Chapter 6

Chapter Six

The Leighton Cluster has ostensibly gained a new member. Jasper Noble was seen at the Duke of Leighton’s annual winter ball and, later that week, carousing with celebrated author Dash Campbell at the Hare and Thistle. It’s also rumored he’s an investor in Tobias Streeter’s expanding distillery venture.

This group of low- and high-ranking members of society is known for closing ranks around its own. Will another rogue be inducted and, as has happened before, soon lose his heart to love?

~Newspaper clipping crammed in a hat box under a countess ’ bed

H e didn’t particularly like brooding, Jasper decided as he brooded on a duke’s veranda later that evening. Flipping his knife open and shut with one hand, a trick he’d taught himself because the action spoke louder than words on the necessary occasion, he guessed this whisky should be his last. The earth beneath his feet was shifting just enough to provide comfort.

Cece was ignoring any effort he’d made to apologize when he wasn’t sure what the bloody hell he’d done to make her so angry. He’d been honest about their situation, nothing more.

Not a first, by the by. He recalled many a night he’d sought forgiveness for his transgressions.

Jasper stared into his glass without the liquor answering him back. At this rate, he was going to require a visit to one of those hidden estates up north where one stayed a month or so to dry out.

He rubbed his eyes with a sigh, the tiresome sounds of a ball tainting the air. He’d left his spectacles behind and felt a headache coming on because of it. He wasn’t a particularly good dancer, so he’d sat like a wallflower on the sidelines, chalk on the ballroom floor an element that typically brought on a coughing fit. Which made him think of the boy with the sunken chest and dark circles, a lad who’d looked weak and felt weak. He stiffened his shoulders and glanced at the moon struggling to be seen through the wispy clouds, light only serving to land in a dull wash over his boot. It didn’t help to know he could beat any of the men here in a handsome variety of lethal ways.

Jasper muttered an oath and gave the veranda wall a kick. His pride was smarting; that was the problem.

The countess was currently circling the ballroom with a chap ten years his junior. A reed-thin bloke with hair the color of wheat and a pallor to match. Jasper flipped his blade, a sliver glint in the night, guessing the viscount or marquess, or whatever title the dull sod held, didn’t suffer from a shoulder that ached when it rained or a knee that locked up on occasion. He wasn’t covered in scars, some of which Jasper couldn’t recall how he’d gotten. The man was young enough to start a family and live to see his grandchildren thrive. Not as tall, nor as attractive, Jasper would vainly admit, but he’d do in soothing Cece’s curiosity should it come to that.

Which it would at some point. She was too passionate to remain celibate for long.

Jasper polished off his drink with a growl. The youngster seemed smitten, and why not, glancing down Cece’s daring neckline every chance he got.

While Jasper contemplated his dilemma, his friends circled him without a hint of subtlety, closing ranks as a gossip rag once claimed they tended to. He fell into the familiar sounds rippling through the night: Xander Macauley’s loud curse, Tobias Streeter’s low laugh, Dash Campbell’s Scottish burr. They’d even dragged the calmest member of the Leighton Cluster away from his own fete. The Duke of Markham was the least likely to engage in the antics they were known for, so his appearance on the veranda was a surprise.

Jasper worried he was becoming too used to their steady friendship.

Dash settled in next to him, levering his polished Hoby boot on the wall. He sipped from his tumbler before speaking, apparently the person nominated to start the conversation. “Scaring me a bit, laddie, with the weapon ye’re tossing about. I reckon there’s a bloke or two inside you might be considering jabbing a blade into.”

“He’s in a mood, mate,” Macauley murmured and came up on his other side. They were in protective stance, and Jasper couldn’t deny the ache this realization sent through him. It had been so long—forever, actually—since he’d been afforded friendship, a thing some claimed a man didn’t need in this life. When he’d found he did . “Over a woman, no doubt. Hell’s teeth, but do I remember those sulks. My beloved Pip cycled me through the races, she did. I about cried in my ale that one night.”

“It’s the willowy blonde he’s eyeing, the actress in”—the Duke of Markham snapped his fingers, trying to recall—“what’s the name? Spring something or another, the new production on Drury.”

