Nicola Cornick Collection

by Nicola Cornick

  “What did you expect?” Owen said savagely, and she heard the note in his voice and fell silent.

  It took only fifteen minutes to reach Clarges Street and they did not speak once on the journey. Owen rode into the mews, handed the horse over to the groom and gave it a grateful stroke on the nose. Tess was watching him, her eyes wide, her face troubled. There was a long rent in her cloak and her gloves were dirty and torn. Seeing the evidence of the physical danger she had placed herself in, Owen felt his temper soar.

  “Owen …” she said, as he practically dragged her through the entrance hall and into the library, slamming the double doors behind them. “I’m sorry.” Her blue eyes, so wide, so honest, touched his face. “Please let me explain.”

  She had tried that last time, Owen thought bitterly, and it had worked. He had believed her. No more, though.

  “You told me you would never attend another meeting,” he ground out.

  Her gaze fell. “I wanted to go to say goodbye,” she said softly. She opened her hand. Something sparkled as she cast it down on the table. He saw it was a locket.

  “The radical cause was Robert’s cause,” she said. She looked up suddenly and Owen’s heart shifted in his chest at the sincerity in her eyes. “I was saying farewell.”

  Almost he believed her. He wanted to believe her, but he could not because there were the cartoons with their vicious incitement to violence. He put his hand into the pocket of his coat and drew out the drawings, letting them scatter on the table.

  “What of these?” he demanded.

  Tess nodded. Her expression was odd, he thought, distressed, but a little furtive. “These are not my work,” she said.

  “Please.” Owen felt a rush of contempt. He had not expected her to lie. “They are signed Jupiter, are they not? What is this, Tess?” His voice grated. “Just another betrayal?”

  “No!” Her voice rang clear. There was a slight frown between her eyes now. “I tell you, I did not draw these!” Her gaze searched his face. Her voice dropped. There was flat calm in it now. “You don’t believe me,” she said.

  “No,” Owen said. “Of course I don’t believe you! You gave me your word you would not attend a political rally and yet I find you there despite your promise, despite the danger. You gave me your word you would never draw these again—” he ripped one of the cartoons in two “—and yet here they are with your signature on them.”

  “You don’t trust me.” Her eyes had not left his face. “You can. Owen, please—”

  The library door burst open.

  “Yes?” Owen snapped, not taking his eyes off Tess.

  “My lord.” The quiver in Houghton’s voice was more fear than outrage. “There are soldiers here—” They were already pushing past Houghton into the room, filling it with a blur of red coats.

  “We are here on Lord Sidmouth’s orders to arrest Lady Rothbury on a charge of treason and sedition.” The young captain of the dragoons looked nervously from Owen to Tess and back again.

  Owen saw Tess turn chalk-white. She swayed, clutching the edge of the table to steady herself. The remaining cartoons scattered to the floor like confetti.

  Owen tore his gaze from Tess’s face and stared down the captain. The only thing he could do now was to bluff and hope that the man would be sufficiently intimidated to back off. It was the biggest gamble of his life and he could feel the tension tight across his shoulders.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, man,” he said, very coldly. “Lady Rothbury a criminal? Your wits have gone begging.”

  “Lord Sidmouth’s orders, sir.” The man was dogged. “There are political cartoons circulating that are her work—” he gestured to the ragged papers on the floor “—and she was witnessed attending the meeting at Spa Fields earlier this afternoon. We are here to take her to the Tower of London, my lord, so that Lord Sidmouth may question her further.”

  Owen looked at Tess. For a moment he saw abject horror in her eyes. He remembered in that moment what Tess had confided to him about her fear of the dark, the door closing on her, locking her into Brokeby’s nightmare. He thought of the gaol and the terror and the darkness and the locked doors. He felt the despair roll over him. He knew what life was like in a British gaol. He had been there before. Sidmouth’s methods would not be gentle. He could deal with that. Tess could not. Whatever she had done, he would never let that happen to her.

  “The cartoons are mine,” Owen said. “I am the man Lord Sidmouth seeks.”

