Jack (The Jaded Gentlemen Book 4) (20 page)

Hector, whose coal thief Jack would likely never catch. Much to ponder regarding Hattie Hennessey’s past, and wrong done her by the late coal man.

“Is that your portrait over the mantel?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” Hattie said, not even glancing at the painting. “I wasn’t a beauty, like Theodosia, but then, my husband was unlucky in
business rather than a fool, God rest him. I married a third cousin, which is often the best sort of husband. Madeline, you will please wrap up these
lovely biscuits, unless Sir Jack would like another?”

The biscuits were already slightly stale, but Hattie would probably make them last another week.

“I could not possibly eat another,” Jack said, rising. “Miss Hennessey, I will see to the horses, but you are not to rush away. Give me a
few minutes to offer the beasts water, while you catch your aunt up on the news from the village.” He bowed to both ladies and withdrew to the chilly
yard between Hattie’s sheep byre and her cottage.

His first task was to fill up the water trough for the sheep from the cistern beside the house. Hattie’s wooden bucket leaked, and the cistern was
frozen over, so the undertaking was cold and time-consuming. Next, he used a shovel standing beside the door of the cottage to dig a path through the snow
between the byre and the cottage, and when those necessities had been tended to, he forked hay to the sheep from the thatched hay rick beside their pen.

“If that’s you, Eloise,” he said to an inquisitive ewe, “I’ll pass along your regards to Charles when next he and I
meet.”

The gate still sagged, a length of rusty tin flapped against the roof of the byre, and the hay was far from good quality. If Hattie’s story could be
believed, this desperate existence was her thanks for presuming to hold a young man accountable for his actions.

Jack was wrestling a sizeable rock onto the loose tin by virtue of standing on the sleigh bench, when Madeline emerged from the cottage, pulling the door
closed behind her.

“You’ve watered the horses?” she asked.

“The horses are all of three miles from home,” Jack said, leaping to the ground. “They didn’t need watering.” Hattie
Hennessey needed help, though. Jack didn’t point out the obvious, lest he find himself facedown in the snow.

“I’ve told her to sell that portrait,” Madeline said, stalking off to the sleigh. “I think she keeps it to torment herself.”

“Perhaps she keeps it to recall a happier time?” Jack suggested, handing Madeline up into the sleigh.

“What is the point of recalling a happier time? That happier time is lost, and it can’t be brought back by staring at a picture. Hattie would
be better off selling the damned thing and buying sugar for her tea.”

Or paying Mortimer Cotton for the services of his ram?

“Teak House will send Hattie a belated Christmas box,” Jack said, “and she’ll have a crop of lambs in the spring.” Those
measures were not adequate to address the penury Hattie endured. “All of the money from this year’s darts tournament should be donated to the
Widows and Orphans Fund. Hattie will see a share of that, as will Theodosia.”

He gave the horses leave to walk on, and soon had them trotting smartly in the direction of Teak House. The sun did nothing to moderate the cold. If
anything, the temperature was dropping as the morning wore on.

“Madeline, say something.”

She wiped her eyes with the end of her scarf and sniffed. “If you hadn’t watered the sheep, I would have. Breaking the ice out of the cistern
and scooping the ice from the trough makes Aunt’s hands ache awfully, and she has no laudanum—” Madeline turned on the seat and braced
her forehead against Jack’s shoulder. “I am awful. I’ve wished my aunts would die rather than see them endure another winter. They never
have enough to eat. Theo has lately developed a cough. They’re always cold, and they worry so, about the sheep, the chickens…”

While Madeline worried about them.

Jack had abundant coin with which to address Hattie’s and Theo’s poverty, and he’d make every effort to do that, though he suspected
they’d rebuff anything resembling charity.

“Madeline, Hattie’s situation is not your fault.”

She made an odd noise, and her shoulders hitched.

Jack pulled the horses up right in the middle of the lane. “It’s not your fault,” he said again, fishing a handkerchief from his pocket.
“Please don’t cry, love.”

Madeline pressed his handkerchief to her eyes, like a blindfold. “You don’t understand. It
is
my fault. Every bit of it. It’s
all my fault.”

