His Mask of Retribution (5 page)

‘Again?’

‘Again,’ said Knight.

Callerton gave a whistle. ‘You’ll be late back, then.’

Knight scowled at the prospect. ‘I’ll have to make a show of it, but I’ll be back in time.’

‘Most men would love a chance to play the rake. Come to think of it, most men would be living the dream rather than faking it.’

‘I’m not most men.’

‘No, you’re not,’ agreed Callerton more quietly. ‘Most men would have left me to die in Portugal.’

The two men looked at one another, feeling all of the past there in the room with them. The only sound was of something being thudded hard against wood, coming from above.

‘We’ll get him,’ said Callerton.

‘Damn right we’ll get him. And in the meantime I’ll silence his daughter.’ Knight slipped the black silken mask from his pocket, tied it around his face, grabbed a branch of candles and strode up the stairs.

* * *

The ivory-and-tortoiseshell hairbrush splintered into three from the force of being hammered against the door. Marianne threw it aside and continued her assault with her fists and her feet, not caring about the pain.

The panic was escalating and she feared that she would not be able to keep a rein on it for much longer if he did not come soon. She banged at the door so hard that her blood pounded through her hands and she could feel bruises starting to form. She glanced round at the mantelpiece and the dying candle upon it. The light was already beginning to ebb. Soon it would be gone. Her stomach turned over at the thought. She bit her lip and banged all the harder.

She did not hear his footsteps amidst the noise. The lock clicked and then he was there in the bedchamber with her.

‘Lady Marianne.’ His half-whisper was harsher than ever. ‘It seems you desire my company.’ He stood there, holding the branched candlestick aloft, and the flickering light from the candles sent shadows darting and scuttling across the walls. His brows were drawn low in a stern frown and the shadows made him seem taller than she remembered, and his shoulders broader. He was dressed in expensive formal evening wear: a dark tailcoat, white shirt, cravat and waistcoat, and dark pantaloons. Beside all of which, the mask that hid his face looked incongruous. No ordinary highwayman.

‘My candle is almost spent.’ Her pride would let her say nothing more. She glanced across to the mantelpiece where the lone candle spluttered.

‘It is.’ He made no move, just looked at her. His gaze dropped to the broken hairbrush that lay on the floor between them. ‘Not very ladylike behaviour.’

‘Highway robbery, assaulting my father and abducting me on the way to my wedding are hardly gentlemanly.’

‘They are not,’ he admitted. ‘But as I told you before, I am what your father made me.’

She stared at him. ‘What has my father ever done to you? What is all of this about?’

He gave a hard laugh and shook his head. ‘Have I not already told you?’

‘Contrary to what you believe, my father is a good man.’

‘No, Lady Marianne, he is not.’ There was such ferocity in his eyes at the mention of her father that she took a step backwards and, as she did, her foot inadvertently kicked a large shard of the handle so that it slid across the floor, coming to a halt just before the toes of his shoes.

She saw him glance at it, before that steady gaze returned to hers once more. ‘My mother’s hairbrush.’

She looked down at the smashed brush, then back up at the highwayman and the fear made her stomach turn somersaults. She swallowed. ‘Does she know that her son is a highwayman who has terrorised and robbed half of London?’

‘The newspapers exaggerate, Lady Marianne. I have terrorised and robbed six people and six people only, your father amongst them.’

Her heart gave a stutter at his admission.

‘And my mother is dead,’ he added.

She glanced away, feeling suddenly wrong-footed, unsure of what to say.

He carried on regardless. ‘Were you trying to beat the door down to escape or merely destroy my possessions?’

‘Neither,’ she said. ‘I wished to...’ she hesitated before forcing herself on ‘...to attract your attention.’

‘You have it now. Complete and undivided.’

She dared a glance at him and saw that his eyes were implacable as ever.

‘What is it that you wish to say?’

The smell of candle smoke hit her nose and she peered round at the mantelpiece to see only darkness where the candle had been. A part of her wanted to beg, to plead, to tell him the truth. But she would almost rather face the terror than that. Almost. She experienced the urge to grab the branch of candles from his hand, but she did not surrender to the panic. Instead, she held her head up and kept her voice calm.

‘All of the candlesticks are empty.’

