Chapter Fifteen
J ack did not go back to the ball after he’d escorted Elenora and a rather grumpy Aunt Penelope and Petunia back to Arlington Street. A journey notable for the fact that when Elenora got into the carriage, she took the seat opposite her aunt and cousin rather than between them, as she’d done on the outward journey. Jack took the opportunity to take the seat beside her, although, as Aunt Penelope was present, he kept silent. After all, Elenora was supposed to be nursing a megrim. The fact that he quite wanted to reach out and take her hand in his was more than a little disturbing, which made him thankful for her chaperone’s eagle eyes keeping those impulses under control.
He escorted them up to their door and saw them safely through it, as at that time of night you could never be certain of safety even on your own doorstep. Several disreputable looking men could be seen lurking in the shadows, out of the circles of light thrown by the streetlamps, the smoke from at least one pipe curling upwards to join the ever-present fog. He couldn’t possibly have abandoned three ladies to traverse the space between carriage and front door alone.
With them safely inside, he returned to his carriage and had Parker drive him home. The press at Belmont House had somehow lost its attraction after the way Elenora had explained herself. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to feel like that, but a part of him wanted to do so, in order to relate more closely to her. He’d stopped, by now, questioning his motives. And besides, without her there, the attraction had waned.
Parker halted the carriage at the steps up to his own double front door and Thomas came and let down the step, standing back smartly to attention. Getting home now, even if it was after midnight, would be a relief for his servants, some of whom couldn’t take themselves off to bed before he returned.
The carriage rumbled off around to the back entrance of the mews, and Jack started up the steps to where Thomas was now holding the door open for him. As he did so, a slight movement caught his eye.
Someone was standing in the shadows a couple of houses down. A dark and for some reason familiar shape. Where had he seen that figure before? But whoever it was melted back into the darkness out of sight as quickly as Jack spotted him. Had he even seen him or had the figure been a figment of his imagination? And was he just on edge after having seen those lurking figures near Lady Dandridge’s house? London was always like this—thronging with people who looked as though they meant you ill, and in all probability did. Maybe he was getting overcautious in his old age.
He shrugged and went inside.
His valet, Briggs, was waiting upstairs for him in his dressing room, possibly already alerted to his return by the secret house telegraph system whose workings Jack had yet to fathom. He bowed as Jack came into his dressing room. “My lord.”
Briggs, a burly individual who would not have looked out of place in the boxing ring, had been with Jack since he was little more than a boy. Since he’d left Harrow to be exact. Jack’s father had decreed that, as he was no longer a schoolboy, he was in need of a man to dress him and take care of his clothes. So Briggs, who had been one of his father’s underfootmen, had been allotted the task. Something that had pleased Briggs, a Wiltshire boy with a yen to see London Town, no end.
And Briggs had probably seen a lot of London by now, as Jack, eager to kick over the traces and restrictions of life as a schoolboy, had almost immediately set up his own establishment in Portland Place.
Briggs helped him out of his coat. “Might I venture to remark that your lordship is returned unusually early. May I enquire after your lordship’s health?”
Jack let him undo his cravat. “I suppose I am. My fiancée, Miss Wetherby, was feeling a little out of sorts, so I escorted her and her aunt home.” Briggs, like all of his staff, had known about his engagement almost before he did due to that possible sixth sense they all seemed to possess. No doubt the servants in every house in London now knew as well, although hopefully not all the details. However, you never knew with servants.
“I trust she is not too indisposed,” Briggs said, slipping Jack’s waistcoat onto a hanger and straightening it with practiced hands.
Jack stepped out of his satin breeches and pulled off his stockings. “Briggs, have you noticed anyone hanging about in the street recently?’
Briggs paused in the act of picking up the breeches. “Many people loiter outside in the street during the day, my lord. After all, we’re only a stone’s throw from the poorer quarter of the city, with their tenements and beggars.” His expression betrayed his own scorn for the loiterers and their origins.
Jack, standing in only his long shirt, shook his head. “No, I don’t mean during the day. I mean at night, after dark. I noticed a figure in the shadows when I returned just now, and I’m sure the fellow saw me look his way and hid himself. If that isn’t suspicious, I don’t know what is.”
“Do you want me to take a look out of the window now, my lord?”
Jack shrugged. “I daresay the fellow’s taken himself off. He might have been out to rob me but thought better off it as I was so quickly inside the house. Even this street isn’t safe, I’m afraid. You can look if you want to though. I’ll just have a quick wash while you do.”
Briggs disappeared into Jack’s bedroom while Jack sloshed warm water over his face. He’d have a shave in the morning. A quick brush with some tooth powder and he was nearly ready for bed. He was just pulling on his nightshirt when Briggs called softly. “My lord.”
The bedroom was lit only by a lamp beside the bed—his reading light. Jack padded across the rug to the window where Briggs was peering out, keeping himself well back in case he should be seen. He waved an admonishing hand at Jack. “I think the fellow you mention is staring up at this very window right now, my lord, so have a care when you look out, or he might see you.”
