No Other Love (40 page)

The Countess had taken the ring in her hand, then had gone dead still, her face draining of color. She stared at the ring, not speaking.

“Mama?” Lady Ursula crowded in beside her anxiously. She looked down at the ring, then exclaimed, “Good God!”

“What? What is it?” Nicola looked from one to the other.

“What did you say Jack said about this ring?” the Countess asked her, her eyes bright, two red spots of color suddenly bursting on the paleness of her face.

“Why, only that he knew little about it. His mother told him that it was his father’s, a keepsake. He never knew his father, so it was precious to him.”

“Where is this man?” the Countess asked. “This highwayman. I want to see him.”

“Right now?” Nicola asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Grandmama, what is wrong?” Alexandra asked as she and Marianne joined the little knot.

“Nothing.” The Countess stood, holding up a hand as if to deflect all conversation. She turned to Nicola. “Where is he?”

“Here. I—I can fetch him if you wish.”

“I do wish it. I must talk to him.”

J
ACK WAS NOT IN THE ATTIC
. E
VEN WHEN
she called his name, he did not answer. Panic rose in Nicola’s throat, and she turned and hurried back down the stairs to the hall below. She started down the hall, and as she did, she noticed that one of the doors stood open. She went to the doorway and looked inside. It was obviously the nursery, long unused, with toys and books put neatly away into cabinets. Jack sat at the child-size table, and even as worried as she was, Nicola had to laugh at the absurdity of his long legs doubled up as he sat in the little chair. He turned, startled, and gave her a sheepish grin.

“Whatever are you doing in here? You scared me.”

“Sorry. I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing,” he replied, frowning. “I feel…unsettled. I wanted to look at things.” He shook his head and smiled. “I’m being stupid. What I should be doing is riding away. I can’t stay here and endanger these people. It was risky enough for them to get me out of gaol. To stay here and continue to put them in danger would be the work of a scoundrel.”

“They want to help you. You once saved their lives, and they feel that they are returning the favor. Besides, there is not a person in this house with any fondness for Exmoor. You cannot leave yet. Exmoor was just here. He and his men are out searching everywhere. Give it a day or two, and when the hunt has died down, you can go—and I will go with you.”

He turned to her, and there was a look in his eyes of such love and longing that it made Nicola’s heart twist in her chest. “No. I cannot ask that of you. It is too dangerous.”

“Do you not want me with you? When you said tonight that you loved me, did you not mean it?”

“Of course I meant it,” Jack retorted roughly. “I love you. I have loved you for ten years. Even when I hated you, I loved you. But you cannot marry a highwayman.”

“Do you intend to continue this vocation?”

“Of course I’m not going to continue. I shall go home—well, back to America.”

“I will go with you.”

“Nicola—think. I am not poor, but I have nothing like the sort of wealth that you are accustomed to.”

“
Still
you think that matters to me? Have you learned nothing? I love you, and I want to be with you, and that is all I care about!”

Jack reached out and grabbed her arms, pulling her to him fiercely. “My beautiful, wonderful girl,” he murmured in a low voice. “How could I ever have doubted you? I was such a fool.” He bent and took her lips in a long, searing kiss.

When at last he raised his head, his voice was a trifle unsteady. “If that is truly what you want, we will marry and go back to the United States. But I will send for you when I am safely away. Or we can meet in London. You can go home, and I will come to you. But I refuse to allow you to ride out with me. What if we did not make it? What if they captured you? I could not let you be caught aiding and abetting a thief. Or worse—you could be shot.”

“None of that will happen, because we will wait here until the hue and cry dies down. Then we will go, and no one will stop us. I will not let you go again, Jack, not even for a few days. I have seen what fate can deal out. I lost you once, and I will not risk losing you again.”

“You will never lose me,” he promised, and wrapped his arms around her again, pressing her to his chest. “Not even if you try.”

“Then you agree that I will come with you when you leave?”

“I agree that we will talk about it further,” Jack replied in an amused voice. Reluctantly, he released her and stepped back. “Now, tell me about Exmoor. What happened?”

Nicola quickly related the events of Exmoor’s visit, concluding with the Countess’s sending him on his way. “You should have seen her, Jack. She was magnificent. Not a single intimation that she knew we were all lying through our teeth. Didn’t turn a hair at all of Richard’s accusations. Just looked like a queen and dismissed him and the Squire. Poor Squire Halsey looked as if he wished he were anywhere but here.”

