Mad Jack (Sherbrooke Brides 4)

“But I was sick. Who would want to debauch a sick naked young lady?”

“If you were conscious and looked as nice as you do at this moment, most any man who was still breathing would want to debauch you.”

“Then why didn’t you debauch me?”

“Well, I can’t say that I didn’t consider what it would be like—debauching you—but I didn’t carry through with it because you were really very sick. You weren’t all that conscious. You weren’t arguing or laughing. Your hair wasn’t tousled all over your head, all soft-looking. No man would have wanted to debauch you in the eye of your illness, just perhaps on the periphery.”

They stared at each other. She licked her lower lip. He stared at that lower lip as she said, “You didn’t debauch me on the periphery either. Why?”

“This isn’t a bone. Stop chewing. Let it go.”

“What if I were older than you, what then?”

“It would depend, I suppose, on how much older than me you were. Ten years? No, I’d probably still have to hie myself and you to the altar. By the way, I like older women,” he said and smiled. “I also like the way your mind works, like a wheel that backs up when one doesn’t expect it to.”

Then he laughed. “It’s late at night, you’re sitting here in your nightgown, we’re quite alone, which simply isn’t allowed, you know, yet I didn’t even think twice about coming into your bedchamber, and we’re talking about all the particulars of debauchery.

“No hope for it, Jack, we’ve got to marry, and soon. Since your stepfather isn’t your legal guardian, which is a very good thing, and since I also know Lord Burleigh very well indeed, I don’t believe I’ll have much difficulty obtaining his permission to be your husband. Oh, incidentally, your father might be dead, but Lord Burleigh isn’t, and he’s a very powerful man. Were he to find out—and he would—that I was alone for four days with his ward, he’d be on my doorstep with the ink on the marriage agreements scarcely dry.”

“I have sixty thousand pounds. That’s a lot of money.”

“I believe Sinjun was a greater heiress, but you’re right, it’s nothing to raise one’s brows at.”

“So, you spend four days alone with me and you earn sixty thousand pounds.”

A dark blond eyebrow shot up. “Is that how you translate this mess? Into groats for my coffers? Let me tell you, Jack, I don’t want to marry you any more than you want to marry me. My life was pleasant, blessedly predictable, until Mathilda and Maude came trooping in, claiming disasters so they could stay.”

“What disasters?”

“As Aunt Mathilda would say: Featherstone—fire and flood.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “I heard them arguing over the excuse they’d give you, but they never told me what it was. That’s very inventive.”

“Yes, it was well done of them. Quincy didn’t buy it for more than a minute, but I really didn’t care enough to question them closely. I knew I’d enjoy having them here. I really have no other close family, you know. Actually, I would have welcomed them without a whimper if they’d just asked to visit me for a while. On the other hand, I can see their need to protect your innocence. They couldn’t have known I was a saint among gentlemen.”

It was quite fascinating, really, just watching the myriad expressions on her face ranging from absolute terror to rage to even a brief smile that showed the dimple in her left cheek. He sat forward and said, “No, Jack, I’m marrying you because as a man of honor I have no choice. Your money doesn’t matter in the least, at least it doesn’t matter in terms of being the catalyst to matrimony. No, your ill-planned thievery of poor Durban is what precipitated this whole thing.”

“It wasn’t ill-planned.”

“You would have ended up in Bath, if some malcontent hadn’t robbed you, then tossed you into a ditch. I call that ill-planned, at the very least. If I were more honest and less sensitive to your female feelings, I should possibly refer to your debacle as the end result of brain fever, a supposed common ailment amongst females.”

To his surprise, she laughed, actually laughed in the face of his amusing insult and her unamusing situation. She said, shaking her head, “It wounds me to have to say this, but you do rather seem to have the right of it. Oh, dear. It was ill-planned.”

She rolled off the other side of the bed and shrugged into one of Mathilda’s dressing gowns, a particularly odd affair because it was completely black, the neck a swatch of black feathers. It dragged the floor. She tied the sash, then turned to face him. “Actually,” she said, a good fifteen feet between them, “if I want to keep you at a distance from me, I need to light more candles. You’re all shadowy over there by the bed.”

“True enough,” he said. He watched her light the eight candles on a very old gold candle branch and set it on a circular table in the center of the room. The corners were still hidden in deep shadows, but they could see each other clearly enough. “So you want to see me? My face?”

She was twisting a hank of hair around her fingers. “Yes, I want to see you, particularly your face. I’m coming to know what your various expressions mean. Listen to me, Gray. I have quite ruined your life, and the truth of it is that I don’t know what I would have done even if I had managed to sneak into Carlisle Manor, grab Georgie, and escape undetected. I’m an idiot. I thought I’d rescue Georgie, then sneak over to Featherstone, cozy the servants there into hiding us until my stepfather gave up on finding me, then sneak both Georgie and me to London, to Lord Burleigh. I don’t know him. I can’t begin to imagine the look on his face were I to arrive at his front door with my little sister. I wouldn’t have come back here. Your good nature never would have extended that far.

“It supposes that everyone else remotely involved would have to be idiots too, even if I’d succeeded.” She paused, then, under his horrified gaze, she began to cry.

“Jack, for God’s sake, don’t do that.” He was out of his chair in a flash, across that fifteen feet, and gathering her up against him, black peignoir and black feathers and all. He rubbed his hands up and down her back as he said over and over, “No, don’t cry. I can’t bear it. Please stop.”

“I’m an idiot,” she said, tears making her choke. “An idiot. And now you’ve got to pay because men are afraid that an unacceptable flower could spring up from the female’s soil.”

He began untangling her hair with his fingers. “All right, maybe you didn’t think your plan through. But you’re not an idiot. I wager you would have thought of something. Even if you’d ended up first in Bath and then had to change course, you would have managed it. Of course, I would have caught you by then, but I know—I’m positive—that you would have given me an excellent chase. Actually, you did. It was just your ill luck that I saw your light blink in the stable that night.”

“Rotten luck,” she said against his neck.