Unmasked (17 page)

“Mari,” he said, “tell me what is wrong.”

Her head was turned aside as though she was ashamed for him to see her distress. He stroked her arms very gently, drawing her a little closer to him. Her body was tense and she stood rigid before him, braced like a bow, resisting his attempts at comfort, shutting him out.

“You don’t understand,” she said, and there was despair in her voice. She sounded broken.

“Then explain to me,” Nick said. “Tell me so I can help you.”

He saw hope flare in her eyes for a moment and felt the excitement quicken his blood. She was going to talk to him. She was actually going to confide at last. He was so close to hearing the truth….

Then she shook her head. He could feel her withdrawing from him.

“I cannot,” she said. She sounded wretched. “I am sorry…I truly wish…” She shook her head. “No, I cannot.”

The frustration slammed through Nick to have been so close and yet still denied. He took a step toward her but then there was a shout from farther down the road and a moment later the coachman was puffing up the hill toward them, a light in his hand. John Teague was at his shoulder.

“Falconer! Mrs. Osborne!” Teague’s face was drawn and the strain showed in his eyes. “What has happened? I am but this moment returned from taking Lady Hester back to Peacock Cottage—” He broke off as he saw the marks on Nick’s wrists. “What the devil? Are you injured, Falconer?”

“Nothing but a scratch,” Nick said. He spoke to Teague but looked directly at Mari. “It was the Glory Girls, Teague.”

“The Glories?” Teague looked thoroughly confused. Nick saw him glance at Mari, who had been standing silently, head bent. “But surely…I mean…The Glories? Tonight?”

“Indeed,” Nick said grimly. “They robbed us.”

“Robbery?” Teague repeated. There was an odd tone in his voice. “The Glory Girls are avenging angels, Falconer, not highwaymen.”

“I thought,” Nick said, “that you said they relieved you of your purse only a few weeks before I came to Yorkshire?”

He felt rather than saw Mari turn slightly to look at John Teague, but when he glanced back at her, her face was quite expressionless. It was enough, though. He knew that Teague had in all probability lied about the robbery for the same reason that he had tried to misdirect his inquiries all along, to protect Hester Berry. And by the same token he knew that both Teague and Mari knew that the gang that had held them up that night must indeed be the Glory Girls and they were both covering up for them. He remembered the look on Mari’s face when the coach had been stopped; the surprise, puzzlement and fear in her eyes. She had not been complicit in the attack but as soon as it had happened she had realized what the Glory Girls were doing. She might not ride with them but as he had suspected, she was deeply embroiled in their activities.

The only thing that he could not understand was the violence of Mari’s reaction when she had freed him from his bonds. It had not been feigned and it argued deep distress. Even now her fingers were straying to the cut on her neck where the blood had dried in a thin smear and he could see that she trembled slightly.

“We must get Mrs. Osborne home, Teague,” he said abruptly. “She has taken some hurt. And I think any questions must wait until the morrow.”

Mari’s head came up and she met his eyes and he knew she had read the unspoken threat in his words. Tomorrow, he thought, he would challenge her about all the secrets that lay between them. It was time to bring the deception to an end.

“H
ESTER
!”
Mari was so angry that she marched straight into Hester’s bedroom with barely a knock. She stopped at the sight of her friend reclining lazily in her bed, eating the remains of a plate of bonbons. “I want to talk to you!” she added wrathfully. “What the devil do you think you were doing? You were supposed to be over at Starbotton, knocking down Sampson’s enclosures, not playing at highwaymen with me and Major Falconer!”

“I know,” Hester said, with her mouth full. “We thought it would be so much more effective to stop you and Major Falconer on the road, because you would not know about it and would therefore seem completely innocent—”

“Innocent! Effective!” Mari was so furious she could barely speak. “First you trick me and then you point a pistol at me! I almost shot you for that!”

“Not me,” Hester said. “Laura.”

That stopped Mari in her tracks. “
Laura?
You mean, that it was Laura who was acting the part of Glory? Dear God, I almost shot the Duchess of Cole!”

“You were magnificent,” Hester said admiringly. “We never imagined that you would play your part so well. And if you did not recognize Laura as Glory then it is certain that no one else will do.”

