Gallant Rogue (Reluctant Heroes Book 3) (6 page)

“
Oh, no
,” Lady Greystowe paled considerably, her exuberance was severely dampened by Donovan’s caution. Donovan always did have a talent for making a fine point without mincing words. “I would never wish to endanger either of you,” she said to her brother-in-law, now duly reminded of the seriousness of her inquiries and its possible effect upon those who gave her the information she sought.

“I am still a sailor,” Jack went on, feeling the need to smooth the failed conversation. “I work for his lordship, I’m the captain of his merchantman, the
Pegasus
, and pleased to be so fortunate.” He looked down the table to his friend again and they exchanged a careful nod. “I’m married to the sea, as it were. I’d be willing to share a few stories about my adventures as a sea captain. We’ve had trouble with privateers here and there, if that would interest you?”

“Oh, certainly. Thank you, Captain,” Lady Greystowe returned. Her eyebrow arched slightly. “Married to a body of water? Why Captain Rawlings, that is positively disturbing. Do you not long for family, for a wife and children to come home to?”

Great Neptune
. Conversing with this lady was akin to trying to step across a deck filled with lit cannon fuses linked to crates of gunpowder. She was a clever one, and very persistent in digging deep for a story.

“Jack was engaged. His fiancée died tragically,” Donovan said in a curt tone.

“Forgive me,” Lady Greystowe said with emotion. “I didn’t mean to stir up past hurts.” 

“It was many years ago, my lady.” Jack replied. “I was engaged to a lovely woman named Amelia. A young lady with golden hair like a field of pale flax. She lived in Boston. Her father ran a mercantile specializing in rich silk cloth. Her father was going to sail to the East Indies to purchase silks. My Amelia went with him. Their ship was taken by Barbary pirates and she...” He paused, the bitter memory rising to the fore and clogging his throat.

He couldn’t tell this gentle woman his beloved had been sold to an Arab prince, as a concubine for his harem. He couldn’t tell Lady Greystowe he’d turned to piracy when he learned of her grisly death at the hands of her captor. Or that her brother-in-law, the respectable Count Rochembeau sitting opposite from her had been a vicious pirate in those days, and had helped Jack wreak a prolonged and bloody vengeance upon Arab sailors for the death Jack's beloved.

“She died before I could find her,” Jack said sharply and downed his wine in one long, desperate guzzle. He set the empty goblet on the table. A footman stepped forward to fill it again.

Murmurs of sorrow echoed around the table. Murmurs he didn’t wish to hear.

“Someday you will find true love again,” Mr. Barnaby, the old man, piped up with an annoyingly cheerful voice. He lifted his glass to Jack, seeming convinced of his forecast. 

“I beg to differ,” Chloe, now the widow of Mr. O’Donovan, interjected, her subtle Spanish accent laced with bitterness. “You may find true love but you may not be able to keep it.” It was the first time she spoke this evening.

The gathering seemed startled by the fact that she had spoken at all.

“Love comes in many forms,” Old Barnaby countered. “A man or woman can have more than one love in a lifetime.”

“I fear you speak the truth,” Donovan quipped, as if to infuse hope into the sinking conversation. “My mother mourned my father for seventeen long years and then one day, out of the blue, love found her again.” There were a few chuckles and snickers about the table.

That was cause for hope, to be sure. Donovan's mother, Alicia Beaumont, had married the former Ravencrest butler!

*    *    *

“Thank you, for rescuing my sorry ass,” Jack offered as he and Donovan retreated to Donovan’s laboratory, where the man conducted most of his business.

“Rose is an annoyingly curious woman,” Donovan said. He uncorked the decanter of fine brandy that sat on his desk and poured them each a generous portion. “She’s looking for fanciful stories for her book.” Donovan pushed one glass across the desk to Jack. “If it’s any consolation, she’s been scratching at my hide for the past month about my
mysterious past
.”

“So that’s the direction of the wind,” Jack commented. “I’m glad I was able to offer her my creaking hull for a broadside, if only to shield yours for a short time.” He lifted his glass and Donovan did likewise. They saluted one another and drank heartily.

“I have a favor to ask,” Donovan said, swirling his glass in his hand as he spoke. “A serious mission that I would not entrust to anyone else, my old friend.”

