Beware of Virtuous Women (38 page)

Chelfham pressed the muzzle of the pistol hard against Eleanor's temple. "
You
have the journals?" he asked Chance. "I don't even
know
you!"

Jack's head was splitting and his stomach was turning again. He feared he might pass out. But the weapon in his hand never wavered, and his gaze never left Chelfham's cocked and ready pistol. "Let her go, Chelfham. Let her go and we'll do anything you say."

"I can't," Chelfham said, backing up yet again, until he was stopped by the edge of his desk. "Pirates. Smugglers. Hooligans! This isn't the way it was supposed to be. Why couldn't you have just brought me the journals? It's not too late. He said it was too late, but it's not. It's not!
Get me the journals!"

Hard on the heels of Chelfham's demand came the sound of breaking glass. Everywhere, upstairs and down, the sound of breaking glass, including in the study, where everyone stood as if frozen into a tableau, staring at the fire that had blossomed in the middle of the room.

Rian ran out of the room, but was back in seconds. "Everywhere, Chance. Fire everywhere. I'll get the woman."

"He can't! He can't do this! Barbarians! My house! This is
my
house!"

With his every word, Chelfham tightened his grip on Eleanor, until she felt light-headed from lack of breath. She clawed at the earl's forearm, but he was past understanding what he was doing to her. She couldn't swallow. She couldn't cry out.

"Eleanor!"

She pulled on Chelfham's arm hard enough that she was able to draw in another breath as she looked to Jack, to the growing fire between them.

But was she really here? Or was she on the ship? In the cupboard, Mama holding her tight, too tight.
No!
She was here, in London, and Jack was... Jack was...
oh, God!
Everything was different. Everything was the same. The terror. The fire. The pistol. She was going to die.

Again.

"Eleanor," Jack said, his voice low, commanding, as she seemed to look at him without seeing him. He had to get her back, rouse her from whatever nightmare had seized her or, failing that, he had to use what he knew. The ship. Jacko.

Could he do it, break through her terror? Would she understand? Chelfham couldn't understand what he was about to say. Jack.
Jacko.
No, Chelfham wouldn't understand. But Eleanor might.
Please God, let her understand.
"Eleanor? It's me, Jacko. Do you hear me, Eleanor? It's your Jacko.
Jacko.
Eleanor, understand? You remember what you're going to do, don't you, Eleanor? Stay still for Jacko. Stay very, very still."

"Jacko?" Eleanor mouthed the name, unable to actually speak. Then, suddenly, she knew. The child inside her knew what would happen next.

Six-year-old Julianna Maddox ceased her struggles to be free, closed her eyes, and braced for the sound of the shot...

"Are you certain you're all right?"

"No, Chance, I'm not," Eleanor said in a resigned voice, for this was not the first time she'd heard the question. "Although I probably would be absolutely fine... if you'd stop staring at me as if I might dissolve into a puddle at any moment."

"She's got you there, Chance," Rian said as he walked into the drawing room, dressed for travel. "Elly coddles us, remember? Not the other way round. She likes it best that way. Now, Elly, ask me if I believe I'm dressed warmly enough, if I have enough money in my pocket, and if I'm sure I know how to find my way home. Then I'll be on my way."

"Cheeky, isn't he?" Chance said, getting to his feet to clap his brother on the back. "Remember, halfling. I'll be following you in two days' time, and I expect you to keep that mouth of yours shut until I can speak directly to Ainsley."

"Tell Papa? I'm not that much of a looby. I'll leave that to you. It's enough that I'm going to have to tell him why
I
disappeared without telling anyone but Jacko. Who won't defend me, you know."

"I think you should stay, Rian, and ride to Becket Hall with Chance," Eleanor said, putting aside her embroidery, that she hadn't really been attending to in the first place. "I simply don't understand this rush to be gone. You've barely seen London as it is."

"I've seen enough," Rian told her, bending to kiss her cheek. "And somebody has to go prepare the family for the news about you and Jack. Our Jacko will probably take to his bed with the shock—then meet Jack at the door with a list of demands to prove he's worthy of you."

Eleanor felt her cheeks flushing. "That's not true."

"Oh, it is, Elly, it is," Rian promised her. "Not to mention how I'm going to tell them about the way you've been shorn. Fanny's going to go green with envy, as she's always complaining about her masses of hair. We'll have to hide all the scissors in the house. Well, I'm off," he said, extending his hand to Chance.

"Not so much as a hint about Beales," Chance warned yet again, holding tight to his brother's hand.

"Not a word about any of it. Mostly because I still can't believe the half of it."

"He'll be fine," Eleanor said once Rian was gone and Chance returned to his seat. "Now, as I've been waiting patiently for hours—tell me."

"Tell you what, Elly?"

Clearly Chance didn't yet quite realize what she knew—that the past fortnight had changed her, that she felt a new assertiveness, a new strength, and the daring to say what was on her mind. "No coddling, Chance. You've been gone all day and I saw your face when you came in just before luncheon, and before you realized I was at the head of the stairs. What's happened?"

