The Earl With the Secret Tattoo

When Lady Eleanor Gibbs cracked open a random bedchamber door at the mansion on Grosvenor
Square and saw a tattoo on the partially exposed shoulder of the man kissing her stepsister,
her entire world tilted.

Heroes don’t exist, after all,
was her first outrageous thought.

From out in the corridor, she shut the bedchamber door so softly, she was sure neither
clandestine lover inside heard the muffled click. Everything in her wanted to lean
on that door and slump down its polished mahogany surface until she was sitting on
the floor. She wanted to brood. To cry. To raise her fist and shout at the universe
that she so obviously didn’t comprehend.

Instead, she threw her shoulders back and had her second thought, this one even more
outrageous:
I’ve wasted the past five years pining after Lord Tumbridge?

The scoundrel earl?

She despised the man.

Despised!

And look at what he was doing now. Ruining something yet again—a wedding, for goodness’
sake. A wedding that would solve everything she’d worried about for her stepsister
Clare, who’d become as self-important and superior as her father, Lord Pritchard,
and Eleanor’s own mother.

Once you make a decision, don’t be halfhearted about it,
Papa—the late Lord Kersey—had told her long ago when she’d been afraid to cross the
bubbling creek at their country property to meet him on the other side. She’d been
eight, barefooted, nervous, and shy.

Now she remembered that creek when she watched her own hand grasp the doorknob and
throw open the door.
“Stop,”
she ordered the kissing couple in a voice that even she thought carried some heft.

They pulled apart and stared at her, the Earl of Tumbridge lofting a brow in recognition.

Oh, yes, it is I,
she told him with her eyes.
Probably the only woman in the world who’s immune to your charms.

Or so she’d thought. Until now, she’d never made the connection between the wastrel
lord and the mysterious tattooed man who’d held her in thrall all these years. But
she saw in the glow of the candelabra that Lord Tumbridge had the same strong chin
and bold gaze.

The same insouciance.

And then she registered the blue, narrowed eyes of her stepsister Lady Clare Donovan,
the wretched bride-to-be.

“Go
away,
Eleanor,” Clare said with feeling.

Which was highly unusual. Eleanor didn’t think Clare
had
feelings anymore.

“Shut the door,” the earl said next, and removed his hands from Clare’s curvaceous
backside.

“You two should be ashamed of yourselves.” Eleanor heard the tremble in her voice.
She wasn’t used to standing up to genuine flesh-and-blood people. She preferred her
characters do that for her in her stories.

“Shut the door, Lady Eleanor,” the earl said in weary tones, and stood back from Clare.

“Please.”

Eleanor had assumed—wrongly—that her tattooed hero would show an alert interest in
the world, not a jaded resignation.

“You always manage to look and sound bored,” she said thickly, recalling the one,
painful waltz she’d shared with him in which she’d somehow found his arms around her
exciting, despite their differences. “It’s vastly rude, especially when you’re here
wreaking havoc with one of the guests of honor at the ball—who happens to be a member
of my own family.” She turned to Clare. “What will Mama and Lord Pritchard think?”

“Please stop talking, Eleanor,” Clare said in warm, lush tones—

To the earl.

“Look at
me,
Clare.” Beneath her simple ivory tulle bodice, Eleanor’s heart pounded so hard, she
almost couldn’t breathe.

Reluctantly, her stepsister’s head swiveled to meet her gaze. “What is it?”

“You shouldn’t kiss a man who’s clearly not your fiancé.” Stating the obvious brought
Eleanor no satisfaction.

Nor did it Clare. She wore a gorgeous pout.

“Fine.” Lord Tumbridge left Clare and strode past Eleanor, leaving heat in his wake.
“
I’ll
shut the door.”

When he pulled the massive wooden barrier closed, at once the strains of the waltz
in the ballroom became distant and the room, cozy.
Too
cozy. Eleanor blushed to think what she’d interrupted.

“It’s none of your business what we’re doing in here.” Clare apparently read her mind.

“Now
leave
.”

Eleanor pointed to the closed door. “You leave, both of you. Separately, of course,
before Viscount Henly sees you.” The thought of Clare’s fiancé almost brought tears
to her eyes. “How could you, Clare? He’s so sweet. He
loves
you.”

