A Murderous Masquerade (Unrivalled Regency Book 2)

by Williams, Jackie

  His child! His son!

  The breath left his body and his knees weakened at her impassioned words. He couldn’t have loved her any more than he did at that moment. Her strength and courage humbled him. She would have to live with the consequences of their actions, but she was more than willing to face up to them. He wouldn’t let her face her enemies alone. If all he could give her and their child was his name, then he would do it and gladly. He fell to his knees in front of her and pressed his lips to the stomach that held such a precious cargo.

  His whisper echoed gently around the cell.

  “I love you, my child, my son. Hear me and know this, know that I hold you in my heart and will bless you every day from wherever I may end up. I love your mother more than life itself and wish that I could have come to know you. You will be fine and strong and will look after the woman I love. I know this...I know this.” His eyes were wet with emotion when he looked up towards the parson again. “Do it. Do it now, do it quickly and do it right. I want no question over this after I am gone.” He fumbled in his pocket for the papers as he quickly regained his feet and stood as the surprised parson nodded briefly and took Anne’s hand.

  “Who gives this woman to this man?”

  Alexander stepped forwards and signed his name on the papers.

  The vows were spoken softly. Giles slipped the only item of any value that he owned, from his cravat. He bent the pin into a circle and wound the end around the base of the diamond. He slipped the ragged ring onto Anne’s finger as she smiled courageously up at him.

  “We need another witness.” The parson pursed his lips. “It won’t be legal if we don’t have one.”

  Giles felt as though he was about to explode with anxiety when he suddenly heard a shuffling outside the door.

  “Hey! Nate, is that you?” He called quietly through the bars to the guard.

  A ragged, dirty face appeared at the square hole in the door.

  “Yes, me Lud. What can I do for you? I was right sorry to see what ‘appened. I don’t believe ‘em if that’s any comfort to you.”

  Giles nodded.

  “Thank you. I am relieved to have your confidence, but I have a more pressing thing to worry about at this moment. I apologize for having to ask but can you write your name?”

  Nate beamed proudly, showing his blackening teeth through the hole in the door.

  “Aye, me Lud! Me mother taught me an’ me sister to make out letters in the mud. I ain’t so ‘andy with anything much mor’un me name but, I can be sure of me letters.”

  “Excellent! I am going to hold up a paper to you. Can you put your signature at the bottom next to the Duke’s?” He pointed at the specific line.

  Nate looked dubious for a moment.

  “What’s it I’m signing? I can’t be beholden for anything.”

  Giles shook his head.

  “My new will. I can’t leave all my estates without writing one, but it cannot be witnessed by a possible beneficiary so Lady Anne is unable to do it for me and it is against the rules of the church for the parson to express any interest. The Duke is the first witness and I would be honoured if you would be the second...I’ll ask Craddock about an extra ham tonight, seeing as this could be your last decent meal for a while too.” Giles referred to his nightly sharing of his over burdened table.

  Nate licked his lips and dropped his hungry gaze.

  “It’s a crying shame that you should ‘ave to write one anyway.” His hand slipped through the bars and, using the quill Alexander passed to him, he signed his name slowly and carefully.

  Alexander turned his back to cover the hole in the door as the parson took the document and added his own name and the date. He looked up at Giles and Anne.

  “I pronounce you husband and wife before God and all his disciples. You may kiss your bride.” He added quietly as he and Alexander spun around to face the door again.

  Giles took Anne’s hands in his and leaned down. Her face tilted up to him, radiant in her happiness, but her eyes were filled with tears.

  “I will tell our son about you every day of his life. I will keep your portrait next to my heart and my love for you in my soul. You are mine Giles. I am the happiest woman alive!”

  Giles’ eyes swept over his beautiful bride.

  “We should have had a lifetime, Anne but if I can only have one more taste of your lips, I will take it.”

  Their lips met on a tidal wave of emotion and Giles thought that his heart would burst. He had wanted her for so long. One day of love making wasn’t enough, but he wondered if forever would be enough. Right at this moment he seriously doubted that any amount of time would be enough to satisfy the burning desire that thrilled through him as they kissed.

  There was a small commotion outside the door and Giles lifted his head as someone began thumping against the lock.

  Alexander stepped forwards quickly and pulled on the part of the wick hanging from the hole. Dried, cold wax came out in small clumps which Alexander caught and fisted in his hand. Moments later Gates barged in through the doors.

  “What’s going on? Why wouldn’t the door open? There had better not be any tricks happening.” He huffed out his stomach and glared at each of them in turn.

  Alexander snorted in derision as he stuffed the wax in one pocked and the marriage certificate in the other. The parson shuffled about guiltily while avoiding looking at the magistrate. Anne dropped her gaze to the dirty brick floor and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. Giles sneered at the man and pulled his wife to him for a last breath of her intoxicating scent.

