The Counterfeit Lady_A Regency Romance

by Alina K. Field

Anger flashed through him. If Sir Richard hadn’t learned it, it was because Fox had killed the man who’d attacked him in Belgium. “So you say.”

  Perry pulled her hand away and began to pace. “Sir Richard plays a double game. He’s a squire passing on information on a smuggler. And as John Black he runs a smuggling enterprise. Which might have stumbled last year when a substitute was tried and transported.”

  “Why?” Perry asked. “Why would Sir Richard do this?”

  “It may be he’s trying to take out the competition,” Fergus said.

  Perry stopped in front of him and drew herself up into a tight determined line. “But why bring in an assassin? Why take Father?”

  “I know why.” Lady Jane’s skirts rustled as she rose from the room’s only chair. “We talked about it earlier. Sir Richard wants the man who stole the woman he thought should be his bride. He wanted Felicity Landers, enough to try to wrestle her into a carriage and make off with her. He’s been stewing in anger for decades. He wants revenge.”

  Perry went still. He moved his hand to her waist and felt anger trembling through her.

  Kincaid grunted and Farnsworth shrugged.

  The logic of women, those shrugs said. A man, educated, propertied, with a position in the community and a business to run—albeit an illegal one—wouldn’t stew thirty years about a bride who was lost, would he? Not even a brute like the Baronet.

  His chest tightened. What had he done for many years about his brother’s bride? What had Shaldon been doing about the murder of his wife?

  “Revenge?” Farnsworth said, sighing. “Not greed. Could it be that simple?”

  Perry’s breath caught. “It’s that simple for Father.”

  Farnsworth shared another glance with the other old plotter, Kincaid.

  Was it truly that simple for Shaldon? Was it that simple for him?

  Fox shook his head. He’d stewed in revenge, as had Shaldon, but neither had turned to villainy. Shaldon had his spying, not always honest, but always honorable, at least where his country was concerned. Fox had his painting—and Perry.

  Could he truly have her honorably, with her family’s blessing? He would stew for decades if he were to lose this chance with her. He had to find a time and a place to tell her.

  “Your father wants more than revenge,” Fox said. “He wants to know how your mother really died. He wants to know who killed her.”

  Davy’s thin voice came from the place near the door. “It’s him.”

  The eyes turned his way made Davy squirm. He cleared his throat. “I allus thought it was Scruggs what did it.”

  Tension knotted Fox’s brain, right behind his eyes, and Perry’s face had gone stiff as a bad portrait. What the hell else had this little man kept hidden all these years behind tankards of ale and flasks of gin? Fox took Davy by the collar. “Tell the lady what you know.”

  Davy’s fingers twisted, crushing his hat and he wobbled. “I saw it. I saw the lady’s…” he glanced at Perry and ducked his head. “Your mother’s killing.”

  Perry eyed him up and down, as grave and contained as her father would ever be. “Lady Jane,” she said, with a softness that the old man would never have shown, “let us have that chair.”

  Fox pulled the chair over.

  Perry gave Davy a nod. “Now sit.”

  “Oh, miss—”

  “Before you fall. Please.”

  Davy looked around and took the chair, sitting poker straight, like a man bracing for a beating.

  “Go on,” Perry said.

  “I saw the carriage on the road. Saw the accident.” He gulped for air.

  “What happened?” Fox moved round to stand by Perry.

  “I don’t know. Well, it may be the wheel slipped off. Or the driver swerved right off the edge of the cliff. I don’t know. I was below, in the cove, and couldn’t see all. I’d gone to—well, Scruggs had some barrels sunk in the water there.” He tucked his chin down and squeezed his eyes shut a moment. “I did start up the hillside to help. The carriage was tipping, the horses going wild, the driver trying to hold them.” He paused and gulped more air. “Then a man comes down the road from the house, all in black, he is, and I’m thinking, it’s Scruggs, and I says to myself, if he sees me tippling his tubs I’ll take a beating. I says to myself, no need to go up—he’ll help ’em.”

  Davy’s face had gone ashen, the light from the lanterns and candles not finding a trace of pink in his flesh, the memory of that day draining the blood from him.

