The Substitute Countess (21 page)

“But why?”

“Ransom, maybe. Or maybe he’s a slaver. No good purpose, that’s certain. Which way were they going when you saw them?”

She pointed toward the harbor as she wiped her face of tears with her other hand. “You’re probably right, damn his eyes. She’d not have gone of her own accord. Just yesterday she confided she was going home with you. I told Paolo of her decision last night.”

“So he snatched her up because it would be his last chance at her. He must know I’ll be after them,” Jack said, hurriedly donning his boots without bothering with stockings.

“Oh, no, he won’t think
that,
” she argued, bitterness in her growl. “He called you a milquetoast and believes you incapable of fighting.” She blinked up at him and sniffed. “Are you?”

“He’ll soon find out, that I promise!” Jack yanked on his coat, stuck his pistol in the pocket and headed for the door.

“I’m coming with you!” Mrs. Grierson announced.

“No time for you to dress. Wait here.”

She ignored that and trailed after him at a run, nightdress flapping and her slippers pattering away on the stairs behind him.

He figured she would give it up once they reached the gravel path, but heard her huffing just behind him. “Go back, ma’am,” he called over his shoulder. “This could get ugly!”

“Uglier...the better,” she retorted, short of breath. “He
used
me...to get to Laurel.”

Jack went straight to the harbor. Rowboats bobbed against pilings at the pier and there were several ships anchored much farther out in the deeper water. The moon was high and full, casting a ghostly light over everything.

“Tide’s coming in,” he muttered, figuring he had only a few hours to determine which ship. He paused and squinted at their outlines, hoping to eliminate those too small to accommodate passengers.

Then he realized that the Italian might not risk taking Laurel to one that transported regular travelers, one where she might beg help and escape him. Damn the man, he could be carrying her to any vessel out there!

“Look!” Mrs. Grierson cried, pointing as she danced up and down at the edge of the water. “Just there, see?”

Jack followed her finger and saw the boat, a dinghy with three figures in it, one of them rowing against the force of the tide. Just then, one stood. He saw the flash of blue-white gown, the sweep of the cape as she swung it at the others. Then she jumped. Her action tipped the small craft over.

“Laurel!” he shouted.

Jack shucked off his coat, kicked off his boots, splashed into the surf and leaped into the nearest boat. He untied it from its mooring, grabbed the oars and began rowing for all he was worth, praying that Laurel knew how to swim.

The tide would bring her closer if she kept her head, rode the waves and didn’t give up.

His muscles burned as he put all of his strength into the effort to reach her. Faster and faster, pulling against the rolling of the sea, he struggled past the breakers, searching frantically to locate her in the water.

He saw her then, riding the swells, arms pulling in unison, not flailing in panic. She kept her wits, thank God. He also spied a larger figure following only yards behind her.

“Here, Laurel! This way!” Jack called out. He fought hard with the oars, adjusting his direction as best he could without being swept backward.

In moments that seemed like hours, she was nearly even with his boat, but still too far away to reach, and he could not go sideways. Jack glanced back. They were near enough—he could swim her to shore. He dropped the oars, went over the side and swam.

Three more strokes and he would have her! Her scream ended abruptly as she was jerked under. Jack saw the man’s head break the surface and he went for it. He grasped a handful of hair and yanked backward. With his other fist, he pounded once, smashing the nose. Hands came up to protect the face and Jack dived, knowing Laurel would be free.

A swell slammed her body into his and he grabbed her beneath the water. She began pummeling him ineffectually, but with all her might.

He grasped her waist and pushed her up to the surface so she could breathe, and she ceased fighting. Jack came up beside her. “It’s me, Laurel!” he sputtered, knowing she had taken him for her attacker.

“Hold on,” he ordered, dragging her arms around his neck, facing him. “The tide will take us in.”

“Jack!” she screamed. “Behind you!”

Jack swerved to see the man behind him, one arm raised high, moonlight glinting on a silvery blade.