To say those words aloud—
It’s all my fault
—only made audible the defining misery of Madeline’s existence, and yet, her
admission unloosed a torrent of tears.

And in front of Jack Fanning, of all people.

“Such a dire pronouncement,” Jack said, wrapping his scarf around Madeline’s neck. Unlike her scarf, which was coarse wool, his was soft
and bore the fragrance of sandalwood.

“It’s the truth,” Madeline said. “I hate to cry. That’s true as well.” Unfortunately, every word Hattie had spoken had
also been factual.

“When you can look upon injustice and undeserved poverty and feel nothing, then you should be concerned. Your tears are evidence of a caring
heart.”

He faced straight ahead, the wind ruffling his hair. His tone was severely reproving.

“You don’t say what I expect you to say,” Madeline replied. “I do care about my aunts, and their situation is my fault.”

The offside gelding stomped a hoof in the snow. Jack took up the reins and asked the horses to walk on.

“You are at fault, because you did not allow young McArdle to lift your skirts?”

“Yes.” No sense prevaricating about this when Madeline was withholding information in so many other regards.

“I take it you sought another position?”

Jack was very much the magistrate, interrogating rather than conversing, and that helped Madeline put aside her tears—for now.

“Without a solid character reference, a girl who has only a few weeks’ experience in service would never find another position. Aunt was let go
for stealing, and the new housekeeper regarded me suspiciously as a result. Caleb was determined to make me regret my
stubbornness
—his
word—and thus I was frequently disciplined for offenses I did not commit.”

“Beaten,” Jack said. “To encourage you to look more favorably on rape by comparison. Why haven’t you delivered a few stout blows
between my legs, Madeline?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How am I different from Caleb McArdle?”

And men accused women of going off on queer flights. “You’re alive, for one thing, and you mean me no disrespect, for another.”

“I want under your skirts, and I’m not offering marriage.”

He’d already been under her skirts, and Madeline’s entire view of erotic intimacy had undergone a sea change. If she had any sense, she’d
tell him their dalliance was over before it had begun.

Madeline had no sense, not where Jack Fanning was concerned. If her lot was to grow old fretting over hens and ewes, she wanted one experience of passion
with a man who knew what he was about.

“If you did offer marriage, I’d turn you down, sir. To become invisible in the eyes of the law, lose all authority over myself, and subject
myself to the dubious guidance of a man holds no appeal. Am I a strumpet?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You are a mature, healthy woman who harbors no romantic illusions.”

“I’ll take that for a no. Let’s agree you’re a mature, healthy man who also harbors no romantic illusions. Caleb was a rutting,
spoiled little bore to whom a new maid was simply a toy to be played with until it broke or got with child.”

The sleigh flew along, the horses’ breath puffing white in the winter air. Jack turned the vehicle up the Teak House drive and was soon assisting
Madeline to alight.

“He didn’t, did he?” Jack asked, quietly.

As the groom led the team around to the carriage house, Madeline stood in the drive, her hands on Jack’s shoulders, his at her waist.

“I beg your pardon?”

“McArdle—nothing broken, I hope?”

What was he asking? “Aunt intervened before I’d suffered more than bruises and a bad fright.”

“And thereafter? You said you’d endured a year at your first post, before you removed to Candlewick.”

What did that matter? Madeline had left the McArdle household nearly ten years ago, far wiser at sixteen than she’d been at fifteen, and yet, Jack
was apparently… concerned.

“Nothing broken, Jack. A bad patch, we all have them. The other maids and footmen looked after me when the king’s justice did not. I came
right, as you did.”

He offered his arm and escorted her to the house by way of the side garden. Madeline thanked him for the outing, did
not
kiss his cheek, and
repaired to her bedroom to trade her boots for his house slippers.

Axel Belmont wished he could rouse his dearest wife from her nap, but a new mother needed her rest, and Sir Jack Fanning needed a sympathetic
ear—this instant.

“Madeline was new to service,” Jack said, pacing the length of Axel’s larger glass house. “Little more than a girl, recently
bereaved of both parents.”

Madeline
, not Miss Hennessey. Certainly not Hennessey, as Axel had addressed the young lady for years.

