His Mask of Retribution (19 page)

‘Of course I love him,’ she said, loud and angry, and faced her father with defiance. ‘I love him,’ she said again. ‘And I will not let you hurt him.’

Her father ignored her and kept his attention focused on Rafe while he spoke to her brother. ‘Take your sister upstairs.’

Francis took a step towards her.

‘No!’ she shouted. ‘I am not going anywhere.’

‘My wife stays with me,’ said Rafe, his voice low and uncompromising.

‘Very well,’ her father said, but his mouth tightened. ‘Are you going to tell me what manner of game you are playing, Mr Knight?’

‘There is no game, Misbourne. You know what I want.’

‘I am sure I have not the slightest notion. I played along with the highwayman’s demands for the sake of my daughter’s safety.’

‘June 17th, 1795,’ said Rafe. ‘Hounslow Heath. You may have forgotten that night, Misbourne, but I
have not.’

‘I am not unaware of the tragedy of your parents’ demise, Knight, but I fail to see how their unhappy fate has anything to do with me.’ It made sense what her father was saying. He would have been so very plausible, had she not already overheard the betrayal from his own lips.

‘I was there that night, Misbourne,’ said Rafe in the highwayman’s deadly quiet whisper. ‘Did not your henchman tell you?’ He stepped forwards and his eyes had nothing of gold in them, nothing of lightness, only the promise of death. ‘I watched what he did to them. I saw what he took from them.’

Every last vestige of colour washed from her father’s face. ‘If you believe that I had anything to do with your parents’ murder, you are mistak—’

‘Five men,’ said Rafe. ‘Tommy Jones—brother of Billy Jones, the villain who dressed up as a highwayman and did the deed—who you ensured was hanged so that he might never reveal the truth. James Harris—Billy’s handler, the one with whom your man made the arrangement. Frederick Linton—your man with whom the liaisons were made. Alan Brown—the corrupt Bow Street Runner who led the investigation—and George Martin Fairclough—the magistrate who was in Linton’s pocket.’

Her father swallowed hard. His eyes seemed to bulge as he realised the significance of the names. ‘They were the ones you robbed? The ones you...’

‘Yes,’ said Rafe darkly. ‘You paid them well for their silence—they kept it for fifteen years. But they talked to me.’ He smiled without humour. ‘How they talked.’ And those words spoken so quietly sent a chill through the room.

Her father tried to laugh it off as an absurdity, but the sound was hollow and unconvincing, and across his face was unadulterated fear and a guilt that endorsed Rafe’s accusation better than had he held up his hands and admitted it. ‘You have got this all wrong, Knight.’

The two men stared at one another.

‘Give me the document, Misbourne.’

Her father shook his head.

Rafe slipped the pistol from his pocket and pointed it straight at her father’s heart. ‘I will not ask you again.’

She saw her brother edging closer to Rafe, positioning himself ready to act.

‘Go ahead and pull the trigger, Knight,’ her father said.

Marianne saw the slight tightening of Rafe’s fingers on the pistol. ‘No!’ She stared at her husband, at the hardness and the hatred in the focus that held her father. She did not take her eyes from Rafe’s face as she moved to stand between him and her father.

Rafe’s eyes moved to hers. ‘Stand aside, Marianne.’

But she shook her head. ‘You know that I cannot let you do this.’

They stared at one another and she knew what she was asking of him. She saw the pain and the anger and the grief and all that he had spent a lifetime working towards. But she could not let him pull the trigger. She stood there, her eyes fixed on his, willing him to understand. Slowly he lowered the pistol.

From the corner of her eye she caught the movement of her brother charging at Rafe. ‘No, Francis!’ she cried, but it was too late; Francis launched himself at her husband, knocking the pistol from his hand and the two men were down on the floor landing such savage blows on one another that the blood reached to splatter against the hem of her skirt. Crimson against ivory. So stark and so awful. She stood stock still and stared at it in shock for a moment, while the furore erupted around her. Her brother’s blood. Her husband’s blood. She bent down and lifted the pistol from where it had landed at her feet, then she pointed it at the sofa behind her and fired.

The noise was deafening. The plume of smoke was acrid and stung her eyes. And when it cleared, both men were on their feet, staring at her with alarm and concern.

