Seacliff (29 page)

“And… ?”

“A party.”

It was clearly not what he’d been expecting, and this time she did laugh.

“Yes, a party.” Her gaze swept to the windows now covered in green velvet. “Winter has finally come, and nothing would please me more than to warm the season with a party. A grand party, Oliver.” She rose and began pacing. “Everyone in the village shall come. They will see I’m not dying, and they will work all the harder because of it. They will see you as the perfect host, and while they won’t love you—and I can’t pretend they will, because we both know it’s not true—they will see that you’re at least human.”

Then, in a sweeping move she dropped to his feet and took his startled hands in hers.

“A party, Oliver. A ball! Think of it. In the middle of dreary winter, all that light and music… a ball, Oliver! A ball!”

She waited, smiling while her hands gripped his and she tried not to scream, tried not to tear her eyes away from his. But if her plan was to work, she must have patience and his cooperation. For without the latter, she had no hope at all. “Oliver?”

And when he gave her a faraway smile, calculated and cool, it was all she could do not to laugh aloud and spoil the mood she’d woven.

22

“I
don’t believe it! You’re absolutely mad,” Gwen exclaimed, dropping onto the footboard chest, her expression incredulous. “I can’t imagine that you’d try something as foolish as this, Cat.”

Caitlin stood in front of the full-length mirror and turned slowly, checking her gown from every possible angle. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” she said as if she were discussing the purchase of a new carriage. “It makes perfect sense to me.”

Gwen closed her eyes in annoyance, but Caitlin was still wearing the same half-smile she’d had for the past hour. “You haven’t been thinking, that’s what it is. You just haven’t been thinking,” Gwen said.

Caitlin stared at the other woman’s reflection. “I have been doing nothing else, Gwen Thomas, and I’ll not be discouraged. I mean to leave Seacliff tonight or my name isn’t—”

“Dead,” Gwen said angrily. “You’ll be dead before the sun rises.” Caitlin had had enough of arguing. She sliced the air with her hand, indicating silence and examined herself more closely. Her gown was of pale gold and emerald green, the plunging neckline and cuffs lined with braided silver thread. Her hair had been swept back into a dizzying series of loops and curls into which baby pearls had been nestled. Around her neck glittered a double strand of diamonds from which a teardrop diamond dangled into the cleft of her breasts. The scent of rose and lilac lingered about her like a cloud, creating a delicate co-mingling of temptations which, she sincerely hoped, would draw the men into staring at her figure and not at the tension she was sure ran across her face. When she moved, her skirts and petticoats whispered; when she laughed, the swell of her breasts rippled distractingly; when she held her arms demurely at her sides and buried her white-gloved hands in her gown, every curve was accentuated, every inch of hidden flesh was a promise.

It was a daring, consciously licentious costume she’d chosen for the evening, but it was essential to her plan. She must seduce all of the males in the mansion, befuddle their senses and thwart their suspicion. To do anything less would mean she’d spend the rest of her life a prisoner in her own home, just waiting for the day when Oliver tired of her and saw to it that she met with an “accident.”

Gwen shook her head firmly. “No. No, Cat, I will not permit it.”

Caitlin spun on her, her eyes bright with months of suppressed rage.
“You
will not permit it? You?” She covered the distance between them in half a dozen strides and grabbed the woman’s shoulders. “You have no choice, my dear. It’s all been arranged, and there’s nothing you can do about it now.”

Tears sprang into Gwen’s eyes, and she rubbed at them fiercely with her knuckles. “You could have at least told me, Cat. I would have helped you, you know. Or tried to dissuade you from such suicide.”

Caitlin softened somewhat and leaned closer to kiss her friend on the cheek. She shook her head sadly. “It would have been wrong, Gwen.”

“Wrong? How could my wanting to help you be wrong?”

“Because of Flint,” she said, knowing nothing more needed to be said. Since Flint’s assault on Gwen the night Griffin fled the valley, Gwen had been afraid that the overseer would summon her again and demand to know what conversations had taken place in her mistress’s apartments. And worse—she knew that under threat of her life, and of Davy’s life as well, she might well have broken. Caitlin was thus reduced to planning her escape on her own. She had set up dozens of schemes and probed them for their weaknesses and strengths. But it had been Les Daniels’s suggestion of a party that had made the notion more than a fantasy. After only a brief word with Orin that afternoon, she felt her chances were good, but only the evening’s climax would tell.

