Three Little Secrets (24 page)

Madeleine interceded, taking Merrick by the arm and propelling him from the smithy. Outside in the yard, he hesitated. “There’s no getting to the bottom of this, is there?” he grumbled. “That page has just vanished on the wind.”

Madeleine gave him a crooked smile. “Vanished into someone’s pocket, more likely,” she said. “But given the range of dates missing, it was taken at least two weeks after we were married.”

Merrick looked at her darkly. “And what do you make of that?” he asked. “That your precious papa had nothing to do with it?”

“Obviously, Merrick, someone wanted to make a marriage more difficult to prove,” she said coolly. “And they were willing to pay a price in order to do so. But given the nature of Gretna Green marriages, it might have been any one of ten irate fathers.”

Merrick gave a dubious snort. “Oh, let’s venture a guess as to whose!”

Madeleine looked down at the graveled yard. “I shan’t defend him, Merrick,” she said, her voice soft. “Hard as it may be for me to think he might do such a thing, I must accept that it is possible. Did you think that I would not?”

Merrick stared into the distance and dragged a hand through his hair, the sun glinting off his ever-present signet ring. “I hardly know what to think anymore.”

“My father could not have done it himself, for we left in great haste,” Madeleine went on. “But is it possible he could have paid someone to do it? Yes, I daresay it is.”

And Madeleine had a fair idea of just who it might have been, too. But first, she needed to talk with Eliza.

Merrick was still standing in the smith’s yard. “I am sorry, Maddie,” he finally said. “I am sorry you are having to face the truth of what your father was.”

“As am I,” she said quietly. “And if you do not mind, I should really rather not talk about it.”

“Aye.” The word was tight. “Fine, then.”

She forced a smile, and took his arm. “Come, Merrick. May we go back now?”

For an instant, he hesitated. “In a sudden rush, are you?”

“Not I,” she answered coolly. “You are the one with all those pressing business letters to write.”

They walked in silence back to the old inn, her hand on his arm. His steps, usually swift with impatience, were almost sedate, as if he dreaded the return. She could tell that he was deeply preoccupied with something, but she was afraid to ask what.

In the reception parlor, the innkeeper had returned to his desk and stood sorting through the post. Merrick pulled her into a smaller parlor near the taproom. Both rooms were empty, save for a red-haired potboy who was clearing away the last of someone’s meal.

“You look tired,” said Merrick. “I am going to send for tea.”

Madeleine
was
tired—tired of the day’s events, and a little tired of Merrick’s imperious tone. Still, tea did sound welcome. She draped her shawl over a chair at the small table. The potboy had darted toward the kitchens with his tray, so Merrick strode off in search of help. He soon returned, drew out her chair, and with his eyes, bade her be seated.

Madeleine sat down without argument, her head still swimming with conspiracies. They managed to make relatively civil conversation about nothing of importance until the tea came. Madeleine poured two cups, then entirely forgot hers.

Merrick looked at her from beneath a sweep of dark lashes. “So, weren’t you the least bit curious, Maddie, about Gretna Green?” he asked softly. “Didn’t you wish to see this little village just one last time?”

She shook her head. “I should rather we’d passed on by.”

“And yet, there you were at the smithy.” There was a hint of a challenge in his tone.

Madeleine lifted one shoulder. “I just wanted to see…” She waited a moment, and tried to pick up her words again. “I just wanted to see our names, Merrick, in the register. I think…I think I just wanted to—to prove something to myself. Can you not understand? Can you comprehend wanting to see something, and yet not wanting the pain of looking at it?”

“Oh, aye.” His vivid blue gaze caught hers, and held it. “Quite well.”

Madeleine leaned over the table a little. “I shan’t claim, Merrick, that I ever believed everything my father said,” she whispered. “But not being able to find those annulment papers—dear heaven!—one begins to wonder what else might not be so. Things one has built one’s life upon. Good God, I just never dreamt…”

He covered her hand which rested upon the table, and squeezed it almost violently. “And I never dreamt you would believe such a thing of me, Maddie,” he rasped. “How could you think it? That I would annul our marriage—or even marry you for your money?
How
?”

She shook her head. “He showed me the papers, Merrick,” she said again. “They looked real to me. But before that…before that, there was the letter. I keep forgetting about that.” She cut her gaze away, unable to look at him.

“The letter?” he finally said.

Her free hand—the one in her lap—began to shake. “You may wonder how I can so easily believe that my father would bribe someone to cut that page out of the register,” she said. “It is because I knew he had done such a thing before.”

