For the following week, Raven was glad to get back to his own life. He put his focus where it belonged—on refurbishing his house, keeping his employment—and not on any unreliable debutantes.
He enjoyed his position at Sterling’s. After three years, the red silk wallpaper was as familiar as the color of his own blood.
When Reed Sterling had first offered him a position, Raven had started out as a mere usher, but quickly worked his way up to a croupier. Now, as he prowled through the rooms, he oversaw the tables and the bank, kept the books in order, and took care of patrons’ requests. He also supervised the list runners and made sure the ushers filled the whisky glasses.
It all kept him busy. Far too busy to think about Jane Pickerington. Or to wonder why, after pushing and pushing to find a link between the mark on his arm and the Northcott family, she’d suddenly lost interest.
Not that he cared. In fact, he was glad she hadn’t pestered him once in the past week. She hadn’t sent the translation of the letter like she’d said she would either. That didn’t bother him at all. And, apparently, her copy of Debrett’s was still at the bookbinder’s because she’d sent no word regarding the family name.
More than likely, the absentminded bluestocking had forgotten all about it and had moved on to something new. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened to him. Wouldn’t be the last, he was sure.
Of course, if he were truly interested in knowing, he could always purchase his own copy of the book. It could be good for a laugh, if nothing else.
But, since none of it mattered, regardless, there wasn’t any point in wasting hard-earned money. He put the whole ordeal out of his mind and cracked his neck from one side to the other.
Stopping near the door of the hazard room, he cast an absent glance over the crowd at the green felt table. As usual, gents were shouting and raising fists stuffed with pound notes while sconcelight glanced off their sweaty pates.
He was familiar with most of the men who walked through Sterling’s doors. Knew their names, their secrets and indiscretions. Knew who’d lost their shirts at the tables and who’d begged for a loan from Reed Sterling. London, however, was a big city and he couldn’t know everyone. So, when a stranger walked in, Raven always noticed.
Though, lately, he’d become even more shrewd in his studies. He’d found himself taking careful note of the men in their middle years with gray or grizzled hair, and whether or not they were of a similar height and build to his own. He’d searched faces for resemblances—the shape of the eye, the cut of the chin, anything. And on more than one occasion, he’d caught himself wondering if any of the men had married a French woman who’d once needed an English tutor.
It was madness! And it was all Jane Pickerington’s fault.
So before he acted the fool and started sizing up this crowd, too, he stalked toward the faro tables. He wasn’t going to let one luckless encounter with a little debutante distract him any longer.
“You there, boy,” a man called out as he passed.
Raven felt the hair at his nape stand on end. He knew he was being hailed, but it had been years since anyone had dared call him boy.
Even as a lad it bristled him to hear the condescending sneer that forever accompanied it. But he’d never been cowed by it. He’d always been too proud.
At the orphanage, Mr. Mayhew had beaten him time and again and told him that his arrogance would be his downfall. Devil Devons at the workhouse had told him the same, right before he’d lock the door to the rat cupboard. But Raven, no matter how bloodied afterward, had continued to stand before them, straight-shouldered and staring them directly in the eye.
His competence and assuredness had gained the admiration of his fellow workers. And the majority of the patrons treated him with respect, or kept a wide berth.
Normally, he would turn and stare down any man who thought he was nothing more than muck on a pair of boots. Usually, that was all he needed to do.
But tonight, his temper was rough-edged, like a blade that begged to be sharpened. Deep in his gut roiled the upheaval and uncertainty of the past week, and he knew he wasn’t as self-possessed as he needed to be. So, he decided to ignore the pompous gent’s insult and walk on.
“I say, there . . . boy.”
Raven gritted his teeth but did not turn around. At least, not until the prig clamped a hand on his shoulder. Then he whipped around on a low growl.
The gent’s blue eyes widened with a start. A glare instantly followed, his heavy tawny brow furrowing above a hawklike nose. The man—older by about thirty years—regarded him with the chilly disdain that aristocrats must teach their young from the cradle. “Fetch me a whisky.”
