Behind the Mask (House of Lords)

by Brooke, Meg

  "Is it often foggy down on the flats?" he asked. It was a stupid question, but he did not know what else to say.

  "In the mornings when the weather is warm, yes," she replied. "I was going to ride down to the waterfall. Would you like to see it? My mother will be quite disappointed if she discovers I have failed to show you one of the most splendid sights in the Park."

  "Of course," he said, though he knew he really ought to be returning to the house to collect Strathmore and begin questioning servants.

  She turned her horse and he followed her along the ridge. When the path widened she slowed so that he could come up alongside her. "Did Jameson give you what you needed?" she asked.

  "He did, thank you. He seems to be a very capable steward."

  "I believe my father found him invaluable," she said. "He is a trustworthy man, My Lord, and extremely patriotic. He will not steer you in the wrong direction if you seek his help."

  Colin nodded. Grasping for some topic to steer the conversation away from his mission, he asked, "Have you known the Holliers long?"

  She looked straight ahead as she said, "All my life, it seems. Toby and Leo and I played together as children."

  He laughed. "John Mowbray told me you were the best tree climber among the lot of you."

  She blushed, but at least she smiled. "I suppose that's true. I was quite the hoyden as a child. I suppose I still am," she said, looking down at her smart coat and breeches.

  "No one who saw you in those breeches would think of you as anything but a woman," he said rather too quickly. But the words were out, and he could not take them back.

  Fortunately, she met his eyes, her grin widening. "Thank you, I think," she said.

  They turned down a narrow path. To one side the river burbled as it rushed down the slope. The trees began to thicken, and they crossed over another bridge. Then they came out into a little clearing. At its center was a small, shallow pool being fed by a waterfall that came from twenty feet up. Along the rocks ferns and flowers grew. The whole scene was one of abundant lushness, and Colin found himself marveling at it.

  Miss Chesney dismounted and he followed her lead as she brought her horse to the edge of the pool. As the animals drank, she went over to sit on a low, flat rock. He joined her.

  "I suppose you came here often as a girl," he said.

  She nodded. "Leo taught me to swim here. My father was furious with him because Toby—" she stopped abruptly.

  After a moment's silence he said, "There was something between the two of you, wasn't there? Forgive me, I know I have no right to ask."

  "It's all right. It feels so long ago now. We were friends until he went away to school, and when he came back I was sixteen, and he was not yet twenty-one, and things...changed. We wanted to marry, but he had no fortune and no profession, and my mother refused him."

  "But now he has made his fortune," Colin said. He looked over at her. Her eyes were fixed on the waterfall, but she seemed a thousand miles away.

  "Yes," she said softly. "And he has come home."

  "Do you...do you still love him?"

  She turned to look at him, and in that moment he realized that he was in deep trouble. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and comfort her, and it was an instinct he had never felt before. "I don't know," she said.

  He kissed her. He wasn't quite sure how it happened, only that suddenly his lips were meeting hers and she was leaning into him.

  Suddenly she pulled away, a hand to her lips, and the moment was gone. "I'm sorry," he said.

  "Don't be." She smiled, suddenly her bright, cheerful self again. "Would you like to climb to the top?"

  He agreed, desperate for any excuse to get off that rock. She led him along the edge of the pond. To one side of the waterfall the stones jutted out sharply, and it was possible to climb. She went first, taking the handholds and going confidently up. He followed, his boots slipping on the wet rocks, trying not to look up at the way her breeches molded to her body.

  At last the scrambled over the edge and up onto the flat ground above. She had turned to look out over the landscape. He came up beside her and followed her gaze.

  "You see?" she said. "The fog is beginning to clear already." She turned back towards the river and then she screamed.

  Colin whirled. Miss Chesney was frozen, one hand to her mouth, her eyes fixed on the body that lay not twenty feet from them at the edge of the river. Instantly Colin threw his arms around her, cradling her head against his shoulder. "Don't look," he whispered. Her shoulders were shaking. "It's all right." But as he looked over her head at the body of John Yates, he knew that it was a lie.

  Somehow Eleanor managed to climb back down the rocks to her horse. Lord Pierce rode with her back towards the great house. For a long time neither of them said anything, but as they crossed the bridge Eleanor managed to ask, "Are you a spy, Lord Pierce?"

  He slowed his horse and stared at her. "Not exactly," he said at last. "I am an agent of the Foreign Office, and I do covert work when it is asked of me, but my purpose is not espionage."

  "That man, up at the waterfall. You knew him, didn’t you?” He nodded. “Was he a spy?"

  He shook his head. "He was one of my detail, the one we sent in advance. Perhaps one day he might have risen to that rank, but now he never will."

  "His body—"

  "Don't think of it. I will arrange for it to be taken to the village. Is there a doctor there who can examine it?"

  "Of course. But that was not my question. His body, Lord Pierce, appeared to have been...what I mean is, was he..."

  "Tortured?" She nodded, biting her lip. "It would appear so."

  “How terrible,” she said.

  “It is a risk we all take, every one of us, when we enter the Service.”

  She shook her head grimly. “To think that people say that the Foreign Service is for cowards,” she said. “I have heard men say that only those too afraid to fight go that route. But it isn’t true.”

