Unmasked (13 page)

“Do you think so?” he murmured.

“Yes.” Her dark eyes mocked him. “I am a rich widow, you see, and you—” she smiled “—you may well be a fortune hunter.”

Nick’s lips twitched. “You have met many such, Mrs. Osborne?”

“Oh, many and a many,” Mari said.

“They profess to admire you?”

“Always. But they admire my fortune more.”

“Whereas I,” Nick said gently, leaning toward her, “am heir to a fortune, and thus do not need yours. And I admire you sincerely.”

The smile that curved Mari’s lips was cynical. “You cannot admire me sincerely, Major Falconer. You have met me on only a few occasions. Any sincere emotion takes time and experience to grow.”

Nick made a slight gesture. “I am misled, then, by the feeling that I have met you more
frequently
than you claim. At least half a dozen times, by my reckoning.”

The color crept under her skin. “How odd.”

“And disturbing,” Nick said, “to feel that one knows a person more intimately than they pretend.”

Mari’s luscious mouth was tight with scorn. “There is nothing intimate in our acquaintance, sir.”

“I beg to differ.” Nick lowered his voice. “I saw almost every intimate inch of you in that fountain, Mrs. Osborne, and having done so can only burn to touch every place that my eyes have uncovered.” He shifted. “I would have done so yesterday—would have made love to you—had we not been interrupted.”

He saw Mari bite her lower lip, her incredibly full and sensuous lower lip and felt his body jolt in response. The world of Laura’s drawing room, the other guests, the buzz of conversation about them, even his memories of Anna, had all retreated to the edges of his mind. He could focus on Mari alone and the dazzling need to possess her.

Mari was fidgeting with her teaspoon. “I think you refine too much upon one kiss, sir,” she said. “It was no great matter.”

“How crushing for my self-esteem,” Nick said. “I shall have to try to do better in future.”

“Pray do not put yourself to so Herculean a task on my behalf, sir,” Mari said. She raised her eyes to his. “As I said, I made an error and I tend to learn quickly so I will not make the same mistake again.”

Nick reached out and lightly touched the back of her hand, and she let the spoon fall into the saucer with a slight tinkle.

“I would like to believe you,” he said softly, “just as I think you would like to believe yourself, Mrs. Osborne, but the truth is that you want me, too. You kissed me back. Admit it.”

He could see that she was disturbed by his words. The color in her face was the flush of arousal now although her refusal to meet his gaze showed that she was fighting it. She fidgeted with the seam of her dress, pleating it between her fingers.

“Major Falconer—”

“Yes?”

“It is true—I did kiss you back.” She spoke very softly, so quietly that he had to strain to catch her words. She sounded very candid. He would have believed her had he not known her better, known her for a counterfeit. “I did not intend to,” she said. “It took me by surprise and so I…I responded.” Her voice strengthened. “But Major Falconer, I would ask that you disabuse yourself of the belief that I share any of your feelings. I do not wish for a love affair.”

Nick smiled. “You depress my pretensions.”

“I hope so. I have no use for your admiration.”

Nick leaned closer until his breath stirred the tendrils of hair that escaped the confines of the knot. So far she had been the epitome of the respectable widow, word perfect, irreproachably virtuous, but for the unwilling arousal he had seen in her eyes. Now he felt the tiniest tremor of awareness go through her at his proximity. She was not indifferent to him, very far from it. And he was prepared to go as far as he had to in order to test that virtuous facade and uncover the tavern harlot beneath.

He leaned forward and allowed the back of his fingers to brush the skin of her neck, very gently, as though by accident. She felt warm, soft and so smooth he wanted to run his hands over her whole body to see if it was equally as perfect. Her skin heated beneath his touch and blushed a pale rose. He felt a sudden wrench of pain for Anna, then, for her delicacy and her honesty and the fact that he had not deserved her. This relationship with Mari was based on little but deceit. And yet there was some truth in it, for there was no pretence in his desire for her.

“You say you have no wish for an affair but you know you lie,” he whispered. “Take me as your lover.”

