Beware of Virtuous Women (21 page)

"He
wants them gone. Not you—this other man. You are a minion, out of your own mouth. So tell me, why am I dealing with you?"

"Because I'm as close as you'll ever get. You want to stay alive, don't you? We'll enlarge on your little enterprise, you and I, add my money to it, then split the profits fairly between us. Forty percent for you? That seems fair. Either that, Eastwood, or take the cripple and what small profit you've made and use it to buy passage to Jamaica or some such place. Disappear. Because you already know too much, because this is my only offer, and because those are my conditions."

"And because next time it will be considerably more than a flaming brick. Yes, I begin to see your less than subtle strategy." Jack filed away the earl's mention of Jamaica. Eleanor's story included Jamaica, but no one had as yet heard that story. Coincidence? He thought not. "Or, since I really think I don't like you, Chelfham, I could simply turn you in to the authorities right now, and continue on as I am."

"You could. I'd be very sorry to do it, but I'd then have to turn you and Harris and his friend Eccles over to the hangman. I'd be mortified for everyone to learn that my beloved brother-in-law was dabbling in smuggling with you while under my roof. Damned upset. Why, I'd been quietly gathering evidence of his guilt, but had hesitated to turn it over to the Crown, worrying for my wife's health if she learned the truth. Sad. So very sad, don't you think?"

Jack chuckled ruefully. "So that's why you put up with him? Him and his scarlet waistcoat, his deep gambling? He's your carefully set up sacrificial lamb if anyone gets too close?"

"Sacrificial lamb? I like that. He does rather
bleat
when he talks, doesn't he? And, yes, every smart man has one always at the ready. I should know." Chelfham smiled a greasy smile that seemed almost painful. "You're a smart man, Eastwood. But not smarter than me. I've been playing this game a long time, as both pawn and bishop. I don't know how you figured out that I'm involved with...no, we're done discussing him. A man wants to die in his bed, preferably sated and still buried deep inside a beautiful woman, even if he did have to buy her."

Jack watched as the earl sauntered toward the flag-way, then followed after him, feeling the fool. An impotent fool. "You're afraid of your own partner?"

"Never equal partners, remember? Not you with me, not me with him. There is only ever one block at the top of every pyramid." The earl looked back at Jack, smiled. "And let's just say I've watched him long enough, so that I've learned how to survive. You could learn that from me as we both get very rich."

"Become your protege, you mean, as you betray this man you so obviously fear? You continue to work with— for—him, with the two of us quietly building our own private empires. With you in charge, of course, as there is only one stone at the top of every pyramid." Jack gritted his teeth and said the words. "I'd be honored, my lord."

"And there's the answer I've been waiting for. Good for you, Jack! He'll never know about us, as he doesn't dirty his hands with details as long as his profits remain constant. You operate on Romney Marsh, correct? One of those ragtag bands that smuggle small cargos up and down that inhospitable bit of coastline? I've been having some fun there lately, there and in one small stubborn corner of Cornwall, dissuading people from dealing with these smaller gangs. I'm guessing the Marsh. Whichever it is, you wouldn't have come looking for a partner at all if your enterprise weren't already in trouble."

Jack thought it was time for a bit of patently false blustering on his part. 'Then you'd be wrong, on all counts. I still maintain all my contacts. Whatever you think you're doing to anyone else, it hasn't affected me. The only reason I found you is because you've been slipshod, not me."

"Oh, please, Eastwood, don't insult me, not when we're only beginning what will be our lucrative association. I know where you operate from because we've
got
everything else. And you've come to me at just the right time. Harris and his friend clearly have outlived their usefulness. I need someone who can do the, shall we say, dirtier work. Last night's debacle proved yet again that my brother-in-law is not up to the task. My God, man, you and your little bride could have been burned up in your beds. You really didn't get the dumpling's note?"

Jack rubbed at his temples, where his head had begun to ache. "You sent a note. You actually did that? Warned me, then set my house on fire? And all to have me understand that I'm vulnerable if you want me to be, and to have me fear for my wife's life, send her away."

Chelfham spread his arms wide. "What can I say, Eastwood? I'm a man besotted by his wife."

"You could be a dead man. I could have killed you back there, and I was tempted," Jack pointed out as the two of them walked along the flagway, toward White's. "I could still kill you for the insult to my wife. In fact, I believe I'd enjoy that."

"No. No, no, no. Don't bother to posture and bluster now, man, because I won't believe you, you've left it too late. Join with me, Jack, just the two of us, and I can protect us from.. .from the man atop the pyramid."

"Just the two of us," Jack repeated, stopping on the flagway, so that the earl also stopped, turned to look back at him. Jack needed to be absolutely clear on this one point. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

The earl's smile beamed through the swirling fog as he walked back to Jack. "See? Not a stupid man. I was counting on that. Get your wife gone, please, before you dispose of them. My wife will have enough on her plate, what with ordering mourning clothes to honor her brother."

