The estate of Strickland, on the other hand, was a fearsome place and one to be avoided. It was large and luxurious and contained the one man whom Jack could never bear to face again. The old marquis was a fine man, a good and just master to his people.
It was Jack who counted as the villain there.
So in the brief time he’d still been able to stand England, he’d spent his days at Brown’s, with the friends who still remained. Aidan and Sir Colin Lambert had walked by Jack’s side as boys and stood with him still, though he lately returned their friendship with nothing but distance and silence.
The rented cab pulled away in a clatter of hooves and creaking wheels, leaving Jack standing on the walk, gazing up.
Go on. Walk in. Learn the meaning of the letter. Your ship has been instructed to wait for you. Once you know what it is that “awaits you here,” you can simply turn around and leave again.
With feet that felt as leaden as in a bad dream, Jack climbed the steps and entered the open door.
In the entrance hall of Brown’s stood a group of people. Jack hesitated at the door, his grip tightening on the handle of his valise. “People” meant strangers, and strangers had a disturbing tendency to speak to him, to ask him questions, to force him to search for sensible replies in the haunted corners of his mind. Even how do you do? became an impossible test—for he had not the assembled wit nor the will to lie, but the truth would only make them back away from him and look for the soonest possible excuse to leave the room.
Baggage lay piled just inside the door. Someone was arriving. Or leaving.
There’s a coincidence. So am I. Arriving and leaving, as soon as possible.
Then Jack spotted a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark hair and blue eyes. Aidan. Jack next saw Colin’s fairer head, only slightly shorter, and heard his teasing voice.
Two women, one dark haired, one fiery red, stood with Jack’s friends. The women were both quite pretty, noticed a distant corner of his mind. Then, more slowly, the truth rose to the surface of his mind.
Women. In Brown’s Club for Distinguished Gentlemen. Moreover, the women were most certainly attached to Aidan and Colin. Either that or someone really ought to slap Colin a good one, for his hand rested intimately low on the flame-haired woman’s hip. The pretty brunette with the large brown eyes turned her limpid gaze adoringly on Aidan.
My, how things have changed. Go away for a few months—
Years.
Fine. Go away for a few years and the world turns on its head.
At that moment, the two couples moved slightly apart and Jack saw her.
Jiggling eagerly on little booted tiptoes, with her head tilted back so far that her tiny tricorne hat threatened to slide from her dark curls and her wide blue eyes bright and shining with excitement, was a beautiful child of perhaps three years. She was dressed rather improbably as a pirate, right down to a tiny wooden sword thrust into the belt of her striped trousers.
The sight of her struck Jack like a blow from a real sword, directly into his chest.
Oh. Her.
Though Jack made no sound or movement, the four adults noticed him at last. The dark woman stepped forward and began to speak, something about the child. It was simply noise lost in the roaring in Jack’s mind. I know those eyes.
He held up a hand and they all went very still. “I know who she is.” He dropped his valise and crossed the hall to go down on one knee in front of the little girl. “You look just like your mother,” he said softly.
She pulled off her silly, adorable miniature eye patch and blinked her startlingly blue eyes at him. Then she reached out to stroke his thin face with her pudgy baby fingers. “You’re Cap’n Jack.”
It was as if Jack’s heart began to beat again in that moment, hesitantly, rustily, then growing in strength and rhythm.
No one touched him. Ever. Even his friends satisfied themselves with a quick clap on the shoulder, and that only rarely. Her tiny fingers were sticky and scented with lemon cake crumbs.
Jack would not have drawn away for all the world. He remained motionless for her inspection. “And you are?”
She put her other hand on his face, framing his darkness with pink softness. “I’m Cap’n Melody.”
Melody. Of course. Any other name simply wouldn’t do. “Hello, Melody. I am your father.”
Melody tilted her head and gazed at him for a long moment. “I like ships,” she said finally. “Do you have a ship?”
He nodded again. “I have many ships.” Somehow, her childish questions seemed perfectly simple to answer.
“Can I see them?”
