His Mask of Retribution (8 page)

‘We are very close to the square in which you live. All you need do is walk straight along this street until you come to your father’s house. Go home to where you are safe.’ His half-whispered words sounded harsh in the soft quietness of the night.

Go home to where you are safe.
She shuddered at the memory his words elicited.

He saw it, but misunderstood the reason. ‘You need not fear to walk alone through the darkness. You will be safe. I will be watching you until you enter through the front door.’

‘I am not afraid,’ she replied.
Not with you.
It was absurd and ironic, and true. ‘Not of the darkness here, outside, in the open...only indoors, in chambers, when all the candles have been extinguished.’ She had never spoken even this small part of it to anyone before. Indeed, she did not know why she was telling him.

‘Sometimes the worst monsters are those whom we allow to play in our imagination.’ He glanced away into the distance, a hard look upon his face, as if he were remembering monsters of his own.

‘Not always. Sometimes the worst monsters really are those that wait in the darkness.’ She bit her lip, suddenly afraid that she had revealed too much.

His eyes came back to rest on her and the look in them was one of guilt.

‘I should go.’ But she did not move.

‘You should. I...’ he hesitated as if he did not want to speak the rest of the words ‘...wish you happy in your marriage to Pickering.’

She felt only dread at the prospect of the marriage. She did not want to think of Mr Pickering or anything else, not at this moment, not while she was standing here with the highwayman.

‘I hope that your arm heals quickly.’ She looked up at him through the moonlight and the moment seemed to stretch between them. These were the last moments they would be together. The last time she would see him.

They stared at one another and the tension that was between them, that had always been between them, seemed to tighten and strain. She could hear the sound of her breath in the quietness of the alleyway and the pound of her heart against her chest. There seemed so much unsaid. She knew she should walk away, but she couldn’t.

‘I...’ She bit at her lip, not understanding why she did not want to go.

‘Marianne.’ He leaned his face ever so slightly towards her, his gaze holding hers with such intensity, as if he might kiss her. She wanted him to do it. She wanted to feel his mouth against hers, wanted him to take her in his arms. But he did neither. Instead, he touched a hand gently to her face, stroking away some strands of hair that fallen against her cheek. ‘You really should go home now.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. Home. And this moment and this man would be gone for ever and everything would go back to the way it had been before. To holding candles to ward off the darkness, and being guarded so carefully by her father, and being afraid of every man that looked at her. If only she could capture this moment, capture this man who was taller and darker and more dangerous than any other and who used his strength not against her, but to protect her. This man who had saved her when all those who loved her had failed. In his very danger and strength was the safety she sought.

She had forgotten what it felt like to be without fear. Just as she had forgotten what it felt like to be attracted to a man. And the attraction she felt for him dwarfed any childish fancies she might have imagined she felt for her brother’s friends. She knew what she wanted to do. Time was running out. Before she could think better of it she stepped towards him, stood on her tiptoes and with bare-faced, bold audacity touched her lips to his stubbled cheek.

* * *

He did not reach for her, did not even touch her for fear that it would make her disappear into the mist that swirled around them. Yet his lips found hers and they were the sweetest, most innocent lips he had ever tasted. She stilled, startled like a deer caught upwind of a hunter. He did not move for a moment, just let their lips rest together and share their breath, allowing her to grow used to the feel of him. He inhaled her: she smelled of violets and mist and moonlight, and all that was temptation. And when she did not bolt, he kissed her. A soft kiss. A gentle kiss. A kiss that said everything he could not say in words. That he was sorry. That he had never meant to frighten her. How it might have been, had their situations been different. And when he broke away she was still standing there, the expression on her upturned face serene and blissful, her eyes closed, her lips full and parted, as if he kissed her still. Then she opened her eyes and looked at him, and he thought she was everything he had ever wanted. A woman of moonlight and mist, of innocence and mystery. Fragile, yet possessing a power she did not realise. All fine-spun glass and shimmering silver. The counterbalance to himself. And for one tiny moment of madness he was tempted to give it all up for her. And then cold hard reality crushed the foolishness of his thoughts.

‘Go home, Marianne,’ he said.

But she had already pulled the hood to cover her hair and shroud her face and was stepping away, beyond his reach in every respect.

They looked at one another across that small distance and then she turned and walked into the street and out of his life.

