‘You used that knowledge to try to get rid of me,’she said, and then, because Frances had nearly reached the end of the rose border, hitched up her skirts and trotted after her. ‘What right had you to interfere?’
‘Well, somebody had to do something about it. Poor Lady Matthison was prostrate with distress. And Christopher was far too much of a gentleman to tell you to your face that he could not stand the sight of you.’
The shaft went wide. For she knew now that Kit did indeed want her. He could not keep his hands off her! Oh, he might not feel the romantic love she had dreamed about inspiring when she had been a girl. But he certainly desired her, in a very basic way. Why, he enjoyed taking her to bed so much that he had stopped the carriage on the way here, and spent an entire afternoon naked in her arms, when he could just as easily have pressed on and arrived at Kingsmede in time for supper.
‘Frances…’ Cora stepped up to her and looked her straight in the eye. ‘You and I both know that is a lie. Christopher wants to marry me.’ For whatever reason. ‘He told me he organised search parties—’
‘Only to satisfy your brother!’
‘No, Frances, that is not true. You have to stop this right now! He wanted to find me. You know he did.’ It seemed so obvious now, she did not know why she had not seen it before. ‘That was why you deliberately kept me hidden away up in the vicarage attic!’
‘I was tending your injuries,’ Frances argued, her eyes darting away. ‘You were too ill to move.’
‘You moved me from your hallway when I collapsed on your doorstep!’ Cora scoffed. ‘It would have been far less trouble to carry me into your parlour, and send word to Kingsmede that you had found me, than it was to heave me up all those stairs! And if you were really concerned about how ill I was, why did you never send for a doctor? No, you cannot use that excuse on me. Even back then, though I had a high fever, and had no idea who I was, or how I came to be there, I was fully aware that you hated me. You hated me so much, you sent me to Oakham Hall. You knew you were handing me over to a…a rapist, didn’t you!’
Frances looked a little contrite. ‘Yes, I did regret the necessity of taking that step. But by that time, it had become clear to me that little, short of death, would halt your ambitions. When the horse threw you, and I saw you lying there all covered with leaves, your head and limbs at such peculiar angles—’ she tilted her head to one side, a reminiscent smile playing about her lips ‘—like a little broken doll.’ Her eyes snapped back to Cora. ‘I thought, for a few, blissful hours, that it had all been taken out of my hands. That death had provided the ultimate answer to the problems you posed. Even if the fall had not quite killed you, I was sure that lying on the ground in all that rain would have finished you off. Instead, you crawled to my door. It was quite a shock to see you standing there wringing wet, and with blood running down your face, asking me for help. You are like—’ her face spasmed with disgust ‘—a pernicious weed, that will keep springing back up. You had to be rooted out for good!’
‘You saw me fall? And did nothing to help?’ No, it was worse than that. She screwed up her face as she tried to remember the actual words Frances had used when telling her about Kit’s tryst in the woodcutter’s hut. It was all terribly hazy…but unless Frances had put the idea in her head, she could not see why she would have gone to the stables and saddled a horse that was far too spirited for a novice to ride, when she could as easily have walked to the hut, as Kit had done.
‘Frances!’ she gasped. ‘You tried to kill me!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Frances retorted. ‘I merely concealed your whereabouts while considering what to do with you.’
Cora blinked in temporary confusion, until she realised that Frances was thinking about her stay in the vicarage, rather than the ‘accident’ in the forest.
‘Your head injury had left you confused, which gave me a little time to come up with a solution to the problem you posed. For a few days, you became so ill that I began to hope you might just die and put us all out of our misery. But no…’ She sighed. ‘You began to recover. I feared it might only be a matter of time before you remembered who you were, and would start demanding you return to Kingsmede. So I went to visit the housekeeper at Oakham Hall. She was always in need of staff. The turnover there was very high.’
‘And you told her I was an orphan, dependant on the parish…’
‘In need of light work because you had been ill,’ Frances nodded. ‘A brilliant plan, I thought.’
