make you sound like a bloodless old maid?
“Um…” she said, holding the book close to her chest, “Cluny is an Irish name, is it not?”
“If it wasn’t before, it is now that Cluny’s got it,” Jack told her, walking her toward the doorway. “We served together in the Peninsula.”
“In the Peninsula,” Eleanor repeated, longing to kick herself. He’d probably held more scintillating conversations with doorstops. “How…interesting. I hadn’t realized you’d served.”
“I doubt we know very much at all about each other, Miss Becket.”
“Eleanor.”
Jack nodded. “Elly. Right. I’ll have to practice. You don’t seem to have any trouble remembering to call me Jack, do you? Perhaps you’re better at subterfuge than I am.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” Eleanor said, holding herself so rigid that she was certain that, were she to bend over, she’d snap like a dry twig.
She most certainly wasn’t going to tell him that when she dreamed of him, she dreamed of Jack. Never Mr. Eastwood. She might be a dull stick of an old maid, but her dreams at least had some merit.
And now she was standing here in her dressing gown, her hair hanging down her back in a long, thick braid. And the man hadn’t so much as blinked. Didn’t he care? Was she so unprepossessing a figure that this obvious breach of convention hadn’t even occurred to him?
Jack, acting without thought (or else he’d have to think he was insane), reached out his hand and ran a finger down the side of Eleanor’s cheek. “You’re frightened, aren’t you, little one? You put on a fine face of confidence, but you’re frightened. You’d be skittish, even trembling, if that wouldn’t make you angry with yourself. And, right now, you’re caught between wanting to run from me, and longing to slap my face for my impertinence.”
Eleanor backed up a single step, holding the book so tightly now that her knuckles showed white against her skin. “I’m certain I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Eastwood.”
“Jack.” He smiled, beginning to feel more comfortable with the woman. Seeing her as more human. He should have realized that Eleanor, living with the Beckets, couldn’t possibly be entirely the paragon of virtue she appeared.
“Yes. Jack. But I’m still sure I don’t know what you mean. We know why we’re here and what we’re doing and…”
“Do we? I thought we did,” Jack said, placing his hands on her shoulders. “But we’re damn unconvincing at the moment if we’re supposed to be newly married. Having my bride trying not to flinch, run from me, doesn’t seem the way to convince anyone, does it? Unless we want to convince everyone that I’m some sort of brute, and I have to tell you, Elly, I’m vain enough not to wish that.”
Enough was enough! “Has it occurred to you, Jack, that I am not dressed?”
He looked down at her, from the throat-high neckline of her modest white muslin dressing gown to the tips of her bare toes as they protruded from the hem. Bare toes? The woman was walking about barefoot? “Well, now that you mention it…”
“Oh, you’re the most annoying man,” Eleanor said, stooping down so that she could bow out from beneath his hands. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bed.”
Jack watched her leave the room, her limp noticeable, as if her left ankle simply didn’t bend, yet a graceful woman for all of that. Perhaps she was more comfortable barefoot, without the constriction of hose and shoes.
Elly. He’d have to remember to call her Elly, at least in public. And she would have to become used to being in his company. He’d work on that. Find a way to make her relax some of that reserve that was so at odds with the behavior of the rest of the Beckets.
Odd little thing. Pretty little thing.
Jack stepped behind his desk and sat down, opened the center drawer to take out the journal that among other information included a list of French names, the list of those he had used in the past and would not be able to use again—most definitely the two that had been murdered—and noticed that the wafer-thin silver marker he kept on the most recent page was no longer there.
It wasn’t anywhere in the drawer. He pushed back his chair and looked down at the floor, then reached down, picked up the thin, hammered-silver piece and stared at it for long moments.
Had he dropped it over a week ago, before traveling to France? No. His mother had given him the marker, had even had it engraved with his initials, then told him he could use it to “mark the pages of your life, my darling.” He was always very careful with the thing.
Cluny? Could Cluny have been snooping about in the desk drawers? There would be no reason for him to do so. Besides, if Cluny had been at the drawers they’d be a bloody mess, not perfect except for the misplaced marker.
“More comfortable barefoot, Miss Becket?” he then asked quietly as he looked up at the ceiling, to the bedchamber he knew to be directly above this room. “Or able to move about more stealthily barefoot?”
In that bedchamber, Eleanor now stood with her back against the closed door, trying to regulate her breathing and heart rate.
He’d nearly caught her. God, he’d nearly caught her.
And for what? She hadn’t found much of anything, hadn’t even known what to look for, when she came right down to it.
“I wasn’t simply snooping,” she told herself as she sat down at her dressing table, to see that her face was very pale and her eyes were very wide. “I was being careful.”
But now she realized that the lilt she’d heard in Jack’s voice for that one moment had probably come to him courtesy of association with his Irish friend. Nothing nefarious at all. What was the man’s name again? Oh yes. Cluny.
Jack was allowed to have friends, of course. Gentlemen have friends. There was nothing strange in that.
But so many lives depended on secrecy, on being careful.
“I will not allow my heart to rule my head,” Eleanor told her reflection.
That resolution made, Eleanor padded over to one of the windows and pushed back the heavy draperies to look out over the mews, as she believed the area was called, and at the few flambeaux and gas streetlamps she could see in the darkness.
At Becket Hall, there was only night beyond the windows once the sun had gone. Darkness, emptiness. The Marsh on three sides, the shingle beach and Channel on the last. Becket Hall was its own world.
Here, she was a very small part of very large city. One of untold thousands of people, thousands of buildings.
How did people live here? How did they exist? For what purpose had they all felt it necessary to jam themselves together cheek by jowl?
She let the drapery drop back into place and surveyed her chamber. It was a lovely thing, but so was her bedchamber at home. She hadn’t traveled to anywhere better; she’d merely come to a different place.
Would she be accepted?
Her
