Julia London - [Scandalous 02]

by Highland Scandal

  The king had glared at him, waiting for something more. When he didn’t receive it, he’d said, “Then it seems proven that, indeed, the Earl of Lambourne will do anything to find his way under a skirt, including risking his own fool neck!”

  Jack had bristled at that. Lizzie was different. He’d not risk his neck for just anyone. But he’d smiled, bowed his head and said, “Aye, Your Majesty, I risk my own liberty to help her, for she has been terribly wronged. She needs her king.”

  The king had stopped rubbing his knee to study Jack a moment. “Remarkable,” he’d said thoughtfully. “What do you seek?”

  Jack had quickly explained the situation. An old royal decree prohibiting the Beal men from owning land. The vein of slate that would keep Thorntree and its inhabitants for generations to come, and the struggle to possess the slate.

  But Jack could see he was losing the king, who began to rub his knee with vigor, tossing aside the poultice that obviously did nothing and drawing the worried looks of two doctors who hovered nearby. “Your Majesty, I’d no’ ask it of you did I no’ believe this woman is the most deserving of your subjects.”

  The king snorted.

  “She has been badly treated by the men of her family, but she remains cheerful in the face of adversity and determined to right those wrongs, even though she is merely a woman.”

  “Women should listen to their men if you ask me!” the king said testily. “The Prince of Wales and his wife have made a mockery of marriage, for the simple fact she would not do as he bid her!”

  “This woman did as her family bid her, Your Grace,” Jack carefully continued. “And still they would do her harm.”

  The king grunted and waved Jack away.

  But Jack did not intend to leave without the thing he needed. “She…she has a heart as deep as an ocean and a countenance as bright as a starry night, Your Majesty. Moreover, she possesses a determination that would put most men to shame. She is the essence of Scotland,” he said.

  That drew the king’s attention. “You speak so eloquently, Lambourne. It is unlike you.”

  Jack smiled and bowed. “Even I can be moved when justice is denied.”

  The king began rubbing his knee again as he studied Jack. “What precisely is it you want?”

  “That in your infinite wisdom, Your Grace, you set aside the handfasting that was done between us, and bless the engagement of Miss Beal and Mr. Gavin Gordon.”

  “You came for that?”

  “And that the royal decree prohibiting Beal men from possessing property be somehow strengthened so that Mr. Gordon might protect it on behalf of Miss Beal, and Carson Beal be excluded from ever possessing the land or the slate, or disposing of the same.”

  “Carson Beal?” the king echoed.

  “A Jacobite, Your Majesty,” Jack said. Jack didn’t think there were really Jacobites in Scotland any longer, but in the king’s mind there were. “A Jacobite who would steal the land that is rightfully hers, given to her by His Majesty, your father.”

  “No,” the king said, shaking his head. “Traitors, the lot of them! They made my father a most unhappy man! He had ulcers, were you aware?”

  “I was no’.”

  “Why should I grant them land? No, no, I shall make it quite clear that this…this woman owns it and any minerals, et cetera, found on the land. The laird shall owe her a tax of—what do you think, one hundred pounds per annum?”

  “That would do nicely, Your Majesty.”

  “To this woman—”

  “Miss Elizabeth Drummond Beal and her sister, Miss Charlotte Drummond Beal—”

  “And furthermore, will submit to the Crown twenty five pounds per annum for the trouble he’s put us all to! Where is my scribe! I should like a scribe!” the king bellowed at one of the footmen, who scurried out to find a scribe at that late hour.

  “I am forever in your debt, Your Majesty,” Jack had said, bowing low.

  “You are forever in my son’s clutches,” the king said. “Submit yourself for questioning, my lord.”

  Jack had been brought to the Tower that night. Each day, royal guards took him by way of Traitor’s Gate to the home of Lord Mulgrave, where a privy council questioned him endlessly about his association with Caroline, Princess of Wales. Had he ever been intimate with her? Could he name men he believed had been intimate with her? Had he ever seen Captain Manby emerging from the princess’s rooms?