“Maddie, what are you talking about?”

She tore her eyes from his. “I know about your letter to the architect in London,” she whispered. “I know because Papa brought it here to Gretna Green. He paid someone to steal it, I daresay, from Mr. Wilkerson’s office.”

“Wilkerson?” Merrick looked truly confused. “I must have sent him a score of letters over the years, but none worth a shilling, so far as bribes go.”

“This was your first letter,” she said. “The one in which you promised him payment of thirty thousand pounds for your half of a new business. You were to pay him in August, you said, as soon as you had the money.”

“Holy God!” said Merrick. “And what kind of business did the devil have me buying for that great sum?”

She looked at him strangely. “An architectural firm, was it not?”

“Maddie, if an architect had thirty thousand pounds, he’d hardly need to work.”

Again, Madeleine shook her head. “Papa said you had to have a lot of money,” she persisted. “He said it was for—oh, God, I don’t know!—something about surety bonds or insurance or some such thing, because you were to take on such magnificent projects.”

“Aye, ’tis true in part,” Merrick agreed, but his face was going black with rage. “A new business burns through a man’s money and pays but bloody little for a long while. But what I promised Wilkerson was three thousand pounds, which I’d already arranged to borrow from my grandmother.”

“Three?”

“Aye, and if you saw a letter that said
thirty,
then trust me, Maddie, your father’s forger had been at it again.”

The sick, sinking feeling had returned to the pit of her stomach, a mix of rage and crushing regret. She forced it away. Merrick’s eyes were flashing with anger now. “But Papa claimed, Merrick, that that was why you married me,” she insisted. “Because you had a chance to join in this new firm—a chance to have your dream—and that you needed my money to do it.”

“Thirty
thousand pounds
of it, Maddie?” he answered incredulously. “And you believed that? Christ Jesus, what kind of crackbrained gudg—”

She had the cup in her hand before she scarce knew what she was about. The warm tea hit him full in the face. Merrick said not a word, but merely glared at her, then withdrew his handkerchief and wiped off his face.

“I daresay I ought to apologize for that,” she hissed. “But I shan’t, for I’ve been waiting thirteen long years for the chance. Now call me a crackbrained gudgeon a third time, the next thing to hit you will be a good sight worse than tepid tea.”

Merrick tossed his handkerchief down in disgust. “Let me rephrase that,” he said tightly. “No—you know what, Maddie?—Let’s just not bother.” He shoved back his chair and stood. “I’m sick to death of trying to make sense of all this.”

She, too, pushed her chair back. “Had enough, have you?” she challenged. “Well, just take me back to London, for God’s sake! You mean nothing to me now, Merrick MacLachlan. I want to go home.”

Merrick planted both hands on the little table and leaned into her. “Go where you damn well please, ye razor-tongued shrew,” he growled. “And fair fa’ ye! ’Tis a good riddance to a bad bargain, so far as I’m concerned!”

To her mortification, tears sprang to her eyes. “I cannot go!” she cried. “You and your vile piece of paper are holding me hostage! I daresay I’m lucky you’ve not forced your—your
attentions
on me as you have threatened!”

“Aye, you wish!” His blue eyes were afire now, his Scots accent growing thicker by the second. “Now, listen to me, woman, and listen well. I wouldn’t have ye barearsed naked on a big silver platter. You’re naucht to me, and the paper bedamned, so go the hell home. The lad’s safe enough wi’ me, and ye bloody well know it!”

“I don’t know it!” she lied. “How can I? Did you take care of me?
Did
you, Merrick?”

He was literally quivering with rage. “Aye, go on, then, ye damned she-wolf,” he rasped. “Rip out my guts! I’ll have the boy back by All Saints’, so just get on your bloody broomstick and—”

“All Saints’!” she cried. “But—but that’s months from now!”

“Oh, aye, four of them!” he agreed. “But since you’ve been enjoying the benefit of his company for the last twelve goddamned years, I dinna think I was asking overmuch.”

Madeleine stood, trembling with indignation and trying to think of another insult to fling in his face when a faint giggle permeated the awful silence. Her head whipped around, and her eyes caught a flash of white apron as the red-haired potboy vanished around the corner.

Shame and embarrassment flooded over her then. Unsteadily, she sat back down.

Merrick did not seem to care. With a violent kick of his bootheel, he shoved the chair back under the table, then stalked from the room. As soon as his footsteps faded up the stairs, Madeleine let her face fall forward into her hands.

