Much Ado About Jack

by Christy English

  He stopped along the way and bought roses from a flower shop that had just opened its doors. Without his captain’s uniform on, the shopkeeper looked down his nose at him, but James didn’t care. He just needed the flowers to smooth his way with the woman he wanted more than any other.

  He watched as the flower seller stripped the leaves and thorns from the chosen bouquet, wrapping them in paper three times to keep the stems damp as James traveled to Regent Square.

  When he reached her doorstep, her butler stared down at him as if he were a bit of refuse that an ill wind had blown in. The scuttlebutt he had paid good money for said that her butler was Greek, a man she’d rescued from the Turks.

  He had heard from the same source that her lady’s maid was a woman she had rescued from Paris. It seemed that Angelique was quite the humanitarian, at least where her servants were concerned.

  James was not sure he believed the information he’d paid for, but the man in front of him dressed in immaculate dark clothes might have been Greek. He might have been Zeus himself.

  “I am sorry, sir. Her ladyship is not at home.” The man wrinkled his nose, as if James smelled of day-old fish.

  “I’ll wait,” James said.

  The butler drawled his next words lengthening them until James wondered if he was not a full-blown English butler after all. “I am sorry, sir. You may not.”

  James weighed the man’s words, as well as his disdain. Something in his opponent’s eyes told him that he was not lying. Angelique was not lounging abovestairs in her dressing gown. For the moment at least, she was gone.

  “When will she be back?”

  “She does not keep me informed, sir.” He began to close the door in James’s face.

  James drew a golden guinea from his pocket and offered it, along with the roses. “Perhaps you might leave these for her.”

  The deepening contempt on butler’s face forced James to pocket the guinea. A Scot, no matter how grand, would have taken the money, and gladly. But James had to remind himself that in the south, among the English, things were different.

  The man did accept the offering of flowers, taking them between two fingers as if they were pox ridden and might infect his person.

  “I will see that she gets them, sir. Good day.”

  James stood staring at the closed door. He turned to look out over the shaded square which had just begun to stir with nurses taking children out in their prams. He watched one woman walk by with her charge, a footman at their heels, until he shook himself awake. He would come back that afternoon and camp out on her doorstep, if need be. He was on the scent, and he would have her. He would not let her slip away.

  And once he caught her, he would keep her under him until his hunger was sated.

  Twelve

  The Duke of Hawthorne’s funeral was one of the longest hours of Angelique Beauchamp’s life.

  She had always thought that her own husband’s funeral was the longest, but at least she had loved him, and during his funeral, she had been in shock. Now, from the third pew, she could do nothing but watch her friend Arabella suffer.

  Hawthorne, the new duke, sat beside her friend, a hulking gray shadow that no amount of candle or sun could shed light on. He was dressed in immaculate dove gray, with an appropriate black armband. He watched over Arabella as a hawk might, hovering over her before his claws struck home.

  Angelique knew that she had to help her friend get out of London and away from him.

  At the Claremores’ ball two nights before, she had thought she and Lady Westwood had managed to squelch all rumors of Arabella’s supposed infidelity. But now she sat in the middle of St. Paul’s, surrounded on all sides by people speaking of little else.

  One lady murmured how ill the widow looked and speculated how such a plain and sallow-faced woman could find a lover at all. Her seatmate said that perhaps Arabella had paid her lovers to look the other way as they serviced her.

  Neither woman looked in her direction, but they both spoke loudly enough for her to hear.

  Angelique had never thought of herself as a violent woman, but as she listened to that twattle while watching Hawthorne usher Arabella out of the church without letting her speak to anyone, she felt the first desire to kill that she had experienced in over a decade.

  Before this, only her dead husband had brought out such ire in her. She needed to discover the source of the rumors that were ruining Arabella’s life, and put a stop to them.

  She tried to attract Anthony Carrington’s attention, but he shook his head once and escorted his elderly aunt up the aisle. His blonde young wife had not come.

  It was Lady Westwood who caught her gaze and held it. Anthony’s aunt placed one imperious arm on his, coming to a full stop, heedless of the well-dressed traffic behind her, all of whom wanted to get out of that gloomy cathedral and out into the sunlight.

  Lady Westwood simply didn’t care. Angelique smiled at her and took her hand.

  “My lady, the rumors are still flying.”

  “So I understand.” The old lady was in a foul humor, and Angelique wished once again that she knew who was spreading the vile lies, because when Lady Westwood turned her eye on prey, she never missed her mark. Their attempt at damage control had failed. They would need to go to the source of the lie and shut it off.

  “I am heartily displeased,” Lady Westwood said. She glared at the younger members of the ton as they passed, as if each one of them was responsible for her displeasure. Angelique would have laughed out loud at any other time to see the wealthiest and most influential members of the elite shrink under that old woman’s gaze, but Arabella’s reputation in tatters was not a laughing matter.

  “We will regroup,” Lady Westwood said. “Come to tea at my home tomorrow, and we will discuss strategy.”

  Angelique thought of her husband’s illegitimate daughter waiting for her in Shropshire, but she did not hesitate. “I’ll be there. Will five o’clock suit?”

