For Your Arms Only (3 page)

She pressed her lips together. “Julia should moderate her tongue.”

Alec was surprised into a short laugh. His sister had always been the most outspoken of the Hayes children, for she had known she was the apple of their father’s eye and would get away with anything. “Why start now?”

His mother didn’t respond to it. She touched the cuff of his jacket again, smoothing her fingertips over the fabric as though to reassure herself he was real. “Never mind. Julia will get over her upset. All will be well now that you are home again.”

Alec thought of all the reasons she was wrong. He suspected his mother was willfully turning a blind eye to every one of those reasons, and that it would only delay the inevitable questions and explanations. More potently than ever, he wished he had been able to refute the charges of treason; now he had come home without the vindication he needed and would be even more suspect because of it. Who would believe him innocent after he had disappeared for five years without a word to his family? Thanks to Stafford’s intervention with the Home Office, he wasn’t about to be arrested, but Alec hardly thought that would prove anything to the people of Marston, who had long ago accepted his guilt.

But it would be cruel to say that to her now. Let one person at least rejoice in his return. He covered her hand on his arm with his own. “I hope so, Mother.”

But I doubt it.

A
lec strode toward the breakfast room early the next morning, still buttoning his coat. A previous assignment for Stafford had been as a footman, where he’d had to rise before dawn to start fires and begin his day’s chores, and he had kept to the hours ever since. They weren’t so different from army hours. Even if he hadn’t been accustomed to rising early, though, Alec would have been up and dressed; he was desperately eager to leave the house.

His mother had put him in his father’s chamber. Of course it must have been Frederick’s until his death, but Alec remembered only his father in that room, from the stern reprimands he had received as a child to the solemn farewell he had taken of his father, by then grown old and ill and confined to bed, before leaving on that last fateful campaign in Belgium. Alec had shied away from it; he asked for his old room, but after some fretting his mother finally confessed it was now John’s. All of Alec’s possessions had been packed away in the attic after Waterloo. Besides, she urged him, he should have the master’s suite now that he was the master. It seemed to tighten a sort of noose around his neck, hearing those words, but in the interest of peace and grace, he had just nodded and accepted it.

But by the time morning came, Alec thought he might go mad if he didn’t get out of that room—out of the whole house, in fact. He intended to gulp down a cup of coffee and spare himself and his family a painful breakfast together. Perhaps a long ride about the property would restore his connection to the place and bring him some peace.

He pushed open the door and stopped short. Julia stood looking out the window, a cup of tea in her hand. At his entrance she turned with a smile that withered as soon as she saw him.

“Good morning,” he said.

She sipped her tea and turned back to the window. “Good morning.”

The sideboard had already been laid out with a number of dishes, a welcome sight. Still, from the blushing sky, it was very early. “Do you normally rise this early?” For the life of him he couldn’t recall what Julia had done before he left.

“Yes,” she muttered.

“Ah,” Alec said when it was clear she meant to say no more. “It is just one of many things I have forgotten.”

“Perhaps I’ve changed. It’s been years and years, you know.”

He heard the chill in her words. Even though he told himself it would take time for them to get used to each other again, it pricked his temper a little bit. “I am aware of exactly how long it’s been, Julia.”

She gave a quiet sniff.

Alec poured a cup of coffee. “I don’t pretend nothing has changed. By all means, speak your mind.”

“What can I have to say, to the prodigal son returned home at long last? To our own Lazarus, back from the dead when Mother mourned all these years not even being able to tend your grave? Why, what could I
possibly
have to say that might interest you now, when you’ve not cared a fig for what any of us thought or felt for the last five years?” Her light, airy tone was more biting than any sarcasm or bitterness could have been.

He took a sip of the coffee. Hot and rich, it was the best coffee he’d had in years. Once he would have met Julia on her own terms, replied in kind, and erupted in a blazing fury. As children, they were two of a kind in temperament. He had grown used to controlling himself since then, though. A spy learned to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself. “Of course. Forgive me for taking an interest.”

“I am sure it will pass in short order.”

“Julia, shall I apologize again?” he said curtly.

“Whatever for?” She turned to face him, eyes wide in feigned surprise.

“I didn’t come home to argue with you,” he snapped in spite of himself. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing—Nothing at all!”

“I see.”

