Grant rose to pour them another drink. “I hope your journey will grow tiresome and we see you back here before too long,” he said, returning with the filled glasses. “Life’s never dull when you’re around, Jack.”
“Only because I drag you away from your beloved library and your fusty old tomes.”
Grant smiled. “I’m not sure if danger is attracted to you, or you’re attracted to danger. But I take some comfort in the fact that you know how to deal with most situations.”
With a rueful smile, Jack touched the graze from Renard’s ball on his upper arm, which still stung. “Not always.”
“Here’s to a safe journey.” Grant raised his glass of claret.
“Thank you. I’ll endeavor to write when I reach Ireland.” Jack grinned. “Good luck with negotiating the marriage mart.”
Grant shook his head with a wry twist of his lips. “Mother becomes more insistent by the day. But it will be an extraordinary woman to want to live as I choose to.”
Jack lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps you will fall deeply in love and emerge from your self-imposed isolation.”
Grant grunted.
Jack wondered if Grant would ever recover from his heartbreaking past. He hoped his cousin would not settle for a milk-and-water miss, a young debutante with no spirit. He needed a passionate, fiery woman to shake him up and drag him away from his books.
The next morning, as Jack prepared to leave, a letter from Altheawas delivered. He resisted reading it, tucking the missive into his kit. After a final word to his staff, he rode along the Holyhead Road toward Wales.
Hours later, he stopped for the night beneath an oak because the weather was warm and the skies overhead still clear. He tended to Arian’s needs, then rolled out his bedding beneath the sheltering branches of the towering tree. Jack leaned against the trunk, enjoying the quiet while breathing in the smells of grass and earth, along with the scents of wild rose, chamomile, beechwood and bramble, which carried on the breeze.
He took out Althea’s letter and read it before the gathering dusk obliterated the words. He’d been afraid that if he’d read it sooner, he might weaken and go to her.
There was gratitude and regret in every line. Althea was pleased to be home in Oxfordshire once more with her dog and spending her time repotting neglected plants. Jack would be in her thoughts every day and every lonely night. “You are a very brave man, Jack Ryder,” she wrote. “But are you brave enough to defy convention? I love you with all my heart, my darling. Whilst I while away the days and months, I shall wait in hope you’ll return to me.”
Jack wished he could be there with her. But it would not do. Any day now, a whippet pup named Brandy would be delivered to her with Jack’s hope she would care for him for a while. Grant had volunteered to make the journey. He would hand her Jack’s letter with his promise he would be back before the year was out and would call to see her.
Jack tucked her letter away with a sad tug at his heart. He would think of her day and night until they met again.
Epilogue
Seven months later…
Jack returned toLondon from his journey, which had taken him first to Ireland to view the place where he had been born, thence to deliver Lady Erina’s parcel to her cousin in Naas. After tea and freshly baked Irish soda bread dripping with jam and cream, he’d toured Mrs. Leahy and her new husband’s small farm, admiring her pigs, then, with the woman’s bulky package to Lady Erina—a knitted shawl, he was told—in his portmanteau, he’d left Ireland to visit his businesses, first to northern England and thence to Dover. And though he had enjoyed special moments of quiet pleasure and meeting interesting people along the way, all the while, Jack had been pulled home, in his heart and mind. But what would he find? His businesses had taken him away for longer than he had wished.
Among the correspondence awaiting him was one on fine paper bearing His Majesty’s embossed crown. It was an official letter from King George’s secretary. With a sharp intake of breath, he sat down in his library to read it.
It stated that King George IV had learned of Jack’s vanquishing of the French agent. Jack rubbed his jaw. Who had told him? He smiled. It must have been Bascombe. A ceremony would be held on the twenty-fourth of next month, where the king would bestow a knighthood on Jack.
Jack threw back his head and laughed. “If only you could be hereto see that, Father,” he said aloud. “I’ve finally become a gentleman.” He sobered. This meant a great deal to him for one very special reason. And he couldn’t wait another day to ride north to Althea. But was she still free? Or had some lucky noble, with an ancestry that stretched back to the signing of the Magna Carta, snatched her up?
As Harry and Lady Erina were still away on the Continent, Jack kept the parcel for their return. Devon returned from Albany to work for him and considered Jack’s beard a worthy challenge, which he dealt with efficiently. “You’ll feel a good deal lighter, Captain,” he observed as he neatened Jack’s side whiskers and cut inches from his hair, leaving it short and wavy. Dressed as a gentleman again, Jack left the city and drove his phaeton to Burford in Oxfordshire.
He was nervous, uncomfortably like an eager youth, when he finally guided his horses along the drive leading to the Elizabethan manor house built of Cotswold stone.
Jack tossed the reins to a footman, who had rushed out to greet him. “Tell a groom to see to the horses. There’s a good fellow.” He walked over to speak to the butler, who waited at the open door.
“Captain Ryder. To see Lady Althea.” Jack handed the dour fellow his card.
“Peel, sir.” The butler’s eyes visibly warmed, and he bowed. “Yes, Captain Ryder, we have been expecting you. Her ladyship told me you were expected.”
“Oh, and when was that?”
He raised scraggy, gray eyebrows. “That would have been a month or two ago, and several times since.”
Jack grinned. “Then I’m late. Am I in trouble?”