  Before Lady Westwood could answer, Anthony said, “No, it will not.”

  His aunt turned the full brunt of her glare on him.

  He did not wait for her to rebuke him. “Aunt, if you receive her, the entire ton will assume that Angelique and I are once more bound together.”

  “Let them think what they please on that subject, Tony. As long as you and I know differently, on that matter, they can sort themselves out.”

  “Caroline won’t like it,” Anthony said. He did not have the grace to look at Angelique but stared over her head, as if wishing himself anywhere but there.

  “Your domestic matters are your own concern, nephew. My household and whom I receive within it are mine.” She turned back to Angelique. “Tomorrow at five o’clock will do.”

  Angelique felt a heated blush burn her cheeks, but she kept her eyes fixed on the dowager countess’s face. Lady Westwood had been her friend for over a decade. Unlike the rest of the ton, she had not looked down on Angelique when Anthony turned her away. Even now, she stared Anthony down until he stopped glowering in Angelique’s direction.

  “Thank you for your help, my lady. I hope to discover the source of the rumors before then, so that we might know whom we are fighting.”

  Arabella had nothing but her husband’s good name to protect her. She had come from nothing and would return to nothing if the ton listened to the rumors of her infidelity and decided to cast her out. Men might do as they pleased, but ladies were not so fortunate. Unlike Angelique, Arabella had no powerful friends like the Prince Regent to protect her.

  Lady Westwood seemed just as determined to keep Arabella safe. Protecting lone women was one of the older lady’s pet projects. It was clear she did not intend to stand idly by and let the jackals consume Arabella without a fight.

  “Agreed,” Lady Westwood said. “I will canvass my own acquaintance as well. Until tomorrow.”
>
  She bowed and Angelique bowed back. Anthony’s dark eyes met her for a fleeting moment before his aunt took his arm and led him away.

  “Good riddance,” Titania said.

  Angelique jumped at the voice of Pembroke’s light o’love. The actress owned a successful theater in Drury Lane and was patronized by the Prince of Wales himself. She had done very well, almost as well as Angelique had done in the cotton trade. Angelique was a silent producer in her theater and a longtime friend. The profits that came in from Titania’s versions of Shakespeare’s plays were always quite handsome.

  Angelique nodded to her, one self-made woman to another. “Indeed,” she said. “I am always glad to see the back of him.”

  “And a fine backside it is,” Titania mused, her gaze following the Earl of Ravensbrook down the long aisle.

  Angelique laughed out loud at that bit of irreverence and said, “Shall we walk out together then, and contemplate his finer attributes from a safe distance?”

  Titania smiled. “Indeed, my lady. We fallen women need to stick together.”

  ***

  Angelique tried to get Titania to come to her town house for a glass of brandy, but the actress claimed she had a performance that night and could not take any alcohol until after.

  Angelique did not press her but left her to her own conveyance as she climbed into her lacquered coach outside of St. Paul’s. The afternoon was still sunny, but it seemed to Angelique that all the warmth had gone out of the day.

  She had missed her chance to leave for Shropshire at dawn. The trip, and her new ward, would have to wait. She would spend the rest of the day figuring out how best to deal with Arabella’s unseen and unknown enemies.

  She did not go home at once, but ordered her carriage to take a turn around Regent’s Park. She did her best thinking behind the reins of a carriage. In the city, it was considered unwomanly to drive herself, so she forced herself to be content with the motion of the carriage. She stared up into the branches of the trees overhead, pondering which of her acquaintance to go to first to suss out the culprit, the man or woman who had begun the rumors about Arabella. She had no idea where to start.

  An hour later, when she arrived on her own doorstep, her butler, Anton, stood glowering from his perch on the landing. The red roses that had mysteriously appeared that morning still sat in their vase on the entrance hall table behind him. He waited until she was out of her carriage and climbing the front steps before he delivered the bad news.

  “My lady, the Duke of Hawthorne waits for you in the drawing room.”

  Angelique swallowed hard, suppressing a groan. Of all the men she would rather not see, the new Duke of Hawthorne was at the top of the list.

  “I am not currently receiving, Anton.”

  “I told His Grace as much. He was very insistent.”

  Angelique stepped into the entrance hall and was greeted by the chill of the Duke of Hawthorne’s voice.

  “And I will become more insistent still, Angelique, if you refuse to see me now,” he said.

  The interloper was not tucked away in the softness of the drawing room but stood in the middle of the black- and white-tiled floor of the hall. His dove gray coat was as immaculate and unwrinkled as it had been at the funeral, and the silver knob on the end of his walking stick gleamed in the candlelight. The sun had begun to set, so the candles had already been lit.

  “Of course I will receive you, Your Grace,” Angelique said, her breath even, her tone smooth.

  She led him into her formal drawing room. Hawthorne did not wait to be offered refreshment but crossed to the sideboard where she kept brandy for gentlemen callers. He poured himself two fingers of it, took one sniff, then left her expensive brandy on the sideboard like rejected refuse.

  He moved in a leisurely manner to the fireplace, surveying the room as he went as if she and all that were in it were on sale at auction. He placed one well-polished boot on the grate as if staking his claim to her home.

