Mad Jack (Sherbrooke Brides 4)

She was going right for his guts. He had to keep his head about this, he had to keep his distance, to protect himself, to protect her. He said slowly, lightly tapping his fingertips together, “I don’t believe in that French notion of lightning striking when you see a certain person and that person then becomes your mate for life. I’ve known you a short time, Jack. I’m fond of you. We laugh together. We seem to suit each other well enough.” Then he knew he had to draw back, and so he said, placing her firmly in the past, “To me, that was a great start, but naturally, that’s all it was.”

She felt hard, focused determination, all on the surface to this point, there only as a fragile screen to protect her, begin to burrow deep inside her. She actually smiled at him. “I didn’t know what you would say. Whether you’d lie one way or the other. This lie wasn’t as awful as what I feared. No, I can work with this.” Remarkably she smiled more widely at him. “Yes, I would even agree with you. What we have is a great start. You notice that my start for us is in the present, however, not the past.”

He stilled; his hands dropped to his lap. He had to make her understand, to accept what couldn’t be changed, what would remain truth no matter what one wished with all of one’s might. He said very gently, “But there’s no longer a start for us, Jack. We’ve got to face up to it. It’s all a matter now of how we’ll deal with this situation. I’m very worried that you might be pregnant.”

And she said, her determination still growing, “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

He opened his mouth, but she stalled him, raising her hand. “No, Gray, listen to me. I told you, I’ve come to a decision.”

Oddly enough, even though he’d come to accept that they would have to obtain an annulment, he still didn’t want to hear her say the word. He hated the word. It meant the end. He didn’t think he could bear it.

“Yes?”

“Lord Burleigh is wrong. My father wasn’t your father as well. I refuse to believe it. Thus, there is only one thing to be done. You and I together must disprove the entire tale.”

He could but stare at her. “You don’t believe what Lord Burleigh told me? You call it a tale, as in a myth or a fiction to tell a child at bedtime?”

“That’s right.” She turned from him and began to pace some fifteen steps away from him, then back again, in her long-legged stride. She whirled about to face him at the far side of his study. “I don’t understand why you would so completely accept what Lord Burleigh said. Listen to me: he has no proof. Nothing in writing. No sworn statement attested to by anyone. Yes, it’s a tale, one he believes firmly, but nonetheless still a tale.

“I’ve gone over this many times in my mind, Gray, throughout today. Listen, Lord Burleigh has only my father’s belief that he had impregnated your mother. Nothing more. You, Gray, bowed to his opinion, his consummate belief. No wonder—you’ve known him all your life. But I’ve never even met Lord Burleigh. Nor was I there with that sick old man, hearing the anguish in his voice, the sorrow for you, for both of us. No, you gave me only the facts—and the facts don’t tear you apart with their sorrow and tears. They’re cold and dry and don’t clutter or numb your brain with the pain of it all.

“And so I tell you, it’s not true. There are no real solid facts. Nothing to prove Lord Burleigh’s allegations. Now, my question to you is how are we going to discover the real truth?”

He rose slowly to his feet, splayed his palms on the desktop. “Jack, I’ll admit it. When I left Lord Burleigh, I felt flattened, overwhelmed. I felt impotent. I was scared out of my mind that you could be pregnant because I did believe him. It’s true that Lord Burleigh’s pain and sorrow touched me deeply, scored his beliefs into my very soul, whereas you got a diluted version.

“But it doesn’t matter. The truth remains the truth. I have no reason whatsoever to disbelieve Lord Burleigh. He was frantic. He didn’t want it to be true, trust me on this, but he’d accepted the fact that he couldn’t allow this marriage to continue.

“You’re right, I was immensely floored by what he said, by how he said it. He believes this with every part of his being. Could I do less? No, I don’t think so. I must believe him. Don’t you think I wanted to fight against it?”

She didn’t answer. She picked up her dark gray wool skirts and nearly ran back to his desk. She leaned over it, her face nearly in his. “You are not my damned brother. I cannot believe that you are so willing to simply give up, to simply toss me out of your life, to toss each of us out of each other’s life.

“Now, since your mother and your father are dead, we must find another member of your family who was around your parents in those days.”

Slowly Gray shook his head. “My mother isn’t dead. Most everyone believes she died some ten years ago, but she didn’t. She lives on my country estate near Malton, on the River Derwent, not many miles northeast of York.”

“She’s alive?” Jack nearly jumped up and down with joy and relief. “By all that’s holy, that’s wonderful. There’s no problem now, Gray. I don’t understand why you simply didn’t tell me we would go immediately to see your mother. She would certainly tell you the truth, wouldn’t she?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” he said. “If she were able to.” He dashed his hand through his hair. He looked away from her, toward the far wall covered with bookshelves.

“What, Gray? What is the matter?”

When he looked back at her, his eyes were shuttered, looking inward toward a vast wasteland of remembered pain. “I suppose you deserve the truth. My mother has been quite mad since the day I murdered my father. Or rather, since the day I shot the bastard who was beating my mother to death.”

She said nothing more, simply walked around the desk and leaned against him, her arms around his back. He’d killed his father? She felt the wrenching pain in him and for a moment couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of what he’d said. He’d carried this within him for so very long. She would wager that she was the first person he’d ever told of it. He’d been so alone. She didn’t think she could bear it. She squeezed him more tightly, not caring that he’d stiffened, tried to steel himself from his half sister. “I’m so very sorry,” she said against his shoulder. “So very sorry. I knew your father was a bad man, but this?”

“A bad man? My father? No, that doesn’t begin to describe what he was. He was a monster. He beat her as long as I can remember. Then he started beating me. She screamed and cried, but did nothing.

“One day, when I was twelve years old, I heard my mother screaming. I ran into her bedchamber to see him hitting her with a belt. She was on her hands and knees, her head down, making these keening cries, and he was standing over her, his legs spread, wielding that thick belt. I couldn’t stand it. I remember that I yelled at him to stop. He turned to face me and he was smiling. He said to me, his voice all jovial, nearly caressing, I remember, ‘Well, boy, you want me to stop hitting the bitch? What will you do if I don’t stop?’ I stood there, frozen, just as I’d been since I was old enough to realize what he did to her. He laughed, turned, and struck

her so hard she went down flat. I ran into his bedchamber and got his gun that he kept in a lower drawer of his armoire. I didn’t even stop to see if it was loaded. I simply ran back into my mother’s bedchamber, saw him raising that belt yet again, and yelled at him to stop it.

“Again, he turned to face me. He saw the gun in my hands. I’ll never forget what he said to me for as long as I live. ‘You dare raise my own gun to me? Do you know what I’m going to do to you for that?’ and he started toward me. I shot him.

“I shot him dead center in his chest. He stopped, one foot still lifted to take his next step toward me. I remember the look of utter surprise on his face. ‘You shot me, you puling little whelp?’

“I said nothing at all. He came toward me, blood dribbling out of his mouth, falling onto his white shirt that was already drenched with blood from the bullet in his chest. I raised the gun and shot him again. This time the bullet struck him in the throat. I don’t think I realized until then that the gun held two bullets. He cursed me, took one more step toward me, blood now spewing out of his neck like a great red fountain. Then he just crumpled to the floor.”

She held him more tightly. She could see that boy, see his mother. But she couldn’t see that horrible man who’d terrorized both the mother and the son. What Gray had done had taken great courage.