His Mask of Retribution (17 page)

He rose to his feet, coming out from behind the desk. ‘The hour is late,’ he said. ‘I thought you would be sleeping.’

She set the candles down on his desk and looked at him. ‘I could not sleep. Not with you out on the streets of London alone at night.’

‘You were worried about me,’ he said quietly. The thought was so sweet that it made him smile.

‘You have a five-thousand-guinea price on your head and my father and brother are sworn to kill you. Of course I was worried.’

He reached to her and, taking her hand, touched his lips to her knuckles. ‘But you got my note saying I would be late?’ He did not release her hand, just kept it within his own.

She nodded. ‘Did you resolve matters with your man of business?’

‘Not entirely.’

She glanced over at the ledgers lying open on the desk. ‘Was there a problem?’

‘It appears there is a discrepancy with the monies in my bank accounts.’

‘You mean there is money missing?’

‘Quite the opposite,’ he said and the worry was back with him again. ‘I was the recipient of an inheritance held in trust until I reached my majority. The initial sum was small, but I thought my income through the years came from its successful investment. Now I have discovered the investments were so poorly made that, had someone not been making regular payments into my accounts, I would have very little.’

‘How strange,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t it be possible to check with the bank and find the identity of your mysterious benefactor?’

‘Under normal circumstances, yes. But whoever is behind this has taken great pains to hide their identity. My lawyer has tried every avenue available, but no name is forthcoming.’

‘Perhaps it is some relative of yours who wishes to remain anonymous.’

‘I have no relatives, Marianne. I am alone in the world.’ And he thought of the man who had made it that way.

‘Not any longer.’ She smiled shyly.

His eyes traced her face, seeing nothing of Misbourne there before meeting her gaze. It was true she had the same dark eyes as her father, but whereas Misbourne’s were soulless as the devil’s, Marianne’s were gentle and filled with passion. ‘Not any longer,’ he repeated. ‘Now that I have you, Marianne.’

They looked at one another. And in the silence he heard the slow steady tick of the clock and the settling of the glowing embers from the hearth.

‘Come to bed, Rafe,’ she said and he felt the slight squeeze of her fingers around his.

He lifted the branch of candles from his desk and followed her up to their bedchamber.

* * *

And so the nights and the days passed. Marianne employed servants who worked with precision, seeing to his every need, and slowly the house began to change from a place where he slept and ate to a home once more. The floors were swept; the furnishings cleaned and tidied. Soon there was the clean sweet smell in the air of beeswax and lavender wood polish, and cut flowers in the vases, and her own sweet scent of violets. The paintwork on the door and windows was pristine. The brass of the door knocker was polished until it gleamed. The house began to take on a new life, a vibrancy that reminded him of his youth, before his parents had died. Callerton officially became his steward. Every day he watched Marianne’s confidence grow and he did not think of Misbourne. And every night he loved her more.

* * *

‘Not this room, or the adjoining bedchamber. Both are to remain untouched,’ said Marianne.

The two maids, clutching their basket of dusters and cloths and polish, bobbed a curtsy each and hurried away.

Marianne stood in the silence of the yellow bedchamber alone and looked around.

The daylight shone in from the landing, exposing what she had only seen by candlelight or the daylight that had stolen through the cracks of the shutters. Since the last time she had been in this room the surfaces had been shrouded with holland covers. Her hand caught at the cream-linen sheet covering the dressing table and let it slither to the floor. The ivory-and-tortoiseshell hairbrush sat in three parts on the exposed mahogany surface of the dressing table, just as she had laid them after gathering them up from the floor. Rafe’s mother’s brush. She touched her fingers to it and was filled with a feeling of such fierce tenderness, that it took her breath away, and a sadness upon which she did not want to dwell. She could not hide for ever;
they
could not hide for ever. Her father stood between them, an unspoken barricade they could not cross.

She did not know what made her glance round at the doorway, for he made not one noise. But when she did, she saw that Rafe was leaning against the door frame watching her.

