Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) (31 page)

Jack’s plan to marry Madeline Hennessey was very—well, he didn’t care if it was realistic. For the rest of his life, he wanted to end his
days like this, talking with Madeline, watching Madeline prepare for bed, and sharing that bed with her.

And he’d damned well take her aunts in hand too. Madeline could devise a way for him to do that, and to keep Weekes from being so faint of heart when
it came to inspiring the flock to charity.

“Mama has a kind heart,” Jack said, “despite appearances to the contrary. Theodosia would fare well under Mama’s roof.”

Madeline set the brush down and turned on the stool to face Jack. “Fine for Theodosia, but what about her property? She’s not selling it,
because she’s determined that I should inherit from her. I can live there, though I’ve no notion how to make a smallholding profitable, and
neither she nor Hattie have discussed how I’m to look after two properties when I haven’t the coin or ability to manage even one.”

Despite Madeline’s quiet tone, her words were filled with both ire and incredulity.

“I’ve never wanted to be a smallholder,” she went on, “and they assume—without so much as asking me—that I’m
thrilled to take on work that stout young men find exhausting—work I have no idea how to do, work my aunts honestly haven’t been able to do. I
might as well be fifteen again, learning to set a table or beat a rug.”

The part of Jack that liked puzzles started manufacturing solutions: sell one property, live on the other, using the proceeds of the first to make needed
improvements. Rent both and use a steward to manage the tenants. Rent one, live at the other.

The set of Madeline’s shoulders warned him against that version of helpfulness. None of those schemes would work for long if the property owner was a
single, young female. Her aunts were tolerated based on their widowed status, and given some financial aid from the church and neighborly assistance.
Madeline would have a harder time than even her aunts had endured.

Then too, the problem wasn’t the properties, but rather, the people merrily thrusting them onto Madeline’s shoulders.

“You’d never set a table as a girl?”

“For the tea parties I held in the nursery.” Madeline picked up Jack’s boots and put them outside the door. “I never realized that
every time I sat down to breakfast, everything on the table had been precisely positioned, item by item. It’s silly—the food tastes the same,
provided the plate and silverware are clean—but it wasn’t silly when I was new to service.”

Jack undid his pocket watch and hung his waistcoat over the chair at the escritoire. “Are you angry, Madeline?”

He was angry, at Higgans, who might well have hidden his own medical bag to justify making accusations against an innocent man.

“Yes.” She fastened the door lock with a decisive snick. “Yes, I am angry, now that you ask. I hadn’t put that label on my
sentiments, but I’m furious, and hurt, and—how can my aunts assume I’ll gladly step aside from everything I know, and the people I know,
and take up feeding chickens? I’ve given them my every spare groat, keeping only a little for my own old age at their insistence. I’ve given up
my free time, gone without… I never foresaw that they’d cast me aside.”

“But you daren’t tell them that, because their happiness matters to you very much.”

Just as Mama had not stopped Jack from shipping out for India, though she’d probably felt awfully betrayed by his actions.

And afraid, afraid for her firstborn son. Doubtless Jeremy’s decision to enter the clergy had also been a result of Jack’s determination to see
India firsthand.

“Can you talk to your aunts?” Could Jack talk to them? He could buy both properties, find Madeline tenants for them, and set his steward to
managing them, but he could not force assistance on Madeline that she wasn’t prepared to accept.

“I can’t deny Theo a chance to live far more comfortably, I know that. I’m just—hold me.”

That, Jack could do, happily, forever. He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it toward the wardrobe, then wrapped his arms around his tired,
bewildered, annoyed lady.

“Would you ask me for help if you needed it, Madeline?”

She yawned against his shoulder. “Do
you
ask anybody for help?”

“I asked
you
for help, and you did not fail me. My house is a happier place, my mother has seen the wisdom of having good companionship, and
the year will proceed more smoothly henceforth because you have put a guiding hand on the—”

Madeline slid a guiding hand around to his backside. “You’re paying me well for my time here.”

Money had no place in the point Jack was making. “You could have refused me. Your position at Candlewick was comfortable, and you owe me
nothing.”

