Unmasked (8 page)

“No,” Mari agreed.

“And even if you had,” Hester said, her voice as hard as iron now, “no one could condemn you, Mari. Not if they knew the truth. The man deserved to die horribly a thousand times over for what he did to you.”

There was a silence between them. At the beginning of their friendship, when Hester had suggested that they should share a home, Mari had decided to tell her all about her background. Hester and Laura Cole were the only people she had ever told, the only ones who knew that Mari had reinvented herself as Marina Osborne, respectable widow. Even then she had omitted the worst details of Robert Rashleigh’s vice, not wanting to either relive it or to inflict on her friends the horror of what she had experienced. Mari thought that she would never forget Hester’s appalled reaction and the look of utter shock on her face when she heard the tale. Hester, who had believed herself so outrageous, so worldly wise and cynical, had been shaken to the core by Mari’s disclosures.

She had heard Mari’s tale in silence and then she had squared her shoulders and told her that Robert Rashleigh was a despicable man who deserved to die for what he had done and that Mari must never,
ever
feel sad or ashamed or lonely ever again. Mari had appreciated her kindness and her generosity of spirit more than Hester could ever know, but even so there were things that she could never tell her friend, things she could never explain about the shackles that were on her mind if not her body. She had been a serf all her life. One of her earliest memories was trying to grasp after what it truly meant to be free. She had asked the old Earl to explain about serfdom but he had just laughed at her for what he called her philosophical interests. And when she was twelve and he had asked her what gift she would like for her birthday, she had asked for her freedom and he had given her instead a mouse made of spun sugar.

The old Earl of Rashleigh had treated her as a toy but it was his son who had made her his plaything, had taken away her self-respect and her innocence and sometimes she despaired that she could ever forget.

She finished the champagne and smiled wryly to think of the little serf from Russia sitting on a Duke’s terrace and drinking his champagne. How far she had climbed. How far she had to fall, if Nick Falconer should suspect her, if he had uncovered that she was his cousin’s runaway mistress, a slave, a thief and a criminal.

“He is a difficult man to deceive,” she said, thinking of Nick.

Hester looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

Mari swung her champagne glass thoughtfully between her fingers. “Only that he is clever, Hester, and ruthless and strong. I am so afraid that he will catch me out sooner or later.”

Now Hester looked horrified. “But, Mari, you cannot let him! You must lie to him and keep your nerve. Think of the consequences if you do not! You could bring us all down—”

“I know,” Mari said. She felt immensely weary. This, she thought, was hardly the moment to tell Hester how much Nick Falconer attracted her nor that she had a mad desire to trust him.

“Do not worry, Hester,” she said. “You have always cared for me. I will not let you all down.”

“All you have to do is to carry on as though nothing has happened,” Hester said, calming a little. “Besides, it could all be a hum. Major Falconer was at school with Charles. It might just be a coincidence that brings him here to Peacock Oak and nothing to do with Rashleigh at all.”

“As I said before, I don’t believe in coincidences,” Mari said bleakly. She put the empty glass down gently on the balustrade. “I think I shall retire. Laura will understand that I am tired after the day’s festivities.”

“I will come with you,” Hester said at once. She stood up and brushed down her skirts. “This ball bores me. It is the same old faces. I shall drop you at home and then travel on to Half Moon House.”

Mari’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, Hester!”

The light spilling from the ballroom windows was bright enough to illuminate Hester’s rueful expression.

“I know. You think me wanton.”

“It is not that,” Mari said. She struggled with her feelings for a moment. On the nights when Hester did not come back, she lay in her bed and fretted the night away as though she were Hester’s mother. “I worry about you, out on your own, in bad company. And then there is Lord Teague. If he knew…” She stopped.

Hester snapped her fingers. “John is my friend, nothing more.”

“But he wants to be more,” Mari argued. “He cares about you. He loves you, Hester!”

Hester slipped her hand through Mari’s arm. “Let us not quarrel,” she pleaded. “You are tired and anxious, and I am bored. You know how these events stifle me. So you will go to your bed and I will go—”

“To someone else’s,” Mari said dryly. She sighed as she spoke for there was no changing Hester. She and her husband, Jack Berry, had been as wild as each other, forever encouraging one another to new feats of madness. From things that Hester had said, Mari had understood that she and Jack had quarreled like cat and dog, and yet something had bound them together. In Jack’s case the madness had ended in an early death on the hunting field. In Hester’s, Mari was not sure where it would end.

