The Earl with the Secret Tattoo

by Kieran Kramer

  Now James studied the tiny crouched cat engraved on the talisman’s copper surface. “I promise,” he whispered to the cat before he put the small disk back in his pocket. To anyone else the practice might seem silly, but he said those two words every day before he left the house.

  Lord Kersey had asked two things of him before he died: that James bring Lord Pritchard to justice if he didn’t live to do the same, and to protect his daughter Eleanor.

  For five years now, James had done his best to watch over his mentor’s daughter. As for bringing Lord Pritchard to justice, he still hadn’t done so. But as he lived and breathed, he would. It galled him every day to pretend that he didn’t know the man had betrayed his country yet enjoyed a fine standing in the community.

  Knowing that Eleanor resided under the traitor’s roof was the worst part of all.

  A mere seven hours after James had kissed Pritchard’s daughter and tangled with her fiery stepsister, it was still pitch dark—and that one hour of opportunity between the last of the late-night revelers straggling home and the earliest servants awakening. James shut the gate of his back garden softly and began a purposeful walk down the alley, his cape pulled tight against the fog, his hat brim low on his head. He wended his way through silent streets and slipped into a small bakery as the first cock crowed.

  “Pritchard’s landed into debt again,” he informed his superior in the Brotherhood, Ronald Stubing, proprietor of the Second Bun Bakery Shop, when he walked in. One of James’s other Brothers, William Reeves, handed him a cup of coffee, for which he murmured his thanks.

  “Lady Clare told me herself last night he’s selling her off.”

  They’d gathered in the cramped back room of the bakery, where Stubing hunched over a worktable and punched dough.

  Reeves was the head accountant at a thriving men’s clothing store on Bond Street, the one Prinny himself patronized. He was a wizard with numbers and was the first to alert the Brotherhood who among the beau monde was in debt. If they couldn’t pay their tailoring bills, that was a significant sign.

  Reeves wrinkled his nose. “Could you be a bit less vigorous with the flour?” he asked Stubing and brushed his sleeve. “I’ve got to go straight to work after this.”

  Stubing paused in his kneading and glowered at him. “Do you mind?” he shot back in his thick Cockney accent. “We’re talking about Satan’s right-hand man, a retired Brother turned betrayer who’s been sitting pretty and unchallenged for five years. I pity the daughter, shallow bitch that she appears to be, Tumbridge.”

  He glanced up at James.

  “Yes, well, I pity her, too,” James said. “Perhaps she’d have turned out differently in other circumstances.” He thought about Eleanor, another daughter of a member of the Brotherhood, and of how perfect she was.

  There was a rustle at the door, and Lord Patrick Griffin swept in, reeking of stale cheroot smoke and spirits. His eyes were bloodshot and his shirt rumpled. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, and took off his slightly dented tall hat.

  “We know why.” Reeves didn’t look a bit envious.

  “You toffs and your easy jobs,” Stubing muttered. “Either seducing spoiled debutantes or recruiting bits o’ muslin to talk about their high-class customers. What a life, eh?”

  Stubing had been one of the country’s most prized sharpshooters in the war with Napoléon.

  “A man has to do what a man has to do,” Patrick said with a crooked grin. He’d been recruited into the Brotherhood after his twin brother, a brilliant negotiator with the Portuguese alliance during the Wars, had lost his life in mysterious circumstances. “But the truth is, I tease those lightskirts and don’t bed them, Stubing, much as you’d like to imagine so.”

  Stubing scoffed. “I don’t need to imagine nothing of the kind. I got my Mary at home, warm and cheery. She’s got none of those diseases your girls do.”

  “One reason why I’m careful,” Patrick said. “Ask James here. Believe it or not, it’s challenging work pretending to be a drunken wastrel with a stone-cold heart.”

  “You learned from the master,” said Reeves gleefully, looking at James. “No more sober man exists in London than Lord Tumbridge, yet who would guess?”

  “The man’s an expert at fake retching into his hat,” chuckled Stubing. “Although the stone-cold heart is for real, at least when it comes to women. Ain’t it, James?”

