The Carhart Series Read online

  He winced. “I convinced Ned to give me one last chance. I know you won’t give me one—you have every reason to despise me. But—listen—just—” He broke off and fumbled in his pockets. He pulled out a sheet of crinkled paper and handed it to her. “There.”

  Jenny smoothed out the crumpled wad. “What is this?”

  “Title,” he said, “to what’s inside the barn.”

  “I already told you, you can’t buy me.”

  His eyes raised to hers. “I know,” he said softly. “There isn’t enough money in all the world. But I’m begging you to let me—let me—” He scowled and scuffed his feet.

  Jenny’s stomach turned over very slowly. Her toes curled inside her slippers.

  “Just go inside,” he whispered.

  She crossed the cropped grass and pulled open the heavy door. It creaked and sent a cloud of dust, woody with a hint of mold, whooshing around her. When she stepped inside, the temperature of the air dropped ten degrees. The familiar odor of clean hay met her. But there was a smell unlike anything she’d ever experienced. A whiff of acidity touched her nose, followed by a sweet, warm scent. Lions?

  No.

  There were no heavy iron cages. But nor was the barn divided into efficient cow-size rectangles. Instead, all the barn was open; one giant hayrick lay in the middle. And there, next to that golden pile, placidly munching hay, it stood.

  Large and gray. Floppy ears wiggled in languid pleasure, as its trunk leisurely brought another bite of hay into its ivory-tusked mouth. It rolled its eyes when Jenny entered, but made no further movements.

  Jenny was shocked into silence. Gareth came up behind her. Her heart was racing, a faint pitter-patter.

  “What,” Jenny asked steadily, “am I going to do with an elephant?”

  “I don’t know,” said Gareth. “What are you planning to do with all my points?”

  Points? It took Jenny a moment to remember what he was talking about. Points, when he smiled. She turned around slowly and put her hands on her hips.

  “Your points? Those are my points. I earned them. You can’t have them.”

  Gareth scowled and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Bollocks. I had to smile very hard for every single one of them. And if you don’t take this elephant and marry me, I swear to God you’ll never get another point again.”

  Jenny’s world froze. Outside, she could hear the clear voice of a blackbird singing. It was overwhelmed by the ringing in her ears. She turned to Gareth slowly.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, you’ll never earn another point again. I haven’t smiled since you left me, and I miss it.” He kicked at the ground, his eyes tracing the dust. “I miss you.”

  “No, before that.”

  “Take this elephant—”

  “After.”

  He looked up. That feral light shone in his eyes again, but this time the wild look was a plea. A lion yearning to be freed from its cage. “Take me.” His voice was thick and husky. “Please. Jenny. I’m begging you.”

  She didn’t know what to say in answer. He’d shocked the words right out of her skin. She could only stare, as some frozen expanse inside her tingled to life. It hurt to want.

  “I can’t take this elephant,” she said, focusing on the one part of what he’d said that she could understand. “Do you know how miserable this poor beast will be in winter? This is cruel.”

  “She’s African,” Gareth said disjointedly. “From the bush. I was thinking maybe she could go back.”

  “Back? Back where? Back how?”

  “Back to Southern Africa. Perhaps this winter. The trip might take six months.” His voice took on a wistful quality. “I’ve always wanted to go. It’s supposed to be a lovely place. Especially for someone with theories on bird migration…” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “But.”

  “But surely Lord Blakely could not abandon his estates for so long.”

  “No. Lord Blakely could not. Not unless he had someone he could trust to run his estates in his absence. And Lord Blakely…Well, Lord Blakely did not trust anyone.”

  “Lord Blakely is talking about himself in the third person, past tense,” Jenny said. “It’s disturbing.”

  “Then let me switch to the first person plural. What Lord Blakely could not do, we can. I would not trust anyone else to manage my estates, not for the shortest space of time, because I thought I was better than everyone else. I was wrong. You see, Jenny, I need you. I need someone who will see the strength buried deep in the hearts of men. Someone who can tap into that strength. I need someone who can look at a man and move him to become more. I can’t do it alone.”