He felt her whole body stiffen. She drew back from him slightly. Her lips were parted, her breathing shallow. There was shock in her face and something else that quickened his pulse. He waited, his mouth dry, for her response. In that moment he wanted nothing more than to take her to his bed. He had all but forgotten the Glory Girls. As for Rashleigh, he could hardly have cared less about his murderer. The man had been a blackguard and it was good riddance. He wanted nothing other than Mari, her naked body entwined around his, her mouth open and willing beneath his own.

“You move too fast.” Her words came out as a whisper.

“I know when I want something.”

“You are outrageous.”

“I know it. But so are you. You match me in every way although you pretend otherwise. You are far from proper, Mrs. Osborne, and we both know it. I have seen you in your true guise.”

Her chin came up. “Now you go too far, sir.”

“I go nowhere near far enough,” Nick said, “but I shall go much further.” He saw Mari give a quick glance over her shoulder at the Duchess’s guests, chatting and laughing and totally oblivious of the spell that held them both in thrall. “Not now, perhaps,” he said, “but at a time of my choosing.”

He saw a flicker of expression in Mari’s eyes and then she gave a little sigh and sat up straighter.

“The answer is no, Major Falconer.”

Nick was not a strategist for nothing. He knew when to retreat. “Very well,” he said. He sat back and smiled at her. “Forgive my importunity. But I wonder whether you would care to ride with me tomorrow? You could explain matters so much more clearly to me if we were alone and we could…pledge ourselves to reach a better understanding.”

He saw with amusement that she was about to give him a crushing set down, but before she could do so, Lord Henry Cole gave a loud snort and lurched awake, turning toward them. “Riding? Did someone mention a ride?” He spun around unsteadily on Charles. “When is the hunt going out, dear boy? Can’t wait to see the fillies mounted, eh?” He gave Mari a lascivious wink.

“You must hold me excused, my lord,” Mari said. Suddenly she was as pale as chalk. “You know that I do not ride well enough to join the hunt.”

Nick watched curiously as she smoothed her skirts with fingers that shook slightly. There was something here that was more than Mari’s dislike of Lord Henry, he thought. He had seen the way she had dealt with the persistent peer at the ball; she was not afraid of him. Yet now she was breathing in short, shaky breaths and looked almost white enough to faint. He caught her fingers in his, his desire for her suddenly overlaid by concern.

“Mrs. Osborne? Are you quite well?”

“I…Yes…” For a moment her dark eyes were unfocused as though she were gazing inward on something terrifying. “I beg your pardon.” She straightened and removed her hand from his. “Yes, I am quite well, I thank you, sir. But I am afraid that I must decline your invitation to ride. You have seen for yourself that I am not proficient.”

Nick knew this was true but he thought it could not account for such acute anxiety. He frowned slightly. Had she had a hunting accident in the past that might have made her so nervous?

“Have you ever been out with the hunt, Mrs. Osborne?” he asked slowly.

“No.” She had locked her shaking hands together now in a vain attempt to quell their trembling. “I dislike the hunt. It is barbaric.”

“It is but sport.”

She looked him directly in the eyes. And now there was no pretence, no desire, no deceit, nothing but pure, blazing anger.

“Sport?” she said. “Tell that to the hunted, Major Falconer. You have no idea what you are talking about. Excuse me.”

And with a soft swish of satin skirts she rose to her feet and walked away.

S
OMEHOW
M
ARI MANAGED
to quell her panic whilst she crossed the huge expanse of marbled hall and waited for the footman to call her carriage. Somehow she must have provided a coherent reply to Laura’s anxious questions as her friend came hurrying out of the drawing room to check that Mari had not been taken ill as a result of the lobster patties they had had for dinner. And somehow she had kept her expression studiously blank as Nick Falconer followed Laura from the room and paused for a moment, watching her thoughtfully as she stood in an agony of impatience, desperate to be alone.

