Mad Jack (Sherbrooke Brides 4)

The dowager baroness Cliffe turned away and walked to the far windows. She pulled back the thick green satin draperies and stared out into the black night. She said nothing more.

Jack stood there, mute, unable to think of a single word that might change the woman’s mind.

What was she to do now?

29

JACK HURRIED back to their bedchamber, flung open the door, and ran into the darkness. There was a fire in the fireplace, no other light. Gray hadn’t been here. She pulled up short. She realized it wouldn’t matter if he were here or not. He wouldn’t believe her. He would have to have proof.

Where was he? Probably hidden away somewhere in this house, pondering how he would gain an annulment, wondering what he would do with her, a wife he cared about who soon wouldn’t be his wife if he could help it.

Slowly, she sank to the floor in front of the fireplace. She looked at the one stump of wood that was just beginning to burn. She lowered her face into her hands.

She didn’t move when she felt his hand on her shoulder, gripping her tightly.

“Jack, don’t cry, damn you, not now, not just yet. We’re not beaten. Come along. I just remembered that there’s a large portrait of my father painted when he was not too much older than I am now. Just after I killed him, I pulled that portrait down and dragged it to the closet beneath the stairs on the first floor. Come, let’s go see it.”

He wasn’t making annulment plans. He sounded excited. He sounded hopeful. She looked up at him and swallowed the damnable tears.

“Gray,” she said, “a portrait of your father?”

“Yes, I never wanted to see the miserable bastard again as long as I lived. I wanted to erase him. Come along, Jack. It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning. I was down in the library searching for anything my father wrote that could concern me, Thomas Bascombe, or my paternity. I didn’t find anything as of yet, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something, somewhere, I will contact his steward tomorrow. Don’t worry, Jack. Don’t give up. What’s wrong with you? Come, let’s go find that portrait.”

He hadn’t given up. She jumped to her feet, smoothed her skirts, then took his face between her hands. “I’m sorry I collapsed on you. It wasn’t well done of me. Let’s go.”

Ten minutes later, Gray and Jack together dragged out a four-foot-tall, two-and-a-half-foot-wide portrait that had to weigh more than the boy who’d dragged it in here all those years ago. It was wrapped in a thick white Holland cover. Jack was spitting out spiderwebs from her mouth as they emerged from the deep under-stairs closet.

“Let’s bring it into the study,” Gray said. Once they had it clear of the closet, he hefted it up onto his back, saying over his shoulder, “Bring the candle branch, Jack. Yes, close the door first. That place was black as night and dirty as well. I’ll tell Nella about it.”

She followed him silently, her eyes on that huge covered portrait. She was praying as hard as she could. There had to be something in that portrait, she thought, just a simple something, some sign, a small proof.

She watched Gray prop the painting up against his desk. Slowly he pulled off the cover. He wiped the cloth over the painting. She knew he wasn’t yet looking at it. He rubbed for a few more minutes, tossed the cloth away, then looked at her. “Come here, Jack. We’ll face this together. Why are you hanging back? No, don’t be frightened.” He walked to her and gently took the branch of candles out of her hand and set it on a side table near a settee. “What’s wrong?” He gently pulled her against him. “You were so certain that everything would be all right. You made me ashamed that I’d believed it all without a single question. Then I remembered the painting. Come, let’s face it together.” Gray lightly touched his fingers to her white cheek. There was a small veil of spiderweb. He wiped it away.

She pulled away from him, grabbed up the candle branch, and set it atop the desk. It cast bright light over the painting. She took several steps back to stand beside Gray. Together they looked at the painting.

She stared at a tall, very lean man who was standing outside a stable. He held a bridle in a black-gloved hand. His other hand—not gloved—lay negligently on his hip. One leg was bent slightly, but still, he stood tall and proud. He was handsome, beautifully dressed in riding clothes, his head thrown back as if he’d just laughed at something someone had said just beyond him.

Gray breathed out slowly. “I’d forgotten what he looked like. I suppose I didn’t ever want to remember.”

He was as dark as Lucifer. One simply knew that beneath his white-powered wig his own hair was black and thick, opaque, without a single swatch of lighter color in it. His skin was swarthy, his eyes as dark as a bottomless pit, probably as black as his hair. His eyebrows were thick and arched, black slashes scoring his brow. Those eyes stared back at them, soulless, without light, filled with nothing that meant anything to Gray.

“I hated him,” he said quietly. “I hated him more than anything or anyone in my entire life. He looks like Satan, doesn’t he? No humanity in him, just endless cruelty, endless delight in dominating, endless belief in his own power—and he wallowed in his power, Jack, I do remember that. No one went against him. I remember now that he enjoyed simply looking at my mother, touching her beautiful hair, lightly stroking his fingers over her face, her shoulders. An angel and the devil. That’s how they looked together. Her fairness fascinated him.”

His voice sounded faded, as if he were seeing himself in the past, seeing everything through a child’s eyes.

“Yes, he must have been something,” she said in a very adult, very matter-of-fact voice. “A splendid fellow, don’t you think? He beat his wife, beat his son, showed no mercy until his son, only a boy, was brave enough to stop him. Now, on the surface of things, he doesn’t seem to have a single feature that he passed on to you. Let’s study it more closely.”

She took his hand and pulled him forward.

“Look at the black hairs on the back of his hand,” Gray said, pointing to the ungloved hand that posed on his father’s hip. He held up his own hand, letting the candlelight flow over it. “His hand is square, mine isn’t.”

“He has long legs. So do you.”

“Many men have long legs,” Gray said, staring now at the boots he was wearing. “His feet are long and narrow. So are mine. Many men have long, narrow feet. There’s nothing to any of it, Jack.”

“He has a very heavy beard. You can see it, and given the angle of the sun the artist has painted in, it can’t be later than noon.”

“Yes, he was quite dark. I’m not. I fear I’m most like my mother, Jack.”