For Your Arms Only

by Caroline Linden

  His friend looked at him and touched the drooping brim of his hat in salute. “And to you, Alec.”

  Chapter 28

  1820

  But I can’t help,” Cressida said for the fourth time. “I could tell Mr. Wallace the direction and stay behind, out of the way.”

  “Nonsense.” True to Cressida’s suspicion, Madame Wallace was proving to be far more than she appeared. She wore a pair of loose dark trousers and a dark, close-fitting jacket. Her black hair was pulled back into a tight braid that snaked down her back. Cressida caught the gleam of a knife, strapped to her forearm, when lightning flashed. She stared at it in uneasy fascination, and wondered what she had gotten herself into. Madame had swept her into the waiting carriage, and now Mr. Wallace was driving them along at a perilous speed toward the Lacey home. “Tell me more. What did you read?”

  Cressida shivered again. “My father was responsible for it all,” she said in a small voice. It was horrible to think, let alone say out loud. “He helped another officer commit treason, then he put the incriminating papers in Al—in Major Hayes’s belongings when it appeared the major had been killed in battle. And then he blackmailed old Mr. Lacey, taking money in exchange for keeping silent about the truth.”

  “Then what has happened to your father?”

  “I don’t know.” But she suspected. Mr. Lacey did not seem the type to be cowed and afraid, and blackmailers rarely met good ends. If Mr. Lacey hadn’t done Papa harm, someone else probably had.

  Madame Wallace didn’t appear too concerned. She kept glancing out the window. The lightning was growing more frequent and brighter, and now the distant rumble of thunder rolled across the land. From the strength of the breeze that ruffled the carriage curtains, it was quite a storm coming. “What do you know of Lacey and his home?”

  “Almost nothing.” She raised her hands when Madame sent her an irritated look. “I told you I couldn’t help! You ought to have brought Julia instead.”

  “No,” Madame said. “You are the steadier one. Do not say you know little; tell me what you do know. You have met Mr. Lacey?”

  Cressida took a deep breath and nodded. “Once. He’s an older gentleman, about my height and stooped; he walks with a cane. I don’t think he has any family still living, at least not at The Grange. There is a servant, a very large man named Morris, who attends him to church. That’s the only place I’ve ever met Mr. Lacey. He scowls at everything and everyone, and he practically gave my grandmother the cut direct. He called Alec a traitor to his face in front of all Marston at church one week.”

  “And the house?”

  “I have never seen it except from a distance. Julia said Alec and Will Lacey were bosom friends as lads, though, so he must know it well.”

  “Well, that will have to suffice.” Madame lifted the curtain to peer out the window again, and again Cressida caught the gleam of the knife handle.

  “May I ask…” she began timidly. “May I ask how you know Alec?”

  Madame’s smile flashed in the dark carriage. “He has not told you; perhaps I should not.”

  “Then what…who are you?”

  Madame Wallace leaned forward. Cressida leaned forward, too. “I am not someone you should know too much about.”

  Somehow Cressida agreed with this statement. It didn’t stop her from asking more questions, though. “Why do you have a knife strapped to your arm?”

  Madame gave an elegant shrug. “I hope it might remain there all night.”

  Meaning that Madame hoped not to draw it? “What are you planning to do?”

  “I shall have a look around,” said Madame vaguely. “Alec may have no need of my help. He is quite capable, when pressed.”

  Cressida kept looking at the knife. Madame seemed far too dainty and delicate to hurt anyone with it, small as it was. “Do you have a pistol, too?”

  She laughed in genuine surprise. “Of course not. Far too much noise. I prefer a more subtle approach.” She leaned forward abruptly. “Ah, this is the house?”

  The Grange, the Lacey estate, lay in the hollow below them, a rambling edifice from the days of the Tudors. Cressida nodded. Madame tapped on the side of the carriage, and they halted at once. Madame pushed open the door and leaped to the ground, moving up to talk to Mr. Wallace. Cressida leaned out the window, searching for any sign of Alec during the frequent lightning flashes. The grounds appeared to be deserted, and light glowed in only a pair of windows in the house. Thunder crackled more ominously now, and the wind was sending leaves swirling from the trees. The horses were just as spooked as she was, to judge from their stamping and snorting.

