Slightly Noble

by Lilly Gayle

  “Jack!”

  ****

  Abby stood, clutching a wooden box to her chest. Loose tendrils of blonde hair escaped the snood at the nape of her neck and brushed her shoulders. Her blue eyes widened, and her cheeks flushed. Jack could only stare.

  She had lost weight while he was away. Her stomach was flat, and her breasts were high and firm behind the wooden box. Even with the startled expression on her face, she looked beautiful.

  He swallowed to coat his suddenly dry throat. “I did not mean to startle you. When I found the door locked, I assumed you had gone out with Uncle William.”

  “You could have knocked,” she said, a slight tremor in her voice.

  “As I said, I assumed you were out.” He strode forward and bent to retrieve the brooch she had dropped. He turned it over in his hands as he rose, examining the loosened silver wires sticking out at odd angles. Had he just caught her destroying the jewelry he had given her? Or had he just discovered a new facet to his wife’s personality?

  “It was broken,” she stammered. “I was trying to fix it.”

  He smiled, enjoying the flush that spread from her cheeks to her chest. “Were you, now?”

  Her gaze slid to the floor. “It did not seem that complicated a task. Anyone can thread beads onto a silver wire.”

  He had imagined broaching the subject of her father a bit more delicately, but this was as good a way as any. In fact, catching her by surprise could prove most beneficial. Abby’s facial expressions were much easier to read when he kept her off-balance.

  A smile teased his mouth, despite his best efforts to hide it. “Especially someone whose father is a jeweler.”

  Her chin snapped upward, and her eyes widened. “What?”

  “I met your father.” Brushing past her, he laid the brooch on the desk. Then he took Abby’s arm and guided her back to the chair. He eased her down onto the seat and turned to sit on the edge of the bed when he noticed the cradle. He stepped closer and looked down at his heir. A smile touched his face and slithered into his heart. “He has grown.”

  “Babies tend to do that,” she snipped.

  He turned to his wife. The guilty flush remained, but her eyes flashed with angry defiance. Abby still did not trust him.

  Raking a hand through his hair, he walked to the end of the bed and sat down. Fear flashed in her eyes, but she held his gaze, looking almost rebellious.

  He sighed and his shoulders slumped. The time for secrets was long past. Abby was his wife, and he would hear the truth and her reasons for keeping it from him. “Why didn’t you tell me your father was a famous jeweler in London?”

  Color leached from her cheeks. “So you could keep Will and me hidden until you extorted money from him in exchange for our location? I think not.”

  Had she honestly believed him to be so unscrupulous? Anger and regret twisted his stomach into a hard knot. He had kept secrets, too, trusting her no more than she had trusted him. He had married her for one reason only, but now that he had what he wanted, he wanted more. Was it even possible? Drury and possibly even her own father had misused her. Gaining her trust would be nearly impossible. Yet, what kind of life would they have together if he failed?

  “I don’t need your father’s money, Abby. I am quite wealthy in my own right.”

  “Only because you married me and got your precious heir,” she said, her voice rising in volume.

  “I made my fortune as a privateer. I do not need money from either of our fathers,” he growled, and the baby whimpered.

  He stood, turning toward the cradle. Abby rushed past him, snatching the child up from his bed, and holding him to her chest as if protecting him from a raging lion.

  “Don’t touch him!” Her body quivered, and he could almost smell her fear.

  During the war, he had grown used to seeing fear in a woman’s eyes. Whenever his crew had overtaken a ship with women on board, they had looked at him as if he were Black Beard or some other notorious pirate intent on raping and pillaging. He had never counted women as spoils of war and had forbidden his crew to touch them. Yet their fear had not shredded his heart the way Abby’s did.

  “You have nothing to fear from me, Abby. I do not need your father’s money, and I cannot imagine why you did not tell me the truth. Is your father a greedy man? Are you afraid of him?”

  She blinked her big blue eyes. “Certainly not.”

