Redeeming Jack (2 page)

He spied a loaf of bread and a slab of butter on the pine kitchen table and helped himself. There was no food at his lodgings and almost no money. Ignoring the sudden anxious pain in his gut, he tried to block out his fears for the future.

Unless his luck changed, he would have to crawl back to the mysterious Captain Fury and beg for more work. Warm bread stuck in his throat. He coughed and tried to swallow. He wanted to earn an honest living but kept getting pulled back into a murky underworld of lies and deceit by his need to survive.

Jack had once joked to Michael that as a soldier, all he’d been trained to do was kill people and bind up wounds. After being dishonorably discharged from the army, he’d taken employment nursing wounded officers back to health. Somehow, people always found out about his colorful past. Despite his considerable skill, he was usually dismissed at the earliest opportunity.

The Waterstones were the first family who had accepted him for what he was. It galled him that his whole relationship with them was based on a lie.

His sharp ears picked up the sound of someone descending the servants’ stairs. He got slowly to his feet and wiped the breadcrumbs from his mouth. The Duke of Diable Delamere appeared, Jack’s missing coat in his hand. To Jack’s surprise, the duke had changed out of his gray eveningwear into riding gear.

The duke held out the coat. “Were you looking for this?”

Jack turned his back, cut himself another thick wedge of bread and slathered it with butter before looking up again. “What do you want, Your Grace? And what do I have to do to get my coat back—lick your boots?”

The duke half smiled as he glanced down at his immaculate riding boots. He tossed the coat toward Jack. “No thank you, Llewelyn. I fear you would spoil the polish and Jacques, my valet, would never forgive me.” His expression sobered. “Will you come to my study whilst the other guests eat their supper? I have something very important to discuss with you.”

* * *

As soon as she reached the ballroom, Carys Llewelyn escaped to the ladies retiring room. After Jack’s startling appearance, she had pretended not to notice the interested stares of her companions and Lord Rice’s silent support. Luckily, no one occupied the quiet sanctuary, apart from a serving maid who greeted Carys and withdrew. Carys sank onto one of the chairs and pressed her cold hands to her cheeks. She’d imagined meeting Jack in a thousand different places, but not at a ball.

She pulled out two diamond headed pins from her hair and admired their stark brilliance. Five years ago, when his father had disinherited him, she had let him walk out of her life.

She’d only seen him once since then. On that occasion, two years previously, Jack hadn’t even bothered to speak to her. If his brother, Robert, had hoped to bring them together, his good-hearted scheme had failed miserably. The shame of that meeting and the ridiculous duel resulting from it between Jack and her brother, Gareth, still made Carys wince.

She grimaced and slid one of the pins back into her hair. By that point she hadn’t wanted to speak to Jack. Scream, shout and throw things at him, perhaps, but not conduct a reasonable conversation. He hadn’t answered her increasingly desperate letters and she wasn’t a fool. He hadn’t forgiven her. To her dismay, it appeared as if his dislike had only hardened in the past two years.

In the magnificence of the marbled hallway, he’d looked older than his thirty years, shabbier and out of place. The Spanish sun had tanned his skin and bleached his hair from honey to harsh gilt. Harder and deeper furrows on his face replaced the gentle lines of good humor and soft living she remembered. She recalled the hint of scorn in his voice and the insolent way he ran his eyes over her, as though she were a light skirt begging for his custom.

She regarded herself in the mirror, surprised by her composure. It had taken her a long time after Jack’s desertion to achieve such an unruffled exterior. She pictured herself as a swan. All graceful, gliding elegance on the surface and frantically paddling feet down below.

She was four and twenty and had been married to Jack for seven years. Did he care that she’d grown up? Did he care that another man was escorting her around London? It was impossible to tell. All she sensed was his disapproval. After five years apart, she wasn’t sure she knew him anymore, or if she would even like him. To think he was once the sun moon and stars to her…

“Carys, are you all right?”

As Carys slid the last pin back into her hair, Anna, Lord Rice’s sister, peered around the door.

“Yes, I’m fine.” She tried to smile. “It was just such a surprise…”

Anna nodded, her blue eyes full of sympathy. “I would say it was. You arrive at a ball with my brother and your long-lost husband turns up! It’s worthy of a comedy of errors at Drury Lane.”

