Howland struggled into a sitting position, rubbing his reddened ear and looking as if he were still dazed from all the brandy he’d drunk earlier. “She came back in here with that same candle. And she was crying. Or maybe she’d sprayed more whisky all over herself. I only know her face was all wet, and her hair was a mess. She apologized for disturbing me and said she was looking for her reticule. She thought she might’ve left it in here when you brought me into this room, and sure enough, she found it over there on the dressing table next to that candelabrum.”
Jack and Samantha glanced at the dressing table as if they both expected to see the reticule in question, but of course they didn’t. Felicity had retrieved it as she intended.
“She should’ve taken the reticule and left without another word.” Howland remained on the floor, as if he thought there was no point in standing up since Jack would probably just knock him back on his arse again. “Instead she asked if you played the highwayman just for a lark.”
“I certainly thought it was just for a lark!” Jack couldn’t help feeling a bit peeved that Felicity had doubted his assertion about that. “Had I known it was for any other reason—the reason you deigned to finally reveal to me little more than an hour ago—I would never have agreed to do it.”
“Oh, you would’ve done it,” Howland muttered.
“Don’t think that just because you’re on the floor or that my sister is still glaring that I won’t knock you flat again.” He took a single step toward Howland, who scampered backward in a crablike fashion till he was crumpled up in the nearest corner. Jack hated to ask this question, but he knew he had no choice. “Didn’t you hear anything in the next room?”
“I don’t remember hearing anything. All I remember is you brought me in here, and next thing I know, I see Miss Griffin stumbling about looking as if she’d already been compromised by someone else.”
“What should he have heard in the next room?” Samantha furrowed her brow as she peered at Jack. “That’s your room, isn’t it?”
“I believe you assigned it to me. But if he heard nothing, then it’s irrelevant.”
“Not if it means what I think it does.” Samantha set the ewer down on the bedside table.
“It’s not what you—oh, bother. Now that you’re married, maybe it’s exactly what you think,” he said lamely.
“Especially if you haven’t proposed to her or otherwise declared yourself to her.”
“For the love of”—Jack quickly reconsidered the mild blasphemy on his lips—“Miss Griffin. I told her I would marry her the day after we left Howland Hall!”
Samantha folded her arms across her chest and narrowed her eyes.
“You don’t believe me? Uncle Crispin was right there.”
Just like that, her arms unfolded and her eyes unnarrowed. Then her arms flew outward and her eyes rolled as she said something that sounded like, “Ugh!”
“I know, Samantha. I know you can’t stand him, but since we were in his book room at the time, and—”
“Oh, where is my own reticule when I need it, so I can cosh some sense into your head? That’s not what makes me go ugh, you fool! She doesn’t want to be told you’re marrying her—the way she must’ve been told she was marrying Renton.”
Howland said, “You could always use that ewer to—”
“Silence!” Jack jabbed a finger at Howland, who still cowered on the floor in the corner. “This no longer concerns you.”
“I daresay it does, forasmuch as my mother and her aunt have decided we must marry. And besides, I’m not finished telling you what she—”
“Kindly hold your tongue until I’ve finished explaining to my brother why he’s a fool,” Samantha said acidly.
Howland stuck out his lower lip and managed to curl up into an even smaller, tighter ball.
“There’s no need for you to explain anything further,” said Jack. “I already know why I’ve been a fool. All her life she’s been told by others what will happen to her. She’s never been allowed to make anything happen on her own—except, perhaps, for that night when she leaped out of her aunt’s carriage to confront me and ask me if that was all. And that one act changed her life more drastically than any decision anyone else ever made for her.”
“For once in her life, she made a choice,” agreed Samantha. “She exerted some control over some aspect of her life, for better or for worse. Why should that be taken away from her now? Don’t tell her you’re going to marry her. Ask her. Go and propose marriage to her.”
“Right now? When—”
“Ugh!” Samantha said again, only this time she planted her fists back on her hips. “I see you do require further explanation as to why you’re a fool.”
