Much Ado About Jack Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Christy English

  Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Dawn Adams

  Cover illustration by Robert Papp

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Act I

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Act II

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Act III

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Act IV

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Amy Smith Pierce, Marianne Nubel, and Ellen Seltz:

  I was not given sisters at birth, but I’m grateful I was given you.

  Author’s Note

  Gentle reader, Much Ado About Jack begins one month before the action of my previous novel, Love on a Midsummer Night. Most of this book follows the timeline of Love on a Midsummer Night, culminating in the same week in June 1818 when Raymond Olivier plays Oberon in Titania’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  Act I

  “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.

  Men were deceivers ever,

  One foot in sea and one on shore,

  To one thing constant never.”

  Much Ado About Nothing

  Act 1, Scene 3

  One

  London, May 1818

  Angelique Beauchamp, Countess of Devonshire, found a hulking Scot standing on the deck of her ship.

  Her kid leather slippers whispered against the damp oak planks as they would have on a ballroom floor. She glided across the deck strewn with vats of tar, coiled rope, and unattended brushes.

  The crew was supposed to be preparing her ship to go back out to sea, but she could only see Willy, the ten-year-old boy she had taken on last year, perched in the rigging high above. He waved to her, and she waved back, but after that, she kept her eyes on the man in front of her.

  The Scot was as tall as a Viking. His broad shoulders were barely contained in a coat of black worsted, hard worn but well mended. He wore his auburn hair long, tied in a queue at the back of his neck.

  Angelique was tall for a woman, but beside him, she felt delicate, like one of the china doll beauties so popular that season on the Marriage Mart.

  “Good day, sir,” she said. “May I ask what you’re doing skulking about my ship?”

  He smiled, and she caught the light of genuine humor in his eyes. He was a man who did not take himself too seriously, then. In spite of his military bearing, she might be able to deal with him.

  “Good day, madam. I have come to speak with Captain Farvel.”

  “You won’t find him. He deserted yesterday.”

  She spoke with confidence, as if she had not come down to the docks to speak with the erstwhile captain herself. She simply assumed that Farvel had deserted, from the state of the ship and from the absence of her crew. If she got her hands around her captain’s neck, she would throttle him. Farvel had better stay hidden away, wherever he was.

  The Scot’s blue eyes did not take on a gleam of avarice to hear of her misfortune, as some men’s might have done. He did not give the appearance of looking upon her staffing problems as an opportunity. He frowned, seeming almost concerned for her. “And the rest of the crew?”

  “I assume they are in the stews of Southwark.”

  He laughed then, and she was tempted to laugh with him. For the first time since her man of business, George Smythe, had told her of the cargo of rotting cotton that Farvel had brought back from Charleston, her temper ebbed a bit, and she felt almost human.

  Like all things, her good humor did not last.

  “I understand this ship is for sale,” the Scot said.

  Angelique felt the dark of her temper rising like a summer storm, and she clamped it down. “You heard wrong.”

  She could count on the fingers of both hands the number of men angling to get the Diane away from her. It was a good ship, her only ship, and would make a charming addition to any fleet. And if she sold it, the West India Company would no longer have to deal with her. In spite of their drawing room manners and open courtesy, they did not like doing business with a woman.

  “Well,” he said, “perhaps I might speak with the owner about that.”

  “I am the owner. And I can assure you, the Diane will never be for sale.”

  The deck lurched beneath them in the wake of a passing barge, and he reached for her, catching her arm.

  Angelique had spent her childhood on this vessel. She had kept to her feet in storms off the coast of Africa, in the gales that blew north of Scotland. She could keep her footing without help in the midst of the Thames. She felt her mask of glacial calm come down as she drew her arm out of his grasp.

  “I would thank you not to touch me,” she said. “I would also thank you to let it be known among your acquaintances that the Diane belongs to me.”

  “Does it indeed?” He seemed not at all offended by her ire, but amused. The blue of his eyes reminded her of the sky on a clear summer day: guileless, open, hiding nothing. But she knew better than anyone how quickly such a sky could change. Beauty and serenity like that was an illusion, the kind of deception she would never be taken in by again.

  “She is a beautiful ship,” he said. For the first time, she heard a hint of his brogue, a shade of Aberdeen thickening his voice as his eyes ran not over the deck beneath their feet, or the furled sails above their heads, but over her.

