Chapter Eleven
* * *
Jack had overseen many a troop movement in India, and transferring Theodosia Hickman to Teak House required the same skills—patience and a talent for heavy lifting. The traveling coach had been pressed into service for Mama, Theodosia, Martha and the pups, while a quantity of clothing and personal effects had been packed into the boot. Jack and Madeline had remained behind, tidying up the provisions brought over from Teak House, making the bed, and banking the fire.
“I’ll establish one of the grooms here temporarily,” Jack said, “and if Theo’s recovery is prolonged, I’ll find a tenant’s son ready to try his hand at running a smallholding.”
Madeline was moving slowly, wrapping up perishables, organizing staples in the cupboards.
“Theo’s recovery might be… she might not recover entirely,” Madeline said. “When your mother departs for London, I might have to move in with my aunt.”
And Jack might lose his temper in the next instant. “Your aunts need the coin you earn in service.” Though Madeline had a point as well. Theo had been barely keeping up, clearly putting off tasks that mattered—scrubbing the water trough, mucking out the byre, periodically draining and cleaning the cistern, among others.
One good spring storm, and Jack suspected the roof would start leaking, which spelled doom for a small, elderly domicile.
“I like my position at Candlewick, but selfishness on my part won’t solve what’s amiss here, Jack.”
Coin would solve what was amiss, but instinct warned Jack not to point out the obvious. He had coin, and the Hennessey females had enough pride to tell him to keep every penny of it.
“Vicar Weekes needs a puppy,” Jack said. “The pups are certainly old enough to leave their mother.”
Madeline closed the cupboard and eyed Jack as if he’d spoken in Urdu. “Vicar Weekes, who’s seldom seen outside his study or the church, needs a puppy?”
“Certainly. Mrs. Weekes is occasionally alone at night when her husband must comfort a family dealing with illness or the death of a loved one. A dog provides both company and safety, and those pups will be enormous.”
They’d eat enormous amounts too, and Theo had barely been feeding herself.
“I’m sure you must be right,” Madeline said. “But I’m tired and out of sorts. I’ve never known Vicar to have a pet.”
She was asleep on her feet, while Jack felt the roiling energy he associated with anticipation of a battle. For Madeline to move to this mean, tiny cottage would be wrong, and for Jack to tell her what she must do or not do would be wrong as well.
Also stupid.
“If you’re through here,” Jack said, putting the tin of tea in the cupboard, “then I’ll take you back to Teak House.”
Jack stood immediately beside Madeline, close enough to see the fatigue leaving shadows beneath her eyes. Her hair had been tidily pinned earlier in the day, but beating rugs, remaking the bed, and dusting every inch of the cottage had imperiled her coiffure.
This was what love looked like—tired, anxious, disheveled, but willing to soldier on indefinitely.
Jack tugged loose a pin threatening to abandon her coiffure entirely and handed it to her. “I sent Higgans a note last evening before we set off.”
“I know.”
“I had a note delivered to Hattie this morning, alerting her to the situation as well. You haven’t received a reply from Higgans, have you?”
“He’d reply to you, wouldn’t he?”
Jack turned Madeline by the shoulders and drew her into his embrace. “I signed the note with your initials: Aunt Theo quite ill. Please come. I didn’t want to explain why a neighbor three miles distant from this cottage would be notifying the physician, and we were in a hurry.”
Madeline rested against him, which helped quell the anger building inside Jack.
“I never expected him to come, Jack. The last time Aunt was ill, it took us three months to pay Higgans’ fee, and all he did was glance at her and suggest we send for the surgeon to bleed her.”
Nowhere in this cottage could two people sit side by side except on the freshly made bed, so Jack remained in the front room, arms around Madeline.
“I am the king’s man, and Higgans’s cavalier disregard for a helpless old woman should be a crime. I can do nothing to hold him accountable though.” The groom who’d delivered last night’s note to Higgans had assured Jack that the doctor had been home preparing to sit down to a hot, hearty supper.
