The Earl With the Secret Tattoo (7 page)

The Earl of Tumbridge had warned her not to let anyone know he was the man with the
secret tattoo—but he hadn’t said she couldn’t talk about the actual robbery. Yet here
she was, queasy with fear and nerves, having been assaulted the very night after she’d
begun doing just that.

With whom had she discussed that fateful day? She made a mental list: Clare, the Sherwood
sisters, Mother, Lord Pritchard—

Her gut seized at the thought of him. She remembered how agitated he’d been in the
carriage on the way to the ball, how she’d felt a whisper of caution that had compelled
her to lie to him about the talisman’s whereabouts. She was almost sure he had something
to do with this—her own stepfather!

But she’d never trusted him.

Never.

Yet there was also Lord Tumbridge. He’d seen her at the Brady mansion. He’d gone back
inside the house with that lovely little painting. Perhaps Janice and Cynthia had
told him she’d been asking after the robbery. Had Janice told him she’d given Eleanor
the talisman? Or had he simply suspected she might have it?

Had
he
sent someone to frighten her?

She was in terrible trouble, and she needed answers.

Slowly, she sat up and put her feet over the side of the bed. An awful decision must
be made: Should she trust her mother—and thus Lord Pritchard—to help her, or force
more answers out of the Earl of Tumbridge, who’d shown himself to be a dangerous man
with his own secrets?

The latter,
she decided, and knew it was the right decision. Her heartbeat’s frenetic pace subsided
to a more steady one. It was a gamble, yes, to confide in the man. She was almost
sure she’d have to show him the talisman. But it was the right decision. Somehow,
she knew.

She got up, wrapped her navy blue cape around her night rail, and put on her navy
blue bonnet, all very quietly.

But a fresh doubt assailed her. She’d have to trust the man who’d brazenly kissed
her stepsister when she was clearly engaged to another man.

Could she trust Lord Tumbridge?
Should
she?

Hesitating a fraction, Eleanor picked up her reticule, which hung from the side of
her full-length looking glass and still held the talisman. Heavens! She’d come so
close to losing the small token.

And then she crossed to her dressing table, where she took her sharpest hat pin and
stuck it into the flimsy velvet pouch.
Yes,
she told herself. She’d have to trust Lord Tumbridge; she’d have to focus on the
part of him that had saved her and her friends during that robbery.

But she didn’t have to be naïve about it.

When she opened her bedchamber door, she stood for a very long time and listened to
the sounds of the house. What she was about to do tonight was far scarier than crossing
that creek Papa had long ago urged her to do.

Finally, when she was as sure as she could be that everyone was abed, she stepped
out into the corridor, walked swiftly past Clare’s bedchamber, down the stairs, and
out the front door, shutting it quietly behind her.

It was time. Time to trust her instincts.

<#>

James was in the middle of a dream about fishing with his father, but Lady Eleanor
was there, too. A fish kept knocking into the boat, a big fish, one he wanted to catch
to impress Lady Eleanor
and
Father. But he couldn’t see it—

Knock, knock, knock.

Knock, knock, knock!

His eyes flew open and he jumped out of bed. Literally sprang out and landed on his
feet like a cat.

Someone was at the front door.

He wrapped a silk banyan around him and opened his bedchamber door. There was a candle
in the hallway—one of the servants was already on his or her way.

“I’ve got it, Michael,” he said to the footman.

“Very well, sir,” said Michael, and handed him the candle.

Knock, knock, knock!

James hurried down the stairs and opened the front door. Lady Eleanor Gibbs landed
against him with a light thud.

He put out his arms to stop her fall. Catching her was
much
better than landing a big fish.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I—I’m so sorry. I’d put my ear against the door to hear if someone
was coming, and then you opened it—”

“It’s all right,” he soothed her.

For a brief second, he got the feeling she didn’t want him to let her go. He didn’t
want to, either. It was the last thing in the world he wanted, in fact.

But he must.

Gently, he placed her upright on the scarlet-and-gold carpet. “My dear Lady Eleanor,
what’s wrong?”

