Desire Wears Diamonds (25 page)

Darius’s green eyes flashed with his
thoughts and finally he spoke. “Let the Knight have his run. The
Queen is either bait in the Jackal’s gambit or…”

“Or?” Rowan asked.

“Or another deadly force on the board.”



Back at the Grove and in the sanctuary of
his rooms, Michael poured himself a stiff drink. He wasn’t usually
a man to indulge in the afternoon but the last few days had pushed
him hard. His worry over the social hurdles of attending Bascombe’s
felt trivial in retrospect. His attraction to Grace had been a
heady distraction but he hadn’t considered how dangerous it would
be. Well, he might have accepted a threat to his own safety, but
not Grace’s.

Before Bascombe’s it had been about
shielding her from the damage he imagined inflicting on her
brother. But it was Michael’s touch that had brought her harm and
that was a situation he must rectify before he could take another
step toward the Jaded’s aims.

My life has turned into a very bad penny
novel.

Even so, a thread of anticipation cut
through him like a hot wire and made him grimace at its power.
Grace would be under his care and legally, his to possess. It was
ridiculous to consider it. It was a marriage of convenience, only
because her brother was conveniently mad enough to insist on
it.

And Grace was openly adverse to it.

She will never forgive me for going along
with her brother’s wishes.

Damn it! I can’t think of Grace’s feelings
or I’ll throw myself out the window.

He went to the bell pull and yanked it hard,
several times, not out of impatience but out of courtesy for Tally
who could occasionally miss a tentative signal.

Within minutes, there was a knock on his
door and Michael let Tally in. He waited until he knew his young
friend was in position to look at his face directly as he spoke so
that Tally could read his lips.

“You’re getting taller,” Michael told
him.

Tally nodded and then signed his response.
‘
Not tall enough! Maggie thinks I’m a baby!’

Michael smiled. The boy had shot up in
height in the last few weeks and Michael suspected that Mrs. Clay
had underestimated his age. Poor nutrition and a life on the
streets could hold a child back, but Mrs. Clay’s love and good
cooking over the years was finally bearing fruit. Her blonde cherub
was going to be a young man and nearly grown in another two or
three years.

Where does the time go?

“Be patient, Tally.” Michael shook himself
out of his reverie. “I need my box, little brother. Can you fetch
it for me without anyone seeing?”

Tally smiled.
‘Of course! Mother’s busy
cheering the laundress with a cup of tea. Her husband is off
drinking again.’

Michael eyed his own room and decided that
if he was bringing a bride home tomorrow he may as well ask.
“Tears? Has Maggie been in to change the rooms yet?”

‘
Yes! I assisted her.’
Tally’s cheeks
colored with his words.
‘The linen basket is heavy and I like to
be...helpful. She says I’m good company.’

“Careful, little brother. Once you lose your
heart, it’s hard to get it back.”

Tally nodded and ducked out, a shy smile his
only answer to Michael’s sage words of wisdom. Michael retrieved
his drink from the mantle and then worked through the ritual of
getting out his personal papers and reaching his desk. The
methodical steps calmed him and by the time he had things laid out,
there was a knock on the door heralding Tally’s return.

“That was quick,” he complimented the boy
and took the padlocked box from Tally’s hands.

‘
Anything else?’
Tally signed.

“No, but tell your mother I’ll be down later
to speak to her privately.” There was no way he was going to add to
the shock of impending events without alerting Mrs. Clay to Grace’s
arrival. If possible, tomorrow he would limit the number of
hysterical women in the Grove to one. Michael shuddered at the
notion of even one…

‘
I’ll tell her.’
Tally hurried off
and Michael closed his door, locking it behind him this time.

He carried the heavy wooden box, with its
reinforced metal skin and thick iron strapping, to set it on the
table by the fireplace. Michael dusted off the top of it and then
unbuttoned the top of his shirt to more easily pull a silver chain
from around his neck. A single key hang from the chain and Michael
laid it on his palm. It was an ornate silver little thing that gave
no hint of its match to the black and rusty lockbox on the
table.

