“Confessing? You accept my marriage proposal—and I will hold you to that acceptance—and now you confess to criminal activities. This is certainly novel. I was under the impression that cuddling and pillow talk came after the lovemaking.”
He’d tucked one arm beneath Madeline’s neck, and wrapped the other around her middle. She was surrounded by Jack, and nothing—not his body, not his tone of voice—suggested he was upset by what Madeline said.
“I stole the coal from McArdle and divided it between my aunts without their knowledge. I took the tournament money from the Weasel. I stole Higgans’s medical bag. I was angry.” Jack kissed her shoulder, which Madeline found annoying. “I solve an entire crime spree for you, and you’re flirting.”
“Madam, we passed flirting several raptures ago. What were you angry about?”
That question wasn’t as easy to answer as Madeline might have thought. “I’ve been angry for years, since my father drank and gambled away all of our security, since I was beaten for offenses I hadn’t committed, since my aunts were left to scrimp and starve by husbands who’d betrayed their trust.”
“Those are good reasons to be angry. Are you angry with me?”
That question wasn’t from the magistrate, but rather, from the lover—the brave lover.
“No, I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with myself for disappointing you. Stealing is wrong, I know that, but being good and kind and honest wouldn’t keep my aunts warm through January, or make Vicar disperse the poor box funds when they were needed, rather than when he recalled to do it.”
“And Higgans’s medical bag?”
“Aunt Theo could have died because of his laziness. I’m not sorry I took his medical bag. In a just world, I’d leave him to shiver his way through a bad lung fever, alone in a cottage where the fire had gone out. I couldn’t do that, so I took the symbol of his calling from him.”
Jack started a slow kneading of Madeline’s shoulders. “Stealing is a crime, you’re right. I’m not sure moving the tournament money to the church qualifies as stealing, but Madeline, lying isn’t considered good behavior either. Even lying to protect loved ones is still dishonest.”
Madeline twisted around to peer at Jack. “What are you going on about? A confession is when one tells the truth, and that’s what I’ve done.”
She settled back into his arms, wondering if these were the last moments she’d spend in his embrace.
“Madeline,” Jack said, very close to her ear, “I treasure you for your loyalty to family, but you needn’t dissemble. I know Hattie helped herself to McArdle’s coal, moved that money, and stole Higgans’s bag. I questioned her today, and both evenings when you claimed to have visited her, she made no mention of your coming to call. She wasn’t home, was she?”
God in heaven. This was worse than inadvertently incriminating Pahdi, or at least as bad.
“If Hattie were the guilty party, would you prosecute her, Jack?”
His sigh fanned past Madeline’s nape. “I’m sworn to uphold the king’s justice, Madeline, but prosecuting an old woman for trying to keep warm by burning what is essentially McArdle’s trash is beyond me. No harm resulted from moving the tournament funds—a miraculous occurrence, if you ask Tavis—and all we need do in Higgans’s case is return his blasted bag to him.”
In other words, the magistrate valued reparation over incarceration. Good to know.
Wonderful to know, in fact.
“Jack, Hattie didn’t mention my visits because I was busy stealing coal, putting the darts money in the church vestibule, and nipping Higgans’s bag. I did those things, and I can’t plead age or poverty. I wanted… justice, I suppose, or for somebody to acknowledge that Hattie, Theo, and others like them need and deserve help.”
Jack went still, stopped his stroking and caressing. Madeline couldn’t even feel his breath on her shoulder.
“You committed these crimes?”
Oh, the incredulity in his voice. Madeline didn’t know whether to be flattered or dismayed.
“Yes. My wages aren’t adequate to make the repairs my aunts’ cottages need. I couldn’t afford Cotton’s ram for Aunt Hattie. I couldn’t ask Vicar to scold people into increasing their donations for the poor. I couldn’t give up my position at Candlewick because without that money my aunts would be worse off than they are now. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You didn’t know what else to do?” His question was carefully neutral, as if verifying a translation from a foreign tongue.
