Kasey Michaels - Beware Of Virtuous Women

Jack stepped behind his desk and sat down, opened the center drawer to take out the journal that among other information included a list of French names, the list of those he had used in the past and would not be able to use again—most definitely the two that had been murdered—and noticed that the wafer-thin silver marker he kept on the most recent page was no longer there.

It wasn’t anywhere in the drawer. He pushed back his chair and looked down at the floor, then reached down, picked up the thin, hammered-silver piece and stared at it for long moments.

Had he dropped it over a week ago, before traveling to France? No. His mother had given him the marker, had even had it engraved with his initials, then told him he could use it to “mark the pages of your life, my darling.” He was always very careful with the thing.

Cluny? Could Cluny have been snooping about in the desk drawers? There would be no reason for him to do so. Besides, if Cluny had been at the drawers they’d be a bloody mess, not perfect except for the misplaced marker.

“More comfortable barefoot, Miss Becket?” he then asked quietly as he looked up at the ceiling, to the bedchamber he knew to be directly above this room. “Or able to move about more stealthily barefoot?”

In that bedchamber, Eleanor now stood with her back against the closed door, trying to regulate her breathing and heart rate.

He’d nearly caught her. God, he’d nearly caught her.

And for what? She hadn’t found much of anything, hadn’t even known what to look for, when she came right down to it.

“I wasn’t simply snooping,” she told herself as she sat down at her dressing table, to see that her face was very pale and her eyes were very wide. “I was being careful.”

But now she realized that the lilt she’d heard in Jack’s voice for that one moment had probably come to him courtesy of association with his Irish friend. Nothing nefarious at all. What was the man’s name again? Oh yes. Cluny.

Jack was allowed to have friends, of course. Gentlemen have friends. There was nothing strange in that.

But so many lives depended on secrecy, on being careful.

“I will not allow my heart to rule my head,” Eleanor told her reflection.

That resolution made, Eleanor padded over to one of the windows and pushed back the heavy draperies to look out over the mews, as she believed the area was called, and at the few flambeaux and gas streetlamps she could see in the darkness.

At Becket Hall, there was only night beyond the windows once the sun had gone. Darkness, emptiness. The Marsh on three sides, the shingle beach and Channel on the last. Becket Hall was its own world.

Here, she was a very small part of very large city. One of untold thousands of people, thousands of buildings.

How did people live here? How did they exist? For what purpose had they all felt it necessary to jam themselves together cheek by jowl?

She let the drapery drop back into place and surveyed her chamber. It was a lovely thing, but so was her bedchamber at home. She hadn’t traveled to anywhere better; she’d merely come to a different place.

Would she be accepted?

Her sister Morgan had seemed to believe that an introduction to Lady Beresford would open many doors, at least enough doors to help Jack insinuate himself further with Phelps and Eccles…and the Earl of Chelfham.

The earl and his young bride. Would the woman know anything, or was she a silly creature whose main concerns were balls and gowns and petty gossip? Would Eleanor like her? If she did, would it pain her conscience to then use the young woman for her own ends? And could she do it in such a way that Jack never suspected what she was doing, then asked why?

And she might not even get out into society at all, or so Jack had hinted. Because he hoped they would be quickly successful, so that he could have her back at Becket Hall as soon as possible? Was he that anxious to get her gone? Did he think her limp would be a detriment if he took her into society? Had he even noticed the limp? Lord knew he’d never noticed anything else about her in two long years….

Eleanor pressed a hand to her forehead, feeling the beginnings of the headache.

Everything had happened so quickly, perhaps too quickly.

And she was alone here. Very much alone here.

She came out of her reverie at the sound of a knock on the door. She looked at that door for a few moments, reminding herself that she couldn’t see through the thing, so either she had to open the door or pretend she was already in bed and fast asleep.

Which was ridiculous, for the chamber was lit by at least a half-dozen candles. Unless she wanted the household to believe she’d be reckless enough as to go to sleep with them ablaze, and possibly burn down the house around their ears, she’d have to at least go to the door and ask who was there.

The knock came again, along with Jack’s voice calling out her name. Well, now at least she knew who stood on the other side of the thick wood, didn’t she?

What on earth did he want? Had he discovered that she’d been snooping in his desk? No. She’d been very careful. She’d looked in all the drawers, then through the papers in the wide center drawer. Then the personal accounts book he’d marked at the page that listed several French names…

He’d marked the book. There’d been a thin silver marker. A pretty thing, with his initials pressed into it. She’d lifted it, held it, looked at it—his personal possession. What had she done with it?

Eleanor squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember.

She’d opened the book. Taken out the marker.

Looked at it. Laid it in her lap. Looked through the pages.

Heard footsteps.

Replaced the book.

Stood.

She hadn’t replaced the marker.

She’d stood, and the small marker must have slipped to the carpet, unnoticed.

Had he noticed?

“Just a moment, please,” she called out, bending to the dressing table mirror to assure herself she no longer looked so pale which, unfortunately, she still did. She pinched her cheeks hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, then pulled a face at herself before opening the door.

Just a crack.

“Yes? I was just about to retire.”

Jack tipped his head to one side, looking down at the sliver of face that was all Eleanor seemed willing to show him. With any luck, she wasn’t holding a pistol behind her back, cocked and ready to blow his head off if she was so inclined and who could know what all the Beckets were inclined to do?

“I hesitate to disturb you, as you were probably already half dozing over that book you chose, but I believe I might have found something that would be of more interest. May I come in?”

Eleanor nervously wet her lips, then nodded, stepped back so that he could push open the door and enter her bedchamber. He now had on a white, open-necked shirt beneath his banyan, and she wondered, just for a moment, if she should be flattered that he’d tried to make himself more decent for her, or lament that she could no longer see his bare chest.

Dear Lord. She’d never expected to see a man in any bedchamber she inhabited, not in her entire lifetime.

Stop it, stop it! Stop thinking like that!

She stopped thinking entirely when Jack held out the “something of more interest,” and she saw it to be the journal she’d been reading downstairs. Then he held out his other hand, palm up, and there was the silver marker, the damning marker.

Eleanor lifted her gaze to him. May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, as the ruthlessly practical Jacko always said. “You maintain very orderly records. But I might suggest the benefits of keeping them under lock and key.”

She hadn’t even blinked. Jack had thought she’d pretend ignorance of what he was showing her, deny what she’d done.