Melody waved at her, opening and closing her pudgy fingers in the manner in which tiny children waved.
How in the world was he going to break it to Aidan and Colin that the little girl they loved so much was of no connection to them whatsoever?
Miss Laurel Clarke, clad in black mourning—but not for the parents she’d grown to despise!—never wed, never asked, stood in the hallway of her wealthy sister’s house and watched the man and child walk away from her to the door. Her shaking hands held a book with a grip that turned her knuckles white with strain.
The world had just spun wildly on its axis and had come down in an entirely different shape.
Memories. Fear. Pain. Then at last, the tiny furious wail.
The midwife who wouldn’t meet her gaze. Born dead. Poor little mite. It happens.
She’d lived on, although she’d thought perhaps she might die. Yet in truth, it was but a half-life, for the heartbreak of Jack Redgrave’s betrayal and her family’s cruelty was nothing compared to the loss of her child.
Now, the man in the doorway, the man who couldn’t be there, had just walked past her as if she didn’t exist. He knelt before the child at the open door. “It looks like rain,” he said quietly. “Are you buttoned up?” He stood and extended his hand down. “Come along, Melody.”
Blue eyes.
Melody.
Just like hers.
Melody.
Born dead.
“I heard her cry.” The words slipped from Laurel’s numb lips like a whisper, like a battle roar, like the last words of a defiant prisoner.
She’d heard that cry. She’d believed that cry. So she’d named her child, despite all the argument and disbelief.
Melody.
Two
Once she could move, Laurel followed his lordship and the little girl out of the house at a run, but the carriage with the Strickland crest was halfway down the drive before her own feet touched the gravel. Laurel stood in the middle of the drive, one hand pressed to the stitch in her side, her heart pounding with more than exertion, and watched Melody leave. Matched black horses kept up a smart trot, taking Laurel’s baby away from her with every revolution of the carriage wheels.
She lives! Joy shimmered like rising bubbles in champagne.
He took her! Fury flared hot and crackling like wildfire.
Jack had compromised and abandoned Laurel, had stolen her child, had let her mourn all these years for them both!
Oh, the loss! The oceans of tears, months and years of aching emptiness, the painful, creeping realization that she was all alone, that she would never love anyone, never have anyone, that the rest of her life was to mean nothing but more of the same . . .
The bloody thrice-damned bastard kept Melody all along!
Melody lives!
Rage burned.
Elation glowed.
The bewildering combination of emotions left Laurel nauseated and shaking. Damn that enervating shock! If only she’d moved faster, she could have snatched her daughter away from that betraying rotter forever!
Her daughter . . .
Jack had not asked to see Laurel. He had been leaving the parlor where Amaryllis usually held court to guests. Why?
In the past few years that she’d lived as a dependent in her sister’s household, continually reminded of her indebtedness to such a kind and tolerant relative, it had never occurred to Laurel that her sister might know the secret that their parents had tried so hard to keep.
Laurel turned and hurried back into the house, her heart pounding in her chest.
In the parlor, Amaryllis pretended unconcern. “Heavens, why the urgency? It was only Jack, after all.” Yet Laurel could see that her sister was hiding something.
“Amy, for someone who lies on a regular basis, you are rather terrible at it.” Impatiently Laurel moved to block her sister’s view of herself in the mirror over the hearth. “Tell me, what was Lord John Redgrave’s business in this house? Why did he bring you the child?”
Amaryllis sulked at Laurel’s tone and toyed with the fringe on a silken pillow. “He had some silly idea, that’s all. Nothing to concern you.”
Laurel gazed at her sister, a chill disbelief growing in her soul. She had always believed Amy innocent of evildoing, for she had been away on her honeymoon when matters had turned dire. Laurel had been certain that their parents were as concerned with keeping their actions from their elder daughter’s knowledge as they were committed to hiding them from the world at large. This belief, this faith in Amy’s innocence, had been what had allowed Laurel to live in this house and act as her sister’s companion and virtual slave.