His gaze did not falter. She thought she saw something flicker in his eyes, but she did not understand what it was. He stepped forwards.

She took a step back.

He looked into her eyes with that too-seeing look that made her feel as if her soul was laid bare to him, as if he could see all of her secrets, maybe even the deepest and darkest one of all. She knew she should look away, but she did not dare, for she knew that all around them was darkness.

The silence hissed between them.

‘I would be obliged if you would fill them. All of them.’ She forced her chin up and pretended to herself that she was speaking to the footman in her father’s house, even though her heart was thudding nineteen to the dozen and her legs were pressed tight together to keep from shaking.

His eyes held a cynical expression. He turned away and headed for the door, taking the branch of candles with him. She heard the darkness whisper behind her.

‘No! Stop!’ She grabbed at his arm with both hands to stop him, making the candles flicker wildly. ‘You cannot...’ She manoeuvred herself between him and the door, trying to block his exit, keeping a tight hold of him all the while.

His gaze dropped to where her fingers clutched so tight to the superfine of his coat sleeve that her knuckles shone white, then back to her face.

She felt her cheeks warm and let her hands fall away. ‘Where are you going, sir?’ She was too embarrassed to meet his gaze. Her heart was racing hard enough to leap from her chest and she felt sick.

He raised his brows. ‘I may be mistaken, but I thought you requested candles. I was going to have my man bring you some.’

Her eyes flickered to the branch of candles in his hand, then to the darkness that enclosed the room beyond. ‘But...’ The words stopped on her lips. She did not want to say them. She could not bear for him to know. Yet the darkness was waiting and she knew what it held. She felt the terror prickle at the nape of her neck and begin to creep across her scalp.

‘Lady Marianne.’

Her gaze came back to his, to those rich warm amber eyes that glowed in the light of his candles.
Please
, she wanted to say, wanted to beg. Already she could feel the tremor running through her body. But still she did not yield to it, not in front of him. She shook her head.

‘If I were to leave the candles here...’

‘Yes,’ she said, and the relief was so great that she felt like weeping. ‘Yes,’ she repeated and could think of nothing else. The highwayman passed her the branch of candles. Her hand was trembling as she took it; she hated the thought that he might see it, so she turned away. ‘Thank you,’ she added and sank back into the room, clutching the candles tight to ward away the darkness.

There was silence for a moment, then the closing of the door and the sound of his footsteps receding.

She stared at the flicker of the candle flames and thought again that, in truth, he was no ordinary highwayman.

* * *

The clock in the corner on the mantelpiece chimed midnight. Misbourne left his son and his wife in the drawing room and made his way to his study. He needed time to think, needed space away from his wife’s incessant weeping, because his heart was filled with dread and his stomach churning with fear over the gamble he had taken.

‘Had he released her she would be here by now,’ Linwood had whispered and Misbourne knew that his son was right. Yet he could not admit it, even to himself. He needed a brandy to calm his nerves. He needed time to gather his strength and hide his fears.

But everything changed when he opened the door to his study. For there, on the desk that he had left clear, lay two pieces of paper like pale islands floating on the vast sea of dark polished mahogany. One was a smooth-cut sheet of writing paper, and the other was a crushed paper ball. His heart faltered before rushing off at a gallop. He hurried across the room to the desk. The writing paper bore his own crest, but it was not his hand that had penned those three bold letters and single word.

IOU Misbourne.

The ink glistened in the candlelight. His hand was shaking as he touched a finger to it and saw its wetness smear. He whirled around, knowing that the words had only just been written. Behind him the curtains swayed. He wrenched them open, but there was no one there. The window was up and the damp scent of night air filled his nose. He leaned his hands on the sill, craning his head out, searching the night for the man who had the audacity to walk right into his home to leave the message. But not a single one of the lamp posts that lined the road had been lit. The street was dark and deserted. Not a figure stirred. Not a dog barked. And of the highwayman there was no sign.

He knew what the crumpled ball of paper was before he opened it. The letter he had sent to the highwayman. A letter that could have been used against Misbourne. A letter that could cost him much in the wrong hands. Crumpled as if it were worthless. The villain knew what the document was. He knew, and there was only one man left alive with that knowledge. Misbourne felt sick at the thought. It was everything he had guarded against. Everything he had prayed so hard to prevent. He shut the window and closed the curtains, knowing it would do little good; the highwayman had been in his home, the one place that should have been safe.

