‘Yes. Tell me…’ He paused, then said with deliberation, ‘Mary, where do you come from? Who were your parents?’
It was the first time he had addressed her by her real name. The truth was going to come out, now, no matter what the outcome.
She looked into the black depths of his eyes, and felt the shadows creeping closer. ‘The truth,’ she managed on a strangled whisper. She wished now she had not challenged him to seek the truth. Whenever she had tried to examine what lurked buried in the depths of her mind, all she had ever discovered was that it was dark and horrible and painful.
Uttering a little whimper, she began to massage the back of her neck, where the muscles had gone rigid with stress.
‘I don’t know!’she finally managed to admit. ‘I don’t know who my parents were. Though, sometimes, I think I remember my mother.’
Because he had asked it of her, she delved inwards, towards the vague image of the kindly, calming presence that had urged her to keep her mind on her sampler. ‘She taught me to sew.’
‘That is good,’ Lord Matthison murmured. ‘Is there any more?’
He reached across the space between them and laid his hand over the one with which she was clutching at the arm of the chair. ‘What of your father?’
There was that menacing figure beyond her mother. The one she had never quite dared to try to examine. The one her mother had been so determined to shield her from. The one with the loud voice and the hard fists.
‘He used to hit me!’ Now she knew why it was second nature for her to sit quietly at her needlework, striving to become invisible to anyone else that might be in the room. ‘He was always angry. Nothing I did was ever good enough.’
And then, before she could prevent it, a horrible image flashed into her mind. Of a woman lying on the floor, curled up on her side, with a man crouching over her, pounding her with his fists.
‘Cora, Cora, what is it, where have you gone?’
She blinked, coming back to the present to find Lord Matthison holding both her hands between his, his dark eyes full of concern.
‘He used to beat her, too…’She shivered. The image was so stark, so terrifying, the sense of loss and horror so deeply imbedded in her psyche that she suddenly knew why she flinched from the prospect of reclaiming any of her memories. ‘I think he might have killed her.’
She had to block out this shattering revelation from her past! She had to turn her mind away from the horror. But she had no work to occupy her hands. No soothing, repetitive activity to calm her troubled mind. She got to her feet, in agitation, her breath coming in thin, reedy gasps.
In an instant, Lord Matthison was on his feet beside her. He hauled her into his arms, and began to rock her, crooning soft, soothing nonsense into her ears. And because there was nothing else she could use to block out those images, she concentrated completely on him. On the feel of his hands, running up and down her back. The sound of his voice, telling her over and over again that she was safe. The scent of his skin where her nose butted up against his neck. And the violent images gradually faded away, her breathing slowed, and the panic receded. She was not there any more. She was standing in a hotel room in Bath, with the fire crackling cheerfully in the grate, and the coffee cooling in the cups on the table. In Lord Matthison’s arms.
‘Your father could not have killed your mother,’ he said, when at last she stopped spasmodically clutching at his jacket sleeves. ‘He was a man of the cloth.’
The man who had been crouching over her mother had been wearing the clothes of a cleric.
She shook her head, vehemently pushing the disturbing image back into the shadows.
‘Cora’s father may have been a man of the cloth,’she argued, pulling out of his arms and turning away. ‘My father was a drunken bully.’
It was one of those truths that slipped from her mouth without her knowing where it had come from. Yes, she sighed. She knew that was true. That was how she had been able to identify the sweet, fruity odour in the coach as spirits lingering on a man’s breath. The other passengers must have spent some time in the taproom whilst waiting for the journey to start. It was the reason they had all slept so soundly, no matter how loud the guard blew the horn, or how deep the potholes that they bounced over.
Lord Matthison gently set her back on her chair, and went to his own, his face creased in perplexity.
‘If you are not Cora Montague,’ he said, shaken, ‘then who the hell are you? Why do you look so much like her? And why did you only appear in London six years ago? Less than two months after she disappeared. With no clear memories of your past!’
‘N-not clear memories, no,’ she admitted. ‘Just snatches, mostly.’
He sat forwards, his eyes narrowing. ‘What do you mean, mostly? What have you not told me?’
‘Well,’ she admitted, feeling horribly guilty for not mentioning it before. ‘I do remember the place where I lived before they sent me to work for Madame Pichot. A great house it was, in the country.’
‘Where was it?’ he demanded sharply. ‘Tell me everything!’
‘I…I can’t!’ she gasped, getting to her feet and pacing the floor in an agitated manner.
‘Can’t or won’t?’
‘Why are you torturing me like this?’ she whirled on him. ‘What do you hope to gain?’
He got to his feet too, and pulled her into his arms again, cradling her against his chest. In spite of her accusation that he was torturing her, she subsided into his embrace as though he was her only rock in a sea of uncertainty.
‘You know what I want,’ he groaned. ‘I want you to be Cora! I want to find out what happened to you that day you went out riding and never came back. And how you ended up in London. But if—’ he took her face in his hands and raised it so she had to gaze directly into his eyes ‘—if you turn out to be someone else…a girl perhaps who ran away from home after witnessing the brutal murder of her mother by her father…then I promise you, I will still take care of you. I swear, you have nothing to fear from me, whatever we find out.
