Lady Thief

by Kay Hooper

  Spencer, who had been moving silently through the crowd, stopped just behind the Cat. “Do you consider me a thief, Stoven?” he asked coldly.

  Stoven goggled at him. “You?”

  “Yes. You see, I am the witness she spoke of. I rode with her the night she held up your coach.”

  Stoven went whiter than before. “You still can’t prove I put the ring into the cane.”

  The Cat smiled gently. “I saw you kill Thomas Courtenay. Oh, you have changed in the past eight years—I’ll grant that—but you still have that peculiar little scar beneath your right ear. I took particular notice of that—eight years ago. Now, how many men do you suppose there are in England who have a scar shaped like a horseshoe beneath their right ear and who carry a talisman ring concealed in the head of their cane?”

  Stoven sneered again. “Who will believe the word of a thief?”

  “Well now—there you have a point. The Cat may not be believed.” She reached up and calmly removed the hood. “But I think people will listen to—and believe—Jennifer Courtenay.”

  There was a gasp from the crowd. Jenny, ignoring everyone else, fixed her eyes on Stoven’s pale face. “Why did you kill my father, Stoven?” she asked softly. “Was it because he was going to expose you as a traitor? Was that it?” She smiled gently at his start of surprise. “Oh, yes—I know all about that. You see, Stoven, my father always kept a journal. He wrote down everything that was important to him. And finding a traitor is certainly very important.”

  Stoven broke free of Brummell’s restraining hand and stared wildly around the room. “It’s a conspiracy! You’re all against me!” He started to turn toward the door, and froze in his tracks as the point of Jenny’s sword touched his throat.

  “Would you like me to cut the truth out of you, Stoven?”

  He stared into her deadly eyes and became suddenly calm. “All right. I killed him. I killed Thomas Courtenay. I had no choice—he was going to tell them.”

  Only sheer willpower kept Jenny from cutting his throat. She thought of the father she had lost, and her arm trembled slightly from the effort of holding back.

  As Simmons entered through the garden doors, Jenny slowly lowered the sword. “I hope you rot in hell!” she said in a fierce whisper.

  Stoven, staring into the chill of her golden eyes, felt almost relieved when Simmons took his arm and said, “Lord Stoven, I hereby arrest you for the murder of Thomas Courtenay.” He was led silently away.

  Suddenly, the room errupted into noisy confusion. People crowded around Jenny, congratulating her for finding her father’s killer, and expressing admiration for her daring masquerade.

  Brummell stepped up to Spencer, a faint smile on his face. “A fine woman you’ve picked for yourself, Nick. She has fire and spirit. I sincerely hope you know what you’re doing—trying to tame her, I mean. Wouldn’t care to try it myself.”

  Spencer looked at the Beau with some surprise. “I don’t mean to try, George. Why should I? I love her.”

  Brummell watched him move away. To himself, he murmured, “That just may do it, my friend. That just may do it.”

  Jenny looked about her, dazed, and became dimly conscious of Spencer telling everyone that she was tired and would talk to them all later. Then he was leading her through the sympathetic crowd and out into the garden. She was unaware of the tears that coursed down her cheeks. Her only thought was that—at last—it was over.

  Once in the privacy of the garden, Spencer took her into his arms and held her gently while sobs racked her slender body. Loving her as he did, he knew that the tears were a needed release from the tensions and fears of the past years.

  At long last, her sobs died away, and she lifted tear-bright eyes to gaze up at him. “I—I’m sorry,” she whispered huskily. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  Spencer cupped her face in his large hands and smiled gently. “If anyone has a right to tears, love, it is you.”

  “I just can’t believe it’s over. It is, isn’t it, Nick? It is over?”

  “Yes, love—it’s over. And now we can spend the rest of our lives together with no shadow hanging over us.”

  “Nick, are you—are you sure? So much has happened since we met—”

  He laid a gentle finger across her lips, silencing her hesitant words. There was a glow deep in his eyes. “I am very, very sure, Jenny. Sure that I love you—sure that I want you to be my wife.”