Dear God! What had she done this time?

Damn Merrick MacLachlan and his temper and his almighty pride straight to hell! And damn her, too. For the awful truth was, it was not just Merrick with whom she was angry. It was herself. She
had
been a gudgeon. And she had been weak, too. She had given up on her marriage.

Once her father had stowed her firmly away at, Sheffield, her life in London—her life with
Merrick
—had all seemed a distant fantasy. The bravado which had led her to elope with him had utterly failed her. Without him, she had collapsed, falling into a mental abyss so dark and so hopeless, it had just seemed easier to sleep and to cry than to get up and
do
something about her plight.

Why had she not simply walked away? Why had she not tried to find Merrick, and insist on hearing the truth from his lips? She could have sold…something. Her jewels? Her clothes? And she could have stolen a horse from the stables, she supposed, and made her way back to London. She could have written to someone, perhaps to her aunt in London, and begged for her help.

But she had done none of those things. Because somehow, she had allowed her father to convince her that Merrick had not wanted her. She had let him subtly undermine what she knew in her heart was true. She had let him make her feel like a little girl again. And she had accepted his lies—lies which she now realized were not even
good
ones—because she had been brought up to believe her father had her best interests at heart.

Merrick carried his own blame, yes. But she had failed her marriage. And thereby, her child.

Madeleine pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Yes, there, perhaps, was the awful truth of it. There was blame enough to go around on all sides of this mess, and the ache in her heart was growing heavier with each passing day of this miserable, ill-considered journey.

Slowly, and with a deep sigh, Madeleine rose, took her shawl from the back of the chair, and made her way up the stairs. Tomorrow would be a trying day, and she had brought much of it on herself. Nonetheless, she was not about to turn back now. Whatever fate lay ahead for her and Merrick—and for Geoff, too—she would somehow summon the strength to see it through this time. She would not give up again, though today, it seemed, Madeleine scarce knew what she was fighting for.

Were it no’ for hope,
the heart wad break.

M
adeleine went downstairs early the next morning, in the faint hope of avoiding Merrick for as long as possible. Soon enough she would be trapped with him—and with his glittering eyes and hard, black glower—in the tight confines of a carriage, a torture which would last for the rest of the day. Last night he had been absent from dinner, thank God, though no one seemed to know why or where he had gone.

In the reception parlor, the innkeeper was out again, and in his place was the stout little woman in the starched white cap whom she’d seen dusting the previous day. “Good morning to ye, ma’am,” said the woman, peering at her over her spectacles. “’Tis a fair day for traveling, if ye mean to be awa’?”

“Yes, regrettably I must,” Madeleine returned, extracting her purse. “I am Lady Bessett. May I settle my accounts?”

“Aye, to be sure.” The woman withdrew a ledger from beneath the desk, and totted up the amounts for bed and board, and well as the stabling.

Madeleine was counting out the money when she heard the tread of heavy boots coming down the steps. She turned to see Merrick hit the last stair and head for the front door. His expression was grim, his every muscle taut as a cat’s beneath his elegantly cut coat and snug buff breeches. Though he must have seen her from the corner of his eye, he neither turned nor acknowledged her presence by so much as a curt greeting.

The woman behind the desk was watching Madeleine as she observed him leaving. She cleared her throat with a delicate little sound. “’Tis a pity, is it not?” she said sotto voce. “And such a fine-looking gent he is, too.”

Madeleine turned back to look at her. “I beg your pardon?” she said. “What is a pity?”

“Och, that wicked scar!” she said. “’Tis no wonder, of course, that you noticed it.”

It was on the tip of Madeleine’s tongue to say that she had not noticed it—for indeed, she had not. She no longer saw the scar at all, for her apperception of the man as a whole had long ago overwhelmed that one small physical imperfection.

The woman at the desk clearly did not realize they had arrived together. “He gives you regular custom, I collect?” said Madeleine quietly.

“Oh, aye,” she said. “Has businesses in London, he does. But passes by once or twice a year going to his family up in Argyll.”

The devil must have been in her then, for it was the only explanation for what Madeleine did next. “His family, did you say?” she responded coolly, taking the change the woman offered her. “So he is married?”

The woman closed the ledger and shook her head.

“Now that, I cannae tell ye,” she confessed. “He was once, and that I do know, for ’twas his purpose in first coming here, or so my brother said.”

“Your brother?”

“The innkeeper,” she clarified. “I’ve been here but a few years, myself. Came down from Perthshire after I was widowed.”

