Two months.
She’d sacrifice her honor and pride for just two months. Jane thrust aside all guilt and hardened her mouth into a determined line. After the abuses and injustices she’d known at the hands of the peerage, she had no compunction in entering into another one of their households so she might steal her freedom. After all, noblemen and their snobbish kin were the same. She’d not feel any remorse in lying to them.
Jane drew in a shuddery sigh. “Liar,” she said under her breath.
Except, when faced with the option of survival or her own sense of guilt for her deception, Jane chose survival.
Chapter 3
In the muddied London streets, with rain stinging her cheeks, Jane at last had reservations in absconding with a note intended for Mrs. Belden and leaving in the dead of night without a word to anyone.
She jumped as the driver of the hired hack tossed down her lone valise. It landed with a hard thump in a rather impressive puddle. Water splashed the hem of her skirts and soaked her boots. She glowered up at the gap-toothed man who stuck his hand out. “Yer coin.”
“Your coin,” she muttered and fished around her reticule. She handed over the coins, eager for the foul-stenched, leering driver to be on his way. It wouldn’t do to be discovered, arriving in a rented hack. He stuffed the half pence into his pocket and then climbed aboard his carriage—leaving her alone.
In the biting London rain. At the front steps of the Marquess of Waverly’s residence. The seeds of misgivings, which had rooted around her brain the moment she’d arrived in London and blue skies had been replaced with black storm clouds and ominous rumblings of thunder, grew in her chest. She stole a skyward glance and blinked as raindrops trailed down the lenses of her spectacles, blurring the world before her. With a silent curse, she removed the pair and dried them with the fabric of her dampened cloak. To no avail. Jane placed the glasses on once again seeing the world through a rainy blur.
She sighed. It was a sign.
“Don’t be silly,” she muttered to herself. “The sign was a favorable one.” She’d paid attention to the blasted sign. Two months. What was the likelihood of that precipitous amount of time coinciding with the timing of her attaining control of her trust?
Lightning cracked across the sky and she jumped, propelled into forward motion. She swiped her waterlogged valise from the ground and, with an unladylike speed that would have gotten her sacked by Mrs. Belden if there hadn’t been the whole treasonous Mrs. Wollstonecraft talk on Jane’s part, she made her way up the handful of steps.
The new signs all seemed to point to the folly in her plan. Even so, she still didn’t care to be smote by lightning on a stranger’s doorstep. She dropped her valise and knocked. Thunder rumbled overhead, burying the staccato rhythm of her rapping.
Another blasted sign.
“I’ve quite tired of signs,” she said, glaring at the door. A glint of gold snagged her notice and she raised her attention up from the black panel. She wiped the rain from her eyes and stared transfixed at the erect dragon, with his vicious grip upon the knocker, daring her to knock.
The day she’d been assigned a post at Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School, she’d met the other instructors—dour-faced, always frowning, as though they’d feared a grin would result in their immediate expulsion from their esteemed post. Dragons, every last one of them…. and she’d become one by default.
A dragon. Jane raised her fingertips and traced the ice cold fabled creature. A slow smile turned her lips up. She raised the knocker and pounded hard. She’d little other choice. She knocked once more. Nay, she had no alternative. Another knock. Either lie her way into a post for two months’ time or face an uncertain life on the streets. She flattened her lips into a firm line. Or, she could swallow her injurious pride and appeal to the man who’d sired her until—“Bloody unlikely,” she said between gritted teeth and pounded all the harder.
The door opened and the alacrity of that movement wrenched her forward. She released her grip upon the dragon so quickly she sprawled forward and came down hard, half-inside and half-outside the home of the illustrious Marquess of Waverly. Despite the chill of the rain, humiliated shame set her body ablaze with fiery heat. Mustering a smile, she raised her gaze upward to the gray-haired butler towering over her. The wrinkles lining his weathered cheeks marked him at some ancient age. She frowned. Was the marquess one of those monstrous sorts who abused his servants and didn’t provide a deserved pension at the end of their years of service? Jane scoffed. Then, didn’t all noblemen place their interests and desires before—?