Fool Me Twice (26 page)

He did not sound as though he cared.

“We have a common enemy! Lord Bertram—I needed a way to oppose him—”

On a noise of disgust, he turned away. The sight of his broad back bewildered her into silence. She had imagined, somehow, that he might want to know what she meant.

He knelt down by the trunk. In a moment he would put everything together, see what she had taken, what she still clutched beneath her arm. She must tell him.
Now.
“Lord Bertram,” she said. “For years he has dogged me. You must listen. I came here specifically—”

“Did he send you, then?” He opened the trunk.

“No!” She came off the wall. But when she started to approach, he sent her a look that struck like a fist of ice. “He is abhorrent to me. Believe me. I had looked for a way to stop him, and I came here when I realized—”

“And here I thought you came to apply for a maid’s position.”

She stared at him. “Do you—do you not even wish to hear me out?”

His laughter sounded mechanical. He lifted out the hem of the wedding dress, the brocade glimmering. “This belonged to my wife,” he said. “She taught me a great deal. She left me well equipped to hear all manner of stories. I can’t imagine yours will be more surprising than hers.”

Her stomach cramped. She felt physically ill. That he would compare her to his wife . . . “I’m not like her.”

“Oh?” He looked up at her. “Did you know her?”

His tone was all wrong. Cordial, pleasant, as though they were standing in a corner at some party, making polite conversation. “I’m not like her,” she whispered.

He fixed her in a long steady look. “You mean to say, your actions do not match your character. I am mistaking you. This is not what it seems. That’s what you mean?”

“Yes!” She hesitated. Where to begin? With the letters she had uncovered from his wife? But she had not
uncovered
them, she had
stolen
them. From Elizabeth—
from his sister-in-law. How would that confession make him eager to hear, to believe, the rest of her tale? “It’s complicated,” she said rapidly. “But if you would let me explain—my mother, she and Bertram knew each other from her childhood—and I promise you, it will all make sense—”

He rose. She told herself she would not retreat, but when he walked toward her, she hit the wall again. “Yes,” he said, “I am wholly mistaken. I have misinterpreted you entirely. You have a brilliant explanation, which will show you to be not a thief, but a victim. Even, I suppose,
noble
in your motives.” His words assumed a mocking edge, drilling into her brain like gunshots: “Honorable. Righteous. Misunderstood.”

He gripped her arm and dragged her around, so that she looked into the grand mirror over his dressing table. Four feet high and half as wide, it showed them both: his hard mouth, his merciless, level stare. Her face looked white and blank, the face of a foiled thief, a fraud and a liar. She stared into her wide, panicked eyes. They did not look innocent.

“And yet when you pass a mirror,” he said conversationally, “for a moment, you startle. You wonder, who is that, looking back at you? This criminal face, this guilty air.” His lips twisted into something like a smile. “I am sure you have some excellent reason for your crimes. Tell me, while you were ransacking my belongings, did you find my wife’s letters?”

It hit her, like an anvil to her chest, that nothing she said now would convince him. For he would imagine that she had invented her story on the spot, after reading the letters from his wife.

Worse, if he discovered the letters she had stolen—
his wife’s letters, which she carried in her apron, for she’d meant to return them before slipping out—he would misinterpret her possession of them.
Did he send you?
he had asked.

That she had so many letters written by and to Bertram would only make her look guilty of collusion with him.

“I didn’t want to do this,” she said miserably. “I took no pleasure in deceiving you.”

Marwick pressed his cheek to her hair. She heard him inhale, and some deranged part of her quivered to life at his nearness, at the smell of him, the warmth of his skin. The saner part of her froze like a field mouse beneath the passing shadow of a hawk. She dared not breathe.

“Of course you took no pleasure,” he murmured. His breath was hot along her skin, waking perverse echoes of last night’s pleasure. “Enjoying it would force you to acknowledge your own guilt. Far easier to imagine yourself the martyr, I imagine. Far easier to sleep at night. He must have paid you very well to do his dirty work.”

“He did not pay me,” she whispered. “I loathe him. And I do not sleep so well.”