Madeleine had half turned to watch Merrick through the window as he gave instructions to both the coachmen and circled about inspecting the carriages. “So his was a Gretna Green marriage?” she murmured, her tone faintly scandalized. “An inauspicious beginning, to be sure.”

The woman arched one brow and nodded. “Oh, aye, that it surely was,” she said. “If even half what they tell is true.”

Madeleine turned back to the desk. “There was a scandal?”

The woman’s gaze darted left, then right. She was clearly eager to gossip. “Aye, the wife
vanished
!” she whispered. “Just a young slip of a girl—English, like yourself, ’twas thought—though he’s not, o’course. But the girl’s father came after them, and took his revenge, then carried the girl off.” Here the woman leaned halfway over the counter, her eyes wide.
“And she was never seen again!”

“No?” Madeleine pressed her hand to her heart. “You cannot mean it?”

The woman pursed her lips, and shook her head. “And she’s not been seen with him, ma’am, from that day to this, and you may well believe it.”

“I do,” said Madeleine. “I knew of a situation very like it once.”

The woman narrowed one eye knowingly. “Did ye?” she asked. “Well, ’twas like one of those novels they sell in Princes Street, I thought.”

“And this father—this dreaded kidnapper—what was his name?”

Again, the woman shook her head, her starched cap bouncing. “’Twas never known,” she admitted. “And he took great pains to ensure it. Blacked the crests on both his carriages and came in and out o’ the village like a whirlwind with four hulking great brutes for footmen—if you could call ’em such. Then drove awa’, wi’ one of them trailing blood halfway to Carlisle, or so ’tis said.”

The floor felt suddenly unsteady beneath Madeleine’s feet. But then she remembered…
something
. Whispers. Uncertainty. One of the carriages dropping off long before they arrived home. Servants she had not recognized and had never seen again.

“How dreadful!” she whispered, her eyes fixed on the ledger.

“Oh, indeed! But the lad gave almost as good as he got, for ’twas thought the other fellow would surely die, too.”

“As…as good as he got? What do you mean?”

“Put a pitchfork through his belly, MacLachlan did,” she whispered. Then she slowly shook her head. “That was it, you see. That’s where he got that awful scar. One of the brutes laid his face open from temple to chin.”

When Madeleine winced, the woman pounced with relish. “Och, my lady, that wasna’ a fraction of it!” she went on. “And it happened, all of it, just down the lane by the stables. All but dead, the poor lad was, my brother said, when they carried him in, and he lay here for weeks festering, still as death, ’til they fetched a priest down from Glasgow, quiet-like, to give him last rites.”

“Last rites?” she whispered. “But—But he is not Catholic.”

The woman looked at her strangely and turned the bill around for her inspection.

“I mean—
is
he?” she went on. “He doesn’t
look
Catholic.”

The woman shrugged as Madeleine began to lay out the coins. “He was wearing a ring,” she said. “And he wears it still, always on his wee finger. ’Tis gold, with a little builder’s square cut in it, and some Latin words, and somebody took it into their heads that it was some piece of popery, so being a softhearted man, my brother sent for the priest—for by then, the poor man was barely breathing. He was sae far gone, even his servant left.”

The horror was rising like bile Madeleine’s throat.
“I was hurt,”
Merrick had said.
“I wrote you as soon as I was able.”

Dear God. He had meant it literally. “They…they beat him?”

“Nigh to death,” said the woman sadly. “’Twas terrible, to hear my brother tell it. They called out the magistrate, but och! What can ye do? The man was rich, and the laddie wasna. No one was aboot to look too hard for that one, aye?”

Through the window, Madeleine could see that one of the ostlers was holding the head of a big, prancing bay which looked fresh as the morning’s dew. With a stroke down the great beast’s neck, Merrick drifted away from his coachman, still shouting out the last of the morning’s instruction. In a moment, he would be through the door.

Her knees unsteady, Madeleine turned back to the desk and seized the woman’s hand. “There was a servant,” she said abruptly. “You—you mentioned a servant. Who? Of what sort?”

The woman drew back an inch. “Well, ’twas just the young lady’s maid, I believe,” she said. “But my brother said she wasna’ any help. Claimed she knew naught of the fellow, nor where his family might be found. I daresay they were worrit sick.”

“Dear God,” said Madeleine, shoving her coin purse into her reticule. She looked about in desperation. “I—I am so sorry. I must go. That was…that was quite horrible. I thank you. For—for your kindness. More than you will ever know.”