“The chit’s been giving more care to the wastrel issue of the Earl of Thandie-Roark, true enough. Might vex an interested man if a man were truly interested.” Dash hummed, dusting his glass over his lips. “You should check with your bonnie missus, Streeter. The earl shouldn’t have passed the Duchess Society’s keen examination. I know I didn’t.”

“Who here except me would have passed?” Markham asked in an utterly nonjudgmental tone, the ruby in his signet ring a fiery spark in the darkness. “And Leighton, of course. The duke factor has pull, I have to admit. Glosses over scandal, lack of finances, or poor dispositions.”

“Duke factor.” Macauley snorted, casting Markham a wolfish side-glance. “You married in, your wife co-owner of the bleeding matchmaking enterprise. Like you would have been rejected, even without the title.”

Tobias Streeter turned to rest his hip on the wall, moonlight an easy wash over his broad form. Thoughtfully, he chewed on the toothpick jutting from his lips, a habit left from his successful battle to quit smoking cheroots long ago. “It’s the redhead he’s fretting over. The countess we’re staging these theatrics for. My wife has a notion, and I’ve come to greatly respect those.”

Conversation ceased, still as death.

The lone member of the Cluster who didn’t gossip had spoken.

Jasper stared into his tumbler without comment, which was comment enough. He’d shown blatant fascination, unable to tear his gaze away from a woman he had no business lusting after. Cece’s false laughter was a trifle only he would notice—and be gutted by. He’d stood too close to her all evening, even tried to make conversation at dinner and been soundly rebuffed. As for her form-fitting-but-positively-stylish gown, well, he’d nearly swallowed his tongue when he’d seen it.

He knew what she looked like beneath it—or he had a long damned time ago.

Taking a sip from an empty glass, he reviewed his options.

What the hell, Jasper decided and tossed the tumbler in the shrubs. They were his friends—and like his persona—he’d decided to keep them.

Besides, he was tired of lying.

“The earl’s interest in Lady Edgerly will cease the moment she wipes the floor with him in archery. Or croquet. Shuttlecock. Aren’t those on tomorrow’s joyful agenda? He’ll flirt, then she’ll sting him right to his bones with a candid response no other woman in England would dare make. She can shoot as well as any man, should he mistake this as an endeavor meant to impress her. God help him if he takes her riding.” Shrugging, he scratched his chin with the dull side of his blade. “ She can’t help herself. Letting a man win to gain his consideration has never been Cece’s way. She’s nothing if not determined, which will make her a societal pariah once they realize who they’re dealing with. A lady, truthfully, she’s not. Northumberland women are tough stock. Not built for ballrooms, heaven love them.”

Though he’d never admit it to this group, it had been much the same when she’d decided about him. Ambitious, driven Constance Willoughby was a sight to behold when she wanted something. She’d broken the mold, ruining him for anyone else.

He’d been doomed to lose his heart from the first second. She’d made sure of it.

“Who the hell is Cece?” Dash asked as he snaked a deck of cards from his waistcoat pocket and began a calming shuffle.

Jasper fidgeted, giving his knife a spin that sent moonlight glinting off the blade. “A girl I grew up with.”

“By bloody lord, Hildy was right,” Tobias whispered, his toothpick dropping to the flagstones. “That woman is a terror with her estimations.”

Macauley turned to him, and Jasper realized it was time. He could be honest, or he could be alone. His friends had given him space enough to come clean. He needed to prove he trusted them. “Who are you, mate?”

Delaying, he glanced over his shoulder. Smoothed his hand down his waistcoat, feeling every bone button knock his palm.

“He’s jumpy,” Dash said, shocked. “I never figured to see the day. I watched him set his own broken finger without blinking, queasy as hell myself from the sight.”

In a quick move, Jasper snapped his knife shut and slipped it into his pocket. “This story is one I’ll share with you, then you forget you ever heard it. The knowledge is dangerous to those who retain it if you catch my meaning.” He’d made men weep, and for that, there were those who hadn’t forgotten. He employed thugs to guard his home and businesses for a reason. He’d never be out of the dark, another rationale to keep Cece away, now that he’d decided he needed another to strengthen his position.

