Unmasked (19 page)

“So,” he said, raising his head, “you lose.”

“No.” Mari dragged in a deep, painful breath. “You have proved nothing.”

“I have proved that you kiss me as though you mean it.” His thumb slid over her nipple again and she shuddered. He bit down on the tender lobe of her ear.

“Admit it, Mari,” he whispered. “Tell me the truth.”

Oh, she was so tempted. Bewitched, bewildered, seduced by his touch, she wanted to trust him. Never had the walk to the hangman’s noose seemed so easy.

“There is nothing to tell.” She held on—barely—to the shreds of her sanity. “I admit that I respond to you, that is all. And that can be no real surprise to you when you have tormented me with the fact these three weeks past.”

He laughed, a low laugh of masculine triumph, and his mouth returned to hers, insistent, demanding, deep.

“I wondered when you would forget to wear a high-necked gown,” he murmured against her lips. “You have such a sweet scattering of freckles on your shoulders. I have ached to see them again. Had we not been interrupted that day by the river, or last night in the carriage, I would have stripped your gown away to expose them.”

Mari drew back a little. Her lips felt swollen, stung by his kisses. Her heart felt bruised at the proof of his calculated seduction. She had suspected that that was what he intended, of course, but to hear it confirmed made her feel wretched.

“I think you mistake me for another woman,” she said.

“I do not. That is what I have been telling you.” His hands were hard against her back, holding her close to him. She could feel his arousal and her stomach knotted with a mixture of fear and longing.

“We can play this game for as long as you wish,” he said. “I’ll allow it is most pleasurable—but you will never convince me.”

“And you will never make me confess to something I did not do.”

“You already did.” He held her a little way away from him and his dark eyes scanned her face thoughtfully. “Your reaction when I accused you was not that of an innocent woman.”

Mari looked down at the cracked pieces of the plant pot and the telltale scattering of earth on the hothouse floor.

“You startled me, that is all.”

“Of course. And then I challenged you. And although you said that you did not understand what I was talking about, you were not even remotely convincing.” He smiled. “For a criminal, you are a poor dissembler, Mrs. Osborne.”

Mari was afraid that it was true.

“You can prove nothing,” she said again. “When you can, pray come back. Until then, good day, Major Falconer.”

He laughed. “You are sending me away?”

“Of course. What does your case amount to?” Mari held his gaze as coolly as she could. “A scattering of freckles and the response to a kiss? It is scarce sufficient.”

He smoothed some of the spilled soil between his fingers. “I know you are an impostor,” he said slowly. “I know Mr. Osborne did not exist.”

Mari’s heart gave an erratic thump. The panic caught at her throat. He had made inquiries. Of course he had. He might know far more than he was disclosing. Rashleigh might have told him everything…But until he revealed the extent of his knowledge, she was not going to give anything away. She could not. Five lives depended upon her silence. She took a deep breath and fought down the fear, locking it out for as long as she could.

“I still do not know what you are talking about.”

“Yes, you do. You are not Mrs. Osborne, virtuous widow. But I think we both already know the extent of your virtue—or lack of it—do we not?”

Mari held his gaze, desperately trying to decipher how much he knew. His expression was dark, closed, as he watched her.

“You base your assumptions on no more than a vivid imagination and wishful thinking, Major Falconer,” she said, as steadily as she could. “As I said, unless you can make good your claims, I suggest that you leave and do not trouble me until you have something you can prove.”

The silence that followed her words was as taut and tense as a lightning storm. Mari held her breath. She could feel the churning sickness of the panic pressing closer, but still, she held it at bay. Then he nodded.

“Very well.” He laughed curtly. “You have the devil’s own nerve, I grant you that.” He gave her a mocking bow. “I shall be back. The next time you hear from me there will be nothing you can do to refuse me. Good day, Mrs…. Osborne.”

Only when she was sure that he had gone did Mari permit herself to crumple slowly to her knees, picking up the shards of pot with shaking fingers.

She had not believed that he would go.

But he would be back. He would respond to every challenge that she set him. She might be determined, but he was ruthless and she would never win. She knew she was running out of time.