They went back inside and Hester sent a footman to fetch their cloaks. As they crossed the hall to leave they saw Nick Falconer emerging from Charles Cole’s study. For one infinitely long, loaded moment his eyes met Mari’s and she stared, unable to look away. She thought of her own words and Hester’s response.

He is a difficult man to deceive….

You must lie to him! You could bring us all down….

It was true. If Nick Falconer knew her history, knew everything his cousin Rashleigh had known, then conceivably it might ruin all those whom she cared about the most. For herself, she sometimes felt so tired of the struggle to be free that she did not care. But she could never bring danger to Hester or Laura. They had shown her nothing but kindness and friendship. Even so, looking into Nick Falconer’s dark eyes and wondering what he wanted from her, Mari had a conviction that she could not escape their encounter unscathed.

Witch Hazel—A spell is upon me

N
ICK AWOKE EARLY
the morning after the ball and made his way downstairs. Streaks of silver dawn light were fading from the sky. The musicians, their faces drawn with tiredness, were packing up their cases. The servants were starting to scrub, polish and dust the house back into a state of tidiness. Nick knew it would be some time before his fellow guests rose from their beds, so he partook of an early breakfast and set off to walk a path that led up through the beech woods to the fells above.

One of the first rules of army tradecraft that he had been taught was to understand and prepare the ground. Accordingly he wanted to see the lie of the land at Peacock Oak and understand the area over which the Glory Girls rode.

Charles had told him the night before that Hester Berry and Marina Osborne lived at Peacock Cottage, a house that had once belonged to his land agent and which Mari had bought from the estate some five years before. Nick could see it below him as he climbed higher up the hill. The word
cottage,
he thought, was picturesque rather than accurate, for it was a substantial dwelling with a beautiful walled garden and greenhouses built against the south-facing wall. He remembered hearing that Mari had advised Laura Cole on the redesign of the gardens at Cole Court. The botanical interests were obviously hers. It was an intriguing thought—the highwaywoman with a passion for horticulture. Nick shook his head at the image. Mari Osborne was becoming more of an enigma with each thing he learned about her.

Beyond Cole Court and Peacock Cottage, the grounds fell away down to the water meadows of the River Wharfe, where the sheep were grazing placidly in the early morning heat haze. Over the stone bridge was Peacock Oak village and the Skipton road, cutting its way through the high fells on its journey south. It was good ambush country, Nick thought. The road was narrow and twisting and there were plenty of places to hide. He wondered about the horses. Charles and John Teague had said that the Glories met at one of the hostelries along the road, the King’s Head or Half Moon House. Perhaps they stabled their horses there, as well. He would have to go there and have a few pints of ale with the local villagers. The difficulty, as he already knew, would be in getting anyone to talk. If the Glories were part of the local population then the villagers would probably guard their secrets well. The Girls were heroines to them, for their work amongst the poor and oppressed. He knew that if he asked questions, in all probability, he would get no answers. Men’s gazes would slide away and they would answer evasively and he would know that they would never tell him the truth. Some loyalties went very deep.

There was the echo of hooves on the cobbled track farther down the hill and Nick looked down through the beech trees to see Marina Osborne on a chestnut mare. Surprisingly she had no groom leading her, but was alone. This morning she had forsaken the drab gray of her ball gown for a smart riding habit in dark green. Her black hair was drawn back into a tight knot, but a frankly frivolous little hat ruined the severity of the outfit. The horse was picking its way gingerly along the path and Mari was sitting equally gingerly in the sidesaddle.

Nick watched her thoughtfully for a while. He had wondered if Mari’s apparent lack of facility in riding might be a deliberate ploy, for how could she be Glory if she could not sit a horse with confidence? Yet now he could see that her lack of skill was no pretence. It would be impossible to feign such incompetence. She sat on the sidesaddle as though she were perched on a chair and about to fall at any moment. She held the horse’s reins but exerted no control with them. The simple fact was that she seemed a very poor horsewoman indeed.

He watched her make a complete hash of leaning down to open a gate, losing her footing in the slipper stirrup in the process and, he was almost certain, cursing under her breath.

