Masquerade

by Susan Carroll

  He merely laughed, giving her chin a hard pinch. "Ah, sweet, indeed, and a tongue to match."

  He turned to Armande, sweeping into a mocking bow. "By all the saints, if it isn't his lairdship, the Marquis de Varnais. A good day to your worship. You're looking elegant enough to coax the snakes back into Ireland."

  "Mr. Fitzhurst." Armande's smile was cold. "You seem to become more Irish each time I meet you."

  "Ah, well, 'tis a damn sight cleverer than becoming more English."

  Phaedra's breath snagged in her throat, but Armande's only acknowledgment of her cousin's biting comment was a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. He bowed and tried to move on his way, but Gilly barred his path, her cousin's chin tilted to a pugnacious angle.

  "I have recently returned from France. A charming country. But sure and I don't have to be telling your lairdship that."

  Armande's lips compressed as he nodded in polite agreement. Once again he tried to sidestep her cousin, but Gilly laid a restraining hand upon his arm.

  "I even had the good fortune to travel by your lairdship's own estates, and what do you fancy I-"

  "Gilly!" Phaedra cried. She sensed the belligerence coursing beneath her cousin's lazy smile, the tension masked behind Armande's expression of indifference.

  Armande removed Gilly's hand from his sleeve in an elaborately courteous manner. "I am glad you had such a rewarding journey," he said. He took out his snuffbox, flicking open the lid, the gesture laden with weariness almost as though he himself had conceived a distaste for the role he had to play. "You have not been spending your money unwisely again, I hope?"

  "After all your grand advice when last we met? Certainly not. I expect far greater results from my investments this time." Armande closed the snuffbox with a click. Phaedra wondered if he realized he had forgotten to pretend to take a pinch.

  "Indeed, Mr. Fitzhurst?" he said. He looked directly into Gilly's eyes. "Well, I wish you a long life in which to enjoy it."

  Gilly blinked, astonished; and Armande managed to walk past him with an air of quiet dignity. Her cousin let out his breath in a long, low whistle.

  "What a cool devil! I think I have been rather silkily threatened, but stap me, if for an instant I didn't fancy his good wishes were sincere."

  Phaedra glared at him, realizing how her hands had trembled during the exchange. It had been like watching two duelists facing each other and wondering who would be goaded into striking first.

  "I shouldn't wonder if he had threatened you when you were doing your damnedest to provoke him."

  "I was only seeking to know the man better, my dear." Gilly’s innocent expression was belied by the acid in his tones. "Bring forth his warm, caring side you've been telling me so much about. Perchance I’ll become better acquainted with himself before the afternoon is out."

  Phaedra placed her hands upon her hips. "Perchance you'd best stay away from Armande-and the house."

  "Oh, I promise to stay away from him."

  "I warn you, Gilly," she said, "I will be watching you."

  He shot her an aggravating smile and sauntered away, twirling his hat. She had little choice but to dog his footsteps, fearful that at any moment he intended to slip off to the Heath.

  While Gilly joined a group of the older lads in playing at ninepins, she hovered in the background, taking care to keep her cousin constantly in sight, all the while affecting a deep interest in the game. When someone tugged at her sleeve, she pulled away without glancing around.

  "Phaedra," Jonathan pleaded. "You must give me but a moment of your time."

  "Not now," she started to protest, then swallowed the words as she recalled guiltily that she tended to avoid Jonathan too often of late. The poor man appeared nearly ill with worry over something. She sighed, offering her hand in a gesture of acquiescence, permitting Jonathan to lead her to a bench where she could still keep Gilly within her line of vision.

  Knowing Jonathan, she was certain whatever had caused this state of anxiety would prove nothing more than a tempest in a teapot. She did not even feel startled when Burnell announced gravely, "Phaedra, I am afraid you may be in danger."

  Phaedra forced a smile to her lips, her eyes drawn to where Gilly hurled the ball, scattering the heavy wooden pins. "Jonathan, I assure you, despite the heat, I am not planning to go swimming or do anything else which might distress you."

  "I am worried about this Robin Goodfellow affair," he said with a sharp edge to his voice. She glanced up at him in surprise.

