He bowed his head, setting his face against her hand. Her words were a salve upon his soul. “I am yours.”
“Well,” she said, “now that we have that settled.”
“Yes, now that we have that settled…” He hesitated as he looked at her, choosing his next words with care. He’d already mulled them over on the journey down. Now it was only a matter of getting them out, and in the right order. “I know how you feel about this place. How much it means to you—the land and all of your tenants, but…” He faltered.
How could one man weigh himself against an entire estate? An estate that was synonymous with the Honeywell name?
But he didn’t have to formulate the right words.
Maggie saved him the trouble.
“My father always told me that the land would go on. That people didn’t matter. We didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Beasley Park.” A frown puckered her brow. “I daresay he hoped it would persuade me to accept Fred. To think only of the estate and what our marriage might mean for it.”
Her marriage.
St. Clare’s mood soured at the edges. “You don’t still intend—”
“No. But Papa was right. The land does go on. And it has, all through my illness, and while I was in mourning. It’s gone on without me.” She gave him a bleak smile. “I’ve had an epiphany, you see. I’m not as indispensable to Beasley Park as I’ve always believed.”
He pressed a consoling kiss to her wrist, that delicate place where her pulse beat so valiantly. His heart ached for her, but he couldn’t be sorry. Beasley Park was as much a rival to him as Frederick Burton-Smythe had always been. “I’ve had a similar epiphany.”
“Oh?”
“That night, when I left here, when I struck out on my own, had I found Gentleman Jim, I’d have gladly joined him in whatever criminal enterprise he was engaged in. I had no particular principles. And later, when Allendale proposed to take me under his wing—to pass me off as his heir—it never occurred to me to refuse. And it wasn’t because I aspired to riches or the trappings of notoriety or nobility. It was because…all I ever wanted was to belong somewhere. It didn’t much matter where.”
“You belong with me,” she said.
Her words, spoken so simply, were his undoing.
What self-control he had left fractured on a surge of emotion. It crumbled to dust, taking the remnants of his gentlemanly resolve right along with it.
Any thoughts of propriety promptly fled. There was only her. The two of them. And ten long years of restless, painful, unrequited longing.
He levered himself over her, ignoring the twinge from his bullet wound as he caged her with his arms. Her eyes went wide as he kissed her, hard and fierce. “Yes,” he said. “And you belong with me. Not here, stuck on this bloody estate for the remainder of your life. Not married to Frederick Burton-Smythe.”
“I told you, I’m not going to marry him. I thought I could before you came back but—”
“Marry me,” St. Clare said. It was half plea, half hoarse command. Not at all the romantic proposal he’d contemplated when traveling down from London.
Her bosom rose and fell against his chest. He felt her heart beating wildly, surely as wildly as his own. “And how shall we live?” she asked.
“Does it matter? Without you, life wouldn’t be worth living at all.”
She briefly looked away from him. Her throat spasmed on a swallow.
“You told me that, without me, you’ve been only half a person, living half a life. But I’m here now. Not the same—not Nicholas Seaton—but my heart is still yours. It’s always been yours. If you’ll marry me—”
“Of course I’ll marry you.”
His eyes blazed. “Maggie—”
“But you know Fred will never approve the match. It will mean giving up Beasley Park. Giving up my fortune.”
“Damn this place, and your money along with it. I’d take you in your underclothes.”
She choked on a laugh.
“I may still do,” he said in a low growl. “Come here.”
Her arms circled his neck, and when his mouth found hers once more, she kissed him back as eagerly and as passionately as he kissed her.
Sometime later, he lay down at her side, holding her hand, just as he’d done so many years before. A foolish smile played over his lips. He was lovestruck. Thoroughly besotted. And, at present, not much inclined to address realities.
Maggie had no such aversion. “Your grandfather’s not likely to approve either.”
“You think not? You may invite him to tea and ask him yourself.”
“What?” She abruptly sat up. One might think the earl himself had appeared in front of her. “Don’t say he’s come with you?”
So much for their respite from reality.
St. Clare propped himself up on one arm. “He has. He’s at the Hart and Hound. Still abed, I expect.” They’d arrived at the coaching inn late last night, sometime after eleven. His grandfather had forgone dinner and gone straight to his room. Even now, St. Clare still wasn’t sure of his mood. “We intend to pay a formal call on you this afternoon.”
Maggie was aghast. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Why not? I have it on good authority that a little boldness never goes amiss.”
“There’s boldness and there’s boldness. This is…” She shook her head. “Your grandfather must realize what will happen if someone recognizes you.”
“He’s aware.”
“And yet still he’s come?”
St. Clare shrugged. “I told him how I felt about you. He knew I had to see you. That I was tired of waiting. And he knew I’d come with or without him—hang the consequences.”
A blush seeped into her cheeks. “Good gracious. He must think me the veriest siren.”
“If he’s thinking badly of anyone at the moment, it’s me. His thoughts are for his title. If I’m exposed as being illegitimate, his dreams of me inheriting it are over.”
She frowned. “I wonder.”
He gave her an alert look. “About what?”
“About whether you are illegitimate.”
