Beware Of Virtuous Women

What a far cry from the soldier he’d been in Spain…until word had come about his cousin’s disappearance. His cousin’s murder, most probably, and presumably at the hands of smugglers.

“Mr. Eastwood, are you asleep?”

Jack lifted his hat slightly and looked at Eleanor Becket out of one barely opened eye. “My apologies, miss.”

Eleanor watched as he unhurriedly sat up straight, as if he truly cared to listen to what she had to say—but not all that much. “Oh, no, apologies aren’t necessary. You’ve every right to be weary. That inn was abominable. Dirty, the food inferior, and with faintly damp sheets. I should have thought to bring linens from Becket Hall. I only thought…um, that is, we’re nearing London, I suppose, and perhaps you wish to discuss how we’re to…to go on?”

“You’re right, Miss Becket,” Jack said, removing his hat, running a hand through his hair as he wondered what Miss Eleanor Becket would think about sleeping on the ground, in the mud, while being pelted by a cold, hard rain. With his rifle in his arms, at the ready. Faintly damp sheets? Hell, he hadn’t noticed. “But the thing is, I really don’t know how we’re going to…go on, as you say.”

“Really?” Eleanor blinked twice, pushed away the thought that the man surely should have had some idea of what would come next, or else he shouldn’t have embarked on the plan in the first place.

But that was the practical part of her, the part that had, according to Morgan, sealed her fate as an old maid. Still, she was who she was, and what she was, and clearly someone had to take charge.

“Very well, Mr. Eastwood,” she said, unclasping her gloved hands that had been resting in her lap these past three hours, while inwardly she’d longed to use one of them to tip that ridiculous hat off the man’s head and tell him to sit up straight and stop acting like Spencer in one of his sulks. But she’d resisted, even lowered the shades and sat in the half-dark so that the sunlight would not disturb him.

“Very well what, Miss Becket?” Jack asked, wondering if he should pretend not to notice the twin spots of color that had appeared on her cheeks. The little fawn had a temper. How interesting.

Lifting her chin slightly, Eleanor began to count on her fingers as she rattled off her thoughts with the precision of a sergeant barking orders to his troops. “Number one, Mr. Eastwood, we are married, at least to the world, which includes your staff in Portland Square. Therefore, I am Mrs. Eastwood to the staff, and Eleanor to you. And you are Jack.”

“Not darling?” Jack asked, the devil rising in him now. “I had so hoped for a love match.”

Eleanor dropped her head slightly, lowered her gaze, then looked over at Jack through remarkably long, thick black lashes. “If I might continue?”

Well, that had put him in his place, hadn’t it? “My apologies…Eleanor.”

“Accepted. This is difficult for both of us, I’m sure,” Eleanor said, longing to kick herself for being so formal, for being such…such a stick! “If you prefer the diminutive, Elly will also do.”

“Very well. But you can still feel free to call me darling, Elly.”

Eleanor clasped her hands together and pressed her knuckles against her mouth, trying to keep her lips from turning up into a smile. “Now you’re being facetious.”

“I only sought to ease the tension between us. We’ll be fine, Elly, I promise. My staff are very incurious, and that’s by design.”

“Very well. I really don’t look for any problems there, as I’ve read extensively about the proper running of a large domicile, although I much prefer my experience at Becket Hall. I will, of course, need a maid assigned to me, if I’m to go out in public without you. I also read that somewhere—that ladies do not walk about unaccompanied.”

“You plan to do a lot of walking, Elly?”

He kept calling her Elly. She’d really rather he addressed her as Eleanor, that she had not suggested the diminutive. She was not, after all, his sister. “I would like to see some of the sights, if at all possible.”

“So I’m right in assuming this is your first trip to the city. You never had a Season when you were younger?”

“Is my advanced age so obvious?”

“Well, that was putting my foot in it, wasn’t it? Then you’re younger than your sister, the countess?”

“No, you were correct. I am the oldest, already into my majority. I preferred not to have a Season.”

“Because of your—damn. I can’t seem to say anything right, can I?”

“No, Mr.—Jack. We probably should get past this, as I’m cognizant of the fact that you know little about your new wife. I am one and twenty, I never had a Season, and I suffered an injury to my leg and foot as a child that has left me with a slight limp. It pains me in prolonged stretches of inclement weather or if I overexert myself, but is otherwise simply a nuisance. I’m neither ashamed nor proud of my…condition, and would prefer you ignore it rather than concern yourself. I am, I assure you, more than capable of the mission I’ve accepted.”

“All but bullied your way into taking. Made a case for yourself against your father’s wishes, actually, but who’s quibbling?” Jack commented, once more holding back a smile. “I simply want to know why you were so willing to volunteer.”