“It’s not funny, Anna. I have to find a way out of this muddle. I’ve been trying to convince myself that Jack will agree to my plans and simply disappear again. But my husband is never predictable.”

She shivered as she recalled the contemptuous expression in Jack’s brown eyes. He had tried to make her look like a dithering peahen. She was certain that without Oliver’s calm intervention, she and Jack would still be bickering now. How was she supposed to deal with a man who hadn’t contacted her since his return from God knows where? Was she to be forever chasing after him like a little girl with a crush on her brother’s best friend?

Anna came to sit beside her. Carys was grateful for her undemanding presence. Soon, she would have to leave the sanctuary of the retiring room and go out to face the questions of her friends and, most importantly, Lord Oliver Rice.

The man who expected to marry her.

JACK PICKED UP the uneaten piece of bread and followed the duke up the servant’s stairs. He narrowly avoided banging his head on a lintel when the duke made an abrupt left turn. In the dark passageway, Jack used his free hand to trace the rough brick wall. He was surprised at the heat beneath his fingertips until he realized they tracked the curve of a chimney breast.

Eventually, the duke pushed open a door into his well-lit study, bypassing the crowded entrance hall. He crossed to the main door and checked it was locked before turning to Jack. “Please take a seat.”

“Are you hiding your association with me, Your Grace?”

“Hardly. I’m keeping the
hoi polloi
out, not you in. Since the government decided to make me out to be some kind of hero, hysterical females and other fools accost me in public. They shower me with compliments and insist on shaking my hand or kissing my cheek.” The duke shuddered and brushed at his immaculate sleeve. “It is most fatiguing. Her Grace, of course, finds it highly amusing.”

Jack studied the concealed door in the bookcase that matched one on the opposite side of the fireplace. The second door led into the office of Michael Waterstone, the duke’s secretary. He finished up the crust of bread and deliberately wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“What an exciting life you lead.” Jack sat in the chair indicated and took the glass of brandy the duke poured for him. “Concealed stairways, code-breaking and assassinations…”

The duke ignored Jack’s remarks and sat behind his desk. “Now, where shall I start?” He fanned the papers out and laid them in front of him. “You are Lord Jack Augustus Owen Llewelyn, born on September the twenty-fifth in the year of our Lord, seventeen-eighty-four, at Llewelyn Hall in Wales. You were originally destined for the church but ran away from home and enlisted in the army.” The duke looked up. “Why in God’s name did you enlist in the Forty-Eighth Foot? They are based in Northamptonshire. Why didn’t you choose a Welsh regiment?”

Jack gave an exaggerated sigh. “Because I didn’t want my father to know where I was. If I’d enlisted in Wales, someone might have recognized me.”

The duke nodded. “Of course. How remiss of me. I assume once you established yourself, your father accepted your decision and paid for your preferment?”

“No, Your Grace, he did not.” Jack said impatiently. “I gained the rank of Captain entirely by my own efforts before losing it again.” Jack sat back and sipped his brandy. “Although I hardly see the point of this discussion…”

“If you will just let me finish. Your father, Dafydd, is the current Duke of Carmarthen and you have two older brothers, Robert and Edward. Neither of your brothers is yet married.” The duke let the document fall from his fingers. “What the devil went wrong? Up until the scandal of your dismissal from the army and your subsequent disinheritance, you led a charmed life. You were mentioned in dispatches and decorated for bravery.”

Jack felt a familiar sense of wariness envelop him. He was sick of having to justify himself and too worried about the future to care whom he offended. He rose to his feet and slammed the thick crystal brandy glass down onto the duke’s desk. “As I don’t intend to spend a cozy evening reminiscing about my past mistakes. I will bid you good night.”

The duke sighed and leaned across the desk to replenish Jack’s glass from the decanter that stood at his elbow. “I don’t have time for that either. I am already in trouble with Her Grace for disappearing before the end of our first ball. But sometimes the urgency of a situation demands immediate action. I have a job for you, if you are interested.”

Jack sat down again, his suspicions aroused. “Why would you think I need a job and why would you offer me one, knowing my past?”

The duke shrugged. “I know you have little money at the moment and no new employer. Yet my wife and her brother think you one of the most trustworthy men they have ever met.”