All the way down the empty street, all the way through the glow of the faint lamp-lit mist that hung in the darkness, not once did she look back at him. Not even when she reached the steps that led up to her father’s house. And there was a part of him that wanted her to look. A part that wanted to know he had affected her as much as she had him.

He watched her lift the brass knocker and strike it against its plate, the clatter of it muffled by distance. Then she glanced back at him, as if she could see through the mist and the darkness to where he stood watching. And he felt a stab of primal satisfaction. The front door opened and a shaft of light flooded out into the street and she no longer looked at him, but only ahead to the butler and to Misbourne as her father pulled her inside.

Chapter Six

T
he house was in uproar. Marianne could not doubt that her father was pleased to see her. She had never seen him cry, but there was a sheen of tears in his eyes as he held her close, hugging her to him as if she had come back from the dead. Her mother’s cheeks, normally never anything but perfectly powdered and pale, were flushed and pink. There was so much excitement and joy as her parents embraced her; her mother clucked over her and even her brother standing by the side watched with a mixture of relief and unspoken questions in his eyes. And she
was
glad to be back with those she loved. She
was
relieved. But even as she felt these things she could feel too that her family were slotting her back into the place she had left, sliding the guard closed around her, imprisoning her within that illusion of safety. She glanced at the blinds in the drawing room, already drawn low to shut out the night and the highwayman. And she smiled at her father and she hugged her mother, and she thought of the highwayman out there in the darkness and her lips burned and throbbed from his kiss.

Marianne had changed. Something had shifted in the world. And she knew with an absolute certainty that nothing would ever be the same again. Behind her back she slipped Mr Pickering’s betrothal ring from her finger and hid it within the pocket of the blue-silk dress.

* * *

It was close to lunchtime the next day when Marianne’s father came into the drawing room and sat down on the sofa opposite her and her mother. She could see her brother, Francis, waiting in the background and knew, before her mother spoke, that they had come to question her about the highwayman.

‘Your papa wishes to speak with you, Marianne. Be sure to do as he asks.’ Then with a nod of her head Lady Misbourne slipped from the room, leaving Marianne alone with her father and brother. Francis did not move from where he leaned against the wall.

‘You are well enough this morning to be out of bed, Marianne?’ her father asked.

‘I am very well, Papa, thank you.’

‘There are some questions that I must ask you about these last few days. Questions that, although I have no wish to distress you, must be asked.’

She felt a ripple of nervousness run through her.

Her father cleared his throat and looked awkward. ‘Your mama tells me that...that the villain did not...’ He cleared his throat again and did not meet her eye. Marianne glanced round at Francis, but her brother’s face was a mask that showed nothing. ‘Did not force himself upon you,’ finished her father.

‘He did not,’ said Marianne. ‘He did nothing like that. Indeed, he treated me with kindness.’

‘Kindness?’ Her father’s gaze riveted to hers and she saw the sudden shrewd sharpness within them and was afraid, not for herself but for the highwayman.

‘He did not hurt me,’ she said. ‘He brought me candles to light the darkness. And when I escaped and found myself lost in St Giles Rookery he saved me from a group of ruffians who would have...’ She looked away in embarrassment. ‘They meant to...’ And then her eyes met her father’s once more. ‘The highwayman saved me from them.’

She saw the look her father exchanged with her brother.

‘I want to know everything about him, Marianne, where he took you, what he did. Everything.’

She swallowed and then slowly sketched a very rough outline of the past few days.

At the end of her story she saw her father close his eyes as if garnering strength or control over some strong emotion. ‘At any point did you see his face, Marianne?’

A fleeting second to make a momentous decision. Her heart beat, and the seconds seemed to slow down. A pause that was so tiny, yet felt so vast. She should tell the truth, reveal a description of that so-handsome face. Especially given what he had done to her father.

‘Whatever that villain may have threatened, pay no heed, Marianne, for I swear on my life that I will see the scoundrel caught.’

She knew what they did to highwaymen that they caught. The magistrates would not be lenient. Her father would see to that.

‘He was masked. I saw nothing.’ Marianne could not meet her father’s eyes to tell the lie. Her heart tripped all the faster.

There was silence in the room and she expected them to say that they knew that she was lying. But they did not.

Her hands lay folded on her lap. She gripped them a little tighter together. ‘He said he had taken me to force you to yield a particular document.’ She hesitated. ‘Why did you not give it to him, Papa?’

