by Anne Stuart
“Not really. Mr. Arbuthnot is too stupid, Lord Glenshiel is too self-absorbed, our host is too interested in pinching bottoms, and the rest of the gentlemen suffer from the same reservations. Lack of wit or lack of interest.”
“A servant, then? Most of the guests brought their own manservants with them.”
“There’s no way a servant could have had access to the other robbery sites in the last two years,” Brennan observed. “Or had you forgotten?”
Clegg’s face turned an ugly mottle. “Kind of you to remind me,” he said with deceptive cheer. “So now you’ve made an excellent argument against your theory. Make up your mind—is the Cat here or is he not?”
Brennan shrugged. “I don’t know, Josiah. I just figure I’d best keep my eyes open and be prepared for all eventualities.”
Clegg looked at him with active dislike above the gold-toothed smile. “You’d be smart to do so.”
Welch had been a silent witness to this, clearly missing half the undertones, but he spoke up then. “That still leaves us with Lady Autry’s missing ruby brooch. It’s probably the most valuable piece taken so far—mebbe the thief was just toying with us until he took the really good stuff.”
Clegg gave him a look of approval. “My thought exactly. We find the ruby brooch and we’ve got our thief.”
“That brooch is worth a fraction of the value of what the Cat usually absconds with,” Brennan said. “I don’t know why he’d bother.”
“Maybe he’s bored,” Welch said facetiously.
But something clicked in Brennan’s tidy mind, so at odds with his loose-limbed, untidy body. “An interesting thought, Samuel,” he said, moving lazily to his feet. “I think I’ll go for a walk. You’ve given me much to consider.”
“Don’t be daft, man!” Clegg’s voice was rich with contempt. “Thieves don’t get bored. They can’t afford to.”
“Perhaps this one can,” Brennan murmured, heading out of the room. “It’s worth considering. I’ll close the door so no one will eavesdrop.”
“Who would bother... ?” Clegg’s voice terminated in a muffled obscenity as Brennan shut the door behind him, turning to look down the narrow hallway. He’d seen the shadow lurking, just out of sight, and he trusted his instincts implicitly. There was no sign of her now, but she couldn’t have gotten far.
The rain had stopped, though the cool dampness of late autumn lingered in the air. Robert Brennan was a man who, for all his pragmatism, relied on his instincts. To the left was an empty stone barn he’d discovered on one of his earlier forays around the estate. Common sense told him whoever had been eavesdropping was now safely back in the house.
Instinct told him she was in that barn, hiding from him, uncertain, in trouble. If he had any sense at all, he’d beat a hasty retreat, as far away from temptation as he could manage, and confront her in a far more public place.
But then, a young lady like Miss Fleur Maitland shouldn’t be seen talking to someone who wasn’t much more than a servant. She might even be ashamed to have anyone spy them together.
He set his jaw, irritated with himself and his sudden doubts. Like a green schoolboy, he thought with contempt. If Miss Fleur had any reason to talk with him, he’d discover what it was. If not, he’d turn around and leave her be.
She was sitting in a pile of fresh straw, wearing a pale, pretty dress. The light was dim in the barn, scarcely illuminating her, and she looked still, almost serene, damnably, entirely at home in a barn. Brennan stood in the doorway, watching her, breathing in the sweet smell of the hay, overlaid with the faint trace of flowery scent that could come only from her, and he was assailed with such painful longing that his voice was unnecessarily harsh when he spoke.
“You were spying on us,” he said.
She jerked, and he realized that she hadn’t known he was standing there, watching her, as he’d thought. “I wasn’t,” she protested in a scratchy voice, and he could see the streak of tears on her face.
“Then why were you there?” He stepped inside the old barn, ignoring the sweetly familiar sense of homecoming that washed over him. He’d missed the countryside, he’d missed the farm, more than he’d ever guessed.
“I... I wanted to talk to you,” she said, starting to scramble to her feet in the hay. The full, flowery skirts got caught under her knees as she struggled to pull herself up, tugging at the front of her bodice. She had soft, full breasts, made for babies. Made for a man.
