Unmasking Miss Lacey

by Isabelle Goddard

  ‘Two highwaymen? Are you certain, Mr Black—I thought they usually worked alone.’ The earl was being deliberately obtuse.

  ‘This ’un was a stripling—learning the trade, no doubt—but I caught ’im in Partridge’s quarters. On the jump.’

  ‘Filling in the time before the next ambush, perhaps?’

  ‘Exactly. I ’ad ’im, got ’im in me fambles, and then out of nowhere, this cove appears and floors me.’

  ‘Allow me to help you up. You are still a trifle shaky.’

  ‘I should think I am.’ He pointed to the offending bough. ‘That’s what ’it me. Any man would have gorn down with a blow from that.’

  They began to trace a stumbling path back through the wood and towards the lighted inn. ‘You didn’t ’ear nuffin’?’ The Runner’s tone was just this side of suspicious.

  ‘No. I’m sorry, I heard nothing. The noise from the inn...’ It was fortunate, Jack thought, that the riotous party was still in full swing. ‘I was trying to escape the clamour and walked into the woods to find peace. I could hardly believe my eyes when I came upon you.’

  ‘Nor see nuffin’?’

  The Runner’s job was to be mistrustful, he thought. ‘Not a thing. Whoever attacked you must have melted into the mist. But can I assist you to your room?’

  ‘I’m much obliged, your lordship, but I’m well enough. I’ll be taking a rest just now, but tomorrow that office of Partridge needs looking to. The varmints might have dropped a clue, yer never know.’

  ‘No, you never know,’ the earl said and walked slowly up the stairs to his room.

  * * *

  He sank down in the single chair furnished by the inn; it was of bare wood and roughly turned, but he felt none of its discomfort. All he felt was misery. She had deceived him. She had made a binding promise that she would never again go adventuring and here she was disguised in breeches and ready to steal. For why else could she have been in a private room and wearing such garb? Today they had loved each other to the full; today he had offered her marriage. She had hesitated in accepting him and now he could see why. She was the inveterate thrill seeker he had first thought and a husband would prove a severe curb on her activities. For years he had guarded himself against love, but Lucinda had shot to pieces his determination to preserve his heart. How could he have been so stupid to allow it to happen? The qualities in her that entranced him were the very same that had brought him to Julia. It was so drearily predictable: the moth to the flame. He had not managed to safeguard himself at all. He had fallen once more for a woman who could only bring him hurt and disillusion.

  * * *

  He was at Verney Towers by ten o’clock in the morning and was shown into a drawing room at the back of the house. It was a room he had never visited and the chill struck him immediately. It was sparsely furnished and heavy velvet curtains obliterated most of the natural light. He thought it tomblike, but perfectly fitted for a day which spelt the death of his hopes. He stood motionless in the centre of the room and squared his shoulders for what was to come. He wasn’t even sure why he was here except that he felt he owed it to Lucinda to hear her out. If he were sensible, he would already be on his way to London. He had left Lynton finishing the packing and Fielding fussing over the horses. By tonight he would be in Half Moon Street and taking his first steps on the long, painful path to a future without her. He had to get on with his life, put the last few weeks behind him. If he repeated that mantra to himself often enough, surely he would succeed. He had endured the catastrophe that had been his courtship of Julia and he could survive this.

  Survive was the right word, he thought—he could not compare his youthful love with the feelings that had taken hold of him since he met Lucinda. When he had fallen for Julia, he had been young, very young, just learning to fly, and in retrospect his feelings appeared mere gentle flutterings in the path to love. But when he’d met Lucinda, he had been a man hardened by experience, made cynical even, by the world in which he lived. Yet in knowing her, he had grown new wings; in loving her he had launched himself into full, joyous flight. Together they had soared and now, together, fallen to earth.

  Once he had left here he would go on living—what else was there to do?—but this time there would be no salvation in sport, no distraction from travel, no oblivion to be found in the mindless social whirl. The hurt was too acute. He would survive, but he would not forget, for she would always be with him: a face in the mirror, a figure in his dreams, an ache that would never leave him.

  A slight sound caused him to turn and she came slowly through the door, the shadow of a smile on her face. She was simply gowned in white muslin over a tunic of pale blue sarcenet with a blue ribbon threaded through her blonde curls. Her face was still very pale and as she glided towards him, he thought her almost ethereal. But the urgent desire to pull her into his arms was far from ethereal and stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘You reached home safely, I see.’

  She hesitated for a moment, seeming unable to speak across the cold distance he was putting between them. ‘Yes, I thank you.’

  Then, when he made no further comment, she said in a constrained voice, ‘I know you do not wish to be thanked for what you did for me last night, Jack, but you have my everlasting gratitude for helping me from a dreadful predicament.’

  ‘I have already told you that I desire neither thanks nor gratitude and I meant it. It is an episode that I wish to forget.’

  The harshness in his voice made her stumble on her words. ‘How is Mr Black?’

  ‘Mr Black is alive.’

  ‘And he suspects nothing?’

  ‘You can be easy. He harbours no suspicion of either of us—he is intent on pursuing two fearful rogues.’