Jack struggled with a desire to keep silent but his innate honesty surfaced. “I was ordered to work for the Waterstones. I was paid to keep an eye on Elizabeth.” The duke looked pained and Jack sighed. “I mean, Her Grace. Not that I did a very good job of it.”

The duke gave a soft laugh. “Neither did I. If you recall, Her Grace had to save me from a watery death. I already knew you were not quite as innocent as you appeared. After the assassination attempt on the Prince Regent, I tried to find out about you from my colleagues at the Foreign Office. To my surprise, I was only able to gain information from the War Office.” He paused deliberately and Jack tensed. “It seems the army still considers you a useful tool, despite your very public humiliation. And that, of course, leads me to wonder why a man of your pride allows himself to be used by the army and doesn’t simply walk away.”

Jack swallowed the rest of his brandy and took more. The duke was uncommonly perceptive. He hadn’t realized the man possessed the ability to cut through the layers of Jack’s much-vaunted thick skin with the unnerving skill of a surgeon. He considered his options and offered an edited version of the truth. “I work for the War Office when they need anything unsavory done. If I’m caught, they will refuse to acknowledge me. In return, they continue to support certain search efforts in Spain.”

The duke sat back, his expression thoughtful. “If you are prepared to be treated like a social pariah in order to achieve your objective, you must have a very strong motive. In my experience, that can only mean love or money. Which is it?”

“I do what I have to, Your Grace. I’ve never much cared for society’s opinion anyway.”

“You might not care, but what about your wife? Do you think it has been easy for her these past few years? She barely ventures up to town.”

“It appears my wife has made her own arrangements in my absence. I doubt she has any feelings left for me at all.” Jack gulped at the duke’s excellent brandy and felt it settle in his stomach like a smoldering coal. From the ballroom, the soft lilt of a waltz filtered through Jack’s consciousness. Was Carys dancing with her tall companion? Jack imagined so. She loved to dance.

The duke cleared his throat and Jack’s attention snapped back to the warm, fire-lit room. “Did you say you had a job for me, or are we just going to discuss the inconsistencies of women?”

“Don’t attempt to class my wife with your own. You owe a lot to Her Grace.”

Jack held the duke’s icy stare for as long as he could manage and then gave up the effort. He couldn’t imagine the duchess abandoning the duke. “I apologize. Your wife is a pearl beyond price. Now can we get back to the matter in hand?”

“Do you remember that Mrs. Forester, Elizabeth’s mother, was implicated in the failed assassination attempt on the Prince Regent last June?”

“Implicated?” Jack laughed. “I heard Mrs. Forester was in such a rage when her husband misfired that she whipped out her pistol and tried to finish the job herself.”

The duke compressed his lips. “Exactly, but that is not the story she came out with at the trial. She insisted, whilst weeping into her handkerchief, that Sir John Harrington and her husband forced her to take part in the scheme and that she was innocent.

“You and I know she lied, but for Elizabeth and her family’s sake, I allowed the lie to stand. I could not allow my prospective bride’s mother to hang by the neck or be transported for life.”

The duke offered Jack a cigarillo from the silver box on his desk. “Of course, now I regret that decision with every fiber of my being. Mrs. Forester has escaped. From information we have gathered, we suspect she will try and join up with La Fleur, the mastermind behind the assassination attempt.”

Jack lit the cigarillo and blew out a cloud of smoke. “And what does your duchess think about that?”

The duke’s expression grew cold. “She doesn’t know. And if you do your job properly, she’ll never have to. I need you to find Mrs. Forester and bring her back.”

Jack stared at the duke as a thousand questions flooded his brain. He decided to start with the obvious. “Do you have any idea where she might be heading?”

The duke stood up and walked across to the window, cigar in hand. “Yes, we believe she is in Wales, where we expect her either to rendezvous with La Fleur or seek passage to France.”

Jack nodded. It made sense. French ships had been avoiding the British blockade of the English Channel for years by sailing around to safer harbors on the Irish Sea. The Welsh were not known for their love of the English. Knowing his countrymen, Jack could certainly imagine them allowing the occasional French ship to dock and unload cargo when nobody in authority was looking.