“How could you?” She shook her head. “Things were so much easier when we thought you were dead.” Alec froze. Julia’s face turned deathly pale, but she put up her chin and glared at him. She did not retract her words. His own sister, the girl who had once adored him and teased him and written tearstained letters to him in Spain, wished he were dead.

Carefully, deliberately, Alec put down his cup and walked from the room.

He rode like the demons of hell pursued him. The horse was Frederick’s, long-limbed and sedate, but under Alec’s hand he stretched his stride and fairly flew over the hills and meadows of Penford. By the time Alec pulled him up on the edge of the ridge, the horse was lathered with sweat and breathing as hard as Alec himself.

He swung down from the saddle. His last few years had not included much riding, but his body remembered the rhythm well. As they’d charged up the last hill, his memory flashed vividly back to another charge up a hill, with French bullets whining past him and artillery shaking the ground. He’d had a saber in his hand and the bloodlust of battle in his heart, and no real inkling of what was to come. What a bloody fool.

Alec wound the reins around his hand and walked, cooling the tired horse after his run. He rarely thought about his army days anymore; it was a distant memory, a long-ago life that had little bearing on the present. He turned and surveyed the rolling, verdant lands of Penford, his inheritance, his home. The sight inspired nothing within him. It might have been any piece of land, in England or Belgium or the distant reaches of America for all the meaning it had to him now. For too long he had been no one, not an officer, not a gentleman, not even Alexander Hayes but Alec Brandon, imposter and spy. Now he didn’t quite know who he really was.

The horse tugged against the rein, stretching his neck for a bite of grass. Alec roused himself from his thoughts and turned back to what he did know. He still had Stafford’s business to attend to, and right now it was a more attractive proposition than anything that awaited him at Penford. With a pat to the horse’s neck, he mounted again and turned in the direction of the Turner property.

Sergeant Turner had taken Brighampton, a modest estate just a few miles from Penford. In truth it was more of a farm than an estate, but Alec noted the fields were not well-tended as he rode past them, taking the shortest path instead of going by the main road. Nor did he see anyone working in the fields, another sign that the sergeant’s absence was trouble. Who would lease a farm like Brighampton and then not farm it? And when he came in sight of the house, other signs of neglect became apparent, from the overgrown shrubberies to a shutter hanging loose.

The house sat on the edge of a small copse of trees, a cottage really. Behind it were a squat stable and a few other outbuildings, with a large vegetable garden that did look neat and tidy. From the other side of the trees spread a wide meadow dotted with grazing sheep. The sergeant appeared to have done fairly well for himself at some point. Perhaps he just didn’t intend to farm the land. Alec catalogued other details about the property as he rode up, trying to form a view of the missing man and his situation before hearing from his family. But then a strange sight caught his attention, distracting him from conjectures about the Turners.

A man was sneaking out of the stable. There was no doubt of it, from the way the fellow glanced left and right every few feet. He was a big man, broad in the chest, with long arms hunched close up to his sides and a cap pulled low over his forehead. Alec couldn’t see his face, but when the man sidled around the corner of the stable and took off at a run, he nudged the horse to follow. It could be a servant, shirking his duties…but Alec’s instincts said not. Better to take a look and find nothing amiss than to let someone significant slip away.

The man had disappeared into the woods by the time Alec reached the edge of it. He pulled up at the trees, which were quite dense, and stared into the shadowy woods. Birds chattered in the branches and a rabbit darted under a fallen log, but there was no sign of the suspicious character. Alec turned and rode back to the stable, wondering what the man had been doing in there so stealthily.

It was a modest stable. There were two horses in the stalls munching on hay, but the rest of the stable was empty and apparently unused. Alec moved slowly and silently, peering into empty stalls and around corners, trying to see what could have attracted a man who ran off into the woods. It looked very ordinary, neatly kept although far from filled. He could see no signs of damage or anything maliciously done. The man couldn’t have been carrying anything large. If he weren’t a thief or a vandal, what could he be?

He heard the whisper of a footstep just before the question came from behind him. “May I help you, sir?”

