Unmasked (30 page)

“You shouldn’t—”

“I should.” He pressed a kiss against her hair. “I like doing that for you, Mari. I intend to do that and much, much more.” She felt his chest move as he laughed. “Even so, it wasn’t meant to be like that.”

Mari raised her head, frowning a little. “What do you mean?”

Nick sounded rueful. “I mean, my love, that I had intended to wait until we were in bed and it could be gentle and decorous.”

Mari gave a little splutter of laughter. “Decorous?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you or shock you.”

Mari sat up a little. “You have done neither.” She looked at him. “Though I am a little surprised to see that you still have your breeches on.”

“I was in too much of a hurry to take them off.” He sounded very pleased with himself all of a sudden, she thought. He straightened, adjusted his clothes and then before she could protest, he picked her up off the bench, racing up the garden with her clasped in his arms. The rain was still pouring steadily down now but the thunder had passed. He carried her up the stairs, kicked open the door of her bedroom and placed her gently down on the bed.

“Bed,” he said. “Gentle and decorous.”

Mari sat curled up on the covers and looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her chemise and petticoats were crumpled and still damp, her face was flushed pink, her eyes bright, her hair tousled. She stared. She had never seen herself this way before, never looked like this before, never
felt
like this. It was not the shameful, sickening horror that had possessed her after Rashleigh had taken her. That had gone. For the first time, she could remember it with regret but no pain. It was in the past, and now she could see that she had become a different person, freed, transformed.

“Oh!” She stared at herself. “I look…” She hesitated but it was the right word. “Beautiful.”

“You are,” Nick said. He came to sit behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She could feel his heat and the press of his body against hers. He bent his head and touched his lips to her neck and she leaned back to allow him to kiss her. His mouth was like a brand on her skin and he slid his hands down from her shoulders to her waist, holding her tightly against him. He was nipping at the soft skin of her neck now with tiny sharp bites that raised the goose bumps on her arms and sent the quivers of sensation right down to her toes. His hair brushed her bare shoulder, a soft caress.

Mari turned her head and he kissed her, a sensual kiss of demand and possession that had her melting fast. She had not suspected it, had not imagined she could want him again so soon. Her body’s responses were mysterious, unknown to her before now but as his tongue swept across hers she felt the sweet low ache in her belly again and pressed back against him in a mute plea. His hands came up to palm her breasts, his fingers caressing her nipples through the shreds of her chemise. Wicked, delicious sensation made her shiver. She turned back and opened her eyes to watch in the mirror as he drew the bodice of her chemise down from her shoulders and bared her breasts to his hands. His fingers were tanned dark against the whiteness of her skin. His thumb flicked over her nipple and she had to bite down on a scream of pleasure.

He turned her in his arms so that they were kneeling opposite one another, tangled his hands in her silky hair and held her face up for his kiss. But there were things that she wanted to know now, things she wanted to do. She put a hand against his chest and pushed him backward, taking him by surprise. Before he could protest she had scrambled up his body, straddled him, the tips of her nipples brushing his chest as she leaned forward to kiss him. She heard him groan and felt his erection swelling against her thigh and felt feminine and powerful.

Her hands went to the fastening of his breeches and he groaned again but he did not stop her this time, and taking courage, she freed his shaft and removed all his clothes and allowed herself to explore his body with her fingers and her tongue. She took her time, running her palms over his shoulders and down his chest, trailing her mouth across his abdomen and feeling a secret and very female satisfaction when his erection strained toward her and he fisted his hands in the bedsheets in sheer desperation. She was excited, fascinated, by the contrast of the hardness and the velvety smoothness of his shaft. She took it in her mouth, wanting to torture him with the same agonizing pleasure he had given her and spin it out into ecstasy but he caught her shoulders and drew her against his naked body, turning her over and coming down on top of her in one fluid, possessive movement.

“Next time,” he ground out.

He entered the tip of his shaft into her and had her squirming beneath him. Her hands fluttered at his back and his buttocks, frantic to pull him closer. He slid inside her one slow inch at a time, deeper and deeper until he was buried to the hilt, then he raised her bottom in his hands and thrust hard. She felt stretched and full and beneath the fullness was exquisite pleasure.

He smoothed the hair back from her face with the same gentleness he had shown her once before.

“Mari?” he whispered.