M
ARI THOUGHT
about Nick Falconer for the rest of the afternoon, throughout dinner, which she ate alone, Hester not having returned, and again whilst she sat in the drawing room after the meal, drinking tea. She thought about the alternatives and came to the conclusion that she had to leave Peacock Oak, quickly and silently, and go somewhere that Nick Falconer could not find her. She had reinvented herself before and she could start all over once again. All it took was courage. And at least she would have her freedom and Hester and the others would be safe.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” She realized that the maid had come in and was waiting for her attention. “I found this under the door—” The girl was holding out a letter. “I am not sure how long it had been there.”

Mari took it automatically. “Thank you, Betty.”

“Ma’am.” The girl curtsied and went out quietly and Mari unfolded the letter and started to read.

She had not taken in more than a few words when she realized, with a cold blow to the heart, that it was another anonymous letter, the third.

Mari felt numb. Her thoughts tumbled back over her conversation with Nick earlier that day. She had sent him away with instructions not to trouble her unless he had something new to say. She had challenged him and now, surely, he had responded.

“You belong to me now that Rashleigh is dead, and I want you.”

The letter had to be from Nick. Who else could have sent it? He was Rashleigh’s heir. She did belong to him. She was his property. The first letter had arrived on the same day that he had. He had been biding his time, playing games with her, awaiting his moment. Now that moment had arrived.

Once before, she thought numbly, a man had offered her a bargain—her family’s future for her own enslavement. It had been no true choice. She had had no alternative. She had bought freedom for them with her own body.

Now someone was threatening her with almost the same words and she knew, with a deepening sense of disillusionment, that it must be Nick. She knew what he wanted. He had made no secret of it from the start. He wanted her, and now he was demanding her submission.

She thought about their last encounter, that very afternoon, in the hothouses. He had given her the chance then to tell him the truth and she had refused. Now he had finally shown his full hand. Rashleigh had told him about her, just as she had feared. Their game was over and he was demanding what was his.

She remembered Hester saying that John Teague had told her Nick had been sent by the Home Secretary himself and her feeling of painful disappointment deepened to think that not only would Nick use her as callously as his cousin had done but he would also be corrupt enough to betray the man who had sent him. He was an officer in the army. He was supposed to be on the side of right. But he had proved himself as venal as Rashleigh. Her instinct to trust him had been utterly wrong.

He knew about the Glory Girls. He knew about Hester and Laura and Josie and Lenny. It was precisely what she had feared all along; the one thing that she had hoped would not be true. Mari felt faint to think of the power of life and death that was in Nick’s hands now. She felt sick to think of what he could do to rip apart their lives: Hester, who had just found her true happiness with John Teague; Laura, who hid behind her facade as the perfect Duchess and ached with loneliness beneath it; Josie, who had struggled her entire life. They had taken her in and shown her love when she had had no one. And now she was the only one who could stand between them and ruin.

It sickened her that she had thought Nick Falconer had come to Peacock Oak for justice, that he was supposed to be a man of honor, and yet he would compromise his principles with such evil blackmail.

She thought of the pistol in her desk drawer but knew almost at once that such a course would not serve. She could shoot her blackmailer, she might even get away with it, but there were no guarantees that someone else would not know the secret. Rashleigh’s death had proved that. She had thought that it would set her free, but he had already told Nick of her existence. Maybe Nick himself had shared the secret. There would always be someone else. A runaway slave could run all her life but there would always be another master waiting.

She stood up, smoothing her skirts with little anxious movements that she was not even aware she was making. She felt cold inside, as though once again she had locked away all the emotions and feelings that had unfurled within her over the last five years of freedom. She had done this before when Rashleigh had made his bargain with her. She could do it again. She could give herself to Nick as his mistress in order to save those she loved.

She glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to nine on a beautiful summer evening. She had three hours ahead of her in which she would do nothing other than concentrate on how important it was to save Hester and Laura and the others. She would think of nothing else, feel nothing else. Enslavement was nothing to her when she could lock away her true self within and no one could touch it.

You belong to me now.

Like Rashleigh, he could possess her body and try to take her soul but he would never break her spirit.

