Romney Marsh Trilogy: A Gentleman by Any Other Name / The Dangerous Debutante / Beware of Virtuous Women

Julia nodded, giving up the fight, as it seemed there was nothing Jacko didn’t know. “They were suspicious in Rye even before the storm. The church officials demanded answers, and Papa wouldn’t give them to them, wouldn’t betray our congregation, didn’t even tell our people he was in trouble.”

She looked at Jacko. “They were his people. For as long as I can remember, they were his people. And he’d rather die than betray them. There,” she ended, wiping at tears with the back of her hand, “are you satisfied now?”

“I am that.” Jacko got to his feet, hiked up his trousers that had a tendency to slip low on his belly. “You’ll do.”

“I’ll do? Really. And precisely what does that mean?”

“Only a fool trusts the town drunkard, Miss Carruthers.”

“What?”

“I needed to hear the story from you, Miss Carruthers, and you were brave enough and proud enough to tell it to me.” He gave a quick tilt of his head. “And I suppose I wanted you to know that I know. You knew too much, you see, and reacted too well—on the Marsh, with that fool Diamond last night. Now I know why. Your papa may have killed himself to protect his congregation but mostly he did it to protect you. Because you were also a part of it.”

Julia sighed. “Only marginally. But, yes, I was involved from the time I was a young child. I would have stood with him, Jacko, proudly. But he didn’t give me the opportunity. I understand why he did what he did and have come to grips with his death and can even remember him fondly now. You’ll tell the others? You’ll tell Chance?”

Jacko shrugged. “Don’t see the point, do you? Unless you want to one fine day. Not as if you’ve lied to us. You lived in Hawkhurst, your papa was the vicar and now he’s dead and buried in the churchyard as the holy man he was. Oh, and Penton, his pockets full, is aboard ship and on his way to Saint Augustine in America, which he’ll learn when he eventually sobers up and looks over the rail.”

Julia’s heart leapt in her chest. “He’s gone? You did that for my father and me?”

“We protect our own here, Miss Carruthers.”

“So you no longer believe me to be a danger to…to the family?”

Then Julia had to grab hold of the chair behind her as Jacko advanced on her with his lumbering walk before bending to raise her hand to his lips. “Welcome to the family, Miss Carruthers. Chance would be more the young fool than I take him for if he let you go.”

“Julia,” she said, her mouth so dry she could barely get out the words. She still wasn’t sure quite how it had happened, but Jacko had accepted her. “Please. I’m Julia.”

Jacko’s smile suddenly didn’t seem quite so dangerous, although she doubted she’d ever be so foolish as to consider the man harmless. “All right then,” he said, nodding. And then he shouted out so unexpectedly that Julia jumped. “Waylon! Haul your singed arse back in here and fix Miss Julia’s betrothal ring. What a pitiful excuse for a smithy you are, Waylon, letting a lady stand waiting on you.”

Julia bit back a laugh as Jacko winked at her even as Waylon and his young assistant came scurrying back into the smithy.

But that didn’t mean that her hand refused to stop shaking for the whole of the time Waylon measured her finger and refit the ring…especially when she had a sudden thought: had Morgan deliberately maneuvered for her to be alone with Jacko? Had this entire meeting been planned?

But when Morgan finally joined her at the blacksmith shop, her smile was devoid of guile as she asked Julia if she wanted a piece of rock candy she then handed to her in a twist of greased white paper.

“I saw Jacko,” Julia said, accepting the sweet as the two of them waved good day to Waylon and made their way back toward the village proper.

“Did you?” Morgan remarked in seeming innocence, licking her fingers after popping a small bit of the confection into her mouth. Then she winked broadly at Julia. “Had the old warhorse come to Waylon to be re-shod?”

Julia smiled at the small joke as she wavered between two conclusions. She was overreacting to what she had romantically imagined to be a family not only rife with secrets but loyal to the death…or this really was a family rife with secrets and loyal above all to each other.

No matter which conclusion was correct, she knew she was very glad to be on the inside with the Beckets rather than classed as the enemy….

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHANCE SAT IMPATIENTLY, looking toward Becket Hall as he was rowed toward shore, having been told he was dressed like “too much the toff” to be handed an oar of his own. Four days since he’d seen the Hall. Three full days too many, to his way of thinking.

He was caught between anger and bemusement at how much he had missed Julia. Her voice, her smile, her dogged inquisitiveness. Her bravery. Even her stubbornness.

Her ability to draw him out of himself, make him look at his past again, at his choices, at his failings. At his newly discovered hopes.

His last sight of her had haunted him as he’d stood on deck on the Respite, his face turned into the wind. Her nervousness as she had complied with his wish to leave her as she’d lain half-naked and sated in her bed had stayed with him, along with the certain knowledge he had taken with him that this woman would bend, but she would not break. There was a strength in her, a quiet strength, and more than a little daring.

Being on the water again had set Chance’s heart pounding, not with the hated memories he’d expected but with the desire to have Julia standing beside him, sailing ahead of the wind. Showing her the stars by night, holding her close against his side as they raced the tide, chased the moon. Lying beside her in the captain’s cabin as gentle waves rocked them to sleep after an evening of loving…

It wasn’t just the timing of the thing—Julia coming into his life just as he returned to Becket Hall, just as he began to make peace with his past, with his family.

Or maybe it was. Perhaps Julia had entered his life precisely when he needed her, turning it upside down, questioning his responsibilities to Alice, even questioning his loyalties. And never taking a step back.

Chance swiveled on the plank seat to look back at the Respite, its sails lowered and secured, riding high in the water while firmly anchored. How cannily Ainsley had crafted her, a gentle mix of the Bermuda and the Jamaican sloop.

Over sixty feet long and twenty-one feet wide, her weight had to be close to one hundred and fifteen tons, yet her draft was only eight feet. Fast, agile with its fore and aft rigs so superior to the square-rigged Waterguard vessels.