‘I know it cannot be easy for you, Marianne. The last time you were in this room, things were very different between us.’

‘Very,’ she said.

‘It was...wrong of me to take you from your father, regardless that I would never have hurt you. I’m sorry that I frightened you.’

‘Are you sorry that you took me?’

He looked at her. There was a pause before he answered. ‘I have never lied to you, Marianne. I will not start now. So the answer is no. I am not sorry.’

‘Even though my father refused to yield you the document?’

‘That has nothing to do with it.’

She glanced round at him. ‘It has everything to do with it!’ she said, shocking herself with the anger in her voice.

‘It was the reason I took you, Marianne. It is not the reason I am not sorry.’ He paused. ‘Nor the reason I made you my wife.’

‘We both know why you made me your wife. To save me from ruin.’ She wished so hard that it could have been for another reason, the same reason that she felt in every beat of her heart and every breath that filled her lungs.

‘You know what is between us. You must know how I feel about you.’

Desire. Attraction.
Not love. How could it ever be love considering what lay between Rafe and her father? Yet at his words she felt her heart somersault in her chest, felt it thump harder and a dizziness bubble through her blood.

‘Must I?’ she said, holding his gaze, willing him to say the words. The silence hummed loud and awkward. She turned away, glancing around the yellow bedchamber. ‘It was your mother’s room,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘The shutters are still nailed closed.’

He said nothing.

‘And those in the adjoining bedchamber too. Your father’s?’

He nodded.

There was a pause, a quiet in which she could hear the sound of her own heart and, she fancied, his heart too.

‘What happened to your parents, Rafe?’

The silence hissed in the room. At first she thought he would not answer, but then he said, ‘They were killed—murdered in a robbery.’

‘I am sorry for your loss.’ She ached with compassion for him.

‘The shutters were closed that night. I swore that they would remain so until the man responsible for their deaths was brought to justice.’ His voice was calm, controlled, devoid of emotion.

‘Justice,’ she whispered.
Not vengeance.
An icy finger stole down her spine at the word. And she remembered his strange remark about his parents in her father’s study on a night that seemed so long ago.

‘Justice,’ he said.

‘When did they die?’ She felt suddenly deeply uneasy.

‘1795,’ he replied.

‘The mausoleum in the burying ground,’ she said and saw again in her mind’s eye the lettering chiselled into its stone lintel—EDMUND KNIGHT, 1795—only now realising its significance.

‘That of my parents.’

There was a cold feeling in her chest, a deep seeping dread. ‘1795, Hounslow Heath. The document that was taken in exchange for your daughter.’ She spoke the words of his ransom demand.

‘I am surprised that he showed you.’

‘He did not. It was my brother.’ Her heart was pounding hard now and there was a sick feeling in her stomach. ‘What happened to your parents is at the root of what is between you and my father, is it not?’

He said nothing, but she saw the flicker of tension in the muscle of his jaw and the slight darkening in his eyes.

‘He is my father. You are my husband. Surely I have a right to know?’

‘You have every right, Marianne. But he
is
your father. Do you think I have no care for you?’

The words were bittersweet, for she understood now why he did not want to tell her, why he had not told her at the start: because he knew she loved her father. ‘You do not wish to hurt me.’

‘No.’

But she had to know. And she was sure, no matter how much she loved him, that he was wrong about her father. ‘My brother is searching through
The London Messenger
archive for all of that year, seeking anything to do with Hounslow Heath. What will he find, Rafe?’

‘He will find that my parents were robbed and shot dead by a highwayman upon Hounslow Heath.’

‘A highwayman,’ she said. ‘In the same place that you held up my father.’

His eyes never shifted from hers.

‘The same place you took me from him.’ And she remembered the words he had answered when she asked him what her father had ever done to him. ‘When you said that my father took from you that which was most precious, you were not talking of the document, were you?’

‘No,’ he said softly.

‘Are you saying that my father was the highwayman?’ She could not keep the incredulity from her voice.

