Unmasked (21 page)

He thought about her words. Maybe she had been born a maid-servant and had seen Rashleigh as a means to escape from servitude. It seemed that she and his cousin had used each other for mutual pleasure and benefit.

He smashed one fist into the palm of the other hand. She had chosen her path and it was not her fault but his if he had secretly started to hope that she was so much better, so much finer, purer and sweeter, than she had turned out to be. In truth, she was a whore with a whore’s mind, as well as a harlot’s body. Everything had a price. Had she not shown that the very first time they had met, in the Hen and Vulture? He was no more than a fool to have been misled by a consummate actress.

He had never intended to allow matters to go so far with Mari. He had played along with the masquerade at first for information—he had wanted to know the truth of how Rashleigh had died—but then he had become so jealous and angry that he had forgotten his good intentions, forgotten his principles, forgotten everything in the heat of Mari’s seduction. When she had spoken of being Rashleigh’s mistress, he had felt a searing rage that made him demand everything that had once been his cousin’s. Every privilege, every favor, every kiss, every caress…His jealousy had been uncontrollable. He had never felt for Anna an ounce of the white-hot possessive rage he had felt then for Mari, and somehow that simply made matters worse. Even now, thinking of the taste of her and the silken warmth of her body beneath his hands, he could have groaned aloud.

He put his head in his hands, then straightened up and went down the steps to the pool, where he doused his face in the cool water from the fountain. His mind cleared a little and the simmering anger within him eased and at last he found he was able to think dispassionately. He picked up Mari’s discarded clothes from the terrace, scrunching them up in his hand in a mixture of frustration and puzzlement, and walked slowly down the gardens toward the house.

He thought about Mari’s words when they had first met that night.

When I received your letter, I knew he had told you about me—who I was and where to find me.

Except that Rashleigh had not told him. He must have told someone else, someone who had been sending her anonymous letters.

If you do not keep to the agreement, then I will make you pay.

She had sounded fierce, furious, threatening to kill him if he broke his word. And now Nick wondered about this agreement. Could the mysterious letter writer be blackmailing her? It would explain the author’s anonymity and Mari’s anger. Nick thought that he would give a great deal to know about that agreement.

Pondering on it, Nick crossed the parterre and went into the house.

The hall was empty. Carrington, the butler, greeted him politely, as though his grace’s guests frequently returned from midnight strolls in the grounds wearing fewer clothes than they had gone out in.

Nick went upstairs, thinking about the information in Anstruther’s letter and how it had matched with what Mari had said about Rashleigh paying her off and her agreeing to live quietly in the country. Evidently she had invented a history and identity for herself. Living in a quiet place like Peacock Oak, it would be important to have a background that was irreproachably respectable, hence the husband who had been a clergyman’s son. But such lies could make her very vulnerable to blackmail.

He lay down on the bed and put his hands behind his head. Did he believe what she had told him about Rashleigh’s death? She was a liar and an impostor and yet he was inclined to think she had told him the truth. Perhaps she was capable of honesty after all.

He kept very still, concentrating, his mind running over everything that had happened and all that she had told him.

Something in the story did not fit.

He frowned. Something was not right. He could sense it.

He rolled over on the bed and lay facing the window where the curtains were not drawn and the moon poured in its bright white light. On the chair lay Mari’s golden gown, shimmering in the moonlight. It seemed to taunt him with all the things that he did not know or understand.

Now that he had seen Mari Osborne in her true colors he knew he would do well to forget the disturbing impulse that prompted him to dig deeper. He would do well to forget Mari altogether; forget the taste and the touch of her, forget her sweetness in his arms and the aching need he had for her. He should go back to London, tell Hawkesbury that she was not the woman he sought for murder and highway robbery and give himself time and space to think clearly about who that murderer could be. Perhaps then he could untangle his emotions from this case and lay his feelings for Mari to rest.

Once again, as he had the previous night, he took Anna’s locket from the drawer and opened it to look at the picture inside. Her image smiled back at him, calm and untroubled. He felt the familiar wash of guilt sweep through him. He had not been there to help Anna when she needed him. He had failed her.

Was he about to fail Mari, too?

