Sins of the Past (The Star Elite's Highwaymen Investigation Book 2)

by Rebecca King

  ‘You left Mivverford,’ Bessie murmured.

  ‘I heard that there was a position going as a companion. I had no idea what I would be expected to do but I had to take a chance that I could get the job and so applied for the position. I packed my things up and made my way to Simmerton.’

  ‘That was why you could start straight away and didn’t care about the way I was dressed,’ Bessie muttered.

  ‘I needed to hide somewhere I knew he wouldn’t find me. Mivverford is at least twenty-five miles away from here. He never comes this far across the county,’ Rosamund whispered. ‘And you said that you never went anywhere. This position was just what I was looking for.’

  ‘Did he recognise you the night the highwaymen robbed us?’ Clarissa asked.

  ‘He must have, but I don’t know why he didn’t just let his friends kill us,’ Rosamund murmured. ‘He knows I know about his sins of the past.’

  ‘Yet he let you live,’ Al finished for her. He thought about her story for a few moments and suspected there was more that she hadn’t told them. ‘Did you take anything of his when you left Mivverford?’

  ‘Just the things he gave me,’ Rosamund muttered. ‘I couldn’t leave them in my room and had no idea where most of them came from so I couldn’t return them either. If I had left them in my room people would have thought that I had stolen them. I was afraid of getting caught.’

  ‘Do you still have them?’ Zach asked.

  ‘Are they in your carpet bag?’ Al added.

  When Rosamund nodded, she slid her chair back to stand up only for Al to wave her back down. Elias went to fetch her carpet bag but put it onto the table and rummaged through it himself. He found a hand-sized wrapped roll of cloth which had been bound tightly by a thin strip of leather and placed it onto the table. Al untied the binding and unrolled it.

  ‘That’s my bracelet,’ Bessie gasped as she stared at a small gold cross on a fragile chain. She glared accusingly at Rosamund before poking a finger through the rest of the items, all of which were various items of jewellery. Bessie looked at Clarissa. ‘Is any of this yours?’

  Clarissa looked but didn’t recognise anything.

  ‘You stole from me?’ Bessie cried, glaring at Rosamund.

  ‘It appears so,’ Zach murmured.

  ‘What did you take of Archie’s,’ Al asked softly. ‘We will arrest him, and he will tell us under interrogation, so I warn you now that trying to keep it from us will only earn you a longer sentence behind bars. What did you take of his? What do you still have that he might want back and needs to keep you alive to get?’

  ‘This,’ Elias replied before Rosamund could.

  He removed another roll of material which was also bound tightly by a thin strip of leather. Inside it was more jewellery, but it was clear from its dullness that it was old. Within it was a locket.

  ‘These are what he gave you,’ Al murmured. ‘These are what he stole from the locals around Mivverford, the evidence of his – or your – thefts.’

  Rosamund nodded. ‘I think that he recognised me. Archie knows I still have the gifts he gave me. I think that is why they followed me. He must want the things back because they prove his guilt.’

  ‘Why don’t they prove your guilt? How can you prove that you didn’t steal them?’

  Rosamund sighed. ‘I can. The tavern owner can prove that I didn’t steal them on the nights these were taken from their owners. The houses in question were broken in to overnight. I was working in the tavern.’

  ‘Not all night,’ Al argued.

  Rosamund shifted awkwardly and looked out of the window before dropping her gaze onto the table.

  ‘What tavern did you work in? What was it called?’ Al demanded.

  ‘The King’s Arms in Mivverford,’ Rosamund replied.

  ‘It’s a bawdy house,’ Morgan said. ‘It is close to the site of one of the highwaymen’s robberies.’

  Al nodded. ‘He, the tavern owner, paid you to work all night.’

  Rosamund nodded.

  ‘And you had customers who would be able to confirm that they were with you on the nights that the houses were broken into. Then this man, Archie, came to you with presents but he was just another customer.’

  ‘He was more than that,’ Rosamund murmured. ‘Or I thought he was.’

