Markham Manor—February 1830
‘Jake. It’s time.’
Although he’d been on tenterhooks waiting for those words for three long weeks, they still caught him by surprise. He quickly rolled to sit, but fell out of the bed instead.
‘Right! Right! Don’t panic!’
‘I’m not panicking, darling. You are.’ She was shaking her head and smiling at him as he stuffed his legs into his boots. Then laughed as he stalked to the door. ‘Clothes, Jacob?’
He looked down at his body. Nude except for the Hessians he had jammed on the wrong feet, he smiled, too. ‘You’d think I’d be more prepared fourth time around, wouldn’t you?’
He tried to be calm as he dressed, tried to ignore the way her pretty face contorted with each contraction and kissed her softly as he went to raise the troops. Each of their three children had been born in Markham Manor. It had become a tradition and they had travelled up from Mayfair a month ago to be with his family for the birth.
Flint was holding the fort in his stead at the King’s Elite. Lord Fennimore had made Jake his successor when he had finally retired last year. In Jake’s opinion, it should have been Leatham’s job. His brave, selfless friend had always been the better spy. But Seb had been lured away by the Prime Minster himself and was helping to create an entire police force for London, so Jake now found himself with the responsibility of the ever-expanding secret service they had created together. To his greater surprise, he rather enjoyed it.
He paused briefly outside his brother’s door, wondering if he should wake them at this ungodly hour, then realised Jack would have his guts for garters if he didn’t. Jack had quite exacting standards and took his responsibilities very seriously. Those same morals now made him a well-respected magistrate. A man who judged men solely by their deeds rather than their reputations and understood what it meant to be poor.
He tapped lightly. ‘Jack, Letty. It’s time.’
A few seconds later his brother’s dark head appeared, grey now just at the temples but still fiercely handsome. ‘Have you sent for the others?’
‘Footmen are winging their way to their houses as we speak.’ Houses which all stood within the walls of the estate. ‘They won’t be long.’ They never were.
* * *
Several hours later and three of them were pacing the floor of the Great Hall, while Joe was irritatingly calm and watching them with amusement as he polished his spectacles. Spectacles his scholarly eyes now needed all the time.
‘I thought you said that this labour would be quick!’ Snapping at him made Jake feel less helpless. He’d been banished from the birthing room by a very stern Bella some time around dawn, instructed in no uncertain terms to leave this to the ladies because he was getting in the way and all his pacing and hand wringing was stressing his poor wife. When the wives all ganged up together, there was no arguing with them.
‘It’s only been three hours.’
‘It feels like three weeks! Why don’t you go and write a paper or something!’ While his practice was still loyally based in Retford, Joe was now one of the leading lights in the Royal College of Physicians and his words of wisdom were relentlessly hung on by medical students the length and breadth of the land. His calm brother merely grinned in response.
The distant newborn cry had Jake breaking into a run, but he was met at the door by Cassie and Letty. The two sentries took their guard duty very seriously. Their folded arms and firmly planted bodies wouldn’t let him pass. ‘You can’t come in until Bella says so.’
‘The hell I can’t!’
‘Oh, let the poor thing in.’ Fliss’s voice, strong and healthy, filled him with relief. The door opened and Jake practically floated in, mesmerised by the sight of the fuzzy dark-haired bundle in his exhausted wife’s arms. She held out the baby and he took it. Cradling it close. Behind him he felt his brothers, all peering over his shoulder to see the latest addition to the growing Warriner brood. The baby’s eyes opened and stared blurrily at him. Deep blue, not the usual blue of a newborn—Warriner blue.
‘I told you so.’ Joe grinned and held out his hand and Jack huffed before smacking a pound note into it.
‘One of these days, one of us has to produce a child with their mother’s colouring!’ But alas, now all seventeen of their combined children were Wild Warriners through and through, thankfully the only thing they had inherited from their troublesome ancestors.