  Jenny slipped her arms around his neck. With a glowing smile, she said, “I believe you mean that, Your Grace.”

  A laugh rumbled deep in his chest. “You require a great deal of convincing.”

  “Well? What are you waiting for?” There was an impish gleam in her eyes. “Convince me.”

  And he did.

  Masquerade

  Chapter One

  A cold wind snatched at her cloak as Cassandra Eden bent forward to peer in the direction of her coachman’s pointing finger. She shivered as she looked at the broken axle. It was a very broken axle, and she did not require the opinion of an expert coach-builder to perceive that the vehicle was not going anywhere until it was repaired. Cassandra’s dismay intensified when fat white flakes of snow began to swirl through the gloom of approaching night.

  “Oh, no,” she said.

  John Potter, her coachman, nodded glumly. “I suspicioned that axle was cracked, miss, and this godforsaken road finished it off right enough. There’ll have to be a new one, and where to find aught tonight—”

  “Obviously we won’t be able to get it repaired tonight,” Cassandra said with a sigh. “But we must have shelter. How far to the nearest inn, John?”

  The grizzled coachman ruminated with a frown, then said, “That’d be the Boar’s Head, miss, and it’s all of twenty miles along and back on the main road.”

  Even a lightweight racing curricle and team of fine horses would have required more than an hour for the journey on such a bad road, but in any case Cassandra had neither. She had a weary team of well-bred but sturdy horses and an elderly, broken coach that should have been left in her uncle’s London stables. It was late January, late afternoon, and the leaden sky was a grim indication that the drifting flakes of snow were only the overture to a storm.

  Cassandra glanced up at the window of the coach, where her maid’s worried face could be seen, then stepped away and surveyed the countryside with considerable—though masked—worry of her own. A damaged bridge some miles back had necessitated this detour from the normal route between London and Bristol; they were presently somewhere in north Berkshire, an area that was almost exclusively patchy forests and endless acres of cultivated or pastured land.

  “John, is that a manor house? There—on the edge of that forest across the field?”

  The coachman squinted, then nodded slowly. “It appears to be, miss. Haven’t seen another place bigger’n a cottage for miles, so stands to reason there’d be an estate of some kind in these parts. Lonesome place, though.”

  Cassandra agreed silently. In the fading light it was difficult to see clearly, but she thought the distant house looked lonely and more than a little desolate. But that was probably the weather, she told herself sternly.

  “We shall go there, then,” she said in a decided tone. “Another half mile along this road should bring us to the drive, I think.”

  “I’ll go, Miss Cassie. I’m sure they’d be agreeable an’ send a carriage—”

  “Oh, nonsense, John. I would much rather walk to the house than huddle in the coach awaiting rescue. We shall not impose upon our host any more than absolutely necessary. Come out, Sarah—we must walk from here.”

  Her maid, a pretty but apprehensive young woman no more than a few years older than her mistress, left the shelter of the coach reluctantly. “Walk, Miss Cassie?”

  Cassandra could hardly help but smile at Sarah’s consternation; town bred, the maid considered anything outside London’s narrow and bustling streets the wilderness and undoubtedly quaked at the
thought of walking any distance at all through this bleak landscape.

  “Would you prefer to freeze, Sarah?” She didn’t wait for a response but directed the groom to unstrap her smallest bag from the coach and hand it down to her. Since the horses were standing wearily with no need to be held, the lad scrambled atop the coach and did as he was bid.

  “I’ll carry that, miss,” John Potter told her as he reached up for the bag. “Tom can stay with the coach till I bring help from the manor. An’ you won’t be wantin’ to rap on a strange door with no more than this slip of a girl beside you.”

  Cassandra, who was neither a shy woman nor one who imagined herself threatened where there was no cause, was a little amused as well as resigned by her servant’s determined protection. It was one of the reasons her uncle had allowed her to set out from London with only her maid; he knew very well that John Potter was a more trustworthy guard than any number of outriders and could be depended upon to defend as well as advise Cassandra in the event of trouble.

  “I very much doubt the manor is filled with desperadoes,” she told him in a dry tone.

