The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5

by Catherine Coulter

  “Ah, so your papa promised you clothes if you carted me off to Scotland?”

  “Yes, and a handsome allowance. Come along, Winifrede. Get up. Just look at you. Your hair is straggling down around your face, you’re wearing a wretched gown that makes you look bilious, and there’s this woman here who’s larger than I am and could probably snap my neck like a chicken’s. She probably could toss me out of that window. Still, she’s very pretty, and I fancy she would be very pleasant to have wrapped around a man on a cold night.”

  Dr. Brainard drew himself up and puffed out his meager chest. He waved a bottle of his own homemade dandelion restorative tonic at the young interloper. “You mind your manners, you coarse little puppy. Actually Helen could lie on you and suffocate you. She wouldn’t need to exert herself at all.”

  Helen said, “Now, Ossie, the boy is merely upset and not thinking straight. Look to your patient and I’ll look to the coarse little puppy.”

  Ossie dutifully looked at Gray, then said quickly, “Oh, goodness, my lord. Miss Helen is quite right. You’re looking flushed. I beg you to lie still. Don’t jump out of this bed, entirely unclothed, and strike this young man who’s going to receive his just desserts any minute now from Miss Helen.”

  Gray’s head felt as though it should be split open. The fact that it wasn’t, the fact that he could actually see and hear everything that was going on, was heartening. He managed to stand, pulling the covers around him like a toga.

  “You stole Jack from me?”

  “Yes, of course,” Arthur said. “She and I are going to marry. She sent me a note begging me to come take her away from your house on Portman Square. We were on our way to Scotland.”

  “Jack? Do you wish to marry this paltry fellow?”

  “Goodness, no, Gray. He’s a worthless sod, a wastrel, of no good to anyone I can think of. I think Helen should snap his neck or perhaps pound him into a pork kniver.”

  “Actually,” Helen said, advancing on Arthur, “perhaps that might be a fine idea. You’re boring me, sir. You are unduly exciting Dr. Brainard’s patient. You insulted one of my maid’s gowns that she very nicely loaned to Jack here.”

  “Stay back,” Arthur said, waving the gun about. Then he looked crafty. “If you were dead, my lord, then there would be no one but me to marry Winifrede. That’s her name, not Jack. That’s the valet’s name my father was yelling about.”

  “You’d hang for murder, you bonehead,” Jack said. “Well, that’s not true. I’d kill you myself before you were hauled to the gibbet. Give it up, Arthur. Go home.”

  Gray realized that if he didn’t sit down he would collapse on the floor. The room was moving, and he knew he wasn’t. Jack was on her feet then, running to him. How could she realize so quickly how he felt when he’d just realized it himself the instant before? “Please, Gray, you must lie down. You could be seriously hurt. Please.”

  Arthur grabbed her arm and jerked her back. Gray felt rage pour through him. He stepped around Jack, girded his toga, grabbed Arthur’s other arm and yanked it up behind his back. Arthur screamed with the pain. The burlap sack fell to the floor. Jack kicked it away. Gray said in the most menacing voice Jack had ever heard from him, “Let her go, you idiot.”

  “No, she needs to obey me, she needs discipline—”

  “Discipline, you say?” Dr. Brainard said, taking a step toward Arthur. “Now, Miss Helen here, she knows all about discipline. She’s known to be exquisitely inventive.”

  “Let her go,” Gray said again and tugged Arthur’s arm up just a bit higher.

  Arthur yelled again and let Jack go. This time she kicked Arthur’s shin. He yelled again.

  “Now, drop that nasty little gun,” Gray said, not an inch from Arthur’s nose, “before you shoot yourself in the foot or I stuff it down your throat.”

  “The gun or his foot?” Jack said.

  “Be quiet, Jack.”

  “No, I—” Arthur screamed when Gray pulled his arm up higher behind him. “You’re breaking my arm.”

  “It’s all right. There’s a doctor right here to bind you up. Drop the bloody gun.”

  Arthur dropped the gun. Jack quickly picked it up. Gray leaned close to Arthur’s ear and whispered, “You’ve lost. Take your carriage and go home. If I see you again, I won’t be pleased. Go away—now.” Gray dropped his arm.