“Well,” Mari said furiously, when she had got her breath back, “I am glad that
you
are so pleased with your evening’s work!”

Hester darted a quick look over her shoulder. “Keep your voice down, Mari! Jane will hear you. And besides I have the headache.”

“Jane is in the kitchen drawing me a bath and making me some supper,” Mari said, “and you should not have drunk so much tonight. As it is I am surprised that you did not fall off your horse under the influence. Oh, Hes—” her tone changed “—of all the crack-brained, idiotic, addle-pated, downright foolish ideas!”

“But did it work?” Hester inquired, scooping up the last sprinkling of crumbs from her plate. “I was sure that if the Glories held up the two of you together, Major Falconer would see once and for all that you simply could
not
have any connection to Glory yourself and he might leave you alone. That was why Laura arranged it so that you would be in the carriage with him.”

“Astound me,” Mari said crossly. “I had worked that one out for myself.”

“Of course,” Hester said, eyeing her with slight trepidation. “Of course you had. And we thought that if we warned Major Falconer off, as well, he might go back to London and give up the hunt for the Glory Girls.”

“A spectacularly bad idea,” Mari said, “since your so-called warning will have made him all the more determined to track them—you!—down! Aargh!” She sat down on the bed regardless of the mud and sheep droppings clinging to her skirts. “What did I tell you? Do not draw attention to yourself, do not do anything reckless, do
not
attempt to warn Major Falconer away….”

“I know,” Hester said. “You are the only sensible one amongst us.”

“I begin to think so,” Mari said. “I thought that Laura at least had some sense but it appears she has an appetite for self-destruction equal only to your own.”

“She is angry with Charles,” Hester said apologetically.

“So this is the way that she punishes him? By trying to get caught?”

“Well, it would be one way of getting him to notice her,” Hester said.

Mari made an aggravated noise and jumped to her feet. “He will notice her well enough when she is swinging on a gibbet!” She ran a hand over her hair. “Oh, Hester, you play at this with no idea what you are doing!” The anger went out of her to be replaced by a terrible weariness. “I was terrified this evening,” she said, trying to make Hester understand. “
You
terrified me. All of you. And as for Major Falconer…” She stopped. “Lenny tied him too tightly, Hes. He really hurt him.”

“He doesn’t like him,” Hester said. “He feels protective of you, Mari, of all of us.” She bit her lip. “I am sorry about your necklace. Laura did not mean to hurt you. She was very upset. But we had to make it convincing, you see. I will buy you another, I swear—”

Mari shook her head. “Don’t. Don’t say that, as though it will put all to rights. You have no idea.” She put a hand to her head. “What have I done, Hes? I should never have started this. I’ve created a monster and it has to be stopped.”

Hester pushed the empty plate aside and scrambled down the bed. “I don’t understand! The Glory Girls work for good! We never hurt anyone except in their pride or their pocket.” She glanced at Mari’s face. “Oh, I know tonight was different but we never meant to hurt you! How can you even think it?”

“Of course I do not believe you would deliberately have hurt me,” Mari said. Her mind was full of Nick Falconer, of the marks on his wrists and the searing, terrible memories they had conjured in her mind, memories that played out in her nightmares. The violence with which she had reacted to seeing Nick’s injuries had frightened her. Even now she felt sick to think of it, sick to think of Nick being hurt. Her reaction disturbed her and she could not even begin to start explaining it to Hester.

“What we do is wrong, Hes,” she said slowly. “I am as much to blame as those of you who ride. I see that now. We treated it lightly, but tonight I was so frightened.” She walked wearily to the door. “I am too tired to talk about this now. I need to sleep. No…” She saw that Hester was going to say something placating. “Pray do not speak to me until I have calmed down or I might be inclined to turn you in myself. Especially as the reward has gone up to fifty pounds!”

She paused with her hand on the doorjamb. “When he came to find us, John Teague said that he had only just left you here, Hes. Was that a lie?”

Hester’s eyes were very bright. “John? Did he say that? Bless him for covering up for us!”

“It means,” Mari said patiently, “that he knows what we are about. And apparently he also told Major Falconer that the Glory Girls had robbed him a few weeks back.”