‘But don’t you want to know the truth about yourself? I think,’ he said, looking at her challengingly, ‘we both need to unravel the mystery of your past, before either of us can begin to live freely again.’
‘Y-you will take care of me?’
‘Yes. It is not your fault you look like Cora. You have done nothing to merit losing your post and ending up in a town where you know nobody. If you are not Cora, then I swear, I will make amends for all of this.’
She knew he spoke the truth. Whoever she turned out to be, he would be responsible for her.
Just as Molly had said he would.
She pulled out of his arms, rubbing her hands up and down the sleeves of her dress. Now was the moment any sensible woman would negotiate terms. Tell him she wanted him to set her up in a shop when he was finished with her.
But, she realised on a shocked, indrawn breath, that was not what she wanted at all!
Somewhere during this long, confusing day, she had begun to wish she really could be his Cora. That she was fit to marry him, and could stay with him for ever! That was why she had allowed her memories to begin to tally with what he kept on telling her.
She sank down on to her chair.
‘W-will you do something for me?’ she asked in a tortured whisper.
‘If I can.’
‘W-will you treat me, as though I was…Cora, until we find out the truth?’
She did not think she could bear it if he treated her like a disposable commodity, not now she had caught a glimpse of how deeply this man could love.
‘Nothing would please me more,’ he said, his face relaxing into something approaching a smile.
It almost broke her heart. She was encouraging him to live out his fantasy, when she knew it would only be a matter of time before the truth blew it all to smithereens.
She was not the woman he loved.
It was one of those things she just knew.
Chapter Six
It was not as pleasant, having an enormous bed all to herself, as Mary had thought it would be.
She rolled over on to her side, tugging the blankets up round her ears as she went, wondering how it could be so hard to get to sleep when she was so exhausted. To think, when Lord Matthison had told her she could take this bed, while he made himself comfortable on a chair by the fire, she had felt nothing but relief! She had even mustered up a timid smile when he had pulled the velvet bed-hangings closed round her, assuring her that he would not intrude on her privacy. She had briefly imagined stretching out her aching limbs on the invitingly soft mattress and falling instantly into a blissfully deep and dreamless sleep.
As yet, she had not even managed to keep her eyes closed for more than a few seconds at a time.
It was too dark.
Almost as soon as Lord Matthison had drawn the dusty brown curtains round her, she’d had to fumble her way to the edge of the bed and open them a chink. She had brought her overnight bag into her private cocoon, but dreaded groping for it in that thick darkness, and trying to locate her nightdress in its depths by sense of touch alone. It had been extremely awkward, wriggling out of her clothes, and into her nightdress whilst kneeling up on a surface that had the consistency of sponge cake.And when she’d finally succeeded, instead of relaxing back into the bank of pillows, she had kept on kneeling there, chewing on her lower lip, while she wondered what to do about her dress. She had felt how stiff the hem was as she’d tugged it over her head. What she really wanted to do was to rinse the mud out before settling for the night. She was sure, if she could hang it over one of the chair backs, before the fire, it would be almost dry by morning.
But that would mean venturing out into Lord Matthison’s territory.
In her nightgown.
Swallowing down hard, Mary had draped her soiled dress over the footboard, telling herself that there were worse things than having to put on travel-stained clothing.
Far worse. She had experienced some of them today. When she remembered how desolate she had felt, standing in that doorway with that blank piece of paper in her hand, her insides clenched up and she had to wrap her arms about her stomach.
And it was not only what had really happened today that had left her feeling so raw. It was the glimpse of the past that Lord Matthison had goaded her into looking at. She could still see her father pounding his fists into her mother’s curled-up body, every time she shut her eyes.
She sat bolt upright, her own fists clenched. She had always known that there was something so ugly in her past that her mind recoiled from remembering it! But worse, far worse, was the horrible, sickening certainty that there was more to come. She could sense it, lurking just out of sight, like a beast crouching in the shadows, lashing its tail as it prepared to pounce the moment she let her guard down…
Mary grabbed one of the pillows, and buried her face in it as she hugged it to her knees. If only she were back in London, with Molly on one side of her, and Kitty on the other. They would not have let her so much as roll over, never mind sit up and toss pillows about. But then, with the girls on either side of her, she would not be feeling so vulnerable. Even if they did not fully wake up, one of them would always reach out, and pat her sleepily, and tell her to pay no mind to her dreams. Without them to guard her, she gasped, blinking blindly into the inky blackness that surrounded her, she would never dare to go to sleep. With nobody to wake her, she might fall deeper and deeper into her nightmares until they swallowed her whole!
Her heart was beating so fast, her whole body shook with its force. She felt so utterly, completely defenceless, here in this town where nothing was familiar to her. In London, there was always noise, no matter what time of night it was. The rattle of carriage wheels passing in the street, the cries of the night watchmen, drunken revellers singing as they staggered home. Signs of life.
This place was as silent as the grave. She felt as though the very quietness of the hotel room was conspiring with its darkness to suffocate her in this velvet tomb.