  Shame did that to a man, drained the life out of him, made him walk through life like a cadaver.

  “He goes behind the carriage and next thing I sees, he’s got the lady, and she was fighting him, and I’m thinking, slow down, stop hitting her, she’s panicked, is all. ’Tother lady came up, waving a pistol. Fired it, she did. Didn’t hit nothing before he slapped it away.”

  The room had gone stuffy with exhaled breaths and the flames of the lights. Davy wiped a hand over his face and shuddered. “Coachman was off by then, horses going wild. Knew what was happening, they did. Gave a good fight the man did, but the big man beat him until he stopped.” His breath came, short and shallow. “Picked both ladies up and threw them over the cliff, he did. Dragged the man to the edge and rolled him.”

  Davy’s eyes shone. “Looked, straight my way, he did. Scruggs’d know me, even at that distance. I pulled back, I stayed down, heard the carriage topple. Then I ran. Went around the point. Went home. Pretended I was there all day.” He gulped and shook his head. “I should’ve helped. I should’ve done something.”

  Perry swallowed back tears and touched Davy’s shoulder. It was too late for her mother, too late for doubts, too late for recriminations. Davy couldn’t have been much more than a boy when her mother was killed, a slight boy against Sir Richard’s bulk. She couldn’t blame him.

  And they needed him. “Help us now, Davy. You know these parts. Where would Sir Richard take my father?”

  He screwed up his face with the effort of thinking and set his gaze on Fox. “Scruggs might know. He knows more.”

  Fox’s mouth firmed in that obstinate, secretive way of his.

  “Scruggs?” she asked.

  “We had him brought in,” Fox said.

  That had been when she and Lady Jane were wrestling Kincaid into submission.

  “And?” Perry asked, wanting to throttle him. It was time for these men to talk to her, and to Lady Jane.

  “We didn’t get much out of him,” Fox shifted. “We left off the questioning to come up here. He’s locked in the pantry.”

  “MacEwen,” Kincaid said, “you and your cousin go talk to him. Send the soldiers outside.”

  They didn’t know who to trust.

  “Don’t beat him,” Perry said. “Not until after I have a chance to talk to him.”

  Fox sent her a cryptic look. “Davy, go and wait in the parlor with Pip. Mac, have one of the soldiers stay with him to make it look like Davy’s a prisoner too. Don’t you dare leave.”

  Or I’ll kill you myself, his tone said.

  “No, don’t leave,” Kincaid said. “You’ll stay and help us, too.”

  Davy frowned. “I’ll stay.”

  He’d heard the or else in Kincaid’s tone. Honestly, these men could be brutes also.

  Perry touched Davy’s shoulder. “If you must leave Clampton, we’ll find you work, and no matter what happens, we’ll look after Pip.”

  Davy nodded, and followed the MacEwens out.

  “The man’s been wallowing in drink for ten years to cover that shame,” Kincaid said. “Had enough of it he has. We can use him. Now, I’ve no more dignity left here—can one of your ladyships fetch one of the Earl’s shirts from that satchel?”

  “You’re not getting up yet.” Lady Jane pressed him back. “You’ll lie there a bit longer and let that flesh knit.”

  “She’s right,” Farnsworth said.

  While Kincaid glowered and the others bickered, Fox settled an arm ar
ound her, and she curled into his warmth.

  “You should sit,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No.” While Father was suffering, she’d take no comfort.

  How would Sir Richard torture him? A man that cruel might have many means.

  “We need to plan how to get Father out.”

  “We need to know where he is.” Lady Jane plopped on the narrow bed, abandoning all etiquette. “One of your men should have reported by now.”

  “Aye,” Kincaid said. “It’s possible they can’t get away themselves.”

  Lady Jane’s mouth firmed. “Or it’s possible they’ve been taken, or killed.”

  Through this east-facing window, Perry could see the sun on the horizon.

  She sighed into Fox’s shoulder. “A new day. A totally different day.” She lifted her chin and searched his eyes. “We have an invitation to dinner.”

