Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) (2 page)

On Jack’s most daring day, he wouldn’t issue an order to Madeline Hennessey, who had not been little for many a year.

“I’ll tell Miss Hennessey you miss her.”

He swung up on his horse and trotted out of the stable yard, while Charles, apparently recovered, climbed aboard the wayward Eloise and did what rams did
best. Jack envied the sheep both his calling and the endless enthusiasm with which he pursued it.

“Do come sit with us, Madeline,” Abigail Belmont said, patting the sofa cushion. “I vow you never rest unless I order you to.”

Madeline Hennessey did not want to sit, much less directly across from Sir John Dewey Fanning—Sir Jack, to the locals.

“Please join us,” Axel Belmont said, “or I will scandalize my dear wife by consuming more than my share of tea cakes.”

The Belmonts were Madeline’s employers, and she never overtly disobeyed them. “While I long to preserve Mr. Belmont from disgrace—doomed
though such an endeavor must be—I did promise Mr. Chandler that I’d assist him with an inventory of the—”

Sir Jack had risen, as if Madeline were part of the Belmont family rather than a servant. Her post hovered between lady’s companion and general
factotum these days, which for the most part suited her.

“Please stay a moment, Miss Hennessey,” Sir Jack said. “I bring felicitations from your Great-Aunt Hattie, and a reminder that she misses
you.”

“Thank you, Sir Jack.” Aunt Hattie had likely nattered his handsome ear off, complaining about how infrequently her great-niece visited.
Madeline called on each of her two widowed aunts every two weeks, weather permitting. It wasn’t enough, but with only one half day a week, she
couldn’t do more.

“Have a seat,” Sir Jack said, gesturing to the place beside him on the sofa. “Hattie was in a fine humor, and the tale resulting in that
miracle wants telling.”

What Madeline wanted was to assist Mr. Chandler with his inventory in the saddle room. Chandler was passionately in love with his horses, unlike the new
footman, who fancied himself in love with Madeline—or her bosom.

She took the place next to Sir Jack, though she really ought not. He was one of those men who looked good across the village green or in the churchyard,
and he was handsomer still at close range. Also scrupulous about his personal hygiene.

Madeline had to respect a man who was on good terms with soap, water, and a bathtub. If he had sandy hair, brilliant blue eyes, and Sir Jack’s fine
manners, she could tolerate a few minutes beside him on the sofa—despite his chilly demeanor.

“Did you run across Aunt Hattie in the village?” Madeline asked.Hattie rarely left her smallholding, mostly because the work was far more than
one old woman could keep up with. She also had no coin to spend at market, and didn’t go visiting, lest friends return the favor and empty her
larder.

“Hattie summoned me in my capacity as magistrate,” Sir Jack said, holding the plate of tea cakes before Madeline.

She chose the plainest of the lot, which would be delicious because Cook took the honor of the Belmont kitchen seriously. Sir Jack chose the only other
cinnamon sweet and passed the plate back to Mrs. Belmont.

“I hope Aunt hasn’t been the victim of a crime,” Madeline said.

“I’m sure when she recounts the incident, wrongdoing will be involved,” Sir Jack replied. “Mortimer Cotton’s prize ram,
Charles II, came calling on his own initiative. I don’t know whether Cotton was more embarrassed that his livestock got loose, or angry that
Hattie’s ewes had enjoyed Charles’s company without Cotton being compensated.”

The topic was not exactly genteel, but the Belmonts weren’t fussy people, and Candlewick was twelve country miles from Oxford.

“How did you resolve this?” Mr. Belmont asked. “Mortimer and Hattie have been threatening the king’s peace ever since her ram died.
I was tempted to lend her one of mine, but then Cotton would have been up in arms because I’d deprived him—or Charles—of a potential
customer.”

Madeline took a bite of her cake rather than ask Mr. Belmont why Cotton’s good will was more important than an old woman’s livelihood.

“Had you solicited my opinion,” Mrs. Belmont said, “I would have told you that Mortimer Cotton is an idiot. If his rams cover every ewe
in the shire, every herd will soon be inbred, and Charles will be out of a job.”

Mr. Belmont saluted with his tea cup. “Had I been clever enough to think of that argument, I still would have had to deal with Hattie
Hennessey’s pride. Charles’s romantic inclinations have spared us all at least three more sermons on charity and loving kindness.”