A moment later he was scrambling down the hillside as a small creature ran across the path, the mare shied, and Mari, with no control over the horse at all, tumbled from the saddle to lie still on the track.

By the time he reached her, the horse had calmed and was cropping the grass beside the path. It looked at him from the corner of a bad-tempered eye. Mari’s saucy little hat had come off and was stuck upside down on a nettle.

“Mrs. Osborne!”

She was lying still, her hair falling out of its severe knot to cascade around her shoulders, her eyelashes dark against the pale curve of her cheek. Then she rolled over and Nick could see that, far from being knocked unconscious by the fall, as he had assumed, she had been winded and was literally fighting for breath. He grabbed her arms and forced them wide, then drove her wrists hard into her stomach. It was a primitive and painful treatment—he knew that from personal experience—but it was effective because it drove what remaining wind there was out of her body and allowed her to start breathing afresh. He let her go and she sat up, panting.

“There is no need to maltreat me, sir!”

Although she still sounded breathless her eyes were snapping with anger. Nick laughed. It seemed there was not much wrong with her.

“I did you no hurt and I saved you from choking for breath,” he said. “You should be thanking me, not berating me.”

She did not reply, but gave him another furious look from those gold-flecked eyes. He judged her to be recovering well enough and went across to pick up the horse’s reins. It came with him docilely and allowed him to tie it to the gate.

Nick went back and offered Mari a hand to help her rise. She ignored it and scrambled to her feet. Her face was flushed now and there was a long streak of dirt down her cheek. Her hair was awry and her riding habit sadly crumpled. Nick thought she looked utterly tempting, ruffled and disheveled. Unbidden, the image of her in the fountain the previous night rose in his mind, her skin pale in the moonlight, cool, sweet, oh, so desirable.

Hot and hard on the heels of the memory came the impulse to kiss her. The strength of the urge shocked him. He could imagine how warm and sweet she would taste. Her mouth was full and very, very sensual, made for kissing. He wanted to strip her crumpled riding habit from her and explore the delicious, voluptuous body beneath. One step closer and she would be in his arms….

No. His mind intervened, slamming down on his desire, imposing the image of Anna’s delicate innocence between him and the woman before him. What the hell was the matter with him? He had sworn to seduce the truth from her but that would be a cynical ploy on rational terms, not at the whim of his wayward body. He was here to expose her as a criminal, not to forget everything he believed in whilst he threw her down in the leaves and made love to her. Even if she was no highwaywoman, and her ineptitude in the saddle suggested that she surely could not be, he was still certain that she had been the woman he had met in London, a woman who had been masquerading as a whore and could well be a murderer or a murderer’s accomplice. If he was going to get close to her and expose the truth, he would need to be as devious as she surely was.

“You should not ride out alone when you are not very good at it,” he said. “You could get into difficulties.”

She shot him another look under which the anger smoldered. “I can manage, I thank you.”

“No, you cannot. If I had not been here—”

“Then I would not have been pummeled and battered like a prize fighter!”

Nick shook his head. “Next time I will leave you to fend for yourself, madam.”

“Please do so. I have no need of your assistance if it comes in that form.” Mari straightened up and he saw her wince slightly.

“Have you twisted an ankle?” he inquired.

“No!” The flush in her cheek deepened. “My head hurts a little, that is all.”

“A touch of concussion, perhaps. Let me help you.” He came across to her and put out a hand but she stepped back, very firmly out of reach. There was wariness in her eyes now, as well as a startled physical awareness that she could not quite hide. For all his determination to be cool and in control, the emotions crackled between them like burning sticks.

“Thank you.” Her tone was formal, quenching the fire. “I shall be very well. I will walk the horse home—”

Nick fell into step beside her. He had no intention of allowing her to go so easily.

“No, you won’t,” he said. “Not alone.”

She looked at him. “This is absurd, Major Falconer. I have no need of your further
assistance
—” she invested the word with some sarcasm “—having suffered enough of it already.”

Nick leaned casually against the gate and fed the horse a handful of grass. “You seem very eager to be free of my company, Mrs. Osborne,” he said. “Most women are not so quick to dismiss me.”

Another scornful flash of those glorious eyes was his reward for this. “Well,” she said sweetly, “I am not amongst their number. I do not beg for you to stay. I told you last night that I had no desire for your company.”

