She regarded him earnestly as silent seconds ticked by and she tilted her head. “Papa.”
Marcus stilled. He took Jade’s hand, squeezed it and brought Emily close. Burying his face in Emmy’s blond curls, he kissed the top of her head. “I would be proud to have you call me Papa.”
With a satisfied release of her breath, Emily stood up, all the while Mucks—the poor benighted girl pup—sat quietly and stoically in her arms.
“Look,” Emily called out as she started walking toward the other children. “Annie! Molly! Look what I gots.”
“Don’t run,” Jade shouted after her. “You could hurt Mucks.”
Emily stopped and turned around. “Emmy knows that.”
Jade chuckled. “Good.” She turned back to smile at Marcus.
He drank in every nuance of her beauty and expression, so glad to be back and have her full and complete attention.
“Do you think Mucks will run if Em sets her down?” she asked.
He shook his head. “She’s a calm one. She’ll stay right by her. They’re friends already, I think. Ivy did a great job of choosing her.”
“Papa,” Jade whispered touching his cheek. “What a good one you would make. But what will happen if Emily ever goes back to her real father?”
Marcus kissed Jade’s hand. “The man who beat her mother wasn’t her father. Her real father is a London dandy who wants nothing to do with her. He has a broken jaw for telling me so. Emily’s mother went to see him and when he refused to provide for Em and sent Catherine packing, she ran weeping into the street into the path of a moving carriage. She’s gone, Jade. Catherine’s gone.”
Marcus got Lacey to watch Emily and propelled Jade into the house and down the hall toward Eloisa’s room. But he passed it and went to the empty bedroom, their room, and shut them inside.
Then Jade’s back met the door and Marcus closed his mouth over hers, drinking in the sounds of her weeping, and telling her with soft sweet words how sorry he was to have left her, and how much he’d missed her, that he’d help her raise Emily, if only she’d let him.
Jade forgot how angry she’d been for his desertion, despite his discovery of her hidden railroad supplies, and told him as much in the same weepy, kiss-stealing way.
She needed to be comforted.
By him.
She needed him.
She ducked unexpectedly from under his arms, aware she confused him, but when she took his hand to drag him to the bed, she did nothing more than lie down. He came to her, touching her everywhere at once, budding a nipple here, sleeking a thigh there, kissing fingers and sucking earlobes. Her bodice lay open; she didn’t know how, and his tongue and his hands gentled, laved and suckled all at one time.
She was hot; she was wet. She was breaking all the rules she’d set for herself after he left. She didn’t care. She tugged his earlobe with a gentle bite.
He felt as much like velvet against her lips as his length had felt in her hand that last morning.
Velvet and sin.
Delicious.
Wondrous.
The Earl of Attleboro. She slid her hand along the rutting length of the Earl of Attleboro—his title she’d deduced from the information she gleaned in the village—seducing the man who owned the railroad she wanted to destroy. A scoundrel disguised as a saint, lying to her even now.
Chapter Thirteen
Jade shoved Marcus hard. “Get off me ... you ... oaf!” She rolled out from under him and off the bed when he pulled back, passion dazed and confused.
Trying to regain her breath and her balance, she watched as he rose and attempted to adjust himself in his suddenly-tight trousers. His dignity returned in miniscule measure, beat by affronted beat, as he raised his head like any proud stallion. “You dragged me to the bed, Scandal, so don’t go all priggish on me. It doesn’t suit.”
“You’d have had me against the door at any rate.”
“Not if you didn’t want me to. But ‘no’ wasn’t the message you were sending.”
Jade raised her chin. “You caught me off guard. I’m stronger now. What did you expect after deserting me for nearly two months.”
“You were never mine to desert, Jade.”
“And I never will be.”
He ran a hand through his hair, weakening her resolve, making himself look more human and less the lying aristocrat. “I’m not ready to accept that. Look, I know you’re in trouble. You need to trust me. Please. Just tell me what’s wrong and I’ll help you. I promise. I can take care of you. No matter what’s happened with the railroad so far, I can fix it. Why won’t you trust me?”
Because the Earl of Attleboro owns the bloody thing, she thought, and you’re him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He growled at that and grasped her arms. “It has to stop, Jade. I can only help you, up to a point.”
“You’re hurting me!”
As if she’d slapped him, he stepped back, appalled. “I’m sorry. Forgive me, please. I ... I’ve never hurt a woman in my life. I’m sick for worrying about you. I’ve had nightmares about the danger you’ve put yourself in, about what might happen, I’m so bloody scared for you in this.”
“You’re talking foolishness.”
He walked to the window to look out, his hands clasped behind him. “I’ll talk sense, then. Don’t go to the construction site tonight.” He turned back to her, his gaze skewering her with intensity. “It’ll be dangerous. There’ll be armed guards.”
