His Mask of Retribution (20 page)

* * *

‘You bastard!’ Linwood landed the blow against his father’s chin and Misbourne did not turn away, let alone raise an arm to defend himself. ‘How could you do such a thing?’

Misbourne said nothing, just stared at the carpet with deadened eyes as the blood trickled down his chin and his lip began to swell.

The flames had died away within the fireplace. The coal was devoured and in its place was a mass of glowing embers. Rafe did not know how long it had taken for Misbourne to explain every last detail, but he had done it and the silence that followed had been deafening. He could not blame Linwood. Only the thought of what it would do to Marianne stayed his own fists...and pistol.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘Paying the money into my account. Trying to appease your conscience.’

‘I had taken your parents from you. Paying for your education, ensuring that you would never want for money—these were the only things I could do. I stood in the shadows and watched you grow from a boy to a man, easing your way when I could, safeguarding you when it was necessary.’

Rafe felt sick.

‘I was right,’ said Linwood. ‘You would have married her to anyone.’

Misbourne nodded. ‘Anyone to save her from him.’

‘It is why he fought so hard to secure first Arlesford, then Pickering—why he had me wed her so quickly,’ said Rafe. ‘It had to be by her twenty-first birthday.’

‘He would have come for her otherwise,’ Misbourne said, ‘and no matter what protection I built around her he would have found a way to breach it.’

Rafe balled his fingers into a fist at the thought.

* * *

The door slammed closed and the hackney carriage drew away. It stopped again a few minutes later; the coachman was speaking to someone, declining a fare. And then they were off again, making their way steadily through the streets.

Marianne thought about Rafe. And in her mind all she could see was the look in his eyes when he had sent her away, a look she did not understand and yet seemed to reach into the very core of her and touch where no other could. A look that had such a grim irascibility about it that she knew he would not falter. Whatever he had read upon that page, he was never going to tell her. He was shutting her out. Treating her as her father had done all of these years. Overruling her, without discussion or explanation. Always knowing what was best for her. Marianne knew she could not just sit back and let that happen. She knew she had to fight for what was between them. And just as she thought it, the sun peeped from behind the clouds, lifting away the heavy dull greyness and shadow that hung over the day. She glanced out of the window at the patch of blue sky above and the beautiful shimmer of the sunlight upon the water below and felt the finger of unease down her spine. She moved closer to the window, looked out properly, focusing on the route the carriage was taking and saw they were on London Bridge, crossing the Thames...heading in the opposite direction to St Luke’s and Rafe’s town house. The panic was sudden, like a fist slamming into her stomach, making her catch her breath, making her feel sick. She banged a hand on the door and called out to the driver in a loud clear voice.

‘Stop this carriage at once.’

But the carriage did not stop.

She told herself that the driver was just a villain chancing to fleece her for a higher fare by taking her on a longer route. She prayed to God that that was the case. But in her heart she knew, even though she did not want to believe it. She felt the panic roil, felt her limbs stiffen with terrible fear so that she could not move, could not make a sound. And then she heard the whisper of Rafe’s words.
Running from fear only makes it chase you. Hiding from it only makes it seek you. You have to face fear.

She stopped struggling inside herself and stilled the turmoil of her thoughts. With traffic as it was in London it was only a matter of time before the coach had to stop. But the carriage did not slow. Instead its speed increased until it was rattling dangerously fast over the pot holes and ruts of the poorly kept road. Marianne gripped tight to the securing strap and knew there was no chance of jumping from the speeding vehicle.

She shouted as loud as she could, thudded her free hand against the glass of the window, anything to attract attention. But the carriage driver was taking her through a place where there were no houses or shops, only large warehouses and derelict-looking manufactories. There was no one to see, no one to hear. She stopped shouting and saved her energy for the fight ahead.

The carriage eventually came to a halt outside a seedy tavern. There were men on the narrow street, unshaven, unkempt, with bloodshot eyes and blackened teeth, sitting on steps and old broken wooden crates, drinking from dark and dirty bottles. And women, too, women who lounged in doorways with their petticoats showing and grimy skin beneath, who looked at her with malice and amusement in their eyes. There would be no help here. It reminded her of the rookery in St Giles from which Rafe had saved her. But he would not save her now. He thought she was upstairs in her father’s house, drinking tea with her mother. She had only herself to rely on. She sat very still, watching, waiting for what was going to happen.

The door opened and it was not the carriage driver that stood there, but a tall thin gentleman, as old as her father. A gentleman with a black lacquered walking cane, who had just climbed down from his seat beside the coachman. He was impeccably dressed, as out of place in this seedy place as she was herself. He climbed inside, sat down opposite her and made himself comfortable. And she knew even before he looked round to face her who he was. There had been no imagining in the botanical gardens, or that night in her bedchamber. She looked across the hackney carriage into the cold pale eyes of the Duke of Rotherham.

