Sweet Deception (Hidden Identity)

by Colleen French

  Sweet Deception

  Colleen French

  Copyright © 1992, 2018 by Colleen French. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of The Evan Marshall Agency, 1 Pacio Court, Roseland, NJ 07068-1121, evan@evanmarshallagency.com.

  Version 1.0

  This work is a novel. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Published by The Evan Marshall Agency. Originally published by Kensington Publishing Corp., New York, under the name Colleen Faulkner.

  Cover by The Killion Group

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Essex, England, 1654

  Thomasina adjusted the black Puritan cap on the back of her head as she slipped into her father's library. "You called for me, sir?"

  Her father, the Viscount Greenborough, stood facing the bookshelves, flipping through a dusty volume, his back to her. His thin shoulders were hunched beneath a black coat, and even from behind she could see his frail hand tremble as he turned an onionskin page.

  The room was dim, lit only by the yellow light of a few stinking tallow candles. All was silent save for the eerie scratching of a limb on the windowpane, left bare by an unlatched shutter.

  Thomasina clasped her hands. "Sir?"

  The viscount returned the leather-bound book to its proper place and turned to face his only living heir. He looked at her, yet took care not to make eye contact. "I'll not mince words, daughter. I've grave word from London."

  She lifted her chin, her dark eyes settling upon her father's beaten frame. "You've lost your lands," she whispered, shocked but by no means surprised.

  Greenborough tugged at his goatee. "I have."

  "But what of Lord Waxton's promise?" Thomasina asked.

  The Earl of Waxton, a prominent man at Parliament, had befriended her father more than a year ago, promising to aid him. Though he made Thomasina's skin crawl, he had become a frequent visitor at Havering House. Her father had insisted the earl's intentions were naught but good.

  "You said he swore you would be safe if you left the church and vowed your allegiance to Cromwell." She could feel her heart wrenching beneath her breast. All she could think of was her dead mother and the pain her father had caused by closing the chapel here at Havering House and sending away the household priest. Unable to practice her religion any longer, Lady Greenborough had withered and died in six months time. "You abandoned your faith to save these lands!"

  "I did not abandon my faith, daughter. I but made a prudent political decision, so it will do you well to hold your tongue against such words!"

  Thomasina set her jaw in bitter anger. Though barely thirteen, she was not such an innocent that she didn't know what it meant to lose one's lands to Cromwell. Since the beheading of Charles I, she had seen it happen to neighbors and friends, to those not willing to sign allegiance to the Protector. Those who were lucky traveled from one relation to the next seeking food and refuge; those who were not so lucky had been beheaded. Her voice was barely a whisper when she spoke again. "He swore he would protect the family seat. Lord Waxton—"

  Greenborough gave a quick wave of his hand, not allowing her to finish. "Silence, woman! Lord Waxton has saved my head. He could do nothing more!"

  "But, Father," she balled her hands in anguish, "for how many hundred years has this land belonged to our family? How can you give it up so easily? Surely there are means to—"

  "Silence, I said!" His face had turned scarlet. He lifted a long, bony finger and held it beneath her nose. "It would be best if you learned to hold your tongue. To be a scold is unbecoming in a bride."

  Thomasina felt the blood drain from her face. When she managed to speak, her own voice sounded strange in her ears. "A bride, you say? But you promised my mother that you would not sell me to save yourself."

  She touched the lace of his sleeve, searching his haggard face for a glimpse of the man he had been before the wars. "You promised, sir . . ."

  "Deathbed pledges made in haste are soon regretted." He pulled back his hand, made uncomfortable by her touch. "I did what I had to for your own good. This is the only way I could protect you." Then he added, as if in consolation, "You're nearly of marrying age. This agreement should be of no jolt to you."

  She lowered her gaze to the grey slate floor, numb with shock. "I take it that he who has been granted your lands has also been granted my maidenhead?"

  "Crude words for a young woman, but aye."

  Thomasina's hand went to the crucifix she still wore pinned inside her bodice. She had never had much use for her mother's religion, but the tiny gold cross was all she had left of her. "May I ask who this gentleman is, or is his identity to be a surprise as well?" Of course, she knew the answer before her father spoke. She had seen this coming a year ago. Only her father had been too blind to not know what would become of them both.

  "The Earl of Waxton."

  Thomasina bunched her skirts in her hands to retreat. "I won't marry him!" she shouted, her dark eyes narrowing in determination. "I'll take the veil before I marry that olden dupe!"

  Her father's laughter echoed in the high-ceilinged room. "You cannot take the veil, daughter. Your mother's beloved Catholic Church has been dissolved."

  Her father's heartless laughter echoed in Thomasina's ears, and her vision clouded as she fought back her tears of injury and anger. She looked up into the dome ceiling painted in Italian fresco. The faded winged cherubs and horned beasts seemed to be laughing, too, laughing at her as they whirled overhead. Suddenly, this place that had been her haven would be her prison. Her father, the man who had been her defender, was now her whoremonger. "I . . . I won't do it, sir. I vow, I won't." She lifted her stiff skirting and whirled around. "I'll run away," she cried over her shoulder as she marched for the doorway, her head down. "God a'mercy! I'd take my own life before I'd marry an abhorrent caitiff such as Waxton."

