Gallant Rogue (Reluctant Heroes Book 3) (2 page)

Jack had to convince her of their suitability. He just needed more time and an editor to sort out his rambling thoughts and make them sensible.

It was Christmas morning. The Count and Countess Rochembeau planned a feast for their house guests. Last night’s party had been for the people who served his lordship in his many industries. Today, the master’s family would enjoy a fine Christmas meal and some much-needed frivolity. Jack was Count Rochembeau’s honored guest and part donor of the feast. The countess had sent him a frantic note two days prior, begging him to find her a ham or a goose for the family dinner. Jack had delivered the goods:
a ham and a goose
.

He stuck the quill in the stand and corked the inkwell. Enough of this. He must woo her with actions, not words. Words and thoughts were the weapons of his adversary, Mr. O’Donovan. It was possible Miss Ramirez did not know how to read. If he sent her a note she might not be able to decipher it. No, it was best to take action. Woo her carefully through the twelve days of Christmas and show her a proper courtship.

Jack removed his shirt from last night and tossed it aside. He moved to his portmanteau and pushed around for a clean shirt, one that didn’t smell of sweat, whiskey, and cheroots. Women disliked the scent of cheroots.  And a whiskey stench when courting was never a good thing.

Yes.
He grinned at his reflection in the mirror as his head emerged from the clean shirt. Tucking it into his breeches, he examined himself, noting the light morning stubble on his chin.

As Jack cleaned the barnacles from his hull with his straight razor, he contemplated the arsenal at his disposal. The countess was grateful to him. The countess doted on her companion, Miss Ramirez. Perhaps Lady Beaumont would help Jack in his desire to woo the fair creature. Despite the longstanding friendship between the count and himself, the count would naturally favor his relative’s claim. But with luck, the countess might be persuaded to aid Jack’s cause and give a good word on his behalf to her companion.

Jack exited his guest chamber and went downstairs to seek out his ally. He walked the halls, searching each room for her, hoping to find the countess alone.

“May I assist you, sir?” The deep voice of the Ravencrest butler echoed behind him. Giles St. Vincent had the domineering manner of a king, and that must be why her ladyship hired him to take command the household staff.

“I must speak with her ladyship. It is urgent,” Jack said. He had nothing to fear from Giles St. Vincent. The Ravencrest butler knew him as the count’s favored friend. “Would you ask her if we might have a private word before the festivities begin?”

“I will see if she is able to receive you. Remain here, Captain.” Quick footsteps went rat-a-tat-tat on the parquet flooring as the man moved down the hall to find his mistress.

The scents coming from the kitchen were enough to make Jack drool like an old hound. Ham and roasting goose, onions, spices, and baking bread. It was heaven. He brought the ham and the goose so her ladyship’s first Christmas Feast as a married woman would not be a failure. He'd pilfered the goods off the wagon meant for the governor’s mansion on St. Kitts. Her ladyship was grateful. That was his trump card. Jack must use it to gain her assistance.

The butler returned. He gestured for Jack to follow him down the long corridor. They entered the library. Lady Elizabeth Beaumont sat on a chaise. She was too beautiful for this world. She was the kind of woman you saw in paintings: Venus or an artist’s incarnation of Aphrodite. She was the count’s darling bride.

The woman was hardly a woman at all, a girl of barely eighteen, and yet she had deftly wrapped the fierce and austere Count Rochembeau about her little finger. “My dear Captain!” She smiled up at him from her repose. She had a dish of tea in her hands and a chubby red tabby kitten on her lap. The apricot silk gown complimented her creamy white skin and brought a delicate blush of color to her cheeks. The vibrant copper hair was tied back in a ribbon and arranged in fashionable ringlets about her face. “I am exhausted from the night’s revelry. I scarcely slept. I pray you fared better in finding rest. What can I do for you, my good man?”

Jack made a perfect, courtly bow before her royal majesty, the queen of this island paradise. “I slept not at all, fair lady. Grant me but one favor?”

“What may I do for you, Captain?” Elizabeth set her tea saucer on the side table and sat upright. At her movement, her cat darted away a few paces and then sat down and began diffidently scrubbing his face with his tongue-dampened paw. A halo of light from the window bathed the cat in regal splendor.