* * *

‘What do you mean, Lady Marianne is not there?’ Misbourne demanded of the footman.

But Lady Misbourne was hurrying down the staircase at that very moment, running up to her husband, breathless and uncaring of social graces. ‘I thought she was down here with you! She did not come upstairs.’

Rafe saw the whites around Misbourne’s eyes grow larger. The fear that crept across the man’s face was transparent. He sent his wife and servants away. ‘Oh, my God, he has come for her!’ he whispered as if to himself. ‘It cannot be...’ He stared at Rafe. ‘I thought she would be safe once she was wed. He is such a stickler for precision. Everything to the letter. Everything just as was agreed. I thought once she was married he could not...’ He clutched his hands to his face and could not continue.

Rafe looked at Misbourne and the man quailed beneath the look in his eyes. ‘You should have warned me that he was coming back for her, that I could have guarded her against him,’ he said in a deathly quiet voice. ‘Had you shown me the document...’

‘Had he shown you the document you would have killed him for the bastard he is and what would that have done to Marianne? Besides, we are jumping the gun,’ said Linwood. ‘She was angry and upset with us all.’

But most of all with Rafe. He knew it was the truth. From Marianne’s point of view he had let her down when she had needed him most.

‘She has probably returned to Knight’s house,’ continued Linwood, but Rafe could see the fear in Linwood’s eyes. And he felt a ripple of the same fear.

He strode to the front door and opened it. His carriage sat waiting directly outside in the street, with Callerton standing by the horses. Callerton moved to open the carriage door when he saw Rafe, slipping the step down into place. By that one small action Rafe knew that Marianne was not within the carriage, that Callerton was expecting her to emerge from the house on his arm. The dread pierced right through him, sharp and cold as the blade of his sword. And he knew in that moment that Misbourne was right. The fact that the document was destroyed and that Marianne was his wife changed nothing. Misbourne had made a pact with the devil, and the final day of reckoning had arrived. Misbourne had indeed unleashed a monster. And the monster had come for Marianne.

Chapter Fifteen

‘R
otherham,’ Rafe whispered and the intensity of the word cut through the room like the lash of a whip.

‘How could he have slipped back into the country? I have eyes and ears at every port,’ said Misbourne.

‘Men that can be so easily bought are always open to a deeper pocket,’ said Rafe.

‘He has her and there is nothing we can do.’ Misbourne crumpled to his knees, his face ashen, a stricken look in his eyes.

‘On your feet, Misbourne,’ Rafe snapped and dragged him up with nothing of compassion. ‘Where is his town house?’

‘It no longer exists. It was burned to the ground the week after he fled to the Continent.’ It was Linwood who answered, and there was something in his voice that meant Rafe did not have to ask who lay behind the property’s destruction.

‘She is already wed to Knight.’ Misbourne seemed to be talking to himself. ‘He cannot marry her. But he means to have her regardless. I had not thought he would deviate from what was agreed.’

Rafe thought of the words written upon the second half of the page he had torn from the book.
I give to you my daughter, Marianne, once she has reached her twenty-first year, to be your wife.
Rotherham was a man who wanted precisely what he had been promised. And if that were the case then Rafe thought he understood what the villain was doing.

‘He could have her anywhere,’ said Misbourne and covered his face with his hands. ‘We haven’t a hope in hell of finding them.’

‘We do not need to find them,’ said Rafe.

‘What do you mean?’ Misbourne let his hands fall away and stared at Rafe.

‘I think we will hear from Rotherham before the afternoon is out.’

* * *

‘Good afternoon, Marianne,’ Rotherham said in the soft voice that had so haunted her nightmares. ‘We meet again, just as I said we would.’

‘How did you...?’

‘I have been watching you, my dear. How very fortuitous that you escaped your “guard” to travel all alone and by hackney coach...when the coachmen are so easily and quickly persuaded. All the money in my purse and the promise of even more when we reach home.’ He leaned forwards and dropped his voice slightly, as if he were telling her a secret. ‘Although he might be in for something of a surprise when we get there.’

‘You villain!’

‘Come now, my dear, that is no way to speak to me when I have come all this way to rectify a little misunderstanding.’

‘Misunderstanding? It was hardly that, sir.’

‘I wish only to make my apology and put matters right.’

‘I do not want your apology! Take it and return whence you came.’

The cool pale gaze flickered over her face, appraising her. ‘How much you have changed, Marianne, in three short years. You are not afraid of me.’

‘You are the one who should be afraid,’ she said. ‘You should be very afraid.’

He smiled in a condescending way as if she were a simpleton who did not understand the words she was saying. ‘And why exactly should I be so fearful? Hmm?’ He wetted his narrow lips.

