Page 44 of Match Made in Heaven (The Cricket Club #5)

J ack stalked through the wharf, avoiding the shocked glances thrown his way. He could deal with curiosity, even confused gawks, but he couldn’t abide the frightened confusion lining some of the faces. Like Jack was a ghost. Like he wasn’t real.

He yanked his jacket lapels higher up his neck. What he’d been through had been real enough.

Jack was no stranger to devilish storms, but the one he’d battled outside Aberdeen would have made Poseidon run scared.

In the last month, he’d had plenty of time to wonder if he could have done anything differently to change the course of that terrifying night, but he’d come up empty.

When it came to brawling with the sea, sometimes you won, but most times you didn’t.

And as Jack had flung himself off the Siren before the waves and rain could drag him down with it, he’d assumed that that had been it. He’d lost. Fair and square.

Even after he’d miraculously found a flat piece of detritus and held on for dear life, he’d known the end was near.

With chattering teeth, he’d cursed the storm for hours before resorting to prayer, asking the Lord to provide Ella with the life that she deserved.

Asking that maybe she keep a small place for him in her heart.

But the Lord was busy that night. Or just in a peculiar mood. Because Jack didn’t die.

The following day he was fished out and carried aboard a whaling ship on its way to the Orkney Islands. The crew had been just as shocked as Jack was that he was still breathing after hours in the tumultuous Black Sea. And they were even more so when he was still alive the next day.

They’d left him in Stromness, beaten and battered, homesick and depleted.

But incredibly determined. Jack waited two weeks for a ship to stop at the remote island.

Luck was with him when a Hudson’s Bay Company ship made port for supplies before finishing its final leg to London.

Filled with a wide variety—from Canadians to Americans to Orknians and British—the crew was only too happy to show off their bountiful furs and pelts from their latest expedition and explain, in minute, grisly detail, how they’d trapped every last one.

The ship delivered Jack to England six weeks after he’d left it—four weeks after he’d been declared dead.

All in all, the journey back home had been comfortable and, more importantly, uneventful, though if pressed, Jack could have done without most of the Americans.

He marched into Sutton Shipping Company and found Jeremiah Sinclair seated at his desk, scribbling away as always. He was struck with an immediate pang of relief, grateful for life’s tendency to not give a damn and always move on.

At the noise, Sinclair continued to look down at his ledger, but the pencil dropped from his fingers. Slowly, he brought his head up, blinking his huge eyes behind his round glasses. And then he smiled. “I knew you couldn’t stay dead, Jack Sutton.”

Jack grinned as Sinclair leapt from his chair, hauling him in for a hug that had him balancing on his tiptoes.

Sinclair pounded him on the back countless times before finally letting him go. “You’re too skinny,” he remarked.

Jack laughed. “What do you expect? I had to swim all the way back.”

Sinclair humphed . “You swam, did you? So that’s what took so long.” He shook his head. “You pirates and the tales you tell…”

“And I’ll tell you every single one later, my friend.” Jack gave his friend a pointed look. “But I have some things I have to do first.”

Sinclair nodded, catching his meaning. The men had known each other for too long to stand on ceremony. “Of course, of course,” he said, pushing Jack back to the exit. “Get out of here. Go shout to the world that the mighty Jack Sutton has returned from his watery grave.”

Jack grimaced, hesitating with his hand on the doorjamb. “Watery grave? I thought you’d have more faith in me than that.”

Sinclair’s expression fell. He paused, taking off his glass to rub his eyes before continuing.

“What did you expect us to think, Jack? Some of your crew from the Siren made it to shore. They told everyone how quickly the storm had come over the ship. How catastrophic it had been.” He sighed.

“They said surviving was impossible. Not overnight in those waves.”

Jack forced a wan smile, uncomfortable with the tilt to Sinclair’s shoulders, as if the man had been bearing too much this last month. “Well, I did. And things are going to get back to normal. I promise.”

He slapped Sinclair on the back, almost popping his glasses off his nose. The business manager poked them back in place with his finger before distressing Jack again with a pensive, hesitant look.

“What?” Jack snapped, chagrined by his loss of control.

Sinclair’s mouth hardened to a line. “It’s just… I had to tell your family. I was there. I saw what it did to them. To your mother… to Ella.”

Jack’s chest squeezed. There hadn’t been one second throughout this ordeal when Ella hadn’t been on his mind. Hearing someone else say her name out loud made him miserly, as if her name only was his to utter.