Raven stiffened. Even worse than being called boy, he despised being treated like a dog and asked to fetch the master’s slippers.
Even so, he knew how to be diplomatic. He wouldn’t have gained this position if he hadn’t proved his ability to keep a cool head when dealing with pompous aristocrats. And since he’d never seen this gent in Sterling’s before, he granted him a little leeway. A very little.
Maintaining an inscrutable expression, Raven cleared his throat, preparing to politely inform the gent that all he had to do was give a nod to Tom. After all, the usher was standing only six feet away with a complimentary whisky tray in hand. Any beef-headed buzzard could have discerned as much.
But then the man spoke again.
“Be quick about it and there’ll be a shilling in it for you.”
Raven tried to shrug off the provocation. But, damn it all, this had been a shite week and he’d had enough. The rough edge of his temper sliced through his composure just enough to break the surface. “A whole shilling?”
The man squinted, jaw ticking. “Are you mocking me?”
Raven signaled Tom, offering the gent a mere passing glance. “Of course not. I would have to be of superior birth to condescend to the likes of you. And wouldn’t you know it, seems I’ve forgotten my crown at home.” When Tom approached, Raven reached out and took the whole tray. Then he pushed it toward the gent, all the while knowing that reflex would force any man to take hold. And when he did, Raven flashed a cold grin. “Your whisky, sir.”
He sketched a proper bow and stalked into the faro room.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of it.
A quarter hour later, as he was taking a stack of profits to the safe, he saw that self-entitled arse standing in front of Reed Sterling in the main card room, his beak sniffing with effrontery.
Spotting Raven, the gent pointed with a hard sweep of his arm, the silver buttons on his cuffs winking as they caught the light.
Sterling followed the gesture, his unreadable gaze raking over him. And even though no discernable reaction flickered over the former prizefighter’s famously calm exterior, Raven knew they’d soon be having a chat.
So, at the end of the night and with the accounting ledgers in hand, Raven went to Sterling’s office as usual.
Inside the paneled room, Reed Sterling was standing at the window behind his desk, staring across the street at the white stone town house where he lived with his wife and her uncle.
Raven laid down the ledger on the desk and eyed his employer, taking note of the set of his square jaw. The dark-headed man was an imposing figure, especially when he had his arms crossed over his chest, with the sconcelight silhouetting his form. Years of pugilism had given him broad shoulders, a burly build, and a right hook that could fell a tree.
Without turning around, Sterling said, “I trust that whatever issue you’ve been having with the clientele this week, you’ll remedy by tomorrow.”
Hmm . . . Apparently, this wasn’t the only night he’d unleashed a small portion of irritability on the high-society nobs. But he was tired of looking at gents of a certain age and wondering if any of them had left a child to nearly freeze to death on a cold January night, discarding him like refuse in the gutter.
“Done and over,” he said, but made the mistake of shrugging. The action caused his shirt to catch that blasted scab left over from Ruthersby’s cane—right above the mark—and his words came out sharper than he’d intended.
Sterling turned, a dubious smirk lifting the nick on his upper lip. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with a rumor I heard about a certain man—and one who strangely matches your description—having been involved in a brawl at Moll Dawson’s, would it?”
Sterling had eyes and ears all over the city and nothing ever got past him, so Raven expected this. But that didn’t mean he was willing to talk about it. As far as he was concerned, the less he mentioned about that night, the better. “Perhaps I have a twin in London.”
Sterling’s mouth twitched as he scanned the columns of the ledgers with a deceptively absent air. “I also heard another tale about Duncan Pickerington visiting your flat—as he calls it. Yet his account was so completely absurd that I dismissed it.”
Raven cursed under his breath, his back teeth grinding together.
“I also believe,” Sterling continued conversationally, turning the page, “there was mention of a girl involved.”
