It Happened One Midnight (PG8) (38 page)

She blanked in shock.

Suddenly she couldn’t feel her limbs at all.

She took it from him gingerly. The foolscap rattled between her trembling fingers. A haze of emotion moved over her eyes, and it was a moment before she could read.

But she did read. In the dim silence, while Jonathan held utterly still, she read.

And she saw that what he said was true.

She looked up at him.

“But . . . how . . . ?”

“I bought it. And the reason I was able to buy it is indirectly all because of you. I’ve another deed—I had the solicitor draw up two of them—that says something entirely different. It says the mill belongs to me. I’ll tell you about that next. For that’s where your choice comes in. First, I wanted you to know, Tommy . . . that I chose a bride from a deck of cards yesterday.”

She reared back. And now shock slowly iced her palms and the pit of her stomach. She longed to look over her shoulder. Longed to flee. But she was trapped here now.

Surely . . . surely the mill wasn’t an apology, or a thank you for services rendered? Was this a cruel trick?

And now panic shortened her breath.

“Would you like to see who I drew from the deck?” he asked. His expression gave away nothing.

She stared at him. Iciness had given way to a feverish heat in her cheeks. Fine. There was nothing she couldn’t endure. She straightened her spine and jerked up her chin, and thrust out her palm.

And he pulled a card from his right pocket as she took a bracing breath.

He settled it into her palm.

“Look at it, Tommy.” he ordered. When it appeared she never would.

So she looked.

And then she looked harder.

It was the Queen of Hearts. She was wearing a green dress, and her eyes were a vivid green rimmed round in gray, and she had a little pointed chin and delicate slashes of eyebrows.

Most striking of all was the hair.

“Copper-colored hair and all,” he whispered.

She couldn’t see it through her tears. “Copper!” she choked wonderingly. “
Yes
.”

“
Burnished
copper,” he embellished triumphantly, still on a whisper.

She laughed shakily. “Yes!” she approved on a whisper, too. “But . . . how . . .”

These seemed to be the only words she was capable of speaking today.

“I commissioned a deck, Tommy. Wyndham had already done your portrait, so he painted it from that. I made him work around the clock for a few days. And I made sure you were the only person in that deck. Not only that, but you can buy the Thomasina de Ballesteros deck in the Burlington Arcade.”

She recovered then, and choked a laugh. “I hope we make an immense profit.”

He heard the word “we.”

She understood how he heard it when he went suddenly very still and alert.

A man
alive
with a hope he hardly dare harbor.

She couldn’t postpone it any longer. She’d best tell him what she came to tell him.

“Jonathan . . .” she said hesitantly. “It’s . . . I’m afraid I have something to tell you, too.”

He’d survive a few moments of torture, the beast. It was only what he deserved.

She almost took pity when she saw how instantly gray and taut his face went.
He loves me. He loves me. He loves me
. The thought was a hosanna, and exultation. And she took no pleasure in hurting him.

Still, a little theater wouldn’t kill either of them. She’d get the torture over with quickly.

“Very well. Tell me what you need to tell me,” he ordered curtly. Still tense and slit-eyed and gray-faced. Like a man braced to have a bullet extracted from his flesh.

“Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”

He hesitated, much the way she had. And then he inhaled for courage and thrust out his hand.

And slowly, with great ceremony, she poured the strand of pearls into his palm.

He blinked. He looked down at them and frowned faintly. “I don’t . . . that is . . . what are . . .”

“When you deposited the money in my account, I used all of it to buy them back from Exley & Morrow. I’ll have them returned to Prescott tomorrow.”

And the dawning of realization on his face was glorious. “You believed in me,” he said slowly. “You trusted me.”

“Of course I did. That, and I love you more than life itself.”

She saw her words enter him like cupid’s arrow. He closed his eyes swiftly, as if bracing against an onslaught of emotion. He mouthed something that might have been “Hallelujah.”