  ‘But you were still a tavern doxy,’ Al argued. ‘Why would you expect him to think anything more of you?’

  ‘He brought me presents,’ Rosamund cried.

  ‘He gave you the stolen goods to keep hold of. If someone found you with the stolen goods you would go to the gaol for it. Did he ask for them back before you left Mivverford?’ Bessie asked.

  ‘Yes, but I told him that he couldn’t have them,’ Rosamund replied. ‘I said that I would hand them to him once the magistrate had gone.’

  ‘And he gave you all of this,’ Elias murmured, poking through the tangle of bangles, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and fine jewels which appeared to have been crudely removed from larger objects.

  ‘You didn’t stop to think about why a blacksmith would have items like this? You didn’t stop to question how valuable they were when he gave them to you?’ Zach scowled.

  ‘At first, he brought me that red jewel. I just thought it was a trinket. You know, a bit of red glass or something. I didn’t think it was expensive,’ Rosamund snapped. ‘It wasn’t until one of the customers recognised my locket that I started to wonder and took another look at them.’

  ‘So when the magistrate was called, you bundled everything up and slipped out before you could be arrested for stealing the items Archie stole from people around Mivverford,’ Zach concluded.

  ‘But you haven’t gone far. You only moved twenty-five miles away. Didn’t you worry that someone might notice you and would report your whereabouts to the magistrate?’ Al asked.

  ‘Bessie made it clear during my interview that I wasn’t going to go out very much. She didn’t socialise much and rarely went anywhere. That suited me perfectly. The furthest I have been since I got here is Wimley Marshes. I really didn’t think that I had anything to worry about,’ Rosamund protested.

  ‘You wouldn’t have had if Archie hadn’t decided to join the highwaymen. Now that he has, and has found you in Simmerton, he decided to follow you to find out what you did with his stolen hoard.’ Al shook his head in disgust.

  Rosamund stared at him. Her voice was calm when she said: ‘Believe me when I tell you that he would not blink about having to kill me if he needed to.’

  ‘And anybody else around you so long as he can get his hands on the jewels he stole,’ Clarissa whispered. She shivered when Rosamund nodded.

  ‘Have you spoken to him since the night of the robbery?’ Zach asked, thinking about the highwaymen who had been lurking in the trees earlier.

  Rosamund shook her head. ‘I daren’t leave the house.’

  ‘That is why you wanted to go to Scotland so desperately. It wasn’t because you were afraid of the highwaymen robbing you. It was because of Archie,’ Clarissa said. ‘You panicked and packed everything up because you were going to run away again.’

  ‘I didn’t expect them to turn up as quickly as they had. I should have gone before dawn but fell asleep. By the time I woke up it was time for breakfast. I didn’t want to just run away again. I wanted to take a reference so I could get another job in Scotland. There, nobody would know who I am and even the oaf wouldn’t be able to find me,’ Rosamund sighed.

  ‘But why didn’t you just leave? Why did you have to attack us so violently?’ Bessie demanded. ‘We could have been seriously injured.’

  ‘Because she has stolen from you,’ Elias murmured, removing a small, elaborately carved box from the bottom of the bag. ‘This was hidden beneath the clothing at the very bottom.’

  ‘That’s my box,’ Bessie breathed. ‘That was in the library.’

  ‘What’s in it?’ Al asked.

  Bessie stepped forward and lifted the lid to reveal several age
d coins. ‘I don’t think they are valuable, but they were a coin collection, antiquities, my husband and his ancestors collected. Some of these coins date back to the Roman period.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ Morgan murmured.

  Bessie picked them out of the box, one by one, and positioned them on the table in rows of five until the box was empty.

  ‘They are worth a small fortune,’ Al breathed.

  ‘Well, you can certainly be arrested for theft, assault of Clarissa, fraud for lying about your background to secure a position here, and prostitution,’ Morgan warned Rosamund. ‘I am afraid that on this occasion your sins of the past have returned to haunt you.’

  ‘Do you know if Archie’s friends live near Mivverford as well?’