Madeline slipped from Jack’s embrace. “This is when Vicar would tell you to leave Higgans’s fate in God’s hands.”
“Vicar Weekes’s living is generous, his manse snug, and his duties congenial. When Mrs. Weekes is ill, Higgans will come at a smart pace. I like Weekes generally, but he’s lazy, and in this case, his guidance is ridiculous.”
Ah, finally. A small, tired smile. Madeline kissed Jack’s cheek and surveyed the cottage. “Weekes is lazy, but not mean, and you are fierce. I’ve done what I can here. If you’d take me back to Teak House, I’d appreciate it.”
The emergency of Theodosia’s illness had passed, and for Jack to be alone with Madeline under these circumstances—no family under the same roof, no servants hovering, no exigent circumstances—was courting scandal.
Jack would rather court her.
Life was just full of frustrations lately. Take, for example, the positive loathing Jack had developed for Madeline’s cloak and boots, about which he could also do little.
“The damned darts tournament is tonight,” Jack said when he’d assisted Madeline into the sleigh and turned the horses onto the lane. “Will you attend?”
“Of course not.”
“Half of Belmont’s staff will be on hand to cheer their team along. Your presence wouldn’t be unusual.” His request came not from any male need for her to admire his prowess at the dartboard—if any prowess he still had, after the past twenty-four hours—but rather, from a need for Madeline to put down her burdens for a few hours and cast off her responsibilities.
Madeline twitched at the lap robe and pulled up the collar of her worn cloak.
“You told your mother that I begged for her to attend Aunt Theo, and made it sound as if you loathed the idea. Why?”
Even tired, Madeline would not have neglected to explore this topic. “Mama might have refused me a direct request, and I couldn’t have that. She is toweringly competent in the sickroom, and her presence at the cottage provided chaperonage, of sorts. The woman is endlessly contrary, though. If I’d asked, she would have told me I was presuming, interfering, and otherwise neglected to use sense.”
Jack had been terrified his mother would refuse to help.
“Thank you for interfering,” Madeline said. “My aunt could well be dead or dying if you’d been less willing to interfere. Your mother simply wants you to appreciate her, to notice her, and all she’s learned in life.”
Madeline’s perspective bore the unmistakable odor of unwelcome truth. “I notice and appreciate that my mother, like present company, can be stubborn and contrary. If Mama hadn’t been willing to come, Jeremy would have accompanied me without a second thought.”
Because Jeremy was a good man. Jack had reason to hope that Jeremy was an accomplished kisser as well.
Madeline yawned behind her gloved hand. “I like your family, Jack Fanning. You ought to get to know them sometime. Your mother isn’t the only one who’s stubborn and contrary.”
That was the last thing she said before falling asleep with her head on Jack’s shoulder. The better to spare her from the bitter wind, Jack slowed the horse to a walk, and took the roads home, rather than the shortcuts across the farm lanes.
* * *
“Well?”
Jack Fanning had a way of making a single syllable into an entire interrogation. Too bad the king’s man hadn’t any children—yet—who’d show him the futility of that imperious tone and arched eyebrow.
“Well, have a seat,” Axe
l said, beneath the noise of the Weasel’s championship-night crowd. “I vow, Fanning, this is the last year I’m leading a team. I will sponsor entire legions, but when a man hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks, this nonsense pales. My attendance at the assembly is looking none to assured either.”
Fanning slid onto the bench on the opposite side of the table, the same table they’d occupied the last time they’d endured the Weasel’s hospitality. Nothing wrong with allowing a little comfortable predictability to creep into life.
Axel and Jack Fanning weren’t old, after all. They were merely… mature.
“Half the damned shire must be here tonight,” Fanning said, as the foam on his ale gradually settled. “Would that Vicar’s Bible studies gathered as much support. How is Mrs. Belmont?”
