Page 10 of Lady Louisa and the Carriage Clock
“I must be off. Will you come to dinner in two days?” Edith asked, rising to her feet. “I have invited Ashford’s sister Lady Diana so that we might catch up on events at the registry office. I’m hopeful Cecil will also attend.”
Diana managed the Veteran’s Registry Office in Berkeley Square. Ashford and Nathaniel had recently purchased land in Berkeley Square and opened a veterans registry office. However, due to interference from the RA, the two men signed the business over to Lady Devon soon after and stayed away to keep the enterprise protected.
“The viscount is invited to your dinner?” she asked with a flicker of awareness, chuckling to hide her excitement at the thought of seeing Lord Wycliffe again so soon. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“You have two days to learn to conceal your jubilation at winning the clock,” Edith replied dryly.
She wrinkled her nose. “I’ll do my best.”
Chapter Four
Cecil 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.
