Mad Jack (Sherbrooke Brides 4)

“Yes, he is handsome, ma’am,” Sinjun said and blinked. She gave Mathilda a beautiful smile. “Isn’t he amazing? He can yell at me and then kiss me, all without wasting a single breath. My stepson, Philip, remarks upon that. He wants to be just like his father. He practices on his little sister, Dahling. He doesn’t kiss her because he still thinks girls are the very devil, but he does enjoy practicing his father’s yelling skills.”

Sinjun shook out her skirts, straightened the smart little straw bonnet on her head, and said, “Now, Quincy just whispered to me that my husband is currently in the drawing room with Douglas. I don’t know why Douglas didn’t come out when we arrived, but I’m sure to be told shortly. Hopefully I won’t have to be told anything too shortly, though, since I don’t intend to walk into the tiger’s mouth. Jack, will you be all right?”

Jack, flattened by rotten bad luck and illness, said, “I’m fine, Sinjun. Thank you.”

“You’ll tell me everything once Gray has pried everything out of you, all right?”

“We’ll see,” Gray said, eyeing Jack, who looked ready to expire. “Maude, where do you want me to gently unload our valet?”

When Gray went down the wide staircase some ten minutes later, Douglas Sherbrooke, the eldest of the Sherbrooke siblings, stood at the bottom of the stairs in the black-and-white Italianate marble entrance hall, his hands on his hips. He wasn’t smiling. When Douglas Sherbrooke didn’t smile, he looked ferocious indeed, Gray thought, remembering how he’d been fool enough once to go into the ring with Douglas Sherbrooke at Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Saloon. He was lucky he hadn’t gotten his jaw broken or his teeth loosened.

“Good day, Douglas. How is your family?”

“Everyone is just fine. Look, Gray, you’re probably wondering why I’m here in your house, standing here in your entrance hall, looking up at you like you’re an unwanted guest.”

“No, not really. I’m so bloody tired I don’t really care who’s here.”

“Where’s Sinjun?”

“I believe she went to one of the bedchambers to, er, repose herself, at least that’s what she told me.”

“Sinjun’s never reposed herself in her life. The girl’s incapable of reposing. You’ll not believe this, Gray, but Colin just told me she’s pregnant. My little sister—pregnant. By God, I can remember holding her right after she was born. I remember her wetting on my brand-new breeches, my shirt, my hands. She also puked on other breeches, other shirts, my same hands. She was beautiful, Gray, and so precious. Damn, but it’s difficult to accept that she’s now going to have a babe. I think of her as so young and naive and innocent. Then she saw Colin and couldn’t wait to learn all sorts of wicked things, which, naturally, he was more than ready to teach her, curse the bounder.

“Now, you know well enough that she gave you that reposing excuse because she knows that I now know and she doesn’t want me telling her she’s an idiot for scurrying off to God-knows-where to rescue you.” He struck the heel of his palm to his forehead. “Reposing herself, hah. Sinjun’s never been a coward, but that’s what she is now. Ah, it curdles the belly. My little sister has become a coward, and it’s all Colin’s fault. Dragging her to Scotland, forcing her to live in a bloody castle, throwing local ghosts in her face—when everyone with even a tiny brain knows there’s no such thing as ghosts.

“Yes, it’s all turned her into a coward. She’s avoiding me. Me. He’s only had her for four years, and she’s become a coward. It revolts my innards.”

“That isn’t true, Douglas,” Colin said, striding out of the drawing room toward them, his voice nearing a roar. “Damn you, your precious little sister controls everything and everyone in a ten-mile radius of Vere Castle. She controls everything and everyone inside the castle as well. She even has that blackguard neighbor of ours, Bobbie MacPherson, cooing over her white hands, although she wanted to kill him not above four years ago. She’d probably take over the running of bloody Edinburgh Castle if she took a notion to. I don’t believe in ghosts any more than you do, Douglas, but she deals quite well with Pearlin’ Jane.

“Don’t you blame me because she’s hiding upstairs in Gray’s house and he didn’t even have the chance to invite us to stay, which he would have done because he likes us. Yes, Sinjun knows I’m so furious with her I’m just likely to take away all her clothes to keep her in bed for the next week.”

“Who’s Pearlin’ Jane?” Gray asked.

“My family ghost,” Colin said, clearly distracted. “But she doesn’t really exist. Hellfire, Douglas, Sinjun’s pregnant, damn her beautiful eyes, and Jesus, I can’t stand this. I just can’t.”

It was as if the dam had burst. Colin’s voice became deep and harsh. He yelled to the chandelier overhead, “Dammit, I don’t want her to die. I couldn’t bear it if she died.”

Gray said quietly, quite aware that every servant in his house was positioned just so to hear every word each of them said, “I think we should go to my study. Quincy, bring us some food.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Gray shut the study door, turned, and said, “Now, what’s all this about Sinjun dying?”

“Nothing.” Colin ran his fingers through his hair, standing it on end. “Nothing. I just lost control of my mouth. I’ve got it back now. I’ve just been so bloody worried. All right, I’ve been scared to my feet.” He smashed his fist against the leather arm of a wing chair.

“Sinjun won’t die,” Douglas said, and Gray saw that he was perfectly white. “She won’t. I won’t allow that. For God’s sake, my mother didn’t die and she birthed four children. Look at me, I’m not a lisping little fellow, and she came through it all just fine. Your first wife didn’t die birthing Philip or Dahling. What the hell is wrong with you? Oh, God, is Sinjun ill?”

“No,” Colin said, his voice that of a desperate man.

“Then why do you think Sinjun’s life is in any danger?” Gray asked, an eyebrow raised. “Has a doctor told you that she’s in danger?”

Colin, who had been standing in the middle of the study, his head lowered, said, “Neither of you understands. Don’t you see? It’s been nearly four years and she’s never gotten pregnant before. I’d just about come to believe that we were simply not supposed to have children, but because I’m a randy bastard, I’ve forced her time and time again to take my seed, and she does enjoy it so, indeed, she’s always leaping on me in our bedchamber or jerking me behind the stairs or bringing me down on the tower steps to my special room, and just look what happened.”

“Oh, God,” Douglas said. “You sodding randy bastard. I might have known. I did know, the minute I laid eyes on you kissing Sinjun in the entrance hall of my very own house four years ago—and you barely even knew her name—yet you had your damned hands on her bottom and you had your tongue halfway down her throat. By God, you miserable Scot sod, you’ve forced her?”

Douglas leaped a good six feet to land on Colin, his big hands going around Colin’s neck. Soon the two men were rolling on the floor, tangling in the beautiful Aubusson carpet, threatening to overturn one of Gray’s prized Chinese vases that had just arrived from Macao six months before.

The door burst open. Sinjun came running into the study, yelling, “Stop it, both of you. Stop it, now, do you hear me?”