With an oath he snapped the locket shut and lay down and attempted to sleep but the doubts and questions in his mind disturbed him and gave him no rest.

Mari had run from him. She had been afraid.

She had been Rashleigh’s mistress.
She had been afraid…

He lay awake all night.

Coltsfoot—Justice shall be done

“I
AM WORRIED
about you, Mari,” Hester said over a late breakfast a couple of days later. “You are too pale and you haven’t been to your greenhouses for three days so I know there must be something wrong. Are you sick?”

Mari tried to smile. She felt tired and listless. It was the same weariness that had possessed her when she had first known her secrets were to be exposed and all she had struggled to gain was under threat. She felt too tired to move, too tired even to think. She felt as though she was in a dream that nothing could penetrate. Since the night at the Star House with Nick she had hidden away, nursing the terrible scars on her mind that their encounter had forced so cruelly into the light, and she had not cared about anything else at all.

“I am very well,” she said. “I felt a little unwell for a couple of days but it is quite past now.”

“Jane said that Major Falconer has called twice but that you have refused to see him,” Hester said, reaching for the jam pot. “She said she was afraid he would ignore her excuses and demand an interview with you. What is going on, Mari?”

“Nothing,” Mari said. She made an effort. “I find this heat very enervating. I wish that it would thunder and clear the air.”

“Well, it won’t happen today,” Hester said. “Frank says that the weather will not break until tonight. Laura has arranged an archery tournament for Miss Cole and her friends today, but I fear it may be too hot for it.” She stood up. “I promised I would spend a dull hour at the Court cheering them on. I suppose you will not come with me? No? Well, before I forget, here is a letter that arrived for you yesterday. I do not know who brought it. I found it in the hall.”

After Hester had gone out, Mari put out a hand and reached slowly for the letter, unfolding it with a singular lack of interest.

It was printed in capitals on a single sheet of parchment.

Mari stared at the note. At first she did not understand. Then she felt nothing but shock as the words slowly impinged.

She had made a terrible mistake. It had not been Nick who had sent her the anonymous letters. Her mysterious blackmailer was still unidentified.

Her trancelike state shattered. She felt angry, and the anger swelled and grew until it blocked out all other feelings. Nick had tricked her. He had allowed her to believe that he was her blackmailer. She had told him so much—too much. She had given such a lot away. She had almost given herself.

She shredded the letter between her fingers. So Nick Falconer had not been the venal, callous man she had thought him, the man who, like his cousin, had been prepared to blackmail a woman to get what he wanted. He had not sold his principles. But he was almost as bad because he had deceived her thoroughly to find out the information he had wanted. He had led her on deliberately so that she confided in him. And he had nearly—so very nearly—seduced her. He would have done so had she not run away.

She would deal with the true blackmailer later. Now she would deal with Nicholas Falconer.

There was a red haze of fury before her eyes now. Suddenly all her emotions switched back into life, as though someone had set a flame to tinder. She was burning up with anger and it felt good, strong and powerful. She got to her feet. She took Nick’s shirt, which Jane had laundered so beautifully and left, somewhat pointedly, on the silver tray on the hall table, and she marched out of the house, across the garden and through the gate into the deer park, all without pausing for breath.

Laura’s guests were already assembled, sitting beneath a big white marquee on the south lawn. It was midmorning and tea was being served. Mari could hear the civilized chink of china as the servants handed around the cups. Miss Lydia Cole and some of her debutante friends were performing at the archery butts and Lady Faye and the other matrons were watching and applauding enthusiastically. Mari could see Nick standing at the edge of the group, chatting to John Teague. She looked at them all and thought of the years she had spent portraying herself as the irreproachably respectable widow and how she was about to smash the whole illusion now and that she no longer cared.

She walked up to the archery butts and draped Nick’s shirt over it. Then she strolled over to Miss Cole, who was watching her with lively interest, and asked to borrow her bow. By now Laura’s guests were starting to watch her. She could hear the lowered voices, the curious whispers.