Jade felt the blood leave her head. She feared her lack of colour showed. The narrowing of his eyes said it did, but she couldn’t care. “What about my money? I want to go over my finances.”
“As selfish as you sound, I’ll try not to judge. Nothing is ever as it seems and you don’t walk alone, do you?”
Jade stepped back at his venom. “I’m your employer and I would like to discuss the business you conducted on my behalf in London, if you please.”
“I haven’t seen my brother in two months, so I’m bloody well going to see him now, then I want to see Eloisa and the babies and a few others. After dinner, I plan to rock Emily to sleep. So, yes, I do mind, if you please.” His features had lost all softness, his expression stony cold.
Jade wanted to turn the tables and throw her discovery of his identity in his face. She wanted to ask what he planned to do after he rocked Emily to sleep. But she already knew he’d be waiting to catch her as she left the house, except he wouldn’t succeed. Not tonight.
Jade opened the door to leave.
“I adore you,” he said, but she kept walking.
Garrett wasn’t in his own room, but in Eloisa’s with her and the twins. A baby-minder had been brought in, Marcus noticed when he entered, an ingenious invention with three rockers, the middle one serving the chair and cradle both.
By rocking in the chair, Eloisa rocked its attached cradle, one babe within, the other in the cradle Jade brought from the attic the day of their birth.
“Separate beds, I see. Fighting already, are they?” He bent and kissed Eloisa’s cheek and regarded his brother. “Like us, Garr.”
Garrett smiled and extended his hand.
Marcus didn’t think he’d ever wanted so badly to embrace his brother. He wasn’t sure if he’d missed him so much as he’d had enough of seeing him in that wheelchair. Then again, Garr was all he had, for he’d just lost the woman he loved.
He squeezed Garr’s hand, covering their clasped ones. He’d written of a broken heart, but ... “You look well, the both of you.”
Marcus regarded the babes more closely. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Mac’s in the minder to keep him from fretting.”
“How did you guess?” Garrett drawled.
Eloisa laughed. “He’s my fussbudget.”
“May I,” Marcus asked. At Eloisa’s nod, he lifted Mac in his arms, realizing he’d missed the little tiger a good deal more than he realized. “I’m getting soft,” he said to no one in particular.
“Does she now?” New and interesting information. “With both of them?”
“Well, no, actually. Garrett has an affinity for his namesake, of course. And Jade has one for yours.”
He’d best not read too much into that, Marcus thought. “The night you were ill, she slept with Mac pressed to her breast,” he said to explain, as much to himself as to Eloisa.
“She held him while she slept?” Eloisa clasped a hand to her heart. “Lord, it’s a wonder she didn’t drop him.”
“She wasn’t sitting up.” Marcus explained how well his notion that night had worked.
Garrett huffed. “I wish you had shared that piece of wisdom with me and Abigail. One of us might have got some sleep.”
Marcus wanted to ask about Abigail when there came a scratching at the door.
“Come in,” Eloisa called.
“Well, hello, stranger,” Ivy said as Tweenie rushed to Marcus, paws at his knees, happy tail slapping his leg.
Ivy chuckled. “You were missed.”
Marcus greeted his friend at the same time he felt a trickle of warmth on his sock. “Well, Tweenie missed me, anyway.”
“No!” Emily stood in the open doorway, astonished and ...crestfallen.
“Emmy-bug what—”
Tweenie and Mucks-the-pup met for the first time, growling, circling each other. Then as fast as it began, the skittish dance stopped. Tweenie nuzzled the half-pint and began to groom her.
Marcus grinned, but Emily didn’t crack a smile. His girl wasn’t happy. With a martial light in her eye, she marched over and pulled at his hand supporting the baby. “Play with Emmy.”
“Mac is too little to play with you, Emmy. Would you like to hold him?”
“No!”
“Marc,” Ivy said. “I think Emily feels Mac is ... taking her place in your heart?”
“The devil you say.”
“Green as an Irish shamrock,” the puppeteer confirmed with a nod.
While Marcus would have liked to nip Emily’s jealousy in its little green bud, she’d lost her mother not so long ago, and just now got him back, and she faced worse, because she would soon learn that her mother would not be returning. “Tell you what; why don’t I give the baby back to his ... back to Eloisa, and we’ll take Uncle Garr to his room so I can borrow some dry socks?”
Emily nodded, hopeful, relieved. Her shuddering sigh gave her away. She feared losing him. Marcus handed Mac to his mother and lifted Emily high into his arms to kiss and jiggle her in the air. Once he’d got a giggle, he returned his attention to the company.
“Where is Abigail? I expected to find her here.”
“She moved back upstairs,” Garrett said.
“I didn’t think she’d ever part with the twins.”
