Unmasked (22 page)

Accordingly she waited until the long case clock had struck eleven that night, donned a dark cloak and took her pistol from the drawer in the desk. Hester had not returned and Mari was glad. If she had told Hester what she was doing, her friend would have insisted on accompanying her and she wanted no witnesses to this very private meeting.

The moon was bright as she went through the gate into the deer park and picked her way between the trees until she reached the driveway and beyond that, the formal gardens. It reminded her of the night when she had run toward Nick Falconer in a panic of fear and desire. Now, though, her mind was icy clear. The fear had lifted.

The gardens were still and quiet in the hot night. Mari found a spot beneath the weeping willow by the fountain and waited. She wanted to see her blackmailer arrive. She wanted to know his identity before he saw her. In the massing banks of storm clouds to the west, she could see the flicker of lightning. The full moon was peering from behind the scurrying clouds now and the whole night seemed full of menace.

On the terrace of the Star House a shadow stirred. Someone was mounting the steps and heading for the door.

Mari kept very still, craning her neck to see if she could recognize him, but the night was too dark now. She saw the figure slip the latch. He crossed the threshold into the darkness inside, leaving the door ajar. A moment later Mari saw the flare of a lantern within.

Moving very quietly, she slid from the cover of the bushes and skirted the fountain. The pool reflected the faint light of the moon. The canal stood silent and still whilst in the rock garden the water from the fells tumbled down the hillside toward the river. The roar it made masked all other sounds.

Because of the noise she did not hear the second figure until it was almost too late and it was nearly upon her. At the last moment she saw it approaching and stepped behind the trunk of the tall silver birch, and the woman walked straight past her and up the steps of the Star House, disappearing through the half-open door. As she slipped through the door Mari saw the lamplight fall on her face. It was Laura Cole.

Mari’s heart raced. Laura here? Had she made an assignation? It seemed impossible in the extreme. Mari waited a moment and then resumed her cautious progress toward the Star House, ghosting silently up the steps to stand by the door, her back against the wooden panels of the wall, straining so that she might hear the conversation within.

It was Laura who was speaking. Her voice was low-pitched and perfectly calm, almost conversational.

“Were you expecting someone else, my dear? You seem strangely put out to see me. I saw you creeping out of the house and thought it might be interesting to follow you. So here I am—and most curious about your reason for being here in the middle of the night.”

Mari heard her companion grunt a reply, and after a moment, Laura resumed.

“It seems ironic, does it not, Charles, that it was Mari who designed this house as a place where the two of us could retire from our public lives to enjoy a little intimacy? Ironic, I mean, in the sense that you chose it as the place for your seduction of Mari rather than of me?”

The shock hit Mari squarely in the stomach. She felt icy trickles of horror and disbelief creep down her spine. It was
Charles
who had written the notes, Charles who had threatened to expose her and bring the Glory Girls to justice, Charles who had claimed to have bought her from Rashleigh and to own her body and soul. And Laura
knew.
Laura, whom she loved, Laura who had been one of her most loyal and dearest friends. She felt the cold sweat prickle her skin.

Charles was blustering. “Don’t know what you mean, old girl. What has Mrs. Osborne to do with this?”

“Oh, Charles.” Mari thought that Laura sounded as exasperated as a governess with a slow pupil. “You always underestimate me, my dear. Do you not realize that I know all about your sordid attempts to blackmail Mari into becoming your mistress? I guessed it was you as soon as I heard about the letters. I know how you sent her those desperate little notes threatening to expose the truth about her and about the Glory Girls! I thought it unworthy of you, my dear, but then I suppose that snake Rashleigh was the one who told you of Mari’s past? You always were far too deep in his company and so easily led. I could forgive the gambling and your stealing my jewelry,” Laura finished gently, “but not your blackmailing of Mari, and not your
disgusting
attitude toward slavery. I will never forgive that.”

There was a heavy silence. Mari could feel the sweat running down between her shoulder blades now. Her muscles were cramped tight with the effort of keeping still. The moon had vanished behind the suffocating darkness of the storm cloud and the only light came from the golden pool cast by the lantern.

