The Carolina coastline grew more and more distant as Adam watched from the ship’s railing. He hadn’t bothered when they were leaving port. Adam hadn’t enjoyed the bustle and noise of a city for years now, but—once they’d sailed far enough out to give a view of the labyrinth of inlets and islands he’d come to love—he’d come up to the deck to say good-bye.
Crumpled in his fist was the letter he’d received from his father. It wasn’t long. They’d never had much to say to each other—especially not since he’d sent Adam away in exile—and the Earl of Clairborne didn’t mince words. Not even when he was turning his son’s entire life upside down.
The land has been sold back to the crown. Come home at once.
Nine words that ruined everything Adam had spent the last ten years building. Four that sent him into a fury. The Earl might as well have disowned him for all the help Adam had received since being banished to the colonies, and now he claimed the right to once again order Adam about like a pawn on a chessboard?
The tittering of female laughter floated toward him on the breeze. Adam looked over to realize he’d gained the attention of two female passengers posted farther down the railing.
“. . . can’t be a native. Look at his blonde hair . . .”
“. . . dressed like a gentleman, but his skin is so brown . . .”
Adam looked down at his hands. They were browned from the sun—from long days spent working the land and earning the respect of the men who worked with him. For him. What would happen to those men? To his neighbors? To his friends? There had been no notice. Just a curt letter and suddenly the place that had been his home since his twentieth birthday wasn’t his any longer.
He blamed himself. Adam knew what the old man wanted. There had been other letters from his mother over the years suggesting he come home. Letters suggesting it was past time he find a wife. Adam had never expected they would sell the land out from under him to force it.
If he had anything of his own, he would have stayed. But, like a dutiful son, like a fool, he’d stayed true to the pretense they’d used when they sent him away. He was in the Carolina holdings to manage the family interests. For ten years, Adam had kept up the lie. After the first year, when he’d fallen in love with the land and with having a purpose, it had become the truth.
Adam’s letter hadn’t been the only one his father had sent, just the last one. By the time it arrived, all of the accounts and lines of credit had been frozen. All of the profits he’d accumulated were trapped in the family accounts and he was banned from accessing them. Even his passage back to London had been paid in advance through a third party. If he weren’t so angry, Adam might admit that it was cleverly done.
He had no choice but to go home but he’d be damned if he would stay. Whatever it took, Adam would find a way to get the land back and return. He wouldn’t betray the trust of the men he’d worked beside for a decade. The Earl of Clairborne might not flinch at uprooting honest men in a ploy to bring his son to heel, but Adam wasn’t about to sit by and be reckless with men’s lives. He wasn’t the same boy that had left England ten years ago.
“The female passengers seem quite taken with you, Lord Clairborne.” The Captain came to stand beside Adam at the rail. They’d made open water and his expertise was no longer required at the helm.
“If they know what’s good for them, they’ll recover from it quickly.”
The captain gave him a sideways look. “You’re not interested in the attention of beautiful women?”
“No,” Adam said. That was how the whole trouble had started in the first place.
***
Jane was blind, trapped in complete darkness. A boot heel sounded against the stone to her right. Her head snapped to follow it. The air just behind her left ear moved. She spun in that direction. A shove to her shoulder knocked her off balance and she flailed into the unknown coming up with a fistful of . . . settee cushion?
A chuckle came from across the room.
“I know that was you, Charlie.” Jane righted herself.
“It’s not Blind Man’s Bluff without the buff.”
“You don’t have to shove so hard.” Jane fumbled a circumspect path in his direction.
Parlour games were a regular diversion in the Bailey house growing up. Jane knew from experience that her brother couldn’t resist teasing her, especially when she pouted. If she kept him talking long enough, she could corner him and claim her victory.
Suddenly, a swish of skirts was heard perilously close to her location. She leapt in their direction, crying out with triumph when her hand closed around a silk-clad shoulder. Jane pulled the blindfold off to see who she had caught.
“Damnation,” Hannah cursed. “I’m slow as an oxcart,”
“You’re with child,” Jane soothed.
Hannah rubbed the small of her back. “Well it’s exceedingly inconvenient. How is a person supposed to do anything swelled up to the size of a house?”
“They’re not supposed to do anything. They’re supposed to take their husband’s sage advice and spend the ordeal in blessed repose while adoring clansmen wait on them hand and foot.” Lord Rhone did not look up from the chess game he was engaged in with his cousin, Lord Dalreoch.
“I’m not going to lie about enciente for the better part of a year,” Hannah argued with her husband, not for the first time. “Not anytime, but certainly not through my very first Christmas celebrations.”
“I don’t blame you, dear.” Aunt Mathilda climbed down from the armchair she had been standing on.