Jack exchanged places with Briggs and dared a peek. For a moment, he could see nothing, as the street, despite being furnished with lamps, was not well lit, and the man, for a man it was, was not standing near any of them. As before, a movement caught his eye. There he stood, leaning up against a wall at the corner of the next street, the smoke from a pipe wafting up being what had attracted Jack’s attention. “I see him. Yes, that’s the same man I saw earlier. Do you think you’ve seen him before?”
Briggs shook his head. “I don’t think so, my lord. But it’s difficult to tell in this light. He does seem to be persistent, doesn’t he? I can see no reason for him to be loitering there unless he intends some crime, or he would be home to his bed by now, surely?”
Jack nodded. “If I wasn’t already dressed for bed, I’d be sorely tempted to go out there and confront him. I don’t like my house being spied upon.” Did the man have anything to do with Louise? He wouldn’t put it past her to set someone to spy on him and perhaps to beat him up, or worse, out of revenge. She was a woman of strong passions, as he well knew.
Jack stepped back from the window. “Perhaps you could go down and check Alcock has locked everything up, and warn him that we have someone lurking outside looking a sight too interested in us. Just as well to be cautious, especially at night. Although I don’t think a burglar would risk entering a house as well occupied as this one, even after dark.”
“I can stay up and keep watch, if you’d like me to, my lord.”
Jack shook his head. “Nonsense, that would tire you far too much. Just get Alcock to make sure all the doors and windows are bolted, as I said, and warn the other servants to be on their toes. It’s probably nothing at all, just a coincidence. He’s more than likely waiting for someone and idly looking at the lighted windows of all the houses. And I’m probably worrying unduly. I expect he’ll be gone soon, back to wherever it is he comes from.”
Briggs bowed. “As you wish, my lord. Will that be all?”
Jack would have liked his usual glass of bedtime brandy but, with what he’d just seen, it might be best to keep his wits about him, whatever he’d said to Briggs. “Thank you, Briggs. You may go.”
Briggs departed, bearing Jack’s clothes and shoes to tend to later. As soon as he’d closed the door, Jack went back to the window. Sure enough, the man was still there, his pipe smoke curling into the cold night air. He must be determined at whatever he was about, because the night was freezing. He’d have to be on his way soon, though, or the lamplighters would be finding his cold dead body in the morning. Just a loiterer with nothing better to do.
Jack got into bed and picked up the book he’d been reading these last few nights—book two of the series he’d lent to Elenora. He hadn’t read it for a long time and was curious to see what it was that attracted her. The thought that he’d really prefer it if he himself attracted her instead of his books arose, but was pushed back down. He wasn’t immune to her pretty face and didn’t mind admitting it. He’d always found pretty faces beguiling; what man didn’t? Perhaps it would have been better had she been a little brown mouse like her mother and sisters. He opened the book. He wouldn’t think about that now.
After he’d read the same paragraph three times and nothing had sunk in, he let the book fall back into his lap. The lamp flickered. Not the easiest thing to read by. And especially not when he was thinking about something else. About someone else. About Elenora.
He closed the book and lay back on his pillows, stretching his legs out. Briggs had put a couple of wrapped hot bricks in his bed earlier that evening and it was toasty warm. However, even that couldn’t keep his thoughts from the girl he didn’t understand.
Why was she immune to his charms? He was handsome, in a devil-may-care way, as more than one of his ex-mistresses, and other ladies of the Ton, had frequently informed him. Although she’d said he was old in that endearingly frank manner she possessed, he was certainly nowhere near her father’s age. Forty was still two years off and he had maintained the trim figure of a much younger man. Unlike Dugdale with his little potbelly. And yet, a girl he was finding increasingly fascinating seemed not to have noticed his many attributes. In fact, she’d been more interested in his seven-year-old son. Perplexing.
He blew out the lamp and put his arms behind his head. Tonight was going to be one on which sleep would be hard to find. Not only were his thoughts full of Elenora, with her spun gold hair and intelligent blue eyes, but also every so often they returned to the figure lurking outside in the street, if only as a distraction from visions of Elenora. Shoving her image aside with determination, he concentrated on struggling to remember where he’d seen someone similar lurking, but failed.
However, inevitably, his thoughts returned to Elenora again. When she’d precipitated out of that alcove away from Louise’s clutches, and he’d caught her in his arms, he’d suffered the sensation of never wanting to let her go. Which was quite uncharacteristic of him. He’d always prided himself on not allowing his heart to become engaged with whatever lady was his latest dalliance. And up until now, he’d succeeded. Until he’d met the little oddity that was Elenora Wetherby.
With a deep sigh, he rolled onto his side, the man in the shadows forgotten. How difficult was it going to be to get to sleep now he couldn’t banish Elenora’s face, with its furrowed brow of concentration, from his mind. Damn women to blazes. Damn Elenora and damn Louise Raby.
