CHAPTER FIFTEEN LESSONS FOR A NOTORIOUS RAKE #5
Arabella looked at the thorned seal.
“No invitations have been issued since.”
“Which makes entering difficult,” Catherine said.
Frances looked at the confiscated maid’s cap.
“Not impossible.”
“No,” Arabella repeated.
Eleanor studied the name. Gabriel had said no one truly knew the master of Blackthorn Hall.
The documents supported him. Lord Ravenscroft existed in accounts, legal notices and rumours, but scarcely in life.
A reclusive nobleman. A vanished woman. A locked wing.
A private library filled with dangerous editions.
And payments matching those used by the Mercury Club.
“Book Three,” Frances said.
Everyone looked at her. She blinked.
“I mean the third investigation.”
Clara closed the ledger.
“We require someone with reason to enter the estate.”
Sophia studied the servant records.
“Or someone Blackthorn believes he invited.”
Arabella’s expression suggested she already disliked the direction of the conversation. Eleanor touched the closed gate upon the seal.
“The gate remains closed,” she said.
Beatrice smiled faintly.
“Then we shall require a woman capable of opening it.”
* * *
Gabriel waited outside Rothmere House beside a dark carriage. Eleanor emerged to find him leaning against the door with a basket beneath one arm and three books stacked in the other. The sight filled her with immediate warmth.
“You brought provisions.”
“You missed supper.”
“I ate biscuits.”
“Frances’s biscuits do not constitute food. They constitute evidence of poor judgement.”
“And the books?”
“You forgot them.”
Eleanor examined the titles. A history of Northumberland estates. A catalogue of private classical editions. Her own corrected Hymn to Hermes.
“I forgot none of these.”
Gabriel looked at the books.
“Then I have been deceived.”
“You wanted an excuse to collect me.”
“Yes.”
The admission came without embarrassment. Eleanor smiled. Gabriel handed the basket to the driver and helped her into the carriage. Inside, he arranged the books beside them and opened the food. Bread, cheese, cold chicken and two apples waited beneath a cloth. Eleanor looked at him.
“This resembles the meal from the publishing office.”
“I have improved the mustard.”
“You disliked the first jar.”
“It lacked discipline.”
He prepared a piece of bread and cheese, then paused before handing it to her.
“May I?”
Eleanor accepted it. The question remained unnecessary in the ordinary sense and meaningful in every other. Gabriel poured wine. The carriage moved through the evening streets.
“We identified the owner of Blackthorn Hall,” Eleanor said.
“Ravenscroft.”
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“The accounts match Mercury payments. A cryptographer disappeared into his household, a woman vanished during a house party and the west wing has been locked for years.”
“Charming.”
“The servant records are false.”
“Less charming.”
“The next investigation may require travel.”
Gabriel stopped cutting an apple.
“To Blackthorn Hall.”
“Yes.”
He set down the knife.
“Will it involve false names?”
“Probably.”
“Hidden passages?”
“Almost certainly.”
“Armed criminals?”
“Experience suggests so.”
Gabriel sighed. Then he took her hand. At the beginning of their arrangement, Eleanor had required instruction on where to look, how long to hold a gaze and how to accept a touch without apologising for being wanted.
Now her fingers closed naturally around his.
She met his eyes. No calculation. No lesson.
Desire remained, but it no longer threatened to weaken her.
Love remained, but it did not require surrendering the freedom she had fought to claim.
Gabriel lifted her hand and kissed her fingers.
“Do you regret the lessons?” he asked.
“Only the unnecessary ones.”
His brows rose.
“Which were unnecessary?”
“The lessons in seduction.”
Gabriel looked offended.
“They were rigorous.”
“They were redundant.”
“You requested them.”
“I lacked sufficient evidence.”
“And now?”
Eleanor moved from the opposite seat and sat beside him. The carriage rocked, pressing their thighs together. She touched the edge of his cravat.
“Now I understand that you were already ruined before I began.”
Gabriel’s mouth curved.
“Ruined by whom?”
Eleanor leaned closer.
“By a woman who looked at beauty as irrelevant evidence.”
He caught her around the waist and drew her onto his lap.
The basket tilted. Eleanor rescued the wine while laughing against his mouth.
Gabriel kissed her. The carriage carried them through London, past clubs where men continued wagering upon his fidelity, lecture halls where Eleanor’s name could no longer be erased and printing rooms where women’s words waited to be set into type.
His hands settled at her waist. Hers moved into his hair.
No instruction was required. Teaching London’s most notorious rake the meaning of devotion had proved considerably easier than Eleanor expected; living with the devoted result, however, promised to be a far more scandalous education.
The End
Next: The Widow’s Wicked Bargain