  Patrick and Reeves laughed.

  “Indeed,” James muttered into his cup of coffee, and decided to bring the conversation back round to Lord Pritchard. He set his cup on a nearby shelf and leaned against the wide, rough back of the brick oven.

  His friends didn’t need to know that the warmth emanating from those bricks made him long for Eleanor. He’d give anything to hold her close, to feel the heat of her body pressed to his, to kiss her and make her his own. “I was just telling them, Patrick, that I think we might have caught our man at a weak moment. He’s clearly in debt. His daughter’s lamenting the fact that she has to marry Viscount Henly. She says her father believes Henly will solve all their money woes.”

  “It makes sense.” Patrick hung his hat and cape on a hook by the door, next to James’s.

  “The top secret leaks these past eight months—they started after that big loss he had to Dupree on the green baize.” He looked round at them all. “He’s active again.”

  “Let me kill him,” Stubing said, methodically filling pans with balls of dough, then covering them with a cloth. “It would make everything so much easier.”

  “No,” said James. “Lord Kersey told me in no uncertain terms he’d rather Pritchard receive public condemnation and suffer in prison, and I agree.”

  “Scandal and prison won’t make up for all the loyal diplomats and agents who died because of his greed during the war,” Reeves added quietly.

  “Nothing will bring them back.” James was pensive. “But he craves approval more than anything. Being vilified by his peers and the masses, too, would torture him far worse than a quick death.”

  “Right,” said Stubing, wiping his hands on his apron. He looked around at the lot of them. “We let him live. But we’ve got to get him. Soon. He’s a loose cannon, and he needs to be brought down once and for all.”

  James pulled the treasured token with the cat engraved on it out of his pocket and held it up. “This talisman’s mate is still out there. We don’t have it, but neither does he. He’s not even looking anymore. He made a quick, messy effort to get it, and when his thugs failed, he gave up because he didn’t know what it meant. Or perhaps he did guess its true importance. What better way to make sure it remains lost than to let it stay in the hands of a big, rambling family like the Sherwoods?”

  “Exactly,” said Stubing.

  “But we know what it means,” said Reeves.

  “And God knows we’ve been trying to find it,” Patrick added.

  “It will turn up,” James assured his compatriots, “and when it does, Pritchard’s life as he know it will be over.”

  There was a moment’s silence as they all looked at the dull copper circle.

  James blew a few motes of flour off it and put it back into his deepest pocket. “Today I’m going to risk talking to the Sherwoods about the robbery. I looked over the old reports again, but there’s still nothing that leaps out at me. Lord Westdale never mentioned the talisman to the constables. He probably didn’t realize it was what they were after.”

  “But we know he had it,” said Reeves.

  A bribed servant in Lord Pritchard’s house had told James so, the same servant who’d also informed James that Lord Pritchard had sent the thugs after the two Sherwood carriages carrying the six siblings, as well as Lady Eleanor and Lady Clare, to London.

  Stubing sighed. “The servants in the House of Brady, even after all these years, are too damned loyal. When I was among them, it was like pulling teeth to get them to say anythin’ about the family, much less talk about a talisman that might be tucked away in a d
rawer in the house.”

  “And as for speaking with the Sherwood family itself,” James said, “I know we’ve also reached a dead end. But I hope you don’t regret now that we drew a line in their case—no seduction of the young ladies. No setting up friendships with the boys only to drop them later.”

  Patrick scratched his jaw. “Damn us for taking the high moral ground.”

  “Which we abandon when we have to,” James reminded him, and remembered how he’d kissed the selfish Clare, much to his distaste. “We know in our gut when we can and when we must.”

  “Well, the Sherwood brood can’t know you were at the robbery, Tumbridge,” Reeves warned him. “Your maintaining cover is more important than our finding that talisman.”

  “Is it?” asked James. “For five years, I’ve agreed with you. But now I don’t.” Eleanor’s face came to him. “How much longer can we pretend we’re oblivious of Pritchard’s perfidy? If I risk being exposed by pushing too hard on the Sherwoods, then so be it.”

