Desire Wears Diamonds (37 page)

“Blackwell,” Darius’s voice was calm. “We
don’t need to cover that ground.”

“I understand,” Michael said. “But here,
before you gallop back down the stairs, ransack Sterling’s home and
Ashe ends up hurting himself, you might want this.” Michael reached
in his pocket and held out a leather pouch toward Rowan.

“What is it?” Rowan asked as he took the bag
from Michael’s hand.

“Open it.” Michael sat back down and added
more hot tea to his cup from the steaming pot on the tray.

“My God!” Ashe exclaimed as a diamond the
size of a large plum came to fiery life in the palm of Rowan’s
hand. “Is that…? But how is that…possible?”

Michael added two lumps of sugar to his tea
and milk as he spoke. “I’ve never had much talent with sleight of
hand but I deliberately made sure the church wasn’t well lit, so
that might have helped. I had two leather pouches in my pocket last
night. I showed Sterling the diamond, then appeared to have a
change of heart so I could it back in my pocket.”

“You gave him a different stone?”

Michael nodded. “A lovely hunk of diamond
about the size of a peach pit but terribly flawed, I’m afraid.”
Michael looked up at them all. “It had to be a good size or he
would have questioned it.”

“You didn’t give him the diamond?” Ashe
repeated the question uselessly as he sat down in shock near the
fireplace. “Why not tell me your intentions? Last night, you had
every chance but you allowed me to believe the worst!”

“I had no choice,” Michael confessed. “At
any second, Sterling was going to be within earshot and one word to
the contrary would have foiled everything.”

“He wasn’t in earshot when we spoke at the
sports club or…you could have told us, Rutherford!” Rowan
protested. “We’d have kept your secrets without risking your
neck!”

Michael hesitated. “I needed Sterling to
believe that he had me. I never knew exactly when things were going
to come into play and I needed your reactions to be genuine and
natural. If we appeared cozy or if there were signs of your
support, he’d have become suspicious.”

“Damn it!” Ashe ran a hand through his hair.
“I’m a bit ashamed to realize my natural reaction was to behave
like an ass.”

“None of us have behaved well,” Galen added.
“For that, we’re truly sorry, Michael.”

“Wait,” Josiah spoke up. “What about
Sterling? Aren’t we in the same bind again? Once he finds out that
Michael didn’t give him the right diamond, he’s bound to be
furious.”

“He won’t ever bother us again.” Michael
finished his tea and set the cup down. “I made sure of it.”

“You made sure of it?” Galen asked. “What
did you do, Michael?”

“Sterling borrowed money to finance his
schemes and the promise of that diamond was his only collateral. He
admitted more than he meant to about the pressure he was under and
that he had his own deadline to meet.” Michael leaned back in the
chair as his friends began to settle into their own seats to hear
the tale. “In fact, I think he meant to meet them after the
exchange to deliver the gem into their hands.”

“There’s an awkward moment,” Rowan
noted.

“Exactly,” Michael agreed. “Because once
Sterling hands over that common rock to men who have waited
impatiently for years for a stone without equal, they’ll call in
their debts and it won’t be taken in coin. Sterling is gone, as
surely as the sun rises, his body will never be recovered.” A small
ball of ice formed in his stomach as he spoke aware that he’d
literally arranged for Sterling’s demise and while he hadn’t
dirtied his own hands he knew it wouldn’t make a difference to
Grace.

“How do you know this? If he looked at it
before his own meeting… How can you be so sure he won’t double-back
and demand the real treasure?”

“For several reasons. If he’d looked in the
bag and discovered the switch, his rage would have brought him
immediately to my door. It was a long sleepless night waiting but
he never came.” Michael ran a hand through his hair.

“And the men holding the Jackal’s leash?
Won’t they think to come after us?” Darius asked.

“I don’t expect them to. Yesterday, I had
two notes delivered by courier in the city. I wrote an anonymous
note to the secondary buyer he was lining up for the diamond
warning them that Sterling was a con artist. The prince’s mistress,
Miss Pierre, wouldn’t have taken the news lightly considering she’d
already given him an advance payment. I told her that she was being
swindled, that the East India Trading Company was being cheated and
that if she received word of the diamond’s availability, it would
be a ruse. They won’t be able to ignore her complaints.”

