Chapter 11
J asper’s eyes followed Frankie as she left the room, noting the far-too-interested gazes of half a dozen men. He doubted she had any idea the effect she had. Most of the women at the soirée were outfitted in feathers, flowers, jewels, and braided silks. Frankie, in her simplicity, was drawing all the more attention because of her lack of adornment. As Lady Evelyn had so snippily pointed out, Frankie’s gown was plain and sleek and pink, and it made him think of other things that were sleek and pink.
A tingling sensation crawled over the back of his neck when one of the men—Lord Tarton—exited behind Frankie.
Jasper excused himself from the boring conversation he’d been suffering through, and began to follow Lord Tarton when he remembered the cheating. Halfway across the room he veered to the poker table and bent his head to say in Mr. Jonathan Parkin’s ear, “Make your excuses and acquit yourself of my house immediately.”
The redhead was the spare to an earldom and he curled his lip at Jasper. “Beg your pardon? Do you know to whom you speak?”
Jasper’s expression remained firmly pleasant. “I suggest you leave quietly before Lord Barlow discovers you’ve been culling cards.” Lord Barlow was staring at his hand while sweat beaded on his forehead. He was a bullfrog of a man, with wide shoulders and an ugly face. He had an ugly temper, too, and everyone knew it.
Jasper straightened and strode across the room without a backward glance. He did not need to wait and see if Mr. Jonathan Parkin had the common sense to follow Jasper’s request: He knew he would. For all of his bravado, Parkin would not want to be caught cheating by the likes of Barlow. Jasper made a mental note to revoke Parkin’s membership to Rockford’s.
What was far more interesting than Parkin having the poor sense to risk antagonizing Barlow to begin with, was the extraordinary fact that within minutes of entering the room his governess had known Parkin was cheating. He’d seen it in the flash of alarm on her face, and then she had lifted her head and scanned the room to see if anyone else had noticed. He’d been afraid she was going to do something unwise, such as call out the cheat in front of the entire room, so he’d shaken his head to let her know that he saw and he would handle it. She’d appeared immensely relieved.
All of this begged the question— how did she know? There were experienced gamblers who would not have been able to tell what Parkin was doing, and yet a governess had? A governess who was also able to count cards? Something was afoot. Frankie Turner was not a typical governess, and Jasper was determined to discover exactly what she was doing in his house and for whom she worked.
But first he was going to follow Lord Tarton and make sure the man didn’t do anything extremely stupid.
Jasper, always fleet of foot, followed silently behind Tarton, who weaved and rounded the corridor bend a shade too narrowly, stubbing his shoulder against the wall and propelling himself backward a few feet. Jasper shook his head in disgust. As a fishmonger’s son in one of the poorest sections of England, he had seen men find the only comfort they knew in the bottom of a bottle. It was a source of heat when there was barely enough coal for the fire; it was a lick of bravery when one silently suffered beneath tyrants. Jasper knew there were demons that could be silenced, if only for a short while, by alcohol.
He also knew there were demons that could be brought forth. He’d seen men spend every ha’penny to their name for a night with the bottle while their children starved. He’d seen men provoke fights and he’d heard of them beating their wives. The effects of alcohol on the men of the ton were no different. Money didn’t change man’s basic nature; it only raised the stakes.
Jasper drank, but he never drank to excess. He had made his choice early on when he’d needed his wits about him while playing cards.
Lord Tarton was too deep in his cups to realize he was being followed. Jasper watched his bobbing back as Tarton turned down the corridor toward the sitting room. Farther ahead, Frankie’s bare shoulders were visible in the shadows cast by the candelabras. She paused outside of Jasper’s study door and peered over her shoulder, perhaps alerted by the sound of Tarton’s unsteady footsteps.
Jasper swung his body to the wall and waited. He was in a shadow behind a bust of some war general or other that he’d inherited with the house, and he did not think she’d seen him. The tingling at the back of his neck amplified, and his fingers twitched as Lord Tarton walked toward her, swayed, and then stumbled straight past.
Jasper exhaled a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, but then his eyes narrowed as Frankie, relieved to be alone in the corridor now, reached forward and twisted the knob to his study. The study he had made clear no one was to enter.
Curiosity mingled with irritation as he waited to see what she would do next. She knelt to the ground and peered through the keyhole before removing a slender tool from the pocket of her gown. Bloody hell, was she going to pick the lock on his study door?
Jasper silently advanced, and when he was not two feet from her, he heard her muttering, “The book says the Detector lock is foolproof, but the chances of that are not as good as Chubb and Son’s may think. Now I’m supposed to move the pins, but heavens, that seems much easier said than done.”
Well there went any theory of her being a master spy.