  "Phaedra, it is that last piece you wrote. You have caused riots in the city."

  "I know all about that. Gilly told me."

  "Did he also tell you Jessym's house was attacked by a mob last night, the windows broken while they howled for the real name of Robin Goodfellow?"

  "N-no." She faltered. "I am sorry to hear that. I trust Jessym was unharmed?"

  "Aye, but I hear he would sell his soul to reveal the identity of Goodfellow and deflect the anger from his own door."

  "He can sell away," Phaedra said. "As long as the only two people who ..." Her words trailed off as she was about to offer Jonathan the familiar assurance only he and Gilly knew her secret. But there was now a third. Armande. But no matter how angry he was with her, surely he would never betray her. Even if he had ceased to love her, what possible reason could he have for doing so?

  "Everything will be all right," she said. "This will all pass. And I have decided never to write as Goodfellow again."

  "Have you, my dear?" Jonathan brightened, his careworn features suffused with relief. At least, she thought wryly, her decision to fling aside her only chance for independence had made someone happy.

  He clasped her hand between his own. "Such a wise choice. I am so glad of it." He immediately sobered. "Of course, I realize what the writing meant to you. Your husband has left you in such dire straits, and Sawyer sometimes can be so difficult."

  Such a mild description of her grandfather's irascible temper almost made Phaedra laugh aloud, but she became uncomfortably aware of the way Jonathan was stroking her hand.

  "A woman as young as yourself," he said timidly, "must marry again one day."

  Phaedra gently but firmly disengaged her hand. "You are beginning to sound like Grandfather. He has been doing his best to thrust me into the marquis's path all summer."

  "Varnais? Surely not! Such a strange, cold man."

  Phaedra stiffened, not liking Jonathan's assessment of the man she loved any more than she had Gilly's.

  All the worry lines returned to Jonathan's brow. "Blast Sawyer and his ambition. How could he even think of forcing you to marry that-that-"

  "Do stop fretting, Jonathan. No one is forcing me to marry anyone."

  "But I know too well what Sawyer is like when he gets one of these notions in his head. Nothing ever stops him."

  "Jonathan, I assure you," Phaedra said wearily. "I will never be the Marchioness de Varnais."

  She regretted she had ever mentioned the matter, only seeking to divert Jonathan's thoughts from the Robin Goodfellow affair. Now she had given him something else to worry about. At times his concern for her could be almost oppressive.

  "I am sorry, Phaedra," he said. "I do not mean to annoy you. But I would do anything in the world to protect you."

  "I know that, Jonathan," she said, making one last effort to dispel his anxiety and coax a smile from the solemn man. "Long before Grandfather bullies me into marrying anyone, I will have run off to become a highwayman, just as my cousin and I have always planned." She nodded to where Gilly played at ninepins.

  Where Gilly should have been playing. Her cousin's place had been taken by a chubby boy with a jam-smeared face. Phaedra jerked to her feet, glancing wildly about her. But her desperate gaze encountered nothing but a sea of boys, her grandfather urging them on in a tug of war, the servants bringing forth more cakes and ices. Gilly was nowhere in sight. Nor could she see Armande.

  "Damn him!" she said through clench
ed teeth, although she was not certain which man she cursed. Perhaps both of them. Not taking the time to offer an explanation to the startled Jonathan, Phaedra tore off running toward the house. She heard him calling her name, but she dared not stop.

  She was out of breath when she reached the set of long doors that brought her in at the back of the Green Salon. Clutching her aching side, she hastened into the front hall.

  The house was silent except for the sound of her ragged breathing. She might have fancied herself in some abandoned castle with all the grim accoutrements of war gathering dust upon the walls above her. So quiet was the vast stone chamber, as still as that long ago night when James Lethington must have hidden behind the armor, the mace clutched in his sweating palms.

  Phaedra darted up the stairs as though the armored suit itself could come to life and pursue her. She buried her fear beneath angry muttering. "It is I who shall be doing the murdering this time. I will kill Gilly when I find him."

