Page 5 of Lady Louisa and the Carriage Clock (The Rogue’s Alliance #3)

C ecil quit the Exeter Exchange and walked briskly down the street until he spied his coach.

“Home!” He called to his driver, letting himself into the carriage.

After being seated, he released every expletive he knew and made up several more. When he finished, Cecil slumped back against the velvet squabs and closed his eyes.

“That bounder, Leopold!”

He’d lost the clock because of a schoolboy rivalry. He knew Leopold would have beggared himself before he let Cecil win the clock, so he’d stopped bidding. Twenty pounds was an outrageous amount to pay for the timepiece.

The important thing was he knew where the clock was and who now owned it. He could have Bones steal it if he wanted to trust the former smuggler with the task, and Cecil wasn’t sure he did. He would simply figure out a way to gain access to the clock.

No one but Cecil and a dead man knew he had the matching clock, and the dead man wasn’t talking.

He would confide in Nathaniel. Would his friend tell his wife? Although he trusted Edith, he wasn’t sure he wanted her to share the information with her friend. Not only because Louisa would become aware of how much he needed that clock. It was highly likely others knowing about the secret the clocks held would put them in danger.

Perhaps the RA wasn’t concerned with the clock as they assumed it was no threat without its twin. For the present, he believed the clock was secure in Lady Louisa’s possession.

Cecil thought back to the people who had been in attendance at the auction. No one had struck him as an agent of the RA. A few older gentlemen had been there to bid on the books. Only he and Lady Louisa had seemed especially interested in the clock.

He’d been entrusted with his clock by a member of the RA, a member who had died at his own organization’s hand. The clock had been his assurance of safety, but when that no longer protected him, he gave it to Cecil to bring the RA to its knees.

“And that I will do,” he said gravely, opening his eyes. He smiled grimly. He’d been through too much to allow one debutante to stand in the way of his destroying the RA. No matter how well-dressed she might be.

Upon arriving home, Acker greeted him.

“I’ll have Eliza bring you a tray, my lord.”

Before he could tell the man that he wasn’t hungry, the elderly butler was gone.

Cecil was seated at his mahogany desk in one corner of the room when there was a knock at the open door. “Come!”

The maid, a former doxy distantly related to Bones, entered the drawing room and set a tray on the corner of his desk. “I made you some sandwiches, my lord. I know you can’t stomach the swill that so-called cook passes off as food.”

He looked over the tray, surprised to see the sandwiches looked edible. Cheshire cheese and roast beef peeked out of thickly sliced bread.

“This looks very good. Thank you, Eliza.”

“Will there be anything else, my lord?” She fluttered her lashes at him.

“I have all I need at present,” he replied firmly, returning his gaze to the correspondence on his desk.

The maid departed without another word. Soon after Bones came to work for him, his great niece Eliza had been in trouble with the runners and sought out Bones for help. Cecil smoothed over the difficulty on the condition the young woman gave up her profession. Not having any other way to support herself, Cecil had employed the young woman in his household. Eliza had at first thought she was hired to keep him company, but he soon dissuaded her from that thought.

He picked up a sandwich and bit into it. It was delicious, although the standards were quite low in his household at present. He returned to reading his correspondence to distract himself from brooding on the clock, not surprised to see the expected invitation from Edith inviting him to dine with her and Nathaniel in two days.

“I’ll be there.” Two days was surely plenty of time for him to formulate a plan to wrest the clock from Lady Louisa.

* * * * *

“O h, Louisa!” Edith pressed her hands to her cheeks when Louisa entered the drawing room. “You are a vision!”

Louisa’s evening dress of crepe over white satin flattered her figure, and a blue satin band encircled her midsection, drawing attention to her tiny waist. Her headdress was a thin tiara with a band of white satin, her hair fashioned into curls on her forehead and dressed low on the sides.

She felt heat on her cheeks and resolved to become more skilled at receiving and replying to compliments. “Thank you, Edith. You look like a fairy tonight.”

Where Louisa had copper-colored hair and dark green eyes, her friend had blue eyes and golden locks. As a married woman, Edith could now wear darker colors but often wore light blue as the color complemented her fair complexion.

“Good evening, Louisa.” Nathaniel stepped forward and bowed. “You’re our first guest to arrive.”

“Your sister Alicia isn’t joining us this evening?” she asked, looking about the room.

Nathaniel replied, “She is attending a play with Lady Kettering. They have become quite bosom friends.”

A footman announced Lady Diana.

“Diana!” Louisa and Edith exclaimed together.

“I have so much to tell you about the registry.” Diana strode forward with a wide smile. “You'll be happy to hear the enterprise has been running smoothly.”

The lady was a handsome woman who sported the same cobalt blue eyes and dark hair as her brother Lord Ashford, their friend Charlotte’s husband.

Their host and hostess offered refreshments, and after the new arrivals declined, the women seated themselves in one corner of the large room. Nathaniel looked content to sit near the drinks tray, nursing a glass of port.

Louisa marveled at her exquisite surroundings. Nathaniel and Edith had the largest home in Grosvenor Square, and the room was ablaze with lit candles, another sign of the baron’s wealth.