He flexed his jaw impatiently as he waited for his friend to finish his thought.

Sinclair went on. “The women collapsed and were taken to the rooms, utterly heartbroken. I swear to you, Jack, if someone told me they were still sleeping, I would believe them.”

Jack nodded, resisting the pain that gnawed at him. The pain that he’d caused. Unconsciously he reached to twirl his earring, but found his earlobe empty. He remembered that he’d given it to the trappers as payment for taking him home.

Sinclair smiled, reading his mind. “You going to stop to get another one? Maybe a hoop this time. You actually seem naked without it.”

Jack tried to laugh, but he couldn’t make the sound. “I’m not a pirate, Sinclair. I’m a damned gentleman. I should remember that more often.” He glanced over his shoulder, a smile finally finding his lips. “And I have a lady I need to wake up.”

*

Even with all the annoying looks Jack had received on the wharf, nothing came close to the disdain Ella’s mother directed at him from her front door. The butler hadn’t allowed him to come inside, and neither had his mistress. Something about his smell—which Jack had to admit, wasn’t great.

Nevertheless, he suspected there was more to it.

“My daughter is not here,” Lady Weston stated firmly, tipping her nose so high, Jack wondered if she could even see him.

“Where is she?”

“I’m not sure.”

“When will she be back?”

“She didn’t tell me.”

Jack closed his eyes, praying for patience. Biting this woman’s head off wouldn’t help his cause. He needed her to like him—for Ella’s sake.

Lady Weston’s scowl could have sparked a fire. At this point, Jack would probably have to settle for the lady tolerating him.

“Can I leave a message?” he asked.

Lady Weston tapped lightly against her temple. “You can try, but my memory isn’t as good as it used to be.”

Jack shook his head with a bitter laugh.

She was being impossible. And he wasn’t exactly sure why.

“Well, since we’ve met before, I assume you know that my name is John.

It’s short. Four little letters. Shouldn’t be too difficult.

However, if it is, it’s no matter. I will return tonight. Thank you, my lady. Good day.”

Jack turned with a grunt and was halfway down the porch steps before she called out, “Please don’t!”

He twisted back to see the lady leaning on the side of the door, gripping the lace at her neck. Her face was blotchy, her eyes panicked.

Jack sighed, climbing the steps once more. “Don’t what?”

Lady Weston pursed her lips. The disdain had gone, but it was replaced with something that Jack couldn’t read. Fear? But what did she have to fear from him?

“Don’t come back,” she replied. “If you care about my daughter at all, you’ll leave her be—”

Jack cut the space between them with one stride. “I love your daughter more than you’ll ever know.”

“Fine,” the lady said, her voice oddly contained.

It stunned Jack, because he knew her confidence came from the total belief that what she was doing and saying was completely right.

“If that’s true,” she went on, “then you will listen to me now. Whatever happened to you out there, it almost killed my daughter. She was ill, and even when she recovered, she wouldn’t leave her room for days and even weeks.

She’d thought you were dead, and it made her want to follow you. ”

Lady Weston pushed away from the door, her chest nearly hitting his.

“But do you know who was here? Your brother. He writes to her; he walks with her. I know that he wants to marry her. He can offer her the life that she deserves, that she needs. You can’t with all your roving and wandering and…

ocean . Ella is fragile. She needs a house, her friends, her books.

You don’t have those things. So please, please, Lord John or Jack or whatever you call yourself, leave this house and never come back.

Stay lost before you drag my daughter down with you. ”

Jack stared at the woman as she pleaded with him. Her lovely eyes were marred by anguish.

The urge to hate her was palpable. Because Lady Weston didn’t know him.

And she certainly didn’t know her daughter.

However, she did love Ella. And Jack could understand that.

He took a moment, cataloging all the information she’d just fed him and allowing himself to forgive her.

The lady didn’t know this (and Jack certainly wasn’t going to tell her now), but they had a long road ahead dealing with one another. Grievances couldn’t be kept alive.

He cocked his head, scratching underneath his chin. “My brother accompanies her on walks?”

Lady Weston blinked. “Y-yes. He left his family at Sutton Park and has been spending more time in Town.”

Jack nodded. He had so much yet to say. Explanations and apologies. Words pricked at the edge of his tongue.

But in the end, he only said one thing before going on his way.

“Hmm.”