  "An abhorrent caitiff, the lady says?"

  In her haste, Thomasina had not heard Waxton's approach. She stopped so near to him that the hem of her drab olive petticoat brushed the toes of his polished shoes.

  "Step aside, sir," she muttered between clenched teeth. She did not lift her head to look at him.

  When she tried to push past him, he caught a handful of her thick, shining hair and jerked so hard that her head nearly snapped from her shoulders.

  Thomasina looked up, her lower lip trembling with a mixture of fear, pain, and utter condemnation. The earl was a tall, painfully thin man some forty years her elder, with a hooked beak nose and black rodent's eyes. He wore a great powdered wig and the rich melancholy sui
t of a man of Cromwell's government. In his hand he carried a silver-tipped walking cane.

  Waxton stared at her and for a moment he made no effort to conceal the lewdness of his thoughts. His sinister gaze flicked to her father's nervous one. "Is there adversity here, Greenborough?"

  "Adversity? No, most certainly not, my lord." Her father's voice was strained. It was apparent he was frightened of Lord Waxton and his power. "It's naught but an attack of the vapors, isn't it, daughter?"

  When Thomasina hesitated, Waxton, still holding her by a handful of her hair, tapped his cane on the cold slate floor. "Come, maid. This union is one of prudence. We'll not be wed immediately . . . not at least until your woman's flow has come. You'll learn to accept me in time."

  Oblivious to the pain that brought tears to her eyes or the embarrassment of his words, she lifted her dark lashes until her gaze locked with Waxton's. "No, sir," she murmured, the venom plain in her voice, "I should think I will, instead, come to despise you even more than I do at this moment."

  Chapter One

  Havering House, Essex, England

  January 1662

  Thomasina halted on a stone step and pressed her back to the wall to steady herself, knowing that if she stumbled she would fall to her death in the blackness below. With no railing on the winding tower staircase, the damp, sweating wall was her only safeguard.

  Her hand fell to her breast and she felt the rapid beat of her heart. The only sounds she could detect were those of her own breathing and the squeak of a few mice that scurried along the crumbling steps. The passageway was dark and dank, and even through the thickness of her ermine-lined cloak she could feel the biting cold of the January wind.

  There had been few times in the last eight years that she had ventured up these precarious steps into the tower, a full four stories above the ground. It was here that Waxton's laboratory was located, a room he said women had no need to set foot in.

  But the hour was right. Thomasina knew it was time to make her move, to strike a bargain with the Earl of Waxton. For eight years she had endured the farce of marriage between them. For eight years she had remained imprisoned here in Havering House, given no opportunity to leave the boundaries of the land. She was not permitted to seek out female companions in neighboring homes, nor to visit sick villagers, nor to even shop for her own goods.

  Since her marriage and the suicide of her father that had quickly followed, Thomasina has been kept under lock and key to prevent her from cuckolding her husband. She was nearly imprisoned in her own apartments in the third wing of Havering House, only to be paraded before her husband's cronies as the virgin bride. For eight years she had endured Waxton's cruel verbal and physical assaults, the foul touch of his hands as he struggled to take what he could not, and the loneliness that had become the most difficult to bear.

  All these long years Thomasina had sought an opportunity to escape the marriage. Just when she had nearly given up hope of ever being free, her prayers were answered. The solution had come in the simple form of a letter she discovered pigeonholed in a secret drawer of her husband's bedchamber writing desk. The letter contained a brief message and a list of twelve names of noblemen engaged in the business of attempting to overthrow the newly crowned King of England. The punishment for treason to the Crown, imagined or real, was the immediate beheading of the accused.

  Like most of the Roundheads of Cromwell's brief era, Lord Waxton had turned the tables at Havering House and welcomed his new monarch with open arms, just as Charles, upon restoration of the crown to the Stuarts, had welcomed his stray sheep back into the fold. Waxton, along with many other members of the Protector's government, had declared his loyalty to King Charles and vowed to defend his crown forever more. For in the two years of semi-anarchy following the death of Cromwell, most Roundheads had joined their onetime enemy Royalists in yearning for the return of the monarch.

  But Thomasina now knew the earl had lied when he had gone to Whitehall Palace to make his oath. The hidden slip of parchment was her proof, and that proof was what would finally free her from Waxton's iron grip.

  Thomasina, having caught her breath and gained her courage, lifted her heavy velvet skirts and walked to the crude planked door of her husband's laboratory. A candle burned in a sconce on the wall, illuminating the entryway. She rapped on the door with her fist.

  Just as she pulled her hand back inside her cloak, the massive door swung open. To her surprise, it was not her husband who answered her knock but the Duke of Hunt.

