Captain's Lady Read online

  Table of Contents

  CAPTAIN’S LADY

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  CAPTAIN’S LADY

  JAMAILA BRINKLEY

  SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

  New York

  CAPTAIN’S LADY

  Copyright©2017

  JAMAILA BRINKLEY

  Cover Design by Anna Lena-Spies

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Published in the United States of America by

  Soul Mate Publishing

  P.O. Box 24

  Macedon, New York, 14502

  ISBN: 978-1-68291-478-6

  www.SoulMatePublishing.com

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For my husband, who likes my lists.

  Acknowledgements

  I’m so happy to be able to tell Jack’s story, and I want to thank everyone who reached out to me asking for it. Don’t tell the others, but he might be my favorite, too.

  Chapter 1

  “I think I’m in trouble,” Alicia said.

  Katherine Ashe looked up at her sister from her place on the chaise in their great-aunt’s parlor. “What sort of trouble?” she asked cautiously.

  Alicia sank to the floor next to her, her movement as graceful as any she demonstrated in the ballrooms of London. She rested her golden head on her older sister’s knee, pressing the silk of Kate’s gown into her skin uncomfortably. “The bad kind,” she said.

  Kate set her book down. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific, dearest.” Alicia sniffed, and Kate felt a wet spot growing on her knee. Tears? Bad indeed. She smoothed a hand over her younger sister’s hair, feeling the soft strands begin to wrap around her fingers. “Is it money? Anthony gave us enough for this one Season, but if you—”

  “It’s not money.”

  “Is it . . . a man?” They’d been given an ultimatum at the beginning of the Season: marry, or find work. It was to be their first and only Season in London. Kate had dutifully scanned the young lordships available in the ballrooms of Mayfair and decided upon a career as a governess, or perhaps a steward’s assistant. Alicia, four years younger, had a far better chance of marrying. She was possessed of golden good looks, innate natural grace, and perhaps most importantly, a far better aptitude for listening to men who were full of themselves. Kate didn’t envy her one bit.

  “It’s . . . not exactly a man. Not anymore.” Alicia’s words were muffled in Kate’s skirts.

  “Alicia. Tell me what it is.” Kate’s tone took on the firm command her grandfather had taught her, and Alicia’s head shot up in obedience.

  The younger Ashe sister wiped her eyes with a slender finger and sniffed again. “I think I may be . . . in expectation of an interesting event,” she said finally.

  Kate stared at her. “An interesting event? Like what? Fireworks?”

  Alicia rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Kate. Don’t you speak to other women?”

  “Not if I can avoid it,” Kate said. “Or men, either. People are so . . .”

  “So inefficient?”

  “Certainly. What event?”

  “Kate. An interesting event. Of a womanly nature.” Alicia made vague gestures toward her own body, and Kate suddenly comprehended what she meant.

  “Oh. Oh,” she said, with dawning horror. “Alicia. What . . .? How?”

  “Please don’t ask me how,” Alicia said. “Please tell me you at least know that.”

  “Of course I do,” Kate snapped. “But you shouldn’t.” Good lord. Alicia was only nineteen.

  “Well, I do,” Alicia said. “In theory and practice, it turns out.”

  Kate pressed a hand to her forehead. “When can I expect your . . . friend to call? I’ll need to tell Lady Morehouse to say yes.” Their great-aunt would not be pleased.

  “You can’t,” Alicia said.

  “Can’t what?”

  “Expect him to call.”

  “What?” Kate’s whirling thoughts of hasty weddings and expenses ground to a halt.

  “He won’t be calling,” Alicia said truculently.

  Kate sat back against the chaise’s uncomfortable upholstery. Lady Morehouse’s tastes ran more toward money than comfort. “What do you mean, he won’t be calling?”

  Alicia’s eyes sparkled, and this time, Kate recognized anger, not tears. “Exactly what I said.”

  “But—”

  “Kate. I need help,” Alicia said.

  Kate stared at her sister. “Alicia, the only help I can think to give you is to get you married. And there’s only one person you ought to be marrying.” She copied her sister’s gesture, waving toward the midsection in question, then halted mid-wave. “Wait. Are you sure?”

  “About what?”

  “That you’re . . . expecting. Fireworks, so to speak.”

  Alicia smiled dryly. “Yes.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “No.”

  “But shouldn’t—”

  “Kate.” Alicia sounded exasperated. “When would I have seen a doctor that you didn’t know about?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate snapped. “You certainly found time to do at least one other thing I didn’t know about.”

  “How is this helpful?” Alicia demanded. Her lovely brows were drawn down and the elegant little chin was firmly set. “I came to you for help, and all you do is ask questions!”