  Angelique felt the old telltale heat of desire rising from the center of her belly. She had not felt the lick of a flame like that, nor even smelled the smoke of lust, since Anthony Carrington had left her over a year before. She had taken one or two lovers since, of course, but with neither had she felt this warm beginning, this caress of craving.

&nbs
p; She clenched her stomach against the onslaught, against the traitorous heat that rose to consume her. She tamped it down, just as she had tamped down her temper. When she raised her eyes to meet his, the man facing her smiled as if he knew her struggle and welcomed it. As if he knew that he had already won.

  She meant to leave the insolent man standing where he was. Since Farvel was nowhere to be found, she would have Smythe start looking for a new captain at once. But before she could take another step, the ship lurched again, and this time her choice of shoes betrayed her and she lost her footing.

  Her slippers slid out from beneath her, and she flailed, trying to catch hold of the rigging behind her where it was tied to the mast. Her hands touched not well-oiled rope but a burly, masculine arm. The man laid his hand over hers and drew her close.

  His hands were strong and calloused. He no doubt spent a great deal of time on a ship at sea, for in spite of the rocking of the deck beneath their feet, he did not sway, but held himself and her as steady as if he stood on dry land.

  As Angelique stood close to him, her cheek pressed against his chest, she caught the scent of leather and spiced rum. The scent of that man brought the peace of her childhood back to her, layered over with the heat of lust.

  Angelique closed her eyes and took in his scent, relishing the strength of his arms around her and the illusion of safety they gave her. The ship rocked again, and she came to her senses. Dear God, had she lost her mind?

  She stepped away from the man as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, straightening her gown and pelisse, smoothing her skirts. Two curls had escaped the prison of her bonnet and had fallen across her breast. The man reached for them, gathering them at her throat, lingering over their softness.

  She jerked back reflexively, and he released those curls. The tendrils of her hair clung to his fingers like limpets, as if they would tether him to her. Her hands shook as she slid them back beneath her bonnet.

  The blue of his gaze was no longer amused. The planes of his face were hard with naked desire. His need called to her own, a siren song that would draw her onto the rocks. The ship of her reason would splinter, and she would be left to drown.

  “Good day,” she said again, turning to flee from her own ship. She crossed the swaying deck to the narrow gangplank, certain that she had escaped, but when she raised her gloved hand to steady herself against the railing, he laid his hand over hers, capturing her so that she could not move.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  The wind was strong, and a piece of his auburn hair had come loose from the queue at the nape of his neck. Angelique felt an almost overwhelming need to reach for that strand and to draw it back from his face just as he had touched her errant curls. She held herself very still until the longing passed.

  “Angelique Beauchamp, Countess of Devonshire.”

  If she had thought that her title might discourage his advances, she was mistaken. She saw the definite light of challenge in his eyes, as if by running away from him, she had thrown down a gauntlet at his feet. He smiled as if he had taken it up.

  She had not been conscious of issuing a challenge. Her battlefield was a ballroom—her adversaries, mincing gentlemen of the ton who would inevitably bow to her will. This man was not one of those. She found herself grateful that she would never see him again.

  Forcing herself to rally, Angelique walked down the plank from her ship without faltering. She allowed her footman to assist her into the carriage that bore her crest, a phoenix rising from the ashes, flames falling from its wings. William’s gloved, indifferent hand felt nothing like the hand of the stranger.

  She did not allow herself to look back. She could still feel the heat of the man’s gaze on her skin, coupled with the overwhelming rise of her own long-banked need. She shook with that desire still, pressing her hands together, forcing them to lie docile in her lap.

  She had skirted danger, but she had avoided it in the end. That man’s touch would steal her reason; lust like that would take over her life, as Geoffrey had when she was a girl, as Anthony once had done. She would never allow any man such power over her again.

  Fortunate then that a nameless ship captain would never be allowed entrée into the world she had built for herself so carefully.

  She laid her head back on the soft velvet squab of her well-sprung carriage, not noticing the jolt of the cobbled streets as her driver took her home.

  Two

  The scuttlebutt was that old Duke of Hawthorne had died, leaving his money and his estate in his nephew’s hands. William Darlington, the new duke, had called a special meeting of the Hellfire Club to celebrate.

  Captain James Montgomery heard something of this when he visited his father’s club in Mayfair, but he listened to the speculation with only half an ear. In spite of the food and the women that were bound to be on offer, James would not be joining his fellow Hellfire members for the party in the new duke’s honor. He had never met him and did not much like the idea of celebrating another man’s death.

