Jack stood in the shadows across the road from O’Malley’s pub and waited, giving the men assigned to the tavern’s back door time to move into place. The cobbles directly in front of the pub windows glistened under a mizzling rain. Around him, other Hellions fingered their knives and cudgels, with pistols in the hands only of a trusted captain and two lieutenants. Keeping within the boundaries set by a government that tended to cry revolution at the sight of a well-armed private army had not been easy over the years. Especially when the general populace’s view of armed men was even worse—which was why the country still had no proper police force. Though the idiocy of such nonsense raised his hackles, Jack had learned the art of compromise long since.
He had also learned that negotiation spared lives, as well as long-term animosity. So, in spite of Terence’s directive, he would make one last effort to stave off direct confrontation. Inside O’Malley’s, the workers’ leader, Colin Flynn, was haranguing the employees of the Brockman Distillery, regaling them with the silver tongue peculiar to the Irish, inflaming their minds against the Brit bastard who kept them in chains, working them too many hours for too little pay. A thrice-damned Welshman with no respect for his cousins across the water. Or so Jack’s lookout had reported not ten minutes since.
Against adamant protests from his officers, he was going to make one last attempt to avoid violence. Unless someone had a pistol no one had seen as his spies watched the men file into O’Malley’s, he could survive an attack for the short length of time it would take for his men to come to his rescue.
Jack rubbed moisture from his face and stepped down onto the cobbles, motioning the dozen men at his back to follow. The bruisers guarding the pub’s front and back doors had been hauled away a good five minutes earlier. All he had to do was walk in.
They should just cudgel each man as he exited, his officers had pointed out with no little vehemence, and haul every bloody one of them to their ship’s brig, where they could damn well stay until they saw reason. A solution Tobias Brockman would undoubtedly favor. Jack frowned. But this new fever that had seized him—this determination to do good, to make things better, wouldn’t let him charge in, cracking heads left and right, using force where none might be needed.
You’re in Ireland, for God’s sake! his common sense screamed. Nothing in this benighted place makes sense.
Jack opened the pub door and walked in.
Victoire held the rowboat steady while Master Geoffrey Tarleton and his five-year-old sister Serena climbed in, young Geoff taking the seat at the stern, while his sister perched on the narrow seat in the bow. Victoire, having grown up around boats of every variety, managed to hitch up her skirts, give the rowboat a shove into deeper water, and scramble aboard before the children drifted off without her. For a moment she balanced precariously, arms wide, as the boat bobbed beneath her, and then she was seated on the center seat, the oars grasped firmly in her hands.
Behind her, little Serena clapped her hands and giggled. They were afloat. The sun shone, sparkling off the lake’s clear water. Birds twittered in the trees, circled overhead. A duck squawked, paddling furiously out of the rowboat’s path. In the distance two white swans glided majestically against a lacy backdrop of willow branches. Victoire heaved a sigh. Magnifique! All was right with the world.
Well, perhaps not quite. She glided the oars through one long stroke, two, three, then allowed the boat to drift as her mind did the same. She could scarcely remember a time when she had been so content. Being part of a family, a real family like the Tarleton’s, had been so long ago she could scarcely remember it. But these last few weeks had reminded her how glorious it could be. Two parents who loved each other, three beautiful children, including Andrew, the baby. Warmth. Caring. Living at The Willows was the best thing that had happened to her in a very long time.
Except, possibly, Jack. Silent Jack. Jack, the enigma. Jack, who had turned his back on her.
“Miss?”
“I’m sorry,” Victoire murmured, her wandering thoughts brought up short by young Geoff’s quizzical look. How could she fuss over her own problems when her hosts had endured so much, coming very late to the happiness they now enjoyed? After flashing her warmest smile, Victoire plied her oars with a right good will, pulling them steadily toward an expanse of lily pads near the center of the shallow lake. A spot where, they knew from past experience, fish lurked, just waiting to be caught.
Victoire suddenly frowned. The boat didn’t feel right. She was pulling harder on the oars, huffing a bit.
Cold. About her feet.
“Water!” Geoff yelped. “We’re leaking, miss.” Serena squealed.
Victoire looked down. Incredibly, water was already an inch deep in a boat that had been sound not two days hence. Turn around! But they were almost in the middle, the shoreline a good fifty yards in any direction. Faster to just keep going than attempt to turn around . . .
“It’s over my boots, miss,” Geoff said, amazingly steady—truly his parents’ child. Serena, not so stoic, began to whimper.
Victoire hauled on the oars, putting every ounce of strength into each stroke. Glanced over her shoulder. Dear God, they weren’t making any progress at all. But Serena, bless her, was curled up on the narrow bow seat, her feet tucked under her. Sniffing, but controlling the wails which had to be welling up in her throat, because Victoire could feel them in her own. She could swim, of course, but the children—
“Geoff,” she panted as she fought the increasingly sluggish rowboat, “do you swim?”
