Clandestine

by Julia Ross

  An illusion as absolute as her supposed affection for him.

  Guy stared straight ahead and ignored the unpleasant clutch of distaste in his gut.

  Hampstead Heath stretched away to a sky-laden horizon. Small gangs of men were working here and there with carts and shovels, making the most of the remaining daylight. Guy paid them no attention, looking only toward the whitewashed cottage that the curate had described.

  He pulled up his team in front of the garden gate.

  It had been almost completely dark when he had been forced to abandon his quest the previous evening to return to town for the ball. Now, in the late afternoon light, Knight’s Cottage looked both charming and private.

  His tiger leaped down to take the horses’ heads. Guy stepped to the ground and held up his hand to Sarah.

  “Come!” he said, smiling to cover his disquiet. “This is the place.”

  She set her fingers on his and climbed down, then she glanced up at him, her apricot brows drawn together. For a split second they stood gazing at each other. Little sparks seemed to fire between them, as if the air sizzled, as if he might give way to a mad impulse to pull her into his arms and kiss her.

  Sarah snatched back her hand and looked away.

  The gate opened on well-oiled hinges. Sarah stepped aside to let Guy knock at the door. After a long silence, footsteps rapped on tile.

  The door opened. A woman in a cap and apron glanced at Sarah, then dimpled a smile as she gazed up at Guy. Dust sheets, brooms, and buckets were visible behind her.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You’re Mrs. Harris, the housekeeper?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. But Mr. Ashdown—that’s the gentleman as had the lease, sir—he went off to Italy. He’s an artist.”

  “No, we’re looking for a lady,” Sarah said. “She lived in this cottage all last winter, up until shortly after Easter. Did you know her?”

  The housekeeper frowned. “Until Easter, ma’am? No, she—”

  “Never mind that,” Guy said. “The lady we seek first took the lease thirteen months ago, in late May of last year. A boy from the Five Oaks, one Harvey Penland, ran errands for her.”

  “Why, yes, sir! That’s right. And a cheeky lad he was, too. Yes, yes, I remember the lady very well. Sometimes she would sit for hours at a time, just staring from the windows as if her heart would break, or else she wrote letters, pages and pages of them, which the Penland lad took down to the post.”

  “Did she ever meet any gentlemen, or have gentlemen callers?”

  “No, indeed not, sir! Though she sometimes went walking on a Sunday, Mrs. Grant always kept herself to herself.”

  “Mrs. Grant?”

  The housekeeper glanced back at Sarah. “She said she was a widow, ma’am. Such a shame! Such a lovely lady! The prettiest yellow hair you ever saw, and eyes like a periwinkle. I thought she was sad and lonely, but she always said not.”

  “Do you think she was ever afraid?” Guy asked.

  “Afraid, sir? Well, I don’t know, but then I wouldn’t, would I? I’m just the housekeeper. Mrs. Grant never confided anything to me.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “God bless my soul, sir! I’ve no idea. She took herself off one day without a by-your-leave, or word to anyone. Just packed up and left. Mr. Langham had to find another tenant in a hurry, I can tell you, and was lucky to find Mr. Ashdown. Now, if you’ll forgive me, ma’am, sir, I need to get on. The new tenant’s due any day, and the floors need doing over.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Guy said with a bow. “You’ve been more helpful than you know.”

  Sarah spun about and walked back to the carriage.

  Guy forced himself not to follow, not to compound his sins by offering false comfort.

  The garden was a pretty retreat with lawns and bushes and flowers, all hidden behind a high hedge. Rachel had lived here alone, until she had knocked on the door of his London townhouse to throw herself at his feet—and into his bed.

  That was not, of course, what she had told him.

  When had she first begun to spin her web of lies? During the seven months when she had truly been a governess for Lord Grail? Or in the missing five months before Jack had found her in the kitchen and asked her to spend that day on the yacht?