Then he opened them again, as if he couldn’t bear not to see her in the aftermath of those words.

“Say it again.”

“I love you.” Those magical powerful words that she never dreamed she’d be able to say to anyone.

And look, look what it did to Jonathan Redmond’s face when she said them. What a humbling power she held.

He recovered, and smiled a slow satisfied smile. “Of course you love me. How could you help it?”

He gathered her abruptly into his arms then, and he bent to kiss her senseless.

And then her senses congregated again and clamored for his touch everywhere she could possibly be touched.

“And you’ll marry me?” he wanted to know. He murmured this in her ear, before he applied a tongue to it. Her breath caught, and she turned her head to press her lips to his throat. How swiftly his heartbeat was beating. For her.
He loved her
.

“I’ll marry you,” she gasped.

Because he’d dragged his hands softly down over her breasts and cupped them, and she felt the surge of wildness overtake her.

He kissed her again, and his hands went to work on the laces of her dress.

“Excellent. Because, as I may have mentioned, I love you, Tommy, and I really think I may perish without you.”

“Will it kill your father if we marry?”

He gave a laugh. “You sound just a bit hopeful. But never fear. My father will love you, too.”

“How is that possible?” She’d gone to work on the buttons of his shirt.

“Because I told him he will. Oh, and he will. For you and I, my love, my dearest Tommy, and our children, and our children’s children, are not only going to own much of England one day . . . we’re going to rule it, too. Starting with this mill. This mill is
ours
. Starting with laws about child labor. Let me tell you how.”

He lifted her up onto the desk, and furled up her skirts, his mouth never leaving hers. She reached for his trouser buttons, and had them open with scandalous rapidity.

“Our children’s children?” she whispered.

“Our beautiful, brilliant, fearless, scrappy, courageous, copper-headed children. We ought to have at least ten of them. I have it on good authority.”

Though in a way, they already did have hundreds of them, just as he’d told his father. In mills all over England, waiting for their help.

Imagine that. That Gypsy girl had been
right
.

“Ten? We’d best get started, then.” Tommy was practical.

And so—for the sake of England’s future, of course—they got started.

And didn’t finish for
hours
.

Epilogue

T
HERE WAS AN EPIDEMIC
of stiff necks in Pennyroyal Green.

Generally Pennyroyal Green parishioners had no difficulty deciding where to point their eyes during Sunday services—after all, one simply
wanted
to look at the Reverend Sylvaine regardless of what he was saying—and not even his recent marriage to the most unlikely woman imaginable had dimmed his ability to fill the pews.

But for six Sundays in a row Reverend Sylvaine had competition for his parishioners’ attention.

Breathlessly, silently, frozen with fascination, everyone listened and watched. Isaiah Redmond had neither blinked, nor flinched, nor smiled while banns were read for his youngest son and a certain Thomasina de Ballesteros, a heathen name if ever there was one, some sniffed. (Mercifully, no rumors about Tommy had yet wafted from London to Sussex on the winds of gossip.) Others surmised she
must
be of Spanish royalty, what with her fine looks and bearing, or otherwise Isaiah Redmond never would have countenanced the match. For Isaiah Redmond’s back remained straight, his gaze remained focused, his expression remained mildly interested, and he never so much as twitched a muscle or raised a brow, let alone a protest.

He also never once looked at Jonathan or Tommy. Let alone spoke to them. Nor did matriarch Fanchette Redmond, though one had the sense that her neck was quivering with the effort not to turn. But then she was a mother, and looking at her children was a difficult-to-combat instinct.

The parishioners hardly knew
where
to look.

Jonathan weathered his silent father and the curious stares with a shifting blend of wary aplomb—inscrutability was an art form with Isaiah Redmond, and one never quite knew what the man had up his sleeve—and serene certainty, for love had encased him in a bubble of invincibility that concerns about the future couldn’t penetrate. Tommy bore the curious stares of the townspeople like a queen, and if while the banns were read she surreptitiously gripped his hand the way she used to grip her father’s medal, Jonathan would look down to where their fingers twined, awestruck and honored and grateful that the bravest person he knew would turn to
him
when she needed courage. It was what he was born to do: ensure her safety. He would endeavor to deserve her trust every day of his life.