  Tess made an involuntary movement. He heard her gasp. Her eyes were wide and terrified. Owen gestured to her to be silent. He kept his gaze on the Captain of the Dragoons. “I am an American, a known sympathiser with the reformers’ cause,” he said. “I was a prisoner of war a mere two years ago for fighting against the British.”

  Tess started forwards. “Owen—” she said.

  Owen shook his head very sharply. “Don’t say anything, Teresa.”

  He turned back to the captain. “I am afraid I have been working against the government from within,” he said. “As Sidmouth’s man I had access to a great deal of useful information.”

  A ripple went through the soldiers like wind through the grass. At least half of them looked as though they wanted to shoot him on the spot. The captain was dithering now, uncertain what to do. Owen held his gaze. Tess had obeyed him; she was standing quite still, but there was tension in every line of her slender body and her eyes were riveted on his face.

  Owen picked up the cartoons and let them slide through his fingers. “What are you waiting for?” he said to the captain. “I’ve confessed. I am the man you seek. Lady Rothbury is and always has been innocent.”

  “My lord.” The captain looked confused. “Lord Sidmouth—”

  “I assure you,” Owen said, “that Lord Sidmouth will be very happy to have me in place of my wife.”

  The captain drew himself up. “Very well,” he said. “We shall see what his lordship says.” He turned to his men. “Take him away.”

  Tess moved then, running forwards into his arms even as the soldiers moved to surround him.

  “No!” Owen felt her tears hot against his cheek, heard her agonised whisper. “No! I won’t let you do this!”

  “It’s better this way.” For a moment Owen held her tight and close, so close, against his heart, then he put her from him with iron control. Any more and he knew he would be lost. As he stepped back they were pulling him roughly away from her and the distance between them was lengthening even as Tess held her hands out to him in a vain gesture.

  “I love you,” she said. “I love you so much. You made me whole again.”

  Owen heard the words long after they had taken him away.

  THE WATCH WAS CALLING TWO in the morning but Tess could not sleep. She had not slept for seven nights now, not since the soldiers had taken Owen away. She had not eaten either. Joanna and Merryn fussed over her. Lady Martindale, suddenly her staunchest support, called upon her each day. None of them could get her to eat or even speak. Because there was nothing that she could say.

  She had gone to Lord Sidmouth the morning after Owen had been arrested and she had told the Home Secretary that he had got the wrong man, that he knew she was the guilty party and that he should let Owen go and take her instead. She told him she knew that Justin Brooke had betrayed her. She even offered to draw some cartoons for Sidmouth to prove that she was Jupiter. She had snatched his quill up from the desk and drawn a few quick lines, and Sidmouth had sat back in his chair and had smiled indulgently at her as though she were no more than a featherbrained female and told her that it must have been a frightful shock to her to discover that her husband was a traitor but what did she expect when he had been a prisoner of war. Leopards, Sidmouth had said, puffing on a pungent cigar, never changed their spots.

  Tess had been furious and had pointed out that Owen had fought for the British at Trafalgar and that he had sworn his allegiance when he had taken his oath to the king, but Sidmouth had only shru
gged. He would not let her see Owen, even though she had humbled her pride and begged.

  “Why is he doing this?” Tess had wailed later, abandoning her reserve and crying all over Joanna and Alex. “He knows full well it was me! Why is he going to punish Owen instead?”

  And Alex, who was looking grimmer than Tess had ever seen him, had said, “Because he could not hang you, Tess. He couldn’t hang the daughter of the Earl of Fenner. Yes, he knows you were Jupiter, but he needs a scapegoat. And he has the perfect one in a man whom he can remind everyone was born a foreigner.”

  Tess had understood then, and her world had caved in on itself, extinguishing the light and hope forever. Because she knew that Alex was right. Owen had given himself up for her and he was indeed the most perfect person for Lord Sidmouth to blame.

