More Than a Mistress, Chapter Six

The chapter opens with a second meeting between the Earl of Durbury and Mick, the runner who has been hired to find (the person we now know is) Jane.  Except she is referred to as “Lady Sara Illingsworth”.  Oh well, no surprise that ‘Jane’ would be using an alias, being on the run and all.  And no surprise that as I have long suspected, she is actually a Lady.  Mick has had no luck finding her.  Mick and the Earl have different ideas about how best to pursue the fugitive: Mick wants to ask around at the pawnbrokers to see if a lovely young lady has brought in any priceless jewels lately, but the Earl insists that Lady Sara would not have pawned the jewelry and refuses to even give a description of the missing piece(s).  The Earl wants Mick to look for her at the employment agencies and other likely employers, thinking Sarah may have found a job.  Mick wonders why a woman would “steal a fortune and then neglect to spend any of it,” and reflects that “there [is] more to this whole business than [meets] the eye.”  Mick questions the Earl about any likely aliases, and the Earl confirms that Sara’s mother always called her Jane. 

So, the Earl’s story and Jane’s reflection are not so much with the matchy-matchy here, and even Mick is starting to think that it’s “a very strange business indeed”.  If the Earl’s son is on his deathbed, why did he leave his bedside to come to London?  Did Sara/Jane steal a fortune, as accused by the Earl, or simply one bracelet and a bit of money, as Jane’s internal monologue would have us believe?  If she did steal a fortune, where is it?  And why is the Earl acting so cagey, refusing to give Mick the details he needs to solve the case?  It’s a mystery right inside a romance novel.  Bazinga!

Back to the Duke and Jane.  The Duke is very, very, very bored, because he is an invalid and Buzzfeed hasn’t been invented yet so he has nothing to do.  Jane has become his constant companion, and he isn’t sure how to feel about that.  She takes good care of him, changing his bandage and moving his cushion, and once massaging his thigh, which was both “magically soothing” and “alarmingly arousing”.  He teaches her how to play chess, and they also pass the time “merely talk[ing]”.  The Duke notes that “it was strange to him to talk to a woman.  He was adept at chitchatting socially with ladies.  He was skilled at wordplay with courtesans.  But he could not recall simply talking with any woman.”  I wonder what the difference is between “chitchatting socially” and “simply talking”?  I suppose there is some posturing going on with the latter, what with the Duke’s reputation as a ladykiller to uphold.  I guess he isn’t doing that with Jane.

Because romance cannot blossom without the emphasis of petty disagreements, Tresham picks a fight with Jane about the plot of Gulliver’s Travels, which she is reading to him.  He displays an awesome grasp of sarcasm with the line, “You are such a restful companion.  You put words into my mouth and thereby release my from the necessity of having to think and speak for myself.”  Oh, snap!  He decides they should talk instead, and asks her about her past, which of course is not going to go well.  Jane maintains the falsehood that she was raised in an orphanage but doesn’t give details about what it was like.  When he pushes her to comment on loneliness, she responds that “Aloneness is not always the same thing as loneliness … Not if one learns to like oneself and one’s own company.  It is possible to feel lonely even with mother and father and brothers and sisters if one basically does not like oneself [and feels] not worthy of love.” 

This touches a nerve and Tresham snaps that she is right.  Jane immediately senses what’s going on, and asks if that is what happened to him.  He thinks about dismissing her for her impertinence at asking such an intimate question, but then remembers that he’s the one who started this line of questioning.  “He had never had conversations, even with his male friends.”  Which again makes me think that ‘conversation’ must have a different meaning to the Duke, because he had loads of conversations with his friends in the last chapter.  Anyway, he takes the plunge and starts telling Jane all about his past.  Jane continues to be supernaturally insightful and notes that Tresham seems to have some very definite ideas about what it means to be a Dudley: more boisterous and quarrelsome than most.  The Duke considers “his family, the vision of themselves and their place in the scheme of things that had been bred into them from birth onward.”  He has no useful answer, though, just points out that if Jane had known his father and grandfather, she wouldn’t ask this question.  Nor would she ask the next one, which is whether Tresham feels he must live up to their reputation, and whether he does so by choice or feels trapped in the role. 

Jane lists the various observations she has made about Tresham’s character and actions, including his risk-taking in duels and curricle racing.  Tresham responds that he wasn’t always this way, and that his father “rescued” him by making sure he took the “final step” in his education.  He obviously doesn’t remember this fondly, as he comments that Jane might in fact be fortunate to have never known her parents.  Then we get to hear the Duke’s opinion of love.

“If love is a disinterested devotion to the beloved, Jane, then indeed there is no such thing.  There is only selfishness, a dedication to one’s own comfort, which the beloved is used to enhance.  Dependency is not love.  Domination is not love.  Lust is certainly not it, though it can be a happy enough substitute on occasion.”

(I’m betting that romance novels where one character doesn’t believe in love, but then comes to see the error of his/her ways, are totally commonplace.)

Once the gates have opened, Tresham can’t stop talking about his past.  His parents didn’t live together, but saw each other for only a few minutes three or four times a year.  They both had lovers.  Tresham has hateful memories of his father’s country cottage where he kept a lover.  And there is more: “Jane did not know the half of it, and he was not about to enlighten her.”  (I bet he will enlighten her later!)  “I have much to live up to, you see.  But I believe I am doing my part in perpetuating the family reputation.”

Jane tries to encourage him not to be bound by the past, commenting that he has free will, as well as rank, influence, and wealth to live his own life in his own way.  He insists that that is exactly what he is doing, other than being laid up by a bullet wound.

“But perhaps it is a fitting punishment, would you not agree, for having taken my pleasure in the bed of a married woman?
She flushed and looked down.

“Does it reach your waist?” he asked.  “Or even below?

I just had to include that entire passage as-is, because wtf?  I pretty much got whiplash from that subject change.  Plus, the juxtaposition of sexual pleasure, Jane’s downward look, and then the mention of her body parts, makes this immediately sexual – which is probably the point – and also weird – which is hopefully not.  Anyway, he is OBVIOUSLY talking about her hair, the stuff on her HEAD, not the stuff she is “looking down” at “below her waist”.  Hmm.  Yeah.  Jane says it’s “only hair,” but Tresham argues that “it is only the sort of magic web in which any man would gladly become hopelessly caught and enmeshed.”  Random compliment much?  Jane is also taken aback, and primly comments that he should keep those thoughts to himself.  He orders her to go get the chessboard and as she leaves, he wonders how he came so close to baring his heart in sharing his boyhood memories, especially since he prefers to believe he is actually heartless.