“You are intent on catching the thief—or thieves?”
Jack sat back, crossing his feet at the ankles. “Something about the purloined coal and the mysterious levitating coin jar smacks of the same hand.”
“What about Mr. Cotton’s errant ram?”
“That might have been an innocent case of wandering livestock.”
Madeline rose, the topic far less interesting than kisses, though just as fraught. “It might not. In all three cases, somebody benefitted without costing the victim much of anything.”
“True, and in the cases of McArdle and Tavis, one could even say the victims themselves benefitted from the thief’s visit. Cotton’s ram is certainly none the worse for his outing either.”
The habits of service offered Madeline a distraction from watching Jack Fanning’s mouth form words. She wandered the room, straightening an afghan over the sofa, tidying a stack of books on the reading table, closing the cover over the piano keys. She was arranging music in alphabetical order by composer when a pair of strong arms encircled her waist from behind.
“Madeline Hennessey, you have been avoiding me.”
“Trying to.”
Jack dropped his arms and turned her by the shoulders. “Why?”
“You should marry Miss DeWitt.”
He took the music Madeline held—a piece by Clementi in F major that she’d spent a month memorizing when she’d been eleven—and set it aside.
“I should marry Miss DeWitt? And here I thought you the sensible, observant type.”
“Miss DeWitt would be the perfect wife for a knight of the realm. She’s pretty and cheerful, and would never impose on you. She’d make a good mother, and she’d know exactly how to seat a group of thirty, even if the numbers weren’t perfect.”
“Do you know how often I’ve entertained thirty people at dinner?”
He had the silver to seat twice that number, as well as the crystal and the china. “Not as often as you should.”
“Never, Madeline, nor do I intend to start now. I do, however, intend to kiss you.”
* * *
Jack’s thoughts were leaping about like March hares. One moment, he was grasping for the common thread connecting the thefts from Tavis and McArdle, the next he was admiring the curve of Madeline Hennessey’s mouth. Then he’d recall that his household was without a housekeeper, and be assailed by both relief and chagrin.
He ought to have turned Mrs. Abernathy off months ago.
And he ought to resolve his situation with Madeline Hennessey, though not when she was regarding him as if she’d like to flee straight out the nearest window.
“Unless, of course, you’d rather I didn’t kiss you,” Jack said, stepping back. “The choice is yours.”
“The kissing isn’t the problem.”
Kissing wasn’t entirely a solution either. Jack’s problem was that after years of cordial indifference on the subject of the fairer sex—or the next thing to it—his breeding organs had chosen now to recall their intended use.
Happy New Year, indeed.
On the one hand, the timing was awful. Miss Hennessey was arguably in Jack’s employ, and thus under his protection in the gentlemanly sense. He ought to leave her in peace on that ground alone. Then too, his mother was underfoot, to say nothing of the dimpled Miss DeWitt, as well as Saint Jeremy.
And thieves were loose in the shire who would not surrender themselves to the king’s man without conscientious investigation on Jack’s part.
The timing, the setting, the person—wrong, wrong, all wrong.
On the other hand, Jack was bloody grateful that his interest in women hadn’t deserted him permanently. Madeline Hennessey knew what she was about, and would plant him a facer if he overstepped.
And should Jack fail to heed that warning, Belmont would finish the thrashing Madeline started.
“If kissing isn’t the problem,” Jack said, “then what is?”
Miss Hennessey sat at the piano and pushed the cover off the keys. “If a woman marries, she becomes her husband’s property.”
Jack sat beside her on the piano bench, an agreeably crowded arrangement, even though the m-word had entered the conversation.
“Your great-aunts did not choose well, I take it.”
“They did not choose at all,” Madeline said, starting on a competent rendition of some lively bagatelle—without benefit of the written music. “Their parents chose for them, and my aunts dared not disobey. I hate that.”
“The times were different.” Jack watched her hands and wondered where a housemaid found time to learn, much less memorize, parlor music.
“The times weren’t that different,” she said. “You really should court Miss DeWitt. You need a wife, not a passing fancy. That’s all I’d be to you, and I can assure you, that’s all you’d be to me.”
She brought the piece to a cadence, leaving a ringing silence.
“I’ve never been a passing fancy before.” Nor did Jack care for that status now.
The slipper was supposed to go on the other, daintier foot. The male of the species bestowed his favors on ladies of easy virtue—note the plural—and they were the passing fancies, often very passing. Jack had never been particularly free with his favors, but prior to his marriage, he’d not been a monk either.
“I’ve been a passing fancy a time or two,” Miss Hennessey said. “I don’t recommend it. The promise of pleasure is seldom kept, the affection superficial. Then there’s the bother of being discreet, and extricating oneself when interest wanes or is caught by another passing fancy. All quite… tedious.”
She was right, in the normal course. Flirtations became affairs that all too often became petty dramas in the mess hall.
Though Jack did not anticipate another passing fancy catching his interest. Not in the foreseeable future, and discretion under the present circumstances wouldn’t be that great a challenge. If he had to choose a woman who was not given to histrionics, it would be Madeline Hennessey.
