XVI
“Well?” Alec prompted when she didn’t immediately respond. Isabella, recalled to her surroundings, made a face.
“ ’Tis not very interesting,” she warned.
“Tell me anyway.”
“All right.” Absently she smoothed a wayward strand of hair away from her face. Without her maid to dress it for her, it was less likely than ever to stay tidy for any length of time. “Bernard’s property marches along my father’s holdings in Norfolk. My family has known his family for years. I came of an age to be married, Bernard offered for me, Papa accepted, and we wed. And that’s all there is to that.”
Alec looked skeptical. “Why would your da be willing to let you wed a bounder—oh, forgive me, I’m not to call a spade a spade in this case, am I?—a man like St. Just? He’s been wed before, and he’s a generation older than you are—”
Isabella gave him a warning look for his mockingly retracted description of Bernard, but answered anyway. “As I said, my father has known his family for years. When Bernard’s first wife died, he was devastated. Shortly after that, my papa wed for the second time, and Sarah—my stepmama—promptly got with child.”
“That still doesn’t explain why your da married you off to St. Just.”
Isabella sighed. “To be truthful, I expect Papa accepted Bernard’s suit to get me out of his household. Sarah made it rather clear that she found my presence upsetting.”
“Why would she find your presence upsetting? You’re one of the least offensive people I’ve ever known.”
“Why, thank you, sir—I think.” Isabella smiled at him. “But I look like my mama, you see. Almost exactly. Apparently Sarah found it a hardship to be faced with a replica of her predecessor day in and day out.”
“So your da got rid of you for her?”
Isabella shook her head. “It wasn’t like that, exactly. I didn’t enjoy sharing a household with Sarah, either.”
“You weren’t in love with St. Just?”
Isabella shook her head, and smiled a little ruefully. “He was a neighbor, but I didn’t really know him. He’s a very attractive man, of course, I quite see that, but he was so much older and so experienced. I was frightened of him, to tell you the truth, and I begged my papa to call off the wedding. But Sarah was getting closer to her time, and he would not.”
“Fine, loving da you have.” It was a disgusted mutter, but Isabella heard.
“I never saw much of him, not even when my mother was alive. I don’t think they were very happy together. And he dotes on Sarah. And the new babies.”
“Babies? Good God, how many has she had?”
“Three. The youngest, Nathaniel, is a boy. The heir at last. Papa must be over the moon.”
“Don’t you know?”
Isabella shook her head. A slight sadness shadowed her eyes. “I’ve only seen Papa twice since my marriage. He’s been … busy with other things, you see.”
“Oh, aye, I see.” Alec’s voice was grim. His golden eyes narrowed as they met hers and saw the faint darkening in the soft blue depths. “So tell me about being married. Was it as bad as you expected? From what I’ve seen of St. Just, he’d make the devil of a husband for a chit like you.”
Isabella shook her head. “Oh, no, I don’t want you to think that Bernard has been unkind to me. He’s in London most of the year, but when he does come down to Blakely Park he is perfectly civil to me. That’s why I cannot believe he would hire someone to kill me. He doesn’t hate me or anything, you know. He treats me with the respect due his wife.”
Alec gave her a derisive look, but forbore to comment. Instead he asked, “Have you any children?”
Isabella shook her head. Alec forbore to comment on that, too, to her relief.
“So tell me about Blakely Park. Is that your home?”
Isabella eagerly accepted that inoffensive conversational gambit. “Yes, and it is the most beautiful place! Acres and acres of moor with pine trees and babbling brooks and a beautiful blue lake to fish in. I love it there.”
“Were you coming from there when you were kidnapped?”
Isabella nodded.
“Who knew you were on the road? Do you always travel to London at this time of year?” He frowned as she shook her head, then continued more slowly. “Oh, that’s right, you said you’d never been to London before. So what prompted you to decide to come?”
