“But I finally realized that Douglas hadn’t withdrawn from me because he was inflamed by your beauty. No, he finally admitted that he’s been to France twice in the past two months, on some sort of mission for the war ministry. That is why he was distracted. That is why he ignored me, despite my varied and wondrous attempts at seducing him.
“He felt guilty because he didn’t tell me that his precious life was in danger. He knew I would have locked him in a closet. When I finally accused him of infidelity, then he had to tell me the truth. I forgave him. He is to go on another mission in two weeks, and I am still deciding how I will react to this.
“I believe I will travel with him. My French is so excellent now—after eight years—that I, like Douglas, will be accepted as a native. Yes, Douglas, I will go with you and protect you.” And small, slight Alexandra Sherbrooke stood there, her hands clasped, beaming.
Douglas said to Gray, “Actually, she did break me. I had to tell her, although I knew it wasn’t a good idea. You see, I’m used to speaking to her of all things that occupy my mind, and thus when I didn’t, I changed toward her and she took it to heart in a woman’s way, which is never accurate in the least. Believing I was unfaithful to her. Ha!
“As to her French, the good Lord preserve us. It isn’t a whit better than when she shouted at Georges Cadoudal ‘Merde!’ And then something like, ‘I’m going to Paris tomorrow with my husband—Je vais a` Paris demain avec mon mari’—in Hookham’s eight years ago and hit him in the nose with a book. Heatherington overheard it and was mightily amused, the damned bounder.”
“Heatherington again?” Helen said, stroking her chin with long, slender fingers. “I must meet this debauched gentleman who appears to be everywhere of interest. I don’t believe I mind that he isn’t taller than I am, Douglas.”
“Forget Heatherington, Helen,” Douglas said “You might be big for your age and have a modicum of sense, but he is wily and cunning and knows how to make a woman—any woman—want to toss up her skirts for him.
“Now, Alex,” he continued, his voice suddenly soft and cajoling, “this is to be my last mission. The first two trips to France were preparatory to this final one. I am to bring out an old gentleman who has provided Wellington with excellent, perhaps even vital, strategic information over the years. It won’t be dangerous, Alex, I swear it to you. I’ll leave on Thursday and be back with you again by next Wednesday. All right?”
Alex was silent for a long moment, studying his face. Finally, she nodded slowly. “I will allow it, but only if I can accompany you to Eastbourne and wait for you there. You will also tell me all your plans so that I won’t feel utterly helpless. All right?”
Douglas cupped her face in his two large hands. “You are my torment and all that I hold dear. I will expect to see you waving to me from the beach when the boat returns from France.” He kissed her.
“Well,” said Gray, “it appears that we now all understand why Douglas wasn’t making love to Alexandra three times a day as was his wont before two months ago.”
Douglas raised his head. “I’ve a lot to make up for, don’t I?”
31
GRAY REALIZED in that moment that his entire staff was very likely enjoying this titillating performance by an earl and countess of the realm. He looked up to see Maude and Mathilda standing at the bottom of the stairs, staring benignly at everyone.
Jack said, “Oh, dear.”
Mathilda said, “What orgy?”
Maude said, “What Mathilda would say if she wished to tread further down that particular path is that—”
Mathilda said, “Eight men? A good number. Don’t bring Mortimer.”
Gray simply grabbed Douglas’s arm and said, “We’re going into the drawing room. Jack, bring Helen. Aunt Mathilda, Aunt Maude, won’t you please join us? Quincy, bring refreshments, but knock first. Don’t just come in with the tea tray, all right?”
Quincy said, “I could slither in, my lord, or I could creep in on mice feet. No one would even notice that I was in the drawing room with the tea tray. I could—”
“Be quiet, Quincy,” Mathilda said and walked quickly toward the drawing room. She called over her shoulder, “Tea, if you please, not manly brandy.”
Once everyone was gathered in the drawing room, Helen said to Douglas, who was still holding his wife close to him, “It’s a pity Alex didn’t realize that I have never fancied married gentlemen. They’ve been broken by another woman’s hand, you see. They carry her mark, her imprint, if you will. Yes, you are well taken, Douglas.”
