Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

I would consider an assignment in the northern district should one become available. Northumberland, for example.

~Missive to Chief Intelligence Officer Browning from Agent Noble

B y the time he escorted Lady Shandling-Miers home and returned to Bloomsbury, Cece was gone. Josiah and Mara with her. Nelson greeted him at the door with the sour mien of a disappointed father. No words were spoken, but the punch of censure struck deep. As did the overwhelming rush of emotion when he stepped into Cece’s bedchamber and found nothing but her delicious scent and an emerald hair clip on the vanity matching the one sitting on his bedside table.

Another scar—this one to the heart.

She left the last damning message in her study. Her loupe, a piece he pocketed immediately and had warmed in his hand every second since. Along with a note that said: I can create a past now, too. Thank you for showing me how.

Jealousy was blinding and had him bracing his fist on the wall until it passed. He had shown her how. He was skilled, undoubtedly, but he wasn’t the only man in England able to do the job. Also, he might be more trouble than he was worth.

A conclusion that left him hollow.

Accordingly, he did what heartsick men had for ages.

Drank a bottle of whisky, got tossed from White’s—for the last time, management claimed—then nearly overturned his carriage on Bond. One of those ridiculous races he hadn’t taken part in for years, and it said too much about his reputation that no one had been surprised to see him appear at the starting point. As the winning curricle passed him minutes later, he realized risky behavior didn’t bring the exhilaration it once had. Exhausted baron-cum-hoodlums needn’t apply.

What he’d experienced with Cece was the only excitement he needed, Jasper decided when he woke the following afternoon with a pounding headache and a fresh set of bruises on his shin from that damned race.

He’d never be well again unless he figured out a way to make her trust him. Choose him. Not Crispin Sinclair, she idolized that sorry chap, but Jasper Noble. The rascal who had former lovers showing up at all hours, begging for admittance.

The ghastly bet among bets of men.

Had he enjoyed this kind of attention, he wondered, as he counted the cracks in his bedchamber’s ceiling? Sneaking in veranda doors left ajar and out servant’s entrances with his clothing in disarray? Having vases thrown at him (once) and women vowing never to speak to him again (more than once).

As images of Cece wrapped around him, lying beneath him, gasping and clawing and panting, drenched him like bathwater, he couldn’t honestly recall. It was as if the past had been wiped from his memory—except for his past with her . Despite a chit he’d taken on a swim months ago showing up to wreck everything, his night with Cece had been a dream. Passionate pleasure. Truth, laughter, and tenderness. While she’d slept, he’d counted her freckles just as he had in their youth. Serenity had never been this serene.

For the first time since his espionage days, he’d been where he belonged.

In the arms of the only woman he cared two shillings about. A countess who could be carrying his child because, one of the three times, he’d been careless. The thought of a brother or sister for Josiah shot a wave of warmth through him. If he didn’t manage to muck this up, there might be a family waiting for him, the first he’d ever had.

With his head aching but his heart light, Jasper decided the best advice would come from men who’d been in similar dire circumstances. Later that afternoon, Xander Macauley answered his door, as he was wont to do, before Jasper could begin a second round of knocking. Rookery thugs didn’t hold with employing majordomos. As Jasper crossed into the foyer of the terrace, the shouts of children and the yip of a dog from the floor above sailed past him.

The type of chaos Jasper wanted—he simply wasn’t sure how to get it.

“I’m not here to discuss the apprenticeships,” he stated before Xander could dive into business.

They were expanding a campaign Xander’s wife, Pippa, had created to remove young men and women from city workhouses and place them in proper jobs in society households. The plan had run into opposition recently from several underworld criminals profiting on cheap labor, hence the men of the Leighton Cluster getting involved. Dangerous opposition they didn’t want the Duchess Society ladies anywhere near.

Xander closed the door, his smile a shade past amused. “I’ve been expecting you all day, mate. Leave your umbrella in the corner, will you? Pippa gets cross about slick marble and busted arses.”

Jasper halted and spun on his heel. With a groan, he gripped his temple at the fast movement. “How bad is it?”

Xander laughed and leaned against the door. “You haven’t seen the Gazette , I take it? ”

Jasper’s gut shriveled. Fuck .

“Come,” Xander said and strolled down the main corridor as if his friend’s predicament brought a splash of sunlight on a rainy day. He was whistling, in fact. “They’re waiting for you.”