  Jack denied it all, but the men who questioned him—lords, like him—found his refusal hard to believe. The Earl of Lambourne, who had a notorious taste for women, had not sampled the princess’s delights?

  He was returned and tossed into his pair of rooms in the Tower each night without regard for his person, exhausted from the questioning and left to ponder his fate and what was left of his apparently ghastly reputation. He thought of Scotland, of the days of his childhood spent hunting the hills around Lambourne Castle.

  When he wasn’t mulling over his fate, Jack was pining for Lizzie. He thought of her, dreamed of her, summoned the image of her as she had appeared that last night, dressed exquisitely in the finest gown he’d ever seen, her eyes glistening with happiness. She was, he had no doubt, the most beautiful woman in London. In Britain.

  He imagined Gordon offering her comfort when it was learned their host had been arrested, and her turning to Gordon and the security he offered. Love—what was love when the world was pounding at one’s door? She needed someone like Gordon and she was far too clever not to realize it.

  Jack spent countless hours imagining her return to Scotland bearing papers that confirmed Thorntree was hers, free and clear of any interference from Carson Beal. He imagined her bearing Gordon wee bairns, lots of chubby, happy bairns.

  And Jack…he would be locked away for God only knew how long, rotting in this putrid cell. He had occasional visitors—the guards seemed disinclined to respond to requests to call on him except when pressed. But Christie, Lindsey, and now O’Conner, who had recently returned from Ireland with several fine horses to sell, would come when they were allowed, and they told him that the scandal was coming to a head, that decisions would be made very soon.

  One day Jack met another prisoner at the Tower. Sir Richard Newlingale had just been brought up from Newgate, where he’d bartered his way into better accommodations at the Tower, and told Jack that the Crown was in a hanging mood, and several men were scheduled to hang on Wednesday next.

  That was when Jack began to imagine his own hanging. He imagined the noose around his neck, the moment when the executioner put the black bag over his head and the floor fell out beneath him.

  When royal guards roused him Wednesday afternoon with the very cryptic, “It is time to go, gov’na,” and shoved him out the door, Jack assumed the worst. They told him to gather his things and did not respond when he asked where they were taking him as they dragged him across the Tower green to Traitor’s Gate.

  This was it, then, Jack thought. They would take him to his public trial, where he’d be found guilty of high treason and would hang, perhaps even today. He’d not see Fiona, but that was just as well. He did not want his sister’s last memory of him to be his execution. He was thankful he’d written his farewell letters after all. He had not finished the letter to Lizzie, but there was so much he really didn’t know how to say.

  At Traitor’s Gate they put him on a royal barge and moved him upstream, to Whitehall Stairs. Jack concluded the trial was to be held before Parliament. He really had no idea how trials for treason were carried out, but thought that made sense. He imagined his old friend, the traitor Wilkes, walking the same path before him, and wondered if he’d known he was going to die, if he’d imagined it as vividly as Jack had.

  At Whitehall Stairs, he was surprised to see Christie, Lindsey, and O’Conner standing about, as if they were waiting for a water transport. He assumed that they, as gentlemen and lords, were duty bound to escort him to trial. “So this is it, then, aye?” Jack said as he moved heavily up
the steps, the guards flanking him.

  “One might say,” Christie said solemnly.

  “Well,” Jack said with a sigh as one of the guards handed a bag of Jack’s things to O’Conner, “no one can say I did no’ have a good life, aye? I’ve enjoyed almost all of it, I have. Granted, there were times when my father lived that I thought it rather bleak, and I donna take any fond memories from this last fortnight,” he said with a withering look for his guards. “But all and all, I’ve no complaints.”

  The three men exchanged a look but said nothing. The guards escorted the four of them to a royal coach. It seemed fitting somehow that George would provide a coach to see Jack to his end.

  Lindsey was the first to enter. Christie and O’Conner followed him. “Milord,” one of the guards said, and held open the door of the coach.

