Lord of Deceit (Heiress Games Book 2) (12 page)

Serena and Portia, though, had been ten and eight when Thorington had inherited and started managing the estate far better than his ancestors had. They had been three and one when their father had cast their mother out after Anthony’s birth.

In other words, all they knew was comfort. Thorington and Rafe had given them the security that they would otherwise have lacked. And, unlike Rafe, they didn’t remember how love could turn to hate and life could change in an instant. Their mother was a story and a dream to them, nothing more.

But her infidelity still affected them. Without dowries, it would be difficult for Serena and Portia to make the matches they could have made otherwise.

Somerville had proven that to Serena already. She didn’t mention it now — Rafe didn’t think she was heartbroken, just angry that he had judged her to be inferior. Money would have smoothed over the rumors of bastardy enough for most men to accept them, especially since they were legally ladies. Without money, though, some families might remember that their mother had been unfaithful and decide that their dangerous parentage wasn’t worth the risk.

Waiting for a love match, especially in their situation, was akin to waiting for the Rapture. It might solve some problems, but the chances it would happen in their lifetimes, and that it would end as they expected — with salvation, not damnation — were laughably small.

He sympathized, but someone had to point out the obvious. “If you want marriage, there’s no place better than here to find a match,” he reiterated. “Brighton might have a garrison full of possible matches, but military men aren’t the steadiest of suitors.”

Serena’s gaze turned almost uncomfortably sympathetic — as though they viewed him with as much pity as he viewed them. “They could be, if the right opportunity presented itself.”

Rafe ignored the implication. “Regardless, the second and third sons you’ve disparaged here are willing to make a match. The men who’ve run off to make their fortune in the military aren’t.”

Portia and Serena looked at each other for a long moment. He didn’t know what was contained in their silent communication, but they finally turned to him with a united front. “If you won’t take us to Brighton today, promise you’ll take us in a week,” Serena said.

He wanted to help them. But his revenge against Somerville was nearly within reach. He always put his mission above anyone else’s desires. He couldn’t admit, even to himself, how much Octavia played into his decision…and it wasn’t solely revenge that made him want to seek her out.

“I can’t promise to take you to Brighton.”

The shape of their mouths was the same — they must have inherited that surprised, disappointed expression from their mother.

“Why won’t you help us?” Portia asked. “I thought you wanted us to be happy.”

He couldn’t convince them to abandon their plans by appealing to practicality. They wanted love and romance. Rafe didn’t believe in the stuff. But he wasn’t above using it to manipulate others into doing what he needed them to do.

He couldn’t promise them love of their own. But he could lure them into thinking of something else.

“I must stay here,” he said. “You saw Thorington today. He is absolutely in love with Callista, and absolutely going to make a muck of it if he’s left to his own devices.”

Their immediate glee almost made him feel guilty. “I know!” Portia exclaimed.

“It is so obvious how he feels,” Serena added.

“What are you going to do to get them to come together?” Portia asked.

“It’s simple,” Rafe said. “Thorington can’t help himself and he can’t stay away from her — that part is taken care of. But he’s unlikely to marry her if he thinks that Ferguson won’t let her win the house because of him. So we need to remove that impediment.”

Thorington and Ferguson hated each other — Thorington had secured an invitation through Lucretia by contacting her directly for it, since he had known that Ferguson wouldn’t have invited him otherwise. Rafe didn’t think Ferguson would let Callista inherit if she married Thorington — there was too much bad blood between them. Thorington had come very close to ruining the life of Ferguson’s cousin-in-law the previous spring. Ferguson would never forgive him for that, or reward him by letting him have Maidenstone.

But Serena and Portia didn’t know that.

“We can become more friendly with Ferguson’s younger sisters,” Serena said. “We already enjoy their company. And they have a good relationship with him. Maybe we can influence Ferguson through them.”

Ferguson’s twin sisters, Lady Catherine and Lady Maria, were approximately the same age as Serena. Rafe nodded. “That’s a good plan. It will at least give you a chance to learn whether Ferguson is completely set against Thorington or whether he’ll reconsider. But I could use your help with something else.”

It was risky, bringing them into his schemes, even tangentially. But he couldn’t risk being the only person talking about ghost stories at the party — it would be too obvious. If his sisters got some of the younger women excited about it, the rumors would spread more effectively on their own.

And it would give Portia and Serena a reason to stop talking about going to Brighton — which was necessary, since he couldn’t give them a real excuse for why he wouldn’t take them.

