The Earl with the Secret Tattoo

Book 0: House of Brady

by Kieran Kramer

Genres: Romance; Regency Romance

Synopsis

In this exclusive e-novella from Kieran Kramer, a daring young debutante learns that when it comes to love, there's more than meets the eye…

Lady Eleanor Gibbs is shocked when she stumbles upon a tattooed London gentleman involved in an illicit embrace. Five years ago, a masked man bearing that same tattoo saved her and the six children of the Marquess and Marchioness of Brady from a band of thieves. Now, Ellie's "hero"—better known as the notorious Earl of Tumbridge—appears to be no more than a common cad. When this master of seduction and corrupter of virtue dares to sabotage her marital opportunities, it's more than Ellie can bear. What Ellie does not yet understand is that the inked scoundrel has a reason for ruining her chances for love: He wants her all to himself...

Release date: December 18, 2012

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 32

Sample

Earl with the Secret Tattoo (Chapter 1)
When Lady Eleanor Gibbs cracked open a random bedchamber door at the mansion on Grosvenor Square and saw a tattoo on the partially exposed shoulder of the man kissing her stepsister, her entire world tilted.

Heroes don't exist, after all, was her first outrageous thought.

From out in the corridor, she shut the bedchamber door so softly, she was sure neither clandestine lover inside heard the muffled click. Everything in her wanted to lean on that door and slump down its polished mahogany surface until she was sitting on the floor. She wanted to brood. To cry. To raise her fist and shout at the universe that she so obviously didn't comprehend.

Instead, she threw her shoulders back and had her second thought, this one even more outrageous: I've wasted the past five years pining after Lord Tumbridge?

The scoundrel earl?

She despised the man.

Despised!

And look at what he was doing now. Ruining something yet again--a wedding, for goodness' sake. A wedding that would solve everything she'd worried about for her stepsister Clare, who'd become as self-important and superior as her father, Lord Pritchard, and Eleanor's own mother.

Once you make a decision, don't be halfhearted about it, Papa--the late Lord Kersey--had told her long ago when she'd been afraid to cross the bubbling creek at their country property to meet him on the other side. She'd been eight, barefooted, nervous, and shy.

Now she remembered that creek when she watched her own hand grasp the doorknob and throw open the door. "Stop," she ordered the kissing couple in a voice that even she thought carried some heft.

They pulled apart and stared at her, the Earl of Tumbridge lofting a brow in recognition.

Oh, yes, it is I, she told him with her eyes. Probably the only woman in the world who's immune to your charms.

Or so she'd thought. Until now, she'd never made the connection between the wastrel lord and the mysterious tattooed man who'd held her in thrall all these years. But she saw in the glow of the candelabra that Lord Tumbridge had the same strong chin and bold gaze.

The same insouciance.

And then she registered the blue, narrowed eyes of her stepsister Lady Clare Donovan, the wretched bride-to-be.

"Go away, Eleanor," Clare said with feeling.

Which was highly unusual. Eleanor didn't think Clare had feelings anymore.

"Shut the door," the earl said next, and removed his hands from Clare's curvaceous backside.

"You two should be ashamed of yourselves." Eleanor heard the tremble in her voice. She wasn't used to standing up to genuine flesh-and-blood people. She preferred her characters do that for her in her stories.

"Shut the door, Lady Eleanor," the earl said in weary tones, and stood back from Clare.

"Please."

Eleanor had assumed--wrongly--that her tattooed hero would show an alert interest in the world, not a jaded resignation.

"You always manage to look and sound bored," she said thickly, recalling the one, painful waltz she'd shared with him in which she'd somehow found his arms around her exciting, despite their differences. "It's vastly rude, especially when you're here wreaking havoc with one of the guests of honor at the ball--who happens to be a member of my own family." She turned to Clare. "What will Mama and Lord Pritchard think?"

"Please stop talking, Eleanor," Clare said in warm, lush tones--

To the earl.

