Sinjun interrupted him. “Who’s this? Goodness, Gray, is this the young lady who isn’t really the valet Jack? She looks all green about the gills. What have you done to her? Move aside and I’ll see to her.”
Gray moved aside. Sinjun was only four years his junior and a major force of nature.
“Where is Colin?” Gray asked, trailing Sinjun into the bedchamber and closing the door.
“He was being a perfect pain in the—well, never mind that. He’s more nervous than the chickens get when I’m practicing with my bow and arrow in the apple orchard. It’s absurd, Gray. I’m just pregnant—a very common thing, particularly among women—and you’d think I was afflicted with some strange and nasty disease. I left him in London to drive himself mad for a change.”
Gray closed his eyes. “You mean you simply walked out on Colin? You didn’t say anything at all to him?”
“I left him a very sweet letter,” she said. “Now, enough of that. Let me see to Jack.”
“You’re pregnant? That’s wonderful, Sinjun! Congratulations.” Gray hugged her, then lightly tapped his fingertips on her chin. “You didn’t ride like a bedlamite to get here, did you?”
“Not at all. I brought a carriage.” She just smiled up at him, then moved to the bed. She stared down at Jack the valet for a long moment, then sat on the edge of the bed.
She leaned forward and peered very closely into Jack’s eyes.
“I’m really all right.”
“You’re less green now than you were a minute ago. Yes, you’re going to be fine, thank God. Did Gray nurse you? Of course he did, there’s no one else. I’ve known Gray forever. He’s never nursed me, but I would imagine he’s quite capable.”
“It’s his fault that I got sick. He wouldn’t let me take Durban.”
“What a selfish lout. Shame on him. Who’s Durban?”
“I’m not a lout,” Gray said. “Durban’s my horse, not hers.”
“Believe me,” Sinjun said to Jack, ignoring him. “Gray’s not at all selfish. He must have had an excellent reason not to lend Durban to you. He is wonderful, you know. You can believe me about this.” She lightly laid her palm on Jack’s forehead. “You feel nice and cool. When did you last drink some water? It doesn’t matter. Here, drink some more. You’re also clean. Did Gray bathe you? He never bathed me either, but again I’ll wager he’s quite good at it. Gray is thorough. He’s conscientious.”
“Don’t forget to repeat how wonderful I am,” Gray said, torn between amusement and irritation and, yes, a dollop of embarrassment as well.
“Your skin also feels healthy and soft. Hmmm, that’s lucky for you.”
“Gray rubbed cream all over me.”
“He noticed your skin was dry? He rubbed you with cream? What a thoughtful thing for him to do.”
He saw that Jack didn’t stand a chance. No one did with Sinjun. Jack drank the entire glass of water that Sinjun held for her. Gray wanted to laugh. While Ryder would have coddled Jack and let her complain and whine, Sinjun simply rolled over her. Was he really wonderful? And thoughtful?
“Sinjun,” he said to a bewildered, silent Jack, “is but one of the Sherbrooke siblings. Just wait until you meet Ryder and Douglas. Incidentally, Sinjun, how is Vicar Tysen?”
“He and that appallingly proper Melinda Beatrice—that’s his wife”—she added to Jack—“are working on their third child. Three! They’ve only been married just three years. Can you believe that? Douglas and Ryder torment him, tell him that God surely can’t approve of all the carnal appetite he’s displaying.” Sinjun Kinross paused a moment, her brow furrowed, her Sherbrooke blue eyes gone dark with intensity.
“As I told you, I brought a carriage, Gray. Actually, it’s your town carriage. When Jack is strong enough, we’ll go back to London.”
“I’m strong enough right now. This very minute. I’ve never been called Jack before a week and a half ago.”
“What’s your name?” Sinjun asked.
“Winifrede.”
“You don’t look like a Winifrede,” Gray said. “Thank God.”
“No, you don’t,” Sinjun said. “Gray’s right. I like ‘Jack.’ It has grit. My mother wouldn’t like it; she’d claim it would wither a female’s charms and shrivel a man’s interest, but I disagree. Yes, ‘Jack’ has fortitude.”
Gray laughed at the look of complete bafflement on her face. “All right. Let me wrap you up and Sinjun here will take us back to London.”
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.
Jack flailed, Gray cursed, and Lynch, the coachman, froze in appalled silence.
“This is a propitious start,” Colin said to the dangerously overcast sky, helped Gray dust himself off and straighten Jack into a sitting position, then assisted his wife into the carriage, holding his breath, it seemed to Jack, until she was safely seated and the black glove was removed from the floor of the carriage and gently placed between her palms.
“I’m riding for a while,” he said, looking at his wife, Jack thought, with an odd mixture of rage and desperation. “Gray, I wish you luck.” He gave him a salute and turned away to a stable lad who was holding a magnificent black barb with a white blaze on its forehead. Once he was in the saddle, he called out, “I’ve tied your horses to the back of the carriage. All right, Lynch, let’s go. It’s at least five hours back to London.”
