Unmasked (12 page)

Mari felt a familiar rush of fury through her blood as unstoppable as an incoming tide. It was always the same. When she heard a tale of injustice or greed on the part of the local landowners or employers, she wanted to run straight down there to confront them. The activities of the Glory Girls gave her enormous satisfaction in righting a few of the inequalities that beset rural life. It was not enough—it was never enough—but it helped. Her charitable work, the education, the food, the firewood in winter, felt like a tiny drop in an ocean of disparity, where the weak suffered and died if they had not enough to clothe, feed and warm them, and the powerful sat before the roaring fire and stuffed themselves with meat.

“That is…unfortunate,” she said quietly.

“John has already challenged Sampson about it,” Laura said, “but Sampson has the law on his side. He has bought the land. He simply laughed in John’s face and told him he was a fool not to take advantage himself.”

“And you and Hester want to ride out and teach Sampson a lesson?”

“Yes.” Laura drew the gig to a halt on the grassy bank by the side of the river. “Has Hester not spoken to you of it?”

“I have not seen her this morning,” Mari admitted.

A little frown puckered Laura’s brows. She lowered her voice until it was barely audible above the sound of the water.

“Was she out all night again?”

“Yes.”

“This has to stop, Mari, or something terrible will happen.”

“I know,” Mari said unhappily, “but what can I do? She will not listen to me. I know she is unhappy but I am powerless to help.”

Laura shook her head. “She was always like this, unable to settle, searching for something. For a while Jack’s madness masked hers—actually I think they made one another worse—but when he died and she lost all her money and Starbotton Hall to boot, it started again.”

“Perhaps Charles could help—” Mari started to say, but fell silent as Laura shook her head.

“Charles would be no help,” his wife said bitterly. “He would be scandalized if he knew of his cousin’s behavior. He is beyond conventional, Mari. Truly I think he is the most boring man I know. I have spent years wishing desperately for his regard only to discover that he has nothing by way of feelings to give me and I am locked into the most tedious life imaginable.”

“Laura!” Mari was genuinely shocked now. She had realized that Laura and Charles were not close—how could they be when he spent so much time apart from her?—but until that day in the gardens Laura had been supremely loyal, never uttering a word of criticism of her spouse. “I am sorry,” she said a little awkwardly. “I had no idea that matters were as bad as that.”

“We are a fine pair, Hester and I!” Laura said, urging the horse to set off again. “The one too wild and the other too staid.”

“There is nothing very staid about riding out with the Glories,” Mari said.

“No.” Laura’s porcelain fair face flushed a little. “It is my escape, I suppose. Not a very noble reason to ride out, but the only one I have.” She took one hand from the reins and squeezed one of Mari’s clasped ones. “Do not pity me, Mari. After all, I am a Duchess and that has some compensations.”

“I suppose it must,” Mari said, but for the first time she was wondering what they were. Having money and influence was all very fine but when there was an empty chasm beneath, no love, no warmth and a huge mansion to rattle around in alone, all the money in the world could not compensate. And Laura was so generous, so loving as a person. Mari’s heart ached for her, that she had no object on which to expend that love.

“We are not so different, you and I,” she said. “It amazes me that our backgrounds are so far apart and yet we are so similar in so many ways.”

Laura smiled. “So you understand, then. What do you say? Shall the Glories ride against Sampson?”

Mari laughed aloud. “Yes. Yes, they shall. It is reckless and very probably mad, but I cannot see such injustice and stand aside.” She thought about Nick Falconer and it felt as though a shadow had tiptoed across her grave. “Just be careful, Laura,” she besought. “I have lost so much. I could not bear it if anything were to happen to you or to Hester.”

Laura smiled. “It will not.”

“If you do ride out,” Mari said thoughtfully, “make it after the Midsummer dance on Friday night. Everyone will be cast away and their drunken recollections will greatly enhance Glory’s reputation later.”

“Gracious,” Laura said. “What a splendid idea! It is fortunate Glory has your resourcefulness, Mari.” She turned the horse in at the gate of Peacock Cottage. “It will be Glory’s last ride. I promise.”

“It had better be,” Mari said, and once again she was thinking of Nick Falconer, and his determination to bring the Glory Girls down.