“No,” he said after a pause. “Nor do I.” He pulled away from her. “So tell me,
Mrs. Johnson
. In my shoes, what would you do with yourself? Would you summon the police, or would you effect a more immediate justice?”

She could not imagine what he meant by that. She did not want to find out. “I want to destroy Bertram,” she said very rapidly. “You are right, I know what your wife did, and so I
know
that you and I have a common cause—”

“Oh, you
know
of that? How delightful.” He paused,
looking struck. “Of course, that explains a great deal. No wonder you showed such courage. When did you learn of her adventures, I wonder? Before I threw the bottle? Before we met in the library? Before the garden, this morning?
Well?
”

She stared at him, strangled by her own deceit, and then flinched as he put his hand to her cheek, spanning her face from temple to chin.

“I am glad you know the truth,” he said quietly. “I’m sure it did much to quell your fear of me. For you realized I was not worth the fear: you realized what a pathetic object of mockery I am.”

She shrank into herself. “No! I never thought such a thing!”

His hand tightened slightly. Just a fraction; just enough to make her aware of how close his thumb lay to her jugular. “Oh, but surely it did comfort you,” he said. “I could not be so fearsome, after all—not if the woman I’d married could conspire so freely against me, without the least fear of discovery.”

“I would”—even as she spoke, she knew the stupidity, the futility of it—“I would help you to ruin Bertram. I would help you.”

“Indeed?” He seemed to consider this, then nodded. “But conspiracies require trust. Could you trust me, Mrs. Johnson?”

This sudden turn threw her. “Yes,” she whispered. If only he would remove his hand from her throat.

“Is that so? If only you could see your expression. You’re terrified of me. How could you trust a man who terrifies you?”

She swallowed. “I . . .”

“But I have been told,” he continued in that smooth,
unruffled voice, “that my judgment is flawed. Untrustworthy. I am forced to agree.
Fool me once,
so the saying goes. But here, now, with you—I’ve been fooled twice. So I leave it to you to help me decide, for clearly my judgment
is
foul: am I able to trust
you
? Is this the face of an innocent before me? Or do you agree that what I see in your face is the panic and guilt of a
liar
?”

The word cracked like a whip. “I never meant to do you harm!
Think!
Did I treat you like a woman who’d chosen to hurt you?”

He tilted his head, as though to see her better. “How interesting,” he said, “that you imagined you had the choice.”

His hand slid down her throat, cupping, very lightly, the span of her shoulder. His forefinger traced her collarbone through her wool jacket—a jacket that felt suddenly far too thin. He watched how he touched her, his expression opaque. “What is in that portfolio you dropped?”

He would discover it anyway. “Your evidence on Bertram.”

“So that’s why you’re here? He sent you to retrieve it?”

Suddenly she was angry. After all she had done for him, could he not even listen? “He didn’t send me. I
told
you. He’s my enemy as much as yours. My mother—”

“Then how did you know I had material that might destroy him?”

It was time to confess the matter of the other theft. “Your—your wife,” she stammered. “She wrote him letters—”

His palm covered her mouth. “Shh. Let’s not speak of her, shall we? She rather ruins the mood.”

As his free hand closed on her waist, she froze, then
forced herself to meet his eyes, willing him to remember himself. To remember
her,
and what had passed between them.

But his face now was a mask of concentration. And he touched her as though she were not human, but a doll, dumb, witless, fashioned for his enjoyment. His gaze followed his roving hand, which made light little touches down her body, skimming the side of her breast, shaping her waist, molding the curve of her hip, skating—she sucked in a sharp breath—over one buttock, which he palmed and then squeezed, slowly and deliberately.

It was awful. It was the opposite of what he had done in the library—which, while more forceful, had never been brutal, for she had
willed
him to do it, then. Against all good sense, she had wanted it.

“Stop it,” she whispered. “I don’t want this.”

“But what a sweet body you have,” he murmured. “And I have unfinished business with it.” When he lifted his eyes to meet hers, he gave her a slow smile. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am that you’re a liar.”

