If Wishes Were Earls (13 page)

Yet they knew one lucky hand of cards could change all that, so it was inevitable that most of them ended up at the table by the window.

The first four players were Englishmen. There was no doubt each and every one of them had tried his luck at the Continental tables and now, for whatever reasons, were ready for the greener pastures of home, including Tristan Marshom, the 6th Earl of Roxley.

The last player was a Frenchman, the Comte de la Motte, Tristan thought he’d said, though the fellow hardly had the look of a nobleman to him. Then again, the French often gave themselves titles to raise their own stakes.

Not that English noblemen were much better, he mused. Oh, his title was real, but sadly he had pockets to let. He glanced over at his dear wife, Davinia, who watched the other players with the eyes of a sharpster. In her hand, she played with a coin, the silver bit weaving between her fingers like magic, a trick she’d picked up in Italy.

A sorry lot
, her wan smile said.

Perhaps this will be the one, my darling
, he silently encouraged, as the tall, thin man to his right gathered up the cards.
This is the game that will restore us.

She smiled slightly—a wistful look full of hope—blew him a kiss and made her way upstairs. This was his game tonight and she left him to do what he did best.

Then came that sound, that
ffft
of the boards as they brushed against each other as the man shuffled the deck. That purr always reminded Tristan of the wiles of a cat, rubbing against one’s leg.

“Come now, Batty,” the man to the right of the dealer said, “our new friend has a look of impatience to him.” He nodded toward the Frenchman, who looked neither impatient nor impressed by his companions.

The aforementioned Batty waved aside his friend’s request to start the game. “Corney, I’ll not deal until the cards tell me so.”

“I would spend the remainder of my days in Calais if I were to wait for the cards to talk,” complained the other of Batty’s companions.

“Ah, Moss,” Batty replied, “you’ll die from this wine before that.”

They all laughed, save the comte, who smiled blandly, and the innkeeper behind his bar, wearing an expression of Gallic forbearance . . . or perhaps disdain. It was hard to tell the difference.

And when Batty finally did deal out the cards, they all recognized the telltale signs in each other—they were all professional and this was no game for novices.

Nor would tonight offer any of them the favor of picking a ripe purse. Or so it seemed. This was going to be all about skill.

Or that fickle bitch, Luck.

Another man, English by the look of him, dozed by the fire.

Tristan kept a wary eye on the fellow. He could be an accomplice, a card spotter perhaps, partnered to one of these fellows. Davinia, on the other hand, would insist the man was a smuggler or a spy.

But she had rather romantic notions of those professions.

“Sir, do you play?” Corney asked the fellow by the fire.

The mysterious enigma shook his head. “I am no gambler.”

“If you drink the wine in this place, I would argue that you are,” Batty advised him, nodding at the half-filled glass at his side.

The innkeeper muttered under his breath, a string of French that no one bothered to translate.

“Are you certain, sir?” Moss prodded. For it was obvious to each of them that they were all too well-matched to gain what they wanted.

A fat purse. And this stranger might be the only one likely to possess such a rare commodity.

“No, thank you,” the man said, shifting in his seat so his long legs were closer to the fire. “But good luck to you all.”

Moss shrugged and they went back to playing.

“T
hen what happened?” Lord Henry asked.

“Nothing,” Roxley told him. “The diamonds came to London with de la Motte and were pawned.” He paced away from them and stared moodily into the fire.

Demmed, bloody diamonds. How he hated those wretched stones. Wasn’t it bad enough that his parents had abandoned him to the care of his great-aunts so they could chase after their gambling dreams on the Continent? That they’d died coming home, as broke as when they’d left.

Probably more in debt.

And all for what?

To restore the Marshom name.

Those were the only words he could remember his father ever saying. He’d been half asleep when his parents had come into the nursery at the Cottage.

We must go, my dear boy
, his father had said.
To restore the Marshom name.

Roxley couldn’t even remember the sound of his mother’s voice, but had never forgotten the cold tears on her cheeks as she’d bent down to kiss his forehead.

