by Danice Allen
“Jack! Jack!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around his neck. “Thank goodness you’re all right! Is it over?”
Jack let her cling for a minute, then pulled free, grasped her by the shoulders, and looked her over. She was dressed from head to toe like a man, with her long hair tucked inside an old hat Jack thought he recognized as one he’d seen Harley wearing on their trip to Thorney Island.
“What’s the meaning of this, Amanda?” Jack demanded to know. “Why are you dressed like this and why are you riding about London alone at this hour?” Relief and surprise had given way to anger. “Don’t you realize the danger involved in such foolishness?”
“Oh, Jack, don’t be angry!” she pleaded, tilting her beautiful face to look up at him beseechingly. “I was worried sick about you. I couldn’t just sit at home sniffing salts and dabbing away tears while I waited for word!”
Jack was already softening. Amanda was a winsome lass, hard to stay angry with for long. But he deliberately hardened his voice when he asked, “How did you know where to find us?”
Amanda bit her lip, the unconscious gesture making his heart romp and skitter like a frisky pup. “I didn’t know,” she admitted meekly. “I guessed you’d come here because this park is smaller and more remote than the others. And I was right! But I’m late because even this park is large enough to get lost in! I was so afraid I’d be too late!”
Jack shook his head with a beleaguered sigh and gave her a slight shake. “You goose! I asked you to trust me, and you said you did! What happened to all that trust, Amanda?”
“I do trust you, Jack. But I don’t trust Robert Hamilton. If he’d … he’d hurt you, I was going to kill the little sod!” She stepped back a pace, pulled a pistol out of her greatcoat pocket, and waved it in the air.
Jack was so shocked and surprised by her use of vulgar language and her brazen brandishing of a firearm, he laughed out loud. “Amanda! Do you even know what a ’sod’ is, sweetheart? But before you answer, give me that gun just in case it accidentally goes off.”
She shrugged and relinquished the pistol without argument. Jack laid it on the grass with the other weapon. “I don’t know exactly what sod means, Jack,” she admitted. “All I know is it’s something quite despicable. Robert is a sod, isn’t he, Jack?”
“And a coward into the bargain,” Percy Mingay said, stepping forward. “Is anyone interested in hearing what Rob wrote in the note?”
“What note?” exclaimed Amanda. “Didn’t he show up?”
“No, and I don’t expect any of us will ever see him again,” Percy remarked with unfeigned satisfaction. “The note reads, ‘Got an offer I couldn’t refuse. Crossing the channel at four-thirty. Won’t be back. Sorry for the inconvenience, Percy. Rob.’ ”
“An offer he couldn’t refuse?” Jack repeated, frowning and turning to face Julian. “That’s odd …. Do you think someone threatened him? The moneylenders from the gaming hells, perhaps?”
“Why would they try to force him out of the country, Jack, if he still owed them money?” Amanda wondered.
“You can’t get blood out of a turnip, Miss Darlington,” Julian observed coolly.
“Who knows what happened to him, and who cares?” said Percy, tossing the note over his shoulder. “He has more enemies than I do! He’s gone, that’s all. And good riddance, I say. Only wish he’d let me know his plans last night. I could have slept to my usual hour this morning instead of rising with the bloody chickens.”
“Watch your language around my fiancée, Percy,” Jack growled.
Percy raised his brows. “Sorry. Forgot she was female in those clothes and … er … with her colorful vocabulary and all. Apologize sincerely,” he added for good measure. He bowed low, then turned to go, apparently eager to flee before he found himself replacing Rob as Jack’s duelling opponent.
“Send the doctor away,” Julian called after Percy as he strode away through the diminishing fog, then muttered, “Rattle.”
Jack turned back to Amanda and slipped his arms around her waist. “And a blind rattle at that. I don’t know how he could ever forget you’re female, Amanda,” Jack said, eying her slim thighs and deliciously rounded derriere encased in tight buckskin breeches. “Especially in those togs. Makes me want to—”
“Good Gawd,” Julian interrupted, managing to look bored and offended at the same time. “I have no desire to see the two of you coo and kiss. What you do in private is your concern, but please spare me from being privy to your ’sweet nothings.’ Take her home in the carriage, Jack. I’ll ride the horse. You don’t want anyone to see her dressed like that. If she’s to be your wife, you might want to maintain a modicum of respectability.”
Jack grinned. “You’re right brother, as you so frequently are. I envy you your wisdom and perspicacity … not to mention your splendid sense of style. In fact, I’d say you were the luckiest man alive if”—he stopped abruptly and turned back to Amanda, his grin softening to a tender smile—”if I didn’t already hold that distinction. Even with all my faults, I’m the luckiest man alive.”
Jack looked into Amanda’s beautiful blue eyes. They glowed with love. Long moments passed while they basked in the warmth of their hard-won happiness.
“Don’t you agree, Julian?” Jack asked at last, turning for his brother’s corroboration. But Julian had vanished.
“He moves like a cat,” Jack said with grudging respect. “And he has impeccable timing.”
