‘I will speak to him and ask if he is willing to see you.’
‘He will,’ replied Melwyn confidently, holding Jenna’s gaze. ‘And he will want to see me alone.’
Jenna watched a self-assured smile curve the young woman’s lips before turning to leave and closing the door nosily behind her.
Jack was already out of bed and struggling to pull on his boots.
‘You should be resting.’
‘I heard voices,’ he said. He swore under his breath. ‘Help me with these.’
Immediately, Jenna went to help him. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Like I have been kicked in the head by a horse. It has reminded me of the other reason why I do not drink to excess.’
‘I meant your arm.’
He smiled, ‘My arm is considerably less painful.’
She did not believe him. ‘It is only the landlord’s daughter. I can send her away.’
‘Melwyn?’
The woman’s name lit up his eyes. He sounds pleased to see her, thought Jenna.
‘Yes. She wants to talk to you.’
‘I’ll come down stairs and see her alone.’ Jack stood up, ‘My shirt … help me with my shirt.’
Jenna found it and eased the sleeve over his bandaged arm. Melwyn was right, she was just his housekeeper and she would remain so if she did not let him know how she felt.
‘Do not let her visit tire you out. Tell her to go if you do not feel up to it.’
‘I am glad she has come.’
Why? Why are you glad she has come? You said you had no interest in her, yet you are eager to see her.
He attempted to button his shirt, but found bending his arm too painful. Jenna saw him wince.
‘Let me,’ she said, taking over the task. She instantly regretted her offer of help as each button she worked upon lay on his bare chest. It took all of her willpower not to tremble and make a mess of it. Thankfully, he did not watch her, preferring to look over her head and stare at the wall.
The task finally came to an end and they found themselves standing too close with no purpose. They both turned awkwardly away.
‘Jenna …’
‘Yes?’
‘I want to apologise for yesterday. I should not have reacted to your kiss as I did. I did not consider the consequences. I was not thinking clearly.’
Jenna picked up a pillow and held it to her chest. ‘I was not offended,’ she muttered miserably.
‘You should be. I took advantage and grew loose with my tongue. I would not wish to make you feel uncomfortable working for me.’
Any happiness she felt had gone. Melwyn’s visit had seen to that.
‘I do not,’ she said quietly.
‘My response was quicker than my wit,’ he said. It was a poor attempt at a joke.
Jenna looked away. ‘I will stay in here and change the sheets,’ she said, looking at his empty bed. ‘I will not eavesdrop.’ Jack did not reply; she could see that his mind was elsewhere and he wanted to see the woman downstairs.
After he had gone, she stood alone listening to their muffled greeting below. Just as she suspected, she could not make out what they said. She looked around her and saw evidence of yesterday – the musket ball she’d left in a dish and fresh bandages ready for redressing his wound. Yet, despite it all, he behaved as if he was ashamed there had been any closeness between them.
She was not ashamed and would not forget. She was in love with him, but he did not know it and, if his ramblings were only half-truths, he had a liking for her too. If she wanted things to change she needed to let him know how she felt. But how? What did she have to draw on in life? Every relationship she had ever had with a man was based on blood ties or fear. How does a woman convey to a man that she wants him? How does she encourage his interest in her when he is reluctant to even acknowledge he has one when sober? Whatever experience she drew upon, she had to do it quickly, before Melwyn stepped into his arms and took her chance away.
Jack paused on the last step to ensure his bandage could not be seen. His wound hurt like hell, but he did not want Melwyn to know about it. The less people that knew, thought Jack, the better. He pasted on a smile before entering the room where he knew she would be waiting for him.
‘Hello, Melwyn. I did not expect to see you here.’
He offered her a chair and was glad when she accepted and sat down. He had begun to feel lightheaded already and needed to sit down himself.
‘Does your father know you have come?’ he asked as he settled himself carefully in the wooden chair opposite her.