  Jenny looked at the elephant. No thinking man would ever have purchased an elephant as a wedding gift. And yet there it stood. It flicked an ear at the two of them—likely elephant language for, go on, this dramatic performance is quite interesting.

  There was only one possible conclusion. Gareth had stopped thinking. For the first time in a week, Jenny allowed herself to hope. Really hope. She reached out and brushed his cheek. It was stubbly beneath her fingers. God knows when last he’d shaved. Probably before he’d obtained that bruise.

  “Gareth.”

  “I haven’t arrived at second person yet,” he said quietly. “You. You. Always you. I love you, Jenny. When you left me, all the warmth went out of my world. When I said those horrible things, I didn’t realize then how much I needed you—how superior you were to me.”

  Jenny’s heart gave a little flip.

  “This entire country suffocated me, cold and dreary and monochromatic. Then I met you. And you spread color everywhere I looked—in every aspect of my life. You put texture in a flat world. Before I knew you, I despaired of ever seeing Brazil again. I can’t think of a single reason why you should stay with me, but you’re a great deal cleverer than I, and I’m hoping you can imagine something.”

  Gareth set his gloved hands on her shoulders. His golden-warm eyes were covered with a sheen that looked suspiciously like moisture. Inches from his face, she could see reddish veins throughout his cornea. The haphazard stubble on his cheeks stood out, darker brown than his hair.

  “Gareth,” Jenny asked, “when was the last time you slept?”

  “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “And you call yourself a rational man.”

  He didn’t argue. Instead, his fingers on her shoulders tightened their grasp just the smallest fraction.

  “I can give you one thing,” he said huskily. “One thing besides myself, that is. Nobody will ever look down on you again. Not with my title, nor with my protection. My grandfather taught me to fend off those sorts of attacks. Let me put them in your service now. Let me stand beside you.”

  It was in that moment that Jenny realized he would not abandon her. Not ever.

  “Gareth,” Jenny said imperiously, “give me your hand.”

  He froze, his head half-turned away. “What?”

  She didn’t bother to repeat the question. Instead, she took his wrist and stripped off the riding glove. His breath hissed in when her thumb traced the lines of his palm.

  “You’re a stubborn man,” she said. “A rational man. You’re excessively proud, damnably responsible and all too awkward.”

  He hunched miserably under her analysis. “I can change.”

  Jenny peered into his palm. “No.” She dismissed this with a sad shake of her head. “You won’t. Change is not what I’m seeing in the future.”

  “I can try.”

  “You won’t change,” Jenny said briskly, “because I love you the way you are.”

  Shock filtered through his features, but Jenny wasn’t finished.

  “Do you know what I see when I look at you, Gareth?”

  He shook his head.

  “I see a strong man. Honest, and good. Perhaps a little inflexible—but smart enough to know his limitations. Clever enough to pick a woman who will push him to be better. I see a man who makes mis
takes, but is willing to admit them and work to better them. I see a man who was willing to put aside his own pride for his cousin’s sake. And for mine, just now.”

  “What else do you see?”

  She pulled his hand to her and set it on her waist. He leaned in, his fingers closing about her. Tugging her next to his heart.

  “I see that I’ll say yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, I’ll take you. If you’ll take me.”

  When his lips met hers, she could taste the smile on his face. He pulled her against him. And when, after a long, leisurely time, he raised his head, he laughed. For one eternal instant, Jenny had no label for the swelling rightness that filled her chest, no words to describe how she felt. But then the thought came.

  Ah. So this is what home feels like.

  Epilogue

  IF THERE WAS ONE CONSTANT in the highest echelons of London society, it was the Marquess of Blakely. For nearly two centuries, Blakelys had been a constant edifice. They stood as bulwarks against change; the old guard, reminding younger rabble of the obligation of nobility. Nine generations of cold, chilly men had been counted on to depress the pretensions of those who overreached their stations.

