Page 24 of Match Made in Heaven (The Cricket Club #5)

J ack closed the nursery door quietly, wincing when the latch made its tiny click. Retreating a step, he finally allowed his shoulders to slump.

A breath was released behind him, and he knew that he wasn’t the only one with steam to let out.

He turned to face Ella, regretting the way she instinctively moved back, creating more room between them.

It was an action determined by propriety, but also… perhaps self-preservation? Jack told himself not to wonder, but could Ella possibly want him the way that he wanted her?

Was it as all-encompassing and ever-growing as his need? Because if so, then God help them both. All Jack needed was one little encouraging look, one hopeful glance, and he would lose himself to the deep. Like the poor bastards in the whirlpool, never to be seen again.

Jack stared at her, watching myriad emotions dance across her face in the shadowy corridor. She was tired, overwhelmed, superior, plaintive, shy.

But not the emotion that Jack had been worried about, not the sentiment that he’d guarded himself from. Ella’s brown eyes were liquid in the moonlight, full of compassion, with not one drop of disillusionment.

She searched for her blonde braid resting on her shoulder, running her fingers up and down the plaits as if needing an excuse to move.

This was the first time Jack had seen her hair out of the perfunctory bun.

It hung, hauntingly long and thick, its ends reaching well past the swell of her hips.

At once, Jack regretted letting his gaze venture that low.

He had no choice now but to take in her lack of attire (as prim as it was) and admire the way the thin, flimsy fabrics skimmed along her lithe body, highlighting the curves that were only meant for a lover’s eyes.

Jack was not that lover. And would never be. He’d allowed himself to kiss her this afternoon—he hadn’t been able to help it. But that had to be it. Feeling her passion again, knowing that it was for him, might break him.

Ella’s smile was hesitant and wry. “Sonia is probably the most interesting child I’ve ever met. It will… be nothing short of entertaining to watch her grow into a woman.”

Jack nodded.

Her gaze was expectant; however, when nothing more came from him, she nodded to the stairwell. “I suppose I should go to bed.” She raised a brow. “Are you…”

Jack was no better than Snow White, lost in a stupor. He shook himself out of his muteness, throwing a glance at the door next to the nursery. “I’ll stay here tonight in Nanny’s room. I remember finding it a comfort when she was close.”

The corners of Ella’s mouth lifted, and Jack’s heart thumped soundly against his ribcage. It did that every time she was about to tease him. “You didn’t feel safe even with your older brother in the nursery with you?”

Jack’s laugh was rueful. “I didn’t feel safe because my older brother was in the nursery with me.

He used to keep me up at night, telling me the most frightening tales.

Now that I think of it, I probably gravitated toward the sea because I liked the close quarters.

Even alone in my bed on the ship, I’m never far from other people. ”

“Unlike here,” Ella replied, lifting her head to scan the enormity of the house.

“Unlike here.”

Seconds passed. It was like an awkward dance, both of them swaying slightly, fidgeting with fingers and hair, shifting their weight to opposite legs.

Jack didn’t know what she was waiting for, but he couldn’t hold out for much longer. Having Ella here, alone, close enough to be kissed and held. Close enough for him to want to tell her everything and anything. It was untenable.

A small patch of pink simmered on the tops of her cheeks.

She was such an innocent; Ella was the perfect mold for the na?ve, elegant, stainless girls that the ton routinely created.

The kind that had never appealed to him before.

But that was because he was oversimplifying her.

Ella was more than a production of a time and place.

Her quality was on a different level, meant to stick in his heart and last for all eternity.

And Jack’s hero’s quest would be to bear it. If he was considering himself a hero—which he wasn’t. There was hardly anything heroic about the way he wanted to strip her down to nothing and lick the cleft between her legs.

“So that’s why you did it?” she asked sharply, dropping her braid to her shoulder. “That’s why you kept Sonia beside you when you told your mother?”

Jack was taken aback by her tone. “Do you think I should have hidden her away?”

“I think you should have protected her.”

“I was protecting her!” Jack said, forcing Ella to take another step back.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he added, swiping his hand over his face.

Weariness seeped into his bones. The effects of all the decisions he’d made today rushed at him all at once.

And now the inevitable: her disappointment.

And Jack wasn’t as prepared for it as he’d thought.

“I was protecting her,” he repeated, softer this time, giving every word the effort it deserved.

“I could have tossed her upstairs, could have fostered her off to the kitchens, but I wouldn’t do that.

It was important she know…” He swallowed the lump in his throat, warding off the anger attempting to break through.

“Sonia needed to know that I wasn’t ashamed of her, that I wouldn’t allow anyone to ever be ashamed of her. ”

“But your mother—”

“My mother needed to hear that most of all.”

Ella crossed her arms; the curious way she regarded Jack made him feel like an animal in a zoo, which was almost right. There was always something feral in him when she was near, something primitive that made him want to take and then take some more.

“So that’s it, then?” Ella asked suddenly. She sniffed. “I should have known you wouldn’t ease the poor girl into her new life. Hammering her in is more your style.”