Except…She shivered in the breeze from the open window. Except that she was very afraid that she could not shut Nick out as she had done his cousin. From the first he had threatened all the defenses that she had so carefully erected. From the first she had wanted to trust him and lean on his strength and be with him.

He was not like his cousin.

Mari closed her eyes briefly. That was an illusion, of course. He was exactly like his cousin. He had proved it by sending the letter. He had told her from the first that he wanted her and now he had moved to make that desire a reality. And she had to ensure that she did not, for a moment, weaken and give him more than her body, for if she fell in love with him, as she had feared she was doing, her enslavement would be complete, a matter of emotion and not simply a physical relationship. She had to make sure that never, ever happened. It was the very last thing that she could withhold from him.

Very slowly she went upstairs to prepare for their meeting.

Dittany—Passion

I
T SEEMED TO
N
ICK
that no one was very eager to linger after dinner that night. John Teague made some spurious excuse about needing to return to Starbotton to consult his estate manager, Lord Henry Cole complained of gout and said he intended to go to bed early and Charles did not offer Nick his customary nightcap but retired to his study alone. Since it was a clear, starry and warm night, Nick thought that he would take a walk in the gardens before he, too, retired to bed.

It was as he was passing the stables that he thought he saw Lord Henry Cole, miraculously cured of his gout, slipping away across the deer park and glancing furtively over his shoulder to make sure he was not spotted. A little later, pausing by the cascade to watch the silver water tumbling in the moonlight, Nick also thought he saw the shadow of a man lurking behind the bushes. He stopped and listened but there was no sound and dismissing the idea as fanciful, he walked on to the Star House. This small, star-shaped gazebo had been placed on a low mound facing the fountain where he had seen Mari Osborne bathing on the first night he had come to Peacock Oak. And now, in a re-creation of that moment, his heart leaped as he saw Mari leaning on the wooden balustrade and gazing at the fountain. She was dressed in a filmy gown that looked gossamer pale in the moonlight and her arms and shoulders were bare.

Nick had been thinking about her for almost every moment since their encounter that afternoon. Mingled with those thoughts had been the memories he had of the previous night, of Mari’s courage as she had faced down their attackers, her distress as she had struggled to unfasten the bonds that had held him. The more he thought about her the less able he was to disentangle his instincts from his suspicions and the lies. He knew her to be an impostor yet he sensed she was in some sort of terrible trouble. She had sent him packing that afternoon with a coolness that belied the desperation he had seen beneath the surface.

Perhaps he was deluded. Perhaps he was a fool, misled by the part of his anatomy that was certainly not thinking but very definitely feeling. Perhaps he only wanted to exonerate her because he had held her in his arms and wanted her more than any woman he had ever known. Perhaps lust was clouding his judgment. All those things might be true. Yet his stubborn instinct could not be shifted. And so he had decided to take an enormous risk. He was determined to tell her everything, why he had come to Peacock Oak, what he thought he knew of her, to place it all before her, to urge her to trust him and tell him the truth.

And now seemed as good a time as any.

He went up the steps to the terrace.

M
ARI HAD ARRIVED
at the Star House at eleven, so anxious that she knew she was ridiculously early. There was no one there. The light of the full moon poured in, illuminating the little room that she had designed as a retreat for Laura and Charles. The charm of the idea mocked her now, for she knew that Laura and Charles would never share the intimacy of a night here gazing at the stars and instead it was to be the scene of her own seduction, but not in the way that she wished. Never in the way that she wished it.

She moved through the quiet room and went out onto the little terrace, with its white balustrade. The fountain was in front of her, the splash of the water loud in the night. Away in the woods, an owl called. Mari shivered as the night breeze breathed along her skin. Mindful of the part she had to play, she had chosen to wear a pale yellow dress, which was cut low and left her arms bare. She knew it was not the cold that made her tremble, for the night was hot. She knew it was nervousness and expectation.

There was a step on the wooden stair, the shadows shifted, and a man crossed the terrace toward her.

It was Nick Falconer.

Mari’s heart did a little skip of pure anticipation, and at the same time she felt, conversely, desperately sad that in being there he had confirmed he was her blackmailer, the man who owned her.

The moonlight fell on his face. His expression was watchful, unreadable.