‘Enough,’ she said. ‘No more.’ She dropped the spent pistol to the floor with an almighty thud. Her ears were still ringing with the echo of the pistol shot. She looked first at her brother, a searing glance that made him look away in shame. And then she looked at her father. She looked him straight in the eyes.

‘After what you have done to Rafe, do you not think an explanation is the very least he deserves?’ she said quietly.

He stared at her as if he had not thought she knew the awfulness of his crime. As if he only now realised the truth—that she knew what he had done. For a moment there was such a terrible tortured expression in his eyes. It was a pain like none she had ever seen, as if his very soul was writhing in agony. He closed his eyes as if he could not bear for her to see it.

‘I am sorry, Marianne,’ he said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. ‘I am so very sorry, my darling girl. You are right, of course.’ There was nothing of fight in him, nothing of his energy and strength. ‘I never meant for the Knights to be killed. It was to be a highway robbery only. The fool was supposed to rob them, nothing more.’ And then he waved Francis away and looked at Rafe. ‘I have spent a lifetime regretting the loss of their life, what I did to you...’ He shook his head. ‘I am sorry, truly I am.’

‘The document.’ Rafe’s voice was harsh.

‘The damnable document.’ Misbourne gave a laugh, except it came out like a sob. ‘Your father and I were both members of a particular club...some might call it a secret society. He was taking the document to the Master of the Order. There would have been an investigation. It would have all come out. I could not let that happen.’

‘So you killed him that you would not be blackballed from your club?’ Rafe said with incredulity.

But her father shook his head. ‘I would take the shame on myself a thousand times over, if only it had been that simple.’

‘Then what?’

‘I could not risk that the document might find its way back to its owner.’

Rafe sneered and shook his head. ‘So the document was not even yours to steal?’

‘It was not,’ said her father. ‘But I had to have it,’ he added quietly. ‘I would have done almost anything in the world to possess it.’ He raised his eyes suddenly to Rafe’s. ‘But it made no difference. I had unleashed a monster and I could not call it back.’

‘Where is the document now?’

Her father’s eyes flitted to hers before returning to Rafe’s. ‘I will give it to you. And you may do what you want with me. Only send Marianne upstairs, to sit with her mother, first. I beg you, Knight.’

‘I have been treated as a child for too much of my life,’ she said. ‘I want to know what this document is that cost Rafe’s parents their lives and my father his honour.’

‘Marianne has every right to see exactly what you refused to bargain for her safe return. She stays.’

Her father seemed to shrink before her eyes. With every breath in the silence he aged a lifetime. His eyes sunk. His cheeks grew gaunt. Her proud strong father looked old, defeated, grey. His gaze moved to hers, and there was in his eyes such a terrible sadness and regret that it broke her heart. He looked at her, drinking in her face as if it were the last time he might look upon her, the seconds stretching too long before he looked at Rafe once more. He said not one word, just turned and walked over to the small boxed bookcase by the fireplace and withdrew a blue leather-bound book that looked like every other in his collection. He hesitated only for a moment, holding the book in his hands as if he had held it a thousand times before, then opening it and turning the pages to find the one he sought. He creased the spine open and she realised that the document had been bound into the book like a proper page. Then he passed the wide-opened book to Rafe, who had moved to stand before the fireplace.

Marianne watched Rafe’s eyes scan the page. She waited for him to reveal the document’s secrets, but there was only a deafening silence. Her heart beat once, twice, three times. She saw Rafe’s eyes widen, saw the way his gaze shot to her father’s and the look that was in them—utter incredulity and condemnation and comprehension all rolled into one. The silence was deafening. A piece of coal cracked and hissed upon the fire. And still Marianne waited and her stomach was clenched tight and for all the heat in the room and the sweat that prickled beneath her arms her fingers were chilled to the bone.

‘Why the hell have you kept this all these years?’ She could hear the horror in Rafe’s whisper and it frightened her more than anything else had done.

‘So that I could never forget what I did. So that I would always remember that it was my fault,’ said her father, and he seemed a shadow of the man he had been. ‘It is my penance, my punishment.’