  Arthur moaned and rubbed his arm. Helen said, “Why don’t you come to the taproom with me, Arthur? I’ll give you a nice mug of ale before you leave my inn, which shouldn’t be more than ten minutes from now.” She led Arthur Kelburn away, still moaning, still rubbing his arm, and said over her shoulder, “Ossie, see to it that his lordship is resting comfortably. Jack, you’ve got the gun. You can remain here and guard his lordship, just in case our Arthur here has cohorts.”

  “You mean like Lancelot?” Jack said.

  They heard Arthur moaning his way down the hall, saying at every other step, “It just isn’t fair. She would have begged me to marry her. All I needed was just a couple of days with her. I would have disciplined her and she would have loved it. My father taught me all about that, you know,” and then he groaned again.

  Ossie said, “I’ll wager the puppy’s father doesn’t know any of the marvelous disciplines Miss Helen employs.”

  Gray, tucked back into bed, moaned and closed his eyes again. “Jack, your Lancelot comment was on the witty side. I can already see questions in your eyes—don’t listen to any of this discipline talk, all right? Now, I really hadn’t intended to spend the day before my marriage in this manner.”

  “Breathe deeply, my lord.”

  “Here’s a scone for his lordship, from Miss Helen,” said the maid Gwendolyn, who’d lent Jack the gown.

  “Thank you,” Gray said. “Give it to Jack and she will feed me.”

  “Your breathing is irregular, my lord. Perhaps if you chew on a bit of scone it will ease your choler.”

  Helen Mayberry sat in the chair that Ossie Brainard had pulled close to Gray’s bed. Ossie sat at her feet on an old leather hassock. Jack was seated on the end of Gray’s bed, her legs tucked beneath her.

  As for Gray, he was propped up against three pillows, like a king, eating another scone, this one crammed with raisins.

  “I see nothing for it, my lord,” Helen said. “I believe if Ossie says you’re fit enough, we should return you to London tomorrow morning. It is your wedding day.”

  Gray started to say that his head ached so badly a wedding day was the furthest thing from his mind, but he looked at Jack, who had the gun in her lap and looked pale and frightened. He said, “I don’t have a carriage.”

  “I do,” Helen said. “That’s why I said that we should return you to London. I will accompany you. It’s only an hour and a half away.”

  “Miss Helen’s father is Viscount Prith,” said Ossie. “We will borrow his carriage.”

  “We could,” Helen said on a sigh, “but you know, Ossie, my father would demand to come with us.” She said to Gray, “He loves to travel, even short distances. A trip to London would send him into raptures. He would also demand to come to the wedding. He attends every wedding not only here in Court Hammering but in all the surrounding counties. He married my dear mother three different times, when he was in a particularly romantic frame of mind. Thankfully, our vicar is a man of flexible bent.”

  Gray said to Jack, who was still looking blank-brained, “Jack and I should very much appreciate having you as our guests. It is to be a small wedding. It’s possible that it will be even smaller if Douglas and Ryder Sherbrooke are still out chasing after you, Jack. Perhaps we’d best postpone the wedding until everything settles down, my head included.”

  “No,” Jack said, so distressed that she nearly bounced herself off the bed. “Something else bad will happen if we don’t get married. It’s already started—my foot’s asleep. Som
ething else would happen, too. I just know it. My stepfather could kidnap Aunt Mathilda, not realizing that if she wished to she could orate him into the ground, then slit his throat. No, as long as you can stand upright, Gray, I should like to get it over with. Then you can go to bed for as long as you like.”

  “An offer a man can’t refuse,” Gray said to the bedchamber in general.

  “Really, my lord,” Ossie said, giving Helen an interested look, “there are ladies present.”

  “Not really,” said Jack. “Until last week I was a valet and proud of it.”

  Douglas Sherbrooke stood beside Gray late the following Friday morning in the St. Cyre drawing room, having returned to London three hours before, just in time for an early breakfast. He’d had time to shave and change his clothes and rejoice that Jack was back where she belonged.

