Much Ado About Jack

by Christy English

  “Good riddance,” Caroline said.

  “I understand a highwayman took him down with his own pistol,” Anthony said.

  Angelique felt gratitude rise in her chest. If the Earl of Ravensbrook backed their story, then it would hold, even in London. No man called Anthony a liar. Not twice.

  “It might have been that Hawthorne killed himself after the loss of Arabella,” Titania mused. “Or perhaps he was shot over a debt of honor as Carlyle was in Town.”

  Angelique tightened her grip on James’s hand.

  “Two blackguards dead in the same week,” Anthony said. “That may be a record.”

  Caroline raised an eyebrow at her husband, her disgust plain on her lovely face. “I thought you had killed Hawthorne already, Anthony.”

  “I had him escorted out of town last night and set his carriage on the road south. I am no murderer.”

  “I am,” Angelique said. “And I would do it again.”

  Heedless of the people around them, heedless of Anthony’s eyes on them, James took her in his arms. Angelique responded at once, as if waking from a nightmare to the light of a clean morning. She pressed herself against James, drawing up on her toes to take his lips with hers. He did not disappoint her, as he never did in this. He kissed her, and she felt his heart in it.

  “What is your answer, Angelique?” he asked. “You’re still wearing my ring.”

  The absurdity of the fact that James was pressing his suit for the second time the same night she had killed a man threatened to overwhelm her. She felt her laughter bubbling up beneath her heart, her stomach beginning to writhe with it. She opened her mouth to let it come but found that she made not a sound.

  It was as if the rest of her life fell away, save for her daughter and the weight of the duke’s death. Angelique felt lighter as she looked at James, but she knew she would carry the weight of the Duke of Hawthorne for the rest of her life. But she would carry it gladly, as the price of keeping Sara safe.

  She looked into the clear blue of James’s eyes. He did not seem flustered by her hesitation, but stared down at her as if he knew her answer already. His bedrock certainty felt like a haven, like a shield against an uncertain world.

  With Hawthorne dead, the Montgomerys were safe, and she would be free to rebuild her business one contact at a time. She would give herself over to what she truly wanted; she would yield at last and face whatever came after.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “To marrying me?”

  “Yes.”

  The tension drained out of James, and he sat down in an armchair by the fire. He had allowed her to dress his head wound already, but she saw that the blood had begun to flow again and to darken the white gauze bound around his head. She moved with him and sat on his lap, not caring that Anthony, Caroline, and Titania still watched them, as if they were in a play of their own.

  “Derbyshire is lovely this time of year, Angelique. But let’s go home.”

  She kissed him. “We’ll leave tomorrow for London.”

  “No,” he said. “Let’s go home to Shropshire.”

  Angelique could not answer him, for tears clogged her throat. Caroline, ever watchful, took Anthony by the hand to lead him away. The Earl of Ravensbrook seemed to hesitate by the door, and Angelique met his eyes. She found her voice, swallowing the joy that blocked her speech.

  “Thank you, Anthony. You hold my life in your hands.”

  It was not Anthony, but Caroline, who answered her. “We will not break faith with you,” Anthony’s wife said.

  Titania raised one hand before she let herself out the front door, into the night. Angelique knew she should see her guests out, but she was too tired to think, too tired to move. It seemed as if she had been running all her life, and only now had come to this place where she might stop and catch her breath. Her place, it seemed, was not Shropshire, or on the open sea, or even at Aeronwynn’s Gate, but in James Montgomery’s arms.

  Neither of them spoke for a moment. Neither was much for poetry, it seemed, or romantic murmurings in the dark. But James’s arms were warm around her, warmer for the fact that she could stay within their circle for the rest of her life.

  “‘I love nothing in the world so well as you,’” James said.

  She finished the quote for him. “‘Is that not strange?’”

  He kissed her, and his lips lingered on hers, not asking to make love, only savoring the taste of her. When he drew back, she laid her head on his shoulder.