Jasper tossed his umbrella aside and followed with a creeping sense of dread. Who was waiting for him? He’d persuaded Lady Shandling-Miers to keep quiet with the rationale that exposing Cece meant she’d expose herself. The chit wasn’t actually a bad sort, a spot of fun in the day, and she’d apologized for putting him in an unenviable position as well as coming to his home when she wasn’t invited.

Even if he’d let her in before without an invitation.

Apparently, their swim had been memorable. At least for her.

When Jasper entered Xander’s walnut-paneled study, he got his answer.

Several members of the Leighton Cluster were gathered there and appeared to have been for hours. Dash Campbell dealing cards behind a massive desk taking up much of the room. Tobias Streeter sprawled on the settee, a set of blueprints balanced on his lap. The Duke of Leighton kneeling before a crate filled with rocks, geology the love of his life outside his duchess. They glanced up when he edged into the room and gave him looks that ranged from entertained to irritated.

The incensed man started first. “I nearly burnt down my west parlor for your little romance, and this is where you end up taking it?” Leighton selected a stone Jasper believed was azurite from the pile, rotated it in his hand in review, then made a notation in the folio at his side.

“Nice hunk of azurite, Your Grace,” Jasper said and received a look of amazement from a duke who didn’t actually talk to him very often. Surprisingly, he’d scored high marks in geology, not that Leighton wanted to discuss this when he’d nearly lost a section of his home for no good reason—or so it appeared.

“I’d suggest my jeweler. Perhaps a tiara is in order.” With a low hum, Tobias trailed his fingertip along a section of the blueprint. A self-made architect, he was building a set of row houses in Marylebone that were causing quite the stir. The toothpick jammed between his lips, a relic of his successful effort to quit smoking cheroots, bobbed as he talked. “Though I heard he retired some years ago. May have even passed on for all I know. He was quite aged when I patronized his shop.”

“Stopped working, the poor sod, after your marriage put him out of business,” Dash said with a crafty shuffle that had gotten him banned from every gaming hell in Town except his own.

“Couldn’t be helped. Hildy isn’t the jewelry type,” Tobias returned without looking up.

Xander gave Jasper a shove that sent him stumbling into the room. “Enter the den of thieves, my fine chap.”

Jasper glared over his shoulder. “What are you stealing?”

Xander’s lips curved in a knowing smirk. “Why, hearts, of course. Except for you, it seems. A truth, innit, that certain blokes can’t win at love?”

“I tried to stop it,” Jasper said, making his way to the sideboard, figuring whatever drivel was in that gossip rag had told most of the story for him. “Stop her . Sometimes a train is racing down the tracks and tossing your body in front of it isn’t enough.”

Before he could pour a drink, Xander was at his side, filling a teacup and shoving it into his hands. “Trust me on this. You don’t need more liquor. I can’t see those gorgeous blues for the bloodshot. Not to mention a faint aroma of the foxed variety drifting from your skin.”

Jasper angled his forefingers beneath his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. Was it his imagination or was it Cece’s scent clinging to his skin? His heart dropped at the notion. Blimey , had he messed this up. “The lady who intruded promised to keep her mouth shut. She’s actually a pleasant sort. I hope the column didn’t name her.”

“It didn’t, though all of London recognizes the two in question. You and Shandling-Miers.” Leighton tossed the azurite in the crate, stretched, then rocked back on his heels. “Servants talk, Noble. The information pipeline begins on the lower levels. Your staff must love your countess, however, because the column mentions nothing about her. It only details a midnight swim and a chit who’d come calling. The rest we pieced together, what with the fire you and Campbell set in my parlor and a missing former love. The usual.”

“Lower levels? You bleeding nob.” Xander snorted and took a sip from his tumbler. Apparently, the happily married men could have a drink.

“He’s a duke,” Dash said and flipped over a card that was, naturally, the ace of spades. “Prince of nobs next to, lud , an actual prince. Everyone is on a lower level.”

“Don’t think to run over there and propose if you haven’t gotten around to it yet.” Tobias frowned, unhappy with an element of his design. “Hildy was as heated as I’ve seen her since my own misdeeds before our marriage. Your charming escapade in the stable wasn’t enough? According to her, you’re prohibited from ever seeing her client again, no matter if you’ve been dallying with her since your youth. This decree is an exact statement, by the by. She knows exactly where the Countess of Edgerly has been staying this week.”

Xander leaned his hip on the sideboard, a grin ripping across his face. “Stable? Hell if this day isn’t getting better and better.”

Miserably cradling his teacup, Jasper crossed the space to sink into an armchair one of Xander’s children had drawn tiny faces on in black ink. “Would it be indiscreet to admit, among friends, that the countess has been the one dallying with me since the moment I laid eyes on her twenty years ago?”

