Wicked. Shannon Drake
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around him. And yet, at times, it seemed as if he had no common sense whatsoever!
“Dougray’s is ahead,” Ralph said, referring to a pub.
“You do not need a quota of gin!” Camille remonstrated.
“Aye, but I do!” the little man moaned softly.
She sighed. Dougray’s was known as a working class establishment and was of a better repute than many a place both Ralph and Tristan had frequented. The pub was also not averse to serving women, particularly the growing sisterhood within the clerical office force in the country.
Camille always dressed carefully to maintain her station as assistant to Sir John Matthews, associate curator for the burgeoning department of Egyptian Antiquities. Her skirt was a somber gray with a small bustle, and her blouse, with an attractive, tailored look that primly ringed her neck, was in a similar but lighter color. Her cloak was of good quality and appropriate. Once it had belonged to a lady of class who had presumably let it go to the Salvation Army when she had acquired one of more recent style. Skeins of rich sable-brown hair—which Camille considered to be her one beauty—were dutifully pinned atop her head. She wore no jewelry or ornamentation other than the plain gold band that Tristan had found on her mother’s person, and which she had worn ever since—on a chain when she was a child, and now upon her finger.
She didn’t think they were particularly noticed when they entered the pub.
“We’re hiding?” Ralph whispered.
“Please, let’s just move to the back.”
“If you’re trying to be nondescript, Camie, you should be aware that every fellow in this place has turned to look at you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s your eyes,” he told her.
“They are an ordinary brown,” she said impatiently.
“No, lass, they’re gold, pure gold. And sometimes they have a touch of the old Emerald Isle. Quite remarkable. I’m afraid that men do watch you, the proper ones—and them that aren’t so proper!” he said, looking around with a flash of anger.
“I’m not under attack, Ralph. Please, move!”
She quickly urged Ralph into the smoky rear of the establishment, ordering him a gin and herself a cup of tea. “Now,” she commanded, “talk!”
So he did.
“Tristan loves you dearly, child. You know that,” Ralph began.
“As I love him. And I am hardly a child any longer, thank the good Lord!” Camille retorted. “Now tell me, immediately, what mess I must rescue him from this time!”
Ralph muttered into his glass of gin.
“Ralph!” she remonstrated, showing backbone and temper.
“He’s in the hands of the Earl of Carlyle.”
Camille gasped. Of all the things she might have expected, it was not this. And though she didn’t have the story as yet, already she was dismayed.
The Earl of Carlyle was known to be a monster. Not just in his dealings with workmen, servants and society, but in truth. His parents, wealthy beyond comprehension through dual inheritances, had considered themselves scholars, great antiquarians and archeologists. The fervor regarding anything from ancient Egypt had taken root in their hearts, and they had lived their adult lives in Cairo. Their only child had been sent back to England for a proper education and university, but he had joined them immediately after.
Then, according to newspaper reports, the family had fallen victim to a deadly curse. They had discovered the tomb of an ancient priest, filled with precious artifacts. Among those artifacts was a canopic jar containing the heart of the priest’s most beloved concubine. The concubine was supposedly a witch. Naturally, stealing away the canopic jar cast a serious curse upon the family. It was reported that one of the Egyptian diggers began to rant, pointing to the heavens, declaring that the selfishness and cruelty in stealing the heart of another would bring about disaster. The earl and his countess merely laughed at the man, which was a serious mistake, apparently, as they died themselves quite mysteriously—and horrendously—within days.
Their son, the present earl, had been with Her Majesty’s troops, putting down insurrectionists in India at the time. Upon hearing the news, he had gone quite insane in battle and turned the tide in a skirmish in which Her Majesty’s troops had been seriously outnumbered. He had prevailed, but not without injuries so serious that he was hideously scarred. And embittered. And saddled with a family curse, as well, one so dire that, despite the fortune he had inherited, it kept him from seeking a wife during any season in London.
According to rumor, the man was beyond vile. Hideous in face and form, he was as gnarled, blackened and evil as the heart that had come to Carlyle Castle in the canopic jar.
It was said that the relic had then disappeared, and many believed that the heart had become one with that of the now evil Lord of the Castle. He simply hated everyone. A hermit living at his overgrown and massive estate, he prosecuted any trespassers—at least, those he did not shoot—to the utmost degree of the law.
This much, Camille knew. If she hadn’t read about it in the papers, she would have heard the story anyway—embellished she was certain—as it was always a subject of discussion in the Egyptian Antiquities section of the museum.
Ralph didn’t need to say another word for her heart to be filled with dread.
She remained impassive and forced her voice to an even level as she asked Ralph, “Just how did Tristan manage to run afoul of the Earl of Carlyle?”
Ralph finished his gin with a shudder, sat back and looked at Camille. “He had it in him to…well, to waylay a carriage from the north.”
Camille sucked in air, staring at him with dismay. “He meant to rob someone, like an ordinary highwayman? He might have gotten himself shot—or hanged!”
Ralph squirmed uncomfortably. “Well, you see, that wouldn’t have happened. We never got that far.”
Hurt, as well as dismay, suddenly filled her. She had a job now! A perfectly respectable job. Work that filled her with fascination and paid quite decently. She could support the two of them—and Ralph—decently, if not in the lap of luxury, without his resorting to any criminal trickery.
“Pray, tell me, what prevented the two of you from getting your fool selves killed?” she demanded.
He squirmed in the badly upholstered seat once again. “Carlyle Castle,” he said, his eyes downcast.
“Do go on!” she said.
His lashes flickered and he said defensively, “It’s because Tristan does dote on you so, Camie, that he seeks another way to set you up properly in society.”
Camille stared at him, anger growing in her heart, then dissipating. There was simply no way to explain to Ralph that she would never be a part of “society.” Perhaps her father had been a nobleman; perhaps the fellow had even married her mother in some secret ceremony. The ring she had worn had been testament to a man regarding her mother with at least enough affection to invest in a fine piece of jewelry.
The world believed that Camille was the child of a distant relative of Tristan’s, a man knighted for his gallantry in Her Majesty’s Service in the Sudan. But it wasn’t the truth. And there would never be such a thing as a socially prominent marriage, or a season or anything resembling the like. And if she pushed too hard, the truth would be discovered.
The truth was not attractive in the least. Her mother had been a prostitute; she had died in Whitechapel. Once upon a time, she had surely had dreams of a different life. But she had fallen in love and been discarded in London’s East End, disinherited and penniless. Whoever Camille’s father was, he had long disappeared by the time she was nine years old. And Tess Jardinelle died in the same streets she had worked. If Tristan hadn’t come along