The handwriting flowed strong and confident across the paper. It was identical to that she had seen in his room, creating music for sonnets by Shakespeare.
“So he had arranged to meet her that night! Oh, Mary, she was your sister. Didn’t you want revenge?”
“Revenge, ma’am? It was as much Milly’s fault as his, I dare say. I wouldn’t have wanted to be the one to send Master Charles to the gallows. He was too fine of a lad for that.”
“Then why on earth did you keep the note?”
“Because he wrote it! There, I’ve said too much already. I never should have kept it.” And with a sudden gesture, the housemaid threw the letter onto the fire.
Catherine wanted to weep. She had hoped so much to find that Mary had something that proved Devil Dagonet innocent of Millicent Trumble’s death. He, instead, had known that the maid had something incriminating and had been determined to wrest it from her. There had been no need for his concern; Mary was still so besotted with a girlish infatuation for him, she had suppressed evidence of his guilt, and now destroyed it.
Dagonet was an out-and-out rogue. He would use anyone for his nefarious purposes and never look back. Is that why he had been so charming with her? Why he had kissed her? So that she would also shield and protect him, while he rifled the house and made Mary give up the letter? Women were only too easy a prey for a rake like him. She blushed as she recalled the strange, wonderful sensations she had felt. What if he had kissed her again?
She, too, sensible Catherine Hunter, had very nearly come under the spell.
Chapter 8
Captain David Morris had returned from the ball and walked whistling into his study at Stagshead. He was faintly inebriated, just a little tired, and very happy. For him and Amelia, the bumbling neighbors with their country manners, the unsubtle flatteries of Sir George Montagu, and the odd remarks of his sister, Charlotte, had never existed. He and Amelia had danced oblivious to their surroundings. That they had spent the evening entirely together was quite unexceptionable. They were to marry in just under a week.
Morris stopped, however, quite suddenly, when he saw his friend awaiting him in front of the fireplace, dressed carelessly in buckskin breeches and dusty boots.
“What, Charles? Have you been out?”
Dagonet gazed at him for a moment and smiled. “Congratulations on your happiness, my friend. You have spent the evening in the arms of your beloved, inviting nothing but the fond and sentimental best wishes of the parish. You have my felicitations.”
Morris colored just a little. “Of course I spent the evening with her. If you knew what it was to be in love with a fine young lady like Amelia Hunter, you wouldn’t be so damned impertinent.”
“Ah, my dear Captain! That is a state that is never to be my lot, is it? It’s the great advantage of being a notorious rake, you know. One’s grosser emotions will never be mistaken for anything so fine or delicate as love. The lightskirts will flock to your side, so you never have to endure the innocent embraces of the virginal daughters of good family. Marriage is out of the question, and you’d be a scoundrel to engage the affections of a decent woman, let alone return them. It’s the most enviable position.”
Morris threw himself into a chair and released the knots in his cravat. Dagonet should not destroy his mood, damn him!
“Pour yourself a drink, for God’s sake, Dagonet,” he said. “You’re too dashed odd for words. What has happened, anyway?”
“Everything has happened, my dear Captain. And nothing that brandy will heal.”
His tone was still light and bantering, but Morris realized that his friend was controlling himself with a certain amount of effort. Dagonet began to stride back and forth before the fire.
“You went to Lion Court, didn’t you? What the devil do you expect to find there, old fellow? Can’t the past lie forgotten?”
Dagonet whirled around. His green eyes blazed like fire. “I carry the past like the Old Man of the Sea. It awakes me at night like a succubus. Those last days at Lion Court haunt me day and night, and not because I can’t forget, but because I can’t remember! All I know is that a silly girl was drowned in the lake and I was found stinking drunk in the woods. But I don’t even know who discovered me, and I don’t know why I was there in the first place. Millicent Trumble was nothing to me. It is a void as great as the mouth of hell. Did I kill her? There is no reason why I should have, but try living with that question, my friend. My uncle and grandfather obviously believed that I did, but no one would tell me their reasons. Who has the answers? No one outside of Lion Court, and few inside it. My uncle is dead. George, then? If he knew, I am the last person he would tell. Most of the servants knew nothing of it at the time. Only Mary, the girl’s sister, is left. She might know something and she won’t talk to me.”