‘You deliberately put me in the way of Lord Sandiford, expecting him to…?’
Frances nodded sombrely. ‘I dare say it must have been terribly unpleasant for you. But you had to learn your lesson. Your sin was overweening ambition. You wanted a lord. Well,’ she tittered, ‘I gave you to a lord who would humble you! So the punishment fit the crime. It was a very neat solution. A man of Christopher’s standing would never marry a woman who had been sullied. Particularly not by a man of Lord Sandiford’s reputation. So that even when your memory returned, and you found your way back to Kingsmede, I knew you would no longer pose a threat.’
‘I cannot believe you are admitting to all this so calmly.’ Cora felt as though she was in a waking nightmare. ‘To talk of wishing me dead, of conniving at my utter ruin…are you not ashamed? Your father is a vicar, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Why should I be ashamed? I only did what was best for everyone concerned.’
‘You are unbelievable! No decent person would have acted as you did…’
‘You are such a simpleton,’ Frances sneered as she unlatched the gate that led through to the orchard. ‘History is full of good Christian folk girding up their loins, and acting decisively to save those around them from a greater evil. Just think of all those men of the cloth who condemned heretics to burn at the stake,’ she said triumphantly, striding into the trees, her skirts flattening a trail through the long grass. ‘It cannot have been easy to send a woman to die such a horrible death. And yet they did it. Because they knew it was the right thing to do, to purge the church from a greater evil.’
‘I am not evil!’ Cora gasped as she followed in Frances’s wake. ‘And nobody thinks it right to burn people at the stake any more. Frances, you have taken leave of your senses!’
Frances stopped so suddenly Cora almost ran into the back of her.
‘No! I am the only one who sees things clearly. You are not fit to be Lord Matthison’s wife! Not then, and especially not now! Not after spending seven years hiding away in shame, earning your living as a dressmaker and no doubt keeping low company.’ She bent down, and hissed into Cora’s face, ‘Did you bear Lord Sandiford a child, Miss Montague? I have often wondered if he managed to make you pregnant before you escaped, like so many of the other girls who took employment at Oakham Hall. I could get no news of you once you had left. But then, of course, they are well used to covering up Lord Sandiford’s peccadilloes.’
Cora reeled back. ‘No! He did not manage to rape me.’ She lifted her chin proudly. ‘I fought him off.’
Frances raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
‘Ah, so that is the tale you have told Christopher. That is how you persuaded him to take you back.’ She shook her head and clucked her tongue in reproof. ‘You really are shameless in your determination to ensnare him, are you not? And he, being the gentleman he is, will not question the word of his dearest friend’s sister.’Her pale eyes turned flint hard. ‘But I am warning you now, nobody else will believe you, once they hear you worked at Oakham Hall. Nobody will receive you. You will be a social pariah!’
‘And you will make sure they know, won’t you, Frances?’ Cora retorted, the past becoming clearer as Frances spelled out what her future would be like. When she had first arrived at Kingsmede, as a shy young girl, the staff had been somewhat surprised that master Christopher had brought back a fiancée. Surprised, and warily watchful, but not hostile. That attitude had only developed gradually. As Frances, she now saw, had worked behind the
scenes to paint a picture of her as a greedy, scheming seductress.
‘Well,’ said Frances with a calculating look. ‘It all depends on you. I take no delight in spreading gossip, you know,’ she said piously. ‘I would much rather not have to speak about such a sordid incident. If you were to just break off this ridiculous engagement, and go back to where you came from, there would be no need for any more unpleasantness. And, my dear—’ she placed her hand on Cora’s forearm, and looked intently into her eyes ‘—if you have any real affection for him, you must surely see that the best thing you can do for him is to release him from the intolerable burden of this unequal alliance. Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice our personal happiness, for the good of those we love.’