Raven stiffened, shoulders ramrod straight. “Pickerington never should have mentioned any of it, especially nothing about her.”
“Why is that?”
Knots of tension rose like hackles down his spine, and Raven didn’t quite understand the sudden anger he felt toward Pickerington. But it was there, nonetheless. “Isn’t it your rule that well-bred women aren’t discussed beneath this roof? At least that’s how it was when you were courting your matchmaker.”
In response, a pair of mismatched irises—one, a solid indigo and the other golden at the corner—lifted from the ledger. A dark brow arched in a clear warning to tread lightly in matters that concerned his wife. “We both know Pickerington, and I’m sure he meant no slight. From what I understand, the girl is his own cousin.”
“Then he should do a fare sight better at protecting his own family, not let them fall into danger. A man keeps what’s his safe and sound.” Raven growled before he thought better of it and saw the keen flash of interest in that gilded eye.
“Made an impression, did she?”
“Nothing of the sort,” he answered tightly, wanting an end to this conversation.
But that didn’t stop his skin from tingling from the unwanted and ever-recurring memory of her taut, fragrant body pressed against him. Bloody hell! He wished he could just forget already.
Fisting his hands, he swallowed and inwardly rued the day he’d ever met the little jam-eating bluestocking.
Sterling closed the book and offered a nod as if that was the end of it.
Raven turned on his heel to leave. But just as he got to the door, Sterling had one more question for him.
“So tell me,” he said with a trace of amusement, “were you actually turned . . . pink?”
Raven was going to kill Pickerington for having such a big mouth.
Looking over his shoulder, and mustering as much pride as he could, he stared pointedly at the budvase on the windowsill. “As pink as that posy you’re taking to Mrs. Sterling.”
* * *
Jane couldn’t let another day pass without sharing her findings with Raven. She just hoped it would be enough to convince the hard-won skeptic. However, if the wax seal hadn’t persuaded him to believe, then she likely had a battle ahead of her.
Peering through the slit between the carriage window drapes, her gaze skimmed over the ramshackle terrace in Covent Garden. She’d expected Raven home by now. According to her watch fob, it was a quarter past three o’clock in the morning.
The news she had for him needed to be delivered in person.
Unfortunately, finding the time had been challenging in between lessons for the children, daily disasters, and social obligations that Ellie refused to let her cancel.
In fact, Ellie was with her now, asleep on the blue velvet bench beside her. Ellie’s aunts, of course, believed they were both still at the Willinghams’ ball with Jane’s parents. And her parents believed that their daughter was spending the evening at Upper Wimpole Street with Ellie and her aunts.
It was the perfect stratagem. Or, at least, it would be if Raven ever showed up.
Jane was ashamed to admit that she’d caught herself wondering—and not for the first time this week—if he’d found a new brothel and was holding and kissing cyprians the way he’d held and kissed her. But of course he was. It was logical to conclude that a man she’d met in a brothel would continue to seek his pleasure in such establishments.
But her stomach refused to agree with her mind. Every time she thought of it, that organ churned with peculiar ferocity. The frequency of this occurrence in the past seven days had compelled her to carry a placket of mint leaves. Their soothing digestive properties had become necessary after the artist on her mental portico started painting a series of scandalous portraits involving Raven and scores of beautiful women.
Reaching for her reticule, she began fishing through it. But the flickering glow from the lamppost dimmed as a form emerged beside the carriage.
She did not jolt in startlement. Even before she turned her head, she knew who it was. Only Raven made her skin contract in an all-over body tingle of gooseflesh. Only he caused her heart to stumble awkwardly out of rhythm as if it just tripped over an artery and collided with the wall of her rib cage.
The queer sensation irritated her all the more as she thought about the lateness of the hour. She wondered if he would reek of women’s perfume. Grumpily, she reached out to unlatch the carriage door, but he instantly took control of it.