St. Clare listened in stunned silence as Maggie told him all she’d learned about Jenny, Father Tuck, and Gentleman Jim. When she got to the part about what she’d planned to do next, a chill settled in his veins. “You were going to visit the hedge tavern in Market Barrow?”
“Well…yes. If Fred hadn’t forbidden me the use of my carriage.”
“Thank heaven he did.” St. Clare got to his feet, too troubled to remain sitting. He paced to the edge of the water and back again. “Damnation, Maggie. That tavern is notorious!”
“Nonsense. You make it sound as though I’ll be going there in the dead of night. I intended to go this afternoon, in broad daylight. Nothing can harm me then, surely.”
“And what will you find out in broad daylight? What villains will you question with the tavern standing empty?”
Maggie’s face fell. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.” She quickly rallied. “Very well then, I shall simply have to plan a foray after dark. And you needn’t look so appalled. I’d be safe enough. I’d take Bessie with me.” She paused, adding quietly, “And a pistol.”
“Good God,” he muttered. “I’d credited you with more sense.”
She glared up at him. “What a thing to say. You know I can shoot as well as any man.”
It was true. As a girl, she’d never lacked for skill—or courage. She’d been as formidable with a pistol as she was on horseback.
“That’s beside the point,” he said.
Maggie stood from the grass. “It’s exactly the point.” She dusted off the skirts of her pelisse. “If you’re going to say that the place is dangerous and imply that I’m foolish to go there—”
“You’re reckless. Just like you were sitting wi
th Jenny while she was dying. Nearly killing yourself in the bargain. And when you came to Grosvenor Square that night to stop me from dueling Fred. Or when you came to Grillon’s—to my hotel room of all places. You never stop to think of the consequences.”
“Must you recite a list? This is different. It’s—”
“Reckless,” he said again. “And for what? To prove some damn fool theory you have about Jenny and Gentleman Jim having been married?”
“It’s not a ‘damn-fool’ theory. It makes perfect sense.”
“That the son of an earl would marry a hedge-tavern doxy?”
She threw up her hands. “Yes! The same son of an earl who turned highwayman. If he can contemplate one, why couldn’t he contemplate the other?”
St. Clare shook his head. It was too far-fetched. Too apiece with the private dreams he’d had as a boy. That one day he’d discover he wasn’t a bastard after all. That he’d had parents—a mother and a father who had been wed to each other.
He couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it.
Maggie came to stand in front of him. Some of her hair had fallen loose from the knot at her nape. Mink strands curled about the edges of her face, ruffled by the morning breeze. “You’re blinded by your feelings for Jenny. So angry at her for being a bad mother that you can’t imagine she might have had any redeeming qualities.”
“She didn’t.”
“She was beautiful once. That’s enough for most men. And she might have had other attributes to inspire Gentleman Jim’s affections.”
He snorted.
She rested a hand on his chest. A soothing gesture. He felt the weight of it there, through the layers of his cloth waistcoat and linen shirt, all the way down to his skin. His blood surged in response. Only moments ago, he’d been lying with her, kissing her and holding her. Asking her to marry him.
And she’d said yes.
She’d said yes.
And now, here they were, all but arguing over…what? The decades-old relationship between Jolly Jenny and Gentleman Jim?
St. Clare might have laughed if he wasn’t so irritated.
Good lord, was there nothing about Maggie Honeywell that didn’t tie him in knots? That didn’t leave him breathless and befuddled and struggling to keep his bearings?
“Not every relationship is a grand love affair, you know,” she said. “For most people, a comely countenance and a pleasant disposition is enough.”
He covered her hand with his. “It doesn’t follow that they got married. Not even if Gentleman Jim admired her attributes. Not even if he knew she was with child. He wasn’t an honorable man, Maggie.”
“So I gather. But who’s to say he married her because he cared for her? Perhaps he had some other motive.”
“Such as?”
“Perhaps he married her to spite his father?”
St. Clare went still. “And then left her here, with child?” The chill in his veins turned positively glacial at the dastardly possibility of it.
“You said it yourself. He wasn’t a good man. Indeed, when it comes to James Beresford, that seems to be the prevailing point of view.”
“If it’s true…” St. Clare didn’t dare consider it. He was too wary of disappointment to hope. In his experience, when one went chasing after the past, one never found quite what they were expecting. “But how can it be? If I was legitimate, Jenny would have announced it to the world. There would have been no reason to keep it secret.”
“According to Mr. Entwhistle, she told my father that she’d been tricked into believing she was married. That, in fact, she wasn’t married at all. I suspect this Father Tuck or Friar Tuck or whatever it is he was called at the time may have been part of it.” Maggie frowned. “Either that or Jenny simply asked for him on her deathbed because he was an old friend—someone who had once been kind to her.”
“There,” he said. “Do you see? You may be making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“Perhaps,” Maggie replied. “There’s only one way to find out.”
His brows lowered. “Market Barrow.”