She had no glib retort, and she was wearing far too many clothes.

“Are you falling asleep, Madeline? My masculine pride will never recover if you prefer a nap to sampling my charms.”

She turned, swept her hair up, and presented him with a row of hooks. “So be my lady’s maid. A maid can get in and out of her uniform
unassisted, but not so, a companion.”

 Her posture was trusting and alluring both. Jack made himself useful unhooking her dress and loosening her stays rather than dwell on how many ways
he’d like to kiss her nape.

“You’re welcome to borrow my toothpowder,” Jack said, “and there’s water warming by the hearth.”

Madeline walked straight to the privacy screen, her undone dress and unbound hair provoking a riot behind Jack’s falls.

He’d never felt this way about a woman, not even about Saras. She’d been exotic, passionate, loyal, intelligent, and beautiful, but Jack had
been too young to grasp that she could also have been his friend.

And he hers. “Shall I bring you the warm water?”

“Please.”

Why hadn’t he lit more candles when he’d had the chance? Behind the privacy screen, Madeline stood in her shift and stockings—thin shift,
much-darned stockings—twisting her hair back into a braid. Jack fetched her the tattered hair ribbon from his vanity.

“You are not shy. I like that.” He hated that she hadn’t even a decent pair of stockings.

“I am not sixteen, and you will soon see every treasure I possess. You might want to get out of your breeches first.”

He wanted desperately to get out of his breeches, but the moment to display his wares hadn’t arrived.

“I’ll warm the sheets.”

The bed had been turned down when Pahdi had last tended to the hearth and brought the wash water. Jack filled the warmer with coals and did a thorough job,
even warming the pillows, then pulled the covers back up.

Madeline emerged from the privacy screen in Jack’s dressing gown, a luxurious brown velvet article lined with blue silk. She’d probably never
worn so rich a garment—and all Jack wanted was to get her out of it.

“I hope you don’t mind that I’ve borrowed this,” she said. “I like that it bears your scent.”

“It will also keep you warm in a winter wind. Into bed with you. I’ll be only a moment.”

Jack remained before the hearth, rather than give her a moment of privacy. In this at least, he’d insist on her trust.

Madeline unbelted the robe, let it slip from her shoulders, and passed it to him.

He let the robe fall to the floor. Madeline Hennessey was… Aphrodite come to life. Her figure testified to both rigorous activity and good nutrition,
and her feminine endowments made Jack ache everywhere from his hands to his breeding organs, while her trust warmed his heart.

“I’m not a girl,” Madeline said, chin tipping down. “You know that.”

What Jack knew, was that Madeline wasn’t entirely his. Not yet. He stalked over to her, and wrapped her in his arms. The sensation of
her
against
him
, both of them naked from the waist up, was like holding the fire of life, both shocking and dangerously delightful.

“My back is scarred,” Jack said. “I’m proud of those scars, because they remind me that I can fight when I have to, fight until
other men with more sense would give up. You are beautiful, you don’t need me to tell you that, but it’s not your exquisite form that captures
my regard.”

He paused to kiss her, truly, properly, indecently kiss her.

“You like my form,” Madeline said. “When you look at me like that and kiss me like that, I like my form too.”

About damned time
. “I will do far more than like your form just as soon as I join you in that bed. Don’t let the sheets get cold.” He managed to extricate
himself from Madeline’s embrace and walk to the privacy screen without stumbling, though it was a near thing.

For her, he’d get his unruly passion under control, and pleasure the lady witless as long as she allowed him to—and pleasure himself witless a
time or two as well. That part, he was confident he could manage.

Jack did not know how he’d convey to Madeline that he suspected her Aunt Hattie had taken to a life of petty larceny and that his own mother agreed
that such a hypothesis explained all the facts.

And Jack was in a complete quandary over what to do about it.

Of all the thefts Madeline had committed, stealing this night with Jack was the one she would not regret. Something troubled him—the missing medical
bag perhaps—and yet, for her, he would put off the magistrate’s role and be her lover.

As she would be his.

