To Kiss a Thief (25 page)

The pieces of the past fell into place with startling rapidity: the crumpled memorandum he had dislodged from his stepmother's desk; Sarah's supposed demands for money; the discrepancy between the amount on that paper and the notes in Sarah's trunk.

The fact that Eliza was never far from his stepmother's side.

“Eliza has been blackmailing you—threatening to reveal the truth about the necklace if you did not pay for her silence.”

His stepmother nodded without meeting his eye.

The part of him that had clung with perhaps naïve desperation to the notion of Sarah's innocence offered surprisingly little resistance to the suggestion of Eliza's guilt.

The missing necklace had been in Eliza's possession all along. And now his oldest friend—or so he had always imagined—had put it in Sarah's trunk and then suggested someone fetch her shawl, intending it to be discovered.

He glanced toward the terrace, wondering why Eliza would have done such a terrible thing. He would find out. But first—

“You let me suffer—let
Sarah
suffer—all these years . . .”

“Suffer?” Shock propelled the word from his stepmother's mouth. “You never wanted to marry the girl anyway. You were well out of it. It did not matter that the necklace wasn't real,” she insisted. “Or even that she hadn't stolen it. She was still a thief at heart, and I knew it. She wanted what ought never to have been hers. And if she had been truly innocent, she never would have been so willing to leave.”

“Amelia, what have you done?” His father's voice was so soft that in another man, the tone might have been mistaken for gentleness.

“
I
am the one who suffered.” She pouted, sinking back into her chair. “Thanks to her, my home was ransacked by Bow Street Runners. Your darling Fairfax risked his life in a duel and then went into exile. I kept my silence through it all. But, like Sarah, I grow weary of keeping secrets. If you had not made me promise to begin to keep better track of my expenditures, Marcus,” she added with a bitter shake of her head, “your son would never have discovered where she went.”

“But I did,” St. John murmured. “I found her.”

He folded the handkerchief around the broken bits of glass and passed the bundle to his father. “You will excuse me. I must go to her,” he said as he strode across the room.

“St. John.”

He paused, almost to the door.

He did not think he had ever heard his given name pass his father's lips—he had, after all, been “Fairfax” from the moment of his birth. No, that had been an intimacy reserved for his mother. Lately, oddly, for his daughter. And perhaps someday, if he were lucky, for his wife.

“I have made mistakes where you were concerned,” his father acknowledged with a downward glance at St. John's stepmother. “But Sarah, I think, was never one of them.”

St. John nodded. He understood, at last. He looked forward to the opportunity to build a different relationship with his father.

But first he had to stop his bride before she ran out of his life forever. He made it only a few steps beyond the threshold before he broke into a run himself.

* * *

When he did not find her at the pianoforte, as he had hoped, he knew where she must have gone. Pushing aside his trepidation, he followed her. As he had feared, ascending the steep steps to the nursery was like climbing into his past. Every step, every shadow was familiar to him. But this time he did not try to cast off those memories. He let them pour over him, their healing power blending with the hurt. When he burst through the door moments later, his eyes fell first on Clarissa sitting on the floor with her doll, and his heart lurched. In his fear, he had never stopped to consider how wonderful it would feel to see a child—his child—playing in the place where he himself had played, long years ago.

But there was no sign of his wife.

“She's gone, then.” He had wasted precious moments—years—because he had been afraid to face his feelings, afraid to face the truth.

Emily started and jerked to her feet, her needlework spilling from her lap and onto the floor. “Lawks, sir. What a fright you gave us. I thought you were Mrs. F.”

Clarissa toddled over and tugged at his hand. “Play wi' me, Papa.”

He ran a hand over her curls. “I can't now, little one. But I will. Did she say where she was going, Miss Dawlish? Did she say anything at all before she left?”

“I could see somethin' had happened to upset her. But she wouldn't say what. I asked if she was going to leave, and she swore she meant to stay.” Emily shook her head. “Said runnin' was for guilty folk.”

Deflated, he asked, “What happened to change her mind?”

“I dunno,” Emily replied with a shrug. “She was pacing about and stopped at that window.”

Lifting his daughter into his arms, he walked to the place Emily had indicated, and looked out, though he knew what he would see. The back garden, the cliffs, the Channel. The surest route of escape from Lynscombe—of whatever kind Sarah meant to effect.

