Читать книгу Beware Of Virtuous Women - Kasey Michaels, Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 10

“ABOUT TIME IT WAS you lugged that great big simple self of yours back here, boyo. I was about to give you up.”

Jack turned, still in the act of sliding off his neck cloth, to see Cluny Shannon sprawled on the lone chair in his dressing room, a half-empty glass hanging from his fingers.

It was always a half-empty glass with Cluny, who never saw the sunshine without mentioning the clouds.

“My apologies, old friend. I didn’t notice a candle in the window. Were you pining for me?”

Cluny finished off his drink, obviously not the first or even the fourth of the evening, and carefully got to his feet, holding the glass in front of him as he advanced on Jack. “Thinking of where to lay off the silver, to tell you the truth. I could turn a pretty penny just for that behemoth you’ve got sitting on the table in the dining room. Now that I think on it, it’s a shame you made it back. Go away again, get yourself lost, and I’ll be a rich man.”

Jack unbuttoned his waistcoat and shrugged out of it, then began on the buttons of his shirt. “You’re getting soft in your old age, Cluny. Ten years ago, and you’d have had the silver before I was halfway to the coast. Have you sold off my clothes to the ragman, or do you think my dressing gown is still here somewhere?”

“I’m supposing you want me to fetch it for you now, don’t you?” Cluny put down the glass and navigated his way to one of the large clothespresses, extracting a deep burgundy banyan he then tossed in Jack’s general direction. “Here you go, boyo. Cover yourself up before I lose my supper.”

“Which you drank,” Jack said, snagging the dressing gown out of midair and sliding his bare arms into it, tying the sash at his waist. “I need you sober now, Cluny. We’ve got us a fine piece of trouble.”

The Irishman settled himself once more into the chair. “True enough. I saw her when you brought her in. A fine piece indeed, but what in the devil are we supposed to be doing with her?”

Jack shook his head at his friend’s deliberate misunderstanding and headed back into his bedchamber, Cluny on his heels. “That, my friend, is no piece, fine or otherwise. She’s Becket’s daughter, so if you want to keep your liver under wraps you’ll be very careful what you say, and what you do. Understand?”

“Not even by half I don’t,” Cluny said, pouring wine into two clean glasses. “Becket’s girl, you say? So you brought her up to town as a favor to the man?”

“No,” Jack said, accepting the glass Cluny offered, “I brought her up here as my wife.”

While Cluny coughed and spit, wine dribbling from his chin, Jack eased his length into a leather chair beside the small fire in the grate and waited, pleased to have said something that might have sobered up the fellow at least a little bit. “You all right, Cluny?”

“All right? You go and get yourself caught in parson’s mousetrap, and I don’t even know about it? I have no say in the thing?”

Jack took another sip of wine, trying to keep his features composed as the Irishman turned beet-red from his double chins to his thick shock of coarse, graying hair. “I suppose you wanted me to ask for your blessing, dear mother?”

“You could be doing worse than putting your faith in me. And I’m not your bleeding mother, even if you are a son of a bitch. What’s she like, this Becket woman?”

Jack considered the question. His first thought was to tell him Eleanor’s huge brown eyes were the most beautifully expressive feature in her small, gamin face. That she was fragile, yet seemed to possess a will of iron. That he felt like a raw, too tall, uncivilized golumpus whenever he was near her. That he felt uncharacteristically protective of her, and even more uncharacteristically attracted to her.

But he doubted Cluny needed to hear that.

“Quiet. Smart. Not necessarily trustworthy, but that’s all right because I don’t think she trusts me, either. Oh, and we’re not really married.”

Cluny looked at his wineglass, then carefully set it down. “Time to haul myself back up on the water wagon. What did you say? Are you bracketed or not?”

Jack waited for his just-arrived valet to put down the tray of meat and cheese and leave the room, heading for the dressing room to, most likely, cluck over the condition of his master’s wardrobe that was much the worse for wear after a week across the Channel.

“What’s that fellow’s name, again?” he asked Cluny, who’d settled his cheerless bulk into the facing chair.

“Frank,” Cluny said, popping a large piece of cheese into his mouth.

