His Wicked Kiss (48 page)

“ ‘Why brand they us with base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base?’ ” Edmund cried as if he could not comprehend it. “ ‘
Base?
’ ”

Jack knew exactly how he felt. Alec put his head down, laughing into his hand. His pregnant wife, Becky, elbowed him.

“ ‘Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, takes more composition, and fierce quality, than doth within a dull, stale, tired bed go to th’ creating a whole tribe of fops, got ‘tween asleep and awake?’ ”

“Man’s got a point,” Damien drawled in a low tone.

“ ‘Fine word, legitimate!’ ” Edmund the Bastard kept at it, crossing toward the limelight, so close that Eden with her fine aim could have hit him in the head with an orange peel if she’d had one.

She looked as if she might like to.

“ ‘Edmund the base shall top th’ legitimate,’ ” the villain declared. “ ‘I grow, I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for bastards!’ ”

“Bravo, my lad!” Jack stood up and bellowed in a voice made to carry orders out across the waves.

Immediately, his brothers echoed the sentiment, cheering with applause and a piercing whistle of approval.

The whole theater broke into laughter, having been in on the joke for years. After all, the whole town knew who they were; their scandalous history had always been an open secret in
London
.

The Knight women glanced at their husbands with equal parts doting and exasperation.

Jack looked the audience over for a moment with a wry stare.

“Welcome back, Lord Jack!” somebody yelled from down in the pit, but there was no point in overdoing it.

He sat down with a look of tranquil cynicism, tugging his waistcoat into place. Lucien was still laughing and clapped him on the back.

“Perfect timing, old boy.”

“Somebody had to say something,” he muttered, then took a swig from his flask.

Eden
shook her head at him and smiled.

In the days that followed, Jack was amused to find the invitations pouring in.

It seemed his open acknowledgment of the family scandal had quite disarmed the ton, and now Jack, the prodigal son, was being given the chance to show he wasn’t such a bastard, after all.

Funny how fortune and power could make a man’s sins seem mere foibles, eccentricities. At any rate, the society that had once shunned him was now offering him the olive branch.

There was a time when he would have snatched it out of their hands, snapped it in two, and thrown it on the ground, but he was not so angry anymore.

Not so full of obstinate pride.

Besides, his darling
Eden
wanted to belong to their world, and recalling Lord Arthur’s advice, Jack deemed it an honor to make her wish come true.

“You said you wanted to put down roots,” Jack murmured as she stared in shock two days later at the house he was proposing to buy.

Eden
could not even answer, bedazzled by the dramatic Baroque ceiling mural in the entrance hall: blue sky and great, silvered clouds with Apollo the sun god driving his chariot across the ceiling. She had a direct view of his mighty steeds’ underbellies from where she stood; one could almost hear them snorting.

The mural had a sense of vivid motion, which, when added to the rest of the entrance hall’s opulent details, created an almost dizzying sense of grandeur: gilded bannisters, huge splendid door casements, decorated white pilasters, roundels with the bas-relief busts of Greek philosophers peering out like nosy onlookers, painted cherubs everywhere, expanses of gleaming Italian marble, and chandeliers above like sparkling crowns.

The house was being offered to Jack on extraordinary terms as part of the settlement finalizing matters between him and old Abraham Gold. For all its grandeur, it would need a bit of work. Jack had suggested that overseeing the improvements and refurbishing it might be an apt project for
Eden
while he was gone to
Venezuela
.

She turned rather dazedly, taking it all in, and was delighted anew by the view out the high, arched windows. The tall, spouting plume of the fountain danced in the center of the ornamental lake. The mile-long drive up to the house wound through two hundred acres of green, rolling landscape sculpted by Capability Brown.

Through the window, presently, she spotted Cousin Amelia strolling with Lieutenant Trahern, and smiled. They had fetched her cousin on the way out to Derbyshire, where the grand house was situated, a few hours from
London
.

The gallant young lieutenant and her shy cousin had charmed each other from the moment they had met. Now the pair had gone out to view the grounds while Jack and Eden toured the house. When they were done here, Amelia would accompany
Eden
back to Town for a few days—information that seemed to please Mr. Trahern as much as it pleased the girls.

Eden
quite believed a bit of matchmaking was in order.

She had never anticipated becoming her cousin’s chaperone, but now that she was an old married lady, such was her privilege.