“Did she take anything with her?”

“Why, no. She just—Mercy me, Lieutenant!” Emily shrieked, patting her breast and withdrawing a folded sheet of paper. “I forgot. She wrote this.”

With a gentle hug, he put Clarissa back on the floor with her doll before snatching the note from Emily's grasp. She brought her candle closer, and his thumb smudged a childish sketch of a cat as he unfolded the paper and read:

Her dowry. Of course. She believed that was the only part of her he needed.

His gaze returned to the note and he repeated the phrase, “
Whatever happens
.” He could not like the implication of those words. And then he saw that at the bottom of the page, in a shakier hand, she had added:

Jerking his gaze back to the window, he scanned the terrace for any sign of Eliza. But she was nowhere to be seen. Then his eyes traveled the unkempt path that wound down to the sea.

“Thank you, Miss Dawlish,” he said, folding the note and tucking it into his coat pocket. “I believe I know where to look.”

He only hoped he was not too late.

A
way from the shelter of the house, the breeze grew stronger, its summer warmth replaced by autumn's chill. It whipped Sarah's hair free of its pins and sent it twisting and tangling about her face. She clutched her silk shawl tightly around her shoulders; every moment the wind threatened to snatch it free of her grasp and whirl it away.

Eliza did not glance behind her, but Sarah maintained a careful distance between them nonetheless. When Eliza paused to clutch a stitch in her side, Sarah stopped. When Eliza slipped out of sight on a turn of the path, Sarah sped up.

Soon the sea stretched before them, the Channel's gray water whipped into snowy froth by the wind. Scrubby sea grass snagged Sarah's stockings; even her sturdy shoes—for she owned no dancing slippers—were no match for the rough ground. But she pressed on, to the spot where St. John had revealed why he had left Lynscombe, and perhaps had first begun to realize why he needed at last to come home.

Eliza paused at the cliff's edge to scan the horizon, her red hair streaming behind her.

And then she jumped.

The wind ripped a scream from Sarah's throat before she realized that Eliza had merely dropped onto a ledge that formed part of the trail down to the strand. As she peered cautiously over the cliff, expecting to see Eliza's body on the rocks below, the other woman looked up at her from just a few feet away and laughed.

“Why, what a pleasant surprise, Lady Fairfax! Care to join me for a walk on the beach?”

Despite the dizzying and deadly prospect before her, Sarah swallowed her fear. She wanted answers to questions that had been haunting her for three long years. She followed Eliza down.

Although the path was neither so narrow nor so steep as it had appeared from above, she clung to the chalky face of the cliff, its roughness tearing at her gown and shredding her gloves.

Eliza moved with far less difficulty, as if the descent were familiar to her. Sarah watched how she moved along the trail and avoided the spots Eliza's feet had skirted. In a matter of moments, the other woman was standing on the sand, looking toward the water.

When Sarah at last traded the crumbling chalk for more solid ground, her breath was as ragged as her clothes. “What have you done, Miss Harrington?” she asked when she was at last able to speak.

“Done? Merely arranged matters so that things can be the way they always should have been.”

“And how is that?”

Eliza's lips curled in a cruel sort of smile. “I think you know, Lady Fairfax. You overheard what I told your husband the night of your nuptial ball. I meant for you to overhear, after all,” she admitted coolly. “He should have married me.”

It was confession enough to make Sarah's heart jerk into her throat.

“Yes, I was always meant to be Lady Fairfax, and eventually, the Marchioness of Estley.” Eliza began to stroll along the beach as she explained. Reluctantly, Sarah followed. “You see, my father and your husband's father are old friends and near neighbors. When I was born, Papa began to fantasize of one day joining the two families. I grew up believing my future was already settled.”

They passed under a stone archway that had been carved by the power of the sea, then over a narrow strip of dry strand along the cliff, where an inlet cut in toward the shore. Beyond it lay a wider stretch of beach. In the distance, Sarah could see an abandoned skiff washed up on the shore. As they walked toward it, Eliza continued her story.

“I understand that you have a child, Lady Fairfax—a daughter.” Sarah's heart thumped erratically in her chest, and she gave a chary glance over her shoulder, although the house was entirely out of sight and she knew she had left Clarissa safe in the nursery. “Can you imagine, if you chose her husband for her today, how she might feel about that man when she is a woman grown?”

