The Valentine Legacy (Legacy 3)

Neither Marcus nor James looked the least bit surprised at Spears’s announcement.

It was Jessie who said, “What is this decision you’ve come to?”

“Mr. Badger, would you do the telling, if you please?”

Badger handed everyone another of his delicious damson tarts while Sampson poured the port. He cleared his throat and said as he seated himself at the dining-room table, “It’s all about this Valentine woman and the lost colony of Roanoke Island. You’ve added more spice to the stew, Jessie, and we all find this lost-colony business stimulating. Perhaps the stimulation could have come a bit later, but one must continually adapt, and we have.”

“Fancy,” Maggie said as she took a delicate bite of her tart, “a young woman who lived so long ago writing to us across the centuries. And here she is that evil pirate’s great-grandmother.”

“That certainly proves the lost colonists survived,” Marcus said. “If this Valentine gave birth and her offspring survived, then others could have survived as well.”

The Duchess’s thoughts were more focused on the chair in the parlor she’d pronounced would belong to James—a huge, comfortable winged chair, as ugly as the devil in a tattered old brocade of pale brown. But her ears pricked at this talk of Ocracoke and a lost colony. “What about Valentine, Badger?”

“Jessie told us that she’d forgotten about Valentine’s diary just as she’d forgotten all about Blackbeard’s journals. This Old Tom was the one who told her his grandfather had gotten his evil hands on all

the diaries. The only reason he’d kept Valentine’s diary was because he thought it an oddity, and she was family, after all.”

“That’s right,” Jessie said. “Old Tom let me read aloud to him part of Valentine’s diary. I know a lot about how the colony lived. I’m certain that what happened to them will be toward the end of the diary. I fancy I could become very famous were I to publish her diary and present my conclusions.”

“We are considering that, Jessie,” Spears said. “It is another stimulating prospect. However, first things first. What we want to do now is journey to the Outer Banks to Ocracoke Island and dig up all the diaries. Then we’ll locate that treasure. You can progress with your scholarship, then we will assist you to present it to the world. I fancy all of us are nearly ready to board another ship. It isn’t all that long a distance, after all.”

Maggie cheered.

Sampson lightly patted her lovely hand.

Badger said, “I have four more damson tarts. Who would like them?”

“Yes, let’s go immediately,” the Duchess said, leaning forward to take one. “Well,” she added with a small frown, “perhaps not tomorrow, but soon. First Jessie and I must order all the furnishings we need for the house. When we return, everything should be about ready. Oh dear, there are the roses to be seen to. I’ve already asked Thomas to look into finding you a gardener, James. I can’t bear to see the roses so bedraggled and I fear I don’t have enough time to work on them myself.”

“Don’t worry, Duchess,” Jessie said. “Now that James and I have my dowry, we can hire three gardeners. I will make certain that when you come again to America the gardens will be what you’re used to.”

“James,” Marcus said, eyeing the last of Badger’s damson tarts, “are we even necessary? Do you get the feeling that we might as well take ourselves back to England? That the ladies can see to these matters all by themselves?”

“James is very necessary to my happiness,” Jessie said, and smiled at James, who seemed startled by her words. Then he gave her a wicked grin.

“My dear Jessie, that’s not exactly what I meant, but perhaps that is a consideration.”

“What can I do, Marcus?” James said, snagging the tart before the earl could. “My wife will surely pine away without me if she and the Duchess go off adventuring.”

“We’d never leave you to yourselves. It would be too dangerous,” the Duchess said, leaning forward, her soft white elbows resting on the white tablecloth.

“Do your ordering, Duchess,” James said, “then we’ll leave. But first, tomorrow night, we’re going to a ball in Jessie’s and my honor at the Blanchards’, where it all started with Jessie falling out of a tree on top of me, after, of course, she’d shot Mortimer Hackey in the foot.”

“Oh dear,” Jessie said. “Do you think that dreadful man will be there?”

“If he is,” James said, stretching his legs out and crossing his feet at the ankles, that last damson tart chewed and swallowed, “and if he gives me any threatening looks at all, you, my dear wife, can pound him into the Blanchard rosebushes.”

Surprisingly, Jessie didn’t laugh with all the others. She nodded solemnly. “Don’t worry about Hackey. Surely he’s feared me ever since I shot him in the foot.”

James rolled his eyes.

Spears said, “Quite right, Jessie.”

Marcus said, “I don’t suppose, Badger, that you hid just one more damson tart? James has proved himself an unworthy host. He popped that last one into his mouth before I had a chance to snag it for myself.”

Badger, giving Marcus the same fond look he frequently bestowed on Anthony, lifted the corner of a napkin to reveal one last tart.

The Blanchards, immensely fond of James but not his mother, and equally fond of Oliver Warfield but not his wife or his daughter Glenda, were perfectly willing to accept Jessie once Mrs. Blanchard saw that she wasn’t wearing trousers and smelling of the stables. Indeed, the Blanchards were so relieved to see something of a vision come into their house that Mr. Blanchard ordered more bottles of champagne to be brought up from the wine cellar.