“You call me competent,” Madeline said, around an ache in her throat. “I’m not. I didn’t know how to help my aunts, and everything I tried wasn’t enough. I’m so tired of not knowing what to do.”
She rolled over, and plastered herself to Jack’s chest. She needed his arms around her now, and even if he ordered her from the bed, she wasn’t sure she could make herself leave.
“This is the real confession,” Jack said, drawing her close and resting his cheek against her temple. “You are exhausted, bewildered, and ready to drop where you stand, but you cannot give up. I know how that feels, Madeline. I do.”
Madeline’s tears came in noisy, undignified sobs, when a polite sniffle mortified her. Now she wanted to run from the room, but Jack’s arms held her fast.
“Sometimes, I think I hate them,” she said, “the pair of them. They are so stubborn, and so admirable, but they’re all I have, and I can’t… I don’t…”
She gave up trying to explain the welter of protectiveness, need, frustration, and terror that drove her, and all the while, Jack held her. He said nothing, didn’t reason with her, didn’t judge or pontificate, and in his silence, Madeline heard worlds of understanding.
“You’ll not arrest me?” Tears had made her voice low and raspy. “I didn’t take Cotton’s blasted ram, by the way, but that’s what gave me the inspiration.”
Jack’s hand on her back paused, then resumed a slow sweep across her shoulder blades. “Charles II inspired you?”
“Not the ram, but the fact that the ram showed up when Aunt needed him. Somebody probably left a gate unlocked accidentally, and Hattie’s herd was serviced. Cotton wasn’t out any coin—Aunt would never have paid for the ram to visit her ewes—but Aunt’s problem was solved. Her lambs will come quite late, so she’ll not cost anybody else a good price at market. I know Cotton has been quietly accused of generosity, but I can’t believe that to be the case.”
“So you saw a victimless crime in that example.”
Jack’s tone was off, though his touch remained gentle.
“I saw… a way to atone for doing what I found necessary. McArdle needed to padlock his yard, and he can’t sell the leavings strewn all over his lot.”
“So McArdle received a valuable lesson, and a tidy yard. What about the tournament money? Another valuable lesson, to both Tavis and the vicar?”
He sounded almost admiring.
“Or Vicar’s congregation. We’re a fortunate parish, generally. We ought to do better by our widows, and the Weasel had a better reputation when Tavis’s mother ran it.”
“No argument there. What of Higgans’s bag?”
“I had no higher purpose than making him look like a fool,” Madeline said. “And I’ve got Pahdi in awful trouble. Do you believe I had nothing to do with Cotton’s ram?”
This mattered to Madeline. Confessing to crimes she’d committed was difficult enough, and the business with the ram was so fortuitous, Madeline wanted to believe it was the work of kind providence.
Jack kissed her shoulder again, and this time, Madeline didn’t find it annoying at all.
“You had nothing to do with Charles II paying a call on Hattie’s ewes, and neither did Cotton. I know exactly who arranged that situation.”
But Jack hadn’t arrested anybody, or stifled the rumors that Cotton had set the ram loose himself.
“Who would do such a thing?” Madeline asked. “It was quite clever, and now everybody wonders if Cotton has
n’t been hiding a latent streak of decency beneath all his bluster. I’d like to commend the thief, or ram-napper, whoever he is.”
An interesting silence ensued, while Jack kissed his way from her shoulder to her ear.
Then he rolled to his back, and situated Madeline along his side. “You may commend me, Madeline. I put the ram in with Hattie’s ewes, and I’ll thank you not to peach on me. Mama has a very high opinion of the hero of Parrakan, and I’d like to stay in her good graces.”
“You—? You put the ram in with Hattie’s ewes?”
“She wouldn’t take charity, and Cotton wasn’t about to extend charity. Nobody wanted to meddle, and yet, something had to be done. Cost me half a night’s sleep, and my dog cart will smell like ram until next summer. Stop laughing, Madeline. I thought surely you’d pick up the scent when I delivered you to Teak House from Candlewick.”
She did not stop laughing. She laughed as hard as she’d cried, until Jack stopped laughing long enough to point out that all they need do is return Higgans’s bag to him, and be about planning the wedding.