  Whenever it had been, Rachel Mansard had caught Guy Devoran as securely as any spider ever caught its first moth. And now—to his infinite self-disgust—he was reeling Sarah Callaway into that net of sticky threads.

  Sarah was standing beside the carriage, gazing valiantly across the Heath, her back upright.

  Guy shook himself and strode up the path after her, though his blood burned with awareness, of her brave, resolute determination, of the wisps of fiery hair escaping her bonnet to caress her speckled cheek. A lady who spent too much time in the sun, instead of always sheltering her complexion—as Rachel had done—beneath parasols or white plaster ceilings.

  She turned to face him. Her eyes were suspiciously bright.

  “You’ve already followed up all possible leads here, haven’t you?” she asked. “That’s why you didn’t want to bother bringing me. Other than that housekeeper—and confirming that Harvey Penland worked at the Five Oaks—you talked yesterday with everyone who might have known anything.”

  “Yes,” he said. “There’s nothing more to learn here in Hampstead that will help us find your cousin.”

  It was, fortunately, the truth.

  Guy helped her up onto the seat. Beneath the escaped tendrils of red hair, brown flecks circled the corner of her jaw like the Pleiades, the daughters of Atlas hidden in the heavens to save them from the lust of Orion.

  Avoiding his gaze, Sarah arranged her skirts. “And so I see that I’m defeated. Anything that you wish to share, you will share. Anything you wish to hide, I’ll never get out of you. But I have no doubt now that I will discover nothing at all by myself.”

  “Rachel did not meet Daedalus here,” he said.

  She adjusted her gloves, her face pale. “No, she must have done.”

  He felt desperate to make amends in any small way that he could.

  “Would you like to drive up over the Heath?” he asked. “The views of London are spectacular, and the sun will be setting soon.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I should like that.”

  He whipped up the horses.

  They drove in silence for several minutes, while the rolling heights of Hampstead Heath opened up before them. Deep shadows filled the hollows. Pink-tinged clouds massed to the west.

  “Isn’t there anything else you can tell me?” she asked at last.

  “Not much. Rachel apparently lived in that cottage with the discretion of a mouse. She never went into society and she never received visitors of any kind. When the curate tried to call, she told him that she wished to be left entirely alone, because she was writing a novel.”

  “A novel?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m forced to conclude that she was referring to her letters to you.”

  To his immense surprise, Sarah laughed, though a bright flush raced over her cheeks. “A novel may be fiction, sir, but fiction is only compelling when it’s emotionally true.”

  “Ah,” he said. “So we come back to that.”

  “Everything comes back to it,” she insisted. “Rachel fell in love with Daedalus after Christmas, but feared him by Easter. When she came back from Devon in May, she was forced to hide from him in Goatstall Lane. Nothing will ever make me doubt that. So some detail has been missed. If she lived here like a mouse, he must have skulked in the shadows like a cat.”

  “So you won’t concede that Daedalus, as she described him, may have been another product of her imagination?”

  She lifted her chin and gazed away at the scenery. “I shall never in a million years believe that, sir, and neither will you, once you read her letters.”

  “Then you’ll still trust me that far?”

  “Yes, and in spite of
everything, I can’t regret involving you. Yet if we fail in our quest, I trust you’ll not take it too much to heart?”

  The compassion in her voice froze the blood in his veins. “Why do you suppose that I should, ma’am?”

  “Because you smile at me as if you’re already crushed by disappointment, almost as if you fear that we shall never discover the truth.”

  He glanced away, his nostrils filled with her scent, his very bones on fire.

  “Nothing so very terrible, I trust, Mrs. Callaway. But yes, we may fail. And yes, I should hate that.”

  It was a small reality, but all he dared offer. The necessity to hide the whole truth roared like an enraged bull in his heart.

  Guy headed his team for the loveliest parts of the Heath.

  There was, of course, a great irony in feeling so irate about achieving exactly what he had wanted. All the seeds of truth that he thought it possible to share had been sown. After they took root and she saw that the letters didn’t sway him, the luminous Sarah Callaway would surely be convinced and agree to let him hunt for Rachel alone?