She remembered that Charlotte had told her Diana kissed Cecil in front of her brother Ashford in this very room. Ashford believed she did it to punish him as he’d decreed that Diana should wait until after the war to marry her fiancé. Diana’s intended was killed at the battle of Toulouse soon afterward. She felt a twinge of jealousy, although Charlotte had asked Diana about the kiss, and the lady replied, “I merely wanted to punish my brother for making me wait to marry my captain.”

A footman announced another guest, “Lord Wycliffe!”

And in the viscount strolled, looking far too attractive and far too self-assured. Louisa caught his gaze, and the gentleman smiled quickly and inclined his head. She took his gesture to mean he was congratulating her on her victory.

Louisa hadn’t expected the viscount’s good-natured surrender. His smile briefly blinded her before she remembered who she was dealing with. Lord Wycliffe was not easygoing nor one to take defeat lying down. He was up to something. She returned his nod and tore her gaze away from him, her pulse ratcheting up a notch.

You’ve met your match, Lord Wycliffe, she thought triumphantly.

* * * * *

T he sparkle in Lady Louisa’s eyes and the alertness of her expression put paid to his belief he could fool the lady into thinking he wasn’t irritated that she’d won the clock. She wasn’t an empty-headed deb, after all. Neither were Charlotte or Edith. A man would underestimate those three ladies at his own peril.

But she was still a woman, and women adored him. A glance here, a light touch there. Perhaps he could win her over by appearing to like her against his will, an idea that somehow felt too close to reality to make him entirely comfortable.

“Cecil!” Nathaniel approached him and held out a glass of port.

“Thank you.” He took a long sip of his drink. “Did you hear Louisa won the clock?”

“Edith told me,” Nathaniel replied, "Louisa's brother helped her secure the prize."

Cecil sighed. “He did.”

They approached the ladies, and he made his greetings.

“I hear Louisa bested you in a bidding war,” Diana said coyly, her eyes dancing. She looked decidedly like her brother when teasing him.

“In all fairness, her eldest brother Leopold did,” he replied smoothly.

“And the item was a carriage clock?” Diana turned to Louisa.

Louisa shook her head as she replied, “That is a misnomer. The clock is a mantel clock. One of a pair by Gaston Jolly. The other clock is missing.” She glanced at Lord Wycliffe to see his reaction to her words. His expression was inscrutable; perhaps he already knew everything she’d just stated.

“Did you purchase it for yourself?” Diana asked.

“I did,” Louisa answered. “It is resting on the night table in my bedchamber.”

Cecil would definitely not ask Bones to retrieve the clock. Gaining access to the lady’s bedchamber posed a problem. After all, Lady Louisa was not a lonely widow but an innocent debutante with four older brothers and a father residing in the same house.

“And where did the auction take place?” Diana asked.

Louisa replied, “At the Exeter Exchange. Leigh and Sotheby were the auction house.”

“I thought they merely dealt with selling off libraries.” Diana tapped her chin with a finger.

The dinner gong sounded. Nathaniel escorted his lady in; Cecil held out his arm for Lady Louisa as she was the next ranking female. She placed her hand on his forearm, and he breathed in her scent. It was unusual, citrusy, musky, and not at all unpleasant.

Cecil was not seated beside the lady, which he assumed was on purpose. Last season, while playing cards, he and Lady Louisa had nearly come to blows, and in front of most of those present this evening.

As he enjoyed a meal made by one of the best chefs in London, his mind wandered.

The key is the clocks.

The night of Wycliffe’s murder, his brother’s body had been moved to a private parlor in The Cock and Crow by two members of the night watch, and the coroner summoned.

An inquest was scheduled for the next day. Cecil and the local night watch beadle would be called upon to give depositions along with the Cock and Crow’s publican and Molly, the barmaid.

Cecil had written a brief statement for the Bow Street Runners and returned home to speak with his mother and youngest brother, David. During the carriage ride to Mayfair, instead of thinking about the fact that his brother was dead, he focused on what Wycliffe had said about the clock.

When he arrived at the townhouse in Hanover Square, it was to discover the house in an uproar.

Cecil found his younger brother in the drawing room. “What is going on, David?”

“Someone broke into Wycliffe’s study while mother and I were out. They’ve made a right mess. Our brother is going to be beside himself.”

Cecil made his way to the study to find cabinet doors torn open, desk drawers emptied, and their contents strewn about the room. An exquisite ebony wood box was left wide open on his brother’s desk. It was empty. He’d never seen the red silk-lined box before and had no idea what the box had contained.

He could no longer delay telling his family about the murder. When he exited the study, the butler informed him that the viscountess had joined David in the drawing room.

“Oh, Cecil!” His mother remained seated when he entered the room, her hands worrying a handkerchief in her lap. “Whatever will your brother say? None of the servants seem to know what happened.”

He doubted whether that could be possible, but for now, he had to tell her about Wycliffe’s death.

“Mother,” he said softly, taking a seat beside her on a long settee. “I have something to tell you.”

Her eyes widened. “Cecil, you’re scaring me.”

At that moment, the reality of what he’d recently witnessed, the truth of it, broke on him like a wave. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried, but the tears poured down his cheeks as he whispered, “Mother, Wycliffe is dead. He’s been murdered.”