“No, not Frank. Francis?”

Cluny shrugged. “I like Frank better, a good, solid name. Why aren’t you married? Not that I want you to be, you understand, but why not?”

So Jack explained. For an hour, he explained, as Cluny interrupted almost constantly.

At the end of that hour Cluny had fallen off the water wagon—never an easy ride for him, even in the best of times—and poured himself another drink. “Are you sure that cousin of yours is worth all this skulduggery? I always thought you didn’t like the man above half.”

“It’s not him I’m doing it for, but his mother. Mothers love sons, Cluny, even if the son is a thorough jackass. Besides, even if it all started that way, we’ve moved far beyond my concerns for Richard. I’m…well, I’m invested in this now.”

Cluny looked around the large, well-appointed bedchamber. “Of course you are, lad. Everything you do is out of the fine, sweet goodness of your heart. I’ll be shedding a tear here any moment, I will that.”

Jack had told a small fib to Ainsley Becket—the house in Portland Square wasn’t really his. It was his cousin’s, as was the estate in Sussex. But where his cousin had allowed both places to go to rack and ruin, they were now returned to their former glory. His mother and aunt lived well now on that Sussex estate, not in constant fear of losing the roof over their heads. This house was now furnished in the first stare, thanks to Jack’s money. If he found Richard, he’d buy the pile from him, the estate, as well. If he didn’t find him, his aunt would surely be happy for the money.

He chuckled low in his throat. “I never said I was applying for sainthood, Cluny. But at least we’ve a fair division of profits between us and those who take the most risk. Or are you feeling a dose of Christian charity coming on and want to give back your own share?”

Cluny sank his chins onto his chest. “How far two such God-fearing gentlemen as ourselves have sunk. Not that they won’t hang us high enough.”

“And on that happy note, I think I’ll go off downstairs to my study to see if I’ve anything important to deal with that’s shown up in my absence.”

“A letter from your mother, that would be the whole of it,” Cluny told him, slowly pushing himself to his feet. “She’s well, thanks you for the silk, and sends her sister’s never-ending thanks for looking for poor old Richard. We’re not finding him, boyo, not if we haven’t found him yet. My thought is he’s moldering at the bottom of a well, or has long since been fed to the fishies.”

“I no longer expect to find him alive, Cluny. But I will discover what happened to him.”

“Even though he was a worthless bastard who, just like his father before him, begrudged you and your mother every crust of bread family duty forced him to provide his blood kin? Admit it to me at the least, Jack. You’re in this for the adventure of the thing. Those Beckets have thoroughly corrupted you.”

Jack paused at the door, his hand on the latch. “They’re a remarkable family, Cluny. A real family, not bound by blood but by something even more powerful. I admire them very much.”

“And they’ve made you bloody rich.”

Jack grinned as he depressed the latch. “Yes. That, too.”

He wandered through the mostly dark house, knowing its furnishings weren’t a patch on the grandeur of Becket Hall, but pleased nonetheless.

He’d gone from poor relation to foot soldier, from foot soldier to courier, from courier to spy, from spy to trusted aide.

But when an injury had forced him home and he’d learned about Richard’s disappearance, he’d picked up his deck of cards and begun his hunt for his cousin. Which had led to Kent, to Romney Marsh, to whispers about the Red Men Gang and, eventually, to the Beckets of Romney Marsh.

“Only good turn the miserable bastard ever gave me,” Jack muttered to himself as he made his way through the black-and-white marble-tiled foyer and to the back of the house, where Richard’s father had established a reasonable if incomplete library.

It was only when he reached for the latch that he realized that there was a strip of soft light at the bottom of the door. Transferring his candle to his left hand, he eased his back against the door even as he held the latch, slowly depressed it, and pushed it open, turning with it so he was ready to confront whoever was in the room.

“Miss Becket,” he said a moment later, battle-ready alertness replaced by anger. “What do you think you’re doing down here?”

Eleanor looked at him levelly, even as her heart pounded so furiously inside her that the beat was actually painful. She held out the book in her hand. “I couldn’t sleep, and decided there must be at least one sufficiently boring book in here that would help me.”

