His wife poked him in his waistcoat, hard.
He looked ready to pick her up and shake her, Jack thought, watching Douglas flex his hands. He took a step back from her. “Alex, for God’s sake, get hold of yourself.”
“You’ve been gone a lot lately, Douglas. All you tell me is that you had to take a trip to see to this, and then another trip over there to see to that. You’ve been gone at least three weeks in the past two months. Three weeks! You were with her at her ridiculous lamp inn, weren’t you? My God, did you see her shortly before Gray’s wedding? You did, didn’t you? Just where is this ridiculous town, Court Hammering? You let her seduce you with talk of that lamp, didn’t you?”
Douglas took two more steps back from his wife, whose face was now nearly as red as her hair. His back was nearly touching the mantelpiece. “Listen to me, Alexandra,” he said, stern as a magistrate now faced with a roomful of ruffians, “This is beyond absurd. If you don’t cease this ludicrous jealousy I will send you home. You will stay there, dealing alone with your mother-in-law—may God preserve you—until you learn how to comport yourself. I have never been to Court Hammering. Well, no—I visited Lord Prith once many years ago, but not since that time. Forget Helen.
“Very well, I remember now that I also visited Lord Prith at Grillon’s Hotel after Gray’s wedding. You weren’t yet here. They invited me to dine with them. There’s nothing more to it than that, Alex.”
Then Douglas blundered. He smiled as he said to Gray, “One of the footmen tripped over a hassock. He would have fallen on his nose if Helen hadn’t grabbed his collar and hauled him right up.”
“Oh, yes, she’s so fast and competent, isn’t she? Oh, yes, I heard how she even faced down Arthur Kelburn, who’d kidnapped Jack. Well, Douglas, I could have faced him down as well. Just because I’m small doesn’t mean that I’m stupid or a coward. I could have vanquished him. I could have saved that footman, too. A hassock would be nothing to me.”
Douglas smote his forehead with his palm. “This is beyond ridiculous. Listen to me, Alex—you couldn’t have faced down Arthur Kelburn. You’re so small he probably wouldn’t even have seen you. No, I revise that. If he’d seen you, he wouldn’t have been able to look away from those breasts of yours. Yes, that’s right. He would have just stood there, gaping and slavering over your breasts until someone thought to kosh him.”
The countess of Northcliffe was shaking her fist at her husband in front of two very interested spectators. “Just listen to you. I will tell you, Douglas Sherbrooke, you haven’t a notion of how one should comport. You’re standing here talking about my bosom when a gentleman simply doesn’t do such a thing.”
“Oh, yes, gentlemen do it, just not in front of ladies. But you haven’t acted like a lady for the last hour. All the way over here in the carriage, you just narrowed your eyes and stared at me. When I asked you what was wrong, you just kept shaking your head and saying ‘Nothing, Douglas, nothing at all.”’
“You know, Douglas,” Gray said mildly, “I was remarking to myself that if Jack were as well endowed as Alex, Arthur Kelburn wouldn’t have cared about her money. He would have stolen her away because he was overcome with lust.”
“I see,” Jack said, rising slowly from her chair, turning to stare at her husband as if he were a roach in the corner. “But being that I’m just skinny and flat-chested, and utterly unappetizing, Arthur only wanted the money he’d get if he managed to drag me to the altar.”
That’s what I get, Gray thought, for trying to distract Alex. He looked up at his wife with a lopsided grin.
It was a pleasing, quite charming grin, disarming and wicked, but Jack wasn’t going to be taken in. She was going to stand firm.
“Not exactly,” Gray said, that grin now becoming white-toothed and even more wicked. “It’s just that you require a bit of exploration, Jack, to truly appreciate all the lovely scenery you have to offer. Your terrain isn’t obviously mountainous, you see, but—”
“Don’t do it, Gray,” Douglas said. “It won’t work. Geographical metaphors filled with hillocks and valleys and forests and such, never work. Trust me.”
“I’m strong, too,” Jack said. She swooped down and jerked Gray’s chair back, and he and the chair went toppling onto the pale blue and peach Aubusson carpet.
That gained everyone’s attention.
“If I pull myself upright, what will you do, Jack?” He lay on his back, his legs still over the fallen chair.
“Jack,” Alex said, “oh, dear, you mustn’t argue with Gray. You’ve been married only a week. That isn’t right. I was very wrong to leap at Douglas’s throat in front of you. It wasn’t well done of me. I apologize.”
“Shouldn’t you be ap
ologizing to me?” Douglas said, taking a step toward his wife. “It’s my throat you want to slit.”
“Stop right there, Douglas. Now, tell me, my lord, why did you take the utterly charming and very strong Miss Helen Mayberry to Gunther’s for an ice on Monday?”
The earl stared down at his wife as if turned to stone. He cleared his throat, once, twice. “How do you know of that, Alex?”
Both Jack and Alex were looking at Douglas now. They were frowning. Gray, still lying on his back, was also frowning at Douglas, but his frown was not one of condemnation but one of how could you be so stupid?
Alex shook her fist in his face. “You believe, you faithless hound, that I wear blinders in my own house?”
Obviously, one of the servants had found out and told another servant, who probably told her maid, who naturally filled her little ears. He sighed. “It was a lovely day, Alex. Helen had never been to Gunther’s. I escorted her there. I’ve known her for fifteen years. There was nothing more to it than that.”
“Did she tell you anything more about King Edward’s lamp?” Jack asked.
“Just that she’s convinced it’s somewhere in East Anglica, perhaps near Aldeburgh, close to the water. She told me that King Edward’s queen, Eleanor, loved the coastline, the ruggedness of it, the savagery, especially at that particular spot. She believes that after Eleanor died, King Edward hid the lamp somewhere near there as a tribute to her, a shrine.”
“I don’t believe,” Gray said, still on the floor, “that any man, even King Edward, would have hidden away a possibly magical lamp, particularly if it was covered with jewels.”