Page 62 of Who’s That Earl

Thoroughly baffled, Mrs. Rutherford huffed again and left, slamming the door behind her. Jane wandered into the next room to pour a lukewarm cup of tea as the dogs began to settle themselves.

What exactly was she supposed to do now?

Restless feet carried her back to the window, but a quick glance showed no sign of her watchmen. Reluctantly, she returned to the desk. While sipping her tea, she unwrapped the two books she’d bought yesterday. Uppermost sat Boyle’s Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, with Observations on a Diamond that Shines in the Dark. Somewhere in its pages lay the solution to her glowing light problem in The Brigand’s Captive. Returning her cup to its saucer, she tucked the book under her arm and went upstairs to dress.

When she descended the stairs, the sitting room was no longer empty. “G’morning, ma’am,” Mr. Ross greeted her around the last morsels on the breakfast tray, hurrying to his feet.

Thomas, who’d been reclining easily on the little sofa near the window, rose too. “Well, now, lass, I hope you had a good night’s rest,” he said, and winked. “Ross here says he never heard me come in last night, but how he expects to hear anything over that snoring, I’d like to know.”

“Yes, well.” Jane willed herself not to blush, though heat was rushing through her veins. “It was, on the whole, a remarkably quiet night.”

Thomas laughed, glanced at his friend, who had bent one fair brow into a skeptical arch, and quickly turned that laugh into a cough. “Now, then. I figured we’d be lucky to beat your father to Edinburgh, and it turns out, we’ve only just done it. Ross charmed the innkeeper’s wife into letting him see the register this morning, and a Mr. J. Quayle arrived late last night. He stole your last letter to your brother, so he knows right where you are to be found. I’d expect to see him at any time.”

A shudder passed through her, as if she’d been doused with cold water. Thomas stepped closer to her, took her hand in his, and led her down the remaining three steps. When she reached the bottom, he did not let her go. “What do we do now?” she asked.

“You go back upstairs and wait. When he comes, Ross and I will deal with him.”

For a moment, Jane said nothing. “Deal with him?”

“Persuade him tae go back where he came from and leave ye in peace,” explained Mr. Ross.

Her gaze shifted between the two of them. She could guess exactly what sort of persuasion they had in mind. “He expects to find me alone. He’ll never even come through the door if he sees two strapping men prepared to set upon him.”

“Well, we have a plan.”

“Och, now, Magnus, ye canna be serious with all that?” Mr. Ross chimed in, sounding anguished.

“If you’d be so kind, lass,” Thomas said with a mischievous smile, “bring down that fancy dressing gown of yours, and any sort of a mobcap, if you have one.”

Jane blinked.

“Ross, as the shorter of the two of us, will sit just here at the table, wearing your banyan and cap, with his back to the sitting room. When your father knocks, I’ll open the door. He’ll see someone he assumes to be you at work and step in, and we’ll have him, you see?”

Jane’s lips twitched. “Mr. Ross is going to dress as me?”

“You said naught about a dress, Magnus,” he sputtered in protest.

“Not a bit of it. Just lay the thing over your shoulders and shake it off the moment I’ve locked the door.”

It sounded a rather elaborate plan, merely for the pleasure of telling her father off—a pleasure, if she understood things correctly, she would not even be allowed to witness. But she trusted Thomas, whose words and gestures seemed to regard the whole event as a lark, though now and again she caught a shadow of something else in his eyes. “I’ll run up and fetch what you need.”

An hour and a quarter later found her sitting on the edge of her bed pretending to read Boyle’s century-and-a-half-old treatise on light and color, but mostly tracing the stitching on the faded coverlet and watching the light travel across the pale green walls. When she at last heard a rap on the door, she nearly dropped the book. As she had hoped, the dogs were too busy worrying the bones she had given them, snapping at one another now and again for sport, to pay any mind to another visitor.

Hurrying to the door of her chamber, she opened it just enough to hear voices rising from the rooms below: Mr. Ross’s high-pitched attempt at an English accent inviting her father in, Thomas’s deeper tone as he ordered her father to drop his walking stick.

Latching the door behind her, she hurried down the steps, reaching the sitting room just in time to see Thomas pin her father to the floor with a knee to his chest and the walking stick across his throat.

Her father looked older, of course, though not frail, his brown hair liberally sprinkled with gray. Right now, his face was a familiar shade of puce, and that equally familiar glob of spittle had begun to form in the corner of his mouth as he hurled epithets at his captor. Whatever she felt in that moment, it was not pity. Mr. Ross, who loomed over the pair with the poker from the fireplace upraised in his hands, would have looked more threatening if he had shed the mobcap along with the banyan.

She took a step closer. “Wait.”

“Jane.” Thomas and her father spoke as one. Mr. Ross tried to prevent her approach, but she slipped easily past.

“I need to speak to him,” she said softly to Thomas, whose expression was contorted into a mask the likes of which she had never seen before. His was not the face of a man who’d spent his time in the West Indies relaxing on a sandy beach. “Let him go.”

The words took several long minutes to reach him, but at last, he rose, keeping a firm grip on the walking stick, and allowed her father to scramble to his feet.

“Jane.” His blue eyes were hard as he glanced at the two men before focusing on her. “You were expecting me.”