“Now, just a moment, old girl…” Charles’s voice cracked a little with telltale tension. “I swear, I have no notion what you are getting so exercised about. Came up here to…to have a bit of peace and quiet, don’t you know. I wanted to…to think. All those guests…The house party…A fellow never gets a moment to himself.”

“I see.” Mari could hear Laura’s footfalls echo off the wooden floor. Her shadow crossed the pool of light cast by the lantern. “You wanted to have time to think. I do believe that is the poorest excuse that you have come up with since your lies to me about your theft of my jewelry.” The contempt dripped from her voice. “Well, I have had enough, Charles. I have had enough of your lies and your deceit and your blustering and your pathetic excuses. Rashleigh
sold
Mari to you like the sickening scoundrel he was. Do you think I do not know that? Do you think I have not worked out everything? But you were a coward. You did not dare come out and claim her openly. How could you? Slavery is disgusting and you pretend to oppose it. But instead you sent her anonymous letters, you blackmailed her in the most repellent manner that I have ever seen.”

There was a silence, broken by Charles’s mumbles of self-justification. “Didn’t realize that she would tell you…”

“You didn’t realize that she would tell me? She told Hester and Hester told me. Mari is my friend, Charles, and I have more respect for her than I will ever have for you again!”

“It wasn’t like that,” Charles muttered. “I admit I made a fool of myself over her. I wanted her as my mistress but it is no great matter.” His voice changed into a pathetic attempt at confidence. “You understand how it is in society, old girl. It is the way of the world—”

The sharp slap of Laura’s hand against Charles’s cheek snapped the silence and Mari jumped.

“It may be the way of the world, it may be
your
way, but it is not
my
way,” she said. “I suppose there have been other women, all those times you were in London without me?”

The silence was painful, assenting. A moment later Laura resumed, “You will leave Cole Court tomorrow morning, Charles. I understand that Major Falconer returns to London on the morning coach. Well, you may travel with him.”

“Travel by stage?” It seemed to Mari that Charles was more appalled at the thought of that than anything else that Laura had said that night. “I say, I can’t do that, old girl. Think of my position! I’d be a laughingstock if I didn’t take the carriage. Don’t make me.”

“You will travel by stage,” Laura said relentlessly, “and if I hear one word more—one word, Charles—from you about threatening to expose the Glory Girls, then Glory herself will personally hunt you down and shoot you. Do you understand me?”

Mari could hear naked fear in Charles’s voice now. “Never meant it, my love. I would never have spoken out, I swear.”

Once again Mari could hear the sharp clip of Laura’s heels against the wooden floor. “Before you go,” she said, “there is something else I need to know.”

“Anything!” The eagerness in Charles’s voice was pitiful. “Ask me anything, old girl, and I swear, I will tell you the truth.”

“How did Rashleigh know that Mari was here in Peacock Oak?” Laura said. “Did
you
tell him where to find her, Charles?”

“I didn’t know who she was,” Charles protested. “We were having a drink one day and I started to tell him about your unsuitable friendship with a merchant’s widow. He seemed very interested—”

“I am sure he was,” Laura said dryly, “when he realized whom she was.” She sighed. “Poor Mari! Of all the unconscionably bad luck, to choose Peacock Oak without knowing that you were hand in glove with Rashleigh!”

“The
Ton
is a small world,” Charles muttered.

“Indeed. And it was Mari’s lawyer who recommended Peacock Oak as a quiet place to buy a property, and he is of course, our family lawyer, too.”

“Most inappropriate,” Charles said. “I cannot think why he takes on the middle classes as clientele when he has our business.”

Mari heard Laura give a snort of amusement. “You are a more tragic snob even than Faye, my dear. And was it Rashleigh who told you about the Glory Girls, too? How did he find out about us?”

