“It’s ruined Jessop as far as society is concerned,” said Giles, who seemed to have miraculously found his appetite from somewhere, “although from what I’ve read he deserved nothing less. To lie about ruining a lady when she rebuffed his proposal just to force her into marriage is abhorrent. I am so glad the unfortunate lady’s good name has been restored. Without the Sentinel’s timely interference, in another few days she would have been Lady Jessop.”
“A fate worse than death, to be sure.” Diana addressed nobody in particular. “For the snake has a leering way about him that always makes my flesh crawl.” She shivered, picturing another leer from another time from another snake who had wanted more than she was prepared to give.
“Thank goodness the Sentinel found enough evidence to confirm the bounder was lying through his teeth.” Giles pulled a face. “Good should always triumph over evil, don’t you think?”
It should, but it didn’t. Especially where women were concerned. Lord Jessop had targeted the young lady on purpose. Herfather was dead, she was young, she had no male relations to refute the accusations made, and although undoubtedly a great beauty, she did not have the important connections necessary to make a selfish predator think twice.
“Thank goodness Lord Jessop isn’t as clever as he thinks he is.” Discovering he had spent the entire night in question at a notorious gaming hell and brothel rather than ruining the young lady as he had claimed had been a godsend, but it was his drunken signed and dated markers that had hoisted Jessop by his own petard. Those two damning bits of hastily scribbled paper that promised to cover the cost of his intense two days of debauchery had been worth every penny of the ten pounds she had had to pay for them.
“I swear that column is the only thing worth reading nowadays.” Jeremiah’s comment bolstered her ego. “It relies on hard facts rather than veiled speculations or innuendo.”
Giles nodded, waving his own fork now as he tried to muster the energy to be sociable. “And he doesn’t beat about the bush with self-indulgent turgid prose like all those other fellows. He gets straight to the point in the first line, making the accusation up front as if courting a libel suit and then backing it completely with evidence. No hearsay, no opinion, but irrefutable, substantiated facts that no court could deny. Look what he said about Jessop.” He laid down his cutlery, cleared his throat, and adopted a pose as if he were Hamlet about to launch into his soliloquy. “Lord Jessop is a blaggard and a blackmailer. A man who waged a war of vicious lies, venom, and vitriol against an innocent to feed his own vile desires.” Serious Hamlet left and a grinning Giles returned. “Aside from the marvelous way it sets the scene, the wittyuse of alliteration was rather brilliant. It imbued the piece with a cadence one would expect to see in a page-turning novel or a play rather than the newspaper. And he chose such emotive language, too.” He counted them off on his fingers. “Vicious… vitriol… venom…vile. In four words, the Sentinel has told us how to feel about Jessop’s crime even before we know what the scoundrel has done.”
Diana dabbed her lips with her napkin to cover her smile. Trust Giles to notice that detail. It made the hours she spent laboring over her opening paragraphs worthwhile.
“Do you know him, Diana?” Jeremiah was always pressing her for information about the paper.
“No…” She shook her head blandly as she studied her food. “He’s a mystery to all of us at the newspaper office and likes it that way.”
Jeremiah nodded. “I can’t say I blame him for wanting to remain incognito. The Sentinel has unmasked and upset a lot of nasty people these past few months, and some will want their revenge. If I were him, I’d stay away from dark alleyways.”
Diana avoided them already. She knew the worst of the predators lurked in dark alleyways where nobody heard your screams. “You seriously think that bounder Jessop has the time to retaliate on top of all the trouble he is already in?” She scoffed at the extreme overreaction. “He’s too busy trying to save his own skin, believe me. He’ll end up sloping away with his tail between his legs like that other toad the Sentinel exposed in the autumn—Sir Donald…” She snapped her fingers as if she didn’t recall a single thing in her bulging file on that investigation. “MacPherson? MacFarlane?”
“McFey.” Giles offered her a smug smile at his superior memory. “Sir Donald McFey. The rotter who tried to siphon his ward’s trust fund into his own pockets before the girl came of age. Fled across the Channel the day the story broke and before the ink on the arrest warrant was dry.”
“You see!” Diana addressed Jeremiah. “My point is proved. When push comes to shove, a villain will always flee rather than seek retribution.”
“Perhaps those fools didn’t—but others might not think twice about it.” Jeremiah’s scaremongering was precisely why she hadn’t confided her secret to anybody. Her family would all overreact if they knew what she was really doing and then ruin everything she had worked hard for with their well-intentioned mollycoddling.
“Being shunned by society hardly seems a fitting punishment for Lord Jessop’s crime. And ruining a lady simply to possess herisa crime in my book.” Vee’s timely comment distracted from the potential danger of her job, but still echoed Diana’s own sentiments. “He should be arrested and put on trial for what he did. Had he been a common man rather than a peer, he would have been.”
“But Jessopisa peer, so as hideous as he is, I doubt his ruined reputation will last forever. Thetonhave short memories where rank and status are concerned.” An unfairness that made Diana’s blood boil. “Especially as he is as rich as Croesus.”
“All the more reason why his behavior was baffling.” Hugh frowned at the table. “The man is an earl. That title alone is enough to make him an attractive prospect for many girls on the marriage mart. Especially if the girl’s parents are keen to climb the socialladder and can offer an obscene dowry—which he clearly did not need.”
“While we are on the subject of the marriage mart, titles, social-climbing parents, and obscene dowries, I have some news myself…” Giles shot her a loaded look, and for some inexplicable reason Diana’s heart lodged in her throat.
“Don’t tell meyouare getting married?” Hugh’s jaw hung slack.
“Thankfully, I amnot.”
She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and he grinned at her, amused, as if he had heard it.
“But my disagreeable sire is.” He paused for dramatic effect, enjoying the way every mouth around the table hung slack. “The announcement of the duke’s impending nuptials will be in tomorrow’sTimes.”
“No!” The word came from everyone in unison.
“Yes indeed. The old curmudgeon informed me of it this morning, and you’ll never guess who the unlikely bride is?” He smiled at Diana again, not smugly that she had got it wrong, but in acknowledgment she had helped him to find the truth. “Dahlia Regis!”
“Daft Dahlia the dumpy draper’s daughter?” Vee’s comment earned her a nudge from Olivia, which made the youngest Merriwell instantly bristle. “Well, she is daft! The poor thing can hardly string a sentence together without her father’s assistance.”
“Why on earth is he getting married now? And to Dahlia Regis of all people.” Hugh’s question exactly mirrored the one on the tip of Diana’s tongue. “Do you suspect he needs the money?”
“Something certainly smells off about it—but I’d be the lastperson the duke ever confided in about anything.” Giles stared a little too long at his last forkful of soufflé to convince her he was as unfazed by it all as he was trying to appear. “So I have been left with no earthly clue as to his reasoning. All he did tell me is that I am expresslynotinvited to his wedding, which suits me just fine as I can think of better things to do with a day than watch poor, doe-eyed Dahlia shackle herself to the duke.”
The duke.
Never Father or Papa. Why had she not noticed that telling distinction before?
