The Deception

by Joan Wolf

  THE DECEPTION

  Joan Wolf

  Chapter One

  It began with the death of my father. If I live to be a hundred, I shall never forget that day. The sky was gray as gunmetal and the bare tree branches were black with damp. The men carried him into our lodging on a hurdle and his face was as gray as the sky.

  “Some damn fool was after shooting in the woods, Miss Cathleen,” Paddy said. His weather-beaten face was red with emotion and cold. “He must not have seen Mr. Daniel riding by. Freddie’s gone ta fetch the doctor.”

  “Papa.” I knelt beside the bed. A cloth that had once been Paddy’s shirt was balled up and stuffed against the wound in his chest. It was drenched with blood. My father’s eyes flickered at the sound of my voice. His lashes lifted, and for the last time I gazed into their familiar brilliant blue. “Kate,” he said. “Jesus. I’m done for.” His eyes flickered shut.

  “Papa!” I was as close as I’ve ever been to hysteria. I forced my voice to a steadiness I did not feel. “The doctor is coming,” I said. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “Didn’t .... think he ... suspected ... I knew ...” my father mumbled.

  “Didn’t think who suspected, Papa?” My voice was sharp. “Do you know who shot you?”

  He did not answer right away.

  “Papa?”

  “Don’t know ... who ...” His eyes opened again and fixed on Paddy. “Send for... Charlwood,” he said. His voice sounded bubbly. “Lizzie’s brother.” Silence as he fought for breath. “... take care of Kate.”

  “No one is going to take care of me,” I said. “Just be quiet and wait for the doctor. You are going to be all right, Papa.”

  The blue eyes remained fixed on the old groom who had been with him since boyhood. “Paddy?”

  “Right here, Mr. Daniel.”

  “Promise ...” More silence while he fought for breath. The agonizing struggle caused me to drive my nails into my palms. “Promise you’ll send ... for Charlwood.”

  “I’ll do that for you all right, Mr. Daniel.” Paddy’s soft Irish voice was steady. “Do you not worry. I’ll make certain that Miss Kate is looked after.”

  My father’s bloodstained chest was heaving. I looked frantically toward the window of the small, shabby lodging. There was no sound of hoofbeats to signal the coming of the doctor. The only noise in the room was the ominously-bubbly sound of my father’s breathing. “Don’t talk, Papa,” I said again. “The doctor will be here momentarily.”

  My father was looking at me once more. “Been a bad father to you, Kate,” he said. His voice was very faint. “But... love you.”

  His eyes closed and they never opened again.

  * * * *

  My first reaction was sheer, blinding rage. I created such a furor, in fact, that the local magistrate instituted a thorough search for my father’s killer, but he came up with no suspects. Then grief set in.

  I didn’t cry. I cried when my mother died, but I had only been ten then; too young to realize the futility of tears. That was something I had learned over the years. Crying hadn’t brought my mother back, and it wasn’t going to bring my father back, either.

  A cold rain began to fall as Paddy and I returned to the lodging house after Papa’s funeral. The streets of Newmarket were deserted. The racetrack was closed in November, and the bleak look of the town echoed the bleak feeling in my heart.

  “Mr. Daniel would like it that he’s buried in Newmarket,” Paddy said, trying to cheer me up a little. “It was nice that so many of the lads came to the funeral.”

  There had been a large contingent of trainers, lads, and even some owners from the local racing stables at the church and the cemetery. In his own way, Papa had been a well-known man.

  “Yes,” I said, turning my face to the faithful friend who had been part of my life since my birth. I felt utterly forlorn. “What am I going to do now, Paddy?”

  “We will wait here for your uncle, Miss Cathleen,” he replied.

  It was not the answer I wanted to hear. I bit my lip, bent my head, and stared at the ground. There was a stone close to my foot and I kicked it into the road. It landed in the mud with a little plonk. “You don’t think we could carry on the business by ourselves?” I asked. “You could buy the horses and I could train them.”

