Page 4 of How to Tempt An Earl (Wed Within a Year #2)

A name had been enough, for now. Kieran sat across from Luce in front of the cold fire in the study at the back of the house, sipping brandies and mulling over the events of the day. Or, more precisely, the events of the last thirty-six hours, which had been hectic and, in their own way, life-changing. His glance strayed to the big desk that dominated the room—the desk from which Caine had spent years presiding over the Horsemen. But Caine was married now, and happily so, even as that marriage fulfilled one of the requirements that went with the new titles: that the Horsemen marry within the year or the titles would revert to the Crown upon their deaths. Proof that nothing in this life was guaranteed.

‘You miss him.’ Luce nodded towards the empty desk.

‘I know he’s not gone. I know he’s a letter away. It’s the immediacy I miss, and his sureness. As annoying as it was at times, Caine was always right. Caine never doubted his instincts.’ Not the way he did. He had the ghost of Sofia to thank for that. Doubt was a different sort of scar from the one he carried near his liver.

‘He was annoying, and I am sure he will be again—only from Newmarket instead.’ Luce laughed and then sobered. ‘But I understand. It’s just us now.’ He fingered the short stem of his glass in a gesture that indicated he had something difficult to say. ‘It is us now, Kieran. You and me. I am here for you. You can count on me.’

‘I know,’ Kieran assured him. Luce was referring to his recent physical absence from the Horsemen. After Stepan’s accident, Luce had retreated to his newly inherited estate and buried himself in beginning to restore the estate’s library, while Kieran and Caine had bravely forged into the investigation, rooting out those who were responsible for the sabotage and for their brother’s…death…disappearance? These days, neither word felt quite right. It had been two months and there was no body or word to indicate Stepan’s fate that night in Wapping. The uncertainty haunted him, the doubt mocking. Should he do more to find Stepan? Where else should he look? Was it wrong for life to go on while there was no resolution?

‘I shouldn’t have left the Horsemen blind like that. You needed my services and I was absent. It was a lot for two to handle; a third person would have helped.’

Kieran offered a rueful grin. He might torture himself with ‘what ifs’ but he would not allow his little brother to do the same. ‘Don’t scold yourself over it. Once a Horseman, always a Horseman. You didn’t really leave us. I wasn’t exactly stalwart either. I went through the motions of going to the clubs and listening for rumours, but mostly I went out to the clubs and hells for me, to drown my sorrows, to numb my pain. It didn’t work. But Caine was patient with me. We all miss Stepan.’

They might miss him for ever; or, even worse, they might start to forget—forget to search, forget to scan the post each day in hope of some word.

It felt good to talk with Luce like this. It was a kind of remembering, a kind of grieving. They were brothers but they were also partners. Whenever the Horsemen had split into twos, it had been he and Luce who’d paired up. It always had been. Caine and he had arranged it that way even from childhood: the two oldest brothers each taking a protégé from the two youngest. It had created a unique, unified fraternity between the four brothers instead of age-based factions—the two oldest set against the two youngest.

There was more he’d like to talk with Luce about. The titles: did he intend to meet the marriage deadline? Stepan: did Luce think Stepan was dead? If not, where did he think Stepan was? But those items would have to wait. There was a more pressing matter to discuss and it was sleeping upstairs.

Kieran took a long, slow swallow of brandy and changed the topic. ‘What did you find at the boarding house?’ He’d sent Luce on some reconnaissance and, if possible, some retrieval—Luce’s specialty.

Luce crossed a long leg over his knee and took the change of conversation in stride. Luce was flexible that way, his nimble mind able to anticipate what someone was thinking, or what they would say next. As a result, he was seldom caught off guard. ‘I was able to get her valise and, before you ask, I did not look through it. Anything that was lying about the room, I threw in and I left.’

Kieran nodded. To have nosed around would have raised the landlord’s suspicion and Celeste’s. If she thought anything she’d been hiding had been disturbed it would undermine the careful truce he’d established tonight. ‘How was the landlord?’

Luce shrugged. ‘Bribeable, which is both good and bad. For a price, he and his wife were happy to let us know if anyone turned up asking for her, and more than happy to accept that I was her brother come to fetch her home. I think they’d also be happy to tell that story to anyone who asked, for the right amount of coin.’ Luce finished his drink and rose, heading for the sideboard to refill their glasses. ‘What do you make of her? Is she for us or is she a decoy working for him?’

Kieran accepted a glass. ‘That’s the real question, isn’t it? What to do with her and what more does she know? The last will likely affect the answer to the first.’