“Certainly.” Anything else? Shall I slay a dragon? Fight off the monsters under the bed? Glare at your suitors until they shake in their boots? He stood and held out his hand. “I shall show you my flagship, the Honor’s Thunder.”
“All right.” She took his hand and walked him to the door, then turned to wave at the assembled pairs of wide eyes. “I’m going to go see Papa’s ship. Bye!”
Wilberforce, who seemed entirely unchanged by the passage of anything as feeble as mere years, helped Melody into her little coat, then opened the door for her and Jack, bowing silently as they passed from the club.
Outside, the afternoon had advanced. Jack blinked at the brightness of the day. When had the sky become so brilliantly blue?
He looked down at the tiny pirate by his side. She looked back up at him.
Blue, like a summer sky.
One night . . . one night that he could not erase from his mind, no matter how far he had sailed or how long he remained gone. One dazzling night of true unity before she’d tossed him aside to wed a richer man—
The former Amaryllis Clarke, now the Countess of Compton, was going to tender her explanations, and this time she was going to tell the truth.
“Papa! I can see the house! It’s a big house!”
It was quite possible that no one in the world could be as excited as three-year-old Melody could be excited. She jumped on the sprung carriage seat. She hung from the window. She even forgot her rather loathsome rag doll for two consecutive minutes.
“Yes, Melody. The Earl of Compton has a very large house.” Jack picked up his tiny daughter’s doll from the floor of the carriage with two fingers and put it back on Melody’s seat. Gordy Ann looked like a tatty cravat tied into knots and then dragged behind a mule team for a year or so.
Yet Melody’s love for her knew no bounds. Jack could hardly complain, for that expansive circle of love now included him as well.
I rank somewhere after Gordy Ann and before berry trifle. Well, perhaps I am tied even with berry trifle.
It was an acceptable place to stand. After all, he was rather partial to berry trifle himself.
At least, he had been long ago when the world had consisted of colors other than gray and tastes other than sand.
Beside him, Melody bounced on the seat and sent him a gleeful look over her shoulder. “Papa, I can see the door!” Her big baby blue eyes sparkled.
Things were looking up. His world of gray now included the color blue.
They were her mother’s eyes exactly. Eyes like summer sky, like blue topaz, like the egg of a robin. Amaryllis’s eyes could tease and flash and twinkle, turning unwary fellows into brainless wax in her hands.
Moreover, those eyes could turn as cold as the shadows of a glacier, like the ones he’d seen in the north seas. Like the one he carried inside his chest.
Tiring of the unchanging view from the window, for they still drove slowly up the lengthy winding drive, Melody scrambled over to the other seat to fetch Gordy Ann and then returned to Jack. Without hesitation, Melody climbed into his lap and leaned contentedly against his chest. Looking down, Jack tried to decide if he ought to put his arm about her for safety. She looked secure enough, so he let her be.
Tirelessly affectionate, Melody was like a candle flame, trying to thaw that glacier inside him. Yet even a tiny thaw might become a summer, given ti
me enough. He tucked his arm about her, just in case the carriage hit a pothole.
He was a little surprised that she wasn’t intimidated by him. Most children were, as were most adults, now that he thought upon it. Melody, however, had simply adopted him as part of the strange and unlikely family of Brown’s Club for Distinguished Gentlemen and had instantly accepted him as her very own papa.
He’d known she was his at once, for she looked exactly like the only woman he’d ever loved. Even without such a reference point, Melody had seemed to simply know him.
She called him Papa to his face and Cap’n Jack to everyone else. Melody was his child and his responsibility, yet over the last three days she had become something much, much more than that. Melody was the first person in a very long time to make him feel anything at all.
Which made him doubly furious that Amaryllis could abandon his child to halfhearted foster care and go on her merry way!
Anger was also something new to his gray world. Interesting thing, anger. Anger meant that he cared about something. Each new/old emotion unfolded before his numbed soul like a letter written by him but long forgotten. Familiar, yet entirely untried.