  Sir Richard had invited them to dinner even while plotting to take her father. Or maybe, he’d planned to take Father at the dinner and instead had availed himself of the earlier opportunity.

  The silence in the room fairly buzzed, though no one uttered a word, and her attention was on Fox, so she couldn’t see whether brows were working into furrows as the two old spies and Lady Jane turned the idea around in their collective heads.

  Fox was doing his own brow furrowing. “No,” he said. “And anyway, the invitation was for you, Lady Jane, and your father.”

  “And Father is already there.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe he has him stashed in some smuggler’s tunnel somewhere. We need to hear what Scruggs has to say.”

  “And how will you get him to talk?”

  His mouth firmed. “We’ll charge him with murder. Davy saw a big man do the deed. It could have been him.”

  “We’re wasting time.” She turned in his arms. “Farnsworth, you and Kincaid. if you’re able, will come along tonight.”

  “I’ll be able,” Kincaid said.

  “And Fox, you’ll come as my fiancé.” Her nerves rattled and she took in a breath. She could do this. She would do this. “That should draw a reaction.”

  “Sir Richard saw me at the cove,” Fox said. “And you want me to just come along to dinner?”

  Outside, the first ray of sun stabbed through the haze. Dinner—even a dinner by country hours—would be hours and hours away. Between now and then, anything could happen to Father. Bad, cruel, horrible things.

  “On second thought, we’re not going to dinner,” she said. “We’ll join Sir Richard for breakfast.”

  “No.” The cry came from all the men, but the loudest voice was the one in her ear.

  Chapter 31

  Talk, talk, talk.

  Perry set to grinding coffee, the beans as hard as Fox’s stubborn refusal to allow—allow—her to drop in on Sir Richard that morning. She wrestled the crank, letting the aroma fill her senses, willing it to chase away this sluggish resentment.

  Running off on her own hadn’t worked out well. That was a truth that poked at the sore spot in her back with every downward crank.

  She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Papa was a hard, strong man, a wily man. Old, but not decrepit. If any man could survive a physical challenge, it was the Earl of Shaldon.

  “He won’t come.” Kincaid spoke around a bite of bread.

  Lady Jane pounded her fist on the kitchen table. “He might, and then we’ll have drawn him out, and some of you can go in. And if he doesn’t, well, then we’ll know.”

  Lady Jane wanted to send a message calling Sir Richard to a crime, a normal duty for a country justice of the peace.

  “And then he’ll know,” Farnsworth said.

  “Oh, hell, Farnsworth,” Kincaid said. “We know he knows. The time for subtlety is past.”

  They argued on. Fox caught her eye and came up behind her, enveloping her in his arms.

  All of her nerves tingled, warmth rippling from the top of her head to her toes. He’d best not be playing with her.

  She leaned into him. “I should go to his manor,” she said. “Make a big splash. Stop at the inn and tell the world where I’m going. He won’t kill me then.”

  “He’s tried once already.” His breath tickled her ear.

  “But I was alone. And that was in secret. This will be different. Perhaps I can bring Scruggs along.”

  The innkeeper had been, finally, talkative after they’d told him someone was bringing in assassins just in time for King George’s coronation. MacEwen had twisted his arm with the mention of the hanging and beheading the previous year of the treasonous Cato Street conspirators.

  However, if Scruggs thought Sir Richard was the famous John Black, he wasn’t letting on.

  Father might be in a cave down the coast, said Scruggs, now housed in an unused stable box, and the innkeeper could lead them to it.

  Or, Father might be at Sir Richard’s manor, the man had said.

  Fox’s arms tightened and two large hands cradled her hips on opposite sides. She flexed against him. And…he was aroused.

  Desire shot through her, sudden, demanding.

  What was he doing? Did he want her or not?

  She watched her hand gripping the crank, turning, churning, chopping the beans to tiny bits.

  “I don’t want you hurt.” Fox’s quiet murmur stopped her hand’s motion. The drub, drub, drub, of her heart, the muffled roar of waves breaking, those were the only sounds. Behind them, the room had gone quiet.

  She set her hands atop his. “It’s too late for that,” she whispered.