Cora swayed. If Frances had come to her last time she had been here, and delivered that little speech, with such sincerity that she had managed to bring tears to her eyes, Cora might have done exactly as she suggested. Frances might have won!
But she had not. No, Frances had sent her out on a horse she could scarcely ride, hoping to break her heart, if not her bones. And then locked her away, denying her the medical treatment she had so badly needed. She had lain in that attic, shaking with fear and fever while Frances sat at the foot of her bed, turning her hand this way and that so that the ruby ring she wore on her finger gleamed and pulsed in the candlelight. With a gloating expression on her face.
Angrily, Cora flung Frances’s hand from her arm.
‘You want him for yourself, don’t you!’ She did not know why she had not seen it before. But every time Frances mentioned Christopher’s name, her eyes shone. Her whole face softened. ‘That is why you have worked so hard to get rid of me. All that talk about working for the greater good is so much sanctimonious claptrap!’
Frances’s mouth thinned with disapproval. She took a breath to refute Cora’s accusations, but this time Cora was not prepared to listen.
‘Don’t bother to come up with any more of your clever little stories to try to hoax me! You took his ring from my finger, and you wore it. I saw the expression on your face as you sat there, night after night, hoping I would die.’
Cora’s legs were shaking. She had never had the courage to stand up to anyone before, and she was not sure where she was getting the strength to do it now. It was just unthinkable to leave without saying what she had specifically come here to say.
‘Frances, you must return the ring you stole. If you do not, I will have to tell Lord Matthison that you have it.’
‘I did not steal it!’ Frances looked outraged. ‘I was keeping it safe. I have kept it safe for years. Lady Matthison asked me to hide it when her husband would have sold it off to pay his gaming debts.’
‘And then she asked you to bring it back, so that Kit could give it to me,’ Cora deduced.
‘She did not want you to have it!’ Frances spat. ‘She wept when she told me how Christopher was throwing it away on an unworthy woman.’
‘But it is Christopher’s right to throw it away, if that is what he wants to do. It is not for you to decide who should wear it.’
‘It will not be you!’ Frances hissed, total hatred blazing from her eyes.
‘Nor you!’ Cora retorted without thinking.
‘Why should it not be me?’Frances seized her upper arms and shook her. ‘You hooked him, and you are only a parson’s daughter!’ She flung Cora from her with such force she stumbled, and would have fallen if the lower branch of a pear tree had not struck her in the small of her back. She clutched wildly at the trunk of the tree, steadying herself while Frances continued to rant.
‘He has known me all his life. I was his friend before he even met Robbie! Lady Matthison looked on me as a daughter. I know his land, his people, in a way you never could, and never will. You have no idea what it means to be mistress of Kingsmede!’
The wild desperation in her eyes tugged a strand of sympathy from Cora. For some time she had known there was something not quite right about Frances. Now she saw that the woman had been so hopelessly entangled in the coils of unrequited love for such a long time that it had affected her ability to reason.
‘Have I not been waiting patiently for him all this time? Helping him refurbish Kingsmede?’Frances gesticulated towards the house. ‘Showing him what a comfort I could be,’ she finished, tears welling in her pale eyes, ‘when he was sad?’
What was sad, was that Frances had convinced herself that what she was saying was true. But it wasn’t. Oh, she might have had a hand in redecorating the house. But Lord Matthison had never once mentioned Frances, not in any context, let alone as a friend who brought him comfort. When he described the years she had been missing, he had spoken of loneliness, pointlessness and hellish darkness.
Frances half-turned away, fumbling with the strings of her reticule. After the amount of tears Cora had shed over the past few days, she had provided herself with several clean handkerchiefs when she had dressed that morning. Feeling heartily sorry for Frances’s heartache, she pulled one from her sleeve, and went to offer it to her.
But Frances had already found what she had been searching for in her reticule.And it was not a handkerchief.
It was a little knife.
For a few seconds Cora stood there, holding out her handkerchief, while the dappled sunlight glinted on the lethal-looking little blade as the wind ruffled the overhanging branches.