“That’s the problem,” Madeline said. “That blighted bag is not where I put it. I’ve looked twice, and his damned bag has somehow gone missing in truth.”
* * *
Madeline had lifted the window to Higgans’s study, taken his bag, and left it sitting in the muck wagon at the local livery several doors away from Higgans’s house. She’d left the pony trap hitched behind the livery, an ordinary location to leave a nondescript vehicle. Nobody had remarked her crime because everybody was too intent on assembling at the Weasel, or getting home before the temperature dropped further.
Jack had searched the livery as well as he could without being obvious, and though the muck wagon had sat in its usual location—the livery was a tidy place—he’d seen no sign of Higgans’s bag.
“May I interrupt?” Jeremy asked. He stood in the doorway to Jack’s study, morning light from the window across the corridor gilding his hair.
“Of course,” Jack said. “Need a break from the whist enthusiasts?”
Jeremy came into the study and closed the door behind him, but didn’t take the seat across from Jack’s desk.
“I never much cared for whist. Suppose you don’t either.”
Jack had been too busy for whist over the past few days. “I’m not very good at it.” The one time he’d sat down with Mama, Jack, and Miss DeWitt, Mama’s matchmaking innuendos had outnumbered the playing cards.
Jack kept a box of jasmine tea on this desk, the same as in the library and on the escritoire in his bedroom. Jeremy picked up the one sitting to Jack’s left and peered at the carvings.
“You don’t have to be good at cards, Jack. That’s not the point. This is not decent.”
Most people never noticed. “It’s pretty. I like it. The scent of the tea soothes me.”
Jeremy set it down, though his expression was a touch wistful. “I’m getting married.”
Well, damn. Jack had been hoping Miss DeWitt might notice what a sterling fellow Jeremy was, and solve several problems with a single kiss, as it were.
“Congratulations. Whoever she is, she’s a lucky woman.”
Now Jeremy settled into the chair opposite the desk. “I haven’t approached her family, though the young lady is quite willing. What are you working on?”
“I’ve made a list of all the people who were at the lending library. I need to speak with them again regarding the night Higgans’s bag went missing.”
“Don’t you want to know the name of my intended?”
“Only if you want to tell me. If you’re concerned her family will turn you down, don’t be. We don’t need anybody’s money to live quite comfortably, or to see a young lady well settled after taking the Fanning name. If she’s your choice, then she’s deserving of our every courtesy and protection. That aside, her family would be daft to refuse you.”
The list before Jack was too damned long, and beside it sat a note from Higgans demanding to know if progress had been made on “the case.”
The damned case could go hang for a moment. Jeremy had chosen a bride.
“That’s it?” Jeremy asked, sitting forward. “I’ve taken a fancy to a lady, and you’re ready to start writing bank drafts and recommending me as a suitor?”
Jeremy had known their father even less than Jack had, which might explain this display of diffidence on Jeremy’s part. A father might have offered advice or guidance on the choice of a bride. All Jack could offer was moral support.
“Jere, you are a fine man, and a gentleman. I’m proud to call you brother. I could not for two weeks do what you do, much less do it as well as you do. You make Mama laugh. You make Pahdi smile. I can count on my one hand the number of times I’ve seen that man smile, and I’ve known him half my life. When you walk into the room, Miss DeWitt lights up. You would have made a much better diplomat than I, but you have such genuine humility that the diplomatic corps would never occur to you.”
Jeremy rose. “Miss DeWitt would agree with you. Thinks I’m a paragon. Ridiculous, but there it is.”
Thank God, Lucy Anne DeWitt, and the healthy appetites of the Fanning menfolk—and their fiancées.
“Miss DeWitt has excellent taste, but now you know a bit how I felt, with all that hero nonsense, when mostly I’d managed not to bungle too badly.”
“That can’t be easy,” Jeremy said. “Makes a fellow feel like he ought to be a hero even if he hasn’t any notion how to go on. Difficult business, being a hero without a map.”