‘Because if you do not release me, there is a man who shall not rest until he has hunted you down.’

‘Really.’ He seemed amused, more than anything else.

‘And when he catches you...’

‘If he were to catch me...’ Rotherham sat forwards in his seat as if riveted by her words. ‘What would he do, Marianne?’

Marianne thought of Rafe in the rookery and what he had done to the men who had stood in his way. She thought of the burying ground and the bullets and the blood. And most of all she thought of the way a city of thieves and villains had parted to let him pass.

‘You think you are dangerous,’ she said and shook her head. ‘But you have not met my husband.’

‘Rafe Knight,’ said Rotherham and something of the smile vanished from his face.

She laughed to see it and felt Rotherham’s eyes shift to hers, and in them for the first time was a flicker of anger. ‘How hoydenish you have become, my dear. You should learn to mind your manners.’

‘I do not think so, your Grace,’ she said. ‘My husband likes them just the way they are.’

He paused, then said very carefully, ‘Then Rafe Knight is an unfortunate fool. Just like his father before him.’

The wind dropped from her sails. ‘His father? What do you mean?’

‘Poking his nose into affairs that were none of his concern, taking documents that were not his to take. It was Knight who stole the original document from me, you know. Once it was in my possession again, I had a copy made. A precise replica, so good that Misbourne could not even tell it apart from the one he had written with his own hand when he went to such lengths to retrieve it. I take it your husband has told you the story of how his parents met their death?’

She gave a single stiff nod.

‘Billy Jones, the highwayman that night, worked for me, of course. I always remembered him with a degree of affection as a reliable sort of man, until Rafe Knight started asking questions and I realised that Jones had not been so very reliable after all.’

She stared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing. ‘It was you who ordered the murder of Rafe’s parents!’

‘Indeed, my dear. But it would have been so much harder to silence Edmund Knight had your father not arranged the robbery.’

‘And why was it necessary to silence Rafe’s father?’

‘Knight was taking the matter that very night to those who would have made what was agreed within that piece of paper impossible. And I had to have you, my dear.’

Everything in the world seemed to pause in that moment. She thought she must have misheard him, but when she looked at his face she knew that she had not.

‘The piece of paper...’ she began, but her lips felt too stiff to form the words.

‘Did your father not show you?’ He arched his thin grey brows. ‘You know he should not have let you marry Knight, and so slyly done. No betrothal, no courtship, not even a hint of gossip. I had no idea. I thought I was coming back to the matter of Pickering. I hope you have recovered from your little coaching accident.’ He smiled, but the look in his eyes was one of anger. ‘I really am most disappointed in Misbourne.’ From the inside pocket of his waistcoat he produced a sheet of paper folded like a letter except it bore no name or direction, and no seal. ‘A gentleman’s gaming debt is a matter of honour, after all, and your father has more than proven he has none of that attribute.’ His eyes dropped to the paper in his hand.

Marianne’s gaze followed.

‘Do you know what this is?’

She could hazard a very good guess.

‘It is the original document written in your father’s very own hand.’ He offered it to her.

She stared at the folded paper, but made no move to take it. She knew that within that document lay the explanation for all that had happened.

‘Do you not wish to read it? Do you not wish to know what your father gambled on a turn of the cards? What he staked when he was in his cups?’

She had a horrible, horrible feeling. Inside, she was trembling, but when she reached out and took the document from him her hands were still and calm. The paper betrayed not so much as a quiver as she opened it out and read it. It consisted of two separate IOUs written by her father to Rotherham in 1795. In the first he had given her maidenhead—to be claimed when she turned eighteen. In the second he had given her hand in marriage, if Rotherham so wished it, redeemable when she turned twenty-one.

She stared at the sprawl of her father’s handwriting, and in that moment everything ceased to be. Whatever she had imagined had been written in the document, whatever she might have expected, the truth was a zenith away. Nothing could have prepared her for it. Those few seconds seemed to last an eternity. Her mind was thick and slow-witted, unable to comprehend, unwilling to accept the magnitude of what he had done. She could feel the beat of her heart and hear the sound of her breath within the silence of the carriage. Her eyes blinked. From outside came the sound of a man’s whistle, followed by a woman’s coarse laughter. A seagull cried. Her father, whom she thought had loved her. Her father, who had always tried to protect her. All of her beliefs shattered and cracked apart. She could not weep a single tear. She could not utter even one word. She just sat there, frozen in the likeness of the woman she had been.

‘I thought you would understand, my dear,’ Rotherham said, taking the document from where it lay in her hands and folding it neatly once more into his pocket. Then he gave a single thud upon the roof with the head of his walking cane and the carriage moved off, swaying and dipping over the uneven surface of the narrow road.