He took the marble-backed volume from her hand and read, “A Complete History So Far As It Is Known of That Celebrated English Thoroughbred—you’re interested in horses?”

Goodness, had she really picked that book? She lifted her chin slightly as she answered him. “No, not at all, which is the point of the exercise, is it not, when one is attempting to find something that is so stultifyingly boring it is virtually guaranteed to put one to sleep? Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

Or was the man unaware that she was clothed only in her night rail and dressing gown? And couldn’t he do something about that expanse of bare chest visible beneath his dressing gown? All that golden hair. Was it soft to the touch? It had to be, just as his chest was undoubtedly quite hard. Thank the good Lord he still wore his pantaloons, because it would be only the good Lord himself who could know what she’d do if the man had been naked beneath that dressing gown. Fainting seemed probable.

As if he was able to hear her silent conversation with herself—hopefully not all of it—Jack tied his banyan more tightly over himself. “I would certainly excuse you, unless you’d wish to talk for a moment? I think we’ve settled in fairly well, don’t you? You’re happy with the servant staff?”

Perhaps she should stay, if just for a few minutes. Not act too eager to be out of his company, as if she’d been caught out at something, being somewhere she should not be, doing something she should not do. She’d simply ignore his chest. After all, she’d seen male chests before. Her brothers’ chests, that is. Although Jack’s chest seemed…different. Definitely more interesting.

Eleanor walked over to seat herself on a brown leather couch that was placed against one wall—she would have preferred it against the other wall, but this wasn’t her house, was it? “Mrs. Hendersen seems a competent enough housekeeper, yes. Although I’d rather she didn’t address me as you poor dearie. I’m not sure if that is a comment on my physical state or my choice of husband. Which do you suppose it is?”

Jack leaned against the front of the desk and smiled at her. “I’ll speak to her about that.”

“No. Don’t be silly, Jack. We’ll rub along well enough. And Treacle would appear to understand his part in the running of the household.”

“Who?”

Eleanor could see that Jack wasn’t exactly an attentive employer. Otherwise, the dust on the tables in her bedchamber would not have been so deep she could draw her finger through it. “Your butler, Jack. Treacle is your butler.”

“I’m sorry. Cluny takes care of these things. I really don’t pay attention.”

“Cluny?” Eleanor frowned, unable to recall the name. “I don’t believe I remember a Cluny when the servants were presented upon our arrival.”

And she thought: Cluny. An Irish name. There had been a Cluny Sullivan in Becket Village. Dead now, just an old man worn out.

Jack hadn’t wanted to touch on Cluny’s existence until the two of them had got their story straight as to who he was, who he would pretend he was as long as Eleanor was in residence. “He’s my…my personal secretary. Good man, completely trustworthy.” Jack stood up again. “Yes, a good man. Was there anything else you needed?”

Eleanor got to her feet and retrieved her book from the desktop. “Thank you, no. I hadn’t needed anything when you came in here, and that hasn’t changed.” Stick, she told herself, trying not to wince. Can’t you say something—anything—that doesn’t make you sound like a bloodless old maid?

“Um…” she said, holding the book close to her chest, “Cluny is an Irish name, is it not?”

“If it wasn’t before, it is now that Cluny’s got it,” Jack told her, walking her toward the doorway. “We served together in the Peninsula.”

“In the Peninsula,” Eleanor repeated, longing to kick herself. He’d probably held more scintillating conversations with doorstops. “How…interesting. I hadn’t realized you’d served.”

“I doubt we know very much at all about each other, Miss Becket.”

“Eleanor.”

Jack nodded. “Elly. Right. I’ll have to practice. You don’t seem to have any trouble remembering to call me Jack, do you? Perhaps you’re better at subterfuge than I am.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” Eleanor said, holding herself so rigid that she was certain that, were she to bend over, she’d snap like a dry twig.

She most certainly wasn’t going to tell him that when she dreamed of him, she dreamed of Jack. Never Mr. Eastwood. She might be a dull stick of an old maid, but her dreams at least had some merit.

And now she was standing here in her dressing gown, her hair hanging down her back in a long, thick braid. And the man hadn’t so much as blinked. Didn’t he care? Was she so unprepossessing a figure that this obvious breach of convention hadn’t even occurred to him?

