“How dare you—”
“You just fired a pistol, Lady Howland—presumably at Lady Tyndall—yet you clearly missed, and neither of you seem to have a care for who you may have hit in her stead. Am I the only one who sees Miss Griffin on the ground?”
Dear God, Felicity thought. Then she had been shot. But she wasn’t dead yet. Only why did she not feel any pain? Why wasn’t she bleeding from somewhere? Or was that because she was dead?
“Am I the only who cares about her?” Jack’s voice broke as if along with his heart, and Felicity wondered in alarm if he was about to cry. The last thing she wanted—well, maybe next to dying in the dirt of Hampstead Heath—was for Jack’s heart to break, and over her.
But if that were so, then didn’t it mean…?
He added, “Am I the only one who loves her?”
Silence fell like a thunderclap over Felicity, and all she could hear was her own pulse pounding furiously in her ear, as if her heart refused to stop, refused to let her die when it knew, even if her befuddled head didn’t quite realize it yet, that she had every reason to go on living.
And the greatest reason of all was Jack.
“Of course I care about her,” said Blake, as he crouched over her to feel her pulse and search for a wound. “She’s my cousin.”
“And my niece,” Aunt Dolly added. “Even if I never was a part of her life until last week, and I blame myself for that. What about you, Cordelia?”
“After what she just said?”
Felicity finally raised her head, propping herself on her elbows. “Stop talking about me as if I’m dead—or just ruined!”
“Thank God!” Jack and Blake chorused, and Blake added, “Lady Howland’s aim is as bad as her son’s. Felicity’s fine. I think she must’ve fainted.”
“I didn’t faint. I never faint. I saw Jack’s pistol at my feet so I thought I would crouch down and retrieve it for him. That’s when she fired and scared me quite close to death.”
“I meant to hit Lady Tyndall,” wailed Lady Howland, “and I still do!”
She charged Cordelia like a mad bull, as Blake said, “Holy Mother of—”
Felicity never heard the rest of his blasphemy, as a screeching Lady Howland flew right over them like a Valkyrie gone rogue. This was swiftly followed by a scream from Cordelia along with a sickeningly bone-jarring thud.
“God Almighty!” Blake thundered, as he leaped to his feet. On second thought, maybe that was the rest of his blasphemy.
“Good heavens!” Dolly exclaimed. “Blake! Stop them!”
“Fine. Fetch me a pail of water.”
Jack helped Felicity to her feet and swiftly pulled her away from the roadside melee before taking her into his arms again. He still wore the domino mask, but his eyes were large and round and unmistakably aquamarine as he gazed back at her, breathing raggedly.
“I love you, Felicity. I love you with all my heart.” With that, he claimed her mouth with his own, still holding her against him as if he knew she felt as if she would turn into jelly and slide back into the ground should he ever let go of her. She twined her arms around the broad shoulders she’d come to know and love so well, and tasted the familiar wintergreen mingling with a hint of brandy.
She broke the kiss just long enough to whisper, “I love you, too, Jack. With or without the mask.”
He grinned as he tore it off his face and tossed it over his shoulder. “I almost forgot I was wearing it. It’s so much more comfortable than the Venetian bauta.”
“You won’t have to wear it again,” she assured him. “The highwayman was an amusing little fling, but in the end, all I want is you.” And she soundly kissed him once more as he wrapped his arms around her again, lifting her off the ground.
She sighed happily. “This would be so much more romantic if it weren’t for those two viragos. Perhaps you should help the duke split them up.” For Cousin Blake was having a devil of a time with it. Every time he tried to so much as touch Cordelia, or mistook Lady Howland for her, he was rewarded with a vicious scratch and a shrill, “Unhand me, you oaf!”
“I daresay this is a job for Howland, since I’m not kin to either of the combatants,” Jack said, and he called over to his childhood friend, who Felicity now suspected would never be his adulthood friend.
Howland didn’t seem to hear Jack as he sat slumped in the doorway of his carriage, his face in his hands.
“I say, Howland!” Still holding Felicity’s hand, Jack stalked over to him. “This seems an odd suggestion, but don’t you think you should—well, restrain your mother?”
