Mad Jack (Sherbrooke Brides 4)

8

THEY MADE it to the front yard of the inn. Gray was carrying Jack, with Sinjun giving him instructions he didn’t need, when a man’s furious shout made them stop in their tracks.

“Oh, dear,” Sinjun said, “I believe I’m about to be brought low.”

Gray, who alternately looked up at the heavy dark clouds overhead and down at Jack’s pale face, said, “I thought you left Colin a very sweet letter.”

“It was. It was mawkish it was so sweet. It wasn’t a thing like me. Perhaps he didn’t have a chance to read it. Or perhaps he saw I was gone, read the letter, and decided to strangle me anyway. But you know, Gray, Colin is a lot like Ryder and Douglas. One minute he’s yelling his head off and the next he’s laughing and—”

“I know when a man is gathering himself up to yell his head off,” Gray said, “and your husband is on the very brink.”

The man striding quickly toward them was waving his fist and yelling, “Damn you, Sinjun, don’t you move. Don’t you even think about taking another single step away from me. Just stand right there and be calm and don’t fidget. And don’t breathe too deeply, it might shake something loose.”

Jack, all wrapped up like a package and held in a man’s arms, against a man’s chest—something that had never happened to her in her life—looked up to see a tall black-haired man nearly running across the inn yard toward them. She forgot how weak and light-headed she felt and asked, “Why can’t you breathe too deeply, Sinjun? Shake what loose?”

“Because she’s pregnant, dammit.” Colin Kinross, the earl of Ashburnham, came to a halt in front of his wife, very gently clasped her upper arms in his big hands, and yelled, “Are you all right?”

“Yes, Colin, I’m healthy as a stoat.”

“You look flushed, dammit.”

“If I am flushed, it’s because my husband chased me down in an inn yard and is shouting loudly enough for the entire town of Grindle-Abbott to hear. Look, there is Mr. Harbottle coming out of the inn wielding an empty tankard over his head.”

Colin jerked his head up and stopped Mr. Harbottle with a look. His eyes were back on his wife’s face in the next moment. “You left me, Sinjun. After I told you to remain very prettily arranged on your bed, reading those ghost stories I bought you myself, you had the gall to leave me. You managed to slip out past the servants, who know you well enough to be forewarned, but you still managed it. They are upset, but not as upset as I am.”

“I was needed, Colin. Ryder saved a child and he had to take the little girl back to Brandon House, to Jane.”

Colin’s mouth was forming around very satisfying full-bodied curses when Gray said, “Hello, Colin. I’d shake your hand, but as you can see, I can’t at the moment. I’m holding Jack. Oh, yes, Sinjun said she left you a very sweet letter. Didn’t you read it?”

“Hello, Gray, Jack,” Colin said with no great enthusiasm, without looking away from his wife. He said right in her face, his voice now a bit more controlled, just a bit lower, “You’re a twit. We’ve been married nearly four years, and the good Lord knows I’ve patiently tried to guide you, to gently instruct you, to ease you into the pursuit of logic, the exercise of reason. But you remain a twit, at least on occasion, like this occasion here in this inn yard, now with that fat innkeeper standing over there holding that empty ale tankard.” He ran his fingers over his wife’s face, then leaned down and kissed her lightly. “When I get you alone, I’m going to beat you.”

Sinjun laughed up at him. “Enough of that, Colin. I

have excellent explanations, all of which I wrote you in my letter. And I already told you, I was needed. Just look at poor Jack, all bundled up in blankets, whiter than your beautiful hard belly in the dead of winter.”

“Now isn’t the time to distract me with talk of my manly parts. Damn you, I read your explanations. They are pitiful. They hold no weight at all, particularly since I specifically told you to remain in bed, to rest, to nap, to read your novels, and yet you hared off the moment I was out of the house. And just who is this Jack person who doesn’t look at all like a ‘Jack’ to me?”

Gray said, “Colin, Jack here is getting heavy. I know she looks frail and pallid as a netted gailey fish, but even small rocks weigh heavy after a while if there are enough of them in one sack. I’m a manly man, just like my footman, Remie, but nonetheless, I’ve been holding her for the past ten minutes, all during your touching reunion with Sinjun and even for five minutes before that. Perhaps you can continue to pin Sinjun’s ears back after I’ve loaded Jack into the carriage?”

Colin Kinross turned to Gray St. Cyre, a man he’d met before he met Sinjun Sherbrooke in London back in 1807 when he’d had to find himself an heiress or have his people starve and his lands go to hell. He said, “St. Cyre, you’re holding a girl in your arms and her hair’s all tangled and blowing in her face. She looks like one of Madame Tussaud’s figures, all white and waxy. I’m not blind. She isn’t a boy. How can her name be Jack?”

Gray smiled. “I think she looks quite like a proper Jack. If I’d braided her hair you surely would have been fooled. It’s good to see you, Colin. Congratulations on the future arrival of your son or daughter.”

The earl turned white, which was surely odd, then he seemed to shake himself, and said, “Thank you.” He grabbed his wife’s hand when she merely took a step toward the carriage. “You’re not moving until I tell you to.” He said over his shoulder, “Are you telling me that this is Jack the valet?”

“One and the same,” Gray said. “Do you ride, Colin, or will all of us pile into the carriage?”

“No, Colin,” Sinjun said, “you must restrict verbal assaults if we’re all in the carriage together. You’re going to have to wait until we’re alone. You can’t take a strip off me in front of Gray and Jack.”

“Why? Your brothers would take a dozen strips off you before they even got to the door of the carriage.”

“True, but they’re English. You’re a Scot. You’re more civilized than they are. You have better manners.”

Colin Kinross, the earl of Ashburnham, raised his eyes heavenward. “Nearly four years,” he said aloud. “I will not survive until I’m thirty.”

Sinjun patted his arm, saying to Gray and Jack, “He will turn thirty this year. I believe I will give him another tome of poetry for his birthday. He loves poetry. It soothes him, at least in the normal course of events. Now, Gray, do put Jack into the carriage before you drop her.”

Gray closed his eyes. His life had been delightfully tranquil, predictable, quite tolerable, all in all. He’d saved Lily and hopefully threatened her husband sufficiently. His mistress, Jenny, had a new recipe for quail soup that was ambrosia to the tongue. Yes, one day had followed another with ease and comfort—until the great-aunts had descended on him. Until Jack the valet had stolen Durban. Until Jack the valet had become a damned girl and gotten ill. He sighed, stepped up into the carriage, slipped on one of Sinjun’s black gloves, and fell forward on his face, hitting his head on the opposite door. He managed to toss Jack onto the seat an instant before he would have smashed her against the carriage floor.