Jayne Fresina (35 page)

“That’s all you want?” her father scoffed. “You came after my daughter with no thought for monetary compensation?”

John laughed, the sound ringing out loud and harsh. “She is all I want from you.”

From his chair by the fire, Lance grumbled, “You’d better take care of her.”

“And you take care of my niece,” John rounded on her brother. “I’d better not hear of you playing around with other women. I know how you fine, rich, bored folk find your entertainment away from home.”

“John, this is not the time,” the Earl groaned. “It’s too late for all that. If you saw what I did last night, you’d agree the marriage must take place, the sooner the better. I’ve always known that girl would cause me a burst spleen sooner or later. She’s as much to blame as he is.”

Lucy felt her father’s familiar, stark disapproval focusing on the pearls hanging from her ears. “I see you found your missing earrings, daughter.”

She was surprised he’d ever paid enough attention to notice them missing before this, or that he even knew she possessed such a pair of earrings. Everyone fell silent, looking at her, everyone but John, who kept a wary eye on her father, sword still raised at the ready.

“I assume this reckless fellow is the one who put the glow back in your cheeks, Lucasta, just as he put the pearls back in your ears. Yet it took him this long to come for you after the night you shared in May.”

John’s brows raised, eyes quizzical. Lucy’s pulse slowed.

“No, she didn’t tell me,” he continued crisply. “I am not a stupid man, John Sydney Carver, whatever my daughter thinks of me; I can work things out for myself.” And his thin lips bent in a motion that might have been a smile, or a snarl. “I had no idea when I met you last night, but now I see you here, just as her pearl earrings miraculously reappear, I can only conclude you are the man she went to in May, when she lost them.”

Lucy tried to breathe. Thankfully her earlier nausea had faded. John’s firm hand around hers helped enormously.

“I knew she’d left the house that night in Norwich, but I let her have her moment,” her father said, somber as a parson presiding over a funeral. “She will come under the hammer now, I thought. Let her get it out of her, once and for all, and then she can do her duty.” He paused, gazing up at the beams of his grand, arched ceiling, “I sensed Lord Winton’s previous attempts to beget an heir with young brides had failed due to his own incapability. Four brides, all unable to provide him with a son?” He shrugged. “Apparently it never occurred to Winton that his own seed might be at fault. Therefore, I thought my daughter’s one night of misbehavior may actually be of use to us, that if Winton had no good seed left, she might still bear the fruit that so far failed to bloom in all his other wives. My daughter, I thought, will bear Winton an heir, one way or another.”

Knowing her father well enough already, she was not shocked to hear this. Instead she accepted what he was, as she always did. His disease, ruthless ambition, was incurable. John was astounded, however. She felt it in his grip, saw it in the subtle widening of his eyes. She was ashamed for her father, not that he’d ever know or understand it. He didn’t see how other families protected one another, loved one another without conditions, without thinking first what they could do for him.

At some point during his speech, Lord Winton came downstairs, hearing the early morning ruckus and eager to stick his nose in, but not understanding the first thing about any of it.

“Carver?” he exploded, eyes popping, “Why are you here?” His brows swayed, crusted tongue moving over his sharply pointed teeth. “Is this about those fleeces?”

“Fleeces?” John croaked sarcastically. “Aye, it’s about the damned fleeces, Winton, and what you owe me.”

“I told you, the quality was poor…I don’t owe you a penny more.”

John swore loudly, brutally. “You imbecile. Do you think I care now?”

Still Winton didn’t understand and Lance mischievously piped up from his chair. “Looks as if he’s taken what you owed him, Winton, plus interest.”

A log fell from the fire, a few sparks bristling in the chill morning air.

John spoke again, clear and certain. “I love your daughter, Sir Oliver, and she’s in love with me. So we have two choices: wait for old Winton to drop dead, or slice him through with this sword where he stands. I’m inclined to the latter for the sake of expediency.” His strong fingers, knitted with hers, squeezed gently.

Lucy watched wisps of white hair spinning around her husband’s head, saw his eyes scrambling from side to side. “It was you! You stole my bride away, Carver.” The penny, it seemed, was slow to drop. Livid, he shook a gnarled finger, first at John and then at Lucy. “I will have satisfaction for this outrage! I’ll see you hanged for this kidnapping.”

His wandering finger was almost sliced off and only then did he see the sword in John’s hand, impossible to miss now, the point of it pressed against his chest, in the rough vicinity of the withered organ he called a heart.

“No one stole me away,” Lucy exclaimed hotly. “I went to him. I made my choice. Sue me if you must, not that I have a penny to lose.”

“You’ve been cuckolded,” Lance commented wryly from his lounging pose by the fire. “May as well give up and go home, Winton.”

When the old man made a slight move toward Lucy, John lunged, the sword blade suddenly flush with Winton’s sallow cheek.

If not for the Earl’s swift intervention, that ugly, wizened head would have been separated from its neck with one strike. With one calming hand on John’s arm, the Earl directed his words at Winton. “Your marriage is no more. It will be annulled. I’ll see to it myself.” He glanced over at her father. “There will be no further debate on who keeps what and so forth. Will there?” He raised his voice and repeated, “Will there?”

