Page 19 of Match Made in Heaven (The Cricket Club #5)

J ack shoved his hands in his pockets, releasing a long breath while eyeing the daunting pile of correspondence crowding his brother’s large, mahogany desk.

“Why is it so quiet today, Carlisle?” he asked the butler, who stood a polite few feet away along the bookcase that lined the wall of the duke’s study.

“Quiet, my lord?” As usual, Carlisle’s voice came out passive and unaffected. Jack could have told the unbothered man that his jacket was on fire and his voice would have sounded exactly the same.

Jack cocked his head, one side of his mouth twitching up in a wry half-smile. “You know what I mean.”

The butler returned a barely there nod. “Miss Ella ventured to town today. She informed your mother that she had a meeting.”

“A meeting?”

“A meeting, my lord,” Carlisle repeated. “So, that must be the reason you think it’s quieter.”

“Hmm,” Jack answered, trying (and failing) to sound as indifferent as his brother’s loyal man.

His father’s loyal man as well. Carlisle had the good fortune to be one of those people who never seemed to age.

Jack had known him since he was a boy and didn’t notice a difference in the butler between now and then.

It had to be the hair. Carlisle’s was white, snow white, and it had always been that way.

Scrutinizing a man’s advancing age was difficult when he’d always seemed old.

Carlisle nodded to the correspondence. “Should we get to it, my lord?”

Jack squinted, painfully inspecting the unopened letters with one eye. There was no telling what was in that pile. This was what Sinclair was for, damn it! The last thing Jack wanted to do was dip his toe into his brother’s ducal affairs—and not -so-ducal affairs.

“Do I have to read all of them, Carlisle?” Jack asked. “Surely all the important letters are sent to his business manager?”

“Some, my lord, but not all,” the butler responded evenly. “Your brother likes to stay on top of things. He is incredibly vigilant when it comes to the title and its responsibilities.” He paused, his calm veneer finally cracking. “Despite what some people say.”

Yes, what people said. About Oliver’s drinking, whoring, and the myriad other vices that Jack didn’t know about but assumed he had.

But, damn it, that was his brother’s business.

Jack had no right to pry, and yet here he was in Oliver’s office, doing just that.

But every ship needed steering, even one as trained and well looked after as the duke’s.

“Fine,” Jack said grimly. He rounded the desk and took a seat, rifling through the letters with an impatient hand. “But I’m only opening the ones that seem pressing. The rest can wait for Oliver.”

“Of course, my lord.”

Over the next fifteen minutes, Jack came to the annoying realization that everyone who sent a letter to a duke thought it was pressing.

Bills, bills, bills. From the tailor, the modiste, the jeweler, the flower shop…

Oliver led a merry life, there was no question, but Jack couldn’t help being a little disgusted by the profligate spending.

Sinclair could have five new clerks from the money Oliver spent in one month at the flower shop alone.

And if people weren’t demanding that the duke settle his debts, they were accosting him for handouts.

Charity after charity begged for donations, most asking that Oliver continue the generosity that he’d doled out the previous year.

Jack’s ire was tempered a little at this.

His brother may be a cad and a rogue, maybe even a libertine, but his heart was always in the right place.

His heart.

Jack tapped the sharp edge of a manilla envelope against the shiny, polished desk, letting his mind wander. Had the flowers Oliver ordered been delivered to Ella’s residence? What about the jewelry? Had Oliver purchased a ring for his soon-to-be duchess?

What about the modiste? Ella’s parents would hardly allow the duke to send her clothing. Were they a surprise for a later date, or were they intended for some other lucky woman?

Jack didn’t know what he hated more, the idea of Oliver buying delicate bits of lace for Ella or doing it for someone else behind her back.

And this was the problem. The woman wasn’t even standing in the same vicinity as him, and she still plagued him. The house wasn’t quieter with her gone; it was louder. Because it left a vacuum for his ungainly thoughts to grow and fester, always, always, always coming back to Ella.

“My lord?”

Jack blinked, realizing that the crisp letter in his hand had been demolished into a crinkly ball.

“Shite, sorry, Carlisle. I got lost there for a moment.” He took his time smoothing the envelope back into a respectable shape until he could read the address on the back.

“St Bridget’s Orphanage,” he mused, tossing it to the side. Asking for another donation, no doubt.

But when Jack reached for the next envelope on the stack, he saw that it was also from the same orphanage. As was the one under it. And the one after that.

He lifted his brows at the butler. “Demanding nuns, aren’t they?”

Carlisle didn’t laugh. Which wasn’t unusual, but it still gave Jack pause. As did the butler’s starched demeanor. He didn’t know if the man’s spine could snap any straighter—but it did.

Jack held the envelope up toward the butler. “What’s this about?”

“I am not aware of its contents, my lord.”

Jack frowned. That was a tight go-around if he’d ever heard one. He tried again. “Have you been aware of its contents before?”

“Perhaps, my lord. A long time ago.”

Jack’s shoulders slumped. He was not in the mood for a mystery, especially one that made his unflappable butler… well, flap.

Muttering, he tore open the envelope and ripped out its contents. It was only a matter of seconds before Jack’s frown morphed into a glower. And only a minute before the cursing began to trip from his furious tongue.

“Fuck!” he hollered, erupting from the chair. He pointed a finger at the butler. “You and I are going to talk when I get back.”

The butler nodded as Jack marched out of the room, his “Of course, my lord,” as calm and unconcerned as ever.

*

It reeked of soap—and not the good kind. Not the heady, soft, flowery aroma that followed Ella around wherever she went and lingered for long, tantalizing minutes after. This smell was caustic, acidic, the kind that made your eyes water and your nose burn.

