“If you don’t mind my interrupting your no doubt fascinating private conversation,” said Richard, lifting a blond brow, “there have been some inquiries as to why our guest is not bound.”
“Or trussed,” contributed Henrietta.
“I have,” said Nicolas, spreading his arms wide, “attempted to explain, but your comrades, my love, seem reluctant to listen. I would prefer not to have rope marks on this coat, if it is all the same.”
“There must be some shackles in the dungeon,” said Henrietta darkly.
“Rust stains,” said Nicolas politely, “are very difficult to get out. My valet would be most cross. And one does not like to encounter Gaston when he is cross.”
Miles nodded knowingly. “Valets, eh?”
“Don’t worry,” said Lizzy brightly, dancing into the chamber in a peculiar costume that was part Robin Hood and part Paris frock. “I have my crossbow.”
Nicolas regarded the costume appreciatively. “That is a most unusual ensemble, mademoiselle. But becoming.”
“I know,” said Lizzy. “And I still have my crossbow.”
Nicolas bowed his head in acknowledgment.
“Does anyone have any rope?” demanded Henrietta.
Jane felt a headache coming on. She wished they would all just go away, and preferably take Nicolas with them. “No rope. Our guest”—she gave Nicolas a hard look, willing him to behave himself—“is not bound because Monsieur le Comte de Brillac has expressed a desire to become our ally.”
Miss Gwen snorted. “Oh, is that what he’s calling himself now?”
Miles looked at Miss Gwen with interest. “Do you mean the count thingy, or ally?”
Nicolas stepped into the middle of the room with the grace of a born performer. “Both, I assure you, are true. The title of Comte de Brillac comes to me from my mother’s husband. Ally, I hope, is a title I may earn.” He bowed towards the door, where four marines were staggering beneath the burden of an unconscious Braganza. “May Her Majesty Queen Maria be the first token of my good intentions.”
“Rather a large token,” muttered Miles.
“The size of the token,” said Nicolas, with a courtly bow, “is a representation of the sincerity of my commitment.”
Or of Queen Maria’s fondness for biscoitos, but Jane decided not to press that point.
“Monsieur le Comte de Brillac,” said Jane, raising her voice to drown out further commentary from her unwanted entourage, “has offered his services to His Majesty King Louis the Eighteenth. Which means”—she was all too aware of Jack’s silent presence beside her, his arms folded uncompromisingly across his chest—“that our interests are now aligned.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it, missy. Snakes don’t change their scales, no matter how many times he”—Miss Gwen poked her sword parasol in the Gardener’s general direction—“changes his name. What has it been? Four names so far? Five? It’s getting hard to keep track. Make up your mind already.”
“I have.” Nicolas affected a convincing gravity. “When the Bourbons have been restored to their rightful throne, I shall return to my lands at Brillac and devote myself to rebuilding all that has been shattered.”
“Noble sentiments,” said Richard, his voice hard.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, read between the lines,” said Miss Gwen. “He wants Louis the Eighteenth to give him his land back. It’s not the least bit noble.”
“Noble, ignoble, does it matter?” Nicolas was his most maddening when he was his most philosophical. “All of us are creatures of both dark and light. If one does a good deed for a dark motive, does the motive matter?”
There was a time when Jane had found those sorts of musings a sign of an elevated intellect. Most likely because Nicolas had usually been looking smolderingly at her while he uttered them. Right now, the philosophy and the smoldering both grated on her nerves.
“Fine,” said Jack, speaking for the first time. “Put him on a boat and ship him to Louis. He has what he wants; we have what we want.”
“Not quite everything,” said Nicolas. He paused for dramatic effect, waiting until all eyes were on him before turning and looking at Jane, an intimate, heavy-lidded look designed just for her—and his audience. Holding out both hands to her, he said in a voice designed to carry, “It is traditional, is it not, for an alliance to be sealed with a marriage?”
Taking Jane’s hands, he drew her forward, into the center of the room, where everyone could have the best possible view.
Jane’s hands were cold, cold as ice. She drew them away, frozen with the wrongness of it. “Nicolas—don’t. Please.”
She cast an anxious glance over her shoulder at Jack, who was doing his best impression of a stone boulder.
Nicolas tugged on her hand, claiming her attention. “Surely now,” he said softly, smiling up at her in a way that would once have made her all fluttery, “there can be no obstacle to our union.”
“Aside from good taste and common sense,” said Henrietta hotly.
“He’s not bad-looking,” commented Miss Gwen. “If you like reptiles.”
Dropping to the floor at Jane’s feet, Nicolas drew the signet from his finger. Not his personal signet, the one he used as the Gardener, but the sigil of the counts of Brillac.
Once, a very long time ago, Jane had imagined this moment, had imagined a world in which she and Nicolas might be together.
That, however, was before she had known him.
And before she had known Jack.
“Well, my Jeanne?” Nicolas said whimsically, proffering the ring. “Will you make me the happiest of men?”
Gold glittered in the torchlight. On the edge of the circle, Jack turned on his heel and stalked off.
