Anne Barbour (17 page)

She would send to London for a Bow Street Runner. Yes, that sounded like the most sensible course of action. Those men were adept at finding missing persons; surely they would manage just as well at turning up missing identities.

She realized with an unpleasant start that she would miss John Smith when he returned to wherever he had sprung from. Not, of course, that she was in any real danger of losing her heart to him—she had learned her lesson too well to be lured into that trap again—but, she must guard against lapsing into a serious indiscretion. She had always thought of herself as a virtuous woman, but she was not at all sure that her rectitude was strong enough to withstand John Smith’s beguiling assaults. And she certainly had no desire to be added to his no doubt long string of conquests.

There were times, she had admitted to herself long ago, when she almost wished she had allowed Francis to seduce her on the night of their elopement. She had undergone all the penalties of ruination with none of its pleasures. If she had allowed Francis to bed her, she would at least have sampled the delights of a carnal embrace once in her life. Perhaps there might even have been a child. A familiar stab of longing surged through her.

Now, she was forced to another admission. The desire she had felt for Francis to continue his fevered caresses was a frail thing compared to the almost uncontrollable spiral of wanting into which she had been drawn at the first touch of John’s mouth on hers. Francis’s embrace had resulted in a pallid imitation of passion—an apprenticeship into the wickedly delicious precincts of sin to which she had been so persuasively invited by John Smith.

She turned her face into her pillow, but her last thought before drifting into a restless sleep was that oddly, she had experienced no sense of sin in her response to his kiss. In fact, the one aspect of the episode that she remembered clearly was the shattering sense of rightness she felt in his arms, as though she had been enfolded in a welcoming haven.

Which was absurd, of course. John Smith was dangerous, she reminded herself muzzily, and she had better not forget it. She must not be lulled into losing the peace of mind she had struggled so long to acquire.

Her eyes closed, and her breathing deepened; and she slept, only to dream of polished-pewter eyes and a dark, lean visage hovering above her own.

Chapter Eleven

It seemed as though she had been running for a very long time. Her breath came in short, deep gasps, and behind her she could hear the hoofbeats of her pursuer. He was getting closer! Her feet, tiny and fur-covered were bloody from the rocky terrain over which she traveled. Behind her, she could feel the full brush of her tail, catching occasionally in the brambles covering her path.

She stumbled and fell. Instantly, the hunter was upon her. Dismounting, he ran to her and bending, he cradled her in his arms. She raised her head and gazed into the gun-metal eyes of John Smith.

Oddly, now that she was caught, she felt no fear as he stroked her luxuriant red pelt. Her whole body tingled as he ran strong, gentle fingers over her pointed ears.

She strained against him, and now she stood on two feet. She was human once more, and her hands as they reached to touch him were again white and slender and smooth. She lifted her face, and John bent his to meet her.

For a moment, she waited in breathless acquiescence for his kiss, but as he moved closer, and closer still, his features began to blur. Before her terrified gaze he changed! He was no longer John Smith. He was a stranger—or—no, he wore the face of—of Francis Summervale.

She shrank away from him, aware as she did so that she had resumed the shape of a fox. Frozen in her fear, unable to move, she watched Francis draw a dagger from his belt. He held it high over his head, and when he brought it down, it flashed in a glittering silver arc, plunging straight toward her heart. Her mouth opened in a long, silent scream, and—

Catherine jerked upright in her bed. Wildly, she glanced about the room, absorbing with difficulty the familiar surroundings of her bedchamber. With a conscious effort, she calmed her breathing and listened to the thunder of her heart.

It took several minutes for her to regain her composure, but at last she sank back into her pillows. Lord, what an odd, frightening nightmare! She had barely begun to drift into another, uneasy sleep, when a creaking noise from the corridor seemed to ring like a gunshot in the room and brought her bolt upright again.

She sprang from her bed and hurried to her window. In a few moments, as before, a now familiar figure exited the house and glided over the graveled path that led to the stable.