“Helen, you are jabbering like a nitwit,” Douglas said. “What is this nonsense about breaking and imprints?”
“What I could have said instead,” Helen said, her lovely eyes twinkling with amusement, “is that you, Douglas, are obviously very much in love with your wife. I’m relieved that you finally told her the truth, regardless that it will worry her. A man should never keep things from his wife. It isn’t healthy for his innards. Imagine the discipline Alex would have to mete out if you were to do it again. Now you will once more be reasonable and trust her.”
“What sorts of discipline?” Alex said, all her focus now on Helen.
“You are very nearly en pointe, Alex,” Douglas said, looking vaguely alarmed and also, truth be told, a bit intrigued. “Forget this discipline business.”
“You may feel free to write me, Alex,” Helen said. “Now, I’ve intruded far too long—actually, all of us have. Aunt Mathilda, Aunt Maude, it is a pleasure to see you both again.
“Now, here are poor Jack and Gray, still in the throes of bliss, their first week of marriage barely completed. Good-bye. I’m off to find this Heatherington.”
Helen slipped out of the drawing room, leaving Alexandra staring thoughtfully after her. “I will write to her about this discipline business. Do you really think Helen will search out Heatherington?”
“I hear Quincy prowling outside the door,” Gray said. “Is everyone finished saying their lines in this extraordinary play? Is everyone thirsty from talking so much?”
“I don’t believe I’m thirsty,” Douglas said. “I believe I have a lot of making up to do with my wife. Do you have anything more to say, Alex?”
“I don’t have anything to say, my lord. Do you think that if we left Gray and Jack they would feel slighted?”
“Doubtful,” Gray said and laughed.
Mathilda said to Douglas, “Beautiful man. Come back soon.”
“I will, madam,” Douglas said and kissed Mathilda’s veiny hand. He gave Maude a winsome smile and lifted his teacup to his mouth.
Douglas and Alex drank half a cup of tea, if that, before they left, laughing, nearly dancing to their waiting carriage.
Mathilda said to her sister, “Everything goes well. We can leave now.”
“I have heard,” Gray said, “that Featherstone is fully restored to its former beauty, all traces of the wretched fire and flood long gone. But that is no reason for you to leave. You are quite my favorite great-aunts. I should like for you to remain.”
Maude briskly shook out the skirts of her puce gown, smiling at both of them impartially. “No, we’re through here. I meant to tell you, my boy. I hear that Jack’s stepfather is going to marry that Mrs. Finch, a lady who isn’t at all a lady, but at least she’s wealthy.” Maude patted Jack’s hand. “She will keep Sir Henry in good form, Jack. She is a very strong woman. Actually I feel a bit sorry for him. I daresay his life will become less pleasant.”
Jack said, “On the other hand, she seemed to be quite a passionate lady.”
Mathilda said, “Animal pleasure—that’s all any of them want.”
“I agree,” Maude said. “No need to give him more. Come along, Mathilda, the two young people wish to quote sonnets to each other. I recognize the signs. We are going to a walk in the park.” And off they went, with Quincy fluttering after them, offering shawls, bonnets, gloves, even raspberry tarts.
Jack laughed and said to her husband,
“We have had a very unusual homecoming, Gray.”
“Actually,” he said, taking her hand and gently placing it on his arm, “I would like to regularize it a bit now.”
“Perhaps all afternoon, just the two of us?”
“Yes,” he said, kissed the tip of her nose, shouted a laugh to the ceiling, and galloped up the stairs, Jack running at his side.
Quincy stood very still in the doorway of the drawing room. He slowly ate one of Mrs. Post’s orange tarts. When Horace reached around to snag a lemon cake, Quincy said, “There have been so many changes since her ladyship arrived on the scene.”
Horace, closing his eyes in bliss as he chewed on the lemon cake, said, “Everything is finally right and proper, thank the good Lord. My liver nearly scared itself out of my body there for a while, but not any longer. I believe I’ll go upstairs and see what Dolly’s about.” He grinned down at Quincy, wiped his hands on his breeches, grabbed an apricot tart, and walked away, whistling.
What was right and proper now that wasn’t right and proper before? Quincy wondered.