The carriage rolled to a smooth halt. Jack looked through the window to see a vast and luxurious house. His view was limited mostly to the semi-circle of costly marble steps that led to the richly carved front doors. A flurry of liveried grooms came forward to hold the horses and to open the carriage door.
Jack was unimpressed. Strickland was older but every bit as luxurious, with five times the estate of this place. Amaryllis had married well. She was a wealthy countess. If she’d waited a little, she could have been an obnoxiously rich marchioness, who might or might not deign to notice a mere wealthy countess.
Amaryllis had never been a patient sort.
Jack and Melody were admitted to the house at once and installed in an ostentatiously formal parlor. The room was so grand and gilded and dripping with crystal that the usually irrepressible Melody clung to Jack’s leg and stuck a corner of Gordy Ann into her mouth, gazing about her with wide eyes.
Jack didn’t sit. He remembered that much about anger. Anger was done better standing.
In an almost-but-not-quite-rude amount of time, the door opened and Amaryllis drifted in, tall and elegant, hair as dark as fine mink, eyes like cool blue pools. Perfect features, inviting figure, exacting fashion sense. Her gown was as black as a mourning gown, but the cut was perfection.
She was every bit as lovely as the last time he’d seen her, when she was furiously demanding that her father throw him from the house, but now her liveliness was replaced by a layer of acquired ennui.
She watched him closely for his reaction, though she pretended stylish lassitude. “Jack? Is that really you? Heavens, what in the world brings you to this dull old house?”
Jack waited curiously for some feeling to emerge, but the sight of Amaryllis left him entirely cold. Except for the anger, of course.
“I’ve come to speak to you about our child.”
Amaryllis flicked a bored glance in Melody’s general direction, then focused on Jack with a calculating gleam. “I don’t have any children, darling. Everyone knows that.”
Without another word, Jack turned and walked Melody to the door of the parlor. He pointed at the bottom step of the grand winding staircase. “Sit.”
Melody sat, clutching Gordy Ann close. She gazed up at him with those eyes—couldn’t Amaryllis recognize her own features in miniature?—and her bottom lip slowly emerged.
Jack gazed at her, nonplussed.
She thinks you’re angry at her.
Oh.
“I’m not angry at you, Melody.”
Big blue eyes blinked. And dampened.
Oh God. Alarm was a new feeling. Definitely one for the list.
“Melody, I am angry, but I am angry at the lady in the parlor. I am going to say some rather rude things to her now and I don’t want you to have to hear them. If you sit here with Gordy Ann, I will come out in a few moments to fetch you.”
As he watched, the lower lip began to retreat and the eyes blinked back the moisture. “You’re angry at the lady?”
“I am.”
“Gordy Ann doesn’t like the lady.”
Oh damn. “Gordy Ann might like the lady better after a while.”
Melody nodded, but Jack had to admit that Gordy Ann didn’t look very forgiving.
“Will you stay here?”
Melody nodded again, this time seeming her usual self.
Jack left her sliding Gordy Ann up and down the polished banister at the bottom of the stair and returned to the parlor.
Amaryllis had arranged herself attractively on a sofa. There was plenty of room for Jack to join her, but he remained standing.
“How can you deny you had my child?”
Amaryllis blew out a breath and abandoned her seductive pose, instead reaching for a chocolate from a box on the table next to her. “I repeat, I don’t have children, Jack. Despite my husband’s initial hopes, I’d never ruin my figure so.” She shrugged. “It isn’t so difficult to manage. A few herbs, a bit of this and that.”
Frowning, Jack sent an assessing glance over that figure. He was no expert, but Amaryllis looked exactly the same as she had four years ago. Possibly slimmer.
She was watching him look at her. “Do you like what you see, handsome Jack?” She ran a fingertip along her neckline, ending at her cleavage. “You used to like it quite a bit, if I recall.”