Howland dropped his hands and craned his neck to look up at Jack with a reddened, wet face. “You must think I’m an awful bounder, Jordan.”
“To put it mildly. Are you just going to sit there and let your mother kill Lady Tyndall?”
“It might solve at least one of my problems if I did.” Howland emitted a loud, soggy snuffle as he regarded Felicity. “How did you know, Miss Griffin? Or did Jack tell you?”
“Howland, I had no idea you—well, with Lady Tyndall,” Jack said under his breath. “I only knew it was a married woman and maybe I mentioned it to Miss Griffin one night.”
Felicity nodded. “When she insisted I had to marry you to cover the scandal of Lydia eloping with Renton, I said I’d heard you had an affair with a widow. I thought she was going to have apoplexy, and when Aunt Dolly pressed for more information, Aunt Cordelia wanted to drop the subject altogether. It was a shot in the dark, to be honest—and perhaps, literal, even if your mother was the one who fired the shot. In fact”—she whirled on the two squabbling matrons—“Aunt Cordelia! You’re the one who arranged with Lord Howland for the highwayman to hold up our carriage and take my garnet ring!”
Cordelia and Lady Howland froze, arms sticking out every which way as they both gawped at Felicity. Dolly promptly stepped between them and untangled them from each other before pushing them apart as if she were throwing open a set of double doors.
“Felicity, you’re amazing,” Jack remarked. “First you say something to set them at each other’s throats like a pair of wild dogs, and then you say something to stay and silence them.”
“Captain Jordan!” Lady Howland exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Where on earth did you come from?”
“I’ve been here the whole time. Lady Tyndall, will you not respond to your niece?”
“No, Jack,” said Lord Howland. “What I told you the other night is true—at least from my perspective. I never planned this with Lady Tyndall, but with Lord Renton, just as I told you. And Miss Griffin, I—I—what I said the other night was wrong. Jack thought the whole time it was just another one of our pranks. He would never have done it had he known the truth, because he has far too much honor.”
“That he does,” Felicity declared. “So I was right about Renton all along! He did have something to do with it!”
“After he unexpectedly inherited his title, Renton told me he desired a more suitable bride than Felicity, and naturally I thought of my own daughter.” Cordelia’s voice was hoarse from her recent screaming as she panted for breath. “Considering my niece never had any kind of tendre for him, and he was now wealthier than Howland and an earl instead of a viscount—well, I just didn’t think it was fair that Felicity, a soldier’s daughter, should become a countess while Lydia, the daughter of an earl herself, had to settle for being a mere viscountess.”
“Mere,” muttered Felicity, who’d always been an even more mere Miss.
“Both their mothers were daughters of a duke,” Dolly pointed out. “Does that not count for anything? And I must say, after what I just witnessed, Cordelia, I trust I’ll never hear another word from you or Lady Howland or any other society doyenne about the shocking behavior of Americans like myself!”
“This daughter of a duke married an earl!” Cordelia slapped a hand against her ample bosom. “My sister only married a mere soldier.”
“Mere,” Felicity muttered again. “O
nly.”
“Colonel Griffin was the younger son of a duke himself,” Dolly reminded her sister-in-law. “But then what better could I expect from you, Cordelia? You’ve never thought too highly of the lowly American woman your brother married, either, save for the fortune I brought with me.”
“Pray, could we please return to the original topic of conversation?” Felicity glanced back at Cordelia. “I suppose because of your own attachment to Lord Howland, you also considered the notion of him married to your daughter to be just a wee bit awkward.”
Cordelia swayed and blinked her eyes rapidly as if she might fall into a swoon, yet no one made a move to reach out to her in the event she did.
“Honestly, I don’t blame you, Auntie. I can even understand why you never apprised Uncle Tyndall of the impediment when he and Lord Howland’s father arranged everything before they both died. Still, why didn’t you or Renton just tell me what the two of you wanted? I would’ve been happy to be free of him.”
Jack squeezed her shoulders. “But then you never would’ve have met me.”
