Unlacing the Innocent Miss

by Margaret McPhee

  She loved Nell and was happy for her sister, but Nell and Marcus’s happiness, their love, reminded her too much of what she had lost and would never regain. Wolf was gone and he would not be coming back. According to Nell, even their brother Nathan had found love and was happily married. She could begrudge neither Nell nor Nathan their happiness, but her own heart was still wounded and sore. She heard the thump of footsteps striding past her door and a stifled giggle before Nell’s whispered warnings that Marcus would drop her and that Rosalind would hear.

  ‘I do not care if the whole world hears,’ came Marcus’s reply, and then the door to their chamber shut and Rosalind heard nothing more. She thought of Wolf and of their own sweet lovemaking…And forced herself to stop. This would not do at all.

  She slipped on a dark green pelisse to match her dress, fitted on her brown bonnet and blue kid gloves that were rather the worse for wear from her journey down the length of the country, and slipped quietly from the bedroom. She tiptoed down the stairs to the black and white chequered hallway, where she asked a passing maid where she might catch a hackney coach to Spitalfields, before leaving. The front door closed silently behind her. She had ghosts to lay to rest and her mind to clear, and neither could be done in this house.

  The clock in the hallway struck ten.

  Wolf glanced at his pocket watch before descending from his carriage. Eleven o’clock. He wondered again if the hour was too early to call upon Lord Stanegate, but dismissed the thought, knowing that he had been up since seven chafing to get here. Stanegate needed to be warned for Rosalind’s sake, and there was always the chance that Wolf might catch a glimpse of Rosalind while in Bruton Street. A spur of excitement pricked him at that thought. Rosalind. He doubted he had gone five minutes without thinking of her, no matter how hard he tried not to.

  Stanegate was still tweaking his cravat into place when he entered the same trade reception room in which Wolf waited.

  ‘I had not thought to see you again, Mr Wolversley.’ Stanegate raked a hand through his tousled hair. He had the look of a man who had just got out of bed, Wolf noted somewhat sourly.

  ‘I am here on a matter of importance, to give you warning concerning a particular man. Some know him as the Gypsy, Stephano Beshaley, others as the gentleman, Stephen Hebden.’

  ‘Beshaley!’ Stanegate’s gaze shot round.

  ‘Do you know of him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Beshaley and I have had dealings in the past.’

  ‘Then he has already come after your wife?’

  ‘His vendetta has encompassed more than Lady Stanegate.’

  Wolf’s face hardened. ‘Nice of you to warn Rosalind.’

  ‘We did not know of Miss Wardale’s whereabouts. My wife lost contact with her many years ago.’

  ‘And after the newspaper article was published about Rosalind?’

  ‘I made my own discreet enquiries,’ said Stanegate coldly. ‘There was nothing that could be done until she was found.’

  ‘You should have warned her of Beshaley. And you should have warned me.’

  ‘Pray tell me why on earth I should tell you aught of this family’s business, for it is certainly none of yours, sir. I know who you are. I know what you are. And I resent your overfamiliar tone when speaking of my sister-by-marriage.’

  ‘Do you indeed?’ Wolf’s eyes were like flint. ‘Then maybe I should tell you that Beshaley was the man behind the jewel theft in which Rosalind was framed.’

  Stanegate’s brow rose at that.

  Wolf ignored it and continued on. ‘He was the man behind that damnable scandalmongering newspaper article. He has sought to ruin Rosalind completely and utterly. And I am not certain that he will be content with how matters have ended.’

  ‘Beshaley is indeed a dangerous man, Mr Wolversley, but Miss Wardale is safe with us. Beshaley would not dare show his face round here again.’

  Wolf’s gaze was hard. His words were low, but the threat contained in them was unmistakable. ‘Then I hold you responsible for Miss Wardale’s safety.’

  Stanegate’s manner was positively icy. ‘The lady’s welfare is none of your concern, sir.’

  Wolf stepped closer to Stanegate and spoke quietly. ‘On the contrary, my lord, it is everything of my concern, as you will discover should aught befall her while she is within your care.’