Mrs. Belmont was counting the days—or nights—until the assembly, much like her husband. “Abigail thrives on motherhood. The child will want for nothing, and it’s as if with that baby in her arms, Abigail doesn’t either. A man can feel…”
“Extraneous,” Fanning said. “Surplus to requirements. As when not five people are available for a game of whist, but six, and the poor fellow who owns the premises is told to go bring his ledgers up to date, or write to some old chum in India. I am the host at Teak House, in theory at least, but abruptly my earthly sanctuary has become overrun with chattering females abetted by my brother. He knows more bawdy jokes than both Mama and Theodosia Hickman combined.”
A tavern maid hurried by, and at the next table, some half-drunken smallholder stuck out a booted foot and tripped her. She landed more or less in Jack Fanning’s lap, which resulted in much laughter from those nearby, and a saucy smile for Fanning from the woman.
Fanning rose with the lady in his arms, set her on her feet, and kept hold of her by the wrist. He turned a ferocious glower on the neighboring table.
“Battery,” he snapped, “consists of a harmful or offensive touching of another’s person. Apologize to the lady or be given an opportunity to admire my formal parlor on Monday morning, when I will have you bound over for the assizes.”
One did not interfere with the magistrate when he was about the king’s business—particularly not when his tone conjured images of a growling tiger, complete with a switching tail. Axel kept his mouth shut, as did the lady.
“I meant no harm,” the young fellow grumbled.
“Had Miss Tansy fallen and struck her head against this post,”—Fanning delivered a hearty blow to solid wood—“she would have suffered grievous injury, to say nothing of lost wages and humiliation. Whether you meant to cause harm or not is immaterial. You meant to trip her.”
The entire table looked sheepish, and Tansy’s detractor suffered a punch on the arm from the man next to him.
“Apologize, Wyatt. The lady coulda smacked her gob. My cousin lost a tooth that way.”
“I’m sor—”
Jack Fanning grew three inches taller on a single in-drawn breath. “When a gentleman tenders an apology to a lady, he does so on his feet.”
The crowd had not yet noticed this exchange, which was fortunate. Over the years, the Weasel had been the scene of a few mills in conjunction with the darts championship, and Axel had no desire to explain to his lady how the king’s man—a sober, reasonable fellow, when not falling in love—had started a general donnybrook.
The batterer scrambled to his feet and swiped a hand over unkempt hair. “Miss Tansy, I do apologize. I meant no harm.”
Tansy’s blush was most becoming.
“And?” Fanning added.
“And I won’t do it again.”
“Ever,” Fanning said, letting go of Tansy’s wrist. “If I were you, Miss Tansy, I’d serve the occupants of this table last on every occasion.”
She bobbed a curtsey and scampered off, casting a smirk over her shoulder at Wyatt. The young men vacated their table and shuffled away in the direction of the dartboard.
“They’ll be engaged by the time the assembly rolls around,” Axel said, when he wanted instead to knock Fanning’s head against the post. “Well done. Was that a demonstration of the legendary diplomacy you exhibited in India?”
Fanning took his seat, gaze on the young men now lounging against the bar and trying to look adult.
“Do you know, I dropped my butler at the lending library this evening, and from thence he is walking back to Teak House. Despite this weather, I could do with about twenty miles of forced march myself right now, in any direction away from this nonsense.”
Axel remained silent, for the king’s man wasn’t finished.
“In India,” Fanning said, “I didn’t exercise diplomacy so much as I translated. My domestics taught me the local languages, and I was able to prevent some misunderstandings. I caused a few as well.”
The subject would do as a change in topic when Fanning was spoiling for a fight. “Is that how you were taken captive? In the midst of translation duties?”
“That’s one way to look at it. Another is that I became entangled in local politics, and my simple, straightforward English mind wasn’t capable of foreseeing cause and effect as they would play out in the vastly more complicated arena of Indian society.”
“Like a debutante at a ball,” Axel said. “But like most of the young ladies, you eventually came right?”