  Mr. Wallace jumped down from his perch and waved Cressida forward. “You’ll have to hold the horses,” he said, raising his voice over a boom of thunder. “The storm’s put the fear of the devil into them.” He held out the reins, and she took them uncertainly. “Lead them down the road a bit, there’s a stand of trees. Just don’t stand too close, else the lightning might get you.” He laughed as he said it, looking remarkably jolly given the situation. Cressida scowled at him and he turned away, pulling up the collar of his coat to hide his grin.

  “You will be fine,” Madame said to her. She patted Cressida’s arm. “Just wait here. Come no closer. We shall see to Alec.”

  Cressida nodded, and the two of them spoke a moment before heading off toward the house. Within seconds they had melted into the shadows, and even the next flash of lightning didn’t reveal a trace of them.

  The wind howled, and a shower of acorns fell from a nearby oak tree, bouncing off the carriage roof with dull little pops. The horses tried to rear up in alarm, nearly pulling Cressida off her feet. If she didn’t tie them up, they could take off and drag her along with them, or leave her behind entirely. She managed to urge them onward, to the bend in the road Mr. Wallace had pointed out, and tied the reins to a sturdy tree branch.

  But she couldn’t see the house from here. Anxiously she paced along the road, finally slipping through the trees to peer into the darkness again. The lightning, when it came, was now almost as bright as day, but she couldn’t see a sign of anyone—not Madame Wallace, nor Mr. Wallace, nor Alec.

  What was happening? Even though she had told Madame she ought to have stayed at Penford, she was practically shaking with the desire to see better, to know what was going on inside the house. Was Julia mistaken? Perhaps the journal hadn’t referred to Will Lacey at all. If they had come to the wrong house…She laughed out loud in despair. Madame and Mr. Wallace would be breaking into the wrong house, Alec would be off somewhere completely on his own, and she would be standing here in a thunderstorm with two terrified horses, biting her fingernails to the quick worrying about all of them.

  She hadn’t even begun to comprehend her father’s actions. It was there in his own hand, baldly spelling out how he had persuaded Nob into treason and profited from it, then again from another man’s supposed death. She thought of all the times Papa had gone off and come home flush with cash—blood money, most likely. Perhaps that was why he had gone to see Lord Hastings; he had never given them a good explanation of how he knew a colonel. Bitterly Cressida wondered what secrets the colonel might have, and if Papa had held something over him, too. Had Papa met his end there, having gone too far, or perhaps here in the house in the hollow below her? The wind whipped through the trees where she stood, making the branches creak and moan as they swayed. It was a mourning sound, wrenching and sorrowful, and a tear leaked from her eye as she acknowledged that her beloved Papa, with his booming laugh and affectionate embraces and the way he always made them all smile, had been worse than a scoundrel; he had ruined other lives and lived on money wrung from other people’s guilt and shame. She had suspected for a while that he’d met his death, but for the first time, Cressida thought it might be a blessing if they never knew, if Papa just disappeared and was never heard from again.

  The wind was rising. The interminable heat hadn’t abated when they left Penford, but she had sn
atched up a cloak out of habit. It was still in the carriage, and as the wind changed and became noticeably cooler, she shivered. No rain had fallen yet, but the air was thick with it. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, and turned to go back to the carriage. She should check on the horses, and the cloak would feel good. There was nothing to be seen in the darkness anyway. With any luck, Madame Wallace and Mr. Wallace would return soon, with Alec in tow, and they could go home.

  She only made it three steps.

  Chapter 29

  Alec found Angus Lacey in his study, dozing off over in the chair by the fire. For a moment he stayed in the shadows, noting how much the man had aged. The hand that lay on the book in his lap was gnarled and crooked, veins standing in blue lines across the back. His head drooped to one side as he slept, and for a moment he looked almost dead.

