Despair washed over her. A shrew; she sounded like a shrew. Damn it, wasn’t there some sane middle ground between shrew and strumpet?
“I take it you’re wearing those clothes to prove you mean business.” Marcus raked her with his gaze once more, but this time his look revealed scorn—which she would not let bother her. She needed to alter the course of their relationship. She had no choice.
“I’m wearing these clothes because they’re comfortable and easy to work in, because this is who I am. I won’t lose myself to you, or anyone. I won’t, Marcus.”
“I understand, Jade. I do. In a lot of ways, I’m as frightened by the force of this ... familiarity ... as you are.” He flashed his cocky grin, but she fought the pull. He sobered and ran a hand through his hair. “Believe me, no other woman ever came close to rattling me the way you do. If one did, I’d have walked.”
“Walk now, then,” she said, missing him already, hurting, physically as well as emotionally, at the very notion. “It’ll be better for both of us.”
Shaken by the suddenness and stubbornness of Jade’s reversal, Marcus admitted to himself that he would stay, of course. He needed to, and the railroad barely entered into his rationale. He couldn’t leave because something in Jade called to him, as something in him, he believed, called to her. He must be near at hand when she heeded the call.
Pray God it would happen soon.
“I agree to our relationship remaining strictly business for now,” he said, going so far as to sit behind the desk and pull the ledger over to prove it, but he could tell she suspected a trap.
“Promise?”
“Look, Jade—”
Something tapped the door so softly Marcus wasn’t certain he’d heard it.
“Come in?” Jade called, as unsure as him.
The door opened slowly. “Mucks?” Emily saw him and trotted in, incredibly adorable, her pink dotted muslin dress rumpled, a shoe and stocking on one foot, nothing on the other.
Marcus rolled his chair back as she approached, grinning at the small ray of sunshine in the cloudburst his morning had become. “Emily? Does Lacey know you’re here?”
Emily shrugged, raised her leg high and lay her bare foot on his knee.
Marcus wiggled a tiny toe. “This little piggy went to market—”
Emily giggled.
“I thought you came to play piggies. No?”
She shook her head. “No!”
“Did Tweenie steal your sock?”
She shook that little head harder, swinging a profusion of yellow curls to and fro.
“No?” Marcus hauled her onto his lap. “What happened to your shoe and stocking then Emmy-bug?”
“Tweenie piddled on it.”
Marcus looked up to share his amusement with Jade and caught a rather wild look in her eyes. She reminded him of a cornered animal. Panicked. As if she were being ... tortured.
By observing him and Emily?
Tortured ... that’s how she’d been acting all morning. Not sure where to turn, cornered. Why hadn’t he seen it?
Could she be so torn by what she felt for him that she feared something as simple as his gentleness with Emily would break her resolve?
Perhaps she didn’t want a business relationship anymore than he did, but ran from anything deeper.
He needed to remember that she’d been taught, and seen enough horrors to believe, that a gentle man must be an aberration. And when confronted by one ... what?
Her life’s lessons made no sense, that’s what. She’d lost her grounding—trembled on unsure foundations. That, he could comprehend.
At least he had interacted with the opposite sex. Jade held no experience relating to men of her station, except for him. And what had he done but storm the ramparts?
Bloody hell.
He had gone too fast. Frightened her.
If he allowed it, this affinity they seemed to have for each other—almost as if they’d shared a life before—would frighten him as well. Frighten him senseless, if truth be told.
Perhaps they did need to slow down. Backtrack. Start again.
Fine. He would give her the business relationship she desired until she begged for something more. Denying his feelings would be difficult, but if he must be firm and businesslike to win a woman who needed gentling more than any other of his experience —no small amount of experience—he faced a challenge that should cool him while it warmed her. A double challenge.
“Emmy,” he said, ready to make a start. “Jade is my employer, so I must request a few minutes to take you and bring you back to Lacey.”
Emily nodded and regarded Jade. “Mucks miss Jade.”
Marcus rolled his eyes. “So much for business. You see, Jade, I care for Emily and she cares for me, and people who care for each other help each other. Ours is a non-business relationship. It’s called friendship.”
He moved toward the door, but Emily puckered her lips to give Jade a goodbye kiss and so he brought Emily to Jade.
Marcus turned away from the love Jade revealed when she kissed Emily and fought the yearning to be the recipient of such unfettered devotion from Jade.
Business-only, he reminded himself in frustration. “You can deduct from my salary an amount equal to the time it takes me to get Emmy settled. That’s the best I can do business-wise at the moment,” he said as he left.
The door slammed behind him.
Jade stood alone in the centre of her study in pain, as if something tangible had crushed her, her arms and legs weighted down.
Friendship, she thought. There was the middle ground. “Marcus! Marcus, wait.” She went after them.