He shut that thought out of his brain as well. “About what, miss?” he said formally.
“About this,” she said, opening her small fist and displaying a large, ugly ruby brooch.
He crossed the deserted barn, towering over her. He’d come too close, he knew it, but he couldn’t back away from her without making it obvious. He took the jewel from her hand. “Lady Autry’s missing brooch, I presume,” he said, surveying it for a moment before he tucked it into his pocket. “Did you steal it?”
“Of course not!” she said, clearly shocked. “I found it with my watercolors this morning, and I was so horrified, I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even tell Jessamine.”
“Why not? Doesn’t your own sister trust you?” he said coolly, and immediately regretted it.
The look she cast up at him was so full of bewildered pain and hurt that he couldn’t bear it. “Have I done something to give you a disgust of me, sir?” she whispered in a broken voice. “Have I somehow caused you injury? I don’t understand your dislike of me...”
Her china-blue eyes swam with tears, and he wasn’t a man to be moved by tears. Yet he wanted to lean down and kiss them away. “I don’t dislike you,” he said stiffly. “I have no opinion of you one way or another.”
If he’d wanted to stop her pain, he’d certainly chosen the wrong words. The tears spilled over with a strangled sob, and she pulled away from him, starting toward the door.
He should have let her go. Better to hurt her now than to start something that would spell disaster for them both. But that choked sob was more than he could bear, and when she started past him he reached out and caught her, meaning to do no more than apologize a bit more gently, but somehow she was in his arms, her face pressed up against his jacket, her quiet, heartbroken sobs thrumming against his chest, and he was holding her, pressing her up against him, and he was bending down to kiss her, and she was raising her face to his, and her mouth was damp with her tears, and then damp from his mouth, and he was settling her down into the straw, cradling her against his big body as if to protect her from all the dangers of the world, and she was flowing against him as if she knew that was where she belonged, and duty and class and right and wrong had no place in the stillness of that deserted barn.
Alistair stepped away from doorway of the barn, a faint smile on his face. He was pleased with his latest machinations. There was no question in his mind that Brennan was the smartest of the runners who were after him, and there was nothing more distracting than young, forbidden love.
Besides, Jessamine’s pretty little sister was so disarmingly smitten with the thief-taker that Glenshiel couldn’t let it pass without interfering. He knew perfectly well his efforts would cause more harm than good. It would also confuse matters gloriously, leaving Jessamine to tend her rebellious, broken-hearted sister, leaving Brennan too frustrated and despairing to put his best efforts into finding the Cat. He was protecting himself, and he refused to count the cost.
Still, they were rather sweet together, the large, untidy runner and the compact, sweetly beautiful girl. It was a shame fate couldn’t be kind, that there couldn’t be a happy ending for such mismatched lovers.
But fate was a sly trickster, he knew that of old. And even if those two would never have their hearts’ desire, at least they’d have the memory of a brief, forbidden taste of it to warm them during the long years.
He strolled back toward the main house, humming a bawdy tune under his breath. He passed no one, and he suspected the two of them would be safe and unint
errupted in the barn for the rest of the afternoon. Perhaps he should have stayed to see whether the stalwart Brennan gave in to temptation and deflowered the flower.
He grinned sourly. It was the sort of thing he would do himself, and the spice of risking an audience would have only added to his pleasure.
But Robert Brennan was a different sort, Nicodemus had informed him. A man with a conscience, with morals, with scruples, none of which afflicted Alistair, praise heaven. He would no more tumble a well-bred virgin in the straw than he would stab his own mother. Fleur Maitland would leave that barn intact, but knowing what she was missing.
And Robert Brennan would be too eaten up with frustration and nobility to be able to think clearly when the Earl of Glenshiel took to his room with a severe case of the stomach gripes, and the Cat went prowling on the London rooftops.
“I love you,” Fleur said quite firmly, staring up at him. He’d pulled away from her, as she knew he would. He’d kissed her with fierce abandon, and then sanity had returned. He sat in the straw beside her, arms on his knees, breathing deeply, refusing to look at her, and she knew he would push her away again. “I love you,” she said again.