‘No, he does not,’ replied Melwyn, sitting stiffly, her eyes darting about the room whilst her hand twisted the weave of her skirt. She was nervous, he could tell, so waited patiently for her to speak.
She noticed him looking at her and jerked her head upwards to the room above. ‘I didn’t think I would get to see you,’ she said. ‘Your housekeeper was not best pleased to disturb you. If she was a dog she would have snarled.’
Jack’s laugh morphed into a wince before he had a chance to guard his reaction.
‘Are you hurt?’ asked Melwyn, her nerves overtaken with concern.
‘I fell from my horse yesterday and now have a bruise to remind me of my stupidity.’ Jack smiled. ‘It is not something I wish to dwell upon, Melwyn. Tell me why you are here.’
Melwyn began to worry the thread of her dress again. ‘Your housekeeper won’t tell anyone I have been here, will she?’
‘Jenna is very loyal and will not gossip.’
Melwyn considered his reply. ‘She seemed very protective. She wanted to send me away so I gave her the impression we had an understanding. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘An understanding?’ queried Jack.
‘A liking for one another.’
Jack raised an eyebrow. He wished he had been present during that conversation.
‘You find that funny?’ asked Melwyn, with a curious look upon her face.
Jack straightened in his chair. He had forgotten Melwyn felt self-conscious about her scarred face. Why did women ask questions that had no right answer?
‘Not in the least.’ It was time to get down to business. ‘Melwyn, why are you here?’
Melwyn shifted uneasily in her seat. ‘There is talk that the preventative men attacked the smugglers last night at Tudor Cove.’
‘News travels fast,’ said Jack, noncommittally.
‘Father hoped that would be the end of them, but it seems most got away. Why, even this morning Job and Amos Blake sent someone around to us. They want Father to take more kegs. He doesn’t want them or have the money to pay, but the Blakes are forcing his hand as they don’t want to risk carrying it across country to one of their holding houses.’
‘Will he be a witness against them?’
Melwyn shook her head. ‘He is too scared. And nor will I. You don’t know what it is like to live in fear, Jack.’
He did, but now was not the time to share his own life story. ‘I can’t bring them to justice without evidence or witnesses. I need help, Mel.’
‘Which is why I am here.’
Jack straightened. Suddenly the pain in his shoulder no longer mattered. ‘Tell me.’
‘There is someone who speaks to both sides.’
Jack let out the breath he had been holding. ‘There are many who speak to both sides,’ conceded Jack. Had her father not already told him this?
‘A man in authority. A man no one would suspect.’
This was different to a sly creature like Silas. ‘What man?’
Melwyn hesitated. ‘I don’t know his name, but I know he has connections to the highest in the land. He has inside knowledge, Jack, so he can warn the smugglers.’
‘But he did not warn them last night.’
‘You do not believe me?’ asked Melwyn, a little hurt.
‘I believe you,’ said Jack. ‘I just don’t know if what you have been told is correct. Where did you hear this?’
&n
bsp; ‘I don’t know their names.’
‘You must do.’
‘I don’t. I was working and overheard some men talking as they supped their ale. They spoke of being warned about the preventative men on a previous drop. So they changed the landing place to avoid capture.’
Anonymous drinkers, earning a coin or two with the odd bit of smuggling. However, their loose words brought out by drink may be of some use.
‘I had better go,’ said Melwyn, getting up. Jack stood too. ‘You have been good to us Jack, I hope what I have told you helps in some way.’ A little frown darkened her brow. ‘I am leaving home soon as I am to be wed. I don’t want my parents spending their final years worrying for their own safety.’
Jack gave her arm a reassuring stroke. ‘I will do everything in my power to help,’ he told her. ‘Now take that frown from your pretty face and go home to them. Try not to let the last few weeks you have of their company be marred by others. Time with your family is precious and you can never get it back. Take it from me,’ he added sadly. ‘I know about these things.’
