The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5 (144 page)

There was deep, calm rage in the baron’s voice, and Dr. Cranford tilted his head in question. “I know it’s probably none of my affair, but I strongly advise you not to take on this man tonight. You’ve lost a goodly amount of blood. I don’t want you to hurt this shoulder perhaps more. Can it wait until tomorrow?”

“Oh, yes,” Gray said, looking into the rustling coals in the fireplace. “I fancy he’ll believe his henchman has succeeded. Even if he finds out that I’m still breathing, I doubt
he’ll be worried. How was he to know that the stupid sod he sent to kill me kept his instruction?”

Dr. Cranford, not wanting to know any more, took his leave.

32

“T
ELL ME
,” Jack said, pressing as close as she could to Gray’s side. “Tell me about this woman you saved. I don’t understand this.”

Gray sighed. His shoulder throbbed, the laudanum was beginning to drag at his voice and his mind, slowing both. He turned his head slightly and kissed the tip of her nose. “I finally have you as my wife again, but here you are, lying against me all neutral, not a lustful bone in your body, not a lustful thought in your female brain.”

She lightly stroked her palm over his belly. He sucked in his breath. “No, don’t prove me wrong. Well, go ahead if you truly wish to. Despite my manly wound I will eventually feel lust begin to fill my bones and my brain.”

She laughed, kissed his mouth, and let her hand move lower to touch him. He trembled and jerked and sucked in air. Then she kissed him one last time and quickly moved away. “No, you need to build your strength, not deplete it. I won’t tease you any more, it’s not fair. Now, tell me about this woman you saved, or let’s sleep. One or the other.”

“A hard woman you are, Jack, very hard.”

She laughed at that, wanting to touch him again, to feel the heat of him. She didn’t even have time to sigh with regret. He rolled over on top of her, jerked up her nightgown with his left hand, and nearly lost his wits at the feel of her naked against him. He forgot his manly shoulder wound, forgot everything but how he wanted her now, no more waiting, no more talking, just her body and his, together. “I think it’s time I made you pregnant,” he said and came into her. Her body was ready for him and accepted him, but he realized quickly that Jack’s mind was still on his wounded shoulder, the man who’d tried to kill him. He hadn’t given her enough time.

Well, hell.

He came up, balancing himself on one hand, and said, “I want you to forget everything but me inside you. Do you hear me, Jack? Think of me pushing in you, deep. Ah, yes. I love the feel of you, how you squeeze me, how you shift and tighten around me. How do I feel to you?”

“Inside me?” Her voice sounded thin and scratchy. “Hot, Gray, you feel hot and—” She gasped, arching up, pulling him down on top of her and kissed him wildly. He was laughing and moaning when he felt her tense beneath him, felt her legs tremble and lock. Then he threw back his head and cried out to the ceiling beams, knowing that this woman had been fashioned only for him and he’d been as lucky as a man could get that he’d caught her stealing Durban.

“Jack, I’m done in.”

“No wonder,” she managed to whisper as she helped him ease over onto his back again. “That was a very nice experience for me, Gray. Thank you.”

“Anytime,” he said. “Well, if you’re still interested, give me another five minutes.” In the next moment he was
asleep, the laudanum and his utter relaxation drawing him quickly under.

Jack lay beside him on her back, her head pillowed on her arms. Her nightgown was bunched up around her waist, her thighs were sprawled apart, and she too was relaxed, too relaxed even to bring her legs together.

She stared up at the dark ceiling. “Thank you, God,” she whispered. “He is my husband. Thank you.” She began whistling softly into the still room.

“And he loves me,” she said as she turned her head to see the distant stars through the windowpane just beyond Gray’s side of the bed. “I know he does.”

“Yes,” Gray said beside her. “Of course I love you. Do you think me an utter idiot?”

“You’re never an utter idiot, Gray. You truly love me? You swear it?”

“I swear it. How could I not? You come dressed to my house as the valet Mad Jack, you steal my horse, you have the gall to get deathly ill on me, you have the nerve to make me want to protect you. Oh, yes, I love you.”

After that utterly wonderful monologue, Jack had no time to tell him she’d kill for him, she’d do anything he ever wanted her to do. He began snoring, soft fluttering little sniffs that made her smile even as she grasped his hand in hers and fell asleep.

“That’s how I met Ryder,” Gray said the following morning at the breakfast table. He kissed her fingers, then released her hand just a moment to take a bite of his eggs. “He saved children who were abused, as I already told you, and I tried to help women whose husbands abused them.”

Jack heard his calm voice, looked at his beloved face, and thought,
That doesn’t surprise me after what you saw your father do to your mother
.

“I was twenty years old, wild because there was no reason not to be, and thoughtless, enjoying myself far more than a healthy young man should. One night I had just left two of my friends and wasn’t more than a mile from home. I remember the sky was beautifully clear, with a smattering of bright stars and a half-moon. I felt good. I was whistling, kicking pebbles out of my path lightheartedly, when I heard a woman cry out.

“I saw a woman in a drawing room through partially open draperies. A man was hitting her. I didn’t stop to think, didn’t stop to wonder what was going on, to question, to do anything. No, I ran up to that house and tried to burst through the door. It was locked. I ran to the window of that room where the man was hitting the woman and managed to shove it up high enough to climb inside.

“I remember the look of utter astonishment on the man’s face when he saw me crash into his drawing room. He looked at me, looked at the woman, hit her again, really hard in her ribs, and it was then that I knew he was the sort of man who made hitting women a habit.

“I told you that my father never hit my mother’s face. Neither did this man. Her ribs and her belly were his targets. He was just like my father.

“He shouted at me, demanding to know what I wanted, but I just ran to him, jerked the woman free, and beat him into the floor.