He turned to glance down at her. “Don’t say that, lass,” he said heavily. “You know there’s no future for us. You don’t want a tumble in the straw from a farmer’s son, and don’t be telling yourself that you do. You’re not that kind.”
“I love you.”
“Stop it. You don’t know what love is—you’re a milk-fed babe with no knowledge of what the real world is like,” he said angrily. “You’re untried and innocent and you’ll bring us both to disaster with your fancies.”
She pushed herself up on her elbows, suddenly angry herself. “No knowledge of what the real world is like?” she echoed. “I’ve lived in Spitalfields for the last three years. I went from a life of protection and privilege to not much better than life on the streets.”
“Don’t be daft! You have no notion what life on the streets of London is like.”
“Don’t interrupt me,” she said, too angry to be cautious, she who never got angry. “I spent fifteen years of my life in safety, in peace, in the country, and then I was taken off to live in a filthy city, surrounded by strangers. Jessamine tried to protect me, but she couldn’t be with me all the time. I’ve seen people lying dead in the gutter. I’ve seen men with their throats cut. Whores servicing their customers with their mouths in an alleyway. Rats and disease and filth and death. I’ve seen all those things and more. I know how a woman can take a man standing up, I know how a child can pick a pocket so quickly no one would even notice. I know there are men who come in their fancy carriages to the streets of Spitalfields to find children for their twisted desires. I know all those things and more. I wish to God I didn’t. So don’t tell me I have no knowledge of what life is all about. I know too much about filth and despair and poverty.”
“You don’t know the ways of society....”
“I do, dammit,” she said, horrified at herself for cursing. “I know they’ll disapprove of us, try to keep us apart. And I don’t care. I love you, Robert Brennan. I want to be with you.”
“Lass,” he said in a gentler voice, “how can you think you love me? You barely know me. Go back to your sister. She’ll see you safe with your own kind. I’m not the man for you, and when you’re older and wiser, you’ll be glad of it.”
She stared at him for a silent moment. Her mouth still felt damp and tingling from the kisses she wished more of, and she could still feel his hard, strong hands on her waist.
But he would kiss her no more. She rose to her feet, brushing the straw out of her skirts, disdaining his scramble to assist her. “And when you’re older and wiser, Robert Brennan, you’ll regret you weren’t brave enough to fight for what you wanted,” she said.
Keeping her back straight, she left the barn with all the dignity of a duchess.
Fourteen
There was only a light mist falling that evening, but the wind whipped Jessamine’s hair free from her demure arrangement, flinging it against her face. If she had any sense at all, she would get out of the rain and the wind, back to the relative quiet of her room at Blaine Manor.
But it was an uncharacteristically quiet night at the raucous house party. Several of the more daring couples had gone off to the races and weren’t expected back till late. Still others had opted for a quiet night of whist, while the Earl of Glenshiel was closeted with a vile case of the grippe, according to Freddie Arbuthnot. And Fleur had taken to her bed as well, her eyes huge and red-rimmed in her pale face. Pale, that is, except for the faint rosy rash that blushed her cheeks and chin, a rash that looked like it was caused by a man’s whiskers.
Fleur couldn’t respond to her sister’s questions; she simply turned her face into the pillow and wept, a circumstance that distressed Jessamine tremendously. Fleur was not, by nature, a weeper. She cried over hurt animals and lost children, but the heartfelt depths of her sobs struck an unnamed terror in Jessamine’s heart.
She could only blame Glenshiel. She had no particular cause to do so, but she had rapidly come to the conclusion that the Earl of Glenshiel was the author of all her most recent misfortunes, and if he hadn’t somehow managed to sneak around Jessamine’s careful surveillance and upset her sister, then he doubtless had a hand in it.
Fleur wasn’t telling, and Alistair MacAlpin had retired to his room with a highly suspicious illness. And Jessamine, at loose ends, had every intention of finding out just how sick he actually was.
