Beware of Virtuous Women by Kasey Michaels Read Free Book Online Page A

had been murdered—and noticed that the wafer-thin silver marker he kept on the most recent page was no longer there.
    It wasn't anywhere in the drawer. He pushed back his chair and looked down at the floor, then reached down, picked up the thin, hammered-silver piece and stared at it for long moments.
    Had he dropped it over a week ago, before traveling to France? No. His mother had given him the marker, had even had it engraved with his initials, then told him he could use it to "mark the pages of your life, my darling." He was always very careful with the thing.
    Cluny? Could Cluny have been snooping about in the desk drawers? There would be no reason for him to do so. Besides, if Cluny had been at the drawers they'd be a bloody mess, not perfect except for the misplaced marker.
    "More comfortable barefoot, Miss Becket?" he then asked quietly as he looked up at the ceiling, to the bedchamber he knew to be directly above this room. "Or able to move about more stealthily barefoot?"
    In that bedchamber, Eleanor now stood with her back against the closed door, trying to regulate her breathing and heart rate.
    He'd nearly caught her. God, he'd nearly caught her.
    And for what? She hadn't found much of anything, hadn't even known what to look for, when she came right down to it.
    "I wasn't simply snooping," she told herself as she sat down at her dressing table, to see that her face was very pale and her eyes were very wide. "I was being careful."
    But now she realized that the lilt she'd heard in Jack's voice for that one moment had probably come to him courtesy of association with his Irish friend. Nothing nefarious at all. What was the man's name again? Oh yes. Cluny.
    Jack was allowed to have friends, of course. Gentlemen have friends. There was nothing strange in that.
    But so many lives depended on secrecy, on being careful.
    "I will not allow my heart to rule my head," Eleanor told her reflection.
    That resolution made, Eleanor padded over to one of the windows and pushed back the heavy draperies to look out over the mews, as she believed the area was called, and at the few flambeaux and gas streetlamps she could see in the darkness.
    At Becket Hall, there was only night beyond the windows once the sun had gone. Darkness, emptiness. The Marsh on three sides, the shingle beach and Channel on the last. Becket Hall was its own world.
    Here, she was a very small part of very large city. One of untold thousands of people, thousands of buildings.
    How did people live here? How did they exist? For what purpose had they all felt it necessary to jam themselves together cheek by jowl?
    She let the drapery drop back into place and surveyed her chamber. It was a lovely thing, but so was her bedchamber at home. She hadn't traveled to anywhere better; she'd merely come to a different place.
    Would she be accepted?
    Her sister Morgan had seemed to believe that an introduction to Lady Beresford would open many doors, at least enough doors to help Jack insinuate himself further with Phelps and Eccles...and the Earl of Chelf-ham.
    The earl and his young bride. Would the woman know anything, or was she a silly creature whose main concerns were balls and gowns and petty gossip? Would Eleanor like her? If she did, would it pain her conscience to then use the young woman for her own ends? And could she do it in such a way that Jack never suspected what she was doing, then asked why?
    And she might not even get out into society at all, or so Jack had hinted. Because he hoped they would be quickly successful, so that he could have her back at Becket Hall as soon as possible? Was he that anxious to get her gone? Did he think her limp would be a detriment if he took her into society? Had he even noticed the limp? Lord knew he'd never noticed anything else about her in two long years....
    Eleanor pressed a hand to her forehead, feeling the beginnings of the headache.
    Everything had happened so quickly, perhaps too quickly.
    And she was alone here.