  After which, he would probably never see her wild freckles again.

  Enough cause, surely, for a little fury at fate?

  SARAH gulped in the clean evening air and tried to breathe out her distress.

  It was hard to remain angry when their surroundings were so lovely. It was anyway beyond ungracious to feel anything but gratitude to Mr. Devoran, even if he refused to accept her judgment about Daedalus.

  She glanced at his harsh eyebrows and perfect bones. His eyes reflected nothing but some dark grief that she couldn’t understand, like the water in a deep well. Nevertheless, both his features and the scenery were a beautiful, storm-tossed celebration of nature. She was privileged to see them.

  And how could she blame him? After all, Rachel had created a story of her life over the last two years as sustained and inventive as any work of fiction.

  A group of red-and-white cows stood at the edge of a pond. Trees massed here and there in little copses, or bravely straggled out alone to invade the rolling heath.

  Mr. Devoran guided his team to a high knoll and pulled up.

  “A remarkable view.” He gazed up at the high, drifting clouds, already stained by the oncoming sunset. “Yet it’s the sky that makes this place so remarkable.”

  Smooth skin stretched over the hollow where his throat met his jaw: a defenseless place, usually hidden. A wave of heat spread unbidden over her breasts and up her neck.

  “Yes,” she said, looking away across the valley. White shafts of light broke between the clouds to light up a few chosen spires. “It’s almost as if something sacred transpired from the clouds.”

  He glanced back at her. Dark fire burned in his gaze. “One is certainly closer up here to the vast vault of heaven, but it’s Nature herself who feels holy.”

  “Why is Nature always female?”

  “You don’t agree that she is?”

  “I don’t know, though I suppose it’s because Nature is the source of all life.”

  “No, it’s because she’s fascinating, capricious, and changeable.”

  “Like a typical female?” she said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but it’s implied, isn’t it? Yet Nature is also capable of unpredictable violence.”

  “True,” he said. “The worst of male attributes.”

  He moved his team forward until they reached another hillock. Mr. Devoran signaled his tiger, who leaped down to take the horses’ heads, then he walked around the carriage and held up his hand.

  “Come, Mrs. Callaway. The view is best if one walks just a little way up from here.”

  She took his fingers and allowed him to lead her to the highest point. London lay spread out before them. Shafts of dying sunlight glanced over the great dome of St. Paul’s and picked out the silver thread of the Thames.

  “The works of man are also lovely,” he said. “But sadly enough, usually only from a distance. From here, the rooftops cluster around each church spire like cygnets around a flock of swans. A little closer, and you’d be confronted with all the misery and dirt of a great city.”

  “You’d also see splendid buildings and statues and art and gardens,” she said.

  “But nothing, you must agree, anywhere near as inspiring as the setting sun?”

  They stood in silence as color bled slowly from the sky, until the bruised grays and blues were shot through with threads of gold and crimson. At last a faint lime green leached up behind the clouds to dissolve away into darkness, pierced only by the Evening Star.

  “Venus,” he said. “It’ll be truly dark soon. We must get back.”

  Sarah said nothing as he helped her into the carriage. Yet she caught a sudden flash of real concern in his eyes.

  Damnation! He had seen that hers were blurred with tears. Pain seared her heart that he had noticed and possibly even cared a little, though she had no idea why.

  THE long summer twilight softened the oncoming darkness as they returned to Blackdown House. Lady Crowse expected her guests to share a small supper, but Sarah pleaded a headache and retired immediately to her room.

  Guy watched the sway of her skirts as she marched away up the stairs. Sarah Callaway had inadvertently set up a disturbance in his heart and in his loins, like a squall blustering through clouds and threatening rain.

  Though he was not in the least hungry, he ate a light meal with the duke’s elderly sister, then dutifully played cards until she was ready to retire. He did his best to be amusing, but several times he caught the old lady’s gaze shrewdly assessing him, as if she saw the signs of rot at the core.