“True,” she conceded, and turned back to Cordelia. “That evening of the dance at Howland Hall, you kept pushing me to approach Renton. Why, if you meant to put us asunder?”
“I was only trying to ascertain if you were still betrothed, after what happened with the highwayman.” Cordelia was now sullen. “Initially he proposed compromising Lydia and allowing you to catch them, so you’d have no choice but to cry off. But I feared too much the possibility of scandal attaching itself to my daughter. The scandal had to be entirely yours.”
“Were she not a lady and I not a gentleman,” Jack murmured.
“Only he wasn’t supposed to elope with her!” Cordelia added, as if that would negate her own role in this. “And now the scandal is on him and my daughter!”
“No wonder you exaggerated to anyone who would listen what happened that night.” Felicity might have exploded with rage at her aunt’s scheming, except for what Jack had just pointed out to her…she would never have met him otherwise. “It wouldn’t matter even if I never left the carriage to confront him. You deliberately went out of your way to turn it into a scandal that would banish me for good. ’Twas your word and Renton’s against mine. But in the end, I must confess that you did me the greatest possible favor, Aunt Cordelia.” She turned to smile up at Jack, tamping down the temptation to kiss him again as he smiled back.
But she needn’t have bothered, since he kissed her once more anyway.
Howland finally rose to his feet to face Jack and Felicity. “Clearly I was duped, Jack, but not as much as you were, for which I must apologize. But obviously I cannot marry Miss Griffin.”
Relief flitted through her.
“But you ruined her!” his mother shrilled. “Are you saying I didn’t see what I saw at Ellsworth House the other night?”
“Yes, I am saying that,” he retorted. “And I shan’t marry her when she’s already been—” He cast a worried look at Jack.
“Ruined by the highwayman?” Felicity suggested.
“I prefer the term ‘compromised by Captain Jordan,’” Jack declared. “For I don’t believe I—or the highwayman—ruined you at all, my dear. Do you?”
“Of course not. That’s only what everyone else would say.”
“Well, I think it’s high time you and I stopped fretting over what everyone else says, when what they say is invariably wrong,” he said firmly.
Felicity couldn’t agree with him more, and this time she did kiss him.
“Besides,” Howland continued, his voice trembling as if he still feared retribution from some quarter, “since coming to London my affections have been engaged with Miss Pitt.”
“Miss Pitt?” his mother sputtered. “That merchant’s daughter whose father fancies buying her a title?”
“That merchant’s daughter has a dowry of fifty thousand pounds.” Howland stated this as if his affections were not so much engaged with Miss Pitt as they were with Miss Pitt’s dowry. “After Rollo decamped to the Continent and Lydia eloped with Renton, Miss Pitt and I, sharing something in common, found solace in each other’s arms.” He turned to Felicity. “I hereby release you from our betrothal, Miss Griffin. I daresay as long as you marry Captain Jordan and I wed Miss Pitt as soon as possible, we may avert any potential scandal. Of course you may keep the diamond ring.”
Only Felicity had no intention of keeping the ring, because it wasn’t really hers, any more than it had ever really been anyone else’s save for its original owner, Lady Martha Griffin.
“And what ring do you intend to offer Miss Pitt?” Lady Howland demanded.
“Her father will provide that,” he assured her. “All I must provide is the title.”
“Argh!” She clawed the air with both hands.
“Well!” said Blake, as Jack gave him the bag of stolen jewels. “It’s been an interesting evening, ladies and gentlemen, but now that the highwayman has come and gone, shall we press on to Lockwood House as originally planned?”
“I must tender my regrets, Your Grace,” said Howland. “I should return to London and speak to Mr. Pitt at once.”
“What about me?” Lady Howland cried.
“You shall go with him, my lady,” said Blake. “While I do have room for you, I’d rather not risk you attacking Lady Tyndall again or damaging my carriage any further. There’s a bullet hole just above this rear wheel. You would’ve hit her had she remained in her seat.”