She raised the bow, took aim carefully and shot the arrow into the center of the target, piercing Nick’s shirt somewhere in the region of the heart. Impaled on the arrow, it flapped like a flag of surrender in the summer breeze. There was dead silence from the pavilion now. Mari handed the bow back to Lydia with a polite word of thanks and walked directly up to Nick. She ignored John Teague, ignored Hester and Laura, ignored everyone else as though they simply did not exist. She was conscious of nothing and no one but Nick himself.

“Major Falconer,” she said, “if you ever trick me again, I will shoot you.”

And without waiting for any response, she turned on her heel and walked away.

H
E CAUGHT UP WITH HER
before she had taken more than twenty steps away, catching her arm and drawing her beneath the spreading branches of one of the home park oak trees, in order to hide them from the prying eyes of Laura’s guests. Mari did not care. She was so angry that she would have said whatever she had to say in front of an invited audience.

“Mrs. Osborne—” he began.

“Don’t pretend to misunderstand me, Major Falconer,” Mari cut in.

“I won’t,” Nick said.

That stopped Mari momentarily in her tracks. It was not what she had been expecting, but then he had always been a very direct man.

She could see one of the servants taking his shirt down off the butts now and Lydia and her friends resuming their display.

“You are angry with me,” Nick said.

“Correct.” Her gaze came back and focused fiercely on his face. The anger burned so hard and so bright inside her she thought she might be consumed. She looked at him and the intensity of her feelings shook her. Whatever there had been between them had always been powerful, passionate, extreme. Now it was unstoppable.

“You are angry because I led you to believe that I was the man who had written you the anonymous letters,” Nick said.

“You are
so
perceptive, Major Falconer.” Mari wanted to hurt him, to lash out. She barely held herself under control. “I can see why Lord Hawkesbury thought to send you to unmask me. You must be a real asset to him.”

Nick took a step closer to her and she fell silent, suddenly powerfully aware of his physical presence. Even now, after all that had happened, she was not, could not be, indifferent to him.

“I did not lie to you even once that night,” he said slowly.

“No,” Mari said bitterly, “you merely allowed me to make assumptions.”

“Exactly.”

“Why?”

There was no tone of apology in his voice as he answered. “Because, as you have no doubt guessed, I needed to know what had happened to my cousin.” His gaze examined her face and Mari felt herself burn beneath it. “I needed to know,” he said quietly, “that you were not a murderer.”

“I see.” Mari’s fury was almost choking her. “You needed to know that I was not a murderer so you tricked and very nearly seduced me. And that is supposed to make all right. Well, Major Falconer, the purity of your motives does
not
excuse your actions. You are a deceitful, dishonest, cunning, conniving traitor!”

He smiled at her. It was devastating. “I accept your reproof. You have every right to be angry with me. Forgive me, but I had to be sure.”

“You pretended to be attracted to me from the start,” Mari continued, trying to ignore the perfidious impulse that was prompting her to excuse him.

“That,” Nick said, “was no pretence.”

“And you set out to seduce me with deliberate intent.”

“Again, that is true, but my desire for you was not feigned.”

Mari took a deep breath. “You would have made love to me had I not run away from you.”

“Yes.” Nick shifted a little but his dark gaze remained fixed on her. “I would have made love to you,” he said. “I wanted you to the exclusion of all else. I freely confess it.”

They looked at one another whilst the anger and something far stronger smoldered between them, then Nick straightened. “And I do believe,” he said quietly, “that I have as much right as you to be angry. You told me a pack of lies that night.”

Mari caught her breath. Suddenly his tone frightened her far more than his words. It was very gentle, terrifyingly so. “Everything that you told me hung together as a story,” he continued. “It might even have been true. But it was not.” He rested a hand against the trunk of the oak. “I thought about it all night.” His eyes met hers and Mari felt the slam of her heart through her entire body. She was surprised she was not shaking visibly with it. “I thought about
you
all night, and about why you might lie to me.”

Nick reached out and touched her cheek, and she closed her eyes in despair. “I think,” he said softly, “that you lied because you are alone and in danger and you are afraid.”

His insight stole her breath. It seemed impossible that he had not believed the story she had spun for him. Impossible, and very, very dangerous, because now he was within a whisker of piecing together the truth and she had to stop him.

“You are imagining things,” Mari said. She wanted to sound abrupt. Instead she knew she sounded scared.