“Yes, miss.”
Thank God. “Serena?”
The long pent-up wail burst from the little girl’s throat. Her brother answered for her. “Not very well, but she can float.”
Water was gushing in, as if every seam between the planks had suddenly opened up, turning into bubbling geysers filling the boat with water.
They were going down. In water still icy from a hard winter, forty yards from shore, with two young children, the boat was going down.
Surely the boat, made of stout wood, would turtle, allowing them to cling to it. But she couldn’t count on it. Not in time. The water was cold, like the waters of Lower Canada. They had to get out before it sapped their energy, making it impossible for them to save themselves.
Water. Again, water. Her life seemed linked to watery disasters.
Not this time!
“Geoff!” Victoire thrust an oar into his hands. “I know you can swim, but clothing and cold water make it hard. Hold this tight, don’t let go. Use it to help you get to shore as fast as you can. Bring help. I promise you I’ll take care of Serena. Now, go!”
Without the slightest hesitation, the boy tumbled out of the boat into the water. Grasping the oar in both hands, he kicked hard, heading for shore. Victoire tossed the second oar into the water, turned and grabbed Serena just as the boat began to go under, stern first. Tears streaked the little girl’s face, but Victoire heard no sound. It was as if they were enveloped in their own tight bubble, Victoire, Serena, and the oar she had to find. Now, this very minute!
And . . . there, she had it. She draped Serena’s arms around the oar, told her to hold on tight. Placing her own hands to each of side of the little girl’s, she slipped her body in behind her. And then they were moving. Slowly, so slowly. But ahead, thank God, she could see Geoff already half way to the shore. If he didn’t grow too cold, lose his grip . . .
No! She wasn’t about to abuse the Tarleton’s hospitality by drowning their two oldest children. But it was cold, so very cold . . .
In between reciting every prayer she ever learned at the convent, Victoire inserted encouraging words for Serena. Hang on, hang on, just a little farther. Geoff will bring help. Think hot chocolate, a warm fire, how happy your mama will be to see you . . .
And, yes! Geoff was scrambling up the bank, running for the house.
They were going to make it. They were. She would not let this child die. And when she could stop hanging on, stop kicking, stop praying so desperately, she would take the time to analyze what had just happened. And why.
Jack made an effort not to limp as he walked down the gangway in Bristol, even as common sense jeered at his false pride. One look at his head swathed in bandages and his right arm in a sling, and no onlooker could doubt he’d been in a pitched battle. The Hellions had won, of course, but it hadn’t been pretty. And the whole sorry scene had left him in a sour mood. He should have known Terence had the right of it—there was no negotiating with this particular group of stubborn Irishmen.
Both bandage and sling were coming off before he reached London, Jack vowed. Even a look of I-told-you-so on Terence’s face and—
“Mr. Harding, Mr. Harding.” One of the clerks from the Bristol office came dashing up. “Message for you, sir. Urgent. I was told to give it to you as soon as you docked.”
Hell and the devil, what now? “Open it,” he ordered, not wanting to be seen scrambling to break a simple seal.
A few lines from Terence—Jack recognized the handwriting—and another folded letter inside. Keeping the second letter, the clerk handed him the message from O’Rourke, stark in its simplicity. Tarleton’s courier says the enclosed message is urgent, so I’m sending it on to you in Bristol. Take whatever time you need to attend to it. T
Jack had faced death so many times he’d lost count, but the emotions that flooded him now were worse. Victoire, Julia, Nick—what had happened? Fear, guilt, love smashed through him. For the first time in his life, his hand shook as he accepted the second letter the clerk had opened for him.
Ah, God, they were all safe, but at what cost. The children, the children. For a moment Jack feared his knees might buckle. He’d brought danger into his friends’ lives. Their children nearly drowned. As for Victoire, he’d failed his mission, left her exposed to danger, no matter how unintentionally. Hell and the devil confound it, he was a useless idiot!
He took a series of post chaises across the width of England, pushing each until the postboys were so exhausted they nearly fell off the horses. On the long journey he had far too much time to think. Each twinge from his leg, his head, his arm he considered a well-deserved sting of the lash. Fool, fool, fool! How could he have thought Victoire would be safe in Lincolnshire?
He had underestimated the Darrincotes, had not thought them up to the task of following Victoire that far, when all it took was money enough to hire the right people to keep watch around the clock. Yet his trusted outriders had sworn they were not followed. And they hadn’t been . . . it had taken the Darrincotes a while to find her. Someone astute enough to ask the right questions, perhaps examine Jack’s own background . . .
He groaned out loud. Ask the right questions in Grantley, where strangers were rare, and of course Victoire had been found.
Devil a bit, how could he have let the Darrincotes out-think him?
Which meant that one or more of them—or possibly that weasel Pilkington, Launsdale’s man of business—was far more clever than he had supposed.