“So you saw her at last? How did you get in? The place was crawling with servants for the ball.”
“I crept in over the roof, like the renegade that I am. It was no trouble to corner Mary in the hall behind the pantry, but my famous charm was useless. If she could have helped me, I believe she would, but she only blushed and mumbled. My pursuit of her confidences has thus been in vain. Maybe she has nothing to tell? Then I am condemned to never learn the truth.”
“You could have made her talk, Dagonet. You know it.”
“Yet I would not.” He relaxed suddenly and smiled, yet the green eyes were empty of mirth. “Miss Hunter will talk to her for me, I fear.”
“You’re a damned rogue, sir!”
“More than you know, Captain, but I am the victim of my latest trap.” Dagonet threw back his dark head and laughed. “No more of my maudlin troubles! Let me get that damned brandy.”
* * * *
Each morning that week found Amelia once again at Stagshead. She and David sat together on the small couch in the music room, talking over every dance, every moment that they had shared at Lion Court. She felt transported with bliss. Today, Captain Morris had her hand in his and was gently playing with her fingers as they conversed.
At the harpsichord sat her usual chaperone, little Annabella. Amelia was far too correct to sit alone with David, even if they were almost man and wife. Annie, however, made no objection at all to these frequent visits. She was engaged this time in playing hilarious duets with the object of her latest infatuation, Devil Dagonet. It had not been difficult to keep her word, and not tell even Mama that the famous prodigal was staying with Captain Morris, since it was so much fun to be with him, and if Mama found out she might put a stop to it.
“No, no!” Annabella squealed. “It doesn’t go like that. It goes like this!” Her short fingers plopped out the tune.
“Does it?” Dagonet said, as seriously as if he were addressing a duchess. “How odd! I thought my part went like this.” And he played the first few lines of an old song that sent Annie into peals of laughter.
They were all thus entirely engrossed when Catherine arrived at the French window. She had walked all the way down from Lion Court in a stiff breeze, so that her face felt flushed and tendrils of hair blew annoyingly around her face. She had gone over and over in her mind everything she knew about Charles de Dagonet. It wasn’t too hard to guess where he might be staying. Who else had also spent years in the Peninsular Campaign? With whom else had he been on such easy terms as he rescued Farmer Westcott’s prize flock? Only Captain David Morris!
An instant before she appeared, Dagonet must have heard her boots on the gravel walk. He stopped playing with a soft word to Annie, and walked over to face her. His features remained a perfect mask, but Annabella leapt gaily from the stool and ran up to her favorite sister.
“Cathy! It was to be a secret, even from you, but now you’ve found out. This is Devil Dagonet and he’s my very best friend in the world.”
Amelia had shown the grace to blush scarlet, though there was no real reason why she should, and Captain Morris, with only a trace of awkwardness, began to ask Catherine to come in. They were in
terrupted by Dagonet.
His tones were perfectly modulated, with just the merest hint of amusement. “Alas, discovered again! Miss Hunter has come to see me, my friend. Let me take her for a turn in the garden.”
Before any of them could object, he had seized Catherine by the arm, thrust her onto the terrace, and closed the door behind them.
“The shrubbery is splendid this time of year, ma’am. May I show you the finest of Captain Morris’s rhododendrons?”
“Let go of me! How can you! The flowers have been over for months.”
Undeterred, he propelled her away from the house. When they reached the thickest part of the plantation, he spun her to face him.
“Now, Kate dear, tell me why you hate me so much.”