  I felt his arm come around me. He hugged me once, hard, then let me go. His voice was regretful but firm when he answered, “Your father wanted you to go to your mother’s people, girl, and I’m thinking he was right. You’re eighteen years old now, Miss Cathleen. It’s no life for a well-born young lady, trekking around horse farms with the likes of me.”

  “It’s the life I’ve always lived,” I said. “I love you, Paddy. I don’t even know my uncle.” I gave him a look calculated to melt his bones with pity.

  It didn’t. “He’s your mother’s brother and a lord,” Paddy said briskly. “I would be a poor friend indeed if I stood in the way of such an opportunity.”

  I kicked another stone into the street. “We don’t even know if he’s coming.”

  “If he does not come, then it will be time to discuss what we will be doing next.” The door of the lodging house loomed in front of us, and as we went in I offered up a silent prayer that my uncle would not show.

  He came the following day. I can still remember the sound of his step on the bare floor of the hallway outside my door. I heard that firm step distinctly, and I knew.

  Paddy was sitting with me, and it was he who answered the door. When Charlwood introduced himself, the old groom let him in.

  “I’m thinking you look awfully young to be Miss Cathleen’s uncle.” Paddy’s critical eyes went over the impeccable aristocrat from the top of his carefully arranged hair to the tips of his toes. The old groom had spent too many years following Papa around English estates and racetracks to be impressed by impeccable tailoring and shining Hessian boots.

  “I am thirty-two,” Charlwood said. “My sister was six years older than I.”

  “Ye have the look of Miss Elizabeth,” Paddy grudgingly admitted.

  It was true that he had my mother’s dark auburn hair and sea-green eyes. My mother’s eyes had been soft and misty, however, while his were almost startlingly clear. I had risen to greet him and we stood now, with two feet of worn carpet between us, and looked at each other.

  “I have come to invite you to make your home with me, Kate,” he said. “Your mother was my only sister, and I want to take care of you. For her sake.”

  His face looked sincere; his voice sounded sincere. I looked at Paddy. “I’m thinking you should go with him, Miss Cathleen,” he said gently. “It was what your da wanted.”

  I nodded. My heart was breaking, but I did not cry. Instead I looked slowly around the small, faded room where Papa had died. We had come to Newmarket at this unlikely time of year because he was hoping to sell two horses to the Marquis of Stade, whose estate was nearby. Papa had not yet closed the deal with Stade, however, and we still had the two geldings stabled here in the inn. They were both big, honest hunters that I had schooled. They were worth good money.

  “Take the horses,” I said to Paddy.

  The old man looked at the fine English lord who was my uncle.

  Charlwood smiled. “Miss Cathleen will want for nothing,” he promised Paddy. “You may keep the horses.”

  The following morning I left Newmarket in my uncle’s coach. The rain had stopped overnight and the brilliant blue sky of morning gave no indication of the storms that were to follow.

  * * * *

  Charlwood Court was huge and empty and cold. Since the death of his father some years before, my uncle had lived alone. He was not married.

  He told me this when we stopped at a posting house to change hors
es and I felt an alarm sound in my brain. I had assumed that a man his age must be married. He saw my reaction and assured me that he had summoned a respectable female cousin to stay in the house with me. “The proprieties will be observed, Kate,” he had said with a smile.

  It was dark when we reached Charlwood Court, which was located five miles southwest of Reading. Cousin Louisa was waiting for us in the chilly drawing room. She was a poor timid little mouse of a thing, and if I had had any room in my heart for an emotion other than grief, I would have felt sorry for her.

  She looked startled when she saw me.

  “Yes,” Charlwood said softly, “she is the image of her father.”

  There was an odd note in his voice, and I looked at him in surprise. He smiled. He smiled a lot with his mouth, but I had noticed earlier that his eyes never seemed to change.

  “Louisa will show you to your room, Kate,” he said. “Welcome to Charlwood Court.”