By the time the last post chaise pulled up in front of The Willows at close to nine at night, Jack’s temper had rung all the changes from fear, guilt, frustration, and fury to the sneaking suspicion the other emotion pounding its way through the tumultuous mix was love. But as he strode past Peters, not bothering to shed his coat or hat, he felt only guilt, warring with fury.
Victoire glared at the fire burning so merrily in the Tarleton’s drawing room grate. Ten days of being confined to the house, ten days of agonizing guilt. Ten days of begging to be allowed to leave, to take ship for Lower Canada, never to return.
The answer? An unequivocal No! No matter that two of the Tarleton’s three children had nearly drowned—because of her. She would stay at The Willows, the Tarletons decreed, until Jack Harding returned. So here she was, going slowly mad. Her only salvation, spending long hours in the nursery with Geoffrey, Serena, and baby Andrew. Dear Geoff, who seemed to think the whole incident a grand adventure, relishing his role in bringing help as Victoire, numb with cold, struggled those last few yards to shore.
It had not been an accident, of course. Holes had been drilled in the bottom of the boat, Tarleton told her, and likely filled with some substance like salt or sugar that would gradually melt away, allowing the boat time to get into deep water before it sank. He had immediately sent a courier to London, but not a word from Mr. Harding, whom Victoire no longer thought of as “Jack.” Miserable man! To abandon her here. A prisoner . . . for all the Tarletons were the finest people she had ever known.
Enfin, what was to become of her? Tarleton had only scowled when she suggested it might be put about that she had, in truth, drowned. Which seemed a perfectly logical suggestion, for then she could go home with no one the wiser, the Darrincotes could have her money, and this whole miserable contretemps would be over.
Of course she would never see Jack again. Mr. Harding, she corrected, her glare contorting into a mask of pain. Harding, the hard-hearted leader of the Hellions. Oh, yes, that had a ring to it. Harding. Hard-hearted. Hellions. The litany rolled through her mind. He had shucked responsibility for her, leaving her here to rot. Harding, the hard-hearted Hellion. Blast him!
A great pounding on the front door brought her head around, her eyes meeting Julia’s, whose hands were paused over her embroidery frame. A visitor at nine o’clock at night? Surely not good news.
Nicholas Tarleton appeared in the doorway that led to his bookroom, where he had been studying the estate’s account books. At the moment, Victoire thought, he looked as he must have when aide-de-camp to Julia’s father, every bit the soldier ready to spring into action. Yet not at all surprised, she noted, when Jack Harding strode into the room.
“Nick, I have no words . . .” Jack wrung his friend’s hand. “Forgive me.” Abruptly turning to Julia, he dropped to his knees in front of her. “How can you ever forgive me? I never dreamed such a thing could happen. I would give my life for your children, you know that.”
“Of course we know that, Jack,” Julia murmured, taking his hands in hers. “No one could have anticipated such a heinous attack.”
“Believe her, Jack,” Nick added, laying a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We don’t blame you. We’re just very glad all ended well. Though it appears we must now find a way out of this coil in short order.”
Jack, looking down, shook his head. “I was in Belfast or I would have been here much sooner. Again, my apologies.”
Julia reached out, lifted up his chin. “Let me look at you. Ah,” she murmured, as she scanned his cuts and bruises, “you always were a fool, Jack, never knowing when to quit. It appears you are charging about the country when you should be tucked up in your bed. And was that a limp I saw when you crossed the room?”
“Souvenirs of Belfast,” he returned, coming to his feet. “Nothing of consequence.” For the first time he looked past Julia to Victoire, who was sitting very straight and tall in her chair, her hands clenched so tightly in her lap, her bones ached. How was it possible to feel so many different emotions at the same time? she wondered. Joy, when she’d seen him enter the room. Concern, when she saw his limp. The inevitable rush of anger when she recalled his abandonment, the length of time with no word. Humiliation expanding to anger, when he had not so much as acknowledged her existence. Chagrin, when she realized he’d been in Ireland. A longing to offer sympathy, when she realized he’d been hurt.
And back to joy, warmth . . . and something more when he looked at her at last, and in that moment she knew he felt guilt for her as well. He had failed to protect her, leaving him more hurt inside than out. Of course apologies for endangering the children had to come first. But the agony he felt over nearly losing her . . . oh yes, it was there in his eyes. Along with a grim determination that should have been heartening, but wasn’t. Did he truly care about her, or was he merely agonizing over failing to keep her safe, as he had promised? Was he determined to settle this matter for her? For the sake of his friends? Or for Jack Harding’s pride?
“Miss duBois, I believe we need to talk.” His face suddenly cold and stern, Jack held out his hand.
“There’s a fire in the bookroom,” Nick offered.
“Come,” Jack said, his gaze never wavering from hers. “We settle this here and now.”
A shiver slid up her spine. Victoire ignored it. This, the moment of battle, was no time for a faint heart.