Page 8 of How to Tempt An Earl
‘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. ‘Doyou 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 whatshemeans 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, sheispretty. 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. ‘Notyet,’ 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.’