Jack, acting without thought (or else he’d have to think he was insane), reached out his hand and ran a finger down the side of Eleanor’s cheek. “You’re frightened, aren’t you, little one? You put on a fine face of confidence, but you’re frightened. You’d be skittish, even trembling, if that wouldn’t make you angry with yourself. And, right now, you’re caught between wanting to run from me, and longing to slap my face for my impertinence.”

Eleanor backed up a single step, holding the book so tightly now that her knuckles showed white against her skin. “I’m certain I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Eastwood.”

“Jack.” He smiled, beginning to feel more comfortable with the woman. Seeing her as more human. He should have realized that Eleanor, living with the Beckets, couldn’t possibly be entirely the paragon of virtue she appeared.

“Yes. Jack. But I’m still sure I don’t know what you mean. We know why we’re here and what we’re doing and…”

“Do we? I thought we did,” Jack said, placing his hands on her shoulders. “But we’re damn unconvincing at the moment if we’re supposed to be newly married. Having my bride trying not to flinch, run from me, doesn’t seem the way to convince anyone, does it? Unless we want to convince everyone that I’m some sort of brute, and I have to tell you, Elly, I’m vain enough not to wish that.”

Enough was enough! “Has it occurred to you, Jack, that I am not dressed?”

He looked down at her, from the throat-high neckline of her modest white muslin dressing gown to the tips of her bare toes as they protruded from the hem. Bare toes? The woman was walking about barefoot? “Well, now that you mention it…”

“Oh, you’re the most annoying man,” Eleanor said, stooping down so that she could bow out from beneath his hands. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bed.”

Jack watched her leave the room, her limp noticeable, as if her left ankle simply didn’t bend, yet a graceful woman for all of that. Perhaps she was more comfortable barefoot, without the constriction of hose and shoes.

Elly. He’d have to remember to call her Elly, at least in public. And she would have to become used to being in his company. He’d work on that. Find a way to make her relax some of that reserve that was so at odds with the behavior of the rest of the Beckets.

Odd little thing. Pretty little thing.

Jack stepped behind his desk and sat down, opened the center drawer to take out the journal that among other information included a list of French names, the list of those he had used in the past and would not be able to use again—most definitely the two that had been murdered—and noticed that the wafer-thin silver marker he kept on the most recent page was no longer there.

It wasn’t anywhere in the drawer. He pushed back his chair and looked down at the floor, then reached down, picked up the thin, hammered-silver piece and stared at it for long moments.

Had he dropped it over a week ago, before traveling to France? No. His mother had given him the marker, had even had it engraved with his initials, then told him he could use it to “mark the pages of your life, my darling.” He was always very careful with the thing.

Cluny? Could Cluny have been snooping about in the desk drawers? There would be no reason for him to do so. Besides, if Cluny had been at the drawers they’d be a bloody mess, not perfect except for the misplaced marker.

“More comfortable barefoot, Miss Becket?” he then asked quietly as he looked up at the ceiling, to the bedchamber he knew to be directly above this room. “Or able to move about more stealthily barefoot?”

In that bedchamber, Eleanor now stood with her back against the closed door, trying to regulate her breathing and heart rate.

He’d nearly caught her. God, he’d nearly caught her.

And for what? She hadn’t found much of anything, hadn’t even known what to look for, when she came right down to it.

“I wasn’t simply snooping,” she told herself as she sat down at her dressing table, to see that her face was very pale and her eyes were very wide. “I was being careful.”

But now she realized that the lilt she’d heard in Jack’s voice for that one moment had probably come to him courtesy of association with his Irish friend. Nothing nefarious at all. What was the man’s name again? Oh yes. Cluny.

Jack was allowed to have friends, of course. Gentlemen have friends. There was nothing strange in that.

But so many lives depended on secrecy, on being careful.

“I will not allow my heart to rule my head,” Eleanor told her reflection.

That resolution made, Eleanor padded over to one of the windows and pushed back the heavy draperies to look out over the mews, as she believed the area was called, and at the few flambeaux and gas streetlamps she could see in the darkness.