“I told you he was no swindler from the stews. What rookery tough folds his cravat like that? Ever seen the posh way he drinks tea? Like the duke over there, pinkie extended.”

Dash held out his hand. Macauley grimaced and slapped a wad of bills into it.

Jasper turned on them, temper flaring. “You’ve been wagering about me?”

Dash turned his gaze back to his cards. “We wager about everything. I don’t own the premiere gaming hell in London for nothing, laddie.”

The Duke of Markham clapped his hands, his impatience showing. “I, for one, would like to hear this story if we can cease the damned betting for three seconds.”

Jasper respected the hell out of Markham, although he’d yet to call His Grace a close friend. The man supported his duchy through his beloved love of rocks, his knowledge making him the most proficient mining surveyor in England. It was a lesson in respecting your passions and knowing the life you desired above all would follow. Neither his family nor his peers had appreciated his enthusiasm for geology, but he’d remained steady despite that opposition.

Clearing his throat, Jasper reached to adjust spectacles that weren’t there, then sighed with a shoulder-rolling stretch. “My father was a baron of absolutely no mention, his only child the same. An unforeseen title bestowed on my grandfather for services given the Queen, a bit of luck most would say. A rotten bit for society. My late childhood was spent in Northumberland after the baron won an estate on a race at Epsom. This is where I met the countess. A brief respite after being asked to leave three boarding schools where, trust me, it was proven I didn’t belong in the aristocracy. They knew I was base at my core, and frankly, I agreed.”

“A bloody baron,” Macauley said, his lips curling, “as I’m guessing your sire has passed on.”

“You’re the son of an earl, and you married the sister of a duke,” Jasper returned, unwilling to buckle. “Let’s not cast stones, shall we?”

“ Bastard son, Noble. Cast out and never acknowledged. There’s a key difference.”

“The speculation about you has truth, does it?” This from Tobias, his penetrating gaze locked and holding. Tobias’s serene nature often left Jasper edgy. He imagined this is how many a man on the other side of the bargaining table had felt.

Jasper hedged, “I assisted the Crown from time to time.” Because of a signed agreement upon his retirement, saying more wouldn’t be prudent. Or legal. Or safe .

Macauley sneaked a tinderbox from his pocket and stuck flint to steel. The aroma of cheroot smoke followed, a rare indulgence and proof that his wife, Pippa, wasn’t nearby. “The shipping enterprises? Partnership in our distilleries?”

“Don’t misunderstand. Jasper Noble was a front that became very real to me, more so than the baron’s spawn who came before him. Except for the brief snatch of time in Northumberland, his life suits me better than the other ever did. I’m entered into no partnership under false pretenses with regard to my faithfulness to the project or business. I can promise you, I’m not going back.” Even for her , he vowed but didn’t utter.

Choosing Cece was choosing the other life, and he wasn’t going to do it. She was dangerous for him—and he for her—even if she didn’t realize it yet. “I didn’t suffer the childhood I would have if I’d been born in the rookery, as Jasper Noble is contended to be, but I suffered, nonetheless. Bruises, black eyes, and the like. My father was an unholy brute, nothing kindhearted about him. I was glad to get away when he cast me out, willing to leave his name behind and the memories with it.”

Macauley squinted through a plume of smoke as gray as his eyes. “The same, mate, for me. I rejected any connection to my sire after being tossed aside like rubbish. Except for being forced to leave my brother behind, the unburdening was euphoric.”

Jasper glanced at his hands, callouses from work dotting his palms. Being judged a hoodlum in this new life gave him pleasure. Unburdening, indeed. “I like what I do. I’m good at bargaining. I’m good at selling. Trade, of all things.”

“Trust is mandatory.” Tobias wedged another toothpick between his teeth and closed his lips around the bamboo stalk. “Between partners. I won’t agree to anything else. ”

Jasper’s gaze touched every man’s circling him. “There’s nothing false about my friendship or my commitment to our shared endeavors. You have my word, and that’s one thing I’ll never default on.”