  Even Lady Martindale had gone to Sidmouth to petition him on behalf of her great-nephew, but Sidmouth had been as unaffected by her pleas as he had been by Tess’s. And then Tess had heard that Rupert Montmorency had been boasting in his cups that he had conspired against Owen in the hope that Lady Martindale would change her will to leave everything to him, and that after Owen’s death he would petition the courts for the Rothbury title as well. Tess had been so enraged that she had stormed into White’s, past all the gentlemen who said she could not enter because she was a female, and had poured a glass of port all over Rupert, ruining his cravat and his silver lace waistcoat. So everyone was talking about her all over again. But she did not care because nothing mattered except saving Owen.

  Now Tess sat by the window watching the cold winter moonlight flicker across the darkened garden and she felt lonelier than ever in her life, empty and alone down to her soul. She tried to reach out to Owen through the dark, to imagine where he might be and what he might be doing but she could not sense his presence. She felt smothered by the house and by all the old musty drapes and those damned statues with their blank eyes. She hated it. She had to get away. She had to think.

  She went over to her dresser and took out her drawing book with the sketch of Owen she had done when first she had gone to him to ask him to marry her. She traced the lines of his face, the slash of his cheekbones, the fall of hair across his forehead. Impossible to imagine that she might never see him again. Unacceptable to think that Sidmouth might hang him for a crime he had not committed. She could not bear to think of it; she could not bear to lose him when she had only just found him.

  She turned the page and started to draw. Within a few strokes of the pencil Sea Witch had started to come to life, sails billowing as they caught the wind, prow raised to the waves.

  Sea Witch …

  Tess closed the book very softly. She knew now what she had to do.

  “YOU BLOODY FOOL,” GARRICK Farne said, marching into Owen’s prison cell in the Tower of London and planting himself foursquare in front of him. “What the hell did you have to confess to something like this for?” Then, as Owen did not answer: “I don’t think I can get you out. Grant and I have both tried. Sidmouth doesn’t want to know.”

  “Of course not,” Owen said. “I was the one who questioned his judgement and told him he was corrupt.” His mouth twisted. “Sidmouth doesn’t really appreciate opposition.”

  Sidmouth, Owen thought, had been notably unsympathetic to him so far. He had had him thrown into a damp cell in a forgotten corner of the White Tower and had left him to rot. The room had a pallet for a bed, a broken chair and one narrow window, barred. It smelled of damp and decay and hopelessness. He was inordinately glad that Tess had never had to endure this place where light and dark merged and nameless horrors rose to taunt him in the depths of the night.

  “Plus you are a foreigner, a known Republican sympathiser, a former prisoner of war and a reputed pirate.” Garrick rubbed his forehead. “Hell, Rothbury, you’ll be hanged before you know it.” He scowled. “Why did you have to confess to this when you did not even do it?”

  “Why do you think?” Owen demanded.

  Garrick stared at him. “Tess,” he said heavily, after a moment. “So it’s true. She really was Jupiter.” He ran a distracted hand through his hair. “She said that she was, but I thought she was run half-mad, wanting to save you. So that night at the brothel—”

  “She was running away from the radical meeting,” Owen said. “Yes. Your wife is not the only bluestocking firebrand in that family, Farne.”

  “Bloody hell,” Garrick said. He frowned, dragging the most recent of Jupiter’s cartoons from his pocket. “But Tess didn’t draw these cartoons,” he said.

  Owen did not even look at it. “Yes, she did,” he said tiredly. He felt sick with misery and disappointment. Tess had promised him she would not go to the radical meeting but he had found her at Spa Fields. She had told him she had not drawn the cartoons but he could not believe her. He wished she had kept her promise to him. But more than that he wished they had not quarrelled, not now when very likely he would not be permitted ever to speak to her in private again. He would never have the chance to tell her how much he loved her.

  “Tess didn’t draw those cartoons,” Garrick insisted. “Lady Emma Bradshaw drew them.”

  “What?” Owen shot to his feet. “Lady Emma? She cannot have done.”

  Garrick passed the cartoons over. “Look at them,” he growled. “They aren’t as good as the other ones.”

  “They were drawn in a hurry,” Owen argued.