“Yes.” This time she allowed herself to think and to feel. Slowly, carefully, she opened her heart and her mind and waited for the feelings to come, happiness where once there had been misery, healing sunlight banishing the dark.

“I love you,” Nick said. “I will love you always.”

He started to move, taking her with him, their bodies entwined on the bed, their images in the mirror locked in a tangle of sweet, erotic pleasure. Mari opened her eyes and gasped to see the reflection; the slide of his hand over her thigh, the hard thrust of his body into hers, the whiteness of her skin as she lay in pleasured abandonment on the covers. The sight of it was her undoing. She watched as Nick’s eyes closed and his muscles tautened and his face tensed with pleasure as he quickened the pace, carrying her with him until the sensual delight seized them both, flinging them together over the edge and they lay gasping in sweet oblivion.

After a long moment Nick drew back the bedclothes and pulled her beneath them, still curled in his arms. It was a long, long time before either of them spoke but they did not need words.

At last Nick stirred. “Decorous,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps we will have to work a little harder to achieve that.”

Mari pressed a kiss against his jaw.

“Nicholas…”

“Mmm?” His voice was already very sleepy.

“Frank will find both my gown and your shirt in the greenhouses,” Mari said. “What will Jane say this time?”

Nick put out an arm and drew her close in to the warmth of his body. “She will say it is a very good thing that we are married at last,” he said, “and so it is.”

Rose—Everlasting love

“I
HAVE BEEN INTENDING
to ask you, Nicholas,” Mari said a few days later, “when you plan to go to Scotland. I know that you wished to visit your family before the end of your furlough.”

They were walking through Laura’s rose garden and Nick was enjoying the simple pleasure of watching Mari and knowing she was his wife.

His wife.

It seemed little short of miraculous.

Then he saw her snap the head off one of Laura’s roses, an action so unexpected that he recognized she was nervous and her nervousness was making her clumsy. He realized then that during the brief, heady days of their honeymoon he had given her no reassurance about the future or indeed where she fitted into his plans. They had been too wrapped up in the present to look ahead but now he knew Mari was anxious.

Catching her fingers in his before she shredded too many more flower heads, he brought them to his lips.

“I thought perhaps next week,” he said. “As a wedding trip? Hester and John plan to travel to the Lake District for their honeymoon and we might go part of the way with them and continue on to Sutherland after.”

Mari’s face lit up at the idea and he felt a rush of pleasure to have made her happy. He was learning to read her reactions these days and he could see that there was still one matter that troubled her. His furlough. Of course. She would be wondering what would happen when that came to an end.

“As for the army,” he said carefully, “I had thought perhaps to sell out and come to live with you here at Peacock Oak? In time we will have Kinloss, as well, of course, but I do not wish you to worry about living there for I am almost certain that the garden will be in need of remodeling by the time I inherit and so you will have a great deal to do…” He stopped as Mari wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a spontaneous hug. “Oh, yes!” she said. “That would be entirely delightful.” She released him. “But in the meantime what are you to do? You are not a man accustomed to sitting around with nothing to occupy himself.”

“I thought,” Nick said, “to buy some land and learn to be a farmer. Not the type like Sampson who encloses the common land and steals people’s animals,” he added hastily, seeing her frown, “but the sort like John Teague who is a good landlord. What do you think?”

Mari slipped her hand through his arm. “I think you will be good at it.”

“Charles is selling,” Nick said. He cast a sideways look at her. “Did Laura tell you?”

“Selling Cole Court?” Mari stopped and stared at him. “But surely he cannot. Is it not entailed?”

“The house and some of the land is,” Nick said, “but not much of the farmland hereabouts. I have offered to buy.”

Mari was biting her lip. “That means he does not intend to come back,” she said. “He is severing all the ties he can with Peacock Oak. Poor Laura. What will she do?”

“Live apart from him, I imagine,” Nick said. “You did not truly believe that after all that has happened they would be reconciled?”

Mari shook her head slowly. She still looked troubled. “I suppose not,” she said, “although I did wonder if they might set aside their differences in order to preserve the appearance of a happy marriage.”

“I do not think Laura would settle for that,” Nick said. “You know her better than I, of course, but she does not strike me as someone who would compromise over anything that truly mattered.”

“And she loved Charles so much once,” Mari said. “If only he had had the will to see it and not to waste what he had.”

They had reached the lawns where Laura had had the tea table set up beneath the plane trees. Hester, John and Laura herself were already seated around the table and they waved to Mari and Nick to join them.

