Proper Scoundrel (21 page)

A portion of one letter that troubled Marcus concerned Emily:

Lacey says that Emily asks more for you than she ever asked for her mama. You’d best think about coming back to her soon. She’s a sad little girl these days.

Garrett’s most significant letter came during week seven:

I do believe, dear brother, that the heart I have long denied owning may be broken. Shipment of lumber and rails both due Wednesday week. Please come home. G.

Home. Marcus could see Peacehaven Manor high on the cliff from as far as the Brighton Road. Both Garrett and Jade had referred to it as the home he should return to. The skip of his heart when he caught sight of it told Marcus they were right.

Wednesday. The shipment of lumber and rails was due to arrive at midnight tonight. Until then, a reunion with so many people awaited him, he could hardly contain his anticipation.

There had only ever been him and Garr. Their parents died young of a fever. The title and estate had passed to a young boy who protected his brother. To see them to adulthood, they had a turnover of housekeepers, nursemaids and schoolmasters. And a puppeteer named Ivy.

At ages twenty-one and nineteen, the boys were set free of their keepers to run their own lives and become a family to each other. Strictly speaking, they each owned an estate, but the Attleboro Estate at Seaford Head remained home to them both. Marcus had been overseeing it, along with his own estate, for more than a year now, ever since Garr’s accident. And there he would remain, for as long as his brother needed him, despite the fact that his heart would forever reside at Peacehaven Manor.

Because of Ivy, he and Garr had a bigger family now— Jade, Abby, Emily. Eloisa and the twins. Lacey, Beecher, a whole house full of family.

Marcus wanted to see them all instantly, but he wanted time with each, except he didn’t want to wait a minute to see any of them. Especially Jade.

She did not walk alone, she’d written. That statement stuck in his mind. Whatever she did, she did it, not for herself, but for the people she loved.

The key to her actions lay in that optioned piece of land. Her reaction when he spoke of buried treasure teased his mind. Suppose she hadn’t changed the subject but focused on it. Suppose—

The elusive notion he’d nearly grasped became nothing but a vaporous joy as his carriage turned onto the Peacehaven Estate drive, and Marcus sat forward, eager, giddy with coming home. He grinned and tapped the roof with his cane, telling the driver to stop.

Ladies in pale silks sat on blankets under beech and cherry trees with fans to cool themselves. Children scampered in clusters on the sweeping lawn. A mid-afternoon romp. He wanted to run with them. But he especially wanted to run carefree with Emily giggling beside him. He’d spotted her laying in the grass beside Jade, head to head, both of them so busy looking up at the clouds they didn’t see or hear his carriage amid the children’s laughter.

Marcus lifted the basket with his gift for Emily, the one Ivy had arranged for him to pick up, and he jumped from the carriage and waved his driver on.

He heard Emily and Jade talking as he got closer, about the pictures the clouds made. His throat tightened with happiness and love. He stepped nearer, until he stood within their range.

Both stared in silent shock. Then, in one move, Emily seemed to shoot up and into his arms, as if she hadn’t touched ground in the interim.

She started to cry as she clutched him tight, and he thought for a minute he might join her. Her sobs were killing him.

He blinked and looked down at Jade, just sitting there watching him, unsure. Hopeful, but wary. He couldn’t stand it and sat in the grass beside her, still holding Emily tight.

He leaned into Jade, until her luscious lips were a bare inch away, until they curved into a smile and she kissed him, placing her arms around both of them.

Marcus lost his balance and tumbled backward, woman and child in tow. “So good,” he said on a chuckle. “So blessed good to be home.”

Emily sat up on his chest and scowled down at him. He raised his knees so she could sit back. She crossed her arms. “Bad boy!”

“Who me?” he asked, trying not to laugh.

She nodded. “Emmy missed Mucks. Emmy cry,” she said, less angry and more sad.

“Oh, Emmy-bug, I missed you too.” He pulled her down toward him and hugged her tight. “I missed you so bad. Will you forgive me for staying away so long?” He included Jade in his request.

Jade’s eyes filled and she shook her head.

Emily sat up and mimicked her.

“No? You won’t forgive me, then?”

Jade laced his fingers with hers. “For my part, there’s nothing to forgive.”

He wanted to kiss her again, pick her up and carry her upstairs to her room and not come out for a week.

“Emmy?” He lifted her stubborn little chin with a finger. “Say yes.”

Emily raised her hands in the air. “Yes!” she shouted bouncing on his belly, catching him unaware and making him gasp.

His pain tickled the devil out of Jade, reducing her to giggles. Marcus would take the blow again to see such a sight.

The contents of the basket Marcus picked up on his return from London—per arrangements with Ivy—began to whimper so he pulled it nearer. “This is for you, Emmy-bug.”

She climbed off his belly, allowing him to sit up as she lifted the basket by its handle, needing both hands to set it before Jade. “For Emmy,” she told Jade, very much in awe.

“Open it,” Jade said, the roses of her dress matching the rose in her cheeks.

Emily couldn’t figure out how, so Jade lifted one of the side flaps a bit for Em to grasp. When she looked inside, Emily squealed and pulled her hand back as a tiny nose popped out.

She started to tremble and shake her hands. “A baby! A baby doggie!” She made to grasp it around its neck, but Jade taught her how to lift and carry her baby Dachshund so she wouldn’t hurt it.