  “Then who, Abby?” He stepped closer and touched her cheek. She flinched. The baby whimpered. “Who hurt you and made you so mistrustful?”

  “Why should I trust you?” She took a step back. “You are a privateer, little better than a pirate.”

  “I’m a merchant sea captain who used my ship to aid America and Britain during times of war. I did not plunder purely for profit, but I was good at it. I make no excuses for that. But I would never harm you or your child. It pains me that you would think otherwise.” It more than pained him. It broke his heart.

  He did not expect to have the kind of marriage Gilchrest and his wife shared. That kind of love was hard for Jack to fathom. But he had never wanted a marriage like his parents’ either. He did not want to live separately from Abby. He wanted a family. The kind of family he had never had.

  Abby flushed but held his gaze. “You have given me no reason to trust you. You have hardly been here at all.”

  She patted the baby’s bottom, soothing his whimpers. Jack’s heart twisted in his chest. In his efforts to protect his wife and her reputation, he had widened the gulf between them. “I had little choice. I needed to secure my inheritance without exposing you to scandal.”

  Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second before she schooled her expression. “And I needed to protect my father. You went to great lengths to secure your inheritance, and I had no idea how much further you would go to gain wealth and power.”

  She was right, of course. He had given her his name, but he had not given her a single reason to trust him. He had been more concerned with finding out about her past than in getting to know her or allowing her to get to know him. And after meeting her father, he suspected there was more to her relationship with Drury than even he had guessed. “Is that what Drury did? Did he use you to get to your father’s money?”

  “No.” She expelled a frustrated breath. “Drury was already engaged to a duke’s daughter. He did not need my father’s money.”

  The damn bastard was a rake and a scoundrel, a heartless womanizer who preyed on the innocent. Blood roared in Jack’s ears. His rage was a beast he wanted to unleash, but the fear blossoming in Abby’s eyes tempered his fury. Exhaling slowly, he forced himself to speak softly. “But you did not know he was engaged. Did you, Abby?”

  The softening of her features made Jack’s heart pound against his ribs. She ducked her chin. “No. I thought he loved me. He was so full of compliments. So very gallant.”

  “And you believed his lies.”

  She nodded, avoiding his gaze. “He seemed sincere, and he was very respectful.”

  “I’m sure he was—in public.” If Jack ever got his hands on the bastard, he would beat him to within an inch of his life. He forced down the fury and tried to rein in his temper.

  Abby nodded but kept her eyes lowered. Jack wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed and patted the mattress. She raised her chin and visibly swallowed, the wary expression in her eyes twisting his gut into tighter knots. Then she took a shuddering breath and bravely came forward to sit beside him, leaving at least a foot of mattress between them.

  “Tell me what happened, Abby. Tell me how you ended up at the Sisters of Mercy.”

  She swallowed hard, staring down at the child she held in her arms. At first, he did not think she would answer. Then, she took a quivery breath and spoke in a voice devoid of emotion. “My father was richer than many nobles. He made friends, but he still was not on the same social standing until the Duke of Chivington commissioned him to craft a pendant f
or his daughter’s presentation at court.”

  She turned her blue gaze on him, and his heart lodged in his throat. “I designed a gorgeous piece with opals the same shade of lavender-blue as Lady Edwina’s eyes, but no one ever knew it was not my father’s design. The duke was so impressed that he invited my father and me to a spring ball at his country estate the following week.”

  Her hard gaze dared and challenged. Yet, he did not miss the flash of vulnerability. She had hidden her talents from society, afraid of being more of an outcast than her lack of peerage already guaranteed. Times had changed, but society still held to the same, old-fashioned rules of conduct that separated commoners from nobles. So, no matter how much wealth Halsey amassed, some in society would never truly accept him as an equal. Nor would they accept his daughter, unless she married above her station. Even then, some might still consider her an outcast.

  “Did Drury know of your talents with jewelry?” Envy burned a hole in Jack’s gut. Had she shared confidences with Drury that she had never shared with anyone else?