  And so, when the ninth marquess purchased an elephant on one day and announced he was married on the next, gossip flurried. Because he had not married the expected peer’s daughter. Nor had he married an heiress, which would have been titillating enough. So who had he married?

  Nobody could quite figure out.

  Oh, they knew what she looked like. She was a friendly woman with striking dark hair and a pleasant figure and an extremely bright smile. And they knew her married name—Jennifer Carhart, Marchioness of Blakely—but they knew nothing of her family or her fortune. It was a puzzle, because everyone knew that a Blakely simply could not have married anyone unsuitable.

  Stories flew.

  At first, some insisted that Blakely’s bride was the woman who’d been called Mrs. Margaret Barnard. But that woman had been in society so little, and those who had been closest to the woman—Blakely himself, as well as his cousin, his cousin’s wife, and his sister—insisted it was not so. And besides, Mrs. Barnard had been a distant connection of the Carharts, so distant that polite society hadn’t even bothered to remember her. Blakely would never have stooped to marry her. And that put paid to that guess.

  The new Marchioness of Blakely busied herself in the planning of the much larger wedding of Blakely’s sister. High society, not wishing to be left out of the hubbub entirely, busied itself spinning theories.

  Someone suggested she was a foreign princess from a tiny country south of the equator.

  Someone else insisted she had the look of Gallic nobility, and was thus the last remaining scion of some family that had fled the Terror.

  Yet another person claimed that the marchioness had once been a fortune-teller, capable of calling spirits from the ether and lightning from the skies.

  By the day of his sister’s wedding, society had divided into bitter camps on the question. When the marquess and his marchioness disembarked from their carriage, outside the church where Miss Edmonton was to marry, they were the object of intense scrutiny. His lordship was impeccably turned out in burgundy velvet. Her ladyship wore a diamond pendant and a dress of blue water-shot silk. They looked at one another a great deal, and touched an unfashionable amount.

  After the ceremony, the Countess of Lockhaven pushed through the crowd of the wedding breakfast. She caught Lord Blakely’s arm just as the man found his sister.

  “Lord Blakely,” she simpered. “And Lady Blakely.”

  Blakely looked down at the hand on his sleeve. His gaze traveled up her arm. That cold expression—for which Blakelys had so long been known—froze Lady Lockhaven.

  “Well?”

  Lady Lockhaven dropped her hand. “We were wondering if—well, if you could say something about…” In the hush that fell, everyone could hear her gulp. “About your lady’s birth? And her people?”

  If Lord Blakely’s face had been cold before, it turned frigid now. He looked the countess disdainfully up and down. Everyone in the crowd suddenly remembered her mother had been a soap manufacturer’s daughter, married for her thousands of pounds. They remembered her husband’s first marriage had been to a country girl he eloped with, who’d had the good grace to die before she embarrassed the family by providing an heir.

  “My wife’s birth?” He drawled the words insolently, and the crowd shivered as one. “A damned sight better than your own.”

  That was the last time anyone asked the marquess about his wife’s origins.

  Not solely because society feared his response. Rather, his conduct directly thereafter settled the debate for once and all.

  After Blakely delivered that infamous and much-repeated set down, he transferred his gaze to the new Marchioness of Blakely.

  She shook her head, once. Firmly. “Gareth,” she said dryly. “It is your sister’s wedding day. Behave.”

  Silence. He’d lifted his chin, in typical Blakely arrogance. The crowd waited for the blast.

  And then Lord Blakely shrugged and grinned helplessly.

  Grinned. Helpless. A Blakely.

  “Oh,” said his sister, from where she stood near him. “Is that how it’s done? I’ll have to practice that.”

  Like that, everything society knew about nine generations of Blakelys went up in smoke.

  Since that day, there had been no question. Lady Blakely had been granted otherworldly powers at birth. Every smile she coaxed from him, every laugh that she surprised from his lips, stood as testament to her arcane abilities.

