The Lure of the Moonflower (29 page)

He turned as she entered, barely visible in the dusky room. “Am I to wish you happy?”

Jane stopped short. After all these weeks together, everything they had shared. “That’s all? That’s all you have to say?”

Jack pushed away from the window. “What am I meant to do? Duel for you?” He jerked a thumb back in the direction of the armory. “He would win.”

“I never asked you to duel for me!” She would do her own dueling, thank you very much. Jack of all people should know that. Jane’s nails dug into her palms. “I’m not a prize to be won or a parcel to be handed back and forth.”

Jack held up a hand. “I never said—”

No, he didn’t, did he? Tight-lipped, Jane advanced on the man she had foolishly allowed herself to grow to love. “You never say anything. Because if you did, you might have to admit that you care. It’s easier just to turn around and walk away. Just like you’ve walked away from everything.”

She could tell she had hit home by the way Jack stiffened. “I didn’t precisely see you saying no to him, did I?”

It was cold in the small room, icy cold, but Jane didn’t feel it. “Because you didn’t stay to see it!”

Jack’s fingers closed around her shoulders. Jane could feel his labored breaths, the ragged movement of his chest. “You show up looking like
that
—wearing his dress, his jewels, his perfumes. What in the hell am I supposed to think?” He released her, stepping back. “My congratulations, Countess. You’ll make a beautiful ornament at the court of Louis the Eighteenth.”

Jane had always prided herself on her ability to retain her poise, even in the most grueling of circumstances. But she was frustrated, humiliated, hurt, and just plain furious.

Jane poked Jack in the chest with her index finger. It felt good, so she did it again. “Would you like to know just how many times I’ve told Nicolas no? By last count, approximately thirty-seven. Not that it’s any of your concern. You see, he, like you, seems to believe that I don’t know what is best for me.”

Jack grabbed her hand before she could poke him again. “He can give you everything I can’t. He can give you riches, titles, a place in the world.”

Jane jerked her hand away. “I have my place in the world! I made it myself, with my own hard work.” And error, a great deal of error. She braced her hands against Jack’s shoulders, holding herself away to look at his face. “Have I ever—ever—given you any indication that I desire titles or riches?”

“Not in so many words, no . . .” Jack’s fingers itched to close around her waist and draw her close. Everything that had seemed so clear ten minutes ago was murky and blurry. He knew he had a point, but he was no longer entirely sure what that point was. He retreated a step, his back hitting the whitewashed stone of the wall.

Jane stalked forward, cornering him. Jack could feel the rough stone biting into his back as Jane glared at him, her chest right beneath his nose. “I don’t want to be placed on a pedestal. I don’t want to be the ornament of anyone’s court. And I certainly don’t want a lute beneath my window!”

She had told him that, hadn’t she? Jack was beginning to feel rather less sure of himself. The Gardener, that proposal, felt very far away, and Jane was very near.

Jack reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The perfume was growing on him. “How are your blisters?”

It didn’t work. “They sting,” said Jane shortly. “But I didn’t mind that. I didn’t mind any of it. As I would have told you if you had only
listened
.”

Jack pressed his eyes shut. Somehow he had gone from being noble and wronged to just being wrong. He wasn’t quite sure how that had happened. “I thought you wanted a bath and a proper bed.”

“There is,” said Jane dangerously, “a vast difference between wanting a proper bed and requiring coronets on my sheets. Did it ever occur to you that I didn’t care what sort of bed it was as long as you were in it?”

The words rang through the small room. Jack’s throat felt sore, swollen. He couldn’t seem to force words out, even if there had been any words to say. Jane’s chest was rising and falling rapidly, her bosom swelling distractingly over the low neckline of her white gauze gown.

“Jane—” Jack managed, but it was too late.

Jane jerked away, knocking over a bag of meal in the process. “I don’t need another man to put me on a pedestal. I have enough of those already.” She wrenched open the door to the drilling ground, the sky flaming red and orange behind her. “Congratulations on a successful mission, Moonflower.”

And the door slammed, taking with it Jane and the last of the light.

There was a creaking noise from the other side of the room. Jack whirled, reaching for a pistol that wasn’t there.

His father peered around the door, assured himself that Jack wasn’t armed, and then stepped inside. “I don’t think that went very well, my boy.”