Charlie stepped out from behind a suit of armor. “Thank God. I was running out of ideas.”
Deidre and Tristan hopped down from the windowsills.
“Does this mean I won?” Fiona, Lord Rhone’s younger sister, rolled out from under the settee.
Jane gaped at them. “Was everyone cheating except Hannah?”
Her friend blushed inspecting an invisible wrinkle in her skirts. “I tried to climb the windowsill, but Deidre beat me to it.”
“For your own safety,” Lady Dalreoch said.
“You’re all horrible,” Jane declared. “I refuse to play any more games with you because you do not play fair.”
Mathilda patted her niece on the shoulder. “It’s probably not wise for us to blindfold Hannah and send her crashing into furniture anyway. Why don’t we call the game and enjoy drinks around the fire?”
Oh good, more drinking. Because they hadn’t done enough of that already. Honestly, between the cheating and the whiskey they might as well be spending Christmas at a dockside pub.
“Why don’t we each open a present instead?” Jane suggested.
“Can we?” Fiona asked. “I want Gavan to open mine.”
It was agreed that they would all exchange one present—over drinks, of course—and the gathering broke apart as soon as the chess game finished to go claim their chosen presents from where they were hidden. They couldn’t be placed in a pile, like any normal Christmas. Not with this lot. They had to be hidden to ensure no one peeked.
“While they’re gone there’s something I need to tell you,” Charlie told her ominously.
“What is it?”
He took her hands, leading her to the settee and replacing the cushion. “I think you should sit down.”
“All right.” She sat. “Tell me.”
“I invested all the money we’ve made working for Lord Rhone.” Charles said.
Her brother at least had the courtesy to look sheepish. Seven years ago their father had invested the family fortune to the hilt, losing it all when the South Sea Bubble burst. Jane hadn’t explicitly told him not to invest the money she made as a companion. She hadn’t felt comfortable telling him what to do with it when he had been supporting her all these years, but quite frankly she had assumed he would know better.
She sighed. It really wasn’t all that bad. She wished he hadn’t done it, but they each had secure positions here with Hannah and Lord Rhone. “We’ll make it back, Charlie. It will be all right.”
“Make it back? You have it all wrong. We made a killing.” He leaned close, willing her to understand. “I did it, Jane. We don’t have to work anymore. I can become a gentleman of leisure. You can have a real season—not like the mess we made of the last one. Hell, we might even be able to re-open the house in Sussex!”
It took a moment for what he was saying to register. When it did, Jane was consumed with a rising sense of dread. A real season in London, with everyone looking at her. With everyone talking about her first season and the way they’d left halfway through in disgrace. What if she saw Geoff? She couldn’t. She couldn’t do it.
“That’s wonderful, Charlie,” she lied.
“Isn’t it though?” he exclaimed. “I’ve already broken the news to Aunt Matty, but I’m sure you two will need to do all sorts of womanly planning that I don’t know about.”
“Surely it can wait until mother and father come home.” Relief settled over Jane like a blanket. Lord and Lady Bailey were living rough out in the colonies, pursuing fortune and adventure. It would take months for word to reach them and for them to travel back to England.
“I wrote them this summer. Father was on about some sort of issue with the corn and a hard winter? They said they’re not sure when they’ll have time to make it back, so we should proceed without them.”
“Oh.” Just like that the relief drained away. “I might be too old, Charlie. It’s been so long . . .”
“You’re four and twenty. It’s not the usual, certainly, but you’re hardly on the shelf.” Charles looked at her, puzzled. “You’re happy about this, aren’t you, Janey?”
She pasted a very convincing smile on her face. “Of course I am. I’m just . . . in shock is all.”
He jumped, too excited to sit still. “I told you I’d do it. I told you I’d get our lives back.”
“Yes, you did.” Jane needed to get out of the room, away from his excitement, before the walls started closing in on her. “I’ll just go tell Aunt Matty you’ve told me.”
She left her brother, grinning like a lunatic, and went upstairs to her Aunt’s room.
As soon as Mathilda saw her, her aunt put down the present she’d been digging out of the armoire. “He’s told you, then.”
Jane nodded.
“Jane, dear, if you don’t want to go to London, tell him.”
Jane shook her head. “I can’t. He’s so proud of what he’s done. And it’s wonderful. It truly is.”
“You’re white as a sheet just from the news. If you don’t tell him—”
“No,” Jane said. She straightened her spine. “I won’t ruin this for him. I haven’t seen him this happy in years.”
“And what about you?”
“I’ll manage. I always do.” She would. She would manage, just as she always did.
Aunt Mathilda didn’t appear convinced.