The Earl with the Secret Tattoo Read online

  “It’s lovely to be here,” she said as two golden-haired young ladies sprang from their chairs, came one on either side of her, and took her elbows.

  “You must sit by me, Eleanor,” the younger one said. She was Cynthia, and probably no more than fourteen. “Mama said I could join her today. The Jensen sisters always demand toast and need help preparing it. And Mrs. Pepper is here. She always talks Mama’s ear off—”

  “Cynthia,” said the other young lady—Janice, a lithe beauty who must have been home between terms at her boarding school in Switzerland. As Eleanor recalled, she probably would make her come-out the following year.

  Cynthia blushed. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “You can sit between us, Elly,” suggested Janice, and gave her arm a squeeze. “You know we always love to see you. You’re like a sister, you know.”

  Their enthusiasm touched her heart. Eleanor didn’t know what it was like to have a sister who genuinely cared for her.

  “Yes, we’ve all taken baths together,” said Cynthia stoutly, and plopped down on the sofa. “At least that’s what Mama told me. I don’t remember. I was too young.”

  Eleanor and Janice laughed.

  “Yes, we did bathe together,” said Eleanor lightly. “How we all managed to fit into the copper tub is beyond me. Marcia and I took turns holding you. That was the secret to our success.”

  Cynthia giggled.

  Janice and Eleanor exchanged a fond look. Those days were long ago, when Eleanor’s father had been alive and he and Mother had often taken her to stay with the Sherwoods.

  “It really has been too long,” Eleanor said, laying her hand on both girls’ arms. “I’m sorry I’ve been so…distracted.”

  She had. Nothing was the same since Papa had died and she’d had to get used to her stepfather.

  But the sad truth was, Mother had not been a great friend to the marchioness, especially after Papa died. It was as if a wall had sprung up between them. The Sherwoods had made overtures, but Mother and Lord Pritchard always seemed to find something else to do.

  And time had passed. Happy childhood memories faded.

  But today, it was as if it were old times again.

  “Janice, I want to hear all about boarding school,” Eleanor said. “I long to see the Swiss Alps. Are they as beautiful as paintings portray them? And Cynthia, what are you studying these days?”

  Both Janice and Cynthia were happy to relate their latest news and interests and catch her up on family gossip. Marcia was still at her school in Surrey, having just achieved the status of headmistress. Peter and Robert were away at Exeter, Peter in his final year before he was off to Cambridge. And Gregory, Lord Westdale, had recently finished his studies at Oxford.

  Eleanor sighed. “My goodness. And Lord and Lady Brady? How are they?”

  “In fine health and very happy,” said Cynthia. “They always act as if they got married yesterday.”

  Janice bit her lower lip. “Yes, they do. Sometimes we feel quite de trop.”

  Eleanor laughed.

  “What does de trop mean?” asked Cynthia.

  Eleanor leaned down to her ear. “It means your mother and stepfather are very much in love.”

  Cynthia grinned. “Oh, I knew that.”

  The tea tray was brought round by a helpful footman. After Eleanor had fixed hers, she looked between her two companions. “Girls, it’s been five years now since we had that high adventure on the road back to London from Dover.”

  Janice sat up higher. “What a scene.”

  “Yes,” said Cynthia. “I’ll never forget it.”

  “Neither will I,” said Eleanor. “I’d like to hear your memories of that day.”

  “You would?” Cynthia’s eyes were wide.

  “Not if it’s too painful for you,” Eleanor added hastily.

  “Oh, no, it’s not that,” Cynthia said. “It’s just that Lord Tumbridge has already called on us this morning and asked about the very same thing!”

  “He did?” Eleanor felt her whole body heat.

  Janice gave a vigorous nod. “He didn’t mean to, really. But he was telling Mama about a friend of his who’d recently been robbed on the road to Dover, and Mama told him that once all her children, you and Lady Clare, and Gregory’s tutor had been robbed, too, on the same road and near the same place.”

  Eleanor’s heart began to thump. “So what did you tell Lord Tumbridge?”

