The Earl With the Secret Tattoo (3 page)

“You sulked in the carriage,” Clare accused her.

“Of course I did.” Eleanor was indignant. “If your father had just died on holiday
with you in the Cotswolds, wouldn’t you have?”

Clare’s brow furrowed. “I suppose so, although I’d never go to the Cotswolds. I prefer
Cornwall.”

Eleanor couldn’t help sending her a flat stare. “Please go on with your story.”

“All right.” Clare flung a curl off her neck. “You and your mother stopped at our
house to find some support before you returned home to an empty house, but you were
told you needed to go to London with me and the Sherwoods for some cheering up. You
were furious that the Sherwood siblings came to escort us there.”

“Yes, I was. We already established that, did we not?”

“But your mother is friends with Lady Brady. It was the least the family could do
in your time of mourning. And we were only a brief stop off their regular route.”

“I know all that,” Eleanor gritted out, “but it doesn’t negate the fact that no one
cared what I wanted. Let’s get to the actual robbery, shall we?”

“Wait. Are you paying me for this?”

“No.”

“Then why am I—?”

“Because I asked you to,” Eleanor reminded her. “What do you remember about the robbery?”

Clare’s brow furrowed. “That the carriages suddenly lurched to a halt, which was frightening
in and of itself. And then we heard shouting. We looked out the window and saw two
robbers pulling Lord Westdale out of the boys’ carriage. One began choking him when
he fought back and managed to knock the pistol from the robber’s hand. Lord Westdale
was surprisingly strong for a boy of fifteen.”

“Were you frightened?”

“Of course.” Clare’s eyes flashed annoyance. “I was only thirteen. I remember there
was another scoundrel guarding our carriage. Lord Westdale’s sisters were screaming
and crying out the carriage window, despite the thug guard telling them to shut up.
And then the carriage door flew open because the Sherwood girls were pressed against
it.”

It seemed that Clare had forgotten all about how much she didn’t want to speak to
Eleanor. “You pulled me toward the opening,” she went on avidly, “and we could see
much better then. Westdale’s brothers jumped out of their carriage and threw rocks,
and Lord Peter beat that robber’s back with a stick, hard enough that Westdale almost
broke free.”

She was silent a few seconds.

“What then?” asked Eleanor.

“Both the two robbers and the boys were trying to get to the pistol,” Clare said quietly,
“while the tutor stayed in the carriage sobbing loudly and their coachman attempted
to calm the horses from his box. They were stamping and whinnying when the pistol
landed between them. And then you jumped out suddenly from the other door of our carriage,
which had been closed, and I—I thought you were going to get killed for being so foolish.”

Her face actually turned slightly pink at that point.

“Well, I obviously didn’t,” Eleanor said, feeling embarrassed at the sudden awkwardness
between them. “I only wanted to help get to the pistol, but I couldn’t.” She paused.
“How did you feel when the masked horseman made an appearance?”

“Surprised and impressed. Seeing him thunder up on a horse, throw himself off, and
immediately dispatch the two robbers, then their guard…it was like a glorious theatrics
enacted in front of us.”

“It was,” Eleanor murmured in agreement.

For a brief moment, they looked at each other without any animosity between them.
There was even the sense that they’d shared in something that would usually bond anyone
else.

“I wonder what they were after?” Clare’s sincere interest surprised and somehow pleased
Eleanor. “They didn’t seem to care about the rest of us. Only Lord Westdale.”

“I don’t know.”

“He was wearing that talisman around his neck, remember?” Clare relaxed her shoulders
and leaned back against the banister, as if settling in for a coze.

“Yes, he was,” said Eleanor, feeling some excitement. “I’d forgotten that he had it.”

“Lord Robert found it in the cave by our house. He gave it to Lord Westdale the night
before at dinner. We all passed it round first. Your mother said it might be dirty
and we should wash our hands.”

“She did,” Eleanor murmured. “Then Westdale put it on a string around his neck. But
it was such a modest token. It hardly seems as if it would be worth holding up two
carriages for.”

“But the robbers ignored the rest of us, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but Westdale was the oldest and most likely to fight back. That could be why
they picked on him.”

“True.” Clare’s brow furrowed.

“You don’t think—?”