  Tomorrow she would look to Sara’s welfare, to Mrs. Beebe, and to Lisette. Tomorrow she would call on Smythe to draw up the proper papers to make her lands her own, whether she married or not. But for tonight, sitting with James in the firelight was enough. She leaned against him and sighed, relaxing against him as he stroked her hair.

  “You are the most stubborn woman I have ever known,” James said, his voice soft, musing, as if he had murmured an endearment.

  “And you are the most arrogant man I’ve ever met,” Angelique said. “Between Anthony and the Prince Regent, that is saying something.”

  “I like a stubborn woman.”

  “I find I enjoy an arrogant man.”

  “We should get on well together then,” James said.

  Angelique kissed his throat where his heart beat beneath her lips. “Yes, we will.”

  Act IV

  “I do love nothing in the world so well as you.”

  Much Ado About Nothing

  Act 4, Scene 1

  Epilogue

  “Jamie!” Constance shrieked. “She’ll make the most beautiful bride!”

  His youngest sister ran to him from the carriage, leaping into his arms. Constance was followed by Maizie, who was nine, and by Emma, who was eleven. All three girls surrounded him, wrapping their arms around his waist. His older sisters, Margaret and Sarah, followed more sedately, but they did not wait their turn to embrace him, but pushed their little sisters out of the way.

  “We came by ship again,” Constance cried.

  “I got sick three times,” Maizie said in her quiet way. Her soft blonde hair blew about her head in tufts and ringlets, fighting the pins her mother had placed them in.

  “I helped clean it up,” Emma said proudly, pushing against his leg in case he might not listen otherwise.

  “Yes, girls, you all did very well. Now step back, and give Jamie room to breathe,” Margaret said, the voice of authority that everyone but Constance heeded.

  James set his youngest sister down, caressing her brown hair as he let her go. His mother was in his arms then, and he held her close, careful not to squeeze her plump form too tight or to muss her fashionable curls.

  “We came up the river Severn to Aeronwynn’s Gate,” she said, her voice almost as breathless as Constance’s. “Who knew it was so wide?”

  His father came to him and took his hand. “Indeed, who knew?”

  He smiled at his son and drew him into a bear hug. John Montgomery felt no concern about crushing him.

  James turned to watch as Angelique’s ward, Sara, sat down with his own sisters, Sarah and Emma. Maizie and Constance ran in circles around the threesome, grabbing sweets off the tea cart even as Sara tried to pour for her guests. Used to the antics of the twins at the inn at Wythe, Sara did not blink an eye but kept talking to her two new friends as if she had not a care in the world. And he supposed, for the first time in her life, she did not. Thanks to Angelique.

  His wife-to-be was wrapped in his mother’s arms. Angelique did not shy away but stood in the older woman’s embrace, as if taken back to another time and place, as if wishing for her own delicate mother and her soft touch. But all hints of sadness and loss were blasted away by the joyous cacophony of his family, all of whom were intent on making her theirs, just as he had been.

  Angelique met his eyes above the fray and
gave him a dazzling smile. She did not look like the elegant society woman he had first met onboard her ship. Nor did she look like the sultry countess he had waltzed with at the Duchess of Claremore’s ball. She looked like Angelique, the daughter of a sea captain, the woman who loved him. The woman who, in a few days’ time, would be his wife.

  His mother let her go, and he crossed the room to stand beside her. Still nodding at whatever Margaret was saying about her new bonnet, Angelique took his hand. James sat down with her, content to be silent and let his sisters’ conversation, and the noise of his family, wash over him like an incoming tide.

  Angelique was his anchor, his ballast, in the midst of the sudden storm of family. He watched them all with love, the warmth of the woman he loved beside him.

  ***

  Their wedding day dawned bright, without a hint of clouds.

  The summer sun had risen early, and the dew on the grasses of her garden had long since been burned away. Angelique walked with Sara and his youngest sisters, Maizie and Constance, as her attendants. The rest of his family and hers watched as she walked to him up the gentle rise beside the river Severn.

  The field of white Queen Anne’s lace lay all around them, its pristine purity broken here and there by the dark blue of irises, a dark blue that matched the color of her gown. She had tossed aside the bonnet she had considered wearing. Instead, she wore white roses from the garden in her hair and let the sunlight kiss her.