Jack deflected the blow, put a foot to the man’s chest and shoved hard. When he turned to find Laurel, he heard a shot over the sound of the breaking waves. He knew it could not have come from the knife-wielder. Wet powder was useless. Anyone aiming from a boat in the rolling surf had precious little chance of hitting them anyway.

Jack turned his focus on Laurel so she wouldn’t drown. They were near the shore, but not close enough. She reached for him and hung on.

His feet soon found purchase and he stood, gripping at the shifting sands with his toes, hauling Laurel up against his chest. He staggered through the shallows, laid her on the rock-strewn beach and collapsed beside her.

“There now...” he gasped, and coughed up the brine he had swallowed.

Laurel rolled close and buried her face in the clinging wet fabric of his shirt. “Take me...home,” she groaned.

He sat up and dragged her onto his lap, hugging her tight and planting a kiss of promise on her tangled curls. “Immediately, if not sooner,” he said.

“I’ll wait for
him.
Make certain he is dead,” Mrs. Grierson declared. She stood not a dozen feet away, holding Jack’s pistol in both hands.

Jack smelled the gunpowder, acrid as it mingled with the cool salt air. The woman held herself stiff and still as a statue and looked much like one, motionless and blue-white in the moonlight. “You shot him.”

“Yes.” Nothing more.

Jack and Laurel sat there resting from their ordeal, holding and warming each other until he felt able to rise and pull Laurel to her feet.

“He meant to sell me,” Laurel said. “Because I’m English. And fair. From what he said, I’m not the first.”

“We’ll tell the authorities. Perhaps the others can be rescued.” He tightened his arms around her. “Try not to think about it.”

“Why did he come after me?” she gasped.

“Because you would tell,” Jack said simply. “If you were drowned, he could have claimed you went of your own accord. And no one would know of the others.”

The rowboat he had appropriated earlier washed ashore with the incoming tide and brushed back and forth on the sand. Jack wondered how long it would take for the Italian to turn up. He would, because he’d never have made it out to the ships if that shot had missed him.

Jack looked up. Mrs. Grierson was waiting patiently, with one shot left in Neville’s double-barreled pistol.

He heard a shrill whistle. Someone must have summoned the Watch. People would surround them soon and demand to know what had gone on. He hoped Mrs. Grierson’s French was better than his. He did not want Laurel to have to relive the incident, even with words. He rubbed her back, trying to warm her.

“I worried you might not come for me,” Laurel murmured against his chest as she returned his embrace.

“I will always come for you,” he said, brushing a hand over her hair and cradling her head. “Always.”

“He made me go with him. You believe me, don’t you?”

“I never doubted it for a moment. You would never betray a friend. Or me.”

“He said he would kill you if I screamed. If we had reached the ship, you would never have found me. He wasn’t bound for Florence, as you might have thought.”

“I know. Hush, love. Don’t think about it anymore. It’s over now and you’re safe.”

“I love you, Jack,” she whispered, looking up at him. “I think I did from the very first day we met.”

He smiled to himself as he stroked her cheek. No, maybe she had loved who she thought he was then. Now she knew him better, along with most of his frailties, and loved him anyway. “I know, my brave girl, and I love you, too.”

Epilogue

W
eeks later, Laurel basked in the warmth of home at last. She thought often of the poor infant who had died at sea, the one who might, had a fever not taken her, be living the life Laurel had now.

On Sunday they were to hold a service for her and place a small granite memorial beside the mother’s grave. It would carry the name of Lady Pippin Worth, since
Pippin
was the only name they knew that anyone had troubled to give her.

Lady Portia had sold her jewels and was busy establishing an orphanage with the proceeds, in order to save other babies and assuage some of her guilt. Laurel’s father was handling the purchase of property and business legalities for her.

Laurel looked forward to bringing everyone together for the harvest festival. There was much to celebrate, not least that the estate was returning to a profit after a few years stagnation and the old earl’s death. Laurel kept a sharp eye on expenditures and investments with Jack’s ever-reluctant blessing.