Of all the world, only Amy had not betrayed her.
Now doubt trickled past that wall of trust, a trickle that fast became a flood when Amaryllis shot one shamed, guilt-ridden glance up to meet Laurel’s gaze.
“You knew.” It was not a question.
Amaryllis’s fingers began to pull the threads from the fringe, one by one. “Not . . . not in the beginning. There were rumors among the servants. At least that was what my maid told me. Until Papa died two months ago, I knew nothing for certain. Then someone came to me, trying to blackmail us over your . . . indiscretion. Gerald sent her packing, of course. I suspect he made a mistake there, for she knew rather a great deal. She knew you had a little girl.”
Ice would be warmer than Laurel’s heart. “You knew my child lived.”
Amaryllis shook her head quickly. “No, I didn’t! Not until half an hour past, when Jack brought her in to show her to me.”
Laurel advanced a single step. Amaryllis must have seen something new in Laurel’s face, for her arrogant and often domineering sister cringed away from her. “Laurel, I swear to it! I knew nothing about a living child! The servants’ rumors told of a stillbirth!”
Watching closely, Laurel noticed that Amaryllis’s left eyelid had a tendency to drop. “Amy, I know that you are lying.”
Amaryllis looked away, but then her shoulders stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re so angry about. Mama and Papa were simply trying to save you from yourself! And save us all from a terrible scandal! I’d think you’d be relieved it all went away so quietly.”
“Relieved.” Laurel’s gut churned as she gazed at the stranger wearing her sister’s face. “You thought I’d be relieved to think my child was dead.”
Amaryllis tossed her head defiantly. “Well, yes, of course! No one knew a thing outside the family. It all worked out rather nicely, until Jack walked back through that door and asked me—”
“Nicely.” Laurel held up a hand, halting her sister’s lying, betraying words. “I’m leaving,” she said flatly. “My portion awaits me untouched in the Bank of England. It isn’t much, but it will get me and my child far from you evil, wicked people. You and bloody Lord Jack Redgrave!”
With that she turned and strode from the room, her black skirts fluttering with new purpose and new power. Amaryllis’s voice rose behind her, but Laurel cared not a whit for the words that followed her down the hall.
“You ungrateful wretch! You can’t leave! You daren’t! Who will manage the house? Laurel, who will plan my dinners and balls? Laurel!”
Her heart hammering with a new rhythm, Laurel heard nothing but her daughter’s name echoing again and again in her mind.
Melody.
When Jack arrived back at Brown’s Club for Distinguished Gentlemen with Melody, the front door of the club opened before the marquis’s carriage attained a full stop before it. As Jack stepped down and swung Melody to stand on her little booted feet next to him, the club’s head of staff was already waiting for them at the top of the stairs. Wilberforce was as inscrutable as always, but Jack spied several expectant faces hovering just through the entrance.
Everyone would want to know what he had learned. Jack felt a dull dread at the thought of what was to come. Melody had found a family at Brown’s. Within those walls she was surrounded by loving uncles and aunts and a full dozen d
oting grampapas. Even the servants were her willing devotees. Jack would have to be the one to tell them all that Melody was not theirs to keep.
He spied a boy’s face, the thin twelve-year-old features twisted with concern. Poor Evan. He was half protector, half prey to Melody, spending his days fleeing persistent games of house and tea party and yet never far from his tiny Mellie’s side, always ready to make her flash her dimpled smile. Unlike the others, Evan had not wanted Jack to make the journey to visit Amaryllis. The boy had seen enough tumult in his short life to know that sometimes change was not a good thing.
Evan had been quite right about that. Jack took Melody’s little hand in his and helped her make the big steps up the marble stairs. At the top he held on for a moment, loathe to let her small fingers slip from his grasp. Then she ran forward to deliver a nonstop account of their trip to Wilberforce, who bent attentively, focused on every chattered word.
