Unmasked (23 page)

“Humph.”
Hawkesbury sighed again. He toyed with a quill, snapping it in half.

“This is most unsatisfactory.”

“Yes, my lord.” Nick allowed himself to relax infinitesimally. He was protecting Mari quite deliberately. From the moment he had seen the fear and vulnerability in her, he had resolved that he had to return to London to make sure that Hawkesbury’s inquiries did not harm her. In the fullness of time he hoped she would trust him sufficiently to confide in him but until then it was all he could do.

“Humph,”
Hawkesbury said again, breaking into his reflection. “So what are your thoughts?”

“I think,” Nick said, “that my cousin could have been stabbed by a passing criminal who saw a rich man and chanced his luck in the hope of carrying off his purse. Or a hired assassin might have set upon him. Any one of those outraged peers whose sons Rashleigh had cheated could have paid a man to do the job. I think it most unlikely that you will discover the truth now, my lord, and I think very few people care because in so many ways it is poetic justice that he is dead.”

Hawkesbury grunted. “Can’t argue with that. The man was a scoundrel.”

“He was worse than that,” Nick said.

“Just so.” Hawkesbury sighed. “If we may be sure that there is nothing seditious, nothing treasonable going on that involved Rashleigh and those damned highwaywomen…” Another quill pen broke between his fingers. “But can we be sure?”

“I think that whoever killed Rashleigh used Glory’s name to gain more notoriety,” Nick said. “I do not think there was any conspiracy. And whilst it is a taunt to law and order to have these women galloping around the countryside and robbing the rich to give to the poor, there are worse crimes.”

“It goes against the natural order,” Hawkesbury grumbled. “If the poor were meant to be rich, then God would have given them money.”

“Which is what he is doing, indirectly,” Nick said. “Those are my thoughts, sir, for what they are worth.”

“I’ll send the militia,” Hawkesbury grumbled. “I’ll catch them yet!”

“Then I wish you the best of luck, sir,” Nick said. He stood up. “If I have fulfilled my commission, then I will ask your permission to resume my furlough.”

“You’ve scarcely fulfilled it satisfactorily,” Hawkesbury grumbled again. He flapped his hands irritably. “Oh, very well, go! Go and sort out those papers you inherited from your cousin. Nothing but filth there!”

“Your clerks must have suffered terribly reading through it all,” Nick said politely.

He went out into the street. London wilted under a hard blue sky. The dust clung to the trees, turning the leaves a dull green. He found himself thinking of the fresh green fields of Yorkshire.

He wondered what else to do with his furlough. He was meeting Anstruther that night at Whites and he supposed that after that he should go up to Scotland. His great-uncle was hosting a stalking party at his estate in Sutherland. His sisters and their families would be there and he had every intention of seeing them at some point during his leave. What he would be unlikely to do was to spend more time with Charles Cole, who had traveled back with him on the coach and seemed to have taken up residence permanently at his club, drinking his way through bottle after bottle of ruinously expensive port. Charles seemed to be avoiding Nick’s company and had offered no excuse for his sudden departure from Yorkshire so close to his cousin’s wedding other than some vague comment about urgent business in Town. It was most odd.

Nick walked back to Eaton Square through the stifling heat of the day and stepped into the cool of his great-uncle’s hall with some relief.

“There is a gentleman to see you, sir.” Danton, the butler, was standing in the doorway. “Or rather, not a gentleman, but a lawyer by the name of Churchward. Apparently the matter pertains to your cousin’s estate and he has been hoping to have the chance to speak with you for several weeks past.”

Nick raised his brows. He had thought that Hawkesbury had dealt with all aspects of Rashleigh’s estate as part of the investigation into his death and that there was nothing else to add.

Danton was hovering. “Shall I show him in, sir?”

“By all means,” Nick said.

The fussy-looking little man whom Danton ushered into the study a moment later was clutching a battered leather briefcase in one hand and he extended the other to shake Nick’s proffered hand.

“Good day, Major Falconer. Thank you for receiving me.”

“Would you care for refreshment, Mr. Churchward?” Nick inquired. “A pot of coffee?”

