Unmasked (16 page)

“I did not,” her voice was low now, forbidding further discussion. “I had a very conventional upbringing.”

Still he persisted. “All the feminine arts?”

“Naturally.”

“But no riding lessons.”

He thought that she was almost betrayed into a smile at that. “No riding lessons,” she agreed. “I have never had any talent for it at all.”

“I could teach you,” Nick said. “I like a challenge.”

“So I have observed.” She fidgeted a little. “Major Falconer, you know I would be foolish in the extreme to accept your offer.”

“How so?” Nick raised his brows. “I ride well and I am a good teacher.”

Mari turned her head so that only her profile, clear-cut in the moonlight, was visible to him. “You are being deliberately slow, Major Falconer,” she said. “I am not minded to accept any of the offers that you make to me.”

Nick laughed. “A pity,” he said. “I should apologize, I think, Mrs. Osborne. It is simply that you…tempt me beyond control.”

It was close to the truth, close enough to make him uncomfortable, and he could see that it troubled her, too, because he was sure that she felt the same. He acted then, quite deliberately and ruthlessly, to take advantage of her confusion and prove to himself that he was still in command of his desires.

“Mari—” He moved until he was beside her on the seat and touched her cheek, feeling the silken smoothness of her skin beneath his fingers. Once again he heard her catch her breath. She did not draw away.

“This is…” Her words were barely more than a whisper. “I do not understand why I feel like this…It is all wrong…”

Nick hesitated, wanting to ask her why but sensing it was too soon. If he pressed her too hard, too quickly, she would withdraw from him and he would learn nothing. This time he had to go very slowly if he was to trap her into confiding in him.

He rubbed his thumb experimentally along the line of her jaw and felt the instinctive way in which she turned her head into his touch, pressing closer. He slipped his hand around to her nape, beneath the heavy plait, and applied the tiniest amount of pressure to bring her lips closer to his. He could hear the quickness of her breathing and feel the sweet, scented warmth of her. His senses started to reel and he clamped down mercilessly on his own needs and concentrated on Mari, bringing his mouth gently down on hers.

Her lips softened beneath his and she gave a little sigh, opening her mouth to the subtle but relentless demand of his. For a moment Nick’s mind was clear, calculating, and then he sank inexorably, inescapably, into a sensual excitement so intense that it destroyed coherent thought. He kissed her with a fierce passion, plundering her mouth until it was swollen and tender from the pressure of his. He rained little kisses over her cheeks and throat and exulted in the soft sounds of surrender that they drew from her.

His mouth returned to hers, hot and insistent, and his hand slid up to cup her breast. He felt her melt in his arms, sweet and urgent, and then suddenly the carriage slewed across the road and pulled to an abrupt halt, and they almost tumbled straight off the seat and onto the floor.

“We are the Glory Girls! Stand and deliver!”

The command came out of the darkness and Nick heard Mari give a gasp, this time, he thought, of shock and fear. There was an ominous thud and then the door swung open abruptly. In the aperture stood four horse-men, all masked and cloaked.

Nick looked at Mari and was surprised to see on her face an expression of almost comical amazement, which was followed swiftly by anger and then puzzlement, before she wiped her face clear of any emotion at all. He had no time to think about her reaction, though, because the leader of the gang brought her horse around in an ostentatious but beautifully controlled circle in front of them. It was a pitch-black stallion that was snorting and trying to rear. It was not, Nick noted, the bay with the white flash that he and Anstruther had seen at Half Moon House a few nights back. The Glory Girls had evidently changed their horses.

Nick sent up a quick prayer that Hester Berry—and he was certain that it had to be Hester, for who else could ride as well as she and have the sheer nerve to carry off the role of the notorious Glory—had not consumed such vast quantities of cider at the dance that she lost control of the stallion. She had only one hand on the reins because the other held a wicked-looking silver pistol that gleamed in the moonlight. He did not even dare wonder what might happen if she was half cut and could not fire straight.

The leader reined in before the open door of the carriage and addressed them.