“And the other note?”

“A bit riskier but I didn’t want to leave
any avenues open. I wrote to Lord Waverly via my lawyer that a
certain man in his employ had been harassing me for some time now
about imaginary treasures and demonic diamonds. I told him that I’d
met Mr. Porter once in India while he was mumbling about mystic
gems and that I had made a crude joke about possessing a treasure
that I hide in my piss pot. Mr. Porter must have misunderstood me.
I told Lord Waverly that as a simple soldier with a small pension,
I would appreciate it if he would ask Mr. Sterling Porter to stop
haranguing me or perhaps escort his man to an asylum.”

“It’s too ridiculous!”

“Exactly,” Michael agreed. “Between their
own doubts, Sterling’s bluster, and my blatant misrepresentation of
the facts, they will never ever look in the Jaded’s direction
again, god willing.”

“When have the gods ever been willing?”
Josiah asked.

“When the right hands have the diamond and
have arranged to keep it safe. Prophecy respected, right, D?” Ashe
teased with a wry grin.

“Not necessarily. You are all forgetting
that extremely interested third party. The one who set fire to the
Thistle and haunted every jewel cutter from London to Edinburgh,”
Darius replied. “If they believe that Michael gave Sterling and the
East India what they were after, then we may be in even more danger
than ever before.”

Michael raised his hand. “No. I met one of
their assassins accidentally after he tried to kill me and…”
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “I invited him to meet me after
midnight, after Sterling had left.”

Shock in the room was almost universal.
“You—
invited
a would-be assassin to meet you in a dark
secluded location after midnight? Just in case, Sterling didn’t
kill you?” Ashe asked.

Michael smiled. “I wanted him to see that I
still had the diamond; that it was still in my hands. He seemed
satisfied with my vow to protect it with my life.”

“My god, we’re finally safe and out of it,”
Darius whispered. “Thanks to Rutherford!”

“The Jaded are safe,” Michael stated flatly.
“And my oath is fulfilled to Ashe to see to Sterling Porter. There
is no way that Sterling survived to see the sun rise and if he did,
then it’s to beg for a quick end. The Jackal is finished and by the
hands of the devils he served.”

“But not your hands?” Grace asked from the
top step where she stood frozen. “What do they call it when you
watch someone walk to their doom and say nothing?”

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Grace.”

“Who are these men?” she asked and stepped
forward, her face pale. “Who are these men who all seem so calm and
pleased to discuss my brother’s demise, magical diamonds and
jackals?”

Every man abruptly came to his feet and
Michael knew every single one of them was wishing he was somewhere
else…including himself.

Michael took one slow breath. “Gentlemen, I
believe you haven’t yet met my wife. Grace, these are my good
friends—whose names escape me at the moment only because…I fear I
might…be suffering a stroke.”

In his worst nightmares, he was always on
his knees initiating a confession to a very horrified Grace who was
sobbing and unable to look at him. But in that nightmare, they had
always been very much alone.

No, this is definitely worse.

None of the Jaded had recovered to speak yet
and the delay was only a few heartbeats but to Michael it was an
eternity falling away from his hands. He expected her to flee in
tears, find Mrs. Clay and force him to begin a very long uphill
siege. But once again, Grace’s approach to her world had nothing to
do with anyone’s expectations.

“Eavesdropping,” she began as she climbed
the last step, “is a terrible thing and in books, I always found it
a weak literary device for revealing someone’s true nature. I
always thought that if a person truly
knew
someone, they
would hardly need to be reduced to standing on stair landings to
realize that—“ her voice broke and her eyes filled with unshed
tears. “To realize that the man you love has married you only as
part of some…twisted plot.”

Ashe cleared his throat. “Madam, I grant you
that circumstances are beyond strange but it’s—“

Darius put a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps
we should go and leave Michael to explain things more clearly.”

