“We are betrayed,” Ashe whispered distractedly holding an empty glass that he’d never remembered to fill. “And by the last man I’d ever expected.”
“No. I won’t believe that. Sterling may be preening in triumph but we know better than that. Michael is likely playing along in some scheme and couldn’t reveal the details while the Jackal was present,” Rowan countered.
Galen held up his hand. “The Jackal wasn’t in that hallway and Rutherford was firm on the matter. If there were details to his plan, why not reveal them then?”
“We did promise to leave him alone to whatever scheme he devised,” Darius added. “Something must have happened at Bascombe’s. Has anyone seen her? Is she…beautiful?”
Ashe wasn’t having it. “Damn it! She’s probably as plain as mud and as horse-faced as her brother! There’s nothing like the power of the first taste to make a man lose his mind and if I’d been thinking straight I wouldn’t have said a word to nudge him down that path! Means to an end, he said! Bullshit!”
The others raised their eyebrows at the words “first taste” but said nothing of it. It seemed the lesser surprise of the day.
Darius walked over to grip his friend’s arm. “You go too far! You’re already close to saying too much and not being able to go back, friend. We don’t know what he is facing and we cannot react like quarreling children!”
“I for one, don’t believe that he intends to go through with it,” Rowan said. “Michael has too much honor, too much respect for women to…marry this girl merely to use her as a pawn.”
“A pawn,” Darius repeated then he sat forward quickly. “Think of it like a chess game. This could all be some feint of Rutherford’s! A ploy of sacrifice to draw the Jackal out from behind his castle.”
“I hate chess,” Ashe countered, his lips pressed into a thin line of disapproval.
Darius smiled. “That’s because you always lose when we play.” Darius sighed and softened his tone. “And you always lose because you’re too impulsive.”
Ashe let out a long slow breath and then scowled as he tried to take a sip from his empty glass. “Perhaps you’re right.”
Galen took a seat in the circle. “Chess. So what is his play? And what would be the next logical move for us?”
Darius’s green eyes flashed with his thoughts and finally he spoke. “Let the Knight have his run. The Queen is either bait in the Jackal’s gambit or…”
“Or?” Rowan asked.
“Or another deadly force on the board.”
Back at the Grove and in the sanctuary of his rooms, Michael poured himself a stiff drink. He wasn’t usually a man to indulge in the afternoon but the last few days had pushed him hard. His worry over the social hurdles of attending Bascombe’s felt trivial in retrospect. His attraction to Grace had been a heady distraction but he hadn’t considered how dangerous it would be. Well, he might have accepted a threat to his own safety, but not Grace’s.
Before Bascombe’s it had been about shielding her from the damage he imagined inflicting on her brother. But it was Michael’s touch that had brought her harm and that was a situation he must rectify before he could take another step toward the Jaded’s aims.
My life has turned into a very bad penny novel.
Even so, a thread of anticipation cut through him like a hot wire and made him grimace at its power. Grace would be under his care and legally, his to possess. It was ridiculous to consider it. It was a marriage of convenience, only because her brother was conveniently mad enough to insist on it.
And Grace was openly adverse to it.
She will never forgive me for going along with her brother’s wishes.
Damn it! I can’t think of Grace’s feelings or I’ll throw myself out the window.
He went to the bell pull and yanked it hard, several times, not out of impatience but out of courtesy for Tally who could occasionally miss a tentative signal.
Within minutes, there was a knock on his door and Michael let Tally in. He waited until he knew his young friend was in position to look at his face directly as he spoke so that Tally could read his lips.
“You’re getting taller,” Michael told him.
Tally nodded and then signed his response. ‘Not tall enough! Maggie thinks I’m a baby!’
Michael smiled. The boy had shot up in height in the last few weeks and Michael suspected that Mrs. Clay had underestimated his age. Poor nutrition and a life on the streets could hold a child back, but Mrs. Clay’s love and good cooking over the years was finally bearing fruit. Her blonde cherub was going to be a young man and nearly grown in another two or three years.