“I hadn’t known she was an orphan,” Axel said, gently transferring a seedling to its own pot.“And new to service. Have you been in
Hattie Hennessey’s cottage, Belmont?”

Axel straightened and braced his hands on his lower back. The worktable was low enough that the plants upon it were away from floor drafts, but still had
room to grow. Having a newborn in the house had prompted Axel to a frenzy of propagation among his plants, for after winter, came the spring.

Sir Jack was looking at him expectantly, so Axel cast back over the remnants of the conversation.

“I have not had the pleasure of being a guest at Hattie Hennessey’s hearth.”

“Hattie has a painting over her fireplace,” Jack said, taking a sniff of a white rose blooming on a lovely specimen at the end of the table.
“A portrait rather than the usual pastoral scene. It’s skillfully done, and the subject is a young Hattie Hennessey.”

Axel preferred botanical prints and floral still lifes. “What is the significance of the painting?”

Sir Jack paced along between the rows of plants, and Axel wished he’d received his guest in the library. Twenty-four hours after visiting
Hattie’s cottage, Jack Fanning was still in a taking, and plants—roses especially—did not thrive in the presence of human acrimony and
strife. Axel would not admit that sentiment to any save his wife, who could be trusted not to laugh at him for such fancies.

“Have you had any portraits done, Belmont?”

Axel transferred another seedling to its own pot. “I will have one done of my wife, when she’s not as preoccupied with an infant.”
Abigail might want a portrait of her husband, and Axel would indulge her, despite his loathing for inactivity.

Jack shot him an assessing over-the-shoulder glance. “You will pay handsomely for a professional painting. Poor families have no portraiture, unless
somebody has an aptitude for sketching. This was an oil, beautifully framed, of a young lady with pearls in her hair.”

Six more fledglings to go, roses all. “So Madeline’s people had money at one point.”

“A great deal of money, and then they lost everything.”

“Fanning, you cannot—half the banks in Scotland failed because of the Darien scheme. Many a family has come to grief with bad investments,
gambling, intemperate spending. Hattie and Theodosia are nearing their three score and ten. What do the family’s circumstances half a century ago
matter?”

Sir Jack came marching down the aisle so quickly his passing stirred the foliage on either side of him.

“You don’t know when they lost their money. I’ve been asking about at the Weasel and elsewhere. Both sisters came to this area as a
result of matrimony. First Theo, then Hattie, when their parents got wind that Theo’s husband was neighbors with a distant Hennessey cousin. The
ladies had dowries.”

Four more left. “Most families try to set aside a portion for their daughters. What is your point?” For Sir Jack was leading up to some
conclusion, some hypothesis that had him more animated than Axel had ever seen him.

“The ladies live one step above dire poverty now,” Sir Jack said, peering at the seedlings Axel had planted. “Theo’s husband
squandered her portion. Hattie, being the younger sister, had less to begin with. She went into service with the McArdle family when she was widowed some
twenty years ago, and when Madeline needed work, Hattie vouched for her.”

To gather up this kind of detail, Sir Jack had probably spoken with half of Vicar’s prayer group, a notably venerable gathering.

“Now comes the part I don’t want to hear,” Axel said, patting dirt around the roots of a tender little specimen. Not all seedlings
survived transplanting, and there was no telling which would fare well and which would wither.  

“Hector McArdle’s brother, Caleb, made a nuisance of himself to young Madeline. Hattie put a stop to it, and Caleb saw Hattie accused of theft.
Hattie lost her post, for which Madeline blames herself. Instead of having a housekeeper’s salary plus the rent from the freeholding, Hattie had
neither. I gather Hattie was all but supporting Theo by then.”

“And so the house of cards came down.” Having occasionally served as magistrate, Axel had a nodding acquaintance with the law. As a man who
might someday be raising a daughter, he did not much respect the legal treatment of women in England.

The realm had prospered spectacularly under a female sovereign, one who’d disdained to take a spouse, and maintained control over her throne as a
result. How long were the women of England to be punished for the slight Elizabeth had dealt to English manhood?

“Shouldn’t you water the transplants?” Sir Jack asked.

Everybody was an amateur botanist. “My hands are dirty, and I’m not done here. You are welcome to wield the watering can, but drown my posies
and—”