Kasey Michaels - Beware Of Virtuous Women

But not little Eleanor Becket. Not the large-eyed fawn with the spine of Toledo steel. He should have known better.

He slipped the marker between the pages and put the journal down on a nearby table. “You’re probably right, and your honesty in the face of discovery is commendable,” he said carefully. Then he turned to look at her, his eyes narrowed in that way he had, and probably didn’t know he had—but that Eleanor found particularly unnerving. “Now, do you want to tell me what in the hell you were looking for?”

Eleanor refused to back down. But she didn’t consider herself brave, only practical. After all, she had nowhere to go.

“It is important for us to know who we deal with, especially at the moment. You live very well, Jack.”

“Ah, now I understand. You think I’ve been keeping more of the profits than I report to Ainsley? Is that really why you’re here?” Then he shook his head. “No, Ainsley wouldn’t do that. If he had any questions about my honesty, he’d have Jacko ask them for him.”

“You make Jacko sound like a terrible man. A brute.”

One side of Jack’s mouth lifted in a rueful smile. “I’m wrong?”

Explaining Jacko wasn’t Eleanor’s priority. She really wished she knew what was, but she’d examine that later. For now, she knew she couldn’t betray any weakness. Papa had told her that years ago: always deceive with confidence. “I apologize for looking through your desk.”

“And it won’t happen again? You won’t decide listening at keyholes is a grand idea? You won’t sneak a peek at my mail, or send someone to follow me when I’m going about in the city?”

Eleanor didn’t know quite where to look, so she continued to look straight at him. “Now you’re being facetious. I apologized.”

“But with no promise to mend your ways.” Jack stepped closer to her. “Why, Elly, I do think I’ve just been warned.”

“No! That is…oh, go away. I did a stupid thing, and I’m sorry.”

“Ah, that’s better. Except, I think, for the part where you were backing up just now, as if I was going to bite off your head. I’ve given this some thought. We don’t look very married, little one. Not if you’re going to flinch every time I’m near you.”

“You’re in my bedchamber, Jack. What sort of behavior were you expecting of me?”

Well, that stopped him. Her words, and the way she stood there, her spine so straight, looking at him with those huge brown eyes. What did he expect from her? What did he expect from himself?

He knew what he hadn’t expected. He hadn’t expected to be interested in this quiet female who apparently had depths he’d never considered. He hadn’t expected to be so curious as to what went on behind those wide, seemingly frank, ingenuous brown eyes. He hadn’t expected to feel quite so protective of her, or so attracted to her.

And now, once more, and knowing it, damn her, he was going to rush to fill the silence. And fill it by saying something he’d probably regret. “You’re free to look at anything in my desk. Anything. You’re free to ask me any questions, and I’ll do my best to answer those questions. You’re Ainsley’s daughter, and I consider you to be his agent here and, in some twisted way, my partner.”

Now he fell silent, waiting for her to fill that silence with a similar promise of her own.

He may as well have been waiting for Hades to freeze over.

At last she said thank you, and then inclined her head toward the door, which was as close as a refined young lady probably could get to “Now take yourself off, you bugger!”

“Elly…”

“Eleanor,” she corrected. She had enough on her plate. She might as well be truthful on this one small thing. “I’d much prefer you to address me as Eleanor, if you don’t mind.”

That was as good as a slap to the face. She’d said her family called her Elly. He was back to being an outsider. “Certainly…Eleanor. I didn’t wish to presume a familiarity you might not like.”

“No, that isn’t what I—that is, we are supposedly husband and wife.”

“And newly married, too,” Jack said, happy to have the conversation steered back to territory that seemed to discommode her more than it did him. Not that he could recall a time when he’d been nervous around a female.

Until tonight.

“Yes, and newly married, as well. We should discuss that, just so that our stories match. Where we met, for one. I’d prefer you did not mention Becket Hall.”

Jack nodded. “That makes sense. If I’m exposed, you can disappear. And with no one knowing about Becket Hall or those who live there. So, wife, where did we meet?”

Eleanor was becoming more uncomfortable by the moment. “I’m merely being careful, Jack. No one has to know that I am a Becket at all, that Morgan is my sister. Ethan was careful to keep any of that out of his letter to Lady Beresford.”

“You read it?”

“Certainly. Didn’t you? As I said, we need to keep our stories consistent.”

Jack was beginning to think he was in the presence of a master. That his days as courier and spy had been relegated to amateurish at best. Why, he should be surprised to still be alive, and not have been long since put up against some French wall and shot.

“Do you have a plan?” he asked when yet another silence yawned between them, a silence he’d have to fill sooner or later anyway.

“I do, yes. Sussex is too close, too easily checked for the truth. Your story for Mr. Phelps, as I remember it, is that you have an estate somewhere in the West Indies and are only visiting here, correct? I should say that we met there, in Jamaica to be more precise, and that I am the child of a moderately wealthy landowner there.”

“Splendid. Then you came to me with a considerable dowry? That should please our gentlemen. Yes,” Jack said, beginning to pace the carpet. “That would work well. I’ve run through my fortune, and now I want to purloin my wife’s fat dowry and use it to invest in something that will very quickly make me very rich, put my near-bankrupt Jamaican plantation to rights.” He turned to smile at Eleanor. “You should write novels.”

Eleanor twined her fingers together at her waist. “Yes, thank you. This also negates any necessity for ours to be seen as a love match.”

“In other words, I’m to be cast in the role of unmitigated cad. Charming. You know, woman, when you eventually disappear the world will think I’ve buried you under a rosebush. Or haven’t you thought of that? Ah, by the look on your face, I can see you haven’t. Then it’s settled. Ours is also a love match. We have Ethan’s reputation to consider here, too, remember, as he’s the one who has ostensibly introduced me to the ton.”

Eleanor, who now knew the full story of Morgan’s titled husband and his unconventional parents, smiled at this. “I don’t think Ethan is overly concerned about that, Jack.”

Why this one point was becoming so important to him, Jack didn’t know, didn’t want to know. But, damn it, he couldn’t spend the next weeks squiring about a woman who cared less for him than she did the dirt beneath her feet. It was just unnatural, that’s what it was.

“I think I must nevertheless insist. I want a love match. The appearance of a love match.”

Eleanor knew when a battle wasn’t worth the fight. Besides, what difference would it make, as they’d both know they were playacting? “For the sake of your male pride, yes, I understand. My brother Spencer would probably feel much the same way. Even if, as you may recall saying, we never set foot in society at all. Very well. If we are in company, any company at all, I hereby promise to make mooncalf eyes at you at every opportunity.”

He longed to shake her, shake away some of that quiet reserve that, he felt increasingly sure, hid a whole other Eleanor Becket. The real Eleanor Becket.