Swinging the door open on a growl, he issued a gray-eyed glower. “Isn’t it a bit late for you, Jane? I believe your driver has fallen asleep and this is hardly the place to leave yourself unprotected.”
She sent him a glare of her own. “You only have yourself to blame. I wouldn’t have needed to linger if you’d bothered to come home at an appropriate hour. Where have you been, or dare I even ask?”
“You harp like a fishwife,” Raven muttered under his breath, his voice sharp as an ice pick. “It may surprise you, but there are people who have to earn a wage if they want to eat. They don’t have the luxury of flitting about out of a need to escape boredom, passing time between dinner parties and foolish, reckless escapades.”
At the rumbles of their gathering argument, Ellie stirred with a small mewl of protest, but did not awaken. She merely rolled closer into the corner and pressed her cheek more securely to the bunched-up shawl she was using as a makeshift pillow.
Jane sniffed the perfumeless air surrounding him, marginally mollified. “I was under the impression you did not want me to contact you unless I found something definitive.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, his dark coat pulled taut over the tightly loomed muscles. “I didn’t care if you found anything at all. Like I told you, nothing’s going to change for me. I just find it amusing that your determination to upend a man’s life runs on a schedule.”
“A schedu—” She stopped on a growl. This was not how their encounter was supposed to commence. She wanted to convince him to believe in the possibility, not completely disregard it. “I’ll not allow you to goad me. This is too important.”
He shrugged, then nodded indifferently toward Ellie. “This one of your book-writing friends?”
“Yes,” she said stiffly. “I would introduce you to Elodie Parrish; however, once she decides to fall asleep, the end of the world could not rouse her. Even so, I knew I had to stay until I saw you.”
“Miss me, did you?”
She ignored his mocking tone and turned her attention to her reticule again. Reaching inside, she curled her hand around a scroll, then held it out for him. “I took the letter, applied a restoration technique with the juice of a lemon and uncovered the name written at the bottom. I’ve translated much of the contents as well.”
He slowly unfolded his arms, eyeing the paper as if it were a miniature cannon ready to fire. Taking it in hand, he unrolled the letter, skimming over the contents.
“Arabelle,” he murmured, his gaze fixing on the looped scrawl.
If it were anyone else, Jane would imagine that the bland expression indicated disinterest in the subject, or even boredom. Raven was quite skilled at pretending indifference.
But she knew it meant more to him than he cared to let on. When they’d been in the conservatory, there had been moments when she’d looked into his eyes and had seen something familiar buried deep down in their depths.
It was longing.
She’d seen the same look in the mirror her whole life—that need to belong somewhere, to have her existence matter to someone, and to know that she wasn’t merely an easily discarded byproduct of procreation and nothing more.
“Arabelle Foreaux Northcott, to be exact,” Jane supplied.
She was careful to affect an offhanded tone for the purpose of easing him into the rest of what she would soon reveal. From their brief encounters, she already understood that he tended to retreat when pushed too far and it took a devil of a time to bring him back. Either that, or he attempted to distract her by any means necessary. Even with a kiss.
After many thoughtful hours of mulling over their startlingly passionate osculation, she’d come to the conclusion that he hadn’t actually desired her. No, indeed. His response had been more of a means of self-preservation against a sudden glut of life-altering information.
“As you know,” she continued, “I had intended to research that family name in our copy of Debrett’s. Regrettably, on the very day that it arrived from the bookbinder, another disaster befell it.” Jane shuddered as she recalled the event. “I had just opened it when Theodora came to me, complaining of a sleepy stomach. I soon learned that, when her stomach falls asleep, it decides to regurgitate its entire contents in a rather terrifying spectacle. I’ll spare you the more gruesome details but only say that, by the time I returned to my desk, I discovered that much of the book had been ruined beyond repair. Including the pages regarding the Northcotts. Nevertheless, that did not halt my efforts, for I found—”
“How is your sister?” Raven interrupted.