Two Weeks Later
It happened so quickly, Gray saw only the slash of movement hurtling out of the deep shadows before the knife came down. He managed to jerk away, but the knife tore through his jacket and shirt, sliding into his shoulder, not deeply, thank the Lord. He felt a punch of freezing cold, then numbness.
He whirled on his heels, crouched down, and brought his fist up into the man’s jaw. The man grunted in pain and anger and staggered backward several steps. It gave Gray room and precious seconds. He said to Jack, never looking away from the man, who was shaking his head, the knife still held ready in his right hand, “Stay back, Jack.”
Jack looked frantically around for a weapon, anything she could wield to help. They were only fifty feet from home, it wasn’t even fully dark, yet this man had attacked them.
The man was coming at him again, and Gray shifted to the right, light on his feet, as Gentleman Jackson himself had taught him, and looked at his opponent’s eyes. “Always in their eyes, milord,” the Gentleman always said.
The man’s eyes flicked with pain, then purpose, then direction. Gray was ready for him. He kicked upward, striking the man’s wrist, spinning as his leg came down, to the right, out of harm’s way. The knife went flying toward the street. He heard Jack running to get that knife. What should he have expected, anyway? For her to stand there cowering? Perhaps whimpering? Not Jack. Not his wife. He smiled even as he sent his fist beneath the man’s chin. It lifted him off the ground. The man howled, cursed, then fell hard onto his knees, his palms out flat in front of him on the ground to keep himself up. “Ye bastid,” he said, wheezing, choking, shaking his head, trying to get himself together. “Ye bastid. He told me, he did, that ye’d be a treat to butcher, the bloody lying bugger, making me think ye’d be easy, so I wouldn’t back out. Ye ain’t no treat attal.”
“No, I’m not a treat,” Gray said, standing now over the man. He came down beside him, jerking his right arm up behind him, high and higher still. “Tell me who this bloody lying bugger is. Who hired you to kill me?”
The man moaned softly, then keeled over.
“Gray!” She was at his side in a moment, the knife in her hand. “He hurt you. Oh, God, he stabbed your shoulder.”
“It’s all right, Jack. Don’t fret. The damned bastard passed out before he told me who’d hired him. I hope he’s carrying some papers.” He leaned down and searched through the man’s pockets. In his breeches pocket he found a folded piece of paper.
He couldn’t make it out in the darkness. “Well, there’s no hope for it.” Between them, Gray and Jack dragged the man across the square to his own town house.
Quincy had the door open but a moment after Jack’s yell. “My lord! Oh, my goodness, what has befallen the poor gentleman?”
“This is no gentleman, Quincy,” Gray said. He and Jack heaved the man onto the marble entrance hall. He grabbed his shoulder, swayed a moment, then straightened.
“Quincy,” Jack said, trying to keep her fear from bubbling out, “send one of the footmen for his lordship’s doctor. This man stabbed him.” Her voice shook, she couldn’t help it. “Quickly now!”
Gray was gone. She saw him walking into the library. “Gray!” She ran after him. He was standing by his desk, unfolding the bit of paper. She watched him read it in the glow of the candles.
He swore softly beneath his breath, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d only thought the curses, Jack heard him. “No, it’s all right. Curse if you want to. Gray, what does it say? Who is this man?”
“This fellow is simply a hired assassin, Jack, sent to me by a villain whose wife I saved three months ago. Before the aunts and you arrived, I got a letter from him, telling me that he would make me suffer as I had made him suffer. He sent me another letter some two weeks ago, the bastard.”
Jack was fair to bursting with questions, but she saw his hand pressed against his shoulder, the blood seeping through his fingers, and said very calmly, “Come to the kitchen, Gray, and let me see how bad the wound is.”
He called over his shoulder as he followed Jack to the nether regions of the house, “Quincy, get Remie in here to sit on this fellow if he awakens.”
“Aye, my lord, Remie is on his way. We’ll not let the bastard breathe too loudly.”
Jack seated Gray at the kitchen table and helped him off with his coat. Her hands were trembling. When she got his shirt off, she looked at the two-inch wound that slashed along the top of his shoulder. “I don’t think you’ll need stitching, Gray. Let me wash you. It’s not bleeding very much anymore.”