If being a Becket qualified Eleanor for anything, it was the acquired ability to lie smoothly and without suspicion. “I have been no farther than a few miles from Becket Hall since I arrived there as a child of six, which is when I…became a part of the family. I know you are aware that only Cassandra is Papa’s natural child, and that the rest of us came to him as orphans.”

“Yes, I do know that. It’s all very intriguing, actually.”

“Not really, not if you knew Papa well. At any rate, Morgan’s delightful stories of London have intrigued me, and I finally realized I should like to travel to the metropolis. Not for a Season, I don’t delude myself into aspirations at that level, but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. Plus,” she ended, looking at him levelly, “I am as eager to rid us of our current problem as are you. It’s my family, after all, that could be put in danger.”

“I see,” Jack said, aware that the coach was now riding along well-cobbled streets, even without raising the shade to look out the window. He moved to the front-facing seat, sat beside her. “How do you plan to approach the ladies?”

Ah, good. They had left the subject of her life behind them. As for the rest, she’d simply ignore his proximity. She was almost used to being in his company. Almost. “I don’t. I plan to sit very quietly and listen to the ladies. I’ve learned that most people rush to fill a silence.”

Jack considered this, even as he became uncomfortably aware of the silence in the coach and, damn the woman, rushed to fill it. “I begin to feel that I am the amateur here, Elly. Does Ainsley know just how well you’ve been listening as you bend over your embroidery or paints, which is all I can picture of you when I think of my previous visits to Becket Hall?”

“I’m flattered that you are able to recall me at all,” Eleanor said, her voice steady even as he actually said what she’d always felt. That she was near to invisible to him, when he had become the center of her life.

“Ouch! I believe I can almost feel the flat of your hand on my cheek for that careless insult,” Jack said, then surprised himself by lifting her gloved hand to his lips. “I can promise you that I will do my best to make up for my sins by being an extremely devoted husband.”

Eleanor gently tugged her hand free, even as she continued to look at Jack, fought to control her breathing. “I doubt that most of the ton behave as Morgan and her Ethan do. Civility will be enough.”

He’d hurt her. He’d be damned if he knew how, but he’d definitely hurt her. And, if he had any sense at all, he’d drop this subject completely and get on with the business of how he would further infiltrate the trio of men he suspected of being in league with the Red Men Gang.

Only later, once he was alone, would there be time to think about this strange, fragile-looking young woman who, as Jacko had said, seemed to be formed of finest Toledo steel.

“Tomorrow we’ll begin,” he told her as the coach stopped, then started off again at a near crawl, caught in the crush of early-evening London traffic. For a woman who’d professed an interest in the London sights, Eleanor Becket seemed content to have the shades drawn tight on the coach windows. Just a naturally secretive little thing, wasn’t she? Or she liked sitting in the half dark, which was silly, because she wasn’t a bad-looking woman.

“Yes, Jack, tomorrow will be soon enough. How do you plan to begin?”

“With Lady Beresford. We may not be in London long enough to take advantage of the association, get out into wider society at all. I hope not, frankly. But I’ll present Ethan’s letter to her anyway.”

“A bit of honesty covers many a lie, Papa says. At the very least, you could then honestly drop her name into the conversation as you ratchet up your pursuit of the men you mentioned at Becket Hall.” Eleanor spoke each word carefully, not wishing too appear too anxious to hear about the men…the man.

“Yes. But remember, I’ve already begun with Harris Phelps, as he frequents several gaming hells on the fringes of Mayfair. Gilly—that’s Sir Gilbert Eccles—is more of a cipher, I suppose you’d say, definitely a follower and not a leader. Where Phelps goes, Eccles will follow.”

Eleanor wet her lips, swallowed. “And the third? I believe you said he was an earl?”

“Earl of Chelfham, yes. The estimable Rawley Maddox. He’s the oldest of the trio by a good twenty or more years, as I already told Ainsley, and definitely the smartest. He’s why I’m bothering with Phelps and Eccles at all—they’re to be my way in to Chelfham. It’s his bride I’d most particularly hope you can cultivate. She’s Phelps’s sister, which may explain why Chelfham bothers with him. She’s also young, probably not more than a few years older than you, in fact.”

“Really? How…interesting.”

“Not really. He’s trying for an heir is how I heard the story. His first wife died in a fall down the stairs, the second in childbed. If Chelfham dies without issue, I believe the earldom goes vacant.”

Eleanor’s head was spinning. “I believe the proper term is extinct, if all possible heirs have died. A title is dormant if no one claims it or his or her title can’t be proved, and in abeyance if more than one person is equally qualified to be the holder.”

Jack shook his head. Listening to this woman was like being back in class with his tutor as he reeled off dry as dust facts and expected Jack to care. “Is that so?”

“Oh, yes, at least I think so.” She smiled at him, and Jack felt an unexpected punch to his stomach. She was such an odd little creature, all prim and proper, yet also so anxious to please. “Papa has a rather large library, and I have quite a bit of time.”