Madeline would remember the beast in her prayers, for Mr. Belmont was right: Aunt was as proud as she was stubborn as she was poor, much like her sister
Theodosia.

“I find I am in need of charity,” Sir Jack said. “I have come to solicit Mrs. Belmont’s aid, for I’ve family threatening to
visit directly after the Yuletide holidays.”

“How I can help?” Mrs. Belmont asked.

Abigail Belmont had the inherent graciousness of a true lady, though she’d been born the daughter of an Oxford shopkeeper. Mr. Belmont was prosperous
gentry, and Madeline would have cheerfully murdered any who sought to do the Belmonts or their children harm.

Mrs. Belmont was perhaps thirty, and her husband several years older, but they’d not yet been married a year, and their firstborn was a recent
arrival. They glowed with contentment and the sort of glee Madeline associated with happily ever afters and large families.

Sir Jack, by contrast, lived alone but for his servants, and glowed with… well, he didn’t glow. At all.

“What you can do,” Sir Jack said, “is rescue my household from certain doom. My butler and my cook barely speak, the footmen pretend not
to hear or understand the butler’s orders, the maids run riot, and my housekeeper threatens to quit regularly. I cannot have my brother, much less my
mother, subjected to such tumult.”

“Oh dear,” Mrs. Belmont said. “Mothers can be quite—”

“Maternal,” Mr. Belmont said, kissing his wife’s hand and keeping possession of it.Madeline finished her tea cake, which tasted less
enticing than it had smelled—not quite sweet enough, a little too dry.

“I realize I’m asking a lot,” Sir Jack said, “but there’s nobody else upon whom I can impose.” To Sir Jack, even
soliciting advice would be an imposition.

“You might need to hire a new butler,” Mr. Belmont suggested. “Or to clean house, figuratively. Nothing like making an example of a
slacker to inspire good effort from those who’ve taken their posts for granted.”

Sir Jack rose and went to the window, which looked out over a drive lined with maples. Though Christmas would soon be upon them, the autumn had been mild.
Golden leaves carpeted the grass and clung to the branches, turning the afternoon luminous. One winter storm, one windy morning, and the last of the
foliage and its brilliant light would be gone.

Winter, for a man who’d spent nearly a decade in India, would be long and trying. For a woman who thrived on industry, winter in the Belmont
household would be a cozy, peaceful, little slice of hell.

“I had hoped Mrs. Belmont might speak to my housekeeper,” Sir Jack said. “Perhaps review Cook’s menus, organize the maids’
schedules, and have a word with Pahdi about the footmen’s responsibilities.”

“Madeline looks after the menus for me,” Mrs. Belmont said.

“And the maids here at Candlewick are on the schedule Madeline devised for them years ago,” Mr. Belmont added, the wretch.

For years, Madeline had been Hennessey to him, and he’d been a widower distracted by grief, and by the need to parent two rambunctious boys. Madeline
had enjoyed wayward notions where Axel Belmont was concerned—when she’d been young and foolish, and he’d been not quite as young, and
devoted to his first wife.

Sir Jack turned a considering eye on Madeline. “One senses Miss Hennessey is competent at all she turns her hand to.”

Oh, no, Miss Hennessey was not. In the opinion of her aunts, Madeline had failed utterly to make a good match. Sir Jack was guilty of the same shortcoming,
but being a man, nobody would dare chide him for it.

Then too, he was the magistrate. Madeline was not overly fond of the king’s justice or those who claimed to enforce it.

“What you need,” Mr. Belmont said, “is a second-in-command or aide-de-camp.”

Fortunately, Madeline was neither of those things. “Do you mean a house steward, Mr. Belmont?” 

Mr. Belmont studied her with the unblinking scrutiny he turned on his botanical specimens, and Madeline abruptly felt like one of those blooms. Torn from
the vine, helpless to avoid visual dissection under Mr. Belmont’s quizzing glass.

“Not a house steward,” Mrs. Belmont said. “Sir Jack, does your mother travel with a companion?”

Sir Jack folded his arms and leaned back against the windowsill. He was indecently handsome in his riding attire. Tall and lean, tending to casual elegance
and soft edges that gave him a deceptively comfortable look. Madeline had seen him on darts night, though, with his cuffs turned back, his gaze fixed on
the target.

Though a notably retiring man, he was a good neighbor, a conscientious landlord, and a reliable partner for the wallflowers at the local assemblies.