The idea behind the security of his diamonds
was simple and fairly flawless. He’d given Tally the locked box
early on asking him to hide it in the Grove, somewhere safe and
secret that only Tally could access. Then Michael had kept the key
around his neck at all times, never taking it off. So in reality,
if he’d ever been pressed, he could honestly swear that he didn’t
know the actual location of his treasure.

And as Tally was a trustworthy boy, he’d
never asked about the box’s contents nor could he have opened it if
he wanted to.

Michael inserted the key and turned it three
times to the left to unlock the solid padlock, then set to work.
Inside, the box was lined with worn brown velvet and contained
several leather bags. Michael began to pull them out, then set the
empty box on the floor. Each bag he emptied on the table, his brow
furrowing in concentration. Large diamonds, cut and uncut, tumbled
out onto the table’s smooth surface from the first pouch and
Michael sighed. He’d never really thoroughly culled through his
portion of the jewels and when he’d initially needed money after
their return to England, he’d sold six small gems and felt like
King Midas. The profit had been insane and since he lived a fairly
frugal existence, he’d never needed to sell any others and so had
had no excuse to ask Tally for his box.

Even the entire quest for diamonds in
disguise had never triggered the box’s retrieval.
They’re all
diamonds—where’s the disguise in that?

But as tensions had ratcheted up with
Sterling and as he was about to become a married man, it felt right
to finally face his holdings; to reassure Grace that she would be
provided for but also for his own peace of mind.

Michael emptied each pouch and dropped the
leather pouches into the open box at his feet. The pile of diamonds
was substantial and he let out a slow sigh before realizing that
there was one more pouch left on the table. He picked it up and
frowned at the size of the stone inside it.

God, that’s a monster!

He dumped it out indelicately and then
flinched at the sight of a dirty white rough stone the size of a
large plum. It was the ugliest piece of quartz looking nonsense in
the lot and he shook his head in pity as the lump of dull crystal
landed like a plain cousin on top of all her glittering
counterparts.

“I forgot this one…” he said aloud. Ashe had
even made a joke at the time about what looked like a large piece
of gravel when they were dividing up the gems by color and had
offered him a choice of his sapphires to make up for the worthless
thing. Michael had declined and made a joke about keeping the rock
for luck if nothing else.

Luck, if nothing else.

Suddenly a new thought occurred to him and
before logic overtook him, he swept all the other diamonds into the
palm of his hand and funneled them into the lockbox’s top. When the
large ugly lump was alone on the table, Michael reached for the
fireplace shovel and took aim. Just as he had at Ashe’s, he swung
decisively if a bit more cautiously as he feared Mrs. Clay’s
censure more than he did Godwin’s.

He lifted the shovel’s blade, expecting to
see a similar pulverized show of crystalline snow and dropped the
shovel on the floor in shock.

For the ugly dull and flawed exterior of the
stone had indeed shattered but only to reveal an extraordinary
diamond that had been inside the bland glass shell. The size of a
small plum, organic in shape, it was flawlessly cut with facet
after facet drawing out an inner fire and spectrum of color that
defied description. By the firelight, it became a living thing,
pulsing with glittering rainbows and refracting the light until
Michael wasn’t sure he hadn’t been hypnotized staring at it and
losing time…

After all this time, it was under my nose,
exactly as Darius said it would be.

“I have it,” he whispered. “I have the
sacred treasure.”

He sat back in his chair and absorbed the
implications. His first impulse was to send word to the others
immediately but something stopped him.

The diamond flashed and flared and Michael’s
breath caught in his throat.

Better to wait.

I may need all the leverage I can get and if
Sterling fails to deliver Grace to the church…

Michael pushed the thought away and stood to
begin pacing. The diamond changed nothing. He wanted to rescue
Grace and secure her future before anything else happened. The
Jaded would demand the stone be out of his hands for safekeeping
but Michael’s instincts jangled with alarm at the thought. It was a
dangerous thing to possess and he wouldn’t allow any of his friends
to take on the risk. Not until he knew that he had control of
things and had the Jackal in hand.