“I thought it would be you,” Mari said, “but I hoped—” She stopped. What point was there now in telling him that she had hoped she was mistaken, that she had hoped he would prove to be a better man than his cousin had been? It did not matter what she thought. She was trapped. She was his property.

She shivered. The memories of the past clung like wisps of smoke no matter how she tried to shut them out.

He took a step closer. “Why did you think it would be me?”

“Because you are Rashleigh’s cousin.” Mari thought that if she could keep this very practical, very calm, she would survive. She could shut out all emotion and keep the past locked away. She had done it before. Whenever Rashleigh had touched her, she had absented herself from her body so that whilst he might have thought he possessed her, he had never conquered her. She looked at Nick’s dark face and felt the panic close her throat. She was not sure if she could do that with this man. Right from the start his touch had undermined her defenses. He had invaded her very thoughts. She was not sure if she could shut him out, but she had to try. She had to use every trick she had ever learned to keep him from knowing how vulnerable she felt, how vulnerable
he
could make her feel. She might belong to him, he might legally be permitted to do whatever he wished with her, but she would show him no emotion. She was a slave but he would not be permitted to possess her soul, as well as her body.

“You are his heir,” she said again. “When I received your letter, I knew he had told you about me—who I was and where to find me.”

She stopped. He had made a slight movement, quickly stilled, but he did not speak.

Mari thought back to the note. The most urgent thing, the most important thing, was to make him swear to keep his word.

“You promise that you will honor the arrangement you offered in the note?” she said. “If I give you what you wish, you will keep your word?”

His face was still shadowed. “Of course. I will keep my word.”

She did not trust him now—of course she did not—but she had no choice. Rashleigh had made an unholy bargain with her seven years before; now his cousin was enforcing a similar one. The only thing that mattered to her was that Hester and Laura and the others would be safe. The only people she truly cared for, the ones who had loved and stood by her, had to be protected. She could save them.

“If you break your promise—” She stopped, for a moment too choked with emotion to say more. “If you do not keep to the agreement, then I will make you pay.”

Nick moved into the moonlight. “How? Will you kill me, as you killed Rashleigh?”

“I did not kill him,” Mari said. She knew that in saying it she was admitting she had been the girl at the Hen and Vulture but it hardly seemed to matter now. Nothing mattered anymore.

Nick shifted a little. “Tell me. Tell me what happened at the club the night Rashleigh died.”

Mari walked across to the balustrade and leaned both hands on it. Why not? Why not tell him the truth? She was already in his power. And she was tired of carrying the burden of it all alone.

She could sense that he had moved to stand behind her but she did not turn.

“I did not kill him,” she said again. “It was not my doing.”

“Then who did?”

“I do not know. Rashleigh had told me to meet him there. I had taken rooms across the street where we could talk privately. I told him to follow me and went out first.”

“Your wig and mask were by his body.”

“I discarded them in the alleyway. I had no further use for them. Rashleigh knew who I was.”

“Because you had been his mistress?”

“Of course. I was only in disguise because I did not wish anyone else to see me.”

There was a second’s pause. “So why did you pick me up that evening?” Nick asked. “Why risk exposure?”

Mari shrugged. “I only did it because I felt conspicuous, sitting in the tavern on my own. If I had known who you were—”

“Yes?”

“I would not have chosen you.”

It was not the whole truth. Mari knew that something had drawn her to Nick that evening but she would not tell him that. She knew this was the first of many lies she would have to tell to keep him from invading her innermost thoughts, to prevent him from understanding how she felt. She could tell him the facts, dispassionately, but she did not want him to know
her.
That was too intimate and it would cause her too much pain. It would permit him too close. Just as she had previously had such a strong instinct to trust him, now all she wanted was to keep him at bay.

She heard him sigh.

“I did not realize at the time that Rashleigh had told you about me,” she said. “It was only when you came to Peacock Oak and your anonymous letters started to arrive that I realized someone else knew who I was, and where I was.” She turned her head slightly. “That was why you were at the tavern that night, wasn’t it?”

“I was there to meet him,” Nick said.