He gave a laugh that held nothing of happiness. ‘As if Misbourne would dirty his hands.’ He shook his head. ‘No, Marianne. But your father was behind it. He was the one who paid for it to be done.’

‘That is ridiculous! Why on earth would he do such a thing?’ The thud of her heart was loud in the silence. His gaze was steady, everything about him so quiet and focused and controlled.

‘He wanted the document, and he wanted my father dead. My mother just had the misfortune to be with him at the time.’

‘You cannot know that.’

‘Oh, but I can, Marianne.’

‘How?’

He could see that she didn’t believe him, that she still believed in her father over him. And part of him was glad of it and part of him railed against it. He didn’t want to tell her, but he needed to. Needed to tell someone after all these years and she was the one, the only one.

‘I was there that night,’ he said and felt a strange kind of relief in saying the words aloud.

‘You witnessed your parents’ murder?’ He could hear the horror in her voice.

He gave a nod.

‘Your fear of highwaymen...’ Realisation dawned on her face.

He glanced away to the shadows that edged the room, his face grim. ‘I watched what he did to them and there was nothing I could do.’

‘Fifteen years ago. You must have been a child at the time.’

‘Ten years old. Old enough to understand.’ He shook his head again and darkness of the past closed in upon him so that he could see again the nightmare playing out before his eyes. ‘He took my mother’s jewellery, my father’s watch, his purse of money. I thought he would ride away and leave us safe. But he did not.’

He knew that she had come to stand before him, but he did not look up. ‘He demanded the document from my father’s pocket. But my father would not yield it.’

‘Just as mine would not,’ she whispered.

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘I heard him lie and say that he carried nothing. Even with the muzzle of the highwayman’s pistol touched to his forehead.’ It seemed he was back upon Hounslow Heath, watching the horror unfold before him, and his body felt that same overwhelming fear, that same rage, that same impotence. He could hear again his mother’s screams, see the highwayman shoot her, feel the crack of the highwayman’s fist against his face. ‘When he was dead, the highwayman took the document from his pocket. There was blood on his fingers when he opened it out and showed it to me—my father’s blood. I have never forgotten what he said: “These few words, whatever they say, are worth a grand and your pa’s life.”’ He glanced at her with a small tight smile that belied all he was feeling. ‘And he rode away and left me there.’ He felt the grief raw and ragged as he had done on that day on the moor fifteen years ago and turned away so that she would not see his weakness.

She caught one of his hands, holding it between both of hers.

‘I have made it my life’s work to find that highwayman...and the man who set a bounty of a thousand pounds on my parents’ lives. I traced every link in the chain, all five of them, Marianne, until I found him.’ His gaze met hers.
Misbourne.
Her father’s name whispered silently between them.

‘My father would never sanction murder. Someone has misled you. Whoever gave his name lied.’

But Rafe knew what he had done to the men he had found. ‘No, Marianne,’ he said gently. ‘No one lied...of that I can be certain.’

He saw the small shiver that ran over her. ‘There must be some mistake.’

‘There is no mistake.’ Yet no matter what he said, no matter how much he told her, the denial was still there in her eyes.

‘I know my father, Rafe, and he is far from perfect, but to kill an innocent man and woman...?’ She shook her head. ‘I cannot believe it of him. There is no way back from such a crime.’

‘There is not,’ he said quietly.

He saw the sudden comprehension in her eyes and the fear that followed in its wake. Justice and all that it implied loomed black as death over both of them. ‘He is innocent, Rafe. He has to be.’

He felt his heart ache, for her pain and for his own. She came to him, wrapping her arms around him. Pressing her face to his chest, breathing him, holding him, her eyes shut tight. And they stood like that, entwined, with only the soft sound of their breath and the beat of their hearts, in defiance of the past, in spite of the future, and all it could bring. They stood there until she turned her face up to his...until she took his hand in hers and led him from the room.

