Page 8 of Who’s That Earl

Even by candlelight, however, now that some of her initial shock had worn off, she could see how tired and travel-weary he was. Icy raindrops still glittered on the shoulders of his greatcoat. His sun-warmed skin betrayed the pallor of fatigue, beneath a two or three days’ growth of beard. He looked...well, haggard was the word that came to mind. No less handsome for it, to be sure. But definitely as if he’d been hurrying to get here. To discuss urgent business with...her?

The prospect of a sleepless night of wondering, and remembering, stretched before her. She shook her head. “I’ll just take the dogs downstairs so we can talk in peace.”

He glanced at them before settling his gaze on her. “If you’re sure.”

Of course she wasn’t sure. Circumstances had forced her to make a number of quick decisions in recent years. A charitable soul might describe most of them as rash.

A nocturnal reunion with this man might be the worst of them, and that was saying something.

But curiosity was eating at her. What could have brought him back into her life? And if he’d managed to find her, who else might arrive on his heels? She nodded brusquely, aware that her grip on both the situation and the dogs was growing every minute more tenuous. “The sooner I give you an opportunity to explain the business that brought you here, Mr. Sutherland, the sooner you can be on your way.”

Chapter 3

Left alone in the room, Thomas spent a full minute staring after her. Disbelief was far too mild a word to begin to capture his emotions. One woman had haunted his memory, his dreams, his imagination for years. Had he truly found her at Dunnock?

Or was this another episode like the one he’d experienced shortly after his arrival in the West Indies? According to the doctor, he’d been within hours of succumbing to some tropical fever. She’d appeared at his bedside and scolded him into recovery. When he’d come to himself enough to ask about her, the old nurse who’d been hired to care for him had favored him with a soft, pitying look. The kind of look ordinarily reserved for fools and madmen.

He sniffed the air for some hint of night-blooming jasmine but smelled only peat smoke. He hadn’t hallucinated, though. Not this time.

The high-stickler Higginbotham, about whom he’d been warned, was none other than his Jane.

No sooner had the thought formed than he shook his head and snorted to rid himself of it. His Jane? Ridiculous. She’d been the acquaintance of a few weeks, seven years ago. No matter the hours they’d spent together, the confidences they’d shared. No matter the words he’d nearly spoken. No matter the memory of her sweet kiss and his whispered promise to call on her papa.

But when he’d tried to keep that promise, Mr. Quayle had declared he had no daughter and slammed the door in his face.

It hadn’t taken years of specialized training as an intelligence officer to realize the man wasn’t telling the truth. Mr. Quayle had been an exceptionally poor liar. But Thomas, believing he had more time and fearing that a challenge to the father might result in a punishment for the daughter, had bowed his head, apologized for the intrusion, and walked away, still clutching the nosegay he’d brought for her.

An hour later, a messenger had delivered new orders from General Scott. Come nightfall, Thomas had found himself staring up at the smoke-stained ceiling of a Portsmouth pub, wishing he’d probed Mr. Quayle’s answer just a bit. Once under sail for Dominica, he’d tried and failed to shake the memory of her. Tried and failed to dismiss the spark between them.

At first sight tonight, she’d been so cool, so aloof, he’d almost begun to doubt his memory again. But when she’d laid her fingertips on his arm...well, he did not think she’d forgotten him, either.

Restless, he tossed his hat and gloves onto a low table and strode deeper into the room. Near the fireplace, his foot struck something hard. He looked down to discover he’d nearly tripped over a bone. A femur, by the looks of it, long since stripped of its flesh by the sharp teeth whose marks it bore. Beside it lay a coil of knotted, frayed rope. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. Were these not precisely the artifacts of pain and suffering that a reader of gothic novels might expect to find littering the floor of a crumbling castle?

Even if the devastation had been wrought by a pair of cosseted spaniels, and not some fearsome hellhound.

Closer to the hearth sat a pair of plump cushions, shielded from sparks by a brass fire screen. Their midnight-blue velvet was coated thickly with white fur, nearly obscuring the names embroidered in gold thread. The Greek goddesses of love and wisdom...Ratliff evidently had a sense of humor, as well as a flamboyant touch.

Rather than pushing the cushions aside to get closer, Thomas contented himself with stretching out his hands to the roaring fire. Once, the heat of the tropics had threatened to congeal his northern blood. He had not expected his return would prove an equally challenging adjustment.

Truth be told, he had not expected to return.

When his greatcoat began to steam, he shrugged himself free of it and looked about for a place to hang it that wouldn’t be marred by its dampness. Behind the desk was a straight-backed wooden chair that might easily have passed for some sort of antique torture device, with its high, narrow back and straight arms. Nary a curve nor cushion in sight.

Nevertheless, someone had been sitting there. The desktop was covered with papers. Without intending to pry, he passed his gaze lightly over them. Fresh, black ink. A neat hand. Something about a girl, and a graveyard, and—Ah. This must be Robin Ratliff’s work in progress. As Thomas draped his coat over the chair, he glanced once more about the room: the desk littered with papers, the overstuffed bookshelves, the dogs’ beds. So this was the famous author’s workshop? He’d expected something more lavish, given what General Scott had said, and what the lease to Dunnock had suggested, about the man’s extraordinary wealth.

Taking in and evaluating every bit of available information had become something of a habit with Thomas. Nevertheless, if not for the penknife acting as a sort of macabre signpost, he would have overlooked the letter.

He had never considered himself an inordinately curious person, particularly about matters that did not concern him. But if nothing else, seven years of spying on behalf of the British Crown made it difficult for him to ignore a piece of paper that someone had found necessary to stab to death.

It might have been staged, of course. Some plot twist the writer had been testing out. But if so, he’d gone to a great deal of trouble to make the prop convincing. Unlike on the manuscript pages, the writing was difficult to read, obviously disguised—by using the opposite hand, if he had to guess. As best as he could make out, the letter writer intended to subject the author of some book called The Necromancer’s Bride to the fate of its titular character, which evidently involved both occult offerings and more run-of-the-mill torment.

One word had been obliterated by the penknife—stabbed more than once, it would seem, for the paper was ragged, though the knife was sharp. The grisly details evidently extended onto a second sheet, which peeked from beneath the first. He flicked the corner of the top page with his fingertip but did not lift it to continue reading. He’d seen enough.

It was impossible to determine from a quick perusal whether the threat was sincere. On the other hand, elaborate plots sometimes masked far simpler dangers. He would not advise Ratliff to ignore it.

“Now, Mr. Sutherland, about this—”

He jerked his gaze to the doorway, where Jane stood framed, frozen in the act of brushing dog hair from her dress. Her blue eyes sliced coldly through him as her gaze shifted from him to the papers on the desktop and back again.