Jane Feather - [V Series] (47 page)

“Wise of you,” she said. “My drawing room’s been
full since midmorning with people trying to pry some additional tidbit out of me.” She unpinned her hat and drew off her gloves.

Sebastian poured sherry. “You look the very devil,” he said frankly. “What happened to you last night? I looked up and you’d gone.”

“Marcus took me away just as you were exposing Gracemere.”

Sebastian whistled soundlessly. “He saw.”

She nodded. “All of it.”

“Bad?”

She nodded again. “Very. As bad as we knew it would be if he found out.”

“I’m sorry, love.” Sebastian took his sister in his arms and she wept quietly for a few moments while he stroked her hair. “When he’s had time to calm down, to look at it clearly, he’ll understand. He knows you love him. He’d have to be a blind man not to know it.”

“I hoped he loved me,” she said drearily. “But love is easily killed, it seems. He despises me.” She heard again his voice telling her to go away … to get out of his sight. Such furious contempt.

“Stuff,” her brother said. “Of course he doesn’t despise you.”

“Yes, he does. Anyway, let’s not talk of it anymore now. Agnes Barret paid me a visit this morning.”

She explained what Agnes had said and Sebastian listened attentively. “There’s nothing she could do,” he said at the end. “Neither of them has any redress, Ju. Gracemere will have to leave London. He’s already been obliged to resign from his clubs, according to Harry. He can rusticate in the country or go abroad. But there’s no place in Society for him now … or ever again.”

“And Agnes?”

“She’s untarnished. She can continue as before.”

“But without her lover. And if her fortunes are tied with Gracemere’s then his ruin is hers, one way or the other.”

“Either she ends her relationship with Gracemere, or she abandons her place in Society and joins him in exile. Not comfortable choices. Now, what are we going to do about Marcus?”

Judith shook her head tiredly. “I don’t believe there’s anything to be done. I’ll leave him as soon as I can decently do so without causing remark. We’ll concoct some story to put me out of the way, and Marcus will be free to marry or to continue to live as he did before he met me.”

Sebastian could think of nothing to say in the face of this dreary future. Any option he might offer would be just as wretched when compared with what might have been.

Judith reached for her hat and gloves. “I’d better go home. Maybe Marcus will be back by now.”

She walked back to Berkeley Square and found Harriet’s maid on the doorstep. “Beggin’ your pardon, m’lady, but Lady Moreton sent me.” The girl bobbed a curtsy. “She asks as ’ow could you send miss ’ome as soon as possible.”

“Send her home?” Judith stared at the girl. “But she went home a long time ago.” It was a mere ten minutes’ walk from Berkeley Square to Brook Street. “Oh, but she said she had some errands to run for Lady Moreton. I expect that’s where she is.”

“Oh, no, m’lady,” the girl corrected. “Miss already sent the footman home with her ladyship’s tonic.”

“You’d better come in,” Judith said, and the girl followed her into the house.

“Gregson, did you see Miss Moreton leave earlier?”

“Oh, yes, my lady. She left with Lady Barret.”

Judith felt the blood drain from her face. Harriet … with Agnes. She saw again those tawny eyes, glittering with maleficence, heard again the hissed threats.

She thought of Harriet, the perfect means of revenge upon Sebastian.

“Tell your mistress that Miss Moreton went with Lady Barret. I’m certain she’ll be returning shortly,” she instructed the maid. “Gregson, send someone to find his lordship.” Her voice was crisp, offering no hint of the terror she felt. “In fact, send as many people as necessary. He may be at one of his clubs, or at Jackson’s Saloon … at one of his friends’ houses. But he must be found immediately.”

“Is there a message, my lady?”

“Simply that he’s needed at home immediately.”

Judith went up to her drawing room. Once private, she paced the room in agitation, feeling completely helpless. What would they do with Harriet? Marcus had an inner knowledge of Gracemere, he’d have some idea of what he intended. She was far too agitated to worry about how she would face him after last night’s hideous scene; neither did it occur to her that her husband would withhold his help, however deeply disgusted he was with his wife and her brother. Marcus was not vindictive. With the greatest difficulty, she resisted the urge to send a message to Sebastian. What could he do, except join her in impotent fear?