  The air around them felt oddly thick, but Kate barely noticed. “Questions are an essential part of determining how to deal with a situation,” she hissed at her sister. “A situation you apparently have no worry about easily rectifying.”

  “No worry!” Alicia’s voice rose in pitch, and the tone echoed strangely in the room around them, bell-like. Neither sister noticed. “I’ve been sick as a dog, trying my best to handle this on my own so that you could pursue your own mysteri
ous plans.”

  “Handle it? It shouldn’t have happened in the first place!”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Alicia was shrieking now. “Of course it shouldn’t have happened! But it did, and all I need now is help!” On the last word, a thunderous explosion rocked the room, throwing both sisters to the ground.

  Coughing, Kate raised herself onto her forearms and shifted her weight off of Alicia, who was somehow under her. “What was that? Alicia?”

  There was no answer, but the alarmed shouting and pounding of footsteps toward the parlor told her they would have company soon. She shook her sister’s shoulder. “Alicia!”

  “Ow,” mumbled her sister. “What happened?” Blue eyes opened and met brown ones with identical expressions of confusion and fear.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “But look.” She pointed toward the mantle as she steadied both of them into sitting positions.

  Alicia’s hands rose to cover her mouth. “Ohhhh . . .”

  Lady Morehouse’s priceless collection of antique vases lay shattered on the hearth, and the wall above the mantel was blackened as though it had been burnt.

  The door slammed open, and Lady Morehouse herself stood framed in the entryway. While she wasn’t a large woman, the sister of the late Earl of Ashewell exuded a formidable aura of sheer personality, making her seem like she filled any room she entered with far more than her share of personal space. “What the devil are you two doing in here?” she demanded. Then she saw the hearth, and for the first time since they’d come to live with her six months ago, Kate saw Lady Morehouse truly speechless.

  “My lady!” A footman was trying to get past her into the room.

  Lady Morehouse held up a hand, and the man subsided. She stepped gently into the room, eyes on the hearth, then turned and shut the door in the young man’s surprised face.

  “Lady Morehouse—”

  “Aunt, we didn’t—”

  The same raised hand turned in their direction, halting both Kate and Alicia mid-sentence as they fumbled for explanations. Still silent, Lady Morehouse gathered her skirts in one hand and stepped delicately over the debris littering the floor until she reached an ornate chair, thrown askew by the force of the explosion and leaning against the wall. She righted the chair—the first manual labor of any kind Kate thought she’d ever seen the older woman perform—and straightened it meticulously into its original position, ignoring the chaos around it. She sat gracefully, arranging her skirts carefully and setting her head back against the tall, throne-like spine of the chair. Finally, she fixed her cool blue gaze upon the sisters and spoke.

  “Well?”

  They glanced at each other. Kate saw the pleading in Alicia’s eyes and sighed. “We have to tell her,” she murmured.

  “But it’s not—”

  “It probably is,” Kate said.

  “Tell me what?” Lady Morehouse’s tone was quiet but firm, reminding Kate suddenly of her grandfather in his thoughtful moments. He’d been the lady’s brother, after all.

  “Alicia is . . .” Kate paused, struggling for words.

  “I’m in trouble,” Alicia blurted once again.

  “Stand up, girl,” Lady Morehouse said.

  They both stood, brushing dust and porcelain shards off of each other’s skirts.

  Alicia glanced at Kate, who gave her a not-so-subtle push toward their aunt. They were effectively living off of the woman’s charity, hers and the new Lord Ashewell’s. They could at least stand up when she asked them to.

  “Turn around,” Lady Morehouse said. Alicia obeyed, brows drawing in once again. Kate felt the air tingling with something she couldn’t identify and found herself short of breath. “Ah. Got yourself with child, have you?”

  At that, the breath left Kate completely. “How—”

  Lady Morehouse snorted. “I’ve been alive for a long time, missy, and I’ve known a lot of young ladies, troublesome and otherwise.” She gave them each a nod— Alicia for troublesome, Kate for otherwise. “That part is obvious, and solvable. What’s not so clear is what exactly happened here.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Solvable?” Alicia’s demand cut Kate off. “What do you mean?”

  “Hush, girl,” Lady Morehouse said. “Do let me think.”

  “I will not hush,” Alicia said furiously. “You can’t just solve me. I have to be involved.”

  “The way I see it, you’ve been involved enough already,” Lady Morehouse snapped. Kate opened her mouth, and then closed it. There was something about the way their aunt was watching Alicia, as if she were waiting for something.

