Unmasked (6 page)

“I like it that you do not pretend,” he said. His voice was intimately low. “Ninety-nine women out of one hundred would have claimed not to understand me.”

If only he knew. Sometimes she forgot where the pretence began—and where it ended.

She gave him a very straight look. “Of course they would, and who could blame them? A reputation dies all too easily, as you must know, Major Falconer.”

“So why are you different? Why did you admit it?”

Mari met his quizzical dark gaze and felt a little breathless. “I am not different. I do not wish you to be the ruin of my reputation, Major Falconer. But equally, I know that you saw me, so what can I say?” She spread her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I was bathing. You saw me. It would avail me little to pretend otherwise. So I must rely on your behavior as a gentleman and hope you will not speak out.”

It was not the whole story, of course. It would be impossible to tell him the truth, that sometimes the role of the respectable widow grated on her and she felt an impossible desire to be free. She could not tell him that it was this impulse that had led her to strip off her clothes and revel in the fresh coldness of the fountain. That was too intimate a thing to confide to a virtual stranger, a dangerous stranger who already saw far more than she wished.

When he remained silent, watching her face, she raised her brows. “Was that all you wished to say to me, Major Falconer?”

She saw his lips twitch into a smile at her attempted dismissal of him.

“No, it was not all.” He reached forward. His fingers brushed against her neck very lightly and lingered, warm against her skin. “You had better hide that curl if you do not wish anyone else to guess your secret. Your hair is still wet. You must have rushed home and dressed in a great hurry.”

Mari’s hand flew to her neck where the wayward curl of hair nestled against her throat. It felt feathery, soft and damp, drying from the warmth of her body. She pushed it beneath the edge of her turban, her fingers suddenly clumsy. She could feel the color suffuse her face as Nick continued to watch her.

“Hair as black as midnight,” he said. “I remember.”

There was a heat in the pit of Mari’s stomach as she thought of what else he might remember about her. Her whole body felt as though it was on fire. But then the memory of Rashleigh—his violence, his touch—slithered into her mind and turned her blood to shards of ice and this time she could not erase it.

Not all men were cruel like the Earl of Rashleigh had been. She knew that. She knew that some were all that was chivalrous and honorable. But she had no desire to find out for herself which were good and which were not. She could never trust a man; never let him close to her, and this man least of all when he could bring them all down. So she had to put an end to this disturbing attraction now. She had to finish matters before they really began.

“I have to ask you to forget everything that you saw, sir,” she said coldly, “and never speak of this again.” Indignation swept through her and she could not quite stifle it. “Indeed,” she said, “if you had any claim to the title of gentleman, you would not have been watching anyway.”

She saw the laughter lines around his eyes deepen and felt a strange tug of feeling inside. “My dear Mrs. Osborne,” he sounded amused, “you ask too much. I am a man first and a gentleman second.”

“A very long way second!”

He inclined his head as though conceding the point. He took her hand again, drawing her close. His breath tickled her ear. The icy feeling that was wedged beneath Mari’s heart threatened to melt in the heat of his touch.

“You are a widow, Mrs. Osborne,” he said softly, “and as such, I assume, you are familiar with the way a man thinks on such matters as—” his voice dropped further “—physical desire?”

Mari repressed a shiver. Oh, yes, she knew all about the way a man thought about lust. Rashleigh had taught her more degrading things than she ever wanted to remember. She looked down her nose at him.

“The thought processes of a man on such subjects are scarcely complex,” she said coldly.

Nick laughed. “Quite so. Then you may imagine how
I
felt on seeing you naked and soaking wet with the water cascading over your body and the droplets catching the last of the light—”

Her whole body suffused with blistering heat, Mari wrenched her hand from his. “Major Falconer!”

“Call me Nicholas. Or Nick, if you prefer, since we already know one another so well and are likely to know each other even better.”

“Major Falconer,”
Mari repeated, “you are remarkably—indeed, distressingly—obtuse. I have no interest in encouraging your attentions to me. I am a respectable widow.”