  And those that questioned her worth still had only to see the look in his eyes when he watched her to find all the proof they required.

  For Teej. Because when I had to make Ned a hero, I gave him a little bit of you.

  Prologue

  London, 1838

  LADY KATHLEEN CARHART had a secret.

  Truth be told, she had more than one—but the secret she had in mind as she sat across from her husband at breakfast had arrived only today. It was wrapped in paper and had been set carefully atop her chest of drawers. And if her husband knew what it was…

  She suppressed a faint smile.

  Across the table from her, he set the paper down and fixed his gaze on her. His eyes were a liquid brown, three shades beyond her breakfast chocolate. They stood out, uncannily dark against the sandy brown of his hair. He had no notion what it did to her when he looked at her like that. Her toes curled. Her hands clasped together. All he had to do was look at her, and she found herself wishing—wanting—no, desiring. And therein lay the root of her problem.

  “I had a talk with my cousin a few days ago,” he said.

  Around London, a thousand couples might have been having a similarly prosaic conversation. Kate’s mother had cautioned her to be practical about marriage, to accept that she and her husband would share a genteel, friendly politeness.

  But then, Kate hadn’t married the average London gentleman. Mr. Edward Carhart did nothing properly or politely—nothing, that was, except his newly acquired wife.

  “What did Blakely have to say?” Kate asked.

  “You know that some of our holdings are in the East India Company?”

  “Aren’t everyone’s? It’s a good investment. They trade in tea and silk and saltpetre….” Her voice trailed off into roughness.

  If he’d known what flitted through her mind when she said the word silk, he’d not sit there so sanguine. Because she’d purchased a filmy night rail on Bond Street. It was made of imported silk and fastened together in front by means of lavender ribbons. Those scraps of opaque fabric were perhaps the garment’s only concession to modesty. It lay on her chest of drawers, simply beseeching Kate to wear it one evening.

  “Silk,” Ned said, looking off into the distance without seeing her lean forward, “and other things. Like opium.”

  “Opium was not on my s
hopping list.”

  He didn’t smile. Instead he glanced away as if uncomfortable. “In any case, Blakely and I were talking about the recent events in China.” Ned shook his paper at her. “And we decided it would behoove someone to personally inquire into what was going on over there.”

  For once, he sounded serious. Kate frowned at him. “By someone, you mean Mr. White, and by over there, you mean the office on—”

  “By someone,” Ned said distinctly, “I mean me, and by over there, I mean China.”

  He set the newspaper down and bit his lip. The morning sun suddenly seemed too bright. It blasted in from the window behind him, casting his features into shadow. She couldn’t make out his eyes. He had to be joking. At any moment, he was going to grin at her.

  She gingerly relinquished her hold on her teacup and essayed a small smile. “Have a lovely journey. Will you be home in time for tea?”

  “No. The Peerless is leaving St. Katharine’s at noon, and I intend to be on it.”

  Not just the light was blinding. She raised her eyes to him, and his sincerity finally penetrated. “Oh, God. You really meant it. You’re leaving? But I thought—”

  She’d thought she had time for that silk night rail, folded carefully in paper.

  He shook his head. “Kate, we’ve been married three months. We both know that the only reason we wed was because people found us alone together and imagined more had happened. We married to stave off the scandal.”

  Put so baldly, her impractical hopes sounded even more foolish than she’d supposed.

  “The truth is,” he continued, “neither of us is ready to be married, not really.”

  Neither of them?

  He stood and pushed back his chair. “I’ve never had the chance to prove myself to anyone. And…” He trailed off, his hand scrubbing through his hair. “And I want to.”

  He set his serviette atop his plate and turned around. The world swirled around Kate.

  He was walking away, as if this had been normal breakfast conversation on a regular day.

  “Ned!” Kate vaulted to her feet. The word seemed as like to hold back the breaking floodwaters of her marriage as the insubstantial silk gown waiting upstairs.