  That is, if Armande had not already done so. She suppressed the thought, hating herself for even imagining her love capable of such a thing.

  The deathlike silence pervaded the landing as well. Had not one servant remained behind to guard the place? Any other time that wretched Hester Searle would be lurking about to intercept her cousin. Where was the blasted woman the one time Phaedra needed her?

  Phaedra crept toward Armande's bedchamber and pressed her ear to the door. She did not know whether to feel relieved or more alarmed when she detected not a single sound. She tried the door and found it unlocked. Inching it open a crack, she risked a peek inside.

  "Gilly?" she whispered, but received no answer. The room appeared undisturbed, Armande's scant belongings untouched, even down to the small locked chest upon the dressing table. Still, Phaedra did not quite trust her wily cousin not to be hiding somewhere, merely waiting for her to leave.

  She tiptoed into the room, peering into the dressing chamber, behind the draperies and the wardrobe, beginning to feel rather foolish. Perhaps she had once more leapt to conclusions. Perhaps Gilly was not in the house at all, but still somewhere upon the grounds, waiting for his opportunity. She had better hasten out of here, before Armande caught her prowling.

  She left the room, softly closing the door behind her. Should she linger here to see if Gilly did attempt to make good his threat?

  Uneasily, she glanced down the hallway. She hated being alone here. It was as if the Heath itself brooded, watching her with unseen eyes. Adjuring herself to stop being ridiculous, she made her way toward the backstairs. Knowing her cousin, she thought it likely that he might be trying to slip in through the servants' passageway.

  At the bend of the servants' stairway she paused, trying to decide whether to go up or down. If Gilly's object was to search Armande's room, it was not likely he would have gone to the Heath's uppermost floor. But when she glanced up the stairs, she was startled to see the door to her garret flung wide.

  She supposed Gilly might have hidden up there if he thought he heard someone coming, but she doubted it. As she mounted the steps slowly, her heart thudded in a disquieting rhythm. She craned her neck, trying to peer inside the room without actually entering. She could not even bring herself to breathe Gilly's name this time. Why had she never noticed before how gloom-ridden her precious garret was, even in the daytime?

  At last she took a cautious step inside, telling herself she was being even sillier than she had been in Armande's room. Her garret appeared much as it had this morning when she had bolted inside to gather up the papers to show Armande. Of course, she had been in a tearing hurry then.

  Her gaze flew to the desk, the carved gargoyle heads on the legs grimacing back at her, seeming as ever to guard her secrets. Then why was she beset by this eerie feeling of something being not quite right about the garret, something different or out of place?

  She studied each feature of the room, trying to determine what it was that bothered her. Her glance skimmed past the window, the desk, the daybed, the jumbled assortment of three-legged stools, the little table that held her supply of candles, the bookshelf tucked away in its dark corner.

  The bookshelf which should have been empty.

  Phaedra stared, uncertain whether what she saw was reality or some startling phantom image. The shelves, which had stood vacant for so long were now crowded with books.

  Stumbling across the room, she reached for the leather-bound volumes of every size and thickness, half-afraid they would crumble and disappear at her touch. Smollett, Johnson, Goldsmith, Fielding, even her Shakespeare and Aristotle, they were all there, like old friends miraculously restored to life, resurrected from the ashes of Ewan’s fire. Only the bindings were newer, as yet unworn by her loving hands. Nearly every book Ewan had robbed her of had been returned, along with a few new ones. For a moment all she could do was caress the fine-tooled leather, too stunned to do anything else. Then she reached for one-rose-bound book on the top shelf which stood a little out from the others, as though beckoning her.

  The first volume of Gulliver's Travels.

  Phaedra carried it over to the light streaming through the garret window in order to see it more clearly. She opened the book to its flyleaf, half-expecting she might see the inscription her mother had written so long ago, somehow knowing what she would really find.

  The words were not in Lady Siobhan's delicate, spidery hand, but a bold, elegant scrawl. To Phaedra, the inscription read, From your fellow voyager on the sea of dreams.

