Unmasked (24 page)

Ash—With me you are safe

N
ICK’S FIRST IMPULSE
on arriving back in Peacock Oak had been to go directly to Peacock Cottage and demand an interview with Mari. When he arrived there, however, there was no answer to his knock. The house looked as though it had been closed. He had only been gone for ten days, yet it seemed that much had changed.

He was obliged to go across to Cole Court, his impatience simmering inside him and desperate for a way out. The Court was also strangely silent and when the butler answered the door to his knock it was to inform him that the house party had ended and the guests departed.

“No one is at home except for me.” Laura Cole came forward to greet him and he saw that she was limping. “The most tiresome thing, Major Falconer—I twisted my ankle when I was out riding only two days ago and so cannot walk, let alone ride. And the hunt is to go out tomorrow and here I am stuck at home like a dowager aunt.”

She gestured to him to precede her into her private study. “However, this is most auspicious in one sense as I have been hoping to speak with you if you returned to Peacock Oak and it seems that now I have my chance. Tea, Carrington, if you please.”

In the study Laura sat down with a gasp of relief then smiled up at him. “I apologize that I cannot invite you to stay here for your visit, Major Falconer, but with Charles away—” here a flicker of pain crossed her face “—and the house party ended it would not be appropriate.”

“Pray do not concern yourself, your grace,” Nick said. “I am uncertain how long I shall be staying but I have booked a room and left my bags at Half Moon House.”

“Oh, dear!” Laura’s eyes were bright with amusement. “Josie will not like that. I am surprised that she did not turn you from the door.”

“Perhaps,” Nick said, watching her face, “she knows that my presence here is no longer a threat?”

He saw Laura color up delicately and fidget a little with her skirts. Carrington brought the tea in at that moment and Laura stirred the pot with perfect composure, although her color was still a little high.

“I hope,” she said with a little constraint, as the door closed behind the butler, “that that is true, Major Falconer, for all our sakes.” She tilted her head to look at him. “I understand, you see, that when you were here previously you were anxious to track down and arrest the gang of highwaywomen calling themselves the Glory Girls?”

“Your grace—” Nick began, but Laura raised a hand to stop him in his tracks and Nick could suddenly see that beneath the outer gentleness she had all of a Duchess’s authority.

“Major Falconer, if you please…” She waited for him to fall obediently silent and then resumed, “I assure you that this is a matter of utmost importance. So please tell me—is my understanding correct?”

She raised a brow interrogatively and Nick nodded. “It is correct,” he said.

“The Glories will not ride again,” Laura said. “Nor were they associated in any way with the death of Robert Rashleigh.”

“Your grace,” Nick said, astounded, “how do you know—” He stopped. He thought of Laura’s passion for riding, and then he looked down to see her feet peeping from beneath the hem of her gown. They were very large feet. A moment later she had whisked her skirts back to cover them and he looked into her gentle hazel eyes to see that she was smiling at him.

“They will not ride again,” she repeated, adding, “A pity in many ways, but it has to be.”

Nick was silent.

“Mari Osborne never rode with the Glory Girls,” Laura continued. She passed him a cup. “Tea, Major Falconer? Sugar?”

“Thank you,” Nick said, feeling increasingly cast adrift in this unlikely conversation. “No sugar, please.”

Laura shot him a look. “I think that you realized that, of course. Poor Mari, she is by far too bad a horsewoman ever to ride out like that!”

“I had observed it,” Nick said, taking a gulp of tea and feeling that he needed its restorative qualities.

“Quite. But the idea of the Glory Girls, Major Falconer…” Laura smiled. “That was the scheme of someone who had known immense injustice in their life, someone who wanted to ensure that others did not have to suffer the type of hardships and betrayal and cruelty that they themselves had done. May I press you to a rock bun?”

“Thank you,” Nick said automatically, thinking of Mari and all the charitable work that she had done. He had thought before that he had been very slow to see the truth. Now he was starting to realize how close he had been without realizing it. He had known that Mari must have been deeply involved with the Glory Girls, but she had been the cool planning behind the attacks, not the one who rode out to execute them. And she had done it from a sense of justice.