“How can you ask? Destruction runs before you like a pack of hounds, doesn’t it, sir? You will use and toss away anyone in your path, if it suits your own purposes. It must have seemed a fine joke to enlist me for your cause. And how can you involve Annie and Amelia in your deceptions? I do despise you, Mr. de Dagonet, but I would not give you the honor of such a strong emotion as hate.”
Dagonet released her, and she began to pace up and down the gravel path. Quietly watching her, he leant casually against the trunk of a great beech tree. She knew that he had himself under an iron control, but she wasn’t sure if she cared.
“Mary has told all and I am condemned?” His expression was totally unreadable, but his tone was light. “Your face is an open book, Kate. Deception is impossible for you, isn’t it?”
“As it is natural for you? What do even your kisses mean? A fleeting amusement for a Casanova to practice your seductions on the daughter of a country vicar? You began with a fifteen-year-old maidservant in your own home. How many women have you left with broken hearts over the intervening years?”
“I have been completely ruthless, of course.”
The sun danced in his dark hair as the wind tossed it over his forehead, but the green eyes were deeply shadowed.
“Ruthless enough to have me do your work for you with Mary? Why didn’t you bully or beguile her yourself? She would still have protected you forever. She did show me the note, but don’t worry about it anymore, sir. She has destroyed it.”
“What note? I am in the dark, sweet Kate.”
“The one you wrote Millicent Trumble the day she was drowned. The note inviting her to meet you beside Lion Court Lake.”
And at last Catherine had the satisfaction of seeing him turn stark white beneath his tan. It was a moment before he spoke again, but his voice betrayed nothing but an idle curiosity.
“What other charming revelations did she make to you?”
“Nothing that you cannot know yourself, Mr. de Dagonet. The bottle was still in your hand, I understand, when John Catchpole found you in the woods. It must have been a dreadful day for him. Your uncle paid him off the same week and an innocent servant had to make a new way in the world.”
The color was still drained from his face, but he replied quite calmly. “Then I am found out at last in my true colors, Miss Hunter. But I have succeeded, haven’t I, in my schemes? For you have told me what I wanted to know. How could your opinion of me possibly matter now?”
“It matters not a whit, sir, since I do not imagine that we shall meet again.”
There was silence for a moment, before he replied.
“Then this is good-bye, Kate. I shall leave Fernbridge tomorrow. Have no concern for your sisters. Amelia has eyes for no one but Captain Morris. She has hardly been aware of me. As for Annabella, I have been a childish adventure that she will forget with the next storm. I amused her, but I have done her no harm.”
With a formal bow, he was gone. Catherine watched him stride off up the gravel walk, before she turned away and left the garden. She could not face her sisters. Dagonet would have to make her excuses for her.
* * * *
The excuses were made with a remarkable grace, so Amelia and Annie left together without the slightest idea that anything very terrible had gone wrong. Captain Morris, however, was not to be so easily put off.
“Did Miss Hunter discover what you wanted, Charles? Did Mary hold the clue to your reinstatement in society?”
Dagonet dropped into a chair. His face was set like stone. “I am doubly damned, my friend. She succeeded only too well. It would appear that I arranged to meet Milly Trumble that day, though why I should have done so, I have no idea. I wrote a note, in fact, which Mary had kept. I have thus not been proved innocent, but undoubtedly guilty, and so my nefarious schemes have backfired in my face. I have, however, learned something else that was unknown to me.”
“Which is?”
Dagonet laughed bitterly, and leaping to his feet, began to collect up his few belongings that lay scattered about the room.
“The name of the man who found us that day: a certain John Catchpole, my uncle’s favorite henchman, and a man remarkably good with horses. I am off to Newmarket, Captain. The races start next week and it’s about time that I mend my sorry finances in the betting tents.”
Morris stood up. “I’m devilish sorry to see you go, sir.”
“Never fear, David! Like a bad penny, I’ll turn up when you least want me. But credit me with at least enough sense to make myself scarce before your wedding. You’re marrying into a very fine family, you know.”
The men shook hands and Dagonet made for the door.
