Beware Of Virtuous Women

“Ah, there’s a pity. So you’ll be sending her off home, then?”

Jack sat himself down, picked up the snifter of brandy he’d left warming by the fire. “No. I don’t think I could blast her out of here with cannon fire.”

“Would that be a fact? Scared, but standing her ground. Well, you know what that is, my friend, don’t you? That’s courage.”

Jack looked toward the door that connected his chamber to Eleanor’s. “Is that it? Is that why I’m…intrigued by her?”

Cluny laughed into his own snifter, a hollow sound. “Lord love you, no. I seen her from the top of the stairs when Treacle was taking her down the line, introducing the staff just like they do in fine houses, or so I’m told. Face of an angel she’s got, and a fine, fine figure for such a small dab. Courage? Who looks to a pretty woman with an eye out to see courage?”

“Or, Cluny, who looks to courage and expects to see a pretty woman,” Jack murmured quietly. “We’d better get this right, old friend, or Miss Becket in there will be very disappointed.”

Then he sat and looked at the door for a long time, picturing Eleanor untying the bows on her dressing gown, climbing into the turned-down four-poster bed, looking small and vulnerable as she lay half-swallowed by the pillows and coverlet.

She barely came up to the top of his chest. He was a tall man, he knew that, taller than most men, but even taking that into consideration, Eleanor Becket was a small woman. He was certain he could easily span her waist with his hands, yet there was no denying her womanly shape. A small bit of perfection he’d actually not noticed during his visits to Becket Hall.

Now she filled his head, and he couldn’t seem to get her out again, even knowing he had to concentrate on his plans for bringing down these three men and, more importantly, through them, finding the leader of the Red Men Gang.

Oh, yes, and then there was Richard.

He had to avenge what he was sure was the murder of his cousin. Why did he have to keep reminding himself of that part?

“Cluny?” he asked as the fire burned lower in the grate. “Do you think he was in on it, had been a part of the Red Men?”

Cluny didn’t pretend not to know who Jack was talking about. “He was a weasel, I’ll give him that. Could be. Could be. And wouldn’t that be a fine kettle of fish, eh? The pair of us sticking our necks into a noose to get some of our own back for a weasel. Besides, we’re beyond that now. Your cousin is only a part of this. The rest is us and for us. Wrap your head about that one, boyo. Why, we should be putting down our pennies for Masses for that cousin of yours, he did us such a good turn. We’re bad, bad men living a good, good life.”

“I don’t think Eleanor sees the thing that way, Cluny,” Jack said, then drained the remainder of his brandy. “I think she sees us as helping the people of Romney Marsh.”

“Ah, then it’s going to Heaven I’ll be, once they’re done gutting me and hanging me in chains? A good thing to know.”

Jack grinned. “Isn’t it, though?”

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTER TWO DAYS OF TRAVEL, but mostly after two nearly full days spent in close approximation with Jack Eastwood, Eleanor had welcomed the rain that had fallen incessantly for the past three days. Ladies, she’d read, do not move about out of doors during inclement weather, and so she’d told him. She did not add that she needed time to recover her mental equilibrium before heading into Society on his arm.

He’d already presented himself to Lady Beresford alone, before Eleanor had even risen from an exhausted sleep that had held her until nearly noon, and she was more than happy to have missed the interview.

She actually had seen very little of Jack, who had once more taken up with Harris Phelps and Sir Gilbert Eccles, making the rounds of several gaming halls each evening, well into the morning, actually, and then sleeping away half the day.

As for Cluny? After a cursory introduction the man had taken to his rooms as if he was ailing, not even appearing at meals. When she’d asked Jack if the man truly was ill he’d explained that Cluny came and went by the servant staircase, and was actually out and about more than she knew.

Jack had also told her he had yet to encounter the Earl of Chelfham, but that this was nothing to worry about, as the earl preferred to do his gaming in the card rooms of his ton hostesses, or within the exclusive walls of White’s or Watier’s. “But,” he’d told her, “once the earl learns of the small fortune to be made playing at cards with the inept Jack Eastwood? Then he’ll show his face, or we’ll be invited to meet him. I only hope his greed doesn’t take too long to goad him into action. I’m more than ready to begin winning again, which I plan to do the moment Chelfham joins us at the table.”

After that first late morning she still couldn’t muster up any shame for indulging in, Eleanor was up near enough to the crack of dawn the next two days to have seriously discommoded Mrs. Hendersen and her maids. Most especially when she’d walked into the kitchens this morning after waiting an hour for her morning chocolate the day before, sat herself down at the newly scrubbed wooden table, and politely asked if she might have a coddled egg and a dish of tea, thank you.

Mrs. Hendersen had explained, gamely attempting to be civil, that the lady of the household should ring for a servant.

Eleanor had then pointed out the illogic of such a plan. “A servant whom, I’ve now learned, would hear the summons, run up two flights of stairs to hear that I would enjoy a coddled egg and dish of tea. She would then run back down those stairs to have someone procure both, labor back up those stairs, undoubtedly carrying a heavy silver tray, run back to her post, run back when I rang to have the tray taken away.”