‘Hmm.’ Luce looked into his glass, studying the amber liquid. ‘ Do you think there’s more to know? She’s not a one-trick pony?’ Luce was dubious.

‘Of a certainty, she knows more. Her “warning” is merely a wetted finger testing the direction of the winds. In and of itself, what she shared with me is not information worth the journey she’s made and the risk she’s taken. She wants to be sure of us first.’

Sure that they’d protect her. After all, she had run for her own safety as much as theirs. Whatever information she possessed, she meant to use it the way an émigré might dole out precious gems to live on, one at a time. Information was her currency, her jewels. He played back in his mind every word, every facial expression, intonation and gesture that had accompanied the story she’d told him in the garden.

‘She is running, and scared. A canny hare among the foxes to be sure, but still a hare.’ And a beautiful one at that. Despite the logic of knowing his interactions with her were for business, there’d been no denying his reaction to her beauty tonight, even if that reaction had been far from practical. ‘She says her name is Celeste Sharpton and she’s Roan’s ward. She’s close to him in terms of physical proximity. She lived in his house until the time she left.’ That proximity had made her complicit in Roan’s plots and strategies. Those had been her words tonight; she was not wrong.

Both he and Luce knew how living among a particular milieu offered the advantages—or, in her case, disadvantages—of natural absorption of the climate. Summer trips to his grandfather’s estate had put him and his brothers in close contact with their grandfather’s world of spies and diplomats. It had been innocuous at first and, as they’d grown and shown certain aptitudes, more deliberate. By the time he’d been fifteen, Kieran had been running messages to his grandfather’s agents. By the time he’d been nineteen, he’d been in Venice delivering messages and taking lovers. He could only imagine how living in Roan’s household, in close proximity to the corruption Roan meted out, would affect a person.

Luce looked up from his brandy. ‘Do you think she was privy to Roan’s inner thoughts and plans? From what we know of him, he is highly secretive and closed. But perhaps they had a relationship that offered an outlet for those secrets.’

For Celeste’s sake, Kieran hoped Roan had remained closed. Secrets often became burdens. ‘Are you suggesting she was more than his ward?’ A sudden defensiveness for Celeste rose at the suggestion, and protectiveness too. Roan had no code of ethics. He would not flinch at developing a less than appropriate guardian-ward relationship if it served his purpose.

‘As distasteful as it might be to ask the question, we must consider who she is to Roan. Will he want her back because of what she knows or because of what she means to him?’ Luce fixed him with a look. ‘I did not see beneath her veil, but if she’s lovely she isn’t the first woman who has relied on wits and looks for survival.’

Luce grinned and Kieran knew he’d given himself away in some infinitesimal manner. ‘So, she is pretty. Hmm…’

‘Pretty, young, brave, mysterious…’ Kieran said.

‘You believe she is escaping Roan instead of working as bait for him,’ Luce said matter-of-factly.

‘Yes. Her luggage, or lack of it, matches what she told me in the garden—that she had to flee on a moment’s notice. And Falcon believes her.’ Falcon was their grandfather’s agent on the Continent, the one who’d brought word to Caine’s wedding about an informant who had intelligence about the arms sabotage—not a warning about Roan, although the two weren’t necessarily separate issues.

Luce thought it over. ‘Miss Sharpton has said nothing about the arms and she hasn’t told us much more than what we would readily deduce ourselves.’

It was the same concern Kieran had put to her in the garden. ‘Not yet ,’ he qualified. ‘But, yes, I have noted the discrepancy between what Falcon told us to expect and what Miss Sharpton has given up to date.’

Kieran rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘This is what I propose: you should ride to Sussex and confer with Grandfather. Tell him we have made contact with Miss Sharpton. Tell him who she claims to be and that, with all evidence considered, I am inclined to believe her. Tell him that the information we thought would be disclosed has not yet materialised but that other information has—that Roan is headed for English shores in person and is targeting the Horsemen for revenge. The family will need to know so that precautions can be taken.’

With luck, most of the family would still be at Sandmore enjoying some post-wedding relaxation before travelling home. It would make getting the word out easier if the family was all in one place. The only ones not there would be Caine and Mary, who would be on their way to their new home outside Newmarket.

Luce gave a grim nod. ‘I’ll do it, but I don’t like leaving you alone in London, knowing that there is the potential Roan will soon be here.’

Kieran chuckled. ‘I don’t like that idea either, but hopefully I’ll see Roan before he sees me. If it gets too risky, I will decamp. I am more concerned about Roan’s minions arriving in search of her than I am about Roan. We have a little time there but Celeste—Miss Sharpton—does not. It’s been two weeks since she left Brussels. They know she’s gone and they know her destination. They cannot be far behind.’ Indeed, he was surprised they hadn’t caught up with her.