“Bernard sent me a note asking me to join him.” Isabella smiled faintly. “I was so excited! I’m still looking forward to seeing it. The Tower, and the wild beasts at the Exchange, and the theatre and the opera and—” She broke off, laughing at her own enthusiasm. “Hinkel, the head groom at Blakely Park, is a Londoner born and bred, and he’s been filling my head with tales, as you can see.”
“St. Just has never before brought you to London, and he just happened to want you to join him, and you just happened to get kidnapped on the road? And you don’t find anything the least odd about that?” Alec’s voice was sharp with disbelief.
Isabella looked at him with dignity. “There is such a thing as coincidence, you know.”
Alec snorted, then after a moment said, “This Hinkel—did he know you were coming to London?”
“Yes. All the servants at Blakely Park did. Why?”
“Who else knew?” He ignored her question, his eyes intent.
“I don’t know. It wasn’t a secret. I suppose my servants may have told someone in the village; or Bernard’s servants in London, who must have been expecting me, may have told someone.”
“They might have, I suppose.” Alec sounded unconvinced.
Isabella sighed. “You are determined to think that Bernard hired those men to kidnap and kill me, aren’t you? Well, I think you’re wrong. Ours was not a love match, true, but he has no reason to wish me dead.”
“Your money?” Alec suggested.
Isabella shook her head. “Papa paid him a perfectly enormous dowry when he married me. I cannot think he’d have any more to gain if I died.”
“So he married you for your money?” Alec probed.
Isabella shrugged. “Yes, I suppose. But that’s hardly unusual. Nor does it make him a killer.”
“Why do you defend him?” Alec looked at her curiously.
“He is my husband, after all. Though the marriage might not be what I would have wished, it is still a marriage, binding in the eyes of God and man.”
“Noble sentiments,” Alec sneered.
“True, nonetheless,” Isabella insisted quietly. “And so far you’ve told me nothing that convinces me that Bernard is conniving at my murder. Just because he was dressed in mourning, and told one of Pearl’s girls that he was a widower, is no proof that he himself planned to kill me. It only means that he thinks me dead. Why, I don’t know. But there could very well be an excellent reason, just as there could be an excellent reason why he wished me to join him just at this time. Until we know that there is not, I cannot convict him in my own mind on so little evidence.”
“What a loyal little wife you are!”
Isabella met his gaze steadily. “If you would quit sneering and think, you would see that it is far likelier that the ruffians who kidnapped me merely heard through a servant’s perfectly innocent gossip that I would be travelling to London, knew that I was the daughter of a duke—my papa is very flush in the pocket, you know—and the wife of an earl. Then, when the ransom was paid, the kidnappers decided—on their own—to dispose of the evidence: me. Admit it; that scenario is far more plausible than your contention that my husband, for no earthly reason that comes to mind, paid those men to kill me.”
Alec was silent for a moment. “Yes, it’s more plausible, I suppose,” he said, and the very tone of his voice told Isabella that he thought otherwise.
She sighed, unwilling to quarrel with him again. “Since we are obviously not going to agree on this, we must agree to disagree and change the subject. Tell me about yourself. How you got to be the Tiger, or whatever.”
<
br /> Unexpectedly Alec grinned, and rolled on his side to prop his head up on one hand. The movement brought him nearer, so close that his chest nearly touched her small feet where they burrowed beneath the covers. Isabella looked at him, so handsome and so familiar and so close, and felt her heart speed up just a little. But he was talking, and she forced herself to ignore her sudden tingly awareness of him to listen.
“I detect a lamentable lack of respect in your voice when you call me that, my girl. I’ll have you know that strong men the length and breadth of England—aye, and some on the Continent, too—cringe at the mere mention of the Tiger.”
“Ah, but I am not a strong man—and you don’t look very dangerous to me.” Her eyes twinkled as she bantered with him.
Alec’s grin broadened. His golden eyes gleamed at her. “I don’t, eh? I can see I’ll have to work on my image where your ladyship is concerned.”
“So tell me,” she prompted when Alec fell silent again. “You’ve heard the story of my life. The least you can do is reciprocate.”