At Becket Hall, there was only night beyond the windows once the sun had gone. Darkness, emptiness. The Marsh on three sides, the shingle beach and Channel on the last. Becket Hall was its own world.

Here, she was a very small part of very large city. One of untold thousands of people, thousands of buildings.

How did people live here? How did they exist? For what purpose had they all felt it necessary to jam themselves together cheek by jowl?

She let the drapery drop back into place and surveyed her chamber. It was a lovely thing, but so was her bedchamber at home. She hadn’t traveled to anywhere better; she’d merely come to a different place.

Would she be accepted?

Her sister Morgan had seemed to believe that an introduction to Lady Beresford would open many doors, at least enough doors to help Jack insinuate himself further with Phelps and Eccles…and the Earl of Chelfham.

The earl and his young bride. Would the woman know anything, or was she a silly creature whose main concerns were balls and gowns and petty gossip? Would Eleanor like her? If she did, would it pain her conscience to then use the young woman for her own ends? And could she do it in such a way that Jack never suspected what she was doing, then asked why?

And she might not even get out into society at all, or so Jack had hinted. Because he hoped they would be quickly successful, so that he could have her back at Becket Hall as soon as possible? Was he that anxious to get her gone? Did he think her limp would be a detriment if he took her into society? Had he even noticed the limp? Lord knew he’d never noticed anything else about her in two long years….

Eleanor pressed a hand to her forehead, feeling the beginnings of the headache.

Everything had happened so quickly, perhaps too quickly.

And she was alone here. Very much alone here.

She came out of her reverie at the sound of a knock on the door. She looked at that door for a few moments, reminding herself that she couldn’t see through the thing, so either she had to open the door or pretend she was already in bed and fast asleep.

Which was ridiculous, for the chamber was lit by at least a half-dozen candles. Unless she wanted the household to believe she’d be reckless enough as to go to sleep with them ablaze, and possibly burn down the house around their ears, she’d have to at least go to the door and ask who was there.

The knock came again, along with Jack’s voice calling out her name. Well, now at least she knew who stood on the other side of the thick wood, didn’t she?

What on earth did he want? Had he discovered that she’d been snooping in his desk? No. She’d been very careful. She’d looked in all the drawers, then through the papers in the wide center drawer. Then the personal accounts book he’d marked at the page that listed several French names…

He’d marked the book. There’d been a thin silver marker. A pretty thing, with his initials pressed into it. She’d lifted it, held it, looked at it—his personal possession. What had she done with it?

Eleanor squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember.

She’d opened the book. Taken out the marker.

Looked at it. Laid it in her lap. Looked through the pages.

Heard footsteps.

Replaced the book.

Stood.

She hadn’t replaced the marker.

She’d stood, and the small marker must have slipped to the carpet, unnoticed.

Had he noticed?

“Just a moment, please,” she called out, bending to the dressing table mirror to assure herself she no longer looked so pale which, unfortunately, she still did. She pinched her cheeks hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, then pulled a face at herself before opening the door.

Just a crack.

“Yes? I was just about to retire.”

Jack tipped his head to one side, looking down at the sliver of face that was all Eleanor seemed willing to show him. With any luck, she wasn’t holding a pistol behind her back, cocked and ready to blow his head off if she was so inclined and who could know what all the Beckets were inclined to do?

“I hesitate to disturb you, as you were probably already half dozing over that book you chose, but I believe I might have found something that would be of more interest. May I come in?”

Eleanor nervously wet her lips, then nodded, stepped back so that he could push open the door and enter her bedchamber. He now had on a white, open-necked shirt beneath his banyan, and she wondered, just for a moment, if she should be flattered that he’d tried to make himself more decent for her, or lament that she could no longer see his bare chest.

Dear Lord. She’d never expected to see a man in any bedchamber she inhabited, not in her entire lifetime.

Stop it, stop it! Stop thinking like that!

She stopped thinking entirely when Jack held out the “something of more interest,” and she saw it to be the journal she’d been reading downstairs. Then he held out his other hand, palm up, and there was the silver marker, the damning marker.