  ‘Are you threatening me, Mr Wolversley?’ Stanegate asked with incredulity.

  A knock at the door sounded and Lady Stanegate appeared. She smiled and Wolf was instantly reminded of Rosalind.

  ‘Mr Wolversley.’ The smile deepened and she held out her hand to him.

  The atmosphere within the small room was rank with animosity, but Lady Stanegate appeared not to notice that he and her husband were facing each other like two dogs with hackles raised. Wolf looked at her hand. He was not sure if he should kiss it or shake it. He plumbed for the latter, but felt suddenly awkward. The awkwardness intensified with the lady’s next question.

  ‘Are you here to visit Rosalind?’

  To deny it would seem rude. To agree with it, worse still, given the lay of the land between Stanegate and himself. Given that the lady had already been Beshaley’s target he thought it prudent not to mention the villain’s name in her presence. He cleared his throat. ‘I am here on a matter of business with your husband.’

  ‘But you will surely wish to see my sister while you are here?’

  Temptation beckoned. Wolf wanted it more than anything. He struggled to recall why he had deemed that he and Rosalind should not meet again.

  ‘Mr Wolversley was just leaving,’ said Stanegate coolly.

  ‘I am sure that he can spare some few minutes to take a little tea with Rosalind,’ his wife countered.

  ‘Lady Stanega—’ Wolf began.

  ‘Indeed, I insist upon it.’

  ‘Nell…’ Stanegate said with a warning look.

  She met her husband’s eye, and Wolf could see the unspoken message pass between them. A plea and a promise that she knew what she was doing. Stanegate gave a barely imperceptible inclination of the head.

  ‘Do join my wife, Miss Wardale and myself for tea.’ The dark grey eyes met Wolf’s.

  ‘Please do,’ added Lady Stanegate.

  There was no way out without delivering a slight to Stanegate’s wife, and whatever Wolf thought of Stanegate, he was not about to do that. He thought again of Rosalind. ‘Thank you.’

  But when Rosalind was sent for, she could not be found.

  Wolf grew uneasy, suspecting that Rosalind knew he was here and did not want to see him. He could not blame her for that, but it still hurt. But then it emerged from a small chambermaid that Miss Wardale had left the house earlier that morning having asked directions to Spitalfields.

  ‘Mama’s grave,’ uttered Lady Stanegate.

  ‘I am sorry, Nell,’ said Stanegate. ‘She came to me this morning asking questions. I had no idea that she meant to visit the grave alone and today.’

  ‘She should be safe enough, should she not?’ Lady Stanegate’s words were spoken with more hope than belief. ‘There is no one around who should desire to hurt her, is there?’

  Wolf met Stanegate’s gaze with hard piercing thoroughness until the viscount finally glanced away at his wife.

  ‘It seems that Stephano Beshaley has been up to his old tricks again. He is in London, Nell.’

  Lady Stanegate’s eyes widened. ‘But he cannot know where she is. He cannot try to hurt her…’

  ‘He already has,’ said Wolf.

  Lady Stanegate gave a little cry and the colour seemed to drain from her face. Stanegate moved to support her.

  ‘Do not worry, dearest. I will send the carriage to Christ Church immediately.’

  But Wolf stepped forward. ‘There is no need, Stanegate. I will go.’

  ‘Look here—’ Stanegate started to say.

  His wife took his hand in her own. ‘Let him go, Marc. He will bring her back safely to us.’

  Wo
lf was already gone, the tread of hurried booted footsteps echoing through the hall, and the heavy front door slamming in his wake.

  ‘There is something you should know about Rosalind and Mr Wolversley,’ Lady Stanegate said softly to her husband.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The hackney coach drew up outside Christ Church in Spitalfields. Rosalind paid the driver the last of her money and climbed down to gaze upon the huge white columns that fronted the building. It was a large church, built during the reign of Queen Anne, with an angular spire that projected into the cloudless blue sky. She walked through the deserted columns, her footsteps echoing on the bare stone paving, and headed into the graveyard. She was quite alone, not another living soul to be seen, yet that only seemed to add to the serenity of the place.