“That the talisman was important somehow?” Clare asked.

“I don’t know. I wonder now.”

“I do, too.”

“Thanks for speaking with me.” Eleanor tossed her a light smile—any more, and her
friendliness would set up Clare’s hackles. “It’s been enlightening. Have fun at the
Pantheon Bazaar.”

Clare didn’t smile or speak, but when Eleanor looked over her shoulder at the stair
landing, she saw her stepsister watching her thoughtfully.

There was no one else about, not even the butler. He’d gone back to the kitchens,
apparently, likely for a quick cup of tea.

A gut inclination gripped Eleanor, and this time she would follow it. “Clare?” she
called up the stairs when she opened the front door.

“What?” Clare’s tone was resentful again.

“Do you ever question why my mother stayed behind that day? I mean, do you think she
and your father were”—she could barely say the word—“
together,
even before my father died?”

Clare’s eyes widened. “I—I don’t know. I’ve often wondered.”

“So have I.”

They stared at each other a long moment. Clare’s eyes grew so shiny, she blinked several
times. Eleanor, clinging to the front doorknob, felt as lost and sad as her stepsister
appeared.

“I’m your sister now,” she told Clare in a firm, loving tone, “however we were brought
together. And I have one bit of advice for you. If you want a life of misery, keep
acting smug and superior, like our parents. But if you crave true happiness, then
consider that Viscount Henly can offer you just that.”

Before Clare could answer, Eleanor crossed the threshold into the outdoors and pulled
the door shut behind her. It was a magnificent, sunny morning, the perfect climate
in which to pull hidden hurts, old secrets, and unsolved mysteries out of the corner,
dust them off, and expose them to the light of day.

<#>

In the weak light of a single candle in the kitchen of his London town house, James
looked at the talisman he kept in his pocket at all times. It had been given to him
by the late Lord Kersey, who’d taken him under his wing a few years after James’s
diplomat father, in talks with the Austrians at Vienna to declare war against France,
had been killed in an ambush by an elite French team outside Hamburg on his way back
to England.

It was Lord Pritchard,
a white-faced Lord Kersey had told James one dark, rainy night,
who revealed your father’s location to the French. He did it to others, too. But he
won’t get away with it, James. We won’t let him
. And he’d put the talisman in James’s hand, curling his fingers around it.

Now James studied the tiny crouched cat engraved on the talisman’s copper surface.
“I promise,” he whispered to the cat before he put the small disk back in his pocket.
To anyone else the practice might seem silly, but he said those two words every day
before he left the house.

Lord Kersey had asked two things of him before he died: that James bring Lord Pritchard
to justice if he didn’t live to do the same, and to protect his daughter Eleanor.

For five years now, James had done his best to watch over his mentor’s daughter. As
for bringing Lord Pritchard to justice, he still hadn’t done so. But as he lived and
breathed, he would. It galled him every day to pretend that he didn’t know the man
had betrayed his country yet enjoyed a fine standing in the community.

Knowing that Eleanor resided under the traitor’s roof was the worst part of all.

A mere seven hours after James had kissed Pritchard’s daughter and tangled with her
fiery stepsister, it was still pitch dark—and that one hour of opportunity between
the last of the late-night revelers straggling home and the earliest servants awakening.
James shut the gate of his back garden softly and began a purposeful walk down the
alley, his cape pulled tight against the fog, his hat brim low on his head. He wended
his way through silent streets and slipped into a small bakery as the first cock crowed.

“Pritchard’s landed into debt again,” he informed his superior in the Brotherhood,
Ronald Stubing, proprietor of the Second Bun Bakery Shop, when he walked in. One of
James’s other Brothers, William Reeves, handed him a cup of coffee, for which he murmured
his thanks.

“Lady Clare told me herself last night he’s selling her off.”

They’d gathered in the cramped back room of the bakery, where Stubing hunched over
a worktable and punched dough.

Reeves was the head accountant at a thriving men’s clothing store on Bond Street,
the one Prinny himself patronized. He was a wizard with numbers and was the first
to alert the Brotherhood who among the beau monde was in debt. If they couldn’t pay
their tailoring bills, that was a significant sign.