“You disdain marriage,” Jack said, “and you’re not interested in a dalliance, and yet, you haven’t flown off in high dudgeon. Should I be encouraged?”
Madeline rested her forehead on his shoulder, as if he’d delivered bad news. “You should be married, and I’m assuring you that if any such daft notion afflicts you where I am concerned, I will refuse you.”
“Refusal is the lady’s prerogative. I was married once before, years ago. You should know that. I know well what marriage entails.” Though he didn’t know what marriage to Madeline would entail, nor did the idea alarm him as it ought.
“Did you love her?”
“Passionately, to the point of foolishness, as young men are wont to do. She was half-English, lovely, and very stubborn. Saras was the reason I didn’t die when I escaped from captivity with only the most tenuous grip on my reason. Pahdi is her brother, and she charged him on her deathbed with looking after me.”
Jack knew not why he was telling Madeline this, unless it was in an effort to convince her that they weren’t so different. He’d been weary and lost, far from home, and not at all himself. His financial means had been ample, but emotionally, he’d been beggared by his ordeals.
“That’s the sadness in you,” Madeline said, folding her hands in her lap. “You smile so seldom, and you never refuse a duty. You’re trying to live up to her memory.”
Or was Jack trying to escape his memories of India? “I like to be busy, much as you do. The devil finds work for idle hands, witness, our rash of thefts. There’s something else you should know, Madeline.”
“You don’t like guns. Mrs. Belmont told me, but any fool can see your house has no weaponry on display. You don’t ride to hounds, you don’t go shooting. The footmen at Candlewick decided you’d seen too much of war.”
The conversation was unusual, but also like kissing. Intimate, novel, risky, and lovely. Jack took Madeline’s hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles.
“I abused opium. Took
me forever to get free of it. Pahdi and Saras went through hell with me, and I still… It’s not something I will ever be able to joke about or discuss lightly.”
“My aunts tipple. I shudder to think what they’d do if they could afford regular access to spirits.”
The aunts were Madeline’s cross to bear, or the sadness in her, to use her words. Jack would think about how to solve that problem later.
“Your aunts would never do anything to disgrace you,” he said, though they might help themselves to loose coal, or wrestle a jar of coins from the tavern to the vicarage.
Well, damn and blast.
Madeline retrieved her hand. “You are so confident of that, and yet, you barely know them. Your mother will be waking from her nap, and I should be above stairs if she wants me.”
Jack rose from the piano bench and scooted aside so Madeline could get to her feet. “If you enjoy playing the piano, you should feel free to use this instrument. It gets little enough use, and yet, it’s a fine, handsome specimen.” Like the gentleman standing before you.
“Now you’re flirting with me,” Madeline said, circling around him. “If you must flirt with me, I cannot stop you, but I ask that you do so with utmost discretion. You’d be much better off with Miss DeWitt.”
Jack stepped closer. “I’d be bored to tears, and you, Madeline Hennessey, are standing beneath the mistletoe. Again.”
* * *
Madeline kissed Jack as if he were leaving for India on the next tide, as if she were the one passionately, foolishly in love.
Because she was. The more she learned about Jack Fanning, the more she admired him, and the more she wished she wasn’t a former housemaid stealing biscuits for her aging relatives.
He kissed her back, not with the abandon with which Madeline flung herself at him, but with a relentlessly gentle thoroughness that had Madeline sighing against his mouth.
“You drive me daft, Jack Fanning.”
His clothing drove her daft. Madeline wanted to touch him, not the soft wool of his jacket, the silk of his waistcoat, or the fine linen of his shirt. She did not dare, because of all men, Jack Fanning was not for her.
He was above her touch, which didn’t bother her as much as it ought to. He was heartbreak personified, regret wearing breeches, and all she wanted was to get those breeches off of him.
The next thing she knew, she was sitting on his desk, watching as Jack crossed the library to lock the door.
Think, Madeline. “Your mother will awaken—”
“Five minutes,” he said, stalking right up to the desk and positioning himself between Madeline’s knees. “Give me five minutes, Madeline, and then you may retreat into your impersonation of a lady’s demure companion. We deserve five minutes, and then you can consider whether the pleasure I promise you is worth the tedium involved.”
Surely even Madeline in her overwrought state could get into only a little trouble in five minutes?
Jack recommenced the kissing, while Madeline managed to tug his shirt free of his breeches so she could go exploring. The skin of his back was warm and covered with what had to be scars. She learned the contours of his mistreatment by touch as he insinuated a hand under her skirts.
“You are a bold man, Jack Fanning.”
“I’m a determined lover, very determined.”
His touch was both knowing and delicate, tracing the shape of her knee, then drifting higher.
“What are you about, Jack?”
“Looking for treasure. Lie back on the desk, Madeline.”
She yanked his hair, hard.
“I beg your pardon. Madeline, may I invite you to lie back, while I spend the next three and a half minutes…” His caresses glossed over her sex, and Madeline subsided onto the blotter.
The position was undignified, with her legs sprawled over the side of the desk, her skirts in a wrinkled heap about her. One of her slippers slid off her foot and hit the carpet. She kicked the second one free as well.