  She tried to smile, but failed. ‘Even though I am not allowed to thank you, I am glad that you have come. Last night... You must wonder at my conduct. Won’t you sit down and we can talk?’

  ‘I would prefer to stand. I must return to the inn very shortly.’

  A flush spread across her face and she tried again to defend herself. ‘Last night—it wasn’t what it seemed.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘I understand why you are so angry. You believe me to have sought excitement by dressing up and trying to steal from Partridge.’

  ‘And for what other reason would you have adopted that wretched disguise?’

  ‘I dared not be recognised.’

  ‘And why break into his office?’ he continued inexorably.

  ‘I did not play the intruder for the thrill of it. You have to believe me. I was driven to the deed for the best of reasons.’

  ‘And what would that be?’ Scepticism was written large on his face and did not suggest a willingness to believe any explanation she might produce.

  ‘I cannot tell you. It is not my secret to tell.’

  ‘How very convenient.’

  ‘This is not what I want,’ she said desperately. ‘I cannot bear that we are quarrelling. I swear to you that I had good cause for what I did. If you truly love me, you will trust that I speak the truth.’

  ‘You have given me little cause to trust,’ he said bitterly. ‘You made me a solemn vow that you would never again break the law. How can I trust a woman who breaks her promise within days of making it?’

  She hung her head and said with difficulty, ‘I cannot argue with your anger. You have every right to distrust. But please believe me when I say that only something exceptional, a request that I could not refuse, would make me break my vow to you.’

  ‘So exceptional that you cannot tell me what it is, cannot tell the man you have sworn to love. Or has that vow too vanished overnight?’

  ‘You must know that it has not.’

  ‘But that’s the rub, I don’t. I no longer know what to believe.’

&nbs
p; ‘Believe that I tell the truth. I love you dearly, Jack, and if you truly love me, you will understand.’

  ‘Let me return your words to you. If you truly loved me, you would tell me why you have chosen to throw our futures to the wind.’

  She started towards him and held out her hands, but he resolutely kept his arms by his side. Crestfallen she said, ‘I want to tell you everything, but the secret I hold is not mine to tell.’

  ‘So you have said—if secret there is! But let us suppose for one minute that your words are genuine. In effect you are saying that if we were to marry, there would be things that you could not divulge to me, times where you owed your loyalties elsewhere. That is not my idea of a marriage. There should be no secrets between people who love each other.’

  Other secrets, old secrets had come back to haunt him as he spoke. Everyone, it seemed, had known about Julia except for him. He recalled the humiliation of having his banker’s draft refused by a cringing clerk, their hostess’s swift removal of unlocked valuables when they came to call, the look on a friend’s face when he recounted losing this or that bauble. They all knew the secret and he did not. Or, what was likelier, he knew but refused to confront it. This time he would not shy from the truth, no matter what pain it gave him.

  His voice, when he spoke, was without emotion. ‘In all our dealings together, Lucinda, I have asked only that we are honest with each other.’

  ‘I have been honest. I have not deceived you. Well, a little perhaps when you first came to Verney Towers,’ she amended. ‘But I did not dare to confess then that I was the highwayman. And when you knew, keeping my secret did not appear worrisome to you—quite the contrary. You insisted on involving yourself when you need not have done.’

  He could feel himself losing the calm he had maintained with such difficulty. ‘You were happy enough to accept my involvement when it was offered. Indeed, if you had not accepted it last night, you would be kicking your heels in Lewes gaol at this very moment, locked up with every type of miscreant—that is, before they stripped you naked to search you.’

  He could see her visibly shudder and the tears start in her eyes. ‘It’s not an enticing prospect, is it?’

  ‘I owe you an enormous debt, but please, I beg you, trust me.’

  ‘The truth is, Lucinda, that I cannot trust you. You have tricked me once too often and there is little more for us to say, except goodbye—but this time we must both mean it. We are not good for each other.’

  ‘You are wrong. We are made for one another. I know it and so do you.’

  ‘I thought I did—for a few fleeting hours—but I can pretend no longer.’

  There was a deathly silence and then he said in the most matter-of-fact voice he could find, ‘I am to return to London and if I wish to arrive before nightfall I must be on my way. By now my servants will be packed and ready to leave.’

  ‘You are leaving Verney today?’

  ‘I am.’ Her stricken face was almost more than he could bear. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her to happiness. But his instincts were at war with his head for he had spoken truly when he’d said that they were not good for each other. Ever since they’d first met they had been swept along on a roller coaster of feeling: surges of happiness followed by uncertainty and disquiet. He could not live in such emotional turmoil, never knowing from one day to the next what she would be at. He had thought his love strong enough and deep enough to satisfy her every desire for excitement but he had been wrong.