  Jack climbed in and took his seat and looked around at his closest friends. They seemed rather relaxed, given the gravity of the day. Jack was a bit exasperated with them, in truth. It was possibly his final day, and a wee bit of ceremony did not seem out of the question.

  “I’ve thought quite a lot about my estate,” he said, and nodded to the bag O’Conner held. “There are papers within, but the sum of it is, as I leave no male heirs, the estate will naturally go to Fiona and,” he added with a grimace, “Buchanan.”

  Lindsey cocked a brow.

  Jack frowned. “Here’s a bit of parting advice, lads: never trust a Buchanan. Now then, there is the matter of some shares I hold in the three percents. I should like them to be divided among some charities. I donna know the precise charities, as regrettably, I’ve no’ become as familiar with them as I ought to have done, but Lindsey, the countess will know, will she no’?”

  “Ah…yes. Yes, she will,” he said, exchanging a look with Christie.

  “There are other papers there,” Jack said. “Official documents and whatnot,” he added, and patiently explained them all as the coach pulled away from Whitehall Stairs.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, Jack ruminating about how precious was this last glimpse of London. Funny, what he wished he could see now was Scotland. He wished for one last look at the hills and the pines, and those things that reminded him of who he was. He wished he could see Thorntree one last time, for that small manor had come to symbolize Scotland to him in a way Lambourne Castle never had. It was rather sobering to know that he’d not realized until his last day how much a Scot he truly was. At Thorntree he’d rediscovered it, and it would be his dying regret that he’d not had a chance to redeem himself in that regard.

  The coach turned onto a major thoroughfare, and Jack realized his time was growing short. “There is one last thing I’d say.”

  His companions looked at him expectantly

  “Miss Beal. Miss Elizabeth Drummond Beal, to be precise. She’s…she’s undoubtedly gone back to Scotland, aye? Ach, I can scarcely blame her. I’ve put a letter to her in the package, Christie, but it is unfinished. If you would, please, do tell her that I…I did indeed love her. M-more than life, apparently, for I am here on her behalf. No, donna tell her that, for I’d no’ have this on her good conscience. But I should like her to know that I did indeed love her, more than I could find the words to say.”

  “Lambourne—”

  “I never loved a woman ere this, you know I have no’,” he continued earnestly. “But Lizzie…” He shook his head. “Lizzie lit something inside me that I was no’ even aware could fire, and I believe I will miss knowing her most of all.”

  Lindsey, seated next to him, turned his face away from Jack and looked out the window. Across from him, O’Conner had pulled his hat low over his brow so that Jack could not see his eyes. Only Christie looked directly at him, his gaze completely shuttered. “You were saying?” he prompted Jack.

  Lindsey coughed.

  “Only that if there was one thing about my life I would change, it would have been that I had married Lizzie and sired quite a lot of wee bouncing bairns with her. Scores of them. I think I might have liked children underfoot.”

  Lindsey coughed again and sank into his seat. O’Conner surged forward, propping his arms on his knees and dipping his head between his shoulders. Christie covered his mouth as he quietly contemplated what Jack had said.

  “What is it, do you suppose? What is that thing women have that can slip under your skin and anchor there? The thing that will no’ let you go, night or day, that makes you do things you never thought yourself capable of doing? What do you name it?”

  Christie shook his head.

  “Aye, she filled my heart to the point of bursting,” he said, tapping himself on the chest, “and it is my dearest wish that the lot of you might know that sort of love one day. That, gentlemen, is what makes this life worth living. Pity I discovered it far too late, aye?”

  “Indeed it is,” Lindsey said in a strangled voice. And as Jack turned to look at him, he noticed they were pulling up at Jack’s house on Audley Street. Lambourne House!

  “What the devil?” he asked, confused.

  Lindsey and O’Conner dissolved into fits of laughter. Grinning, Christie leaned across the coach and clapped Jack on the shoulder. “My friend, you will not hang today. You’ve been released for lack of evidence. The prince has forgiven you.”

  Dumbfounded, he stared at the lot of them. “Do you mean…”

  “Yes,” Lindsey said, and spasmed with another fit of laughter.