For three of those weeks Jonathan and Tommy stayed with Miles Redmond and his wife Cynthia in a Sussex estate Miles had rented nearby, but Jonathan divided much of his time between London and Lancaster and Sussex.

During the fourth week, a parishioner who happened to be awake exceptionally early one Saturday—namely, Mrs. Sneath—witnessed Jonathan and Tommy leaving the church in the pale gold morning light, followed by Mr. Miles Redmond and his wife Cynthia, the Earl of Ardmay and his wife the former Miss Violet Redmond, and the celestially handsome Lord Argosy.

But not, it was noted and much discussed, by Mr. Isaiah Redmond.

Or by Fanchette Redmond.

And
this
supplied conversation kindling throughout the town for yet another week. When word of Jonathan’s marriage spread through the village, the disappointment at being deprived of a spectacle of a wedding was grave—for not a word had been spoken about the event in advance—yet was rather offset by the revelation that the popular young Mr. Redmond had never looked more gloriously handsome and so
happy,
and that his bride, heathen name or no, looked like the sun itself, as beautiful as an angel, and Mrs. Sneath relayed this story so well at the weekly meeting of the Society for the Protection of the Sussex Poor that there wasn’t a dry handkerchief after the telling of it, and much of the embroidery was inconveniently dampened.

Today the excitement at church continued.

The parishioner’s necks quivered with the effort not to whip to and fro like weathervanes, from Redmond to Redmond to Redmond. For Violet Redmond’s new baby was to be baptized after Reverend Sylvaine read the first lesson, and instead of the traditional two Godmothers and one Godfather, it seemed the little one was to instead have
one
Godmother—Mrs. Cynthia Redmond—and two Godfathers, Mr. Miles Redmond and an almost unbearably dashing, blond, more-than-ever-so-slightly dangerous looking gentleman by the name of Lavay, the first mate of the earl’s ship. For Violet Redmond of course wouldn’t be able to resist exciting a bit of controversy even after she was safely married.

Jonathan was not immune to the temptation to whip his head around the congregation, too, but he managed to do it surreptitiously, with glances. His eyes snagged on Olivia Eversea, who was wedged between two of her brothers. She must have sensed it, because her eyes flicked toward him; for a second, they held gazes. Olivia, who like Tommy, was driven by a passion for causes. Olivia, who had allegedly broken Lyon’s heart and driven Lyon away. And Jonathan had a swift traitorous thought: Did Lyon deserve her? What drove Olivia? Did she miss his brother as much as Jonathan did?

He jerked his stare away when the tiny lace-bedecked Ruby opened her mouth in a howl that elicited sympathetic clucks and chuckles from the congregation. Suddenly the memory of roars of Gypsy laughter echoed in his head:
ten children, ten children, ten children . . .

He must have tensed just a bit, because Tommy squeezed his hand and the corner of her mouth twitched, suppressing a smile. Over the past several weeks Jonathan had spent his time between Pennyroyal Green, Lancaster, and London. With the assistance of Tommy and Mr. Romulus Bean and even Argosy, who had been conscripted into the process but had proved startlingly useful once given something to
do,
they’d made headway into finding loving homes and excellent apprenticeships for nearly all of the youngest children, and hired adult replacements for them; at a higher cost, to be sure, but Jonathan was certain he would be able to offset the cost with increased profits. And he’d also introduced Tommy to Violet. Violet had first regarded Tommy with gratifying astonishment, then stunned glee—for Jonathan’s sudden engagement was highly unexpected and delightfully controversial. And then she’d collected herself and had become a cool haughty silence and a stare that nevertheless spoke loudly:
Prove to me that you’re good enough for my brother
.