He filled a glass with brandy, sat behind his desk and drank the strong warming liquid down. His eyes never left the words written upon the paper. Misbourne was more afraid than he had ever been, both for himself and for Marianne. He knew there was only one thing to do when the highwayman next made contact.
If
the highwayman next made contact.

Chapter Four

M
arianne sat perched on the edge of the bed. The fire that the highwayman’s accomplice had set last night had long since burned away to nothing and the air was cool. The early morning light seeped through the cracks of the window shutters, filtering into the bedchamber. The bed was only slightly rumpled where she had lain awake all night on top of the covers. She had not climbed within the sheets, nor had she worn the nightclothes that the accomplice had left neatly folded upon the dressing table. She had not even removed her shoes.

It had been the first night in almost three years that Marianne had spent alone. And she had barely slept a wink. All night she had waited. All night she had feared. But the highwayman had not come back to hurt her. Instead, he had filled the room with candles to light the darkness of the night. Eventually, as night had turned to dawn, her fear had diminished and all she could think of was the highwayman in the rookery and the look in his eyes as they had met hers. She thought of the villains quailing before him, of the wary respect in their eyes, of how he had kept her safe.

He was tougher, stronger, more dangerous than any villain. And she remembered how, last night, she had physically accosted him, clutching at him in her panic, even barring the door so that he would not leave. She closed her eyes and cringed at the memory. He knew. She had seen it in his eyes. Yet he had not said one word of her weakness, nor used it against her. She slipped off her shoes and moved to sit on the rug in the bright warmth of the narrow beam of sunshine. And she thought again of the man with the hauntingly beautiful amber eyes and the dark mask that hid his face, and the strange conflict of emotion that was beating in her chest.

* * *

When Knight opened the door to the yellow bedchamber his heart skipped a beat. The words he had come to say slipped from his mind. He stared and all else was forgotten in that moment as he watched Marianne hurriedly rising from where she had been sitting upon the floor. The room was dim, but small shafts of sunlight were penetrating through the seams of the closed shutters. She was standing directly in the line of a thin ray of light so that it lit her in a soft white light. There was an ethereal quality to her, so soft and pale with such deep, dark, soulful eyes.

He realised he was staring and pulled himself together, entering the room and setting the breakfast tray that he carried down on the nearby table. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked embarrassed to have been caught sitting in the sunbeam. His eyes dropped down to the stockinged feet that peeped from beneath her skirt, then travelled slowly up the wedding dress, all crumpled and creased from sleep, to the smooth swell of breasts that rose from the tight press of the bodice. Her hair was a tumble of white-blonde waves over her shoulders, so long that it reached almost to her waist. She looked as beautiful and dishevelled as if she had just climbed from a lover’s bed.

His gaze reached her face and he met the darkness of her eyes with all of their secrets and steadfast resilience. And that same ripple of desire he had experienced when he first looked at her whispered again. He closed his ears to it, denied its existence. Her blush intensified beneath his scrutiny and she stepped away, twitching at her rumpled skirts and shifting her feet to try to hide her stockinged toes.

He wanted to ask her why a twenty-year-old woman was so terrified of the dark. It seemed much more than a spoiled girl’s foible. He knew how hard she had fought to hide her fear from him, and were he to ask the question she would, no doubt, deny all and tell him nothing.

‘From Pickering?’ He gestured towards the heavy ornate pearls around her neck.

She nodded. ‘You knew that I was on my way to be married before my father told you, didn’t you?’ Her eyes looked different today. Lighter, a rich brown, and the contempt had gone from them. Something of her armour was back in place, but he had a feeling she had not pulled down her visor. Her manner was still guarded, but less hostile than it had been.

‘It is a society wedding of interest throughout the
ton
.’ He shrugged as if it were nothing of significance and did not tell her that he had made it his business to know all there was to know of Misbourne, or that he had been waiting and watching these two months past for an opportunity to take her from her father.

‘And yet still you held us up.’ He could sense both her curiosity and her condemnation.

‘You think me ruthless. And when it comes to your father I cannot deny it.’