  “You are kind to call on me, uninvited,” Angelique said. She did her best to keep the ire from her voice but was not certain she succeeded.

  “A peer of the realm may always call on another peer in times of need,” the duke answered, his voice cold as an Arctic blast. She could almost feel the icicles forming along her skin.

  The duke stood relaxed against her mantelpiece, straightening the cuffs of his coat, flicking away a nonexistent bit of dirt from his glove.

  “What could you possibly need from me?” Angelique asked.

  Hawthorne turned his gray eyes on her. She felt as if the blood in her veins had begun to freeze.

  It was rumored that he had some power over the Prince Regent, some information that even Prinny, as debauched as he was, did not want aired. If she had somehow inexplicably made an enemy of this man, she could rely neither on Anthony nor on royal favor for refuge. She was on her own.

  Hawthorne smiled then, and Angelique’s stomach clenched. His smile was one of the most unpleasant things she had ever seen, as if a curtain had been drawn back from a darkness that no one wanted to acknowledge even existed. “I have need of you, indeed, my lady. I need you to cease your ill-advised support of the Duchess of Hawthorne. I mean to keep her away from your influence.”

  “And why should I acknowledge your opinion on the matter, Your Grace? As you no doubt have heard, I am a woman who looks only to her own best interests. I gain nothing by abandoning Arabella. She is my friend.”

  The shadow of the duke’s smile faded, and Angelique released her breath. She had been unaware that she had been holding it, waiting for that look to leave his face. “What kind of friend have you been to her? What have you done but expose her to censure and degradation by association with you?”

  Angelique was tall for a woman, and she used her height now to meet the Duke of Hawthorne’s eyes and stare him down. He might be used to bullying women, but he would not conquer her.

  “I am Arabella’s friend. I will stand by her and help her in any way I can.”

  Hawthorne crossed the room to her in three strides, his long legs eating up the distance between them in a blink. He moved so fast, almost like a tiger that had simply been toying with her and now was willing to pounce. She felt the hard clench of his fingers on her upper arms as he drew her toward him. She thought he would shake her like a rag doll, but instead, his left arm drew back in a clenched fist.

  She stood her ground, wishing she could remember the knife lessons her father had given her onboard ship as a child, wishing that she still carried a blade as Anthony’s young wife was said to do. As it was, she stood vulnerable and alone, facing the Duke of Hawthorne’s wrath. But she did not back down.

  She watched the shadows of his face, taking in the cold gray of his eyes, a wintry gray that matched the color of his coat. He stared down at her but did not strike. Instead, he leaned closer and breathed deep, his lips close to her temple. He smelled her as a dog might, searching for weakness. He did not find it.

  “Leave Lady Arabella to me,” he said.

  Angelique heard the front door slam and the sound of Anton’s feet tapping on the black-and-white marble of the hallway. The Duke of Hawthorne stepped back from her then, leaving her shaking. He walked away without looking back.

  Thirteen

  “Who the hell was that?”

  James Montgomery stepped into the drawing room as a tall man in gray left. The man must have been some kind of lord, because he did not glance at James or acknowledge his presence as he passed, certain of his own worth and equally certain of James’s worthlessness.

  For the first time that day, James’s sword hand started itching to take up the blade that was not there. But he was in civilian clothes, entering a civilized drawing room. In Angelique Beauchamp’s world, one did not settle matters at the point of a blade. From all he had seen, the point of a blade might improve
the ton immensely.

  “What are you doing here?” Angelique asked, turning away from him.

  “I came to see you. Did you like my roses?”

  “So that’s where those came from.”

  He watched her walk across the room to pick up a glass of brandy from the sideboard. At first, he thought she meant to offer the drink to him, but she poured the remnants into the fire, casting the glass in after it.

  “Not a fan of brandy then?” he asked.

  She smiled a little, and he saw a shadow chase across the indigo of her eyes. Something had upset her. He wondered if he had walked in on a lovers’ quarrel.

  “It was contaminated,” she answered.

  She sat down heavily on a settee close to the small fire. Though he had not been asked, James crossed the room and sat down with her. He had not slept a wink since he’d seen her last, but she looked as fresh as a daisy in her simple silk gown.

  More like an iris, he thought. A dark blue flower with velvet petals, color and softness meant to draw him in. But she was not trying to draw him in now. Her face was shuttered, troubled. He felt a stab of ire in his belly, just below his spleen. He had never felt such a thing before. It took him a moment to realize that the odd feeling was jealousy.

  “So who was that man?” he asked again.

  “No one of consequence.”

  He was about to ask again when the door burst open and Ravensbrook strode into the room.

  “Damn it, Angelique, stay away from my family.”

  James was on his feet, placing himself between her and Ravensbrook without thinking. The earl stopped as soon as he saw him, sizing him up as he would a rival. James wished for his sword for the second time in ten minutes.

  Then he felt her hand on his arm, a gentle touch, almost like a caress. He stood down, because without speaking, she asked him to. But he kept his eye on Ravensbrook.

  “Anthony, I have no designs on your family,” Angelique said. She sounded weary, worn out. Her fight with the man in gray must have taken a lot out of her.