“No, my lady, I’ll do it.” Mrs. Post took very purposeful steps toward the baron, her eyes glittering. “How did this happen to ye, milord? Some little thief, I’ll wager. Bring him here to me. I’ll put a fish ’ook in the little bugger’s mouth and throw him in the sea. It’s nasty, it is, but not all that bad. Now, if yer ladyship will jest step out of me way, I’ll fix up my poor master all right ’n tight.”
Gray never made a sound. When the wound was clean, Mrs. Post had Tildy, her scullery maid, tear a clean muslin towel into strips. “Be careful, Tildy. No, ye brainless twit, don’t tear it with yer teeth.”
Gray was walking back to the entrance hall when Dr. Cranford arrived. “See to the fellow there, sir. I’m just fine.”
Dr. Cranford insisted on examining Gray’s shoulder before he left. “Nasty, but clean now and not deep,” he said. “Excellent, my lady. Do I see your fine hand at work here?”
“I tried, sir, but Mrs. Post, our cook, shoved me out of the way. His lordship is hers to see to, she said. You swear he’ll be all right?”
Dr. Cranford, tall and lanky, blessed with thick black curly hair, grinned at her. “I’ve known Lord Cliffe since he was a wild young lad up to London from Oxford. I do believe this is the worst shape I’ve seen him in. Well, there was that one time when you were so foxed you fell off your horse and your friends didn’t realize you’d fallen because they were all in their cups as well. No, no, don’t be alarmed, my lady. That’s a tale best forgotten. Now, his lordship will mend just fine.
“As to the ruffian in the entrance hall, he’s just a bit dizzy from the beating you gave him, my lord. You didn’t break his jaw, and that surprises me. He’s tough. He’ll survive, but maybe that’s a pity. The magistrates will be delighted to toss him into gaol.”
“I have a feeling he won’t be unknown to the magistrates,” Gray said. “I do know who sent him and that’s far more important.”
There was deep, calm rage in the baron’s voice, and Dr. Cranford tilted his head in question. “I know it’s probably none of my affair, but I strongly advise you not to take on this man tonight. You’ve lost a goodly amount of blood. I don’t want you to hurt this shoulder perhaps more. Can it wait until tomorrow?”
“Oh, yes,” Gray said, looking into the rustling coals in the fireplace. “I fancy he’ll believe his henchman has suc
ceeded. Even if he finds out that I’m still breathing, I doubt he’ll be worried. How was he to know that the stupid sod he sent to kill me kept his instruction?”
Dr. Cranford, not wanting to know any more, took his leave.
32
“TELL ME,” Jack said, pressing as close as she could to Gray’s side. “Tell me about this woman you saved. I don’t understand this.”
Gray sighed. His shoulder throbbed, the laudanum was beginning to drag at his voice and his mind, slowing both. He turned his head slightly and kissed the tip of her nose. “I finally have you as my wife again, but here you are, lying against me all neutral, not a lustful bone in your body, not a lustful thought in your female brain.”
She lightly stroked her palm over his belly. He sucked in his breath. “No, don’t prove me wrong. Well, go ahead if you truly wish to. Despite my manly wound I will eventually feel lust begin to fill my bones and my brain.”
She laughed, kissed his mouth, and let her hand move lower to touch him. He trembled and jerked and sucked in air. Then she kissed him one last time and quickly moved away. “No, you need to build your strength, not deplete it. I won’t tease you any more, it’s not fair. Now, tell me about this woman you saved, or let’s sleep. One or the other.”
“A hard woman you are, Jack, very hard.”
She laughed at that, wanting to touch him again, to feel the heat of him. She didn’t even have time to sigh with regret. He rolled over on top of her, jerked up her nightgown with his left hand, and nearly lost his wits at the feel of her naked against him. He forgot his manly shoulder wound, forgot everything but how he wanted her now, no more waiting, no more talking, just her body and his, together. “I think it’s time I made you pregnant,” he said and came into her. Her body was ready for him and accepted him, but he realized quickly that Jack’s mind was still on his wounded shoulder, the man who’d tried to kill him. He hadn’t given her enough time.