‘You should not have hurt him,’ she said and he saw her eyes darken with the memory of what had happened upon the heath.

Yet he could not apologise. He could not say he regretted it. Or that he would not have done the same, or more, again. ‘I regret that you had to witness such violence.’

‘But you do not regret what you did.’

He shook his head. ‘Your father deserved much more.’ It was a harsh truth, but he would not lie to her.

She swallowed and something of the defensiveness slotted back across her face. No matter what he knew of Misbourne, he admired her loyalty to her father—the courage with which she stood up to a highwayman to defend the bastard so determinedly. His eye traced the fine line of her cheek, the fullness of her lips. He caught what he was doing and felt the muscle clench in his jaw. With a stab of anger he averted his gaze and began to walk away. She was Misbourne’s daughter, for pity’s sake! He should not have to remind himself.

‘There were seven men in that alleyway,’ she said in a low careful voice, ‘and you are but one man,
yet you did not use a pistol.’

Her words stopped him, but he did not look round. ‘A pistol shot would have brought more of the rats from their holes.’

‘Why did you help me?’

The question, so softly uttered, cut through everything else.

He turned then, and looked at her, at the temptation she presented: those eyes, so soft and dark as to beguile a man from all sense.

‘Why would I not?’

‘You hate my father.’

Hate was too mild a word to describe what he felt for Misbourne. He paused before speaking, before looking into the eyes that were so similar and yet so different to her father’s. ‘Regardless of your father, while you are with me I will keep you safe.’

Safe.
It had been such a long time since Marianne had felt safe. There had been times that she had thought she would never feel safe again, no matter how well guarded and protected she was by her family. She studied his face. In the shaft of morning light his eyes were golden as a flame. He was a highwayman. He had beaten her father and abducted her. He was holding her prisoner her against her will. She had watched the most brutal of London’s lowlife cower before him. He could be anyone behind that dark silken mask. But whoever he was, he had not used her ill, as he could have. He had brought her candles to light the darkness. And he had saved her. He had saved her—and he had bested seven men to do it.

She met his gaze and held it, looking deep into those amber eyes, trying to glean a measure of the man behind the mask. He was not lying. A man like him had no need to lie.

The expression in his eyes gentled. His hand moved as if he meant to touch her arm, except that he stopped it before it reached her and let it drop away.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

She stared up into his face and could not look away. And the highwayman held her gaze.

‘Yes,’ she said at last and nodded. ‘I am fine.’ She had said those words so many times in the past three years, but only this time, standing there in a shuttered bedchamber with a masked man who had abducted her, was she close to telling the truth. ‘The letter that you think my father holds.’

He gave no response.

‘I know you believe he understands...’ She saw the flicker of something dangerous in his eyes, but it did not stop her. ‘Will you ask him again and tell him exactly what it is that you seek?’

‘I have already done so.’

She gave a nod and relaxed at his words. ‘I heard you and your accomplice talking about a document... He will give it to you this time.’ Her father would give whatever it took to redeem her. ‘I will stake my life upon it.’

The highwayman said nothing. He just looked at her for a moment longer and then walked away, leaving her locked alone in the bedchamber.

* * *

Five minutes later Marianne heard the thud of the front door closing and the clatter of a horse’s hooves trotting away from the house. She knew that it was the highwayman leaving. The accomplice’s footsteps sounded on the stairs; she heard him come along the passageway and go into a nearby room. There was the noise of cupboards and drawers being opened and closed, then the accomplice unlocked her door, knocking before entering.

‘If you will come this way, my lady, I am under instruction to show you to another room in which you might spend the day. One in which the shutters are not closed.’

He took her to the bedchamber on the opposite side of the passageway. The daylight was light and bright and wonderful after the dimness of the yellow chamber. She blinked, her eyes taking an age to adjust. The walls were a cool blue, the bedding dark as midnight and the furniture mahogany and distinctly masculine in style. Over by the basin she could see a shaving brush, soap and razor blade, all set before a mirror, and she knew whose bedchamber this was without having to be told. Her heart began to pound and butterflies flocked in her stomach. She hesitated where she was, suddenly suspicious.

Something of the apprehension must have shown in her face for all she tried to hide it, for the accomplice smiled gently, reassuringly.