Melwyn went to the door, but paused with her hand on the latch. She turned to look at him and he saw her struggling with the thoughts in her head. Finally she spoke, her voice determined and clear. ‘The man who speaks to both sides is a preventative man, Jack. I know this because my father is warned each time there is to be a search for smuggled goods. Only a preventative man would know that information. Please don’t tell anyone that you have heard it from me.’ Before Jack could reply, Melwyn had lifted the latch and stepped outside. He went to the door to speak further to her, but she was already walking briskly away with no intention of looking back.
Jack looked down at the neatly secured bandage around his arm. It had been a week since the night he was shot and the wound beneath was almost healed. Jenna was right when she said he would recover quickly. Her tender care, good food and rest had all played their part, as did the musket misfiring as a result of damp gunpowder from the sea air. Without any of these things, he may have lost his arm, if not his life.
He tentatively moved his fingers. Apart from a slight pulling sensation, he felt no pain. This was a great improvement from when he first stirred from his drunken stupor. He had opened his eyes to the sound of women’s voices and was surprised to find himself in an empty room. His head ached and he initially remembered little of the evening before, but when he saw a musket ball on the table by his bed, some of the memories came flooding back.
He turned the musket ball in his fingers. It appeared innocuous now it was extracted, but he would keep it as a reminder of how fragile the gift of life could be. The near death experience had changed him inside, and he suspected it had changed Jenna as well.
Since that night her eyes seemed brighter and she smiled more often. He couldn’t stop himself commenting on her good mood.
‘I have much to be grateful for,’ she had said, passing him a slice of buttered bread. ‘You are healing well and will soon be back to normal.’
‘And what is normal for you?’ he had asked.
Initially she had dropped her gaze, but at the last moment looked up at him through her lashes. ‘To be your housekeeper,’ she had replied. He wondered if that was what she really meant, for she had a strange opinion on the duties of a housekeeper.
What housekeeper would lie half-naked in his bed to distract the dragoons? It was wrong of her to place herself in such a vulnerable position, yet having her so close felt anything but wrong. Somewhere along their journey together, she had stepped outside her role – and he had helped her to do it. He had taken advantage of her when she was only trying to help him. He had been too free with his compliments when she had never encouraged him. On waking he had made up his mind to redraw the line between employer and employee. It had taken all his strength to do it and even more to abide by the decision. Each day it grew harder and for a very good reason.
He paused briefly to listen to her singing in her bedroom, before snuffing out a candle in preparation for bed. It was not only her lightened mood that was different. He noticed another change had come over her, causing unspoken messages to fill the air between them. He saw them sent by other women and he knew what they meant. She was not an innocent maid who did not know the language of nature. She was married once and no doubt used it before. Jack did not respond but it was getting harder to ignore – a lingering touch on his hand, another bashful look through her lashes and a playful tone to her words. She was flirting with him and the line he had drawn was fading fast.
Her singing stopped and the house became still. It cleared his head and gave him a moment to think. Perhaps he was misreading her signals and he was only seeing what he wanted to see. It was a sobering thought. He tried to console himself that any man can have moments of delusion. Any man can see attraction in a woman’s eyes when in reality it is no more than kindly interest sparkling in their depths. He would go to his own bed, he decided, and ignore his fanciful thoughts brought on by the fact that he had not lain with a woman for several months.
Jack frowned as he realised he had not even looked for a woman since Jenna came into his life. She had much to answer for, he thought, as he snuffed out the candle and watched the plume of fragile smoke rise in the air. He had suspected that hiring her would cause him trouble, but he did not consider what it would be like to live with a woman he found so tempting.
Jack straightened his shoulders as Jenna’s soft lyrical tones began to waft through the floorboards again. Damn those floorboards, he thought. He looked up and wondered if fate was stepping in with a beckoning hand. Only moments before he had decided to be sensible. Unfortunately, where Jenna was concerned he realised a sensible choice was no choice at all.
