Chapter Thirteen
As she led him down the hall towards the Countess’s suite, Gregory walked behind her, admiring the view. She was barefoot and naked, except for her rumpled nightgown, open at the throat so it hung low and bared her shoulders. Her hair was tousled and her skin was flushed. She looked well and thoroughly loved.
She looked back at him, smiled and held a finger to her lips, reminding him of the need for silence as they passed her sister’s room.
He did not want to be quiet. He wanted to shout for joy. And to call a ‘thank you’ to her sleeping sister. When Hope had left them alone to play chess he had wanted to retire as well. Considering how much trouble he had caused by being alone with one sister, he dared not risk the reputation of a second one, even if their interaction was completely innocent.
But the younger Strickland had detained him, demanding one more game. The moment her sister was out of earshot she pushed away from the board. ‘Now we will wait. Twenty minutes should be enough.’
‘For what?’ he had asked.
‘For my sister to become angry enough to do something rash,’ she said, with a smile.
He frowned at her. ‘I do not want your sister to do something rash. And I do not need your help in winning her, if that is what you think you are doing.’
She laughed. ‘Perhaps you need no assistance. But my sister needs twenty minutes.’
At last, he had relented. ‘Twenty minutes, or twenty days. It should not matter either way, because nothing is going to happen between us until I have spoken with your grandmother.’ It was pure luck that had made him say nothing, rather than nothing more. Even though she did not seem to try, Miss Charity was far too good at ferreting out secrets.
She was good at judging her sister’s character as well. Though Hope had always claimed to be the proper one, he’d seen no evidence of it tonight. But it was no longer as important to protect her innocence as it had been. Before they’d made love, he had got a promise of devotion from her. There would be no more talk of the Earl, because she had promised to love only him.
He was going to marry Hope Strickland. The acceptance of his official offer was a foregone conclusion. Even so, he would make one, on one knee with a ring worthy of a daughter of one of England’s noblest families. Tradition was important to her. It should be so to him as well. After all, he was starting a family line of his own. She would be the first Mrs Drake. There would be children. Offspring. Progeny. Descendants.
He thought he had been happy before. But now, his throat closed with emotion at the thought of the future. There had been an emptiness in him for as long as he could remember. And now Hope Strickland had filled it.
Ahead of him, she had stopped. She stood at the Countess’s open bedroom door, beckoning him to enter. When they were both inside, she shut it tightly and lit the candles on the bedside table from the one she’d carried. ‘What I am about to show you might be hard to see in candlelight. But I think that was rather the point all along. A dark room hides a multitude of sins.’
He felt a sudden chill of foreboding. Had that been a reference to what they had just done, or was she speaking of something else?
She continued speaking, unaware. ‘I removed these from the lock room this afternoon, while you were busy with Charity.’ She pulled a velvet box from the dresser and spilled the contents on to the bed.
‘The Comstock diamonds,’ he said, surprised.
Now she was poking through some of the most famous jewels outside the royal family as if they were nothing but jumble.
‘The full parure consists of a tiara, eardrops, two rings, a brooch. And, of course, the lavalier, which must be three carats at least. Grandmama rarely wears anything more than the smaller of the rings. She has complained for as long as I can remember that the rest are too heavy for any occasion less than a visit to court.’
As he stared at the jewels, the reason for her secrecy came clear. To verify what he already knew, he picked up the necklace, weighted it in his hand for a moment, then blew on it, holding it up in the candlelight to check the surface for fog.
Then he set it down with a sigh. ‘How long since the real stones were replaced with paste?’
‘I have no idea,’ she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and tucking her feet beneath her to keep them warm. ‘It was hard enough getting Grandmama to describe the rest of the items she took. But when she did not mention them, I became suspicious and examined them.’ She ran a fingernail along the surface of one of the larger stones. ‘They are scratched. No true diamond would have such damage.’
‘And you asked her what had become of them?’
‘She flatly refuses to say a word about them, claiming she will explain it all to the new Comstock when he arrives.’ She waved a hand at the jewellery beside her and laughed bitterly. ‘What will she say to him that might matter? A theft of this magnitude cannot just be explained away.’
‘You were planning to give yourself to the Earl,’ he said, shocked, but not surprised.
She cocked her head to the side, looking up at him with a smile that had become wiser in the last hour. ‘I did not think of it in that way. I was not planning to give anything but my hand. But that was not what he actually would have wanted from me.’ She looked into his eyes and one part of him melted as another grew hard. ‘I may have diminished my value somewhat, since meeting you.’
‘You most certainly have not,’ he said. ‘You were worth more than a pile of cold stones when we began. And now? I would not trade a minute with you for all the jewels in England.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But much as I like to hear them, your beautiful words will not solve my problem.’ She patted the bed beside her, indicating that he should sit. ‘I need your beautiful brain to do that. Or at least Mr Leggett’s beautiful money. How much has he given you to sort our problems?’