Concern filled him, followed swiftly by fury. Who’d put her in such a state?

She swallowed, and then she began to tremble.

“Steady.” He put his hands on her small, soft shoulders, so temptingly hidden beneath
a navy blue cape.

“Please just give me a moment.” Her tone was staunch. “I’ll be all right.”

“May I take your cape?”

“I—I can’t,” she said, and put her arms through the slits in the fabric to show him
that they were encased in pink muslin and lace. From her left wrist dangled a small
reticule with a pearl-tipped pin stuck through its folds. “I’m afraid I’m in my night
rail.”

“That’s all right,” he said as if it weren’t significant in the least that she’d appeared
at his door
en déshabillé
. “Keep it on, then.”

But he did ask for her bonnet.

“Of course.” When she removed it, she looked more vulnerable than ever. Her hair fell
over her shoulder in a braid, and it was slightly mussed—as if she’d run to his house
straight from her bed.

Good Lord. What had happened? “Let me get you a chair,” he said. “A glass of ratafia.
Something.”

“A chair would be lovely. And perhaps a fire, if you still have one. And I’ll say
no to the ratafia, but thank you.”

He took her arm, and she didn’t object. Michael was still at the top of the stairs.

“A fire, Michael,” said James. “In the library. And some tea, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, my lord.” Michael hastened down the stairs, a jacket thrown over his nightdress.

James paused to let the servant pass ahead of them. When they got to the library,
the footman was already crouching at the hearth, fanning the embers and adding coal.

Lady Eleanor sank into the depths of the most comfortable chair in the room and placed
her reticule on a small table at her elbow.

Michael left for the tea, and she looked up at James with those expressive brown eyes.

“I’m all right now,” she said—his pulse picked up its tempo at the word
now
—“but a man came to my room tonight and held a knife to my throat—”

“Good God.” James sank to his knees and gripped her hands. “Are you sure you’re all
right?”

She nodded. “I really am.”

“Tell me what this man looked like.” A desire to kill filled him, hot and intense.
“Perhaps he hasn’t gotten far. I’ll make sure he never hurts you again.”

Her mouth tipped up in a small, grateful smile. “You’re very kind. But it’s too late
for that. He looked like a black shadow to me, and he’s long gone.” She withdrew her
hands from his, and it was like losing his favorite Christmas gift only moments after
receiving it. “But there’s another way you can assist me.”

“Tell me.” Spoiled by the feel of her palm in his, he dared to take her right hand
again. When he raised it to his lips and kissed her knuckles, he lingered there far
too long.

Her face was flushed, her pupils wide and black. “I need answers, Lord Tumbridge,”
she said in a breathy but determined voice. “I don’t know where else to turn. You
have me at your mercy. It’s a place I never wanted to be, as you well know.”

“You’ve nothing to fear from me, my lady. I’m at your service.” His tone was gruff,
and it wasn’t simply desire that made it so.

It was astonishment.

His love for her wasn’t a feeling. It was a fact. The same way the sun’s rising, the
blue of the sky, and the changing of the seasons were. He couldn’t wish it away, even
had he’d wanted to.

“You’re not the same Lord Tumbridge I usually know,” she whispered. “Right now you’re
more like
him
—the man with the secret tattoo.”

James dropped back onto the rug, his hands stretched out behind him. “Sometimes something
feels fated,” he said. “I tried very hard not to let you know the truth, but the truth
will out when it must out. And in our case, I think I’ve lost control of when that
will be.”

“I don’t understand.”

He gave a soft laugh. “You trusted me tonight, and so now I’m going to trust you.”
He paused a moment, wondering how it would feel to tell someone outside the Brotherhood
the truth of his secret life. “I’m not that cold, aloof man you see, the one you believe
delights in ruining your life.”

Her eyes widened. “Who are you, then? I think I caught a glimpse of you on the steps
at the Brady mansion. I hope you are that man. And I hope…you’re still the man who
rode up and saved us from those robbers.”

He stared at her a very long time. “I’m both,” he said, and prayed she believed him.