Sarah gave an uncertain shake of her head. “I cannot.”

“This man she had known from a child,” Eliza pressed, “with whom she played on this very stretch of beach. This man around whom every plan for her future had been built. The first to kiss her, the first to—ah—” She seemed to catch herself with a wicked smirk and shook her head. “But that would be telling tales, would it not?”

Sarah blushed and looked away, trying not to imagine the intimacies this woman must have shared with her husband, feeling as if her heart were tearing in two. “She would love him, I hope.”

Eliza nodded, then paused, as if considering the implications of Sarah's reply. “So, what do you suppose she might do when the man she loved was snatched away by another?”

Anything
.
Everything
.

For the first time, Sarah began to question the wisdom of following the woman to such an isolated spot. She stooped and pretended to inspect her shoe, scrambling for an excuse to get away.

Obligingly, Eliza stopped and waited. “One morning, Papa came to me, grim-faced, and said that Lord Estley had found another bride for his son, one with fortunes more suited to the family's needs,” she continued when Sarah at last stood. Despite the dull roar of the waves, Sarah could hear the edge in her voice. “Almost immediately Papa began to talk of a match with Mr. Abernathy instead. Philip Abernathy, whose idea of sparkling conversation is a debate over the best sort of apples to be put into a tart.” Eliza turned and looked at her. “The future of which I had dreamed was to be unceremoniously ripped away.”

“So you decided to fight for your dream.” Sarah could not admire Eliza's actions. But she was beginning to understand them.

Eliza nodded. “I did, although I confess, at first I did not know how. When I called on Lady Estley, however, it came to me. It was clear she disdained the match as much as I, although heaven knows she was eager enough to have your money at her family's disposal. Her every word expressed scorn for you, your birth, your looks. ‘Would you believe,' ” Eliza said, in a passable imitation of Lady Estley's shrill voice, “‘Estley imagines he can disguise those flaws by draping her in the family jewels?' ”

Sarah felt her mouth drop open in a soft “
Oh!
” of understanding.

“Oh yes. I hoped that if I could find a way to make it seem as if you had stolen them, it would provide sufficient cause to put an end to your marriage. But the more I thought, the more I realized I would need assistance in carrying out my plan. A few nights later, I happened to be at Vauxhall when I overheard a group of young officers complaining about the high cost of purchasing a promotion—those who hadn't the funds were forced to risk their lives to advance. There was a great deal of bravado being spouted, of course. I rather suspect they had been drinking to excess,” she confided in a broad whisper, as if there were someone nearby to overhear the allegation. “Captain Brice was among them. When he asked me to take a stroll along one of the alleys, I accepted. We . . . talked, and I suggested I might know of a way to help him to acquire the money he desired.”

Without conscious thought, Sarah lifted her hand to her throat, as if feeling for the necklace.

“That's right,” Eliza averred, a sardonic gleam in her eye. “We met twice more in secret to plan. I would provide a distraction, send you into his path. You already know how I managed to do just that,” she added with a cutting smile. “He was to do whatever it took to comfort you. Most important, he was to get the necklace and hide it well. I stressed to him that it was essential to claim that the necklace was already missing when you joined him in the library—otherwise, suspicion might have fallen too easily on him.”

Sarah struggled to absorb the implications of everything Eliza was saying. “But your plan still might have failed if we had not been found—found—”

“In a compromising position? That's right,” she agreed. “I did not know whether an accusation of theft would be enough to get rid of you. That was why it was necessary to bring a man into my plan. I could not very well make it look as if you had cuckolded Fairfax without one.” She laughed. “I do believe Captain Brice has a future on the stage once his military career is over. He played his part to perfection. And you, Lady Fairfax—well, you really must be more careful with wine. It can go to your head, you know,” she cautioned, wide-eyed, with what almost passed for earnestness.

“You—you drugged me?” Her fuzziness, her confusion, her headache the next morning all suddenly made sense.

