Dangerous to Hold (11 page)

His eyes were pinpoints of light when they focused on her. Gradually, they warmed. “What I hope to gain,” he said, “is to draw my wife and her brother into the open. I traced them to England. I know they are here, and I’m hoping to find them. When they realize that someone is posturing as Catalina, my long-lost wife, it should completely throw them off course, and draw them out of hiding. It’s high time I gained the upper hand. I’ve been playing it their way for too long. So, will you consider it?
Will you play the part of my wife? Five thousand pounds, Catherine. It’s nothing to sneeze at.”

She rose to her feet and stared at him in astonishment. “After what you’ve told me? Are you out of your mind? Or perhaps you think I’m the crazy one? I wouldn’t play the part of your wife for all the gold in England! Strange as it may seem, I like being alive. You may take your preposterous proposition, Lord Wrotham, and go to the devil.” She marched to the door, opened it, and held it for him.

“That’s what I expected you to say,” he said.

Which was exactly why she’d said it. If he’d taken her at her word, she would have had to find a way to bring him back.

“Ten thousand pounds,” he said softly, “if we apprehend them. That’s a tidy sum of money for anyone, Catherine, even for a man in my position.”

It was a fortune. She could live in luxury for the rest of her life.

She closed the door and returned to her chair. “I’m not promising anything,” she said, “but … all right, explain to me how you think this would work. Maybe if I understand it better …”

There was a different look about him now. The charm had flown out the window and he was staring at her with barely concealed contempt. What had she said? What had she done? Then a mask came down and the look was gone.

Marcus leaned forward in his chair, his arms resting on his thighs, brandy glass cupped in both hands. “You won’t be in any danger Don’t you see, the last thing they would want is for anything to happen to you, else Catalina’s designs on my fortune would be thwarted, because she would, to all appearances, be dead. There would also no longer be any point in killing me since you would be the one to claim my fortune as my widow. Either way, they lose.”

“But
El Grande
and Catalina could prove that I am an impostor!”

“It will never come to that. What Catalina wants is money, and I am prepared to pay handsomely to buy her
off.” To her raised brows, he elaborated, “The divorce, Catherine. I’m willing to pay whatever she asks for the divorce.”

She couldn’t conceal her scorn. “Are you saying that to save your own skin, you would pay her off, a murderess? What about your good friend, Freddie Barnes? What about those others, your fellow officers, who were murdered? Won’t there be any justice for them?”

He said mildly, “You’re a fine one to talk when your sole motivation for even listening to me is money. You’re quire a mercenary little … witch.”

Catherine lifted her brow. “You’re not my friend, Lord Wrotham. I don’t owe you anything. You’re lucky that I’m even hearing you out.”

He let out a breath. “You’re right, of course. And you’re right that I won’t let Catalina and
El Grande
off so easily. But once I have them in my power, your part ends. I won’t go into how I intend to deal with them afterward.”

She said, without much hope of convincing him, “What if you’re wrong? What if
El Grande
and Catalina are innocent? What if there’s another reason for all those murders—if they really are murders.”

“If I’m wrong, I lose nothing. If I’m right, I’ll make damn sure that justice is done.”

Eyes closed, she leaned her head against the back of her chair. He was on the wrong track or he was playing her along for some sinister purpose of his own. But she couldn’t make this decision by herself. Others were involved and she needed to consult them.

Marcus watched her in silence. He didn’t know what to make of her. Perhaps it was truer to say that he didn’t know what to make of himself. In the coach, she had enthralled him. Now, he felt contemptuous. She was just like every other woman—she could be bought if the price was right. Perhaps he’d been wrong about her. Perhaps she was Melrose Gunn’s mistress. The thought irritated him, but not half as much as his body’s automatic response to her.

“In addition to the money,” he said, “you may keep
the wardrobe and jewels that will be necessary to pass you off as my wife.”

She opened her eyes. He was using that tone of voice again, the one that barely masked his contempt. She would ponder that later.

Before she could respond, he went on, “I could hardly expect you to do it because it’s the right thing to do, now could I? Besides, you’ll earn your money. This may take several months. We’ll spend some time in London, just to show you off and spread the word that my wife has arrived from Spain. That should give Catalina and
El Grande
a jolt.” His smile showed just how much he enjoyed that particular prospect. “Then we’ll retire to Wrotham, where my family resides.”

“Wrotham?”

“My estate in Warwickshire. Don’t look so alarmed. We won’t even embark on any of this until you’ve learned your part.”

“It’s just too farfetched,” she said. “How can I play Catalina? What about my hair? What about the language? I know only a few words of Spanish.”

“We can deal with all that.”

“What about my friends? If they see me, they’ll recognize me.”

“Your friends don’t move in my circles. And, in my experience, people see what they expect to see.”

Testing him, she went on, “Why me? Why not someone who already has black hair? Why involve me in your affairs?”

“You look like her. That may or may not be important, but it will certainly be more convincing to
them”

There was a long silence, then she exhaled a slow breath. “I need time to think about it,” she said.

“How much time?”

She did a quick calculation in her head. “A week. No, don’t try to press me. If you do, the answer will be no.”

He gave in gracefully, sensing that she was already halfway persuaded to help him, and he didn’t want to tip the scales the wrong way. At the front door, he waved McNally off as he came to assist him with his coat.

“Melrose Gunn,” he said casually. “Will he be a problem?”

“Why should he be? I can write my articles anywhere.”

“I wasn’t thinking of your articles.”

“What were you thinking?”

“You seemed rather taken with him.” His expression was guileless, blank.