  “Likely not, miss,” the coachman returned stolidly. “But Sir Basil would have my head on a platter was I to let you out of my sight before I was sure you’d be in good hands.”

  Too wise—and too chilled—to bother protesting further, Cassandra merely told Sarah to take care on the uneven surface of the road, then struck out briskly. Unlike her maid, she was country bred and enjoyed daily long walks when she was home, so this trifling distance bothered her not at all.

  Her estimation of the distance involved turned out to be fairly accurate; they came upon the manor’s neat driveway a little more than half a mile from the stranded coach, and Sarah had complained of sore feet only once. But the drive itself wound along for another half mile, and it was nearly dark by the time they neared the house.

  John Potter seemed much reassured by the condition of the place, commenting once that care and money had been spent here right enough. Cassandra agreed silently. The estate was clearly in excellent shape, the lawns immaculate and the shrubbery pruned, and the manor house itself was neat as a pin, at least on the outside. For the first time she wondered whom it belonged to; the place was a fair distance from London—inconvenient in a country house.

  Not that she was in any position to be particular as to the identity of her host, of course. She needed shelter.

  With her servants half a step behind her on either side, Cassandra trod up the steps and applied the gleaming brass knocker firmly. When the door was pulled open almost immediately, she had to fight the impulse to step back, and Sarah’s gasp was perfectly audible in the startled quiet.

  It had become dark enough outside that the only illumination came from inside the house, and in that faint light half of the manservant’s grim, swarthy face was visible. Unfortunately for the maid’s disordered nerves, that side of his face bore an ugly scar that twisted from the corner of his left eye to the corner of his mouth, and the disfigurement lent him an appearance of menace virtually guaranteed to terrify an imaginative young woman.

  “Yes?” he said, his unusually deep voice another shock.

  Cassandra’s alarm had been momentary, and when she spoke it was pleasantly. “Good evening. I am afraid I have suffered a slight misfortune on the road and require assistance.”

  The servant’s chilly gray eyes looked her up and down swiftly, and then were veiled by lowered lids. “Indeed, miss? We don’t get many travelers out this way.”

  A little impatient at being kept standing out in the cold and snow by a servant—hardly the kind of treatment to which she was accustomed—Cassandra’s voice sharpened. “I don’t doubt it. Be assured I would hardly have come this way myself had not a bridge washed out some miles back. Would you kindly be good enough to inform your master of my plight? I have my maid, as you see, and my coachman will require assistance to bring my coach and horses safely off the road.”

  It was not in her character to be so peremptory, particularly with a servant in a private house, but Cassandra was chilled and tired, and all she wanted was something hot to drink and a brisk fire where she could warm her hands and feet. And she was not pleased by the notion that this manservant regarded her with only thinly disguised disdain.

  And, indeed, he hesitated after she spoke just long enough to subtly imply that it was his decision rather than hers to admit her to the house. He stepped back, opening the door wider, and said in a colorless tone, “If you’ll step this way, miss, I’ll inform His Lordship.”

  Cassandra came into the entrance hall, which was quite impressive and blessedly warm, and said, “His Lordship?”

  “Yes, miss. The Earl of Sheffield. This is Sheffield Hall.” He said it as if he seriously doubted she had not been aware of the information.

  She heard a quickly indrawn breath from Sarah, and Cassandra felt a bit dismayed herself. The Earl of Sheffield? Though she had never met him—or even seen him, for that matter—two Seasons in London had certainly exposed her to all the talk concerning one of the more infamous rakes of past Seasons.

  Stone’s his name, stone his heart. That was what they said about Stone Westcott, the Earl of Sheffield. It was always said with a sad shake of the head and an ominous frown, a warning to all young ladies of quality to stay out of the earl’s path if they wished to keep their good names—and their hearts. Of course, unmarried young ladies were considered too innocent to hear what sin, precisely, Sheffield was guilty of committing, and so those interested or merely curious were reduced to piecing together whispers and overheard comments and arriving at some conclusion, however unsatisfying.