Jack turned his head from his casual study of the cat to regard Lady Beaumont. She appeared startled by his request, once again the uncertain adolescent girl instead of the regal goddess she pretended to be when presiding over her husband’s table. “I should hope you would not ask me for money for the relief of your debts. My lord would be very cross with me if I gave you funds without his approval.”

Oh, that
. Apparently, his old friend the count had told his wife about Jack’s penchant for gambling and warned her not to borrow him funds. Jack rolled his lips and swallowed a curse. “No, my lady, nothing so indelicate as that. It concerns Miss Ramirez. I would ask if you might speak favorably of me to your devoted companion, as I should like to begin courting her. If you speak well of me, she would take note of it.”

Elizabeth’s soft pink mouth turned down into a firm, compressed line. Jack feared he may have offended her by being so bold. The delicate white hands brushed down the sides of her silk skirts, and he immediately realized he’d listed in the wrong direction and had gone off course. “Oh, Jack! I’m sorry.”

She rarely called him Jack. It was always captain or Captain Rawlings. Elizabeth Beaumont was English, after all. That she said his Christian name and with such sorrow boded only ill for his cause.

“Sorry, for what, Madame Beaumont?”

“Chloe has married Uncle Gareth. You are too late, Captain.”

“What. . .?
When?
” Jack was certain the woman must be misinformed.

“Uncle Gareth proposed to her last night after the party. They had a secret wedding on the beach at sunrise this morning. My lord and I were the only witnesses. Please, captain, do not betray them. They wish to keep it a secret with the count’s mother also arriving late last night. It is a delicate situation. I pray I may depend upon you, sir?”

“Yes,” Jack mumbled, feeling as if he’d just swallowed a bucket of sand. 
Too late!

Chapter One

February 1808, Ravencrest Plantation , West Indies,

Why are some blessed with so much abundance, while others have only emptiness and loss as their portion?

As she knelt at the stones in the family cemetery situated high up on a grassy plateau overlooking the turquoise sea, Chloe despised herself for her unkind thoughts. And yet, thoughts were echoes of deeply buried feelings.

She shouldn’t compare her life to that of her friend and patroness, Lady Elizabeth Beaumont, the Countess du Rochembeau. It was petty and mean. She couldn’t help it. Sometimes she
felt
petty and mean, jealous of her beloved friend for possessing such bounty.

Lady Elizabeth was great with child—her fifth child. The woman already had four healthy children and a rich husband who adored her.

Chloe had two graves to tend in the family cemetery.

Her beloved Gareth had many titles in her heart during their time together.
Tutor
as he taught her to read when she first came here to work as a maid.
Friend
, when he helped her find her way after she had been raised in position to be Lady Elizabeth's companion. And finally
Lover,
when they jumped the broom together and secretly became man and wife.

Tears blurred her vision as she knelt at her husband’s grave. She was surprised to find the tears still came easily. She'd shed enough tears to fill an ocean in the past year. Chloe propped the bright red bougainvillea flowers against the marble headstone bearing the name of her beloved. She took the sugar cakes, a voodoo offering to the deities, from the basket beside her and set them next to the flowers in a neat line. Nine cakes, for nine years of marriage.

Reaching into the basket a second time, she lifted the small bouquet of white roses she’d picked in the garden just this morning. Chloe sniffed them, inhaling their innocence with longing before placing them on the smaller stone bearing her infant son’s name. At the news of Gareth’s death she went into early labor and delivered a darling boy who lived but a month and was then buried beside his father.

Two little girls came rushing past Chloe. One had hair as black as ink and the other possessed locks as bright as a polished copper penny.

“Aunt Chloe, can we go now?  I’m hungry.” The sweet voice belonged to six-year-old Cherie Beaumont, Lady Elizabeth's daughter.

Chloe looked up from the plots she lovingly tended over the past year. Cherie was chasing a butterfly. Angelica Rose trailed happily along behind her cousin with arms out at her sides like a little bird. Her head was tipped back and her cherubic face was turned up to the sky.

“Girls,” Angelica's mother called out, “Away from that ledge this instant! Come, help me decorate Granny Sheila’s memorial.”

