Mad Jack (Sherbrooke Brides 4)

“TELL ME,” Jack said, pressing as close as she could to Gray’s side. “Tell me about this woman you saved. I don’t understand this.”

Gray sighed. His shoulder throbbed, the laudanum was beginning to drag at his voice and his mind, slowing both. He turned his head slightly and kissed the tip of her nose. “I finally have you as my wife again, but here you are, lying against me all neutral, not a lustful bone in your body, not a lustful thought in your female brain.”

She lightly stroked her palm over his belly. He sucked in his breath. “No, don’t prove me wrong. Well, go ahead if you truly wish to. Despite my manly wound I will eventually feel lust begin to fill my bones and my brain.”

She laughed, kissed his mouth, and let her hand move lower to touch him. He trembled and jerked and sucked in air. Then she kissed him one last time and quickly moved away. “No, you need to build your strength, not deplete it. I won’t tease you any more, it’s not fair. Now, tell me about this woman you saved, or let’s sleep. One or the other.”

“A hard woman you are, Jack, very hard.”

She laughed at that, wanting to touch him again, to feel the heat of him. She didn’t even have time to sigh with regret. He rolled over on top of her, jerked up her nightgown with his left hand, and nearly lost his wits at the feel of her naked against him. He forgot his manly shoulder wound, forgot everything but how he wanted her now, no more waiting, no more talking, just her body and his, together. “I think it’s time I made you pregnant,” he said and came into her. Her body was ready for him and accepted him, but he realized quickly that Jack’s mind was still on his wounded shoulder, the man who’d tried to kill him. He hadn’t given her enough time.

Well, hell.

He came up, balancing himself on one hand, and said, “I want you to forget everything but me inside you. Do you hear me, Jack? Think of me pushing in you, deep. Ah, yes. I love the feel of you, how you squeeze me, how you shift and tighten around me. How do I feel to you?”

“Inside me?” Her voice sounded thin and scratchy. “Hot, Gray, you feel hot and—” She gasped, arching up, pulling him down on top of her and kissed him wildly. He was laughing and moaning when he felt her tense beneath him, felt her legs tremble and lock. Then he threw back his head and cried out to the ceiling beams, knowing that this woman had been fashioned only for him and he’d been as lucky as a man could get that he’d caught her stealing Durban.

“Jack, I’m done in.”

“No wonder,” she managed to whisper as she helped him ease over onto his back again. “That was a very nice experience for me, Gray. Thank you.”

“Anytime,” he said. “Well, if you’re still interested, give me another five minutes.” In the next moment he was asleep, the laudanum and his utter relaxation drawing him quickly under.

Jack lay beside him on her back, her head pillowed on her arms. Her nightgown was bunched up around her waist, her thighs were sprawled apart, and she too was relaxed, too relaxed even to bring her legs together.

She stared up at the dark ceiling. “Thank you, God,” she whispered. “He is my husband. Thank you.” She began whistling softly into the still room.

“And he loves me,” she said as she turned her head to see the distant stars through the windowpane just beyond Gray’s side of the bed. “I know he does.”

“Yes,” Gray said beside her. “Of course I love you. Do you think me an utter idiot?”

“You’re never an utter idiot, Gray. You truly love me? You swear it?”

“I swear it. How could I not? You come dressed to my house as the valet Mad Jack, you steal my horse, you have the gall to get deathly ill on me, you have the nerve to make me want to protect you. Oh, yes, I love you.”

After that utterly wonderful monologue, Jack had no time to tell him she’d kill for him, she’d do anything he ever wanted her to do. He began snoring, soft fluttering little sniffs that made her smile even as she grasped his hand in hers and fell asleep.

“That’s how I met Ryder,” Gray said the following morning at the breakfast table. He kissed her fingers, then released her hand just a moment to take a bite of his eggs. “He saved children who were abused, as I already told you, and I tried to help women whose husbands abused them.”

Jack heard his calm voice, looked at his beloved face, and thought, That doesn’t surprise me after what you saw your father do to your mother.

“I was twenty years old, wild because there was no reason not to be, and thoughtless, enjoying myself far more than a healthy young man should. One night I had just left two of my friends and wasn’t more than a mile from home. I remember the sky was beautifully clear, with a smattering of bright stars and a half-moon. I felt good. I was whistling, kicking pebbles out of my path lightheartedly, when I heard a woman cry out.

“I saw a woman in a drawing room through partially open draperies. A man was hitting her. I didn’t stop to think, didn’t stop to wonder what was going on, to question, to do anything. No, I ran up to that house and tried to burst through the door. It was locked. I ran to the window of that room where the man was hitting the woman and managed to shove it up high enough to climb inside.

“I remember the look of utter astonishment on the man’s face when he saw me crash into his drawing room. He looked at me, looked at the woman, hit her again, really hard in her ribs, and it was then that I knew he was the sort of man who made hitting women a habit.

“I told you that my father never hit my mother’s face. Neither did this man. Her ribs and her belly were his targets. He was just like my father.

“He shouted at me, demanding to know what I wanted, but I just ran to him, jerked the woman free, and beat him into the floor.

“It was the woman who stopped me. I remember she was pulling at my hands, saying over and over, ‘No, he’s not worth it, please don’t kill him. He’s not worth it.’ And so I stopped hitting him. He was unconscious, not dead. Nor was he going to die, more’s the pity.

“The woman was his wife, and she’d angered him by visiting her sister without getting his permission. It took her a while to trust me, for, after all, I was a young man and she was a married woman of at least thirty. But when she finally told me the entire truth, I realized that it would simply continue if I didn’t intervene. She was in exactly the same situation as my mother had been.

“The only difference was that this woman hated her husband. She wanted to leave him despite the resulting scandal; she didn’t care. But she couldn’t leave because she was afraid of him. He’d told her that he would kill her if she did. There was one little girl, Joan, and a little boy, William.

“I didn’t know what to do, not really, but I just knew that I wouldn’t let this continue. I couldn’t leave her to face the bastard. I tied him up and gagged him and pulled him behind a settee.