So he told them that he intended to scare away the other suitors through ghost stories. They thought it was a grand idea — “infamous fun,” as Portia declared — and vowed to help him. They also vowed to keep Thorington from hearing about it — which wouldn’t be hard, if Thorington was so single-minded in his pursuit of Callista that he ignored the people who would begin gossiping about ghosts.

And they also agreed not to say anything more about Brighton until they’d married Thorington off. By that point, Rafe could very well have seduced Octavia and learned Somerville’s secrets. He might need a quick getaway, and Brighton could serve that purpose.

He always laid the groundwork for an escape. But this time, he hated himself for thinking of it.

By the time they’d made their plans, it was nearly too late to change for dinner. Serena and Portia ran off together, united, at least temporarily, because they thought they were helping Rafe to trick Thorington into marriage. They loved the plan, and they loved him, and they were confident that they would succeed.

He would let them believe it all. It might even happen, although it would take more than a few parlor tricks to convince Thorington to marry Callista or to convince Ferguson to give them Maidenstone.

But after a day away from Octavia, he was eager to get back to their schemes. There was no one like her at the party. Dinner that night would feel interminable as he stared at the clock, waiting until the appointed hour to go to her.

And a quarter of an hour later, when he realized that he had thought of nothing other than her as he’d readied himself for dinner, he cursed himself.

He was in more danger from his schemes than anyone else was.

T
hat night
, after Rafe had successfully spirited her into the house again, Octavia led the way to the Gothic wing. They snuffed their candles, relying on bits of moonlight coming through undraped windows and Octavia’s memory of Maidenstone Abbey’s maze-like halls. There was little risk of being caught once they reached the Gothic rooms. They comprised the oldest part of the abbey, where the monks had lived and died.

Most of the rooms were closed up and unused, too old to be comfortable for modern guests. The family still held Sunday services in the chapel. The ancient tapestries were popular with visitors to the neighborhood; those who weren’t invited to Maidenstone often paid the housekeeper for a tour. But like the attics, no servants would go there after dark unless they had a very good reason.

“Do you care to tell me where you are leading me?” Rafe said quietly as they came to a halt in one of the small rooms near the chapel.

The room was dark and cool. Of the original furnishings, only a desk and an armchair remained. The rest of the furniture, hidden under protective cloth, was from the Tudor era, stored there after the first earl’s death. There was nothing to distinguish it from any of the other rooms in that wing, other than its size and its tapestries. It was approximately twice as large as the rest, and the tapestries that hung from the ceiling to the floor were ornate depictions of earthly pleasures rather than the more sober artworks that had survived in other rooms.

“This was the last abbot’s chamber,” she said, her voice low from both caution and reverence. “It was here that he received the message from his brother that he would have to leave the abbey, by order of King Henry VIII. And it was here that they brought his body to lay it out after his brother killed him.”

“How perfectly gruesome,” Rafe said, as nonchalantly as if he were discussing the weather.

“Indeed. But I didn’t bring you here for the history lesson.”

“I am relieved, Miss Briarley. My brother is the historian, not me.”

So it was back to Miss Briarley — as though he hadn’t kissed her the night before. He hadn’t mentioned it at all when he had picked her up at the hunting lodge. He had offered her his arm for the walk across the forest, but he had kept a proper distance between them — no “accidental” brushing up against each other.

But his grin, when he had let her into the abbey, was still conspiratorial. And there was still teasing warmth in his voice.

He was hot and cold, as hot and cold as any suitor she’d observed in London. She had to remind herself, brutally, that he wasn’t a suitor — even though, in some ways, he acted like he was. There was something about his actions that she didn’t understand — something that, if she continued to fail to understand it, might hurt her in the end.

But she was a Briarley, and her Briarley heart told her to leap.

She squelched it for the moment, though. There was time enough for leaping later. She reached into her reticule for the tinderbox and lit a candle again. “I am not much for history either, unless it has to do with Maidenstone. But you will want to see what I am about to show you.”

“If you are about to show me the abbot’s severed head, I will be most displeased,” he said, taking the candle from her when she handed it to him.

“No heads,” she promised. “Unless Lucy has been busier than I suspected.”

He laughed. “She seems too determined to be a perfect hostess. I doubt she would risk getting blood on the carpets.”

“There are ways to kill people without too much blood,” she said.

“True, but beheading is bloodier than you might expect.”