  “Everything,” Cynthia said with relish. “Especially the part about the unlucky talisman.”

  Eleanor grinned. “I believe we could have called everything that day rather cursed.”

  Except for the wondrous appearance of the masked man with the secret tattoo, she couldn’t help thinking, despite everything she knew about him now.

  Janice laughed. “So you remember the talisman Robert found?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Eleanor. “He was so excited, he tripped at the mouth of the cave on his way out and cut his jaw.”

  “He still has a scar,” said Cynthia.

  “And then Peter,” Janice went on, “dropped it in the stable at your house, and a stallion kicked him.”

  Cynthia giggled.

  “Cynthia,” remonstrated her big sister. “He limped for a week.”

  Cynthia bowed her head, but then she looked quickly up. “But we still hadn’t figured out that it was bad luck. Gregory put it on a string and wore it around his neck that night—remember?”

  “Yes, he showed it to the entire table at dinner,” Eleanor said. Her stepfather had gazed at it a long while. Mother had simply passed it on. Unless an item of jewelry was made of gold or precious gems, she wasn’t interested.

  “And when we left the next day,” Janice went on, “Gregory was still wearing it on a string around his neck when we were robbed.”

  “Do you recall how the robber was choking him and he couldn’t breathe?” Cynthia asked her.

  “Yes,” said Eleanor in a whisper. She remembered all too clearly.

  “The boys and I think it was the bad luck of the talisman that made that happen,” Cynthia said. “Which is why Janice got rid of it.”

  “You did?” Eleanor saw a little old lady across from them demanding attention with her toast.

  “The elder Miss Jensen needs you,” Janice whispered to Cynthia.

  “All right,” Cynthia said reluctantly, and went to assist her with the spreading of jam on her toast.

  Janice rolled her eyes. “You can make the argument that the talisman actually saved Robert from a worse gash, or perhaps prevented Peter from being kicked in the head. As for Gregory, it might have protected him from being killed by those robbers.” Janice smiled and shrugged. “So Marcia and I only pretended to get rid of it.”

  “I like how you think.” Eleanor smiled back. “Do you have it here?”

  Janice nodded. “Would you like to see it?”

  “Certainly.”

  They made excuses to Lady Brady. Cynthia sent them burning looks as she sat dutifully attending the Jensen sisters. Upstairs, Janice led Eleanor to a bedchamber with three beds.

  “We’re all three in the same room still,” she said with a laugh. “We’ve never bothered to move mine or Marcia’s things, and we enjoy the rare times we can still be together.” A small wrinkled formed on her smooth brow. “Although the few days Marcia has come to London the past several years, she’s never stayed over.”

  “Really? She’s only in Surrey.”

  “I know.” Janice sighed. “But she’s terribly busy during the school year. We see her in Ireland in the summers, and that’s it. But I’m busy, too, so I can’t complain about her absence. I have one more term to go at my boarding school in Switzerland. Perhaps next year when I make my come-out, I’ll have my own bedchamber.”

  “I think it’s lovely,” Eleanor said, feeling wistful. She and Clare had never slept in the same bedchamber, ever. When the Sherwood girls were together, did they talk at night? Laugh? Share stories?

 
; Of course, they must. She remembered those long-ago nights when she’d been among their number. She’d squeezed in with Marcia, usually, as they were the closest in age.

  Quickly, before loneliness could grip her, she focused on what Janice was doing.

  “I have a key here,” Janice murmured, and opened a jewelry box. “It goes to a tiny tin satchel I gave to Cynthia long ago for her favorite doll, Kitty.”

  “No,” said Eleanor. “The talisman’s in Kitty’s satchel?”

  “Yes.” Janice giggled. “That’s my latest hiding place. I usually keep it with me at boarding school.” She took the key and opened the little satchel. “It’s wrapped in rice paper, and Cynthia hasn’t guessed it’s there. She doesn’t play with Kitty anymore, but she likes having her nearby. Am I entirely awful for hiding the token there?”

  “Yes.” Eleanor chuckled. “You’re wicked.”

