TWENTY-SEVEN
Maddie was fearless, but he would put fear into her cold heart. Remarkable, Jack thought, that she could be so composed. Then it came to him that she could not have read the express, that she had ignored it as she had ignored his previous letters. Did she think he did not exist? It was time to correct her mistake.
“What a delightful surprise, sir, to see you here,” she said. Her cheer was entirely artificial, icy at its core. She made no attempt to approach him or embrace him.
“A surprise to one who did not bother to read my letter in which I stated that I was returning,” Jack said. Anger roiled his stomach and tightened his fists. “But then one who is too busy bedding every man who looks her way would be too busy to communicate. Your whoring takes precedence, I see.”
A reaction, at last, a spark flashed but it was not quite the response Jack expected. Maddie turned her back to him and walked away, marched like a general leading troops as she invaded the garden. Blind fury boiled up in him and he shouted at her, “Will you walk away the stain on your reputation?”
Instantly she stopped in her tracks. “You cast aspersions on my character with a wedding shrouded in such secrecy that all presumed I was disgraced,” she said. “Your wedding gift to me was a stain so deep that it has taken months to scrub it away, and even now I am looked upon with less than the highest regard in some circles. So, thank you. Thank you for all you have done for me. Pray, do no more.”
Her words carried unexpected force, a power that weakened his resolve. “You have dragged my name through the mud,” he said. “Aligned yourself with my enemies, attacked my career and threatened my command.” Jack had to pause to catch his breath, a respite from his tirade that Maddie met with a smirk so cruel he wanted to slap it off her face. “And for what reason? Because I did not provide you with a new gown? For a bolt of silk, you attack me?”
“A bolt of silk?” Her voice was loud, too harsh. The dog took to barking with frightened urgency, the entire episode escalating into a public display that the entire household could not help but hear. Jack scanned the flower border for interlopers, eavesdropping gardeners, only to be brought back to attention by a pebble striking his head.
Maddie let fly with another stone from the walking path, a small rock that he avoided. She followed it up with a fistful of gravel. “You lied to me, the devil take you. You lied to my brothers. You lied to my grandfather. All that you promised, lies. My life. My life, you played with it until you grew bored and then you discarded me. You are despicable. I hate you with an intensity that will consume me if I do not have satisfaction.”
“Do not dare to question me or my actions,” Jack said. “You ungrateful girl, it is you who must obey me.”
“Set me free or so help me, I swear on my grandfather’s grave that I will make public every contract you breached,” she said.
“You are free. Your husband is dead.”
For an instant, all motion ceased. The wind did not blow, bees did not buzz, leaves did not rustle. Maddie’s eyes grew dull, as if all life were extinguished and she could do nothing but stand motionless. Like a wax figure melting, her familiar features shifted until Jack was presented with a blurring image of his father and his mother and himself. “Well?” she asked, her voice so cruel that he feared he would be ill. “You made me a wife. Have you now made me a widow?”
Without thinking, he grabbed her shoulders and shook her, to exorcise the demon that possessed her. “I curse the day that you came into my house. You have disgraced this family that embraced you in spite of your conduct.” His heart was pounding in his chest while his knees shook from the effort to keep from striking her. He searched her features for the slightest hint of remorse, but there was no apology forthcoming. What he saw was all he had refused to see, from the first time he set eyes on her.
Years, months, days flew past him as he counted backwards, until he arrived at a June day in 1789. For a few weeks that year, Sarah was in England to see her sons settled in a British school while her husband continued to Paris to attend a trade conference. The old man was still crossing the Channel when Jack arrived at the Powell estate, to see the woman he had abandoned, to beg her forgiveness. For those few precious weeks, he lived a portion of the life he might have had, oblivious to the consequences. He could no longer deny what was so obvious to him; Maddie was his, as much as Stephen was his. He had sinned, and he was being made to pay the price.
Jack’s heart bent but did not break as he listened to Maddie expel the foul humors that poisoned the air between them. Better to air out the grievances, he decided, than let them fester. She railed against perceived injustices, railed to the trees and the shrubbery because Jack was deaf to all except the cries in his head that warned of disaster ahead. She was overwrought by the time they neared a back entrance where the footman stood ready to open the door. The conversation had to pause until they could continue the discussion in private.
