A Sister's Secret

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘You shall pay dearly for subjecting me to such indignity. I have discovered all your sins. You are a fraudulent wretch and a worthless deceiver.’

  ‘I thought, Your Ladyship, you were aware of that from the beginning.’

  ‘In the beginning, you led me to believe you were a professional adventurer, an unprincipled rogue and a shameless blackguard. This beginning itself, sir, was an act of contemptible fraudulence.’

  ‘I agree, marm, and confess it so, humbly,’ declared the captain, ‘but I’m no more than an ordinary blackguard, such as you may come across every day in London. But as things were—’

  ‘Ordinary?’ said Caroline, spirited now. ‘Did you not declare you would commit any crime short of assassination or murder? There are few men so lost to all grace and decency as to deliver lies of such magnitude as you did, and to one as kind and trusting as myself.’

  ‘Quite so, marm, but the circumstances, d’you see—’

  ‘You are not an adventurer, a rogue or a thief, but you are a man of deceits,’ said Caroline. She had grasped the nettle and seized the initiative. She was in her element, finding entirely new exhilaration in standing up to him instead of denying him access to her presence. ‘Why, you are not even a professional card-sharp.’

  ‘I’m a professional soldier, though not of the usual kind,’ he said. ‘I execute uncommon commissions for His Majesty’s government.’

  ‘As I have discovered to the cost of my self-respect. The Duke of Avonhurst, my father-in-law, confessed all your deceits. Do you now say, sir, that you did not compromise your adjutant’s wife or decamp with the trinkets of young ladies who thought you would marry them?’

  ‘God forbid I should even dream of it,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘and God forgive your father-in-law for spilling the beans.’

  ‘My father-in-law does not spill beans, sir. He is a gentleman of honour, and in honourable fashion he—’ Caroline broke off as Captain Burnside coughed. ‘Sir?’ she said haughtily.

  ‘A cough ain’t always significant, Your Ladyship.’

  ‘My father-in-law, as a matter of honour, felt impelled to acquaint me with all the miserable details of your two-faced activities. I have forgiven him his own part. Your part, sir, will never be forgiven. I detest myself for being a naive, trusting and sweet-natured simpleton, thinking of your professed sins not with scorn but with Christian pity.’

  Captain Burnside eyed her with due gravity. Chin high, she stared him out, showing not a sign that this final confrontation had her in a state of resurgent challenge.

  ‘Allow me, marm, to confess myself abject, penitent and contrite,’ he said, ‘and to offer myself up for execution. But while I am all of a piece, I beg your consideration of the plight of the maidservant Betsy, so invaluable in the matter of the letter. The sweet puss—’

  ‘The pretty trollop?’ interjected Caroline bitingly.

  ‘She’s been dismissed following an investigation into the letter’s disappearance. While allowing you ain’t charitably inclined at the moment, due to my regrettable abuse of your trust and self-respect, I know you to have natural compassion and I thought, therefore, you might find her a position here at Great Wivenden. Sussex, d’you see, offers her less temptations than London, she owning too much of a weakness for gentlemen of a suspect kind.’

  Caroline could not believe her ears. Merciful heavens, was the ground she had newly won to be swept from beneath her feet? Were there no limits to his outrageous audacity? Was there ever a more presumptuous villain, or a more endearing one? Her resolution trembled on the brink.

  ‘Sir, your impudence is breathtaking,’ she said. ‘I am to consider employing your trollop? Oh, sir, I vow you of all things conscienceless. I have found you out, discovered your perfidy, and the first thing you do is beg me to take up your fallen baggage. I am lost for words, sir, lost.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the captain, and coughed again. ‘I ain’t noticed it,’ he said.

  Caroline could hardly contain her swamping tide of recharged spirit. There he was, standing before her, his expression that of a man being entirely reasonable. Oh, that she had denied herself this exultant confrontation until now.

  ‘You are shifting about, sir,’ she said. ‘You may have no shame, but you are surely not such a coward that you can’t face your deserved death bravely. But I declare myself un-vindictive. I am returning home to Charleston at the end of this month.’

  ‘Only over my dead body,’ said the captain.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You ain’t going,’ he said.

  ‘This conversation is over,’ said Caroline.

  ‘It ain’t properly begun yet. Beg to suggest, Your Ladyship, that you stop playing games.’

  ‘Games?’ Her head came up.

  ‘It’s affecting my well-being,’ said the captain.

  A breeze came drifting from the Downs and lightly kissed the leafy trees. Caroline stood still, yielding nothing. The captain was poised, however, to cut off her probable, darting flight.

  ‘Your well-being, sir, is not my concern. I am selling Great Wivenden—’

  ‘No, you ain’t,’ he said.