Where does the time go?
“Be patient, Tally.” Michael shook himself out of his reverie. “I need my box, little brother. Can you fetch it for me without anyone seeing?”
Tally smiled. ‘Of course! Mother’s busy cheering the laundress with a cup of tea. Her husband is off drinking again.’
Michael eyed his own room and decided that if he was bringing a bride home tomorrow he may as well ask. “Tears? Has Maggie been in to change the rooms yet?”
‘Yes! I assisted her.’ Tally’s cheeks colored with his words. ‘The linen basket is heavy and I like to be...helpful. She says I’m good company.’
“Careful, little brother. Once you lose your heart, it’s hard to get it back.”
Tally nodded and ducked out, a shy smile his only answer to Michael’s sage words of wisdom. Michael retrieved his drink from the mantle and then worked through the ritual of getting out his personal papers and reaching his desk. The methodical steps calmed him and by the time he had things laid out, there was a knock on the door heralding Tally’s return.
“That was quick,” he complimented the boy and took the padlocked box from Tally’s hands.
‘Anything else?’ Tally signed.
“No, but tell your mother I’ll be down later to speak to her privately.” There was no way he was going to add to the shock of impending events without alerting Mrs. Clay to Grace’s arrival. If possible, tomorrow he would limit the number of hysterical women in the Grove to one. Michael shuddered at the notion of even one…
‘I’ll tell her.’ Tally hurried off and Michael closed his door, locking it behind him this time.
He carried the heavy wooden box, with its reinforced metal skin and thick iron strapping, to set it on the table by the fireplace. Michael dusted off the top of it and then unbuttoned the top of his shirt to more easily pull a silver chain from around his neck. A single key hang from the chain and Michael laid it on his palm. It was an ornate silver little thing that gave no hint of its match to the black and rusty lockbox on the table.
The idea behind the security of his diamonds was simple and fairly flawless. He’d given Tally the locked box early on asking him to hide it in the Grove, somewhere safe and secret that only Tally could access. Then Michael had kept the key around his neck at all times, never taking it off. So in reality, if he’d ever been pressed, he could honestly swear that he didn’t know the actual location of his treasure.
And as Tally was a trustworthy boy, he’d never asked about the box’s contents nor could he have opened it if he wanted to.
Michael inserted the key and turned it three times to the left to unlock the solid padlock, then set to work. Inside, the box was lined with worn brown velvet and contained several leather bags. Michael began to pull them out, then set the empty box on the floor. Each bag he emptied on the table, his brow furrowing in concentration. Large diamonds, cut and uncut, tumbled out onto the table’s smooth surface from the first pouch and Michael sighed. He’d never really thoroughly culled through his portion of the jewels and when he’d initially needed money after their return to England, he’d sold six small gems and felt like King Midas. The profit had been insane and since he lived a fairly frugal existence, he’d never needed to sell any others and so had had no excuse to ask Tally for his box.
Even the entire que
st for diamonds in disguise had never triggered the box’s retrieval. They’re all diamonds—where’s the disguise in that?
But as tensions had ratcheted up with Sterling and as he was about to become a married man, it felt right to finally face his holdings; to reassure Grace that she would be provided for but also for his own peace of mind.
Michael emptied each pouch and dropped the leather pouches into the open box at his feet. The pile of diamonds was substantial and he let out a slow sigh before realizing that there was one more pouch left on the table. He picked it up and frowned at the size of the stone inside it.
God, that’s a monster!
He dumped it out indelicately and then flinched at the sight of a dirty white rough stone the size of a large plum. It was the ugliest piece of quartz looking nonsense in the lot and he shook his head in pity as the lump of dull crystal landed like a plain cousin on top of all her glittering counterparts.
“I forgot this one…” he said aloud. Ashe had even made a joke at the time about what looked like a large piece of gravel when they were dividing up the gems by color and had offered him a choice of his sapphires to make up for the worthless thing. Michael had declined and made a joke about keeping the rock for luck if nothing else.