Chapter Thirteen

M
arianne led him to their own bedchamber, to their own bed. The daylight was only now beginning to fade, the sky darkening as the night breathed black upon it. She sat him down on the edge of the bed and stood between his legs. There were no words she could offer that would comfort him. Denial would not salve the pain and grief that drove him. Such a strong fearless man, yet he had feared as much as she. He had suffered. He suffered still. She felt his pain worse than any of her own. She stroked his hair, caressed his cheek, placed her lips upon his and kissed him with everything that she felt in her heart, as if by so doing she could draw his hurt into herself and carry it for him. She kissed him once more, then drew back and looked into his face.

‘Let me comfort you as you comfort me. Let me pleasure you as you pleasure me. Let me make us forget, even if it is just for this moment, just for this night.’

‘Marianne, I...’ She saw the turmoil of emotion in his eyes.

‘You need me...’ she said, ‘and I need you.’ And she began to loosen his cravat. Together they peeled off their clothes until he stood there clad only in his black breeches. She looked at him, this big, strong, dauntless man. Invincible. A man like no other. Yet when she looked into his eyes she knew that she had spoken the truth: he needed her every bit as much as she needed him. She reached her fingers to rest lightly against the top of his breeches.

His eyes held hers.

‘I want to see you,’ she said.

He unbuttoned the fall. Drew them from his hips, easing them down his legs until he could step clear of them. Marianne had never seen the front of a man’s underwear before; the white linen covered where his breeches had and reached almost to his knees.

‘All of you,’ she insisted quietly.

He unfastened the drawers, let them drop to his ankles, and stepped out of them.

She looked at him, at the whole magnificent nakedness of him, her gaze tracing down over his chest, over the hard ribbed stomach and abdomen, following the line of hair that led lower. Down the long muscular lengths of his legs, right down to his toes, then back to the part that made him a man. Masculinity and strength and power. He looked more than she had expected, overwhelmingly so. And beside him she could not fail to be aware of how much slighter she was compared to him, of how much weaker, how vulnerable...and how feminine. Yet when she looked at his body she felt something happening deep down low in her belly, felt a heat stirring through her blood. There was nothing of fear.

She was standing so close that she could smell the scent of his skin and see the pulse that beat at the side of his neck. She looked up into his eyes and saw only the man that she loved. Her hands slid up his chest, to his shoulders. She reached her mouth to his and kissed him. A soft, sweet kiss. Tasting him. Dipping into his mouth, teasing his tongue. Kissing him while his hands swept a glorious caress against the nakedness of her back. They kissed and then they lay down on the bed together. When he took her breasts in his hands, when his fingers worked their magic upon her nipples, she kissed him harder, more passionately before drawing back with a slight shake of her head.

‘Not yet,’ she said, just the way he had said to her. She wanted to share the wonder he had given her, wanted to make him forget the pain. This was not about her, only about the man who was her husband. ‘May I touch you?’

He nodded and let his hands lie loose by his sides, giving her permission to do what she would.

She knelt over him, her knees straddling one of his thighs, and plucked the pins from her hair, uncoiling its length until it hung free over her shoulders the way she knew he liked it. She ran her fingers down its waves the way he always did, skimming her nipples, her belly, her hip, and saw his eyes darken as he watched. Then she reached out and touched the tips of her fingers lightly against his lips, letting him kiss them, letting him flick his tongue against them, but sliding them beyond his reach when he would have taken them into his mouth. Her fingers trailed over his stubble-roughened chin, before moving down his neck, his Adam’s apple bobbing as she caressed it. Her fingers journeyed on, lingering over the small springy hairs on his chest, pressing down on the hard muscle beneath it. His chest was so different to hers—hard, muscular, flat. She laid her palms over it, felt the beat of his heart. She teased against his nipples, plucking them, rolling the tiny buds between her fingers. Everything she enjoyed, everything that made her blood rush and her heart race, everything that made her breathless. All of it, she would do to him,
for
him.