“No, really?” There was a lump in Jack’s throat the size of a cannonball. He could go after Jane—but whatever he said only seemed to make it worse. And what did he have to offer her, after all? A besmirched past and an uncertain future. “Because you’ve done so very well with women.”

His father closed the door behind him, carefully navigating the fallen bag of meal. “I’ve made my share of mistakes. Your mother among them.”

This day just kept getting better and better. Jack punched the wall, which did nothing to the wall and a great deal to Jack’s hand, none of it good. “Lovely,” he said, through the pain in his knuckles. “Everyone wants to be the product of a mistake.”

His father seated himself on a cask of nails. “You were never a mistake, Jack. Never.”

“Oh? That’s not what I heard.” Servants gossiped. Especially in the zenana quarters, where gossip was a way of life. “What does it matter?” Flippantly, Jack quoted Marlowe: “‘That was in another country, and besides the wench is dead.’”

“You don’t mean that.”

Jack was sick of it. He was sick of his father making excuses for him, excuses that were their own form of condemnation, worse than any tirade. “Why not?” he shot back. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought it.”

Jack’s father stared down at his hands, the same broad, capable hands that had lifted Jack on the back of his first pony, steadied Jack’s hand on the quill, teaching him his letters. “Your mother and I were ill-suited. We knew that. We tried to make the best of it, in our own ways—”

Best. Jack remembered his mother lying listless in a darkened room, his father sneaking back smelling of spirits after spending yet another late night in the mess. They had both sought escape in their own ways. And he had been caught in the middle of it, lurking in the shadows, longing for affection.

His father shook himself out of his reverie. “It was a bad match and there’s no denying it. But neither of us doubted for a minute that we loved you.”

Jack gave a short, sharp laugh. “She killed herself.”

“Not because of you.” Jack’s father leaned forward, his hands resting on his knees. “If anyone was to blame it was me. I couldn’t give her what she wanted. Whatever that was. She wasn’t a happy woman.”

The understatement of the century. “Is that meant as an excuse?”

“Consider it an explanation. I’ll always bear the guilt of your mother’s death on my conscience, lad. There are times I tell myself it would have happened anyway, and times I wonder what I might have done to save her. I can’t go back and do it again. If I could”—his father spread his hands wide—“I would have taken more care of you.”

That wasn’t what Jack had expected. He had always assumed that if his father could go back and do it again, he would have eliminated Jack’s mother from his history entirely. And, with her, Jack.

Jack’s father looked at him earnestly. “We were both too wrapped up in our own unhappiness to think what we were doing to you. And for that, I beg your pardon.”

It felt very wrong to see his father humbling himself before him. Jack tried to shrug it off. “You did the best you could.”

“Not well enough.” His father seemed determined to have it all out. “I never rose high enough to have real influence. I couldn’t fight for you when you needed me.”

Jack’s eyes prickled. From the residue of gunpowder, of course. “You taught me to fight my own battles. I’d say that was well enough.”

Jack’s father nodded towards the door to the battlements. “Why did you abandon that one, then?”

And that was what came of letting his father get beneath his guard.

Jack feigned nonchalance. He’d learned that trick long ago: pretending he didn’t care, pretending what he didn’t care about couldn’t hurt him. “You’re the one who told me that some battles aren’t meant to be won.”

“I said a great many foolish things in my youth.” Jack’s father cocked his head. “You’re not holding it against Jane that Gwen asked her to bring you home? I didn’t know,” he added quickly. “Not until the plan was in motion. And by then—”

“I don’t imagine many people say no to Mrs. Reid,” said Jack dryly.

“Not within range of her parasol.” His father grinned at him.

Reluctantly, Jack found himself grinning back. Even at his angriest he had never been entirely proof against his father’s charm. It was part of the reason he had stayed away so long.

“She meant well, you know.” His father’s expression sobered. “You’ve been a hole in my heart, and there’s no mistaking that. I hope . . . I hope you can see your way to coming back with us, even for a little bit. There’s a little girl who would very much like to meet her brother Jack.”

It was crass manipulation, but it was alarmingly effective.

“I’ll think about it,” said Jack brusquely, and was surprised to find that he meant it. There was something dangerously attractive about the world his father was offering him: a home, a family, a new sister. Jane. “Although her godmother might not be too happy to see me there.”

