by Abigail Agar
The Duke held up a letter. “He had it sent from the harbour master’s office. It is a letter detailing all he did before he left. He was rather busy.”
“I see,” Jack said. Just like his brother to leave him in the lurch and make him go through unnecessary things. Bet Henry was enjoying a laugh about that right now.
Lady Shelton said softly, “We owe you an apology, Jack. I especially was so hurt by the words in that book that I saw nothing but my own anger. I am sorry that I did not listen.”
“I understand,” Jack said quietly. “What will you do about Henry? Gwyn is insistent that he be left alone, but I know that it is Father’s authority that will be listened to.”
The Duke nodded slowly. “I have been thinking of that. Much of my thoughts were with young Gwyn as I thought of things that would appease her. Yet, hearing her wish to see Henry gone in good peace, I question my thirst for vengeance.” He shook his head. “Women are a surprising bunch.”
“That they are,” Jack agreed.
The Duke asked thoughtfully, “What of your thoughts on the matter?”
Jack had plenty of thoughts most of the time as to what he would like done to his brother, but he just sighed. “I just want everything to be as it was, and not abiding that, then at least as close as it can be,” Jack said earnestly.
“What of Gwyn? What do you think she will do now? I hate that our family has visited such needless frustrations upon her and at a time when she could so dearly not afford it.” Lady Shelton wrung her hands as she looked at Jack with worry. “Do you think the child will be alright?”
Jack nodded slowly. “I think she will recover. As Father said, women are surprising.”
***
(A month later)
Gwyn frowned at her reflection. “What is it?” Adrienne asked curiously.
“Do you think my hair looks better down?” Gwyn asked pointedly.
Adrienne chuckled as she took some pins out of Gwyn’s hair and let the woman’s brown hair fall in ringlets along her shoulders. “I think it looks lovely down,” Adrienne commented.
The little room they sat in was a bit chilly with the wintery breezes outside, and the church as a whole seemed not very well insulated. Winter was determined to come on early, but Gwyn just wanted to get down the aisle, hopefully for the last time.
“I think it is time for us to get into position,” Adrienne said as she listened. “They have started the organ music.”
Gwyn let Adrienne put the finishing touches on her hair before they quickly got themselves out the door and down the hall. They met Gwyn’s parents who gave her bright smiles. “Is it time?” Gwyn’s father asked.
“I do think it is, Papa,” Gwyn said cheerfully. She took the man’s hand in her own. Adrienne opened the doors for them, and they strode through as the organ played them down the aisle.
Gwyn looked around at the faces that greeted her. She saw Mary and her husband to whom she gave a smile. Mary returned the expression with excitement. Nothing was more a welcome sight though than the man at the altar. Gwyn smiled at Jack in his grey suit.
Jack smiled back at Gwyn, and her heart fluttered against her chest. At the altar, Gwyn’s father happily handed her off much to Jack’s amusement. Gwyn grinned after the man as he was led away by her mother to their seats. Gwyn took Jack’s hand and let him help her up onto the little raised spot by the altar.
The minister’s words blended into the sounds of blood rushing in her ears. Gwyn wanted to rush the man through because even the few words that he had to say were too many for her. She held her breath when he got to the part about people being allowed to call out their disagreement with the marriage. Thankfully, the church remained silent.
She shared a smile and a soft laugh with Jack as the ceremony continued. When it got to the part where they were presented as man and wife, Gwyn thought her heart might burst. This was the day she had dreamed of for so long. Hope had been lost and then gained again, but she never should have feared because love always seems to find a way.
Epilogue
(Three years later)
The halls of Stanton Manor clamoured as Gwyn called out for her father. The man had gone missing while playing hide-n-seek with his grandson. Now Gwyn had both the Stanton and Shelton households out looking for the man.
Jack came through the double doors just as Gwyn entered the sunroom. “You should come with me,” Jack said with a mischievous smile.
“Why? What is it?” Gwyn called out as Jack disappeared back out the doors. “Jack, answer me,” she called out as she hurried after the man. “Jack Shelton, you come here this minute.”
Jack called, “You will have to catch me first.”
“We are not children.” Gwyn laughed, but she followed him, certain that the man had found something of her father.
Gwyn stopped as she came around a bend in the path and spotted her father and son playing on the wooden bridge. “Papa, what are you doing?”
Her father looked around and said, “Alas! We have been found!” the man wailed, and Gwyn frowned. Her young son, Fredrick, wailed as well.
“Look out, Mama!” Fredrick called out in alarm.
An arm went around Gwyn’s waist, and she found herself hoisted up. “I have her now!” Jack’s voice rang in Gwyn’s ears.