She lowered her mouth to his nipples and licked, working her tongue over the flat dark skin, and beneath her lips she felt his heart beat harder. She drew back so that she could look down into that most beloved face as he lay there. The man she loved. Slowly she traced her hand lower, feeling his stomach suck in, feeling his rapid inhalation of air. Her fingers caressed each hard band of muscle that lined his abdomen then she paused, feeling the warm steady beat of her heart, knowing how much he had done for her, how much she wanted him. Her hand slid closer to the centre.

‘Marianne!’ She heard his whispered warning. She hesitated, her gaze meeting his. His eyes looked black in the dusky light. He was breathing harder now, the pulse in his neck visibly throbbing, and she was surprised by how much she could affect him. She looked at him and then down to that part of him that was close to his belly. That part she had so feared. And then she slowly stroked her fingers against it.

He gasped and she felt the slight jerk of him beneath her fingers. But he did not move his hands, nor did he try to stop her.

Contrary to all that she had expected, his skin was silky smooth there—the only place on the entirety of his body that was so. But even beneath the silkiness she could feel the rigidity, the hardness, the strength. She slid her fingers down the length of him from the very tip all the way down to the root. He groaned, a low guttural sound of need that mirrored those she made when he touched her, mirroring what she felt for him.

She wrapped her hand around the girth of him.

‘Marianne,’ he gasped and beneath her hand he grew even harder and longer.
Such power wielded by the lightest touch
, she thought. She squeezed him gently and felt the way his whole body stretched and tensed, the muscles of his thigh rippling beneath her.

‘A man’s weapon,’ she said softly, knowing how she had feared it.

‘And his weakness,’ said Rafe. Her eyes met his. Yet his hands remained by his sides, trusting her. ‘You hold the power, Marianne.’

‘Yes,’ she said. Then she bent and placed a single kiss on the silky skin at the very tip of him.

He groaned and jerked again.

She rubbed her fingers along his length, trying to emulate the way he touched her. And then she stilled and wrapped her fingers around him again, showing that she had no intention of letting him go.

‘Show me how,’ she said.

His hand moved to cover hers and he showed her.

She watched him while her hand moved on him, watched him with eyes that were dark and burning with desire and felt all that was within herself rise to meet it. Watched him while he shifted his thigh to touch her womanhood, making her gasp and catch her breath—but she did not still her hand.

‘Marianne.’ It was a plea, a cry from the soul.

‘Rafe,’ she whispered, needing his body, needing his heart, and she laid her body over his even while her hand still slid upon him.

‘Marianne,’ he gasped and his arm came around her, freeing her hand from him and rolling her on to her side, so that their bodies were flush together. And he stared into her eyes as he pulsed against her belly and she felt his warm wetness between their skin.

‘Marianne,’ he said again, then took her mouth with his and kissed her as if his soul touched hers.

His fingers moved between her legs, slid to one single place and it was enough; she arched against him and felt her heart merge with his in utter ecstasy and joy. And when it eventually rolled away and left her in his arms he rose and she heard him pouring water into the basin. She watched him wring out the cloth. He washed her, gently, with tenderness, as if she were the most precious thing to him in the world, and then he washed himself. They lay down together in the darkness. And he held her as if he would never let her go.

* * *

She stood by the bedchamber window and watched the dawn break over the rooftops. From the bed behind her came the sound of Rafe’s breathing, soft and even as he slept. As she stood there in the coolness of the new morning there was something on her mind, something of which she could not stop thinking and which made her clutch her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. Her father had the document Rafe sought. She had heard the admission from his own lips. And if he had the document, the question was how it had come into his possession. The unease whispered all around her. He would not murder. He would not kill an innocent man.

And then she thought of his promise to find the highwayman and how he would deal with him and shivered despite the warm wool of her shawl. She heard a slight noise and glanced round to find Rafe watching her.

‘Marianne.’ His voice was low and husky from sleep, his eyes warm and sensual. Her husband. Her love. She felt like she were standing in a sunbeam with him, but the clouds edged around the sky and soon the shadows would close in upon them. Time was running out on the small haven of happiness, like grains of sand running through a timer.