His father rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. “Some women, my boy, are worth fighting for.”

Jack resisted the urge to make a sharp comment about those who weren’t. His mother had been an open sore between them long enough.

Hating himself for being so vulnerable, Jack said hesitantly, “What if I can’t make her happy?”

His father steered him towards the door. “Happiness isn’t a gift you can give. It’s a task you work on together.”

There are two of us
, Jane had said to him back in the monastery.

And they’d done rather well at being two, until Jack had opened his big mouth.

He paused, his hand on the doorknob, looking back at his father. “What am I going to say to her?”

It was the first time in a long time that he’d asked his father for advice.

Clapping Jack on the back, his father swung open the door. “Have you considered telling her that you love her?”

A
cannon made a very uncomfortable seat.

It was, however, the only seat available. Jane perched on the barrel of a cannon, staring blankly through the embrasure at the roiling waters of the Atlantic. At least, she knew it was the Atlantic, and based on the strength of the wind she assumed its waters roiled. She couldn’t actually see much of anything. The sun had set, leaving her darkling, the enclosure behind her lit only by the scattered light of a few torches that did little to illuminate the vast swath of water beyond the range of the fort.

Somewhere on the other side of the fort, Jane knew, lay Peniche and its lighthouse. But that was behind her. Only the cold waters of the Atlantic lay ahead, as murky as her future.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Jane shifted uncomfortably on the barrel of the cannon, which had the dual disadvantages of being both cold and damp. She should never have agreed to read the draft of Miss Gwen’s next book. She was starting to think like her ninny of a heroine.

The sun would rise tomorrow, as it always did. She would board the
Bien-Aimée
and sail back to England to prepare for her next adventure, wherever that might be.

And Jack would remain in Portugal, doing what he did best: avoiding everyone who might possibly care about him.

What was it Miss Gwen had said? Reptiles didn’t change their scales. They did, actually. They shed their old scales and grew new ones. But that didn’t mean that Jack was going to change his ways.

Jane leaned her head against a rough bit of brickwork. She couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned. She’d known what Jack was before they began working together.

But she hadn’t known all the other things he was: the kindness, the fundamental decency of him. Beneath the layer of deliberate devil-may-care, his moral code was as stern as hers, and he was, she realized, a great deal better at seeing to the needs of others.

She tried to remember the frustrating bits, the moments when they had clashed. But all she could remember was Jack adapting to her change of plans. Jack taking charge when her plan had failed. Jack challenging her, making her think more carefully, and then, when she’d charted their course, covering her back without question. Caring for her.

When she was with him, she felt the weight of being the Pink Carnation lift off her shoulders. She didn’t have to be perfect. She didn’t have to have all the answers. Because Jack was there with her.

Well, he wasn’t going to be with her much longer, and she would just have to get her head around that, Jane told herself bracingly. There was work to be done, arrangements to be made. Misplaced monarchs didn’t just transport themselves. While she didn’t think the French had the sea power at hand to successfully storm the fort, it was very lightly manned. The sooner Queen Maria was on her way to rejoin the Portuguese fleet, the better.

There was the sound of smashing crockery and a cry of “
Ai, Jesus
!” from one of the second-story windows.

The opiates with which Nicolas had dosed the Queen appeared to be wearing off.

She should go, Jane knew. She should make sure that Nicolas wasn’t baiting Henrietta and that Miss Gwen hadn’t run anyone through with her sword parasol.

But she didn’t. She didn’t want to face them just yet: Miss Gwen’s smirks, and Nicolas’s practiced gallantry, and Lizzy’s youthful enthusiasm, and Miles’s and Henrietta’s obvious delight in each other.

There was someone walking, soft-soled, across the clearing. Not Miss Gwen. Her progress was a staccato tapping. Nor any of the others; Jane knew their various treads as she knew her own.

She might have turned or made some sign, but she didn’t trust herself. Instead she stayed where she was, a monument on a pedestal, staring blindly out to sea, painfully aware of every step, every breath, as Jack joined her in the narrow embrasure. She didn’t need to see him to know he was there; every sense was attuned to him, to the soft brush of his coat against her dress, the faint scents of sulfur and donkey that aroused memories that were not generally associated with either of the items in question.