This got the room’s attention in the way a lecherous comment, however slight, will among men. Though the expression on Jasper’s face was melancholy enough to quiet their mocking. More teasing would be akin to kicking a pup.

Jasper stared into the cup, counting the flecks of tea floating on the surface. There were exactly six. The number of times he’d made love to Cece in his life. Perhaps this coincidence meant something. “Am I too old to start over? She has a son, a wee lad. I worry I’m not up to the job. Either job.”

The silence was deadly. Men rarely admitted to fear. Or love. This was both in three simple statements and one troubled question.

“I, um,”—Leighton cleared his throat, likely eons since he’d given advice of this nature—“made mistakes of monumental proportions with Helena. Mistakes I assumed took me out of the running. She isn’t anyone’s idea of a typical duchess, and I had to prove to her this didn’t matter one whit. It still doesn’t. I’m sorry I’m a duke, but there’s no help for it. I’d have quit society long ago and run off with her if I could. As it is, I’m sane because of her. And happy.”

“Well…” Xander swirled the whisky in his glass, debating what to say. Which Jasper could understand because he’d married Leighton’s little sister, therefore delicacy was required. “My children love you if it’s any comfort. Being a father is mainly being there every morning when they wake up, loving them with all your heart, then feeling terrified every second of the day until they go to bed. And doing it all over again. At least that’s fathering for me. Is this a difference in station you’re worried about? Pip and I were at odds about this from the beginning. And my being older.”

“Meaning too old,” Leighton said without looking up from his inspection of another rock, this one of indeterminate origin.

Xander saluted the duke with his tumbler. “His Grace-ness was anxious if I’m allowed to be frank. Can you see him picking me for his sister? If it is the class bit, go back to being the baron. He isn’t recognizable enough for anyone to care, mate.”

“I don’t know him anymore. I couldn’t pretend to be him if I tried.” Jasper downed his tea and looked achingly toward the sideboard. “The problem is, he’s the bloke she loves. Noble? Not so much.”

“Love is a gamble, though, isn’t it? Not like you’re anticipating favorable odds.” This from Dash as he shuffled before sliding a straight flush across the desk with a smile. He’d written a book on duplicitous behavior in games of chance that had made him an instant celebrity. When he was a low-born Scot, as base as Xander and Tobias combined. His success went to show how bloody ridiculous society was. “When you and I tossed that carriage on the way to get the wife, Noble, I’d have said it was unholy rotten luck for a Scottish lad. On the contrary, laddie. Theo took one glance at my bruised jaw and the wee scratch beneath my eye and love just slipped into place like me ring on her finger. We haven’t been apart since.”

“Your advice is to crash a carriage to get Lady Edgerly to trust me?”

Dash shrugged and flipped a card. “How about stealing another telescope? That stunt secured the Earl of Stanford the wife he wanted right quick.”

“The stunt was Necessity’s idea,” Jasper murmured, his mood sinking. Dash was the handsomest man in England. Securing Theo, the wife he wanted, hadn’t been a challenge with that face.

Anyway, when had they gotten the idea he was discussing marriage? He was merely trying to figure out a way to get Cece to talk to him. Marriage and futures and love could come later. Furthermore, he’d nipped the telescope because Xander’s half brother, Ollie, the Earl of Stanford, loved star-gazing, and the woman who loved him figured it was the way to his heart. Jasper and Necessity were friends from his early rookery days, and he’d been happy to oblige, though he’d been unaware of the kerfuffle the theft was going to create. He’d contacted several key associates to find the damned thing, ignorant to the fact the telescope he’d chosen was among the rarest in the world. Actually, the museum was still looking for it. “You’re in marriages of long standing. Settled and deliriously, sickeningly contented. How can you help me? I’m still assembling the chess pieces while you’ve already won the match.”

Tobias sighed and glanced up from his blueprints. “None of us wanted to fall in love, Noble. I fought it like hell, as did every man in this room for their own reasons. The vulnerability you invite into your life when you tell a woman you love her and mean it is only vanquished by the enormity of emotion you’ll feel for your children. To my mind, that’s the piece you’re missing. You’re expecting to, as Dash so unexpectedly put it, know exactly what you’re doing here, to have a solid bet placed before you roll the dice. Do you think this mindless foursome”—he gestured with his quill to the Scot, the duke, the ruffian, himself—“had it figured out? I didn’t know if I was up to the task of being a husband and father, either. I believed, and still believe, Hildy is too good for me. My reputation was the foulest in England, yet in the end, I won the earl’s daughter. How many part-Romani men do you know that have done such? Not with threats and intimidation, means I used to build my businesses, but by opening my heart .”