In the hall, Marcus turned, losing his smile when he saw her, making Jade think she’d hurt him. But he was a man; he couldn’t be as confused and vulnerable as her. Men didn’t get their feelings hurt. They had none to injure.
But she looked for signs of emotional wounds anyway; Gram might have been wrong about that. Just look at the way Marcus sensed Emily’s—
“Well?” he said with impatience. “What have I got, fifteen minutes? Ten?”
“No. No, it’s not that. This doesn’t have to do with business.”
The sardonic look he threw her conveyed a silent, Damn it, make up your mind.
Jade looked down, feeling foolish, and focused on Emily’s cute, little, naked foot. She cupped it then raised it in her palm. “Do you believe how tiny her feet are?”
Marcus softened and became the old Marcus, ready to listen.
Jade warmed. “I ... I just realized that—”
Lacey came rushing around the corner and nearly ran into them. “Emily Patience Warren, you naughty girl, where have you been?”
Emily hid her face in Marcus’s neck.
“I wondered about that,” he said.
A man shouted for Jade. A woman screamed.
Jade regarded Marcus and Lacey—both shocked—and ran.
The spectacle in her foyer reminded Jade of a village fair where the greased pig got loose. She could hardly take it in. The front door stood open, a mama cat at the threshold, a kitten by its scruff, looked to be considering the suitability of lodgings. Calm amid chaos.
Children ran in circles chasing Tweenie—or she chased them—through a crowd of conjecturing spectators.
Abigail, Lilly, oh several of the women, and Lester, Harry and Dirk were bent over something on the floor.
When Jade stepped closer, she saw the body. “Oh my God.”
Whether man or woman, alive or dead, she didn’t know, but her heart started pounding. “Move aside. Somebody—Lester —get Beecher.”
“I think she’s in labour,” Lacey said paling when she saw the woman. “She ... she has to be moved to a room.” Rather than kneeling to help, Lacey backed away.
Jade saw the pain in her eyes. “Millie, take Lacey into the kitchen and make her some tea, would you? I think she’s feeling faint. Marcus, I may need your help.”
Marcus nodded and handed Emily to Li
lly. Then he came to kneel beside the woman.
Jade felt better having him there, and damn it, hadn’t she just finished telling herself that needing him had to stop.
Angry with herself for thinking of herself, Jade gave her attention to the young woman with a swollen belly, prostrate in the middle of her floor. Alive, thank God, and watching them.
Jade lifted a dirty hand to hold it, to tell the soon-to-be mother she was among friends. The poor thing looked as if she’d been starving, likely living on the street. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Eloisa,” she said. “Eloisa Haw ... Higgins.”
Jade and Marcus noted her hesitation and regarded each other.
“Hello Eloisa. I’m Jade. And this is Marcus. Will you let him carry you to a room where you can rest more comfortably?”
Eloisa nodded weakly.
“How do you feel,” Marcus asked, shifting Eloisa’s ratty hair from her eyes.
The smile she gave him transformed her, making one forget anything about her except her beauty.
Good Lord, Jade thought, Eloisa was already half in love with Marcus. If she fell that fast, no wonder her present delicate condition.
Eloisa grimaced in discomfort. “They said to come here and the crazy lady would help me.”
Marcus muffled his chuckle.
Eloisa scanned the faces around her. “I only need a warm place to have my baby. I won’t be a burden. If I could sleep for a bit, I could work for my supper.”
“Shh,” Jade soothed. “Don’t worry about that. You’ll stay for as long as you need, eat three nourishing meals a day and have a fine healthy baby. We needed some excitement around here. No payment necessary.”
“Are you the lady?”
Jade nodded.
“You don’t seem crazy.”
“That’s curious, because today I feel especially so. But don’t be frightened. I’m harmless.”
Eloisa’s torso trembled with an amusement too weak to express as her threadbare shawl slipped to the floor revealing arms riddled with bruises.
Jade gazed at Marcus who’d seen them too. “Did somebody hurt you?” Jade asked her.
“I fell,” she said. “Really.”
“Where the devil is Beecher?” Marcus shouted.
“This cold floor can’t be doing you any good,” Jade said. “Marcus will bring you to a nice room with a warm bed and I’ll be right there to tend you.”
Jade looked up at Marcus. “Why don’t you try to move her now. But stop if she cries out.”
Impressed at the way Jade took matters in hand, Marcus nodded and began to lift the pregnant woman, hesitating only when she gasped. “Are you sure you’re up to this?” he asked her.
When Eloisa nodded, he pulled her fully into his arms, then he got to his feet and looked to Jade for directions as to where to take her.
Voices from another direction had him turning in time to see Ivy push Garrett’s wheelchair through the door. Pleased to see his brother, Marcus was nevertheless amused by the look on Garrett’s face, which was nothing short of stunned.