“All appearances to the contrary, Mrs. Osborne,” Nick interrupted smoothly.

Mari stared at him. He was right, of course. No woman who displayed herself so wantonly in public could possibly claim the right to modesty. It was the richest irony that she had allowed herself to swim only because she was certain she was alone and now it turned out that the one man in the entire kingdom whom she would wish never to meet again had been the one man standing watching her.

“If you are looking for a lover—” Nick began.

Mari’s temper snapped. “Major Falconer, I am not! I must ask you to desist from speaking of such matters! As for what you saw in the gardens, you will desist from even
thinking
about it—” She broke off as Nick shook his head.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Osborne. I give you my word that I will tell no one of what I saw, but you cannot ask me to forget.” He smiled. “You cannot erase my memories.”

Mari had an all too vivid picture of what those memories might look like. She took a deep, steadying breath.

“Very well. If I have your promise of silence then I suppose I must be content.”

He bowed mockingly. “Of course. No gentleman could promise less.”

Mari bit her lip. She was not sure if she trusted him to keep silent. It should have felt like a partial victory and yet the spark in those dark eyes suggested that it was anything but.

“Thank you,” she said warily.

He shrugged easily. “Once again, a pleasure. And if you tell me that we have never met before, then I shall, of course, believe you. But…” He hesitated, and Mari’s overtaxed nerves tightened a further notch, “I wonder…Do you ever visit London, Mrs. Osborne?”

It took every last ounce of self-control for Mari not to jump. She met his gaze and saw nothing there but polite inquiry. He had the most perfect face for games of chance, she thought. He was able to hide every emotion behind a wall of impassivity. And yet she thought she knew where this conversation was heading now. Despite her disguise, he must have recognized her from the Hen and Vulture. He must know she had been the one there that night, waiting for Rashleigh.

Why had he come to Peacock Oak? Did he know her true identity? Had he come to accuse her of Rashleigh’s murder?

Mari thought of the consequences of unmasking and the fear took her breath away. She closed her eyes for a second to steady herself, reminding herself that she knew none of this for certain. Even if he suspected her, he could prove nothing.

“I go to London very seldom, Major Falconer.” The evenness of her voice surprised her. “I have no need of the diversions of Town when I am so sincerely attached to the country.”

Nick inclined his head. “Odd. I thought perhaps that we might have met there a few months ago?”

Mari smiled and shook her head. “I have already said not, if you recall, Major Falconer. And I advise you not to push your luck—or your familiarities—too far.”

Their eyes met and held with the clash and challenge of a sword thrust. Then, with inexpressible relief Mari saw the figure of Laura Cole approaching. There was a faintly worried expression on her face, as though she had realized that Mari was in trouble and was coming to the rescue. Mari was so relieved she wanted to hug her.

“I do believe your hostess is coming to welcome you,” she said. “I wish you a pleasant stay at Cole Court, Major Falconer.”

Nick detained her with a hand on her arm. She felt the warmth of his touch through her sleeve as though her skin was bare. “I will see you again, Mrs. Osborne?”

“I doubt it, Major Falconer,” Mari said, and saw his teeth flash white as he smiled.

“You misunderstand me, Mrs. Osborne,” he said. “It was not a question. I
will
see you again. In fact, I would stake on it.”

“I do not play games,” Mari said. She released herself very deliberately from his touch. “Goodbye, Major Falconer.”

Rosemary—Remembrance

N
ICK LEANED HIS BROAD
shoulders against the ballroom doorway and watched Marina Osborne dancing the cotillion. Laura, Duchess of Cole, had welcomed him in the vague, sweet manner that he remembered and then she had drifted off to speak to some of her other guests and Nick thought that he would retire for the night rather than join the festivities. He felt tired and dirty from the journey. He was not dressed for a ball, as Lady Faye Cole had not hesitated to point out when she had passed him in the doorway and had practically sniffed to imply that he smelled rather insalubrious from his travels.