Lucy also looked at her father, holding her breath. He surely wouldn’t want to anger his son’s future father-in-law, or jeopardize the marriage shortly to take place, the great coup he’d longed for all these years.

Yes, she knew her father.

“Winton may keep the dowry,” he spat, “but this John Carver needn’t expect anything from me.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” John scoffed.

“Except my daughter,” her father pointed out, sneering.

“I am not your daughter, sir,” Lucy said, surprising even herself. “I have not been your daughter for many years, only an object, an unwieldy piece of furniture unsuited to your house, a burden to be rid of. John Carver is my true husband, with or without your blessing.”

There was barely a flicker of movement across his countenance, but Winton opened his sour lips to curse at her and she felt John’s arm move, heard the quick inhale as he prepared to strike.

“No,” she said quietly. “I’ll deal with this.”

Today she was ten feet tall. She walked up to Winton and swung, slapping him hard across the mouth, releasing all her anger, hurt and fear in that gesture. The monster haunting her all these months was vanquished. He was just a short, gnarled, ill-tempered old man, and he would never harm her again.

There was a stunned silence. Returning to John’s side, she took his sword-free hand again. “Can we leave now?” She was smiling, her spirits so ebullient she couldn’t quite get them under control.

Winton would have argued still, but the Earl cautioned him with one stern rebuke. “The best lesson a man can learn is when to concede defeat. It surprises me a man can live as long as you and not learn that fact. Sir Oliver has agreed you can keep the dowry, I’m sure a little extra in my daughter Catherine’s bridal purse when she marries Lance will compensate him for that loss, but Lucy is henceforth free of your bonds.” The Earl’s eyes darkened another shade. He drew himself up to full height and added menacingly, “I am the Earl of Swafford and this is how it will be.”

No one argued.

Hands behind his back, swiveling on his heels, he whispered to Lucy, “Welcome to the family and, as my father-in-law once said to me, good luck, you’ll need it.” A satirical spark in his eyes, the Earl looked around at the faces staring back at him and said, “There, that’s two marriages sorted in the space of half an hour. My wife will be proud of me.” Last of all, he took the sword from John’s hand. “Now get out of here, both of you, before anyone changes their mind.”

John looked at her, hope, love and pride, shining in those blue eyes that looked right into her soul. She nodded, smiling, her smooth hand wrapped tight in his roughened fingers.

And so they did as the Earl commanded, running away together into the fine new morning.

Chapter 25

1594

Lucy paused, one hand to her high rounded belly. Ouch. The baby was certainly making herself felt today. She’d already decided it was a girl and John was content with the idea. He could wait for a son. Another girl, he said, might not be so bad, as long as she was prepared to work for her keep. He had no space in his life for a purely decorative woman.

Or so he said.

The three-year-old, copper-headed bundle riding his shoulders as he strode across the yard was still too small to carry a bucket without spilling the contents all over herself. In many ways she was indeed purely decorative, but the notorious rogue disregarded his rules in her case. Fearless as her father, she bounced on that high perch, chattering nonsensically, clinging on by his ears, sometimes switching her hold to his chin, and in the process poking him in the eye or up the nose.

He didn’t seem to mind. Whistling, he opened the gate and walked out into the lane. They both looked back at her. She waved, capturing the kisses they blew, as they did every day: one for her, one for the baby.

Lucy swallowed a deep breath of sweet, chalky lavender that blew around the house from the herb garden. Well, she couldn’t sit here all day with her feet up like a fine lady, for pity’s sake. Work to do.

Through the open window, she heard her mother-in-law teaching a truculent, argumentative, five-year-old how to bake bread and suspected there would be more flour on her eldest daughter’s face and hair than there would be left on the table.

With a heave, she rose up from the bench by the door and, stepping down into the cool house, she looked back just once over her shoulder at the sun-bathed yard she’d seen in her dreams, long before she ever came there. It never ceased to amaze her that she’d been right, down to the smallest detail.

Heaven was just exactly the way she dreamed it.

As for John Sydney Carver, however reformed he claimed to be these days, she was very lucky indeed that he was once a rogue. They had them in heaven, too, it seemed.

About Jayne Fresina

http://www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=authors&authors_id=182

I hope you enjoyed John and Lucy’s story. After writing
Seducing the Beast
, I really wanted little John to have his own adventure and meet his own love. That’s when I found Lucy Collyer and she demanded her perfect match. Characters always come first for me and then the story, so I’m often at the mercy of my heroes and heroines until they’re happy! Next up, as you may have guessed, is John Sydney Carver’s niece, Cate and how she came to be entangled with Lucy’s brother. Their story is on its way in
The Savage and the Stiff Upper Lip.
 

As always, I’d love to hear from you, so please contact me through my website.

Thank you!

Jayne’s Website

www.jaynefresina.com

Reader eMail

[email protected]

About the Taming the Tudor Male in Three Easy Lessons Series

Book 1:
Seducing the Beast

Available in ebook from Lyrical Press

Book 2:
Once a Rogue

Available in ebook from Lyrical Press