Slowly Alec turned, put on guard by her tone of voice. Frigid with scorn, it wasn’t nearly as polite as the question. Sure enough, his eyes fell first on the pistol in her raised hand, pointed right at his chest. He had faced pistols before, though, and more than one of them had fired—not usually at such close quarters, but he had learned to ignore the urge to flinch and dive for cover. It was much more prudent to be ready to strike back, should the opportunity arise…as well it might, he realized, finally looking the woman in the face.

She was tall and slim, and not half as old as he had expected. Her heart-shaped face was framed by long tendrils of brown hair, pulled loose from the knot on top of her head. The heavy pistol trembled almost imperceptibly in her grip, but her eyes—luscious eyes the color of cinnamon and gold and amber—were utterly calm and level. Alec’s interest rose a notch; he’d never been shot by a woman.

“Perhaps,” he said. “I’ve come looking for Sergeant George Turner.”

Her chin went up. “He doesn’t live in the stables. Perhaps you noticed the house on your ride in?”

His lips twitched. “Indeed. But I saw a man about the stables, and thought it might be he.”

“He would still prefer to receive you in the house, I am sure.”

She wasn’t giving anything away without being forced to it. Alec had been deliberately vague and she had not corrected him. “No doubt. Forgive me. I will go to him there, then.”

She hesitated. “He is not at home, at present.”

Alec was well-aware of that, but wanted to see what she would tell him. “When might he be at home?”

This time she bristled. “When he returns. I’m not his keeper.”

Alec’s eyes slid down her figure in quick appraisal. Sergeant Turner was a man in his fifties, with two daughters and his elderly mother in his household. This must be one of the daughters. She was, however, still pointing a pistol at him. “You are his wife?”

“His daughter.” With a click she pulled back the hammer of the pistol. “Who the bloody hell are you?”

“Alexander Hayes, at your service.” He gave a slight bow; he hadn’t even noticed the pistol wasn’t cocked. Damn this assignment. Damn her eyes. “We are neighbors.”

Again she hesitated. She glanced past him to his horse, tied at the stable door, and then she slowly lowered her arm. “You have odd manners for a neighbor, sir.”

“Forgive me,” Alec said again. “I merely thought to avoid troubling the whole household.” He noticed she hadn’t suggested he had seen a groom or other servant. There was no sign of one, though, and the man he’d seen did not look like a stable boy. He looked like a thief, to be honest. “I apologize, Miss Turner. I shall call at a more convenient time.”

She clearly didn’t like him. Her mouth pressed into a hard, thin line, and she merely jerked her head in a grudging nod and stepped back, inviting him to leave. Alec hid his mild amusement and bowed. There was nearly as much information in her pose and actions as if she’d actually told him. Either she was of a highly suspicious or secretive nature, or other people had come around the farm before, looking for her father. And how interesting it was that she pulled a pistol on him before bothering to discover his name or purpose.

He could feel her eyes on his back the whole time he walked to his horse, mounted, and rode away.

C
ressida Turner watched until the stranger rode away, down the road this time. Then she turned back toward the house, only to meet Tom coming at a dead run.

“What’s happened?” he demanded, his hair standing up every which way and his face flushed. “Your sister said you’d gone out in a hurry.”

She smiled, hiding her clenched teeth. “Nothing happened. There was a man out at the stables, looking around.”

Tom stiffened. “And?”

“And that’s all, or all I caught him doing. He says he’s a neighbor.” She snorted. “Such fine neighbors we’ve got here, all coming around to spy on how terrible things are.” It made her fume; did ordinary neighbors sneak into each others’ stables and examine the horses? Of course not, as he knew full well. He hadn’t been surprised at all when he looked down the barrel of her pistol. She almost wished she’d had the nerve to fire the gun, just to rattle that calm, piercing gaze of his.

Tom’s face creased in a worried frown. “You can’t go running off everyone who comes about.”

Cressida looked at the heavy pistol in her hand and sighed. Her fingers felt stiff and cramped from gripping it so hard. “Someone’s got to. You were fixing the sheep fence. Next time I’ll let you run them off, if you prefer.”

He didn’t look mollified, but nodded and fell in step beside her. Tom Webb had been in the army with her father and was now their general man of work, and he was as protective of Cressida and her sister as a fussy old hen would be of her chicks. “Did he give a name?”

“Alexander Hayes.”

Tom gave her a sharp look, and she couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder just to be sure the man she spoke of was gone. “The dead one?”