It had been a simple enough matter to breech the fastness of his room. She had retraced her steps from a few days before, making certain there were no helpful witnesses as she rapped on the door.
There was also no answer to her tentative knock. She rapped louder, then placed her ear against the heavy wood. Not a sound echoed from beyond, and she reached down to open the door, when a loud harrumph made her leap backward with a shriek.
“His lordship is indisposed, miss.”
It was his sepulchral-looking manservant, Malkin, staring down at her with such stark disapproval that Jessamine almost withered. Almost.
“So I gathered,” she said brightly. “I just came by to see how he was. If he needed anything.”
“I will convey your concern, miss,” he intoned. “Be assured I am more than adequate to the task of looking after my master. Rest and quiet are what he needs now. I doubt you’ll see him till midday tomorrow.”
“He’s quite ill, is he?” Jessamine said. “Exactly what are his symptoms? I have some talent with herbs, and I might be able to brew him a tisane that would put him in better heart.”
“He has the bloody flux.”
“How very unpleasant,” she said faintly.
“Quite.”
Neither of them moved, and Jessamine wondered which of them was the more stubborn. It didn’t take her long to realize she was no match for a superior manservant, and she contented herself with a faint smile. “Give his lordship my best wishes for his speedy recovery,” she said, relinquishing the field of battle.
“Certainly, miss.”
But he did no such thing. The moment Jessamine turned the corner of the cavernous hallway she stopped, leaning against the wall, listening for the sound of the door opening, listening for Glenshiel’s faint voice.
When she dared risk a peek it was only to discover that the manservant was retreating, not even bothering to check on his deathly ill master. Which served to convince Jessamine of one thing. Alistair MacAlpin was not in his room.
She doubted she’d have the chance to check. His guard dog wouldn’t have retreated far, and if she tried to enter the bedchamber once more, he’d doubtless stop her just as swiftly.
She wouldn’t find much more of a welcome in her own room. And there was no peace to be found in the elegant house of her hostess. She didn’t need to read the cards to know that something was afoot, something dark and dangerous and infinitely exciting.
&nb
sp; And it involved Alistair MacAlpin.
The music room was still deserted in that singularly unmusical household. Outside, the rain was falling, but inside the one branch of candelabra she’d pilfered from the hallway sent streams of flickering light over the small room. The glass door still held a crack, proof that no one had breached the fastness of the place.
Jessamine averted her gaze deliberately. The scrape on her back was no more than a faint irritation on her body, but the memory of Glenshiel was a burning brand on her soul. He’d managed to distract and confound her at every turn, threatening everything she held dear.
She cleared off the top of the harpsichord, blew away a faint layer of dust, and set her reticule atop the painted lid. The cards felt warm, living in her hands as she pulled them out, and she was aware of a sudden sweep of misgiving. She knew the cards too well—they seldom kept secrets from her. From the moment she had first set eyes on the disturbingly charming Earl of Glenshiel, she had fought the temptation to do a reading. It was a temptation she could resist no longer. Not when the cards called to her with the answers.
She let her mind go completely blank as she let the well-worn pasteboard cards shuffle against one another. The colors and symbols flashed by, and she closed her eyes for a moment, picturing him. The narrow, clever, dangerously handsome face. The mouth that could curve in a mocking smile or one of devastating sweetness. The mouth that had touched hers, wooed hers...
She laid the cards out in front of her by feel, the warmth of them tingling her fingers. Then she stared in growing apprehension.
The Prince of Swords. Who else would he be? Bold to the point of foolhardiness, a man who toyed with right and wrong. What would a man like Glenshiel know about wrong?
One card followed another, none a surprise. In truth, she hadn’t even needed to lay the cards out, she knew so well the truth that she’d been fighting. The Lovers were expected, as the Tower of Destruction.
Only the High Priestess surprised her, and she stared at it, perplexed. She seldom drew the High Priestess—its power was immutable and frightening. She looked down into the ancient seeress’s painted face and saw her own eyes looking back. And reflected in those eyes was the silhouette of a black cat.