“Careful,” Jasper said, “if you lift the wrong pin the lock will seize. I shall then require a regulating key and I would be most displeased.”
Frankie squeaked, popped to her feet, and whirled around. Her eyes rounded with horror. “Holy Queen V! Mr. Jones, you nearly frightened me to death. I did not know you were behind me.”
“That is apparent.”
Frankie had the lock-picking tool hidden behind her back, and her chest was lifting and falling at a rate that gave away her anxiety. After a moment she gathered herself enough to meet him square in the eye. To his annoyance, she said nothing. She made no halfhearted excuses, did not beg his forgiveness, did not admit to any nefarious scheme. She only gazed at him, those blue eyes behind her spectacles sparkling with—frustration? Yes indeed, how dare he interrupt her prying into his private matters.
Jasper’s need for answers edged out his patience. “Who are you, Miss Turner? You are not simply a governess.”
“What do you mean?”
“For one, you count cards.”
Frankie blinked owlishly, and then a soft groan escaped her lips. “Do not tell me: Cecelia?”
“Imagine my surprise when my niece challenged me to game of Vingt et Un and then proceeded to cheat right in front of me.”
Frankie grimaced. “I never suspected Cecelia would use the strategies I taught her beyond the schoolroom. And here I thought myself so clever for finding an amusing way to teach her mathematics.”
“Mathematics?”
Frankie nodded, and her spectacles slid dangerously far down her nose. She shoved at the frames and said, “I shall have to speak with her so that she does not fleece your guests.”
Jasper experienced a jolt of alarm. “She had better not!” Even as he said it, he knew there was a good chance Cecelia was doing exactly that. “What on earth were you thinking teaching her that? No, forget that question. I do not need to tumble into the inner workings of your mind. Rather, I would like to know who taught you how to cheat at cards.”
A line appeared between Frankie’s blond brows. “No one.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
She lifted a bared shoulder. “It is the truth. Cecelia taught me how to play and the strategies just”—she waved a hand in the air—“appeared.” Her cheeks reddened as she took in his dark stare. “It sounds mad, I know.”
Jasper studied the delicate blush of embarrassment, the wire-rimmed spectacles that were far too large for her narrow face, and the blond wisps of hair that were curling on her neck. If she was pretending, she was better at artifice than anyone he’d ever met—and he’d been rubbing shoulders with con men since he was a child.
Without considering the impulse, Jasper reached forward and brushed a strand of hair off her throat, letting his fingertips linger for a moment at the base of her neck. “And how did you know the redheaded man was cheating?”
Frankie blushed harder and pushed his arm down. “I just knew. I do not know how else to explain it.”
If she was telling the truth, it would mean she was a once-in-a-lifetime mathematics genius rather than a plant from a competing gaming hell.
“I vow not to teach Cecelia any more strategies. Now if that is cleared up, you must excuse—”
Jasper gave a short bark of laughter. “We are hardly finished here, Miss Turner. You may have an unusual ability to understand cards and probabilities, but we have not yet addressed the reason you attempted to break into my study. The study I explicitly warned you not to enter.”
Frankie bit her lip. “It was an accident?”
“An accident?”
“I thought it was the library? Oh goodness, is this your study? Holy Queen V, what a mistake that would have been, since you have expressly forbidden anyone from entering it. How fortunate you happened upon me and halted me from making such a grievous error.”
He could smell roses on her skin, warmed by female heat, and he was surprised by the sudden urge to bury his nose in her neck. “The library door is wide-open. I can see the books from here.”
“Ah. Right. But I have poor eyesight, you see.”
She’d been telling the truth about how she’d learned her card counting skills, because she was, in fact, a terrible liar. Jasper mentally filed away that tidbit for future reference but could not help poking a bit more, just to see how far she would run with her ridiculous lie.
“That makes sense,” he said gravely.
“It does? I mean, of course it does.”
“Only I wonder why you have lock-picking tools on your person then? And why you would attempt to pick the library lock rather than fetch Mrs. Hollendale for the key?”
Frankie bit her lip again, and he could not stop his eyes from dropping to that frustratingly plush mouth. “I… I…”
He took pity on her. “Miss Turner, if you think I believe any of this, you must not know how I built Rockford’s.”
“How did you build Rockford’s?” she asked, instantly curious.
“With ruthlessness and a talent for seeing through lies.”
Frankie wrinkled her nose. “In that case I retract my explanation.”
“That is wise. Are you ready to tell me the truth?”
The little fox actually stopped to think about it!
Jasper Jones had dealt with humanity long enough that very little surprised him, but he was utterly stunned by what she did next.
Instead of answering his question, Frankie reached up, wrapped her hand behind his neck, and dragged his mouth to hers.