“It’s unfortunate that I can’t use my own carriage. But Jane has her carriage here, and her servants answer to her, not Fred. I’m certain she won’t mind if—”
“I hope Miss Trumble has more sense than to aid you in such a dangerous enterprise.” He tightened his grip on Maggie’s hand. “Can you not imagine what might happen? A beautiful creature like you—a young, well-to-do lady—arriving at a hedge tavern in an expensive coach with a matched team of fine horses and no one but her maid to protect her? What do you suppose the villains thereabouts will think when such a plump-pocketed victim walks willingly into their lair?”
Maggie said nothing more. She merely looked at him, a challenge in her blue eyes that fired his blood as much as it frightened him for what she might do next.
He stifled an oath. “Very well. I’ll go myself if it will put the matter to rest.”
She brightened. “And take me with you?”
He gave her a forbidding look. “On no account. I told you, it’s too dangerous. I’ll go at night, and I’ll go alone.”
“You can’t go alone,” she said. “You have your injured arm to think of.”
“Maggie—”
“And besides,” she continued determinedly, “I’m the one who discovered the existence of Father Tuck. It’s not fair that I should wait at home while you get to enjoy the adventure.”
He recognized that subtle lift of her cleft chin. Her mind was made up. She wouldn’t be swayed, neither by threats nor reason. He nevertheless made one final effort. “It’s not about fairness. It’s about your safety.”
She smiled up at him. “You’ll keep me safe. I have every confidence in you.”
That afternoon, just as he’d threatened to do, St. Clare paid a formal visit to Beasley Park in company with his grandfather. It was the polite thing to do when one was newly arrived in the district, paying calls on acquaintances from town. Everything aboveboard and proper.
Indeed, there was nothing out of the ordinary about it at all. Nevertheless, when climbing the wide stone front steps of Beasley Park, St. Clare felt distinctly out of his element.
As a boy, he’d never been admitted to the house through the front doors. He’d been obliged to use the side entrance by the kitchens. Maggie may have relented on this point, but the rest of the household had not. Nicholas Seaton was never permitted to forget his place. He’d belonged below stairs, with the servants.
“You belong with me,” Maggie had said.
The memory of her words—of her kisses—heartened him as he applied the brass knocker to the door.
“A pleasing prospect,” Allendale remarked, glancing about the grounds. “Surprising.”
St. Clare’s mouth curved. “You expected a tumbledown country pig farm?”
Before Allendale could reply, the door was opened by a footman in dark green livery. He was a young man, and one who St. Clare didn’t recognize.
“Viscount St. Clare and the Earl of Allendale to see Miss Honeywell,” St. Clare said. “We’re expected.”
The footman looked at each of them, glanced past them to the earl’s stately carriage, with its crest emblazoned on the door, and then—with a deferential bow—bid them enter. After taking their hats and gloves, he ushered them up the stairs and into the drawing room.
Maggie stood from the sofa as they entered. She was wearing a simple muslin dress with a ribbon sash at her waist. Her hair was caught up in a high knot, a few strands left to curl about her face. She looked extraordinarily young and extraordinarily beautiful.
St. Clare’s heart thudded hard. He felt the same warm, vaguely breathless feeling he did whenever he looked at her. As if his surroundings had narrowed to a point, his entire world reduced to a single person. To her.
He endea
vored not to show it and flattered himself that he succeeded. It was bad enough to be accused of behaving like a lad with his first woman. He wouldn’t allow himself to act the part.
“Miss Honeywell,” he said, bowing. He swiftly dispensed with the introductions.
Not that either of them appeared to be listening.
His grandfather approached Maggie without preamble, responding to her neat curtsy with a stiff inclination of his head. “Miss Honeywell, at long last. I understand you’ve thoroughly ensnared my grandson.”
“No more than he’s ensnared me, my lord,” Maggie replied without missing a beat. She gestured for them to sit down.
Allendale sank into a chair, his attention fixed on Maggie as she resumed her seat on the silk-cushioned sofa.
“Lord St. Clare tells me that you’ve taken rooms at the Hart and Hound,” she said. “I trust you’re comfortable there?”
“Comfortable enough,” Allendale said. “Where’s that supposed nephew of mine and his mother? They’re staying here, aren’t they? Presuming on some threadbare acquaintance?”
“Indeed. My neighbor, Mr. Burton-Smythe, invited them down for the shooting. They’re out at present, visiting his father, Sir Roderick, at Letchford Hall.”
St. Clare wandered to the fireplace. His gaze drifted around the drawing room. It was a large space, richly carpeted, with silk-papered walls covered in oil paintings of horses and hounds, and furnished with elegantly upholstered sofas, settees, and chairs. Everything was just as he remembered.
But something seemed off.
It was the light. There wasn’t quite enough of it. The heavy plum-colored damask curtains were closed against the midday sun, leaving the room dim and cool.
He looked at Maggie, frowning.
“Burton-Smythe is your guardian?” Allendale asked her.
“Something like that.” She flashed a glance at St. Clare. “Will you not sit down, my lord?”
He walked to one of the rosewood chairs and took a seat.
When contemplating his visit to Beasley Park, he hadn’t considered how strange it would be. How unsettling the intersection of his past and his present. More than that, he hadn’t taken into account how Maggie might feel about his return. She wanted him, he had no doubt. Accepted him exactly as he was. And yet…
Gentleman Jim Page 24