St. Bridget’s Orphanage also held the unappealing aroma of sad, unwanted children. Jack had never considered that something like that could give off a scent. Now he knew differently.

“Many brats have black hair,” he declared, standing in the middle of a large, colorless room made small by the ridiculous number of beds crammed in rows on either side of him. He angled his head to the nun standing at his right. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Mother Agnes’s eyes narrowed slightly. It was expertly done. Somehow, the nun managed to convey utter disdain for Jack’s apparent stupidity while also pitying him for it.

“That’s true,” she replied coolly, turning her attention to the child in question.

The little girl sat on her thin, little bed in the far corner, ostensibly combing a tattered doll’s few remaining hairs with her fingers.

“But most children don’t come to us with notes saying they’re the Duke of Winchester’s bastards. ”

Jack clenched his jaw. Hearing his brother’s name used in such a crude manner was intolerable, especially when Oliver wasn’t there to defend himself. “Still,” he remarked, desperately trying to keep his frustration in check, “it’s hardly proof.”

“You’re absolutely right, my lord,” Mother Agnes said, her voice taking on a defeatist quality that immediately put Jack on edge.

“All I have is a piece of paper that the girl held in her hand when she was placed in our care. I chose to believe it, because I had no reason not to. I would never say that St. Bridget’s Orphanage is an expert on handling children born on the wrong side of the blanket; however, we do have great experience, as I’m sure you can understand. ”

Jack nodded curtly.

The nun went on. “And I believe the letter to be credible.”

Jack glanced down at the letter in his hand. The nun had foisted it upon him the second he stormed into the orphanage asking for answers. It wasn’t so much that Jack didn’t believe it. He just didn’t want to.

“I hear the mother was quite good at her craft,” the nun said.

“I’ll have to take other people’s word for it.

I don’t have much of an ear for opera.” She leaned over the letter, nearly poking Jack’s eye with her wide, winglike cornette.

“Apparently, after she died, friends watched over the little girl, but that only lasted a year before the money ran out. The money the duke had initially settled on the mother.”

This was the second letter of the day that Jack nearly gripped to death. Taking a deep breath, he relinquished his hold. “My brother would never do that. He would never willingly give up a child. I don’t care if it was a mistake. I don’t care who or what the mother was.”

For the first time since they’d met, the nun’s tone became wistful, plaintive. “Perhaps you didn’t know your brother as well as you thought you did.”

“No.” Jack’s fury collided with the woman’s pragmatism. But it was like hitting a steel wall—nothing would dent her opinion. “No,” he repeated. “My brother would never be ashamed of a child. He’s many things, but he’s… he’s not that.”

Mother Agnes backed away, once more leveling Jack with an expression filled with disappointment and compassion.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.

I only know what’s in your hand. After the child was born, the mother went to the duke asking for money and help, and he settled her with a tidy sum.

Apparently, it did not last, and the friend of the mother’s couldn’t keep the child any longer. Now, she’s here.”

A tight band of tension crowded around Jack’s head.

Nothing the nun was telling him was unusual.

Men from his circle did things like this all the time.

Unwanted children were taken care of and rarely heard from again.

But Oliver wasn’t like most men. He wasn’t like those men . He was a fucking duke.

He was… not a duke ten years ago.

Jack flipped the paper over in vain, hoping that the answer to the mystery was hidden on the opposite side. No such luck. “It says the mother went to the duke,” he muttered to himself. “Not Oliver. The duke. ”

Could the woman have gone to Jack’s father for help? And if that was the case, could Oliver still not know that there was a young girl in this world who was thought to be his daughter?

“This is all beside the point,” Mother Agnes announced. Gone was the empathy, replaced with a businesslike, cold demeanor. “Will you be taking her today? Or, at the very least, leaving a donation?”

A quick look at the nun’s hands showed that her nails were short and clean, stumpy. So why did it feel like she’d just clawed Jack’s chest, opening up skin?

Mother Agnes took his arm and guided him from the room, toward a dark corridor that led back to her office.

One last glance showed the girl still on the bed, holding her hand out, blocking a taller, heavier girl from trying to take the doll.

Jack rounded the corner before he saw the shite situation play out.

The chattering and limp laughter of children stretched away the more they walked, their footsteps filling the vacuum of the lonely, dimly lit hall.

“I can see this is all new to you, my lord,” the nun said, keeping her steady hand on his.

“But, again, let me remind you that it’s not new to us.

If you don’t know how much of a donation to leave, we would be happy to guide your conscience in this time. ”

Jack searched the nun’s face. Her expression was placid yet assured, buoyed by experience in these situations, dealing with men such as himself. Men with guilty consciences. Men who lived lives where right and wrong were mere suggestions, something nebulous and blurry along the horizon.

As Jack sat in the seat offered to him in the office, it became clear that Mother Agnes had known from the beginning that he would not be bringing the girl home with him.

It didn’t matter how many years he’d spent at sea—the stench of being highborn still stuck to him.

The rancid smell of money and lack of accountability.

Just another lord dealing with another bastard.

What would Oliver do? Jack asked himself, racking his brain for the right answer.

The only true answer. But this whole episode had shaken him to his core, shattered what he thought he knew about his older brother, and his father.

And Jack was not his brother’s keeper, no matter what his mother declared.

He cleared his throat. “Thank you, Mother Agnes,” he said, avoiding the knowing look she returned. “That would be very kind of you.”

A grim smile was his answer. It offered no comfort. The smile was like one between co-conspirators, a verbal handshake between partners in crime, making the best of a bad situation. Jack wondered if the job had done that to the nun, or if she had always been this utilitarian.

“That’s what we’re here for,” she said. “Some secrets are best kept hidden.”