Regency Masquerades: A Limited Edition Boxed Set of Six Traditional Regency Romance Novels of Secrets and Disguises

by Brenda Hiatt

  A groom was walking Sweeney’s horse in the drive just outside the entrance. That was easy enough to fix. It suggested a change of plan to Falcon.

  “The gentleman who rode this horse will be staying longer than he thought,” she told the groom quietly. Much longer. “Would you take his mount down to the stables, please?”

  Now all she had to do was wait. Positioning herself to one side of the door, she took the pistol out and set her basket down on the stone step beside her.

  Sweeney came out a few minutes later. Falcon was ready. As soon as the door closed behind him, she spoke.

  “Looking for your horse?”

  He swung around, startled, and at that moment Falcon raised the pistol. With satisfaction she watched the expression on his face change from surprise to confusion. But she wanted to see fear. And she wanted to be very certain that he knew why he would die.

  “You know that I know how to use this,” she said. “Don’t make a sound.” Gesturing with the pistol she indicated that he should open his coat. “I have no doubt that you are armed—take your weapon out slowly and place it on the ground. Now back away slowly—a little farther—good, that’s far enough.”

  She would take no chances. Without taking her eyes off him she reached down and retrieved his pistol. Once it was in her hand she noted that the safety catch was engaged.

  “All right, now turn and walk. I’ll be right behind you.”

  She marched him away from the house past the beech tree and the spring flowers, across the lawn towards a patch of woods that remained as part of the grounds surrounding the artificial lake. An earthen path led through the trees.

  “That’s far enough,” she said once she felt certain they could not be seen. They were in a small clearing.

  “This is all a mistake,” Sweeney said.

  “Is it? Are you going to tell me that I have mistaken you for someone else, or that you did not come here looking for me? Would you claim that you are not the man who butchered my father in the snow at Astorga? That you never led your men to kill my mother and leave me for dead as well? You, an officer. And all for a few ounces of gold and a handful of holy relics!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Understand? What? What it is like to hover near death for weeks, in such pain that death would be welcome? To battle the nightmares from memories too vivid to ever be escaped? To lose a loving family and a familiar world all in the space of two brutal minutes? What do I not understand?”

  Of course, she did not expect him to answer. Once she had opened the door on her bitterness and anger, she could not stop the tirade that came out.

  “Do you understand what it was like to be fourteen years old, hiding and trying to travel over brutal terrain under the cover of night? You know what Spain was like! French soldiers and Spanish bandits were everywhere. The only safe place was in the south and later, not even there. Some people would only help if they were paid, and how was I to do that? It was all your doing—all of it. Throughout it all I thought of you and planned and waited for this day. I vowed my parents would not go unavenged. And because I lived, I pledged my life to find justice for their deaths.”

  The pistols were heavy. She would have to shoot him before her arms grew weary of keeping the guns aimed at his heart.

  “If I shoot you through the heart, will you die? Likely not—I am convinced that you do not have one. Perhaps I should aim a little higher…”

  Sweat was pouring down his pale face, and fear showed on it now. “Wait. It wasn’t for the gold. It wasn’t only me. I am not the one you really want,” he stammered. “It was your cousin. I owed him. He arranged it.”

  “What?” Did Sweeney truly expect her to believe him? “We were in the middle of a war, in Spain. My cousin was in England.”

  She heard a twig snap behind her, but she did not dare to take her eyes off Sweeney. She did not have to.

  “Yes, I was in England,” said the earl.

  Falcon glanced at him quickly as he stepped into the clearing and she saw that he also had a pistol. Her pulse began to pound in her ears.

  “This is not working out the way I’d hoped,” her cousin drawled, his tone as cool as if they were taking tea in the drawing room. “The two of you were not supposed to meet today. I did not know she was here. But when I didn’t hear you leave, Mr. Sweeney, I looked out and saw her taking you across the lawn. Since you have found it so difficult to kill her, failing twice, I thought it still might work out if she simply killed you. But you had to go and open your mouth. Now I’ll have to kill both of you.”

  “Then it is true,” Falcon whispered. But how? Why? Had he been behind both attempts on her life? She looked at the earl. “I have two shots to your one; I think you will have difficulty carrying out that threat.”

  She should never have taken her eyes off Sweeney. At that moment, he leaped at her. He moved so fast that he shoved her and grabbed one of the pistols from her hand before she realized what he was about. He fired at Lord Coudray. As the earl fell backward and hit the ground, his pistol discharged. The ball whizzed past Falcon’s cheek, missing her by an inch.

  Shaken but still in control of her wits, she backed away from Sweeney, training her remaining pistol on him once more. To her left the earl lay still and silent.

  “I think you have killed him,” she said, risking a quick glance. Her heart filled with a peculiar mixture of horror, relief and dismay. The earl looked so much like her father lying there. He would give no answers to anyone now. “But why? Why did he want my parents dead?”

  “If you kill me, you’ll never know,” Sweeney said.

  “Do not count on that to save you. Seeing you dead means more to me than knowing why my parents died. I can begin to guess.”