Lady Greystowe was standing before the marble obelisk dedicated to Sheila O’Flaherty, the powerful sorceress of Clan O’Flaherty. The woman was not buried here, as she died in England years ago. The young girls running about were the descendants of the old druid priestess.

Cherie stumbled a few feet from Chloe. She pushed herself up with her hands, looked down at her pale pink muslin gown, noting the green splotches from her knees. She shrugged and wiped her palms on the light fabric, adding to the streaks of green and brown.

Chloe couldn’t help herself; she giggled at Cherie’s antics.

The dark head of perfect ringlets turned to Chloe with a look of surprise. Cherie’s surprise turned to joy as she giggled, too, as if sharing a secret. Cherie was given a rare freedom. Her mama, the countess, was not one to expect her only daughter to remain immaculate with three brothers getting into all manner of mischief. Thus, Cherie had developed a devil-may-care attitude toward clothing and didn’t mind if she appeared before her parents in tatters.

“Dis is for Nuncle Gar-rit.”  Angelica Rose, Lady Greystowe’s flame-tressed daughter, came up on the opposite side of Chloe, drawing her attention away from Cherie. “He like it? He like preddee lellow flower?”  The-four-year old held out a single bloom of some obscure weed. Angelica Rose had a speech impediment. Chloe learned to understand her as the family had been visiting for several weeks already.

“Yes. Uncle Gareth will love it. Thank you, dearest.” Chloe took the flower from the girl and placed it on Gareth’s grave next to her own offering.

Chubby little arms wound around Chloe’s neck. “I sorry, Thlo--ee. I sorry nuncle no more here. He in Summer-land wiv Granny Shee-wa. He wuvs oo. No cry, he say.” 

Chloe made a squeaking noise as she struggled to contain the tears. She hugged the sweet little girl. They clung to each other for several moments, until the soft swishing of skirts heralded the approach of Lady Greystowe, the child’s mama.

“Angelica, darling, don’t choke Aunt Chloe,” Lady Rose admonished in her soft Irish burr. “Goodness, you’ve hugged her nicely. Let go now.”

Angelica Rose slowly unwound her pale alabaster arms from around Chloe’s neck and stepped back. She might only be four years old, but the expression in her eyes was ageless beyond measure. Chloe felt her sorrow lessen notably after Angelica’s endearing hug.

“I hope she didn’t say anything to upset you?” Rose, Lady Greystowe, placed a light hand on Chloe’s shoulder as she stood behind her. “Angelica’s an intuitive. She reads the feelings and emotions of others, especially if she touches them. As she’s young, she doesn’t know enough to not speak her mind or simply blurt out what she sees.”

“Oh, no,” Chloe demurred as she pushed herself up from the ground and brushed the bits of grass from her lavender silk gown. Elizabeth had urged her to start wearing colors again as a full year had passed since Gareth’s and Baby John’s deaths. It was easy for someone in Elizabeth’s position to suggest such a thing, when she herself had not lost a beloved spouse. 

“Angelica is a sweet child. She told me Gareth loves me,” Chloe informed the child’s mother as tears welled up. “You are blessed, my lady. Such a lovely little girl, and she has the O’Flaherty gift of seeing, like her father.”

“Yes,” Lady Greystowe said with some despair. “Makes it a challenge to discipline her. She can sense my regret at doing so and then feels twice as bad. She can sense the feelings of others and takes them onto herself, like a sponge. It worries me as life is so full of sorrow, I wonder that she won’t die of a broken heart before she’s ten years of age--
Oh
--oh, do forgive me.”  The soft blue sapphire eyes darted to Baby John’s grave and back to Chloe with alarm. “I meant no disrespect, my dear.”

"We should return to the house," Chloe countered. “The girls are hungry and my lady will worry if we are gone long.”

Lady Greystowe placed a consoling hand on Chloe’s arm. “If you wish to stay a little longer I can take the girls to the house. I’ll send a carriage for you in an hour or so if you like.”

“No. I am finished,” Chloe declared, making herself stand tall and straight. She was finished--with self-pity and despair. She was finished looking back. A full year of mourning, of being morose during the day and crying herself to sleep at night because her husband and child were both dead. It was enough. It was time to move forward. Mourning Gareth would not bring him back. The years with him were the happiest she had ever known. She had to move forward, and in moving forward, she had to make some serious decisions about her life.