He said it like he knew it. She winced. He was so charming, so amusing, that most of the time she forgot that he must have seen a lot of ugliness in Spain. But an apology might make the moment worse, so she turned to the wall that separated the abbot’s chamber from one beside it.

The tapestries there depicted Persephone descending into, and then fleeing from, the Underworld. It was a very unusual choice for an abbot’s chambers. Octavia felt for the gap between two of the panels, right where Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds. She counted over four stones, then up three, sliding her fingers into the groove she found there.

Again, the sense of memory nearly overwhelmed her. She hadn’t done this in half a decade. But as her fingers found the secret lever, and as the wall in front of her slid open, the scent of old stone and still air was the same as it had always been.

“A secret passage?” Rafe said behind her. “Your ancestors had entirely too much time on their hands.”

Octavia laughed. “Time, money, and bad intentions. That would have been as good a family motto as
Briarley contra mundum
, although I suppose the sentiment matches.”

Rafe stepped up next to her as she held the tapestry up to reveal the doorway. It was short, perhaps five feet, so they would have to stoop if they entered. But the tunnel beyond it was at least six feet tall — big enough that a man running for his life would have a chance of making it to the faraway exit. The tunnel was flat and narrow for the first few feet, running between the wall of the abbot’s chamber and the monk’s cell next door to a set of stairs that took the tunnel underground. After that, the tunnel was mostly flat until the stairs leading to the exit door several hundred yards away.

“Where does this lead?” he asked.

“One of the follies in the garden. That area used to be part of Maidenstone Wood, of course. But the other entrance is kept locked from the inside now. Lucy likely has the key now. Grandfather always kept it on his person.”

Rafe held up his candle, but the light didn’t travel far. “Did he think he might need to escape someday?”

“Laugh if you want, but more than one Briarley met an untimely….”

Octavia cut herself off when the flickering candle illuminated something unexpected in the passageway. She grabbed the candle from him, ducked her head, and stepped behind the tapestry.

A painting hung from the wall. There had never been a painting there before. The passageway was entirely utilitarian, meant as an escape route rather than an aesthetic experience. Octavia held the candle higher.

“Is that you and Lucretia?” Rafe asked, stepping into the passageway with her.

Octavia nodded, momentarily unable to speak. It was the painting that she had noticed was missing from the portrait gallery the night before — the painting their grandfather had commissioned of them the summer before their debuts. The girls were posed in the Maidenstone clearing, in front of the stone that gave the estate its name and the Briarleys all of their earliest superstitions. Ava sat on a chair, one that a footman had carried there every day while they posed. Lucy stood behind her, and Octavia still felt the protective hand Lucy had placed on her shoulder. They had posed like that for hours — a pose that, at the time, felt entirely natural.

Looking at the painting now, though, Octavia couldn’t tell whether it was hindsight or the flickering candlelight that added an ominous edge to the art. That hand could have been protective — or it could have held Octavia back. And Octavia’s smile could have been comfortable — or it could have been smug, ready for a life she was sure she was going to seize with no effort whatsoever.

Even if it meant leaving Lucy behind.

She felt the pricking of tears, unfamiliar and unwelcome. She hadn’t cried over Lucy in ages — not even two months earlier, when Lucy had made it clear that she would never welcome Octavia to Maidenstone Abbey, or forgive her for leaving.

“Odd choice to hang a painting here,” Rafe observed. “At least it won’t fade, although I would worry about dampness.”

She blinked until the tears dissolved. There were dead flowers on the floor in front of the painting, along with stubs of burned-out candles and not nearly as much dust as Octavia had expected. The passage wasn’t known to the staff — the earls had always swept it themselves, twice a year, and oiled the doors at both ends. If it needed maintenance, they brought in workers from elsewhere, often in the dead of night. Octavia and Lucy might never have known about it either, but their grandfather had asked for their help as he grew older and the task made him tired.

Lucy was the only person who could have moved the painting and left flowers and candles there as though it had become a shrine.

But why would she do that, if she hated Octavia as much as Octavia hated her?

“Are you feeling well?” Rafe asked gently.

Octavia sighed. “I am fine. Merely surprised.”

It was more than surprise. But he added an additional dose of surprise when he took her candle from her. Then he put an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. Her tears, which were nearly gone, refreshed themselves immediately.

Suddenly, it all hurt again — Julian’s death, Lucy’s betrayal, Ava’s ruin. But mostly, always, inevitably, what hurt the most was that she missed Lucy. She felt stupid for missing someone who had hurt her so badly — but after four years, it seemed unlikely that she would ever quite get over it.