“But why tonight?” Gwen asked in an almost whining voice. “Why must it be tonight of all nights?”

“For that very reason, Gwen,” she said, turning to the vanity table and critically examining a vase of winter roses sent in from Eton: Oliver’s gift to her on her twenty-first birthday. “I am supposed to be celebrating. There will be dozens of people here. Before, I had only shadows—Flint, my husband, that horrid Birwyn. Now there’ll be drink, there’ll be food, there’ll be entertainment, and before the evening is out there’ll be so many distractions that I’ll be able to slip away to the valley before anyone discovers that I’m gone.”

“Do… do you really think so?” Gwen said, wanting desperately to hope, but not daring to give her wishes full rein.

“I have no choice but to believe,” Caitlin said. She plucked a rose from the vase and deftly stemmed it before tucking the vivid red blossom into a curl over her left ear. She examined herself in the mirror and winced. All she needed now was a little rouge on her cheeks and she’d be able to ply the trade in Whitehall with the best of them.

“The snow?”

She covered her face momentarily, lowered her hands and pointed at Gwen’s reflection. “I have been through all this myself a hundred times over, Gwen. It hasn’t snowed for three days. The roads are clear all the way to Cardiff.” She adjusted the strand of diamonds around her neck. “It should be no trouble booking passage to London with one of these stones. And once there I’ll be able to find Lord Carrington or Lord Devon. They’ll remember me from Eton, and they’ll be very interested to know what Sir Oliver is planning for this little valley of mine. Very interested indeed. It shouldn’t be long before. I return. And when I do…” She clapped her hands once, loudly.

Gwen came up behind her and put an arm around her waist, her cheek on Caitlin’s shoulder. “I’m afraid.”

“As am I,” she said softly. “But I can’t bear it any longer. And the longer I wait, the more powerful Oliver becomes. And as soon as someone in the village discovers his real purpose there’ll be bloodshed. I think…I think some, like Randall, have already guessed, but they’re afraid to speak out because of what might… what
will
happen.”

Silence hung between them as Gwen pulled gently away and Caitlin thought of the “soldiers” quartered throughout the village. The word had been spread that they were preparing to embark on a naval frigate on its way down from Glasgow, a frigate Caitlin was positive did not exist. She pulled at her neckline absently. She was forced to admit a certain reluctant admiration for Oliver’s machinations, and for the patience required to bring all the disparate threads together. It had been literally years in the making, this plan of his, perhaps even begun when he realized his days in the army were numbered. It was a dark, malign vision, but a vision nevertheless and— Gwen cleared her throat, and Caitlin was startled into the present. She turned, thinking someone had overheard their conversation or that Flint or Oliver had come to claim her. But Gwen was simply standing there, her hands clasped behind her back, a small and melancholy grin on her face.

“Was going to wait until after,” she said quietly, lifting her chin suddenly as if determined not to weep. “But you won’t be here, God willing.” She brought her hands around to the front, to show a small package wrapped in gaily colored paper and tied with a large gold bow.

Caitlin covered her mouth with one hand while the other accepted the gift. Gwen urged her with a nod to open it, and as she did so, her fingers trembling, her eyes blinked away tears that matched the diamond gleam at her throat. Inside the package was an ornately embroidered lace handkerchief, blinding white in color and bordered with gold thread.

“I been working on it awhile,” Gwen whispered. “I’m not as good as Shamac, but—”

Caitlin dropped the package and embraced her. She wept freely as she buried her face in her friend’s shoulder. Then, her arms still around Gwen’s waist, she leaned back. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she cried. Gwen blushed, and Caitlin laughed.

“And what,” she said with feigned severity, “makes you think I would be leaving you?”

Gwen’s puzzled look furrowed her brow. “But you said—”

“I said I’d be gone by midnight. I did not say I would be leaving alone.”

“But… I don’t … “ Flustered, Gwen reached for the gift, looked to one side, and finally understood. “Me? I’m to go with you? Me?”

