Phineas didn’t reply. Doubt rushed in, stabbing mercilessly, and Adam twisted the knife. “There is also the additional evidence that Isobel’s husband and her brother-in-law have both been involved with smuggling. And Renshaw, of course. Isn’t Evelyn a friend of Isobel’s?”
“She’s a friend of Marianne’s as well,” Phineas objected. “Isobel was a girl when she married Maitland!”
“And shortly after her marriage she inherited Waterfield Abbey. That’s when Robert was killed, Phineas, while smuggling, or worse. I think it’s clear his widow has moved on to greater misdeeds.” He had the gall to look pitying. “I’m sure you could think of other times when Isobel’s behavior was suspicious. I doubt you’ve told me everything.”
There was the scanty lace negligee she wore the night he’d confronted her in her bedchamber, a most unwidowly garment. And her desperate fury when she denied the handkerchief was hers.
Phineas shut his eyes. Adam was right. He must be. The evidence was clear enough. He’d been utterly fooled by a spy cleverer than himself, and Marianne had walked right into the ultimate trap Isobel set for him. If he’d received the letter, been lured into her web of deceit, he wouldn’t have been at the Bosun’s Belle tonight.
His skin prickled.
When they got to Maitland House, he didn’t bother to knock.
Chapter 44
“What are you doing here?” Jane Kirk demanded rudely as Phineas strode down the hall. She stood in his path at the foot of the stairs, glaring at him. “It’s too late to be paying calls, my lord. Far too late.”
“Where’s Countess Westlake?” Phineas asked the insolent servant.
“Don’t you mean Isobel, your whore?”
Phineas ignored the taunt. “Answer me!” he bellowed.
Jane flinched. “Lady Marianne isn’t here.”
Phineas glanced up the stairs, but Jane quickly stepped in front of him. “Leave this house at once!” she ordered, but he saw the panic in her eyes.
“Why, Jane? Who is upstairs?”
Her eyes widened as he loomed over her. He caught sight of himself in the mirror behind her. His shirt was bloody, his coat torn, and his eyes were hellish hollows of fury. He looked more like a brigand than a marquess.
“You can’t see Isobel!” Jane insisted shrilly. “They’re sending her away. This is my house now. I’m going to marry the earl, and I’ll be countess, and bloody Isobel will be nothing.” She gripped the banisters with ugly claws, a mad gargoyle guarding a treasure.
“Isn’t he a little young?” Phineas asked. Had Jane gone mad? It appeared to be a hazard of living in this house.
“Not the child,” she smirked. “Children die all the time. Charles is Earl of Ashdown. Or will be very soon.”
Phineas’s blood ran cold.
Isobel’s letter wasn’t a ruse.
She wasn’t part of the Maitlands’ plots. She was a victim, and so was her son. Relief flooded through him, then dread, as he read the gleam of madness in Jane’s eyes.
“Where is the boy, Jane. Is he upstairs?” he asked, advancing on her.
She laughed. “He’s gone,” she said merrily. “Gone with Honoria and Charles for a holiday.”
His heart skipped a beat. It meant Robin had probably been in the coach at the Bosun’s Belle. Phineas shoved past her to climb the stairs; he had to find Isobel. He prayed it wasn’t too late. Jane came after him and grabbed hold with surprising strength, tugging on his wounded arm. “You can’t go up there!”
With a grunt of pain, he pulled free. Jane shrieked as she lost her balance and tumbled down the stairs.
Phineas didn’t turn to see what had happened to her. He climbed the stairs. Adam would be coming in through the back any minute, and he could see to the servant.
The door to Isobel’s room was locked. He didn’t have the time or the patience for niceties. He drew his pistol and kicked the door in.
A figure by the window thrashed, and Phineas spun, aimed, and found himself menacing a pair of curtains that billowed in the breeze coming through the open window. “Isobel?” he called.
He opened the wardrobe, checked behind the bed curtains, but the room was empty.
He crossed to the open window and looked down. Had she fallen, or jumped, or been pushed? The wild hatred in Jane Kirk’s eyes sprang to mind, and his heart skipped a beat.
Then he remembered how Isobel had watched him climb out of her window.