  She craned her neck and looked around him. The others studied a paper spread before them on the table, a crude map, and another man, dirty and disheveled, had joined them.

  And she’d not heard a thing. Some spy she would make.

  And then Davy entered, towing along a young woman dressed in worn cambric. She had Davy’s same coloring but an air more watchful.

  “This is my cousin, Edie,” he said.

  The girl curtseyed in the awkward, bobbling way of someone with an ailment, or perhaps someone much older, or someone not used to giving such deference. The brown eye she raised to Perry held curiosity and a touch of apprehension.

  Perry swallowed a chuckle. One didn’t see a ghost every day.

  “Edie will help us.” This was the most assurance Perry had ever heard in Davy’s voice.

  “How?”

  Kincaid’s blunt question set the girl to frowning.

  These locals were not obsequious towards their so-called betters. Oh, they might be cowed by people like Scruggs and Sir Richard, but that was the practical consideration of physical intimidation. But merely being born to a higher rank didn’t rate the kind of deference Perry had always received from the tenants of Cransdall.

  Free trading gave them freedom.

  Plus, Perry thought, they’d seen the colonies revolt, and a revolution in France that had sent people of her own class to the guillotine, and had others fleeing to England, perhaps arriving on these very shores.

  Edie raised a pugnacious chin. “I was in service with Sir Richard.”

  In service. The girl had probably been a housemaid, one who flicked dust from every piece of furniture, in every nook and cranny. She would know about secret doors and hidden passageways and where they led. If there were stories of treasures hidden in a priest hole or some such, she would have heard them. She would know Sir Richard’s ways. She would have learned early when to steer clear, when to be one of the invisible girls with a broom and a duster. She would know how many servants there were and where they would be.

  Jenny crossed the room. “I’ll finish that, my lady,” she said.

  Edie’s eyes widened, taking in Perry’s plain dress, the frowzy hair, and her necklace of purple bruises. And the big, handsome man with his hand on her.

  Perry’s man. Well, he would be for a few hours more, and then his damned honor would take him away. And she couldn’t think about that now.

  “Please sit, Ed
ie,” Perry said. “Make room for her at the table.”

  Chapter 32

  They’d involved Scruggs and his village in this rescue, but only one villager was crowded onto Perry’s borrowed cart sitting up in the cargo box, while her three companions there lay low and rolled out, one by one, as the cart crawled up Sir Richard’s long drive.

  Perry’s skirt flapped along, soaking up the moist drizzle. She pulled it in tight around her legs and gripped the seat edge.

  They came to a narrow part of the road, densely thicketed and deeply rutted. Sir Richard must have few visitors. If he truly was John Black the smuggler, his merchandise wasn’t traveling down this path. This jarring ride would pop open half the tubs.

  “Use that pistol.” The low voice came from the back and the cart jumped again, dispensing the last of the muscled cargo.

  Her heart flipped with it, but she dared not turn to look. “I will. You use that knife.”

  I love you, Fox. I shouldn’t but I do.

  All around her the air seemed to thicken and she struggled to breathe.

  Fear. This was fear.

  “Steady now.” Lady Jane’s hand came down atop hers and squeezed.

  She turned her hand over and squeezed back.

  Lady Jane had sensed the panic rising in her. Thank God, it had been this sensible woman following Father to Gorse Cottage to chaperone Perry.

  Along with Fox, Farnsworth and Fergus MacEwen had slipped off the back, leaving Edie propped up against the side gripping a basket. The three men would steal through the woods on their way to the house. The other MacEwen, Fergus’ cousin, was leading the dragoons and some of Scruggs’s men up the steep hill at the back side of the estate.

  All of them would be, please God, mopping up Sir Richard’s watchers and henchmen, if there were any.

  “Kincaid,” Lady Jane said, “must you hit every rut and hole? You’ll burst that wound open, and then where will we be?”

  “Hang on.” Kincaid pulled the reins and finessed the cart around a particularly watery rut. Bottomless, it might be, fathomless perhaps, and filled with illusions, like everything surrounding Sir Richard.