  Janice blushed. “I think Cynthia’s old enough that right before I leave and take it back with me to school, I’ll tell her about it. I want to prove to her that one shouldn’t let superstitions rule a person. A woman has a mind as sharp as a man’s, and she should use it. They’ve plenty of superstitions in Switzerland, and I refuse to believe any of them. As for my brothers and their silliness over the matter of the talisman, I think most of that was put on to frighten Cynthia—the blackguards.”

  “Indeed,” said Eleanor, but she could tell Janice didn’t really think they were. She didn’t, either.

  “We tease each other quite a bit,” Janice explained. “It’s all in fun.”

  “I like that about your family. Things are never dull.”

  When Janice handed Eleanor the engraved copper circle, she felt an instant connection with it. She remembered now how excited they’d all been that Robert had found it near the mouth of the cave in a small recess beneath a rock he’d lifted to examine.

  The disk was cold in her fingers, a dull green color, and on its surface was a primitive cat in a pouncing position. A crude hole was bored in the circle’s top, perfect for attaching a leather string or chain.

  “It looks somehow familiar to me,” she said slowly. “And not because I saw it five years ago. I’m almost sure I recognize—”

  And then she stopped speaking.

  “What?” Janice’s voice was insistent. “What is it, Eleanor?”

  “Nothing,” she said lightly. “It was merely a trick of the light.”

  But it wasn’t. The earl’s tattoo was composed of cat figures just like this one.

  Janice peered at her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Eleanor gave a quick nod. “Simply intrigued, that’s all.”

  She wouldn’t have been able to explain to Janice, even had she wanted to. Eleanor had been the only one to see the tattoo on the Earl of Tumbridge’s shoulder during the robbery. It had been a circular image of three cats in pouncing positions, their tails entwined at the center of the design.

  She turned the talisman over to examine the underside, upon which were etched some peculiar marks, almost like Egyptian hieroglyphs or Eastern script.

  “I wonder what it means?” She looked at Janice, who was watching her with interest.

  “Yes, it’s fascinating, isn’t it?”

  “Have you ever wanted to take it to a jeweler or a museum curator?”

  “I thought about it but never bothered. It seems so modest an object in every other way.” Janice looked vaguely worried. “Do you think it might be very old?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eleanor. “Perhaps it’s a freemason’s badge, which means it could be fairly new.” She still felt shocked at recognizing the cat figure; her mind raced with possibilities.

  “Take it,” Janice said out of the blue. “You can return it to me next year when I come back from Switzerland. Meanwhile, if you want to get it examined by an expert on relics or even a freemason, please feel free.” She laughed. “Wouldn’t it be marvelous if it were actually of some importance?”

  “It would be quite ironic.” Eleanor smiled. “Thank you. I will take it. Were you and your brothers and sisters carrying anything of value that day?”

  “No. The carriage holding our trunks went ahead of us. We had only a few small bags, as you know, between us, to tide us over until we got to London. And Mother always insisted we not travel in a garish manner.”

  “Could the robbers have been after the talisman?”

  Janice let out a small squeak. “What if they were? It never occurred to me. You really must get it examined now.”

  “It’s a good thing no one was able to steal it from you,” Eleanor said.

  “Why?” Janice’s eyes were wide.

  “I think you’re right. I believe it’s of some importance—if not to us, to someone else, at the very least.”

  What did the cat and the odd symbols mean? And what did the talisman have to do with Lord Tumbridge? He must have wanted to procure it that day and had followed the Sherwood carriages—him and those robbers. Had they been working together? Or separately?

  Then again, perhaps no one had wanted the talisman at all. Perhaps Eleanor’s imagination was running away from her. She’d come today to the Brady mansion hoping for answers, and surely, she was deluding herself into thinking she was getting some.

  But Lord Tumbridge must have had a reason for following their carriage—and for wearing a mask to protect his identity.

  And that strange code must mean something.

  Eleanor hoped that particular something would bring her closer to understanding why the earl had been interfering in her life ever since that robbery happened—and why her life might be in danger now.

  She closed her hand over the supposedly unlucky copper disk and prayed that her father was watching over her.