"Look at me, Clare." Beneath her simple ivory tulle bodice, Eleanor's heart pounded so hard, she almost couldn't breathe.

Reluctantly, her stepsister's head swiveled to meet her gaze. "What is it?"

"You shouldn't kiss a man who's clearly not your fiancé." Stating the obvious brought Eleanor no satisfaction.

Nor did it Clare. She wore a gorgeous pout.

"Fine." Lord Tumbridge left Clare and strode past Eleanor, leaving heat in his wake. "I'll shut the door."

When he pulled the massive wooden barrier closed, at once the strains of the waltz in the ballroom became distant and the room, cozy. Too cozy. Eleanor blushed to think what she'd interrupted.

"It's none of your business what we're doing in here." Clare apparently read her mind.

"Now leave."

Eleanor pointed to the closed door. "You leave, both of you. Separately, of course, before Viscount Henly sees you." The thought of Clare's fiancé almost brought tears to her eyes. "How could you, Clare? He's so sweet. He loves you."

Clare swished over to her in her elegant pink satin, her patrician nose an inch from Eleanor's own snub one. "If you don't leave right now," she whispered in menacing tones, "I'm going to tell the Palmers to rescind your invitation to their house party."

"So?" Eleanor tilted her chin up, but inside she was unnerved. The Palmers were like her--bookish, in love with writing, and perfectly content to let her sit by their fishing pond and scribble all day if she'd like, rather than flirt and ride and make small talk. She adored them, and seeing them would be the highlight of her summer. She shrugged. "I like London in early summer. I'll be perfectly content here."

"That's so like you." Her stepsister shook her head. "Why do you even care about the viscount? Do you love him? Perhaps you're jealous."

"Don't be ridiculous." Eleanor sighed. "He's kind, and this is your first engagement ball. He's out there right now, beaming, he's so proud to become your husband. And you--"

She gulped, unable to finish the sentence.

Clare crossed her arms over her voluptuous bosom. "It's your own fault for barging in."

"I was only looking for a place to retreat for a moment." She had a new story idea, and she wanted to find a quill and paper to write it down.

But the details of that story escaped her when she peeked at the earl and saw him sitting in an armchair facing their direction. While she and Clare had been talking, he'd lit a cheroot from a lamp and was puffing away, his smoky gray eyes on hers.

"How can you simply sit there and act so uncaring?" Eleanor demanded to know.

He shrugged. "If I'm going to be trapped in here--"

"No one trapped you," she dared reply. "I seem to remember asking you both to leave separately."

"I suppose you did." He blew out a jet of smoke. "But the best idea is for you two to leave together. I'll stay in here a few minutes more, and then I'll slip out the front door. No one will be the wiser."

"Please. You can't leave the ball," Clare begged him.

Begged.

Eleanor couldn't believe it.

"You've been in here too long already," the earl told Clare. "You should go."

"Not with her." Clare lifted a disdainful shoulder at Eleanor.

Which hurt, of course. There'd been a time when they'd been friends. But Eleanor merely folded her arms. "I can't go first. Because then you two would be in here together again. Alone." She hoped she came across as stubborn as Clare could be.

"All right." Clare rolled her eyes, and Eleanor couldn't help but be elated at her surrender. "I'll go first. And then, Eleanor"--she gazed at her with intense pique--"you follow one minute later. No more and no less. I don't want you to catch up with me."

"Very well." Eleanor didn't want to walk with her, either.

"And I also don't want you to linger here," Clare added.

"Why?" Eleanor was rapidly getting a headache.

Clare smoothed down her bodice. "I don't trust you with the earl."

"Me?" Eleanor heard a chuckle from the chair, and she turned to look at Lord Tumbridge, feeling absurdly insulted. "See?" She sent him a cool stare. "Even he thinks you're mad."

"You are being a tad possessive, Clare," the earl murmured--as if he had any sort of permission to address her in a familiar fashion.