“We have some of your apple cake here, Mari,” Laura was saying, as they sat down, “served with cream from our own dairies—” She broke off, lowering the teapot with a slight thud. “Good gracious, is that Jane over there? I have never seen her
run
before, and so quickly…”

Nick turned. Jane was running across the deer park, positively sprinting, in fact, which was most unlikely in one of her years. By the time she had skidded to a halt beside the tea table she had her hand pressed to her side and was panting so much she could barely speak. John Teague stood up to set a chair for her, but she waved it away. She looked at Mari and the tears started to flood down her cheeks though she barely had the breath to sob.

“The constable’s men are coming, ma’am! Mr. Anstruther is with them. They have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Lord Rashleigh! I came across the park but they are already on the drive, ma’am! You have only a minute—”

Nick felt a cold, cold fear settle in his stomach. Mari grabbed his hand. Her face was ashen. Laura was looking stunned, Hester stricken.

It seemed impossible. They had barely begun to talk about their hopes and their plans, had been married all of three days, and now the past had intruded in the most abrupt and unbearable way.

“I don’t understand,” Mari said. She looked at him. “I thought they knew I was innocent. I thought…”

Nick had thought so, too. He could only assume that Hawkesbury had disregarded his views and decided to press charges on the basis that Mari was the most likely perpetrator. He saw the terror in her eyes. She was breathless, the panic rising in her chest, silencing her. He drew her to him and held her tightly.

“It will be all right,” he said. “I will protect you. I swear it.”

He could see the terrible blankness in her eyes, the pain he had hoped was banished forever, and he could tell she could not hear his words. He felt an unbearable wave of protectiveness swamp him, and an equally powerful surge of anger. He knew he had to keep his promise to her. All the fragile happiness, the liberty, the security was fading away now, leaving Mari exposed and alone. Nick knew she was thinking that the past had finally come for her, that they would lock her up, discover the truth of her history so that even if they could not prove her a murderess they would hang her for theft and take away her freedom and her life and her love forever…

He could never let that happen.

He got to his feet. “Mari,” he said, “trust me. I will
not
let them take you.”

There was the scrape of a chair as John Teague stood up.

“I am the one they should have come for,” he said. He looked desperately tired. “If they are here to arrest a murderer then they should take me. I killed Robert Rashleigh.”

T
HERE WAS A TERRIBLE
,
frozen silence. Stirring from her stupor, Mari saw that Hester’s face had gone very white. She leaped to her feet, clutching John’s arm, her eyes wild.

“John, no!”

“Hester, darling—” Teague released himself gently as though he was already starting to take the painful step of distancing himself from her. “I am afraid that it is true.” He looked at Mari and Nick, and gave them a tired smile. “They will not take you when I have told them the truth, Mari.”

Hester was standing there, unbelieving, anguished, and even through her own shock Mari wanted to go to her and put her arms about her to try to comfort her, but she knew she could not. Hester could not even see her—all her thoughts, all her attention was focused on John alone.

“I don’t understand,” Hester said. “
You
killed Rashleigh, John?” She looked across at Mari. “But why? Was it for Mari’s sake? Did you do this for her?”

Teague’s eyes never left Hester’s face. He was as pale as she was now. “No,” he said, and his voice sounded rusty. “I did it for you, Hester. When you told me that Rashleigh was blackmailing Mari by threatening to expose her past and her connection to the Glory Girls, all I could think of was how to protect you from his malice.”

Hester gave a little, dry sob. “It was my fault then,” she said. Her voice broke. “I should never have told you about Mari and about Rashleigh. We were friends and I always confided in you. But—” she shook her head slowly “—I never thought, never imagined, that you would take his life….”

Teague took her hand. Mari saw her flinch at his touch as though she could not bear it when she knew it might be the last time they ever touched one another.

“I had been in love with you for a long time, Hester,” Teague said. “I thought that you would never be mine and I think I was a little mad with wanting you. When Rashleigh threatened Mari and through her you, I could think of nothing but how to remove the danger. I knew your plans, knew that Mari was to meet him. So I went to the Hen and Vulture, too, and watched and waited. And when I had my chance, I killed him.” He gave her hand a little shake. “Please tell me you understand. Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” Hester said, without hesitation. She was in his arms, her head buried against his chest, her arms holding him so tight. The expression on her face was naked, a compound of love and unbearable loss. Mari felt her eyes fill with tears to see it. She looked at Laura and saw the same anguish in her eyes as they watched Hester’s life being torn apart.