  “He would have killed you. Do I get no thanks for this?”

  “You would kill me, if you had another shot.”

  “What about the others—Timmins and Pumphrey? Timmins shot your mother. I did not act alone.” Even now, Sweeney would argue against his fate.

  “Both of them were under your influence and your command. I have seen them—they are pathetic wrecks of the men they once were. They are punished enough.”

  She recognized the sound of footsteps hurrying toward them along the path. Whoever it was might try to stop her. Sweeney’s face showed that he heard them, too.

  “You won’t do it,” he said. “I don’t believe that you can bring yourself to shoot.”

  “Then you will die surprised.” She steadied the gun with both hands. This was the final moment. Now she would fulfill the promise she had made, achieve the purpose that had given meaning to her long ordeal. The hard, bitter stone buried in her heart would give her the strength to carry out his sentence.

  “Miss Colburne!”

  It was Lord Danebridge’s voice. But how could that be? Where had he come from? Falcon was tempted to look as the baron arrived in the clearing, breathing heavily, but she did not dare to take her eyes off Sweeney again. She heard more people coming now along the path behind the baron.

  “Miss Colburne, stop. You do not need to shoot him. Are you all right? I heard the shots…”

  “I must finish this.”

  “No. Please. Give me your gun.” He moved beside her. A glance from the corner of her eye told her that he had a pistol in his own hand, aimed at Sweeney. “Listen to me. I love you. I will never deceive you again as long as I live, if you will only forgive me and give up this course.”

  “This man killed my father! I have lived for this. I made a vow…”

  “It appears that this man has now also killed the one most responsible for your parents’ deaths. After he faces a coroner’s jury and a King’s Bench justice, he’ll face the gallows. Is it not enough? Do you believe that your mother and father would have wished you to bloody your own hands in their name?”

  “Will you take away the only thing that has made sense of my life—of my survival?” She was beginning to tremble.

&n
bsp; “Is it the only thing?” He sounded utterly despondent. “What about love? Could not God have saved you for that instead of vengeance, Miss Colburne? I never thought I would love another woman after Anne, until you came into my life. I never expected to love you, but you changed all that. You reawakened me to what that kind of love could be. I had not realized how desolate my life was without it. I love you more than life itself, Miss Colburne. Do you feel nothing for me in return?”

  But she did, of course. Life was so unfair. Tears welled in her eyes, and she realized that she could no longer hold her pistol steady.

  Lord Danebridge lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “If you choose to kill him, you throw away any chance for happiness that we might find together. I could tell you I love you a thousand times, but in the end you still must make the choice.”

  A sob escaped from her throat. “We have no hope of happiness together!” But her will to kill Sweeney was gone. For a moment longer she pointed the gun at him. Then she lowered it and dropped it into the grass at her feet. She could not look at Lord Danebridge.

  “Sergeant!” called the baron. “If you would, please?”

  Triss appeared from behind him and took his pistol, aiming it at Sweeney with a determined and fierce look on his face.

  “You!” exclaimed Sweeney in recognition. His body seemed to sag in defeat.

  Lord Danebridge reached down and picked up Falcon’s weapon. As he straightened up, he turned to her and put two fingers under her chin, gently raising her face to his searching gaze.

  “We have much to talk about,” he said. “First we must see Sweeney secured and put under guard until the constable can be brought here, and we must do something for Lord Coudray. But then will you consent to walk with me?”

  She nodded, looking at him through eyes blurred by tears. Despite her best effort to control herself, she was shaking so hard now that her teeth were chattering.

  “Devil take it,” the baron growled softly. In full view of their audience, he stepped up and took her into his arms.

  There would be many more explanations needed later, but the only one Falcon wanted right away was Lord Danebridge’s. He had brought Mr. Fallesby with him from London and the two had arrived at Colburne Hall just in time to find a distraught Triss and Maggie in front of the house with Benita and Carlos.

  “Your Maggie was as near to hysterics as I imagine she ever gets,” the baron was saying. He and Falcon were now walking alone along the gravel pathways in the garden behind the mansion. The earl’s body had been removed to the house and Sweeney was tied to a chair in the earl’s private study awaiting the constable.

  “She told me you’d gone down the drive to try to kill Sweeney, but I knew that you were not there. Mr. Fallesby and I had just driven up the length of it and had seen no sign of you. They did not know where Lord Coudray was, either, and I feared the worst. That is when we heard the shots coming from the grove.”

  He stopped walking and turned to face her, his eyes full of pain. “I thought I was too late. I thought I had lost you. I have never run so fast in my life.”

  Falcon could not give him the reassurances that would ease his pain. How could he lose what he had never had? But she did not say that. Instead she began walking again and steered the conversation back to questions.

  “How did you come to know that my cousin was involved in what happened? I did not know it myself until Sweeney told me. I might not have believed it even then, if the earl had not arrived and confirmed it himself.”