Eleanor lifted her gaze to him. May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, as the ruthlessly practical Jacko always said. “You maintain very orderly records. But I might suggest the benefits of keeping them under lock and key.”

She hadn’t even blinked. Jack had thought she’d pretend ignorance of what he was showing her, deny what she’d done.

But not little Eleanor Becket. Not the large-eyed fawn with the spine of Toledo steel. He should have known better.

He slipped the marker between the pages and put the journal down on a nearby table. “You’re probably right, and your honesty in the face of discovery is commendable,” he said carefully. Then he turned to look at her, his eyes narrowed in that way he had, and probably didn’t know he had—but that Eleanor found particularly unnerving. “Now, do you want to tell me what in the hell you were looking for?”

Eleanor refused to back down. But she didn’t consider herself brave, only practical. After all, she had nowhere to go.

“It is important for us to know who we deal with, especially at the moment. You live very well, Jack.”

“Ah, now I understand. You think I’ve been keeping more of the profits than I report to Ainsley? Is that really why you’re here?” Then he shook his head. “No, Ainsley wouldn’t do that. If he had any questions about my honesty, he’d have Jacko ask them for him.”

“You make Jacko sound like a terrible man. A brute.”

One side of Jack’s mouth lifted in a rueful smile. “I’m wrong?”

Explaining Jacko wasn’t Eleanor’s priority. She really wished she knew what was, but she’d examine that later. For now, she knew she couldn’t betray any weakness. Papa had told her that years ago: always deceive with confidence. “I apologize for looking through your desk.”

“And it won’t happen again? You won’t decide listening at keyholes is a grand idea? You won’t sneak a peek at my mail, or send someone to follow me when I’m going about in the city?”

Eleanor didn’t know quite where to look, so she continued to look straight at him. “Now you’re being facetious. I apologized.”

“But with no promise to mend your ways.” Jack stepped closer to her. “Why, Elly, I do think I’ve just been warned.”

“No! That is…oh, go away. I did a stupid thing, and I’m sorry.”

“Ah, that’s better. Except, I think, for the part where you were backing up just now, as if I was going to bite off your head. I’ve given this some thought. We don’t look very married, little one. Not if you’re going to flinch every time I’m near you.”

“You’re in my bedchamber, Jack. What sort of behavior were you expecting of me?”

Well, that stopped him. Her words, and the way she stood there, her spine so straight, looking at him with those huge brown eyes. What did he expect from her? What did he expect from himself?

He knew what he hadn’t expected. He hadn’t expected to be interested in this quiet female who apparently had depths he’d never considered. He hadn’t expected to be so curious as to what went on behind those wide, seemingly frank, ingenuous brown eyes. He hadn’t expected to feel quite so protective of her, or so attracted to her.

And now, once more, and knowing it, damn her, he was going to rush to fill the silence. And fill it by saying something he’d probably regret. “You’re free to look at anything in my desk. Anything. You’re free to ask me any questions, and I’ll do my best to answer those questions. You’re Ainsley’s daughter, and I consider you to be his agent here and, in some twisted way, my partner.”

Now he fell silent, waiting for her to fill that silence with a similar promise of her own.

He may as well have been waiting for Hades to freeze over.

At last she said thank you, and then inclined her head toward the door, which was as close as a refined young lady probably could get to “Now take yourself off, you bugger!”

“Elly…”

“Eleanor,” she corrected. She had enough on her plate. She might as well be truthful on this one small thing. “I’d much prefer you to address me as Eleanor, if you don’t mind.”

That was as good as a slap to the face. She’d said her family called her Elly. He was back to being an outsider. “Certainly…Eleanor. I didn’t wish to presume a familiarity you might not like.”

“No, that isn’t what I—that is, we are supposedly husband and wife.”

“And newly married, too,” Jack said, happy to have the conversation steered back to territory that seemed to discommode her more than it did him. Not that he could recall a time when he’d been nervous around a female.

Until tonight.

“Yes, and newly married, as well. We should discuss that, just so that our stories match. Where we met, for one. I’d prefer you did not mention Becket Hall.”

Jack nodded. “That makes sense. If I’m exposed, you can disappear. And with no one knowing about Becket Hall or those who live there. So, wife, where did we meet?”