  She wandered along the gravel pathway past the gravestones and the unmarked paupers’ graves and the leafy saplings planted nearby. She read the name on each stone, her feet carrying her onward until, at last, she came to the one that she sought: a small, white-marble stone with the epitaph engraved with black letters. It said simply:

  Catherine Wardale,

  Beloved mother

  Died 12th January 1810, aged 47

  Nothing more.

  She stood there quietly, head bowed, thinking of her mother, remembering, praying, until at last she felt a sense of acceptance, and in that knowledge was a certain comfort.

  A quiet tread sounded behind her and Rosalind knew that she was no longer alone. And strangely, for someone who had spent most of her life hiding and running and afraid, she felt no fear. The thought flashed in her head that it was Evedon come to get her after all. She turned to face him.

  The man stood behind her some little distance away, dressed all in black. A finely tailored coat, black breeches and long black riding boots. A black waistcoat and cravat tied as if he were attending the most fashionable of events, and a shirt that was so pristine white as to appear that he had just had it delivered that morning. And from one earlobe came the glint of a small gold hoop. Not Evedon, but the dark stranger. The man Wolf had named Stephano Beshaley. The man who had gone to such lengths to destroy her.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Wardale.’ His voice was arrogant, indolent almost, with something about it that struck her as strange. The lightest hint of a foreign accent perhaps, or maybe just a lilt to his words.

  She looked up into his face, seeing him at close range for the first time.

  ‘You!’ she whispered.

  ‘At your service, Lady Rosalind.’ He affected a mock bow, and smiled a smile that had nothing of friendship in it and yet was so compulsive that she could not look away. His skin was olive, his eyes as black as his hair, set in a face that was undeniably handsome. His body was lithe; his movements smooth, unhurried. He was sleek and wary and watchful as a great black cat. His hands were uncovered, a pair of black leather gloves held carelessly in one grip.

  ‘We meet at last.’ He reached his hand out, his long brown fingers lifting her hand to his mouth. She felt the warmth of his lips touch to the back of her hand, and the caress of his breath over her skin. The dark eyes met hers; there was something in them that both shocked and fascinated her.

  ‘You are not afraid?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ It was the truth, she realized.

  He smiled again in that darkly dangerous way, and she felt the shiver ripple through her, from the core of her belly to the tips of her breasts.

  ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she asked; her voice was quite calm, nonchalant even.

  ‘Did not your sister tell you?’

  ‘Nell?’ And suddenly those cryptic references to safety made by Nell and Marcus made sense. ‘You tried to ruin her too.’ She stared up at him, unable to hide her horror at the realization. An awful possibility made itself known to her. ‘And Nathan?’

  ‘And Nathan,’ he confirmed with a lazy smile. ‘There are too many secrets in families. Too much shame to be hidden.’ And she had the sensation that it was not only her family of which he spoke.

  He winced and pressed his fingers to his forehead as if he was in pain.

  ‘Dear Lord,’ she whispered.

  ‘He shall not help you,’ Beshaley said. ‘He certainly never helped me, no matter how much I prayed.’

  She did not know how to respond to that.

  In the silence that followed, she could hear the melodic song of a blackbird and, glancing over at the budding bushes from where the call sounded, saw the small dark movement dart beneath the branches. When she looked at Beshaley again, there was a silver pistol in his hand and it was pointing at her. She could not help noticing the exquisite workmanship of the pattern engraved upon its barrel, and the fine ivory handle.

  ‘Are you going to kill me?’ No panic, not even the slightest fear. Part of her wanted to laugh with the irony of it.

  ‘No. I merely wish to finish what I started. Evedon’s prosecution will mean that you cannot climb so easily back into favour by virtue of your noble relations. We are for Evedon House.’ He moved, taking her arm in his, with the deadly pistol held low within the other. ‘My carriage is not far.’

  Her eyes scanned the church yard seeking a means of escape, but found none.