“So Glory was conceived as an avenging angel,” he said slowly. “Of course. She was the creation of someone who had very personal reasons for wishing to right some of the wrongs of society.”

“And,” Laura said, a thread of steel entering her gentle tones, “I am sure that you would not wish to add to the injustices heaped on that person, Major Falconer.”

“I am sure that you are correct, your grace,” Nick said wryly. He took a bite out of the rock bun. It tasted very good.

“Which brings me rather neatly to Mari herself,” Laura said, stirring her tea. “She will not thank me for mentioning this to you, Major Falconer, so pray disabuse yourself of any notion that she has asked me to speak for her.”

Nick waited. He doubted that anything else Laura Cole could say to him on this extraordinary day could possibly shock him.

“Mari Osborne has been very badly used in the past,” Laura said. “I know that to be true.” She gave a little sigh. “How much do you know of Mari’s history, Major Falconer?”

“A great deal more than I did when I was last here,” Nick said, a little grimly. “I came back in the hope that she would finally be able to tell me the whole.”

Laura nodded. “You wish to speak with her. That I understand. But I do hope that you will not hurt her. She has had so much to bear.” She hesitated. “I am speaking very much out of line here, you understand, Major Falconer?” When Nick waited politely, she continued with a little difficulty, “I have to confess here to doing something of which I am not proud, Major Falconer. I have to tell you that I know Mari Osborne’s entire history at the hands of your cousin, the Earl of Rashleigh. I know it because when Mari first came to Peacock Oak, I asked an inquiry agent to look into her background.”

She gestured to the teapot. “Another cup, Major Falconer?”

“Thank you,” Nick said. His mind was reeling. So much for thinking that she could not shock him. “I…Uh…You…asked someone to investigate Mrs. Osborne’s history?” he repeated.

“I used Tom Bradshaw,” Laura confirmed. “You will know of him, I am sure. He is the most discreet and efficient inquiry agent in London.”

“I do know him,” Nick agreed. He shifted. “Tell me, your grace, what was it that prompted you to suspect that Mrs. Osborne was not all that she seemed—for I assume that that was the reason for your actions?”

Laura nodded. She took her cup and walked away from him toward the fire. “People assume that because I am female and a Duchess that I must be either stupid or need to be protected from the harsh facts of life,” she said, after a moment, “but the truth is that I am well able to take care of myself. I knew as soon as I met Mari Osborne that there was something…not odd about her, exactly, but not precisely
right.
I sensed that she was not the blameless widow of a merchant that she claimed to be.” She looked at him. “As you know, a Duchess has many an approach from undesirables, people who want to know me for my money or my influence or some other reason. I developed an instinct for it early. That was why I wondered about Mari Osborne right from the start.”

She placed her cup and saucer on the sideboard and rested a hand on its shining surface. “I never told Mari what I had done, of course. When I heard all that she had gone through, I wanted to befriend her. And the irony was that when I tried, I discovered that she wanted nothing from me other than to keep out of my way. She resisted my friendship fiercely.” Laura’s lips twitched. “Had I not been a Duchess and her next-door neighbor I believe she would have told me to go hang before she accepted my friendship.”

Nick was frowning. “Knowing a little of Mrs. Osborne’s history, as I do now, I suppose that is no great wonder.”

“No,” Laura said. “Well, eventually we did become friends. And a great deal later than that, Mari trusted me with something of her story, never knowing that I knew the whole, dreadful tale already.” Laura turned to look at him. “I knew your cousin Robert Rashleigh, Major Falconer. We all did, Charles, Henry, John Teague, myself. How could we not, when he was a member of the
Ton
as we all were? But I knew Rashleigh for another reason.” She moved away from him with a swish of silk. “When I was young, barely more than a child, in fact, Robert Rashleigh ruined a distant cousin of mine.”

Nick shook his head. “I did not know. I had no idea.”

“Of course not. The matter was hushed up to preserve the family honor in a manner Rashleigh had so signally failed to do. But I heard my parents speaking of it. I never forgot. So you may imagine that when I heard he was dead, I was not sorry, for so many reasons.”