Garrett’s gaze shifted from him to the very pregnant woman in his arms and back again. “Marcus Fitzalan,” he said in his haughty aristocratic voice. “What wild scrape have you gotten yourself into this time?”
Marcus swept Jade and the members of her household with a glance. “Jade, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you to meet my brother Garrett. He’s going to be staying with us for a few weeks.” He raised a brow his brother’s way. “Unless I kick him out sooner.”
Garrett grinned.
“My armful, by the way, Garrett, is Eloisa Higgins. She may be barely strong enough to hang on, and pardon me for saying this, Eloisa, but why your condition is referred to as delicate is beyond me. The more appropriate description that comes to mind right now is ... weighty.”
“Chivalrous as always,” Garrett drawled, a gleam in his eye.
Marcus seized the gauntlet in a blink. “Show us true valour, then,” he said, placing Eloisa in his astonished brother’s arms.
Eloisa safely settled, Marcus stepped back and flexed his arms, appreciating the sight of his knave brother with a pregnant young woman in his lap. “Much better, and vastly amusing,” Marcus said.
No sooner had he said it than Garrett’s eyes widened and he gasped in surprise. “Something is warming my ... I’m wet!”
“I couldn’t help it!” the mortified woman wailed hiding her face in Garrett’s coat. “Something ... broke,” she added, her voice muffled.
Marcus fell back against the wall laughing. Every time he tried to catch his breath, he’d look at Garrett’s aristocratic indignation and start laughing again.
As fascinated by Marcus’s unbridled laughter as by the obvious bond between him and his brother, Jade saw love, there, between them, in their banter and laughter. Even in the fact that Marcus wanted Garrett here, and Garrett came.
Marcus accepted his brother’s limitations without making him seem limited. He didn’t take the wheelchair as a problem. He managed to employ it by making Garrett a necessary part of their activity.
He’d initiated Garrett into the household with a vengeance, actually, but not in such a different way as when a woman like Eloisa usually arrived. The experience was always traumatic, especially to the new arrival, but she was swept quickly and naturally into the household, though never as humorously.
“Er, excuse me,” Garrett said. “Jade, is it? I believe this young lady is ... uncomfortable.”
“Oh!” Jade snapped to attention.
Marcus jolted to action as well. “Does anybody know where Beecher is?”
“Town case,” Lester said. “Didn’t think he’d be back tonight. Old Lady Murray’s got pneumonia.”
“Wonderful,” Jade said. “Marcus, will you take Garrett with Eloisa to ...” She mentally considered rooms accessible to a wheel chair. “The fourth door off the east wing hall, this level.” She pointed. “The hall off that one. It’s the biggest bedroom down here—big enough for a cradle. And the room next to it will suit Garrett admirably, I believe. Oh and Marcus, don’t leave them too soon; you’ll need to lift Eloisa from Garrett’s arms and put her into the bed once it’s made up.”
“Right.”
“Sofia, do you mind seeing to linens, soap and towels enough for Garrett’s and Eloisa’s rooms, then see if you can find Frederick to make up their beds? Garrett will want to change into some clean and dry clothes and put his things away. I’d appreciate it if you’d also help Eloisa wash up.”
Sofia nodded and left.
Jade regarded the members of her household who were milling about. “I don’t suppose any of you ever delivered a baby?” Silence.
“I have,” Garrett said. “But I’d rather not do it alone.”
“I can help,” Marcus added, noting her surprise. “A carriage broke down near our place in a storm a few years ago. The woman, birthing her seventh, thank God, told us what to do. Garrett took charge, and saved the day.”
“Marc served as my babbling-idiot apprentice.”
Marcus gave a rueful half-smile. “It’s true.”
Jade laughed, rattled out of countenance. Of everyone, the seditious Scoundrels were the last she’d expected to come forward.
“Actually,” Garrett said. “I was thinking of a woman.”
“Naturally,” Marcus said.
Garrett ignored him. “When the time came, Marc settled down nicely and served as a great help, so between us, we can do it. But we’d do better, and so would Eloisa, with a woman who has experience delivering a child.”
Jade turned to a slight touch on her arm, surprised to see Abigail standing beside her. “I ... I can help,” Abigail said. “I have a little experience.”
Jade looked from the two most virile men she’d ever beheld to the frightened woman beside her and couldn’t believe Abigail had spoken in their presence.
“Are you certain, Abigail?” Jade asked.
Abigail’s n
od professed willingness, though it could not be termed a wholehearted eagerness.
Nevertheless, Jade accepted with gratitude. “Garrett, this is Abigail Pargeter.”
Garrett extended his free hand toward Abigail, as Marcus had done with Emily.
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