  Fury briefly ignited her gaze, and bitterness crept into her voice. “I may have been invited to share in the pleasures of good society, but I did not make the mistake of believing anyone would accept me if they knew I practiced a trade myself. I wanted to be a part of their world, and I wanted to find a husband, but I did nothing unethical. I just wanted to be accepted among the people I considered friends.”

  “Maybe you should have sought better friends,” he said, unable to disguise the disgust in his voice. All his life, he had felt like an outcast. He may have been born to wealth and privilege, but he had never felt like a peer. Aunt Margery and Morris had seen to it. But how much worse must it have been for Abby to have wanted something so badly, knowing she would most likely never get it?

  Her heartfelt sigh twisted his stomach into knots. “Perhaps. But I liked Edwina and most of her friends.”

  “But there were conditions to those friendships, were there not?” He remembered the rules. And he detested them. “The worst beating I ever got was when I made friends with a boy in Seile. The son of a fisherman had not been an acceptable playmate for a future viscount, and my father made sure Todd Tidwell never spoke to me again.”

  She tilted her head at an adorable angle, and her voice softened. “I never considered how difficult it might be for someone of your class to befriend a commoner.”

  “Ah, but money and goods are the best of references,” he said, quoting Dickens. “Your friendship with Edwina benefited both families. Todd’s family had nothing to recommend him as a friend other than the pleasure derived from his company.”

  She smiled, offering her own interpretation of Dickens’ work. “Yes, and the nobility believe that what cannot be weighed, measured, and priced has no existence.” Her smile turned bitter. “My father learned early on to ‘do other men before they would do him.’ He too was familiar with Dickens, and he learned to play society’s game.” She sighed, looking down at her son with what looked to be regret. “By the time I was six, my father’s wealth had elevated him to a higher social standing that made prior friendships awkward. That is why I started helping him in his shop.”

  “Did your mother approve?” His mother would not have approved of him captaining a ship if they had remained at Ridge Point or Ram’s Head.

  But things had been different in Charleston. Americans seemed to respect a self-made man more than one who had inherited his wealth.

  But how had Abby’s mother felt about her daughter learning a trade?

  She shrugged. “She knew I was lonely. I think she was, too. By that time, she had stopped taking in laundry and spent her days reading or teaching me needlepoint. She believed in a woman having skills. Then I started spending more time at my father’s shop than at home. And Mama got sick.”

  Her voice quivered and once again, Jack wanted to take her into his arms and hold her. “How did she die?” he asked instead.

  “In the cholera epidemic of ’48.” She sucked in a shivering breath and clutched her child more firmly to her chest.

  Jack touched her shoulder. She stiffened slightly and then relaxed. He let his hand fall to the mattress between them. “I was grown when my mother passed. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to lose yours at such a tender age.”

  She kissed the top of her son’s head, and Jack’s chest cramped with emotion.

  “It could have been worse,” she said. “By then, my father could afford to hire a governess.”

  “The maid? Barbara Kersey?” She had mentioned her maid months ago when he had pushed for information. But today seemed different. It seemed as if she wanted to talk about her past.

  She nodded. “After mother’s death, we moved to a townhouse in a more fashionable neighborhood, and Papa hired Miss Kersey.”

  “And she taught you proper decorum and etiquette.”

  “It was not as though my mother were uncivilized. She was just unfamiliar with the ways of the more fashionable set. Miss Kersey was not.”

  The hurt look she gave him sent his heart plummeting to his boots.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jack bowed his head, feeling like an insensitive clod. “I meant no disrespect. But the nun did say you were gently reared.” The nun that had absconded with his money. But he would get to that later. Right now, he needed to keep Abby talking. He needed to learn as much about her as he could. And he needed to gain her trust.

  “Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in his or her mouth,” she said in that superior tone that set her apart from the working class. She may not have been born to wealth, but she wore it well.

  No wonder she had fit in so nicely with society. But had she jumped ship only to land in more turbulent waters? The bourgeois middle class had emerged into a new upper-class society with all the outward displays of wealth the gentry had been accustomed to for centuries. Men such as Drury did not like it.

