"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 cushions, 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."

"Jasmine, dearest, please wait. Tanner will be here at any moment. I think...I'm certain he'll want to talk to you."

But Jasmine shook her head and kept on toward the doorway, clearly eager to be gone before Tanner arrived.

She was to be thwarted in her attempt, however, for just then Tanner appeared in the foyer, and called her name.

Lydia stayed where she was, already certain she knew what he would be saying to his cousin. Her fingertips pressed to her lips, hurting for the girl, she watched as Tanner put his hands on Jasmine's slim shoulders and spoke to her quietly.

She had a sudden remembrance of the day he had come to Grosvenor Square, to tell them all about Fitz. How unfair that he had to once again be the bearer of such sad news. Her heart ached for him.

Jasmine cried out once, before falling forward against Tanner's chest in a faint.

He looked in at Lydia, his expression one of sorrow, but also something else she could not define. Perhaps some sort of fierce protectiveness for all of them, born of Thomas's murder. She got to her feet, to go to him, to help him with Jasmine, but he shook his head as if to tell her to remain where she was.

She watched, feeling helpless, wishing she did not have to tell him what she must tell him, as he lifted Jasmine in his arms and carried her up the stairs.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

"SO?"

Justin removed the jeweler's loupe from his eye and tossed the necklace to Tanner, who s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of the air. "Pretty gla.s.s, I'm afraid. Your cousin had been a very busy man."

Tanner stared at the stones for long moments before letting the necklace slide onto the blotter of his desk, and then got to his feet. "You know, I never even looked at the jewels since my father died, hadn't seen them worn since my mother died, and she didn't wear them often, except for the Malvern Pride. I do remember thinking in pa.s.sing that they could have been hidden better, protected better, but as they'd been safe behind that portrait all these years..."

"Safe from everyone save your cousin, according to what Lydia told us. How is she, by the way?"

"She's Lydia. Calm, at least outwardly. I know she has more to tell me, but other than to say that Jasmine told her Thomas had been replacing stones in the Malvern collection and that might be why he was killed, she said she felt it necessary that Jasmine tell me the rest. She's with her now, attempting to convince her to speak to me."

"To us."

"No, Justin, I don't think so. Whatever Jasmine has to tell me, I doubt she'll say it in front of an audience."

"Oh, so now I'm relegated to an audience? I'm cut to the quick, truly." But then he smiled. "Very well, it isn't as if I'll be left at loose ends, will I? It would appear I have a perimeter to set up before dark, and armed sentries to position discreetly near every doorway, since we don't know when our killer may come calling. You go see to Lydia. Outwardly calm or not, I'm sure she needs you."

"You don't have to do that, you know. Although, from the look on your face, I think you plan to enjoy it."

"The hint of danger? I'm half alive without it, unfortunately. I might have, in a moment of madness, believed differently, but I should never have made her happy. She chose the right man."

Tanner watched his friend leave the room, on his way to round up footmen and grooms and farm workers and whoever else he could find, and station them around the large structure for the night. It wasn't something they could continue indefinitely, turning Malvern into an armed camp. But for tonight, this was the best they could do.

He got to his feet slowly, feeling as if he'd aged a decade in the past four hours, and went in search of Lydia, finally running her to ground in her own chamber.

"You may go, Sarah, thank you," she said quietly as she looked at him, and the maid curtsied, then scurried out of the room. The moment the door to the dressing room closed behind the woman, Lydia was in his arms, her cheek pressed against his chest, and he was holding her tightly, with no intention of ever letting her go.

But eventually he had to, and she looked up at him with tears standing in her lovely blue eyes. "I'm so sorry about your cousin, Tanner."

"He was a thief," he said, the words still difficult to say, even more difficult to believe. "A gambler and a thief. He stole from his own family. I won't say I ever liked the man overmuch, but I'm finding it hard to see him as other than my cousin. Lazy, and yet ambitious. p.r.o.ne to whine and wheedle and play on his old injury, granted, and forever pushing a match between Jasmine and me." He shook his head as he led Lydia over to a chair beside the fire and pulled her down onto his lap. "But a thief? No."

"Jasmine says it's true," Lydia reminded him as she stroked his cheek, pressed a kiss against his forehead. "He felt forced to it, because of his gambling debts."