“She wouldn’t,” he murmured. But someone had. The bushes below were crushed and broken.
Clever girl!
She’d waited in vain for him to come in answer to her letter. Her son was in danger and she’d had no other way. His breath caught in his throat as he imagined her trying to climb down the side of the house for what was undoubtedly the first time, afraid, alone and in the dark.
Stupid woman!
He looked again, expecting to see her lying beneath the window, neck broken, but the shadows were empty. He frowned, searching the street. If she’d survived the climb, then where the hell was she?
He looked around the room for a clue. The bed was rumpled, the wardrobe empty. The soft hint of Isobel’s scent floated on the air, coming from the overturned bottle of perfume on the little desk. Out of habit, he crossed to open the drawer. Locked. He broke it open. Sheets of monogrammed stationery lay in an orderly stack next to quill pens, sealing wax, and a signet with her initials.
Everything was in perfect order. But perfect order always made him suspicious. Order hid the deepest secrets. He reached into the back of the drawer.
Phineas shut his eyes as a thin panel of wood shifted at his touch. Isobel had secrets after all. The kind of secrets she kept behind a false panel in a locked drawer.
Angry, he ripped it out, reached inside, and touched—
Silk?
He pulled it out and held it up. A silk chemise, pale pink, unfurled with a sigh and warmed in his grip.
Surprising, perhaps, and most definitely titillating, but hardly criminal. Distracted, he crammed it into his pocket and reached for another hidden garment, a gossamer nightgown, sinfully cut, as fine as the one she’d been wearing the last time he was there. He swallowed hard, imagining—
“What’s that?” Jane Kirk demanded. The garment was so sheer he could see her right through it. She was leaning against the open door, her eyes burning in her pallid face. She crossed the room and snatched the nightgown out of his hand, examining it with a gasp of shock. “This is silk, and expensive! She isn’t allowed to wear such things!”
“Why can’t Isobel wear silk?” Phineas asked.
“Because of the will,” Jane hissed. “Because she might get ideas if she were allowed clothing such as this. Ideas like you.” She dropped the garment as if it burned. “It hardly matters now.”
Her cold smile chilled his blood.
“Where is she?” he demanded. He would have grabbed her shoulders, shaken the information out of her, but his arm was throbbing and fresh blood dripped from his sleeve.
Jane laughed and approached him. “You don’t need her. If you want the Countess of Ashdown, my lord, then take me.” She rubbed a hand over her breast and grinned. “This is my room now, my bed. I’ll wear the silk, even put on her perfume, if you like.”
Phineas felt revulsion coil through his gut, and fought to keep it from showing on his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the embroidered handkerchief, holding the rose and the letter M before Jane’s eyes. “What about this? Will you hold it, caress me with it?” he asked.
Her smile faded. “Where did you get that?” she whispered, not touching it.
“Who is Lady M, Jane? Is it you?”
She squinted at him as if he were daft. “M? It isn’t an M.”
She moved back toward the door. “You want to know? I suppose there’s no danger in showing you, since it all belongs to me now.”
Phineas followed her down the hall to Honoria’s suite, his pistol tucked in his belt wh
ere he could reach it. Where the hell was Adam? Perhaps he’d found Marianne. His heart clenched, fearing the worst, since nothing good had happened tonight.
Jane held the candle high and gazed around the room with a satisfied smirk. “When I marry Charles, I will make Honoria give up this room. It will be mine, and so will the jewels,” she said. “They will all need to be reset, since they belonged to Isobel’s harlot of a mother, but I don’t suppose stones hold a taint. There’s an emerald as big as my eye. Honoria doesn’t think I know, but I see everything that goes on in this house, I know all their secrets.”
Phineas’s flesh crawled at the cold pride in her eyes. Every nerve was on alert as she pointed at Honoria’s portrait.
“There.” Jane’s bony finger cast a black shadow across her mistress’s painted visage. She scuttled forward to touch the wooden paneling under the portrait, her nails scrabbling on the wood. A hidden latch clicked, and she opened a small recess filled with documents and a stack of velvet jewelry cases. She pulled out a narrow box.