Eventually the carriage pulled up at the door, Mari climbed inside and the blessed darkness enclosed her. She leaned back and closed her eyes. The familiar panic was like a tide racing through her, sweeping aside all thought and reason, claiming her, fiercely, as its own. The feral baying of the hounds echoed through her head. She could feel the chill of the water numbing her feet as she crouched in the stream and waited for them to pass by. She could hear the thud of the beaters’ sticks in the grass, the horn calling to the dogs as Rashleigh’s men hunted her across the winter fields. A wave of heat swept through her body, setting her shaking, and then the panic started to recede a little and her mind began to clear and she could hear the rumble of the carriage wheels on the road and knew she was safe.

Safe.

Free.

People spoke of liberty and freedom so lightly and many had no idea what it truly meant. Her grip on both safety and freedom felt so tenuous. For all her childhood and the first part of her adult life she had lived at the whim of others. She had been a possession, property. She had bought her physical freedom at such a high price and had known that because she was still technically a serf, because her owner had never set her free, she could be captured and taken back and forced back into slavery.

Nick Falconer was Rashleigh’s heir. He might even be her master. She thought of the anonymous letters. At the very least he might discover the truth about her and then she would lose all she had fought so hard to gain.

Never trust a man, never let him close, never let him hurt you, never give him that power….

The attraction she felt for Nick Falconer was ruthless but she had learned hard lessons in a hard school. She would not give in. She had retreated tonight into the shell she had created for herself, her reinvention, Mrs. Marina Osborne, virtuous widow. It was not who she really was. She was not even sure it was the person she wanted to be. Occasionally she would catch a memory of little Marina, the child who had lived for her first seventeen years in St. Petersburg and had tumbled in the snow with the other children of Lord Rashleigh’s serfs. That child had been fierce, strong, forever chasing after new ideas and desperately grasping after liberty but never actually free.

The person Mari wanted to be had been lost seven years before, taken from her home and family, swept away from all that was familiar by Rashleigh’s selfish cruelty, her innocence stolen. But now, looking back, she could see that she had never really been sure of whom she was. Rashleigh’s father had taken a child and turned her into an approximation of an English lady for his own pleasure; she had been some sort of experiment to him, not a real person. He had taken her from her parents when she had been no more than a baby and had named her Marina. Her parents had not even had the power to name her. They had no will, no right, to resist. Thus was the lot of a serf.

When she had created Marina Osborne she had tried to make the life for herself that she thought she had wanted. She had her cottage and her garden and her plants. She had good friends who loved her. She had taken the money she had stolen from Rashleigh and had tried to use it for good. And she had dismissed the impossible dreams of a husband and family because Rashleigh’s legacy to her had been fear and mistrust. Along with her virginity, he had stolen her hopes for the future.

Under other circumstances Nick Falconer might have been a man that she could have trusted, a man with whom she could have rebuilt that future. But although she wanted him, she knew his seduction had a deliberate purpose. He wanted to trick her into trusting him, into telling him the truth. And she had to keep silent for her own sake and the sake of all those she loved and protected.

She shivered a little as she remembered his whispered words.

I have seen almost every intimate inch of you…Take me for your lover….

She had wanted to, had wanted
him
with a desire all the stronger and more poignant because she had thought she would never feel like that. But she had chosen the wrong man. Even if he was not cynically trying to exploit her attraction for his own ends, he could still be her downfall. It could never be. She had to ignore both her awareness of him and the insane urge that prompted her to trust him, to run to him, to draw on his strength. Mrs. Marina Osborne might be a counterfeit but it was all she had to hide behind. She had to hold firm and hope—and pray—that she would never be found out.

“A
NSTRUTHER
,”
Nick said a little grimly, on returning to the drawing room, “I need a drink. You had better join me at Half Moon House. I wish to make some inquiries about the Glory Girls.”

Dexter Anstruther looked less than delighted at this enticing prospect when the alternative was to sit gazing surreptitiously at Laura Cole, but he went helpfully enough to fetch the horses and within a few minutes they had excused themselves from the house-party guests and were riding out on the Skipton road. Nick had no qualms about riding at night. They had pistols and the moon was waxing full so they could see the way clearly. He reflected that it was, in fact, the perfect night for a raid by the Glory Girls, but nothing moved in the still landscape and there was no sound other than the hoot of an owl in the beech wood and the bleat of the sheep down by the river.