“I don’t recall, actually.” He narrowed his eyes. “Amaryllis, no more games. Four years ago, you came to my bed. The next day you announced your engagement to another man. Nine months later, you deposited our child with a nurse and left her there. Two months ago, you ceased paying that nurse, whereupon she abandoned our child on the doorstep of my club. Go on. Admit it!”
As he’d spoken, her face had undergone a journey from amusement, to surprise, to outright confusion. Now she gazed at him with her jaw frankly slack and her eyes blinking uncomprehendingly.
Then she shut her jaw. “Four years ago—” She closed her mouth, blinked, and then laughed out loud. “God, you’ve become so droll, Jack! It’s a silly joke, but it has brightened an otherwise deadly day immeasurably.” She chuckled. “A secret baby! Good lord, what a thought!”
Jack gazed at her, his anger turning to furious bewilderment. “Amaryllis, how could you abandon her? Why did you stop paying the nurse?” He gestured angrily at their luxurious surroundings. “Or is all this riding on debt?”
At that, her eyes snapped. “Of course it isn’t! Debt? The very idea!” She stood, angry herself now, and advanced on him. “I’ll thank you not to spread such rumors!”
He shook his head, disgusted. “Heartless! How could I—” He stopped. Rubbing his open hand over his face, he turned away from her. “You disgust me!”
“Leave my house!” Amaryllis’s lovely features twisted into shrewish ugliness. “Take your foundling brat and get out! Or shall I have you tossed out on your arse, again?” Her lip curled. “After all, it was so very amusing the first time!”
Again.
In Jack’s mind, the past and the present collided. He’d dreamed of her for so long! Yet the woman before him was a wicked, selfish shell of the girl he’d loved. With a single silent cry, the past slipped away, slaughtered by the woman of the present, by the cruelty gleaming from her sky blue eyes.
She seemed to sense that he was reaching the limit of his battle-honed temper.
With a toss of her head, she tried to regain her former ennui. “For your information, Lord John, you and I were never lovers. You are intruding on my mourning with your nonsense. I think it is high time you left.”
Mourning? The black gown. Jack swallowed hard, tamping down his rage. There were polite things one said in such situations, weren’t there? “Your husband?”
She rolled her eyes. “How I wish. No, it was my father. His heart, eight weeks ago.”
Jack reeled in his fresh, unaccustomed anger and took a step back. Her denial was complete. Raging at her would get him nowhere. He bowed. “My apologies,” he said stiffly. There was nothing more here for him or for Melody. “I shall go. Give my sympathies to your mother and sister.”
Amaryllis plunked back down on the sofa and took another chocolate. “Mama died a year ago. Laurel wasn’t fond of Papa anyway.”
Jack turned and walked slowly from the room. Amaryllis was nothing like the girl he’d once loved. And although she was full of spite, her surprise had seemed entirely genuine. She’d sincerely had no idea what he was talking about!
In the hallway, Melody looked up from her little spot on the stair and blinked Amaryllis’s blue eyes at him.
Could Amaryllis have forgotten that night?
That night . . . that one night still ranked as the only moment in the last few years that he’d felt even remotely human—that one night when the world was not cold and gray and grim.
That night that might as well have not existed, for he had nothing to show for it now. Even his memories were now suspect, tainted by Amaryllis’s malice. He had remembered a girl who had never truly existed, painting her with his own need, his own dreams.
Amaryllis had looked at Melody like she was some sort of unpleasant subspecies, as if at any moment the little girl might lunge at her with grubby paws extended, intent on soiling her gown.
No, Amaryllis was no one’s mother.
Which meant that he, Jack, was no one’s father. Melody was not the product of that magical encounter. Melody was just a foundling, simply an anonymous lost child dumped on the doorstep of a gentlemen’s club with a cryptic note pinned to her coat.
Lost in his swirling thoughts, Jack took Melody’s little hand and walked her down the hall toward the great doors.
They passed a dark-clad woman in the hall without truly registering her presence. She dropped the book she carried as Jack passed. Quite automatically, he bent to retrieve it and pressed it back into her hands. “Pardon me, madam.”
Scoundrel in My Dreams Page 3
