Lord of Sin

by Madeline Hunter

  He may have betrayed her. He might have run away after feeding her lies. She could not pretend that he had used her badly in bed, however. She had welcomed all of it, whether it had been in love or lust.

  She walked into Mary and Anne’s little bedroom and peered out the window to the west. She could not see Lord Lyndale approaching, but he would eventually.

  She did not know how she could face him now. Maybe he would pretend nothing had happened. She had been late to stop him, but she still had done so. He had not liked that, but he had accepted it.

  “Why are you in here?”

  Bride startled. She turned to see Anne’s expression of curiosity.

  “I was looking to see if Joan was coming,” she lied.

  “She will be here soon, I am sure. Come and look at what I finished.”

  Bride followed Anne into the other bedroom. Ten squares of paper were laid out on the writing table.

  “You just left them out like this?” Bride admired Anne’s skills, and loved her sister, but sometimes . . .

  “The servant was busy downstairs. I do not think he would be so bold as to enter our chambers, anyway.”

  Bride was not so sure. She lifted one paper and angled it for the best light. “Perfect, Anne. Just right, as always.”

  Anne blushed. “Once Lord Lyndale leaves, we will have to make more. If Roger was right about the clearances, we will need a lot this winter, after all.”

  That was true. Which meant that Bride would have to journey to Edinburgh and back before the bad weather really set in. She had thought she was done until spring, but it seemed not.

  Joan’s boots sounded on the stairs. She entered the bedroom, snug breeches moving to her long strides, and closed the door. She fished under her waistcoat.

  Bride appraised the way her sister wore those garments, and noted how quickly Joan had changed into them upon returning from town.

  Both she and Joan had turned to the old trunk of men’s clothes in order to spare the household’s few, aging dresses from hard wear. Joan, however, had decided she actually preferred the freedom of men’s attire.

  Since Joan cared for the horse and animals, and did most of the gardening, Bride was hard-pressed to give good reasons why a dress should be worn.

  “Here it is.” Joan handed over a banknote. “Holland did not want to part with it, even though he knew it would be hard to change, short of going to a city. I barely convinced him to let me buy it. It was becoming his prized possession.”

  “He probably has never seen one before. Most people haven’t.” Bride unfolded the fifty pound note. She handed it to Anne.

  Anne peered at the signature at the bottom. “Oh, dear. I fear you are right, Bride.”

  Bride took the note and set it on the dressing table. The three of them stared at it, shaking their heads.

  “You can imagine my shock when Holland waved this in front of me last week, so proud and all,” Bride said.

  “Such careless work is inexcusable. Have they no pride?” Anne asked.

  “It isn’t even close,” Joan mumbled. “Any fool who has seen the banknotes from that time can tell the cashier’s signature is a forgery.”

  “Most notes from thirty years ago are gone,” Bride said. She wanted to believe this one did not herald the disaster she feared.

  Joan’s finger traced the signature. “Since it will not be returned to the Bank of England for silver now, maybe no one will—”

  “I doubt this is the only one. Eventually one will be turned in for the silver,” Bride said.

  “It isn’t even well aged,” Anne said, still clucking her tongue over the shoddy craftsmanship, and completely missing the bigger implications. She held the paper up to the light. “The watermarks are fairly decent, however. The laid lines from the screen are very close to correct.”

  They stood silently together, sharing the weight of this discovery.

  Joan finally asked the question Bride loathed answering. “Is it from Father’s plate?”

  “Only one way to know for certain.” Bride opened the box Mary had snuck out of the studio under Lyndale’s nose.

  She fingered to the bottom and extracted several notes bearing the inscription of the Bank of England. She flipped through them until she came to one for fifty pounds. It only bore the parts of a banknote that were printed from an engraved plate. Like a new note awaiting issuance, the handwritten parts were blank.

  She placed it next to the note Joan had bought at Holland’s inn.

  Her sisters’ heads lowered with hers and they all did a side-by-side comparison of the engraving technique.

  “Oh, dear,” Anne cried.

  “We are doomed,” Joan muttered.

  “Damnation,” Bride whispered.

  Ewan paced his horse north toward the coast. He took his time, crossing another glen and climbing a higher hill. The clear air invigorated him.

  Actually, when experienced on a day like this, with the sun shining and a dry bed waiting, the Highlands were quite magnificent.

  He would have to investigate Lyndale’s various properties when he returned to London. Perhaps a Highland manor was among them. A hunting lodge would be welcome. It might be pleasant to come here for sport, not duty and obligation.

  He crested the hill and headed toward lower ground. He had not seen a soul since Bride left, but a long string of people moved down the road snaking in front of him.

  As he neared, he noticed the cattle and pigs accompanying them. Some mules pulled large wagons laden with furniture and objects.

  The crowd saw him. Arms rose in enthusiastic greeting. Children jumped with excitement. Several women called out to him.

  He had intended to merely cross the road, but their reaction piqued his curiosity. He trotted toward them.

  As he got closer, the voices drifted away. The interest in him abruptly vanished. He waited by the side of the road as the troop trudged on. A few women looked his way resentfully.