  “No, it’s not,” he said. “I am sorry you had to see that. It is not something I would wish on anyone, to die that way, and it certainly is not easy to look at.”

  “But it is reality, Lord Pierce. I have never been afraid of the real world. I was never the sort of girl who enjoyed fairy tales and fantasies.”

  “You do not strike me so,” he said. “And yet I have seen that you have a great capacity for beauty. Your singing, the other night, for instance.” He paused, growing quiet as they neared the stableyard. But then he said, “Is that the reason you would not sing last night, because Mr. Hollier was there?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose so.”

  “Will you marry him, now that he has returned?” It was a rude question, and she was certain he knew it, but he had already taken such liberties with her, and they had seen a terrible thing. In perspective it seemed like a very small step over a very wavy line.

  “I don’t know,” she said after she had considered a moment. She looked over at him. “Do you know, he swore that he loved me, that he would earn the right to be my husband, and yet he did not write to me once the whole time he was gone? I sent him letter upon letter, that first year, but when I got nothing in return, I stopped writing. But we were different people then.” With a sigh, she rode ahead of him into the stableyard.

  As she climbed the stairs to her room, however, she mulled over his question. Clearly, Toby’s parents supported his renewing his addresses to her. They had made that quite evident. But did he still have feelings for her? Would there ever be a time when they could talk about what had happened? If they could, Eleanor knew, she would know what to do, what she wanted.

  She had no time to think about such vague possibilities, however. The housekeeper, Mrs. Clarence, was waiting for her down in the library, and, perhaps more pressing, there was a dead man on the property. Eleanor shuddered involuntarily as she thought of the mutilated body she had seen. No one deserved to die that way, least of all a man who was doing hi
s duty to his country, even if he was something like a spy.

  It was only when she was in her room with the door firmly shut that she allowed herself to think about what had happened before they had discovered that body. With the horror of that moment she had all but forgotten the fact that he had kissed her. What on earth had possessed him to do such a thing? What on earth had made her allow it?

  There was no denying that she found him attractive. He had so many of the qualities she had thus far found lacking in the young men of the ton. He was handsome, too, of course, but he was also intelligent without being arrogant, self-assured without being smug. And he seemed to be a genuinely caring person, which was something she had never imagined finding in any man besides her brother.

  Thinking of her brother made her freeze. What would Leo say when he learned that she and Lord Pierce had found the dead body of a not-spy in the Park? Surely Lord Pierce would have to tell him when he arrived, which might be as soon as today. Would he also tell her brother about what had transpired in the minutes leading up to the discovery? Eleanor sincerely hoped not, for both their sakes. Lord Pierce had clearly been right when he had said that his line of work was dangerous, and it did not strike her as the sort of profession one would want one's husband to have. Yet she knew that if he found out what had happened her brother would insist that Lord Pierce offer for her, and then she would have very little say in the matter, for it was two months yet before she achieved her majority on her twenty-first birthday.

  She must put these worries from her mind. Despite what had happened she had every confidence that Lord Pierce would protect them. For now, she must focus her mind on evening entertainments and canapés and floral arrangements and leave the rest to him.

  She rang the bell for Lily.

  "I can't quite believe this," Strathmore said flatly as they watched the workmen the village doctor had brought loading the body of John Yates onto the flat donkey cart. The doctor flung a sheet over the body, but it did little to conceal what was beneath.

  John Yates had been brutally tortured before he died. Colin wondered if he had broken when they tore out his fingernails or crushed his hands with a hammer, or if he had managed to hold firm. He did not know enough of the man's character to decide.

  As if thinking the same thing, Strathmore said, "He wouldn't have broken. Not John. Any of the rest of us would have, but not him. He was the bravest of us, you know.”

  “Had you...forgive me, had you known him long?” Colin asked, embarrassed that he did not already know the answer.

  “We met in Algeria,” Strathmore said. “All three of us, Yates, Crawley, and I, coming back from other places. Crawley and I had been in India and Yates in the Sudan. He was single-minded, Yates. When we were in Algeria he thought only of finding the murderers of those French officers. Since then he’s thought only of the Serraray and the White Hand, of how to break them. He would have been prepared for something like this to happen, prepared in ways that we weren’t.”

  For a moment they both stared at the cart with its terrible cargo. Then the village doctor came up. “All ready, My Lord,” he said grimly.

  “Very well,” Colin replied. The doctor climbed up into the carriage and flicked the reins, and the cart began to roll down the road towards the village.

  Colin and Strathmore fell in behind it, hanging back far enough that they could speak without being overheard.

  “Does this mean the Serraray are already here?” Strathmore asked.

  “I don’t know who else would have been capable of something like this, or why anyone else would have done it. Clearly someone wanted whatever information they believed Yates had. Perhaps they even recognized him, though the possibility of that is slim. But whatever the circumstances, I think this incident makes it clear that our targets have arrived. Indeed,” he added, “when I went back to the house, this was waiting. It’s from Crawley.” He took a folded letter from inside his coat and handed it to Strathmore, who opened it.