Eleanor bristled while her blond beauty of a stepsister spun around to face Lord Tumbridge. "I don't for a minute think you and she would suit that way--Elly's as prudish as they come--but if anyone discovered you together alone, you'd have to marry her."

"You're right," Eleanor said with a wince. "Hurry and leave, Clare. Exactly sixty seconds later, I'll follow behind." She paused. "Make that fifty seconds."

"All right." Clare sulked, but when she looked back at Lord Tumbridge from the door, her expression softened. "Soon," she whispered. "I'll look for a note from you."

He stood. "Too busy for that, I'm afraid."

The blackguard, Eleanor thought, and tried not to note how manly and handsome he appeared in his evening dress.

"Perhaps I'll see you at the Morton masquerade," he concluded.

Clare, the foolish child, giggled. "I'll have to send you a note to let you know what costume I'm wearing."

A fresh surge of fury in Viscount Henly's behalf made Eleanor bold. "You two are shameless."

"And you're not?" Clare said. "I heard about what you did with Baron Easley."

Eleanor let out a soft gasp. "Did with him? But I don't even know Baron Easley."

She dreaded to think that Lord Tumbridge might be imagining her and the baron together in a wild seduction scene similar to his and Clare's. She tossed him a glance. Heavens, he was imagining her and the baron--either that, or enjoying her discomfiture. One side of his mouth was tipped up, and there was an enigmatic gleam in his eye that sent her heart racing--with indignation, of course.

"Clare, you wouldn't go that far," Eleanor persuaded her. "Surely not."

For a split second, her stepsister's eyes clouded, but then she tapped Eleanor's chest with a sharp-nailed finger. "I've already got all sorts of deliciously bawdy stories invented in my head about you and the baron. I suggest you not say a word about what you saw today if you don't want rumors about you two lovebirds spread about. Lord Andrew definitely won't come up to scratch then."

Oh, dear. Clare was full of herself--possibly too far gone--and her kissing session with the earl hadn't helped matters.

Eleanor opened her mouth to tell her stepsister that she wasn't sure she even wanted to marry Lord Andrew--he was scholarly, yes, but he had a rude habit of finishing her sentences for her and acting like a big baby when he didn't get his tea served with exactly two scant spoons of sugar--but Clare shut the door before she could speak, leaving Eleanor and the earl alone.

"Forty-eight seconds." He appeared far less bored with Clare gone.

Eleanor's heart gave a lurch of recognition: she could see the merest glimpse of the hero in his eyes, sense the supple energy of the hero in the way he flung out his arm to tap the cheroot into a small porcelain dish on a nearby shelf.

But, no, she reminded herself. A hero he was not. Here he'd been ravishing her stepsister not five minutes before.

"I can't believe you are he." She began to pace.

"Who?"

She stopped. "The masked man who saved Clare and me and the Sherwood siblings five years ago from a pack of robbers."

He rubbed his jaw. "What makes you think that?"

"Please. There's a distinctive tattoo on the small of your back." Your very tanned, muscled shoulder, she couldn't help thinking. "Clare had her fingers caught up in your shirt, and I saw, sirrah. I saw. So don't try to pretend you're not he." She stared at him, still incredulous. "I had thought him an angel rescuer. But you, my lord, are the devil incarnate. I feel tricked on a cosmic scale."

"Twenty-five seconds," he said.

She gave an exasperated sigh. "Is that all you have to say for yourself after what you've done today? Which is really only the culmination of several grievances I've cataloged against you, the primary one being your supreme arrogance."

He rose quickly and silently to his feet and placed his hands on her shoulders.

At his touch, Eleanor's heart began to thump even harder.

His gaze was on the door. "Get behind the drapes." His tone was soft, commanding. "Someone's coming."

"No, you." She backed away from him. "I'll pretend I'm here alone if someone comes in."

"Too late." He angled his head at the smoking stick in the dish.

"Dash it all." She scurried behind the royal blue velvet curtain.

The door swung open a second later. She bit her lip and prayed no one could see her slippers or the outline of her form.