‘I must visit my family today, Rafe.’

‘I understand.’

‘Do you?’ she asked and turned fully to face him, her gaze scanning his.

He nodded.

She wanted to capture this moment in time and preserve it. She wanted to still the clocks and remain here for ever, but she knew she must face the world.

He peeled back the edge of the bedcovers. ‘Come back to bed, Marianne. The hour is early enough yet.’

She smiled, but there was a lump of sadness in her throat. She went to the warmth and protection of his arms.

* * *

‘I have missed you,’ her father said and kissed her cheek. He looked well, more than well; he looked like a man from whom the weight of the world had been lifted. ‘But it is good that you are married.’ He smiled and chucked her beneath the chin as if she were still his little girl. And when she looked up into his eyes, eyes that were so like her own, she thought of what had happened on Hounslow Heath on a night fifteen years ago.

‘How do you find married life?’ her mother asked.

‘I am very happy,’ she said.

Her mother leaned closer and lowered her voice slightly. ‘You did as I said?’

Marianne felt her face flush warm. ‘Mama, that is hardly a topic fit for the drawing room,’ she said with a calmness that belied her embarrassment and anger.

Her mother looked unabashed. ‘We have been anxious about you.’

‘You have no need to be,’ said Marianne.

‘Then I am relieved,’ said her mother and peered more closely at her. ‘You look different,’ she said. ‘Almost...’ she angled her head to the side and considered her daughter ‘...radiant.’

Her father gave a nod of satisfaction. ‘Where are your footmen, Marianne? It is not safe these days for a woman to travel with a maid alone. A husband should take care of such things. It is his duty to protect his wife.’

‘I am in the process of taking on new staff. The carriage is waiting outside.’ She had forgotten how much her family worried over every small thing, their paranoia feeding an atmosphere of fear, coddling her to the point of suffocation.

‘You should have a care, Marianne,’ her father said. ‘Especially when the highwayman is not yet apprehended.’

She felt her cup rattle in its saucer and quickly took a gulp of tea to disguise her response. ‘There is such a great price on his head that I am sure he will not dare to show his face in London or the surrounding villages or towns again. We need think no more about him.’

Her father shook his head and gave a grim smile. ‘My enquiries are ongoing even as we speak, my dear.’

‘Are you close to catching him?’ She sipped at her tea as if his answer was not so very important.

‘Let us just say I am making progress. But never fear, Marianne, I shall find him even if it takes me a lifetime.’

‘I wish you would not, Papa. Please, do not seek him.’

He peered at her and she could see that she had shocked him. And in the background, where he stood silent and listening, she saw her brother’s face sharpen.

She set the cup and saucer down upon the table. ‘He is a dangerous man. I do not want you to get hurt.’
And I do not want you to hurt him.

‘My dearest girl, you need have no fear on my account. I have made my preparations to deal with him, most thoroughly.’

She closed her eyes at the menace in his voice.

‘You have paled, Marianne. I should not have reminded you of the villain,’ he said. ‘If you will excuse me, my dearest, I have an appointment I must keep elsewhere. But I am glad that you are married to Knight. He will keep you safe.’

She could have laughed out loud with the irony of it were it not so very terrible. She wondered what he would do if ever he discovered that her husband and the highwayman were one and the same.

And when he had gone her mother chattered over inconsequential fripperies. Marianne was worrying so much over her father’s words that it was a struggle to pretend an interest and she was relieved when it came time to leave. But when she would have done so her brother, Francis, drew her into her father’s study, with such a dark intense expression upon his face that her stomach knotted and she felt the prickle of foreboding over her scalp.

Once inside he closed the door behind them.

‘Does Knight treat you well?’

‘He is good to me,’ she said. But he would not be good to their father.

‘You are certain?’

‘Of course. Why do you ask?’

‘Because there is something about him...’ He glanced away into the distance. ‘I do not like him.’ His gaze returned to hers. ‘And I do not trust him.’