‘Rafe?’ she said and began to walk towards her husband. She had a horrible feeling about what was written on that page. A dread like none she had ever known. She feared to discover its terrible dark secret, yet she was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

She saw the flicker of something in Rafe’s eyes. In one rapid move he ripped the page from the book, balled it and threw it into the fire. ‘No!’ she gasped in disbelief, racing towards it as if to save it from the flames, but Rafe stopped her, capturing her in his arms so that she could only watch the page darken and crinkle and shrink to nothingness within the roar of flames.

‘You
do
love her,’ whispered her father in his old man’s voice as he stared at Rafe.

‘The only reason you are still alive is because I love her.’

‘What have you done?’ she cried and stared up into Rafe’s face.

‘What your father should have done long ago,’ he said.

‘Are you mad? After all these years of seeking...after all that you have gone through... Why would you do such a thing?’ She shook her head, unable to believe it. ‘What was written upon that page?’

The question that Rafe had spent fifteen years asking. The thing he had thought the most important in the world. He understood now how wrong he had been. He understood now that the most important thing in the world was that Marianne never discovered the answer to that question.

‘You must think me the very devil,’ said Misbourne.

Rafe did not disagree.

‘But you understand, do you not, why I had to move heaven and earth to retrieve it? Why I could not yield it? He needed the paper in his possession to redeem it. I thought that if he did not have it I could stop him.’

Rafe felt sick to the pit of his stomach. Yet he gave a nod. He understood too well.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Linwood asked.

‘Take your sister upstairs to her mother. Then come down and I will tell you,’ Misbourne said. ‘I owe Knight the truth. And whatever he decides to do, you should know the reason for it.’

Linwood gave a nod.

‘You cannot seriously think to send me to another room as if I am of no consequence in any of this. I am not a child.’ Marianne looked from her father to her brother and back again. ‘I have been as much a part of this as any of you,’ she continued.

Rafe saw Misbourne wince as her words struck home. Marianne did not know that she had been at the very centre of the whole thing.

‘I shall stay with my husband,’ she said and looked to Rafe for support.

‘You should see how your mother is, Marianne,’ he said quietly.

She looked at him as if he had just slapped her. He knew that she must think he was letting her down, but rather that a thousand times over than she learned the truth.

‘Rafe?’ She stared at him with shock and hurt in her eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Marianne.’ God only knew what he would do to protect her. ‘Please trust me in this one thing. Believe me, it is for the best.’

‘The best?’ she said. And she gave him a look of utter strength and anger and disappointment. ‘I have spent a lifetime doing what other people deem best for me. I thought you were different, Rafe.’

‘Marianne, you do not understand...’ But there was nothing he could say to make her see, without telling her the truth.

‘You are right, I do not understand at all,’ she said, then she turned and strode away, slamming the door behind her.

‘Thank you,’ said Misbourne.

‘Don’t thank me,’ snarled Rafe, ‘I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Marianne.’

‘I know,’ said Misbourne. ‘And that is why I thank you.’

‘Is someone going to tell me what is going on?’ asked Linwood.

Rafe’s eyes slid to Misbourne.

The earl slumped down into the chair and in a quiet monotone he began to talk.

* * *

Marianne did not make her way up the stairs to her mother’s little parlour. She felt angry and hurt beyond belief over Rafe’s attitude. Everything had changed in the moment he read the document. What secret did it hold that he would rather ally himself with the man who was behind the murder of his parents than reveal it to her? He said he loved her, but what had just happened in the drawing room did not feel like love. It felt like betrayal, by both her husband and her father. And what did anything written on a piece of paper mean in comparison to that?

She could not go and sip tea and chat about the latest fashions with her mother, closing her mind to all that was around her, pretending that nothing had happened. She could never be that cosseted, fearful, stifled woman again. Marianne slipped out of the front door, closing it noiselessly behind her.

Callerton had not yet returned with the coach to collect them. She could not very well go back inside and start ringing bells and summoning servants to ready her father’s carriage to take her home. Although she was uneasy about the idea of walking alone through the streets of London, she would damn well do it. Better that than the alternative. And then she saw the hackney carriage at the end of the street and her dilemma was solved. She glanced back at the window of the drawing room and was relieved to see that no one was standing there. She squared her shoulders, held her chin up and, with a determined grip on her reticule, headed towards the hackney carriage.