The diamond’s colors winked again and
Michael went back to kneel next to the table and begin to repack
everything into the lockbox. “Sacred or no, I have a wedding to
prepare for and Mrs. Clay to face, you troublesome rock.”

He held it up to the light one last time and
sighed.

Blood and tears, all our lives in the
balance for something a man can hold in his hand. My God, it
is
a penny novel!

Let’s just pray that I make a good
ending.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Grace studied the reflection of the woman in
her vanity’s mirror and marveled at the strangeness of the
exercise. The bruising around her eye was nearly gone and powder
had disguised the last signs of her brother’s brutal hand. Her
blonde hair was brushed to a sheen and the lady’s maid that her
brother had hired for the day had styled it into an ornate and
flattering pile of curls and tiny braids that looped down to touch
her ears.

Sterling hadn’t trusted her to leave the
house for anything as trivial as a shopping expedition so she was
wearing her best day dress, a pale blue silk with an overlay of
sheer muslin edged in lace. The plain bodice was buttoned up to her
throat and the long sleeves puffed out to make her wrists seem even
more delicate.

Grace pressed her lips together, trying to
ward off her emotions. Pouting or railing against fate gained her
nothing. Days locked in her room with only Mrs. Dorsett’s icy
silence bringing trays of food and drawing her bath. She’d already
cried until she couldn’t cry anymore and every argument and plea
she made was useless and only strengthened her brother’s case for
her madness.

Bedlam.

It was like a cavern of terror opening up
under her feet at the very word and Sterling had invoked the very
thing she feared most. For had she not spent years with fantastical
visions in her head and strange characters? Her writing was her
sole comfort but also a source of anxiety. It was an abnormal
pursuit for a woman and Grace knew it. She’d kept it secret from
her family and particularly from Sterling not only to preserve her
hopes for independence but also to preserve her very life. She
wasn’t sure but it was easy to say that the odd workings of her
mind might border on madness and if Sterling desired to hurt her;
would knowledge of her literary pursuits not arm him with the
ultimate weapon?

She closed her eyes to banish the echoes of
the imaginary cries of lunatics in chains that haunted her dreams
and sighed. “It would be worse. God help me, no nightmare I can
conjure would be worse than being trussed up and drug over the
threshold of an asylum never to see the light of day again…”

Grace blinked and did her best to refocus on
the pale woman’s reflection in the mirror. The maid had left a
small sprig of lavender and Queen Anne’s lace on the table. She
lifted it with trembling hands to pin it into her hair.

Michael Rutherford.

He was exactly the man she might have
dreamed of marrying; if she’d permitted it. His kisses dizzied her
but beyond that, his kindness overwrote a lifetime of being
disregarded and ignored. The lure of his presence was irresistible
and in better circumstances, she might not have fought the notion
of becoming his wife.

But Sterling’s hand in it tainted everything
and there was nothing free or joyful in the ceremony ahead.
Whatever his scheme involving Mr. Rutherford, she would be forced
to play her part and quietly sacrifice every dream she had ever had
of a life on her own as a writer.

Today, I marry. And then beg Michael to
forgive me for being nothing he will want in a wife.

A knock on the door heralded the time and
Grace retrieved the makeshift veil she’d made from the back of her
chair. She tossed it over her head and spared one last look at the
woman in the mirror.

She looks like a bride.

Or a ghost…

“Grace!” Her brother greeted her as he
pushed through the door, unwilling to wait for her permission to
enter. “We are waiting for you downstairs.”

She stood slowly and smoothed out her
skirts. “Then let us not make them wait any longer.”

“That’s a good girl!” he said and held out
his arm to escort her out. “I knew you would come around, my dear.
Of course, if you are thinking of some outburst or last minute
scene, I won’t hesitate to—“

“There’s no need to threaten me again,
brother.” Grace took his arm and lifted the hem of her skirts as
they began to head down the narrow stairs. “I may have my faults
but a limited memory isn’t one of them. There is not a word you’ve
uttered in my lifetime that I don’t recall and not an action that
isn’t carved into my heart.”