“Please let me know when you’re finished explaining, Lady Ellsworth, as I still haven’t finished explaining what happened when Miss Griffin was in here,” said Howland.
“So what happened?” inquired Jack. “You were saying she asked if it was true that my stint as the highwayman was just a lark…”
“And before I could form an answer, she went on to say, ‘Does Captain Jordan do everything for a lark? Does he do everything without a care for the consequences, without any thought of what effect his actions will have on others?’”
Jack gulped down a curse, for his sister stood right next to him.
“I didn’t know you’d already told her you did it for a lark—or even that she knew the highwayman was you,” Howland said with a whimper. “Then her mother and aunt came in. I’m just so miserable over Renton’s betrayal that—I don’t know, I guess I just want someone else to feel as miserable as I do.”
“What generosity of spirit. So you told her I set her up to be compromised by you. Only someone as deep in his cups as you are would spin such an absurdity. Why would I do that immediately after—” Jack clamped his mouth shut and shifted his eyes to one side as he glimpsed his sister’s murderous glare. “For the love of God—I mean Griffin, Miss Griffin. Why the bloo—blooming—”
“Oh, just say ‘bloody hell’ and stop pretending you have to be mindful of my delicate ears!” Samantha snapped.
“Fine. Why the bloody hell did you think she came in here looking disheveled, Howland?”
“I thought she did that herself as part of her ploy to trap herself in a compromising position with me. When my mother and Lady Tyndall appeared—as if the whole thing had been planned—what else was I to think? Of course I assumed you must’ve set the whole thing up to get back at me.”
“So soon after you confessed to me the real reason you had me act the highwayman? Oh, never mind. You’re bosky.”
“Either way, it’s done,” Howland said morosely. “Now I’ll have to marry her, unless you know a way out of it.”
Jack was already thinking of what she’d said to Howland right before her aunt dragged her out of this bedchamber.
That ring you were going to give Lydia. The one that originally belonged to Lady Martha Griffin. I want it!
She didn’t really want it. She wanted to see it returned to its original owner.
And that’s when he knew what he’d have to do.
Chapter Nineteen
Felicity was still in bed two mornings later—which is to say she hadn’t left her bedchamber since her aunts dragged her home from the Ellsworth ball. Not that they really dragged her. She’d been more than willing to put as much distance as possible between her and Howland, as if that would somehow preclude the inevitable.
Every time she thought of what she and Jack did that night—and she’d thought of nothing else in the thirty-odd hours since—she felt a pang in her heart as sharp and as fresh as if what happened afterward was happening now. Granted, she hadn’t expected a marriage proposal that night. She wasn’t certain she would have wanted one under the circumstances, for it might have implied that he was only asking her to do what they’d have to do anyway, now that they’d done it. Oh, what a dreadful muddle!
But at the very least, he coul
d have said the three words she longed to hear. That she needed to hear, so she’d know they weren’t marrying simply because they had to.
Instead, since he’d already declared on his own that they would have to marry, and since everyone assumed he’d already ravished and ruined her, he decided he might as well turn assumptions into facts.
Without any regard for her heart—and speaking of which, here came that blasted pang again. Hot tears seeped out of her eyes as she pressed a hand to her chest, wondering how the battered organ within continued to beat as if life went on.
Because she also knew that it was supposed to go on. It had continued after her mother’s demise. It had continued after the deaths of her father and brothers. And it stubbornly endured now, as if she was meant to live on because of something splendid awaiting her.
She wished she knew what that was, because it couldn’t be marriage to Lord Howland. Not for the first time and not for the last, she cursed herself for leaving her reticule in his room. Even if she hadn’t dared to go back for it, the fact that it was there was still enough to condemn her to another loveless match at others’ behest. Would things have been different if, like Cinderella, she’d left a slipper in Jack’s room? And her stockings and garters? She hadn’t seen a bloodstain on his mattress. Instead she found one on her drawers after returning to Halstead House.