“Gwen, not only does someone of my station need a personal maid while traveling, but I certainly wouldn’t leave you here alone, without me. I’m no fool, no matter what you think. I know what Flint would do if I left you behind.” She grinned knowingly. “I expect that at this moment Orin has your bag ready. With Davy’s help, of course.”

“Davy? Is he… I mean, have you—”

“No,” Caitlin said sadly. “He would not. He said he must stay, for his own reasons. I respect him, and I agreed.”

Gwen rose and took her arm. “But how could you? He’ll be killed the first minute they know…” Her expression hardened. “I can’t go, Cat. I can’t leave him—”

“You will go because he wishes it,” she said sternly. “And you will go because you’re my friend. Davy knows what he’s doing, and what he’s doing is right. If he’s here, he’ll be able to get word to us about Oliver, especially if something happens we should know about. Oliver and Flint will not wait until spring to see what I’ve done, Gwen. They’ll have to move if they fail to catch us during our escape. And when they move, Davy will be right behind us with the news.”

She would brook no further protest. She grabbed Gwen’s shoulders and propelled her gently from the room, grinning at the woman’s muttering as she closed the door behind her. But Caitlin’s grin faded when she was alone again and staring at the mirror. Death, she thought; Gwen was instantly ready to face death at Flint’s hands just to stay with her lover. And… she clenched her teeth and swallowed. And here am I …

She glared.

And here am I about to prove to Oliver that I am neither the fool nor the weakling he believes me to be.

It had been almost impossibly hard to maintain the fiction of docility over the past three weeks, but she had managed. Whether it fooled Flint did not concern her, not as long as Oliver was still in charge. And though she’d noticed a slight increase in tension between the two men—an old tension apparently, for why else would Oliver find it necessary continually to remind Flint of his obligations to his employer?—she had no doubts who still held command.

She stepped away from the mirror and whirled around once on her silver-buckled, satin shoes. Gwen had left the corridor door slightly ajar, and the strains of music, soft chatter, and an occasional restrained laugh on the ground floor wafted up to her. Oliver had insisted she remain in her rooms until most of the guests had arrived; an entrance, he maintained, was essential to an effective evening, and he wanted the villagers properly entranced—an added touch of legerdemain, she suspected, to keep them off balance.

“Marvelous,” a voice said in genuine admiration. “Absolutely and unquestionably enchanting.”

Oliver stood framed in the doorway. He wore a black velvet cutaway coat with silver buttons reminiscent of the military; his jabot was laced and spilled in ruffled waves from his neck; his cuffs, too, were made of lace; and his ebony walking stick was topped with an ivory head carved in the shape of an imperial stallion. Oliver was a study, she thought, in black and white, save for the flush that spread lightly over his cheeks and forehead. He bowed to her stiffly, to which she returned a curtsy. One last look at the precarious balance of her coiffure and she moved to join him.

They did not touch. It was as if a barrier of stone had been erected between them, high enough for them to look over but thick enough to keep them distant. She smiled—a mask only, the substance had long since evaporated—and walked with him along the gallery to the head of the staircase. The music was louder now, gaily playing various folk themes the guests knew very well; many of them were singing, stumbling over the words, and many more had decided to add harmony to the already lilting tunes. The atmosphere felt very much like the reunion of many families and, she thought sadly, this would have been one in better times. But she was compelled to admit that Oliver had done his homework well. The Courders and the rest of the staff had been cooking for days, preparing special foods and delicacies for the unsophisticated palates of the valley folk, who didn’t know what they were eating. And the results were already evident. From what she could hear as they approached the staircase, the partygoers’ spirits were high and lively, no small part of which was probably due to the large quantities of wine and fine northern ale laid out for the occasion.

“Caitlin,” Oliver said in a low voice, “I trust you will do nothing foolish this evening.”

She held her breath, suddenly fearful he’d guessed her intentions, or had somehow learned through Orin or Davy the true reason she had begged him to hold this affair. But she managed to keep panic from her eyes as she looked up to him questioningly.

“You do not take wine well,” he said. “And you are not yet the woman you were last summer.” He raised a cautionary finger and wagged it solicitously. “Moderation, Caitlin. In all things.”