Julia’s stomach twisted into a knot. Was that why Jasper had agreed to elope with her? Because he’d already asked for her hand and Papa had refused?
She had no time to ponder the possibility.
There was a rap at the door. Mary leapt to answer it, clearly grateful for the interruption.
It was Jasper. But he wasn’t alone. When Mary stepped back to allow him entry, he walked into the bedroom in company with a complete stranger. A woman, in fact. The same auburn-haired lady Julia had seen in the street.
She was respectable in appearance, dressed simply but elegantly in a fashionable carriage dress.
“Miss Wychwood,” Jasper said, “this is Mrs. Finchley. She and her husband live next door. Mrs. Finchley? Miss Wychwood. As you can see, she’s not being held against her will.”
“Miss Wychwood.” Mrs. Finchley seemed to take in the whole of Julia’s situation at a glance. “I apologize for the intrusion. You can imagine what I thought.”
Julia drew her blanket up more firmly about her waist. She wished she’d dressed, or at least taken the time to comb and plait her hair.
But there was no judgment in Mrs. Finchley’s blue-green gaze, only concern.
It helped put Julia at her ease. “I did wonder if you might suspect something untoward. It was the very plot of a novel I once read. The villain was a dastardly French fellow who rolled a young heiress up in a carpet.”
Mrs. Finchley approached the bed. “Is that the one where he spirited her across the Channel?”
Julia brightened. “Yes! Though, I suppose it’s a common plot. In novels, heiresses are always being abducted by villains.”
“Mrs. Finchley wishes to reassure herself I’m not one of them,” Jasper said. “If you don’t object to her presence, I’ll leave the pair of you to talk while I discuss matters with her husband.”
“Certainly.” Julia gave Mrs. Finchley a tentative smile. “Do sit down.”
* * *
Jasper regarded Thomas Finchley from across the Aubusson-carpeted parlor. He was a slim man of medium height, with brown hair and light blue eyes looking out from behind a pair of silver-framed spectacles. An unremarkable fellow.
Or so he might have one believe.
But Jasper was no fool.
He’d recognized the kind of man Finchley was on sight. The sort of fellow who reminded Jasper of the many nondescript predators he’d encountered in foreign climes. One whose outward ordinariness was nothing more than a convenient camouflage, obscuring just how dangerous the creature truly was.
“You’re the solicitor, of course,” Jasper said. The same solicitor he’d been planning to call on in Fleet Street. The one whose advice he required to set his mind at ease. He motioned to a chair. “Ridgeway’s mentioned you.”
Finchley sat, appearing perfectly at his ease. “I’ve heard about you, as well. It’s difficult not to, given your reputation.”
Jasper took a seat on the settee across from him. “I wouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
“I rarely do.” Finchley’s tone was conversational, just as it had been when Skipforth had admitted him into the hall. As if it were the most normal thing in the world to apply at the front door of a bachelor’s household asking to speak to the young lady who had been carried inside wrapped in a quilt. “In my experience, the truth is often much more complex than rumor.”
Jasper wondered which rumors Finchley had heard. Whispers of both Jasper’s heroism and his brutality were rife in London. The former was mentioned often enough in his presence, but no one had yet dared broach the latter subject to his face.
No one except Julia.
He was painfully conscious of her presence upstairs, weak and vulnerable after her double round of bloodletting. If he could have, he’d have turned the Finchleys away at the door. But their arrival, though ill-timed, was also rather fortuitous.
Yesterday, after Sir Eustace had sent him packing, Jasper had been in no mood to make his planned visit to Fleet Street. And today, it had seemed there would be no opportunity to do so.
But Finchley was here now, by some miracle.
Jasper fully intended to make the most of his presence. “Quite complex, in fact. In both my case and Miss Wychwood’s.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Finchley said. “You can, nevertheless, understand my wife’s concerns.”
Jasper hadn’t taken the man as a henpecked husband. “She won’t be overlong, I trust. Miss Wychwood is in no fit state to be interrogated.”
Finchley looked at him evenly. There was a layer of steel beneath his amiable manner. “Is she fit enough to give her consent to marriage?”
Jasper stiffened at the intimation. “Of course she is.”
“You can imagine how all this looks. An unmarried lady of good family arriving as she did at a bachelor’s establishment, with not one but two bachelors in residence.”
“Ridgeway isn’t here.”
“When do you expect him back?”
“I’ve no idea,” Jasper said. “Not anytime soon.”
Julia was in no danger of encountering the viscount. If it weren’t for the Finchleys, she and Jasper might have already been on their way.
It wouldn’t be long before her absence from Belgrave Square was remarked. Her parents wouldn’t bestir themselves, not with their ill health, but they’d likely send someone after her. Lord only knew who it would be. Servants? The magistrate? A hastily hired private inquiry agent?
Jasper was confident he could repel all comers, but the more people involved in the affair, the greater the chance of a scandal. And there would be scandal enough to contend with once the fashionable world learned he’d spirited away a vulnerable heiress.
He needed to get Julia out of London. To marry her and convey her, with all speed, to Goldfinch Hall. There, she could rest and recover her strength, if not in luxury, at least in safety; free from the dangerous influence of her parents and the oppressive attentions of Lord Gresham. Every moment spent in the parlor with Finchley was a moment wasted.
Unless Jasper could turn the conversation to matters of law.
It was difficult to do so given Finchley’s suspicions.
“Is Ridgeway aware of your plans?” he asked.
“There’s no plan in effect,” Jasper said, “other than a desire to render Miss Wychwood assistance. She finds herself in an impossible situation.”
“In such cases, marriage can provide a viable escape. I don’t disapprove of it.”