"Oh, hello, Tumbridge." It was Lord Andrew. "Have you seen Lady Eleanor Gibbs? Someone said she was walking down this corridor some minutes ago. I wanted to escort her into supper."

"No, I'm afraid not," said the earl. She could tell he'd seated himself in the same armchair again. "Perhaps she's gone back already."

"All right, then." Lord Andrew didn't sound a bit frustrated. He never exhibited any unpleasant feelings--unless his tea was all wrong, of course. But other than that, he never did.

Eleanor was anxious to hear the closing of the door next. But instead, she heard the sound of a body plopping into a chair.

"So what brings you here alone?" Andrew asked the earl in a friendly manner.

Eleanor restrained a sigh.

"I needed to get away from the damned noise," said Lord Tumbridge. "Care for a smoke?"

"Thanks, don't mind if I do."

In her head, Eleanor cursed a blue streak, almost all her annoyance directed at Lord Tumbridge for luring Lord Andrew to stay. A tad of it went to Lord Andrew, as well. He was all too easily abandoning his mission to find her.

A few moments of silence passed. Eleanor blinked into the fuzzy velvet.

"You're looking less than your usual pristine self, Tumbridge," said Lord Andrew. "Your cravat's not in top form, and your hair--"

"Is always a bit of a mess," the earl said in a testy manner. "Are you taking my mother's place tonight?"

Lord Andrew gave a nervous chuckle. "Sorry. It's just that I saw a comely maid down the corridor. I thought perhaps you and she had bumped into each other, if you comprehend my meaning."

Ugh. Eleanor's whole body began to sweat in her velvet cocoon. She'd long thought her studious beau craved being one of the lads, but she'd never had evidence of it until now.

"I'd like to bump into her myself," Lord Andrew added hopefully.

Oh, you poor sod. It took everything in Eleanor not to throw off the curtain and tell him he'd never carry off the brute male act and to stop trying.

The earl responded to his unexpected smoking companion's attempt at bonding with a beat of stony silence, then said, "Let's discuss a more banal topic--marriage." Eleanor seethed. Of course, Tumbridge would think marriage banal. He lived for trifling pursuits. "Are you to offer for Lady Eleanor? Rumor has it you might."

She could barely restrain a yelp of outrage.

There was another pause.

"I think so," Lord Andrew replied without a lot of conviction.

Hot, red humiliation filled Eleanor from head to toe.

"She's a lovely girl," he went on, "and she'll make an excellent mother."

"Admirable qualities in a future wife," murmured Lord Tumbridge.

"Indeed," replied Lord Andrew.

Eleanor decided in that moment that lukewarm was a most unpleasant temperature--in soup and in compliments.

"Of course," Lord Andrew went on, "her stepfather is anxious to get her off his hands--now that he's got his own daughter well situated. Lady Clare's welfare was his priority, as it should be."

That addendum to his reasoning made Eleanor feel even more...beloved.

The smoking, apparently, went on unabated. And suddenly, she had the horrible feeling she was about to sneeze.

"I would've offered for her stepsister myself," Lord Andrew said into the silence. "Her dowry's bigger. And so is her bosom. But I was too late."

Men, thought Eleanor, and closed her eyes tight. The urge to sneeze left her. All that was left in its place was weary disappointment.

She heard someone stand.

"Yes, it's much too late to offer for the stepsister." It was the earl, and he was moving now, toward the door. "But I believe you've made the better choice."

Something in Eleanor brightened at that.

"Oh?" Andrew rose, as well, his shoes squeaking across the floor.

He was the squeaking sort.

"Yes, I think so," said the earl, opening the door. "Although I somehow doubt she'll have you."

She felt a reluctant gratitude.

The squeaking paused. "Why do you say that?"

"Just a hunch. If you want her, you'd best step up your efforts. Perhaps a stolen kiss wouldn't be untoward. Or romantic words. Quote from Shelley. Or even Shakespeare. One of his tragedies, so she recognizes your sensitivity."