“It was my fault,” Hester said again. “If only I had realized what I had done to you! I pushed you too far. If only I had thought about anything other than myself!”

The constable’s men were approaching across the grass now and at the head of the procession Mari could see Dexter Anstruther, his face drawn, a bleak light in his blue eyes. Mari saw Nick straighten and look at Teague and Teague give the very slightest of nods and put Hester away from him with the gentlest of gestures.

“Mr. Anstruther,” he said, before the younger man could speak, “I understand that you have a warrant for the arrest of Mrs. Falconer for the murder of Robert Rashleigh?”

Anstruther was looking perplexed and wary. He looked from Mari to Nick to Teague. “Yes, my lord, but I am sorry, I fail to see what you—”

“I am the murderer of Robert Rashleigh,” Teague said deliberately. “Mrs. Falconer is entirely innocent of the deed. I can provide witnesses who will testify that I was in London on the date of Rashleigh’s death and should there be any other doubts about my veracity I can describe what he was wearing that night and other details that must surely satisfy a court of law.”

Anstruther looked stunned. “If you can prove it, my lord…”

“Oh, I can,” Teague said tiredly. He was still looking at Hester, had not taken his eyes from her. “Of course I can. I give you my word of honor.”

The constable cleared his throat and Teague looked up as though he was wakening from a dream.

“I have to go now,” he said. “Forgive me, Hester. I have to go.”

And without another word he turned and walked away across the grass, leaving Anstruther and the stupefied constable to follow in his wake.

“I
HAVE PUT
H
ESTER
to bed,” Laura said. It was late and she and Mari were sitting alone in the drawing room. John Teague had asked Nick to accompany him to Leyburn jail with Anstruther and the constable, and Nick had sent a note that Teague was to be taken to Skipton castle in the morning. From there he would be taken to London for trial.

“I gave her laudanum,” Laura said. “It was the only way I could get her to sleep. She is half-mad with grief and despair.” She looked at Mari. “John will never tell the truth, Mari,” she said. “He will never mention the Glory Girls. When they ask him why he wanted to kill Rashleigh he will make up some reason about a debt or a quarrel of some sort. He will go to the hangman still protecting Hester, and through her us, too.”

“I know,” Mari said. She got up and walked across to the window. “What can we do, Laura? We cannot just let this happen! How can we help them?”

“There is only one way we can help them,” Laura said. She looked up, met Mari’s gaze directly and Mari felt a shiver go down her neck as she anticipated Laura’s next words.

“The Glory Girls,” Laura said. “Tomorrow, when they take John to Skipton, the Glory Girls must ride to save him.”

Mari felt cold. She rested one hand against the window and looked out into the dark. Carrington had not been in to draw the curtains; the whole house was at sixes and sevens, utterly stunned into shock and silence by what had happened.

“You know that Nick will probably be with them?” she said. “Given that Lord Hawkesbury commissioned him to find Rashleigh’s murderer in the first place…And he knows everything, Laura. He knows about the Glory Girls. He could give us all away in an instant.”

Laura looked thoughtful. “Do you think he would?”

Mari rubbed her forehead to try to dispel the pain behind her eyes. She did not know what Nick would do; she could only guess, hope, pray…But she did not want to ask it of him. She never wanted to ask him to compromise his principles for her sake. They were what made him the man he was, the man she loved. He was good and true and honorable and if she expected him to watch the Glory Girls ride again, and keep his silence, then she would be trading on his feelings for her and taking advantage of a love that should never be treated in that way.

But then there was Hester, who had also loved her as the best of friends, stood by her through thick and thin. Hester, who needed her help.

Laura was watching her struggles with sympathetic eyes. “I do not think that you should ride with us, Mari,” she said. “It is not fair to ask it of either you or Nicholas—”

“I’ll do it,” Mari said abruptly. “You need me. There is only you and Josie and Lenny, for Hester is in pieces. She is my friend and I have to do it for her.”

Laura frowned. “You cannot ride well enough,” she said.

“Yes, I can,” Mari said. She smiled faintly. “Nicholas has taught me. And I can shoot straight. Don’t forget that I am the woman who almost shot Glory!”

Laura laughed. “So you did. And what will you do if Nicholas denounces us? And how will you explain this to him even if he does not?”