  “Bloody hell, do you think you might have said so a wee bit sooner?” he exclaimed crossly, his ire soaring. But the realization that he was free suddenly began to register. “Lizzie!” he cried. “Has she—”

  “She’s inside,” Christie said, opening the coach door.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Lizzie had finally given in to Fiona’s desire to dress her. Today she was wearing a beautiful green and white day gown, overlaid in organza and embroidered with tiny butterflies around the hem and sleeves. She might not have warmed to London, but she had warmed to fine ladies’ clothing.

  Her hair was knotted at her nape and she wore pearl earrings to match her necklace, likewise borrowed from Fiona. Fiona was leaving on the morrow, returning to Scotland to prepare for her wedding. Lizzie was going to miss her. They’d become good friends in this long fortnight.

  She would not miss Gavin, who had accepted the news of a change in her heart with élan. When she’d discovered what Jack had done for her with the king, she’d found the courage to cry off, and told Gavin truthfully that while she would always hold a fond place in her heart for him, she’d fallen hopelessly in love with Jack.

  “Lambourne?” he said. “He’s locked away.”

  “And my heart with him,” she said sincerely.

  Gavin smiled. “I can hardly claim no’ to have noticed it,” he said with a weary sigh. “I am sorry for it, for I’ve always been right fond of you, Lizzie, I have indeed. But I will wish you the best.” He shook his head, looked at his hands. “Perhaps this is just as well, aye? For I think I have fallen in love with London and the friends I have met here.”

  The ladies he’d met here—Lizzie knew very well what Gavin had been up to, thanks to Fiona.

  Gavin spent the fortnight of Jack’s captivity taking a lease on a smaller but suitably situated town home. He intended to stay on in London indefinitely, and wrote his father, asking him to look after the Gordon estate in his absence.

  Lizzie had written Charlotte, too, telling her she’d be home just as soon as she could. But she would not leave London without speaking to Jack, and now that he’d been freed…

  She was quite nervous. He was coming home today, and she didn’t know how he’d feel about finding her here. She checked her reflection one last time in the mirror and was tucking up a curl when she heard him.

  “Lizzie!” he shouted.

  She whirled around and put a hand to her heart to still it. It would not be stilled. She flew out of the suite, down the hall to the curving stairs, her feet flying down the
marble steps to the entrance hall.

  Jack was standing there, his hat swept off his head and clutched in his hand. His gaze raked over her. “You’re here yet.”

  “Aye,” she said uncertainly.

  He suddenly strode forward, cupped her elbow, and marched her into the gold salon. Just inside the door he paused, and the two of them looked at each other. How long they stood there just gazing at one another, Lizzie could not guess. A world of meaning and understanding seemed to flow between them in the silence.

  At last Jack spoke. “Gordon, he’s…?”

  “Gone,” she said quickly. “Our understanding has come to an end.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And what of our understanding?” he demanded. “The handfasting?”

  Lizzie’s heart skipped a beat. She swallowed down her fear and lifted her chin. “I’ve no’ cried off if that is what you mean. You sent me a bonnet—”

  “Woman, I’ve never in my life imagined one could attach so much meaning to a bloody bonnet. It was a hat! No’ a jewel, no’ a horse—”

  “And I am still waiting to hear you say that you esteem me,” she said stubbornly. “If ye donna, I will return to Thorntree today and you have my vow I shall never bother you again.”

  “I donna esteem you!” he cried heavenward, and Lizzie’s heart lurched. “What is in that head of yours, lass? I love you!”

  Lizzie gasped. Desire began to flow in her like a living, breathing thing.

  “Do you think I’ve thought of anything else these long weeks? There, then, you have it—I love you, Lizzie Beal! I have loved you I think since the moment you jumped from the window at Castle Beal! I have loved your spirit and your determination, and how you’ve cared for your sister and done your best to keep Thorntree from ruin, and I…I love you,” he said, taking a small step forward. “I love you more than I have a right to, for I’ve done some bloody awful things. But I love you more than I thought possible.”