“It wasn’t Rashleigh.” Charles’s words fell over themselves in his haste to get them out. “It was the other way around. I told him. It was a mistake! I was drunk! I never meant to tell anyone. I had seen you ride out one night last summer and could not believe it. I set a servant to watch you and he told me about the others, about Hester and that woman who owns the inn on the Skipton road. I meant to keep it a secret, I swear, but I had one of Glory’s cards that Hester let slip and Rashleigh saw it—”

“So you knew all along,” Laura said. Mari could hear the ring of bitter amusement in her voice. “And to think that from the first I wanted to be found out, I wanted for you to know, Charles, so that you might notice me, so that you might realize I was more than just a cipher wife, more than just the bloodless aristocrat that you had married.” Her voice rose. “I wanted your regard, Charles! I wanted your love! And now I cannot understand why I
ever
wanted it.”

Mari slipped away. Whatever happened between them now was no concern of hers. The shock of knowing that it had been Charles who had bought her from Rashleigh was subsiding now although she could not quite believe his hypocrisy. On more than one occasion in the past, Laura had told her with pride that Charles backed the abolitionists and had spoken out against slavery in the House of Lords. It seemed now that his words had been a sham. Her skin crawled to think of him as a man who had wanted her as his mistress. Not by one word or one deed had he betrayed to her his interest in her. Had it been Lord Henry, as she had secretly suspected, she would not have been surprised. But Charles, Duke of Cole, the perfect, conventional country gentleman…She had wondered once what his secret was and now she knew. She felt desperately sad for Laura who had loved him and wanted his love in return, Laura who was so generous that she had not uttered one word against her, so giving that she had not blamed Mari for her husband’s betrayal.

The thunderstorm was creeping closer now and the rain had started to fall in huge fat drops that splattered on the ground, raising the hot smell of the dust. Mari was soaked by the time she found her way back to Peacock Cottage. She stripped off her wet clothes and hung them up in the drying room, then jumped into bed and curled up beneath the blankets, listening as the rising wind threw the rain against the window. She wondered if Laura would ever mention her encounter with Charles to her, and thought that she probably would not. Laura was as secretive as Hester was open. There would be no explanation offered as to why the Duke of Cole had abandoned his house-party guests in the middle of summer, nor any comment made on the decision of the Duke and Duchess to live separate lives. The threat from the blackmailer would simply disappear and for that Mari could only be grateful.

The morning coach from Skipton would also carry Nick Falconer back to London and Mari knew that she should also be grateful that he would be gone from her life. Hester would be married in ten days’ time and a new chapter in the life of Peacock Oak would unfurl.

Mari stretched out, feeling the cool brush of the bedclothes like a lover’s caress. She knew she should try to rest. She could sleep now knowing the threat from the blackmailer was gone. But the threat from the past? That was not so easily dismissed. If Nick chose to ask questions on his return to London, he might find out about Rashleigh and the manner in which she had run away from him.

When you are ready to speak to me, I will come back and then we shall see what can be undone and what cannot….

She turned her head against the pillow. Nick Falconer, as she already knew, was a man of his word and she had a feeling that the fate that tied her to him had not finished with her yet.

L
ONDON IN
J
ULY
was hot and dusty and empty of company. Nick’s first task had been to give Lord Hawkesbury a report of his work in Yorkshire and it was not a meeting that went particularly well.

“So,” Hawkesbury said, steepling his fingers and leaning his elbows on his desk, when Nick had ended his report, “you have identified the woman from the Hen and Vulture but discovered that she was neither Rashleigh’s murderer nor the criminal Glory. You have not found the real Glory or apprehended her gang, and you have no notion who killed your cousin.” His brows snapped down. “In short, you have completely failed in all aspects of your inquiry.”

“Yes,” Nick said. “That sums it up, my lord.”

Hawkesbury sighed loudly. “This woman—your cousin’s whore—you are certain of her innocence?”

“I am,” Nick said. He felt his temper rise with animosity at Hawkesbury’s disparaging description of Mari and tried to clamp down on his anger. He hated to hear her spoken of with such a lack of respect.

“Apparently he pensioned her off on the basis that she should live quietly in the country,” he said. “She had nothing to gain from his death.”