“We are the Glory Girls! We are here to demand recompense for the poor! You—” the pistol moved toward Mari “—I’ll take that pretty little gold chain you have around your neck, madam, in payment for
your
misdeeds.”

The voice was very unlike Hester’s husky drawl. The woman put out a gloved hand and pulled the chain from Mari’s throat, breaking it. Nick heard Mari catch her breath and saw a thin line of blood trickle down her neck where the links of the chain had snapped and cut her skin. For the first time he felt a flicker of doubt that this was a pretence, least of all one that Mari had conspired with.

“And you—” The woman’s voice hardened as she turned to Nick and he had the sudden, unnerving feeling that she genuinely wished to shoot him where he sat. “Hand over your money.”

“I have none with me,” Nick said. “We have been to the village dance. We carry no valuables.”

Glory looked down at him. “The convention,” she said, and he had the impression that she was smiling, “is your money or your life. Which do you wish to offer?”

“It’ll have to be my life, then,” Nick said, “as I have no money.”

Glory wheeled the horse around again. “Very well,” she said indifferently. “Get out of the coach, both of you.” She looked at Nick. “You first. No tricks.”

Nick had thought that had she made Mari descend first, he might have tried something, tried to unseat one of the other riders, perhaps, who sat in a silent, watchful circle around the coach. Now he did not have that option. He was becoming less certain by the minute that this was a charade presented with Mari’s complicity. The tension he could feel in her, the way that Glory had taken the necklace from her throat, the whole tone of the encounter, seemed wrong. There was something else here other than a performance played out simply for his benefit.

Glory’s pistol menaced him and he jumped down onto the road and waited as one of the girls came forward and tied his hands roughly—very roughly indeed, they certainly seemed to bear a grudge—behind his back. The rope cut into his wrists and Nick winced. She was strong, whoever she was, and a disconcerting instinct told him that for all her slightness of figure, this “girl” was actually a man. Certainly she did not smell like a woman and when she dropped the rope at one point and bent down to pick it up, he heard her swear in language that would not have shamed an army trooper.

“Kneel down,” his captor barked.

It was undignified but the man was holding a pistol and Nick had always been a pragmatist. He knew he would have to wait his chance to fight back, so he obeyed. For now. Glory rode up to him, put one booted foot against his chest and forced him farther down on his knees. He noted that she had very big feet.

“I’ll speed you on your way to your maker in a moment,” she said, “and take pleasure in it.” She turned back to the carriage. “You,” she said to Mari. “Get out! I want you to watch.”

Nick waited. He could not move because the man who had tied him up had his pistol cocked by his ear. All his senses were on alert, waiting and watching for the moment that he could strike back and disarm them.

He saw Mari gather her skirts in one hand and jump down from the coach to stand on the road in the moonlight. Nick was watching very carefully now. What he had thought at first was a fine theatrical performance was turning into something far darker.

“Tie her up,” Glory said, and Nick felt the shock slam through him. He had not expected that. The suspicious part of him, the cynical part, had still thought it might all be a charade. Now he knew it could not be. Mari could not be complicit with this. His mind started to race. How to effect an escape, how to end this, how to help Mari…He moved and immediately his captor jabbed the muzzle of the pistol into his neck with a growled, “Keep still!”

“Stop!” Mari said, and Nick’s attention snapped back to her. “If you want to tie me up, you’ll have to shoot me first.” She had taken a step backward so that her back was against the panels of the carriage and she was looking up at Glory defiantly in the moonlight. “I don’t like being told what to do,” she said, very quietly.

Nick felt the pistol that was next to his ear jerk as the man who held it moved in surprise. So they had not expected resistance. He waited, tensed. Glory turned the horse again and brought it close in to Mari’s body.

“Just do what we say, darling,” she said softly.

“No,” Mari said. “I won’t.” She took a deep breath. “Go now,” she said. “You’ve taken my necklace. That’s enough. Don’t try and tie me up. I don’t want to have to kill you.”

Glory threw back her head and gave a peal of laughter. “
You
shoot
me?
You’d shoot Glory?”