“Put me down,” Gwyn demanded through her laughter.
Jack said, “Quiet, ye wench!”
Fredrick and her father were already on their way to her rescue. Jack deposited Gwyn behind him. “Let her go,” demanded Fredrick in as close to a pirate voice as the boy could manage.
“Stand aside, Blackbeard!” Gwyn’s father yelled as he produced a wooden sword from his belt. “We are saving the lass from ye!”
Fredrick whooped in glee behind his grandfather’s proclamation.
“Ha!” Jack yelled. “I will take ye both on!”
Gwyn laughed with glee as the fight commenced. Jack dodged and weaved around Fredrick and Lord Stanton’s attacks until finally, Fredrick landed a blow that felled the dreaded pirate captain to his knees. “We got ’im!” Fredrick yelled in triumph before he and his grandfather ran off towards the house.
Gwyn shook her head as she looked down at her husband lying dead on the ground. “You could have just told me,” Gwyn said as she gave the man a gentle kick to the side.
Jack peeked at her out of one eye. “You would have had me ruin the surprise?”
“I could have done without being attacked by a pirate, but I am glad that he got what was coming to him,” Gwyn said with a nod of her head.
Jack snorted with laughter as he got up off the ground and dusted himself off. “So you would have me run through, eh?”
“You did try to kidnap me,” Gwyn reminded the man.
He shook his finger at her. “Wary, I am a vengeful man.”
Gwyn grinned and said, “I can handle vengeful.”
“But a pirate is patient,” Jack warned. “A pirate is stealthy, and he will get you when you least expect it.”
Gwyn laughed brightly. “Oh?” She turned towards the house. “Then I looked forward to what you have in store.”
***
Shelton Hall was aglow with candles as Lady Shelton held a dinner in honour of her husband’s birthday. The wind was blustery outside the windows, and frost lined the glass, but inside the atmosphere was warm, and the drink flowed. Lady Shelton tapped her glass to get everyone’s attention.
“Please, may I have your attention,” Lady Shelton called in her prim and proper voice. Everyone grew silent. She smiled at her guests. “Tonight is my husband’s birthday, and we all gather to celebrate with him.” Lady Shelton looked over at the man who waved his hand in the air with a smile much to everyone’s amusement.
Lady Shelton continued, “All of you gathered here are dear friends and family. We have had the distinct privilege of sharing our lives with each of you. You have watched our children grow and now our grandchildren.” Fredrick bounced in his seat to get
attention, and people chuckled at the child’s antics.
“Most of all you have watched the journey of our youngest son growing into the mantle that was thrust upon him. On his birthday, my husband wanted to bestow a special gift onto Jack. Darling?” Lady Shelton looked at her husband expectantly.
Lord Shelton stood up and boomed out. “Hello. Jack, could you come here?”
Jack came up to stand beside his father warily. “What is going on?” Jack whispered, but the man ignored him.
Lord Shelton said loudly, “Jack has worked tirelessly not only to perform his new duties as Duke of Castleberry but also to run two households and keep all of us nice and cozy.”
There was a round of applause mostly from Gwyn and the household staff which made Jack eye her curiously. Lord Shelton continued as the applause died down, “Jack, we just want you all to know that we appreciate you more than you know. We have watched you grow, and you were made for this position. That being said, we want to give you a small token of our affection.”
Lord Shelton held out his hands, and two maids brought in a large cake in the shape of a pirate flag. Jack laughed heartily. “You did this?” Jack asked as he looked over at Gwyn.
Gwyn shrugged. “We all did, but I suggested the shape of the cake. Once a pirate, always a pirate.”
THE END
Can't get enough of Gwyn and Jack? Then make sure to check out the Extended Epilogue to find out…
Will Jack and Gwyn be able to put their past behind and finally reconcile with his brother?
What other secrets are being kept from Jack?
Will Captain Shelton be able to provide Gwyn the life she's always dreamt of?
Click the link or enter it into your browser
http://abigailagar.com/gwyn
THE END
(Turn the page to read “The Mystery of the Hunted Lady”, my Amazon Best-Selling novel!)
The Mystery of the Hunted Lady
Introduction
Vera Ladislaw, a third generation Polish aristocrat, lives a quiet life in England, with her father dabbling in political reform and agricultural innovations, and her mother always on the hunt for a good husband. When the unthinkable happens, Vera’s life is torn apart. Alone, framed for a terrible crime and on the run, she disguises herself as a boy and finds work at the remote and storied Avonside Manse, where a mysterious Lord lives in splendid isolation. Will she be able to discover the truth?