  “You’re too clever to bungle this, James,” said Patrick. “It’s our only hope, really. We’ve come to the end of the road. We’ve ransacked the Brady house on Grosvenor Square—what, four times now when the skeleton staff was there?”

  They were each expert burglars.

  “And if I have to take another bloomin’ trip to Ireland to paw through Lord Brady’s estate looking for that thing, I’ll wind up shooting myself.” Stubing made a face. “The blue-smocked housekeeper there don’t take kindly to servants with Cockney accents.”

  “That’s not it.” James grinned. “She fired you—”

  “’Cause I didn’t make that soda bread the way the marquess likes it,” the baker interrupted him with a great deal of temper. “Damn her for her impertinence. I make the best soda bread in the world!”

  “Well, she dismissed me for being too slow with the candlestick polishing.” Reeves huffed. “I’m detail-oriented, more than she. I think she was jealous.”

  “Good thing she takes a few drinks once a year on her birthday,” said Patrick. “It’s coming up, by the way. Are we making another trip?”

  Stubing groaned. “Oh, God, please no. Someday, she’ll catch us. I fear her more than I do the end of a rifle. Or Mary when she’s in labor.”

  James chuckled. “All the more reason to call on the Sherwoods this morning. Only Lady Janice and her younger sister Cynthia are in Town, but they and their mother will have to do. Perhaps one of them will drop a clue about the talisman’s whereabouts.”

  “I don’t know.” Stubing scratched his head. “Maybe we should keep going, wait for him to slip up, or to die—”

  “No,” said James. “Because Lady Eleanor is next on the chopping block. I doubt Pritchard will be long satisfied with Clare’s dupe to settle his debts. He’s probably accruing new ones as we speak.”

  “Yes, Viscount Henly’s wealth isn’t as vast as he lets on.” Reeves shrugged. “He cuts corners at the shop when he can.”

  “Not a good sign,” James said. “Plus Lady Eleanor’s caught on that I’m involved in her life a little too much, and she’s out to find out more about me.”

  “That’s a bit of a mess, Tumbridge.” Stubing stuck out his stubbly chin. “I might have to dock you a week’s pay for that. How did that happen?”

  James sighed and told them about the night before, from the moment Lady Eleanor burst in on him kissing Clare to her hiding behind the curtain when Lord Andrew Wells showed up. “The fool hoisted himself on his own petard, but she blamed me, as I purposely brought up the whole matter of his proposing to her. She took the opportunity to let me know she hated me for always ruining her life.”

  “But we’ve nothing against him,” Reeves protested. “The other one who was after her, however—”

  “The one we invented a job for in Australia, Rupert Hawthorne—,” said Patrick.

  “Yes,” continued Reeves, “that one was an out-and-out bounder.”

  “I know,” said James. “But Lady Eleanor recently found out through Hawthorne’s sister that I’m the one who steered him in that direction. She said she’d have thought nothing of it except that I also ruined her chances for a governess position in Yorkshire six months ago.”

  Stubing slapped a floury palm to his forehead. “Just what we need. How’d she figure that out?”

  “She wouldn’t accept the estate owner’s letter telling her he’d changed his mind about employing her,” James said. “She wrote the housekeeper, who told her that her master was dissuaded from hiring her by a talkative henchman who couldn’t handle their potent Yorkshire beer and told her he’d been hired by me. Said henchman has since discovered—with my help—that he’s better off in America.”

  “And what if Lord Pritchard knows you arranged for her to lose that job?” asked Reeves.

  “He might,” said James. “But I doubt it. Lady Eleanor wouldn’t tattle to a man she despises, and he doesn’t care enough. Even if he did, I’d tell him I did it as a favor to him to protect his stepdaughter. The baron in Yorkshire was an unfit employer, a seducer of governesses. How angry can Pritchard be with me about that? He’ll look cold-blooded if he is, and that’s the last thing he wants to appear.”

  “Understood,” said Stubing, “but as for Wells, we’ve got nothing on him but that’s he’s a bit lacking in social polish and has an excessive amount of pride.” He eyed James balefully.