Yanking her skirt away, Jane said sharply, “Did you really believe that making a public spectacle of me would change my answer?”
From the side of the room, there was the faint click of a door closing.
The dimple was very apparent in Nicolas’s cheek as he smiled up at her. “I live in hope.”
“Don’t,” said Jane crisply. “Not on that score.”
“That,” said Henrietta, “in case you didn’t notice, was a no.”
Nicolas rose easily to his feet. “I prefer to think of it as a ‘perhaps later.’”
“It was a no,” said Jane, and turned on her heel, not sure whom she wanted to shake more: Nicolas for refusing to take no for an answer, or Jack for walking away.
Jack had made his way through a door at the side of the armory, not out to the drilling ground and battlements, but into one of the many cells that honeycombed the side of the fort, once home to monks, now used as storerooms. Jane let herself in without bothering to knock. She found Jack standing by the narrow slit of a window, surrounded by burlap bags of meal, staring out to sea.
He turned as she entered, barely visible in the dusky room. “Am I to wish you happy?”
Jane stopped short. After all these weeks together, everything they had shared. “That’s all? That’s all you have to say?”
Jack pushed away from the window. “What am I meant to do? Duel for you?” He jerked a thumb back in the direction of the armory. “He would win.”
“I never asked you to duel for me!” She would do her own dueling, thank you very much. Jack of all people should know that. Jane’s nails dug into her palms. “I’m not a prize to be won or a parcel to be handed back and forth.”
Jack held up a hand. “I never said—”
No, he didn’t, did he? Tight-lipped, Jane advanced on the man she had foolishly allowed herself to grow to love. “You never say anything. Because if you did, you might have to admit that you care. It’s easier just to turn around and walk away. Just like you’ve walked away from everything.”
She could tell she had hit home by the way Jack stiffened. “I didn’t preci
sely see you saying no to him, did I?”
It was cold in the small room, icy cold, but Jane didn’t feel it. “Because you didn’t stay to see it!”
Jack’s fingers closed around her shoulders. Jane could feel his labored breaths, the ragged movement of his chest. “You show up looking like that—wearing his dress, his jewels, his perfumes. What in the hell am I supposed to think?” He released her, stepping back. “My congratulations, Countess. You’ll make a beautiful ornament at the court of Louis the Eighteenth.”
Jane had always prided herself on her ability to retain her poise, even in the most grueling of circumstances. But she was frustrated, humiliated, hurt, and just plain furious.
Jane poked Jack in the chest with her index finger. It felt good, so she did it again. “Would you like to know just how many times I’ve told Nicolas no? By last count, approximately thirty-seven. Not that it’s any of your concern. You see, he, like you, seems to believe that I don’t know what is best for me.”
Jack grabbed her hand before she could poke him again. “He can give you everything I can’t. He can give you riches, titles, a place in the world.”
Jane jerked her hand away. “I have my place in the world! I made it myself, with my own hard work.” And error, a great deal of error. She braced her hands against Jack’s shoulders, holding herself away to look at his face. “Have I ever—ever—given you any indication that I desire titles or riches?”
“Not in so many words, no . . .” Jack’s fingers itched to close around her waist and draw her close. Everything that had seemed so clear ten minutes ago was murky and blurry. He knew he had a point, but he was no longer entirely sure what that point was. He retreated a step, his back hitting the whitewashed stone of the wall.
Jane stalked forward, cornering him. Jack could feel the rough stone biting into his back as Jane glared at him, her chest right beneath his nose. “I don’t want to be placed on a pedestal. I don’t want to be the ornament of anyone’s court. And I certainly don’t want a lute beneath my window!”
She had told him that, hadn’t she? Jack was beginning to feel rather less sure of himself. The Gardener, that proposal, felt very far away, and Jane was very near.
Jack reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The perfume was growing on him. “How are your blisters?”
It didn’t work. “They sting,” said Jane shortly. “But I didn’t mind that. I didn’t mind any of it. As I would have told you if you had only listened.”
Jack pressed his eyes shut. Somehow he had gone from being noble and wronged to just being wrong. He wasn’t quite sure how that had happened. “I thought you wanted a bath and a proper bed.”
“There is,” said Jane dangerously, “a vast difference between wanting a proper bed and requiring coronets on my sheets. Did it ever occur to you that I didn’t care what sort of bed it was as long as you were in it?”
The words rang through the small room. Jack’s throat felt sore, swollen. He couldn’t seem to force words out, even if there had been any words to say. Jane’s chest was rising and falling rapidly, her bosom swelling distractingly over the low neckline of her white gauze gown.
“Jane—” Jack managed, but it was too late.
Jane jerked away, knocking over a bag of meal in the process. “I don’t need another man to put me on a pedestal. I have enough of those already.” She wrenched open the door to the drilling ground, the sky flaming red and orange behind her. “Congratulations on a successful mission, Moonflower.”
And the door slammed, taking with it Jane and the last of the light.
There was a creaking noise from the other side of the room. Jack whirled, reaching for a pistol that wasn’t there.
His father peered around the door, assured himself that Jack wasn’t armed, and then stepped inside. “I don’t think that went very well, my boy.”