  Eight watched them play, then snapped at Guy’s fingers when he carried the parrot up to Lady Crowse’s apartments for her. The bird had learned most of his vocabulary, as well as his suspicion of strangers, from the duke’s eccentric widowed sister.

  Much to Guy’s annoyance, Eight grumpily repeated his favorite new phrase at almost every step. “Safe from who, sir? Safe from who?”

  The parrot was not interested in having anyone, least of all an untitled cousin, correct its grammar.

  Alone at last in Ryder’s study, Guy paced like a caged cat, while a knife turned slowly over and over in his gut.

  Was Sarah weeping up there alone in her elegant guest chamber? Or was she too angry with him to allow grief? Either way, every encounter with him—and every piece of news that she had received from him since their first meeting in the bookshop—must have caused her nothing but pain.

  Meanwhile, Rachel’s letters sat on Ryder’s desk like the nine holy books that the Cumaean Sibyl had offered to King Tarquin.

  Sarah had sent them down with a brief note:

  Dear Mr. Devoran,

  Pray, read these for yourself, then tell me that I am still wrong about Daedalus.

  I remain, sir, Your most obedient humble servant,

  Sarah Callaway

  Guy cursed, then laughed at himself. Of the nine holy books, six had been burned unread. The remaining three had been said to contain the secrets of the gods. But of course, the Cumaean Sibyl was also the prophetess whom Aeneas had consulted before his descent into the Underworld.

  Meanwhile, Rachel’s letters lay piled neatly in chronological order. In what sense could they possibly contain any real emotional truth?

  Before he wore a track in the carpet, he forced himself to sit down and unfold the first, written soon after she had genuinely gone to live at Grail Hall. The front bore the date and the earl’s name, with the stamp “FREE”—one of the privileges of the peerage.

  Lamplight washed over the paper, highlighting the creases and the crabbed writing, crossed and crossed again to make all of her news fit onto one sheet.

  My dear Sarah…

  He read through the second, then the third.

  The months with Lord Grail appeared to have been essentially uneventful, though Rachel’s letters were often witty, with little flas
hes of a dry humor that she had never shown him.

  However, there was no hint that she had met any gentleman of interest there, and nothing to betray why she had fled without notice that Christmas. The same amused tone continued as she pretended to her cousin that she was still working at Grail Hall, when in fact she had gone—where?

  He studied the franks and postmarks. The scrawled signature looked identical, the postmarks the same.

  Guy looked up for a moment. Obviously, someone had been able to usurp the earl’s franking privileges. Presumably, just as she had enlisted Harvey Penland, Rachel had suborned a servant at Grail Hall to intercept and forward her letters from Sarah. But why?

  Rachel had spun such an elaborate superstructure of lies, no ancient Greek oracle could possibly have matched her.

  Guy pulled out a sheet of clean paper and sketched out a calendar to cover the twenty-six months since Rachel’s parents had died. The day when he’d first met her at the Three Barrels to take her out on Jack’s yacht fell almost exactly in the center, leaving roughly thirteen months before it, and thirteen months since.

  He marked the first seven months after the Mansards’ death: Grail Hall. Ink spluttered from the pen as he circled the following Christmas and added a question mark. She had certainly left Grail Hall then, but the next five months remained blank.

  Guy took another sheet of clean paper and dashed off a quick note to his cousin:

  My dear Jack,

  I offer the gratitude of the wicked once again for your help the day and night of the duchess’s ball, though I am, like Odysseus, still swirling around in unknown seas.

  You remember Rachel Wren. Did you notice the state of her hands when you first found her at the Three Barrels—before she dressed in Anne’s clothes and we disappeared for our jaunt on the yacht?

  I trust to your eagle eye and nose for suspicious detail.

  Meanwhile, pray convey my undying adoration to your astoundingly brave and beautiful wife, along with my gratitude for her recent hospitality, especially so soon after your homecoming and so close to her time.