CHAPTER 1
Baltimore, Maryland
April, 1835
Jason Sherbrooke knew it was time to go home when he rolled away from Lucinda Frothingale, stared into the fat ugly face of her pug, Horace, who growled at him, and suddenly, with no warning at all, saw his twin, eyes sheened with tears as he’d waved good-bye to Jason from the dock at the Eastbourne Harbor. Waved until the ship was too far away for Jason to see him. Jason felt tears choking his throat and an ache so deep he knew his heart was cracking clean in two.
Jason eyed the dog curled up against his mistress’s side, then turned onto his belly, listening to both Lucinda’s and Horace’s breathing. It was true, only moments before he’d felt sated all the way to his heels, and then suddenly he’d been flooded with that particular memory, and the pain of it. Now, just moments later, he was impatient, so restless he could barely keep still. He wanted, quite simply, to jump out of Lucinda’s warm bed and start swimming across the Atlantic.
After nearly five years, Jason Sherbrooke wanted to go home.
At eight o’clock that morning, Jason was seated at the big breakfast table in the Wyndham dining room. He looked at the two people who’d welcomed him into their home so many years before, and at their two boys and two girls who had all become very dear to him. He cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. He prayed that lovely, fluent thoughts would flow flawlessly out of his mouth, which, naturally, didn’t happen. He said only, a lump in his throat the size of the Crack County racetrack, “It’s time.”
Jason didn’t realize he looked like a blind man who’d suddenly regained his sight. He was wondering why there were no more words, just those two that popped out of his mouth, hanging there in the Wyndham dining room.
James Wyndham, seeing the expression on Jason’s face, but not understanding it, raised a dark blond brow. “Time for what? You want to race Jessie again? Haven’t you had enough punishment at her hands, Jase? Even riding Dodger doesn’t give you all that much of an edge.”
Jason jumped at the familiar bait. “Like you’ve always said, James, she’s skinny, doesn’t weigh more than Constance here, and that’s why she usually beats us. It has nothing to do with skill.”
“Har har,” Jessie Wyndham said. “Both of you are pathetic, always trotting out the same tired old excuses. Now, the two of you have seen me ride Dodger—Jason’s own horse—we’re like the wind, so fast we blow your hair into your faces. All Jason can do when he rides Dodger is raise a slight breeze.”
That was an excellent slap to the head, Jason thought, and grinned at Jessie.
“Papa’s right,” seven-year-old Constance said. “Although,” she added, looking at her mother thoughtfully, “perhaps Mama does weigh a little bit more than I do. But Uncle Jason, you’re just like Papa, you’re too big to race, you nearly drag the horse down into the dirt. Jockeys have to be small. Even though Grandmother says it’s a disgrace, what with Mama out there aping men and not staying here in the parlor mending, she still remarks on how skinny Mama is even though she’s birthed four children, and that isn’t a bit fair.”
Jonathan Wyndham, the eldest of the Wyndham children at nearly eleven, nodded. “It was a bit rude of you to say it so starkly, Connie, and Grandmother shouldn’t speak so badly about Mother, but the fact remains that Mother is a female and females aren’t supposed to be racing against men.”
Jessie threw her slice of toast at her eldest son.
Jonathan laughed and ducked. “Mama, you know gentlemen can’t stand it when you beat them. Once I saw Papa nearly weep when you raced ahead of him at the last moment.”
“On the other hand,” Jason said, “everyone I know seems to think you were born on a horse’s back, you’re so good, and who cares if the best jockey in Baltimore has brea—er, never mind that.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking, Mama.”
“Dear Lord, I hope not,” Jason said.
“I hope not too,” Jessie said. “No, don’t ask, enough said.”
Jonathan began picking toast crumbs off his jacket sleeve, and only his little sister Alice saw the wicked gleam in his lowered eyes. “Like I was saying, Mother, you’re a bruising rider, mean as a snake when you have to be, but still, isn’t a smartly mended sheet much more fulfilling for you, so—”
“I don’t have anything else to t
hrow at you, Jon. Ah, look, this nice heavy fork just hopped into my hand.” Jessie aimed the fork at her son. “I suggest you retire from the fray or face very bad consequences.”
“I’m done,” Jonathan said, splaying his palms in open surrender, a huge grin on his face. “Retired, that’s me.”
“Time for what, Uncle Jathon?” four-year-old Alice asked, lisping charmingly. She was leaning toward him, and Jason knew that if they weren’t at the breakfast table, she’d have already crawled onto his lap and curled into him the way she’d done since she’d been six weeks old. When he didn’t immediately speak, his brain empty of words, huge tears shimmered in her beautiful eyes. “Thomething wrong, ithn’t it? You don’t like uth anymore. You want to shoot Mama because she beat you?”
Jason looked at that precious little face and sought for the right words, but what came out of his mouth was, “I love you all dearly. It’s not that at all. It’s—” And then the truth burst right out. “I want to go home. It’s time. I’m leaving Friday, on The Bold Venture, one of Genny and Alec Carrick’s ships.”
Instant and utter silence fell over the breakfast table. Everyone stared at him, including the Wyndham cook, Joshua, who was handing Jessie a fresh piece of toast. As for Lucy, their serving maid, she was so distracted by the awesomely beautiful young master Jason’s words that she was in danger of pouring coffee into Mr. Wyndham’s lap. James grabbed her hand just in time.
“Home?” said Alice. “But you are home, Uncle Jathon.”
He smiled at the little faerie, the very image of her mother, who’d been born after he’d arrived here in Baltimore. “No, sweetheart, this isn’t my home, although I’ve been here longer than you have. England is my home, where I was born, at a beautiful house called Northcliffe Hall. That’s where my family lives, where I spent twenty-five years of my life.”
“But you’re ours, Uncle Jason,” nine-year-old Benjamin Wyndham said even as he passed a crisp slice of bacon to Old Corker, the family hound, who’d been born within a week of Benjamin. “You don’t belong to them over in that foreign country anymore. Who cares about Northcliffe Hall anyway? We could name our house—make it sound all sorts of grand—if you wished us to.”
“We’re already named, bacon-brain,” Jon said to his brother. “We’re Wyndham Farm.”
“You’ve got quite a few cousins in England,” James Wyndham said to his son, but his eyes were searching Jason’s face. Then he smiled. “You know, it’s time for us to pay a visit to England as well. The months and years slip by, don’t they? Time simply marches forward, and so very quickly. Nearly five years. That’s amazing, Jase. It seems like yesterday we met you at the dock in the Inner Harbor and Jessie couldn’t take her eyes off of you, said you were even more beautiful than Alec Carrick, surely the most beautiful man God had ever created. She said you had an identical twin, and that meant there was another one like you. I’ll tell you, I was grateful she didn’t swoon.”
“You remember I said all that?” Jessie said, a dark red eyebrow cocked up.
“Certainly. I remember every word you’ve ever uttered, my sweet.”
Jessie made a gagging sound that reduced her four children to giggles.
James felt both immense sadness and joy in that moment. Evidently Jason had finally come to grips with the past.
“Uncle Jason is prettier than Aunt Glenda,” Constance said and grinned, showing a missing front tooth. “When she’s not staring at him, she’s looking in the mirror, trying to figure out how to make herself look more like him. I told her once to give up. She threw her hairbrush at me.”