Clare swished over to her in her elegant pink satin, her patrician nose an inch from
Eleanor’s own snub one. “If you don’t leave right now,” she whispered in menacing
tones, “I’m going to tell the Palmers to rescind your invitation to their house party.”

“So?” Eleanor tilted her chin up, but inside she was unnerved. The Palmers were like
her—bookish, in love with writing, and perfectly content to let her sit by their fishing
pond and scribble all day if she’d like, rather than flirt and ride and make small
talk. She adored them, and seeing them would be the highlight of her summer. She shrugged.
“I like London in early summer. I’ll be perfectly content here.”

“That’s so like you.” Her stepsister shook her head. “Why do you even care about the
viscount? Do you love him? Perhaps you’re jealous.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Eleanor sighed. “He’s
kind,
and this is your first engagement ball. He’s out there right now, beaming, he’s so
proud to become your husband. And you—”

She gulped, unable to finish the sentence.

Clare crossed her arms over her voluptuous bosom. “It’s your own fault for barging
in.”

“I was only looking for a place to retreat for a moment.” She had a new story idea,
and she wanted to find a quill and paper to write it down.

But the details of that story escaped her when she peeked at the earl and saw him
sitting in an armchair facing their direction. While she and Clare had been talking,
he’d lit a cheroot from a lamp and was puffing away, his smoky gray eyes on hers.

“How can you simply sit there and act so uncaring?” Eleanor demanded to know.

He shrugged. “If I’m going to be trapped in here—”

“No one
trapped
you,” she dared reply. “I seem to remember asking you both to leave separately.”

“I suppose you did.” He blew out a jet of smoke. “But the best idea is for you two
to leave together. I’ll stay in here a few minutes more, and then I’ll slip out the
front door. No one will be the wiser.”

“Please. You can’t leave the ball,” Clare begged him.

Begged
.

Eleanor couldn’t believe it.

“You’ve been in here too long already,” the earl told Clare. “You should go.”

“Not with
her
.” Clare lifted a disdainful shoulder at Eleanor.

Which hurt, of course. There’d been a time when they’d been friends. But Eleanor merely
folded her arms. “I can’t go first. Because then you two would be in here together
again. Alone.” She hoped she came across as stubborn as Clare could be.

“All right.” Clare rolled her eyes, and Eleanor couldn’t help but be elated at her
surrender. “I’ll go first. And then, Eleanor”—she gazed at her with intense pique—“you
follow one minute later. No more and no less. I don’t want you to catch up with me.”

“Very well.” Eleanor didn’t want to walk with her, either.

“And I also don’t want you to linger here,” Clare added.

“Why?” Eleanor was rapidly getting a headache.

Clare smoothed down her bodice. “I don’t trust you with the earl.”

“Me?”
Eleanor heard a chuckle from the chair, and she turned to look at Lord Tumbridge,
feeling absurdly insulted. “See?” She sent him a cool stare. “Even he thinks you’re
mad.”

“You
are
being a tad possessive, Clare,” the earl murmured—as if he had any sort of permission
to address her in a familiar fashion.

Eleanor bristled while her blond beauty of a stepsister spun around to face Lord Tumbridge.
“I don’t for a minute think you and she would suit that way—Elly’s as prudish as they
come—but if anyone discovered you together alone, you’d have to marry her.”

“You’re right,” Eleanor said with a wince. “Hurry and leave, Clare. Exactly sixty
seconds later, I’ll follow behind.” She paused. “Make that fifty seconds.”

“All right.” Clare sulked, but when she looked back at Lord Tumbridge from the door,
her expression softened. “Soon,” she whispered. “I’ll look for a note from you.”

He stood. “Too busy for that, I’m afraid.”

The blackguard,
Eleanor thought, and tried not to note how manly and handsome he appeared in his
evening dress.

“Perhaps I’ll see you at the Morton masquerade,” he concluded.

Clare, the foolish child, giggled. “I’ll have to send
you
a note to let you know what costume I’m wearing.”

A fresh surge of fury in Viscount Henly’s behalf made Eleanor bold. “You two are shameless.”

“And you’re not?” Clare said. “I heard about what you did with Baron Easley.”

Eleanor let out a soft gasp. “
Did
with him? But I don’t even
know
Baron Easley.”

