Page 36 of Who’s That Earl

He had the grace to laugh again, though once more a shadow flickered across his eyes. He did not seem to relish hearing his title bandied about, as other men did. “If I’m wrong, then Robin Ratliff must have had some verra disappointed readers.”

He was teasing her, of course. Nevertheless, the words cut uncomfortably close. “A few, over the years.”

It was his turn to inspect her, though his gaze stayed focused on her face. “Your parents among them, I ken. You said your mother found something of yours, something that distressed her. Something you’d written, I take it?”

Jane nodded. “Left to her own devices, she would, I think, have found it in her heart to forgive me. But Papa—” The memory burst from the place where she’d hidden it away, as swift and dangerous as a bullet from a gun. The crackle of paper as Papa shook the dreadful proof of her sins in her face. The little globule of spittle that formed in the corner of his mouth as he spewed his wrath. Tears streaming down Mama’s cheeks all the while. The billow of smoke as her precious manuscript hit the drawing room fire. “My father disapproved—disapproves, I daresay—of anything that smacks of fancy. Novels most of all.”

The flash in Thomas’s eyes caught her off guard. Had anyone ever been angry on her behalf? His chest rose and fell on a breath drawn sharply in through his nostrils and then slowly exhaled, though she could not see that it calmed him at all. “So he—”

“Burned it.” She spoke across him before slipping out from beneath his glower to sit on the awful sofa. “In his defense, it was a rather shocking bit of prose. Fortunately, I kept another copy hidden under a loose floorboard in my room. When I reached London, the first publisher I spoke with told me it ought to have stayed on the ash heap. Such a scene could not possibly be included in any book that was meant to be purchased by circulating libraries.”

“And you passed that advice on to Robin Ratliff, did you?” He pushed himself away from the desk and came to join her, settling into the leather chair as if it had been made for him.

It was her turn to laugh, a trifle wryly. “I did. But Robin Ratliff opted not to take it. Fortunately, Persephone Press paid well for the book, all the same.”

With a nod, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Are there others who have been...troubled by your work? Not just ordinary critics. How many letters...?”

She glanced toward the desk. “Like that one? None. I’ve never—” Further words caught in her throat as he rose and retrieved the parchment, then returned to the chair and held it in front of him. She wanted it to swat it from his grip before its poison seeped into his fingertips. “I suppose,” she managed, “over the years, there have been a score of good folks who’ve written to me or to Mr. Canfield to complain that my novels were frivolous trash or that their daughters were useless while under a particular book’s spell. I’d never read one that truly troubled me until yesterday. And until tonight, I’ve never felt...afraid.”

“One can’t help but be alarmed at the sight of something like this,” he said matter-of-factly. He turned the paper this way and that, so that the firelight caught the raised edges of the many jagged lines of type, ripped from their proper places and glued together to create something new and altogether terrible. “The one who wrote this wanted to frighten you as much with the form of the letter as with the words themselves. The apparent madness required to create such a thing, the attempt to remain utterly anonymous...it chills the blood. Quite deliberately.”

It was, she supposed, some comfort to know her reaction had been neither unexpected nor overdramatic. “But that’s not all,” she insisted. “Turn it over. Look at the direction. Robin Ratliff has never received a single piece of post at Dunnock Castle. But this p-person knows th-that he—I mean, I—”

With his free hand, Thomas caught hers in a firm, reassuring grip. His fingers were warm—or rather, hers were as cold as ice, though she hadn’t realized it until that moment. “He knows less that he thinks he does. For one thing, he believes himself to be addressing a man, not Jane Quayle.”

“And if he comes bursting through that door,” she demanded, glancing over her shoulder, “will it matter?”

He squeezed her fingers until she returned her gaze to him. “It might.”

Of course, she’d wanted him to say yes, to insist that she was perfectly safe. And yet, there was a comfort in his honesty, something that made her willing to trust him despite the secrets he’d kept.

“You said ‘attempt’—that this sort of a letter was an attempt to remain anonymous. Does that mean the attempt might fail?”

As he studied the document once more, he lifted one shoulder, twisted his neck as if to stretch it. But he never let go of her hand. “You must understand that others are far better at this than I. It requires an eye for detail.” He underlined a string of words with his thumbnail. “See the shape of the letters, the little break in the top of the o? That will have come from a specific press. The idea is to determine which papers and magazines were used, in order to narrow down the suspect’s location. If the newsprint matches the London Times, we haven’t much to go on, but if it’s the Bristol Mercury or the Edinburgh Gazette, we’ve got at least some idea of the part of the country it was sent from.”

But she wasn’t looking at the letter. She was looking once more at him, remembering what he’d said about certain valuable skills he’d acquired in the military. Surely, the ability to identify obscure newsprint wasn’t often required of ordinary soldiers.

If, on the other hand, one had spent the last seven years or more doing something extraordinary...

“What was it you said you did in the army? Beachcombing, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t think that would involve decoding many cryptic letters…”

The paper in his hand crinkled ominously, but he did not actually crumple it in his fist, as she’d feared he might. He was looking neither at the letter nor at her, but at the floor. “We’ll both be better off if I don’t answer that question. At least, not now. Every soldier’s work is dangerous, but the more I reveal about mine, the less likely it is I’ll ever be able to return to it. And surely”—he turned to her and smiled, though it did not reach his eyes—“you don’t want me stuck at Dunnock forever?”

He didn’t intend to stay in Balisaig? He wanted to return to the army?

She tried to tell herself this was good news. She would not be turned out of another home. But having lived here for years, she knew how desperately Dunnock and Balisaig needed better management. Leadership. And in truth—though it was not an entirely comfortable realization—she still cared enough for him that she would rather know he was here than putting himself in danger on the other side of the world.

“Of course not,” she managed to agree, forcing lightness into her voice. “Even in a sprawling castle, Lord Magnus would surely run athwart Robin Ratliff now and again.”

His answering laugh was derisive, humorless. He brushed his thumb across her knuckles, squeezed her fingertips, and then released her hand, which had only just begun to feel warm. “Don’t. Please.”

“Don’t call you by your title? But you’re the earl.”

Those words sent him to his feet, his gaze focused on the door to the stairwell, which he had not closed. “I’m the son of a Glasgow schoolmaster and the simple Highlands lass he met on a walking tour. More important, I’m a lieutenant in His Majesty’s army. I canna…”

The unfinished sentence hung on the air between them.

“You cannot?” she asked finally. “Or will not?”