Читать книгу His Mask of Retribution - Margaret McPhee, Margaret McPhee - Страница 10

Marianne sat perched on the edge of the bed. The fire that the highwayman’s accomplice had set last night had long since burned away to nothing and the air was cool. The early morning light seeped through the cracks of the window shutters, filtering into the bedchamber. The bed was only slightly rumpled where she had lain awake all night on top of the covers. She had not climbed within the sheets, nor had she worn the nightclothes that the accomplice had left neatly folded upon the dressing table. She had not even removed her shoes.

It had been the first night in almost three years that Marianne had spent alone. And she had barely slept a wink. All night she had waited. All night she had feared. But the highwayman had not come back to hurt her. Instead, he had filled the room with candles to light the darkness of the night. Eventually, as night had turned to dawn, her fear had diminished and all she could think of was the highwayman in the rookery and the look in his eyes as they had met hers. She thought of the villains quailing before him, of the wary respect in their eyes, of how he had kept her safe.

He was tougher, stronger, more dangerous than any villain. And she remembered how, last night, she had physically accosted him, clutching at him in her panic, even barring the door so that he would not leave. She closed her eyes and cringed at the memory. He knew. She had seen it in his eyes. Yet he had not said one word of her weakness, nor used it against her. She slipped off her shoes and moved to sit on the rug in the bright warmth of the narrow beam of sunshine. And she thought again of the man with the hauntingly beautiful amber eyes and the dark mask that hid his face, and the strange conflict of emotion that was beating in her chest.

When Knight opened the door to the yellow bedchamber his heart skipped a beat. The words he had come to say slipped from his mind. He stared and all else was forgotten in that moment as he watched Marianne hurriedly rising from where she had been sitting upon the floor. The room was dim, but small shafts of sunlight were penetrating through the seams of the closed shutters. She was standing directly in the line of a thin ray of light so that it lit her in a soft white light. There was an ethereal quality to her, so soft and pale with such deep, dark, soulful eyes.

He realised he was staring and pulled himself together, entering the room and setting the breakfast tray that he carried down on the nearby table. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked embarrassed to have been caught sitting in the sunbeam. His eyes dropped down to the stockinged feet that peeped from beneath her skirt, then travelled slowly up the wedding dress, all crumpled and creased from sleep, to the smooth swell of breasts that rose from the tight press of the bodice. Her hair was a tumble of white-blonde waves over her shoulders, so long that it reached almost to her waist. She looked as beautiful and dishevelled as if she had just climbed from a lover’s bed.

His gaze reached her face and he met the darkness of her eyes with all of their secrets and steadfast resilience. And that same ripple of desire he had experienced when he first looked at her whispered again. He closed his ears to it, denied its existence. Her blush intensified beneath his scrutiny and she stepped away, twitching at her rumpled skirts and shifting her feet to try to hide her stockinged toes.

He wanted to ask her why a twenty-year-old woman was so terrified of the dark. It seemed much more than a spoiled girl’s foible. He knew how hard she had fought to hide her fear from him, and were he to ask the question she would, no doubt, deny all and tell him nothing.

‘From Pickering?’ He gestured towards the heavy ornate pearls around her neck.

She nodded. ‘You knew that I was on my way to be married before my father told you, didn’t you?’ Her eyes looked different today. Lighter, a rich brown, and the contempt had gone from them. Something of her armour was back in place, but he had a feeling she had not pulled down her visor. Her manner was still guarded, but less hostile than it had been.

‘It is a society wedding of interest throughout the ton.’ He shrugged as if it were nothing of significance and did not tell her that he had made it his business to know all there was to know of Misbourne, or that he had been waiting and watching these two months past for an opportunity to take her from her father.

‘And yet still you held us up.’ He could sense both her curiosity and her condemnation.

‘You think me ruthless. And when it comes to your father I cannot deny it.’

‘You should not have hurt him,’ she said and he saw her eyes darken with the memory of what had happened upon the heath.

Yet he could not apologise. He could not say he regretted it. Or that he would not have done the same, or more, again. ‘I regret that you had to witness such violence.’

‘But you do not regret what you did.’

He shook his head. ‘Your father deserved much more.’ It was a harsh truth, but he would not lie to her.

She swallowed and something of the defensiveness slotted back across her face. No matter what he knew of Misbourne, he admired her loyalty to her father—the courage with which she stood up to a highwayman to defend the bastard so determinedly. His eye traced the fine line of her cheek, the fullness of her lips. He caught what he was doing and felt the muscle clench in his jaw. With a stab of anger he averted his gaze and began to walk away. She was Misbourne’s daughter, for pity’s sake! He should not have to remind himself.

‘There were seven men in that alleyway,’ she said in a low careful voice, ‘and you are but one man, yet you did not use a pistol.’

Her words stopped him, but he did not look round. ‘A pistol shot would have brought more of the rats from their holes.’

‘Why did you help me?’

The question, so softly uttered, cut through everything else.

He turned then, and looked at her, at the temptation she presented: those eyes, so soft and dark as to beguile a man from all sense.