Dash grinned and held up the ace of hearts, incapable of focus for long before his mind drifted to other topics. “What about the redhead causing you to hide out in the dark, pining away?”

“I’m not hiding,” Jasper lied. “Or pining.”

Macauley jabbed the cheroot at him, his smile growing. “Ah, finally the interesting bit. When a bloke starts twitching, it’s getting good. It’s been years since we had a failed love affair to pick apart. A spot of entertainment’s welcome. No babes born in the past six months, no felines adopted in the Streeter home. Damn, this group is dying out.”

“New kittens last week,” Tobias murmured, his words layered with a shade of mortification. “A batch of three, orange and black.”

“The countess is no ordinary woman,” Jasper argued weakly, unable to tell them about her hidden talent. Or that incredible summer of his youth. Moreover, perhaps Cece was deserving of his fascination—the only woman who’d ever held it—but he thought himself deserving of peace . Chasing her down while fearing for her safety seemed a fool’s gambit. Suppressing a shudder, he recalled those awful years after she’d married.

Thankfully, things had changed.

Jasper Noble wasn’t a fool when Crispin Sinclair had been.

“I get the story, Noble. Making the woman pay for past transgressions.” Macauley dropped the cheroot and ground the smoking nub beneath his boot. “You’re friendly with my sister-in-law, Necessity, Shoreditch connections and such. She claims there’s a lost love who shattered your heart, mate. Though I always took that as female fancy.”

Jasper stepped back, resting his bum on the veranda wall. The moon was hanging high in the sky when he checked on it, his imperfect vision adding a misty halo to the scene. Was he making Cece pay? And what about that lightning bolt of a kiss? He’d stumbled to his room last night and, within seconds of entering the chamber, had his cock in his hand, images of Cece in the throes of passion bringing him to a ripping orgasm in fewer than ten strokes .

He’d not even made it to the bloody bed .

“Take her away instead of trying to solve this dilemma during a country party, of all horrors. She’s a widow and can do as she likes, one stellar advantage. As I know from my darling duchess being in the same situation during our courtship. Not that you need to advertise the leave-taking… but nonetheless, it’s an admissible option.” In a show of expert persuasion, the Duke of Markham glanced away during this advice, removing an exquisitely colored stone from his fob pocket and rolling it between his palms as if he sought to warm it.

His Grace was nothing if not cunning. The first rule of persuasion was stating your case without pinning a man to the wall with a commanding gaze while doing it.

A tremor raced along Jasper’s spine and landed right in the hard heart of his belly. One of those fateful sensations a man learned to respect. The duke’s stone wasn’t far from the color of Cece’s eyes when she came, dark green and threaded with golden longing.

Damned if it didn’t show how doomed Jasper was when this is what he envisioned upon seeing some silly rock.

“A few days of closed quarters if she’s willing to go,” Tobias murmured around that dangling toothpick, second most sly in the group. “Proximity often helps a man make a decision. You wouldn’t be the first to try it. Once you get her out of here, the rest is up to you. We only aid in the leaving.”

“It ain’t kidnapping. Her boy might benefit from a man around, even for a short time. You like children. Good with ‘em, I’ve seen it with my own brood.” This from Macauley who, despite his keen intellect and ruthless reputation, was the poorest liar among them.

They wanted him to walk the matrimonial plank, every last one of them. Their second name in the ton was the Leighton Lovesicks, a salient fact Jasper wasn’t soon forgetting.

“You’ve got that tucked-away cottage in Bloomsbury perfect for the test,” Macauley added in a voice threaded with amusement, damn him.

“Test,” Jasper repeated, realizing he was being had but allowing it.

Dash slapped him on the back, rocking him forward and off the wall. “I’ll assist, seeing as you broke a digit helping me keep my fledgling marriage on a steady path. That bedeviled carriage had a bum axle, though, I’ll always contend. It’s luck my badly nicked face brought out the tiger in the wee wife, for which I’m thankful.”

Jasper flexed his hand, the mention of his injury making it throb. Dash’s ungodly visage had never once been injured beyond repair. It was the most flawless face in bloody England, bar none, much to the Leighton Cluster’s dismay. “The barouche overturned due to faulty equipment, is that it? Nothing to do with your driver racing hell for leather so you could kiss Theo’s slipper the moment we arrived.”