"And that bothers me more. I even asked Roswell about it, and he was as surprised as I was. Thomas never left the estate except to go to the village from time to time, and that during the day, on estate business. When did he have the opportunity to gamble to such excess?"

"Jasmine said he would disappear for days at a time."

"Yes, I believe I heard that from Justin as well because she'd told him the same thing. But Roswell denies that, too. Something's wrong, Lydia. I don't know what it is, but something is wrong."

Lydia sighed, and put her cheek against his chest once more. "I'm going to say something terrible now, Tanner. And I'm ashamed of myself, because she just lost her father to a murderer. But...well, I wouldn't believe Jasmine if she told me the sky was blue."

Tanner put his hands on her shoulders and eased her away from him so that he could look at her. "I'm listening-and I don't think you said anything terrible."

"It's...it's that nothing she said to me today made any sense, not when I had a few moments to step back and truly look at what she said. It's just that she talks so much, and you get so weary of listening to her that you really don't listen, not for long. She lies so easily, Tanner. Even Nicole couldn't fib that well, and I always thought her extremely proficient at it. Why, she fooled our Aunt Emmaline and Rafe into thinking that each was at Ashurst with us when we actually were totally without a chaperone. For months, Tanner, until Charlotte finally found her out by accident. And she looked me straight in the eye and told me there were no more sugared buns, when she'd had one hidden in her reticule all along. Jasmine, that is, not Nicole."

"You don't mind if I try to sort all of that out later? What lies do you think Jasmine told you this afternoon?"

"But that's the problem. With Jasmine, how can a person be sure? Truthfully I think she's told so many different lies in just the last two days that she's now confused herself, figuratively tripping over her own tongue. She...she doesn't have the ring of innocence about her, and I may feel terrible saying that, but it must be said. If I were to believe anything she's said, I would have to believe what she told me about...her lover. I saw the note from him in her reticule, ashamed as I am to admit that I snooped, and I saw the mark on her face where he'd hit her. We all saw that."

"My cousin has a lover? Really?" Tanner held up a hand to stop Lydia from saying more, and then asked her to please go back to the beginning, and tell him everything she thought important. He never interrupted, never asked for more detail, until she at last told him the name of Jasmine's lover.

"Bruce Beattie? No, that's not possible," he told her, smiling. "We need to mark that down as another of her lies."

"But I told you, I saw the note where he asked her for the key to the French doors in your study. He signed it with his initial. He...he had very good penmanship."

"I won't comment on the penmanship. However, darling, Bruce Beattie is seventy if he's a day, and I doubt if even Mrs. Beattie considers him a wonderful lover. I think he lost his last tooth ten years ago."

Lydia sat very still, her chest rising and falling rhythmically, but each breath seemingly deeper, more agitated. "And that is the very last straw!" she said finally, just before hopping down off his lap and holding out her hand. "Are you coming with me?"

He got to his feet, loving the color in her face, the bright sparkle in her eyes. "I'd have to kick myself down the stairs if I said no," he told her, and allowed her to lead him into the hallway and across the corridor to Jasmine's bedchamber. "Allow me," he said, stepping past her to depress the lever and push open the door.

Lydia brushed past him without thanking him-a sure sign of her temper he believed, and one he might be prudent to note for future reference if he were ever stupid enough to provoke her out of her usual serenity.

Jasmine was seated in the middle of her bed, a silver tray on her knees, a forkful of cake frozen halfway to her mouth. "Lydia? Tanner? Is something wrong? Please say there is no more bad news. I vow, I couldn't survive anything else."

Lydia walked as she spoke, not stopping until she was standing beside the bed. "Not without a plate piled high with strawberry tarts or some such thing to bolster your courage, no, I suppose not. Give me that!"

Tanner watched as the fork was ripped from his cousin's hand just before the tray was lifted and unceremoniously handed to him.

"Here, put this somewhere. Jasmine-get out of that bed."

But Jasmine had pulled the covers up to her chin and was seemingly intent on plastering herself against the pillows. "No. You're scaring me. My papa is dead. Murdered. I have been grieving all afternoon. How can you be so mean to me?"

"I'm counting, Jasmine," Lydia said, hands on hips. "One...two...you don't want me to get to three, you really don't."

The covers were flung back and Tanner caught a glimpse of his cousin's legs, bared to the knee, as she slipped off the mattress and landed feet-first on the floor, nearly falling.