Once again the air between them crackled suddenly with something potent, something heavy and intense. Once again Nick was wrenched by a primitive, masculine urge simply to drag her off to the nearest byre and make love to her on the bed of hay within. He saw her expression change, saw the echo of his raw desire in her eyes and started to move purposefully toward her.

The horse nudged him once, hard, in the stomach and he almost doubled over with the pain. When he straightened up, Mari Osborne had moved prudently out of his reach.

“I fear that Star is as evil-tempered as I am, Major Falconer,” she said. “Pray forgive us both, and do not be offended by my lack of enthusiasm for your company.” Her head was bent, her expression hidden from him. “My only concern was for you. I assumed that you must have been on your way somewhere when you stopped to help me. I would not wish to delay you further.”

Nick allowed himself a smile at this blatant piece of falsehood. “How thoughtful of you, ma’am. But I was going nowhere in particular, merely enjoying a morning walk.”

She looked at him sideways from under those deliciously long lashes. “You are up early for the morning after a ball.”

“So are you.”

She unhooked the horse’s reins from the gate and looped them over her arm. Her back was turned to him. She did not reply. Nick was impressed. In his experience, very few people let silences hang. Mostly they rushed to fill them. It took nerves of steel to resist that urge, particularly if one were hiding something.

“Perhaps,” he continued, “you do not sleep well?”

She flashed him a look that would have withered a cactus. “Perhaps you should keep your impertinent observations to yourself, Major Falconer.”

He grinned. “I see. You will not give me an insight into your sleeping habits?”

“Certainly not!”

“But you have no guilty conscience to keep you awake?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I get up early because I enjoy the summer morning, that is all.”

She gestured to a small purse that was attached to her waist. “This is the best time to collect the plants I use for my herbal remedies.”

Nick raised his brows. “I see you are the modern equivalent of the village witch, Mrs. Osborne. Who would have thought it?”

“It is medicine, not witchcraft,” she said. Her face was flushed now, her brows arched in genuine disdain. “You do not strike me as a superstitious man, Major Falconer. To consider herbal remedies magic not science is willful ignorance.”

She opened the purse to check that the contents were not damaged and the sweet scent of mint hung for a moment on the air. Apparently satisfied, she clipped the purse more firmly to her waist and then guided the horse back through the gate. When she turned to close it behind her, Nick caught it in one hand and held it open to pass through. Mari’s brows immediately snapped down in an intimidating frown.

“Why are you accompanying me, Major Falconer?” she demanded. “There is absolutely no need and I have already expressed a disinclination for your company.”

“I do believe that my road back is the same as yours,” Nick said pleasantly. “It will reassure me to accompany you so that I can ensure you take no further hurt.”

There was no doubt that she was irritated by his insistence, but the only sign she gave was to bite her rather luscious lower lip very firmly between her teeth as though repressing some sharp retort. Nick retrieved her saucy little hat from the grass and handed it to her.

“This is yours, I believe.” He turned it over in his hands. “A curious choice, if I may say so, Mrs. Osborne, for a woman who presents herself as an irreproachably respectable widow.”

Mari frowned as she took it from him. “Whatever can you mean, Major Falconer? There is nothing remotely disreputable about this hat!”

Nick gave her a wicked smile. “It is very provocative, Mrs. Osborne. Just like you. You are what you wear.” His smile grew. “Or what you do not wear.”

Mari took the hat and crammed it down fiercely on her head, squashing it slightly in the process.

“You are scandalous, Major Falconer,” she said, with arctic cold.

“Not I,” Nick said. “You are the one whose behavior is outrageous, Mrs. Osborne, and it surprises me that no one in Peacock Oak has yet realized it.”

She gave him a look of searing scorn. “Whereas you, Major Falconer, have been here all of a day and think yourself
so
perceptive that you know me already. I assure you that you know nothing!”

“What I do not know,” Nick said, “I intend to find out.”

She looked at him and the challenge flashed between them, along with a sensation so hot and primitive that Nick felt it rip through his body. He held himself still through sheer willpower and held her gaze, and Mari was the first to lower her eyes.

“That sounds most tedious, Major Falconer.” Her voice was only a little uneven. He saw her take a deep breath, as though to steady herself. “I am no interesting subject for your study.”