Lord James Stanley, despite his extravagant balls and his rakish ways, is a rather lonely figure. When he finds a confidant in the alter ego of young Vera, a strong bonding is to come. He keeps well-sealed secrets himself, but when Vera’s true identity is revealed, will he still stand for her innocence? Will he be able to trust her?
Despite him being a notorious libertine, Vera finds there is more to him than meets the eye and soon finds herself caught in a complicated web of romance, intrigue, and danger. How will they manage to untangle this web and find true happiness in one another?
Chapter 1
Although aware of her own beauty in the mirror, Vera Ladislaw was not terribly au fait with its effect on men. It was a new power that was only just dawning on her, and she found herself intrigued by its effects.
She had in the last year or so of her flowering become aware of their oddly sweaty brows or, at times, unpleasantly leering smiles. On other occasions they seemed over-gentle in their desire to serve her tea or help her into a carriage, even when, by any estimation of blood, they were of far superior stock than her.
She had not yet decided if she found these attentions flattering, which of course they were, or frightening as she found herself increasingly studied as if she were one of her father’s specimen butterflies pinned under a glass.
To be a foreign aristocrat was a great leveller in England since so many of such diverse ranks had slipped across the Channel chased by the Corsican devil, Napoleon, in the preceding years of conquest.
The Ladislaws had established themselves before this fashionable rush, having come across from Poland in the ’70s when Prussian upstarts had replaced the Polish aristocracy at sword and musket point.
The Ladislaws had been established in and around Bathcombe for long enough now to have all but lost their accents and to have established a thoroughly, in their view, debased living as merchant farmers.
Great-grandmother Ladislaw had been forced to pawn the family’s State Tiara to provide capital for her husband’s business, and although they now lived on a small country estate owned outright – and were able to keep Mishka, their maidservant – the need to work for a living still stung for Vera’s Maman and Papa.
One thing about her beauty that Vera had become used to was the knowledge that in the mind of Maman and Papa it was hitched firmly to the family’s fortunes. For several months, the farm had been assailed by suitors invited to view her rather in the way Papa would take prize cattle into the market, and with each visit Maman had repeated the importance of a suitable match, through which the family might come by a title in their new country.
A poor choice on the other hand, in the overwrought words of Maman, would condemn the family ‘to join the growing bourgeoisie of industrial England.’
So Vera had spent many an afternoon over the summer at tea and cakes with men of many professions, so long as that profession yielded at least eight-hundred a year, or else came with a peerage.
Vera took the task of understanding these men very seriously but found almost at once that it was impossible to draw a man into a discussion. She was either mumbled at by the weak, or ignored wholly by the strong that saw her as little more than a clothes-rack or doll.
Today, however, the suitor in question had made a promising start. He was young, showing signs of much the same lack of surety that Vera herself felt. A man with a regimental uniform and the beginnings of what was clearly his first moustache growing unconvincingly from his upper lip.
He sipped his tea and a rime of milky brown hung in droplets from the sparse down of his upper lip. Vera was distracted enough by the mishap that she almost missed his proud boast to be heading to, ‘Your homeland, Poland, I hope. We are to be sent to reinforce the Prussians against Napoleon’s advance.’
‘I am sure you are aware that the Prussians are occupiers of Poland,’ she said, reminded of Maman’s habit of wincing theatrically whenever Prussia was mentioned. ‘My family is only here because the Prussians sit atop our rightful lands like a plague. While I would not wish harm upon yourself or the fighting men of my adopted homeland, you must understand I feel a great deal of hope when I hear that Napoleon is knocking at our door bringing with him the chance for an independent Poland within his Empire.’
The words had come out in a nervous rush, and she felt herself blushing, in part because she had got carried away and in part because she knew that so much of what she said was not her thoughts or feelings but those of her father.
So you’re parroting Papa’s political speeches now, she scolded herself.
‘I say,’ the young man said, rather startled. ‘You’re not rooting for this Napoleon fellow, are you?’ He was squinting suspiciously at her as if she were hiding state secrets beneath her petticoats and he could suss them out by staring at her bodice hard enough.
She blushed again. Fix this you silly thing, her inner voice snapped.
When he met her eyes and she laughed self-consciously, he was clearly a little unsure of himself, but Vera was pleased to see her good humour was carrying him along.
‘I am a mere spectator of this back and forth,’ she said aloud. ‘Britain has created its Empire abroad; Napoleon has created his in Europe. Neither Empire worries about what people fall beneath the boots of progress and expansion. I am on neither side in this; the French Republic may be as brutal as the Prussian tyranny in the end. I may never get to see the land of my forebears. So, I will continue to drink my tea and observe, while brave men like you go forth to decide the outcome of history. Are you not at all afraid t
o go?’