“I am not,” Nick said, with an absolute certainty that shook her. “I could help you,” he said, “if you were to trust me—”

“Trust you!” Mari said. Once, she had longed to do precisely that. Even now, after all that had happened between them, she felt an insidious urge to confide in him, this man who had set out deliberately to seduce the truth from her and had almost succeeded. She wondered bitterly how many more times she needed to remind herself to trust no one.

“You ask me to trust you now, after all that you have done?” she said. “You can take your trust and your help, Major Falconer, and…and you know what you can do with them!”

“When you ran from me that night, you were afraid,” Nick said, and his quietness cut straight through her anger and pinned her with a helpless despair that she would never be able to deceive him, that in her heart she did not want to and that she needed him now as much as she had ever done.

“What did Rashleigh do to you, Mari?” he said. “I know what sort of a man he was. What happened between you? What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing,” Mari whispered. Her lips felt stiff, bloodless. The heat of the day faded, the grass of the deer park shifted beneath her feet. She fought to keep the memories in the dark place where they belonged. She could not bear the thought of telling him all the hateful, painful details of her history. “I was his mistress,” she said. “It was as I told you.”

“It was not.” Nick’s tone was implacable.

There was silence for a moment and then Mari sighed.

“Let it go,” she said. “Please. I swear, that I told you the truth when I said I had not murdered your cousin, Major Falconer.” She took a deep breath. “And so that there cannot be any further misunderstandings between us, I will also say that I cannot help you in the matter of the Glory Girls. As for the rest—” her voice broke “—as for those things that you have asked me about myself and the Earl of Rashleigh…Those are matters that cannot be set to rights.”

Nick caught her hand in his. “It is never too late—”

“Yes, it is,” Mari said. She thought of her history as Rashleigh’s mistress and the scars it had left on her, and the secrets she had to keep.

“It is too late for me,” she said. She slipped her hand from his. “You should go back to London, Major Falconer, and not return to Peacock Oak.”

Nick took a step back and she thought her heart would break. She knew that she was right, that there were too many secrets and lies between them, too many reasons why they could never be together, and yet for a moment her heart ached fiercely for what might have been.

“I will go back to London,” Nick said, and Mari felt her spirits sink even as she knew he was doing the right thing.

“Thank you,” she said. She smiled a little. “And thank you for believing me, Major Falconer, when I have given you every reason not to do so.”

“I will go,” Nick said, “since you ask it of me. But I will come back, Mari. There will come a point when you are ready to speak to me, and then I will come back and we shall see what can be undone and what cannot.”

Mari pressed her hands to her cheeks. Her battered heart could not bear for him to prove now that he was as good and honorable as she had always hoped he would be. “Nicholas, please,” she said beseechingly.

“No,” Nick said. He smiled faintly. “I will respect your wishes for now, Mari, but you must know that there is no point in trying to dissuade me. I will be waiting for you for as long as it takes. There is nothing so bad that it cannot be put right.”

She watched him go. He walked past the pavilion without pausing to speak to anyone, and disappeared in the direction of the house. Mari saw Hester glance anxiously across at her, but she shook her head. For a moment the tears blinded her eyes. She had sent Nicholas Falconer away and she hoped to be able to forget his strength and his honesty and his integrity, qualities she ached for, because with her past she could not match them nor give him anything in return.

Later that day, Hester had come back to Peacock Cottage and told her that Nick was indeed returning to London, and Mari had known that he had accepted her word and felt both glad and desperately sad. Hester was quiet, and Mari could see that she wanted to ask what had happened between the two of them but did not want to pry. Mari sent her back to John Teague at Starbotton Hall, which was where she knew Hester really wanted to be, and then she took the shreds of the final anonymous letter and sat re-reading it at her bureau whilst she thought about what to do. She knew that she had to deal with it, to wipe the slate clean. She would tell her blackmailer to expose the truth and be damned. She had to dare to believe that he had no proof that could hurt Laura or Hester or Josie or Lenny. She could not keep running, could not keep living in fear. She could see that now, now that she felt awake and alive again. To see him, to deal with him, was the only way that she could be free.