“She sounds like quite a lady.”

“She is. And she wants to meet you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. After Richard left, of course she wanted to know what was going on, and we explained about you, and she said that she wanted to meet you. That is why I came up here, to take you down to see her.”

Jack looked uneasy. “I don’t know. I have never met a countess before.”

“Don’t be absurd. You’ve met higher than that. Lambeth is a marquess. He will be a duke and Marianne a duchess one day.

“That was different.”

“Come on.” Nicola took his hand and pulled him toward the door. “I have never seen you back down before anyone yet. She is a woman. I am sure that you will charm her silly.”

W
HEN THEY WALKED INTO THE DRAWING
room, the tension in the air was palpable. Jack came to a halt, and Nicola glanced up at him. He wore an odd expression as he looked around the room. His gaze finally settled on the Countess, and Nicola felt his arm go rigid beneath her hand.

The Countess rose, her eyes fixed on Jack. “Come here.”

Jack hesitated, then started toward her, Nicola by his side. Nicola glanced around at her friends, but their faces, all turned toward Jack, gave nothing away. They reached the Countess, and Jack swept her an elegant bow.

“Jack Moore, my lady, at your service.”

“Mr. Moore.” The older woman’s voice was tight, almost breathless. “I hope you will not think me rude, but I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Of course, my lady. I shall do my best to answer them.”

The Countess opened her hand to reveal Jack’s ring, lying on her palm. “This ring—where did you get it?”

Jack looked surprised; this was obviously not the sort of question he had been expecting. “Why, from my mother, my lady. It belonged to my father, she said, and I was to keep it forever.”

“So this was nothing that you found, say? I promise you, I do not care if you took it or found it. I just need to know.”

Jack frowned. “No, I did not find it—or steal it, if that is what you are saying. I will swear an oath, if you like. My mother gave it to me, and those were her words. I cannot swear to you that what she said was the truth. I think she often tried to…I don’t know, make me feel better.”

“Better? What do you mean?”

“I was very sick when I was a child.”

Lady Ursula drew a sharp breath, and Jack glanced at her. He stared at her for a moment, his forehead creasing. But the Countess drew his attention sharply back to her.

“You were sick? How old were you?”

“I—I’m not sure. Eight or nine, I guess. I don’t remember much from it, but those are the earliest memories I have, of being very sick, and of Mother and Granny Rose taking care of me. I was weak for a long time afterward, and I was…unhappy much of the time. I guess it was because I couldn’t go out and play for so long. I’m not really sure. I just remember being sad. I hated being confined to the bed, but I was too weak to do much of anything. So Mother would tell me stories, and once she gave me this ring and told me that it was my father’s and that I must keep it.”

“Did she…tell you anything about your father?”

Jack shifted his feet, looking embarrassed. “Only silly stories, nothing real.”

Everyone, absorbed in what Jack was saying, was looking at him and the Countess. No one even heard the faint sounds in the outer hall, but then the door crashed open, and everyone jumped, whirling around to face the door. In the doorway stood the Earl of Exmoor, the magistrate on one side of him and the Bow Street Runner, Stone on the other. Exmoor held a pistol in his hand, and Stone, a musket. Behind them stood the other men, looking uncomfortable.

“There you are, Halsey!” Exmoor said, his voice rich with satisfaction. “I told you he was here. I knew they were hiding him.”

The Squire wrung his hands, glancing guiltily toward the Countess. “Still, sir, we have no right to be here….”

“The devil take it!” Richard said impatiently, starting forward, shoving the pistol into his waistband and stretching out a hand to seize Jack.

The Countess rose, her blue eyes blazing, and swept in front of Jack. “You will not touch him!” she commanded, looking for all the world like an avenging angel. “If you lay a hand on this man or harm him in any way, I promise you that I will not rest until you are utterly destroyed.”

Everyone in the room stopped, staring at the Countess, taken aback by the vision of fury. Then Alexandra’s crisp cool voice rang out, “I have him, Grandmama.”

She stood there in her elegant gown, a small pistol aimed directly at Richard’s heart.

“No, Mr. Stone,” Lord Thorpe said. “Raise that musket and you’re a dead man.”

Stone, who held a musket loosely in his hand, glanced at Lord Thorpe. Thorpe, too, held a very serviceable dueling pistol, aimed directly at Stone. Stone’s eyes moved a fraction and he saw that Lord Lambeth, too, held a gun leveled at Richard.