Rafe’s arm was solid, safe. She leaned her head against him, staring at the painting until her tears blinded her. Then she closed her eyes, letting the tears roll down her cheeks.

Rafe held her through all of it. She didn’t shudder or sob — she was too self-possessed for that. But he held her until she’d recovered that crucial first bit of her composure. She could fix the rest of herself later.

“Thank you,” she finally said, pulling away. She missed the feel of his arm around her, but she was embarrassed that she had lost control. “We should go back to the business at hand.”

He didn’t answer for several moments. He still held the candle up, looking at the painting until she nearly ordered him to stop. “No apology necessary,” he finally said, turning toward her. “Your relationship with Lucretia is complex. It would be more unusual if you weren’t upset by this.”

“I’m not upset. I am more determined than ever to see our mission through.”

Rafe continued as though he hadn’t heard her — as though he didn’t believe her. “But you should know that all families have their wounds. I’ll grant that your family’s wounds have been more spectacular than most. As far as I know, none of the Emmerson-Fairhursts ever killed each other.”

“You’ve missed some fond memories, then,” Octavia interjected. “Or at least some good stories.”

He didn’t laugh as he usually did when she teased him. He paused again, long enough that she wondered if he was done with whatever he wanted to say. But finally, he said, “I am always looking for a good story. But it occurs to me that some stories wouldn’t have become stories at all if someone, at some time, had taken the chance to turn the other cheek, or to offer help, or to grant forgiveness.”

She looked down at the dead flowers. When she nudged one with the toe of her boot, the petals fell to the floor, but they didn’t crumble — they weren’t old enough to turn to dust.

“I didn’t expect a lesson in forgiveness from you, Rafe,” she said, still looking at the wilted petals.

It was meant as a deflection from her own feelings, but as he tensed beside her, she wondered if she had accidentally hit a wound. “You shouldn’t. I don’t forgive.”

That sounded almost scarily final — almost like, no matter how long they were together, there was always the risk that he might not forgive her for something.

She brushed that thought aside as soon as she had it. It came from her Briarley heart, not her rational mind. Her rational mind knew there was no future to care about anyway, save for the next few days.

And at the moment, the portrait consumed her thoughts. Was Lucy’s hand in that portrait protective or limiting? And what would it be like now to have a
real
conversation with Lucy — the one they should have had years ago, standing at the edge of the gardens, before they’d ruined both their futures?

“I also don’t forgive,” she said.

“I’m not sure I believe that.”

“Why?” she asked. “Because women are supposed to forgive?”

He put his hand on her shoulder, right where Lucy’s hand had been in the painting. “No. Because if you really hated her, you would ruin her publicly. You would storm into the drawing room in front of everyone and demand that you be given the same chance as your cousins. And then you would win everyone over, the same way I heard you did during your debut season — you outshone her then, didn’t you? You could outshine her again now.”

“I can’t attend. I’m ruined.”

His hand squeezed her shoulder. “You’re ruined, but you have the chance of inheriting Maidenstone Abbey. And if you did, most of society would accept you — or at least your children. And even if you didn’t, you’d have a damned sight more fun at this party than Lucretia is having.”

She pictured Lucy at the edge of all those ballrooms in London, nursing some inner misery that Octavia had never understood. “Is she still unhappy in company?” she asked. “I had thought she might be more comfortable now that she is older.”

“If that was your first thought, you don’t hate her enough. Trust me when I say that if she were truly your enemy, her misery would delight you.”

She paused for a long moment. Lucy had ruined everything. If Lucy hadn’t been so self-righteous, so determined to stop Ava from going down a path she didn’t approve of, Ava might have been married now. And Julian would inhabit the house, not the graveyard. And Lucy would be…somewhere.

Wherever she might have been, she wouldn’t be within weeks of inheriting Maidenstone Abbey. And all because she had betrayed Ava on a single, catastrophic, irrevocable night.

“I hate her,” Octavia said. “And I will destroy her.”

“No chance of forgiveness?” Rafe asked.

“None. Not that she’s asked for it.”

“Then I hope I shan’t earn your hatred,” he said, dropping his hand from her shoulder.

“You won’t, unless you rat me out to Lucy.”

He laughed. “That’s not something you have to worry about. Shall we return you to the hunting lodge, or is there more you wish to do here?”

There was more she wished to do. She wanted to scare some suitors. She wanted to see Lucy — or perhaps she never wanted to see Lucy.