  “There is nothing for you to be concerned over. Your prisoner is well contained.” He turned back to Anne and spoke quietly. “Keep me in your heart forever, my love. Tell my son every day that I love him with all my heart.” He kissed her one last time, revelling in the taste of her rose red lips before he set her away from him firmly. “Go now; go while I can let you, before I am undone.” His voice sounded as though he’d had gravel poured down his throat. He pushed her towards the parson who took her arm and pulled the sobbing woman past Gates and from the room.

  Alexander took a step towards his friend and stared hard at him.

  “Keep believing, my friend. I will do everything in my power to stop this. Do not lose hope.”

  Giles shook his head.

  “Go back to your lovely wife, spend the night drinking to happier memories and devote tomorrow to making many more. I have only one further request.” He waited until Alexander nodded before speaking again. “If Charlotte decides that she doesn’t wish to marry, I have made arrangements for her to become the mistress of White Briars and have left provision that if our horse breeding venture ever reaches fruition she will receive my share. The money from the estate, little though it is, should cover most foreseeable expenses but I want the place to be hers so that she never has to fear that her home will be taken from her or go to ruin about her feet. However she will need guidance and patience. Can I rely on you to take over my position as her guardian and give her every assistance?”

  Alexander could barely speak; his emotions were running so high that he had to blink hard.

  “You don’t even have to ask. Everything will be done as you wish and Charlotte will always be looked after and cared for as much as she could ever want.”

  Gates began clearing his throat. Alexander glanced over his shoulder and then turned back to Giles. He pulled him into a hard embrace and held him for several seconds before he stood back again.

  “I’ll never forget you, my friend. A better man to have known doesn’t exist. I swear to God that if I cannot stop this I will avenge you.” The determination in his tone brooked no argument.

  Giles shook his head but couldn’t speak. He blessed the day that he had met Alexander as much as he rued the one that took them from each other.

  Alexander took one final long look at his friend before turning to the door and striding out. He didn’t meet the eye of the magistrate, the guard or t
he parson who had taken Anne to the carriage and was waiting outside while the distraught woman could be heard weeping quietly behind the curtains.

  He climbed up into the carriage as Geoffrey took a long hard look up at the window of the gaol and then he closed the carriage door and they moved off along the road back to Ormond.

  Giles waited until Gates had left his cell before he slipped his hand into his pocket. While Alexander’s embrace had not been unwelcome, it was a most unusual thing for the man to do whilst still sober. Giles could think of many a night when Alexander, riotously overfriendly when in his cups, would hang onto Giles’ shoulder and clasp him to his side as much for support in standing as in a friendly embrace. Never had the man hugged him when sober, not even when he thought Giles was about to die on the battlefields. It was distinctly unusual behaviour.

  His fingertips hit something hard that was covered in a soft velvet bag. He glanced up at his cell door, checking that no one was spying on him before he lifted the object out. The bag was a deep blue velvet, luxuriantly soft and held at the top with a cord drawstring. He struggled for a few seconds with the knots and then opened the bag.

  The cinnabar trick box fell into his palm along with a tiny slip of paper. Having no candle now, he could only just make out the writing in the dim light coming through the barred window. He checked the door again before squinting at the note.

  When two hearts collide good luck follows. When one door closes another opens.

  He read it again, noting that it was in Charlotte’s neat hand, before picking up the box and turning it in his fingers. He stopped almost instantly. There was only a slight movement inside. The original stone had clearly gone and been replaced with something much larger. She had found out the secret and her note told him how to repeat it! There was clearly something vital inside the box.

  He peered at the box, turning it quickly as he searched for hearts. The light was fading fast and he could barely see the hundreds of tiny carvings. After looking at the door for a third time, he took one step towards his bucket. He blew out a deep breath and turned the foetid pot over. Its contents ran into the corner of the room and pooled there, but he did his best to ignore it as he placed the bucket below the window and took a step up.

  Although he had to bend his head to avoid scraping the ceiling, the extra foot gave him the light he needed. He turned the box in frantic fingers, looking everywhere for two hearts adjacent to one another. He turned it again and again almost cursing aloud as the vital markings remained invisible to his eye...and then he suddenly stopped.

  Two hearts sat near the middle of one side. He’d almost missed them again due to them facing point to point at the bottom of the hearts. For the first time in his life he was glad that his nails had grown unfashionably long. He pinched the two hearts between his thumb and index fingernails and pulled them together. One heart slid into the other making the whole pattern now look something like a four leafed clover, but still nothing surprising happened. He thought about Charlotte’s note again before squinting at the box. When one door closed another opened. He was now holding what looked like a minuscule door knob sitting on what appeared to be a birdcage. He could just make out the tiny creature sitting on a perch inside. While holding the clover pattern tightly he pulled the closed heart outwards. There was a tiny click, which he felt more than heard, and the opposite side of the box popped open.

  Giles stepped down from the overturned bucket and sat on the wooden bench while he tipped the contents of the box into his hand. There were two tiny jade phials. Both had numerous markings on them but no specific words. He checked the cavity from which they fell. There was another tiny slip of paper. He held that back up to the light.