‘Why would I not?’

‘You hate my father.’

Hate was too mild a word to describe what he felt for Misbourne. He paused before speaking, before looking into the eyes that were so similar and yet so different to her father’s. ‘Regardless of your father, while you are with me I will keep you safe.’

Safe. It had been such a long time since Marianne had felt safe. There had been times that she had thought she would never feel safe again, no matter how well guarded and protected she was by her family. She studied his face. In the shaft of morning light his eyes were golden as a flame. He was a highwayman. He had beaten her father and abducted her. He was holding her prisoner her against her will. She had watched the most brutal of London’s lowlife cower before him. He could be anyone behind that dark silken mask. But whoever he was, he had not used her ill, as he could have. He had brought her candles to light the darkness. And he had saved her. He had saved her—and he had bested seven men to do it.

She met his gaze and held it, looking deep into those amber eyes, trying to glean a measure of the man behind the mask. He was not lying. A man like him had no need to lie.

The expression in his eyes gentled. His hand moved as if he meant to touch her arm, except that he stopped it before it reached her and let it drop away.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

She stared up into his face and could not look away. And the highwayman held her gaze.

‘Yes,’ she said at last and nodded. ‘I am fine.’ She had said those words so many times in the past three years, but only this time, standing there in a shuttered bedchamber with a masked man who had abducted her, was she close to telling the truth. ‘The letter that you think my father holds.’

He gave no response.

‘I know you believe he understands…’ She saw the flicker of something dangerous in his eyes, but it did not stop her. ‘Will you ask him again and tell him exactly what it is that you seek?’

‘I have already done so.’

She gave a nod and relaxed at his words. ‘I heard you and your accomplice talking about a document…He will give it to you this time.’ Her father would give whatever it took to redeem her. ‘I will stake my life upon it.’

The highwayman said nothing. He just looked at her for a moment longer and then walked away, leaving her locked alone in the bedchamber.

Five minutes later Marianne heard the thud of the front door closing and the clatter of a horse’s hooves trotting away from the house. She knew that it was the highwayman leaving. The accomplice’s footsteps sounded on the stairs; she heard him come along the passageway and go into a nearby room. There was the noise of cupboards and drawers being opened and closed, then the accomplice unlocked her door, knocking before entering.

‘If you will come this way, my lady, I am under instruction to show you to another room in which you might spend the day. One in which the shutters are not closed.’

He took her to the bedchamber on the opposite side of the passageway. The daylight was light and bright and wonderful after the dimness of the yellow chamber. She blinked, her eyes taking an age to adjust. The walls were a cool blue, the bedding dark as midnight and the furniture mahogany and distinctly masculine in style. Over by the basin she could see a shaving brush, soap and razor blade, all set before a mirror, and she knew whose bedchamber this was without having to be told. Her heart began to pound and butterflies flocked in her stomach. She hesitated where she was, suddenly suspicious.

Something of the apprehension must have shown in her face for all she tried to hide it, for the accomplice smiled gently, reassuringly.

‘He thought you would prefer the daylight. The sun hits the back of the house in the afternoon.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You need not have a fear, lass. I am to take you back to the yellow chamber before he returns.’

She looked round at the accomplice and the grey mask loosely tied to obscure his face. ‘Could you not simply have removed the nails from the shutters?’

‘No, Lady Marianne.’ The accomplice glanced away uneasily.

‘Because it is at the front of the house,’ she guessed, ‘and you fear that I would attract attention?’

‘It is rather more complicated than that. The shutters must remain closed. Those in the master bedchamber too.’

‘The yellow bedchamber…’ She hesitated and thought of the hairbrush. ‘It was his mother’s room, was it not?’

The accomplice gave a hesitant nod.

‘And this is his house.’

He looked uncomfortable but did not deny it. ‘I must go,’ he said and started to move away.

‘You said he was a good man.’

The accomplice halted by the door. ‘He is.’

‘What he did to my father on Hounslow Heath was not the action of a good man.’

‘Believe me, Lady Marianne, were he a lesser man, your father would be dead. Were I in his shoes, I don’t know that I could have walked away and left Misbourne alive.’ He turned away, then glanced back again to where she stood, slack-jawed and gaping in shock. ‘For your own sake, please be discreet around the window. Being seen in a gentleman’s bedchamber, whatever the circumstances, would not be in any young unmarried lady’s favour.’

He gave a nod of his head and walked away, locking the door behind him.

What had her father ever done to deserve the hatred of these men? Her legs felt wobbly at the thought of such vehemence. She needed to sit down. She eyed the four-poster bed with its dark hangings and covers—the highwayman’s bed—and a shiver rippled down her spine, spreading out to tingle across the whole of her skin. She stepped away, choosing the high-backed easy chair by the side of the fireplace, and perching upon the edge of its seat.