"I should leave that to Jack," Chance said, rising from the chair to walk over to the drinks table. "You might want to hear it from him, rather than me."

"You've told Jack? Honestly, Chance, do you really think he's up to hearing distressing news? And it is distressing news, isn't it?"

"You're coddling him just as Rian says, and he's letting you, the rotter." Chance returned to his chair, a glass of wine in his hand. "He'd be out of that bed now, if he wasn't enjoying himself so much. It's been three days, Elly, and the man has an incredibly hard head. I don't think I could have managed such a delicate shot even without first being conked half-senseless with a candlestick. If it hadn't been for the fact that he then promptly fainted while Chelfham screamed and the house burned down around our ears, I'd say the man was extraordinary. What I'm trying to say, Elly, is that I completely approve of your choice. If that matters to you at all."

"It does. Thank you, Chance." Eleanor smiled in quiet pride—and a bit of definitely misplaced humor— at the memory of how Jack had shot the dueling pistol straight out of Chelfham's hand. "He still swears he aimed to kill and missed, but I don't believe him. He'd promised me, you know—that he'd avoid personally dispatching anyone if at all possible. Now, tell me what's wrong. What's happened?"

"All right, although I will say you're reminding me very much of my inquisitive wife at the moment," Chance said, putting down his wineglass. "It's Eccles."

"He's confessed? He's said something about Edmund Beales?"

Chance shook his head. "No, Elly. That would have been much too easy. Beales was gone from London before we so much as heard of his whereabouts from Chelfham, remember. An entire house, cleared to the walls. Only the devil knows where he is now or what he plans next. Since we already had Eccles, he couldn't know where Beales has gone, either. But it would seem the bastard has very long arms, tentacles that even reach over prison walls, as they found Eccles dead in his cell this morning, his throat neatly sliced. I can tell you, this is causing a good deal of turmoil, since no one except a few people in the War Office supposedly even knew we had him."

"But...but Jack and I both believed Eccles to be a very minor entity in all of this. I doubt he even knew anything of any real importance. I rather feel sorry for him." Then another thought struck her and she sat up very straight. "Chelfham. Is he dead, too?"

"No. He's been moved under heavy guard, to a place I, a lowly former member of the Minister's staff, am not privileged to know. I do know they offered him promises to keep him safe from the hangman if he agrees to cooperate, answer each question put to him. The fool wrote everything down, every name, and now he's going through the journals with the Minister himself."

"Because the journals are written in some sort of code."

"Yes, but one not difficult to break. I deciphered the copies I made with very little trouble before turning the journals over to the Minister. Names of leaders of the different smaller gangs up and down the coast that all operated as a part of the Red Men. Places where contraband was stored before being moved overland. Even landing sites."

"He was very thorough, wasn't he?"

"Yes. He explained that he never knew what his superior—the man he calls Nathaniel Beatty—could ask for, so he wrote down everything. Dragoons are already on the move, making arrests. There are also quite a few members of the
ton
who are going to be rusticating at their country estates for a while, to reflect on their involvement in freetrading."

"They won't be taken to prison? Why?"

Chance sighed, because he wasn't particularly happy to know that, once again, justice was far from fairly applied. "Because, Elly, they are peers. They have titles that go back for centuries... and they all have very powerful, influential friends. Eccles would have hanged, certainly, to serve as a warning—but no one is about to line up two dozen peers and throw nooses around their necks in some public display of punishment. Think of the embarrassment."

"So it was all for nothing?" Eleanor held out her hands to stop Chance from answering. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. The Red Men Gang is in a shambles, and that's certainly a good thing, both for England and for our friends in Romney Marsh. But Edmund Beales is still out there. I can't imagine what Papa will do when he finds out."

"I can," Chance said, shaking his head. "He'll go straight back into whatever hell he was mired in for so damn long. Remembering. Regretting. Blaming himself. He was so much better, Elly, these past few years. We all were. We were all beginning to feel safe." He slammed his fist into his palm. "Damn! We don't even know where to begin to look for the bastard!"

Eleanor folded her hands in her lap, wondering how many times she and Chance would have this same conversation before he finally left for Becket Hall. She hated that Edmund Beales was back in their lives, seemed to be taking over their lives, even in his absence. "Yesterday, you thought France. Chelfham did say that the man who came looking for the journals was French."

"I know. Beales wouldn't blink at working for Bonaparte. His only real loyalty is for himself, and I doubt he'd have any problem changing sides to whoever was winning at the moment. The only good thing right now is that we know he's still alive, while he believes we're dead. He won't know we're after him until we're in his face—and that's the last thing he'll ever know."

The prospect of that eventual confrontation was frightening. Terrifying. And it was time she went upstairs to check on Jack, made sure he was still resting, as the doctor had ordered.