To restore the Marshom honor. Bah! Every Marshom had sought to do just that. Gambling. Failed business ventures. Loveless marriages.

Marry well and cheat often.

“Your father won that night. Half the diamonds from the Queen’s Necklace—at least by all estimates,” Hotchkin insisted with his usual frank assurance.

“My father died penniless. Most likely as will I,” Roxley corrected him.

“But he won that night,” Hotchkin continued to argue like a terrier after a rat. “Perhaps your mother hid them.”

Roxley was growing impatient with the entire conversation. “Mr. Hotchkin, for once you are wrong.”

The young man looked ready to belabor the point, but a shake of Chaunce’s head stopped him from continuing.

“Are you so certain, Roxley?” Lord Howers asked.

They all turned and looked at the man who was considered the mastermind of the Home Office.

“I actually read young Hotchkin’s report and it stands to reason . . .” Howers paused as he was wont to do when he wanted his agents to listen. He studied the rich amber liquid in his glass before he looked up and continued, “There were five men there that night—”

“Six,” Mereworth corrected.

“Pardon?” Howers blustered. The man never liked being corrected.

“If you were listening,” Mereworth dared, for he liked to tweak Howers at any opportunity, “there were six men there that night. Five at the table, and our agent. He was the one who made the report. The one I imagine Mr. Hotchkin discovered misfiled.”

Hotchkin blushed, for he was well-known for digging things out of the files and archives that most had thought could never be unearthed.

“Which agent?” Chaunce asked, getting back to the point.

Hotchkin shook his head. “The report is unsigned and I don’t recognize the hand.”

Howers shrugged as well. “Those demmed stones. Hated them back then, and detest them still. Wasted months back in ’85 searching for them.” He let out an exasperated breath. “So in the interest of expediting this matter, we will agree that there were six men. Though we can only count five of them, since Lord Roxley is dead.”

At this, Mereworth conceded, though when Howers turned his head, he made a cheeky wink at Roxley.

One only Mereworth would dare.

“These men know exactly who left Calais with those diamonds,” Howers said, pointing out the obvious.

“But sir,” Roxley said, leaping into this fray. “Over the years, whoever won them could have broken them up, pawned them carefully not to draw attention to themselves. They could have been gambled away long since.” He just couldn’t believe they were even discussing this. It was utterly ridiculous.

Howers showed exactly why he was in charge of their division, and why one day Hotchkin would probably take his place. His dogged determination was unmatched. “Perhaps. But eventually those stones would have passed through London. And when diamonds are moved in London—”

“They go through Mr. Eliason,” Chaunce said, breaking in.

Howers nodded. “And Eliason owes me a few favors, so when stones get pawned, unusual ones, he lets me know. Besides, he was de la Motte’s original broker for only half of that necklace, so he knows exactly the cut and shape of those stones. And in all these years, he’s never seen the missing half.”

“How do you know so much about all this, my lord?” Roxley asked, the overly familiar sense of dread returning to niggle down his spine.

So close, so very close
, it taunted.

In the corner of the room, the candles on the sideboard flickered, having finally run their course.

“When the Queen’s Necklace first came to London, there was some discussion—at higher levels—of seeing it returned to the French court. Though when it was discovered the stones had been conned from the Paris jewelers by de la Motte’s wife and that Marie Antoinette had never possessed the necklace, the talks ended. And then of course the revolution truly finished the matter. Or so I thought.”

Mereworth snorted. “Had us running around like fools trying to get our hands on them to appease the Frenchies, eh Howers?”

“Silence for all these years, and now suddenly, it seems someone wants what they believe is rightfully theirs,” Lord Henry observed.

Lord Howers, always on the lookout for likely gentlemen to help, glanced over at the duke’s uncle and took his measure.

“One of the other gamblers?” Hotchkin suggested.

“There is someone else: the agent,” Chaunce added. He looked around at their shocked expressions. “We cannot discount the man because he is one of ours.”

Howers sputtered a bit. He didn’t like that notion, not one bit. “There is also the possibility that this was arranged by someone in France. The Comte de la Motte returned to France after his wife died—he had no choice—for they’d run through their ill-gotten gains and her infamy was all they’d been living on.”

