Promise Me Tomorrow (28 page)

“I didn’t have any luck, either,” Justin agreed. “You were the first person any of the grooms remembered saddling a horse for. So it would seem that our man saddled his own. They remember several men going and coming during the day—practically every man here, it seems. And as for learning about their pasts—it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. But I’m going to put a stop to it. I’ll be damned if I’ll let him hurt you again. Next time we might not be so lucky. I’ve come up with a plan.”

“What?” Marianne turned toward him, hope rising in her.

“We shall trap him instead. We won’t have to try to figure out who he is. We shall set out bait for him, and when he takes it, we’ll seize him.”

“You mean we’ll make it appear easy for him to get me, and when he tries—”

“We shall get him. Exactly. Except, of course, that it’s not actually going to be you. I am not going to expose you to that kind of risk. I will pretend to be you.”

Marianne began to laugh. Justin looked at her indignantly, which caused her to giggle even more. “I’m sorry. It’s just—really, Justin, how could you possibly make him think you are me? You are several inches taller and rather too wide across the shoulders. And if you’re planning to try dressing up in my clothes, I can tell you right now I won’t allow you to rip any of my dresses at the seams trying to get into them.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Justin said with great dignity. “I had no intention of wearing your clothes. I shall wear something of Lady B’s—she’s larger than you, and it won’t matter that she’s shorter, because he won’t be able to see my legs. Stop that!” He struggled to keep his own lips from twitching into a smile, but finally gave up the struggle and gave way to laughter, too. “Well, better me than Bucky.”

The idea of his friend, who was quite barrel-chested, cavorting about in a dress pretending to be her sent Marianne off into fresh peals of mirth. Finally she subsided, wiping away the tears that laughter had brought to her eyes.

“Now,” Justin said, giving her a stern look, “if you could kindly refrain from vulgar amusement until I have finished explaining….”

Marianne nodded, though her eyes still danced with merriment. “I will. I promise.”

“All right. Bucky and I have it all planned out. We shall do it tonight at the ball. Bucky was planning to have fireworks shot off over the pond at midnight. It will provide the perfect opportunity to have all the guests out on the terrace at the same time, to look at the display. Now, we will assume that our culprit will have his eye on you. He must be getting more and more desperate, as he has failed several times now. Doubtless he will want to get it over with here. Going back to London would complicate matters. So I think he will be watching you, looking for an opportunity to do you harm, and then try to make it look like an accident or suicide or whatever.”

“I agree.”

“Now Bucky and I will have made it a point to stay with you all day, giving him no opportunity to get at you. Even tonight, when you’re getting ready, Penelope or Nicola will be in the room with you. But then, while everyone is watching the fireworks display, you will separate yourself from the crowd. You will loiter there a little while, allow him to see that you are without an escort, and then you will stroll down from the terrace into the garden. Bucky will have flares lit along the pathways to provide light for the guests, but it will not be enough to make everything bright and clear, of course. Here’s the important thing. You will wear a shawl that’s easily distinguished and some sort of thing in your hair, a spray of jewels or flowers, something noticeable. You will start along the path, going toward the rose arbor. We’ll enlist Nicola and Penelope’s help. By the end of the day, they will have made sure that everyone knows how much you love to sit in the rose arbor.

“Shall we tell them the whole story, then?”

“I don’t see why not. They’re hardly suspects.”

“No.”

“You will take a path that we will go over beforehand. Right after the loveknot of flowers—” He looked at her questioningly to make sure she knew the part of the path he meant.

“I know where you mean,” Marianne assured him. “The little circle where the path splits around—there’s a loveknot of peonies planted there.”

“Exactly. Right after it, you’ll turn to the left, and for the next few yards, you will be hidden from the rest of the path by that high hedge.” Marianne nodded again. “I will be waiting there, wearing a dress of similar color to yours, and a wig—not quite the same shade of red, but close enough. It’s an old moth-eaten thing that Bucky and Nicola dug out of the attic that the girls used for dressing up. And I will have a similar spray of flowers or whatever it is that you have in your hair. You will hand me the shawl, which I will wrap around my shoulders. Bucky will be there, too, and he will whisk you down a different path, while I hurry to the arbor. I will sit down there, and when our man turns the corner, what he will see is the rear of the rose arbor with a woman sitting in it, her back to him—a woman in your shawl and with similar hair. In the dark, with only the light of the moon and the torches, it will be enough to fool him.”

“Then he will attack you,” Marianne said. “What’s to keep him from killing you?”

“You think I can’t defend myself?”

“Not if he has a gun and shoots you in the back.”

“He won’t do that. It couldn’t be passed off as a suicide or an accident. Besides, he will believe that I am a woman and weaker in strength. He will try to hit me or strangle me or something, and I can subdue him. Bucky will be there to help, in any case.”

“I should be the one to sit in the arbor. You and Bucky could hide nearby and seize him when he tried to do something to me.”

“You think that I should hide behind a bush while you accept all the danger?”

“
I
am the one he is trying to kill. There’s no reason for you to risk your life.”

“There is every reason.”

Marianne frowned. “I don’t want you hurt on my account.”

Justin smiled and, heedless of the house behind them, pulled her into his arms. “It’s sweet of you to worry, but quite needless, I assure you.
I
will not be the one hurt.”

“But he might suspect something if it is you. Even in dim light, I fear he will not think you a woman.”

“I will not allow you to take the risk,” Justin said firmly. “There is no point in talking about it. Your only choice, my dear, is to help us or not.”

“Of course I will help you,” Marianne replied in a vexed voice. “I can hardly refuse, but I warn you, if you get yourself hurt…”

“You may scold me all you wish,” he promised, catching her hand and bringing it up to his lips.