  He hadn't written his name, but she needed no signature to identify the writer. She thought back to the time she and Armande had spent together these past weeks, those precious stolen moments of making love and those other, equally precious moments when he had encouraged her to talk. She realized now he had been drawing her out, carefully gleaning the title of every treasured volume she had lost, committing the names to memory. What hours he must have spent combing the bookseller's stalls until he found them all.

  She snapped the book closed. And this was the man she regretted having trusted with her secret, the man she feared might do some harm to her beloved cousin. Armande had been right to accuse her of a lack of trust. How quick she always was to doubt him, to lose her faith in his love.

  Even as bitterly betrayed as he was feeling, he had done this for her, gifted her with the return of all her childhood fantasies, that and so much more. Yet she knew he would turn away, not even permitting her to thank him.

  Her lips quivered with a determined smile. She would find him and force him to accept her gratitude, and her love as well. She leaned out the garret window, allowing a soft breeze to caress her face. Suddenly the world that had seemed so dark this morning was bright with promise, as shining as the sun over her head. She started to pull back in when she glimpsed something below that brought her to an abrupt halt.

  Frowning, she stretched out as far as she dared, peering downward at the cobbled pavement. How strange! It looked as though someone had dropped a bundle of black rags. She strained for a closer look and saw that the rags appeared to be sopping up a pool of something red. Blood.

  A strangled sound escaped Phaedra, and she lost her grip on the book. Frozen with horror, she watched the book fall as though time itself had slowed. The volume spun end over end until it landed with a dull thud, only yards from where Hester Searle's lifeless form lay crushed upon the cobblestones.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Phaedra watched the footman drawing the heavy curtains across the Green Salon's windows as Sawyer Weylin had commanded. It was as though her grandfather thought by shutting out the darkness of night, he could shut out the specter of death as well, although the broken form of Hester Searle had been laid out in the housekeeper's room only hours ago.

  Phaedra huddled against the sofa cushions and shivered.It seemed all she would ever remember about this day-the crumpled black silk, Hester lying twisted like a marionette whose strings had been cut, the blood staining the cobblestones. The rest would b
e a montage of faces-the hysterical housemaids, the ghoulish curiosity of the apprentice boys, Jonathan turning away to be sick, Gilly's grim shock, her grandfather's angry disbelief. And Armande-the only one who had not answered her cries, the only one not there.

  She glanced across the room to where Armande now stood, pouring a small quantity of brandy into a crystal goblet. Except for the fact that he had discarded his frock coat and was garbed in only his breeches, ruffled shirt, and waistcoat, he appeared the image of the elegant nobleman. But the lines of his face were grave, etched with a weariness no gentleman of leisure had ever known. Phaedra studied him, trying to recall exactly when Armande had slipped up to join the rest of them. Had it been when Jonathan had left, bearing the last of the apprentice boys away in his carriage? Or later than that, just before she, Gilly, and her grandfather had retired to the Green Salon?

  She didn't know. She supposed she should simply be grateful he was here now. Armande crossed the room to her side, the glass of brandy cupped in his hand. He carefully avoided Gilly, who paced before the empty hearth like a caged beast, sidestepping the sprawled legs of her grandfather. Weylin had ensconced himself in a wing-back chair opposite Phaedra, where he sat drinking brandy, a soured expression twisting his lips.

  Armande bent over her, holding out the glass he had just filled.

  "Here. Drink this," he commanded gently.

  She shook her head, having already refused Lucy's offers of sal volatile, burnt feathers, and whatever other restorative the girl could think of. Armande was more insistent than her maid had been. He raised Phaedra's hand, curling her fingers about the goblet's stem.

  "You need it, love," he said softly. “It is stifling in here, and yet you look half-frozen to death."

  He was right. Her grandfather mopped at the sweat on his brow, yet she felt cold, so very cold. She sipped the golden liquid, which seemed to spread fire through her, but no real warmth. Phaedra peered anxiously up at Armande, but she could read nothing in his winter-blue eyes except concern for her. Her gaze traveled involuntarily to the small table beside the sofa. Atop its glossy surface reposed the dirt-smudged copy of Gulliver's Travels. Someone, she had no idea who, had retrieved the book from where it had fallen beside Hester.