Snippets of her diatribe took root in his brain. In some part, she was justified in her complaints, although he was not entirely at fault. She was in pain, that much was clear, and there was no point in discussing the terms of their peace treaty until she had absorbed the tragic news and accepted the vagaries of war and the cruelty of fate. The best he could do, until she had collected herself, was to make the first offer, to show he was willing to negotiate, that he accepted some culpability for her sorrow. “After a suitable period of mourning, you may take that Shackleford boy if he’ll have you,” Jack said. “God in heaven, tell me he hasn’t had you already.”
The muscles in her jaw grew tight and then tighter, while her skin grew as pale as death. She nuzzled the dog, an action that enraged Jack with its reminder of the man who had been the root cause of the family’s troubles. “You have done me more harm than I can say,” Maddie said. Her composure was more unnerving than her anger. “All the pain you inflicted, nothing has hurt me so much as your belief in all the evil that was hurled at me. You proved keen to denigrate me while I longed for unity. Shackleford? I would not have him.”
“If I so decree, you will have him,” Jack said.
“I thought as much.” The dog bounded up the stairs and scratched at the door. “Foolish of me to trust your word. To ignore the warnings from those who care about me.”
“Was I wrong to bind you to me?” Jack asked. “Can a father be faulted for guiding a daughter towards a union of benefit to both?”
She turned to him, eye to eye as she stood on the step. The tears were about to fall. “You are the anchor,” she hissed. “You are the anchor that held me here, the reason I returned. Now, sir, I slip the cable and run down before the wind, to put as much distance between us as possible.”
“This is not finished,” he called to her retreating figure. She would have a choice of husbands, a wide selection, bar one, and the sooner she realized the limits of his generosity, the better. “I shall dine at White’s tonight, while you, child, shall reflect on your conduct towards your father. We shall continue this in the morning.”
The dining room at the club was crowded at a time when Jack craved solitude. He was bombarded by idle chatter related to the war on the Continent, disgusted by the whispering in the corners, and outraged by the presumption of Lord Norville to offer him a seat at the gentleman’s table.
The Sea Lords, indeed all of the Admiralty, knew of Edmund Powell’s demise, the details of which Jack had forgotten to share with Maddie. The nonsense that men spoke. Would any one of them boast to a woman of the glory of falling in battle? Would a father trumpet the sacrifice of one who died so that British ships might travel freely? Because of Edmund’s actions in the bay outside of Copenhagen, few of the merchants in his convoy were captured by France’s Swedish allies. The challenge had been met, and won, at a cost that Maddie would consider too dear. Men who waged war accepted the price. The women they left behind were the ones to pay the bill.
Lord Norville wasted no time, his subtle phrases little more than
a probing maneuver in his hunt for an advantageous match. Other men with available sons inserted themselves into the conversation, men who spoke highly of Lady Madeleine’s deportment, her lively temperament, and her determination to rectify an untenable position through legitimate means. There was no roster of lovers, Jack quickly realized. There was instead a long list of gentlemen who had been denied the charms of an untouchable beauty.
“Maintained her poise, and every woman in the drawing room had their eyes on her belly after she re-entered society,” Lord Gravier said. “Can you imagine the disappointment when she failed to grow thick around the waist, when there were those who had placed wagers on the reason for the clandestine wedding?”
“Then pray explain it,” Norville said. “Was she given to a childish impulse that faded upon meeting reality? Were you a doting father who indulged her whim?”
“The questions are moot, Lord Norville,” Jack said. Remaining calm, almost disinterested, took his last drops of fortitude. “There is no need to worry the incident to death.”
Even as the gentlemen around him tried to keep the discussion going, Jack retreated into his own thoughts. Had Maddie, at some point, said something to him that he failed to hear? Some obscure question, perhaps, that he failed to answer, was that the source of the anger that she aimed at him? Gravier made an off-hand remark about fathers and daughters, about the perception by young ladies that their fathers were wholly unqualified to judge a potential husband’s attributes with any accuracy.
“We may not know what a girl wants, but by God we know what is needed for success,” Lord Norville said. “It is a question of wisdom, based on experience. A pauper with a handsome face will not appear quite so handsome when one is destitute and hungry, but tell that to a girl who is smitten. A man has to exert his authority in that case.”