  The facts Cassandra felt reasonably sure of were few. Sheffield sprang from a long line of apparently rakish earls, most of whom had treated their reputations with careless disregard and the rules of society with even less respect. Sportsmen rather than dandies, they had excelled in all the manly pursuits, and among the numerous sporting records gentlemen discussed, many were held by various Westcotts. They seemed to own the finest horseflesh and to drive their racing vehicles farther and faster than anyone else (often merely to win a bet), were famous for their punishing fists in the boxing ring, and were said to be superior marksmen.

  And for generations they had seemingly held a powerful, unusual fascination for the women they encountered. Rarely handsome and never famed for their social graces, they nevertheless boasted an astonishing history filled with conquests. It was whispered that more than one lady of quality had abandoned her morals and, many times, a husband and family in order to run off with “one of those Westcotts.”

  From all Cassandra had heard, this particular Westcott, the current earl, was worse than all his ancestors put together.

  All this flashed through her mind as the dour manservant crossed the hall on silent feet and opened the door to the parlor, where she and Sarah would wait, but her hesitation was momentary despite her misgivings. She had little choice, after all.

  “What name shall I give His Lordship, miss?” the servant inquired as he held the door.

  Before Cassandra could reply, her maid spoke up in a voice that was higher than usual and definitely frightened. “Wells. She is Miss Wells.”

  Once again, Cassandra’s hesitation was fleeting. It hardly matters, after all. With luck, the coach can be repaired tomorrow, and I will never see Sheffield after that. So she didn’t correct her maid, allowing the lie to stand.

  But as soon as they were alone in the lovely, snug parlor, Cassandra took a chair near the crackling fire, held out her gloved hands toward the flames, and said severely, “Sarah, why on earth did you say such a thing? Wells is your name, not mine.”

  “You know very well why, Miss Cassie,” Sarah retorted with spirit. “They say the earl has run through his fortune and intends to wed an heiress—and you’re under his roof unprotected! He’s already ruined one lady and only laughed when her brother demanded he marry her and nearly killed the brother in the mos
t wicked duel the next day!”

  Cassandra’s surprise was momentary. Naturally, Sarah would have heard servants’ gossip—which was clearly more candid than what was whispered abovestairs. But was it any more truthful?

  “Duels in this day and age? Sarah—”

  “It’s true, Miss Cassie. It was years ago, but it happened. My cousin was groom to—to the young lady’s brother, and he swears he saw it with his own eyes. How the earl stood there smiling like a fiend and then shot that poor young man, blood everywhere, and then he just walked away. And he was still smiling, Miss Cassie! Like a devil!” Sarah shuddered, obviously finding a ghoulish delight in the retelling of such a dramatic story.

  Cassandra was unwillingly impressed but reminded herself silently that gossip—even that supposedly obtained by an eyewitness—could seldom be relied upon to be wholly truthful. Still, it seemed at least probable that a meeting had taken place between the disreputable earl and some man he had grossly insulted, though the cause as well as the meeting itself was doubtless less dramatic than Sarah’s cousin had described.

  “Be that as it may, you have put me in an awkward position,” she told her maid firmly. “Whatever the earl may have been guilty of in his past, there is no reason to suppose he would be anything but courteous to a stranded traveler, and I very much dislike facing him with a lie.”

  Unrepentant, Sarah said, “Even a saint can be tempted, miss, and tempting a sinner is foolish! Bad enough you’re so pretty and look so delicate—if he knew you had a fortune as would make a nabob stare, he’d be after you in a trice!”

  Cassandra couldn’t help laughing, but she shook her head as well and lapsed into silence as she warmed her hands at the fire. Hiding her identity had not been her doing, and it was not what she wanted, but now that Sarah had taken that step, she was uncertain if she would correct the situation.

  She was not afraid of Sheffield, or of being under his roof without the protection of a family member; no matter how black the earl was painted, he was indisputably a gentleman. He might well flaunt the conventions of society, and he might even have compromised a lady and then refused to marry her, but he would no more take advantage of a young lady temporarily under his protection than he would rob a bank.