The Valentine Legacy (Legacy 3)

He began laughing and squeezed his son tightly against his chest. “All right. If we leave next week, will that be soon enough for you?”

“That’s what I prayed to hear,” James said. “You’ll all be in this with us. I want to find that treasure as much as you do, but more importantly, I want Jessie to go back to Ocracoke and try to demolish all memories of Mr. Tom. I want her to see that old shack on the beach, look at it good, and remember every detail so that she can forget it and we can get on with things. I wish Maggie were right, that Jessie’s latest knock on the head brought the memories back, but it didn’t, more’s the pity. I should be able to protect her from more blows to the head, but dreams, nightmares, tattered memories that haunt her, that’s beyond me. I want her dreams to be of me, not of that demon from the past. I want Jessie and I to be able to make—” He looked at Anthony. “Well, you know what I mean.”

“Indeed we do,” Marcus said. “That would be damnable. Don’t you agree, Duchess?”

“Pleasure and then pain? Most damnable.”

“Although,” Marcus said, with that glint in his eyes, “some people are very fond of that concept and—”

“Don’t continue, Marcus.”

The earl looked at his son, who was all ears, and sighed. “One must be perfect for the little heathens.”

26

Copenhagen was the Duke of Wellington’s charger at the Battle of Waterloo.

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

EARLY SEPTEMBER

Marathon Farm

“I’M SORRY, JESSIE. If I’d known, I would have done something—what, I’m not sure, but something. Damnation, is she some sort of witch? No, don’t answer that.”

“How could she be here?”

James had no time to answer. All of them were tired, Charles was fussing and hiccuping through his tears, and Anthony was whining that he was hungry. Spears took his hand and said, “You will be as brave and stoic as your mama and papa, Master Anthony. All of us are hungry. All of us are tired. If you whine, we will all think you are a little boy. We will think of you as no older than Master Charles.”

“I am not Charles, but I am a little boy.”

Spears said to the Duchess, “Most of the time it works.”

“Ah, Thomas, you’ve gotten here before my mother has come out. Well, just barely. Hello, Mother. May I ask what you are doing here?”

Mrs. Wilhelmina Wyndham gave her son only a cursory glance. It was the Duchess she was staring at, the glint in her eye malevolent. “You,” she said. “I haven’t seen you for seven years, not nearly a long enough number of years. You brought your entire household to protect you? I must say, missie, you will need them. How dare you come to America? To Baltimore? To my poor son’s house? And you brought this girl back with you. How I prayed she would disappear and never show her miserable ruined face again, but she’s here. Ah, you’ve got two children. You don’t deserve them. Poor James lost his wife and his child. Why did he bring all of you here? You don’t belong here, and I insist that all of you leave at once.”

“Mother,” James said very quietly, “that is quite enough. We’re all very tired. We’ve been aboard ship for six and a half weeks. It took more hours than expected to get to the Inner Basin. Why are you here?”

“I knew you were coming,” Mrs. Wyndham said in a dramatic voice, flinging out her arms. “I knew and thus I came because I knew you would need me, my son. And you obviously do need me. I will remove all these English blighters who don’t belong here in America.”

“Mother,” James said again, this time taking her arm in a strong grasp. “I want you to leave now. I will come to see you tomorrow. Thomas, please see my mother to her carriage.”

“But, dearest—”

“I will call tomorrow, Mother.”

She gave the Duchess a last malevolent look, shot Marcus a coy look, and ignored Jessie. She followed Thomas from the house.

“Oh dear,” the Duchess said. “This was quite a welcome. She was right. Seven years between visits isn’t nearly long enough.”

“It will improve now, I promise,” James said. “Jessie, you’re exhausted, you look a bit green around the edges, and I don’t think there’s a handy chamber pot downstairs.”

“It’s all your fault, James.”

“I know,” he said, patting her cheek. “Badger promises me that you’ll get fat and waddle, but you’re still so thin. You want a chamber pot now, don’t you?”

“Please hurry,” Jessie said, and took short, shallow breaths just as the Duchess had taught her.