“I am taken with him. He’s an intelligent, articulate man who has dedicated his life to improving the lot of others.”

“I heard something tonight to the effect that he is courting you?”

“That won’t be a problem,” she said. “Melrose and I are friends, and that’s as far as it goes.”

“Mmm,” said Marcus, and opened the front door. “Do women find that sort of thing appealing?”

“What sort of thing?” she asked, mystified.

“You know, men like Gunn, intelligent, articulate, dedicated.”

Comprehension slowly dawned. “Not all women,” she replied, smiling up at him, “but to a woman who appreciates the finer qualities in a man, he is almost irresistible.”

Pleased with his scowl, she bade him a civil goodnight, shut the door on him, and returned to her study.

Her smile soon faded. He had given her a lot to think about. It would have been so much simpler if they had been able to sift through everything together. But that was assuming that Marcus had been open and aboveboard with her. She shrugged, thinking of her own duplicity, which far surpassed his.

Staring into space, she reviewed everything that Marcus had told her. Intuitively she felt he had been telling the truth, that his object really was to draw Catalina into the open so that he could proceed with a Scottish divorce. One option was to simply tell him that she was Catalina. But she was afraid to do that. He was out to punish Catalina, and there was no saying what he might do. No, she wasn’t quite ready to go that far yet.

The next thing she did, as she always did after an interview, was make notes. Ten minutes later, she set down her pen, rested her elbows on the flat of her desk and cupped her cheeks with her hands. Major Carruthers would have to be informed of everything Marcus had told her tonight. And
El Grande
, of course. Would he be interested? Would he care? Would it be enough to draw him back to the land of the living? There was only one way to find out. She must write to them both. For a long, long time, she remained as she was, thinking of
El Grande
and the year she’d spent with the partisans.

It had all started in Lisbon, not long after she’d buried her father and was making plans to return to England. That’s when Major Carruthers approached her. A crisis had arisen in British Intelligence and he was short of one Sketching Officer to send into the field. These were spies who went behind enemy lines to sketch military tar
gets so that there would be no unpleasant surprises when Wellington deployed his armies. Major Carruthers had seen some of the sketches she’d done of Madrid, before the retreat, and though she’d sketched only for pleasure, he knew she had the talent for this particular mission. And so she was recruited as a British spy.

She’d met
El Grande
on that first mission, when he and his band of guerrillas accompanied her to the target, a bridge that the British wanted to blow up to secure their position. It was the first time she’d changed her appearance to make herself look Spanish, the first time
El Grande
had claimed she was his sister as a ruse to infiltrate French lines. It was a ruse they were to use many times, until fact and fantasy became blurred in everyone’s mind.

One mission led to another, and before long it made more sense for her to remain with the partisans. The McNallys were asking too many awkward questions about her strange absences. In the end, she told them she was returning to England as companion to an elderly English lady she’d met in Lisbon. It was the only way she could explain that lost year of her life, the year she’d lived with the partisans.

At first, she’d felt aimless, and hadn’t much cared what became of her. She was just getting over the trauma of her father’s sudden death and the horrible quarrel with Amy. In time, she’d come to care about the partisans and their struggle against the French. She’d learned their language and shared their hardships.

It wasn’t long before she was doing a lot more than sketching military targets. She became a true partisan. Their cause became her cause. She learned to shoot, ride, and fight as well as any of them. It wasn’t that she liked war, but she looked back on that time as one of the most rewarding periods of her life. She’d known the kind of freedom few women ever experienced, especially English ladies. Oh, to ride with El
Grande
and the partisans once again, and camp under a canopy of stars, and tell stories around the campfire to pass the time! There had been a darker side to it, the fighting and bloodletting, but that’s
not what she remembered best. And as far as possible, the men had kept the women out of the worst of it.

By comparison, her life in England was pale and placid, though she supposed she had it better than most. She was her own mistress and came and went as she pleased. Her work at
The Journal
took her into all sorts of places, some of them truly seamy. She still wanted to improve the lot of others, but oh, how she missed that sense of oneness with the partisans.

She lifted her head and kneaded the stiff muscles in her neck, trying to loosen them. A slight movement brought her gaze to one of the bookcases. It looked no different from the other bookcases in the room, but that was deceiving.

Lifting the candle from the desk she crossed to the bookcase. Her hand moved along the wall, feeling for the molding that was loose. When she depressed it, there was a grating sound, and she swung the bookcase away from the wall with the pressure of one hand.

The bookcase didn’t conceal a room so much as a large windowless closet. Her father had once kept his specimens and poisons here, and other medical supplies that he’d wished to keep out of reach of small fingers. There were no jars or bottles here now. This was where she kept her Spanish sketches, hidden away from curious eyes.

She absorbed everything in one long look. There wasn’t much to see—rows of open shelves and a few artists’ portfolios, some old diaries, and an odd assortment of boxes containing papers and documents, and relics of her days with
El Grande’s
band. She grasped one of the portfolios, slipped it under her arm, and carried it to her desk.

There was very little in it. Almost all of her Spanish sketches had gone directly to British Intelligence. The portfolio contained only those sketches that were personal to her, and most of those were portraits of partisans or peasants she’d encountered on her missions. This was the record of her year with the partisans, and she thought of it as a testament to them. There were faces here she would never see again.

She thumbed through the sketches till she found the one she wanted. It was a black-and-white portrait of Marcus. Once again, she was struck with the Irish cast to his looks. He looked like a rogue, but a likable rogue, with no real harm in him. She’d done the sketch from memory, after the “Isabella” episode, when he’d kissed her. But he wasn’t a likable rogue. He was beneath contempt.