Jack walked past Wilberforce, into the front hall of the club. The occupants tried not to crowd around him, but he could see that they were eager to hear what had transpired. His friend Aidan stood a little apart, his usual cool expression on his face, but Jack knew him well enough to know that his sensitive soul was perhaps in the most danger, for Aidan had been the first to assume parentage for Melody and the first to fall headlong in love with her.
Aidan’s bride, Madeleine, stood at his side, supporting and being supported, as always silently in tune with her husband, as he was with her. Jack observed it without truly understanding it. He could not imagine a woman who would look into his own soul and like what she saw, much less love it.
He saw Colin, his oldest friend and boyhood companion, leaning against the ornately wood-paneled wall near the grand staircase in apparent unconcern. Such indifference was a mere mask, for Jack knew that Colin profoundly adored Melody and would have gladly claimed paternity. Jack also saw that Colin’s hand was entwined with that of his wife, Pru. She made no pretense at cool nonchalance. Pru bit her lip with deep concentration and Jack could see that her knuckles were white next to Colin’s larger ones.
Young Evan’s scowl was deepening by the moment as Jack’s silence stretched on. Even the giant underfootman, Bailiwick, picked up on the growing tension in the hall. Beyond him, Jack could see the other, older members of the club, gray haired and wrinkly and bent, more patient perhaps, yet just as eager to have their suspense ended.
Then Melody danced through the door, hand in hand with Wilberforce, and the thrumming tension was concealed by smiles and cries of welcome. Though they’d been gone scarcely a day, Jack watched as the tiny girl gave every single person a heartfelt greeting, as sincere as if she’d been absent for weeks.
Evan, who always knew when he was being shamelessly used as a babysitter, didn’t even wait to be asked this time. Glancing warily around at the adults, he took Melody’s hand.
“C’mon, Mellie. Cook made lemon seedcakes for tea today. I know he saved you one.”
Melody, having dispensed easy-hearted love upon all present like a spring rain, was tempted away by the cook’s pastry prowess and swung down the long hallway on the end of Evan’s arm. Even as Melody’s constant chatter faded, all eyes were turning back, pinning Jack like an insect in a display.
Through the heavy numbness that consumed him once again, Jack could only shake his head sharply. He saw Madeleine press her fingers to her mouth. Aidan made no sign of response, but Jack saw the devastation behind his eyes. Colin put his arm about Pru, who was openly distressed.
Bailiwick, great lout that he was, was the only one brave enough to question Jack directly. “But ye said she were yours, milord! Ye said so! Ye said she looked just like ’er mother!”
Jack raised his gaze to meet the younger man’s. “The lady denied it. That is that.”
Madeleine stepped forward. “But she could be afraid! Does she know that all we want is for Melody to be happy? Does she think we condemn her?”
Jack turned his gaze on the slender, dark-haired beauty. The loss in her brown eyes was nearly enough to pierce the deadening fog in which he stood, but he had no more words. Words came harder by the moment, in fact. When Colin moved forward, still holding flame-haired Pru to his side, Jack could only gaze at him dully. Colin’s words sounded as if they came from a very great distance, called out across a desert whose wind stole half the sounds.
One by one, they all began to accept the truth. Jack could see their eyes go from bright disbelief to leaden grief. They knew what it meant that he was not Melody’s father. They all knew that if no one in Brown’s held blood claim to their darling girl, then the only honorable thing to do was find Melody’s true family and return her to them.
They didn’t want her! Jack wanted to shout. They left her and never returned!
Deep inside him, a caged beast of grief pounded at bars of iron suffering. Even if he’d wanted to release it to howl at the fates, Jack had no idea how. Everything he felt, everything he wanted to say, remained trapped within him, just like before. The crack that Melody had effortlessly opened in his shell was swiftly closing, scarring over like a wound left unstitched.
The others followed Aidan and Madeleine sadly down the hall. Even Wilberforce moved as if his feet were weighted with lead, though the butler’s spine remained as ramrod straight as ever.
Jack remained by the door. Every moment in a crowd was like sand scraping into raw skin. The combined focus of everyone’s eyes on him had stolen the breath from his lungs.