‘Such a foolish question, Marianne!’ Her father’s face stained burgundy. ‘Do you honestly think I would not have given it to him, were it that easily done?’ he demanded.

‘You do not have the document he seeks.’ It was not a question, only an assertion of what she already knew.

‘I have not the slightest notion of what he speaks. The man belongs in Bedlam. Demanding old documents of which I have not the slightest knowledge. He is both dangerous and delusional.’

‘I told him you did not have it.’

Her father paled. His eyes opened wider and she saw in them a fleeting look of panic. ‘He spoke to you of the document...of its nature?’

She saw her brother watching her father.

‘Only that it was a document he believed you to own, that it was the reason he had taken me. He said he meant me no harm.’

‘That is what villains say, Marianne.’ He shook his head as if exasperated at her naïvety. ‘Thank God he took fright at the strength of the men that I sent.’

‘He took no fright whatsoever. And those men you sent were indiscriminate with their guns.’

‘He had you with him?’ Her father’s face was aghast.

She nodded. ‘They shot at me and he saved me, Papa, using himself as a shield that the bullet would not hit me.’

Again that exchange of looks between her father and brother.

‘Marianne, are you telling me the highwayman
was shot?’

‘He was shot.’ She glanced down at her hands, remembering that terrible moment when she realised he had been hurt.

‘Are you about to suffer an attack of the vapours?’ Her father was peering at her as if she were a fragile piece of porcelain that might crack at any moment. Before the highwayman she had been just that. And after the highwayman... What should have made her weaker seemed only to have had the opposite effect.

‘I am quite well.’ She stared at her hands, wondering what her family would say if she told them she had picked pieces of shirt out of the wound before binding it for him...or how it had been between them in the warehouse afterwards...and in the alleyway not a hundred yards from where they now sat.

And when she looked up again she could see her father was stroking his beard. ‘So the villain is wounded.’ His eyes were narrow and filled with such hatred that a chill ran through Marianne. He looked up at her and smiled a grim smile, then he took her hand between his and patted it. ‘Have no fear, Marianne, I will see the villain caught, I swear it. He will pay for what he did and there will be an end to him. Now go and rest, my dear.’

‘I am perfectly well, Papa, I assure you. I do not need to rest.’

‘But you will do as I say just the same, Marianne. Your papa knows what is best for you.’

* * *

It was difficult to maintain a low profile when one was pretending to be a rake around town, but somewhat easier to stay away from the places that a respectable young lady might visit. Yet even so, Rafe found himself thinking about Marianne Winslow and subsequently keeping an ear to the ground regarding not just Misbourne, but his daughter too.

He knew that Misbourne had hired a thief-taker to find him and that he had not gone to the Order of the Wolf. He also knew that there was a considerable price on the head of the ‘mysterious’ highwayman. Misbourne’s own newspaper carried word of it, saying that a group of London’s best citizens had put the money together, but Rafe doubted there was anyone other than Misbourne himself involved. Five thousand guineas was a king’s ransom—more money than some men might earn in a hundred lifetimes. Enough to tempt someone to break the underworld’s code of conduct. But of Marianne there had been nothing at all, not even a whisper of a wedding to Pickering.

An image of her filled his mind: all pale and mysterious with her secrets and sensitivity that she strove to hide. He remembered the feel of her lips beneath his and the untapped passion beneath the innocence and wariness, and he felt his blood quicken, just as it did every time he thought of her. He wondered how long it would be before she was married to Pickering. Perhaps then he would have some peace from this torment.

‘What do you say, Knight? Would you bed her?’ Devlin asked as they made their way down the steps of their club in St James’s.

Bed Marianne Winslow? He wanted her, he admitted it; wanted her with a force of lust that shocked him. He closed his eyes and pushed the thoughts away.

‘Knight? You all right, old man?’ asked Bullford. ‘Seem a bit distracted.’

‘I am distracted,’ said Rafe. He gestured to the two carts blocking the street, one of which had spilled its load of coal over half the street, and across which several children were darting, collecting up pieces of coal and running off with them.

‘Not by that,’ said Fallingham with a grin. ‘More likely a certain little lady.’

‘You are not wrong,’ admitted Rafe.

‘The Widow White?’

‘I could not possibly comment,’ said Rafe, watching the queue of carriages begin to build up in the street while they waited for the accident to be cleared.