“My slippers,” Jack said. “They’re too big for you.”
“Not too big,” Madeline retorted.
Jack was splendidly adventurous. He touched her between her legs, intimately and with far more skill than Madeline had known a man could possess.
More skill than she possessed, certainly.
Madeline had been aroused on occasion and found coupling with a considerate man a pleasant indulgence, but Jack’s fingers teased, stroked, and tempted her beyond the bounds of mere pleasance. Desire escalated to need, and from there to a dark, mad, clawing sense of frustration.
Jack’s free hand closed about Madeline’s breast, and she arched up into his touch.
“Let go, Madeline. I want to see you soar.”
The part of her mind still capable of thought heard the plea inside the command, and her body must have heard the invitation as well, for in the next moments, incandescent sensation coalesced where only frustrated desire had been. Madeline’s breath caught as her body endured more sheer glory than she’d experienced in all of her previous encounters together.
When she opened her eyes several dazed eternities later, Jack was bent over her, brushing her hair back from her brow, and looking like a worried Viking prince.
“I mussed your hair, Sir Jack.” Madeline ought to put him to rights, smooth his hair back to order, but all she could do was smile.
He smiled back, beatific and rascally, both. “You indeed mussed my hair, while I’m sure your skirts have become a bit wrinkled.” He helped Madeline to a sitting position, and she wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Is that a trick you learned in India?”
His heart beat in a steady rhythm beneath Madeline’s cheek. She’d pay for these five minutes, probably for the rest of her life, but she needed a few more moments in Jack’s arms.
“It’s a trick you can do for yourself, universal to the species. The experience can be repeated too.”
Wicked, wonderful man. How would she ever give him up, much less to the vapid charms of Miss DeWitt?
“Your five minutes are over, Sir Jack.” Madeline wanted nothing so much as to fall asleep in his arms amid the joyous glow of a fading pleasure.
“Shall I carry you upstairs?”
He could do it, and he would do it. Madeline drew back and ran her fingers through his hair. “No, thank you. You need a comb and some tidying.”
“I don’t think that’s what I need, and I’ll spend the next weeks convincing you that’s not what you need either. I think we’ve both had enough of tidying.” He kissed Madeline on the mouth, but mercifully refrained from elaborating on his point. When he stepped back, she scooted off the desk and slid her feet back into the discarded slippers.
Jack was fabulously wealthy and had the respect of the entire shire. He did not need her—would never need her—her common sense insisted.
He wanted her, though.
She wanted him too, even now, with satisfaction thrumming through her veins. “You may try to convince me that some discreet, friendly untidying would be enjoyable,” she said, mustering a smile. “When you’re not otherwise occupied with catching thieves or dodging Miss DeWitt.”
“I thrive on duty and challenge,” Jack replied, his smile nowhere in evidence. “And my five minutes are over… for now.”
He reached overhead, plucked a white berry from the mistletoe, and pitched it into the ash can by the hearth.
Madeline kissed him on the cheek and hurried up to her room, though the oversized slippers made a hasty retreat somewhat perilous.
Chapter Eight
* * *
Jeremy started his morning studies in the Teak House family parlor, brushing up on Proverbs, among his favorite books of the Old Testament. Pithy biblical phrases were a handy way to establish ecclesiastical credentials, which Jeremy had apparently failed to do with Vicar Weekes.
“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” The difficulty was, a snippet of Scripture didn’t
tell a fellow which brother was the one born to be of aid in the time of adversity—Jack or Jeremy?
“Oh,” Miss DeWitt said, “it’s you. I heard your voice and thought Sir Jack was in here.”
She stepped into the parlor and closed the door behind her. “I don’t suppose you know where he’s got off to now?”
Jack had taken Miss Hennessey to visit her aged aunties, it again being half day.
“He’s probably racketing about the shire in search of a thief or two, which leaves me entirely dependent on your good offices, Miss DeWitt.”
“Lucy Anne, please,” she said, taking a seat beside Jeremy on the sofa. “How can I be of assistance, Reverend Jeremy?”
She was a valiant little creature, hiding her disappointment in Jack’s absence. Jeremy could not blame Jack for investigating crimes, but this business of becoming Miss Hennessey’s personal coachman rapidly approached poor hospitality to Jack’s other guests.
“I’m not feeling very reverend, so you must call me Jeremy. I had hoped the local vicar might allow me to preach a sermon or two as a guest while I’m in the area, but he has yet to oblige me with an invitation. We do that, you know. We vicars. We share our pulpits.”
Except Jeremey hadn’t had a living of his own for more than a year, since the bishop had recalled him from Sussex, where he’d been happily preaching away to a flock more elderly than devout. He missed his congregation, and worse, missed the sense of providing a contribution simply by being a cheerful presence.
A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit drieth up the bones.
“I heard about the darts money,” Miss DeWitt said, patting Jeremy’s hand. “The vicar must be a bit at sixes and sevens, don’t you think? The thief has preached a sermon to the local flock without taking the pulpit at all.”
Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) Page 14