  Take both at dawn.

  He looked back at the bottles and wondered if Charlotte had gone mad. He wasn’t a coward and he certainly wasn’t going to commit suicide so that he could avoid being hung. It was only then that he noticed that there were a further few words on the back of the note.

  Give into your strength and good luck will follow!

  He had no idea what that meant. He couldn’t see the luck in taking two completely unknown bottles of who knew what. He was surprised that Charlotte could even guess what was really in the phials. She’d probably been sold something by a gypsy and been told a story about the medicine giving you wings.

  He turned the tiny phials around. They were beautifully crafted and obviously expensive. He wondered where she had obtained them. There was a little stopper at the top of both so he opened one and sniffed. The scent was strange, almost fungal if he wanted to describe it. He put the stopper back in and lifted the one from the second. The strong scent of something completely unknown hit him instantly and he jammed the lid back on quickly before the smell wafted over to the cell door.

  He stared at the barely visible notes and then back at the bottles before lying back on his bunk. Charlotte would be trying every avenue to save him. There was no way that she would kill him before the hanging so the bottles couldn’t contain a poison, but she was definitely up to something and he had no idea what. He held up the phials again. The etchings on them were dainty, remarkably detailed. On one a man had his eyes closed; either dead or sleeping, it was impossible to tell, with his hands crossed over his chest. On the other there was what appeared to be a small bird fluttering over a flower, a humming bird if his eyes didn’t deceive him. They looked very oriental.

  He stopped looking at them and closed his eyes as he thought.

  Charlotte had discovered how to open the cinnabar box. There was no mention of what had lain inside, but it was clearly not these two tiny bottles. These were too big to roll freely. They had sounded quite different to the original contents, so where had they come from? The markings made them oriental, the carvings made them expensive, the contents made them highly dubious, probably medicinal. But who knew what medicine. You would have to either be able to read or have a book that translated the symbols and then you would have to know what the ingredients would do before you could use them. Only someone experienced with herbs or medicine... A doctor possibly if he knew anything about oriental medicinal practices, something highly unlikely in this neighbourhood.

  He opened his eyes again and rubbed his forehead as something Charlotte has said, what felt like half a lifetime ago, came back to him. It had been as they searched for anything of value at Caithwell.

  “Father had a great collection of Oriental art at one time, but much of it has been sold. There were some fabulous swords and a whole collection of knives. At one point he had a medicine cabinet made from Jade that contained hundreds of tiny phials. John sold it to the Doctor. All I have now are the books that went with it. I can’t understand them as they are written in some oriental hand and the translations don’t make much sense without the medicines that the box contained.

  The two small phials were obviously oriental and contained something that he had never smelled the like of before. Could they have come from the medicine cabinet?

  Charlotte had no money. If whatever she found in the box was valuable enough, would she have sent word to her doctor that she wanted to buy the ancient jade medicine chest back? But to what purpose? Had the doctor helped her search for whatever medicine she thought might help him and bring him luck? He couldn’t imagine how anything was going to help him now, especially not two tiny bottles of strange smelling liquid, but for some reason he trusted his cousin implicitly.

  He tucked the bottles back into the box along with the notes and put it back into his pocket. He’d have to be up before dawn to make sure that he could take whatever the concoction was that Charlotte invented, but he knew that he was going to take it. After all, what did it matter if it sent him off into the afterlife a little sooner than expected? So long as he had time to get the bottles and notes back into the cinnabar box, no one would be any the wiser. They would probably think that he had a heart seizure through stress.

  He took off his coat bundled it up beneath his
head as he lay back and closed his eyes. He brought up every image he could remember of his beautiful wife, Anne and prayed that his last dream in this life would be of her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Anne watched out of the window and dreaded the lightening of the morning sky. Her nails had made scores in the palms of her hands and her cheeks were sore from the trails of tears that had run freely throughout the night.

  There was a gentle tap at her door and Charlotte came in on hesitant footsteps.

  “Anne? Can I sit with you?”

  Anne reached out behind her and held out her hand.

  “Of course. I think we need each other this morning.” She picked up a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes yet again.

  Charlotte dropped onto the bed and curled her knees beneath her nightgown.

  “This cannot happen to him, Anne. Is there nothing else we can do, no one else we can turn to?”

  Anne shook her head as her shoulders trembled. The voice was thick in her throat as she attempted to reply.

  “Alexander has done his best. Even now he and Geoffrey are not home but searching for some kind of evidence or help. I can’t think of anyone else. My father has more influence than I ever thought. My only comfort is that I never have to see or have contact with him ever again. Evenleigh is mine by right of my previous marriage. Fortunately my venture with Alexander, Lily and Geoffrey has secured my personal income. I will never marry another man. Giles is my husband and always will be. Our child will grow up knowing his father through me and the rest of his loyal family.” She caressed her stomach gently.