The pinch in Jasper’s chest was pure panic. These men were feared, yet they were besotted kittens behind closed doors. If the world only knew. Jasper coughed into his fist while he imagined the terror of opening his heart, really opening it—again—to Cece. His cough this time was ragged at the edges.

“You circled too fast to the literal heart of the matter, Streeter,” Leighton murmured and pitched a gleaming silver stone into the crate. Stalking to the sideboard, he poured a whisky, crossed back, and shoved the tumbler into Jasper’s hand. “Take this, man, before you hack up something essential.” Snatching the teacup away, he scowled down at it.

“Lingering spot of asthma from childhood, Your Grace,” Jasper whispered, the mist circling his vision drifting away as air streaked into his lungs.

With an unimpressed oath, Leighton popped the teacup on a table and went back to his rocks. He was a man of few words and cantankerous temperament.

Things his duchess loved about him.

“Thank the devil you’re skilled with a blade,” Dash said and dealt himself another winning hand. “Not too menacing if you had a spasm during one of your investigative missions. Me? I’d have gutted you where you stood.”

Tobias rolled his blueprint into a tight scroll and tapped it on his thigh. “It was her we chose, Noble. Not a blindingly clear future laid out before us like some bricked path leading to a Mayfair manse. I design those for my clients, but I’ve never encountered perfection myself. The reprobate piece, we’d all achieved. To the letter. Which you’ve proven once again with this morning’s edition of the Gazette . You do make it hard on yourself, friend.”

Xander slipped a cheroot from his waistcoat pocket and gave it a sniff but didn’t make a move to light it. His wife, Pippa, hated the things. “I suppose you need to ask yourself, do you want the countess or not? Pip stripped away my resistance one goading smile at a time until the man standing before her was a bloke I didn’t recognize. A man who waltzed and laughed and loved without fear. Now, I know him quite well. I even, most days, like him.”

Certainty stole Jasper’s breath this time. Followed by a pulse of desire when he imagined Cece tangled in his sheets for the rest of eternity, memories to wash away the lonely ones. He could still smell her on his skin, he could . There wasn’t really a way to move forward without her. Why was he making this so hard on himself? “I asked her to marry me when I was nineteen.” At the hush in the study, he glanced into his glass, unable to survive if his cheeks caught even a hint of color while he gave this speech. “Truthfully, I asked her father, who thought a lowly heir to an insolvent barony too far beneath her. In addition to the asthma and a gangling height I hadn’t quite grown into, I also had a trace of a stutter.”

“Unbelievable,” Xander said on a gasping laugh.

“My father was less supportive and judged it an ideal time to prove a lesson about adoration or the lack of it with his fists. I would have run away with her, but Cece”—he looked up with a pained smile—“Lady Edgerly, that is, refused because her sister was soon to enter the marriage mart. I’m sure the union would have been a disaster because we were young, too young, but I wanted it. I wanted her . Consequently, I left my heart in Northumberland, and the courage to grab it back hasn’t been forthcoming. They taught me expertise with weapons in my profession, I’ll grant, but nothing about this feeling business. The petrified nineteen-year-old boy remains inside me, I’m afraid. Terrified and gulping for air.”

With a look of longing at his cheroot, Xander slipped it in his pocket. “You had your future stolen from you, mate. By God, fight to get it back. If I can convince His Grace the Grump over there I’d make a faultless husband for his darling sister, you can win this campaign. If the countess is vexed about an eager-to-play chit showing up on your doorstep, you’re halfway there. If she wasn’t cross as hell, then you’d have a problem.”

For some reason, in this sad state, Xander Macauley’s advice made perfect sense. Cece loved him, even if the words hadn’t been spoken between them in years. Last night, she might have whispered I love you in his ear. He seemed to recall this in the midst of the madness.

She was the courageous one, after all.

Now, it was his turn to fight.

“Figure out what she desires besides you. The independent ones always crave something. Usually dodgy, including some element you won’t appreciate.” Tobias pointed the rolled blueprint in his direction. “Then offer it to her. That’s what we did. But make it pretty, will you? Those abundant gestures women are so fond of. ”

“Give her a choice,” Dash offered with another of his world-class shuffles, “but not really. Underhanded, maybe, but who cares if you get the girl.”

Exactly , Jasper decided, and with his friends’ help, began to plan.