Mad Jack (Sherbrooke Brides 4)

A man with a huge belly that was covered with a stained apron came to their table and bellowed, “Wot be fer ye lads?”

“Something to eat, please,” Gray said, “for my brother and me.”

“A lot of something, please,” she said, her voice as deep as she could make it.

“Yer a purty little pullet, ain’t ye?” the innkeeper said, as he rubbed his belly with a huge hand. “Even with yer face all bruised up.”

“I’m not a little pullet. I’m just a little rooster.”

The innkeeper eyed them both and said, “Ye both look like ye slept in yer clothes. Wot did ye do to yer face, little un? Yer brother here belt ye a good un?”

“My brother fell afoul of a door,” Gray said. “Actually we did sleep in our clothes. Food, please. A lot of it. My brother’s a growing boy.”

“Aye, don’t flap yer feet.” He looked at her again, frowning. “Ye’d best pray Mrs. Harbottle’s good food will ’elp yer little brother grow up straight, but I don’t think so. Aye, I know. I’ll bring one of me Millie’s roasted pork knivers, that’ll help the lad if anything will.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said.

Gray saw that she was staring after the innkeeper. “What is it?”

“I’ve just never before seen a man quite like that one. He was very familiar. What did he mean that the pork knivers would make me grow straight? I have excellent posture.”

“I don’t believe we should visit that subject. The aunts wouldn’t approve. Actually I don’t know if the aunts would themselves understand, so just forget the straight business.

“Now, do you want me to tell the innkeeper that I’m a baron and that he should bow, slinging that huge belly low, to show me proper respect, and then charge me twice as much?”

She laughed. “Oh, no, I’m sure he couldn’t keep his balance. Oh, goodness, do we have enough money to pay for the food?”

“If you don’t eat too much, we should be fine.”

“That’s good—you look too dirty and wrinkled to be a baron.” She giggled behind her hand, a very white hand with long slender fingers. Gray saw another man who was drinking a glass of ale in the corner look up, his nose twitching, sniffing out that sound.

“Be quiet,” he said, leaning toward her. “Boys don’t giggle. They particularly don’t giggle behind their hands with their eyes all wicked. Keep your head down and your mouth shut.”

Actually, he thought, just one look at that face of hers and no man worth his salt would for an instant think she was male.

The innkeeper brought a platter of baked chicken, a single pork kniver for the purty little rooster, an entire loaf of bread, still hot from the oven, and two large glasses of ale. She fell on the chicken before the ostler had taken two steps away from their table.

“Oh, goodness, it’s the best chicken I’ve ever tasted in my life,” she said after she’d dropped a breast bone on her plate. “Indeed, I never had a clue that chicken could be so delicious. Is that thick leathery-looking thing a pork kniver? I’ve never seen one before.” She gently hefted the slab of pork off her plate and onto his. “If I have to eat this to grow straight, I think I prefer taking my chances.”

He laughed, picked up his fork, and dispatched the pork kniver in half a dozen bites. “I just realized that I was ready to take a bite out of that table leg,” he said. He followed the kniver with half the chicken. When he saw her take a long drink of ale, then swipe her hand across her mouth, he laughed. He couldn’t help it.

“If you weren’t so damned pretty, I would believe you a boy. The mouth swipe was well done.”

“I watched Remie do that once after he’d kissed an upstairs maid and heard Quincy coming. Remie’s very manly, you know. I decided that mouth swiping after drinking was just the thing to make me more believable in my rooster role.”

“Well, just don’t drink too much of that ale. It’s got fists. You’ve already drunk most of that glass. Do I see crossed eyes?”

“Naturally not.” She was feeling just the slightest bit dizzy, perhaps a bit light-headed, perhaps almost like she was going to fall in a wrinkled lump onto the taproom floor. She got her strength back when she saw there was still a single heel of bread left. She snatched it up before he could draw a bead on it himself.

Gray sat back in his chair, his hands folded over his belly. “That was quite excellent. Now, are you full yet? It’s time we got back to London. Perhaps on the way you’ll be so kind as to tell me who you are and why you’re the aunts’ valet, Jack—their valet, Mad Jack, to be exact. If you’ve still got a taste for talk, you can tell me why you felt you needed to steal Durban and why you were planning to return to Folkstone.”

She sat as still as the man three tables away who was still staring at her, his head cocked to the side.

“If you don’t tell me, why, then, I’ll just let the aunts know that the game’s up. Then I’ll have Quincy find Sir Henry Wallace-Stanford.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, please, no, Gray. You wouldn’t do that.” Then she blinked at him, tilted her head to one side, opened her mouth, and closed it. She fell forward, her nose hitting a thigh bone in the middle of her dinner plate.

Gray looked up at the dark-timbered eaves of the taproom. “Why me?” he asked no one in particular.