Hester raised her brows. “Did he so? He is very loyal. He will not give us away.”

“I sometimes wonder,” Mari said crushingly, “whether you deserve his loyalty, Hes. Good night.”

She went out and made her way along the landing to her own room. Jane had filled a tub with water scented with rose petals. With a little sigh, Mari slipped off the pink gown and her underclothes, and slid into the warm water. It was blissfully sweet smelling and relaxing. Slowly her tight muscles started to ease and the painful ache of fear and grief in her stomach was soothed away. The cut on her neck throbbed a little and she rubbed it absentmindedly.

She had not told Hester a quarter of her feelings. She had not told her that when they had threatened to tie her up the thought of being constrained had reminded her too vividly of the way that Rashleigh had shackled her to his coach, and brought back every horrible, terrifying detail of her nightmares. She had not told Hester that when she had seen the wheals on Nick Falconer’s wrists, she had felt physically sick, trapped in the memory of a past that she could not escape. All her defenses had been stripped away to the point that she had nearly, so very nearly, told Nick everything. And if John Teague had not arrived when he had, she was fairly certain that Nick would have demanded the truth from her anyway and she would not have been able to resist. She thought of the quiet calmness of Nick’s voice as he had soothed her panic, the gentleness in his hands as he had held her, and she shivered. She had felt doubly a fraud as she had worked to release him, guilty for her complicity in the Glory Girls activities even though she had not known of this particular attack, and so distressed at what they had done to him that she could barely keep calm enough to free him. When he had praised her for her courage, her knowledge of her own cowardice in knowing the truth and not telling him had cut her deeply.

She slid deeper under the water, scrubbing at her body as though to rid it of the stains on her mind. It only seemed to make matters worse that before the attack she had been in Nick’s arms, responding so openly and so urgently to his desire. They were locked so tight in a tangle of her own making now that she was not sure she could ever unravel it.

She heard Hester go down the stairs and knew she must be heading for Half Moon House, but she did not move to stop her.

She scoured herself until she was almost raw and the water was cold, and only then did she get out of the bath and curl up in her bed and try to sleep.

Pink—Ardent love

H
ESTER WAS UPSET
.
She felt that she had failed her friends. She knew that the Glory Girls had upset Mari by their attack in ways that she could hardly understand. She had talked about it with Laura in advance and the two of them had thought that Mari would probably be angry, but Hester had not anticipated this reaction, this distress. And she knew that Mari had not fully confided her feelings in her although she was hurting. There was a wedge between them now.

Then there was John Teague, so loyal, so devoted. He had covered up for her because he cared about her, despite the casual carelessness with which she treated him. He was too good for her, too honorable, too gentlemanly. She did not deserve Mari’s friendship and she knew she certainly did not deserve John Teague’s love. She felt miserable at her own behavior and there was only one thing to do to banish her loneliness and the blue devils. Still half drunk, she strode into the taproom at Half Moon House and saw all the grooms and farmhands that had been at the dance. They were watching her and she felt a frisson of excitement and lust run through her. She could use one of these eager men to help her forget her misery. It was all she was good for.

“You,” she said carelessly, pointing at a young laborer whom she had seen at the inn the week before. He looked about nineteen, well built and muscular with callused hands. Hester’s body shivered in anticipation of those hands touching her. “Come with me,” she said.

There was a ragged cheer from around the taproom and someone slapped the lad on the back. He downed his pint in one gulp and grinned as the ale dripped down his chin and stained his tunic. Hester did not care. The rougher the better, as far as she was concerned.

She was already halfway up the stairs as he started to follow her. Hester never waited for her lovers, never looked back in case she thought about what she was doing and hesitated. She went into the bedchamber and stood by the window, her back turned, tapping her fingers on the wall.

He seemed to be a long time following her. There was a crash downstairs, followed by a swell of noise, then, finally, his footfalls on the stairs. He sounded eager now, taking the steps two at a time. Hester heard the door close, the key turn in the lock and the creak of the bedsprings beneath his weight.

“You took your time,” she said, without bothering to turn around.

“Good evening, Hester,” John Teague said. “As you did not care for my style of wooing, I thought we would do this your way.”