Reeves wrinkled his nose. “Could you be a bit less vigorous with the flour?” he asked
Stubing and brushed his sleeve. “I’ve got to go straight to work after this.”

Stubing paused in his kneading and glowered at him. “Do you mind?” he shot back in
his thick Cockney accent. “We’re talking about Satan’s right-hand man, a retired Brother
turned betrayer who’s been sitting pretty and unchallenged for five years. I pity
the daughter, shallow bitch that she appears to be, Tumbridge.”

He glanced up at James.

“Yes, well, I pity her, too,” James said. “Perhaps she’d have turned out differently
in other circumstances.” He thought about Eleanor, another daughter of a member of
the Brotherhood, and of how perfect she was.

There was a rustle at the door, and Lord Patrick Griffin swept in, reeking of stale
cheroot smoke and spirits. His eyes were bloodshot and his shirt rumpled. “Sorry I’m
late,” he said, and took off his slightly dented tall hat.

“We know why.” Reeves didn’t look a bit envious.

“You toffs and your easy jobs,” Stubing muttered. “Either seducing spoiled debutantes
or recruiting bits o’ muslin to talk about their high-class customers. What a life,
eh?”

Stubing had been one of the country’s most prized sharpshooters in the war with Napoléon.

“A man has to do what a man has to do,” Patrick said with a crooked grin. He’d been
recruited into the Brotherhood after his twin brother, a brilliant negotiator with
the Portuguese alliance during the Wars, had lost his life in mysterious circumstances.
“But the truth is, I tease those lightskirts and don’t bed them, Stubing, much as
you’d like to imagine so.”

Stubing scoffed. “I don’t need to imagine nothing of the kind. I got my Mary at home,
warm and cheery. She’s got none of those diseases your girls do.”

“One reason why I’m careful,” Patrick said. “Ask James here. Believe it or not, it’s
challenging work pretending to be a drunken wastrel with a stone-cold heart.”

“You learned from the master,” said Reeves gleefully, looking at James. “No more sober
man exists in London than Lord Tumbridge, yet who would guess?”

“The man’s an expert at fake retching into his hat,” chuckled Stubing. “Although the
stone-cold heart is for real, at least when it comes to women. Ain’t it, James?”

Patrick and Reeves laughed.

“Indeed,” James muttered into his cup of coffee, and decided to bring the conversation
back round to Lord Pritchard. He set his cup on a nearby shelf and leaned against
the wide, rough back of the brick oven.

His friends didn’t need to know that the warmth emanating from those bricks made him
long for Eleanor. He’d give anything to hold her close, to feel the heat of her body
pressed to his, to kiss her and make her his own. “I was just telling them, Patrick,
that I think we might have caught our man at a weak moment. He’s clearly in debt.
His daughter’s lamenting the fact that she has to marry Viscount Henly. She says her
father believes Henly will solve all their money woes.”

“It makes sense.” Patrick hung his hat and cape on a hook by the door, next to James’s.

“The top secret leaks these past eight months—they started after that big loss he
had to Dupree on the green baize.” He looked round at them all. “He’s active again.”

“Let me kill him,” Stubing said, methodically filling pans with balls of dough, then
covering them with a cloth. “It would make everything so much easier.”

“No,” said James. “Lord Kersey told me in no uncertain terms he’d rather Pritchard
receive public condemnation and suffer in prison, and I agree.”

“Scandal and prison won’t make up for all the loyal diplomats and agents who died
because of his greed during the war,” Reeves added quietly.

“Nothing will bring them back.” James was pensive. “But he craves approval more than
anything. Being vilified by his peers and the masses, too, would torture him far worse
than a quick death.”

“Right,” said Stubing, wiping his hands on his apron. He looked around at the lot
of them. “We let him live. But we’ve got to get him. Soon. He’s a loose cannon, and
he needs to be brought down once and for all.”

James pulled the treasured token with the cat engraved on it out of his pocket and
held it up. “This talisman’s mate is still out there. We don’t have it, but neither
does he. He’s not even looking anymore. He made a quick, messy effort to get it, and
when his thugs failed, he gave up because he didn’t know what it meant. Or perhaps
he did guess its true importance. What better way to make sure it remains lost than
to let it stay in the hands of a big, rambling family like the Sherwoods?”