Danton was dispatched to fetch the refreshments and Nick waved Churchward to a chair before the fire.

“How may I help you, Mr. Churchward?” he asked.

Churchward pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Well, Major, it is more a case of how I may help you.”

Nick inclined his head. “I see. This is in connection with my cousin’s estate, so I understand? Forgive me, but I thought that all matters had been dealt with by Lord Hawkesbury’s office?”

“Indeed.” Mr. Churchward shook his head disapprovingly. “Such a thing has never happened in the history of Churchward and Churchward, Major Falconer. A man stabbed to death whilst dressed as a molly and visiting a low tavern in Brick Hill! His papers confiscated by the Home Secretary! Not the sort of client that Churchward and Churchward, lawyers to the discerning, would choose to have at all.”

“I can imagine,” Nick murmured. “My family uses Wordlip and Charles, but I have heard of your sterling reputation, Mr. Churchward.”

Mr. Churchward sniffed at the bad taste of the Falconer family in preferring a different lawyer.

“That cannot be helped, I suppose,” he said, “but should you ever require another lawyer, Major, may I suggest that you contact us? We are most discreet and accustomed to dealing with all manner of business.”

“Of course,” Nick said. “Even—reluctantly—that involving my cousin Rashleigh.” He leaned forward. “I understand that my cousin named me as heir to all his unentailed property and his nonexistent fortune?”

“That is correct, Major,” Churchward said. “You have inherited the house in Kent and very little else, I fear, and your great-uncle…”

“Reluctantly paid off all Rashleigh’s debts in order to preserve the family honor,” Nick finished. “So what does that leave, Mr. Churchward?”

“This!” Churchward said, with the air of one producing a rabbit from a hat. He fumbled in the leather briefcase and extracted a thin pigskin folder. Nick held his hand out. Churchward, however, did not immediately hand over the file but held it for a moment, an odd expression on his face.

“This did not form part of the paperwork that I passed to Lord Hawkesbury, Major.”

“I see,” Nick said. He waited.

“You should know, sir, that this document only came into my possession shortly before Lord Rashleigh was murdered,” Churchward continued, “and with it he sent me a note demanding in no uncertain terms that I should destroy it in the event of his death.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “And why did you not, Mr. Churchward, if that was his wish?”

An strange expression crossed Churchward’s face. “I read the document, my lord,” he confessed. A shade of color touched his thin cheek. “Most unprofessional of me, I admit, but knowing your cousin I wanted to be sure that I was doing the right thing. And when I had read it, I decided that in destroying it, or indeed in handing it over to the authorities, I might be committing a grave injustice.”

He put the folder gently into Nick’s outstretched hand. “It is your decision, Major Falconer.”

The strangest shiver of premonition went down Nick’s spine. He was not a superstitious man but as he slid the single sheet of paper out of the folder, he felt some of Rashleigh’s venom touch him and turn him cold.

At first glance he did not recognize the document for what it was. The signature was that of his uncle, Robert Rashleigh’s father, and the deed was dated December 1798. The wavering writing suggested a man who was already very sick.

Nick had never seen a manumission form before but as he read on, understanding burst on him.

“I, Cecil Anthony John Rashleigh, twelfth Earl of Rashleigh, do grant in perpetuity freedom from serfdom to Marina Stepanova Valstoya and to all her descendants…”

Nick paused. Like an echo in his head he could hear Mari’s voice, that night at the Star House.

“I thought it would be you, because you are his heir…”

He put the paper down slowly. The patterns in his head faded and reformed; his uncle’s death seven years before, the rumors circulating in the
Ton
of Rashleigh’s Russian mistress whom it was said had stolen from him and run away, his cousin’s fury and refusal to discuss the incident, Mari Osborne coming to London to meet with Rashleigh at the Hen and Vulture, the anonymous letters and Mari’s vulnerability to blackmail and most of all her absolute terror when Nick had touched her…

Nick ran his hands through his hair. A suspicion was forming in his mind, so loathsome, so unbearable, that he was not sure for a moment that he wanted to face it….

Mari had been a serf. A slave. Rashleigh’s slave….