‘Never mind the colouring. What is it?’ Jamie limped forward, leaning on the incongruous floral cane his talented third daughter Thea had painted for him. Like Jack, he was greying slightly too, and just like Jack it only improved his appearance. He and Cassie still created magical children’s books and remained perfectly content to spend every minute of every day in each other’s company.
‘A girl.’
‘Two from two, then. Pay up.’ Joe held out his hand again for Jamie to slap another pound in it, then flapped his winnings in the air. ‘Never argue with science, boys. A girl was inevitable.’
Jake had no words. They all smiled as he staggered to sit still, cradling the precious bundle. Already, he loved his daughter unconditionally, just as he did the other three. But really! Fate seemed determined to give him an apoplexy with yet another cruel joke at his expense.
‘I am the father of four daughters.’ He was doomed.
Jamie grinned and patted him on the back. ‘And I’m the father of five. Between us we have ensured that the little girls now outnumber the little boys.’ Jack and Joe had four sons each. All carbon copies of their fathers. Competition between the two sexes was fierce as each child was stubbornly competitive—just like their sires. ‘I’m rather glad I lost that pound now. We have the bigger team.’
But Jamie didn’t understand. He’d never been a rake like Jake and still slept the blissful, restful sleep of the ignorant. The man illustrated books, for pity’s sake. He and Cassie had constructed a perfect, fairy-tale world in which good always triumphed over evil. But Jake lived in the real world. He’d played an active part in it. A very active part. He knew every single way a rake could waylay one of his precious daughters and worried about it constantly. He was already schooling the eldest two on what tricks to look out for. In a year or two, if he could keep it a secret from Fliss, he was going to teach them all how to shoot a gun and how to kill a man with their bare hands...
His wife squeezed his hand in understanding. She saw the way he tossed and turned at night when all the messy and complicated feelings intruded his dreams and his vivid imagination played with him. ‘It will all be all right, Jake. You’ll see. This one will be as feisty and fearless as her sisters.’
‘And her mother.’ He kissed her softly and they both gazed in adoration at the tiny miracle they had made. Yet another blessing in a life filled with them.
The lovely moment was interrupted by the heavy sound of an army stomping up the stairs as the children arrived back from the village. Jonathan and Serena had volunteered to take them all to the bakery to get them out from under the adults’ feet, but the first Warriner to arrive was Edward, Joe’s studious second son. His nose was bloodied and the wire rims of his spectacles were twisted out of shape.
He smiled at Bella, displaying the charming gap from where he had recently lost his two front teeth. ‘Chivers says we have a new cousin!’
‘Oh, good gracious! What happened to you!’ His mother began to fuss, then they all stared agog as the rest of their children filed in, in various states of dishevelment. Even the little ones clinging to Jonathan and Serena’s near-adult hands sported scuffed knees and torn clothing. Sixteen battle-scarred next-generation Warriners with fire burning in their distinctive bright-blue eyes and steel in their spines.
‘Have you all been fighting again?’ Letty asked sternly. ‘Could you not give it a rest on today of all days?’
Sixteen heads shook in consternation; all denying what they did noisily every single day.
‘Not this time. That nasty blacksmith’s son and his gang took Nick’s toffee apple.’ Edward grinned at his companions as he retrieved the sticky confection from his pocket and held it aloft in his grubby, grazed hand like a trophy. It was covered in twigs, leaves and enough grit to render it inedible. ‘But we hunted them down and we got it back.’
‘Of course we did.’ Jonathan ruffled the younger boy’s hair affectionately, as was his right as the leader of this new pack. The future. Their legacy. ‘And that boy is an idiot as well as a bully. Surely every nodcock with half a brain knows by now? When you mess with one Warriner, you mess with us all.’
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story
you won’t want to miss the other books in
THE WILD WARRINERS quartet
A WARRINER TO PROTECT HER
A WARRINER TO RESCUE HER
A WARRINER TO TEMPT HER
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE KNIGHT’S FORBIDDEN PRINCESS by Carol Townend.