Marianne glanced at the window behind her and the brightness of the daylight. The accomplice was right. Especially given it had been little more than a year since the Duke of Arlesford had broken their betrothal. The scandal surrounding it still had not completely died away. One word of her abduction, one word that she had spent the night in a bachelor’s house without a chaperon—no matter that she was being held alone in a locked room—and her reputation would be ruined to such an extent that none of her father’s influences could repair it. The irony almost made her laugh. Especially when she contemplated the darkness of the truth. Even so, she rose to her feet and walked to the window.

The view was the same as that of a hundred other houses in London—long, neatly kept back gardens separated by high stone walls, backing on to more gardens and the distant rear aspect of yet more town houses, all beneath the grey-white of an English autumn sky. There were no landmarks that she recognised. The catch moved easily enough, but the window was stiff and heavy and noisy to open. She did not slide it up far. There was little point, for there was no hope of escape through it. The drop below was sheer and at least twenty-five feet. She closed the window as quietly as she could and turned to survey the room around her.

It was much smaller than the yellow bedchamber and almost Spartan in its feel. Aside from the bed there was a bedside cabinet upon which was placed a candle in its holder. Against the other walls stood a dark mahogany wardrobe, a wash-stand and a chest of drawers with a small peering glass and shaving accoutrements sitting neatly on top. A dark Turkey rug covered the floor, but there were no pictures on the wall, no bolsters or cushions upon the bed. There was no lace, no frills, nothing pretty or pale. It was the very opposite of Marianne’s bedchamber at home. It was dark and serious and exuded an air of strength and utter masculinity, just like the man who owned it.

His presence seemed strong in the room, so strong that it almost felt like he was here. And she had the strangest sensation of feeling both unsettled and safe at once. Her blood was flowing a little bit too fast. She needed to search the bedchamber, to discover any clue to the highwayman’s identity that she might tell her father when she got home. So she turned the key within the tall polished wardrobe and the door swung open. Sandalwood touched to her nose, a faint scent but instantly recognisable as the highwayman. Goosebumps prickled her skin and a shiver passed all the way through her body. There was something attractive, something almost stimulating about his scent. The rails were heavy with expensive tailored coats and breeches, undoubtedly the clothing of a gentleman, and a wealthy one at that if the cut and quality of material were anything to judge by. It did not surprise her for, despite his disguise, she had known almost from the first that he was no ruffian.

Check the pockets, she heard the voice of common sense whisper in her ear. She reached out her hand, then hesitated, holding her breath, suddenly very aware of where she was and what she was doing. Slowly she touched her fingers to the shoulder of the nearest tailcoat.

The midnight-blue wool felt as smooth and expensive as it looked. Her eyes scanned the breadth of the shoulders. She let her fingers trace all the way down one lapel and it felt as daring as if she were stroking a tiger, as daring as if the highwayman was still wearing the coat. That thought made her heart skip a beat. She slid her hands within, checking the inside for hidden pockets, skimming down the tail to the pocket that was there, but nothing was to be found in any of them. She checked each coat in turn; the feel of his clothing beneath her fingers and the scent of him in her nose made her heart thud all the harder and her blood rush all the faster as she remembered the strength and hardness of the arm she had gripped so frantically last night and the weight of his hand around her arm in the rookery. And she wondered if this was what it would feel like to lay her hand against his shoulder, his lapel, his chest…

She gave a shaky laugh at the absurdity of her own thoughts. She did not like men, especially those who were dangerous. She closed the wardrobe door and, quietly and systematically, began to search the rest of the room.

The soap in the dish held the scent of sandalwood. She touched his badger-hair shaving brush and the handle of his razorblade, wondering that he had left such a weapon at her disposal. But then she remembered him in the rookery and knew that he had nothing to be afraid of. And another shiver rippled all the way from the top of her head down to the tips of her toes.

Everything was neat and tidy, everything in its place. Waistcoats, shirts, a pile of pressed linen cravats…and a black-silk kerchief. She hesitated, feeling strange to see it folded and pressed so neatly within the drawer. It seemed so harmless, so inconsequential, unlike the man who wore it.

There were two pairs of riding boots and three pairs of black slippers—all large. She did not look through his unmentionables, only closed the drawer so quickly that she wondered if his accomplice had heard the noise. Then she sat herself down in the easy chair by the fireplace, properly this time, and considered what she had gleaned of the highwayman from his room and possessions.

He was a gentleman, tall and broad-shouldered and strong. A man who wore a black-silk kerchief across his face. A man from whom one glance made her shiver, and of whom his scent alone made her heart beat too fast. A man for whom she felt both wariness and fascination. Nothing in the room had told her anything more than she already knew.

Knight did not return to his town house until dinnertime that night.

‘Did you win?’ Callerton asked, serving up the stew he had prepared.

‘Your money’s safe,’ replied Knight.

‘Nice to know I made a bob or two without leaving the house.’ Callerton grinned. ‘Shouldn’t Rafe Knight, gentleman and rake, be out celebrating his victory?’

‘They have arranged an outing to a gaming hell tonight.’

Callerton screwed his face up. ‘If I don’t go there’ll be questions. And we don’t want questions.’

Callerton shook his head. ‘Especially not this night.’

‘Is Lady Marianne in the yellow bedchamber?’