, just to prove that he meant what he said when he said he wanted the key. You remember, Lydia? I asked you if you gave someone what they wanted if you thought that someone still would do something they said they would do if you didn't do what they wanted? Because once they had what they wanted, they wouldn't need to do what they'd said they'd do? And you said they probably wouldn't. So I did the right thing. Finally.”

Lydia's breath caught in her throat. Is that what that nonsense had been about last night? But the girl prattled on so all the time-who could listen to it all, let alone give any of it any credence?

Then another even more distressing thought hit her. Tanner had said the body belonged to one of his estate workers. Thomas Harburton was the Malvern estate manager. Oh, G.o.d...

Jasmine got to her feet, still dabbing at her eyes. ”I...I should probably instruct Mildred not to unpack my things, shouldn't I? Once you tell Tanner what I've done, Papa and I will have to leave. You don't mind telling him, do you? I just couldn't face him with such a...a tawdry story. I...I just couldn't bear anything more. I can only hope he'll forgive Papa and me enough to simply let us go.”