Calculating, Tobias shifted his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “This calls for a diversion. Something to bury this farce of a gathering in an early grave and send these nobs loping back to the city. Enough chaos and no one will know where a misplaced countess ends up. Or with whom.”

Markham tossed the rock between his hands. “A diversion could be amusing, though our wives won’t think so. This is Duchess Society business, Streeter. A misplaced countess as you call it will make my duchess most vexed with her duke. Not to mention what Hildy will think of it.”

Tobias frowned, ostensibly considering his wife’s displeasure for the first time.

A plan came to Jasper, a ploy he’d used to break into the Italian embassy in 1826. “A fire,” he whispered, struggling to remember the particulars of the assignment. Had he used a chemical agent or an incendiary device? He only recalled the nasty burn on his forearm that had blistered for a solid week and the billowing smoke driving everyone into Lower Grosvenor Street without actually harming the building. The ruse had tracked as well as a Bainbridge timepiece, right on the money.

“Now, hold on a minute,” Markham said, the stone stilling in his hand.

Jasper smiled, recording their stunned reactions with a pulse of excitement he thought he’d left behind with the emissary business. “A minor disturbance, more smolder than flame. We’ll be on the ready to limit the damage, and the wives need never know how it started.”

When Jasper could see he hadn’t fully convinced the duke, he pushed harder. “I’d be willing to trade your inconvenience for that lavender stone you inquired about, Your Grace.”

Markham’s breath rushed out in a sigh he likely wished to call back. “The chalcedony? The one with the intergrowths of quartz and morganite?”

Jasper gave a half nod, having no idea what the stone was called or what it was comprised of. He only knew with absolute certainty that he could get it. Easier a gambit than stealing the damned telescope for Macauley’s brother. He’d had to contact half his list to find the thing and was still fielding questions about what he’d done with it.

Markham loosened his cravat to allow a fast swallow. “The British Museum has that piece in their mineral collection. Don’t you recall I was outbid at auction?”

Jasper ran through the particulars in his mind. Diversion. Cece. A possible solution to his angst. Her ginger hair spread across silk sheets as his body trapped hers to the mattress. “The director of the museum owes me a favor, a big one,” he finally said.

Tobias snorted, toothpick bobbing. “Of course he does. But this is risky, Noble. You’re already on a short leash with my wife.”

Jasper waved him away while praying Streeter didn’t mention the stable incident.

“A smokescreen, you gits,” Macauley murmured, staring sleepily into his glass. “Street, you remember the one in the warehouse in Five Points when we were lads? Got half a shipment of silks out the back door while they were scrambling to get the blaze at the front under control.”

Dash gave his cards a quick shuffle. “Why’s the spy on a short leash, I wonder? That’s the interesting nugget in this conversation.”

Markham pocketed his rock with a dogged look no one would mistake for anything but ducal determination. “We’re planning a renovation of the west wing. My mother had a great attachment to damask wallpaper with large floral patterns. Roses the size of one’s head have gotten a bit much. A touch of smoke sent billowing down that hallway would be enough to put an end to the festivities. I can claim it’s a worse situation than it is, requiring my staff’s undivided attention. Party over. After all, I might not have another chance with the chalcedony.”

Jasper rocked back on his heels, wishing for a folio to get the details out of his head and onto paper. “I have a plan. Enough anarchy to have these blue bloods ready to return to the comforts of London. We’ll add someone, I propose it be Dash, to race down the corridors, intensifying the panic. We don’t actually need to burn down your estate, Your Grace.”

Markham bowed his head in mock agreement.

With a groan, Streeter tossed his toothpick to the flagstones. “Hildy will kill me if she finds out.”

Macauley clapped him on the back. “Find your bloody courage, mate.”

Laughing, the Leighton Cluster trailed back into the ballroom, able men on a mission.

Jasper would have considered the evening a true victory if Macauley hadn’t pulled him aside at the last second and asked to make use of the able talent of his forger.