  “Gorleston magistrate reports newly abandoned boat near docks this morning. Could not have put in before nine o’clock last night,” Strathmore read. “This is dated two days ago. Why did it take so long to get here?”

  “It went to London first, unfortunately. Some mistake, I suppose.”

  "A mistake that cost Yates his life," Strathmore said bitterly.

  "He was dead, or at the very least had already been taken, before we even arrived at Sidney Park," Colin said, though he knew it was of little comfort. "There was nothing more we could have done to help him."

  "Yes, but—" Strathmore began, but then he paused. Colin could tell he had been about to say something regrettable, and his admiration for the young man grew. It was a rare breed of man who could bit back a caustic remark when riding behind his friend's body, and the ability would serve him well. Strathmore appeared to consider what he meant to say another moment. “We must rethink our plan of action,” he said at last.

  “Yes,” Colin agreed. With one of their number dead, reinforcements would have to be called in. “Do you think the Serraray will strike at us again?”

  Strathmore shook his head. “They have tipped their hand too early, I think, and they would be fools not to realize it.” His tone implied that he had lost some respect for their foes. “Perhaps they believed Yates would last longer. Perhaps they thought they might get actionable information out of him, and perhaps they did. Either they will move on to their true target, the princess, or they will go to ground now, and we will not see them again until they are ready to act.”

  “Someone must go to Hafeley and inform the princess’s guard.”

  “Let me,” Strathmore said immediately. “I am not afraid to face the Serraray if they do try to stop me, but I do not believe they will. And you are right—Sir John must be informed immediately. Perhaps he can be persuaded to take the princess and return to London,” he speculated, though both men knew there was little chance of Sir John Conroy straying from his carefully planned path. “Either way, he must know of this today. I will go directly from the village once we have seen Yates’s body safely to the doctor’s rooms.”

  “I think that would be best,” Colin said. “But be careful, Strathmore.”

  “Of course,” the young man said, and now he lifted the edge of his coat so that Colin could see the pistol he carried at his waist. Colin had never particularly cared for guns or for shooting, though he had of course learned at Townsley, where the hunt was one of his father’s chief pleasures. To Colin, it had always seemed rather unsportsmanlike to fight a man with a weapon that did not put oneself at equal risk with one’s opponent. He knew this was a chivalrous, antiquated view, but he clung to it. Still, he was considering searching out the gun room when he returned to the great house, for it seemed there was more at stake than just his own life now.

  When they reached the village and the doctor had laid Yates’s body out on the slab, Strathmore took one last look at his friend. Then he went out into the street and climbed back on his horse to ride the four hours to Hafeley. Colin followed him out. “Don’t take unnecessary risks,” he advised.

  “Yes, My Lord,” Strathmore said.

  “Well then. Godspeed, Strathmore.”

  Then the man was off, tearing down the street and out of the village. Colin went back into the doctor’s rooms, where the man himself was standing over the body. “How soon until you know a cause of death?”

  The doctor rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I am not well trained in this area, My Lord. Morning, probably. There’s a good deal of bruising that might hide other wounds, and he’ll have to be cleaned. But I can tell you this: it wasn’t pretty.” The doctor paused, staring down at the body for a moment before looking up at Colin. “Is there a murderer in our midst, My Lord? Should the villagers be warned?”

  Just then there was a knock at the door. A stout man clothed in black entered.

  “This is the rector, Mr. Loden,” the doctor said.

  “My Lord,” the
rector began, looking past Colin at the mutilated body. “I heard the news. There are rumors flying all over the village. I wanted to come and see what the people might be told to ease their worries.”

  Colin looked from the rector to the doctor and back. “Nothing that will be of much comfort, I’m afraid,” he said. “They should be on the lookout for any strangers in town. They are really no danger to the villagers, these men, not unless someone gets in their way. Still, everyone should be warned to bar their doors at night and not go out after dark.”

  The rector nodded. “I will make sure the villagers know. Perhaps tomorrow at church we might say a prayer for this young man’s soul. Do you know his name?”

  “John Yates,” Colin said. “That would be most welcome, Mr. Loden. Thank you.”

  The rector bowed his head solemnly and went out. The doctor looked after him. “This is a bad business, My Lord. The last murder ‘round these parts was twenty years ago at least.” He looked back at the body. “Why would they do such a thing? Was it information they were after?”

  “I suppose it was.”

  “The princess isn’t in any danger, is she, or any of the family?”

  Colin did not have to ask which family the doctor meant. “Let us hope not,” he said simply. Then he went out and got on his horse. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  He rode away, wondering how on earth he was going to explain all this to Lady Sidney.

  NINE

  “Miss Chesney?” the housekeeper, Mrs. Clarence, was saying her name again. Eleanor tried to break out of her fog. They had been going over the preparations for the final evening of the princess’s visit, which was to be a masquerade ball to which all the local gentry would be invited. Somehow, it did not quite seem possible to concentrate on champagne orders and floral arrangements and whether they would open the gallery or not. Her mind kept drifting back to the image of that man, Yates, lying on the edge of the river, his face and hands bruised dark purple, his mouth twisted in a grimace of pain. Lord Pierce had told her not to think of it, but that did not seem possible. She could think of nothing else.