She blinked at him, surprised by the thoughtful concern softening his tone and features. A kernel of warmth glowed beneath her breast. “Theodora is well now, thank you. Her fever broke by midweek and her stomach is happily awake and enjoying the biscuits that the cook and every maid have been leaving in the nursery for her.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said with a nod.
For reasons beyond her understanding, the tension he’d seemed to have carried with him from Sterling’s dissipated in that same instant. He shifted closer to the carriage, his movements no longer stiff or agitated. It was as though some inner tumult had come to a peaceful conclusion.
Whatever it was, Jane was grateful. His mellower mood eased the worry she felt over what she would reveal next.
“As I was saying,” she continued carefully, “I still managed to discover information on the Northcotts. It happened quite by accident. I was using a map for the children’s lessons when I noticed a tiny hamlet in Hertfordshire of the same name. And from there, my research led me to this.” Reaching across to the opposite bench, she drew the shawl-wrapped book onto her lap. Unwrapping the hefty tome, she handed it to him.
He looked at it, skeptical. “And what is this?”
“The baptismal record from the small chapel.”
“You stole this from a church?”
“Merely borrowed it from an unwitting vestry clerk. I’ll return it before anyone realizes it’s missing,” she said in self-defense. “I’ve marked the page of December 1799 births with a violet ribbon. But take care of the binding. It’s quite brittle.”
“But how did you know the month . . .” He shook his head without bothering to finish the question and drew in a deep breath. “Let’s just see what you’ve found, then.”
His index finger slid along the rough-cut edge to slip in between the pages where the ribbon lay. Then he opened the book with the caution of a man expecting a venomous snake to spring from the margins.
Skimming the handwriting, his eyes settled on a narrow, slanted script about halfway down.
Even though he didn’t read it aloud, she knew what he was seeing. Merrick Northcott, born 1st of December, to Edgar Clay Avendale Northcott, Viscount Northcott, and Arabelle Foreaux Northcott, Viscountess Northcott.
His gaze lingered for a moment, then he simply closed the book and gave it back. Jane waited for his reaction. A skeptical arch of a brow. A blink of amazement. Anything.
But he offered nothing, his gaze as unreadable as ash in an abandoned hearth.
Disappointed and heartsick, Jane looked down at the book and sighed. Had he truly gone so long without hope of finding his family that there wasn’t a single shred of it left?
She didn’t have an answer.
Feeling the throb of a sudden headache, she pressed her fingertips to her temples. Then, without warning, she felt his hand gently cup her cheek, the warmth of it startling on this chilly night. His touch was so comforting that she nestled into the curve of his palm reflexively.
She realized she’d missed him these past seven days. How peculiar. She could number the length of their acquaintance by the hour and yet his touch and his scent were already part of her, like an indelible mark upon her skin.
His thumb trailed the insomnia-bruised flesh beneath her weary eyes. “Have you slept at all this week?”
“Some,” she admitted. “After Theodora felt better, the twins decided to invite an entire family of squirrels into the nursery. It has been a bit chaotic.”
“In addition to the research,” he added with a knowing look, chiding her with a slow shake of his head. “You shouldn’t have been so determined. Especially not on a stranger’s behalf.”
“Well, I’d say that you and I are more like acquaintances. After all, I don’t normally allow strangers to . . .” She let her words trail off, but mouthed in a silent murmur, “. . . kiss me.”
In response, his gaze heated in a sudden flare, simmering to smoke as it rested on her mouth. Her lips tingled under his scrutiny.
As if he knew this and wanted to soothe her, the pad of his thumb skimmed that tender surface, too. “I bought a new book the other day.”
The alteration in topic was unexpected. And yet, no other man could make such a statement sound so intriguing and so wicked at the same time. “What is the title?”
“Can’t recall,” he said mysteriously, stepping closer until his hip brushed her knee and the lamplight seemed to burn in his eyes. “Come upstairs with me and we’ll read it together.”
At once, she knew what he was doing and she covered his hand with her own, drawing it away from her blushing cheek.