She wasn’t surprised to learn Renton really was behind the theft of the garnet ring, after all. Hadn’t she voiced her suspicions about that to Jack? And she didn’t doubt that he thought it had been just another lark plotted by his two boyhood friends. Instead, her suspicions turned to someone besides his two friends and Renton.
A sharp rap at the door startled her out of her ruminations. “Felicity?” The door clicked open and in bustled Aunt Dolly, who went straight to the window and opened the shutters to let in some unwanted daylight. “What plagues you, my dear? The wedding night? I never had a daughter of my own, so I’m only too happy to reassure you. A wife’s duty can be a bothersome thing—first the act, which must be performed until you can confirm it’s been successful, which may take a month or more even if you happen to be successful on the first try.”
Honestly, how could Dolly be happy to reassure her niece about something that didn’t sound at all happy—or reassuring?
“But men aren’t willing to wait a month for results,” Dolly prattled on. “So expect him to prevail upon you every night, night after night, until he is so informed of the results. In the meantime, all you can do is just lie there, remain silent, and do your best not to move until he’s finished.”
Good God. Was Dolly referring to what Felicity thought she was referring to? What she and Jack had done the other night, and here came that sharp pang again, only this time it was in her temples.
She thought of how she’d writhed and arched her hips, not only in response to his intimate strokes, but to urge him to go harder, faster, deeper, for the harder, faster, and deeper he thrusted, and the more she moved beneath him, the greater the pleasure that had coursed through her—and him, as well. And as the pleasure increased, her gasps had turned to whimpers and then moans.
Yet according to Dolly, she was supposed to just lie there, remain silent, and do her best not to move until he was finished?
Was that why he hadn’t declared himself? Would he never love her because she’d done the complete opposite of what Dolly advised?
“Do that,” Dolly said, “and your duty will be done that much faster.”
Did that mean that because Felicity hadn’t done that the other night, she wasn’t with child? It had occurred to her in the hours since then that she might have conceived, but if she married Howland sooner rather than later, how would she know if the child was his or Jack’s? The baby could end up looking like neither of them. Howland, for instance, was like a male version of his mother, going bald. His father might not even have been the late, previous Viscount Howland.
“And once you’ve given him a son, he’ll leave you alone,” Dolly added, as Cordelia appeared in the doorway.
“I take it Uncle Tyndall never left you alone,” Felicity greeted her.
“If you must know, Tyndall never considered it necessary to prevail upon me too often, as he had a brother and a nephew who could inherit,” Cordelia explained. “Alas, the brother died and who knows where that rapscallion nephew is these days. But Howland has no male relatives to inherit his title. So I’m afraid you must do your duty. With that in mind…” She held out a tiny drawstring bag, smaller than a reticule. “A messenger delivered this for you this morning.”
Felicity opened it, glimpsing a twinkle within, and pulled out a diamond ring that looked just like the one Lady Howland had showed to Cordelia in Felicity’s bedchamber the day she was banished from Howland Hall.
It was the same ring that once belonged to her paternal aunt, Lady Martha Griffin, mother of the new Duke of Ainsley.
If any good could come of this at all, at the very least Lady Martha would get her ring back.
All Felicity had to do was come up with a way to make Lord Howland cry off. Because if he did, then she would get to keep the ring and do with it as she liked.
Just as Lady Celia had done when the erstwhile Troy Griffin, now Ainsley, had jilted her.
“It came with this note.” Cordelia brandished a folded piece of paper sporting a broken wafer over the flap.
“What does it say?”
Cordelia shook it. “Read it, girl. It’s addressed to you.”
Felicity took the proffered note. “Yes, but it looks as if someone opened it already.”
“Do you accuse me of opening notes addressed to you and reading them?”
“No, I’m simply stating that it looks as if someone broke the seal on it already.” Felicity opened it and as she read the words, a spurt of anger spiked through her. She turned away from her aunts to hide her fury.