  Had the bastard set out to put Abby in her place?

  “I assume Drury was not as eager to accept your father into society as Lord Chivington was.”

  “Apparently not.” She rose from the bed and placed Will back in his cradle. Then she straightened her skirts and sat back down, leaving two feet between them. “Once Lady Chivington agreed to sponsor me, Papa and I were invited to a few social events. Edwina’s brother, the Marquess of Sherwood, introduced me to Lord Drury.” She turned, meeting his gaze, her eyes pleading and sincere. “I did not know he was engaged. I do not recall hearing it, and he did not act as if he were. He flirted and said the most outrageous things when no one else was close enough to hear, but he was never vulgar and always respectful. I confided in Miss Kersey, and she encouraged me to set my cap for Simon.”

  Fury burned in Jack’s gut. Abby had lacked a mother’s guidance and both Drury and the maid had taken advantage. “I guess Miss Kersey was climbing that social ladder as well. Better to be a lady’s maid to a lady than a household servant of a merchant.”

  “You cannot blame her,” Abby said with a sigh. “If not for Miss Kersey, I might well have blundered my entrance into society. But I did not. And after the initial start of the season, I received fewer invitations and only saw Lord Drury at public events and places like Almack’s Assembly Rooms or at the park. Then August came and London was so hot and smelly, everyone with a country estate fled. Papa could not leave the store, so I went with Edwina and her family to their estate in Kent.”

  “Is that when Drury took advantage of you?” He tried not to growl. Halsey believed Drury had taken advantage of Abby, but Jack feared the bastard had forced himself on her. Every time he touched her, she flinched. And he had not missed the flash of fear in her eyes whenever he lost his temper.

  She lowered her gaze to her hands. Her fingers were so tightly laced, her knuckles turned white. “No. It was my fault. I was foolish. I wanted to prove to Edwina’s friends that I could expect to marry as well as them, and I encouraged his advances.”

&nb
sp; His hands itched to touch her, to pull her into his arms and comfort her, but he resisted. She looked so alone and fragile, he feared touching her might cause her to bolt like a frightened rabbit. “You were naïve and innocent, but Drury knew what he was about.”

  “I should have known better,” she said with a shivering sigh. “But he was so dashing, and I wanted to be a part of his world. Even after Edwina told me he was engaged, I thought maybe…”

  Another shiver wracked her slim body, and Jack’s heart clenched. Unable to stop himself, he placed his big hand on her small shoulder. She stiffened, her body trembling beneath his touch, but she did not spring to her feet or fling off his offending appendage. He took some small comfort in the fact that she seemed to trust him not to take advantage.

  “What did you think, Abby?” he asked in as soft a voice as he could manage. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed to hold his temper in check. He wanted to set sail for London, find Drury, and take a cat-o-nine tails to the sonuvabitch’s arse.

  Her gaze dropped lower, her chin nearly touching her chest. “I don’t know. He did not seem like a man in love, and I thought perhaps…”

  “He would fall in love with you?”

  Her flush deepened, and she turned away, staring across his cabin toward the door. His grip on her shoulder tightened ever so slightly. “Marriage is seldom based on love, Abby. The nobility marry to link titles and gain power or alliances.”

  His mother had married a viscount instead of Uncle William, the man she supposedly loved. And he had married Abby to gain an heir, so he could inherit a title he did not even want. Disgust filled him. He dropped his hand to his lap, balling his fingers into a fist. “Miss Kersey should have explained that better.”

  She turned and raised her chin, meeting his gaze. “See. It was my fault. Even after Lord Drury announced his engagement to Lady Vanessa, I did not give up on love. I still believed in fairy tales and happily ever after because Lord Drury continued to seek me out and pay me outrageous compliments. I wanted to believe he was only marrying Lady Vanessa to please his family. He never danced with me more than once, but each time, he begged me for a smile or a stolen kiss out in the garden.”