T
HE PIANOFORTE
,
Nick thought, was one of the most refined torture implements invented by man. Already that evening he had been obliged to sit through the noisy playing of Miss Lydia Cole, which privately he had considered quite shockingly bad. Lady Faye had talked all the way through her daughter’s performance in order to comment on what a talented girl she was and how she would make someone a lovely, biddable wife. Her sharp glances and pointed remarks were not lost on Nick, who knew that he was being lined up as first choice of son-in-law and could scarce bear the thought. Miss Cole herself seemed, as John Teague had said, a gentle girl, but her mother was a harridan.

Miss Cole had given her place at the instrument to Lady Hester Berry, who was now playing Bach with a great deal more melodrama than that composer had surely ever intended. Tonight she was wearing a plunging gown in emerald-green, which revealed a vast expanse of bare skin. There were bruises visible on her arms and what looked like a scratch on her collarbone, but Hester was wearing them like trophies and making no attempt to hide them. Nick had seen John Teague take her on one side and ask her about them, and Hester had brushed his questions away with a laugh and Teague had flushed, apparently with anger.

Nick sympathized with Teague’s frustrations. He had had an exasperating day himself. He and Dexter Anstruther had traveled to Skipton to meet with Edward Arkwright’s banker to discuss the robbery perpetrated by the Glory Girls the previous week. Desmond, the banker, had been angry and vicious in his condemnation of the highwaywomen, but Nick suspected that because his pride and his employer’s pocket had been hurt he was exaggerating the case. The man was full of what an immense, rough, uncouth woman Glory had been and how her cohorts were a bunch of ruffians.

“Give to the poor?” he had snorted. “The only ones benefiting from that robbery were Glory and her gang!”

Nick had judged his witness statement as good as useless. The highwaywomen were all six feet tall, rode like men, had deep gruff voices and carried pistols. It had been dark, so Desmond had seen nothing else. They had taken a tenth of Arkwright’s profits from the coach and had left Desmond and the coachman tied up in a field, with a calling card tucked impertinently in their pockets.

“Next time,” Nick said, “why not travel by daylight?”

Lady Hester’s dashing performance hit a jarring note and Lady Faye Cole, who was seated at Nick’s side, leaned closer to whisper in his ear.

“Dear Hester is somewhat
theatrical
in style, is she not?” Lady Faye flicked her fan. “I think it must be the plebeian influence of Mrs. Osborne. Her husband worked for a living, you know.”

“So do I,” Nick said.

Lady Faye’s eyes bulged. “My dear Major Falconer, that is quite different! You are an officer in His Majesty’s army!”

“I still get paid,” Nick said. He stretched. Over Lady Faye’s shoulder he could see Lord Henry Cole snoring on the sofa with his mouth open, and beyond him, Marina Osborne talking with the Duchess of Cole.

Tonight Mari was wearing a gown of rich purple, as demure and high-necked as Hester’s was low cut and daring. Her hair was uncovered and it was drawn back tightly in the same severe style she had worn whilst out riding. She should have looked dowdy but her hair was so deep black in color that it gleamed rich and fine in the candlelight. Nick itched to touch it, to release it from its tight confines, to see it spill across her bare shoulders and feel it run through his fingers. The contrast of the jet-black hair and the creamy pale skin of her shoulders would be unbearably seductive. Nick knew that instinctively and the thought tormented him. In his fevered imagination he had already undressed Mari and made love to her there on the sofa that was, in fact, occupied by Lady Faye Cole.

Nick remembered the tantalizing dusting of freckles that Molly from the Hen and Vulture had scattered across her shoulders and the little heart-shaped mole. If only Mari Osborne did not favor such concealing gowns he would be able to see if she, too, had freckles there and so confirm another piece in the puzzle. Had they not been interrupted, the previous day by the river, he would certainly have unbuttoned her bodice and bared the tender skin of her shoulders to his gaze. And he would not have stopped there. He thought of peeling the purple gown from Mari’s body, very slowly, of exposing the curves of her breasts and their pert pink tips. He wanted to taste her….

He shifted slightly, trying to concentrate on what Lady Faye was saying rather than on his growing arousal. Never had he had such trouble keeping his mind on a commission. The bewitching Mrs. Osborne, counterfeit or not, would drive him to distraction before he solved this case.

