The Promise (10 page)

“What’s she so afraid of, Uncle Finn?”

“Most little girls don’t like bugs, Pip. Aren’t you afraid of creepy crawly things?”

“Why should I be? I’m ever so much bigger,” she pointed out logically.

“Yes, but one of these days you will pick up the wrong insect and suffer a nasty surprise,” Finn warned, but Pip gave him an unconcerned shrug.

“I know which ones are nasty. Did you know that sometimes the mommy praying mantis will eat the daddy praying mantis?” Pip asked with a piquant gleam in her eye.

“I did, actually,” he said with an amused grin. “Did you know mounds of African termites can get up to 40 feet high? Taller than that,” he pointed at the massive arched entrance to Hyde Park.

Pip was impressed. “Did you know a cockroach can live for nine days without its head?” She crossed her arms in challenge.

He laughed. “True or not, there’s no way to top that one, Pip. How did you learn so much about insects?” Finn was fascinated by her lack of fear. She certainly hadn’t taken after Maura in that regard… his sister had been terrified by spiders, bats, mice, and the like.

“Mama borrowed a big book with pretty pictures of insects. She likes learning about bugs, too. And birds. I can tell you a lot about birds.”

“I bet you can.”

Pip placed her small hand in his and tugged him toward the Serpentine. The simple gesture warmed his heart. He wondered if all children were as open and trusting as his charming niece.

PIP’S EYELIDS DROOPED as Jane quietly read a bedtime story. As soon as she was sound asleep, Jane planned to slip out without any clinging or tears.

Looking around the room, she was struck by how far Pip had come up in the world. Jane wondered if Maura had chosen the furnishings. Although clearly expensive, the whimsical pieces were the sort that would appeal to a young girl. The large rosewood wardrobe had ornate floral marquetry panels in the doors and a cornice of carved roses. The hand painted silk wallpaper was covered with climbing vines and flowers. Lace-trimmed pillows with soft, fringed tassels were piled on the bed. Everything was overtly feminine, the chamber of a girl, not a woman. It reminded Jane that Maura had only been sixteen when they met, little more than a child herself when she gave birth to Pip.

Jane smoothed the hair back from Pip’s forehead and waited until the child’s breathing was slow and steady. “Sweet dreams, Poppet,” she whispered, dropping a light kiss on her nose.

She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her forehead to Pip’s, fighting back a sudden rush of tears. Perhaps it would be better in the long run for both of them if she visited less often. What would be easier to survive… an abrupt, catastrophic separation or death by a thousand little cuts? In the Bible, King Solomon determined the infant’s real mother because she was the one unwilling to let her baby be torn in half. Would her continued presence in Pip’s life tear the child apart? Would it hinder Pip from embracing her new family…
her true family
?

Jane was so tired of being strong, so tired of having only herself to rely upon. She gave in to a moment of self-pity and rested her back against the headboard to indulge in the rare luxury of a good, long cry. Tears rolled unchecked down her face, soaking the front of her dress. When she was done, she took a deep, bracing breath and rose, careful not to jostle the bed. She dried her face with a towel at Pip’s washstand then tiptoed into the hall with her shoes dangling from two fingers. She turned and collided with a brawny chest. A quick step backward extracted her nose from the depths of Lord Wallace’s cravat.

“Pardon me, my lord!” she said softly, vivid color staining her cheeks. “I didn’t see you.”

“It’s quite alright, Miss Gray,” he smiled, his large hands wrapped gently around her upper arms. “I came to inform you that a hack is waiting to take you home.” He searched her face, frowning in concern over the evidence of tears.

“Thank you.” She would have preferred to walk and save the coin.

“The driver has been paid,” he said, correctly interpreting her thoughts.

“That isn’t necessary,” she protested. “How much is the fare? I’ll reimburse you.”

“It’s already been taken care of.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he shook his head. “You must allow me to act the proper host, Miss Gray. If you insist on balanced scales, consider the fare poor recompense for the tasty delicacies you bring us.”

Jane chuckled softly. “Pardon me if I seemed ungracious.”

