Desire Wears Diamonds (9 page)

“We’ll see. I’m not there as a suitor. I’m a
family friend who saved his sister’s life and has a connection to
the East India’s fighting forces. If he presses me, perhaps I am
looking for a position as a bodyguard.”

“You’re putting yourself in harm’s way,
Michael. He’s already got his suspicions. My god, this could twist
on you so fast! One moment you’re having tea in his parlor and the
next thing, he’ll be burying you in his back garden.”

“No. He kills me without a word? And gains
what? Proof that he’s a murderer? I go missing and all you have to
do is call the police. He’ll swing for it and it’s done.” Michael
stood slowly to test his mobility. Rowan’s expert wrap had eased
much of the pain but he knew he wasn’t going to be running up any
stairs anytime soon.

Rowan began to repack his doctor’s kit.
“Unless the Jackal has handlers and we’re facing the next battle
blindly without you.”

“Whatever I learn as I go, I’ll convey it to
you as quickly as I can, so there’s less of a chance of me taking
any “revelations” with me. Just don’t share any details with the
others until it’s necessary. I’m not giving up on this. For the
first time, we have an advantage that Sterling doesn’t have.”

“And
exactly
what advantage is
that?”

“He’s the one playing by the rules. I don’t
have to.”

Rowan shook his head and relatched his case
as it closed. “Michael. If this game is being played indoors and
over dinner tables, I’m worried that you don’t even know all the
rules. And when you don’t know all the rules…”

“It’s easier to be defeated,” Michael
finished the thought. Rowan had a point. He could hardly boast
about his skills in good society. His friendship with the Jaded had
brought him into the outskirts of more than one gathering but
Michael Rutherford was no polished player. “I know enough to wipe
the mud off of my boots. It’s a simple dinner inside the man’s
home. If I use the wrong fork, I hardly think it matters but if it
goes beyond that and I’m forced to jig before the Queen of England,
I’ll ask Ashe to give me a quick tutorial on waltzing.”

Rowan smiled. “What I wouldn’t give to see
his face when you ask him!”

Michael ignored the jest. “How long until
I’m healed?”

“At least a month but that would be if you
rested, avoided strain and took to leisurely hobbies like reading.”
Rowan picked up his coat. “See how wise I am not to even suggest
it?”

“Very funny.” Michael began buttoning his
shirt. “And since I have no intentions of taking to my bed?”

Rowan shrugged. “Hard to say. Six weeks? Two
months? Are you going to hurl yourself under any more
carriages?”

“You are the worst doctor in London,”
Michael said with a growl. “I’ll be better in a fortnight and
that’s an end to it.”

Rowan stepped back, tipping his head to one
side as if studying a great mystery. “Anyone else, I’d say I knew
better, but I swear, Rutherford, you do have a knack for
surprises.”

“Let’s hope so.” Michael stretched, testing
his mobility a bit. “For all our sakes.”

A knock at the door interrupted them, and
Michael moved to answer it, opening it to find young Miss Maggie
Beecham standing there sweetly holding out a hat box. Mrs. Clay had
hired her a few weeks before to help at the Grove but already it
was clear that she’d become like a daughter to the landlady and had
a good disposition for the inn. She was a rescued “soiled dove” he
suspected, but Michael was not the kind of man to judge a person by
their past. He simply liked her for her honest sweetness and the
way she had already learned to use her hands to talk to Tally, Mrs.
Clay’s deaf son.

“I believe this is yours, Mr. Rutherford,”
Maggie said. “Although Mrs. Clay said I’m to make you open it
immediately and voice an opinion in my hearing.”

“I see.” He dubiously took the box, forced
to open the door a bit wider so that Rowan could enjoy the show.
“Can’t you just tell her I liked it?”

Maggie crossed her arms, as threatening as a
spitting kitten. “You listen here, sir! She’s pacing in her rooms
over it and all soft at the thought of disappointing her ‘dear
giant’ as she calls you.” She wrinkled her nose and tapped her
foot. “It’s a hat! Don’t you be difficult or I’ll…” Her bravado
faltered and her eyes threatened tears.

“For god sakes, open it, Michael!” Rowan
chimed in wryly. “The girl means business!”

