Page 35 of The Favourite

“Were they also—?”

“Oh yes. All four of them were hanged that day. Along with my brother’s steward, a capable man named John Tunney, the only one who was entirely blameless in the debacle.” An expression of regret flickered over his face. “John, I was really fond of. He used to carve me wooden birds to play with.”

Jane was silent a moment. “How old were you?”

“Hmmm?”

“How old were you?” she persisted. “When this … this terrible thing happened?”

He screwed up his eyes. “Some twelve years.”

Jane swallowed. “And what happened to you, afterward? I mean, with your home destroyed and your family all dead?”

“I was made a ward of the Crown, of course.”

If anything, she turned rather paler. “Was that as bad as it sounds?” she asked, sounding dismayed.

He opened his mouth, intending to say something entirely flippant, when her expression stopped him. Was she feeling sorry for him? It gave him the strangest feeling in his chest and changed his mind about how he would answer. Instead of being glib, he decided to stick with the truth, well, the bare bones of it, in any case.

“Wilhelm had me placed in the home of one of his most rabid supporters,” he replied in measured tones, “where I spent the next ten years of my life learning my trade.”

Jane still looked troubled. “Your trade?” she repeated. “Diplomacy, you mean?”

He shrugged, dropping his gaze. “What else?”

Jane did not answer and when he did venture to look her way again, she seemed to be frowning furiously. Was she trying to make sense of him? And why did he like that idea so much? “What are you thinking about, Jane?” he asked softly.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Why—why did you say that, about liking your brother’s steward, John Tunney?” she asked abruptly. Did you not like your older brother, then?”

He paused a moment. It was sort of shocking to hear a name from his past on her lips. He was not sure if he liked it or not. He never spoke of the past. Why was he doing it now?

“I did not dislike my brother,” he admitted slowly, “but we were not close. Not in age and not in sympathy. When I was twelve, he was twenty-seven. My parents lost several children between the two of us, and besides, Henri was … something of a paragon. I’ve always thought he would have made a very good saint.”

“You were not much alike in temperament, then.”

“Decidedly not.” He grinned. She gazed back at him, and he thought anyone but this woman would smile back at him, even if it was only out of politeness. But Jane looked so serious in the flickering light. Why was he so drawn to her? It baffled him still. On impulse, he sat up in his seat, wanting to be closer to her. “The fire in here is dying down,” he said. “Shall we repair to our bedchamber before it grows colder still?”

*

Jane was already tucked up in bed by the time he had undressed and seen to his ablutions. The two of them, by unspoken agreement, moved between the bedchamber and dressing room, giving one another privacy in these moments.

He had half expected her to have extinguished the candles on her side of the bed and be feigning sleep by the time he joined her but found he was not destined for such disappointment. Jane was propped up on her pillows with the same book from earlier open in her lap.

She wore an unbecoming white cap over her braided hair and had a mantle thrown about her shoulders, obscuring any glimpse of her shift from him. He smiled to himself as he added a few more logs on the fire before climbing into the bed.

Taking her example for his own, he threw a couple of pillows behind his back and turned his head to look at her. “What is that book that so fascinates you?” he asked, glancing down at it. It seemed to him she had not turned a single page.

“Is that the first of your three questions?”

He smirked at her hopeful tone. “Ah, so that is why you are sat so quietly and expectantly. You remembered our agreement. What an honorable creature you are.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You say that as though it were more insult than compliment.”

“Believe me, insulting you is not uppermost in my mind right now. If it were …” He let his eyes travel over the linen cap fitted tightly over her head and winced.

“It seems our taste in bedtime attire does not correspond,” she observed, her eyes glancing at his bare chest and head before veering away. “I would have thought Viscount Bardulf’s nightly apparel would have been a good deal more elaborate. Instead, you go to bed practically naked, I find.”

The way her pale skin turned pink even at the word “naked” should not delight him like this. He should tell her that he did not usually even sleep in braies, but instead, he reined himself in. “Pray tell, what did Lady Jane imagine clothed my body while I slept?” he asked with interest, rolling onto his side toward her and tucking a pillow against his shoulder.