“She didn’t leave the twins,” Garr said.
Eloisa winked. “A lover’s squabble.”
Garr coloured and Marcus laughed.
“I’m not blind, Garrett,” Eloisa said. “Nor deaf either, you should know.”
“Get me out of here, Marc,” Garrett said. “I haven’t blushed in public since I was twelve.”
With Emily’s help, Marcus pushed Garrett out.
In Garr’s room, Emily climbed into Marcus’s lap, curled into his embrace, held on tight, and fell promptly asleep. Mucks came in and curled up at his feet.
“Tell me what happened with Abby,” Marcus said.
Garrett all but trembled with despair. “One night we talked about the future, the next she ran upstairs and wouldn’t come down. I’ve never met another woman like her, Marc. I miss her dreadfully, and I’m worried sick about her.” He shook his head, disheartened. “I love her.”
“Wait a minute, Garr. You’re the worst scoundrel this side of London town, remember? You ‘can’t love only one woman and deprive the rest of your talents.’ Your words.”
Garrett grimaced. “I don’t give a bloody fig about any of that. I want to see Abby. I need to know why she’s forsaken me. I need to be certain she’s all right.”
Emily began stroking Marcus’s whiskers as she woke from her short nap. He chuckled. “Lovesick, the both of us. And a sorrier pair of toss-aways I’ve never seen.”
“What, you too?”
“Madder than a hornet, and I’m only just back. Hardly a kiss before she skewered me with those eyes of hers.”
Garrett chuckled. “I’ll talk to Jade if you talk to Abby.”
“Much good it’ll do you, but give it a try. I’ll go find Abby. Want to go outside for a bit first? You haven’t been cooped up all this time have you?” He kissed Emily’s hand. “Feel better now?”
She smiled.
Garrett agreed to go outside and be properly introduced to little Mucks, which happened once Marcus coaxed Em onto Garr’s lap. “If I’m Papa, Emmy-bug, then this is Uncle Garr and you need to cheer him up.”
That, she understood, because she patted Garr’s cheek and allowed Mucks the pup to wash his face as Marcus pushed them out to the terrace.
“Papa?” Garr said, brows raised as Marcus turned to leave them.
“Papa,” Emmy confirmed with a nod as he left.
Marcus couldn’t find Abigail in the sewing room, nor the playroom or the classroom. He was told she was ill. In the interest of repairing his brother’s broken heart, Marcus decided he had no recourse but to intrude upon her in her bedroom.
On the same floor as Jade, Abby occupied the room three doors down and across the corridor. She replied to his knock and bid him enter, even after she heard his name. A good sign.
“Marcus I’m so glad you’re back,” she said, halting her forward surge, almost as if she intended to throw herself into his arms. She offered her hand instead.
Some indefinable air about her countenance seemed different. She appeared softer, more ethereal than the first time he’d seen her, yet that could be the simple result of an ease of manner due to the absence of fear from impending mistreatment. And yet, a new sadness seemed to engulf her.
He brought her hand to his lips, then he squeezed it. “I’m glad too, but my brother’s worried sick about you, and since he can’t climb the stairs, I’m here as his emissary.”
She paled. “You can tell him I feel fine.”
“That’s not what Lacey said.”
“Lacey’s a worrier too.”
“Why did you move upstairs? It looks like Eloisa still needs you.”
“I didn’t mean to desert her. It’s just that, I couldn’t—”
“Stay near Garr, I surmise. Why? He cares a great deal about you. As a matter of fact, his scoundrel heart has never been engaged, until now with you. He wrote to me in London saying that very organ was broken.”
Abby covered her quivering lips with a hand, then gave up the fight and began to weep.
Marcus went to her and enfolded her in his arms. “I think this must be how Garr feels,” Marcus said, resting his cheek atop her head. “Except that he hasn’t cried ... that I’m aware of.”
Abby chuckled despite herself, but she didn’t move from the protection of his embrace and Marcus decided he should like Abby for a sister.
“I shouldn’t have let it go so far,” she said, wilted now and listless, “but he’s so—”
“Compelling?” Marcus chuckled. “Garr can talk one into almost anything, can’t he? When I think of the scrapes he got us into.”
She wiped her eyes as she stepped from his hold. “He’s wonderful. Gentle. Understanding.”
“So you left him?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand what’s between us.”
“No, I don’t. Which means that you should be speaking to him, shouldn’t you?”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“You’re hurting him now, Abby. He’s hurting badly.”
She turned her back on him to lean against the win
dow and look out.
Marcus stepped up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders in silent support. Down below, with Em still on his lap, Garr laughed at something she said, her pup asleep against his shoulder, a wet doggy nose in his neck.
“He’s wonderful with children.”
Marcus laughed. “And animals. It’s the new Garr.”
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