“Major Falconer?” Mr. Churchward’s voice cut through his thoughts. “I hope that you think I did the right thing in preserving the document and bringing it to you?”

“Oh, yes,” Nick said, looking from the manumission form to Churchward’s anxious face. He cleared his throat. “You were absolutely right, Churchward. Serfdom is a vile thing and it should weigh heavy on any man’s conscience to be instrumental in destroying the evidence of a slave’s freedom.”

Churchward’s expression cleared. “Thank you, sir,” he said in heartfelt tones. “You are not like your cousin.”

“No,” Nick said. “I am not.” He shook his head. “This should have been given to her seven years ago.”

Seven years, not knowing that she was free, of thinking that she was still Rashleigh’s slave….

Nick tried, and failed, to imagine how that must have felt.

He thought about Rashleigh suppressing the document for so long and demanding that it be destroyed on his death. Such malevolence could only mean one thing—that he had deliberately withheld from Marina Osborne the proof of her freedom. Perhaps she had never even known the manumission form existed. Rashleigh must have wanted to keep it to have a hold over her.

Churchward was fastening the battered leather briefcase and getting to his feet. “The only matter that still troubles me,” he confessed as he shook Nick’s hand once again, “is how one might find the lady after all this time?”

“Then do not be troubled,” Nick said. He gave the lawyer a rueful smile. “I know precisely where to find her. You can trust me to put the matter right, Mr. Churchward.”

After the lawyer had gone out, Nick folded the manumission form and put it carefully in his wallet, and went into the library where Rashleigh’s papers were stored. Hawkesbury’s clerks had been thorough and meticulous. Everything was filed by year and carefully annotated. But they had not known what they were looking for and Nick did. Sitting down on the window seat he turned to the ledgers for 1798 and 1799. This was the period immediately after Rashleigh had inherited from his father and so there were a great many estate papers. There was a note of all the Russian property and their sale and a note of the number of serfs belonging to each estate. Their names were not given and they were listed in the column under possessions and household items for inclusion in the sale. Nick felt repulsed to see this further evidence of his cousin’s inhumanity.

On one page, dated December 1798, he found a note in the estate manager’s cramped hand of the purchase of a parcel of land at Svartorsk and a note that Feodor Valstoy, his wife, Maria, and two daughters aged ten and twelve had been granted their freedom from serfdom and established on a farm there.

On another page he found a detailed listing of all the jewelry that Rashleigh had inherited from his father and brought back to England, fabulous jewels of dazzling quality, a staggering fortune. Nick thought it entirely possible that Rashleigh might have sold them and squandered the money like the wastrel he was, but the rumors he had heard at the time, the rumors to which he had paid little attention, had suggested otherwise.

And in a third entry he found payment of passage to the port of London for Robert Rashleigh and Marina Valstoya.

He was beginning to understand now why Mari had struggled so hard to conceal her true identity from him. She was almost certainly a runaway slave and a thief. Or, more precisely, she had thought she was, because his blackguard cousin had never told her she was free.

He wondered again about the ledger entries. Why had Rashleigh, who had never been known for his generosity, given Mari’s family their freedom? They had been given land and liberty from serfdom. Mari had come with Rashleigh to London. It looked like a bargain, an exchange….

Nick froze as an icy revulsion trickled through his veins.

An exchange. Their freedom in return for Mari’s body…And, judging by her fearful reaction to physical intimacy, it had been an arrangement made under duress.

At last the pattern made hateful, horrible sense. Her fear, her vulnerability, her absolute, desperate determination to keep the truth from him….

He put the ledger under his arm and went out into the hall.

“Danton,” he said, “I shall be leaving for Yorkshire in the morning.”

The butler looked a little pained. “Already, sir?”

“I am afraid so,” Nick said. “There was something that I left unfinished and I have to go back.”

Those are matters that cannot be set to rights,
Mari Osborne had said, but Nick knew this could not be true. He would not allow it to be. He would give her the freedom that had been denied to her for so long. He would hear her story. He would bring Rashleigh’s hateful legacy into the light.

He was going to go back and he was going to put matters right.