Jack kept his features blank. "Just a small question, my lord. How often do you feel this need to...change partners?"

"Worried, Jack?" Chelfham clapped a hand on Jack's back. "Good. It's never wise to become complacent, is it? Now, get that wife of yours gone and we'll be partners in earnest."

"That may take a few days," Jack told him, then asked the question most important to him. "We met in Jamaica, my wife and I. Did you know? You said Jamaica earlier."

"I did? Oh, of course. Your wife told mine," Chelfham said quickly. Too quickly? "Yes, I'm sure that's it. Now you've kept me long enough, and I'm late for an appointment. Damn!"

Jack watched as Chelfham pushed his bulk into a trot, heading toward White's. He didn't go inside, but approached a man just then climbing into a fine black coach drawn by four coal-black, perfectly matched horses.

The opened door of the coach quickly obscured the man from Jack's sight, but he could see that the fellow was well dressed, tall, with quite long legs.

Chelfham piled into the coach behind the man and the door slammed shut, the horses moving off, the coach moving directly past Jack, who had stepped into the mouth of yet another narrow alleyway. There were no markings on the door of the coach, no coat of arms. The driver and footmen wore plain black livery.

The shades were drawn.

"Those tits cost somebody a pretty penny."

Jack looked to his left to see Cluny had come up beside him and was also watching the town coach and its matched hackneys move off down the street. "Remember that coach. We may go looking for it someday soon."

"And good luck to us then," Cluny said, sniffing. "Could be any of hundreds, save for the tits."

"Then we watch for those horses."

"Yes, and that's just what I've been longing to do with my days, don't you know. Could there perhaps be a reason?"

"Possibly. We might have just caught a glimpse of the top stone of the pyramid, Cluny," Jack said as the two men walked toward the corner, where Jack's own closed coach waited. "Where are Phelps and Eccles? Chelfham would like them weighted with chains at the bottom of the Thames."

"Then it's disappointed the man will be when they both show up again, isn't it? It's a long way from a faulty wheel on a carriage to the bottom of the Thames. What happened with his high-and-mighty lordship?"

"Quite a lot. I'm to send away my crippled wife because his wife thinks the mere sight of her will mark her unborn child, and then I will be taken in as Chelf-ham's fairly minor partner as he uses me to betray the true leader of the Red Men Gang or whatever the whole is called, if it's called anything. Right after I remove from him the burden of his brother-in-law and the hapless Eccles, both of whom seem to have become dispensable. Our friend Chelfham is a very interesting man, and he believes me to be a greedy and not too bright fool. He also knows about you, by the way."

"He does now, does he? Boyo, have you considered that we may have bitten off a bigger bite than we can easily swallow? You were looking for your cousin, remember? Now we're up to our necks in Red Men and Black Ghosts. I don't like this, boyo, and I find myself wondering more and more about this Ainsley Becket of yours. There's more going on here than we either of us know. I can feel it in my shins."

They climbed into the coach and headed back to Portland Square.

Jack settled himself against the squabs, his weariness having more to do with facing the hours ahead of him than with the fact that he'd not had much sleep the previous night. "Make yourself scarce tonight, Cluny, if you will."

"You still plan to tell her everything? Ainsley Becket's daughter?"

Jack scrubbed at his face with both hands, then looked at his friend. "Do I have a choice?"

"You do that, boyo. Send her away. I say it, Chelfham says it."

"Yes. But I know
why
you say it. Something else is going on here, Cluny. I can feel it, almost taste it."

"There's nobody following you save me, boyo, not unless whoever it would be is a lot better at the job than I am. The woman is their spy, and a good one, for who would think a little thing like that could be so devious? They just don't trust you, that's the whole of it. You're with them, but you're not a Becket. That's just the way of things in this world."

Jack remembered holding Eleanor in his arms. That was no sham, what they'd done, how they'd felt. How he'd felt. "I think you're wrong, Cluny," he said, then added quietly, "Christ, I hope you're wrong."

Eleanor sat in the drawing room with her leather case open on her lap, paging through the watercolors she'd painted from memory, or what she thought to be her memory.

Knew to be her memory...

Jacko had taken her portfolio with him when he'd gone off for over a week a few years ago, then come back to her with them. He'd walked into her bedchamber unannounced, handed her the watercolors, nodded his head once, and then left again.

Neither Jacko nor Eleanor nor her papa had ever spoken more than a few times about the watercolors, what they meant, what any of her slow, painful recollections meant. The implications. She hadn't told Jacko that she'd also remembered what had happened that last terrible day, and his part in the horror. All she'd at last said to her papa was that she had decided she would be happiest remaining at Becket Hall.. .and he had agreed.

Some things, things that could not be changed, were best left alone. Her real name. Her childhood home. Jacko and those last minutes before her escape from Chance's arms and her terrified run across the flaming decks.