  Alec stepped into the room. He had already made sure Morris wasn’t about, and the footman and butler were securely locked in the butler’s pantry. Alec didn’t want to hurt anyone any more than he wanted to be interrupted.

  At his footstep, Lacey started awake. “Eh? Morris, close the window,” he muttered, then jerked as he saw Alec. For a moment they regarded each other in silence.

  “How dare you,” growled Mr. Lacey. He struggled to his feet and gripped his cane. “Get off my property at once. I have nothing to say to a traitor and a liar.”

  Alec stood his ground. “Understood. I, however, have something to say to you.”

  The old man’s lips curled in a sneer. “Nothing you say can interest me. Get out.” He started to walk past Alec toward the door.

  “No, this time you shall not walk out on me. I have not come for my sake.”

  Lacey glared at him with hatred in his eyes…and fear. Alec saw the apprehensive loathing and it struck not fury, but pity, in his chest. Mr. Lacey suspected what he had come about. He didn’t want to hear, not because of his revulsion for Alec, but because he knew Alec had come to confront him with his own sins. “I don’t care whose behalf you’ve come on,” Lacey said. “Say your piece and remove yourself from my sight. If I were a younger man, I’d thrash you myself for coming here.”

  He smiled grimly. “No doubt. Allow me to explain my purpose before we come to blows. I think you’ll find it an interesting tale. I was sent back to Marston to inquire into the disappearance of Sergeant George Turner.” The other man’s flinch was small, but Alec saw it. “Sergeant Turner was, to all appearances, a man of modest means, with a few army connections and boundless ambition. From what I can gather, he traded on every favor he’d ever done anyone and his considerable personal charm to move up in the world. He took a house near Marston and set up there with his family as a comfortable man with means and expectations. No one seemed to know much what those means and expectations were, or whence they might come, but he paid his bills and behaved with propriety.”

  “This is hardly interesting,” Lacey said, his voice freezing with contempt. A vein pulsed at his temple. “I didn’t know the man.”

  “And then one day he simply disappeared,” Alec went on. “He went to London, met an old army superior about a post he wished to take, and then vanished. No word to his family, no letter, not even funds sent on to pay the accounts due a week after he left.” Alec paused, watching Lacey feign indifference. “Eventually his family grew worried enough to inquire of the man he was to meet in London and ask for help finding the sergeant. And so I came back to Marston—rather reluctantly, might I add.”

  “As well you should have been, bringing your treachery back on your family! The shock of it might have killed your poor mother.”

  Alec bowed his head. “Yes, it might have done; my treachery, as you call it, was terribly hard on my family. But that leads me to another interesting story I would like to tell you.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Lacey retreated, circling around the chair. Alec moved with him, always keeping between Lacey and the door, like a hunter monitoring his prey.

  “I think you do, whether you believe you do or not. It begins several years ago and far away—in Spain, to be precise. When Will fell in love with a Spanish girl.”

  Lacey’s eye had begun twitching. “Do not speak of my son.” His voice was the low growl of a cornered animal. Alec refused to relent.

  “He married her, and was very happy until word of your displeasure reached him. I don’t know what he wrote to you, but to me he expressed his deep regret. Not for marrying her—he loved her deeply—but for the fact that he had not planned better and couldn’t keep her in the comfort she deserved.”

  “A hot-blooded foreigner. She did not deserve my son!”

  “She was a Spanish grandee’s daughter, a lady from a good family, and used to a life of ease. She left it all to go on campaign with Will, and to the best of my knowledge she never regretted it.” Alec paused, but Lacey merely snorted. “Of course, we were in different divisions. I didn’t see Will much after Bonaparte escaped Elba and returned to Paris. Our paths crossed once or twice in Belgium, but never for more than a few moments’ conversation. I was grieved to hear of his death.”

  “Don’t you speak of his death!” There was real agony in Lacey’s cry.

  “The last time I saw him was the night before the great battle at Waterloo. It was pouring rain and we had only a few moments, but he was very odd that night. He made a few requests of me; he seemed to be quite certain of his impending death. I had entirely forgotten it, in my…difficult situation, until today, when I read the journal of Sergeant Turner.”