  Bishop Langston, loose-limbed as a willow wand and endowed with a beautifully dark speaking voice, conducted the brief ceremony—so brief in fact, that Jack was married before she even realized her fate was sealed. “Jack, look up at me so I can give you a very modest kiss.”

  She knew his head still ached, but he was smiling down at her, and she thought he looked wonderful in his stark black formal garb and his white linen.

  She closed her eyes and raised her face. She felt his fingertips touch her cheek, then cup her chin. He gave her a light, fleeting kiss, over before it began. But she found it very interesting, nonetheless. His fingers didn’t immediately drop. She opened her eyes and looked up at the man she hadn’t even known existed just three weeks before. Now he was her husband.

  “How does your head feel?”

  “Let’s just not speak of that, Jack.”

  “Then I will tell you how very handsome you look.”

  “That’s better.”

  “There’s something different about you. About the way you’re looking at me.”

  He could have told her that he was now seeing her through a husband’s eyes, and that was a very different experience for him indeed. He was seeing her as a woman who would, this very evening, climb into his bed with him and Eleanor.

  “You’re very brave, Gray. Thank you.”

  His knuckles grazed her cheek. He said nothing. Bishop Langston cleared his throat, which brought some chuckles from behind them.

  “Perhaps I’ll become as romantic as Lord Prith, and we’ll get married several more times in the coming years.”

  “Perhaps at our next wedding I will have time to order a wedding gown.”

  If anyone believed that the pale yellow satin gown with its long, fitted sleeves and high-cut bodice wasn’t suitable for a bride, no one remarked upon it. “Yes,” Gray said, patted her cheek, then turned back to Bishop Langston. The bishop gave them a benign smile and nodded. “Now, my lord, my lady, I believe Quincy wishes to announce that an outstanding wedding breakfast awaits us in the dining room.”

  “With champagne,” called out Lord Prith, Helen Mayberry’s father. “Best thing about weddings—the champagne. Even when I don’t know the bride and groom—as in this particular case—I always bring a bottle of excellent champagne to the festivities.”

  “I say,” Aunt Mathilda, gowned in stark black, “that is an excellent course to adopt. Did you already give your bottle to Quincy?”

  “You said an awful lot there, Aunt Mathilda,” Jack said, watching Lord Prith eye Aunt Mathilda as he would a succulent pigeon. “I haven’t ever drunk champagne.”

  “You won’t drink too much,” Gray said. Before she could question this peremptory order, Mr. Harpole Genner was bowing deeply over her hand. “A lovely ring. Wasn’t it your mother’s, Gray?”

  “No,” Gray said. “It was my grandmother’s.”

  Mr. Genner said, “This is a very happy occasion, my lady. It is such a pity that Lord Burleigh is still too ill to attend. Ah, perhaps he will awaken soon. Yes, he will be delighted to hear of his ward and his godson becoming man and wife.”

  “There is no word yet if his lordship will survive his illness?” Gray asked.

  Mr. Genner shook his head. “I visited just yesterday and his butler, Snell, told me his lordship still lies on his back, eyes closed, occasionally snoring—which is odd, his physician says—with Lady Burleigh holding his hand and speaking to him as if he were there and listening, even interested. Snell also said that his lordship’s color was better and that his whiskers were growing at a fine clip, which, Snell told me, gave the physician reason for guarded optimism.

  “At least they’ve gotten rid of the noxious sunlight from Charles’s bedchamber. You recall how he much prefers the shadows.”

  “I do, indeed,” Gray said.

  “Charles will pull through, my boy. Now, I wish to speak to Lord Prith. Haven’t seen Harry since Trafalgar. A sad day that was when we got the news of Nelson’s death. I remember Harry fancied himself in love with Emma Hamilton once, a very long time ago. Odd how everything works out, isn’t it?

  “That daughter of his, Helen, what a splendid specimen of womanhood. She stands so many inches from the floor, yet it inspires a man to worship, not to fear. I must meet her. Is it true that she owns an inn?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Jack said. “It’s called King Edward’s Lamp.”

  “You wonder where that name springs from, Mr. Genner?” Helen said, resplendent in pale green silk, her magnificent hair piled atop her head.