“So what does it say?” Dolly inquired.
“Oh, it’s from Captain Jordan, of course. He wishes to meet me for a secret rende—”
“That is not who it’s from!” Cordelia exclaimed. “How can you even speak the name of that beastly man after all he’s done? Why, he’s just as much to blame for everything that’s happened as you are. He should be hanged! He should be drawn and quartered and burned at—”
“How do you know it’s not from him? He says right here that he hopes he and I—”
“Don’t be impertinent, Felicity. Lady Howland wrote that note and you know it.”
“How would you know if you hadn’t opened it and seen her signature? And I thought it an abomination that Renton never presented me with the garnet betrothal ring himself. At least his mother gave it to me personally. But Lady Howland? She sends it to me via messenger.”
“Unlike Renton’s late mother, Lady Howland has a title. It is perfectly permissible for her to communicate with you via a third party. In fact, it’s considered good ton.”
Felicity threw the note to the floor. She briefly contemplated stomping on it before concluding that would not make her feel any better. No, what she really needed to do was throw Lady Howland on the floor and then stomp on her, even if doing so was considered bad ton.
That might have made Felicity feel just a wee bit better, but most likely not, for she knew there was only thing—one person—who could pull her out of the abyss into which she’d fallen.
She slipped Lady Martha’s diamond ring onto her third finger. It was too small, stubbornly refusing to go past her second knuckle. In contrast, the garnet ring stolen by her highwayman—yes, her highwayman, Captain Jordan—had always fitted loosely because Lord Renton’s mother, like Aunt Cordelia, had always been very plump.
Fleetingly it occurred to Felicity that Lady Martha’s ring might not have fit her buxom Cousin Lydia, either, but that was now moot.
She moved the ring to her pinky finger. “To think that less than a fortnight ago, Lady Howland refused to announce her son’s betrothal to Lydia unless I w
as banished from her sacred, hallowed grounds. And now she’s all too willing to embrace me as a daughter-in-law. Well, maybe not willing, and maybe not embrace.” She picked up the note from the floor to give it a more thorough reading. “‘Unfortunate events at the Ellsworth ball give me no choice but to suffer you for a daughter.’ I say, is that a period after ‘daughter’ or just a stray blot of ink?” Felicity stepped over to the window for better light by which to scrutinize Lady Howland’s penmanship. There were no other blots or smears save for that one dot that could have been a period to end the sentence, before Lady Howland put a dash just above it to add –in-law.
Unfortunate events at the Ellsworth ball give me no choice but to suffer you for a daughter.-in-law. Oddly enough, the period after law was so much bigger than the dot after daughter—which Felicity noted was the same size as all the other periods in the note—that it might have been a blot. Either way, Lady Howland wanted no doubt left in Felicity’s mind. She would be the woman’s daughter only because the dratted law dictated it.
Period.
“You can wear the ring when we go to Lockwood House for dinner this evening.” Dolly said. “The sooner we can tamp down all the gossip, the better.”
Felicity’s heart leaped at the mention of Lockwood House.
“Merciful heavens,” Cordelia said. “What if that odious Captain Jordan is there?”
Yes, what if, indeed, Felicity thought.
“I’m assured he won’t be there, even though he’s Lockwood’s heir,” Dolly said, and Felicity’s heart sank. “He prefers to stay with his sister, Lady Ellsworth. I only wish Blake had told me sooner of the invitation. He never said a word about it till this morning. But Lord Howland will be there with his mother. You’re invited, too, Cordelia.”
“I only wish we didn’t have to go so far outside of London,” said Cordelia.
“It’s not that far. It’s on Hampstead Heath. Blake and Felicity and I were there just last week to—” Dolly cast her niece an uneasy glance. “Well, it’s not so far.”
“Far enough.” Cordelia wrung her hands, one of which clutched her handkerchief. “There will still be daylight when we leave, but not when we return home. I trust Blake will have plenty of outriders to accompany us.”
The Highwayman's Lady (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 25