Jack leaned a hand against the cannon barrel by her hip. Conversationally, he said, “I hear that the eagle nests only once.”

Time tilted backwards. Of all the things Jack might have said, nothing could have disarmed her so. There was a seductive promise to it, the idea that they might start again, wash the slate clean, forge their partnership anew.

The salt spray stung Jane’s eyes. Rustily, she answered, as Jack had all those weeks ago, “The eagle sometimes nests in uncommon strange places.”

Jack leaned back against the curved side of the embrasure. “Where will you go now?”

Not
I’m sorry
. Not
Stay with me
.

Jane looked out over the choppy waves. In the night sky, the stars were just beginning to emerge, offering guidance to the sailor and light to the lost.

“I was thinking . . . Russia, perhaps. The court speaks French.” She glanced at Jack over her bare shoulder, earbobs dangling heavily from her ears. “And I hear the Tsar has an eye for a beautiful woman.”

Jack shoved his hands in his pockets, watching her with shadowed eyes. “You’ll travel all that way alone?”

Jane made a brief, dismissive gesture. “I can hire a maid.”

“That’s a long way to travel with only a maid for company.”

“Who says I won’t find company along the way?” Jane knew it was childish as soon as the words were out of her mouth. And what was the point of making him jealous? He’d already made his position clear. Striving for normalcy, she said briefly, “Amy and Richard have a school for spies. I’m sure there is someone they can spare for me.”

“There is another option.” Speaking rapidly, Jack said, “Have you ever considered traveling with a husband? I hear they can be rather useful for acquiring donkeys and binding blisters.”

Jane could feel the cold metal of the cannon barrel beneath her palms. “A feigned one?”

“No.” Jack kept his hands in his pockets, his back against the wall, but Jane felt his gaze like a touch, pinning her in place. “A real one. Bell, book, candle, or whatever it is you use.”

“Generally special license.” This hurt too much. She couldn’t play this game. Baldly, Jane asked, “Are you volunteering for the position?”

Gently Jack took her hands in his. He didn’t kneel; that would have put his nose against her knees. The words tumbled out like scattershot: “I would offer you testimonials, but I haven’t any. It’s not a role I’ve attempted. I don’t know if I’ll be any good at it.” His hands tightened on hers. “But I do know that wherever you go is where I want to be.”

Jane looked down at their linked hands, fighting against an irrational desire to fling her arms around his neck and go with him wherever he wanted to go. It didn’t work like that. In one of Miss Gwen’s novels, perhaps, but not in real life. “You—you might think that now—”

“I do,” said Jack. “I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.”

“But what about five years from now?” What about the next time she changed the plan without telling him? What about the first time he saw her flirting, on mission, with another man?

Even as she thought it, she knew the answer. Jack’s temper might flare for a moment, but he would always, always, in the end, see her side of it. He always had.

That wasn’t really what she was afraid of. As to what she was afraid of . . . Jane seized on the least of it. “I don’t mean to give up my work,” she said belligerently.

“I wouldn’t expect you to.” Jack’s thumbs made little circles around the insides of her wrists, warming her through. “I’m not asking you to be an ornament. Or stand on a pedestal. I’m asking you to slog through the mud with me, blisters and all. If you’ll have me.”

Jane tilted her head, feeling a little quiver of hope, like the first faint light of dawn. “No lutes?”

“No lutes,” Jack promised, his lips spreading into a grin that warmed her through to her core. The grin turned cocky. “Unless you want them. You’re welcome to serenade me, if you like.”

He was giving her space, Jane knew. Space to make her decision. Playing for time, she said, “I’m better on the pianoforte than on the lute.”

The tenderness in Jack’s eyes as he looked at her made Jane’s knees wobbly. “I didn’t know you played the pianoforte.”

She played the pianoforte very well. She played the harp indifferently and sang not at all. “There’s a great deal we don’t know about each other.”

“Would a lifetime be time enough to learn?” Jack squared his shoulders, his face serious, intent. “I mean it, Jane. I’m not walking away this time. I’ve found my nest.”

Jane’s lips twisted up in a crooked smile. “And the eagle nests only once?”

Jack wasn’t smiling. “This one does.”