Luce stood up and stretched as the clock chimed the late hour. ‘I’ll set off at first light. While I am gone, be careful. Don’t let gallantry get the better of you.’

‘I won’t. I’ve learned my lesson there,’ Kieran promised, a hand reflexively going to his side. He rose and embraced his brother. ‘You be safe too. If I’m not here when you get back, you’ll know Roan’s people are among us. I’ll find a way to let you know where we are. Sweet dreams, brother.’

* * *

Oh, sweet saints be praised, her valise! It was here in her room, waiting for her. A special kind of relief swept Celeste as she knelt beside it and undid the fastenings. When she’d gone with the Horseman, the possibility of seeing these items again had greatly diminished. There was little chance he’d let her out of his sight long enough for her to get back to the boarding house, even if it was safe to go back. He’d made compelling arguments today about the threats to her safety, threats that seemed more real to her than she’d let on at the time. Roan’s men could not be far behind. They might already be here and temporarily stymied by the vastness of the city in locating her.

The uncertainty of not knowing gnawed at her. She didn’t like being so blind, to be left guessing, worrying. But she would have to get used to it. She could very well spend the rest of her days with that uncertainty, wondering if they were still looking for her. Uncertainty was the price for her freedom.

Celeste dug through the top layer of clothes, which amounted to nothing more than a shift and a spare dress, to the treasures below: her mother’s pearls and the most precious item of all—the miniature of all three of them together when she’d been young. When they’d been a family. The items might have worldly worth but to her the value was in sentiment; they were all she had of a happier time when she’d had a family; a time before her mother had died and before her father had been entirely in Roan’s thrall. Before she’d been sent away to various boarding schools. She’d been safe in those days, loved and cherished.

Carefully, she rewrapped the miniature and tucked it away. The valise had not been rifled through. The miniature had still been wrapped as she’d wrapped it, the pearls still as she’d packed them. Kieran Parkhurst had been kind to send for it, and kind not to have invaded her privacy.

She sat back on her heels. No; she could not start thinking like that. Everything in that sentence was dangerous to her, starting with his name. Everything he’d done or said tonight had been an invitation to encourage a sense of intimacy between them and intimacy inspired confidences. Each effort he’d made had been a pearl added on a string that led towards confession, the baring of her soul, the emptying of the dark reaches of her being.

Kieran Parkhurst was working her in the ways men and women always worked one another: with favours, false kindnesses and score-keeping. He was subtle, too. Some gifts could be refused, but the gifts he offered her could not be. She could not refuse her own valise. She could not refuse a clean dress or shelter, especially the last. Her coin was running low and the Chelsea boarding house would not be safe much longer. Only a fool would say no to what he offered.

So far, he’d wanted very little in return, but he did suspect she was holding back. The way their conversation in the garden had ended indicated as much. She thought of the list sewn in the hem of her gown along with her remaining coin. She did have more information to offer, but she was not about to blurt out all of her secrets at once. Her value to him would be sorely diminished. In her experience, she would not be worth protecting once she had no further information to offer him. That was how it had been with David and Roan. They’d discarded people the way rich women discarded gowns after only one donning.

This time it might be different.

The refrain ran through her head as she refastened the valise and slid it beneath the bed. The idea stayed firmly lodged there when Liana came to help her change into the clean white nightgown of Irish linen and brush out her hair. It was not mere whimsy behind the thought. There was some logic to it. She’d run to the Horsemen not only for their protection but for hers as well, because they were different from Roan. They were protectors; they had a reputation for selflessness, for good. Things could end differently for her this time. ‘Could’ was not the same as a guarantee, though. She’d made a disastrous decision in the past about what a man could offer her instead of considering what a man would offer her. And yet brown velvet eyes tempted her to think beyond the past, to consider the future with a clean slate.

Still, she thought as she said goodnight to Liana and slid beneath lavender-scented sheets, she would not be foolish enough to cast aside her sense of caution, no matter how much a man’s eyes reminded her of melted chocolate, or how much comfort she found in the strength of his arms, or in the courteous kindnesses he showered her with. Never mind that he’d guessed her measurements to near perfection, or that with a simple touch he’d made her feel safer than she’d felt in months in what had essentially been her own home.

She turned down her lamp and fluffed her pillows with determined firmness. Kieran Parkhurst must have women falling at his feet. She could not let herself be one of them.