  “How dare you?” Alicia shouted. The air thickened abruptly once again, and Kate felt an invisible force whoosh past her as an end table exploded.

  Lady Morehouse nodded. “Just as I thought.”

  Kate laid a hand on Alicia’s arm to stop further outbursts. “What are you talking about, ma’am?”

  “You’ve got magic in you, girl,” Lady Morehouse said, pointing a finger at Alicia, who stared back uncomprehendingly.

  “Magic?”

  “The dangerous kind,” Lady Morehouse said thoughtfully. “It would be easier if you had something sweet and biddable, like healing or charm-making.”

  Kate snorted. “Ashes don’t do sweet and biddable.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Lady Morehouse, formerly Ashe, said with a wry smile. “But I think I know somebody who can help us with both of our problems.”

  Chapter 2

  “A viscount. A bloody, be-damned viscount.” Captain Jack Boone—now Lord Captain Jack Boone—kicked viciously at an upholstered ottoman in his cousin’s library.

  Thomas, Lord Westfield, hid a smile behind a glass of very fine whiskey. “It suits you,” he said mildly. “Have you seen the estate?”

  “Oh, yes. A neglected manor in benighted Cornwall, whose tenants were so delighted to have a new Lord Rothwell in residence that they wanted to bring me all of their decisions to make. As if I know anything about pig breeding, or whatever it was.”

  “Pig breeding is a serious endeavor,” said Em, Lady Westfield, with a perfectly straight face. Jack suspected she was hiding a grin with pure illusion, her particular magical gift. He’d recently learned not to play poker with the former street thief, an expensive lesson that her husband had cheerfully failed to warn him about. Some friend.

  “You’ve left London three times in the past two years, and never before that,” he said. “Do you even know what a pig looks like?”

  “Do you?” she countered.

  “They’re pink,” he mumbled. “When they aren’t muddy.”

  “If you’d paid attention to all the lessons we had growing up—” Thomas said. The Duke of Edgebourne had raised Thomas, Jack, and their friend Duncan Lowell, the Earl of Kilgoran, with diligent attention to the lessons future titles would need to know. Not that Jack had had a title at the time, or ever anticipated one.

  Jack waved a hand, cutting him off. “I paid enough attention,” he said. “I learned how to invest, and how to manage people. A ship’s captain needs people skills, not land husbandry.”

  “A viscount needs actual husbandry,” Thomas said, and Em’s smug smile wasn’t even partially hidden anymore. “You need a wife, Jack.”

  The words hit him like rocks thrown at his head, and Jack stared at his friends. “You—” he started then closed his mouth, remembering several comments he’d made about dynastic duty at both Thomas and Duncan’s weddings. Rude ones. Made with glee, and rather a lot of whiskey. “Hell,” he said.

  “That depends on who you marry.” Em rose and kissed her husband. “Do give my regards to your future bride,” she said to Jack and sailed out of the room.

  Jack put his head in his hands.

 
“Chin up.” Thomas reached over to pat him on the shoulder. “If you play your cards right, you can find yourself a wife who knows what to do with that estate of yours, you know.”

  Jack stared at him. “What?”

  “Oh, yes. Ask Mama. She’ll know which of this Season’s lovely young debs have been hiding brains, and which ones of those might have experience managing households for their doting papas, et cetera.”

  Jack frowned at his friend. “Don’t you want me to have what you have?”

  “A love match?”

  “A disgustingly happy one.”

  “Do you want that?” Thomas eyed him curiously. “You’ve certainly give the impression that you don’t.” He sat back and took a sip of his whiskey. “Or do you think you’re not capable of it?”

  “I can do anything.” The familiar phrase fell from his lips as easily as it had in childhood.

  “Hmm. Then I suggest you get yourself over to Edgebourne house and throw yourself on Mama’s mercy. She’ll make you a list. Very organized woman, Her Grace.”

  “When did you become a matchmaker?” Jack demanded.

  Thomas smiled. “When I got married, I suspect.”

  “Go away,” Jack said.

  “I’ll send the Duchess over to you, shall I?”

  “If you do, I’ll set fire to your library.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Jack held a low opinion of the duties required of the nobility, but he had a firm grasp on gratitude and family. So after he left the Westfields’ cozy townhome, he dutifully presented himself at Edgebourne House.

  The Duke and Duchess were in separate meetings—he with a representative of the Crown, something about the regency, or the upcoming coronation of the young Queen. She was with an agent from the Home Office, and Jack didn’t even bother to ask what the meeting was about. Agent himself or no, he certainly didn’t have the clearance to discuss it. While he waited for his foster parents to finish, he made free with the cold luncheon spread set out in the dining room.