“Such big words as you use, Countess,” he mocked. “Clearly you’ve had the advantage of a proper education.”
“A governess, is all,” Isabella replied. “Did you not have a tutor? Or go to school? You’re very well spoken, for a—” She broke off abruptly, afraid of hurting his feelings with her thoughtless words.
“For a ruffian?” he guessed, smiling again but without the humor that had sparked the last grin. “Aye, I suppose I am, but I owe it neither to school nor tutor, for I had none.”
Isabella looked at him inquiringly. Obligingly, he went on.
“As a young lad, I … uh … made the acquaintance of an old bawd—uh, female—who had once been an actress. Not a beauty, was Cecily, nor ever had been, but she had a wonderful way with words. She took me under her wing a little, and bullied me until I learned to not drop my h’s nor add them where they weren’t needed. As to other education, why, I learned as I could. I did a fair amount of reading—where I learned that, I couldn’t tell you, just picked it up—and read what I could find. Most of which would singe your eyeballs, I’m sure.”
“What of your parents?” Her voice was soft as she tried to picture the young man he had been. Thin, she thought, but still so handsome, and eager to learn.…
Alec shrugged. “I’m sure I had some, but I never knew them. I’ve been on my own since I was a wee lad. I ran the streets as a youngster, eating what scraps I found in the gutter, sleeping in doorways or barrels or whatever I could find. There were lots of us out there, and we kind of hung together. That’s where I met Paddy. I must have been about five when he pulled a bigger boy off me when we were fighting to the death over a meat pasty that I had pinched and the other boy wanted. Paddy was bigger even than the other boy, and he knocked the daylights out of him. We’ve been friends ever since, fought our way out of the slum together.”
“What of Pearl?”
Alec smiled reminiscently. “Ah, Pearl’s a right one, ain’t she? She was a regular little spitfire when she was younger, out on the streets with the rest of us. Of course, she sold what she had to sell, but she didn’t turn to the bottle or get caught with the pox like a lot of ’em do. She always had more to eat than the rest of us because she was earning money, and she’d share what she had with Paddy and me. When we went, we took her with us.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Aye, she is. And rare popular with the gentlemen belowstairs. Of course, nowadays she can afford to be choosy about who she shares her favors with.”
As the sense of this sank in, Isabella blinked at him. “Don’t you care?” she blurted before she could catch back the words. As he looked at her, brows raised, she turned a bright pink.
“I’ve got no leading reins on Pearl, just as she has none on me. She can do as she pleases, just as she has been for years. Indeed, I’d like to see the man who could stop her.”
Alec chuckled, apparently picturing such a scenario. Isabella concluded that, however Pearl felt about Alec, he had no intention of wedding her. Unless, of course, ruffians were less than nice in their notions of proper marital fidelity.
“How did you get to be what you are? The Tiger?”
“ ’Tis naught but a silly nickname.” His tone was repressive.
“You know what I mean.” Isabella refused to be sidetracked.
“Aye, I know what you mean.” Alec’s eyes slowly narrowed as if in thought, and then he shook his head. “No, Countess, I’ll not sully your ears by recounting the details of that. Suffice it to say that I found, as I grew, that I’d a knack for thinking of things quicker than most, for running operations that were successful, for directing things. I was a good leader, Paddy a good enforcer. We climbed through the ranks together, and here we are.”
Isabella guessed that the “details” he refused to recount were both extremely interesting and extremely unsavory, but she was willing to let it pass for the moment. There was one thing, however, that was piquing her curiosity.
“Mr. Tyron …”
“Alec, Isabella. Come, ’tis an easy name. Al—ec.” As his mouth teasingly formed the syllables, Isabella had to smile.
“Alec, then. Would you please tell me what is a—a sneak?”
Alec looked at her hard, then laughed. “So Pearl’s jabbering didn’t go totally over your head after all, hmm? Very well, Countess, let me educate you. A sneak is one who’ll pull the gold watch from a gent’s pocket, or the pound notes from your reticule one bright afternoon in Piccadilly. A pickpocket.”
