Page 16 of An Unexpected Earl

“Wonderful,” Pearce drawled sardonically. “Just the heir I need.”

Clayton shot him a hard look, one that had made subordinate officers and infantrymen quake in their boots during the wars. The same look that now brought quickly into line the men who worked beneath him at the Home Office. “Howard’s the link we’ve been hunting for,” he said with absolute certainty. “He might not have had a direct hand in the murders, but I’d bet a box of the finest American cigars that Fribourg & Treyer sells that he’s working for Scepter.”

Dread seeped through Pearce. He didn’t give a damn about turnpikes and land development. But if Howard was involved with Scepter, then Amelia was in danger, and he would still do anything he could to protect her.

He drawled out his agreement. “It seems I’ll be calling on Howard in the morning, then.”

And on his sister.

He set down his glass, picked up his coat, and left.

For once, nighttime London was quiet as he made his way from Mayfair to Wapping in the hackney he’d hired, having sent his own town coach home. How he preferred to spend restless nights like this wasn’t the business of his coachman, and his own personal safety wasn’t a concern. After all, God help the footpad who attempted to rob him when he was in a mood like this.

Sweet Jesus…Amelia Howard. Apparently a lot more had transpired in the past twelve years than he’d been aware of to bring a sweet girl like her to an event like Torrington’s.

But then, hadn’t everything changed for him as well?

That night of her sixteenth birthday had broken his heart. He’d loved her, it had been that simple. She was kind, brilliant, and lovely, inside and out. His best friend. How could he deny himself the chance to finally be that close to her? But they were discovered, and all hell had broken loose.

As he’d left her father’s house, bloodied and bruised after their privateconversationin the man’s study, Peace hadn’t even been able to take a last look over his shoulder at all he was about to lose. Because she would have been there, he knew, standing at her upstairs window, watching him go.

Yet leaving had been for the best—for both of them. He’d hated the reason, but because of that night, he’d been given an officer’s commission in the army and a new life that allowed him to put his energy and restlessness to purpose and gave him the chance to prove his worth.

He’d always known that Amelia belonged with someone else. Someone better. An aristocrat who could give her the life of status and luxury that she deserved. The one she would never have had with him. It had always been only a matter of time anyway until he left Birmingham for a better job and she found her way into society and marriage. Attempting to have any other future but the one fate had thrust onto them would have been pointless.

He just hadn’t expected that leaving her would be so damned painful.

When the hackney reached the main street in Wapping that ran between the Thames and the row of warehouses that fronted it, he pounded his fist against the carriage roof. “Here!”

The hackney stopped. Pearce bounded to the ground, tossing a coin up to the jarvey.

The driver glanced around at the damp and deserted street that was rapidly filling with fog. “You sure this is where you want me t’ drop you?”

“I’ll be fine.” Pearce slapped his hand against the side of the rig to send it away and strode quickly down the street toward one of the old abandoned warehouses.More than fine.

Tonight, he needed to come here the way other men needed air to breathe. He needed to push Amelia from his mind and punish his body until he turned numb, just as he’d done all those years ago when he’d taken up his commission with the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards. Fear and physical pain had done a damnably fine job of it then, too. He’d been able to focus on his command to the exclusion of all else, and as a result, he’d proven himself on the battlefield, saving as many men as possible and earning promotion after promotion. By Waterloo, he was a brigadier. The army had become his life, and he’d been more than happy with it.

Then, while the Coldstream Guards were still in Paris, no longer fighting the war but keeping the peace, everything changed. The Earl of Sandhurst had died without warning and without a close heir. The House of Lords’s Committee for Privileges had to search all the way down the family tree to its roots to discover that the next viable heir was Pearce. He could only imagine the shock that must have rung through both Wythburn Manor and his uncle’s inn in Birmingham when that news arrived on their doorsteps. It was the same shock, certainly, that had slammed into him.

Good Lord.A more screwed-up system of awarding fortune and privilege he couldn’t imagine. But here he was. Earl of Sandhurst. Now saddled with estates, houses, a fortune to manage, and an officer’s rank that had become obsolete with the peace.

Twelve years after leaving Birmingham, he was starting over again, but this time, there was no clear path. All he knew was that he wanted his life to mean something, and being a peer wasn’t enough. The need for purpose lived inside him as a physical yearning, one that burned in his muscles and left him restless, sleepless, on edge. Always had. Like a tightened coil ready to spring. Being in the wars had helped to mitigate the tension, but now that he’d returned to England, it had crept back.

And he had no idea how to end it.

He ducked into an abandoned warehouse. Inside, the building was alive. Lamps blazed throughout the large ground floor, which was crowded with working-class men and women who had gathered illegally for tonight’s boxing match. All kinds of bets were being placed, prostitutes bargained for, gin guzzled from tin mugs and other alcohol from flasks.

In the center of the old warehouse, an eight-by-eight-foot square had been roped off, where one man who stood bare from the waist up and bruised from previous rounds waited for the next challenger. His bottle man and knee man waited nearby while the referee shouted into the noisy crowd, antagonizing them to produce a challenger so the matches and gambling could continue.

There were no takers tonight. Their champion was too big, too muscular for the usual fighters among the sailors and porters who worked the docks.

But he was perfect for Pearce.

He stepped up to the rope and began to strip off his clothes, to bare himself down to his breeches. “Me,” he called out, tossing a coin to the referee to secure his own bet on the match and slipping inside the square. “I’m next.”

The brute charged toward him with a ferocious growl. Pearce dropped his shoulder and swung.

Five