“See?” she said, pointing to the monogram on the box. “It’s the same W, the same rose.” She gave him a mocking smile. “It’s not an M, it’s a W, for Waterfield. That handkerchief belonged to Isobel’s mother. There were more, but Lady Honoria sent them off with letters to a certain friend of hers.”
“Philip Renshaw?” Phineas guessed.
Jane’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know?” She opened the box and gasped. “No!” She threw the empty case to the floor and picked up another.
Phineas leaned against the wall and stared at the embroidered W.
It was the symbol for a place, and a plot, not a person.
“They’re gone!” Jane howled. “All the jewels are gone! Honoria took them with her!”
Adam appeared in the doorway. He looked haggard, his pistol drawn. “Marianne isn’t here. I found the servants locked in the cellar, but they swear they don’t know anything.” He frowned at the sight of Jane, still searching the empty cases, moaning. “What’s happening in here?” he asked.
Phineas bent to pick up the handkerchief Jane had dropped and held it out. “You are wrong about Isobel. Her note said that she and Robin were in danger. It wasn’t a trick. Charles and Honoria took the boy with them earlier. He was probably in the coach at the inn.”
Adam’s jaw tightened. “Miss Kirk, where is my wife?” he demanded, grabbing her arm.
Jane looked up, her brow furrowed. “How would I know?” she asked rudely.
“You seem to know more than any servant should,” Adam replied. “Was my wife here this evening to see Lady Isobel?” He shoved his pistol against her temple. “Answer me!”
Jane jumped away from the gun with a cry, and bumped into the heavy gilt frame of Honoria’s portrait.
For a moment the huge picture shuddered, as if the painted face was coming to life. Jane gasped, and stared up as it tipped forward. “Honoria!” she screamed, but it was too late. Her mistress was upon her, and the heavy frame thwacked her on the head with a dull crunch. She crumpled under the weight of the portrait and lay still.
Phineas sank into a chair, too small and delicate for a man’s frame, and probably for Honoria’s as well. Adam tucked his gun into his belt and turned away from the fallen servant. “You’re bleeding again, Phin,” he said coolly.
He crossed and pulled the bell, and a maid appeared, her eyes widening at the sight of the legs sticking out from beneath the portrait, and at Phineas’s battered appearance.
“Hot water and bandages,” Adam ordered. “Laudanum as well, if you’ve got it.”
“Where’s Lady Isobel?” the girl gasped, forgetting her manners. She pointed to the portrait. “She isn’t—”
“It’s Miss Kirk,” Phineas said. “Lady Honoria knocked her senseless.”
The girl’s eyes glared at the parts of Jane that stuck out from under the canvas. “She locked us in the cellar, told Nurse that Lord Charles and Lady Honoria were taking Robin away, had the poor woman in a panic, and Isobel—” She paused, eyes frantic. “If you please, my lords, where is Lady Isobel?”
Phineas’s vision wavered and he leaned forward, fighting to stay conscious. He stared at the scattered jewel boxes on the floor, and the W mocked him, whispered to him. He drew a sharp breath and looked at Adam.
“It’s a W, Adam, not an M. It stands for Waterfield Abbey. Honoria has been using Charlotte Fraser’s handkerchiefs to indicate a place, not a person. I think it’s a safe bet she and Charles are on their way to Waterfield now, with Renshaw, and Isobel is following, to save her son. Marianne is probably with her.”
He watched Adam’s complexion fade to ash. “Waterfield? God, Phineas, no! They’re walking into a trap!” He ran a hand through his hair.
“What the hell do you mean?” Phineas demanded.
Adam stared at him, his lips tight, his eyes flat and hard.
Phineas got to his feet slowly. There was something—everything—that Adam wasn’t telling him. “What trap?” he demanded.
“The kidnappers came to Aylesbury for King Louis yesterday,” Adam said finally. “We let them abduct an imposter so we could follow them to the real conspirators. If Renshaw is on his way to Waterfield—” He swallowed. “If Marianne gets in the way—”
Phineas felt his stomach drop into his boots. “You didn’t think to tell me this?”
Adam raised his chin. “Sorry, old man. I thought you were losing your touch. All the talk of retiring and mysterious masked women. And you’ve been playing games with Maitland’s sister-in-law. I wasn’t sure I could trust you.” He hesitated, his eyes hollow. “Can I?”