“No, really?” There was a lump in Jack’s throat the size of a cannonball. He could go after Jane—but whatever he said only seemed to make it worse. And what did he have to offer her, after all? A besmirched past and an uncertain future. “Because you’ve done so very well with women.”
His father closed the door behind him, carefully navigating the fallen bag of meal. “I’ve made my share of mistakes. Your mother among them.”
This day just kept getting better and better. Jack punched the wall, which did nothing to the wall and a great deal to Jack’s hand, none of it good. “Lovely,” he said, through the pain in his knuckles. “Everyone wants to be the product of a mistake.”
His father seated himself on a cask of nails. “You were never a mistake, Jack. Never.”
“Oh? That’s not what I heard.” Servants gossiped. Especially in the zenana quarters, where gossip was a way of life. “What does it matter?” Flippantly, Jack quoted Marlowe: “‘That was in another country, and besides the wench is dead.’”
“You don’t mean that.”
Jack was sick of it. He was sick of his father making excuses for him, excuses that were their own form of condemnation, worse than any tirade. “Why not?” he shot back. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought it.”
Jack’s father stared down at his hands, the same broad, capable hands that had lifted Jack on the back of his first pony, steadied Jack’s hand on the quill, teaching him his letters. “Your mother and I were ill-suited. We knew that. We tried to make the best of it, in our own ways—”
Best. Jack remembered his mother lying listless in a darkened room, his father sneaking back smelling of spirits after spending yet another late night in the mess. They had both sought escape in their own ways. And he had been caught in the middle of it, lurking in the shadows, longing for affection.
His father shook himself out of his reverie. “It was a bad match and there’s no denying it. But neither of us doubted for a minute that we loved you.”
Jack gave a short, sharp laugh. “She killed herself.”
“Not because of you.” Jack’s father leaned forward, his hands resting on his knees. “If anyone was to blame it was me. I couldn’t give her what she wanted. Whatever that was. She wasn’t a happy woman.”
The understatement of the century. “Is that meant as an excuse?”
“Consider it an explanation. I’ll always bear the guilt of your mother’s death on my conscience, lad. There are times I tell myself it would have happened anyway, and times I wonder what I might have done to save her. I can’t go back and do it again. If I could”—his father spread his hands wide—“I would have taken more care of you.”
That wasn’t what Jack had expected. He had always assumed that if his father could go back and do it again, he would have eliminated Jack’s mother from his history entirely. And, with her, Jack.
Jack’s father looked at him earnestly. “We were both too wrapped up in our own unhappiness to think what we were doing to you. And for that, I beg your pardon.”
It felt very wrong to see his father humbling himself before him. Jack tried to shrug it off. “You did the best you could.”
“Not well enough.” His father seemed determined to have it all out. “I never rose high enough to have real influence. I couldn’t fight for you when you needed me.”
Jack’s eyes prickled. From the residue of gunpowder, of course. “You taught me to fight my own battles. I’d say that was well enough.”
Jack’s father nodded towards the door to the battlements. “Why did you abandon that one, then?”
And that was what came of letting his father get beneath his guard.
Jack feigned nonchalance. He’d learned that trick long ago: pretending he didn’t care, pretending what he didn’t care about couldn’t hurt him. “You’re the one who told me that some battles aren’t meant to be won.”
“I said a great many foolish things in my youth.” Jack’s father cocked his head. “You’re not holding it against J
ane that Gwen asked her to bring you home? I didn’t know,” he added quickly. “Not until the plan was in motion. And by then—”
“I don’t imagine many people say no to Mrs. Reid,” said Jack dryly.
“Not within range of her parasol.” His father grinned at him.
Reluctantly, Jack found himself grinning back. Even at his angriest he had never been entirely proof against his father’s charm. It was part of the reason he had stayed away so long.
“She meant well, you know.” His father’s expression sobered. “You’ve been a hole in my heart, and there’s no mistaking that. I hope . . . I hope you can see your way to coming back with us, even for a little bit. There’s a little girl who would very much like to meet her brother Jack.”
It was crass manipulation, but it was alarmingly effective.
“I’ll think about it,” said Jack brusquely, and was surprised to find that he meant it. There was something dangerously attractive about the world his father was offering him: a home, a family, a new sister. Jane. “Although her godmother might not be too happy to see me there.”
His father rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. “Some women, my boy, are worth fighting for.”
Jack resisted the urge to make a sharp comment about those who weren’t. His mother had been an open sore between them long enough.
Hating himself for being so vulnerable, Jack said hesitantly, “What if I can’t make her happy?”
His father steered him towards the door. “Happiness isn’t a gift you can give. It’s a task you work on together.”
There are two of us, Jane had said to him back in the monastery.
And they’d done rather well at being two, until Jack had opened his big mouth.
He paused, his hand on the doorknob, looking back at his father. “What am I going to say to her?”
It was the first time in a long time that he’d asked his father for advice.
Clapping Jack on the back, his father swung open the door. “Have you considered telling her that you love her?”
Chapter Twenty-six