He emerged naked from the privacy screen, a long, lean warrior of a man, honed by life, and to Madeline’s profound gratification, well past his
foolish, strutting youth. When he turned to bank the fire, Madeline got her second good view of the scars on his back.

Old scars, and he was right to be proud of them. He’d not given up, against terrible odds, nor had he taken to stealing and offering silent, symbolic
sermons to his betters.

But then, soldiers were permitted to fight. Their lot wasn’t to black andirons, dust sideboards, and polish wainscoting until their knees screamed
and their elders died of poverty and exhaustion.

Jack set the poker on its stand and replaced the fire screen. “That is a pensive expression, Miss Hennessey.”

“Do you have regrets, Jack?”

“Yes,” he said, climbing into the bed. “I regret that you won’t marry me—yet—despite the fact that your common sense
and pragmatism would greatly improve my ability to be useful to my neighbors, both as their magistrate and otherwise. Prepare yourself for a display of my
legendary tenacity.”

Madeline forced a smile. “That approaches a boast. Fortunately, we have all night for you to demonstrate this tenacity.”

“We will talk,” Jack said. “At length, and about whatever uncomfortable reasons you have for refusing the addresses of a man who esteems
you beyond telling. If you fear I will dodge off to India, you’re wrong. If you fear I’ll grow bored and indifferent, you’re in error
there as well. If you fear my vows will be taken lightly, then let me put your fears—”

Madeline touched two fingers to his mouth.

She feared he’d uphold the law. A man who’d considered it his duty to stop wars wouldn’t flinch at arresting his lover when she handed
him a sincere confession.

“Enough talk,” she said. “Tomorrow will come too soon, and we both have problems aplenty to sort out. Tonight is for pleasure.”

And esteem, and—oh, why not be honest?—
for love.
Madeline loved Jack Fanning in a way a girl could not, with respect and acceptance
for the man he was, and knowing that with love sometimes came disappointment.

Jack crouched over her, so she was pinned beneath the blankets. “You’ll notice I sleep without bed curtains. I’m less likely to wake from
a nightmare and think myself back in that cell.”

“I have nightmares too, Jack.”

Rather than endure his well-meant queries, Madeline resumed kissing him. Jack brought variety to kissing, unlike other men of Madeline’s
acquaintance. She couldn’t characterize him as a nibbler, a tongue-tangler, a choir boy…

He was inventive and attentive, both, never pushing Madeline beyond the pace she was comfortable with.

“Get under the covers, Jack. I want to wrap my legs around you.”

He rested his forehead on her chest. “I’m trying for some finesse here, Madeline. I must acquit myself well with you.”

Daft man. She stroked his hair. “Acquit yourself under the covers. Now, please.”

She felt him smile, felt him take a little taste of her cleavage. “You said please.” He was under the covers in the next instant, and somehow,
Madeline was straddling him. “If you are inclined to direct matters, then this position allows you more control.”

So it did—at first.

Madeline plundered Jack’s mouth, teased him with her sex, and generally enjoyed herself with a man more than willing to be enjoyed.

Then Jack started using his hands—free, when he lay on his back—to caress Madeline’s back, her hips, her chest, her arms…

“My breasts,” she muttered between kisses. “Touch my breasts.”

“Manners, Miss Hennessey.”

“Please, damn you.”

Oh, he was a wretch, a wonderful, creative, determined wretch. His hands teased, his mouth… his mouth on Madeline’s breasts was a revelation.

She’d not been properly loved before becoming intimate with Jack Fanning. He gloried in pleasuring her, elevated arousal to an art form, and had no
self-consciousness about indulging his own pleasures.

His hands on her hips urged her up, as he scooted down against the pillows.

“What are you doing?”

“Being tenacious, also selfish. Grab the headboard.”

“Why should I—?”

Dear God
. What he did with his mouth probably had no description in English, it was so wicked and wonderful. Madeline moved minutely, riding the pleasure, until
Jack used his right hand to cup her breast.

Nothing, nothing in Madeline’s experience compared with the sensations that befell her in the moments that followed. She moaned, she thrashed, it was
too much, and she couldn’t get enough, and instant by instant, Jack knew exactly how to keep her falling endlessly from yearning into satisfaction.