Marcus kept swallowing against a ghastly display of emotions over Emily’s excitement.

Holding it like a newborn, four short puppy legs in the air, a tiny puppy tongue lapping at her chin, Emily fell gently back into Marcus’s lap and laid her head on his chest. “Emmy love Mucks.”

“I’m home,” Marcus said, the crack in his voice betraying him. “Home with my best girls.”

Jade wiped away a tear with the back of her hand and cleared her throat. “What do you want to name your doggie, Emily?”

Emily sat up at that, the concept intriguing her. She looked from him to Jade and back. She scanned the yard, the other children, the look of her serious and contemplative.

“Mucks,” she finally said.

Marcus chuckled with surprise. “If you want to call a girl doggie Mucks, that’s fine. Except, what will you call me?”

She regarded him earnestly as silent seconds ticked by and she tilted her head. “Papa.”

Marcus stilled. He took Jade’s hand, squeezed it and brought Emily close. Burying his face in Emmy’s blond curls, he kissed the top of her head. “I would be proud to have you call me Papa.”

With a satisfied release of her breath, Emily stood up, all the while Mucks—the poor benighted girl pup—sat quietly and stoically in her arms.

“Look,” Emily called out as she started walking toward the other children. “Annie! Molly! Look what I gots.”

“Don’t run,” Jade shouted after her. “You could hurt Mucks.”

Emily stopped and turned around. “Emmy knows that.”

Jade chuckled. “Good.” She turned back to smile at Marcus.

He drank in every nuance of her beauty and expression, so glad to be back and have her full and complete attention.

“Do you think Mucks will run if Em sets her down?” she asked.

He shook his head. “She’s a calm one. She’ll stay right by her. They’re friends already, I think. Ivy did a great job of choosing her.”

“Papa,” Jade whispered touching his cheek. “What a good one you would make. But what will happen if Emily ever goes back to her real father?”

Marcus kissed Jade’s hand. “The man who beat her mother wasn’t her father. Her real father is a London dandy who wants nothing to do with her. He has a broken jaw for telling me so. Emily’s mother went to see him and when he refused to provide for Em and sent Catherine packing, she ran weeping into the street into the path of a moving carriage. She’s gone, Jade. Catherine’s gone.”

Marcus got Lacey to watch Emily and propelled Jade into the house and down the hall toward Eloisa’s room. But he passed it and went to the empty bedroom, their room, and shut them inside.

Then Jade’s back met the door and Marcus closed his mouth over hers, drinking in the sounds of her weeping, and telling her with soft sweet words how sorry he was to have left her, and how much he’d missed her, that he’d help her raise Emily, if only she’d let him.

Jade forgot how angry she’d been for his desertion, despite his discovery of her hidden railroad supplies, and told him as much in the same weepy, kiss-stealing way.

She needed to be comforted.

By him.

She needed him.

She ducked unexpectedly from under his arms, aware she confused him, but when she took his hand to drag him to the bed, she did nothing more than lie down. He came to her, touching her everywhere at once, budding a nipple here, sleeking a thigh there, kissing fingers and sucking earlobes. Her bodice lay open; she didn’t know how, and his tongue and his hands gentled, laved and suckled all at one time.

She was hot; she was wet. She was breaking all the rules she’d set for herself after he left. She didn’t care. She tugged his earlobe with a gentle bite.

He felt as much like velvet against her lips as his length had felt in her hand that last morning.

Velvet and sin.

Delicious.

Wondrous.

The Earl of Attleboro. She slid her hand along the rutting length of the Earl of Attleboro—his title she’d deduced from the information she gleaned in the village—seducing the man who owned the railroad she wanted to destroy. A scoundrel disguised as a saint, lying to her even now.

Jade shoved Marcus hard. “Get off me ... you ... oaf!” She rolled out from under him and off the bed when he pulled back, passion dazed and confused.

Trying to regain her breath and her balance, she watched as he rose and attempted to adjust himself in his suddenly-tight trousers. His dignity returned in miniscule measure, beat by affronted beat, as he raised his head like any proud stallion. “You dragged me to the bed, Scandal, so don’t go all priggish on me. It doesn’t suit.”

“You’d have had me against the door at any rate.”

“Not if you didn’t want me to. But ‘no’ wasn’t the message you were sending.”

Jade raised her chin. “You caught me off guard. I’m stronger now. What did you expect after deserting me for nearly two months.”

“You were never mine to desert, Jade.”

“And I never will be.”

He ran a hand through his hair, weakening her resolve, making himself look more human and less the lying aristocrat. “I’m not ready to accept that. Look, I know you’re in trouble. You need to trust me. Please. Just tell me what’s wrong and I’ll help you. I promise. I can take care of you. No matter what’s happened with the railroad so far, I can fix it. Why won’t you trust me?”

Because the Earl of Attleboro owns the bloody thing, she thought, and you’re him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He growled at that and grasped her arms. “It has to stop, Jade. I can only help you, up to a point.”

“You’re hurting me!”

As if she’d slapped him, he stepped back, appalled. “I’m sorry. Forgive me, please. I ... I’ve never hurt a woman in my life. I’m sick for worrying about you. I’ve had nightmares about the danger you’ve put yourself in, about what might happen, I’m so bloody scared for you in this.”