  ‘Captain Burnside, there is a suspicion in my mind that you’re threatening me.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said the captain, ‘I am. Declare yourself permanently attached to Great Wivenden, or take the consequences.’

  ‘Declare those consequences, sir.’

  ‘Abduction, confinement, and bread and water. Sammy is presently at Pond Cottage, with your coach. Unless, marm, you come to your senses, I shall carry you there, bundle you aboard, and get Sammy to drive us to a place where I shall lock you up and feed you bread and water, which won’t necessarily be the least of it.’

  ‘Lock me up?’ Caroline could scarcely restrain her joy. No woman could have failed to perceive what lay behind this outrageous threat. He loved her. Not for him the timid words of a faint-hearted swain, but the calculating and uncompromising approach that carried the implication of a fate worse than death. A fate worse than death? At his hands? Oh, joy. He did love her. But she would not give in, never, until he told her so. ‘Am I dreaming?’ she asked. ‘Am I among phantoms and fantasies? Abduct me? Lock me up and feed me bread and water?’

  ‘Which my estimable mother always prescribed as the most salutary cure for the sulks of rebellious boys and pettish girls.’

  ‘Pettish girls? Pettish girls?’

  ‘Alas, Lady Caroline, that you should have come to girlish sulks, you who adorned Lady Chesterfield’s ball like a magnificent goddess,’ said the unblinking captain.

  ‘Oh, that disgraceful tongue of yours will bring you to a miserable end, Captain Burnside,’ she said, ‘and your ridiculous threats will avail you nothing. Sammy and my coach indeed – fiddlesticks, sir, fiddlesticks. You could never make a confederate of Sammy. He would never go against me.’

  ‘He is under the impression, Your Ladyship, that you and I are to elope.’

  Caroline was further entranced. Oh, the audacious villain. ‘Elope? With you? I should leave Sammy in no doubt that you were engaged in forceful abduction, for I should fight you tooth and nail. You deceived me, lied to me, mocked me, humiliated me and made a fool of me. Have you no thought of what that did to me?’

  ‘Your Most Precious and Endearing Ladyship,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘what do you think it did to me, loving you hopelessly as I did from the moment I first saw you?’

  He had said it at last. It took all breath from her. Dizzy rapture overtook her. Henceforward, the confrontation could only offer unparalleled delight. But all she could say for the moment was, ‘Hopelessly, Captain Burnside?’

  His expression became wry. ‘I ain’t supposing you’ve any great regard for me,’ he said, ‘but all the same I’ll not stand aside and let you go back to America.’

  ‘So,’ she breathed, ‘you would abduct me, imprison me and starve me until I let you have your dreadful way with me? Why, you would never even get me into the coach,
for I should make it plain to Sammy that you were attempting brutal abduction, no less.’

  ‘Unfortunately, marm,’ he said smoothly, ‘Sammy won’t be there, nor the coach. One plays a hopeful hand to see what it will achieve, and when it don’t bring forth the right results, one plays the ace. The ace is Pond Cottage. I shall carry you there, muffling all your cries for help, and keep you captive until you give up your unacceptable notion of running off to America. America won’t do, Your Ladyship, and it ain’t going to do.’

  Caroline’s eyes were luminous with bliss. Joy upon joy, he was no sooner shorn of one bluff than another sprang from his facile tongue. Oh, what a divinely talkative marriage they would have.

  ‘Why, you disgraceful braggart,’ she said, ‘I am no weak and wailing woman, or an incapable one. I should escape the cottage with ease.’

  ‘I should discourage that by removing your clothes,’ said Captain Burnside, as straight of face as she was scornful of smile.

  ‘Removing my clothes?’

  ‘Ah – most of them,’ he said.

  Caroline was almost delirious with inner laughter. ‘Sir, I declare you unspeakable,’ she said.

  ‘All is fair, marm, in love and war,’ he said.

  ‘Your villainy is breathtaking, sir, your love utterly suspect,’ she declared. ‘Do you think I would let you remove a single stitch of my clothing, or allow you to carry me all the way to Pond Cottage with my screams muffled?’

  ‘I consider you a bearable armful, Lady Caroline, and the walk ain’t beyond me, nor the muffling of your tantrums.’

  ‘Tantrums?’ Caroline felt that every leaf of every tree was laughing. ‘Is it a tantrum, sir, to fight for my honour? Show me how you will muffle me. There, you have given me threats, I now give you a challenge. Show me, sir, that you are as good as your vaunted boasts.’

  ‘H’m,’ said Captain Burnside.

  ‘Don’t shift about, sir, but show me. Yes, show me precisely how you will carry me and muffle me.’

  ‘Very well, Your Ladyship,’ he said, and swept her up into his arms, much to her delight. Carrying her, he began to walk, bearing her through the trees. She did not kick, nor did she scream.

