Chapter 7 #2
But even less about the man who sank into the seat at her left, staring at the table setting as if he had forgotten how to use utensils. And yet she knew Jay in a way she’d never known anybody.
Or perhaps it was simply that he called to her in a way no one ever had. Even now, when everything in her own head was a muddle, she wanted to cradle his face in her palms and kiss the wrinkles away from his brow and promise him she would make it all right.
“Farren has been to the club several times,” Heddy explained to Effie. Her friend was the only calm one among them. “White soup to begin? How delicious. I would expect no less from you, Farren.”
“Did you know me all along?” he demanded.
“Do you think me a fool? I am very careful who I admit to my club, Lord Triton.”
Jay stared first at Effie, then Farren, with the look of a man facing the hangman’s noose. “Effie,” he croaked, “I should—”
“No.” She read his face, the despair, the noble resolution. He wanted it all out in the open. She held up her hand. “No.” Jay mustn’t tell. He mustn’t say anything.
Farren narrowed his eyes at his friend. “You let him in.”
“Because he gave me your name. And because—” Heddy sent Jay an apologetic glance— “I also know who he is.”
Effie straightened, feeling her dratted corset squeeze her ribs. “You do? You might have told me. About either of them.”
“I would have told you what I felt you should know.”
Farren glared, ignoring the soup his footman placed before him. “You promise discretion!”
“And there is a great deal I haven’t told her, my lord. I mean what I say about my premises. Absolute discretion,” Heddy said in a silken tone. “My word, this soup is delicious. My compliments to your chef.”
“Thank you,” Farren said automatically. “Would you have told me Effie was there if I asked?”
Heddy blew on her soup. “Not likely.”
Farren glared at Jay. “Did you mean to tell me,” he asked Heddy, “that someone was pursuing my bride?”
Effie found her voice. “We are not married yet.”
And she had pursued Jay. She had come at him with every small lure she had, and he had gathered her in, showing her the peaks of pleasure even when he felt he was trespassing on another man’s territory.
And now to learn the man was his friend, his school chum— She could see the knowledge eating at him like a barnacle on a crab.
Heddy leapt in to help. “Mr. Burnham met Effie all on his own, on the beach. I think it entirely accidental that they met again at my club. Or perhaps it was fated,” she mused, leaning back as the footman came forward with the remove of cold prawns. Effie had barely touched her soup.
“Fated? I told him to go.” Farren threw down his spoon. “Lord Hephaestus.”
Jay tugged at his stock as if it were buckled too tightly. His mouth moved, searching for words.
“Hephaestus was the smith of the gods,” Effie retorted. “Their artisan and craftsman, a gifted builder.”
“Lamed when Zeus threw him from Olympus.” Farren sneered.
“He wed Aphrodite, the most beautiful of all the goddesses,” Effie returned.
“Who cheated on him with Ares, god of war.” Farren watched his friend with narrowed eyes. “You were going to propose marriage to Effie? Didn’t she tell you she was promised to me?”
Jay took the wine in his glass and threw it back in one gulp. “I only learned today there was another. And I didn’t know it was you.”
“I told you last night.” Effie frowned.
Farren’s eyes flared. “What happened last night? Hold a moment, Burnham. You were going to the club to see my cousin, my future wife—”
“Oh, very well.” Jay curled his hand into a fist, knotting the linen tablecloth. “If you must know—”
“Jay!” Effie sprang to her feet as if she might throw herself at him and stop his words.
“I debauched the woman you’re going to marry.” Jay slammed his fist on the table, rattling the china dishes. “Who was only toying with me before she went along and married you!”
Farren rose from his seat, his face drawing into a snarl of fury. “You sneaking, thieving, baseborn cur—”
“I’m not going to marry you, Kent!” Effie shrieked.
That stopped him. Her cousin, the boy she had known from her birth in all his insolent and clumsy stages, caught up short and stared at her. Then he released an enormous sigh, his shoulders dropping in his tailored coat.
“Oh, thank God. I couldn’t cry off, but you can.” He stabbed a finger in the air. “You must be the one to tell everyone. They’ll fall on me like harpies.”
“I don’t care if I am a jilt.” Effie’s chest heaved as she sucked in air. “I don’t care if I never marry—”
“Oh, if you heard how this one’s been going on about you—” Farren faced his friend, his face growing thunderous once again. “You did what to her?”
“Don’t!” Effie shrieked, but her cry had no effect as Farren launched himself. Jay half-rose from his chair, but not in time to gain his feet, and the brunt of the attack sent him stumbling backward.
“Oh, you mustn’t,” Effie moaned, but they didn’t heed her. “Heddy, we must do something.”
“Let them work it out.” Heddy pushed back her chair to watch in fascination. “And may the best man win.”
Blood pounded in Effie’s ears as she watched the two men grapple.
Jay was broader and had more brawn, but Farren, taller and more slender, was slippery.
Farren was trained in the boxing and fencing salons of the gentleman, but Jay was clearly a brawler.
He merely grunted as Farren landed a punch or two, then caught the other man in a wrestler’s grip, one arm about his neck.
Farren’s eyes bulged and he gasped for air, pounding Jay’s taut bicep with his fist.
“Stop. Stop.” Effie ran forward and slipped her arm around Jay’s waist, hugging him from behind. Glory, he was strong, all muscle and flex. “Jay. He’s my cousin.”
Breathing heavily, Jay released his grip.
Farren hauled in air, then drew back his fist and landed a solid punch to Jay’s jaw.
