The man rose, stiff as a rusted hinge. “Where is she?”
William tilted his head, letting his voice go flat. “You’ll have to be more specific. London is full of women.”
“Christine,” George snapped. “Where did you send her? What arrangements did you make?”
So that was it. Christine. The Frenchwoman who had loved Ashford with a devotion that had nearly destroyed her.
William’s expression cooled. He did not raise his tone. He did not take a step closer. But the words came, measured and deliberate, the same contempt he held for himself only days before now turned outward. “You lost the right to ask that when you offered her a cage instead of your name.”
George’s fists clenched. “You think I didn’t want to marry her?”
“I think you didn’t,” William replied evenly, “and then someone else did. And you can’t live with it.”
George lunged. It wasn’t practiced—it wasn’t even a true punch—just a violent, grief-ridden shove fueled by a month of drinking and bone-deep shame. But William didn’t flinch. Hestared at him, unmoved, thinking only of Jane. Of how close he had come to making the same disastrous mistake.
He had not meant to help Christine. He had not meant to care. But in those weeks when Jane sat sequestered in the East Wing, belly growing, cut off from the world—Christine had turned to him desperate. And William, God help him, had seen Jane in her. He had seen the same peril, the same injustice, the same ruin. Christine’s plight had helped him in his indecision. He could not condemn Jane, or his own child, to that same fate. So he had married her. Unlike this man who stood here full of regret.
“Go home, General,” he said, cold and deliberate. “Go drink. Go fight. Go marry the girl your father picked. But don’t come looking for her.” He let his voice drop. “She’s safe. That’s all you need to know.”
Ashford’s breath came ragged, his eyes bloodshot with drink and rage. Then he turned sharply, nearly upsetting a table as he stormed for the hall.
The door shut. Silence returned. William exhaled once, controlled, and turned back toward the dying fire.
A knock came not long after. The footman bowed and extended a sealed letter. “From Horse Guards, my lord. Urgent.”
William broke the seal, read the lines, and felt his chest tighten. Troop movements. Routes. Timetables. His orders had come at last.
He folded the dispatch with meticulous care and set it down on the desk. The room was still, the fire no more than ash.
He would cross the Channel in less than a week. Jane would give birth alone. And his child—his firstborn—might never know him at all.
Chapter 41
The study was small, but tidy. A narrow desk stood near the window, barely large enough to accommodate Jane’s books and papers. Two bookshelves lined the wall behind her, crammed with volumes and a few well-worn periodicals. A single upholstered chair stood opposite the desk, mismatched and slightly faded, but dignified in shape. Sunlight streamed through the gauze curtains, turning the air golden and dust-heavy.
Jane sat at the desk, awkwardly angled to make room for her belly, which now pressed uncomfortably against the edge of the wood. She had piled cushions behind her to ease the strain on her back, but they did little to help.
Lucan’sPharsalialay open before her, its Latin lines underlined in light pencil, beside a small sheaf of notes in her clear, decisive hand. On the facing page, she had begun a new essay draft—tentatively titledRebels and Romantics: Lucan and Byron on the Ruins of Empire.
Her ink-smudged fingers curled lightly around the quill. She had just written a sentence—Lucan, and Byron after him, distrust the notion of glory: both unmask its trappings as hollow, its victories as temporary, and its heroes as already dead—when the floorboards outside the study creaked, sharp and familiar. A knock, and then the door opened without waiting for an answer.
Lady Charlotte stepped inside and immediately wrinkled her nose. “This is it?”
Jane looked up. “Good afternoon to you, too, my lady.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes at the honorific, “You really must stop calling me that. We are sisters now—at least in here.” She stepped further in, regarding the cramped walls with undisguised disdain. “It’s appalling. I knew the house was modest, but I didn’t realize your study was the size of a linen cupboard. Can you even breathe in here?”
“Barely,” Jane said dryly, adjusting her position. “But I’ve managed.”
Charlotte’s gaze swept the room—pausing at the overloaded bookshelves, the stack of drafts on the windowsill, and finally Jane herself, cramped at the desk with her swollen stomach nudging aside an open copy ofChilde Harold.
“For heaven’s sake,” Charlotte muttered. “Why aren’t you in bed?”
Jane dipped her quill again, writing a single word before replying. “Because I am pregnant, not an invalid.”
“You certainly look invalid-ish.”
“How comforting. And here I thought I looked radiant.” Jane reached to adjust the cushion behind her. “I promise, I take the matter seriously—but if I spend another entire day in bed, I’ll go mad. At least here I can still work.”