Elenora was also lying awake in Arlington Street. And she, like Jack, had thoughts only for the person she was engaged to. Aunt Penelope had fussed over her like an old hen with one chick when they’d reached home, insisting on a posset being warmed for her and sitting with her while she drank it in bed, something that had only elicited further resentful glares from Petunia. For some reason, her aunt had been far more inclined to believe Jack when he said Elenora was unwell than she had been when Elenora had claimed it herself before they left. Piqued at this discrimination, Elenora finally managed to rid herself of her putative nurse, and Agatha, who’d been waiting up for her, when the posset was all gone.
Aunt Penelope left with reluctance, Agatha with undue haste as she must have been exhausted and longing for her bed.
“It was very unfair of you to make us leave the ball early,” Petunia said, as soon as they had the room to themselves.
Elenora, who’d been about to snuff out her candle, glanced at the other bed, wrestling with her conscience. “I had a megrim.” Putting the lie into words rankled.
Petunia’s brows lowered threateningly. “No, you didn’t. You made it up, and that idiot you’re engaged to believed you. Just because you don’t like balls. You told me you couldn’t tell lies. So that was a lie too.”
Elenora bristled, seizing on the first bit as being the easiest to refute. “Jack’s not an idiot.”
Petunia harrumphed. “He must be to have asked you to marry him. Even though he compromised you, I bet he could have found a way out of it if he’d wanted to.”
What was she supposed to say to that? Nothing she could think of. She’d just have to stay silent.
Petunia persevered. “How did you manage it?”
“Manage what?”
“To snare a man—an earl’s heir, to top it all—on your debut into society? Did you deliberately set out to be compromised? I bet you did. I bet under all those innocent looks you give people you’ve been plotting this all along.”
Oh dear. This was rapidly getting awkward. How had she missed how jealous Petunia was becoming?
“I, er, I don’t know.” Which in a way was quite true, as she had no idea how she’d fallen into the events that had led up to her engagement.
Petunia snorted. “There must be something you’re hiding. I think you did whatever it was you did on purpose. No one gets engaged the first time they’re at a ball. No one. Not even girls with huge fortunes.”
By that she must mean herself, as her papa had left her with a goodly inheritance, something Mama had mentioned so many times it was engraved on Elenora’s brain.
“Just lucky chance,” Elenora tried, as that too was not a lie.
Another snort from her resentful cousin. “You must be just about the luckiest girl alive then.”
This presented Elenora with another neat response. “I think you might be right.” Or you could look at it that she was the unluckiest. It depended on which angle you came at it from. But she was indeed lucky that Jack had been so reasonable and suggested the sham engagement.
“I can’t believe it,” Petunia snarled, pulling her covers up to her chin. “I really just can’t believe it. You’re so undeserving. You don’t even want to get married, and look at you—engaged to one of the biggest catches of the season.” She turned onto her side, presenting Elenora with her back. “Put that candle out, can’t you? I need to go to sleep.”
With relief, Elenora blew her candle out and snuggled down into her bedcovers.
But sleep would not come. She wriggled down a little further and closed her eyes, but thoughts tumbled through her head as though they were in a whirlpool. Chief amongst them was the memory of how Jack had held her against his chest when she’d escaped from Lady Raby’s dubious presence. And how she’d felt no inclination to struggle to free herself. This was a totally new sensation. His arms, tight around her body, had bestowed instead of agitation, a feeling of being safe and secure. Not that she’d been in any danger from Lady Raby. Well, probably not. Her face admittedly had taken on a rather threatening appearance. But a ball was rather a public place for a murder.
Why had she felt like that? For the first time in her life that she could remember? Try as she might, she couldn’t work it out. A dim memory of a time when she’d been so small only one thing had stuck in her mind wriggled into her head. Of being held tight by someone, pressed against them much as Jack had pressed her against his chest. Had it been Mama? No, Mama always had such a scent of roses about her, a scent that Elenora could distinguish even at a distance. The various scents of different people had been something she’d noticed and classified them by all her life. And whoever had held her like that had smelled of carbolic soap.
She thought of Jack’s smell and her heart did a little inadvertent flip. He smelled… nice. She had no other word for it. Or did she. He smelled… comforting. No, that wasn’t it. He smelled… attractive. She drew a sharp breath. Yes, that was it, he smelled of something wildly attractive. Something that she wanted wrapped tight around her as she’d never wanted anything before.
Good heavens. She sat bolt upright in bed. Could it be that it wasn’t just his smell she found attractive? And his strong arms holding her tight and secure? No, no, no. She wasn’t about to go down this road. She was imagining all of this. It wasn’t possible. She wouldn’t think about him anymore.
She lay down again. But sleep had deserted her for good now. If it had ever been about to take her, that was. All she could see inside her head was Jack’s handsome face, smiling down at her with his interested, yet indulgent expression on his face. Could it be that he liked her too? No, it couldn’t. He’d said himself that he didn’t want to marry, and his silly friend Dugdale had said as much as well—so surprised that Jack had become engaged. That was it, of course. He found her odd, as everyone did, and was amused by the frankness everybody else she knew disliked. And because of that, he was being kind to her. She must banish thoughts of the possibility of him liking her from her head. Neither of them were interested in marriage, and this engagement would end when the season did.
She turned over in bed. This was going to be a long night.