The man staring at his ale across from Axel was not right. He was tired, irritable, and very likely besotted. About damned time he came home from the jungles of memory.
“I came right eventually. My colonel had had me declared dead—attacked by a tiger, drowned, waylaid by brigands. In India, misfortune comes in many fatal guises. The lady I married had third cousins who took exception to the behavior of some junior officers toward the local merchants. My capture was intended to make a point. Because the colonel had no control over his men, the underlying offenses toward the merchants had gone unpunished, and thus by way of retaliation—it’s complicated.”
“When you tried to atone for the ineptitude of your superior officers, you were instead made an example of.”
“Until I inconveniently escaped, and then the only course open to my colonel was to pretend he was overjoyed to see me alive.”
“Though doubtless, surplus to requirements.”
“Shut your mouth, Belmont.”
Axel lifted his tankard in a toast. “How’s Madeline?”
Fanning’s scowl deepened, which ought not to have been possible. “Madeline is exhausted. Theodosia Hickman has removed to Teak House. She became dangerously ill with a lung fever, and Madeline was up most of the night caring for her.”
How would Jack Fanning know Madeline Hennessey’s whereabouts in the wee hours unless—?
“How fares Theodosia?”
“Well enough. She will be cosseted past all bearing, until she recovers in defense of her wits. I didn’t realize Higgans participated in these gatherings.”
The good doctor was at the bar next to Vicar Weekes, engaged in deep discussion.
“Everybody will stop by at some point this evening,” Axel said. “Because you’re here, they’re more likely to behave themselves for the duration of the tournament. After that, Tavis is on his own.”
“When can you take a puppy?”
The course of true love must be running quite amok. “Fanning, I despair of your conversation.”
“The beasts are in my stable, consuming several times more than grown men in good health. You promised, Belmont.”
Axel had promised he’d discuss with his wife the prospect of adding a dog to the Candlewick household, among other items.
“I can take the dog tomorrow, assuming your head isn’t too sore. Bring a puppy by, and Madeline as well. I miss her.”
Fanning left off glowering at the physician and the vicar. “You miss her?”
“Terribly. The secret to Cook’s delicious scones was that Madeline beat the batter just so. The footmen were cheerful because Madeline scolded them and flirted with them in equal measure.
Mrs. Turnbull has accused the maids of being forgetful, when in fact, my housekeeper is the one who can no longer recall which task she gave to whom because Madeline managed the assignments. Even my stable master misses the only person who could suggest to him how the saddle room should be organized. My wife, alas, is concerned with a newborn, and thus—in defense of my entire demesne, I miss Madeline terribly, as does the rest of my household.”
Fanning’s expression traveled an interesting spectrum, from thunderous, to curious, to commiserating.
“Too bad, old man. You can’t have her back. Madeline is threatening to move in with Theodosia when my mother returns to London.”
Hence the scowls, frowns, and threats of arrest.
“That won’t do, Fanning. The senior Hennessey women are a problem, and woe to the man who oversteps when he tries to effect a solution. Having Madeline give up a salaried position to feed chickens with Theo won’t solve a thing.”
“Of course it won’t.”
“So what will you do?” Propose, you damn fool. Get down on your handsome knees and ask the woman for her hand in marriage.
“For starters, I shall sell the rest of those puppies, cash in advance.”
* * *
“You should give Miss DeWitt a puppy,” Jack said.
Jeremy did not consider himself a gifted intellect, but neither was he daft. “I should give Miss DeWitt one of those mongrels impersonating carnivorous elephants in your stable?”
“Of course,” Jack said, pacing around the estate office’s desk. Jack’s path was clockwise, relative to Jeremy’s seat at the desk. “If I give the woman anything—a single blossom—Mama will get ideas. Miss DeWitt is a charming young lady, but Mama’s ideas are not always well-thought-out.”
True enough. Mama had ideas enough to restart the Napoleonic Wars. Abetted by Mrs. Theodosia Hickman, all manner of plots were possible.
Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) Page 20