Catherine waited until the man, mounted on the equally familiar figure of Caliban, disappeared into the distance. Then, lighting a candle from the embers that still glowed in the hearth, she slipped from the room and moved along the dark, silent corridor to John’s bedchamber.

Without pausing to knock, she opened the door and whisked herself inside. She lit a few candles and stood for a long moment of indecision in the center of the room. At last she moved hesitantly, first to the desk that lay near the window, then to a large commode positioned against one wall. She ran her fingers lightly over their surfaces, finding, as she expected, nothing of note.

She was beginning to feel a little foolish. What on earth did she think to find in here? Surely, a man of John’s intelligence—assuming he had something to hide—was not likely to leave a conveniently crumpled letter with a scrawled signature, or a monogrammed kerchief.

Finding nothing in her first, cursory search, Catherine drew a deep breath and began on the wardrobe and bureau. The paltry contents of each—the suits she had purchased and the one he had worn on his arrival at the Keep, plus a few items of underclothing—were all that met her inspection. She reached for one of the suits, but halted, her fingers poised midair.

No, she simply could not make herself rifle the man’s pockets. With a sigh, she turned toward the wall sconce. Pursing her lips to blow out the candles, she halted suddenly, struck by a thought. The three ensembles that hung in the wardrobe comprised, to Catherine’s count, John Smith’s entire complement of clothing. If they were all present and accounted for, what the devil was he wearing tonight? His nightshirt? No, that lay neatly folded in a bureau drawer.

She looked around the room again, and this time she paused at the bed. The coverlet had been turned down, but the bed obviously had not been slept in. Yet the foot of the bed was oddly disarranged.

Moving to it, she lifted the bedclothes.

Nothing.

The mattress lay crooked on the bed, and she lifted the corner. Still nothing. No! Wait! Lying atop the webbing that supported the mattress was a piece of torn newspaper.

She sank down on the bed, and as she perused the little scrap, a disbelieving horror settled in the pit of her stomach. The words seemed to leap at her in disjointed chunks.

“Lord Justin Belforte ... treason ... body identified ... decorated hero ... escape of French general.”

She read the piece again, dwelling on the description that so precisely fit that of John Smith.  She read it once more before she finally grasped its contents.

Dear God, the name of her mysterious guest was Lord Justin Belforte! The man she had kissed with such abandon just a few hours ago was a wanted felon. A traitor!

A trembling seized her as she tried to assimilate what she had just learned. Apparently, the authorities thought that Belforte was dead. Had his French conspirators done away with the wrong man when they attempted to kill a pawn for whom they had no further use? Or had Belforte killed the man himself, hoping to avoid retribution?

As these and other even more chaotic thoughts whirled in her brain, Catherine grew numb with disbelief. She was sickened with the sense of betrayal that seemed to seep into every corner of her being like an ugly fog, creating a despair such as she had never known—even when she had discovered Francis’s perfidy.

It must be just as she suspected. John—no. Lord Justin—had deceived her. He had no more lost his memory than she had. And the why of it was perfectly clear. My lord desperately needed a bolt-hole in which to lie hidden until he could contrive an escape to—where? America, perhaps. What better place could he have found than the isolated solitude of Winter’s Keep? And to compound his good fortune, his little haven was guarded only by a parcel of gullible, foolish, single women, ripe for his blandishments.

One single, foolish woman in particular, she thought bitterly.

What was she to do now? She could not allow Jo—Lord Justin to remain at the Keep. She must be rid of him. Not only must she be rid of him, but she must see that he was made to face his punishment for betraying his country.

She paced the floor in furious circles. She would say nothing to the perfidious snake, but first thing in the morning, she would go to Sir Reginald Selwyn, the area’s justice of the peace. Her brow wrinkled in concentration as she recalled snippets of information that had been dispensed in other newspaper stories about the escape of the French general. Apparently, Lord Justin had not actually been charged with a crime, but that was only because he was thought to be dead. Surely, Sir Reginald would know who to contact in the Foreign Office.