  “Yes, Miss Mayberry, I was wondering exactly that.”

  Lord Prith, taller by a half a head than his lofty daughter, boomed out from behind her, “The story goes that King Edward brought a very special lamp with him back from his crusade in the Holy Land. It’s said to be encrusted with precious stones—diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and such. It has mysteries surrounding it; it supposedly has magical sorts of powers. Tales hint at supernatural sorts of things, like making men disappear, striking down enemies with a single thought, changing light into darkness, things like that.

  “My girl here fancies finding it. She’d rather have the lamp than a husband. The good Lord knows, I’ve presented her with dozens of suitors over the years, but she just looks them up and down—usually down since it’s the short gentlemen who normally swarm about her—and turns them out.”

  Douglas Sherbrooke, who had met Lord Prith when he was twenty years old and newly unleashed on London society, shook the older man’s hand. “And Helen,” he said, turning to the woman who stood exactly at eye level with him. “I read somewhere about King Edward’s lamp. I’m sorry to say that the author believed the lamp to be a fabrication, a fanciful myth that just happened to survive into our time.”

  “Douglas,” Helen said. “It’s a relief to see that you’ve not grown shorter in your advancing years.” Then she punched him lightly in the arm saying to Jack as she did it, “I was once desperately in love with Douglas. He was just turned twenty, and I was all of fourteen or fifteen. He would have patted me on the head like a bothersome little sister if I hadn’t been the same height as he.”

  Douglas laughed. “You’re right, Helen. I was hard-pressed to know what to do with this beautiful young girl who stared me square in the eye. Now, we must spend our time with Gray and Jack, then let’s adjourn to the dining room and stuff food down our gullets. When Gray and Jack won’t wish to be bothered by any of us later, we can have a long talk.”

  “Where’s the champagne?” Lord Prith bellowed.

  “Of course we’ll want you to bother us,” Jack said. “You’re our guests.”

  “No, Jack,” Aunt Mathilda said.

  “What Mathilda would say if she’d wanted to enlarge upon her words is—”

  “It’s all right, Aunt Maude,” Gray said. “I fancy most everyone understands the underlying wit at work here.”

  Actually, every gentleman in the circle was simply staring at Jack as if she were an idiot.

  Helen just laughed and p
atted her hand. “We will see, Jack. We will see.”

  Just ten minutes before the newly married Lord and Lady Cliffe left the St. Cyre town house, Ryder Sherbrooke, clothes askew, hair windblown, strode into the entrance hall, saw that he’d missed the wedding, howled one mournful note, then kissed Jack and said, “Gray, you will give me just a moment.”

  Gray didn’t have a chance to thank Ryder for all his trouble. Ryder immediately said, “Remember I told you I would have just one piece of advice for you?”

  Gray blinked, then said, “Yes, I remember. You rode like a demon to get here in time to give me this advice?”

  “It’s important, Gray. Now, listen.”

  17

  THE ST. Cyre carriage was well sprung, the carriage rugs soft and warm. A light gray rain tapped gently on the roof. The sway of the carriage was mesmerizing.

  “I feel quite stupid,” Jack said, leaning her head back against Gray’s shoulder and closing her eyes. “I wish you would tell me what I didn’t understand.”

  Gray, whose headache had finally subsided to a dull throb, was thinking about what Ryder had told him. “You married me. That wasn’t stupid.”

  “No, what I said to Helen, telling her we wished to stay with our guests.”

  “Oh, yes, surrounded by our friends well into our wedding night. Everyone was amused. Even Douglas gave me this pat on the shoulder, grinning like a dog.”

  “But I still don’t understand why—”

  “I have a favor to beg of you, Jack.”

  He felt her cheek against his shoulder, felt her turn her face into his shoulder and kiss him.

  “Um, the favor is that I don’t wish to speak of this until tomorrow morning.”

  She gave him one more kiss, then leaned back. “Why?”

  “Because between now and tomorrow morning, you are going to become a very well-educated woman. You will come to fully understand concepts that before were mere cloudy ideas swirling about in the ether. You will see with unusual clarity why no one would have expected the two of us to remain with them for more than one single champagne toast.”