  Thomasina swallowed hard against her fear, taking an involuntary step backward. She had not known Hunt was here at Havering House, for had she been aware of his presence she'd have remained safely in her apartments until his departure.

  "I vow," Hunt murmured, raking his eyes over her, "a good even to you. I had hoped I might have the pleasure of your company before the night was over, but your husband thought you to have retired for the night."

  She looked up at his stark white face and white hair. If there was one man she feared more than her husband, it was this albino, the Duke of Hunt. A friend of her husband's, the duke had made it obvious to her that it was only a matter of time before he himself took the maidenhead Waxton was obviously unable to claim.

  For six months he had been stalking her, patiently biding his time until he stole what Waxton seemed to treasure most. The man was frightening enough just to look at, with his ivory skin and inhuman pink eyes, but Hunt himself was more terrifying. He was in a powerful position at Whitehall, a friend to the king and a man known to always get exactly what he set out for, destroying anyone in his path.

  "Lady Waxton?" Her husband appeared in the doorway, obviously annoyed. "What is it that is so compelling that you must disturb me in my laboratory? You should have sent Warren if you had need of me."

  "I . . . I'm sorry, sir." She turned to go. "I . . . I'll speak with you on the matter later."

  "Nonsense." Hunt lifted to his shoulder the albino ferret he often carried in a pocket. "Come in, my dear lady. I was just bound for my apartments. I'm weary from my travel from London. The road was muddy. Quite rough, my trip."

  Thomasina lowered her gaze, feeling caught in the spider's web. This was not a good time to confront her husband, not with Hunt here. His name had been at the head of the list.

  "A good night to you, then," Waxton offered his houseguest. "I'll have Warren make arrangements for hunting come morning."

  Hunt gave a nod to his host and passed Thomasina in the doorway, letting his hand, invisible to Waxton, brush against the curve of her breasts above her busk. Thomasina sucked in her breath as he went by, suddenly all the more determined to escape the wretchedly hopeless life she saw stretching out before her.

  The duke's footsteps echoed hollowly on the stone steps as he made his descent. Waxton walked back inside his laboratory, signaling Thomasina to follow. He closed the door behind her.

  The laboratory was an ill sulfur-smelling room, with tables piled high with various object of scientific interest. There were several human bones with tags hanging from them, jars of pickled remains, several wire cages of mice and bats, and bottle after bottle of medicinal concoctions such as cow dung mixed in vinegar, no doubt purchased in the hopes of curing the earl's impotency.

  Waxton walked around behind a scarred wooden table and began to sprinkle a green powder onto a scale. "Yes, what is it, madame? You can sec I'm engaged." He brought a lit candle closer and leaned over the table in concentration.

  Thomasina breathed deeply as she drew her ermine cloak around her trembling shoulders. She was cold, cold right through to her very bones. Now or never, an inner voice warned. Say it whilst you still have the courage! She glanced up at her surroundings, stalling for time.

  The laboratory, a circular room, was flocked with glass windows and heavy crimson drapes falling from the ceiling. Candles sat on several window ledges, turning the glass into eerie mirrors that reflected distorted images of her and Waxton. Outside she cou
ld hear the howl of the wind and the pounding of rain on the dimpled glass. The smell of the damp sweating stone walls mingled with the odors of the laboratory, making Thomasina's stomach lurch. She turned away from the tagged human skull that rested on a pedestal.

  "I . . . I've come to ask for an annulment, my lord." Thomasina heard the remarkable words escape from her lips clear and steady. For a long moment there was silence, save for the tick of a table pendulum. She began to wonder if the earl had heard her at all.

  Finally, his voice shattered the shocking silence. "You have come to ask for a what?" Still, he did not look up, nor did he cease measuring the powder. But his voice was like liquid steel.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and spoke louder than before. "I said I've come to ask for an annulment. I wish to leave Havering House. The lands and my dowry are yours to keep." She knew she would have to sacrifice any financial security her father had left her, but at this point all she was concerned with was escaping Waxton with her life and her sanity.

  He threw back his head in laughter, his bass voice taking on a sinister tone as it echoed off the bare stone walls. "You"—he was so amused that he could barely speak—"have come to ask me for an annulment?"

  "It is obvious, sir, that we do not care for each other." She forced herself to look up at him. "It is also obvious, sir, that there will be no children of this union."

  He slammed down the measuring spoon, his eyes boring down on her as he leaned across the table. "And what makes you think I would free you now, my little virgin strumpet? Now, after all of these years? You are mine to do with as I please, though I do not see that I have treated you ill. You wear the finest clothes, you drink the richest wine, you eat the most splendid food."

  Her gaze locked triumphantly with his. "I have information . . . information I fear you would not wish made public."

  His rodent eyes widened, his full attention suddenly tapped by her words. "Information? I don't know what you talk of." He started around the table. "Speak up, you worthless chit. What idle threat is this?"