Mari was dancing with Faye’s husband, Charles’s cousin Henry Cole. Nick watched the elegant sway of her gown as she moved through the steps of the dance. When she and Henry came together, he grabbed at her with the overexcited playfulness of a puppy and she withdrew, an ice maiden in silver satin. Nick did not know Henry well for, although he belonged to the junior branch of the Cole family, he was older than Charles by several years and so Nick had never spent much time in his company. Henry had always struck him as a typical country squire, his life a round of hunting and shooting and fishing, gorging himself at table, drinking hard and suffering the gout in consequence. His color was certainly high as he danced with Mari but that, Nick thought, was probably due to a different kind of excitement from that engendered in the field. As he watched, he saw Henry surreptitiously squeeze Mari’s bottom as she passed him, a clumsy but lascivious gesture that made Nick clench his fists in disgust. For a moment Henry bent close to her ear and made some remark that had the color searing Mari’s face. No one else had seen his actions—Nick realized that Henry had made very sure of that. His opinion of Charles’s cousin fell several notches from an already low starting point.

Nick found that he had already taken a couple of steps forward, with every intention of intervening, when he saw Mari dig the spokes of her fan into Henry’s ribs with a force that had him almost doubling up in pain. Henry reeled out of the dance, coughing and spluttering and Mari raised her brows, a look of most perfect concern on her face. Nick relaxed a little and smothered a grin. Henry Cole had got what he deserved and clearly Mari Osborne could take care of herself. Of course she could. She did not need
his
protection. For a moment he had almost forgotten that she might be a criminal and even a murderer, blinded as always by the complicated mixture of raw desire and deeper need that she seemed to evoke in him.

As a soldier, Nick had honed a fine instinct for danger, when to attack, when to withdraw and bide his time, to trust his gut feeling, to listen to that intuition which other men sometimes derided. It had led him to make judgments and decisions that on more than one occasion seemed to fly in the face of practicality and sense and yet they had proved correct in the long run. His instinct had kept him and his men alive. And now his instinct was telling him that Mari Osborne was Glory, the harlot from the tavern, and he wanted her. Lusting after Mari Osborne, the clever, devious, disreputable widow ran counter to everything that he had always believed in about himself and what he had thought he wanted from a woman. She could not have been more different from Anna. And yet his hunger for her was intense, burning him up.

He shifted, uncomfortable with both his thoughts and the physical effect that they had on him. He had found crossing swords with Mari intensely stimulating. He had admired the coolness with which she had countered his attack and the manner in which she had weighed the odds and decided which matters to concede and where to fight him. She was a clever strategist and he relished the game between them. And since they possessed such a powerful mutual awareness, he would use that attraction to bring her down. He would get close to her. He would seduce the truth from her. And he would not forget for a moment that this was all in the line of duty. In playing the game he would be able to slake his desire for her and then the white-hot passion that seared him would burn itself out.

“She turned you down then,” Charles Cole said in his ear, with a certain satisfaction.

Nick straightened up. “She did. In no uncertain terms.”

Charles laughed. “I did warn you,” he said. “She’s as cold as the driven snow. Always has been.”

Nick raised his brows. “Does she have many disappointed suitors then?”

“Plenty of men are interested in her fortune,” Charles said, “even if she is a little gray mouse of a woman.”

Nick looked at him. Charles was a man, albeit an apparently happily married one. Could he not
see
how alluring Marina Osborne was if one looked beneath the dowdiness of her attire? But perhaps he could not. Charles skated across the surface of life, seldom seeking deep meaning. He had been like that for as long as Nick had known him. Perhaps he could not see the rich curves and tempting lines of Mari Osborne’s body and perhaps it was a good thing, too, for Nick had a powerful feeling that he would want to take any man who looked covetously on Marina Osborne and pull his neck cloth so tight it choked him.

