Next to her, Julia felt a veritable dowd.
“Brave of you, too,” Lady Heatherton added. “To be alone with him that way.”
“We weren’t alone,” Julia said. “No more than anyone else riding in the park.”
“I should be nervous myself,” her ladyship went on, “given the man’s history.”
Julia gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean? What history?”
“You don’t know?” Lady Heatherton affected an expression of surprise. “A shame. If you did, you wouldn’t risk his company. Not without your chaperone.”
“I’m sorry . . .” Julia’s brows knit into a puzzled frown. “Are you acquainted with Captain Blunt?”
“One needn’t be acquainted with a man to form an opinion of his character. One need only keep their ears open.” Lady Heatherton gave her little mare a tap with the crop, urging her into a faster stride.
Julia easily caught up with her on Cossack. “You’ve heard something?”
“It’s not my place to say,” her ladyship replied airily. “I daresay you’ll catch wind of it eventually.”
Julia’s temper flared at Lady Heatherton’s casual tone. How dare she malign Captain Blunt in such an offhand fashion? Spreading reckless innuendo about town in an effort to blacken his name—and why? Simply because she was bored and wished to amuse herself?
“I abhor gossip,” Julia said. “It’s bad enough to listen to it, but to repeat it—”
“I’ve done nothing of the sort.” Lady Heatherton’s gimlet eyes flashed sparks. “And it isn’t gossip. My husband was in the Foreign Office during the war. He read the dispatches from the front. What I know, I learned from him.”
“What did you learn?”
“That your Captain Blunt was a ruthless soldier, feared as much by the British as by the enemy.”
Julia huffed. “That’s no secret.” Captain Blunt’s reputation had been alluded to often enough in her presence. “If that’s all you’ve heard—”
“There’s more,” Lady Heatherton said.
Julia steeled herself. “Go on.”
Lady Heatherton dropped her voice as they rode past a gentleman on a prancing bay. “According to Heatherton, Captain Blunt gave no quarter to the enemy. He was known to execute captives in cold blood rather than imprison them.”
An icy chill seeped into Julia’s veins. “Even if that’s true . . . It was wartime. And if they were indeed the enemy—”
“It wasn’t only his adversaries who aroused his cruelty. His conduct toward his own men was just as pitiless. He marched them until they collapsed, and flogged those who were insubordinate to within an inch of their lives, making them subsist on half rations, starving at his pleasure. And the way he dealt with deserters! There were executions. Brandings. Horrors you can’t imagine.”
Julia stared at the viscountess, stunned.
“He nearly killed one of his lieutenants once,” her ladyship continued with ill-concealed relish. “The bookish son of a country vicar, I understand. He’d taken bread to a dying prisoner against Blunt’s express orders. Blunt repaid the man’s kindness by flogging him almost to death.”
Julia shook her head, unwilling to believe it. “That can’t be true.”
“It is. Heatherton says by the time Sebastopol fell, the captain had developed a taste for brutality. How else do you suppose he managed to survive?”
Julia could make no reply. Her heart was beating like a smith’s hammer.
“Is that news to you as well?” Lady Heatherton laughed—a sharp, unfriendly sound. “You really know nothing about him, do you? Silly girl. Why do you imagine he’s called the Hero of the Crimea? He survived an ambush, during which he single-handedly killed an entire patrol of Russian soldiers. It was for that he earned his name. Never mind that he lost the lives of the rest of his men in the bargain.”
“It can’t be true,” Julia said again, as much to herself as to Lady Heatherton. “If it were, he wouldn’t have been welcomed into society the way he’s been. No one respectable would ever have issued him an invitation.”
“Why shouldn’t they? Everything he did was done with the goal of defeating our enemy.” Viscountess Heatherton’s lips curled into a smile. “And now he’s set his sights on you. A sweet little morsel of a bluestocking heiress. Do you know, Miss Wychwood, I rather pity you.”
Nine
Later that morning, after a brief stop at Doctors’ Commons, Jasper bounded up the steps of the Wychwood town house in Belgrave Square. It had been less than a week since he and Miss Wychwood had embarked on their tentative friendship. Just a few short days of talking to each other. Confiding in each other.
She hadn’t exactly approved of his suit. She’d only said she’d like to know him better. It wasn’t much in the way of encouragement.
But time was of the essence.
Charlie, Alfred, and Daisy awaited him in Yorkshire. Every day that passed was another spent away from them. Away from his duties on the estate. It was that which had compelled him to go to Doctors’ Commons to obtain a special license. A presumptuous act, but a necessary one given the time constraint.
Miss Wychwood was certain to understand.
Jasper hadn’t the luxury of prolonging things. The sooner he spoke to her father the better.
Though, by the looks of it, it may not be the most auspicious time to do so.
The windows of the enormous white house were covered in black fabric, and the knocker had been removed from the front door. It gave every appearance of being a home where someone had recently died.
How ill was Miss Wychwood’s father?
Jasper had been inclined to think of Sir Eustace and Lady Wychwood as a pair of eccentrics. Two bored, wealthy aristocrats who had made a life’s work out of their imagined ailments. But perhaps they truly were afflicted with some malady or other?
He rapped at the oaken door. It was opened a moment later by a balding footman in canary-yellow livery.
Jasper handed the man his card. “Tell Sir Eustace that I would have a word with him.”
The footman gave Jasper’s dour, black-clad figure an uncertain look, as if he didn’t know quite how to place him. “This is in regard to—?”
“His daughter,” Jasper said brusquely.
A knowing gleam shone in the footman’s eyes. He admitted Jasper into the hall, relieved him of his hat and gloves, and directed him to a shadowy salon where he could wait while the footman inquired if Sir Eustace was at home.