Luck, if nothing else.
Suddenly a new thought occurred to him and before logic overtook him, he swept all the other diamonds into the palm of his hand and funneled them into the lockbox’s top. When the large ugly lump was alone on the table, Michael reached for the fireplace shovel and took aim. Just as he had at Ashe’s, he swung decisively if a bit more cautiously as he feared Mrs. Clay’s censure more than he did Godwin’s.
He lifted the shovel’s blade, expecting to see a similar pulverized show of crystalline snow and dropped the shovel on the floor in shock.
For the ugly dull and flawed exterior of the stone had indeed shattered but only to reveal an extraordinary diamond that had been inside the bland glass shell. The size of a small plum, organic in shape, it was flawlessly cut with facet after facet drawing out an inner fire and spectrum of color that defied description. By the firelight, it became a living thing, pulsing with glittering rainbows and refracting the light until Michael wasn’t sure he hadn’t been hypnotized staring at it and losing time…
After all this time, it was under my nose, exactly as Darius said it would be.
“I have it,” he whispered. “I have the sacred treasure.”
He sat back in his chair and absorbed the implications. His first impulse was to send word to the others immediately but something stopped him.
The diamond flashed and flared and Michael’s breath caught in his throat.
Better to wait.
I may need all the leverage I can get and if Sterling fails to deliver Grace to the church…
Michael pushed the thought away and stood to begin pacing. The diamond changed nothing. He wanted to rescue Grace and secure her future before anything else happened. The Jaded would demand the stone be out of his hands for safekeeping but Michael’s instincts jangled with alarm at the thought. It was a dangerous thing to possess and he wouldn’t allow any of his friends to take on the risk. Not until he knew that he had control of things and had the Jackal in hand.
The diamond’s colors winked again and Michael went back to kneel next to the table and begin to repack everything into the lockbox. “Sacred or no, I have a wedding to prepare for and Mrs. Clay to face, you troublesome rock.”
He held it up to the light one last time and sighed.
Blood and tears, all our lives in the balance for something a man can hold in his hand. My God, it is a penny novel!
Let’s just pray that I make a good ending.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Grace studied the reflection of the woman in her vanity’s mirror and marveled at the strangeness of the exercise. The bruising around her eye was nearly gone and powder had disguised the last signs of her brother’s brutal hand. Her blonde hair was brushed to a sheen and the lady’s maid that her brother had hired for the day had styled it into an ornate and flattering pile of curls and tiny braids that looped down to touch her ears.
Sterling hadn’t trusted her to leave the house for anything as trivial as a shopping expedition so she was wearing her best day dress, a pale blue silk with an overlay of sheer muslin edged in lace. The plain bodice was buttoned up to her throat and the long sleeves puffed out to make her wrists seem even more delicate.
Grace pressed her lips together, trying to ward off her emotions. Pouting or railing against fate gained her nothing. Days locked in her room with only Mrs. Dorsett’s icy silence bringing trays of food and drawing her bath. She’d already cried until she couldn’t cry anymore and every argument and plea she made was useless and only strengthened her brother’s case for her madness.
Bedlam.
It was like a cavern of terror opening up under her feet at the very word and Sterling had invoked the very thing she feared most. For had she not spent years with fantastical visions in her head and strange characters? Her writing was her sole comfort but also a source of anxiety. It was an abnormal pursuit for a woman and Grace knew it. She’d kept it secret from her family and particularly from Sterling not only to preserve her hopes for independence but also to preserve her very life. She wasn’t sure but it was easy to say that the odd workings of her mind might border on madness and if Sterling desired to hurt her; would knowledge of her literary pursuits not arm him with the ultimate weapon?