With a palpable effort he forced himself to relax. His feelings were becoming too involved and it was clouding his judgment. This was precisely what had happened to him at the Hen and Vulture when Mari’s warmth, the touch and the taste of her, had invaded his senses and played havoc with his judgment. She had played him for a fool then. It would not happen again. Now they would play on his terms, not hers.

He watched as Mari made her way off the dance floor and disappeared through the doors that opened on to the terrace. Her gray dress blended in with the pale shadows and she was gone from his sight. With a slight jolt Nick realized that Mari’s deliberately drab appearance was as much a disguise in its way as the blond wig and mask had been at the Hen and Vulture. She was trying to efface herself, perhaps to escape the fortune hunters, perhaps for another reason. Could she be deliberately creating a persona as far from that of Glory, the female hellion, as possible?

“I think,” Charles said suddenly, surprisingly, “that Mrs. Osborne might be shy. She is not at ease in social situations. I have often observed that she would prefer to avoid gatherings such as this.”

Nick reflected cynically that Charles might have made an interesting point—that Mari Osborne avoided company—but attributed it to the wrong reasons. No woman who dressed as a courtesan and picked men up in a tavern like the Hen and Vulture could possibly be shy, but again she might be deliberately playing a role that was the opposite of the highwaywoman heroine, Glory.

“Well, if she is shy, then she is most unlike your cousin,” he said, nodding toward Lady Hester Berry, the vivid center of a group of male admirers further down the room.

“Chalk and cheese,” Charles agreed. “Poor John Teague—” He indicated an older man standing slightly apart from the group and watching with an air of weary amusement. “He never gets a chance. He’s been in love with Hester for years but I think she barely sees him.”

Teague glanced toward them and Charles beckoned him over. “Come on,” he said to Nick. “There’s better refreshment in my study than you’ll find for Laura’s guests. And Teague has lived in this area awhile. You may find he can throw light on your case.”

They repaired to Charles’s study, a room off the hall where Charles had stashed a very fine bottle of brandy against the need to fortify himself to deal with his cousins.

“For,” he said wryly, “Henry and Faye may be family but I fear that I have little in common with them and Faye will try to foist her daughter on any or all of my male guests, like a fishwife pushing her wares.”

“A shame,” John Teague said lazily, accepting a glass of brandy and folding his long length into an armchair, “for Miss Cole is a fetching little chit—” He broke off to see Charles’s quizzical eye upon him. “No, I do not have an interest there myself!” he said hastily. “You know me better than that, Charles.”

Nick had been watching Teague and weighing up how far to take him into his confidence. Charles had introduced the older man as a friend and indicated that he was reliable, but Nick liked to make his own mind up on such things. Certainly Teague, with his shrewd expression and open manner, seemed pleasant enough. But even at Eton, Charles had been quick to trust, and whilst it was an admirable trait to look for the good in everyone, it could be damnably awkward if you found that the man you had thought honorable turned out to be less than sound. So Nick said nothing of Rashleigh’s murder, merely indicating that he had been sent by Lord Hawkesbury to investigate the civil disturbance caused by the Glory Girls. Teague raised his brows and said he was surprised that Hawkesbury should concern himself with such a small domestic matter.

“They are a bunch of petty criminals, highwaymen, no more,” Teague said. “Gossip has it that they are females, but I doubt it very much.”

“Gossip has it that they are gently bred females,” Charles interposed, “and I think there may be some truth in it.”

“Do they ride sidesaddle?” Nick asked.

Charles laughed. “Not they! They ride astride like a pack of huntsmen!”

Teague shot him a look from beneath lowered brows. “There was nothing gently bred or remotely feminine about the felons who held up my coach two weeks ago, old chap,” he said. “The ringleader had the gruffest voice this side of the alehouse and sat his horse like a trooper.”

“What did they stop you for?” Nick asked mildly.