  James waited for her in the deep blue of his Navy uniform. He stood with his father beside him and watched her come to him, smiling as if he had known all along that they would end up here, making their vows in the sunshine together.

  Her daughter lay buried less than twenty feet away, but Angelique did not feel the sorrow of her loss that day. She felt almost as if her child stood beside her, as old as James’s sister Emma was now. She felt as if her daughter blessed her and wished her happy.

  She looked at James Montgomery with tears in her eyes. He spoke his vows in front of the vicar, and she did the same, but the truth of what they promised lay behind the old worn words.

  James kissed her, and suddenly, he was all she could see. The rest of the world, their families included, receded, and it was only the two of them, standing in the sunlight.

  “I will love you ’til I die,” he said.

  “I’ll love you beyond death,” she answered.

  “You always have to top me,” he said.

  She smiled at him and pressed closer, thinking of their bed. “Not always,” she murmured.

  He leaned down, and kissed her again.

  ***

  A week after their wedding, after his family had all gone home, Sara, James, and Angelique took a sailboat out on the river Severn.

  Through the clever machinations of Smythe, James had been presented with an agreement that signed away all rights to Angelique’s property, and her rights to his. Smythe had been a bit shocked by the idea, and the solicitors had charged double to draw it up, certain that no court in the country would uphold such an outrageous document. A man’s rights over his wife’s property were sacrosanct. James heard these arguments as he sat by Angelique’s side. He had nodded and listened again, and then against all legal advice, he signed anyway.

  Angelique took the document into her gloved hand, the document she had paid a fortune for, the papers that had taken her solicitors three weeks to draw up. She cast them into the fire.

  “Your money is yours. Your ship is yours,” James said.

  “I know. And I am yours.”

  A week after she and James had been married, Angelique reclined in a small skiff as James sailed it down the Severn. Sara sat in the bow, the wind catching her hair beneath her bonnet until the ribbons finally came untied, and her bonnet flew away.

  “We’ll make a new one,” Angelique promised her.

  “But the sun will make me freckle,” Sara protested.

  “There are worse things,” Angelique answered. “A few freckles will not mar your looks. You are beautiful as you are.”

  Sara’s smile was bright with joy. Angelique took off her own bonnet and cast it to the wind. Her dark curls came loose and billowed in a cloud around her head. She shook them behind her, so that she could take a look at her husband. James, his hand on the rudder, watched the bending of the river and followed it unerring. She wanted to see him stand like that on the deck of her ship, the Diane, where they had first met.

  “I would have married you even if your name was Jack,” she said.

  James came back to her, away from his obsession with the water they sailed on. He laughed, leaning close in the small skiff to kiss her once, hard, a promise of what would come later.

  She leaned back, lifted her face to the sun, and smiled.

  Acknowledgments

  Whenever I’m writing a book, there are many people to thank. As always, I’d like to thank my family and friends, especially my parents, Carl and Karen English, and my brother, Barry English, who always offer support and encouragement at every step of the process. Many thanks to Susan Randall, to Amy and Troy Pierce, to Ellen and Andrew Seltz, and to Ron and Vena Miller for everything they do. Many thanks to Laura Creasy and LaDonna Lindgren who have been my first readers since the 7th grade, and still are. Bless you both for hanging in there with me.

  Thank you to the fabulous team at Sourcebooks, especially Leah Hultenschmidt, Aubrey Poole, and Cat Clyne on the editorial end. Without you three, these books would not thrive. Thank you to Valerie Pierce and Beth Sochacki for getting the word out, and to Dawn Adams for the fabulous cover art.

  And many thanks to my friends and readers on Facebook and Twitter. I would be nowhere without you.

  About the Author

  After years of acting in Shakespeare’s plays, Christy English is excited to bring the Bard to Regency England. When she isn’t acting, roller skating, or chasing the Muse, Christy writes from her home in North Carolina. Please visit her at www.ChristyEnglish.com.