  ‘I am, as you see, free to cry for help,’ she said, settling herself blissfully and comfortably in his arms, her hands locked around his neck. ‘So, will you come to the muffling? How is that to be done?’

  ‘Alas, there is only one way,’ said the captain. ‘This way.’ And he kissed her. His lips were firm and determined, making their claim and taking possession of hers, and hers broke apart. The summer breeze brought the lightest of whispers as the surging tide of love engulfed Caroline. In his arms, she drowned in warm seas of ecstasy. He carried her from the wood into the golden sunlight, and still she was muffled, each kiss more prolonged. She sighed when at last he freed her mouth. He said nothing, but he stopped, his expression that of a man not now entirely sure of himself. The responsive ardour of her mouth had bemused him.

  ‘Pray continue,’ said Caroline, her voice a little throaty.

  ‘No, I shall set you down here, having shown you how it will be done,’ he said, and he set her down.

  ‘Continue,’ said Caroline, her warm body breathing close to his. ‘Take me up again. You have not shown me all you intend to do to me. Continue, therefore, and when we reach Pond Cottage, show me how you will go about undressing me.’

  ‘Ah, I think not,’ he said.

  ‘I think yes,’ said Caroline, eyes loving him.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, wanting her.

  ‘Why? Why?’ Caroline laughed in rich joy. ‘Because you are my most audacious and adorable villain, because I am your willing Caroline and your sweet pleasure, and because I love you, love you, love you. Oh, dearest, dearest Charles, you will be true to me, won’t you?’

  Captain Burnside, not ignorant of the reputation Lord Clarence Percival had earned for himself, said, ‘What kind of a true man would any man be if, having been gifted with the love of such a beautiful and endearing woman as you, he could not be faithful to her?’

  ‘Oh, how glad I am to know you aren’t going to end up on Tyburn Tree,’ said Caroline, ‘and how very glad I am that you love me. I really don’t mind going on to Pond Cottage.’

  ‘For what purpose, Your Ladyship?’ he smiled.

  ‘Darling, to fight for my honour, of course,’ said Caroline. ‘I have a dreadful feeling I shall lose, for you are a man of such singular accomplishments and I such a weak and helpless woman … Dearest, what are you laughing at?’

  Captain Burnside was laughing indeed. Richly. She saw the delight he had in her, she saw the love he had for her, and she knew that this time she had made no mistake.

  I am at my beginning.

  About the Author

  Mary Jane Staples was born, bred and educated in Walworth, and is the author of many bestselling novels including the ever-popular cockney sagas featuring the Adams family.

  Also by Mary Jane Staples

  The Adams Books

  DOWN LAMBETH WAY

  OUR EMILY

  KING OF CAMBERWELL

  ON MOTHER BROWN’S DOORSTEP

  A FAMILY AFFAIR

  MISSING PERSON

  PRIDE OF WALWORTH

  ECHOES OF YESTERDAY

  THE YOUNG ONES

  THE CAMBERWELL RAID

  THE LAST SUMMER

  THE FAMILY AT WAR

  FIRE OVER LONDON

  CHURCHILL’S PEOPLE

  BRIGHT DAY, DARK NIGHT

  TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY

  THE WAY AHEAD

  YEAR OF VICTORY

  THE HOMECOMING

  SONS AND DAUGHTERS

  APPOINTMENT AT THE PALACE

  CHANGING TIMES

  SPREADING WINGS

  FAMILY FORTUNES

  A GIRL NEXT DOOR

  UPS AND DOWNS

  OUT OF THE SHADOWS

  A SIGN OF THE TIMES

  THE SOLDIER’S GIRL

  Other titles in order of publication

  TWO FOR THREE FARTHINGS

  THE LODGER

  RISING SUMMER

  THE PEARLY QUEEN

  SERGEANT JOE

  THE TRAP

  THE GHOST OF WHITECHAPEL

  ESCAPE TO LONDON

  THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

  A WARTIME MARRIAGE

  KATERINA’S SECRET

  THE SUMMER DAY IS DONE

  THE LONGEST WINTER

  NATASHA’S DREAM

  NURSE ANNA’S WAR

  LOVE FOR A SOLDIER

  published by Corgi Books, and available as ebooks

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  A Random House Group Company

  www.transworldbooks.co.uk

  A SISTER’S SECRET

  A CORGI BOOK: 9780552169400

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448168118

  First published in Great Britain in 1988 by

  Severn House Publishers Ltd as The Professional Gentleman under the name Robert Tyler Stevens

  Bantam Press Library edition published as A Sister’s Secret 2013

  Corgi edition published as A Sister’s Secret 2013

  Copyright © Robert Tyler Stevens 1988

  Mary Jane Staples has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be
a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at:

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1