“Think nothing of it. I see that you have once again peaceably resolved the issue of where Pip will sleep. She told me several times today that she wanted to go home with you tonight.” His rich baritone rumbled like distant thunder.

“She has conflicting loyalties, I’m afraid. Half of her wants to stay here for obvious reasons, and the other half feels as if she is betraying me by embracing her new family. Like all children, she tends to see things in black and white. As long as we don’t force her to choose, she’ll be fine.”

“You’re very wise, Miss Gray,” he murmured.

“Not at all,” she said and suddenly felt exposed standing in front of him in her stocking feet. His hands were still on her arms and he was slowly rubbing his palms up and down. The contact was wreaking havoc on her composure.

“I’ll just put these on now,” she said self-consciously pulling away from him. Heat lingered where his fingers had been. She braced herself against the wall and slipped on her shoes with shaky hands.

“Children have a short attention span. I drew her thoughts elsewhere, and before she realized it, she was fast asleep.”

“A parenting technique I shall learn in time, no doubt,” he grinned.

She returned his smile. “You will learn through trial and error, as did I.”

“You must have been very young when Pip was born. Caring for a child could not have been easy.” He was curious about her age and his question was a ploy to discover it.

“I was nineteen. Many women have two or three children by that age. The circumstances may not have been ideal, but I managed.”

Twenty-four, then.

“Did you learn by helping your mother care for your brothers and sisters?”

“My mother died when I was young and I was an only child. I had to make it up as I went along.”

“You have my admiration, Miss Gray.”

She was not sure whether it was due to his compliment or the steady regard of his fathomless eyes, but she felt off balance and flustered. The dark hallway suddenly felt too intimate, his body too close, her breathing far too loud. They regarded each other in silence for several moments.

“I understand the duchess is taking Pip to a children’s play tomorrow evening,” Jane said to break the spell. “Might I come late, just to tuck Pip in? In time she’ll become accustomed to not seeing me every day. But it is too soon, I think… for both of us. We have been everything to each other for a very long time and I confess I miss her terribly,” she said honestly.

“There is no question, you must come. If you’re early, you may wait in the salon until Pip arrives. Please make yourself at home.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“I’ll see you out,” he stepped aside and offered her his elbow.

JANE RESTED HER FINGERS lightly on his arm as they walked down the hall. She was intensely aware of the man at her side, handsome, polished, and flawlessly groomed. Jane felt so terribly, terribly, inadequate in her brown broadcloth pinafore next to his sartorial splendor. She wondered if he noticed she had worn the same dress each time he had seen her. Probably not, why would a man like him give her a second look? She suspected her hair looked a bird’s nest after curling up with Pip on the bed, and her skirts were hopelessly wrinkled.

She gave herself a mental shake. Her appearance was the last thing the magnificent Lord Wallace would ever notice, but she wouldn’t be a red-blooded woman were her vanity not pricked by being seen at such a disadvantage. Peckham held up her coat and she slipped into it.

“Thank you, Peckham.” She took her gloves from her pocket and pulled them on.

Jane was thrown further off balance when he followed her outside and helped her into the hack. Even through her gloves she responded to the warmth of his touch. She snatched her hand away and settled onto the seat, eager to be on her way. But instead of shutting the door, he leaned in.

“Godspeed, Miss Gray,” he smiled warmly and Jane’s attention was drawn to his full, firm lips and perfect white teeth. Her pulse jumped and she looked up to find amusement in his eyes. It was as if he knew how he affected her.
Of course he knew.
For heaven’s sake, a man that breathtakingly handsome probably had women throwing themselves at his feet on a regular basis.

An image flashed in her mind of Lord Wallace trying to walk down Bond Street while beautiful women dove into his path, creating great barricades of frilly knickers and petticoats. She couldn’t suppress a snort of nervous laughter.

“Did I say something funny, Miss Gray?” he asked.

“No! No, you didn’t,” she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, but a guilty chuckle escaped anyway.

“When we know each other better, perhaps you will share whatever naughty thought inspired that giggle,” he said with a grin. “Goodnight.”