  “I went to see your Corporal Pumphrey at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. He did not know where Sweeney could be found, as I gather you suspected since you did not visit him. But that is not what I wanted to learn from him. I asked him to talk about his army days in the Peninsula, and whenever he mentioned Sweeney, I would ask a few extra questions.”

  “Are you never direct?”

  “I promise in the future I will be as direct as you wish, if you will only be a part of my life.”

  She shook her head. “What did you learn about Sweeney?”

  “I discovered that he was a younger son of gentry and went into the army to escape his creditors.”

  “How does that involve my cousin?”

  “I’m getting to that. My kind of work requires patience. You must have some for the telling.” He gave her a crooked smile that took away any sting in his words.

  They were close to a bed of wallflowers and Falcon breathed in their sweet scent, willing it to overpower the haunting smell of gunpowder that she fancied still clung to her. Lord Danebridge was hard to resist when he looked at her with just that expression. She wished he wouldn’t.

  “That information from Pumphrey meant I could look up Sweeney’s family in the guides to the gentry. Do you know what I discovered? His family is from Kent—from the same area as your cousin. Sweeney’s eldest brother attended Harrow with your cousin. So you see, the families knew each other even then.”

  “How can you know all this?”

  “This has been my career—matching up information and paying attention to details. If you look at birthdates, and where the candidates in question went to school, you can quickly discover if they were classmates.”

  “But that still does not link my cousin with Sweeney. Why did you look at my cousin’s information?”

  “There was something Mr. Fallesby said when I visited him. It slipped past me at first, but when I discovered the geographic link between Sweeney’s family and your cousin, it came back to me. Mr. Fallesby was impressed that you knew your grandfather had cast off your father, and other details. But of course, the old earl had no way to legally disinherit his heir. Once your grandfather died, there would have been no barrier preventing your father from returning to take his rightful place as the next earl, if he survived.”

  They had reached the fountain that stood at the center of the garden where the paths intersected. Falcon stopped in front of it and stared at the trickling water, a huge lump in her throat. “Except for my father’s own stubbornness,” she whispered.

  “Did it never occur to you that this cousin would have ample reason to wish your father would not return?”

  He turned her to face him and took her hands in his. “I went back to Mr. Fallesby and asked to see his records of disbursements made when your father’s cousin came into his inheritance. Miss Colburne, he had a massive number of debts. It looked as if he had been living on his expectations for years. As your father continued to thrive in the army, can you imagine his growing desperation?”

  “But we are only guessing…”

  “He probably had assumed your father would die in a battle. But can you think of the temptation and opportunity that presented themselves when he learned that Sweeney had been commissioned into the same regiment as your father? Sweeney went into the army to escape debts—how easy for your cousin to take on some of those to gain leverage over him! Do you recall when Sweeney first joined your battalion?”

  “Not precisely. It was after we came back from the Copenhagen campaign. Perhaps early in 1808? It was some months before we were shipped out to Spain.”

  “Did your father’s battalion see action any time after Sweeney came?”

  “No. Not really. We just marched all over half the Peninsula, or so it seemed.”

  “If Sweeney had hoped to kill your father under the cover of a battle, he must have felt very frustrated.”

  “When General Moore decided we must fall back to Corunna, everyone felt frustrated.”

  “Think how Sweeney must have felt then. No opportunity had presented itself, and suddenly the whole army was turned back, destined to return home. He also must have become very desperate indeed.”

  She shivered. “We do not know that this is true.”

  “I will put some of these questions to Sweeney before they take him away. One thing is certain; there were payments made to Sweeney from the earl’s accounts. I think that your cousin never thought anyone would connect them.”


  “How shall I ever be able to tell my grandmother? Or even Lady Rawlings, Lord Coudray’s sister?”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “My cousin said she would want to see me, but he kept putting off the visit, saying she was not well enough. He said she never gave up on my father. Today I had decided to go to her without his permission. That is why I was here when Sweeney came.”

  “And where exactly did he say this grandmother was supposed to be?”

  Something like dread began to uncurl in the pit of Falcon’s stomach. “In the dower house. Why, what do you mean?”

  Lord Danebridge spoke very gently. “He was lying. Your grandmother died a year ago, my love. Mr. Fallesby told me.”

  Falcon’s control finally crumbled. She felt as if her cousin had performed another murder at that very instant, robbing Falcon of one more family member. One huge sob rose up out of her throat. Then, like a flood through a breaking dam, her grief poured out. Awash in tears, she grieved not only for the dead, but also for the living, the lost possibilities and hopes, the dreams that could never be fulfilled. Overwhelmed by emotion, she hardly noticed when the baron took her into his arms again and tried to comfort her with gentle strokes and soothing words.

  “Cry,” he murmured. “You have more than ample reason. It is all right. Everything is going to be all right.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Falcon knew in her heart that everything was definitely not going to be all right. Lord Danebridge was in love with her. That he had said so openly in front of witnesses mattered less to her than his actions. He was here. He had pursued his investigation despite her cruel rejection and he had come here to find her. That alone proclaimed his love to her beyond any doubting. If it had not, the look in his eyes when he had finally released her from his embrace would have told her as much.