At the threshold he stopped and turned back for a moment. “You may set your mind at ease, Captain, about Catherine Hunter, the brave and beautiful sister of your beloved. Her heart and virtue are quite safe. I have made sure, you see, in my competent way, that she despises me.”
* * * *
Amelia was a radiant bride. The weather and the arrangements conspired to give her a perfect day. She received the well-wishes of the entire parish, then she and Captain Morris left Stagshead for the Lake District for their honeymoon.
Mrs. Charlotte Clay and Sir George Montagu had ridden away from Lion Court in the large carriage shortly before the wedding. George declared himself unutterably bored with Exmoor and announced he was off to Scotland for some shooting. Charlotte had received an invitation to visit from a bosom acquaintance, with whom she would be able to indulge in many happy hours of shredding the reputations of others.
Life at Lion Court settled back into its humdrum routine. Lady Montagu spent a week or two bemoaning the departure of her children, then quietly slipped into her old habits. The name of Devil Dagonet was never mentioned, but Catherine saw his face everywhere in the house. She could not rid her mind of him. How could she have been so foolish as to almost lose her heart to such an out-and-out rogue? If she thought, however, that she could be free of any mention of him for very long, she was mistaken. She entered the parlor one morning to find Lady Montagu in a state of considerable agitation.
“Oh, Miss Hunter! The most unexpected thing! I am quite overset. Lord Somerdale wishes me to go to Bath this instant.”
“I hope your father still enjoys his good health, Lady Montagu?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. His health is still quite sound, remarkably so for a man of his age. No, he received a letter from Charlotte, oh — weeks ago!” She glanced down at the sheet in her hand and read: “Your daughter, ma’am, has had the effrontery to send me the most impertinent piece of gossip.” She looked up at Catherine, her brow wrinkled with distress. “He has been fretting over it for all this time and now demands that I go and give him an account of the whole. How Mrs. Clay could have been so careless as to so upset her grandfather, I don’t know, but she wrote and told him of our terrible visit from Charles de Dagonet. I must go. You will accompany me, won’t you, Miss Hunter? We must leave at the earliest convenience. Bath! It means so much packing and trouble that we might as well go right on to London, for I am promised to visit Charlotte in November.”
Thus, two mornings later, Catherine left Exmoor for the first time. Comfortably seated beside Lady Montagu in her cumbe
rsome coach and firmly setting aside all thoughts of the dangerous Mr. de Dagonet, she set off for Bath. With the further promise of London, she was in the highest spirits and she could not deny, even to herself, the greatest curiosity to meet the notorious Marquis of Somerdale, grandfather to both Dagonet and Sir George Montagu, his stout cousin.
Chapter 9
The town of Newmarket, not far from Cambridge, was the heart of the horse racing world and a Mecca for all those young men of fashion who had nothing better to do with their time and their money than lay wagers at the October meetings. The course was a constant pandemonium of noise and color. Fashionable sporting gentlemen rubbed shoulders with the professionals of the turf and the serving classes, all mad with the frenzy of outguessing the odds. The air reverberated with the excited cries of men and horses.
Charles de Dagonet stood a little apart from the milling crowds, his broad, elegant shoulders propped against a railing, and quietly surveyed the scene.
He had no intention of placing bets on the horses. The pay he had received in the Peninsular Campaign had been modest enough, and now he had no income at all. With his slender resources, he could only mend his fortunes in a situation where skill played a greater role than chance, and that was at the gaming tables, not at the track. It was not long before the event occurred for which he had been so patiently waiting.
“Good God! Dagonet! When the deuce did you return from France, sir? The last I saw, you were at Wellington’s coat-tails in Paris. That was in June.”
Dagonet swept a graceful bow which instantly inspired a surge of envy in the young man facing him. “Good day, Wrackby. I am returned to England, as you see, and have spent the intervening time making housemaids mumble and stealing jewels. I trust I find you in good health?”
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