Eleanor was becoming more uncomfortable by the moment. “I’m merely being careful, Jack. No one has to know that I am a Becket at all, that Morgan is my sister. Ethan was careful to keep any of that out of his letter to Lady Beresford.”

“You read it?”

“Certainly. Didn’t you? As I said, we need to keep our stories consistent.”

Jack was beginning to think he was in the presence of a master. That his days as courier and spy had been relegated to amateurish at best. Why, he should be surprised to still be alive, and not have been long since put up against some French wall and shot.

“Do you have a plan?” he asked when yet another silence yawned between them, a silence he’d have to fill sooner or later anyway.

“I do, yes. Sussex is too close, too easily checked for the truth. Your story for Mr. Phelps, as I remember it, is that you have an estate somewhere in the West Indies and are only visiting here, correct? I should say that we met there, in Jamaica to be more precise, and that I am the child of a moderately wealthy landowner there.”

“Splendid. Then you came to me with a considerable dowry? That should please our gentlemen. Yes,” Jack said, beginning to pace the carpet. “That would work well. I’ve run through my fortune, and now I want to purloin my wife’s fat dowry and use it to invest in something that will very quickly make me very rich, put my near-bankrupt Jamaican plantation to rights.” He turned to smile at Eleanor. “You should write novels.”

Eleanor twined her fingers together at her waist. “Yes, thank you. This also negates any necessity for ours to be seen as a love match.”

“In other words, I’m to be cast in the role of unmitigated cad. Charming. You know, woman, when you eventually disappear the world will think I’ve buried you under a rosebush. Or haven’t you thought of that? Ah, by the look on your face, I can see you haven’t. Then it’s settled. Ours is also a love match. We have Ethan’s reputation to consider here, too, remember, as he’s the one who has ostensibly introduced me to the ton.”

Eleanor, who now knew the full story of Morgan’s titled husband and his unconventional parents, smiled at this. “I don’t think Ethan is overly concerned about that, Jack.”

Why this one point was becoming so important to him, Jack didn’t know, didn’t want to know. But, damn it, he couldn’t spend the next weeks squiring about a woman who cared less for him than she did the dirt beneath her feet. It was just unnatural, that’s what it was.

“I think I must nevertheless insist. I want a love match. The appearance of a love match.”

Eleanor knew when a battle wasn’t worth the fight. Besides, what difference would it make, as they’d both know they were playacting? “For the sake of your male pride, yes, I understand. My brother Spencer would probably feel much the same way. Even if, as you may recall saying, we never set foot in society at all. Very well. If we are in company, any company at all, I hereby promise to make mooncalf eyes at you at every opportunity.”

He longed to shake her, shake away some of that quiet reserve that, he felt increasingly sure, hid a whole other Eleanor Becket. The real Eleanor Becket.

“Sarcasm to one side, I accept,” Jack told her. He retrieved his journal, then approached Eleanor once more…and she stepped one step backward once more. “And that will have to stop. We have to practice.” He reached for her hand, lifted it to within inches of his mouth. “No flinching now, Eleanor, I’m not going to bite.”

She stood very still as he bent over her hand, pressing his lips to her skin for one brief moment that nearly turned her knees to water. She’d rarely had her hand bent over, let alone kissed, so she didn’t know if her reaction to the act was usual. But she didn’t think so.

Still bent over her hand, he lifted his head to smile at her. “See? Completely painless. I will do this from time to time, as a man does.”

It was time to put a halt to this exercise before the man suggested he kiss her cheek, just to make sure she wouldn’t scream in maidenly fright. “Claiming his woman, yes. Every animal marks its territory in one way or another.”

He narrowed those intense green eyes as he looked at her as if she’d just spoken to him in some unknown language. “You are a piece of work, Eleanor Becket.”

“Eleanor Eastwood,” she corrected, wondering when on earth her common sense would wake up from its nap and stop her from saying anything else ridiculous. Now was not the time to correct the man. Not when he was standing so close to her. Not when he was still holding her hand.

“Eleanor Eastwood. Alliterative, almost rolls off the tongue. And now, wife, good night.”