The stars seemed to stand out more brightly in the sky; the cries of the gulls were louder. Every detail, every line of Jack’s face stood out with unnatural clarity.

No matter how long she lived, no matter what she saw, this moment, Jane knew, would remain complete in her memory, every word, every sound, every gesture. The world might not quite stop spinning on its axis, but it seemed, for the moment, to rest.

Until the door of the armory banged open.

“Jane!” Lizzy burst out the door into the enclosure. “Jane! Are you— Oh.”

“Go away,” said her brother. “We’re busy.” Turning back to Jane, he said, “While we’re on the subject, my father thinks I should tell you I love you.”

High romance descended into farce. Jane felt more than a little giddy. “Do you?”

Jack regarded her ruefully. “As it happens—yes.”

Jane twined her fingers through his. “That’s not much of a declaration.”

“You wouldn’t let me bring my lute.” Jack’s eyes were very bright in the darkness. Without turning, he tilted his head sideways. “Also, we have an audience.”

Their audience appeared to have grown. Miss Gwen stalked out in pursuit of Lizzy. “Elizabeth! Where are— Hmph.” Catching sight of Jack and Jane, she prodded Lizzy in the back with her parasol. “Inside! Now.”

Lizzy attempted to squirm away. “But—”

“In!” snapped Miss Gwen.

The door slammed shut behind them.

Jane looked up at Jack, her eyes dancing with laughter. “Do you think they’re really gone?”

“Have you met my sister?” said Jack darkly. He cast a hunted look over his shoulder, saying rapidly, “I give it five minutes before she comes back. Possibly less. Do you?”

Jane blinked. “Do I what?”

Jack hunched his shoulders, his brows drawing together. “Love me, damn it.”

What is love?
Jane had asked Nicolas, when he had professed that emotion, unasked. It hadn’t been coyness. It had been a genuine question.

She knew what the poets said of love; she knew what great men and women had sacrificed in the name of that elusive emotion. Towers had toppled; fleets had been launched. But Jane had always wondered if they had all felt a bit sheepish about it afterwards, if what they had lauded as love was merely, in fact, the grip of a strong infatuation, lust fueled by inaccessibility. The prize, when won, lost its luster; infatuation turned to indifference. The famous beauty had a shrill voice; the great lover stinted his servants. Love was a chimera, an ideal.

Maybe you just aren’t capable of feeling it
, Nicolas had tossed back at her, one of those golden barbs that cut deeper than she had ever allowed herself to acknowledge.

But he had been wrong. And so had she. Love wasn’t an ideal; it was messy and muddy and fraught with inconsistencies. It was a hard arm around her shoulders when she slipped and might have fallen, a reluctant nod in the middle of an argument. It was the slouch of Jack’s shoulders and the crooked line of his smile. It was knowing that whatever hardships befell them, they would stumble through it together.

“Do you know,” said Jane, feeling rather like an astronomer who had spotted a new planet in the skies, “I’m fairly sure I do?”

Jack rested a hand on either side of her hips, a wolfish smile spreading across his face. “Fairly sure?”

“Extremely sure?” Jane said breathlessly, clutching at his shoulders for balance.

Jack nuzzled her neck. “I’m not giving up until I get absolutely certain.”

“Oh, hullo! Er, never mind.” Heavy footsteps retreated back in the direction of the fort, along with a faint whiff of ginger.

Jack banged his forehead against Jane’s shoulder. “Can’t a man propose in peace?”

Jane made the mistake of glancing towards the armory. Lizzy appeared to be jostling with Miss Gwen for space at the window. Colonel Reid was ineffectually attempting to shoo them both away.

“But we might miss something!” Lizzy’s voice floated across the drilling ground.

Jane wrapped her arms around Jack’s shoulders, resting her cheek against the top of his head. “Apparently not,” she said apologetically. “It could be worse. They might be trying to help.”

Jack groaned. “How long does it take to get a special license?”

Jane slipped down off the cannon, her body sliding against Jack’s. “There’s no hurry,” she said. “We have a lifetime, after all.”

Jack’s hands closed around her waist. He looked at her through one eye. “I take it that’s a yes?”

“Yes,” said Jane, and, heedless of the cries of the Queen and the crowd jostling at the window, sealed her answer with a kiss.

The eagle had found its nest.