Eleanor's hands slowly curled into fists.

"Right." Andrew sounded unsure. "Thanks for the advice."

"You're welcome," Lord Tumbridge said in a pleasant enough voice.

Damn him, thought Eleanor, and sucked in a shaky breath as best she could in the stifling curtain. She never in a million years thought she'd want to damn the man with the secret tattoo. Never. She'd wanted only to be in the same room with him. To thank him. To admire him. To bask in his bravery.

She spit a piece of velvety fuzz from her mouth. Yet here she was, wishing the man of her dreams to perdition.



James Dawbry, Earl of Tumbridge, shut the door behind the idiot Lord Andrew and quickly pivoted on his foot to face the curtains.

As expected, Lady Eleanor came flying out from behind them, her eyes flashing. She strode straight up to him and put her hands on her hips. "I hate you, Lord Tumbridge," she said low. "But you already know that."

"You'd hate Lord Andrew more if you ever had to marry him. I've saved you years of misery." The Brotherhood had had nothing to do with his helping to sabotage this particular romance. That had been a spur-of-the-moment decision on his part. "Perhaps you should consider thanking me."

"Why," she begged to know, "do you keep interfering in my life? What have I ever done to you?"

"Do you mind if I--?" He pointed to the jacket he'd cast off and thrown over a chair in the middle of his seduction of Lady Clare.

"Your hair needs arranging as well." Her tone was disapproving yet also distracted. She held her hands so tightly together, her knuckles were white. And her eyes--big and brown--were clearly troubled.

He kept his eye on her as he tucked his shirt in properly and donned the jacket, glad to see he'd made her blush despite the defiant glare she cast him.

"There's a pattern here," she said. "You--sabotaging my marital opportunities. As of this evening, not once but twice. And now you're after ruining Clare's." She looked around as if wishing for a frying pan with which to knock him over the head. Alas, there were none, so she merely skewered him with a damning look. "Not to mention you ruined my prospect for employment in Yorkshire."

Oh, yes. He had done. She'd never be the governess to a passel of brats on the dales now, nor the latest sexual conquest of their lecherous father.

"I've nothing against you, Lady Eleanor." Quite the opposite, in fact.

"I don't believe you." If her glare were a fire, he'd be nothing but ashes by now. "I'm going to find out why you're doing this," she said with all the passion of a wronged Athena, "with or without your cooperation."

She was shrewd, bold, and persistent. But what did he expect from the daughter of the founder of the Brotherhood?

"This isn't the time," he said coolly. "Go back to the ballroom."

He saw her pause, but then she drew herself up. "Perhaps I won't. Perhaps I'll stay with you."

He girded himself to ignore the heat flooding his veins. "Not advisable, my lady."

"Why? Are you afraid you might be brought up to scratch?"

He admired her bravado. "Not a bit." He moved lazily toward her. "Two can play that game."

His admiration went up a notch when he lifted her chin and she didn't flinch.

"Tell me what's going on," she whispered, her voice a balm to his soul. "It's really not fair."

He wished he could. He wished he could confide everything in her. But that wasn't possible. When he dropped his hand, it was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do.

"What's going on," he said in his practiced, jaded way, "is that you and I must part immediately. Good night."

He ignored the anger emanating from her in waves and held open the door.

Yet still she wavered.

"The longer you stay, the more likely we'll be discovered," he reminded her. "And you know what that would mean."

"Oh, all right." Despite her best efforts to intimidate him with her threatening tone, she let out a gusty sigh he found endearing. "You win tonight. But rest assured, I'm not going to sit back anymore and see you continue to play with me--and now Clare--the way a cat plays with a mouse."

She breezed by him, the scent of gardenias tantalizing his nostrils.

"Lady Eleanor?"

She refused to look back at him, but she did pause.

"I suggest you say nothing to anyone concerning my identity as your masked savior turned arch nemesis," he said quietly.

"Why shouldn't I?" Her tone was deceptively light.

"Because your life might depend upon keeping my identity that long-ago day a secret."