Cressida shuddered. News of the resurrection of Marston’s most infamous resident had swept through the town in the last few days. Major Alexander Hayes, the younger son of a very old and prominent local family, had been thought dead on the fields of Waterloo some five years ago, which everyone agreed was a good thing, since the man had turned out to be a traitor. His family had suffered terribly, according to local gossip. The elder Mr. Hayes died of despair soon after his son’s treachery came to light, and just this spring the new master of Penford had also died of a lingering illness. The family had lived very quietly for some time, still respectable but widely pitied. This Major Hayes’s return, if he really
was
Major Hayes, would stir up the neighborhood to no end. She wondered what on earth he could want with her father.

“The obviously
not
dead one,” she said in reply to Tom’s question. “He doesn’t look even the slightest bit worm-eaten.” Far from it, in fact. Which was too bad. Now even people who were supposed to be moldering in their graves were coming around to pry into their troubles. Cressida would fear demons escaping hell to torment her next, except that she suspected they were already upon her. If only Papa would come home…

They had reached the house. The door stood open, begging a cool breeze to drift through, to no avail. It was as hot inside the house as it was outside. Cressida knew the heat was shortening her temper as much as her other worries were, and she dragged the back of her hand across her forehead, feeling her sleeve stick to her arm. She wished they hadn’t moved here. If they still lived in Portsmouth, she could have sneaked down to the sea after dark and gone for a swim to cool down. How she missed Portsmouth.

“George? George darling, is that you?”

Cressida paused, glancing up at Tom. Her grandmother’s voice was so bright and hopeful, as if she truly believed Papa might just stroll into the house. Tom, looking grim again, opened his mouth, but she pressed a finger to her lips and handed him the pistol. Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, she straightened her shoulders and walked into the drawing room as if she hadn’t just confronted a stranger at gunpoint while he studied her horses with an eye to buying them at auction.

“No, Granny, it’s just I,” she said, going back to her seat. They had been having tea when her ears picked up the sound of hoofbeats behind the house. She had slipped out with some murmured excuse to her grandmother, who was a little hard of hearing and hadn’t noticed the approaching horse. Her older sister, Callie, shot her a questioning glance, but Cressida just smiled.

“I was sure it would be your father,” Granny said fretfully, her gaze lingering on the doorway. “Your step sounds so like his, my dear. And he is due home any day now.”

Cressida picked up her tea. Her father had been due home any day now for four months. He had gone missing before—or rather, he had left and not told them where he went or when to expect him back, but they had always known it before. Papa would wink and pinch her cheek and say he was off, and he’d be back “in a fair while.” “A fair while” had lasted anywhere from a fortnight to three months, but he had always come back just before the money ran out. Papa seemed to have a knack for knowing when the money was about to run out. Not this time, though. This time they were staring complete and utter ruin in the face, and there was still no sign of her father.

“I’m sure he’ll be home soon,” she said for her grandmother’s benefit.

“Of course he will.” Granny put down her tea and turned to stare out the front window, the one that faced the road. “Any day.”

He’d better, Cressida thought, staring into her tea, now stone cold in the expensive new teacups Papa had ordered when they moved to Marston. Otherwise they were all sunk.

After tea, when Granny had dozed off in her chair and they had cleared away the tea, Callie followed her to the kitchen. “What was wrong?” she wanted to know, setting down the tray of dirty dishes as Cressida put on her apron. Papa had hired a cook and a pair of maids, but they were all gone now. How fortunate that Cressida and her sister were quite used to having no servants at all. “You just jumped up and ran from the room, and then were gone a quarter hour. Granny remarked on it.”

“Did she?” Cressida poured out the dregs of the tea from the pot. “What did she say?”

Callie sighed. “She thought you might have heard Papa approaching. She’s certain he’ll walk through the door at any moment.”

“If only he would,” she muttered. “I begin to wonder…”

Her sister went still. “To wonder what?”

“To doubt,” Cressida admitted. She picked up a teacup and began to wash it. “He’s never been gone this long without some sort of word, not unless there was a war going on. And then we certainly knew where he was.”

Callie bit her lip and said nothing.

“I heard a horse,” she said bluntly. “Out behind the house. I thought it might be another creditor, so I went out to see. A man was walking around the stables, and I thought he had come to take the horses.”