‘He thought you would prefer the daylight. The sun hits the back of the house in the afternoon.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You need not have a fear, lass. I am to take you back to the yellow chamber before he returns.’

She looked round at the accomplice and the grey mask loosely tied to obscure his face. ‘Could you not simply have removed the nails from the shutters?’

‘No, Lady Marianne.’ The accomplice glanced away uneasily.

‘Because it is at the front of the house,’ she guessed, ‘and you fear that I would attract attention?’

‘It is rather more complicated than that. The shutters must remain closed. Those in the master bedchamber too.’

‘The yellow bedchamber...’ She hesitated and thought of the hairbrush. ‘It was his mother’s room, was it not?’

The accomplice gave a hesitant nod.

‘And this is his house.’

He looked uncomfortable but did not deny it. ‘I must go,’ he said and started to move away.

‘You said he was a good man.’

The accomplice halted by the door. ‘He is.’

‘What he did to my father on Hounslow Heath was not the action of a good man.’

‘Believe me, Lady Marianne, were he a lesser man, your father would be dead. Were I in his shoes, I don’t know that I could have walked away and left Misbourne alive.’ He turned away, then glanced back again to where she stood, slack-jawed and gaping in shock. ‘For your own sake, please be discreet around the window. Being seen in a gentleman’s bedchamber, whatever the circumstances, would not be in any young unmarried lady’s favour.’

He gave a nod of his head and walked away, locking the door behind him.

What had her father ever done to deserve the hatred of these men?
Her legs felt wobbly at the thought of such vehemence. She needed to sit down. She eyed the four-poster bed with its dark hangings and covers—the highwayman’s bed—and a shiver rippled down her spine, spreading out to tingle across the whole of her skin. She stepped away, choosing the high-backed easy chair by the side of the fireplace, and perching upon the edge of its seat.

Marianne glanced at the window behind her and the brightness of the daylight. The accomplice was right. Especially given it had been little more than a year since the Duke of Arlesford had broken their betrothal. The scandal surrounding it still had not completely died away. One word of her abduction, one word that she had spent the night in a bachelor’s house without a chaperon—no matter that she was being held alone in a locked room—and her reputation would be ruined to such an extent that none of her father’s influences could repair it. The irony almost made her laugh. Especially when she contemplated the darkness of the truth. Even so, she rose to her feet and walked to the window.

The view was the same as that of a hundred other houses in London—long, neatly kept back gardens separated by high stone walls, backing on to more gardens and the distant rear aspect of yet more town houses, all beneath the grey-white of an English autumn sky. There were no landmarks that she recognised. The catch moved easily enough, but the window was stiff and heavy and noisy to open. She did not slide it up far. There was little point, for there was no hope of escape through it. The drop below was sheer and at least twenty-five feet. She closed the window as quietly as she could and turned to survey the room around her.

It was much smaller than the yellow bedchamber and almost Spartan in its feel. Aside from the bed there was a bedside cabinet upon which was placed a candle in its holder. Against the other walls stood a dark mahogany wardrobe, a wash-stand and a chest of drawers with a small peering glass and shaving accoutrements sitting neatly on top. A dark Turkey rug covered the floor, but there were no pictures on the wall, no bolsters or cushions upon the bed. There was no lace, no frills, nothing pretty or pale. It was the very opposite of Marianne’s bedchamber at home. It was dark and serious and exuded an air of strength and utter masculinity, just like the man who owned it.

His presence seemed strong in the room, so strong that it almost felt like he was here. And she had the strangest sensation of feeling both unsettled and safe at once. Her blood was flowing a little bit too fast. She needed to search the bedchamber, to discover any clue to the highwayman’s identity that she might tell her father when she got home. So she turned the key within the tall polished wardrobe and the door swung open. Sandalwood touched to her nose, a faint scent but instantly recognisable as the highwayman. Goosebumps prickled her skin and a shiver passed all the way through her body. There was something attractive, something almost stimulating about his scent. The rails were heavy with expensive tailored coats and breeches, undoubtedly the clothing of a gentleman, and a wealthy one at that if the cut and quality of material were anything to judge by. It did not surprise her for, despite his disguise, she had known almost from the first that he was no ruffian.