  A young man at the back of the line gave him a smile and shrug as he passed. Ewan moved his horse alongside the fellow.

  “Your friends appeared disappointed once they got a good look at me.”

  “Thought ye wus someone else, they did. Stupid galoots.”

  “This is a large group. Where are you all going?”

  The man shrugged again. “The coast for most. I’m thinking I’ll gae tae Nova Scotia, though, if the passage is offerit. I figure I’d gey be poor there instead of tucked agin the sea here, trying to be a fisherman when I’m a crofter. If it gets bad, I cud always eat a tree if I’m in Canada.”

  Ewan surveyed the people walking ahead of him. These must be some of the families thrown off the land by the recent clearances that had been mentioned at dinner yesterday.

  In contrast to the others, his companion showed remarkable spirits. The tired postures and silence of the parade indicated most of the rest had little optimism.

  “Who did they think I was?”

  “The faerie. The sidhe.” He chortled and shook his head. “Last night a group of the wifies held vigil, waitin’. I cuda told them no faerie was comin’, but figured if it helped for a night to hope and wait, no harm done.”

  “They think a faerie will come and restore their homes?”

  “Nah. Just come and give ’em some money to make it easier. There’s been such nonsense stories in the hills for years now. How when some townships get burned out, a faerie comes at night and gives money so’s the people have something to get them started again.”

  “This faerie must be very rich, to be resettling whole townships.”

  The young man did not pick up the sardonic cue. “He daesna give much, but enough to buy the tools and pay the leases and such, so they dinna begin with debts to those waiting to skin them. It’s all just rumors, coming from someone’s dream.” He looked up and grinned. “I cuda told them the rider they saw wasn’t him. You arna faerie, and it isna night.”

  Ewan heartily wished he were a faerie. The
progress of this sad troop was slow, and it would take many days to reach their destinations. The government had tried to alleviate the suffering of the clearances by establishing work on the coast, but as this young men said, what industry waiting would leave them in poverty and debt.

  He fished in his waistcoat pocket, and cursed that only a few coins met his fingers.

  “You seem an honest fellow,” he said. “I regret this is all I have. Take it, however. It should pay for some food for them to share.”

  The young man accepted the coins and nodded his thanks. Ewan turned his horse toward the hills.

  “If ye see that faerie, ye send him this way,” the young man called. “I cud be wrong and the wifies cud be right.”

  Bride kept staring at the fifty pound note.

  “We could be in bad trouble, couldn’t we?” Joan asked. Anne had left to help Jilly with dinner, but Joan had stayed to commiserate.

  “Yes.” Bride sighed out her worry and frustration. “I had so prayed that whoever stole the plates had melted them down. The copper had value in itself.”

  She remembered all too well the day they had all left with Walter to attend a festival in the town. Her heart had sunk when they returned and saw evidence of an intruder.

  The loss of some money and her mother’s necklace had been the least of it. Days later, when checking the trunk where some of her father’s plates were stored, she had found the lock picked and the trunk half empty.

  Not just any plates had been stolen. That trunk had contained very special copper plates that her father had worked before she was born. They bore engravings that displayed the heights of his unsurpassed skill. Unfortunately, they were also plates that revealed his pride and weakness.

  The special plates buried in that trunk had all been forgeries.

  Some of them copied famous old master engravings. Several invented compositions that could be passed off as new discoveries by famous Renaissance artists. A few recreated prints lost to time but known to history.

  The Caraglio prints that so excited Lord Lyndale and been printed off some of those plates. They were not originals, created by Caraglio’s burin in the sixteenth century. They were impressions of engravings made by her father, forgeries intended to expand the Caraglio series showing the “Loves of the Gods.” No doubt her father had seen the same old, tattered images of the addendum that Lyndale’s expert, Johann Passavant, had seen.

  It was not the theft of the plates that forged artistic compositions that concerned her, however. The danger they represented was small compared to the one that worried her now.

  Not only old master forgeries had resided in that trunk.

  Her father had also expertly engraved counterfeit banknote plates.

  And unlike the old masters, he had printed and used the banknotes.

  So had Bride.

  They had both used them sparingly, carefully, as well they might. The penalty for such forgery had been execution, until very recently.

  That forgers now faced transportation to New South Wales, and not death, did little to console her.

  “Whoever stole the plates realized what they had,” she said. “Either they are printing them or they sold them to someone who can. It would take a long time to set it up, so it may have just started. They would need the press, and forging the paper would be difficult. They would need to find someone to do the signature.”

  “Looks to me they got impatient on the last part,” Joan said. “The signature is not good at all.”

  No, it wasn’t. Eventually that would be noticed.

  “They may just keep circulating,” Joan said hopefully.

  “Small notes circulate forever, until they are faded and in tatters. The problem with large denomination notes is that people do turn them in for silver at the bank. You know the bank will check the number and the signature and the paper, Joan, and even have a record of the person to whom the note with that number was originally issued.”

  “Maybe these forgers were careful enough to copy another, good note from that year,” Joan said. “Maybe they duplicated the number, so if one is returned, the bank would think it was good.”