Amanda smiled impishly and blushed. “Your timing’s not so bad, either.”
“You minx,” he murmured, growing painfully aroused. “Just wait till I get you alone.”
He bent to kiss her, but she pressed her fingertips against his lips and drew back. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Jack?”
He raised a brow. “My memory has had some recent lapses,” he admitted slyly. “What am I forgetting now, Amanda?”
She toyed with his neck cloth, stroking the smooth linen with absentminded sensuality. “I haven’t yet received a proper proposal of marriage from you, Lord Durham,” she told him coyly. “That being the case, all this cooing and kissing—as Lord Serling so aptly phrased it—is quite improper.”
Jack grabbed her hips and pulled her flush against him. Her playfulness and the look of her in breeches was making him as randy as a rooster. But he loved her … oh so much! And he’d give her exactly what she wanted … which was exactly what he wanted, too.
“Amanda, darling, will you marry me? Will you stay with me and love me even when I’m toothless and gray, when I repeat myself constantly and forget where I’ve put my slippers even when they’re on my feet?”
Amanda looped her arms around his neck and stared up into Jack’s mesmerizing amber-brown eyes. “Yes, I’ll marry you,” she said with quiet intensity and a dazzling smile. “And, yes, I’ll stay with you and love you even when you’re a decrepit old man. But promise me something, Jack—”
“Anything, Amanda.”
“Promise me that no matter what else you forget”—she paused, pouted, and poked him in the chest with her finger to underscore each word—“never”—poke—“forget”—poke—“you love me!” Poke, poke, poke.
He threw back his head and laughed; then he sobered fast and dipped his head till their lips were nearly touching. He looked into her eyes and said, “That’s an easy promise to make and keep, Amanda, darling, because you are my love”—he kissed her forehead—“my life”—he kissed the tip of her nose—“and you are quite simply … unforgettable.”
His breath spilled warm against her lips, and Amanda’s eyes fluttered shut in anticipation. They kissed, forgetting everything and everyone but each other.
Riding past on Amanda’s horse, Julian saw the happy couple embracing. He smiled. He was glad for Jack, but he envied him, too. How would it be to find true love?
He leaned back in the saddle and considered pretty, auburn-haired Charlotte Batsford. So serene, so controlled, so well-educated. Was it possible to stir
up that sweet girl’s passions like Jack had stirred up Amanda’s? Could he make himself fall in love with her … and she with him … or did true love just … happen?
It was an interesting thought, deserving of much rumination. But in the meantime, Julian had a far more pressing challenge at hand. Sam, that hoydenish, kittenish, noisy, and charmingly mobcapped child must be made into a silk purse by spring. He’d turn her into a diamond of the first water if it killed him, then foist the little brat onto some unsuspecting man blinded by her glitter.
Oh course, he’d make sure the man was kind to her and loving. He wouldn’t want her to be unhappy. But even so, thought Julian with a rueful grin, he pitied—and halfway envied—the man who got himself shackled to Sam. The poor devil would certainly never be bored, now, would he?
The Perfect Gentleman
Danice Allen
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 1997 by Danice Allen
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information, email [email protected]
First Diversion Books edition April 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-276-5
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Prologue
Montgomery Manor
Hampshire, England
December 25, 1816
“I knew Amanda Jane would make a beautiful Christmas bride,” Aunt Prissy said, sniffling into her lace-edged handkerchief as she sank into a chair by the fire. “The wreath of holly in her hair was sheer inspiration! And how clever of Jack to have the aisle in the family chapel lined with potted poinsettias. The entire affair was lovely … just lovely!”
“Indeed,” Aunt Nan agreed, blinking her teary eyes as she stood in front of the fire with her arthritic fingers splayed and stretched to the blaze. “It couldn’t have been a nicer ceremony. I especially liked the intimacy of it, with just the immediate family present. Though, under the circumstances—with Jack’s last wedding being canceled like it was—it was only proper. What did you think, Samantha?”
Samantha wasn’t sure what she thought. The logical functioning of her brain was playing second fiddle to the feelings in her heart. She sat on a footstool by Prissy’s chair, her ungloved hands stretched to the warming fire. But she felt no more comfortable now than when she’d been standing outside in the damp cold, waving good-bye to Amanda…
Having prided herself on being the unsentimental sort, Sam was disconcerted to find herself on the brink of tears. While Amanda’s elderly aunts waited for an answer to Nan’s innocently posed question, Samantha struggled with her emotions. Not more than ten minutes ago, a half sister whose existence Sam had been entirely ignorant of two months before, had driven off in a carriage for the coastal city of Dover, then on to the Continent for an extended honeymoon. Sam hadn’t had the slightest suspicion how dear that newfound sister had become to her … till now.
“Samantha?” prompted Nan.
Sam looked up. Her throat had constricted too tightly to squeak out a single word, and she knew as she watched Nan’s watery brown eyes soften with understanding and sympathy that she had to get out of that room immediately or embarrass herself. She was no sniveling female, ready to weep at the drop of a hat or the absence of a sibling!