Before she could pull her hand away he lifted it once more, this time turning her hand so that he could press his lips against her palm. For an instant only, he lightly slid the tip of his tongue against her skin before letting her go.

Because he was not a nice man.

He liked the way her eyes grew wide for a moment before she carefully composed her expression—that mix of strength and vulnerability that had begun to tease at him almost unmercifully. He smiled at the way she drew her hand close against her midriff, her fingers curled around the palm he’d kissed.

It wasn’t until he was back in his own bedchamber that he began to wonder what in hell was happening. Not just to the mission they’d undertaken, but to him, personally. That little wisp of a woman, seemingly without humor, without much in the way of emotions, had begun to creep beneath his skin, into his consciousness. And he didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all.

“Something stuck in your craw, Jack?” Cluny asked from his seat beside the fire.

Jack turned to look at his friend. “Strange, but I seem to remember this pile being large enough for you to have your own bedchamber.”

“And that’s true enough,” Cluny said, leaning his head back against the soft leather. “So? I heard voices through the connecting door. Couldn’t hear what you were saying, much as I tried, no shame to me, but I heard the voices. You two settle anything between you?”

Jack stripped off the shirt he’d donned before confronting Eleanor in her bedchamber and slipped his arms back into the silk banyan. Then he said out loud what he’d suddenly realized. “She’s frightened out of her mind, Cluny, and probably second-guessing why she’s here at all.”

“Ah, there’s a pity. So you’ll be sending her off home, then?”

Jack sat himself down, picked up the snifter of brandy he’d left warming by the fire. “No. I don’t think I could blast her out of here with cannon fire.”

“Would that be a fact? Scared, but standing her ground. Well, you know what that is, my friend, don’t you? That’s courage.”

Jack looked toward the door that connected his chamber to Eleanor’s. “Is that it? Is that why I’m…intrigued by her?”

Cluny laughed into his own snifter, a hollow sound. “Lord love you, no. I seen her from the top of the stairs when Treacle was taking her down the line, introducing the staff just like they do in fine houses, or so I’m told. Face of an angel she’s got, and a fine, fine figure for such a small dab. Courage? Who looks to a pretty woman with an eye out to see courage?”

“Or, Cluny, who looks to courage and expects to see a pretty woman,” Jack murmured quietly. “We’d better get this right, old friend, or Miss Becket in there will be very disappointed.”

Then he sat and looked at the door for a long time, picturing Eleanor untying the bows on her dressing gown, climbing into the turned-down four-poster bed, looking small and vulnerable as she lay half-swallowed by the pillows and coverlet.

She barely came up to the top of his chest. He was a tall man, he knew that, taller than most men, but even taking that into consideration, Eleanor Becket was a small woman. He was certain he could easily span her waist with his hands, yet there was no denying her womanly shape. A small bit of perfection he’d actually not noticed during his visits to Becket Hall.

Now she filled his head, and he couldn’t seem to get her out again, even knowing he had to concentrate on his plans for bringing down these three men and, more importantly, through them, finding the leader of the Red Men Gang.

Oh, yes, and then there was Richard.

He had to avenge what he was sure was the murder of his cousin. Why did he have to keep reminding himself of that part?

“Cluny?” he asked as the fire burned lower in the grate. “Do you think he was in on it, had been a part of the Red Men?”

Cluny didn’t pretend not to know who Jack was talking about. “He was a weasel, I’ll give him that. Could be. Could be. And wouldn’t that be a fine kettle of fish, eh? The pair of us sticking our necks into a noose to get some of our own back for a weasel. Besides, we’re beyond that now. Your cousin is only a part of this. The rest is us and for us. Wrap your head about that one, boyo. Why, we should be putting down our pennies for Masses for that cousin of yours, he did us such a good turn. We’re bad, bad men living a good, good life.”

“I don’t think Eleanor sees the thing that way, Cluny,” Jack said, then drained the remainder of his brandy. “I think she sees us as helping the people of Romney Marsh.”

“Ah, then it’s going to Heaven I’ll be, once they’re done gutting me and hanging me in chains? A good thing to know.”

Jack grinned. “Isn’t it, though?”