Mad Jack (Sherbrooke Brides 4)

“Thank you, Mother.”

Alice simply waved her hand at them, saying nothing more.

“G-Gray,” Georgie said, tugging on his breeches, “that lady is s-s-strange, but she’s ever so b-b-beautiful.”

“Yes,” he said, leaning down to pick her up, “but perhaps she isn’t quite as strange now as she was just thirty minutes ago. Do you know something, Georgie? You’re a very special little girl. Now, how would you like to have lunch with me and my wife?”

“J-J-Jack told me I was s-s-special, but I didn’t b-b-believe her,” Georgie said. She smiled up at both of them then placed a small hand in each of theirs.

30

GRAY SAID quietly to Lord Burleigh, the man who’d watched over him since he was a boy of twelve, “All these years, sir, you’ve held this secret close. I thank you for that. But now it’s over. I am my father’s son. Believe me, it’s less distressing to accept that I carry that monster’s blood than to believe I was a bastard, the result of a rape of my mother. Actually, I suppose that blood-wise it doesn’t matter. They were both dishonorable men.”

Lord Burleigh was sitting in a large chair, a plaid woolen blanket covering his legs. His skin had lost its grayish pallor, and his eyes were bright again with awareness and intelligence, thank God. He was still too weak to leave his bedchamber, but he was improving daily, Lady Burleigh had assured Gray when he and Jack had arrived. His voice was strong and deep again, and that relieved Gray enormously.

He sat back and closed his eyes. “I still have difficulty believing that Thomas Levering Bascombe did such a thing. Ah, what a man will do when he loses his heart. He must have loved your mother very much.”

A man could be excused anything, Gray thought, his jaw clenching. He could rape a woman and have it seen as love. But he managed to keep his voice calm and low. “I would never call rape a possible consequence of love, my lord. As I said, given that particular show of brutality, I don’t believe him so dissimilar from my own father.”

Lord Burleigh sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. Finally he said, “I suppose there’s some truth to that. I knew him for so very long, and yes, I admired him. You’re positive, Gray? There is no doubt at all in your mind?”

Gray smiled. “No, sir, not a single doubt. I’m a very relieved and lucky man. My wife is waiting downstairs, enjoying tea with Lady Burleigh. Would you like to meet her, sir? She’s lovely, you know, and I imagine that just being with her will keep me alert, keep my mind sharp for a good many years to come.”

“Yes, I should like to meet her. Bring in this young lady called Jack.”

And so Jack finally met the man who’d believed in his very soul that she and Gray were brother and sister.

“I’m very pleased that you have found each other,” Lord Burleigh said, tiring now, his wife saw as she moved closer to him. “I’m more pleased that I can say that there is nothing more to disturb your future.”

Jack knelt beside Lord Burleigh’s chair. “You forced us to confront ourselves, my lord. If things had turned out differently, then perhaps I would have been tempted to shoot you, but now I suppose you can hear my relief and my happiness shouting from my very bones.

“It’s over—and do you know what?”

Lord Burleigh smiled down at the bright, glowing girl beside him. “Tell me what.”

She leaned up and whispered in his ear.

“Ah,” he said, “that’s excellent.”

Gray stepped forward at a sign from Lady Burleigh. “Jack, my dear, his lordship is ready for a bite of lunch and a rest. We’ve worn him down, I fear.” He helped her to her feet. She gave Lord and Lady Burleigh a lovely curtsy, took her husband’s arm, and nearly danced out of Lord Burleigh’s bedchamber.

He was laughing. “You told him you would have wanted to shoot him. That’s good, Jack.”

“Nothing but the truth.”

“What did you whisper to Lord Burleigh that pleased him so much?”

“Oh, just a pleasant little something, nothing all that remarkable, something that you, for example, could probably guess without a moment’s hesitation.”

He stopped just before they reached the upper landing and lightly closed his hands around her neck. “Tell me or I’ll strangle you and toss you down the stairs.”

She touched her fingertips to his mouth. “To have your mouth on mine again—as a lover’s, as a husband’s—you can’t know how wonderful that is.”

“You don’t believe I understand all about wonder?” He leaned down and kissed her. When he raised his head he was smiling. “Since we’re in another person’s house, I can’t very well take this any further. You won’t distract me, Jack. Tell me now what you whispered to Lord Burleigh. If you do, I’ll let you kiss me again.”

“I just told Lord Burleigh that I love you with all my heart and I will do my very best to make you the happiest of men.”

She’d dropped into his placid, well-ordered life not much longer than a single month ago. She loved him? Her words surrounded him, slowly seeped into him. He felt something warm begin to fill him, something he’d never felt before in his life. He realized in that instant that what he’d come to feel for her was buried deep in the midst of that warmth and it was vibrant with pleasure and endless promise. But the words to express what he felt weren’t yet part of what he’d become, and so he said, his voice as deep as the feelings that were swirling inside him, all the way to his soul, “All your heart? As in every small fiber in your heart is dedicated only to me and my happiness?”