And his darts team
always
won, provided his teammates were at least half-sober.

“My mother does not have a companion that I know of,” Sir Jack said. “She has scores of friends in London, and claims they provide her
adequate company. One does not argue with my mother and come away unscathed.”

One didn’t argue with Sir Jack either. Madeline couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen somebody even make the attempt.

“The older ladies need to be charmed,” Madeline said. “We think because they’ve lost their youth that they’ve lost their
taste for flattery, and that’s not so. They need the silly banter and the sincere compliments all the more for being at a lonelier time of
life.”

Both men regarded Madeline as if she’d just described how Napoleon might have won the Battle of Waterloo. Mrs. Belmont lifted the lid of the teapot
and peered inside.

“I have an idea,” Mr. Belmont said, and Madeline stifled the urge to break the teapot over his helpful head. Whatever his idea, it did not bode
well for her.

“Mr. Belmont,” his wife said, “I believe I will be exceedingly impressed with this idea.” She beamed at her husband, and he…
Axel Belmont was not capable of simpering. He was well over six feet, blond, muscular, academically bright, and tough as only the father of both adolescent
boys and a newborn could be.

He beamed back at his wife, their mutual regard as luminous as the last of the leaves beyond the window, and far more durable.

“Madeline must join your household as a temporary companion to your mother,” Mr. Belmont said, sounding pleased with his own genius. “She
will have your domestics sorted out, and even you will not grasp quite how she accomplished that miracle.”

Madeline choked on the last of her tea cake, only to have Sir Jack return to her side and thump her soundly on the back.

“Belmont, not well done of you,” he said, whaling away between Madeline’s shoulder blades. “Your henwitted notion has clearly upset
Miss Hennessey.”

Madeline waved Sir Jack off, though he remained right where he was. “I’m fine,” she rasped. “A crumb—something—went
down the wrong way.”

“Madeline is surprised that I had a good idea, is all,” Belmont said. “I haven’t come up with a good idea since—”

“This morning,” Mrs. Belmont interjected, smiling at her tea service.

An odd silence germinated, then expanded, while all eyes fixed on Madeline, as if she hadn’t been sitting on the very same sofa for the past five
minutes.

“Mr. Belmont’s idea is not henwitted,” she said, “but neither is it well thought out. With the holidays approaching, and more
Belmont family visiting from Sussex, we’ll have much to do here at Candlewick.”

“We’re not hosting a royal progress,” Mrs. Belmont said. “Matthew and the boys consider this their second home. And Sir
Jack’s mama isn’t coming until after Christmas.”

Madeline had a sense that a significant shift in household affairs had happened without her noticing. One moment, her praises were being sung, the next,
she was being pushed down the drive.

And all the while, Sir Jack studied her as if she were the center ring on a championship dartboard.

“Candlewick is my home,” Madeline said, indignation warring with panic. “Are my services no longer required?”

Her services had lately included everything from supervisor of the nursery maids, assistant to the housekeeper, confidante to the cook, and cribbage
partner to the butler.

“Of course this is your home,” Mrs. Belmont said, in soothing tones that reassured Madeline not one bit. “We would miss you terribly if
you accepted another post, but Sir Jack is our dear friend, and he has sought our assistance.”

He’d sought
the Belmonts’
assistance, and he was no friend to Madeline.

“The situation would be temporary,” Sir Jack said. “My mother has never stayed more than two or three months.”

In other words, the daft man was considering this scheme.

“I take it she’s managed without a companion in the past,” Madeline said. “Might she be insulted at your presumption, choosing a
companion for her now, Sir Jack?”

“My mother enjoys a state of chronic affrontedness, probably much like your Aunt Hattie. By selecting a companion for her, I will conveniently
indulge her gift for finding insult where only consideration was intended.”

“And
I’m
to be the insult you offer her?”

“One of many, I’m sure,” Sir Jack replied. “The food, the bed hangings, the placement of the candles on my library mantel, the tone
in which I address my servants, or the fact that I address them at all… My ability to disappoint my mother is as limitless as—”

He fell silent, but not soon enough to mask an air of genuine exasperation. Madeline had a premonition of winter evenings in Sir Jack’s library.
He’d be happily engrossed in some old soldier’s literary reminiscences of war, while his poor mama went barmy from boredom.