When we know each other better? Criminey!

Flustered, she said, “Sweet dreams, my lord,” repeating the words she said to Pip every night. Her face burned with embarrassment, the phrase was inappropriately familiar when directed at Lord Wallace.

He flashed her a broad devilish smile that made him even more dangerously attractive, if such a thing were possible.

“I am touched, Miss Gray. I believe my dreams will be very sweet,” he bowed and pulled the door shut.

Chapter Eight

Waking up after an epic bender was unpleasant enough for a young blade, but by the time a man reached forty it became a harrowing ordeal. Thomas Gray, who had stumbled into his library and passed out on the floor nearly two days ago, was learning that fact anew. Thinking it prudent to let the earl regain consciousness on his own schedule, his servants had left him undisturbed exactly as he had fallen, puddle of drool and all.

Tom took it slow. He eased open one crusty, bloodshot eyeball and waited for the room to stop spinning. The horizontal plane of an Aubusson carpet came into blurry focus. He peeled his face off the rug and cautiously rose to a seated position, tucking his head into his shoulders as if to ward off pain. A wave of nausea hit full force. He drew in several deep breaths in an effort to calm his roiling stomach. It was an ill-chosen strategy… the reek of his own rancid exhalations nearly undid him.

His head throbbed in consonance with his heartbeat and he longed for nothing more than to escape his present contretemps by way of sleep or death. Either was preferable to his current wretched condition. But first he needed water… his brain was a dry sponge, his tongue a shriveled cork. With extreme delicacy, he worked himself onto his hands and knees, then crawled to the bell-pull and tugged. “Crawford!” he croaked through his parched throat.

After several minutes, he heard his butler padding down the hall. One of the double doors leading into the library opened, flooding the room with sunshine. Tom squinted in pain and pressed the back of his hand to his eyes.

“Aargh! Have mercy, Crawford! Shut the sodding door! Christ, but m’head hurts!”

“Beg pardon, m’lord,” Crawford said in a restrained monotone, focusing just over his employer’s right shoulder to hide his amusement. Fibers were stuck to one side of the earl’s puffy face and his nose listed to the right.

“Stop shouting,” Tom winced.

“Sorry,” Crawford whispered.

“Water,” Tom whispered back. “And Cook’s miracle decoction.”

“Immediately.”

Tom slowly worked his way up onto a tufted wingchair and rested his cheek on the cool leather blotter covering his desk. Crawford soon returned with a pitcher of ice water and a tumbler of thick brown liquid. He placed the tray on the desk then slipped a week’s worth of
London Times
from under his arm and set the stack down beside it.

Tom slugged down the hangover remedy in one long gulp then reached for the papers. “How long have I been out?”

“Since Tuesday.”

“Anything interesting happen while I was awa-aaay?”  The last word split by a belch.

“Aye,” Crawford tapped the top page with his index finger, drawing Tom’s attention to a bold banner headline. “Seems a lady jewel thief pinched a necklace from the Duke of Rutledge. Every man jack in the boroughs has his eyes peeled. Rutledge is offering 5,000 pounds for information leading to her arrest.”

Tom whistled and looked over the story. He smiled at the headline then studied the engraving of a pretty woman being chased by snarling dogs and policemen. “She’s welcome to handle my jewels anytime,” he snickered lecherously.

“Will that be all, m’lord?”

“A bath,” Tom lifted his arm and sniffed. “I reek.”

Crawford did not disagree. “Would you care for something light? Toast? Porridge?”

Tom didn’t answer because at that precise moment the words “Jane Gray” leapt off the page and exploded in his brain. Alarmed by the force of the earl’s sudden scowl, Crawford backed out of the room.

Adrenaline rushed through Tom’s system as he read and re-read the article. After the fourth pass, he eased back into his seat, his mind racing at the all the possible permutations. The description matched Jane, her approximate age, eye and hair color, height and build.

