Contents ( 52)
- praise for
- The Siren of Sussex
- Also by Mimi Matthews
- belles of london novels
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Epilogue
- Author’s Note
- Literary Inspiration
- Victorian Views on Novel Reading and Bloodletting
- False Names, Marriage, and the Law
- The Fall of Sebastopol
- Acknowledgments
- Discussion Questions
- What’s next on your reading list?
“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.