Gray was sitting next to Jack, holding her up, just shaking his head. Sinjun was biting her lip, staring at the toes of her black slippers. Immediately Gray took her hand. “What’s wrong, Sinjun?” he asked as he leaned a bit more to the left to balance Jack, who was listing.
“Poor Colin,” Sinjun said. “I’m such a trial to him, Gray.”
“Nonsense. He’s the luckiest bastard alive and he knows it, but there’s something wrong, Sinjun, particularly with Colin.”
Sinjun nearly laughed, but didn’t quite make it. “No, I won’t complain and whine to you. Ever since we discovered that I’m going to have a child, he’s been different, unwilling to let me out of his sight, always fussing over me. He’s been very un-Colinlike. It was so good to hear him yell, to have him breathing fire right in my face, to have him turn red. It’s the first time he’s managed it since I told him about our child.
“Oh, enough of that. Now tell me, why did Jack steal Durban and leave London?”
Jack shuddered and ducked her face in Gray’s chest.
“Jack,” Gray said slowly, aware that she was wearing only Squire Leon’s wife’s nightgown, with three blankets on top of it, “will answer all my questions once we’re back in London. Won’t you, Jack?”
Jack burrowed herself into Gray’s armpit. When she emerged some four minutes later, she looked at Sinjun and said, “Gray told me about your brothers, Douglas and Ryder. But I don’t know them. Perhaps I will meet them in London.”
Sinjun laughed. “Bless your heart. Certainly you will meet them. It’s quite provoking to hear people talk about brothers and other assorted relatives that you’ve never heard of. Gray probably told you that Douglas is the oldest Sherbrooke sibling. He’s the earl of Northcliffe and the very best of brothers. He’s all big and dark like Colin, and his smile is so sweet it warms the coldest day. Alex, his wife, thinks he should smile more, but I like to see him look stern and forbidding. Then when he finally succumbs to a smile, it’s such a treat. Douglas is smart and loyal, and he takes his responsibilities very much to heart. His family seat is near Eastbourne, Northcliffe Hall, on the southern coast of England.
“Ryder is my second brother, a wicked, utterly charming man, so filled with life and laughter that you can’t help but glow whenever you’re around him. Unlike Douglas, Ryder always has a smile playing about his mouth. For years now, he has been rescuing little children and taking them to a house we call Brandon House, to Jane, a dear woman who’s stronger than ten oxen and as determined as Ryder is to save hurt children.
“Then there’s me. I married a Scot because I saw him at the Drury Lane Theatre one night and fell in love with him on the spot. He needed an heiress, and fortunately I was one. It all worked out marvelously well once Douglas and Ryder got used to the idea of their little sister actually knowing a man in carnal ways. Colin’s first wife had died, and I have two wonderful, quite notorious stepchildren—Philip, who’s ten years old now, and Dahling, who’s eight. Is that enough information for her, Gray? She looks ready to topple over the edge of exhaustion.”
“Oh, no,” Jack said. “Tell me more, Sinjun.”
“Well, Douglas is married to Alexandra, who is half his size and at least as strong-willed. Douglas wants to be the absolute ruler, and Alex allows it half the time, which all of us, except Douglas, agree is fair. They have two sons—twins—who are the very image of Alex’s older sister, Melissande, who’s so beautiful one can only stare at her. Douglas is incensed that his little boys are the most handsome lads in all of England and will doubtless gr
ow up to be insufferably conceited.
“Ryder is married to Sophie. He met her in Jamaica, of all places, and helped solve a perfectly dreadful situation there. She has a little brother, Jeremy, who’s at Eaton. Sophie’s a pillar, all serious and proper, until she looks at Ryder. Then she’s smiling and laughing and touching him and kissing him, no matter who’s close by. They have one son, Grayson, who is the most precious little boy in the world. He has his father’s charm and his utter love of life. Ah, but he has Sophie’s thoughtful expression, particularly when he wants something.”
“Grayson is my namesake,” Gray said to Jack. “Now, Sinjun, my godson will be the most precious child in the world until you have your own son. At least that’s what I hear happens.”
“Perhaps. We’ll see. Do you think he’ll look like Colin?”
“That would be fine just so long as he has your Sherbrooke blue eyes,” Gray said.
Sinjun smiled at that, then said to Jack, “Now, I won’t tell you about our mother, not until you have all your strength back. You’re nearly drooling, you’re so tired. Go to sleep, Jack. If you have more questions about the Sherbrookes, they’re planning to remain in London for a while. Will you be remaining in London as well, Jack?”
Jack mumbled low, indistinct sounds and retreated once again into Gray’s armpit.
Gray let her hide, saying only, “She’ll have to face up to things soon enough.” He pulled a blanket more closely around her.
9
MATHILDA LOOKED at Gray who was carrying the still-blanketed Jack in his arms, and said, “Lordy.”
Maude smiled, patted the soft curls beside her ears, and said, “I never doubted for a moment that you would see to our Jack, my boy. Who is this tall young lady who’s following you and Jack?”
“This is Lady Ashburnham, Aunt Maude.”
“Ill-tempered husband,” Mathilda said. “But handsome, very handsome.”
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