Michael untied the cord and unceremoniously
dropped the box on the floor to pull out a black wool felted hat.
He’d expected more of a working man’s cap but his eyes widened as
he beheld a fine gentleman’s topper with a satin black band around
the crown. It was bound to make his simple clothes look a bit
shabbier in comparison but at that moment, with the heft of it in
his fingers, he was in awe.

“Well?” Maggie asked anxiously.

“I am—speechless. Please tell Mrs. Clay that
it is the finest thing I’ve ever owned and I’m…” Michael had to
swallow an odd lump at his throat, “flattered that she sees me as
worthy of it.”

Truth was, it was the first gift he’d
received in his lifetime. Even if it was on his accounts for
payment, it was the sentiment behind it that made it precious to
him.

“There! That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
Maggie was all smiles. She curtsied and retreated back down the
stairs to make her report.

Michael closed the door only to be faced
with the sight of Dr. Rowan West staring at him as if he’d grown
horns. “What?”

Rowan shook his head. “All this time. How
have I always seen you as a hardened warrior when all along…you are
just as human as the rest of us, Rutherford.”

“The broken ribs weren’t a more substantial
clue?” Michael jibed. “Rowan, you really are the worst doctor in
London.”

“Good thing my wife is a physician,” Rowan
countered. “I’ll send her to attend you next time you decide to
hurl yourself under a carriage to save a damsel in distress.
Although I warn you, Gayle is fearless enough to tell you the
things I’m not.”

“And what is that?” Michael asked.

“That you’re in danger, Rutherford. And that
love makes a man blind.”

“Love? Do not mistake me getting misty over
a hat for some crush on a housemaid to—“

“Not Maggie, Rutherford!” Rowan cut him off.
“I’m saying between your ties here at the Grove, Mrs. Clay, Tally,
all of them, even the Jaded; you have as much to lose as any of us
and aren’t you the one who is constantly warning us about needing
to protect our blind sides?”

“I don’t need a lecture on this subject,
West. I’ve seen to the Grove’s security.”

“You’re deliberately misunderstanding me,
friend.”

“I’m not.” Michael held his ground. “I’m
telling you that no one I care for will be lost. We’ve made it this
far, Rowan, and I won’t drop my guard now.”

“And what if
you
are on our list of
people we’re not willing to lose, Rutherford?”

“I promise you that if I can find a way to
survive this mess, I will. Will that suffice?”

Rowan sighed and gathered his bag and coat
to leave. “No, but who am I to argue?”

Michael caught his arm for a moment. “You’re
a trusted friend, Rowan, and a good man. No matter what lies ahead,
you’ll always be the touchstone that they lean on. I hope you know
how much I trust in that.”

“Michael.” Rowan pulled his arm free. “If
you don’t live through this, I’ll kill you myself.”

He was gone before Michael could think of a
clever reply. He looked back down at the hat in his hand and felt
the icy brush of fear trail down his spine. He would talk to Mrs.
Clay about adding another man to the watch, but the Grove wasn’t
his only weak point.

Not anymore.

Because when he’d seen Mrs. Clay’s gift his
first real thought had been that a certain pert little beauty might
think him handsome if he wore it to dinner on Sunday…

Damn.



Grace closed and locked the door to her
bedroom and leaned against it, hands splayed as if to keep out the
strange chaos of the day. The twists and turns of the afternoon had
left her reeling and then Sterling’s strange behavior after Mr.
Rutherford had left had added to her anxiety.

After his initial anger at her
unconventional and unchaperoned return in a carriage with a strange
man, Sterling had been practically gleeful after the verbal
sparring with Mr. Rutherford had ended. Giddy as a boy on
Christmas, he’d left her on the steps and whistled as he went into
the house and then shut himself up in his study without
explanation.

Grace had waited in her first floor sitting
room, jumping at every sound, convinced that at any moment he would
return to his senses and the scathing lectures about her stupidity
would begin. Or the interrogation about where she was and what she
was up to before she’d fallen into the street.

She composed her lies, rehearsing them in
her head until she was dizzy with it.

But Sterling never bothered to emerge until
dinner and Grace had then endured the strangest meal of her life.
In near silence, her brother simply sat in his chair, eating with
the zeal of a starving man breaking a fast, pausing only to grin at
her like a man enjoying a fabulous jest.