But her eyes registered confusion. “Then why were you kissing Clare? Why do you present
yourself as a useless man of leisure? And why have you meddled in my affairs so egregiously?”

“That man,” he said quietly, “is an illusion necessary for my job—my mission, really.
And Lady Eleanor, you must believe me when I say it’s an honorable one. That mission
will end soon, I believe. And when it does, I’ll be ready to move on.”

“This is all very hard to take in,” she whispered.

“I’m sure it is.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “But it’s imperative we now talk
about you. Tell me more of what happened tonight.”

Slowly, haltingly, she related to him every harrowing detail of her evening.

The fury in him grew more entrenched. “I can’t allow you to go back.”

“Let’s not speak of that right now.” Her mouth was firm, her gaze resolute. “I need
to know if you were after Lord Westdale’s talisman that day you came upon us being
robbed. I
must
know.”

“I did want the talisman, yes,” James confessed. “But then I found out others were
after it as well. I followed those thugs with the intention of disbanding them before
they got to you. But I was too late.”

“Would you have set upon us, as well, had they not been there first?”

“I had every intention of stopping the boys’ carriage and politely requesting the
talisman.

Yes.”

“So you really were a robber.” She sounded horribly disappointed.

He reached for her hand and held it tight. It was becoming a delicious habit. “I never
would have allowed the distressing events that happened to you that day to occur.
I’d have been brief, polite, but demanding. But when I saw how traumatized all of
you were, I couldn’t do it.”

He could tell she was listening intently as she watched the flickering flames of the
fire.

“It was the one time that I truly failed in my mission.” Her fingers felt small and
delicate in his grip, the French lace at her cuffs a tantalizing reminder of her femininity.
“But when I saw you”—she tore her gaze away from the hearth and looked at him—“when
I saw you running from the girls’ carriage, your hair flying out behind you, your
face determined to save the day and get that pistol from beneath the horses’ hooves—”
He gave a short laugh. “—something twisted in my heart. I knew instinctively that
the best thing to do at that point was be a hero to
you,
that brave young girl throwing caution to the wind. And to your friends. Not worry
about the talisman. Retrieving it would have to wait.”

Michael came in with the tea, and Eleanor thanked him profusely before he left. Without
demurring, she poured James a cup in silence and then one for herself, the perfect
lady of the house despite her irregular choice of attire.

“Would you care for a little brandy in yours?” James reached for a decanter on a nearby
shelf. “It might help.”

“Why not?” She gave a shaky laugh.

He poured a dollop into her cup. Together, they sat a few minutes sipping their tea,
he at her feet, both of them facing the fire—and dare he think it?—enjoying each other’s
company.

It was almost too much to bear, knowing he could turn, push the fabric of her cape
and night rail up her leg, and press a kiss to her calf—she was that close. That tempting.

He may have been imagining it, but as the seconds passed, the ambiance went from cozy
to tantalizingly intimate.

“Eleanor—,” he said without looking at her.

“Yes?”

He had to tell her how much he longed to kiss her. But it would require turning. Looking
directly at her.

Speaking the truth.

From his heart.

He swiveled his shoulders. “There’s something I must tell you—”

“I, too,” she said into the charged atmosphere, and put her cup and saucer on the
nearby tea tray. “I have the talisman.”

All his planned words slipped away.

“Do you?” He heard the croak in his throat.

“Does it mean that much?” she whispered.

“Yes. You don’t know how much.” But not as much as she did. Nothing mattered as much
as she did.

She retrieved the primitive copper circle from her reticule and handed it to him.
When their fingers touched, they both paused.

Did she feel it, too? That there was something between them? Something momentous,
even vital?

“I hope it’s what you need,” she said. “For your long-delayed mission.”

“It is,” he said. “Thank you.”

The crackle of the fire in the hearth was the only sound in the room. Her expression
was vulnerable. Brave. Honest. And she was beautiful because of who she was, he thought—even
apart from the fact that she was a classic English rose.

Something powerful and mysterious—something that almost frightened him—pulled him
toward her.