She had only one choice. It rose in her mind now, the vision of the gun still lying on the carpet.

Her crimes had already compounded. There was no reason not to add to them. And—to hell with him! After all she had done, that he would not even
listen—
he deserved nothing from her.

His hand slid back up her body. He leaned toward her—

Now!
She twisted out of his grip and lunged across the room. He grabbed her skirt, yanking her to her knees, dragging her back toward him—but her hand closed around the pistol. She rolled onto her back, and
when he saw what she held, he released her. Lifting his palms, he backed away.

She sat up, breathing raggedly, and then scrambled to her feet.

“Will you shoot me, then?”

No man should ask that question with such idle curiosity. She stared at him, struggling to regain her breath, to make her brain function. Did he not care if he lived or died? “I should shoot you,” she said bitterly. “You idiot. Perhaps you were right—all the stories about you were false. For what kind of politician does not know how to
listen
?”

He snarled at her. “I would rather hear—”

“Throw me the key!” She was done listening to him, too. She took a step toward the door. “Do it!”

Sneering, he pulled the key from his pocket and tossed it onto the carpet by her feet. “This is a capital offense. Brandishing a weapon with the intent to harm.”

She felt suddenly airless, as though the noose were already tightening. “I don’t mean to harm you,” she said, and then felt all at once furious again. She had said that enough. He was deaf, a fool. She opened the door and kicked the portfolio into the hall—then lifted the gun higher as he stepped toward her. “Stay there,” she said sharply.

Slowly he held out his hand. “You don’t want to harm me? Give me the gun, then. If you don’t mean to harm me, hand it over.”

A bizarre laugh spilled from her. “And now the tables have turned! But you never gave the gun to me—so why should I do it?” She swallowed the bitter taste of that laugh and stared at him. “I wanted none of this. All I wanted was my freedom.”

His head tipped. “Yes. You must want it very much, to risk the gallows.”

“And you don’t want enough,” she said. “Your wife was a monster. But so were the men who conspired with her. And if you had shown them half the spine you’ve shown me, perhaps Bertram would not have been my problem to solve. Murder? How unoriginal. You might have been cleverer. You might have made them
pay.
But instead, you decided to cower here in the dark!”

She had the satisfaction of seeing him pale before she stepped out the door. And then a thought struck her.

She reached into her apron and tossed the letters at his head. “My parting gift!” And then she turned the lock, closing him in, and picked up the portfolio.

A thud came behind her. He would try to break down the door now, of course. How predictable. She squared her shoulders and walked quickly for the main stairs.

*  *  *

Alastair vaulted down the staircase, straight past the astonished porter for the servants’ passage to the ground floor. He had not entered it in years; this section of the house was theirs, not his. She would not be here anyway. She was long gone; it had taken him too much time to batter down the door, six inches of solid oak.

He knew he would not find her, but his feet did not consult his brain. His boots hammered heavily on the wooden steps. When he reached the ground floor, domestics scattered, gawking. Jones appeared. “Your Grace! Is something amiss? May I—”

Alastair threw open the door to the housekeeper’s room.

The sitting room was small, plainly furnished. It
smelled like her, like roses, like goddamned deceit. He snorted to clear his nose of it.
I am sorry,
she’d said—the witch! Not only upstairs, either: she had said it in the garden, too. She had been plotting this for some time.

His gullibility knew no bounds.

Through a narrow doorway was the spartan cell where his newest jezebel had slept. Had he found her here, he might have strangled her with his bare hands.

She was not so stupid, though. She had fled. What had she left behind?

He ripped the drawers out of the chest. Empty. The desk: empty, too. The walls were bare save three illustrations clipped out of magazines. A man and woman, hand in hand, walked a village lane. In a parlor on Christmas morning, a mother and father presented a small, bowtied puppy to a young child. A country cottage at dusk on a snowy evening, a lamp glowing in the window.

He felt his mouth twist. The last print, he knew. It had been famous for decades. He himself had kept a copy of it as a boy, drawn to it for no reason he could name.