“Transporting your oldest lads to England?” Jack took a stab at the possibilities of this nefarious task he was about to be given as he leaned back in his chair in a casual pose.

“No.” Donovan sighed and shot Jack a look of consternation. “We’ve agreed to hire a tutor to teach the boys here until they are thirteen. Then, Elizabeth
may
allow me to send them to school in England.”

“Whatever became of Marceau?” Jack asked, attempting to make light conversation. “Why didn’t you keep him on as a tutor for the boys after Michael left?”

Donovan’s visage darkened. “The jack nape showed far too much interest in my wife. He  wrote love songs dedicated to her and then performed them for us after dinner. It was all I could do not to bludgeon the bla’guard when I discovered the nauseating songs he kept assaulting us with were all written to Elizabeth. When she found out they were written as a tribute to her she was disgusted and rightly so. The man is thirty years her senior.”

“I pity you. It must be a curse to have such a beautiful woman as your wife, a woman with wit, intelligence and charm, a woman with a kind heart to soothe all your cares.
Poor
Donovan
.  However do you manage?” Jack could not help himself. Donovan Beaumont took himself far too seriously most of the time, and that was putting it mildly.

His jest worked. Donovan smiled, a truly besotted smile that made Jack envious.

Jack secretly yearned for the ideal of a devoted wife. And didn’t the wily Lady Greystowe pick up on that like a hound scenting a wounded bird hiding in the bushes?

“What is this monumental task? Extracting Michael from yet another difficulty?” Michael was Elizabeth's younger brother, an artist and ne'er-do-well who floated about the world with no ambition or purpose in life but who seemed to find danger without ever searching for it.

“It’s not Michael this time,” Donovan was quick to assure him. “And yes, the brat has a knack for falling into trouble like a love struck poet stepping in horse shit. No, old friend, this time, I’m entrusting you with the safety of a woman.”

Jack sat up straight in his chair, astounded. “That pretty little nanny? Is she pining for England already? She’s only been here a year.”

“No. It’s our dear Chloe. She is for Spain. She has family there and means to find them.”

“That’s not advisable, not with that French upstart slicing up Europe like a roasted goose at Christmas. Have you tried to talk her out of this pea-brained idea?”

Donovan’s eyes widened with exasperation. “Yes,” he hissed with impatience, as if the question itself were ridiculous. “She is determined. Lizzie is frightened about what might happen if Chloe goes off alone to hunt for relatives she’s never even met. It’s worrying enough for Lizzie knowing her younger brother is in Italy, given Napoleon’s strong presence there.”

“Simply forbid it. You are the head of the family.”

Donovan scowled. “You know nothing of women. Doing that would only make Elizabeth support Chloe’s idea all the more and make me into a tyrant in their minds for addressing the situation with logic and reason. They’ve memorized that Wollstonecraft woman’s writings. They quote her word for word. The woman went from England to France alone during the Revolution.
Alone
! Can you imagine it? And by design, simply to observe the horrors first-hand so she could write about them.”

“Wollstonecraft?” Jack quirked an eyebrow at his friend. “Never heard of the woman.”

“How fortunate you are, my friend. I’ve never forgiven my mother for introducing that damned book to my wife—or was it given to her by Lady Greystowe?” Donovan’s lips curled up in disgust as he tried to recall just who had introduced his darling Lizzie to the idea of women being equal to men and capable of managing their lives without masculine interference.

“No matter, it hardly signifies.” Donovan waved the question away after a moment of puzzling over who was responsible for introducing his wife to the notion of feminine independence. “The woman has fallen out of favor since the book was written, yet my Lizzie quotes her faithfully whenever the need arises. No, Jack, I’m not so pigheaded as to start a domestic war by
forbidding
our beloved Chloe to journey abroad in search of her true relations.”

Jack nodded and sipped his drink. Donovan was an enlightened man, more so than most, but he tended to be extremely protective of his wife. It was surprising to hear the man skirt around the issue and refuse to be high handed with his darling Lizzie. Jack recalled his friend being strict and forbidding with his wife in the early years of their union. Years of domestic bliss seemed to have blunted his sharp teeth, tamed the tiger and made him a house-pet, so to speak.