  Garrick shook his head. “Emma came to me and confessed,” he said, with grim satisfaction. “She was all set to confess to Sidmouth too, but I told her it would do no good. He won’t release you. He wants to make an example of Jupiter, but he couldn’t hang either the daughter of the Earl of Brooke or the daughter of the Earl of Fenner. That would look frightfully bad. So you—” Garrick shot Owen a glance in which fury and exasperation were mingled equally “—are his sacrifice.”

  “It’s worth it,” Owen said bleakly. Then, as Garrick just looked at him, he burst out, “Devil take it, Farne, what would you have done? Let Merryn go to gaol? Let her die?”

  Garrick’s expression hardened. “No, of course not.” He raised both hands in a gesture of appeasement. “But there had to have been another way.”

  “There wasn’t,” Owen snapped. “You said it yourself. Sidmouth has to be seen to make an example of someone.” He sat down heavily on the flimsy pallet bed. “So Tess was innocent of these.” His hand scattered the cartoons. “Damnation. I wish I had believed her.” In his mind’s eye he could see Tess’s pale, strained face as she had sworn to him that this time the caricatures had not been her work. He had not trusted her. He felt a great sweep of desolation.

  “The two of you are as bad as each other,” Garrick said. “Did you know Tess went to Sidmouth to try to persuade him of her guilt? If anyone else claims to be Jupiter, this whole thing will start to look like a farce.” He ran a hand through his hair, suddenly looking very tired. “You know what is going to happen, Rothbury? You do understand? They only let me see you because they are going to hang you.”

  They stared at one another.

  “I had thought to try to help you escape to Sea Witch,” Garrick said suddenly, “but if I started to hire a crew Sidmouth really would sit up and take notice and I’d end up in here with you.”

  “ A pity I can’t crew her alone,” Owen said, with a faint smile, “but that is beyond even my powers.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “As you say, Sidmouth has to hang someone. People are terrified of the radicals running out of control and starting a revolution like the one in France.”

  “Sidmouth encouraged those rumours deliberately so that he could crack down on his political enemies,” Garrick said grimly.

  Owen shrugged. “That’s beside the point.” He looked away. “Tell Tess that I am sorry I doubted her,” he said, with difficulty. He stood up, offered Garrick his hand. “And look after her for me, Farne. I want her to be happy. I hope she finds husband number five,” he added wryly.


  “She won’t,” Garrick said. “Don’t you know she loves you, Rothbury? A pity that when she finally finds a man worthy of her he has to do the quixotic thing of dying for her.” He hesitated, shook Owen’s hand. “We’ll keep trying for you,” he said. “We’ll do our best.”

  It sounded like an epitaph.

  The door closed behind him, leaving Owen in the dark.

  TOM HAD BEEN WAITING FOR EMMA all day. He knew she had gone to Garrick Farne and that his half-brother had told her not to go to Sidmouth to confess, but Tom knew his Emma and he knew that she would come anyway. Emma loved Tess Rothbury and she would never let Tess lose Owen if there was a single thing that she could do to prevent it. Emma was honest like that, honourable, true and good, all the things that Tom was not and now wished he had been in order to deserve her. He passed the long, cold day of waiting in thinking of all the bad things he had done. Soon, he knew he would have ample time to sit and reflect on his sins, on all the people he had robbed and cheated and blackmailed, on the time he had left Merryn to die and had tried to shoot Garrick. He thought of all the women he had betrayed. He closed his eyes and saw Tess stumbling down dark corridors towards an open door, a door that he had closed in her face.

  It was the sound of footsteps that roused him. The clock on St. Margaret’s Church had just struck the hour of six. The cold darkness was settling over the quiet street and the snow was starting to fall, and there was Emma, hooded and cloaked, a slender shadow amongst the dark. Tom felt his heart surge and then the dull weight of denial settled on him as he remembered she would never be his again. Soon, very soon, she would be a widow. He knew what he had to do.

  He ran up the steps to Lord Sidmouth’s house and rang the bell. Emma had checked as she had seen him by the door ahead of her. He knew she had not recognised him. For a moment she hesitated then her steps resumed. She walked past the house, turned the corner of the street and was lost from his sight. The door opened. Tom stepped inside.

  IT WAS LATE WHEN THE CELL DOOR clanged open, rousing Owen from half-sleep.