  “Any forger who is careless with the signature is unlikely to get all the details right. If the person doing this is caught, the source of those plates will be learned.” Bride forced herself to spell out the danger. “Those thieves have no reason to shield us. It will be assumed we are accomplices.”

  “Maybe they only printed a few.”

  Bride grabbed at that possibility. Maybe they had only printed a few. Perhaps the risks had been learned when they passed the first ones. And even the boldest forger would only dare pass one or two fifty pound notes a month, unless he was stupid. She had never dared pass a single one herself.

  Unfortunately, criminals often were stupid, which was why they got caught. If these forgers got caught, they could point their fingers right at this house.

  Joan began putting all the papers back in the box. “It appears Walter did not find them.”

  Bride’s heart sickened. Walter had left to track the thieves, to ensure this day would never come. He had sworn he would get the plates back, or see them destroyed.

  Joan’s tone indicated she did not think he had even tried.

  Bride feared he had. If he had confronted men who saw a way to make fortunes for themselves, he had put himself in great danger.

  She prayed that he had lied and abandoned her. She hoped he had not discovered those thieves and those plates.

  Joan stacked the papers Anne had finished. “What about these? Do we dare use them now?”

  Bride held out her hand for them. She gazed at the top one.

  It was not a fifty pound note, but a five pound one. Not a sloppy signature, but a perfect one, as only Anne could forge. Not a rare specimen of money that an inn owner would show all his friends and patrons, but a very common one that merchants and grocers and coachmen saw all the time.

  All her father’s banknote plates were perfect. Superb. No one could handle a burin the way he had. The five and ten pound note plates had not been stolen because they had been in the studio.

  “If we are ever caught, it will not be because of these,” she said. “We have used that plate for years, and no one has ever questioned the notes. We will proceed as before. I will take them to Edinburgh to pass, as I have always done. As for that,” she gestured to the fifty pound forgery, “we do not even know where it was received by that hunting party Holland served. We will have to pray that no more are circulating, that the thieves realized the folly of such an enterprise.”

  Joan took the notes and stuffed them in the box. “I wonder if they have a lot of horses in New South Wales.”

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  A faerie?” Michael greeted Ewan’s tale at dinner with a laugh.

  “A faerie,” Ewan said. “The poor people are reduced to putting their hope in folklore fantasies.”

  “How peculiar,” Bride said.

  She looked only at Michael. Ewan had noticed that she had completely managed to avoid looking at him since his return. Her expression had assumed a stonelike blandness, too.

  That was fine. He could wait. She would most definitely be looking at him, and giving him all her attention, soon enough. The stone would melt, too.

  He had thought of little else besides making love to her since he saw her again. She anticipated it, too. She pretended to ignore him, but they were as starkly conscious of each other as if they still embraced on the hilltop. The mutual awareness tantalized him like a constant feathery touch.

  “A faerie! I cannot imagine what gave rise to such a silly notion,” Joan said, rolling her eyes.

  Anne turned a perplexed frown on her sister. “It is not a silly notion, and you know it.”

  “We know no such thing, Anne,” Bride said pointedly. “We do not want Lord Lyndale to think we are superstitious, do we, dear? Please excuse my sister, gentlemen. She is inclined to believe such fantasi
es herself if one does not watch her.”

  “Of course there are faeries. Everyone knows that,” Anne insisted.

  “Everyone in Scotland,” Ewan explained to Michael.

  “Father thought Anne was part faerie,” Mary piped in. “He thought Mother had—”

  “That is enough, Mary,” Bride interrupted. “Father thought nothing of the kind.”

  “He did too. He said she—”

  “Jilly, please pass Lord Lyndale the sneeps,” Bride said.

  “Faeries,” Michael said, shaking his head. “If someone tried to burn me out of my home, I’d not be waiting for some faerie to make it better once the embers died. Better they should be waiting for Sutherland’s men with knives and pitchforks, if you ask me.”

  “That would only get them hanged,” Ewan said.

  “Some things are worth getting hanged for, then.”

  “One’s own rights, perhaps. But they have none. They are tenants. Neither the land nor the homes are theirs, no matter how long their families have lived there.”

  Suddenly Bride’s attention was on him. A thousand golden lights sparked in her emerald eyes. “Some that you saw today will die because of this. The old and the weak. Some have even died in the fires in years past, and no law punished the men who let them burn, because those men worked for those with power. Do not speak of rights to me, sir. No one has the right to cause such suffering as I have seen.”

  “Father always taught us that there are laws higher than man’s and that one must do what one can to help the poor and weak, no matter what the risks,” Anne said. “He said—”

  Bride’s hand came to rest on Anne’s. A firm squeeze stopped the sentence.

  All the sisters began passing platters. Joan muttered something about the weather.

  Michael’s face had flushed. “No need to be telling me who owns what in this world, sir. I know all about the rights of those who do these things. I took a long walk like those people did, when I was six. Not just Scotland where these things happen. There’s times the law does not handle things fairly, and then it is time to fight.”