He had been quietly searching for his cousin for eight years, ever since she fled Clairmont in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on her back. Could the devious little bitch have been in London all this time, right under his nose? It seemed an impossibly long shot… an even longer one that she would have resorted to stealing; Jane had always been an insufferable goody-two-shoes.
Daddy’s little girl,
he thought with a snarl.

On the other hand, she
had
been terrified the night she left. And she’d left without so much as a pence in her pocket. Perhaps stealing was how she made her way in the world. Lord knew she had no employable skills. Cousin Jane had been destined from birth to become a nobleman’s wife, little more than a decorative breeding machine, he thought derisively. At one time he had hoped to breed on her himself.

A wickedly delicious thought began to weave through his mind and for the first time in weeks a genuine smile curved his lips. If Jane had stolen jewels from the powerful Duke of Rutledge, she was sure to be caught and hanged in short order. If that happened, the Sword of Damocles that had been hovering over his head for eight years would never fall.

Tom had been fifteen years old when Jane was born to his aunt and uncle after nearly twenty barren years of marriage. The news was received with great joy in both Gray households. For Tom it was not because he had a new cousin, but because a boy child would have supplanted him in the line of succession. Since his uncle was already well into his fifties by that time, Tom had only to wait until fate took its inevitable toll and made him the next Earl.

By the time he reached his thirtieth birthday, Tom had run out of patience. He craved the wealth and status his title would bring. For too long he had lived on a modest allowance. He wanted to take up residence in Clovershire’s swanky London townhouse and gamble to his heart’s content. He lusted after a luscious little piece who danced at Covent Garden, but could not afford to keep her in the style to which she most ardently wished to become accustomed. After years of promises, she finally lost faith in him and took up with a rich cit instead.

As the years wore on, his father and uncle both remained lamentably healthy. It seemed they would always stand between him and his birthright. Eventually Tom did what so many young English aristocrats had done before him… he nudged fate along.

His father had required nothing more than a well-timed shove. Thomas Gray the elder had sustained a serious brain injury while tumbling down his marble staircase. He had been helpless as a baby when Tom entered his chamber in the middle of the night to smother him with a pillow. He hadn’t felt a thing… and neither had his son.

His uncle Robert Gray had posed a far greater challenge. Tom spent months considering and discarding options before devising an ingenious scheme to take place at Clairmont’s annual fox hunt. His weapon of choice — a fistful of yew berries mixed with sweet oats. Just eight ounces was enough to kill an adult horse, but Tom had to time everything perfectly.

His eyes closed as he savored the memory of the chestnut gelding’s velvety lips snuffling the treat from his open palm. He had slipped out of the stable unnoticed just before the earl’s groom returned to lead the horse away. Over the braying of hounds, the earl wished his guests excellent sport just before the huntmaster’s horn sounded, signaling riders to surge forward.

In all the excitement, the faint trembling in Gibraltar’s withers went unnoticed. Minutes later, his uncle was thundering over pastureland toward a stone wall. He leaned low and grabbed a piece of mane so he wouldn’t catch Gibraltar’s mouth with the reins when he landed. His weight sank down into his heels on the approach. Together they sailed over the obstacle as they had a thousand times before. But Gibraltar barely cleared the stile and when he came down on the other side he collapsed, crushing the earl under 1,600 pounds of muscle and bone.

Tom smiled at the memory and turned his attention back to the newspaper.

“Lovely Lady Larcenist Steals Long Lost Locket.” He read the headline again. Could Jane be the lovely lady larcenist?

As the years had passed and Jane failed to surface, Tom had allowed himself to hope she never would. He had even been toying with the idea of faking her death to gain full control over her assets. The only thing that had stopped him was the fear that she might appear in her trustee’s office some day and expose him.

Tom read the headline again and joy bloomed in his belly. He couldn’t have written a happier ending to his own story. He had to find out if the mysterious jewel thief was Jane, but how? He couldn’t go to the police or risk contacting a legitimate private investigator. The trustees might find out he had lost track of her. As her legal guardian, he received a fat check for her upkeep every month and enjoyed a comfortable existence in her London townhouse, all expenses paid by her trust fund.