Jack had tried to rely on Lady Jane for her accumulated wisdom, but he began the campaign with a degree of distrust. Once she started to champion Sunderland, he pulled back, afraid that his best ally was proving to be a traitor to the Ashford family. Instead of asking his brother’s wife to encourage some other man, to use a woman’s touch in changing Maddie’s mind, Jack misplayed the hand and so had lost. An admiral who tasted defeat in one battle did not dwell on the action. He analyzed his strategy to uncover every misstep and error, so that he did not repeat them. So too would Jack regroup and sail on, valuable lessons learned. In time, Maddie would see her mistakes as well, but until she had time to appreciate her fault, Jack could offer a much-needed apology for questioning her chastity. He would ask her to forgive him for heeding the words of those who wanted nothing more than to see him brought low so that they might rise.
The assembled diners rose to toast the King and Jack lifted his glass. He had a powerful weapon to use against several of the potential mates who would not suit his daughter, in the deadly force of the financial restrictions put in place by Mr. Mahon. Shackleford would be the first to turn tail when he learned that marriage to Lady Madeleine would not be the windfall he might anticipate. Not one of Gravier’s grandsons would accept a wife of independent means, one who controlled the purse strings. For the first time that evening, Jack smiled.
He went home with a full belly, anticipating a hearty helping of humble pie in the morning. Donning his night shirt, he pricked his finger and felt a stirring of panic. He grabbed a handful of linen and easily located the cloisonné pin, the same memento that Maddie had left for him when she returned to Charleston to see her grandparents. Sheets and blankets were tossed aside as he hunted in his bed for a loving note that explained her intentions, but there was nothing.
After donning a dressing gown, he raced to Maddie’s room, to find the door open and the bed made. He lit every candle he could find, in the hope of illuminating the depths of a female mind that was foreign to him. At once he noticed that her beloved French dolls were missing and the rice basket that graced her dressing table was gone. In a panic, he opened the armoire but he had no idea what clothes she had and could never hope to discover what might or might not be absent.
“Sophie?” he called. “Captain Tar, come here, boy. Here, Tar.”
Silence met his cry. The maid and the dog, both gone. Jack looked around and spotted Maddie’s jewel case at the center of her dressing table, where she always placed it when she was dressing for the evening. “This will be empty,” he said. “This will be empty. She has run away, that is all, gone to ground like a wounded animal.” Inside the red leather box were the pieces he had given her over the years, along with a pair of earrings that Edmund presented to her on their wedding day. Tucked into the corner of the small box was a wedding band, hidden away like some unwanted burden.
In his heart, he pictured Maddie returning to the country, to her horses, and he recognized the wisdom of remaining separate until their tempers had calmed. She had no need for jewels or fine gowns while she simmered and then cooled. He would grant her a week of contemplation, and then he would write to her, to suggest they meet on some neutral ground. The flaw in his logic appeared when a letter arrived from Tony Powell, in response to Jack’s expression of sympathy to the Powell family on the loss of a beloved son. Maddie had gone to Portsmouth, not Farthingmill Abbey or Albemarle, as he should have known. Tony was alarmed by her demeanor, describing Maddie as fluttering, like a bird beating its wings against the bars of a cage when escape was as easy as flying through the open door. She was adrift, it seemed, given to long silences from which it was almost impossible to rouse her.
Not long after the letter from Tony came another from Lawrence, who had heard from a friend that Maddie had been seen at Bath, looking pale and listless. She was in the company of a group of Americans, one of whom was the wife of the departing Minister Plenipotentiary. After a week of taking the waters, the party moved on, and the trail grew cold.
Jack waited in London as long as he could, hoping that his daughter would circle back, but his duty to his King pulled him to the sea. Carried like a heavy weight was the memory of the nights he had passed alone, wishing for the sound of her lovely voice raised in song or the notes of the pianoforte as she played. During those empty hours in the drawing room he had considered his actions, and come to realize that he had foolishly tried to fight against the currents and the tides. He had attempted to direct the wind, to command a force he could not control.
In dead calms or howling storms, the open ocean was both magnificent and awesome; he might curse it but at his core he loved it. Jack had mastered the sea by shifting his sails, altering his course and exercising patience. The ocean could be crossed, under its terms. So too would he conquer that other force of nature, his daughter.
The Second War of Rebellion Page 44