“T
ALK TO ME
,”
Teague said. He was propped on one elbow beside Hester on the bed and was trailing a finger down her spine in a most distracting way. Hester made a little, soft noise of surrender and sheer exhaustion and rolled over to look at him from beneath half-lowered lids. Her body felt full and heavy, utterly sated and yet deliciously alive.

“You didn’t want to talk before,” she said teasingly.

Teague leaned over and kissed her, and his hand came up to cup her breast, his touch sending endless quivers of feeling along her nerves.

“No,” he murmured against her mouth, “and truth to tell I do not want to talk now but I do want to get you away from this place.”

He got up and gathered his clothes together whilst Hester lay still and watched him. The pleasure was draining from her now and she had a horrible feeling that everything was about to go back to as it had been before, and all the exciting, intimate and thoroughly indecent things they had just done to one another would be stifled under layers of civilization and propriety.

“I don’t want—” she started to say, but he turned toward her and interrupted her for the first time in their entire acquaintance.

“This time it is more a question of what I want than what you want, Hester,” he said.

Hester was so taken aback that she did not say anything else and a second later Teague had picked up her cloak, stripped the bedclothes from her, wrapped her up and scooped her up in his arms. She tried to struggle but as soon as she did the cloak fell open, revealing her nakedness.

“Put me down!” She was outraged at his high-handedness. “How
dare you?
”

“I dare many things,” Teague said calmly, “as you are about to discover. I have had enough of your willfulness.” He freed a hand briefly to unlock the chamber door then pinioned her tightly, her arms around her sides, as he carried her downstairs.

“Lie still,” he said in her ear, “or the entire taproom will see you nude and despite your dalliances with half the men here, I do not think that would please you.”

Hester burned with mortification. He knew all about the men, all about her lovers. He knew everything.

There was absolute quiet as he carried her through the bar. A pin dropping would have sounded loud in the silence. Looking around, Hester saw the avid faces of the farmhands and grooms, and the black eye sported by her original choice of lover that evening. Her gaze moved on to take in Josie’s appalled expression and she closed her eyes and almost groaned aloud at the embarrassment of it all. Previously she had pretended that she did not care. Now she could pretend no longer.

Teague said not one word, but kicked the outer door open and then Hester felt the cool night air against her skin as she was tumbled unceremoniously into his carriage and he gave the coachman the order for home.

The short journey was accomplished in absolute silence and, when they reached Starbotton Hall, Teague simply picked her up again, carried her up the stairs and threw her down on his bed, where she rolled out of the cloak and lay sprawled in naked abandonment, staring up at him. By now, Hester was absolutely furious with him for humiliating her in the tavern and in front of his servants. She struggled to her feet, shrugging off the cloak, gloriously unconcerned about her nudity. She turned on Teague, trying to kick him and scratch his face.

“How dare you treat me like this? How dare you?”

“You’re becoming repetitive, my love,” Teague said, an undertone of amusement in his voice. “It was about time that someone did dare. You are spoiled and your behavior is a disgrace.”

He put out a negligent hand and caught Hester by the wrist, pulling hard so that she tumbled down onto the bed with him and across his knee. A second later she felt his free hand come down across her bare buttocks.

Her skin stinging and her pride, too, Hester tried to wriggle to be free of that tormenting hand, which was now smoothing in a circular motion over her bottom and bringing with it such a sweet, scalding heat. She struggled against him and against the insidious pleasure she was feeling, but Teague held her down with one hand in the small of her back and spanked her again, a second, third and fourth blow. Hester’s flesh started to grow pink and warm and the tormenting need she felt in the pit of her stomach made her want to groan aloud. When he slid his fingers between her legs and felt the moist core of her, Hester could not hold back a moan of mingled anger and need.

“You bastard!”

Her head spun as the spanking started again, peppering her tender flesh with burning heat. She struggled against his restraint, all the time growing more and more inflamed with lust, and at last succeeded in rising to her knees on the bed. All she could think of, all she wanted, was to assuage the ache of her body with his. She was furiously angry and unbearably aroused. She thought she would probably die if she could not have him. She grabbed the waistband of his breeches and ripped it open, her fingers seeking and finding his iron-hard erection and drawing an answering groan from him at last. She straddled him and ground down on him, swift and hard, her moan of ecstasy smothered by his kiss, matching his movements, driving them both on, until they both exploded in mutual climax.