* * *

The curtains were drawn within the study of Rafe’s town house. Four men stood around the desk: Rafe, Callerton, Linwood and Misbourne. Four men with cold determined eyes. A letter lay discarded on the desk between them.

London, November 1810

My dear Mr Knight

The lady that you seek is within my care. I hold her for one reason and one reason only. That is, to bring about an end to that which was agreed between the lady’s father and myself fifteen years ago.

I am grown old, and my health feeble of late, and with each day that passes the burden of guilt over my part in it weighs heavier upon my soul. I wish to return abroad unhindered, to live out the rest of what days I may have in solitude and penitence for my sins. You are husband to the lady at the centre of this tangled web and thus I make my proposal to you, and you alone. I will release her only in exchange for the document that her father still holds, that I might destroy the last evidence of our wickedness...and my guilt.

I seek to avoid capture only that the noble name of Rotherham is not blighted. Therefore there can be no question of involvement of the law, or otherwise. Come alone to Hounslow Heath at four this afternoon with the document, if you wish to proceed as I have suggested. If not, I will be forced to revise my plans for the lady and myself.

Your remorseful servant

Rotherham

The letter had been addressed to Rafe and marked private, yet every man in the room knew the words that Rotherham had written upon it. They had spent the last hours readying themselves.

Misbourne checked the ink was dry, then folded the freshly written piece of paper and passed it to Rafe. ‘You will find it faithful to the page you burned in every word and every stroke of the pen. Their very image is engraved upon my memory, for there has not been a day in the last fifteen years that I did not force myself to look at them.’ He paused and then said, ‘Thank you for doing this for my daughter.’

Rafe looked into Misbourne’s eyes, the eyes of the man he had spent a lifetime hunting and hating, the man whom he would never forgive for what he had done to his parents and to Marianne, and he gave a nod of acknowledgement.

‘It has been an honour to know you, Knight.’ Misbourne’s voice was quiet within the room; respect burned in his eyes. ‘For all that you have done for my daughter. For all that you would do for her this night. I thank you, sir.’ Misbourne held out his hand to Rafe.

Rafe looked at Misbourne’s hand and only the ticking of the clock punctuated the silence. Sometimes a man had to make sacrifices for the woman he loved. Even if it meant sacrificing all that he believed in. Even if it meant sacrificing his own life.

For Marianne, only for Marianne
, he thought. He
met Misbourne’s gaze and took his father-in-law’s hand within his own. And it was done.

The men moved to leave for Hounslow Heath.

* * *

The late afternoon air grew damp as the sun began to set, casting Hounslow Heath in an orange-tinged hue and silhouetting the hackney carriage to a black-blocked shape that was as dark and sinister as Rotherham himself by her side. Her shawl was lost within the carriage, and the cold seeped through the thin muslin sleeves of her gown, right through her skin to chill her very bones. The rope that Rotherham had used to bind her wrists behind her back was immovable. No matter how hard she strained against it, or stretched her fingers to reach the knots, it gave no sign of yielding. The coach driver had long since been dispensed with, leaving them to travel here alone.

Rotherham checked his pocket watch again. ‘Five minutes before four o’clock. Not much longer now, my dear. And then all of this...fiasco...will be over and you shall be with your husband.’

She wanted to believe him. She prayed that he was telling the truth. But she could not trust him. Not for one second, not for all that calm measured look upon his face, or the soft reassuring lilt of his voice. And even if he was telling the truth, there was the small matter of the document her father had held, the document upon which all of this centred, the document that was now ash within the ashes tray of a fireplace. But Rafe would think of a way round that problem, she did not doubt it for a second.

The globe of the sun began to sink down beneath the horizon, firing the sky a vivid pink. The heath was silent in its waiting; not a bird called, not a bat fluttered. Even the distant streets of Hounslow that bordered it were hushed as if holding their breath. Four faint chimes of a church bell sounded, and as she watched the sun slip lower and the glorious glow of light begin to fade, a solitary horseman appeared on the horizon, riding straight out of the sun so that it seemed he had been born of the sun itself; a dark-caped figure galloping fast towards them, with such purpose, with such lack of fear. And as he came closer she saw the old-fashioned tricorn hat that she knew so well, and the dark silk kerchief across his face...and the pistol held high in one hand. And she felt her heart lift. Rafe had come for her.

Rotherham grabbed at her arm, pulling her before him as a shield for any bullets that Rafe might fire and producing a pistol of his own to hold against her head. ‘Very amusing,’ said Rotherham and his eyes flicked over Rafe’s highwayman attire as her husband brought the horse to a halt fifty yards away. ‘And somewhat appropriate.’

Rafe slipped down from the beast’s back.

‘Please divest yourself of the weapon. Over there.’ Rotherham indicated a spot some distance away, where the gun could not be readily reached.