And with that string of inanities, Madeleine bolted toward the stairs. She had scarce made the first turn when she heard Merrick jerk open the door.

Fifteen minutes later, after calming down sufficiently that her legs no longer trembled, Madeleine came back down with Geoff and Mr. Frost. The boy was chattering happily about the day’s travel. Despite her near-constant preoccupation with Merrick, Madeleine had not failed to notice that the child seemed happier and far more balanced these last few days. Mr. Frost, too, looked content. His young face was not lined with worry.

Together, they went out into the sunshine of the yard to load their hand baggage. The big bay horse was still wheeling about anxiously, and tossing up the occasional stone as he did so. Merrick appeared around the corner of the carriage, and for the first time Madeleine realized that his snug buff breeches and high Hessian boots meant that he was dressed not for the carriage but for the saddle.

“Good morning, sir,” said Mr. Frost. “That is quite a fine-looking beast.”

“Thank you,” said Merrick. His eyes looked not just grim, but weary. “He is a recent acquisition.”

“He is yours, sir?” said Geoff in some surprise.

Merrick looked down at the boy, and something which looked like regret sketched across his face. “Yes, Geoff, he is mine now,” he answered. “I decided it might be best if I rode on ahead to Castle Kerr, so that my grandmother might make ready for your arrival.”

Madeleine’s heart sank.

Merrick had decided he could not bear to share a confined space with her for another three days, more likely. She should have been glad: glad for the chance to escape his glittering, accusatory gaze and his almost overwhelming presence in the carriage. So why did she feel so disheartened? Why did she fear this was but another unbreachable chasm between them then? If it was, she hoped her little tantrum had been worth it. Just now, it did not feel so.

Madeleine opened her mouth to speak, to ask him to wait, or perhaps, even, to apologize. But so much had already gone unsaid, there seemed no purpose in it. He glanced at her, a fleeting, almost hopeful look. Confused, she closed her mouth. He turned away.

With a few last words to his coachman, Merrick led the big beast around, slid a foot into the stirrup, and swung himself smoothly into the saddle. “Phipps will look after you well,” he said, to no one in particular. “He knows the best inns, and Grimes knows the roads like the back of his hand. The weather will continue fair, I believe.”

“Good-bye, then, sir,” Geoff’s voice was very small.

“Yes, good-bye, sir,” Mr. Frost chimed. He and the boy waved. Merrick touched his crop to his hat brim, then set his heels to the bay’s flanks. The big horse sprang, and in an instant, he was gone.

Geoff climbed into the carriage looking almost inconsolable.

Mr. Frost followed him in. “Don’t worry, Geoff,” he said. “We have lots to do.”

Geoff nodded, but his gaze was fixed firmly at his feet. Madeleine dipped her head in an attempt to see his eyes and tucked a wayward strand of the boy’s hair back into place. “Shall you miss Mr. MacLachlan, my dear?”

Still studying the carriage floor, Geoff nodded. “He is interesting,” said the boy. “And I had some things…some things I wished to ask him. He said I might. Ask him things, I mean. If I had questions.”

“Of course you may.” The child’s dejection left her feeling even further downcast. “What sort of things did you wish to ask, my love?”

The child lifted both shoulders. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Just some things. I forgot them already.”

Above, Grimes shouted back to Madeleine’s coachman. The crack of the whip sounded. The big coach lurched, then ground forward, harnesses jingling. At the last possible instant, Madeleine turned around and watched the shabby little inn vanish in a cloud of dust.
And good riddance,
she thought.

But strangely, it did not feel like good riddance. In truth, it felt…well, a little tragic. As if she were leaving something important behind. But perhaps it was just this inn, this village. It was the place where the marriage of her dreams had begun with such hope and ended all too soon in a tragedy. Being here again had set her every nerve on edge. It had brought back too many things she had no wish to remember, and it had left her feeling just a little ashamed.

Had she really spent the last thirteen years trying to blame Merrick for what had been, after all, a shared failure? Whatever Merrick’s sins, he had not abandoned her at the inn. Not willingly. If the past few days had not made that plain, the innkeeper’s sister certainly had. The truth had first sickened her, then angered her.
Her father
had done that to him. And for what? Pride? Petulance? Madeleine was suddenly very glad that he was dead.

All of it left Madeleine wondering just what else Merrick had not bothered to tell her. And she wondered
why
. Why did he bear his scar so stoically? Was her father the cause of his limp? But more importantly, was it just his stubborn pride which kept him from telling her? Or was he, too, just looking for something to pin their failures on?