“You…are in a good mood tonight.”

“And why not?” he said with a laugh. “My
luck has finally changed! Thanks to my darling sister!”

The endearment was unfamiliar sounding but
Grace managed a nod. “Your luck has changed you say? How so?”

He’d shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t you
trouble your pretty little head about it! It’s all in hand.” He’d
returned to his food with relish and Grace had abandoned
conversation. She knew better than to poke a sleeping tiger.

It must have been a quick meal but even
afterward she couldn’t remember a longer evening. Sterling had left
the table without another word and Grace had helped Mrs. Dorsett
clear the dishes before numbly heading up to her room to hide.

She shook her head and stepped from the
door.
Perhaps he is just happy to see his friend, Mr.
Rutherford. But he didn’t seem happy at first. In any case, I
should be grateful for the distraction and the reprieve.

Shouldn’t I?

She crossed the room to retrieve her basket
where she’d tucked it under her bed. She sat at her vanity and
began to lay out the damaged and torn pages, her hands shaking.
Grace tried to reorder them, copying out one of the pages that had
been torn and realizing which sections were missing entirely. All
in all, the story was largely intact and Grace began to recover her
work. She hated the sight of her tattered parchment and had to wipe
her face to clear away the frustrated tears at the precious hours
of work she’d lost.

Not to mention the income.

She’d a steady demand for her colorful
stories from a publisher and while the money was modest, Grace had
the luxury of saving every tuppence she’d made from her work. The
secret income was hers to hoard and she had every intention of
doing so until she had enough—enough to leave her brother’s house
and make her own way in the world.

But that dream had nearly come crashing to
an end today, an end almost as grisly as the one she imagined for
herself if Mr. Rutherford hadn’t intervened. If her brother had
pressed for details of her errands or if Mr. Rutherford had
corrected her lies in front of him, Grace shuddered at the
consequences.

She leaned back in her chair, ignoring the
ache in her shoulders, and closed her eyes. It was all so tenuous.
The publisher had made it clear that there was no shortage of eager
writers to fill their pamphlets and that any drop in quality or
professionalism would be noted.

And of course, they didn’t realize that the
author was a woman. Grace had presented herself as a lowly clerical
assistant to the eccentric Mr. A.R. Crimson, a slightly mad artist
who (beyond his penny novels and serial chapters) only communicated
with the outside world via notes and letters and was never seen
publicly. It was pure invention and as it turned out, a very
convenient one.

But it was a flimsy illusion her brother
could destroy with one word as her closest male relative and legal
guardian.

My fate rests in the hands of a total
stranger. And yet strangely enough, Mr. Rutherford and I have done
nothing but keep each other’s secrets from our first meeting.

Mr. Rutherford’s appeal was potent and
extremely distracting.

She leaned forward to study her reflection
for a moment but saw nothing beyond the ordinary. Her hair was a
reddish-blonde, a common enough hue, though she was grateful it was
thick enough to hold a curl. Two blue eyes; a decent nose, a touch
long and sprinkled with unfashionable freckles; good cheekbones but
her cheeks seemed too chubby to her critical eyes. Her lips were…
Grace squinted as she pouted at herself to try to make them more
bow-shaped and succeeded in making herself laugh.

The inventory of her physical attributes was
at an end.

“I do not look mysterious, at all!” she
sighed. She frowned at the notion, disappointed. She didn’t really
want her face to betray the inner workings of fairy kingdoms and
blood-thirsty ghosts but it appealed to a shielded part of her soul
that Mr. Rutherford alone could see something in her that others
couldn’t.

Her brow furrowed. He’d encouraged her where
her brother would have expressed curt disapproval and even
complimented her on her stubborn refusal to tell him about her
pages. He’d stumbled onto her greatest secret without realizing it
and nothing was certain. Sunday loomed in her mind, the blade of a
guillotine above her neck.

If her strange alliance held, then an escape
from Sterling was still possible. But if Mr. Rutherford made any
reference to her awkward accident on Oxford Street, she’d better be
ready with a good lie or two or Sterling would drive her out of the
house and onto the streets.