Tom had been lying about Jane’s whereabouts for so long it had become second nature. Whenever the trustees wished to see her, they were told she was attending an elite boarding school in the Pyrenees, visiting distant cousins in Venice, or touring the Americas. Her French relatives had been a pox on his house, raising a stink every six months or so, demanding to see her in person. But his lawyers were excellent, and he employed a talented brown-haired actress who left witnesses to her travels across the Continent. It worked to Tom’s advantage that the British courts had a centuries-old bias against the French. In the end every stand off came down to two things, he was a peer and Jane’s legal guardian. Those facts gave him absolute authority over her, at least until she reached the age of twenty-five or she married. He had no intention of allowing her to do either.

Tom glanced at the reporter’s byline. Harry Barnes. Who better to help him than the reporter covering the story? In Tom’s experience there were few men who weren’t open to a good, honest bribe. The bigger the bribe, the more open to it they became. Surely Mr. Barnes could be persuaded to keep him in the loop.

Hangover swept away on a tide of adrenaline, Tom dashed off a brief letter to Mr. Harry Barnes of the
Times
.  He wrapped it around a fifty-pound note, sealed it, and copied the newspaper’s address from the masthead. After instructing a footman to deliver it post haste, he made for his room with an ebullient spring in his step.

His luck was finally turning. He’d had a bad run at the tables. White’s and Brook’s had withdrawn his membership after other members complained that he failed to honor his vowels. Of course, it hadn’t helped matters that his annual dues had gone unpaid for two years running. He had been forced to gamble in lesser establishments that catered to parvenu cits. Soon those, too, asked him not to return. He worked his way further and further East into the stews. He now owed a great deal of scratch to ruthless moneylenders and cardsharps, the type of men who demanded interest in the form of broken arms and legs. His monthly check no longer paid even the interest on his notes.

News of Jane’s whereabouts had arrived in the nick of time.

“I think my ship may have finally come in, Crawford,” the earl said as he bounded past his butler.

Tom disappeared down the hall. With a perplexed look on his face, Crawford turned toward two footmen who were already rolling up the carpet to carry it outside for airing.

Crawford arched a brow. “I wonder what ship that would be?”

“Ship of fools,” one of the footmen responded with a smirk.

“Garbage barge,” the other offered, and all three enjoyed a mean-spirited laugh at the earl’s expense.

FILLED PASTRY cones with icing. Her skilled hands flew through the motions, leaving her mind free to wander. She seldom allowed herself to think about her parents, or Clairmont, or the carefree childhood she had taken for granted.

She knew Tom was in the city, had glimpsed him several times over the years.
Thank God he had never seen her
. She didn’t know for certain if he was still searching, but she suspected he was. Jane wondered how he had explained her protracted absence to her mother’s family. Had he claimed she was dead so he could legally take control of her inheritance? She had no way of knowing unless she came out of hiding and she couldn’t do that safely until her twenty-fifth birthday.

Her thoughts strayed to the dark days following her father’s death.

Tom had remained at Clairmont to preside over the funeral and reading of the will. Her father’s body hadn’t grown cold before Tom revealed his avarice. In a spectacular show of bad taste, he had asked the grieving housekeeper for a tour of Clairmont. As Mrs. Smith choked back tears, Tom exclaimed over his new possessions, instructing her regarding his preferences in food and drink and suggesting changes to the evening menu.

The next morning Jane’s maternal uncle, Charles Moreau, had arrived from Surrey with Mr. Hamlyn, the late earl’s London solicitor.  After the funeral, she entered the library flanked by both men. Tom frowned and opened his mouth as if to challenge her presence, but shut it after Charles glared at him.

When they were all seated around the table, Mr. Hamlyn cleared his throat.

“Shall we begin Lady Jane?” he asked with an affectionate smile for his late client’s daughter. She nodded.

“We are gathered to hear the last will and testament of Robert Vaughan Gray, ninth Earl of Clovershire. On the sixth day of the month of September in the year of our Lord…” Lost in grief, Jane’s mind wandered during a rambling recitation of burial wishes and legal jargon.