‘I was asking about Miss Fox. She’s at Covent Garden Theatre tonight, playing the part of Lady Macbeth,’ said Devlin. The day was bright, but cool. No sign of yesterday’s rain. They walked on, leaving the mayhem unfolding behind them.

‘I didn’t know you like Shakespeare,’ Bullford piped up.

‘He doesn’t. He likes well-shaped actresses with large assets,’ said Fallingham. ‘And I hear that she’s already in negotiations with Hawick to be his mistress.’

‘Not a done deal yet,’ declared Devlin. ‘I’ve got m’father’s box. Are you up for a night of it?’

Everyone gave grunted answers save for Rafe.

‘Knight?’ Devlin prompted.

But Rafe barely heard him. He was staring at a certain stationary dark town coach with a grey-bearded and moustached man jumping down to investigate the nature of the hold up. But he was not looking at the fading bruise around the man’s eye or the healing cut upon his cheek. Rather, he was looking at the young fair-haired woman still seated in the carriage.

Marianne’s eyes met his. And everything else in the world faded. He could feel the steady hard beat of his heart. All that he had worked for, all that he had planned for Misbourne, could be lost in this moment. Any second now she would call out to her father and reveal the identity of the highwayman who had abducted her. Yet he could not take his eyes from hers and even across the distance of the pavement and the road that separated them he could sense the tumult of her emotion. She looked at him and he looked right back. The seconds stretched too long so that the moment seemed frozen, as if he could have walked across there and taken her for a second time.

Misbourne turned back and the movement caught his eye, breaking the intensity between him and Marianne. Misbourne’s gaze slid to his and their eyes met—and it was as if Misbourne knew exactly who he was. Rafe’s world became quite still; his senses sharpened and every nerve tensed. Then Misbourne turned away as if he did not know him at all and the moment was over.

‘Good Lord!’ said Devlin. ‘Look at the mess of Misbourne’s face. Coaching accident, my arse! I know the marks of a fist when I see them. The rumours are true, then.’

Fallingham and Razeby sniggered.

Rafe saw Lady Misbourne lean forwards from inside the carriage, throwing them a disapproving look.

Rafe kept on walking and did not look back, but he was poised, with every step that he took and every breath that he inhaled, for the shout of Misbourne’s voice and the sound of pursuing footsteps. Every muscle in his body was tensed. Every nerve stretched tight. He felt as he had on the countless battlefields upon which he’d fought across the years. Primed and ready, sickened almost, with the wait for the fight to begin. But the enemy did not give chase. All he heard were his own footsteps and those of his friends, and the irate voices of the passengers of the escalating coach jam. And when he glanced back, Misbourne was still hovering near the door of his coach, staring in the opposite direction at the accident, and Marianne was hidden from sight.

* * *

‘Louts,’ pronounced Lady Misbourne to her husband. ‘Come in, sir, and close the door that we are not subject to their ill manners.’ Then to her daughter, ‘Avert your eyes this instant, Marianne.’

Marianne’s heart was thudding so hard she wondered that her parents did not hear it. The skin on the nape of her neck tingled as if the highwayman’s fingers stroked against it.

‘Yes, Mama,’ she replied out of habit, but she could not tear her eyes away.

He was dressed in a smart, dark, fitted tailcoat, probably one of the Weston’s she had seen in his wardrobe, and dark pantaloons, just like the other men he was with. But that was where the similarity stopped. He was taller, more manly, his dark hair tied back in its queue. And so breathtakingly handsome that she could have looked at him for a lifetime and never tired of it. Even across the distance that separated them she could see the warm golden glow of his eyes and feel the intensity of his gaze. The highwayman. It seemed like everything else in the world dimmed and faded to nothing. She was aware only of him...and the strange connection between them. Her awareness of him was so intense that in that moment she smelled again the scent of him, heard again that harsh half-whisper against her ear and felt the touch of his lips upon hers.

Outside the carriage her father moved and Marianne saw the highwayman’s gaze shift to him—and her father’s to the highwayman’s. She remembered her father’s vow to bring an end to the man who had abducted her and the look of utter malice in his eyes. Her heart gave a stutter. She caught back her breath. And for a terrible moment she thought that her father had recognised him. But then he turned back to the carriage, to her and her mother, and she knew she must have been mistaken.