And then she heard the creak of a chair as Lord Matthison shifted position. Some of the tension drained from her shoulders and she lay down, staring straight up where she knew there was a canopy over her head. If she fell asleep, and if she had a nightmare, he would hear her cry out. And he would wake her, wouldn’t he? Before she went in too deep?
When the chair creaked again, Mary ruefully compared their positions. It didn’t sound as if he could get comfortable. She should have taken the chair, and let him have the bed. She could have curled her smaller body up in a blanket, and watched the flames dancing in the grate. He could have stretched out here, in the kind of luxury he was used to. And at least one of them would have been able to get some sleep.
Instead, she lay rigid, listening to the sounds of his wakefulness, yearning for daybreak to put an end to their mutual discomfort.
She found it almost impossible to look him in the face the next morning. She was painfully aware that he had chased halfway across the country to rescue her, and rescue it had been—she shuddered to think what might have become of her if he had not been there. And far from expressing so much as a hint of gratitude, she had reacted with hostility and suspicion, and finally demanded he accord her the kind of respect he would show a woman of his own class.
‘I will hire a post-chaise to convey us back to London,’ he said, once they were seated at the table where a fresh-faced young waiter had set out a substantial breakfast.
‘London?’ she echoed, her curiosity roused enough to dart a timid glance at him. Immediately, she felt quite wretched to see the dark shadows that spending a sleepless night in a chair had put under his eyes.
‘Yes, London,’ he replied, cutting a slice from the succulent slab of sirloin that lay on his plate. ‘That is the logical place to begin to hunt for clues to your true identity.’
Mary dejectedly bit into a roll she had mechanically slathered with butter and honey. He was not going to give this up. He was not going to rest until he had ferreted out the very deepest of her secrets.
‘You say you worked in a big house before you went to Madame Pichot?’
She nodded, her mouth suddenly too dry to swallow, let alone form words.
‘She must know something about your former employer. They must have given you a reference?’
Mary reached for her cup of chocolate and took a large gulp. Once Madame related the circumstances that had led to her being sent to London…
‘She…Madame…might not be willing to tell us anything,’ she said hopefully.
Lord Matthison looked at her sharply, and she hung her head. It was all he could do not to curse out loud. The dressmaker would not want to help them, that was what she meant.
He stabbed into his steak, savagely hacking off another slice and impaling it on his fork. Madame Pichot was a spiteful woman, to have served a girl she believed to be a simpleton such a cruel trick.
But it was his fault that she had turned on Cora at all.
He flung his fork, complete with the untasted morsel of rare steak, back on to the plate with a clatter. He had spent a large part of the night re-examining the events of the past few days, trying to come to terms with Cora’s reactions to him. In particular, wondering why she assumed he had proposed marriage to another woman, when nothing was further from the truth. She could only have heard that there was any thought of an engagement from some member of the Winters family. Nobody else knew anything about it.
One of them must have gone to Madame Pichot and fed her a pack of lies. Probably breathing threats of scandal that could jeopardise the business.
He could curse them all for their cruelty towards a defenceless woman till the cows came home, but in the end, he had to accept that it was his own actions that had resulted in Cora losing her job and ending up on the streets, so lonely and scared she had accepted the protection of a man who was a virtual stranger to her.
No wonder she could no
t bear to look at him.
‘She may not want to help us, but she will,’ he said in a tone so implacable, his face going so hard that, for the very briefest moment, Mary felt a twinge of pity for her former employer. She could almost see why people believed this man was in league with the devil, when his eyes could burn with such malevolence.
Travelling in a post-chaise, Mary soon discovered, was an entirely different prospect from taking the mail coach. For one thing, the interior was too small to take more than two passengers. For another, they were not tied to anybody’s schedule but their own. When they stopped to change horses and postilions, they could take a meal, or even a stroll if they felt so inclined.
The leisurely pace was less taxing, it was true, but it had the disadvantage that they would not reach London in one stage. And though Mary was in no hurry to face Madame Pichot, she still felt awkward about sharing a room with Lord Matthison. And she knew he would insist that they did.
Though, she mused, as they sat down to a light supper, set out in the private parlour he had obtained, she no longer worried he might not treat her with respect. He had been so attentive to her needs, getting ostlers to jump to attention, and landlords to scramble to serve them, with just one lancing look from his night-dark eyes. How she wished she was a real lady, and could always expect such consideration!
He was such a perfect gentleman, she sighed, wiping her lips with a napkin, and laying it on the table beside her plate. He deserved to be with someone so much better than her.
‘You can take the bed tonight,’ she declared, the moment Lord Matthison closed the door to their bedchamber behind them. Marching across to the bed, she whisked off the quilt, helped herself to one of the pillows, and arranged them on the chesterfield that sagged on bowed legs under the window.
‘And please, do not argue about this, my mind is made up,’ she said when she saw a whole raft of objections flit across his face. ‘I am so tired I could sleep anywhere. I can be quite comfortable on the couch, being so much smaller than you,’ she pointed out.
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