She dreaded to think that Lord Tumbridge might be imagining her and the baron together
in a wild seduction scene similar to his and Clare’s. She tossed him a glance. Heavens,
he
was
imagining her and the baron—either that, or enjoying her discomfiture. One side of
his mouth was tipped up, and there was an enigmatic gleam in his eye that sent her
heart racing—with indignation, of course.

“Clare, you wouldn’t go that far,” Eleanor persuaded her. “Surely not.”

For a split second, her stepsister’s eyes clouded, but then she tapped Eleanor’s chest
with a sharp-nailed finger. “I’ve already got all sorts of deliciously bawdy stories
invented in my head about you and the baron. I suggest you not say a word about what
you saw today if you don’t want rumors about you two lovebirds spread about. Lord
Andrew definitely won’t come up to scratch then.”

Oh, dear. Clare was full of herself—possibly too far gone—and her kissing session
with the earl hadn’t helped matters.

Eleanor opened her mouth to tell her stepsister that she wasn’t sure she even wanted
to marry Lord Andrew—he was scholarly, yes, but he had a rude habit of finishing her
sentences for her and acting like a big baby when he didn’t get his tea served with
exactly two scant spoons of sugar—but Clare shut the door before she could speak,
leaving Eleanor and the earl alone.

“Forty-eight seconds.” He appeared far less bored with Clare gone.

Eleanor’s heart gave a lurch of recognition: she could see the merest glimpse of the
hero in his eyes, sense the supple energy of the hero in the way he flung out his
arm to tap the cheroot into a small porcelain dish on a nearby shelf.

But, no,
she reminded herself. A hero he was not. Here he’d been ravishing her stepsister
not five minutes before.

“I can’t believe you are he.” She began to pace.

“Who?”

She stopped. “The masked man who saved Clare and me and the Sherwood siblings five
years ago from a pack of robbers.”

He rubbed his jaw. “What makes you think that?”

“Please. There’s a distinctive tattoo on the small of your back.”
Your very tanned, muscled shoulder,
she couldn’t help thinking. “Clare had her fingers caught up in your shirt, and I
saw, sirrah. I
saw
. So don’t try to pretend you’re not he.” She stared at him, still incredulous. “I
had thought him an angel rescuer. But you, my lord, are the devil incarnate. I feel
tricked on a cosmic scale.”

“Twenty-five seconds,” he said.

She gave an exasperated sigh. “Is that all you have to say for yourself after what
you’ve done today? Which is really only the culmination of several grievances I’ve
cataloged against you, the primary one being your supreme arrogance.”

He rose quickly and silently to his feet and placed his hands on her shoulders.

At his touch, Eleanor’s heart began to thump even harder.

His gaze was on the door. “Get behind the drapes.” His tone was soft, commanding.
“Someone’s coming.”

“No,
you
.” She backed away from him. “I’ll pretend I’m here alone if someone comes in.”

“Too late.” He angled his head at the smoking stick in the dish.

“Dash it all.” She scurried behind the royal blue velvet curtain.

The door swung open a second later. She bit her lip and prayed no one could see her
slippers or the outline of her form.

“Oh, hello, Tumbridge.” It was Lord Andrew. “Have you seen Lady Eleanor Gibbs? Someone
said she was walking down this corridor some minutes ago. I wanted to escort her into
supper.”

“No, I’m afraid not,” said the earl. She could tell he’d seated himself in the same
armchair again. “Perhaps she’s gone back already.”

“All right, then.” Lord Andrew didn’t sound a bit frustrated. He never exhibited any
unpleasant feelings—unless his tea was all wrong, of course. But other than that,
he never did.

Eleanor was anxious to hear the closing of the door next. But instead, she heard the
sound of a body plopping into a chair.

“So what brings you here alone?” Andrew asked the earl in a friendly manner.

Eleanor restrained a sigh.

“I needed to get away from the damned noise,” said Lord Tumbridge. “Care for a smoke?”

“Thanks, don’t mind if I do.”

In her head, Eleanor cursed a blue streak, almost all her annoyance directed at Lord
Tumbridge for luring Lord Andrew to stay. A tad of it went to Lord Andrew, as well.
He was all too easily abandoning his mission to find her.