They lay breathing fast and entangled together in the bedclothes until Hester turned on one side to face him.

“For an old man,” she said, a provocative smile curving her lips, “you do quite well.”

This time when he took her, her screams of pleasure echoed from the quiet walls of her old home.

N
ICK
F
ALCONER
was not asleep. He lay on his bed, hands behind his head, staring into the darkness.

When he had arrived back at Cole Court there had been a letter from Dexter Anstruther awaiting him. Nick had taken it up to the privacy of his room, where he had crossed to the desk, sat down and opened it at once. Strangely he had felt a pang of anxiety as he had unfolded it, as though a part of him did not want to know the information it contained. His reaction, he knew, was in some way tied up with the complicated feelings Mari Osborne had aroused in him that night. Not the lust and the desire, but the admiration he had had for her courage, the protectiveness her vulnerability had produced in him. He had respected her bravery and had been moved by her distress, and now his feelings were utterly confused for he
knew
she must have some connection to the Glory Girls and yet her fear and her pain had not been feigned.

With a sigh he had turned his attention to the letter. After the initial pleasantries, Anstruther got straight down to business:

Nick had sat back in the chair, the letter clasped loosely in his hand. He was not shocked. He was not even very surprised. He had realized that he had already known what Anstruther had told him, or at the least suspected it, but now he wished that it were not true. Marina Osborne was a liar, a charlatan and very probably a criminal.

He had turned back to the letter to blot out his feelings. There was little more of import, apart from a brief paragraph at the end.

Nick had winced to think of his great-uncle’s displeasure when his London house became cluttered with Robert Rashleigh’s collection of French pornography. He supposed that at some point he should sort through his inheritance from Rashleigh and set matters in order. The prospect was not an enticing one but it had to be done.

Now, several hours later, Nick was lying awake and thinking of Mari Osborne. Tomorrow, he resolved, he would confront her with her false identity. He would tell her that he had proof she was an impostor. He would break her and make her tell him the truth about Rashleigh’s murder and the Glory Girls.

On impulse he went across to the desk and took from the drawer the little portrait of Anna in the silver locket that he carried with him everywhere. The shape of it was so familiar in his hand and the silver engraving worn by his touch. He snapped it open and looked down on her face, as he had done so many times before. Usually it comforted him. Tonight it did not. Never had Anna felt so distant from him, so lost.

He reminded himself that this was what he had wanted from the first. He had resolved to get close to Mari, to seduce her into trusting him or at the very least telling him what he wished to know. Tonight he had almost succeeded in that aim. Tomorrow would be the culmination of his plans. He had been every bit as calculated and ruthless as he had intended, and if a part of him was ashamed at that behavior he had only to remind himself that he was doing this in the interests of justice. Now at last, with the truth revealed between them, his troubling desire for Mari Osborne might be laid to rest when she was revealed as a criminal and very possibly a murderer.

He should feel glad, because this was exactly what he had wanted.

Even so, it was a long time before he slept.

L
AURA WAS NOT SURE
what had woken her that night. For a moment she lay still, her mind drowsy and confused by sleep. Then the sound came again, a soft scraping noise from her dressing room next door and, surely, a muffled curse. Laura slid from the bed and tiptoed across to the door, opening it a crack and peering out.

The moonlight filtered through a gap in the curtains but warmer and stronger was the light from the candle on the side table. It illuminated the walls with their ancestral portraits and it also illuminated her husband, who appeared to be rifling through the contents of the chest that contained her petticoats and drawers. For a moment Laura thought she had discovered the cause of Charles’s indifference to her—his hands were full of feminine underwear, after all—but then she realized that the focus of his search was not her clothing but her jewel box, which was at the bottom of the chest. Not realizing that she was there, he had pounced on the box with an exclamation of satisfaction and was now busy rummaging through the contents. The candlelight glinted on the fine diamond necklace that had been one of her father’s wedding presents to her.