He staggered backward into Effie’s arms and she shrieked again, losing her balance.
Somehow Jay turned mid-fall and caught her so she landed atop him rather than on the floor.
“A facer, after he’d let you go,” Heddy noted. “Hardly sporting, Lord Farren.”
“That’s for Effie.” Farren panted for breath, flexing his knuckles. “Ow. You’ve a face like one of your bricks, Burnham.”
“Jay.” Effie cradled his face, wiping away the trickle of blood at the side of his mouth. “Jay!”
He kept his eyes shut, his arms locked about her. “Shh. I’m holding the girl of my dreams. Don’t wake me.”
“You…” Effie rolled off him and swatted his arm. “I have a quarrel with you, too! Why are you so angry at me?”
He opened his eyes, and she caught her breath at the expression in his smoke gray eyes. Sheer longing, regret, and something that made her knees wobble. Something almost like adoration.
He rolled into a crouch, lithe as a cat, then gathered Effie and rose with her, holding her arms.
“Because I was eating myself up with guilt that I was betraying you with this irresistible woman I met at a pleasure club, and it was driving me mad that I wanted two women. And I needn’t have gone mad at all if you had simply told me—”
“Is it my fault you didn’t know me?”
“He’s a dunce,” Farren put in, regarding his bruised knuckles.
“You were wearing a mask, and you looked different.” Jay rubbed at her nose, and the paint came off. “There they are.”
“The girls at Miss Gregoire’s use cosmetics that aren’t made of lead or arsenic,” Effie said. “One of the previous students made the recipe.”
“She became a rather famous painter,” Heddy added.
Effie wiped beneath her eyes, trying to press away tears. “But why wouldn’t you be happy to know it was me begging for you, if you meant to ask me to marry—”
“Can you bear that I dallied with Erato when I wanted to marry Effie? It’s been eating me up. And you were merely amusing yourself with a tradesman before you went off to marry your lord—”
“No. I chose you.” She curled hands into his arms, uncaring of their audience. “I wanted you.”
“And after all, they are the same girl, so I fail to see the betrayal,” Heddy observed.
“I am a dolt. Forgive me.” Jay drew Effie into his arms.
“He don’t like surprises,” Farren said seriously. “Likes his plan. Needs all the steps written out, and then he’ll follow them, don’t you know.”
“Most sensible people do, Farren,” Heddy said.
“Well, no one ever accused me of being sensible.”
“Effie Stanier, my nymph from the sea.” Jay wiped away a tear that slid down her cheek. “You must marry me. You have to.”
Effie sniffled. “I don’t know that I wish to marry a dolt—”
He kissed her, and she melted. The tide rolled over her and swept her away and she let it carry her to that place of sweetness, of completion, of utter safety and belonging that she felt only in his arms. He was so strong and warm and he tasted of wine and the sea, and she soaked him up as if she were a dried sponge and he the water she craved, that she needed to live.
Jay swept his hands down her back to her bottom, pulling her firmly against him, and a small moan escaped her. If she were the hermit crab, he was the shell that fit her perfectly. Her home.
“Not here, you two.” Farren sounded scandalized.
“How long?” Jay raised his head, his gaze unfocused, his breath ragged. “Until our wedding day.”
“Hmm.” Effie blinked, feeling just as dazed, tossed in an eddy of delight.
She couldn’t quite believe, or catch onto, this anchor that had dropped into place before her.
“Well, my parents arrive next week. We’ll need three weeks for the banns, of course.
I’ve already been thinking about my wedding gown and trousseau, but your family—”
“Will be delighted. And will travel wherever they must. They’ll enjoy it.”
“I see pigeons, lamb cutlets, and a salmon pie,” Heddy said. “Come to the table before your dinner gets cold.”
Jay righted her chair and handed Effie into it, but took her hand across the table as soon as he’d taken his own seat. She couldn’t stop smiling at him.
“My mother will be disappointed I’m not marrying a baron,” she confided.
Farren raised his brows. “But a baron’s heir, so only a slight step down.”
Effie blinked and focused on her cousin. “What?”
Farren tucked into his slice of pie with gusto, now that the matter of family honor had been settled. “His father’s Brancaster. The Brick Baron.”
“I thought that simply a sobriquet,” Effie said. “The way you have a Canal King, or the Queen of Cakes.”
“Baron Brancaster of Holme Hall,” Farren said. “Tell them, Burnham.”
Jay gave Effie a lopsided smile. “It’s true. My father is Brancaster. But he’s still in good health, and I hope not to inherit any time soon.”
Effie’s delight melted away, sucked out like the tide. “I cannot be a zoologist and be a baron’s wife,” she wailed. “That was the problem with Farren! Well, one of many.”
“Effie, Effie.” Jay squeezed her hand. “You may do whatever you wish as my wife, and as Lady Brancaster in due time. Trust me, my family is accustomed to oddities. I am already a baron’s heir who dabbles in bricks. A baron’s lady who is a zoologist will be good for the field, I should think.”
Effie clutched his hand, her heart near bursting, all her dreams falling into place. Because of him.
“A match made at my club,” Heddy said, spearing a slice of pigeon. “Will that be good for advertising, I wonder?”
Effie’s smile came from the wild elation bubbling up within her. “We cannot tell anyone how we met, you must realize.”
The look he gave her was entranced and, yes, full of adoration. She was filled to the brim with joy.
“We met on the beach. I washed ashore, and you found and claimed me. Proper flotsam. And you’ll keep me a good long while, I hope.”
“I believe I will,” Effie said, and leaned in for his kiss.