T
HE PLAN WENT OFF MUCH AS
J
USTIN
had outlined it. Marianne strolled through the garden with Bucky and Justin in the afternoon, quietly noting where they would effect the exchange. They took Nicola and Penelope into their confidence about their plan, and Nicola agreed to slip a statement about Marianne’s love of the rose arbor into a conversation with the largest group of guests she could find. The remainder of the day Marianne spent in either Bucky’s or Justin’s company, and Penelope and Nicola joined Marianne in her room while they dressed for the ball.

As they dressed, Penelope chattered confidingly about the attentions that Lord Buckminster had been paying to her. Blushing, she related that he had held her hand as they walked this afternoon. Marianne smiled and did her best to enter into the conversation with the other two women, but she had difficulty keeping her mind on the subject. Her stomach was tied up in knots, thinking of the evening ahead.

Marianne put on her most elegant gown, a deep emerald green velvet evening dress, with a short train falling from the back of the high waistline. She arranged her hair in a smooth, upswept style, with a distinctive spray of silver and rhinestones pinned in back. Nicola had provided the spray; she had a matching one with false amethysts, which they agreed would look the same from a distance. She and Marianne tugged and pinned the ratty old wig Bucky produced into an approximation of Marianne’s hairstyle and fastened the similar spray in back. The three women stepped back and considered the wig. It was a garish orange color, faded through many years from its original red, and up close in this light no one would mistake it for human hair, let alone Marianne’s vivid auburn coiffure.

“Perhaps in the dark…” Nicola murmured doubtfully.

“It will look fine,” Penelope said stoutly. “In the dark, it will be indistinguishable from red, and all you will really see is the glitter from the spray of stones.”

Carefully covering the wig with a scarf, Penelope carried it down the corridor to Lord Buckminster, who was waiting with a sack that contained an old green gown of his mother’s. He would add the wig to the sack and later place it in the garden behind the hedge, where Justin would assume his costume.

Marianne pulled on her long white gloves, and the three of them went down the stairs to the ballroom. The large room, with its long outside wall of French doors opened to admit the evening air, was festooned with greenery and roses, and sparkled under the lights of its huge chandeliers. Justin waited for Marianne there, dressed in elegant black-and-white evening clothes. His manner gave nothing away, but Marianne could see the suppressed excitement glittering in his eyes. He led her onto the floor for the first dance and later for a waltz, but for propriety’s sake, Marianne had to give the rest of her dances to others.

She also had to make polite conversation with the other guests without betraying her nerves, all the time wondering if this person or that was the one who was trying to murder her. It did not help any that Cecilia Winborne was there and kept shooting her venomous looks.

“I’ll cast my vote for Cecilia as the villain,” Nicola told Marianne in an undertone. “If ever anyone looked capable of murder, it is she. Deborah tells me that she has been seething the past two days.”

Nicola had visited her sister, Deborah, Lady Exmoor, twice during their stay, and Deborah had attended the ball this evening, sitting quietly talking with Nicola or one of the older ladies. Her figure was still slender, but Nicola intimated that she was in the beginning stages of pregnancy. It was her third attempt to have a baby, the first two both having ended in miscarriages, and she looked quite ill, her face as white as chalk.

“I know he made her come,” Nicola said in a hard voice, staring across the room at her sister. “She should be home in bed. She should not try to have any more children, but of course Richard is determined to have an heir.”

Marianne slipped her hand into Nicola’s, roused from her own anxiety by Nicola’s obvious distress. “Perhaps this time everything will go better.”

“Thank you. I hope you are right.” But Nicola’s eyes were troubled and stormy. “She asked me to come stay with her during her confinement. She is so frightened.”

Marianne looked across the room at Lady Exmoor, a paler, less attractive copy of her sister. She certainly looked less than well, Marianne thought, but she did not voice her opinion. “I am sure your presence would make her feel better.”

Nicola’s jaw tightened. “Yes. I shall have to go. I had sworn I would never set foot in that house, but…” She shrugged. “I must, if it will give Deborah any comfort.”

“Of course. I know you dislike the Earl very much.”

“It is far more than dislike,” Nicola replied bitterly, and her face was suddenly bleak and older than her years. “He killed the man I loved, and I shall never forgive him for that.”

Marianne stared, stunned by the woman’s words. “Nicola! He murdered him?”

Nicola shrugged. “I don’t know. He was furious with him. They were fighting. He said it was an accident. It could have been. I don’t know. But he is still as lost to me.”

“That is why you would not visit your sister there?”

Nicola nodded.

“I am so sorry.” Marianne took Nicola’s hand. “No wonder you were so unhappy that your sister married him.”

Nicola squeezed Marianne’s hand. “Thank you. Do you know that I have never told anyone else that, even Penny? You are very easy to talk to. I feel as if I can tell you anything.”

“You can,” Marianne assured her. “I just wish that there were something I could do to help you.”

“It has been a help just to be able to air my feelings.” She released Marianne’s hand, giving her a slightly tremulous smile. Her eyes moved past Marianne. “Would you look at that? Penny seems to be walking on air.”

Marianne turned in the direction of her gaze and saw their friend, strolling around the perimeter of the dance floor with Lord Buckminster. The two of them were engrossed in conversation, and Penelope’s face shone with happiness. A few feet from them, Bucky parted from Penelope with obvious reluctance, raising her gloved hand to his lips for a courtly kiss. Penelope turned and floated toward her friends, her eyes sparkling.

“You are looking,” she whispered when she drew up with them, “at the future Lady Buckminster.”

“What!”

“Penny, are you serious? He asked you to marry him?”

They spoke in excited whispers, mindful of the other ears around them. Nicola took Penelope’s hand and drew her toward a small, unoccupied alcove. “Tell us all about it.”