“The fastest method is usually the most painless.”

“Hmm,” was all she said, letting that inane sound that meant so many things and nothing at all stretch between them. Then she bobbed her shoulders. “Good.”

Jack arched a brow. “Good?”

“Good,” Ella repeated sternly. With a pert nod, she took the first few steps down the corridor.

Jack told himself to let her go. No good would come from speaking to her—ever. But Ella, it seemed, was the only one with a sense of self-preservation that night. Jack’s had vanished along with his solitary life.

“You don’t despise me?” he asked, inwardly cringing at the desperate crack in his voice.

Ella stopped, hesitating for a heartbeat before coming back to face him. Her steps were slow but sure, and her ambiguous expression frightened him more than any of the tales his brother ever could have conceived of.

When the toes of her slippers kissed his, she finally stopped.

Ella remained quiet. Her eyes traveled back and forth between his own, and an unbearable lightness bore down on Jack, as if she were drinking the very essence of him, stealing all the thoughts and fears he held inside for his misery alone.

He almost came undone when Ella lifted her hand.

He shuddered as she slid the tips of her fingers down the side of his face, from the edge of his hairline to the side of his jaw.

It wasn’t just a simple touch. It was a knowing that Jack had never experienced before.

A knowing that he’d never thought he needed.

His eyes were heavy. He ached to close them and imagine Ella with him in his room on his ship, their undressing each other with the nonchalant reverence of a married couple, both habitual and exotic.

But her gaze clung to his, ordering him to stay with her, condemning him to feel and to understand what she was trying to convey.

Jack’s hunger drew her closer. He switched his focus to her lips. Her breath scalded his chin, making him so very thirsty. The desire reminded him of men floating on detritus in the middle of the ocean, baking under the hot sun, being surrounded by limitless water and yet unable to drink it.

That was Ella to him. She surrounded him always: her scent, her laughter, the sounds of her skirts as they swished against corners and table legs. She was the only thing that could satisfy him, but one drop of her and he would be burned from the inside out.

And standing there in the empty corridor filled with such desperate yearning, Jack thought it might just be worth it.

“What do you want, Ella?” he murmured. He skimmed his hands against her gossamer robe and held on to a piece of the garment, pinching it between his fingers, satisfied with this one gluttonous allowance.

Ella’s mouth opened, and he saw her two front teeth peek through, the tip of her pink tongue. The tongue that had tasted his this afternoon.

“I don’t know,” she rushed out in a whisper.

Jack fisted the fabric, burning his knuckles white. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it. You have to know that. Anything.”

Her eyes were shiny, glassy in the cloudy moonlight streaming through the windows. Ella’s face became determined. “I want you to tell me the truth,” she said. “Tell me that Oliver is Sonia’s father.”

Jack flinched, but Ella followed, not letting him out of her grasp. The lie came to him, but he couldn’t say what she asked. The lie was meant to protect his brother—protect the love she held for his brother.

But Jack was lost to that good intention.

Because he wanted her to love him, he realized.

Ella caressed his jaw with her thumb, sweeping a path along the corner of his lips. Jack grabbed her wrist, just holding her, feeling the insistent thump of her heartbeat through his fingertips.

Her expression fell, overladen with too much sympathy. “You can’t, can you?”

Jack remained firm. Silent.

Ella’s hand dropped back to her side, forcing him to let her go. “Then do something else for me,” she whispered. “See the way that I’m looking at you now. And know that it hasn’t changed. It never will.”

*

With one hour left before sunrise, Jack sat next to his brother’s bed. He couldn’t remember being more exhausted than he was then. Or more confused. Or angrier, for that matter. Nothing was right. Nothing had felt right in a long time.

He rubbed his hands over his face and leaned toward his brother, who’d spent the last few hours snoring and grumbling through a restless sleep.

Oliver’s skin was ghostlike and waxy, his body a shadow of its once-indomitable self, lying limp under the avalanche of covers.

His prickly black hair was doing its best to grow back after being shaved, but it was at an unfortunate length, sticking out at all angles, reminding Jack of an angry hedgehog.

Jack hadn’t spoken since he’d entered the room. He never did when he visited his brother. It felt unnecessary.

But maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the way his heart felt like it was snapping into millions of tiny, sharp pieces that were taking turns ripping him apart from the inside, but Jack eventually broke through the silence.

With laughter. Sardonic, miserable laughter.

“I was never jealous of you. I never lied about that.” The words tripped out of his mouth, stumbling as if he’d emptied a whiskey bottle down his throat.

“I never cared about the way people walked past me to get to you. I never wondered if Mother and Father loved you more. And I certainly never gave a shite about all the women and their come-hither looks.” He snorted at his ridiculous speech, resting his head in one palm as he imagined a roguish smile on his brother’s classical face.

Jack took his brother’s hand, holding it like they did whenever they would jump into the pond together, making sure the other didn’t experience the first splash before the other. “Do you hear me? I was never jealous of you, brother. Until now.”