Not by Sight (31 page)

“I’ll be with you presently, Inspector.”

Cromwell left, and Sir Marcus came around the desk to face her squarely. “Miss Mabry, please. For your friend Clare’s sake, if not your own, tell the inspector what you know. I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you get a lesser sentence.”

Grace searched the face of the man who had captured her friend’s heart. She abandoned her anger. “Lieutenant Weatherford . . . Marcus,” she pleaded, “why won’t you believe me? I haven’t betrayed my country, and neither has my father. This has to be a mistake.”

Her pulse sped as the honey-brown eyes flickered with a trace of compassion. His words, though, cut like a blade. “We have the proof, Miss Mabry. I only want to help you.”

“Then find out who is responsible,” she said in a flat tone, “because it wasn’t me.”

If God existed, then He definitely had a twisted sense of humor.

Jack removed his mask and dropped it onto the bed before he strode out to his balcony. In less than twenty-four hours he’d gotten his wish: Patrick Mabry behind bars. Then this morning the thing he’d dreaded most—discovering the betrayal of Mabry’s daughter.

Leaning against the marble rail, Jack struggled with the disappointment of being betrayed. He peered out at the manicured lawns forming a smooth blanket of green, while in his garden red, pink, yellow, and white roses thrived beneath the warmth of an azure sky. So much beauty to behold. Why had the Almighty gifted him with the return of his sight, only to rob him of the only woman he’d ever loved?

Jack could still hear her laughter, an honest sound coming from deep within, and Grace’s uninhibited nature, expressing candid views or showing her temper as they spent hours in each other’s company. Had it all been pretense?

Painfully he recalled their time at Margate when she’d ambushed him with a pair of wire cutters and removed the mesh from his mask in order to see him. Nudging him back into the
real world. Yet he’d been willing with her. She had accepted him, brought him back from the darkness.

“Lies, all of it,” he breathed aloud, gripping the rail. Still, he couldn’t forget her enormous green eyes, glistening with tears as Marcus led her from the study. For an instant, Jack’s convictions had faltered, and he’d fought the desire to banish Marcus from the house and take Grace into his arms, beg her forgiveness, and forget it all happened.

But it did happen. And Marcus held the proof of her guilt.

“We have to live by
faith, Jack, not by sight.”
Words she’d spoken to him, saying faith was discovered with the eyes of the heart rather than by what the world sees. True enough, he thought bitterly. Grace Mabry had deceived him into believing she was innocent, as if she knew all along he suspected her. And Jack did suspect her at first, until he foolishly began to ignore the signs: her omissions to his questions, her anger, and her father’s use of bribery to place her at his estate. Even Marcus had been skeptical, while Jack had argued in her defense.

Self-recrimination filled him. What an actress! She’d had him completely convinced. Perhaps she’d found their situation amusing, gathering information for her father. Writing to him those dirty little letters about secrets—Q ports at Richborough and any other tidbits a defunct agent of MI5 might let slip in his weakened state. Perhaps mocking Jack’s pathetic situation altogether—

“Milord?” A sharp rap at the outer door to his rooms brought him back to the present.

Jack returned inside and stared at the mask lying on the bed. For a moment he was tempted to leave it off, permanently. Whether it was his mood, however, or perhaps some innate sense of preservation, he grabbed it up and covered his face, postponing his revelation a while longer. “Come,” he said tersely.

“Excuse me, milord.” Edwards entered and offered a cursory bow.

“What is it? I specifically asked not to be disturbed.”

“I do apologize, your lordship, but you’re needed at the gatehouse.”

Jack straightened. “Why?”

“I’m afraid the hay balers have gone on strike.”

Jack paused, then said irritably, “And why is that my problem? If they wish more pay, let the Army Service Corps deal with them.”

“It’s . . . not about money, milord,” Edwards said hesitantly.

“Then what
do
they want?”

His steward shifted. “They wish to see you specifically, milord, and discuss terms.”

“What terms?”

“They won’t say. But if you’ll only meet with them in the morning, milord—”

“Fine,” he snapped. Jack sensed they wanted more from him than to discuss terms. “Have Tillman come around at eight o’clock.”

After Edwards departed, Jack removed his mask and tossed it back on the bed. Returning to the balcony, he continued staring out at his gardens, wondering what he would have to face in the morning.

Lying on a bed in her cell, Grace felt too exhausted and heartsick to sleep. Since her arrival at New Scotland Yard hours before, Cromwell and his detectives had barraged her with the same questions, over and over again a hundred times. Where was her father the night of April fourteenth? Did he attend the British Red Cross benefit with her at the home of the dowager countess, Lady Bassett? Was his costume that of the film star Charlie Chaplin? Had he planned any trips, purchased passage aboard a ship? To Ireland, perhaps, or even farther abroad? Who
were his associates, his friends? Did she have any other contacts outside of her father? Where had she hidden the code book?