  Lacey jerked. The agony in his expression faded away at the mention of Turner’s name, replaced with a look of such loathing that Alec realized the full truth of what had happened. “Stop,” said Lacey viciously. “I’ll tell you. Here to seek the noble Sergeant Turner, are you? You may find him in hell. That—That offal betrayed my son, and held it over my head ever since. I care nothing for his family; if anything, they are better off without him. And if you think to sully my son’s name, I shall pursue you to the end of my days. Who would believe a traitor, after all?”

  “You will,” said Alec softly. “You know I speak the truth. Will needed funds after his marriage. Turner offered him a way to make money and in desperation, Will took it.” Lacey recoiled as if Alec had struck him. “And when Will died on the battlefield, Turner planted the letters from the French colonel in my belongings, then blackmailed you with a threat to expose the truth.”

  For a long moment, Mr. Lacey simply stood with bowed head, one hand braced on the back of a chair, his body shaking with every breath. “You were dead,” he said heavily. “You were supposed to be dead.”

  Alec said nothing at this confirmation of his dark suspicion. His family had not been dead, and Lacey knew exactly what he had done to them, neighbors he had once valued as friends.

  “He was the lowest of men, utterly without honor. The thought of that beast using my son…” Lacey’s knuckles were white where he gripped the chair.

  “You paid him not to speak. You allowed my family and the entire country to think me a traitor.” Alec’s iron control on his temper was finally slipping. “Whatever Turner’s sins, what of yours, sir? What honor is there in supporting a lie and ruining my good name? My father’s name?”

  “You were dead,” repeated Lacey. “He was my only son. I had no choice!”

  “When did you kill him?” Alec meant the question to startle Lacey, even goad him into a confession. All his calm and restraint were under terrible strain.

  Lacey, though, was unshaken. He raised his head in defiance. “He deserved to die. It was a boon to humanity, ridding the world of his sort. I make no apologies for it. Not only did he lure my son…Not only that, but he held it over my head and he reveled in that power.” He shook a fist at Alec. “He was a snake, a poisonous viper who preyed on the sorrows of others, and wasn’t killed soon enough.”

  “Then why pay him?”

  “I was weak.” He glared up from under his brows. “I suppose now
you’ll call down the authorities on me, for the death of that—that rapacious bastard.”

  Quite unexpectedly, Alec felt a moment of pity for the old man. Lacey had ruined his own life with hatred and anger and now guilt. Lacey, of all people, didn’t have it in him to stand up and condemn his own son to spare another. “No,” he said quietly. “Not at the moment.” There was little proof of the deed. The diary would incriminate George Turner more than it would Lacey; Alec doubted Turner had even used his name outright. “But you should have this.” He drew Will’s letter from his pocket and held it out.

  The older man glared at it, then started as he recognized the handwriting. “Where did that come from?” His voice shook as he reached out to touch the letter with his fingertip, then took it from Alec’s hand.

  “He asked me to deliver it, in the event of his death. It was sent home with my personal effects after Waterloo.”

  He waited for the meaning to sink in. After a moment Lacey paled and looked up. “Then—no one has seen—”

  “I read it.” But Lacey knew. Will could have been exposed as a traitor at any time, by his own hand. Perhaps that was as Will intended it. Alec felt a fierce sorrow clutch at him, that Will had chosen to make his confession and ride to his death. With this man for his father, he must have seen no other honorable choice. He had done his best to atone for his sin, by asking Alec to look after his wife and child, by laying out his confession to the one man who would never have believed it otherwise, and by sacrificing himself in a last dying moment of patriotism and honor. Only through chance had the letter gone missing. George Turner had seized that chance, casting the blame from Will onto Alec, and in doing so sealed Angus Lacey’s loss in a tomb of agonizing uncertainty. If Lacey had had this letter, he might have refused Turner’s demands. Alec might have proven his innocence years ago, or even not been accused at all. Cressida might have never lived in Marston at all, nor asked Hastings for his aid, and then he would have never met her.