Jeremy sounded only partly bewildered. The other part of him was smilingly devilishly at nothing in particular. And yet, he’d described Jack’s situation exactly. Being a hero without a map was no damned fun.
“Be Miss DeWitt’s hero, and the rest will sort itself out.”
That was apparently the right thing to say, because Jeremy’s smile became luminous. “She’ll be my heroine, and then we’ll have some little heroes and heroines, and you can spoil the lot of them rotten. We’ll descend on you at the holidays and in summertime, and Mama will be the envy of her friends.”
“Don’t get started on the little heroes and heroines too soon. Unless you’re thinking of a special license?”
Reverend Jeremy’s ears turned a non-ecclesiastical shade of red. “My Lucy Anne can be quite… irresistible.”
“So can my Madeline.”
Jack had lost sleep about that, about taking risks with Madeline that might result in a child when he’d yet to put his ring on her finger.
“One suspected,” Jeremy said, going to the window. “Miss Hennessey looks at you the way Mama used to look out at the sea when we summered in Brighton and you were in India.”
“I’ve never thanked you for that,” Jack said, joining his brother at the window. The weather had finally moderated, which meant the lanes were mud, the eaves dripping, and at night, everything would turn back to ice.
“Thanked me?”
“You could have bought a commission, followed me to India. Mama would not have stopped you. You stayed behind and guarded her from melancholia and bitterness. I have you to thank for the fact that my mother didn’t disown me for getting captured.”
“She wanted to sail after you when we heard you were presumed dead. She was ready to conquer the Bengal tribes single-handedly. My Lucy Anne will be the same sort of mama.”
So will my Madeline. Though the first order of business was to find Higgans’s damned bag.
“For not letting Mama take ship, you have my undying gratitude.” Jack extended a hand to his brother. “Congratulations on your impending nuptials.”
“I will marry her, Jack. If I have to elope to Scotland and become a Presbyterian. I gather it’s the same with you and Miss Hennessey?”
Every man should have a kind, tolerant, brother who was this easy to talk to. “Madeline defies all of my preconceived notions about the institution of matrimony and its various attendant glories—let’s leave it at tha
t. Before she and I can make any announcement, I must find Higgans’s damned medical bag.”
Jeremy took Jack’s chair behind the desk. “What has some forgetful sot of a doctor’s bag to do with holy matrimony or its… attendant glories?” Jeremy rendered the term as if trying it on for later use in a sermon.
Jack had come home from India for several reasons, not the least of which was that exoticism had grown wearisome, adventure had paled, and loneliness had become his dominant experience of life. He’d missed Saras. He’d missed a land at peace that made sense to him. He’d missed seasons that offered a variety of weather instead of an annual rotation of deadly fevers.
He’d missed home. Jeremy was his brother, though only now did Jack feel as if he was being a brother to Jeremy in return.
“The situation with Higgans is complicated,” Jack said, “and if you have the time to listen, I will offer you a recitation that falls under the confidential privilege of clergy.”
In other words, Jeremy would not even under oath, disclose what Jack was about to tell him.
“You’ve been naughty,” Jeremy said. “One rejoices to learn a hero can be naughty like the rest of us. I will listen with the privilege of a brother, help any way I can, and keep my handsome mouth shut about the whole of it. What have you done?”
Jack started with borrowing the ram without permission—his sin to confess, if a sin it was—and progressed to how his misdeed had inspired Madeline, but that her misbehavior had now implicated Pahdi, at least in Higgans’s mind.
To talk through the sequence of events helped organize the problem in Jack’s mind, but it didn’t suggest any more possible locations where he might look for the damned bag.
“You could send Pahdi to London to see the sights,” Jeremy suggested. “Or back to India.”
“Which would confirm his guilt, and that’s not right. The bag has to be somewhere.”
“Have you dug through the livery’s muck pit? Somebody might have simply heaped the cart full and emptied it without paying attention.”
Awful—odoriferous thought. “I asked the livery to delivery me two loads of fresh manure, and… nothing. If the bag was in their muck pit, I’d have found it by now.”
Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) Page 26