  Rosamund shrugged at Al’s question. ‘He didn’t discuss them with me. He certainly met with a group of men on a regular basis in the tavern, but I only know them as locals. I don’t know who they are or what their names are.’

  ‘When was this?’ Zach asked. ‘How long have you been working here?’

  ‘Just over two years,’ Bessie confirmed.

  ‘Well, it appears that Archie has a long memory,’ Al sighed. ‘But we have the upper hand.’

  ‘What do we do now? I mean, while Rosamund can go to gaol, Archie won’t know about it. He is likely to still believe that his stolen hoard is here with her,’ Clarissa said.

  Al sighed. ‘What we do know about these highwaymen is that they stopped a carriage near Mivverford, close to where this Archie lives. We know where they are likely to strike next, but we don’t know where the highwaymen meet to plan their attacks. We will go to find Archie at his house and will follow him from there. While we do that, we will guard this house and the people in it in case the highwaymen try to break in. That means that you, Frederick, can no longer stay in your cottage. It is far safer if you stay in this house.’

  Bessie was nodding before he had finished talking. ‘That is without question.’

  Frederick lifted his brows at her but didn’t argue. He knew that it had to happen sometime because there didn’t seem any point hiding how he felt about her now that the whole world had seen his beloved Bessie in his arms.

  Al briefly told them what had happened at their last safe house.

  ‘It is far harder to do something like that here because there aren’t woods close by for them to hide in,’ Zach offered. ‘We have already been patrolling because we made the mistake of thinking that the threat to you only came from people outside of this property.’

  ‘It never occurred to me that you might be in danger from one of the house’s occupants,’ Al admitted.

  ‘It depends on how desperate the highwaymen are for money. Their robbery the other night didn’t exactly bring them much in the way of stolen goods to sell for profit. They might need to resort to trying to get the jewellery back,’ Elias warned.

  ‘We will need to increase the night watch,’ Morgan said. His colleagues all agreed.

  ‘I have to confess that I would feel considerably easier if I knew you were here,’ Bessie murmured.

  Clarissa smiled with relief and looked at Zach only for him to wink at her.

  ‘I’ll go and fetch the horses,’ Elias offered.

  ‘You are taking me to gaol?’ Rosamund cried, looking desperate.

  ‘We have to. You are a thief who has stolen from the homeowner, your employer, and have admitted to knowing the highwaymen. We only have your word for what you claim has happened. Until we can arrest this Archie and get his side of the story, we won’t know if you are telling us the truth. Because we know you are a liar, we cannot just accept your word about where these jewels have come from. What we can’t do is allow you at liberty to attack other innocent people in their homes, so gaol is the best place for you,’ Al informed Rosamund briskly.

  Rosamund looked wildly around the room in search of a way out. Her entire demeanour changed in an instant from concerned yet compliant to panicked and wilful. Zach immediately planted himself directly in front of Clarissa and braced himself.

  Clarissa suddenly found herself staring at Zach’s broad back. Determined not to miss a second of what was happening, she peered around him and watched as Rosamund suddenly darted for the door which led to the driveway to the stables. Before she reached it, Zach yanked her round and threw her bodily onto the floor before tugging her arms up high until Rosamund began to cry out in pain. While she couldn’t move, she could still make noise, and screamed like a banshee and wailed furiously while cursing everyone for finally making her face justice.

  Clarissa and Bessie shared a worried look but neither of them attempted to help her. Instead, they stood and watched the woman who had fooled them both get dragged out of the house to stand on the stables driveway to wait for a horse. When the horse arrived, Rosamund was unceremoniously shoved onto it, shrouded in a cloak which had the hood pulled up, and then led to gaol. Rosamund didn’t even look at Clarissa and Bessie again or attempt to apologise for what she had done. Instead, she kept her gaze on the horizon and her chin tilted at a pugnacious angle until her features were covered by the cloak.

  ‘They will get more out of her when she is in gaol. She will have to be interrogated so the gaol warder can put a report of her crimes before the judge,’ Zach explained. ‘I doubt there will be much more to her story, though.’

