Prologue

Once upon a time, in a nameless foreign land, a soldier was marching home from war. The war he’d fought had waged for generations. It had been waged, in fact, for so many years that in time, the people fighting it had completely forgotten the reason that they fought. One day, the soldiers looked at the men they battled and realized they did not know why they wanted to kill them. It took the officers a little longer to come to the same conclusion, but eventually they had been prevailed upon, and all the soldiers on both sides of the war had laid down their arms. Peace had been declared.

So now our soldier marched home on a lonely road. But since the war had gone on for so many years, he no longer had a home to march to, and really he marched to nowhere. Still, he had a pack with some food on his back, the sun shone overhead, and the road he’d chosen was a straight and easy one. He was content with his lot in life.

His name was Laughing Jack. . . .

—from LAUGHING JACK

Chapter One

Jack marched down the road, whistling merrily, for he was a man without a care in the world. . . .

—from LAUGHING JACK

London, England

May 1765

There are few things more unfortunate in a man’s life than being thrown over by one’s prospective bride on one’s wedding day, Jasper Renshaw, Viscount Vale, reflected. But being thrown over on one’s wedding day whilst suffering the lingering aftereffects of a night of heavy drinking . . . well, that had to set some kind of damnable record for bad luck.

“I’m so s-s-s-sorry!” Miss Mary Templeton, the prospective bride in question, wailed at a pitch guaranteed to bring a man’s scalp right off his skull. “I never meant to deceive you!”

“Quite,” Jasper said. “I expect so.”

He had an urge to rest his aching head in his hands, but this was obviously a highly dramatic point in Miss Templeton’s life, and he felt it wouldn’t show the proper gravity for the moment. At least he was sitting down. There was one straight-backed wooden chair in the church vestry, and he’d commandeered it in a very ungentlemanly manner when first they’d entered.

Not that Miss Templeton seemed to mind.

“Oh, my lord!” she cried, presumably to him, although considering where they were, she might’ve been calling on a far higher Presence than he. “I could not help myself, truly I couldn’t. A frail wreck is woman! Too simple, too warmhearted to withstand the gale of passion!”

Gale ld „of passion? “No doubt,” Jasper muttered.

He wished he’d had time for a glass of wine this morning—or two. It might’ve settled his head a bit and helped him to understand what exactly his fiancée was trying to tell him—beyond the obvious fact that she no longer wished to become the fourth Viscountess Vale. But he, poor dumb ass, had tottered out of bed this morning expecting nothing worse than a tedious wedding followed by a protracted wedding breakfast. Instead, he’d been met at the church doors by Mr. and Mrs. Templeton, the former looking grim, the latter suspiciously nervous. Add to that, his lovely bride with fresh tears on her face, and he’d known, somewhere deep in his dark and heavy soul, that he would not be eating wedding cake today.

He smothered a sigh and eyed his erstwhile bride-to-be. Mary Templeton was quite lovely. Dark shining hair, bright blue eyes, a fresh creamy complexion, and nicely plump titties. He’d been rather looking forward to the plump titties, he thought morosely as she paced in front of him.

“Oh, Julius!” Miss Templeton exclaimed now, throwing out her lovely, round arms. It was really too bad that the vestry was such a little room. Her drama needed a larger venue. “If only I didn’t love you so!”

Jasper blinked and leaned forward, conscious that he must’ve missed something, because he didn’t remember this Julius. “Ah, Julius . . . ?”

She turned and widened her robin’s-egg-blue eyes. Really, they were rather magnificent. “Julius Fernwood. The curate in the town near Papa’s country estate.”

He was being thrown over for a curate?

“Oh, if you could see his gentle brown eyes, his butter-yellow hair, and his grave demeanor, I know you would feel as I do.”

Jasper arched an eyebrow. That seemed most unlikely.

“I love him, my lord! I love him with all my simple soul.”

In an alarming move, she dropped to her knees before him, her pretty, tearstained face upturned, her soft white hands clutched together between her rounded bosom. “Please! Please, I beg of you, release me from these cruel bonds! Give me back my wings so that I may fly to my true love, the love I will cherish in my heart no matter if I am forced to marry you, forced into your arms, forced to endure your animal lusts, forced to—”

“Yes, yes,” Jasper cut in hastily before she could enlarge on her portrait of him as a slavering beast bent on ravishment. “I can see that I’m no match for butter- colored hair and a curate’s living. I retire from the field of matrimony. Please. Go to your true love. Felicitations and all that.”

“Oh, thank you, my lord!” She seized his hands and pressed moist kisses on them. “I will be forever grateful, forever in your debt. If ever—”

“Quite. Should I ever need a butter-haired curate or a curate’s wife, et cetera, et cetera. I’ll keep the thought in mind.” With a sudden inspiration, Jasper reached into his pocket and drew out a handful of half crowns. They’d been meant to throw to the rabble outside after the wedding. “Here. For your nuptials. I wish you every happiness with, er, Mr. Fernwood.”

He poured the coins into her hands.

“Oh!” Miss Templeton’s eyes grew even larger. “Oh, thank you!”

With a last moist kiss to his hand, she skipped from the room. Perhaps she realized that the gift of several pounds’ worth of coins was an impulse on his part and that if she stayed longer, he might rethink his largess.