“You will die first, Exmoor,” Lambeth said casually. “You know that I am a crack shot, and I have it on the best of authority that Lord Thorpe is no slouch with a pistol, either. Or Lady Thorpe, for that matter. American, you know.”

“Don’t be a fool. You wouldn’t shoot me. You would hang.”

“I expect that I would receive a medal, rather,” Lambeth replied. “At any rate, you would not be around to see it. You would have a ball in the head and another in the heart.”

“Put down your gun, Exmoor,” Lord Thorpe commanded, and Richard, with a blazing glance of hatred toward him, dropped the pistol to the floor.

“You, too, Stone.”

With an oath, the Bow Street Runner set down his musket on the table. The Squire let out a little moan and plopped into a chair, mopping his brow.

“Oh, dear,” he murmured. “Oh, dear.”

“Do stop dithering, Henry,” Lady Ursula said impatiently to the Squire. “And try to act like a representative of the Crown. You are the legal representative here, and I think you had better listen.”

The Squire, like most people, straightened at Lady Ursula’s tone of command. “Yes, of course, Lady Castlereigh. It is just—what am I listening to?”

“You will see.” The lady turned her gimlet eye toward the roughly dressed men standing uncertainly in the doorway, their weapons dangling at their sides. “Well, what are you lot standing about for? Get out of this house this instant.”

Thorpe, a smile playing at his lips, said, “She’s right. I suggest that you throw down your arms and leave.”

The men glanced uncertainly toward Stone, then the Earl, obviously at a loss. Lambeth cocked his pistol, saying, “Richard…you know I am an impatient man.”

“Yes, all right!” Exmoor snapped. “Do as they say. Stone, take the men and leave.”

Shrugging, the men dropped their weapons and trooped out, Stone shepherding them. Bucky walked to the door, closed it and turned the lock. “There! Now perhaps we can have a little privacy.”

“Go on, my lady,” Thorpe told the Countess. “You were asking Jack a few pertinent questions.”

“Yes.” The Countess moved back to her seat. “Now, Jack, you were saying that your mother told you stories about your childhood. What sort of stories?”

Jack shifted uncomfortably, glancing toward Richard. “Why, fairy-tale sort of things, about how my father was a rich, powerful man, much admired. Sometimes he was a king or a prince, other times he was a warrior. They were fanciful stories.”

“Did she say how he died?”

“There were many different ways. Sometimes he died in battle, sometimes she said that treachery brought him down.” A wry smile touched his lips. “But, whatever it was, he always died bravely.”

“Think carefully, now. She never said a name or gave a hint as to who he was?”

Jack looked at the Countess, puzzled. “My lady, I don’t understand. Why are you so interested in this ring? Or in my mother’s stories?”

“Please, indulge me. This is exceedingly important to me.”

Nicola looked at the Countess, whose eyes were bright, her whole body tense, then over at Lady Ursula and on to Alexandra, whose attention was riveted on Jack. Suddenly she understood what was going on. She pressed her lips together to hold back a gasp, and she turned to look wonderingly at Jack.
Was it possible?
Suddenly things began to fall into place.

“All right,” Jack said, and it seemed as if he braced himself. “Frankly, my lady, I do not think that my mother knew who my father was. After I was grown, some of the whispers I heard—well, I believe that she was not as virtuous as she should have been.”

Exmoor let out a derisive snort.

“I think she wove those stories because she wanted to believe that my father was a great man, not just someone in a tavern to whom she had given her favors,” Jack continued, his cheeks blazing red. “There is even some possibility that it is worse.”

“Worse? How?”

“When she lay dying, she told me that I should seek my fortune, that I had a ‘heritage.’ She was delirious much of the time. She kept crying and saying she had wronged me, assuring me that she loved me. I tried to calm her down, telling her that she had been a good mother, but she only said that she thought she was keeping me safe, but perhaps it was that she wanted what she could not have. It was…rather unintelligible much of the time, but finally she said that I was the earl’s son. I—when I came to live with my grandmother after Mother’s death, I asked her what she had meant, and Gran told me not to talk about it. She said it was better if I let it drop. I think—” he glanced again toward Richard, then away, finishing in a rush “—well, it is possible that I am Exmoor’s by-blow.” His mouth twisted grimly. “It is not a heritage I desire to have.”