  ‘She fooled us both,’ Clarissa murmured in disbelief.

  ‘We never suspected anything amiss with her either and we deal with criminals every day,’ Zach replied. ‘She really did nothing to make any of us suspect anything.’

  Bessie looked at Frederick. ‘The sins of the past always come back to haunt us.’

  ‘We did nothing wrong,’ Frederick growled. ‘The only sin we have committed is not being honest with our loved ones about our relationship. If you don’t give a damn about society, why have we been so determined to hide our relationship? Do you know something? When we were being held up by those highwaymen, I realised that I could be shot and nobody would know what a sodding coward I have been.’

  ‘How could you be considered a coward?’ Clarissa cried. ‘You stood your ground with them but there was nothing you could do given you hadn’t got a stitch on.’

  ‘I am not talking about that. I am talking about admitting how I feel about your aunt. I am always going to be a coachman because it is all I have known, and that has, in my mind at least, always made your aunt too good for the likes of me,’ Frederick muttered.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Clarissa snorted. ‘If you make each other happy, does it matter what anybody else thinks? At least you know now how many people in the village would risk their lives to come and save you. With that in mind, why in the Hell should you care what they think? If any of them criticise you, at least now you can condemn them for not helping someone in dire need of assistance during a robbery. Everyone in that village must have heard what happened because they have been talking about it. News has spread so fast that my father heard over in Wimley Marshes, yet nobody bothered to venture out to try to stop what was happening.’

  ‘I know that I am not going to care what anybody thinks anymore,’ Bessie replied firmly. ‘I adore Frederick, and always have, and I don’t care who knows it now. It gives me the chills to think that he might have been shot by those blackguards for doing nothing more than sitting on a carriage’s driving seat. Why, it’s positively heathen to think that they so brutally kill coachmen like that. I don’t care what anybody thinks, the Star Elite can use our house for as long as they need to.’

  Clarissa was still grinning at Bessie’s bold declaration about her feelings for Frederick when Zach coughed and shifted uncomfortably. When she looked at him, he tipped his head and tugged her away from the couple who were staring avidly at each other once more. Curious to know what Zach might need to discuss with her, Clarissa dutifully followed him into the rose garden.

  ‘Look, I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but we are both adults and know that there is s
omething between us that neither of us can ignore,’ Zach began.

  ‘We barely know each other,’ she agreed.

  ‘Do you want to get to know me? Do you think you can make room for me in your life?’ Zach pressed.

  ‘I think that question should come from me. I mean, you already have your work with the Star Elite, which I know from experience keeps you terribly busy. Do you think that you might be able to make room in your life for me?’ Clarissa asked carefully.

  Zach squinted into the distance and pretended to contemplate that but couldn’t stop his lips from twitching. ‘I think I already have. What I feel for you has nothing to do with my investigation. This is personal, and something that isn’t going to go away. From the first second I saw you sitting on that carriage in your undergarments, something about you called to something deep within me that I hadn’t even realised was there. Whatever it was has brought us together and has made me incapable of getting you out of my thoughts. If I ever needed a stark reminder of just how fragile life was I had one when Bessie told me that you had been hurt. My world slammed to a halt and wouldn’t start again. I couldn’t function properly until I knew you were safe. My work takes me everywhere, but I need a base of my own – a home. While I am here I would like to spend as much time with you as possible with a view to sharing our lives as man and wife. If I am honest, I already know that I want you as my wife.’

  Clarissa felt her heart flip. For a moment, her view of him blurred but she blinked rapidly to dislodge her tears as her smile grew. ‘I should like nothing more than spending as much time as possible with you. I already know what I want.’

  ‘Oh?’ Zach began to smile because he too felt the connection between them grow stronger. He rather felt that both he and Clarissa looking at each other was very much akin to how Bessie and Frederick were looking at each other – adoringly. He didn’t care, though. For once in his life he truly didn’t give a damn if his colleagues, and the whole world knew how he felt. ‘You are the most precious thing in the world to me, do you know that?’