“I don’t want to go to Lockwood House now!” Cordelia wailed. “I’d rather go back to Kent. Or even Bath. I heard at Ellsworth House the other night that Sir Montgomery Rawlinson has gone to Bath looking for a new widow to court, and I’ll have nowhere else to go once my late husband’s successor arrives from abroad to assume the earldom.”
“I’d rather go wherever Captain Jordan goes,” Felicity said.
“You’ll have to marry him first,” said Blake. “What are your intentions, Jordan?”
“The same as they were when I stated them before,” Jack replied. “Shall I get down on bended knee once more, Felicity?”
“Since your intentions are the same, I shall answer you now, for my response is different than it was before,” she said. “Yes, Jack, I shall be your wife.”
And then they embraced, their hearts beating against one another as if to become one.
* * * *
Jack scooped up Felicity into his arms, and she gave a startled little shriek, but not the kind he’d heard too often from Lady Howland, Lady Tyndall, and of course Lady Tyndall’s daughter. Judging from the smile on her face and the way she twined both arms around his neck, she seemed to like it.
“I’ve been wanting to do this ever since that first night,” he said, keeping his voice low so only she could hear. “Weren’t you hoping the highwayman would sweep you off your feet and carry you away that night?”
“I must confess, I did. Why do you think I went after you? You left without—without me!”
“Where are you two going?” the Duchess of Halstead called after them. “Blake, stop them! Do something!”
“I already did. I said they’d have to marry. And they will. As soon as possible to avoid scandal, just as Howland said.”
“Only we’re not marrying to avoid scandal,” Jack countered. “We’re marrying for love.”
The two of them mounted his horse. Felicity clung to him as they rode down the road, past the two carriages to Lockwood House, which was mysteriously dark.
“What happened?” Felicity whispered, as if to speak any louder might wake up anyone asleep inside.
Jack nuzzled her russet curls, breathing deeply of her honeysuckle scent as he gently wrapped his arms around her. “No one is home. There was never going to be a dinner party here. We just needed an excuse to bring all of you far enough outside of London to do what took place. Although I must confess, I certainly wasn’t counting on Lady Tyndall and Lady Howland going hammer and tongs at each other.”
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“You mean—?” She craned her neck as if to look at him, but of course neither of them could see anything in the dark. Still he knew she must be agape with astonishment.
“Everyone knew about this except you and Lady Howland and Lady Tyndall.”
“Even the duke and his mother?”
“I had to tell His Grace everything, so he’d know to cooperate and I wouldn’t get shot. I know you didn’t want to marry Howland any more than he wanted to marry you. And I certainly didn’t want the two of you to marry, because I want to marry you! We had to come up with a plan, something that would prompt him to insist on ending your betrothal, such as it was. So I agreed to act the highwayman just one more time.” He dismounted in front of the stable and reached up to help her to the ground.
“And this way, I don’t have to return to him the diamond ring that really belongs to my Aunt Martha. Only what about Howland? Will you still remain friends?”
Jack heaved a rueful sigh. “You know, from the moment I arrived at Howland Hall after returning from the Peninsula, I had this strange sense that I’d somehow—well, I don’t know if this is the word I want, but oddly enough it seems the most fitting—outgrown my boyhood friendship with Howland and Rollo.”
Her hand caressed his cheek like warm silk. “Of course you did. You must’ve seen and experienced things on the Peninsula that made you mature in ways they probably never will. I think at heart, Howland and Rollo are still a pair of spoiled little boys. Renton, too.”
“Not just at heart, but even in their minds. Look at what’s become of them. A fortnight ago, who would’ve thought that Rollo would decamp to the Continent to escape his debts, or that Howland would marry not Lady Lydia, but a merchant’s daughter for her dowry?”
Now Felicity cupped his face in both of her hands. It was a marvelous feeling. “For that matter, who would’ve thought a fortnight ago that you’d be marrying the woman you robbed of her betrothal ring? Or that I would marry not Lord Renton, but my highwayman?”
Before Jack could respond, she found his lips with her own, and she kissed him deeply, pressing herself against him until he enveloped her in his arms, hardening with desire for her.
The Highwayman's Lady (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 27