Jasper sighed, took out a large linen handkerchief, and wiped his hands. The vestry was a little room, the walls the same ancient gray stone as the church he’d planned to be married in. Dark wood shelves lined one wall, filled with the detritus of the church: old candlesticks, papers, Bibles, and pewter plates. Above, a window with small diamond panes sat high on the wall. He could see the blue sky with a single puffy white cloud floating serenely. A lonely little room to be once more left alone. He replaced the handkerchief in his waistcoat pocket, noticing absently that a button was loose. He’d have to remember to tell Pynch. Jasper leaned his elbow on the table beside his chair and cradled his head, eyes closed.

Pynch, his man, made a wonderful pick-me-up to settle a sore head after a night of overindulgence. Soon he could go home and take the brew, perhaps go back to bed. Goddammit, but his head hurt, and he couldn’t leave just yet. Voices rose from outside the vestry, echoing off the vaulted ceiling of the old stone church. From the sound, Miss Templeton was meeting with some paternal resistance to her romantic plan. A corner of Jasper’s mouth kicked up. Perhaps her father wasn’t as swayed by butter-yellow hair as she. In any case, he’d far rather face charging Frenchies than the family and guests outside.

He sighed and stretched his long legs before him. Thus was six months’ hard work undone. Six months was the amount of time he’d taken to court Miss Templeton. A month to find a suitable lass—one from a good family, not too young, not too old, and pretty enough to bed. Three months to carefully court, flirting at balls and salons, taking her for rides in his carriage, buying her sweets and flowers and little fripperies. Then the question put to her, a satisfactory answer, and the chaste kiss on a virginal cheek. After that, the only thing left had been the calling of the banns and various purchases and arrangements made for the upcoming blissful nuptials.

What, then, had gone wrong? She’d seemed perfectly complacent to his plans. Had never once before this morning voiced any doubts. Indeed, when presented with pearl and gold earrings, one might even go so far as to say she’d been ecstatic. Whence, then, this sudden urge to marry a butter-haired curate?

This problem of losing fiancées would never have happened to his elder brother, Richard, had he lived long enough to seek his own viscountess. Perhaps it was him, Jasper thought morbidly. Something in him that was anathema to the fairer sex—at least when it came to matrimony. One couldn’t help but make note of the fact that this was the second time in less than a year that he’d been handed his congé. Of course, the first time it’d been Emeline, who—let us be fair, here—was more sister than lover. Nevertheless, a gentleman might very well—

The sound of the vestry door creaking open interrupted Jasper’s thoughts. He opened his eyes.

A tall, slim woman hesitated in the doorway. She was a friend of Emeline’s—the one whose name Jasper could never remember.iv height="0%">

“I’m sorry, did I wake you?” she asked.

“No, merely resting.”

She nodded, looked quickly over her shoulder, and shut the door behind her, closeting herself quite improperly with him.

Jasper raised his eyebrows. She’d never struck him as the dramatic sort, but then his perception in this area was obviously faulty.

She stood very straight, her shoulders square, her chin lifted ever so slightly. She was a plain woman, with features that a man would be hard-pressed to remember—probably why he couldn’t remember her name now, come to think of it. Her light hair was an indeterminate color between blond and brown, and worn in a knot at the back of her head. Her eyes were a nondescript brown. Her dress was a grayish brown, with an ordinary, square-cut bodice that revealed a meager bosom. The skin there was rather fine, Jasper noted. It was that translucent bluish-white that was often compared to marble. If he peered closer, no doubt he would be able to trace the veins that ran beneath the pale, delicate skin.

Instead, he raised his eyes to her face. She’d stood there, unmoving, as he’d examined her, but a faint flush was now visible high on her cheekbones.

The sight of her discomfiture, however slight, made him feel a cad. His words, in consequence, were rather sharp. “Is there some way in which I can assist you, ma’am?”

She answered with a question of her own. “Is it true that Mary will not marry you?”

He sighed. “It appears that she has set her heart on capturing a curate, and a mere viscount will no longer do.”

She didn’t smile. “You do not love her.”

He spread his hands. “Sadly true, though it marks me as a blackguard to confess it.”

“Then I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh?”

She clasped her hands in front of her and did the impossible. She straightened farther. “I wonder if you might marry me instead.”

MELISANDE FLEMING MADE herself stand still and look Lord Vale in the eye, steadily and without any hint of girlish fluster. She wasn’t a girl, after all. She was a woman in her eight and twentieth year, well past the age of orange blossoms and spring weddings. Well past the hope of happiness, in fact. But it seemed that hope was a hardy thing, almost impossible to beat down.

What she had just proposed was ridiculous. Lord Vale was a wealthy man. A titled man. A man in the prime of his life. In short, a man who could have his pick of simpering girls, both younger and more beautiful than she. Even if he had just been left at the altar for a penniless curate.

So Melisande braced herself for laughter, scorn, or—worst of all—pity.

Instead, Lord Vale simply looked at her. Perhaps he hadn’t heard. His beautiful blue eyes were a trifle bloodshot, and from the way he’d been holding his head when she entered the room, leded the she suspected that he might have overcelebrated his impending nuptials the night before.

He lounged in his chair, his long muscular legs sprawled before him, taking up much more space than he should. He stared at her with those shockingly bright green-blue eyes. They were luminescent—even whilst bloodshot—but they were the only thing about him that could be called lovely. His face was long, creased with deep lines around the eyes and mouth. His nose was long, too, as well as overlarge. His eyelids drooped at the corners as if he were perpetually sleepy. And his hair . . . actually, his hair was rather nice, curly and thick, and a lovely reddish brown color. It would’ve looked boyish, perhaps even effeminate, on any other man.