Marcus was in Gentleman Jackson’s Saloon, when one of the six footmen ran him to earth. Stripped to the waist, pouring sweat, he was attempting to exorcise misery and disappointment in a violent bout with a punchball.

He had passed no better a night than Judith, but the sharpest spur of his hurt was becoming blunter and some elements of rationality beginning to offer a spark of light
in his darkness. He could hear her voice clearly now demanding that he understand the driving power of vengeance. He knew that power. Once he’d obeyed its spur himself … and with Gracemere. There was a perfect appropriateness to the vengeance Judith and Sebastian had taken. But still he couldn’t reconcile himself to the knowledge that he’d been used. If only she’d taken him into her confidence …

But how could she have done so? He would have stopped her. However sympathetic he might have been to her brother’s situation, to her father’s ruin, he would never have permitted Judith to do what she’d done. And the destruction of Bernard Melville, Earl of Gracemere, was central to Judith’s view of the world. Until that had been accomplished, nothing else could take precedence … not even her husband. Had he the right to believe she should have dropped the most powerful imperative of her life—and her brother’s life—simply because
he
had come on the scene? Her bond with her brother was too complex and too strong to be severed by the simple ties of passion … of lust and a burgeoning love.

He didn’t countenance what she’d done, but he understood it. From understanding could come acceptance …

“My lord, one of your men has a message for you.”

Marcus grabbed a towel, rubbing the sweat from his face. “Someone for me, Jackson?”

“Yes, my lord.” Gentleman Jackson indicated the lad in Carrington livery, standing at the far side of the room, gazing wide-eyed at the sparring couples.

“What the devil can he want?” Marcus beckoned and the lad trotted across, his message spilling from his lips. “Her ladyship, my lord, wishes you to return home immediately.”

“Her ladyship!” His heart lurched. Only the direst
necessity would send Judith in search of him in this fashion.

“Is her ladyship well?” he demanded, toweling his sweat-soaked head.

“Yes, my lord,” the man said. “I believe so, my lord. Gregson said we was all to search London for you.”

“All?”

“Yes, my lord. There’s six of us.”

“Go back to Berkeley Square and say I’m on my way,” Marcus instructed tersely, his heart slowing as he went into the changing room. If Judith was well and unhurt, that was all that mattered. Surely she wouldn’t have sent all over London for him just to tell him that she was leaving him … although, knowing his lynx, maybe he shouldn’t be so sanguine. So far, he hadn’t managed to keep a step ahead of her. Why should he assume he could do so now?

He dressed in haste and took a hackney home. Gregson had the door open as he ran up the steps. “Her ladyship …?”

“In the yellow drawing room, my lord.”

He took the stairs two at a time. “Judith, what is it?” The question was on his lips almost before he had the door open. Her white face and scared eyes stopped him on the threshold. “What is it?”

“Harriet,” she said, moistening her lips. She wanted to run to him, but the memory of the previous night was too raw. “I believe Agnes and Gracemere have abducted her.”

He closed his eyes for a minute. He didn’t ever want to hear the name of Gracemere again. He had no interest in his old enemy and Agnes Barret. If he was to pick up the pieces of his shattered marriage, Bernard Melville, Earl of Gracemere, had to be consigned to the pits of hell. And then he saw Martha as she’d been that morning,
ten years before, crouched in a corner of the room, her face bruised, her eyes sightless with tears, soft whimpers coming from her mouth as she’d rocked herself in her hurt. A man who raped once could do so again.

“Tell me what you know.”

Judith explained, finding it possible to slow her thoughts and present facts rather than impressions under Marcus’s calm attention. “I’m so frightened,” she said at the end. “I’ve always felt the evil in both of them. What will they do to her, Marcus?”