“Think of it as helping you to relax. And while you two, er, occupied yourselves in the library, I persuaded Fairfax to join me there for one last tryst. I had already arranged for footmen to deliver two messages simultaneously: one to your parents, informing them that Lord Estley wished to meet; and one to Lord and Lady Estley, saying that Fairfax needed to speak to them.
Et voilà!
The new bride in the library with the officer, for everyone to see,” she announced, sweeping her hand before her as if displaying the tableau she described. “But, alas, without the family jewels.”

“The necklace was in the library all along.”

“Of course. After the room had emptied, I went back and retrieved it from the place he had hidden it. It was then that things began to get. . . interesting, shall we say. I left the ballroom to meet with a man in Covent Garden. Perhaps you know the sort of man I mean?”

Sarah nodded blankly, barely certain of what Eliza had asked. She was reliving that night, that awful night—the pitiless faces, her parents' shame. St. John's cold indifference. If he had been anticipating a tête-à-tête with Miss Harrington, then the scene in the library must have been doubly disappointing to him.

The horrible memory absorbed her to the point that she almost missed Eliza's next words.

“Imagine my surprise when he told me the Sutliffe sapphires were nothing but an exquisite forgery.”

“Not . . . real?” she mumbled. But then, nothing else about the evening had been, either.

“Almost worthless. I was frantic. I had promised Captain Brice a good deal of money for his role, and now I had nothing with which to buy his silence. My perfect plan was collapsing around my ears.” Eliza's green gaze drifted over the seascape. “Then I happened to remember Lady Estley's concern about your wearing the gems, and I began to wonder . . .”

“She knew the gems were false?”

“Indeed. As it turns out, she had had the copy made—after having pawned the original to cover her losses at the card table.” In spite of herself, Sarah gasped at the revelation. “Of course, it took some doing to get the truth from her. But she was understandably reluctant to have her husband learn what had happened to his precious family heirloom. She paid me handsomely to keep her secret. Not once, but many times.”

“You kept the false necklace,” Sarah said, recalling the story St. John's stepmother had spun for him about being blackmailed over the jewels. So it had been true—only the name of the blackmailer had been changed.

“I'm no fool,” Eliza huffed. “I also persuaded Lady Estley to send you away, knowing it would confirm your guilt. Then I learned that you had drowned in the attempt to escape—better yet!”

“She did not tell you I was alive?” Sarah noted, surprised. So the marchioness really
had
managed to keep the secret—a number of secrets, it seemed.

“No.” The admission seemed to pain her. “But once I learned the truth, I realized I could not let the little matter of your survival get in the way of my success.”

Eliza's matter-of-factness in speaking of another's death chilled Sarah's blood far more than the brisk wind coming off the Atlantic. She should have known the woman would never have revealed so much if she had had any intention of allowing her an opportunity to repeat it to another.

Fear thrummed through her body. In the moment, she could think of no better distraction than to keep Eliza talking.

“What of Captain Brice?”

Eliza waved a hand, as if the detail were trivial. “He was sent on a dangerous mission, from which he seemed unlikely to return. And as I had not yet paid him for his part in our little play, I had both the necklace and the money.” As if they were close friends, she threaded her arm through Sarah's and resumed walking, pulling her along toward the little boat. Only when they at last reached it did Eliza release her arm.

The tide scrubbed the stern with an insistent rhythm. Sarah glanced inside the small vessel, looking for something, anything she could use to save herself. Could she wield one of the heavy oars and knock Eliza down?

“I had only to wait until Fairfax returned to me,” Eliza continued as she leaned against the gunwale, blocking Sarah from reaching into the boat. Her eyes wandered up the beach, in the direction from which they had come, and she gave a self-satisfied smile. “And, look! Here he comes now.”

Sarah turned to see St. John, clad only in his shirtsleeves, striding forcefully across the strand.

When he was close enough to hear her over the sound of the water, Eliza called to him. “It would have been better, Fairfax, if you had not lost your temper and thrown that blasted necklace across the room. When I heard it hit the wall, I knew the forgery would be discovered.”

“And it was,” he said.

“So, how did you leave things at the house, my dear?” Eliza asked, pushing away from the boat. “Does your father now realize what his silly wife has done?”

“Yes.”

“He should know Miss Harrington was involved, too,” Sarah inserted, managing, somehow, to keep her own voice composed. “It was she who arranged the necklace's disappearance on the night of the ball. With Captain Brice.”