Grace felt further humiliation when detectives returned from Roxwood with her bags. They made her watch as they pawed through her most intimate things, including her journal, which Cromwell kept for himself before allowing her a change of clothes.

They’d found nothing, of course. But their frustration only made them more demanding, causing her unending hours in the interrogation room, seated in that torturous wooden chair as more detectives were sent in to bully her for information she didn’t have.

She tried in vain to convince them Da was honest and hardworking, and as loyal to the Crown as she was. Grace reminded them that
she’d
been working hard for the war effort, and Colin had been fighting for his country in France.

Her words fell on deaf ears. Cromwell, heading up the investigation, even had reservations about her brother, echoing Jack’s callous assumption that Colin had likely gone over to the Germans.

She lay in the dark, hands fisted at her side, trembling. Tears streamed down the sides of her face, and a sob tore from her throat. What would they do to her? How much longer would they flog her with questions before taking action? Would she and Da be sent to the Tower?

“Oh, Colin, where are you?” she cried into the darkness. Closing her eyes, she took deep breaths while praying fiercely for his safe and swift return. He was proof of their loyalty to Britain; his homecoming would exonerate both her and Da and disabuse the belief he was a traitor to his country.

Her brother would be a hero they could not ignore!

Inside the cramped parlor, Jack surveyed the occupants through the slats of his mask. They in turn gaped at him. He’d met the women of the WFC only once before, at the barn, prior to regaining his sight. Until they spoke now, he wouldn’t be able to identify one from the other.

Mr. Tillman had entered behind him and moved to stand beside a uniformed woman slightly older than the others. Jack surmised she must be Mrs. Vance, their supervisor.

“Speak!” he said, growing impatient at their gawking.

His order seemed to shake them from their stupor. A young, very pretty woman stepped forward from the group. “Thank you for meeting with us, milord.”

Clare Danner. While she hadn’t spoken the last time, Marcus had seemed most taken with her midnight hair and gray eyes. Jack felt a pang of envy, knowing his friend was in love and had a chance at happiness. He, on the other hand, would marry a woman who loathed the very sight of him. And the one he’d come to love, Grace, was lost to him forever.

The familiar dull ache in his chest made him angry. “Out with it. Why have you asked me here?” Though he suspected he already knew the answer.

Clare Danner moistened her lips and wiped her hands against her uniform. “It’s about Grace—Miss Mabry.”

Jack admired her courage. She would need it, coping with Marcus’s line of work. Still, why should he make this easy on any of them? “Miss Mabry left,” he said. “I don’t know what you think I can do about it.”

“She didn’t
leave
, milord.” The gray eyes flashed. “We know she was arrested.”

“And . . . ?” He waited.

“She’s not guilty.”

Hope flared for an instant before Jack willfully quashed it. “Can you prove it?” he demanded. “Have you any information?”
She took a step back. Jack eased out a breath. “I appreciate your intent, but there is substantial evidence—”

His words were cut off by a muffled burst of laughter—a brief, high-pitched cackle echoing around the cramped confines of the parlor. Jack raised his head and tried to determine its source.

“Agnes, please hush.”

Clare Danner had turned her remark to a short brown-haired woman barely visible at the back of the room. Then her gaze swung back. “What evidence?”

“It’s confidential. And I still don’t understand how it affects your work at the estate.”

“Grace would never commit treason, Lord Roxwood.”

Jack recognized the voice of Lucy Young, the woman with whom he’d met recently. She came forward to stand beside Clare Danner. “She’s not only a p-patriot, but her brother fights in France.”

“So we’ve been told.” Jack recalled his accusation against Colin Mabry and the way Grace had reacted. Even now, his belief wavered.

“You doubt it, milord?”

As soon as she spoke, Jack confirmed the woman beside Tillman was Mrs. Vance. Her features suffused with indignation. “I was there when Dr. Strom told Grace the news about her brother. I saw her reaction. She’s no traitor. You must be mistaken.”

Her words gave him pause. Jack remembered how distraught Grace had been when she’d come to him, telling him she must leave for London. And Strom seemed legitimate enough . . .

No, he’d been taken in once already. Grace Mabry kept secrets from him, and perhaps she would still but for her family’s situation. “Obviously, there are things you don’t know about her,” Jack said.

“And many things you don’t about her either, milord. If you’ll pardon me for saying.”

A stocky red-cheeked woman came to stand beside Lucy Young. By process of elimination, Jack deduced she must be Becky Simmons. Her look of outrage impressed him. If the proof were not so final against Grace Mabry, he might believe she’d been wrongly accused.

“Grace has been the truest friend. She’s helped all of us in one way or another.” Becky Simmons glanced to the others in the room, who all nodded before she said, “We’d like to tell you about it.”

“And if I listen?” he asked, longing to end the meeting and return to his sanctuary.

“We will return to work and bother you no more,” said Clare Danner. “Will you promise at least to consider our words?”

He let out a heavy sigh and nodded, taking a seat in the worn Sussex chair near the door. “Proceed.”