Grace folded her arms defiantly, apparently
aware that she was in fact, blocking the only exit from the room as
she stood squarely at the top of the stairs bottling them in.
“Explanations are not part of my husband’s skills,” she said. “But
how lucky for me to have the company of so many well-informed men.
My brother—“ Grace took a moment to steady her nerves. “My brother
was unkind and often cruel but I never remember any word of a
diamond. He did not speak of his time in India but I know he had
vast hopes of advancing himself. He was ambitious and…”

“Grace,” Michael began carefully. “He was
more than ambitious. But we never sought him out. We’re no gang of
thugs. We were simply men who crossed his path once. Fate makes odd
enemies sometimes and your brother was never willing to accept that
he was alone in his quest for wealth and power. We never meant to
interfere with his schemes. And if there had been any chance of him
relenting and leaving us alone, all of us would have preferred it.
I would have preferred it.”

“Did you kill him, Michael?” she asked in a
fearful whisper.

Michael shook his head slowly but he owed
her the truth. He loved her too much to keep any more secrets. “I
didn’t but I knew he would be killed by others for his debts and
lies and I did nothing to stop it.”

She gasped and this time, Michael was sure
she would run but the rapid rhythm of a new set of footsteps
pounding up the stairs interrupted the scene. Tally slipped past
her, his face set as he ignored everyone in the room but Michael to
hand over a folded note. Michael took it from him but didn’t open
it. He held it out to Rowan. “It’s addressed to you, Dr. West.”

“Gayle’s handwriting,” Rowan opened the
paper and read it immediately. Only Michael was close enough to
realize that his breathing changed and that something very serious
was underway. Rowan looked up at Ashe. “It’s Caroline. Gayle sends
word that she’s in labor. It’s time.”

“It’s too soon,” Ashe said in a hoarse
whisper. “Weeks yet, God’s mercy!”

Rowan gripped him by the shoulders and
forced him to look into his eyes. “All will be well, Ashe. But I
need to leave now to attend her as quickly as I can.”

“
We
will all go,” Galen amended.
“Blackwell cannot await the babe’s arrival alone.” The unspoken
message was clear.
Ashe can’t do this alone and if it ends
badly, it would take all of them to prevent him from harming
himself to follow his beloved Caroline to her grave.

“Let’s go then!”

“Ashe and Josiah are with me,” Rowan calmly
announced. “We’ll see you at the house.”

Michael stepped aside, agonized to be left
behind but he couldn’t see abandoning Grace, not when they had so
much yet to say to each other. Grace deserved an opportunity to
storm and rage and Michael wouldn’t rob her of it.

But once again, the Jaded intervened.

“My name is Galen Hawke.” Galen stepped
forward to take Grace’s arm, as if they’d decided to head out for a
stroll in a park. “Come on, Mrs. Rutherford! You two can fight in
the carriage.”

“But, I—“

“You are one of us, by marriage, and as
you’ll soon learn, this is a circle that one does not simply step
away from without very good cause,” Galen explained as he propelled
her quickly and carefully down the stairs. “Rowan is an excellent
physician and we’ll have to hurry but I feel compelled to say that
your brother was the worst kind of man and while death gives many
villains a certain saint-like aura, I fail to see it. Besides,
if
he’s dead, it’s through his own stupidity and criminal
actions, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Sterling…was hardly a criminal! He
was…ruthless but…”

Michael was right behind them. “Lord
Winters, I don’t see how this is helping.”

Galen ignored him. “The Jaded are cursed
with misunderstandings early in our relationships, Mrs. Rutherford.
I’m sure you’ll sort Rutherford out but for the moment, we must
attend to Ashe and offer him our compassion and prayers.”

“The Jaded? I’m sorry, which of you is
Ashe?”

Galen pointed. “That gentleman vaulting past
Dr. Rowan West’s waiting carriage there. The one who just
commandeered that hackney and is even now shoving the driver aside.
He is also probably about to whip those poor horses into a
ridiculous and death-defying gallop through the streets of
London…”

The hackney cab pulled away with a lurch and
Grace’s breath caught in her throat at the reckless speed of it. “I
see. He is the father-to-be I take it?”

“Theo!” Rowan called up to his driver as he
helped Josiah up into his carriage. “We’re off to Blackwell’s, as
quick as you can, please.”

Theo nodded, “Guessed as much!” As soon as
Rowan’s feet left the pavement, Theo snapped his whip. “Off
then!”