She looked Nick straight in the eye. “I did not kill Robert Rashleigh, Major Falconer, and nor did Mari or Hester Teague. I want you to know that. When I said that the Glory Girls were not involved in his murder, I spoke the truth.”

Nick nodded. “I am more than grateful to you for your honesty, your grace,” he said.

Laura smiled. “I owed it to both you and Mari to reveal the truth about the Glory Girls,” she said. “Mari has kept silent out of loyalty—to protect those she cares about the most. It was time that those of us who care for
her
should put the matter straight.”

“You may count upon my discretion in the matter, your grace,” Nick said. He laughed. “Though I confess it relieves me to hear the Glories will not ride again.”

“Of course,” Laura said. “A gentleman in your situation cannot collude at breaking the law, Major Falconer. I appreciate that.” She looked at him, biting her lip. “There is, however, one small barrier remaining to your discovering the whole truth, Major Falconer. Mari has gone away.”

Nick remembered the shuttered windows of Peacock Cottage. “I wondered if she had,” he said slowly.

“Not run away,” Laura stressed, “but she required some peace, I think, and some time alone. As soon as Hester and John’s marriage had taken place, she left. She has been gone a week.” She drummed her fingers thoughtfully on the sideboard. “I suppose she did not forbid me from telling anyone where…”

Urgency grasped at Nick and he sat forward. “Your grace—”

“I need your word, Major Falconer,” Laura said. “Your word that you will not hurt Mari in any way.”

“You have it,” Nick said instantly.

Laura smiled. “Very well. Mari is staying in a convent, Major Falconer, the convent of Our Lady of Mount Grace in Cavenham. It is less than twenty miles from here.”

“A convent.” Nick saw the problem at once. “So if she does not choose to receive me…”

“Then you have a problem, Major Falconer,” Laura said. “If she will not see you, there is no way in which you will be able to speak with her, unless you decide to abduct a lady from a convent.” She raised her brows. “Fine behavior for an officer and a gentleman! Do you need time to think about it?”

Nick laughed. “No, your grace. I do not believe I do.”

M
ARI TUCKED HER BOOK
under her arm and made her way from the walled convent garden through the archway to the guesthouse. It was late afternoon now and the hot, heavy summer day promised thunder. From the church floated the clear, plaintive notes of plainsong as the nuns sang Compline. It was an extremely soothing sound. In fact, everything to do with Mount Grace was peaceful and soothing. In the week that she had been there Mari had found more peace of mind than in the past five years.

Nevertheless she was very aware that she was running away. Laura might be kind and say that she had needed to give herself time and space to think, to find some peace, and in some ways that was true. But she had no vocation to be a nun and no intention of staying permanently in her retreat and one day soon she knew she would have to go back. She would have to pick up the threads of her life in Peacock Oak. She would have to dismiss Nick Falconer from her memory, as well as from her life.

She paused in the shadow of the gateway, convinced that someone was standing within the cobbled courtyard and watching her, but when she looked around, there was no one there. With a little shrug, Mari walked down the quiet stone corridor to her room and pushed open the door. There were no locks here. They were not needed.

She placed her book on the table and put a hand up to unfasten her spencer then froze as a movement behind her caught the corner of her eye. Turning, she was just in time to see the heavy door swing shut and Nick Falconer leaning back against it, arms folded. He looked solid, unyielding and dangerously determined. Her pulse jumped.

“What…What on
earth
are you doing here?” Her voice came out as a croak.

He smiled and her stomach dipped. She had scarcely had time to forget that wicked smile. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said.

“Most people would call at the gate,” Mari said. “It is customary.”

“I knew that if I did that, you would refuse to see me.”

She could not fault the logic of that. Of course she would have done. Just seeing him standing there made her nerves trip and the breath catch in her throat. She had thought it would be a long, long time—perhaps never—before she would have to face him again and she was woefully unprepared.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked, and knew the answer before he had replied. “Laura told you, I suppose.”