“Oh.” Isabella was fascinated. “So you’re the boss of the pickpockets?”
Alec sighed. “I’m the boss of all the games there are in London: the pickpockets and burglars and thugs-for-hire like the ones who kidnapped you. I watch over the bawds, and the abbesses, the Charley-boys, and the Lazarus lay—”
“Lazarus lay?” Isabella breathed, fascinated.
“There are those who sell dead bodies for anatomy lessons,” he answered. “And those who don’t care if the bodies are killed for precisely that purpose, though I’m no advocate of that. I oversee most of the back-street hells, and I know all the men who lose money in them, like your Bernard. I’m the one men come to when they need a job done, and if I accept the commission, I choose the men to do it. Nothing gets done out of London without my say-so.”
“So then the men who kidnapped me usually worked for you—”
Alec nodded. “In your case, they were freelancing. Not to do so is a lesson well learned in my ken. But Parren and his fellows were never particularly bright.”
“What else do you do?” Isabella stared at him wide-eyed. The fear of him that she’d completely gotten over days ago stirred again as she realized just how truly wicked his mode of living was.
Seeing the sudden shadow darken her eyes, Alec frowned, then gave her a lopsided smile.
“I play a mean hand of piquet.”
“Piquet?”
Alec sighed. “ ’Tis a card game, Countess. I can see you’ve never played it.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll teach you.”
“But …”
“But what? Have you anything better to do? A pressing appointment, perhaps?”
Isabella had to laugh. “No.”
“Well, then.”
Still Isabella shook her head. She’d never played at cards in her life, and to do so with Alec could not be a fit and proper way to pass an afternoon.
XVII
It was long after dark by the time Pearl and Paddy, both bearing loaded supper trays for the invalids, interrupted the game. Isabella, having lost every one of her hairpins to Alec, was laughing, her hair tumbling around her face, her cheeks flushed rosily, her eyes sparkling. Alec was laughing too, his eyes gleaming at Isabella as he soundly trounced her for the dozenth time that afternoon. With thirty-two cards higher than seven to keep track of, piquet was a complicated game, and Alec was a master at it. The stack of guineas he had wage
red against her hairpins had not suffered a single loss. But even as she lost repeatedly, Isabella had fun. More fun, she thought, than she had ever had in her life.
Pearl preceded Paddy into the room, and stopped short on the threshold, her eyes widening as she took in the pair on the bed. Behind her, Paddy nearly bumped into her, just managing to stop in the nick of time with a clatter of dishes. He, too, stared at the scene before him in amazement.
Alec was sprawled lazily on his side, a hand of cards in front of him and more spread out on the blue silk coverlet, looking more relaxed than either of them had seen him in years. As they watched, he slapped a card down with an air of triumph, grinning broadly as he took a final trick. Given his grumpiness over the last twenty-four hours, his present good humor was even more amazing. Isabella, who both Paddy and Pearl had privately considered a little mouse of a thing, was giggling like a child, her eyes alight with mischief as she plaintively accused Alec of cheating. As she laughed at him, wrinkling her delicately freckled nose, exposing small teeth as white and even as a row of matched pearls, it occurred to both Pearl and Paddy at the same time that she was a very taking little creature after all.
Alec apparently thought so, because as she held out empty hands and shook her head to indicate that she was out of something he claimed as forfeit, he grinned at her devilishly. Paddy, for one, had seen that grin before, and knew what it signified.
Pearl wouldn’t like it that Alec was interested in the little countess. In fact, knowing Pearl, she was likely to be mad as hell.
Hurriedly Paddy cleared his throat, the sound making a loud “Harumph!” that could hardly fail to be heard. Both Alec and Isabella looked around, becoming aware of their audience at the same time, which was exactly the effect Paddy had hoped for. Pearl was staring at the pair of them with narrowed eyes. Moving quickly and gracefully despite his great size, Paddy sidestepped around her, blocking her view of the transgressors and their view of her, lifting his tray high.
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