  To this day I have very little recollection of what Charlwood actually looked like. I know that the rooms were large, but they all seemed to be filled with stillness. It was as if no one had lived there for a very long time. The windows were all draped with heavy dark velvet curtains, which shut out the sun. Even when the fire was going and the candles were lit, the rooms looked bleak and unwelcoming. At night I would lie awake for a long time, listening to the tomblike silence of the house. It was hard to believe that anyone had ever been happy in this place; harder still to imagine my mother as a little girl here. When I finally fell asleep it was to dream of my father.

  So I lived for six months, my heart as frozen as the ground outside my window. My uncle lived the nomadic life of an aristocratic bachelor, dividing his time between London and the houses of his friends, so I seldom saw him. The only person to make demands on me was Cousin Louisa, who had probably never made a serious demand on anyone in her entire life. We made polite conversation at mealtime; otherwise she respected my grief and left me to myself.

  Slowly the winter passed. The dead earth softened and began to sprout forth grass and flowers. Daffodils bloomed and the scent of lilac hung in the air. The house retained its stagnant, lifeless air, but outdoors the world was alive. Unwillingly, I too began to awaken from my long hibernation.

  In early May my uncle came home and told me he was taking me to London.

  “London?” We were at dinner in the gloomy, darkly wainscoted dining room, and I stared at him over the candles. “Why?”

  “Why not?” he replied lightly. “It cannot be good for you to remain cooped up here in the country. You are looking quite pale, my dear.” He put a small piece of potato in his mouth and chewed it slowly. “You have had the winter to grieve for your father; now it is time for you to pick up the threads of your own life.”

  I had been thinking much the same thing myself for several weeks. Why did I so resent hearing it from him?

  I pushed my food around on my plate and scowled. “What will I do in London?”

  “What every normal young girl does. Go to parties. Look for a husband.” My eyes jerked up at those words. He was looking at me, his eyes very direct and clear. He said, “It is not impossible, Kate. Your father was a nobody, but your mother was the daughter of a viscount.”

  I immediately leaped to my father’s defense. “Papa was not a nobody! The Fitzgeralds are a very old Irish family.”

  He shrugged. “That may be so, my dear, but the Fitzgeralds long ago washed their hands of your father. Daniel was nothing more than a gambler and a horse-trader. He dragged my poor sister around from racetrack to racetrack and from one wretched lodging house to another. No wonder she died before she was thirty-five.”

  I was furious. On the surface what he had said might be true, but he had missed the most important thing. I balled my hands into fists and said evenly, “We were never hungry. Papa was a good man and he loved my mother very much.”

  “Daniel was nothing but a good-looking Irish charmer who seduced my sister so that she was forced to marry him,” Charlwood said brutally.

  I stood up. The footman, who had been about to pour more lemonade into my glass, froze. Cousin Louisa made distressed noises. “I will not sit here and listen to you slander my father,” I said.

  “Sit down.” Charlwood spoke between his teeth. His face was white and his eyes were glittering in an alarming way. In fact, he looked quite frightening, but in the course of a lifetime of working with horses I have learned that if you let them know you’re afraid of them, you’ve lost the battle. The same principle applies to men.

  I said in a voice that was every bit as chilly as his, “I will sit down if you will cease slandering my father.” I had enough sense not to ask him to apologize.

  Silence fell as we eyed each other across the table.

  “Do sit down, Kate,” Cousin Louisa said nervously. I glanced at her. The poor thing looked terrified.

  Slowly, I sat down. Slowly, I took up my fork. After a moment the footman carefully poured more lemonade into my glass. Another one poured wine into my uncle’s.

  “Will you be wishing me to accompany you to London, Charlwood?” Cousin Louisa said into the tense silence.

  “Certainly.”

  I put a piece of mutton in my mouth and said nothing. I had my own reasons for wishing to remove to London. I looked up under my lashes at my uncle’s face and let myself consciously realize what I had known deep down all along. I did not like him.

  “Kate will need clothes if she is going to go into society,” Cousin Louisa said. “Her wardrobe is ... somewhat sparse.”