Slowly, she turned to face him. "What?" she whispered.

He looked deep into her eyes. "Things aren't always what they seem. Remember that."

And then he shut the door in her face before she could say anything back.



Heroes didn't exist.

At least, heroes in Eleanor's own life didn't, other than her late father, a quiet genius with a big heart.

And now her life was in danger.

How long had it been so?

The next morning, she felt raw, frightened, and angry. At their ten thirty breakfast, Clare was hostile. Nothing new, really. But she eyed Eleanor over her cup with a trace of fear in her eyes, too.

Clare was never so confident as she put on. In fact, when they were robbed, she'd been shaking all over, her hand clamped around Eleanor's arm--at least until Eleanor jumped out of the carriage.

What did Clare remember about the man on horseback who'd ridden up to save them?

"Tell me your plans this morning," Eleanor's mother, Lady Pritchard, said in expansive tones, looking at each of them in turn as if she were a charming queen and they were her devoted court.

She and Papa had been complete opposites. Eleanor often wondered how they'd come together.

Eleanor's stepfather, Lord Pritchard, was much more like Mother: vibrant, good-looking, sure of himself, politically astute.

"You know very well, dear, that I'm off to save the world." His smile was smug, as was the one Mother returned. "I've a grand speech to present today in Parliament."

"Well, then," said Mother archly. Eleanor knew she fancied herself bewitching.

"Parliament is in for a treat." She swiveled her slender neck to look at Clare and Eleanor. "Girls? Shall you be receiving this morning?"

Clare pushed her eggs about her plate. "No. I'm off to Pantheon Bazaar with Elsa."

Elsa was her best friend, another diamond of the first water a tad less attractive than Clare and not nearly so bright. Eleanor's stepsister wouldn't befriend any young ladies she considered true visual competition, and if it meant she had to endure stupidity, she would.

"I'm to pay a call on the Sherwood household," Eleanor said.

Mother drew in her youthful chin. "And why, pray tell?"

Eleanor shrugged. "I haven't had a good long chat with any of them in a very long time."

Her stepfather put down his cup of tea. "The Marquess of Brady is not a man of whom I'm terribly fond."

"Why is that?" asked Eleanor carefully. She wasn't fond herself of conversing with her stepfather, whom she always addressed as if they weren't related at all.

Mother and her husband exchanged silent glances.

"He's rather dull," said Lord Pritchard.

"Dull?" Eleanor couldn't help exclaiming. "He's one of the most entertaining gentlemen I know."

"It depends on your definition of entertaining." Mother's brow puckered as if they were discussing someone's unfortunate illness.

"Yes, if you call the Irish penchant for exaggeration a gift," said Lord Pritchard with a half-pitying smile.

"Are you suggesting he makes things up?" asked Eleanor between them.

"He does, my dear." Mother gave a great sigh.

"Well, of course, he does," Eleanor replied. "He's known as a supreme joke teller."

"Indeed," said Lord Pritchard on a yawn. "How many more anecdotes about Irishmen, attorneys, and priests meeting Saint Peter at the gates of Heaven must we endure?"

Eleanor pushed away from the table. Mother and Lord Pritchard were entirely jealous. That was the problem. They grasped at straws--and in illogical fashion--whenever someone threatened to cast them in shadow.

Clare was in good company, sadly.

Feeling alone, as she often did after interacting with her family, Eleanor climbed the stairs to her bedchamber to prepare for her visit to the Brady mansion. But dogging her steps was a sense of threat, thanks to the Earl of Tumbridge.

So her life depended upon her keeping his identity a secret?

Fine. She wouldn't tell anyone that she knew who the tattooed man was. But she was intent on going over everything else about that day, and she wouldn't allow the earl to intimidate her into not reexamining it.

She was going to find out what he was about, once and for all, and perhaps then, he'd leave her alone.

On her way back downstairs, she passed Clare coming up. They both stopped on the same step.