“Perhaps de la Motte offered up the other half—or at least the notion of where they might be—to gain his return,” Preston posed. “Those diamonds were, after all, made for a queen. A
French
queen.”

It wasn’t too hard to figure out who might have engineered such a wild plot if such a theory were true.

Napoleon. Hadn’t he just last year installed his new empress, Marie-Louise, and she’d only in the last month borne him a son. Such a cache of diamonds would be only fitting.

And Boney was known to covet anything royal.

“I won’t have those diamonds going back to France to adorn some self-proclaimed empress,” Howers sputtered.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Hotchkin coughed a bit.

“Something the matter, Mr. Hotchkin?” Roxley asked.

“It’s just that, well . . .” He glanced over at Lord Howers and then plunged on in. “I don’t think the comte’s wife just ‘died.’ I would suggest she was murdered. That whoever is after these diamonds has been searching and waiting all this time for them.”

Roxley was only half listening as the theories abounded. It was all too farfetched, too unbelievable. His parents had come home from the Continent broke. Died in a carriage accident and had never had more than two guineas between them. That was the end of it, as far as he was concerned.

Yet something about the catch in Mr. Hotchkin’s voice caught his attention.

I would suggest she was murdered . . .

Murdered.
He shook his head as a long-lost memory floated free, dislodged from its hidey-hole by that odd note in the younger man’s eager words.

Murdered.

Roxley felt his entire world shift. Everything he believed fell away as this tiny fragment, this recollection, unfurled inside him. The shadows in the room swallowed him up and carried him back all those years.

He was just a child again, sound asleep in his room at the Cottage. That is until the cozy familiar silence of the night had been interrupted by crying. Deep cries of grief being torn from someone. More than one person. He’d come downstairs to investigate and found the large front doors of the Cottage flung open.

The memory drew him further into the past until it was as if he were even now standing outside in the cool night air.

Beyond, in the yard, his aunts stood gathered around a wagon. The one, he knew, that had been sent to fetch his parents’ belongings from Dover. Yet instead of trunks and valises, the wagon carried only a matching pair of coffins.

“They were
murdered
, my lady. It was no accident,” the driver was saying.

And then Aunt Oriel had spotted him in the doorway and rushed forward, gathering him into her arms and carrying him back up to bed.

“Poor lamb, poor lamb,” she’d whispered the entire way up the stairs. “Don’t you worry over any of this.”

And he hadn’t, in all these years. Never again had he heard any one of his aunts utter that word. It had always been “their grave accident” or “those tragic circumstances,” but never the truth of it. Never that word.

Murdered.

“My parents,” he gasped. Wrenched out of the memory, Roxley tried to breathe as a new truth dawned around him.

“What about them?” Mereworth asked, quietly and firmly.

“They didn’t just die in a carriage accident. They were murdered. Shot. Both of them.”

Then Lady Gudgeon’s words collided with the image of those coffins.
Your aunt is in dire straits.

“My aunts,” he exclaimed, getting to his feet, while in his heart another name rang out.
Harriet!
Dear God, she was in the middle of this now. “My aunts are in danger.”

“Your aunts?” Chaunce looked at the empty glass beside him as if that might be the cause for this unfathomable outburst.

“Yes, precisely.” Roxley stilled his beating heart and rushed to explain. “Lady Gudgeon—”

There were groans about the room at the mention of the matron’s name.

“Yes, yes,” Roxley asserted. “Lady Gudgeon. She claims this Lord Whenby, the one lingering after my Aunt Essex, is a bounder. And then Poggs—”

“Poggs?” Howers exclaimed. “That pup?”

“Yes, well, I agree he’s hardly the smartest whip,” Roxley conceded, “but he claims my Aunt Oriel is being courted by some ne’er-do-well. I thought before it was naught but too many trips to Lady Knolles’s punch bowl, but now . . .”

Lord Howers sat back. “Whenby, you say? Never heard of him.”