Now the hall was empty. Just like him.
He’d prized having a child. Even just for a few days. Now the years stretched out before him once more, endless and gray with gritty restlessness. He could go back aboard his flagship and sail away, though he couldn’t imagine it would be any better than it had been before.
He could stay here and face Society again. I’d prefer to go back to sea. At least there the sharks smile like they mean it.
As he turned rather helplessly in a circle in the hall, he noticed a heavy envelope awaiting on a silver tray resting on a table near the door. He could see the waxen crest of Strickland on the paper from where he stood. After a long moment, it penetrated his consciousness. The letter contained bad news.
The wax in which the seal was pressed was black. The Marquis of Strickland was dead.
Long live the new marquis. Alone.
Three
The envelope weighed in Jack’s hand, the expensive paper thick and heavy, like the news borne within.
Slowly he broke the seal and read the letter. It was from his uncle’s steward, a good man but one of few words.
My lord,
His Lordship the sixth Marquis of Strickland expired at quarter past eight this evening, June 20 of the Year of Our Lord 1816. Greetings and deepest sympathy to you, Lord John Redgrave the seventh Marquis of Strickland.
The paper crackled loudly in the silent hall as Jack’s fist closed around it. Another man might have thought of his new title, or of his new wealth. All Jack could form was one single thought.
I have no one.
His parents were long gone. His cousin was gone. His uncle was gone, the man who had stood in the stead of Jack’s father for all those years of his boyhood when he’d been most needed.
This blow, coming so soon after the loss of Jack’s all-too-short-lived fatherhood, nearly knocked him to his knees.
I have no one.
The world, like the marbled hallway, echoed with emptiness.
And then came a knock.
The force of her knock left Laurel’s fingers tingling. All the long ride into town, her body had vibrated with tension. Now the accumulated effects had her wound as tightly as a spring. If someone did not answer this door soon, she rather thought she might have to knock it right down.
With the fury simmering inside her, it was not even an outlandish notion. She felt as if she could very well rip aside any barrier that kept her for even one more moment from her child.
When the door opened
to reveal Jack Redgrave himself standing there, greeting her like a blasted butler, Laurel felt as though she’d taken a step on a stair that wasn’t there.
Heavens, he’s so thin! He’s still Jack, though. Still so beautiful, damn his soul.
Seeing him face-to-face brought back so much that she’d determined to forget, all the hours that she’d watched him, worshiped him, waited for him with so much more eagerness than Amaryllis ever had, then the sweet, hot hours of that night.
Followed, of course, by the icy betrayal and finally by the horrific pain and loss. All of those feelings were tangled up in the sight of his face, wound into a wiry, spiky ball of fury.
Her momentum did not falter for long. After a startled glance up into Jack’s face, she pushed past him into the hallowed halls of Brown’s itself, the sacred place of men and whiskey and smelly tobacco.
The woman on the doorstep wore black from the pointed tips of her boots to the crest of the net veil over her bonnet. The sight of such an apparition on the heels of the black seal on the letter rocked Jack back on his heels a bit. If he were a superstitious man, he might start losing sleep about his own near fate.
Before he could blink back his surprise and greet this visiting Lady of Doom, she pushed past him and strode into the entrance hall of Brown’s. Well, that determined it. He would never make a satisfactory doorman for a gentlemen’s club. He was much too inclined to get out of a lady’s way.
Still, he ought to help Wilberforce and at least learn the harridan’s purpose. Closing the door on the noise from St. James Street, Jack turned to greet the woman.
“Madam?” He even bowed a little, although not much. He was a marquis now, come to think of it. The bowing would soon be going the other way about.
His air of bemusement seemed to offend her. Her spine straightened with a snap and she lifted her chin. “Where is she?”
Jack frowned. He truly had not grasped the difficulties poor Wilberforce endured. Madwomen in mourning probably showed up on a daily basis, and here Jack had thought Wilberforce had nothing to do but stand by the door and look stern.
Scoundrel in My Dreams Page 4