"Remember what I said last night," Clare hissed. "You and the baron. I've loads of stories."

Eleanor gripped the stair banister. "Do you remember that day we were stopped by highway robbers?"

"What does that have to do anything?" Clare's delicate brows lowered over her nose.

"Don't you care that I can destroy your reputation in an instant?"

"What do you remember about that day?"

Her stepsister huffed. "Really?"

Eleanor nodded.

"Why do you want to talk about it?" Clare pursed her lips in another wondrous pout. "It happened so long ago, and it wasn't pleasant."

"Because occasionally I've dreams about it," said Eleanor. "I did again, last night."

Which was true, although last night Lord Tumbridge had replaced her usual vision of the masked man. "I suppose I want to get it out of my mind, once and for all."

Also true. She especially wanted to purge her mind of dreams of the earl kissing her madly--he with no shirt on; she, caressing his tattoo, which had been inked at a tempting spot on his right shoulder. In the dream, her fingers curled around that shoulder to pull him closer.

"Very well." Clare surrendered with a graceful sigh. "I was excited to go on an impromptu visit to London with the Sherwoods, if only to escape the air of gloom at my house. Your mother stayed behind with my father, both of them mourning the loss of your father."

"Yes." Eleanor still felt a tinge of bitterness. "They made me go with you and the Sherwoods, even though it was the last thing on earth I wanted to do. I wanted to stay with Mother."

"You sulked in the carriage," Clare accused her.

"Of course I did." Eleanor was indignant. "If your father had just died on holiday with you in the Cotswolds, wouldn't you have?"

Clare's brow furrowed. "I suppose so, although I'd never go to the Cotswolds. I prefer Cornwall."

Eleanor couldn't help sending her a flat stare. "Please go on with your story."

"All right." Clare flung a curl off her neck. "You and your mother stopped at our house to find some support before you returned home to an empty house, but you were told you needed to go to London with me and the Sherwoods for some cheering up. You were furious that the Sherwood siblings came to escort us there."

"Yes, I was. We already established that, did we not?"

"But your mother is friends with Lady Brady. It was the least the family could do in your time of mourning. And we were only a brief stop off their regular route."

"I know all that," Eleanor gritted out, "but it doesn't negate the fact that no one cared what I wanted. Let's get to the actual robbery, shall we?"

"Wait. Are you paying me for this?"

"No."

"Then why am I--?"

"Because I asked you to," Eleanor reminded her. "What do you remember about the robbery?"

Clare's brow furrowed. "That the carriages suddenly lurched to a halt, which was frightening in and of itself. And then we heard shouting. We looked out the window and saw two robbers pulling Lord Westdale out of the boys' carriage. One began choking him when he fought back and managed to knock the pistol from the robber's hand. Lord Westdale was surprisingly strong for a boy of fifteen."

"Were you frightened?"

"Of course." Clare's eyes flashed annoyance. "I was only thirteen. I remember there was another scoundrel guarding our carriage. Lord Westdale's sisters were screaming and crying out the carriage window, despite the thug guard telling them to shut up. And then the carriage door flew open because the Sherwood girls were pressed against it."

It seemed that Clare had forgotten all about how much she didn't want to speak to Eleanor. "You pulled me toward the opening," she went on avidly, "and we could see much better then. Westdale's brothers jumped out of their carriage and threw rocks, and Lord Peter beat that robber's back with a stick, hard enough that Westdale almost broke free."

She was silent a few seconds.

"What then?" asked Eleanor.

"Both the two robbers and the boys were trying to get to the pistol," Clare said quietly, "while the tutor stayed in the carriage sobbing loudly and their coachman attempted to calm the horses from his box. They were stamping and whinnying when the pistol landed between them. And then you jumped out suddenly from the other door of our carriage, which had been closed, and I--I thought you were going to get killed for being so foolish."

Her face actually turned slightly pink at that point.

"Well, I obviously didn't," Eleanor said, feeling embarrassed at the sudden awkwardness between them. "I only wanted