Jenna stopped singing as she realised she was failing miserably. Jack had not mentioned his drunken confession all week. At first, she tried to encourage him by providing the right atmosphere that might stimulate such feelings again, but her attempts got her nowhere. Like a blind man, he saw none of her gentle approaches and left her wondering if he was attracted to her at all. Any sane woman would have asked him if he meant his compliments, but she had been afraid that he would disown them. Instead she had become devious in her cowardice and tried using tricks that she copied from women who loitered around the entrance of Goverek Inn.
She should not have used them on Jack, but her desire to touch and be touched by him had grown over the last few days and made her reckless. She should have known he would not respond. He would be too mindful of his position as her employer. Her attempts were now bordering on embarrassing and tomorrow she must stop. His brandy fuelled words were just a memory that would fade over time. It was no wonder the song she had just sung was a sad ballad about thwarted love. It was how she felt: desolate, empty and undesired.
Jenna heard the door of her room creak open and was surprised to see Jack filling the doorway, a hand resting on the latch, the other against the frame. Jenna put down her hairbrush and slowly stood up. He avoided looking at her, preferring to stare intently at the floor.
‘Tell me to go if I am wrong to come here,’ he said quietly.
Jenna’s heart began to thud in her chest and her mouth grew dry, leaving her silence to hang heavy between them.
‘I have made a mistake,’ he muttered briskly. He was leaving, and so were the kisses he could lay upon her skin.
‘You are not wrong,’ Jenna blurted out a little too loudly. She felt her face redden. Her abrupt reply sounded more like a fishwife than a seductress.
Jack hesitated, turning his head as if he thought he had misheard her.
She tried again, but more quietly and heartfelt. This time, her reply came easier to her as it was how she truly felt. ‘You are not wrong, Jack,’ she said softly. ‘I am glad you are here.’
He paused, allowing her words to linger in the air, before closing the door with a push of his hand and a click of the latch.
Jenna’s heart began to race. ‘What about Melwyn?’
she asked. She had to know.
His black eyes held hers. ‘There is nothing between us.’
‘But you like her?’
‘She is barely out of childhood,’ he said as he allowed his gaze to slowly sweep over her body. ‘I want a woman,’ he mused, lifting them again to snare hers. ‘I want you.’
Three strides and he was framing her jaw with his fingers and kissing her face. His soft kisses deepened before hungrily trailing down the line of her neck. She found herself smiling, as his hands slid down her back to span her waist, before rising again to her breasts. He wanted to feel her, but she remained encased within her stays. They would have to go.
Without uttering a word, they both watched as he pulled at her laces with impatient fingers, their foreheads touching as their shallow breaths mingled in the cold night air. Jenna’s body softened beneath and began to tremble as Jack finally eased her stays from her and impatiently cast them aside. He began to caress her breasts beneath her shift, as he kissed the curve of her neck.
‘Tell me to go … if you want me to stop,’ he whispered hoarsely as he slid one shoulder of her shift down to expose her skin. His lips felt soft and warm, while a sensual graze of his teeth sent shivers up her spine.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ Jenna whispered as her skin’s sensitivity heightened, tightening her nipples to a painful ache.
Jack eased the other shoulder of her shift away and guided it down to rest on her hips. He lifted his gaze to look into her eyes.
‘Then I will not stop,’ was his sultry reply.
Jenna gasped as his lips followed every curve of her body. She closed her eyes and threaded her trembling fingers through her own hair, for she knew he was about to take her on a journey she had never experienced before.
Jenna opened her eyes and saw the unfamiliar wooden beams above. She smiled as she realised she was in Jack’s bedroom and he was lying asleep next to her. She rolled to face him so she could watch him unnoticed. His lovemaking was perfect and he was perfect, she thought happily. She did not know a relationship between a man and a woman could be this good. Her smile threatened to turn into a giggle as she remembered how they came to be in his room. She clutched the sheet to her mouth to stifle it and he felt the movement. He opened his eyes and smiled at her. Delighted he’d woken, she snuggled against him to enjoy the lazy caress of his hand on her arm.
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