“To think that we should see the widow of a
cit
in the blue drawing room at Cole Court,” Lady Faye was saying. “It is Laura’s fault, of course. She is far too
democratic
in her tastes. It is most inappropriate for a Duchess.”

Nick thought that Laura Cole and Marina Osborne did seem very easy in one another’s company. The previous couple of nights, when Mari was absent, Laura had seemed strained and tense and Nick had wondered if she was ill. Now Laura was smiling at something Mari was saying, but her fine hazel eyes strayed constantly to Charles, who was talking to John Teague. He seemed unaware of his wife’s scrutiny and after a moment Nick saw Laura sigh and turn away.

“Her grace met Mrs. Osborne at the Skipton Horticultural Society, I understand,” he said.

“Indeed!” Lady Faye’s discontented mouth turned down farther at the corners. “That is what I mean, Mr. Falconer. Horticultural Society, indeed! As though the Duchess of Cole should be mingling with such people. So common! What does one employ gardeners for if one is going to tinker in such matters oneself?”

“It sounds most entertaining,” Nick said lazily. Privately he thought that Lady Faye considered that she herself would have made a much better Duchess than Laura. It was a tragedy from Faye’s perspective that Henry was from the junior branch of the Cole family.

“Hester attends the meetings, too,” Faye sniffed, “and she knows nothing about plants and cares even less. Yet when I invited them to join me for some card playing with the other ladies of the parish, they declined!”

“Incomprehensible,” Nick agreed smoothly. He saw Faye gesturing surreptitiously to her daughter Lydia to join them, and got to his feet. “Excuse me, Lady Faye.”

He had been seated away from Mari at dinner and had been obliged to escort Lydia Cole, and apart from a brief exchange of pleasantries he had not spoken to Mari at all. The urge to be close to her was now strong, so strong that he could resist no longer. And he thought that although Laura Cole’s drawing room was not necessarily the most ideal spot for a seduction, a conversation with Mari might offer him the opportunity to progress their affair.

He took his teacup and walked across to where Laura was presiding over the pot. She looked up and smiled at him. “Another cup, Major Falconer?”

Nick was very aware of Mari sitting beside the Duchess. She was deliberately not looking at him. Her head was bent, her dark lashes casting a shadow against the curve of her cheek. She was studying her clasped hands rather intently. Nick put his cup down on the table.

“Thank you, your grace, but I must decline. I came across because Lady Faye has been singing Mrs. Osborne’s praises and I wished to ask her advice on my planting schemes.”

Laura’s rather beautiful mouth curled into a smile. “Did you so, Major Falconer? Planting schemes—what a novel approach. But I will gladly give my place to you.”

She squeezed Mari’s hand and stood up. “There was a matter upon which I wished to ask Hester’s advice, dear Mari. We can continue our conversation later?”

“Of course,” Mari said, and for a moment Nick saw her face relax into warmth. “Thank you, Laura.”

Nick took the Duchess’s vacated seat and watched with interest as Mari placed her cup precisely on the table and folded her hands again. There was something very deliberate in her movements as though she was arming herself for a confrontation. When she finally lifted her eyes to his, he once again felt the jolt of the contact like a kick in the stomach. He wanted this woman so badly. He wanted to hold her against him and plunder that tempting mouth with his own. His mind was telling him she was a charlatan, his body that she was the most desirable creature he had ever seen. He knew which he wanted to listen to.

“Good evening, Major Falconer.” Her voice was low and unhurried and reflected none of the heat that Nick felt within. “I am not sure which of your statements just then was more untruthful—that Lady Faye has been singing my praises or that you have a need of botanical advice.”

Nick smiled. “If you think my excuses unconvincing, Mrs. Osborne, what do you think could be my real reason for approaching you?”

Mari shrugged carelessly. “As to that, I can have no notion, Major Falconer.”

“No? Not even after our encounter by the river?”

Her gaze touched his face, and then she looked away. “As to that, I have already told you that it was a mistake on my part and on yours—” she hesitated “—I suspect it was merely part of a plan you have for me.”

Nick was fascinated. Had she divined his true purpose in planning to seduce her? Was she being even more daring, and intimating that she knew his true purpose here in Peacock Oak—and that he would never catch her?