‘He said I could have what was needed,’ Gregory said, collapsing prone on the bed next to where she sat. ‘I was to spare no expense.’
‘Ha.’ She made a sound that was far too harsh to call a laugh and fell back to lay at his side. ‘And how much have you spent so far?’
‘Seventy-seven pounds, five shillings and sixpence,’ he said.
‘That is very precise,’ she said, glumly.
‘I have receipts,’ he said. ‘I would not be in demand if I were not so accurate. I will waive my fee to him, of course, since we are to be family.’
‘Are we?’ she said, rolling to face him.
‘That will be up to his wife’s younger sister.’ He took her hand and kissed the knuckles. ‘I plan to speak to your grandmother the moment we return to London and hope that I shall claim a connection to Mr Leggett before he has even come back from Italy.’
‘Do you think he might give us a wedding gift of fifty thousand pounds?’ She reached to the jewels at her side and perched the tiara awkwardly on her forehead. ‘Or perhaps one hundred and fifty,’ she said, with a regal wave of her hand. ‘You are far better at guessing the value than I. But I guess that the diamonds must be worth at least that.’
‘You are assuming we could buy them back,’ he reminded her. ‘I doubt the biggest stone remains uncut. There will be no equal to be found, even if we could afford it.’
‘At least we still have the settings.’ She sighed. ‘Although, with the luck I’ve had, I would not be surprised to scratch the surface and find they are gilded tin.’
‘But at least this restores my faith in your grandmother’s sanity,’ he said, staring up at the canopy above the Dowager’s bed. ‘I was wondering why she sold such rubbish to get by. If she had already run through the money for the diamonds, it makes more sense.’ He stopped, confused. There was something wrong in that assumption as well, but he was too tired to see what it was.
‘It would have made even more sense, in the eyes of the law, if she had sold things that actually belonged to her.’ Hope gave a bitter laugh. ‘The rest of the jewels in her jewel case are real and not entailed. When I asked her why she did not part with those, she told me that they were gifts from Grandfather and had sentimental value.’
‘Of course,’ he said weakly.
‘And now you see why I thought it was hopeless to even tell you. With your help, we have been able to replace the least important items. But I doubt that the Earl will be impressed by our efforts once he learns what is still lost.’
‘That is quite possibly true.’ And now he could see why she had not wanted to tell him of the problem, for he could not think of a better solution than the one she had been considering.
‘Have you heard anything more about his arrival? How long do we have before he learns what Grandmama has done?’
‘No,’ he admitted. Strickland was already overdue. At best, they had a few weeks before the reckoning she had feared. Now that she’d told him the whole truth, it appeared she had been right all along. For a wrong of this magnitude, marriage would have been a reasonable way to heal the breach and reunite the two branches of the family. If it had been any other woman, he’d have brokered the match himself.
Instead, he’d made bold promises about solving any problem put to him. He’d lain with her and ruined the best chance she had for the security she craved. Now the only thing he could do to set things right was to produce a king’s ransom in diamonds on short notice and out of thin air.
She poked him again. ‘You have not fallen asleep, have you?’
‘No. Merely thinking.’
‘You had gone so quiet, I was beginning to wonder. Do you have a plan?’
‘The beginnings of one.’ He was lying to her again. He had no idea what to do, other than stall and pray. ‘Is the jewel case here? I wish to examine it.’
She rose on one elbow and gave him an odd look, then pointed to it, sitting on the mattress, a few inches from his head.
‘Silly of me,’ he said with a shrug and reached for it. ‘It seems I have eyes for nothing but you.’ Now that he’d started lying he could not tell one truth in twenty.
‘I don’t know what good it will do,’ she said. ‘He will not be impressed by a nice package if the jewellery is false.’
‘It might do no good at all, but I must be thorough. I will not leave any avenues unsearched or any clues unexamined.’
‘You cannot possibly think there is anything to be done,’ she said, smiling in surprise.
He smiled back at her and felt the energy surging in his blood at the sight of such a supremely beautiful, infinitely desirable woman staring at him as if she thought he could hang the moon. She had confidence in him. He must have it as well. ‘I solve problems. If I turn away when presented with a challenge, then what good am I?’
‘If you can retrieve the diamonds, then you are not a problem solver, Mr Gregory Drake. You are a worker of miracles.’
He took a deep breath and felt more than his courage begin to rise. ‘If that is what you require of me, Miss Strickland, I shall endeavour to provide.’
‘That is not all I want.’ She sat up and stripped her nightgown over her head, then straightened the Comstock tiara in her chestnut hair and added the massive, paste pendant which swung to hang between her magnificent breasts. Then, naked and bejewelled and as bold as a pagan princess, she straddled him.
If her body was not enough to make him forget his impending doom, her next words were.
‘Take me, Mr Drake. Repeatedly. Until dawn.’
‘Consider it done, Miss Strickland.’