  He was determined to track down the Countess of Devonshire instead.

  James wore his Navy dress uniform though he had sold his commission the day before. He had been so certain that he was ready to settle on land, but that morning he had found himself back down at the docks, this time not at Greenwich but in London proper, where some of the smaller merchant ships came into port. He had found one almost completely unattended, save for a lone boy in the rigging, when Angelique Beauchamp had shown up and changed the course of his day. Perhaps even the course of his week.

  James was a man to enjoy a pretty face. Even more, he was a man to enjoy the fine turn of a blushing cheek, the swell of full breasts beneath a silk gown, the curve of a woman’s hips as she walked away from him. He had seen little of the last in his twenty years at sea. Always, since the age of twelve, women had been walking toward him. Angelique Beauchamp was the first to walk away.

  He drank his whisky while sitting in a deep leather armchair. Raymond, Lord Pembroke, sat across from him, slumped over his own brandy, half-drunk though it was barely five o’clock in the evening.

  He and Pembroke had come back to England from the Continent two years ago on the same ship and had struck up a friendship of sorts. Pembroke had been his guest for dinner in his captain’s quarters and had brought James into the Hellfire Club, where it seemed a man of certain appetites was always welcome.

  After only a few meetings, James had found the Club tiresome, almost as mundane as White’s. Though the food was always good and the whores varied, James had spent too many years sampling the women of the world to let another man do his selecting for him.

  And now, once again, he had his sights on a woman. A woman who, it seemed, might even be a challenge to get.

  “Angelique Beauchamp,” James said to Pembroke. “Where can I find her tonight?”

  Pembroke’s sky blue eyes were bloodshot. He rubbed one thumb against his temple as if trying to alleviate a headache, and failing.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I want her.”

  Pembroke laughed, one bark that turned into a guffaw. The men around them turned to stare, and a waiter came by to stand silent at Pembroke’s elbow. For a moment, James was sure his illustrious friend was about to be asked to leave, but the footman only poured him a fresh brandy.

  Pembroke dried his eyes on a fine linen handkerchief drawn from his coat. He folded it again and set it aside before he fixed his gaze on James.

  “Every man in London wants Angelique Beauchamp.”

  “I’m going to have her.”

  Pembroke leaned back in his chair, his fresh brandy untouched beside him. “That woman is trouble, Montgomery. That’s all I’m going to say.”

  “All women are trouble,” James replied. “Only some of them are worth it.”

  His friend sighed. “I have it on g
ood authority that she is a lovely woman. Intelligent, well-spoken, a woman who makes her own way in the world. But I would not recommend her to an adder.”

  “Why not?”

  “Some women are complicated. Angelique is one of them.”

  “Maybe I like complicated,” James said.

  “Since when?”

  James ignored his friend’s question and posed one of his own. “Where can I find her?”

  “I don’t keep her diary about my person. Perhaps if you inquired at her town house in Regent Square, her butler might assist you.”

  “Regent Square? Perhaps I will.”

  “I was joking. For God’s sake, Montgomery, I don’t know how you came to know Angelique, but I recommend you have a drink with me and forget about her.”

  “Angelique Beauchamp is a woman a man cannot forget.”

  “I agree completely.”

  A man with dark brown hair and a hawk’s gaze sat down across from James. The stranger drew his leather armchair closer so that they might not be overheard. Pembroke took one look at the man and groaned, rubbing his temples again. James ignored his friend and nodded to the stranger.

  “The Countess of Devonshire will be at the Duchess of Claremore’s ball tonight. Number 5, Grosvenor Square,” the stranger said.

  James waved the address away with one hand. “I’ll find it. My thanks.”

  “Happy hunting. I await the tale of your success with interest,” the man said, rising once more to his feet.

  “I don’t carry tales of women,” James answered.

  He saw the first gleam of respect in the other man’s eyes, but it might have been a trick of the firelight. “That’s just as well, because you won’t succeed. If the Duchess of Claremore doesn’t turn you away at the door, Angelique will.”

  James smiled. If there was one thing he was good at, it was getting a woman to do what he wanted and thinking it was what she had wanted all along. “We’ll see.”

  “Indeed,” the stranger said. “We will.”

  Pembroke groaned again as the man walked away. James wondered if he should offer his friend a headache powder. His mother always favored willow bark.