Marcus thought swiftly. There was no point exacerbating her fears. Later, when it was over, he would tell her the truth about Gracemere and Martha. But for now he had to prevent the violation of another innocent. He had to get there in time. He had failed once; he wouldn’t fail again.

He spoke suddenly with precision and clarity and Judith quailed at the fury and the purpose in his eyes.

“I will not permit any harm to come to Harriet. This lies between Gracemere and myself. You are to say nothing to anyone and you will stay here until I return. You and your brother will not involve yourselves in this. I’ll brook no interference. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Judith said as he strode from the room.

But I don’t accept it.

J
udith ran upstairs, threw a cloak around her shoulders, thrust her pistol and a heavy purse into the pocket, and left the house through the French doors of the book room.

Marcus’s curricle was being led from the mews as she crossed the cobbles. Drawing her hood over her head, she followed the curricle into the square and there hailed a passing hackney. “Wait on the corner, and then follow that curricle when its driver takes the reins,” she instructed the jarvey, handing him a guinea. He touched a forelock.

“You don’t want the cove to know ’e’s bein’ followed, lady?”

“Not if you can avoid it,” she agreed, climbing inside. She peeped around the strip of leather shielding the
window, watching as Marcus came out of the house and climbed into the curricle. She called softly up to the driver. “There’s another two guineas in it if you don’t lose him
and
he doesn’t realize we’re behind him.”

“Gotcha!” The jarvey cracked a whip and the vehicle lurched forward. Judith sat back, taking shallow breaths of the fusty air. The last occupant of the vehicle must have been eating raw onions and smoking a particularly noxious tobacco.

Marcus never looked back. He drove fast through the city, taking the northern route out to Hampstead Heath. It was a journey he’d made once before in the same urgency, consumed with the same desperate fury. How long had Gracemere had with the girl? Four hours at the most. Was Agnes Barret with him? Having procured the girl, was she going to hold her for him? The nauseating images spun before his internal vision.

The Reading stage lumbered down the road toward him, the postboy blowing his horn. The postboy grabbed the side of the box and closed his eyes tightly as the curricle didn’t slacken speed. The two vehicles passed with barely a centimeter to spare.

“Lord-a-mercy!” the jarvey yelled down to his passenger. “That’s drivin’ for you. Didn’t even shave the varnish, I’ll lay odds. He’s in a powerful ’urry, your cove.”

Judith clung onto the strap as the hackney swayed and swerved along the rutted road, trying to keep the curricle in sight. It occurred to her somewhat belatedly that she had no idea how far Marcus was going. He could be going anywhere—Reading, or Oxford. Somewhere well out of the ordinary reach of a hired London hackney. But how did he know where Gracemere had gone?

The road wound over the heath and she leaned out of the window. “Can you still see him?”

“Aye, he’s just turned off at the crossroads. Reckon he’s ’eaded for the Green Man,” the jarvey called back. “It’s the only place ’ereabouts. Folks don’t much relish livin’ too close to the gibbet.”

“No, I don’t suppose they do.” Judith retreated into the fetid interior again, averting her eyes from the rotting corpse swinging on the gibbet as the carriage turned left at the crossroads.

Marcus drew up in the courtyard of a dark, shabby inn under the creaking sign of the Green Man. He jumped down, tossing the reins to a small lad picking his nose by the wall, and strode into the pitch-roofed building, ducking his head under the low lintel. He held his driving whip loosely in one hand.

Voices came from the taproom to the left of the hall, and the smell of boiling greens wafted from the kitchen at the rear, mingling with the reek of stale beer. The innkeeper came bustling out from the back regions, wiping his hands on a grimy apron. When he saw his visitor, his eyes widened as the years rolled back.

“Ah, Winkler, still in business I see,” the marquis observed in a pleasant tone not matched by his expression. “I’m amazed the Bow Street Runners haven’t caught up with you yet.”

The innkeeper shuffled his feet and looked Marcus over with a calculating shiftiness that carried a degree of apprehension. “What can I do for you, my lord?”