Phineas didn’t bother to answer. Adam’s mistrust was as bitter as the pain of the bullet wound. It was going to be a long night, and a hard ride to Kent, and the pain was only going to get worse. “Any whisky or brandy available?” he asked the maid.
But she was kicking away the empty jewel boxes, reaching into the safe for a vial of laudanum. “It looks like she’s taken everything, as if she wasn’t coming back!” she said, and dislodged a sheaf of papers from the safe. They landed on the floor at Phineas’s feet, and he picked them up, felt his head spin. He stuffed them into his pocket, gritting his teeth against the pain. He’d read them later.
“Phineas?” It sounded like Adam was speaking to him through a tunnel. “Fetch some bandages,” his brother-in-law barked at the maid, snatching the laudanum out of her hand. “I’m leaving you here, Blackwood,” he said as the maid left the room. “I’ll go to Waterfield myself.”
Phineas pulled his battered body upright and knocked the vial out of Adam’s grip. “There’s no way in hell I’m staying behind. Isobel asked me for help, and I damn near let you convince me she was a traitor. I am going to find her and Robin, and once this mission is over, I’m resigning. I’m going to marry Isobel, and you can find someone else to do your bidding.”
“This isn’t finished yet,” Adam said stiffly, and Phineas turned to glare at him.
“When it is, and I’ve recovered from this little injury, I’m going to punch that superior expression off your face for good.” Adam surprised him by grinning. “What’s so damned funny?”
“You,” Adam said. “I’m trying to imagine you married, and to Isobel Maitland, of all the women in England.”
Clearly, Adam didn’t know her, couldn’t see her yet, the ravishing woman behind the dull mask she wore. But he would. “Let’s go,” Phineas growled. His hand was sticky with blood, and he used the lace handkerchief to wipe it off, then tossed the smuggler’s token away. “This wound needs stitching. You can sew it for me on the way.”
Adam winced. “My needlework is only slightly better than Marianne’s.”
“Marianne can’t sew a straight line,” Phineas said through gritted teeth.
“Nor can I. But my sailors say that ladies love a man with a scar.”
In the darkest hour of the night, a cart rumbled up to the door of Maitland House. The horse’s hooves were wrap
ped in rags to keep them silent on the cobbled streets.
“I’ve come to collect a lady,” a hooded man told Finch at the door. The other servants hovered behind the butler, staring at the man’s scarred face with wide eyes.
“This way, if you please,” Sarah said, taking charge. “She’s right in here, taking a nap.” She led the way into the salon and pointed at the prone figure on the settee. Her face was pale, and there was a damp cloth draped over her forehead, blood blooming on it like a single red rose.
The visitor didn’t ask any questions. He picked up Jane Kirk, put her into the cart, and drove away.
Chapter 45
“Isobel!” Honoria looked as if she were seeing a ghost when Isobel walked into the drawing room at Waterfield Abbey. Her bulbous eyes widened even further when she caught sight of Marianne. “And Countess Westlake as well. What an unexpected surprise.”
“Where’s Robin?” Isobel demanded, not bothering with explanations. Her stomach was tight with fear for her child, and fury.
Honoria didn’t answer. Instead she crossed the room to settle herself on a settee like a queen, glaring at her visitors in stubborn silence.
Isobel raised the pistol Marianne had given her. Her grip was sweaty, her hands shaking. “Where is my son?” she asked again, her teeth clenched. For a moment her mother-in-law’s eyes widened as she stared at the weapon. Then she laughed.
“Oh, do put that away, Isobel. You’re too much of a mouse to shoot anyone.” She slid a scornful glance over Marianne. “I did not expect you to honor us, Countess Westlake.” She waved a hand around the dusty room. “As you can see, we’ve only just arrived, and we are not in a fit state to receive guests.”
Isobel looked around the once-familiar room. It was faded and out of date, like an old woman in a threadbare shawl. The paintings she remembered, the porcelain figurines her mother had treasured, were gone. There was no sign of Robin or Charles.
“We’re not visiting,” Marianne said tartly. “We’ve come to fetch Lord Robin.”
Secrets of a Proper Countess Page 28