They were learning, understanding more each day, that they each possessed particular strengths the other must rely on and not covet. Though these sometimes coincided or overlapped, Jack was the strong one, the protector, judge and enforcer of laws within their domain. She offered patience, the voice of reason and—she laughed to think of it—financial advice and new ideas.

Midnight at Elderidge House was Laurel’s favorite time of all. The servants were out of the way, their duties completed, and she and Jack enjoyed their time alone. The past two hours had proved particularly wonderful.

“You really are such a
man!
” She stretched her arms above her head and sighed dreamily as Jack traced a finger along her rib cage and smiled down at her compliment. That she sometimes uttered those same words as an accusation didn’t signify to either of them at the moment.

When she lowered her arms, he leaned to nip her shoulder. “I love having the time to explore,” he said against her skin. “Let’s never travel again.”

“Umm.” Laurel smiled in agreement. They had gone overland from Cagnes-sur-Mer, back through Paris to the Nicots, and on to Calais. The journey home had afforded them precious little privacy, and that only available when they stopped for the night at wayside inns. Their two nights at the London house were little better, what with exhaustion from the trip and the rush of their second wedding.

Hurried couplings in unfamiliar beds were exciting, but definitely not as satisfactory as those of their first night home at Elderidge House.

“What do you think of Father’s reaction to our Mrs. Grierson?” she asked, toying with a wave that curled over Jack’s brow. She gave it a tug.

“Ouch!” He chuckled and grabbed her fingers. “Hobson’s in for trouble on that front.”

After a quick visit to the Nicots in Paris and ascertaining that no grandchildren were due in her near future, Cornelia Grierson had accepted Jack’s invitation to come to England with them. She had been unusually quiet since shooting her fiancé and suffered a sadness they had constantly worked to draw out of her.

Only when they stopped in London to visit Laurel’s father for her reconciliation with him, did Cornelia show any vestige of her former self.

She became even more vivacious at the private Catholic ceremony Jack had hastily arranged. He had insisted, so that no one would ever question whether he and Laurel were legally wed. Few women had ever felt as married as she did, especially this night.

“We should ask Hobson to come for a visit whilst she’s here,” Jack suggested. “I sensed a potential attachment there.”

Laurel laughed out loud. “You’d want Cornelia for a mother-in-law? I cannot believe it!”

Jack propped up one elbow and looked down at her. “I quite like her when she’s fixed somewhere betwixt magpie and mute.”

“So do I, but she’s seldom at that average, is she!”

“Not often.” Jack nuzzled Laurel’s ear. “But she’s a fine shot. We could use her every year at the autumn hunt.”

“Jack! You are the worst ever to say such a thing! Never remind her of that horrid event or she’ll sink back into her doldrums.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, obviously neither sorry, nor intent on discussing their guest any longer.

Laurel loved to tease him by making him wait. It drove him wild, and she rather craved wild at the moment. She took his wandering hand and threaded her fingers firmly through his. “We must get planning on the harvest festival right away.”

“In the morning,” he murmured, seeking her lips with his.

She dodged his kiss. “Then there’s Betty and George’s wedding to discuss, as well.”

“Be practical
tomorrow,
” he ordered gruffly.

She held fast, laughing at him when he would have extracted his hand from hers to continue caressing. “Not to mention the—”

“Heir,”
he interrupted, murmuring into her neck between increasingly hot and insistent kisses. “If we must do estate business tonight, let’s dwell on getting the
heir.
”

She wondered what excuse he would use to insist on instant lovemaking once the heir was conceived. Not that it mattered in the least, since he didn’t really need an excuse to seduce her.

Laurel gave up the game with pleasure, welcoming him into her without preamble, loving the impatience and boundless energy that was such a part of Jack. There would be a time for quiet control later in the night and she would love that, too.

She loved
him
and knew that he loved her, without any reservation. Nothing in the world mattered more than that.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from
Some Like to Shock
by Carole Mortimer.

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