The Earl With the Secret Tattoo Read Online Free PDF Page B

Patrick.
    “Yes,” continued Reeves, “that one was an out-and-out bounder.”
    “I know,” said James. “But Lady Eleanor recently found out through Hawthorne’s sister
     that I’m the one who steered him in that direction. She said she’d have thought nothing
     of it except that I also ruined her chances for a governess position in Yorkshire
     six months ago.”
    Stubing slapped a floury palm to his forehead. “Just what we need. How’d she figure
     that out?”
    “She wouldn’t accept the estate owner’s letter telling her he’d changed his mind about
     employing her,” James said. “She wrote the housekeeper, who told her that her master
     was dissuaded from hiring her by a talkative henchman who couldn’t handle their potent
     Yorkshire beer and told her he’d been hired by me. Said henchman has since discovered—with
     my help—that he’s better off in America.”
    “And what if Lord Pritchard knows you arranged for her to lose that job?” asked Reeves.
    “He might,” said James. “But I doubt it. Lady Eleanor wouldn’t tattle to a man she
     despises, and he doesn’t care enough. Even if he did, I’d tell him I did it as a favor
     to him to protect his stepdaughter. The baron in Yorkshire was an unfit employer,
     a seducer of governesses. How angry can Pritchard be with me about that? He’ll look
     cold-blooded if he is, and that’s the last thing he wants to appear.”
    “Understood,” said Stubing, “but as for Wells, we’ve got nothing on him but that’s
     he’s a bit lacking in social polish and has an excessive amount of pride.” He eyed
     James balefully.
    “You shouldn’t have interfered last night. Lord Kersey said protect her, but he didn’t
     mean suffocate her. She’s an intelligent young woman. She’d have figured out Wells
     on her own.”
    “I know. I took it too far.” James said nothing else. What could he say? That he was
     in love with her? He didn’t even want to admit it to himself, much less anyone else.
    “You don’t want her with anyone, do you?” asked Reeves without a trace of his usual
     disparaging tone.
    Ah, the truth always came out, sooner or later, with or without help. Which sometimes
     made James’s occupation as a expediter of truth feel redundant to him—even hypocritical,
     because he had to hide his true identity to bring those truths to light.
    “No,” he admitted to his friends in a low voice. “I don’t want her with anyone else.”
    He fell in love with her during the one waltz they’d shared—the one in which she’d
     upbraided him for interfering with her goal to become a governess in Yorkshire. During
     that dance, he’d been everything she expected him to be: aloof, rude. He’d refused
     to explain his actions in Yorkshire, and she’d been properly angry.
    But the spark in her eyes had mesmerized him; her spirit had awakened something in
     him he’d no idea he possessed: a sense of longing—
    For home.
    For someone who really knew and understood him.
    By the end of the waltz, he realized it wasn’t just any bright, strong, and kind woman
     he longed to look favorably upon him—to love him—rather than scorn him.
    There was only one woman whose heart he longed to possess, and that was Eleanor.
    From the first time he’d seen her as a young girl, she intrigued him. But until that
     moment in the ballroom, she’d always been just that—a girl. Not a woman. Above all,
     she’d been an obligation, one he’d undertaken willingly and with a heart dedicated
     to his mentor’s memory.
    But after a few spins about the dance floor and a softly delivered but spirited tirade—an
     entirely reasonable one, if one considered the matter from her point of view—she’d
     become something precious to him, all on her own.
    Something precious he couldn’t have.
    “It’s a bit dicey,” he said, “but I’ll not let any personal feelings get in my way.
     Trust me.”
    “But if you love her the way I love my Mary,”