the edge of the water and back again. “Damnation, Maggie. That tavern is notorious!”
“Nonsense. You make it sound as though I’ll be going there in the dead of night. I intended to go this afternoon, in broad daylight. Nothing can harm me then, surely.”
“And what will you find out in broad daylight? What villains will you question with the tavern standing empty?”
Maggie’s face fell. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.” She quickly rallied. “Very well then, I shall simply have to plan a foray after dark. And you needn’t look so appalled. I’d be safe enough. I’d take Bessie with me.” She paused, adding quietly, “And a pistol.”
“Good God,” he muttered. “I’d credited you with more sense.”
She glared up at him. “What a thing to say. You know I can shoot as well as any man.”
It was true. As a girl, she’d never lacked for skill—or courage. She’d been as formidable with a pistol as she was on horseback.
“That’s beside the point,” he said.
Maggie stood from the grass. “It’s exactly the point.” She dusted off the skirts of her pelisse. “If you’re going to say that the place is dangerous and imply that I’m foolish to go there—”
“You’re reckless. Just like you were sitting with Jenny while she was dying. Nearly killing yourself in the bargain. And when you came to Grosvenor Square that night to stop me from dueling Fred. Or when you came to Grillon’s—to my hotel room of all places. You never stop to think of the consequences.”
“Must you recite a list? This is different. It’s—”
“Reckless,” he said again. “And for what? To prove some damn fool theory you have about Jenny and Gentleman Jim having been married?”
“It’s not a ‘damn-fool’ theory. It makes perfect sense.”
“That the son of an earl would marry a hedge-tavern doxy?”
She threw up her hands. “Yes! The same son of an earl who turned highwayman. If he can contemplate one, why couldn’t he contemplate the other?”
St. Clare shook his head. It was too far-fetched. Too apiece with the private dreams he’d had as a boy. That one day he’d discover he wasn’t a bastard after all. That he’d had parents—a mother and a father who had been wed to each other.
He couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it.
Maggie came to stand in front of him. Some of her hair had fallen loose from the knot at her nape. Mink strands curled about the edges of her face, ruffled by the morning breeze. “You’re blinded by your feelings for Jenny. So angry at her for being a bad mother that you can’t imagine she might have had any redeeming qualities.”
“She didn’t.”
“She was beautiful once. That’s enough for most men. And she might have had other attributes to inspire Gentleman Jim’s affections.”
He snorted.
She rested a hand on his chest. A soothing gesture. He felt the weight of it there, through the layers of his cloth waistcoat and linen shirt, all the way down to his skin. His blood surged in response. Only moments ago, he’d been lying with her, kissing her and holding her. Asking her to marry him.
And she’d said yes.
She’d said yes.
And now, here they were, all but arguing over…what? The decades-old relationship between Jolly Jenny and Gentleman Jim?
St. Clare might have laughed if he wasn’t so irritated.
Good lord, was there nothing about Maggie Honeywell that didn’t tie him in knots? That didn’t leave him breathless and befuddled and struggling to keep his bearings?
“Not every relationship is a grand love affair, you know,” she said. “For most people, a comely countenance and a pleasant disposition is enough.”
He covered her hand with his. “It doesn’t follow that they got married. Not even if Gentleman Jim admired her attributes. Not even if he knew she was with child. He wasn’t an honorable man, Maggie.”
“So I gather. But who’s to say he married her because he cared for her? Perhaps he had some other motive.”
“Such as?”
“Perhaps he married her to spite his father?”
St. Clare went still. “And then left her here, with child?” The chill in his veins turned positively glacial at the dastardly possibility of it.
“You said it yourself. He wasn’t a good man. Indeed, when it comes to James Beresford, that seems to be the prevailing point of view.”
“If it’s true…” St. Clare didn’t dare consider it. He was too wary of disappointment to hope. In his experience, when one went chasing after the past, one never found quite what they were expecting. “But how can it be? If I was legitimate, Jenny would