  A dark unmarked carriage sat parked at the side of the road. As they neared it, she resolved to take her chances but Stephano Beshaley seemed to sense it and she felt the soft press of the pistol’s muzzle against her belly.

  She had little choice other than to climb up the steps that the exotic-looking manservant kicked down into place, and enter into the coach.

  Compared to the bright sunshine outside, the carriage interior was dim and gloomy. She noticed that the thick black velvet curtains had been closed across most of the windows to block out the majority of the light.

  Beshaley took his seat opposite her, before the door thudded shut and the coach moved off with only the gentlest of sways.

  ‘If you are taking me to Evedon, then do you not think that you owe me an explanation as to why you have sought to hurt me and my family?’

  ‘I owe your family nothing but hurt,’ he retorted, then fell silent, staring down at the floor below, so that she thought that he would tell her nothing. Then he looked at her again, shifting forward in his seat to lean towards her. ‘Do you not know who am I?’

  ‘Wolf told me you are a gem merchant, Mr Beshaley.’

  ‘Ah, Wolversley,’ he sighed, ‘the thief-taker who would save my little thief.’ And his dark eyes glittered in the gloom of the carriage. He laughed softly, and she sensed in him the same underlying danger that was in Wolf, that same feral unpredictability. He was shorter than Wolf, narrower but lithe; she did not doubt his strength.

  ‘I do not know you, sir. I do not understand what this is all about.’

  ‘The sins of their fathers, Rosalind—’ he sounded almost tired ‘—for which the children will pay.’

  ‘My father is dead, sir.’

  ‘Hanged,’ he said and the dark eyes were on her once again. She remembered the black silken noose that had swung from both Evedon’s and Wolf’s fingers. ‘For murder.’

  ‘So they said.’ She watched him carefully, not understanding where this was leading.

  ‘Whom did he kill, Rosalind? Who was his victim?’

  She shook her head as if to deny it.

  ‘Do you even know?’

  ‘A man by the name of Framlingham.’

  ‘Lord Framlingham—Christopher Hebden,’ said Beshaley. ‘My father.’

  She stared at him, eyes wide, pulse racing. ‘But your name is Beshaley.’

  ‘Beshaley was my mother’s name; she was Romany and my father’s mistress; I was born Stephen Hebden and raised for the first seven years of my life as a Hebden in the family home.’

  She stared as if she could not believe what she was hearing.

  ‘Your father murdered mine and, by so doing, he cost my birth mother her life and ruined mine. I was cast out of the Hebden family. They left me
in a foundling home, from where I ended up living on the streets before my mother’s people found me and took me in.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Are you?’ he asked. And when those dark eyes met hers, she felt the shiver pass right through her body.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You were a child the same as me. We none of us deserved what happened.’

  ‘It is too late. What was foretold cannot be undone. The blood of all those with a hand in what happened is cursed—the Hebdens, the Carlows, but most of all, the Wardales, for it was your father who did the deed. You cannot escape it; you are cursed to be ruined by scandal, Miss Wardale. That is why I cannot let Wolf save you.’

  ‘I am utterly ruined. You have seen to that. What need had you for the newspaper article? What need have you to do more now? The theft alone was enough to ruin me, if that is what you wanted.’

  ‘Alas, my sweet girl,’ he said, ‘it was not. Evedon was going to hush the whole thing up. I had to force his hand, so to speak, with the newspaper. And as for now: Stanegate is not without connections. A year in the country while the scandal dies and then you would be back as if nothing had ever happened.’

  ‘You know it would not be so,’ she countered.

  ‘If Wolf has his way, it will.’

  ‘Are you going to kill me?’ she asked again, not trusting that he meant to take her to Evedon. She was not pa nicking. Indeed she felt strangely calm as she faced him in the carriage.

  As he reached across to her, she saw the worked-silver band that surrounded his wrist. He stroked a single long brown finger down the side of her cheek, so gently, with such sensuality, that she gasped aloud at the sensations it wrought. ‘The murderer’s blood is in your veins, Rosalind,’ and her name was like a caress upon his lips, ‘not mine.’