Sam rose abruptly from the footstool and picked up her froth of silvery pink skirts. “Samantha, where are you going?” Prissy called out in alarm, as Sam ran past her chair.
“For a walk,” Sam managed to croak in a strangled voice.
“But why don’t you wait for Julian, dearest? Julian will be down presently,” Nan called after her, but Sam couldn’t wait … not even for Julian. She flew through the double doors of the elegant drawing room, into the hall, past the ever-present footman, and out the front door.
Blinded by a distorting curtain of tears, Sam instinctively turned in the direction of the small stone family chapel that had been set apart from the edifice that the wealthy Montgomery men called home. The cobbled walkway was slick from a morning shower, but Sam hurried heedlessly on, intent only on getting away to a place where she could be alone.
Inside the church were sepulchers that held the mortal remains of past Montgomerys … the noble forebears of Julian Montgomery, the present marquess of Serling, and Jackson Montgomery, Viscount Durham, Amanda’s bridegroom and Sam’s new brother-in-law. The more ordinary family members, however, as well as several longtime servants, had been laid to rest in the tiny cemetery behind the church, their graves marked by tombstones … some rather handsome and ornate, others much more modest.
Sam gravitated toward the simplest tombstone in the small, green graveyard, tucked away in the farthest corner, where an overhanging gable of the church sheltered a patch of grass near the grave. She sank to the damp ground, her skirts billowing about her, and for several minutes gave vent to her unhappiness.
“What’s wrong, Sam?”
Startled, Sam looked up … way up … into the face of Julian Montgomery, Jack’s older brother. He stooped and threw her cloak about her shoulders, then straightened and hovered over her. With the gray, leaden sky as a backdrop, Julian’s cool, golden beauty shimmered like the winter sun.
As blond as a Viking and with eyes the icy, silver-blue of an Alpine lake, Sam thought Julian had the bearing of a prince and the noble mien of a saint. His features seemed carved from the finest marble, carefully chipped and smoothed to classic proportions by an obsessive artist. Sam searched those features now for a hint of what he was thinking, what he was feeling, but she soon dropped her gaze, frustrated by the impenetrability of his expression and embarrassed by her own out-of-control emotions.
“I’m … I’m just missin’ Zeus and Neptune,” she mumbled, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “I wish’t we didn’t have t’ leave ’em at Darlington Hall.”
Julian remained silent, and Sam darted a glance at him. He had raised one finely arched, tawny brow in obvious disbelief.
“It’s the truth!” she blurted defiantly. She did miss her dogs, but that certainly wasn’t why she was blubbering like a babe. However, she’d no intention of telling Julian the real reason for her unhappiness.
Julian shook his head. “You expect me to believe you’re crying over those large, unruly curs you call pets?” he said disdainfully. “Do you take me for an idiot?”
She’d be a fool if she did. Julian was far from an idiot. His intellect surpassed even his astonishing physical beauty. And this paragon of brains and tautly muscled brawn was her “teacher.” Yes, the acknowledged arbiter of good taste for the haut ton had vowed to turn her—a sow’s ear—into the proverbial silk purse. And this miracle was to be wrought in plenty of time for Sam to be presented next April at a coming-out ball as Amanda’s “cousin,” instead of what she truly was … Amanda’s bastard half sister.
Conveniently, Amanda had an uncle and aunt on their father’s side who had lived and died in
a remote village in Cumbria without producing offspring. Since the uncle, a genteel clergyman, as well as the aunt, were long dead now, apparently having left behind no close friends or neighbors to tell their tale, it seemed safe to claim Samantha as their orphaned daughter, who had been taken in several years ago by Amanda’s parents. Mr. and Mrs. Darlington were also conveniently deceased and couldn’t refute the fabricated explanation for Sam’s existence.
A man who was a stickler about a woman’s pedigree would blanch at Samantha’s obscure background, but with the patronage of the marquess of Serling, as well as Amanda’s respectable connection and the generous dowry she’d settled on her sister, Sam would have no trouble attracting suitors. But she sometimes wondered if it would be entirely ethical or wise for a woman to enter into marriage with a man who didn’t really know her. Such a woman would have to remain, in part, a stranger to that man for as long as either of them were alive.
While Sam continued to be miserably silent and immersed in distressing thoughts, Julian reached down, caught her hands, and pulled her to her feet. Painfully aware of her swollen eyes and reddened cheeks, Sam balked. “I won’t go back to the house lookin’ like this, Julian. I don’t want no one thinkin’ I’m some sissified waterin’ pot.”
“We’re not going back to the house,” Julian said calmly. “At least not yet. We’re going inside the chapel. It’s warmer and much more cheerful in there. Warming up and cheering up is exactly what you need, my girl.”
Sam didn’t want to go, but she went anyway. Julian was not a man accustomed to being denied. And that’s precisely why he was her teacher instead of a bevy of assorted tutors. Amanda had engaged tutors at the beginning, but she’d soon learned that Julian was the only person who could prod, bully, tease, and order her little sister into acquiring the basic education and accomplishments required to establish herself comfortably in society and snag herself a husband.