  <#>

  Almost as soon as James returned to his house from his visit to the Brady mansion on Grosvenor Square, he turned back around and headed there again. He’d promised Lady Brady to show her his father’s last painting. It was in James’s hands now, and he was inordinately proud of it. It depicted him and his father fishing, one of their favorite pastimes. He knew the marchioness hadn’t asked to see it right then, but why not?

  He raced up the stairs just as the door opened at the Brady house and Lady Eleanor Gibbs came out, tying her bonnet under her chin.

  “Lord Tumbridge!” she exclaimed.

  “Lady Eleanor!” He was one step below her.

  She gave a last tug on her bow, her face framed beautifully within its straw brim.

  He held up the painting. “My father painted this. Lady Brady wanted to see it.”

  She looked at the painting with a great deal of interest, then back at him. “Lord Tumbridge?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a lovely painting.” Her tone was warm, admiring.

  “It is, isn’t it?” He grinned at her, foolishly pleased that she liked his father’s work.

  “Yes.” But then she bit her lip and looked at him as if he were someone she’d never seen before. “It—it’s something I’d long to have in my own house.”

  Her face, he noticed, was paler than usual.

  And then he realized what was happening. His heart sank, and he looked down at the painting to compose himself. When he looked up again, his expression was cynical and bored. “I suppose it’s all right for an amateur.”

  Her eyes instantly clouded. “Who are the man and boy? You and your father?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve no idea. Excuse me, my lady. I’ve a commitment to fulfill.”

  He hoped he’d made it sound the veriest chore to visit with Lady Brady. With a quick, careless movement, he slung the beloved painting under his arm and walked past Eleanor into the house.

  Lady Janice stood on the stairs. “Back for more, Lord Tumbridge?” She laughed. “Aren’t you brave!”

  He looked over his shoulder. The butler was approaching the door to shut it. But before he did, James saw Eleanor looking back up at him, her brown eyes puzzled, and
then scurry off, her reticule swinging madly from her hand.

  <#>

  That night, Eleanor was off to another ball in a luxurious carriage with her mother, stepfather, and Clare. Viscount Henly would meet Clare at the gathering, where Eleanor hoped to see Lord Tumbridge, as well. All afternoon and evening, she’d secretly replayed their meeting on the steps at the Brady mansion.

  She’d almost literally been bowled over by the earl’s charm, his happy grin, and his warmth. But then it had all disappeared in an instant, and she had to wonder if she’d imagined it.

  Not that she had time to daydream about handsome, mysterious earls. In the carriage, Lord Pritchard sat directly across from her, his large knees knocking into hers. He made no effort to turn sideways, even a little, to alleviate the situation, as most gentlemen did.

  “How was your visit to the Sherwoods today?” he asked her.

  She sent him a tight smile. She’d never liked him, not from the very beginning, when he’d come visit Papa and Mother and pretend to be fond of her. She could see in his eyes that he wasn’t at all. Yet when she’d mentioned it to her parents once at dinner, Mother had scolded her for being unfriendly. And Papa hadn’t contradicted Mother. He’d sat with an uncertain look in his eye and hadn’t say a word in Eleanor’s defense.

  Her parents’ lack of belief in her that day—Mother’s insistence that she carried unnecessary hostility toward Lord Pritchard and Papa’s silence on the matter—had gone far to making Eleanor the quiet girl she became. Never again had she shared with her parents or any close friends her perceptions of people—in case she were mistaken about them.

  She revealed her observations in stories. She followed her intuition only on the page.

  “It was a lovely visit,” she said now to her stepfather. “Lady Brady was her usual gracious self. Thank you for asking.”

  “Did you find out anything more about the talisman?” Clare asked her, their hips and shoulders touching as the carriage swayed.

  “The talisman?” Lord Pritchard asked sharply.

  “Yes, Father,” said Clare. “Remember the copper talisman Lord Robert found in the cave near Summer’s End?”

  “I do,” interjected Mama, her gold-spangled shawl setting off her beautifully rounded shoulders. “It was a bit crude, wasn’t it?”