“Yes,” Mari said. There was a pistol in her hand now and Nick suddenly remembered Charles Cole saying that he kept firearms in all his carriages against the danger of attack by footpads or highwaymen. She must have taken it before she jumped down and hidden it in her skirts. He wondered if she knew how to use it.

“I’d shoot without hesitation,” Mari was saying. “And I think you would find that rather difficult to explain.”

Nick didn’t wait to see whether she would make good her claim. Taking his captor by surprise he twisted around and felled the man with a well-aimed kick to the back of the legs. He crumpled at his feet with another most unladylike curse. Hampered as he was by his bound hands, Nick hurled himself toward the nearest horsewoman in an attempt to unseat her. The horse reared as she tightened her grip on the reins and he threw himself away from the flailing hooves. A shot sounded close by. The coach horses, terrified, set off down the road in a mad cacophony of noise with the coachman shouting as he tried to regain control. Nick heard Glory calling to the others and the man he felled scrambled up and into his saddle and then they were gone in a wild clatter of hooves, the moonlight shining brightly and briefly on their flying cloaks before the beech wood swallowed them up and the sound of the horses died away to quiet.

Mari hurried across to him. He could feel her quick breath against his cheek, the warmth of her body where it pressed against his and the tremor in her hands as she struggled with the knots that bound him.

“You’re not hurt?” he said urgently.

“No.” Her voice was almost steady but her trembling betrayed her reaction. “I fired into the ground. I was afraid I would hit someone if I aimed at them.”

“That,” Nick said dryly, “is rather the point of carrying a firearm.”

“I know.” The catch in her voice was halfway between laughter and tears. “But I have never shot anyone before and I did not want to start tonight.”

Nick thought of the messy way in which Rashleigh had been stabbed and left dying in the street. Would Mari Osborne have been any better at stabbing a man to death than shooting one? After this evening’s encounter he rather thought not. It was too immediate and for all her defiance, she did not appear to have the cold-blooded experience to carry it off. Something shifted inside him, something that felt oddly like tenderness for her.

“You were very brave,” he said.

She made no reply. She was still grappling with his bonds and did not appear to be making much progress. “I cannot undo these knots,” she said. There was distress in her voice now, something close to tears. “They have tied you so tightly!”

“I don’t think they liked me very much,” Nick said wryly.

The rope caught, vibrated with tension and dug more sharply into his wrists, and he smothered a gasp of pain.

“I am sorry.” Mari sounded really shaken now. “I am doing my best—”

“You are doing fine.” Nick kept his voice steady. He could hear the raggedness in hers, the catch in her breathing. Something was distressing her greatly, something more than the mere fact that he had been tied brutally tightly. The memory of her reaction to the mention of the hunt came into his mind and the transparent whiteness of her face as she had looked inward, as though on something truly terrifying. She was reacting in the same way now, as though it was not what was happening in the present that disturbed her but something that she could remember, something unbearable.

“Just keep calm,” he said. “You are doing very well.”

The shaking in her hands eased a little and the rope came loose at last. Nick stretched the cramped muscles of his shoulders with relief. “Ah, that’s better.” He rubbed firmly at his wrists to restore the circulation to his arms. The wheals left by the rope stung him and showed raw and dark in the moonlight.

Mari had not moved. She was holding the rope loose in her hand but she was staring at the marks on his wrists, a blank look on her face, as though she were in shock. He took her hands in his gently and felt the tiny tremors that still racked her body. He was startled to discover that though the night was warm, her fingers were as cold as though it were winter.

“Everything is fine,” he repeated.

“No, it isn’t!” Suddenly she came alive beneath his hands, vibrant with anger. “It is
not
fine! They tied you up. They hurt you!”

He was shaken by the strength of her distress and her anger. “I have come to no harm.”

She shook her head and for a moment he thought he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes in the moonlight. She wrapped her arms around herself as though for comfort. He could see the way she shook.

“I can’t bear it. I can’t bear what they did.” Her voice broke on the words.

He took a step forward and caught her gently by the upper arms.