Teague turned his shrewd gray eyes back to him. Nick remembered what Charles had said about Teague being one of Hester Berry’s suitors and remembered that he had almost pitied him to hear it, but now, seeing the keen intelligence behind those eyes, he started to wonder if Hester knew John Teague very well at all. He did not seem the kind to tolerate her flirting with a great deal of equanimity.

“What do you mean, old fellow?” Teague asked.

Playing for time, Nick thought, and wondered why.

“I understand that the Glory Girls always have a reason for what they do,” he explained. “The redistribution of wealth to the poor, for example, if a mill owner is cheating his workers. Or the liberation of the oppressed if farm laborers are forced to work long hours.”

Teague gave a crack of laughter. “If you say so, Falconer. All they wished to liberate in my case was my money.”

Nick pulled a face. “Are you sure it was the Glory Girls?”

Teague shifted and took a mouthful of brandy. “Certain. They boasted of it.”

Nick shrugged and let it pass. It was odd that in Teague’s case there appeared to have been no ulterior motive for the attack when all the other cases he had read about had been prompted by some injustice. But perhaps the gang that had attacked Teague were impostors trading on the Glory Girls’ name and reputation. That happened often enough when one set of thieves wanted to borrow some of the luster of another.

“My favorite,” Charles said, with a reminiscent grin, “was the time they kidnapped Annabel Morehead on the way to her wedding. Her father’s face, when he realized that all his scheming to marry her off for money had been in vain!”

“That was richly deserved,” Teague agreed. “And Miss Morehead was extremely grateful.” He looked thoughtfully at Nick. “You will find plenty who do not look kindly upon your plan to capture the Glories, Falconer. Some people see them as popular heroes—or heroines—hereabouts.”

“I doubt that Arkwright’s banker is one of those,” Nick said. “I must go to Skipton in the week and speak with him about the attack a few nights ago.”

“I doubt he will still be Arkwright’s banker after that fiasco,” Charles said. “Edward Arkwright does not condone incompetence in his employees and losing a tenth of his profits would be a heinous sin in his books.”

“Perhaps he should look to his own business practices, then,” Nick said. “He was the one who cheated his workers out of their money, so I understand.”

Teague cocked an inquiring brow. “You sound surprisingly sympathetic to these felons, Falconer,” he said. “Surely Lord Hawkesbury expects you to fulfill his commission with the full weight of the law?”

“I imagine so,” Nick said. “Don’t mistake me, Teague. I do not condone highway robbery or extortion and I do intend to find these criminals.” He drained his brandy glass. “Charles, have you ever been held up on the road?”

“No,” his host said, sounding, Nick thought, slightly disappointed to admit it. “But I keep a pistol in my carriages so I can wing them if they try and attack!”

Nick laughed. “I see. So, gentlemen, is there anything else that we know about the Glories?”

“No,” Teague said.

“They are reputed to meet at one of the hostelries on the Skipton road,” Charles said, after a moment.

“I recall,” Teague said. “The King’s Head, is it not?”

“Either the King’s or Half Moon House,” Charles agreed.

“I will call there,” Nick said, “and see what I may discover. And if we entertain for a moment the idea that the Glories
are
a band of gently bred females—”

Teague shifted, clearly uncomfortable. Once again, Nick noted it. And wondered.

“Seems preposterous,” Charles muttered. “Can’t see Laura or Faye or Reverend Butler’s wife leading a band of mounted desperadoes.”

“No,” Nick said. “On the other hand there must be others. Does Mrs. Osborne ride?”

Charles and John Teague exchanged a look. “Occasionally,” Charles said after a moment, “but she is a poor horsewoman.”

“Hester rides like a jockey,” Teague said, “but surely you are not suggesting that Cole’s cousin is a highwaywoman, Falconer? That’s outrageous!”

“I am not suggesting anything at the moment,” Nick said, unruffled. “I am merely asking.”

There was an awkward silence. “I’ve sometimes wondered about Mrs. Osborne,” Charles said suddenly.

“Oh, come now, Charles!” Teague had gone a little red in the face. “Just because she made her money in trade!”