“Yes, ma’am, but that’s the way it is,” Mrs. Hendersen had interrupted, which did her no good at all, because Eleanor hadn’t quite finished. And, as her siblings could have told the housekeeper, when Eleanor had something to say she could be like water on a rock, calmly coursing along until she’d worn that rock into a pebble, just from steady, low-keyed persistence.

As at that particular moment. “Oh, and then return the tray here, to the kitchens. In other words, Mrs. Hendersen, the simple matter of dealing with my coddled egg and dish of tea would necessitate a half-dozen trips either to or from my bedchamber. Much, much more sensible to move me, at least for today.”

“But…but…” Mrs. Hendersen had said, still unaware she might be seeing a slim, petite young woman with an unfortunate limp (the “poor little dearie”), but that she was in reality listening to a quiet verbal assault that would have had Napoleon cowering in a corner and whimpering, “Assez! Plus qu’il n’en faut! Enough! More than enough!”

“Beginning tomorrow morning, I shall be taking my breakfast at eight each morning in that lovely small salon next to Mr. Eastwood’s study,” Eleanor had told the woman—much to the delight of a red-haired freckled young girl Eleanor now knew to be Beatrice, who had been assigned to serve the new mistress.

“That’d be the breakfast room, ma’am,” Mrs. Hendersen had told her, her face rather splotched in unbecoming puce as she fought to keep her tone deferential.

“And called so for a good reason, wouldn’t you say, Mrs. Hendersen?” Eleanor had responded with one of her gentle smiles, believing that matter settled, and then had immediately moved on to the next subject on her mind.

As Mrs. Hendersen sputtered, Eleanor had then called all the servants together and explained life as it would be under her direction. Life as it was at Becket Hall, where everyone helped with any bit of work that might present itself, and nobody was asked to do what a person could reasonably do for him or herself.

Which, as Eleanor realized almost from the moment Jack came storming into her bedchamber shortly before the dinner gong was to sound that evening, had been a horrible mistake.

She’d been sitting at her dressing table, extremely content as a clearly adoring Beatrice pulled a pair of silver-backed brushes through her hair—the girl had insisted—when she’d heard the slam of the connecting door and her “husband’s” near bellow.

“What in bloody hell have you been about, woman?”

Beatrice gave out a small yelp and ran from the room, taking the brushes with her, so that Eleanor could only sigh, then lift her hair with her hands and let it all fall down her back, nearly to her waist.

Which seemed to stop Jack, who had been advancing on her with a fury she hadn’t seen in several years, in fact, not since Courtland had discovered Cassandra hiding in the drawing room after filling his riding boots with mud because he’d refused to take her out riding with him.

“How in blazes do you hold all that mess of hair up on that fragile neck of yours? No, don’t answer me. That’s not my question.” Jack kept his gaze on Eleanor, however, as he pointed in the general direction Beatrice had taken moments earlier. “Do you have any idea of the anarchy you have unleashed out there?”

Eleanor searched in one of the drawers of her dressing table, unearthing a deep blue grosgrain ribbon that matched her gown, then tied it around her hair at her nape. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s not my pardon you’ll be begging, wife. Mrs…Mrs…whoever she is, is downstairs in the kitchens, crying into the cook’s apron.” He raised his eyebrows as he glared at her. “And do you want to know why she’s crying in the cook’s apron?”

“Mrs. Hendersen.”

Jack was losing control, and he knew it. “What?”

“Your housekeeper. Her name is Mrs. Hendersen. And, no, Jack, I don’t know why she’s crying into Mrs. Ryan’s apron. Is she ill?”

Jack jammed his fingers through his hair. “She didn’t look all that good when I saw her but, no, she’s not sick. She’s at the end of her rope—and that’s out of her mouth, not mine. Did you really tell the servants they only had to do what they wanted to do?”

Eleanor sat down, frowned at him. “No, that’s not quite it. At Becket Hall we all help each other. But there are duties, everyone has the duty to help. At Becket Hall they’re…well, I suppose you could call them the crew. Yes, that’s it. There are general assignments, even preferences, but everyone lends a hand where it’s needed. It’s all rather—what’s the word? Oh, yes. Democratic.”

“Is that right? Well, don’t look now, madam, but our crew has instituted a mutiny.”

“Now you’re exaggerating. It will take a little time for everyone to understand that they’re being asked to responsively think for themselves, employ initiative, but—”

Jack let out a short laugh. “Oh, they’re already thinking for themselves, Eleanor. According to Mrs…damn!”

“Mrs. Hendersen.”

Jack glared at her. “According to the housekeeper,” he pushed on doggedly, “two of the footmen have thought for themselves that they should be taking in the sights at Bartholomew Fair today, while the cook—ha! Mrs. Ryan—has thought for herself that something called bubble and squeak would make for a fine dinner for the master of the house. Who would be me, Eleanor, who doesn’t have the faintest damn idea what bubble and squeak is, but I’m damn sure I don’t want it served up in my dining room. And then there’s that maid of yours—”