“My lord, my lady,” Mr. Gold’s land agent addressed them. “If you wish to come this way, I should be very pleased to show you the ballroom. It holds up to four hundred guests…”

Never in her wildest dreams did
Eden
ever contemplate owning a ballroom, let alone having four hundred friends to invite there. She looked at Jack, who was sauntering along languidly by her side.

“Can we really afford this?” she whispered.

“No worries,” he murmured as the agent marched ahead. “I’ll just sell off the castle in
Ireland
.”

She gasped. “Don’t you dare!”

He smiled. “I’m only teasing.” The wicked sparkle in his eyes informed her he had merely wanted to see her reaction, since the castle obviously meant a great deal to them as a couple. He gave her a wink and then glanced around at the house. “If you like this place, you shall have it.”

Reminded in spite of herself of those three blissful days,
Eden
took her husband’s arm in wary affection and steered him onward to see the ballroom. They were getting along better now than they had been since that gloomy day they had left
Ireland
. Admittedly, Jack’s cheeky outburst in the theater the other night had disarmed
Eden
as much as it had the ton.

The measure of amused favor that he had won from Society by his rowdy display seemed to go contrary to what
Eden
would have expected, but as Martin had later explained to her, true “originals” actually led fashion by breaking the rules.

Jack was an original, all right, she mused. When it came to rule-breaking, he was an expert. She surveyed the ballroom and tried to imagine the two of them hosting glittering gatherings like the ones they were now being invited to.

She glanced at her husband and found him watching her again with a soft trace of a smile on his lips and a glow in his turquoise eyes. She smiled back at him, happier than she had been in weeks; nevertheless, she still got the feeling he was up to something.

And so he was.

But his secret agenda was hardly nefarious. After his breakthrough with the ton, and more importantly, with his wife the other night at the theater, Jack vowed not to squander the opportunity he had gained. He was working his way back into his lady’s favor, and nothing on earth would deter him.

He had taken it into his head that perhaps she needed to be wooed and courted all over again, nice and slowly.

Rushing her would only make her run from him again. All sailors had to learn extraordinary patience, waiting on the tides, waiting on the wind. If she was the moon, then he was the sea, slave to her bidding, a thrall to her mysterious pull. He mightn’t like this, forced to live like a monk, but he was used to being at sea for long periods of time, foregoing the pleasures of Eros.

He always found that when he enjoyed the rites of sex again, the taste was all the sweeter, more intoxicating. And so, he had made up his mind to restrain his lust for one more week.

If she didn’t give it to him by then, he had promised himself he would summon up the pirate in him and simply take the wench. He didn’t want it to come to that, but damn it, he was her husband and he had his rights. He hoped instead that buying her this house might inspire her to a more amorous form of t
hank
s.

They finished their tour a while later and left the premises with solemn assurances to the agent that, yes, they were interested and they would let him know their decision post-haste.

Then the four of them stopped about halfway through the drive back to
London
for a meal at a quaint coaching inn.

Jack observed the mooning looks between young Trahern and Cousin Amelia in gentle amusement, now that he knew firsthand the tender misery of falling in love. He made a few remarks to help his young friend’s cause, giving Trahern openings to brag about his various feats of daring at sea.

“You should have seen him, Miss Northrop,” he told the girl while they sat at the rustic table eating roast beef sandwiches and drinking ale. “There were two feluccas full of
Barbary
corsairs trying to pin us in, but Lieutenant Trahern ordered the men to lower the oars and somehow managed to run the frigate right through the opening between them. Cleared it with little more than seven feet to spare on both sides.”

“Oh!” she said. Amelia Northrop was a sweet thing, a pale, demure blonde with a soft, melodious voice as sweet as wind chimes. She was as harmless, biddable, and gentle as her red-haired cousin was fiery and strong-willed.

“Aye, they were ready with the grappling hooks,” Trahern admitted, blushing modestly. “They were going to board us. Luckily Cap’n Jack was there. He fought while I sailed the ship.”

“Did you… kill some of them, Lord Jack?” Amelia inquired in a tremulous voice. “The
Barbary
corsairs, I mean?”

“Ohh, I don’t recall. Maybe one or two.”

Trahern let out a snort of a laugh, no doubt remembering the bloodshed of that day, but when Amelia turned to him with a wondering look, he seemed to catch on that bloody butchery was not the sort of thing one discussed in the presence of a genteel and sheltered young lady—and Amelia Northrop was possibly the most genteel and sheltered creature either man had ever met.