  “You can take her shopping, Louisa, and send the bills to me,” my uncle said. His good humor appeared to be restored.

  I bit my lip. I didn’t want to take his money.

  Cousin Louisa smiled at me. “You will be the most beautiful girl in London, my dear,” she said.

  I smiled back, appreciative of her generous attempt to raise my spirits. I was in little danger of letting her words go to my head. I might have inherited Papa’s cheekbones, but I was still Irish and poor, and the chances of my making a good match were slender, to say the least. I had no intention of spending the rest of my life hanging on my uncle’s purse strings, however, and in order to be independent I needed to find a way to support myself. Perhaps, I thought with the incurable optimism of youth, perhaps in London something will turn up.

  * * * *

  I rose early the following morning to go for a ride. My uncle’s hunters had been stabled at Charlwood since the end of hunting season in January, and I had been riding them on days when the weather was not too nasty. The sun was just coming up when I left my room and began to walk down the dark, picture-hung corridor on which all the main bedrooms at Charlwood were situated. I stopped short when I saw a girl coming out of my uncle’s room.

  It was Rose, the under-housemaid. She was fully dressed, but her hair was hanging in a loose tangle around her shoulders. It was very pretty hair, the color of honey. She stopped when she saw me and pressed up against the wall. I stared at her in confusion and saw that there was an ugly red welt on her left cheek. Her eyes were red as well and she obviously had been crying.

  “Are you all right, Rose?” I asked.

  “I’m fine, Miss Fitzgerald,” she whispered.

  She did not look fine. My eyes went from her marked face to my uncle’s door.

  “I—I was bringing Lord Charlwood his morning tea,” she stammered.

  As I have previously mentioned, the sun was barely up. “I see,” I said in an expressionless voice.

  She began to inch her way down the hall, her back still pressed against the wall. “I’d best be going now,” she said.

  I nodded and let her go, which was clearly what she wanted to do.

  I thought about Rose the whole time I was in the saddle. Obviously she had been summoned to my uncle’s bed, and obviously she had not found it to be a pleasant experience. Every time I thought of that mark on her cheek, my stomach clenched. Most frustrat
ing of all was the knowledge that I could do nothing to help her escape my uncle’s clutches.

  It would be difficult enough trying to escape them myself.

  * * * *

  The very air of London seemed to act like a tonic on Cousin Louisa. She dragged me around the shops on Bond Street, visibly shedding years with every purchase she made. I was appalled by the amount of money she spent, but she kept assuring me that Charlwood would not be at all surprised.

  “How old are you, Louisa?” I asked as we sat having an ice at Gunther’s after a particularly expensive session at Fanchon’s dress shop.

  “Forty-one,” she replied.

  I had thought she was about sixty.

  “But you’re younger than my father!” I blurted in surprise. My father had been forty-six when he died, and his thick black hair had not held a thread of gray. There were definite strands of gray in Louisa’s soft brown locks.

  She smiled reminiscently. “Daniel did not age, then?”

  “Did you know Papa?”

  “I was at Charlwood the summer he met your mother.”

  I knew this story well. Papa had delivered a horse to Mama’s father, taken one look at Mama and stayed on to school her father’s other horses. They had met secretly all summer long, and in September she had run away with him to Scotland, where they had married.

  Louisa’s smile became even more nostalgic. “Your father was so good-looking, Kate. Lizzie was head over heels in love with him. I helped her pack her bag the night they eloped.”

  I stared. I had not realized that Louisa knew my parents.

  A well-dressed middle-aged woman passed our table and cast a scornful look at my old brown pelisse. I returned her look with one so haughty that she was startled. Old harpy, I thought.

  “I have often wondered if Lizzie was happy,” Louisa said.

  “I think she was very happy,” I said. “Papa was...” I searched for the words that would describe my father. “Oh— the world just seemed so much more vivid around Papa,” I finally said. “It’s true that he was a gambler, and there were times when money was short. But...” My voice quivered, and I folded my lips.