Mari felt a little sick. She knew Rashleigh so well, knew all the sordid games he must have had planned for that night. He would have invited his cousin along for some sport with his blackmailed former mistress. She could almost hear Rashleigh’s mocking tones ordering her to pleasure him whilst his cousin watched, blackmailing her to depravities that were the stuff of her nightmares. She nearly put her hands over her ears to shut out the ghost of his voice. Intolerable memories…She shuddered.

Nick put a hand on her arm and she jumped as though burned.

“So you claim that he was following you out when someone stabbed him in the street.”

Mari moved away, unconsciously smoothing down her arm where Nick had touched her.

“I told him to wait a few moments before he followed me. I went to the room and waited for him, but he did not come. Then I heard the hue and cry in the street. I realized what had happened, so…”

“So you ran away.” There was no expression in Nick’s voice, but still, Mari felt defensive.

“Yes.” She schooled her voice to calm. “I was afraid. It looked bad for me—”

“Of course. A lovers’ quarrel.”

“We had been lovers.” It sickened her to refer to what had been between herself and Rashleigh in such a way when there had been no love in it. “It was a long time since we had met.”

“How long?”

“Seven years.”

“How did it end?” Nick asked. “Why did you leave him?”

Danger threatened. Mari knew she could not tell him the truth. She knew that if she said that she had run away, Nick would want to know why. Then there was the money she had stolen. Robbery was a capital offense and stealing from Rashleigh would see her hanged. But even more importantly, if once she started to unlock the secrets of that dreadful night, she would no longer be able to hide her feelings and keep the past from invading her mind. All the hateful, frightening, horrific images would come tumbling out in a riptide, flooding through her body and sweeping everything away. She had kept them hidden for seven years, locked away in a dark place where no one could reach them, but now those locks and bolts seemed so flimsy, so insecure. Nick was getting too close. His quiet persistence was dangerous. It felt as though everything she had worked so hard to forget was in danger of spilling out. Everything that she had tried to rebuild was under terrible threat. Her life, her very self, was going to disintegrate before her eyes. She looked into the void and felt terrified. She could not let this happen to her. So she had to lie.

“Did he not tell you how we parted?” She held her breath, hoped that Rashleigh had been too vain to tell his cousin the truth of how his mistress had stolen from him and run away.

“No,” Nick said. “He told me very little about you.”

“Oh.” She felt a huge relief that he did not know already and that she could keep the horrific memories buried in the dark where they belonged. “Well, he pensioned me off, Major Falconer. He was very generous.”

There was a silence. “He paid you off?” For a second she heard stark disbelief in Nick’s voice and felt anxious that he might challenge her. Then his tone changed, flattened. “I…see,” he said. “I had no idea Rashleigh was so generous to his discarded mistresses.”

“We had exhausted our interest in one another,” Mari said expressionlessly. “I am sure you understand such matters, Major Falconer. So he paid me off on the basis that I should live quietly in the country. Which I have done.”

The silence hung heavy between them. Mari was not sure if she had convinced him. But it seemed that it had been as she had hoped—Rashleigh had been too proud to tell anyone of the way in which she had cheated him. There might have been rumors, but nothing was certain. In Rashleigh’s vanity and silence lay her sanity, for it meant that Nick would ask no questions about the past that would open up all the horrible, painful, unbearable memories she had buried so deep.

“So it was a mutually convenient agreement?” Nick’s voice was quiet, his words echoing her thoughts.

“Of course.”

Mari’s hands tightened into fists, her nails digging into her palms. Her hatred of Rashleigh was like bile in her throat. “Major Falconer, to escape drudgery, to be a rich man’s mistress was a dream for many people I knew.”

That was true, but it had not been a dream for her. Her mind screamed,
Why did he choose me?
And once again she could see Rashleigh strutting through the house in St. Petersburg, eyeing his father’s priceless artifacts with a merchant’s eye. The serfs had all been lined up for his inspection and he had stopped in front of her.

“This is the one my father had clothed and educated, is it not…”

She had only been seventeen but she had seen then that her fate was sealed. There had been a cruelty in Rashleigh that had delighted in taking the little girl, the toy his father had created and indulged, and breaking it. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth to prevent herself from screaming.