“Cressida, you shouldn’t go out there by yourself! You should send Mr. Webb—”

“He was busy mending the fence, and there wasn’t time to fetch him. We’ll be even worse off if the sheep get loose. Don’t worry,” she added, seeing Callie’s dismayed expression. “I took Papa’s pistol, just in case.”

Callie gasped. “You pulled a pistol on him?”

She flushed. “I didn’t shoot him, if that’s what you’re worried about. Even Granny would have heard that.” The door creaked open, and Tom came in. At the sight of Callie he stopped short, ducking his head in a hasty bow.

“Mr. Webb, my sister says there was a man on the property, looking at the horses,” Callie said.

He glanced at Cressida, who kept her eyes on the teacup she was wiping. “There was.”

“What are we to do?” When no one answered, Callie threw up her hands. “What aren’t you telling me? Did he take the horses? Did he set fire to the stables? What happened?”

Tom just looked at Cressida, who took her time washing every last crevice of the delicate cup. It would be worth more unchipped, when she had to sell it. “It was our neighbor,” she said.

Callie looked puzzled. “Which one?”

“Major Alexander Hayes,” Tom answered for her. Cressida shot him a dark look.

Callie gasped, her hand flying to her throat. “Oh dear—the dead one?”

“He’s definitely not dead anymore.” Cressida handed the cup to Callie to dry. “And he was looking for Papa.”

There was a long moment of silence in the kitchen, broken only by the splash of water as Cressida washed a plate. The three of them were conspirators, keeping the bad news from Granny that Papa was gone and apparently not coming back. Cressida hated to think that, but every day that he was gone was another day of doubt that he would ever come striding back through the door in his exuberant way, roaring with laughter and bearing gifts for them all. Every day that he was gone, they sank deeper into debt, since Papa had left only a few weeks’ worth of funds. Among the three of them standing silently in the kitchen, they had managed to feed themselves and the animals, but they’d had to let go all the servants and quietly return most of the more frivolous things Papa had bought. They were getting by, but only just, and Cressida knew they were perilously close to slipping beyond that into true difficulty.

“Perhaps I should go after the sergeant,” said Tom at last. “He’s been gone a long time.”

Callie made a soft noise of distress and Cressida shook her head. “I think we’d rather you stay, Tom. Papa…” She paused, steadying her voice. “Papa can look after himself.”
I hope
…

“Thank you, Mr. Webb,” Callie added in a heartfelt tone. “But I—yes, we would much rather you not go.”

Tom flushed. “Of course, Mrs. Phillips,” he mumbled. He and Callie kept up a formality in address that Cressida had long since discarded. Tom was like a member of the family after all these years. He’d come home with her father from the wars, and with no family of his own to go to, he’d stayed. He had become a man of work around their house in Portsmouth and now the farm, with a much more practical bent than Papa had. Papa could charm an extra pint of ale from even the most hard-hearted innkeeper, but Tom could fix the fence around the sheep pen and start a fire with new wood—infinitely more useful talents, particularly in their present situation.

“Well, the good news is that he wasn’t here to collect on a debt Papa owed him,” said Cressida.

“He said that?”

She frowned at her sister. “No, but how could Papa owe a man who was dead and buried five years ago?”

“Obviously he was not really dead and buried five years ago,” snapped Callie. “He’s had just enough time to find debt markers in the late Mr. Hayes’s things.”

That was true. Papa might have owed money to Frederick Hayes, and his brother could have discovered the note. Cressida sighed. “Perhaps. Tom, could we get by without the horses? They cost a fortune to feed.”

Tom folded his arms and thought a moment. “That’d be the end of farming. Oxen cost just as much and can’t pull a carriage. And you’d have to tell your grandmother.”

With great care Cressida set down the last clean teacup. She didn’t want to tell Granny, who had lived so frugally and even meanly to raise two motherless granddaughters while their father was at war, that they were destitute again. Granny had been happier than any of them to move to Marston almost a year ago, delighted beyond words that Papa’s grand plans had finally paid off and bought them a life of relative comfort and ease. Leaving this country cottage would be hard on Granny, even had it not been a tacit admission that Papa was not coming back any time soon.

“We’ll worry about that if he comes again seeking repayment,” she said softly. “For now, we’ll just…keep on as we are.”