  “You shouldn’t have interfered last night. Lord Kersey said protect her, but he didn’t mean suffocate her. She’s an intelligent young woman. She’d have figured out Wells on her own.”

  “I know. I took it too far.” James said nothing else. What could he say? That he was in love with her? He didn’t even want to admit it to himself, much less anyone else.

  “You don’t want her with anyone, do you?” asked Reeves without a trace of his usual disparaging tone.

  Ah, the truth always came out, sooner or later, with or without help. Which sometimes made James’s occupation as a expediter of truth feel redundant to him—even hypocritical, because he had to hide his true identity to bring those truths to light.

  “No,” he admitted to his friends in a low voice. “I don’t want her with anyone else.”

  He fell in love with her during the one waltz they’d shared—the one in which she’d upbraided him for interfering with her goal to become a governess in Yorkshire. During that dance, he’d been everything she expected him to be: aloof, rude. He’d refused to explain his actions in Yorkshire, and she’d been properly angry.

  But the spark in her eyes had mesmerized him; her spirit had awakened something in him he’d no idea he possessed: a sense of longing—

  For home.

  For someone who really knew and understood him.

  By the end of the waltz, he realized it wasn’t just any bright, strong, and kind woman he longed to look favorably upon him—to love him—rather than scorn him.

  There was only one woman whose heart he longed to possess, and that was Eleanor.

  From the first time he’d seen her as a young girl, she intrigued him. But until that moment in the ballroom, she’d always been just that—a girl. Not a woman. Above all, she’d been an obligation, one he’d undertaken willingly and with a heart dedicated to his mentor’s memory.

  But after a few spins about the dance floor and a softly delivered but spirited tirade—an entirely reasonable one, if one considered the matter from her point of view—she’d become something precious to him, all on her own.

  Something precious he couldn’t have.

  “It’s a bit dicey,” he said, “but I’ll not let any personal feelings get in my way. Trust me.”

  “But if you love her the way I love my Mary,” Stubing said, “you might lose your head when we need you to keep it.”

  All three of his fellow members of the Brotherhood looked at him with skeptical concern.

  “I said I’d handle it.” He was annoyed with himself for confessing. “We’ve gambled lo
ng enough. Pritchard’s our priority. All others must fall by the wayside, including my future in the Brotherhood and—” He paused. “—my foolish interest in Lady Eleanor.”

  “It’s not foolish,” said Patrick quietly.

  “It is when the lady despises you,” said James, “for good reason.”

  “But James—,” Stubing began.

  James held up his hand. “I’m not at liberty to correct her perception of me. I knew that when I signed up for this duty.” He knew he was glowering, but so be it. “Let’s move on. Reeves, who’s the latest dandy to fall into serious debt?”

  <#>

  The drawing room at the Brady mansion was overflowing with morning callers when Eleanor arrived. She couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous. This self-reliant household was one of the most popular among the beau monde, and for good reason.

  The blended family the Marquess and Marchioness of Brady had created when they wed was charming, each member colorful and compelling—especially as they refused to kowtow to the bland expectations of the polite world.

  It seemed the only approval they required for being who they were was each other’s.

  No wonder outsiders wanted to become a part of the Brady world in any way they could.

  “Lady Eleanor Gibbs,” their butler, Burbank, announced to the crowd.

  The marchioness, her vivid blue eyes sparkling and her white-blond hair coiled high on her head, looked up from her conversation with a matron in an emerald gown and a peacock feather in her hair. “Why, Lady Eleanor,” Lady Brady said, “it’s been such a long time!”

  Everyone else in the room seemed to stop and stare. Eleanor wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. Much like her father, she enjoyed her own company. When she wasn’t occupied with obligatory social functions, she preferred to meet one or two friends at the circulating library or for walks through the park. And when she was entirely alone, her favorite pastime was to sit at her desk and write stories about a mysterious tattooed hero and his daring lady love.

  So far, she’d sold three, anonymously, to a small publisher in London.