“You are such a scoundrel,” she said, but there wasn’t even a hint of scolding in her breathless voice. Temptation, perhaps. But not scolding. “Why is it that whenever we’re talking about your identity, you try to distract me with seduction?”
He flashed an unrepentant grin, and didn’t even bother to deny it. “One is far more interesting than the other.”
She took that as another evasion. After all, she knew his preference for worldly women. Her own thoughts cooled and she focused again on the reason she’d come here.
She thrummed her fingers against the book on her lap. “I wish I had more proof to offer. Unfortunately, I have no other information on Merrick Northcott, yet the lack thereof leads me to speculate over the high probability that you and he are linked in some way.”
The more time she spent thinking about Raven and his peculiar “birthmark,” the firmer her conviction became that he was connected to the Northcott family. And as cruel as it was to consider, he would not have that intricately detailed mark on his shoulder unless someone had put it there in order to claim him as their own.
But was he the child mentioned in the letter? Plausible.
However, without evidence at her disposal, she couldn’t be certain. He might have been a ward, or even an illegitimate child.
“You’re making leaps in logic again,” Raven said, his eyes slowly frosting over.
Drat! Had she gone too far? Perhaps her proclivity to find solutions to puzzles was working against her better intentions.
Scrambling to keep him from retreating altogether, she hastily said, “Then prove me wrong. Help me find Merrick Northcott and this will all be over.”
He shook his head. “You’re too tenacious. You would only find another name, and then another.”
“I won’t,” she said. “I give you my word.”
“No,” he said firmly and took a step back. Then his hand fell on the door, ready to shut out every possibility.
Hope left her on an extinguished sigh.
Carefully, she wrapped the shawl around the book. His gaze followed as she placed it on the bench across from her, a frown knitting his brow. Was he still thinking about the contents of the baptismal record? Considering the possibility?
She couldn’t be certain. But his questioning expression was enough to breathe the last dwindling ember of hope to life again.
Jane quickly thought up a new plan. Perhaps if he saw the little chapel himself and imagined Lord and Lady Northcott standing there with their child, it might sway him toward believing.
“I’ll just return that later this morning after I drop Ellie at home, and then change clothes,” she said plainly, as if she intended to put the matter behind her as well. “The parish in Hertfordshire isn’t too far of a journey, fewer than two hours when the weather is dry. And the roads are quite safe, I’m sure. Well . . . mostly.”
Raven gave her an alert glance, a low growl of warning rumbling deep in his throat. “What do you mean mostly?”
“One can never know if there will be bloodthirsty highwaymen lurking about at dawn, lying in wait for the next unsuspecting carriage driver. From what I understand, criminals tend to use the bleary light of dusk and dawn to their advantage,” she said with a shrug and a nonchalant flip of her fingertips in the air.
His brows arched over his narrowed eyes. “I see what you’re doing, but it won’t work. I’m done with all this. I’m going to go into my house, close the door, and get back to my own life. And you’re going to get back to yours, too.”
As if the matter were settled, he stormed away from her to gruffly wake the driver, then came back, fairly steaming with agitation.
Jane, however, wasn’t agitated at all. She’d heard him speak in this same manner in the brothel when he was determined not to follow her, and again in his bedchamber when he professed to having no curiosity about the mark. A scientist of the human condition would likely interpret this as predictable behavior.
Suddenly, her small ember of hope flared brightly, igniting. “Has anyone ever told you that you have an authoritative tone? In fact, it’s quite . . . aristocratic.”
Apparently, he wasn’t in the mood for her teasing.
He closed the door firmly and glared at her through the glass. “Additionally, I want you to send a messenger to return that book. You’re not to go alone. Don’t you dare smile at me, and stop biting your lip. I mean it, Jane. Send a messenger.”
The carriage shifted as the driver released the brake and called out to the horses. Then she was off with a merry wave to Raven, leaving him to curse epithets into the cold night air.