Yes, that’s what she would do. Within a day or two Lord Justin Belforte would be hauled away from the Keep in chains to meet his just reward.

Carefully, Catherine replaced the newspaper scrap beneath the mattress, then made her way back to her own bedchamber. She did not return to bed, however, but stood by the window for a long time. Vainly, she tried to quell the nausea that rose like a tide within her. Surely, she was overreacting to what she had just learned. Yes, she had every right to feel the indignation that surged through her. Lord Justin had played her—-played them all a scurvy trick. His kindness to Grandmama, his quiet sympathy for Mariah, even his yeoman efforts in the fields had been part of the trickery. All false, all purposeful. Yet she felt more than indignant, more than betrayed. She felt used and violated, as though something deep within her had been soiled beyond redemption.

How could she have been such a fool—again? How could she have succumbed to the practiced blandishments of a lying, traitorous villain? Was she so pathetically starved for masculine attention? Was she so desperate for the touch of a man’s hand? She had thought  herself as self-possessed. She believed she had raised an invincible barrier around her heart and her emotions.

She shook herself. She was behaving as though she had given her heart to the man, when in truth, she had only given in to a moment of madness in his arms. She had certainly not relinquished anything more important. She would see Lord Justin Belforte hanged and not shed a tear. She was still whole of heart and inviolate of spirit.

She drew a deep, shuddering breath and returned to her bed. Try as she might, however, she could not return to sleep.

* * * *

“I am sorry to be the bearer of such tidings, my boy.”

Charles Rutledge spoke gruffly from his place across the desk from Justin. Once again, they sat in Charles’s candlelit study, where Charles had just imparted the news that, according to his informants, the Duke of Sheffield’s health had worsened considerably in the days since Justin’s return to England. He was not expected to live out the month.

Justin reached inside himself for the insouciant smile he kept in readiness for when the subject turned to his family.

“I’ve already told you, Charles,” he said carelessly. “The duke’s health is of no concern to me.”

“But he is your father,” expostulated Charles, shocked. “It occurs to me that I advised you badly in suggesting that you not visit Sheffield Court. To be sure, your brother is in a position to do you a good deal of harm, but at a time like this ...”

“Look, Charles, I am sorry to hear the old man is in such bad skin, but I feel no worse than at such news of any one of my acquaintances. It was Father who decided long ago that he’d just as soon forget I’m his son. It took me some years to get the message, but I finally came to terms with the fact. And now it’s too late. If you are envisioning a dramatic death-bed reconciliation, you will have to look to Drury Lane.”

Justin drew a deep breath. “I have not yet decided whether to confront St. John as yet, but please believe me when I say that the state of the Duke of Sheffield’s health will have nothing to do with my decision. Now, have you any news for me concerning my little predicament?”

Charles sighed. “Not much, I’m afraid. I have discovered that, as we had already assumed, it was an Englishman who reported to Captain Bassinet of your mission to Huerta and provided him with a dossier on your background.”

“An officer?” queried Justin sharply.

“Apparently.”

“Was there a description?”

“Nothing very specific. The information came from a Spanish guerilla who had attached himself to the captain’s camp. He speaks little English and said only that the man visited Bassinet in the dead of night. He was a big man and wore a dark coat. Does that strike any notes with you?”

“Mmp,” growled Justin. “Perhaps.” As far as it went, it described Roger Maltby to a T. Particularly, if the coat was the uniform of the Light Bobs.

“It appears to me,” said Charles, an oddly hopeful note in his voice, “that the attempt on your life was not personally motivated, but sprang simply from a need to get you out of the way before you were able to complete your mission.”

Justin rubbed his jaw dubiously.

‘Thus, assuring there would be no troops guarding the bridge at Huerta? Possibly. However, that doesn’t explain the good captain’s comprehensive knowledge of my background—or the paper covered with St. John’s handwriting.”

Charles made no response. Indeed, mused Justin sardonically, what could the man say? “There, there, lad, I daresay a hundred reasons might be found for your brother’s written words to find their way into a set of lethal instructions detailing your immediate demise.”