  He held out his hand in farewell. She looked at it, shocked to utter stillness, as though disbelief had sucked the life from her. Then, ignoring the hand, she brushed past him; he could see her tears begin to fall even before she reached the door.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The walk back to the Four Feathers was the saddest he had ever taken. When he’d returned to the inn last evening he had felt ready to conquer the world. All that had been wrong with his life—the unhappiness of childhood, the trial of family, the hurt of betrayed love—all of it had vanished in those moments when he had loved and thought himself loved in return. A new life was before them both, a sparkling bubble in a mundane world. But the bubble had burst the minute he had realised the identity of the slight figure fleeing for its life. He had been staggered, hardly believing what he saw, but he knew that figure too well not to recognise Lucinda—Lucinda in disguise, Lucinda at her tricks. His heart had plummeted even as he lifted the broken bough to lay the Runner low. He had saved her skin, but that was for the very last time. She was on her own now.

  Not quite on her own. She had her brother back, though she was unlikely to confess to him what she had been doing in his name. He was sure that her fears for the boy’s safety had been genuine; she might even have been sincere in thinking that she could help him by taking to the road. But her overriding desire had been quite other and she had used Rupert’s plight as an excuse for her wild conduct. He recalled that it was only when he was packed and ready to leave the Towers that she had told him it was for her brother’s sake that she had ridden out on Red. Why hadn’t she told him before? There had been plenty of opportunity to do so. It smacked of yet more subterfuge, a last-minute attempt to disarm her lover and stop him from going.

  Rupert was no longer in danger and she’d had to find another motive for last night’s exploit. Her excuse had been flimsy beyond belief and had done nothing to restore his trust. Yet though he no longer believed her protestations, it did not stop him loving her deeply and fearing for her future. He had to remind himself that she was not his responsibility. She had not accepted his offer and though his heart might say otherwise, he owed her no formal commitment. Perhaps her brother, now that he was home, could succeed in persuading her from the dangerous path she had chosen. Freed from the stigma of debt, Rupert would be keen to restore his standing in the county. It would be hard enough for him to claw himself back to respectability; he would not want a sister bringing him into disrepute. Hopefully he would take Lucinda with him in his quest for acceptance. Jack had always felt a little jealous of her devotion to her absent brother. The still absent brother, he thought.

  That was a question—where was the boy? There had been no sign of him since his return to the Towers and today Lucinda had made no mention. That in itself was strange and he turned it over in his mind. Now that Rupert was freed, there would seem no need for her to court danger on his behalf, but what if there was something else, something of which her lover knew nothing? She had spoken of a matter so urgent that she had been driven to drastic action. Was her brother then behind last night’s foolhardy attempt to break into Partridge’s office? If Rupert had sworn her to secrecy...it would account for her determined silence. His heart began to beat just a little faster and his mind shifted backwards and forwards through a kaleidoscope of thoughts, trying to find a path through the morass. Could it be that Lucinda had made two promises and that only one could be kept? Was her promise to Rupert so critical that she had been forced to abandon the vow she had made to him? Pure speculation, he thought unhappily, a ruse to exonerate the woman he loved.

  He began to descend the slope which signalled the approach to the village. And none too soon, he reckoned, looking upwards. Banks of clouds piled one upon another in a troubled grey sky. He would be lucky to reach the inn before the rain unleashed itself. His stride increased, his mind keeping step with the quickened pace. What was she doing in Partridge’s office? It was a far cry from highway robbery. If she was looking for excitement, why had she not ridden out on Red once more? Perhaps she had tired of that game and decided breaking and entering would be more diverting.

  He tried to think himself back. He had been so stunned by her betrayal that he had not closely scrutinised the events of yesterday evening. Now he did. He had been driven out of the inn by the riot of noise from the public bar and decided to walk for a while in the woods, despite the enc
roaching night. He had been descending the staircase when he’d been transfixed by the sight of Didimus Black crouching by the door

  to the landlord’s private quarters. Standing motionless on the bottom step, he had seen a dim light spilling from

  the room—a light that moved. It was a candle and whoever held it high was intent on scouring the office. It had been Lucinda, of course, and the more he thought, the more certain he was that she had been searching for something. She had been searching for something she expected to find. But what? What could Partridge have in that room that had made her willing to risk her life and their future together?

  He crunched across the gravel courtyard as the first drops of rain fell heavily on his shoulders. The sharp sting of water jerked him from his reverie. This would not do; he was entangling himself in pointless conjecture. He must find Lynton and give orders to leave, for he needed to be away and to think no more. The landlord was in the public bar supervising several of the village women who cleaned for him and they had a monumental task on their hands, it seemed, after the chaos of last night’s party. Elsewhere an intense quiet hung over the inn. He saw the door to Partridge’s office slightly ajar and moved silently down the passage towards it. He would put his head into the room, just for a second, in the forlorn hope that he might discover why Lucinda had searched there, if search she had.

  It was not obvious. The room was filled with rubbish: nick-knacks long broken, heaps of paper spilling themselves untidily from shelf to shelf, tools left scattered everywhere. It looked as though Didimus Black had already visited that morning to take measurements, for what good they would do him. There were chalk scratches on the floor and on the furniture to mark where the perpetrator had stood and moved. The desk was open and he peered inside. There was nothing of any interest. What was it that she had wanted from this dismal space? Or had it been, as he knew in his heart, purely a senseless spree? It had to be. He clamped his lips together in chagrin and turned to go.