“It was the woman who stopped me. I remember she was pulling at my hands, saying over and over, ‘No, he’s not worth it, please don’t kill him. He’s not worth it.’ And so I stopped hitting him. He was unconscious, not dead. Nor was he going to die, more’s the pity.

“The woman was his wife, and she’d angered him by visiting her sister without getting his permission. It took her a while to trust me, for, after all, I was a young man
and she was a married woman of at least thirty. But when she finally told me the entire truth, I realized that it would simply continue if I didn’t intervene. She was in exactly the same situation as my mother had been.

“The only difference was that this woman hated her husband. She wanted to leave him despite the resulting scandal; she didn’t care. But she couldn’t leave because she was afraid of him. He’d told her that he would kill her if she did. There was one little girl, Joan, and a little boy, William.

“I didn’t know what to do, not really, but I just knew that I wouldn’t let this continue. I couldn’t leave her to face the bastard. I tied him up and gagged him and pulled him behind a settee.

“Then I waited while she packed and got her young daughter and son ready to leave. I took them both to my house.

“They remained there for three days. That third day I met Ryder Sherbrooke. He was arguing with an older man in White’s. The old codger was saying that all the irritating trash in the streets should be eliminated once and for all, all of them sent to the Colonies or to Botany Bay. He was referring to children who were forced to beg or steal to keep from starving. Ryder never raised his voice, just said that it was adults who brought these poor children into the world and then abandoned them. What were the children supposed to do? Leave all good people alone, the old codger was saying over and over. I managed to introduce myself to Ryder when he stepped away, leaving the old man muttering into his brandy snifter. Oddly enough, within ten minutes of meeting him, I was telling him of the lady at my house and what had happened.

“Within two days he knew all about my past. It was Ryder who helped me figure out how to protect her—”

“Who was she, Gray?”

“Lady Cecily Granthsom.”

Jack just shook her head.

He said only, “You will doubtless meet her soon, Jack. I believe she and her children are currently in Scotland visiting her husband’s family. She will be charmed with you.”

“What did you do with the husband?”

“Ryder and I went to see him. He was enraged that his wife had escaped with her lover, so he screamed at us. He would kill the bitch, he yelled, and that damned lover of hers. He didn’t recognize me as the young man who’d beaten him into the floor.

“That was when Ryder and I explained the situation to him.” Gray smiled, seeing the past, Jack realized, seeing a triumph that had remained with him.

“Lord Granthsom was beyond fury when I told him that I’d been the one to hit him, that I was hiding his wife and children, until I had some believable assurance that he would never strike her again, or the children. He kept screaming that it was none of my affair, that she was a slut and an adulteress and she deserved whatever he did to her.

“That was when he attacked me.” Gray rubbed his hands together. “I thrashed him again. I remember the butler came to the door, saw what I was doing, just nodded, and left. Everyone always knows when there is violence in a household. There is no hiding it. No keeping it secret. After he was bleeding and on the floor, I asked him what he thought I should do with him.

“Granthsom wasn’t stupid. He claimed he wouldn’t hurt his wife again. I didn’t believe him. He signed a paper swearing he’d never touch her again, or her children. He swore he wouldn’t retaliate in any way. Ryder and I left. Two days later, Cecily returned to her home. I accompanied
her. Lord Granthsom seemed calm, accepting. Cecily seemed convinced. I left.

“Three days later the man I’d hired to keep watch over them came to my house to tell me that he was beating her, and it was bad. I took my gun and went there. The servants were all white as death, listening to her screams, yet unwilling to do anything. What could they do? They were nothing compared to him.

“I shot him in the leg. He kept hitting her. I shot him in the other leg.”

“What happened?” Jack looked at the piece of toast she’d been holding an inch from her mouth for the entire time Gray had been speaking. She dropped it onto her plate and leaned forward. “What, Gray? What happened?”

“Lord Granthsom is in a wheelchair. It’s been nearly six years now. He is dependent upon the servants and his wife for his very existence. One of the bullets caused enough damage so that he’ll never walk again.”

“My God, what an exquisite punishment,” she said, jumping to her feet and throwing herself into his arms. He moaned from the wound in his shoulder, then clasped her close, bringing her onto his lap. “Yes, it worked out well. Cecily is her own woman now, in complete control of all his estates because she controls him. He is not a happy man and that pleases me inordinately and Cecily as well. You will meet her daughter, Joan, and her son, William, when they return from Scotland in the middle of the summer. Cecily is beloved by his family for her kindness, her selflessness, her caring for the fallen earl. They believe that he fell from a horse. Because of his pride, he hasn’t ever contradicted her.”

“The husband is an earl?
A peer of the realm?
An earl was beating his wife?”

“Yes. There are no class boundaries, Jack. It’s true that
poverty tends to drain the spirit, and thus many men lose all hope and take their hopelessness out on their wives and children. Also, some men are simply animals, no rhyme or reason for it.”

“And you save the women?”

“I try. Since Cecily, there have been ten women. It’s Cecily who has helped me over the years assist them in dealing with their various situations. Every one is different. I have spent hours scratching my head, trying to figure out the best way to save a woman. Two women I’ve saved were exactly like my mother. They cursed me for interfering. I’ve simply not involved myself with them after I discovered that.”

“This man who wanted to kill you? Who is he?”

“He is the Honorable Clyde Barrister, a little weasel who would doubtless be in excellent company with your stepfather, Sir Henry.

“I’ve gotten several threatening letters from him. I wrote him after the first letter and told him that if he didn’t swallow his threats and leave me alone, I would beat him and throw him in a ditch. I guess he didn’t believe me because another letter from him arrived at the same time as the urgent request from Lord Burleigh to see me. After seeing Lord Burleigh, you can understand how simple it was for me to forget about it.