Donovan continued to vent his frustration. “I cannot prevent Aunt Chloe from leaving us. And I cannot accompany her to an unstable country myself to assure her safety. Not with Lizzie and a newborn in tow. For, if I were to offer to go myself, Lizzie would insist on coming--and she wouldn’t leave the children behind,
so .
. .” He sliced his hand through the air in a dramatic gesture to make his point, “The safer choice is give our dear Chloe passage on the
Pegasus
and provide a suitable escort to accompany her. The only alternative to going myself is to ask the bravest and most calculating man I know to take up the responsibility of ensuring her safety during her sojourn to a foreign land.”

Jack tugged at his earlobe, impressed by the rare compliment. “So, you’ve asked Mr. Duchamp and he refused, and now you’re asking me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Donovan said with annoyance. “I’d not ask Duchamp. It would be like asking a wolf to guard a tigress. They cannot abide one another. One of them would murder the other before they even arrived in port. I can hire anyone, but I trust
you
. I trust you with my life, with the lives of my family. Gareth’s widow is part of that family.”

It was a singular honor to be held in such high regard by a man who trusted no one.

Jack straightened in his chair and set his empty glass on the desk. “I’ll do it.”

Chapter Five

It was inconvenient.

Jack considered himself an accommodating fellow, for the most part.

Having a woman on board—an unattached female—was damned inconvenient.

The
Pegasus
featured not one but two master suites. The count had the ship modified years ago to create two smaller cabins instead of one large one. It was a waste of space, his lordship decided, citing that no one needed that much room. The truth was that his lordship didn’t wish Jack to be inconvenienced on those rare occasions when he sailed to England himself. The comfort of the ship’s owner would always trump that of his captain’s. The count rarely left his island paradise, so in recent years Jack seemed to be ferrying his lordship’s scattered relations hither and yon like a glorified delivery boy. Recently he’d endured a long voyage with Lord and Lady Greystowe, their children, a nanny, two maids and a valet, all of whom had to be put up in the crew’s quarters.

Now, Jack was to be responsible for the safety of a widowed female. It would be a shorter voyage than one westward due to the wind direction, but even so, it was going to be a difficult journey to endure. 

He scowled at the wall separating his room from the one
she
would inhabit.

Was it thick enough to blunt the nightly weeping? A widow of hardly a year with an infant son to mourn as well as a husband, it did not calculate into a smooth passage.

He set his ledger aside, unable to focus his mind on his navigational notes.

There were things to be attended to before they set sail on the morrow. The men must be reminded of their duty to remain sharp and precise. A female always caused distraction among the crew, even when accompanied by a husband. Mrs. O’Donovan didn’t have a husband to protect her from the leering grins of Jack's crew. Instead, she had Jack.

What was he thinking the other night, agreeing so heartily to the count’s request?

He hadn’t been thinking, not with so many glasses of brandy under his belt.

Regardless of his lack of lucidity when agreeing to this ill-advised scheme, one did not find it easy to say no to Count Rochembeau. Donovan Beaumont had a habit of helping a fellow out so thoroughly that one found it impossible to deny his lordship’s occasional little
requests
.  The count had saved Jack’s life more than once in the East Indies. He continued to be an obliging bloke even after they returned to the West. He'd insisted on paying Jack’s gambling debts
and
offering him the command of his own merchantman when Jack lost
Amelia's Revenge
in a card game. All the count asked in return was for Jack to ferry his in-laws about at will.

It was a great inconvenience.

There had been several nerve shredding incidents over the years involving the countess’s younger brother, Michael.  Once, as a lad of sixteen, he’d become stuck in the crow’s nest. After he reached that dizzying height, the lad was afraid to attempt to climb back down. It was hours before anyone realized where the boy had gotten off to. Jack had been about to climb up to retrieve the little shit, but one of his crew rescued the lad first. Still, the possibility of facing the count or the lad’s sister, the countess, to give a report that the adolescent boy with whose care Jack had been entrusted had climbed up on to the rigging unnoticed and fallen to his death was a nightmare Jack could do without. He’d not slept well for the rest of that voyage.