And then Frances came at her.
Cora instinctively flung up her arm to protect her face as Frances slashed out viciously. She felt a sharp sting, and then a spreading warmth as blood streamed from a wound that had been intended to disfigure her.
‘Frances!’ Cora gasped in appalled disbelief. There remained no trace of the genteel, pious façade that Frances employed to deceive people as to her true nature. She was no longer bothering to conceal the murderous hatred that had simmered inside her for years. Her eyes burned with a kind of devilish excitement as she swung the lethal little blade in a wide arc, almost as though she was taunting Cora.
Cora took a hasty step back, her heart pounding so hard it felt as though it was trying to punch its way out of her chest.
Frances took a step forwards, keeping the distance between them equal. ‘If I can get rid of you,’ she said, with a chilling smile, ‘he will turn to me!’
Cora’s heart sank. They were too far from the house for anyone to hear if she cried out for help. And she would not get far if she tried to make a run for it. She had barely been able to keep up with Frances when she broke into a brisk walk!
But she had, once, seen the landlord of a tavern disarm a customer who had come at him with a knife. He had done it by seizing his attacker’s arm as he lunged, deflecting the knife’s trajectory. He’d then slammed his fist into the other man’s face, and the pair had gone down in a welter of mud and blood and beer. She didn’t know how effective punching Frances might be. In any case, she rather thought, given the woman’s superior height and strength, she would need to use both hands to simply block any blow Frances might strike.
But she had to at least try to disarm her.
No sooner had the vague plan for self-defence begun to form in Cora’s mind, than Frances stopped toying with her, and came at her with a wild cry.
The first part of Cora’s plan went surprisingly well. She managed to grab her knife hand and deflect the blade away from her face. The impetus of Frances’s attack carried Cora backwards, and they both fell to the ground, with Frances on top, the weight of her body slamming the breath from Cora’s lungs. And the knife went flying.
But Cora only experienced a fleeting moment of relief, because Frances promptly fastened both her hands about Cora’s neck, and began to squeeze.
Cora scrabbled at Frances’s fingers, trying to prise them from her neck. She was already winded from the fall, and she feared that if she couldn’t take a breath soon, it would be all up with her. But she could not break her stranglehold.
Desperately, she tried to pitch her attacker off,
but Frances was bigger than her, stronger than her, and was pressing all her weight down on Cora’s windpipe. Cora’s strength was fading swiftly. In one last effort to save herself, she reached up, trying to claw at her attacker’s face. Frances reared back, laughing in open mockery. Her arms were longer than Cora’s. She was having no difficulty in squeezing the life from her victim, while Cora could not even mark her face.
Blackness was creeping in round the periphery of her vision. Stars began exploding in front of her eyes. Dimly, from beyond the sound of a murderess’s demonic laughter, she thought she could perceive Kit’s voice, calling her name.
And then suddenly, just when it seemed all hope was lost, someone loomed up behind Frances, and another pair of hands was trying to break her grip. Frances fought to keep up the pressure on her throat to the last, her nails clawing at Cora’s neck even as she was dragged bodily away.
And then Kit’s face swam into view.
And she could definitely hear him calling her name, above the noise Frances was making as she was dragged away, kicking and screaming the kind of curses no vicar’s daughter should have known.
She felt Kit haul her into his arms, urging her to breathe. But it still felt as though Frances had her by the throat. No matter how desperately she tried, she could not seem to draw any air past the constriction she could still feel there.
The darkness was creeping between them now. But as his voice began to fade, she felt a wave of immense gratitude that she had lasted long enough to die in his arms. The last sound she would hear on this earth would not be the demonic laughter of a woman who hated her, but his voice, so beloved, begging her not to leave him.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Cora, don’t be dead. Oh, dear God, please don’t let her die!’
It was too dark, down in the void where she drifted, to see anything, but she could hear his voice, calling to her.
Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss Page 21