She closed her eyes to banish the echoes of the imaginary cries of lunatics in chains that haunted her dreams and sighed. “It would be worse. God help me, no nightmare I can conjure would be worse than being trussed up and drug over the threshold of an asylum never to see the light of day again…”
Grace blinked and did her best to refocus on the pale woman’s reflection in the mirror. The maid had left a small sprig of lavender and Queen Anne’s lace on the table. She lifted it with trembling hands to pin it into her hair.
Michael Rutherford.
He was exactly the man she might have dreamed of marrying; if she’d permitted it. His kisses dizzied her but beyond that, his kindness overwrote a lifetime of being disregarded and ignored. The lure of his presence was irresistible and in better circumstances, she might not have fought the notion of becoming his wife.
But Sterling’s hand in it tainted everything and there was nothing free or joyful in the ceremony ahead. Whatever his scheme involving Mr. Rutherford, she would be forced to play her part and quietly sacrifice every dream she had ever had of a life on her own as a writer.
Today, I marry. And then beg Michael to forgive me for being nothing he will want in a wife.
A knock on the door heralded the time and Grace retrieved the makeshift veil she’d made from the back of her chair. She tossed it over her head and spared one last look at the woman in the mirror.
She looks like a bride.
Or a ghost…
“Grace!” Her brother greeted her as he pushed through the door, unwilling to wait for her permission to enter. “We are waiting for you downstairs.”
She stood slowly and smoothed out her skirts. “Then let us not make them wait any longer.”
“That’s a good girl!” he said and held out his arm to escort her out. “I knew you would come around, my dear. Of course, if you are thinking of some outburst or last minute scene, I won’t hesitate to—“
“There’s no need to threaten me again, brother.” Grace took his arm and lifted the hem of her skirts as they began to head down the narrow stairs. “I may have my faults but a limited memory isn’t one of them. There is not a word you’ve uttered in my lifetime that I don’t recall and not an action that isn’t carved into my heart.”
“That’s a good girl,” he intoned again, the triumphant bite in his voice lessened.
Grace ignored him and the grating sound of his praise, as if she were a dog that had come to heel. They walked the rest of the way in silence, through the
ground floor and out into the narrow garden she had worked so hard to make grand for her brother’s pleasure.
The vicar was there by the small stone bench and alongside him…
Mr. Rutherford!
Every time Grace saw him, she was struck by his masculine beauty and imposing presence. Today, the impact was heightened. He wore a formal coat of dark grey and a snow-white linen shirt and cravat that set his coloring off to perfection. With his black hair streaked with white, he looked more like the Archangel Michael than her shy Mr. Rutherford. Her heart ached at the wretched position she’d put him in, honorably taking on a marriage against his will.
There was no music beyond the faint sounds of the city on the other side of the wall, no decorations beyond the spring blooms on the plants and trees in their haven and only Mrs. Dorsett and Sterling in attendance as the required witnesses.
Grace walked as steadily as she could to Mr. Rutherford’s side and stepped into a strange dream where she recited her vows in a hollow voice devoid of feeling; where fear dominated so that she couldn’t run away; and where the only thing that felt steady was Mr. Rutherford’s arm.
“Congratulations!” the vicar said and Grace blinked in shock to realize it was over and she’d hardly been aware of any of it.
“Thank you,” Mr. Rutherford replied and then guided her back inside to sign the license and paperwork for the registry. The vicar had apparently been informed ahead of time that there would be no lingering over the nuptials and he tacitly helped them hurry through the last of the process. Mr. Rutherford signed first, his hand steady and emphatic in the long strokes of his handwriting. He held the pen out to her and Grace’s courage faltered. She took the pen and scrawled a name she hoped was her own, and then lost the battle against tears. “I’m…sorry…I just…”
“It’s done,” Sterling announced firmly. “For heaven’s sake, stop that nonsense and—“
“There, there,” Michael stepped in between them, retaking her arm and effectively cutting off Sterling’s approach; his presence a shield from the others. “Cry if you wish, Grace. We’re nearly there,” he said softly for her ears alone.
Desire Wears Diamonds Page 19
