Maid of Deception

by Jennifer McGowan

  “You have nothing to say to me anymore, Knowles,” he said. “What goes on between your daughter and myself is our own affair. There is nothing she is doing here that she hasn’t agreed to fully, and there is nothing you can do about it.” He caught my hand and pulled me to him, a parody of two young nobles in love. “She’ll be the first to tell you.”

  “My daughter’s mind is ever her own, and has been since she was scarcely five years old,” Father said, smiling benignly at me even as his eyes flicked down, coldly, to stare at Cavanaugh’s hand gripping mine. I was slowly coming out of my fog, realizing that I needed to turn this conversation into safer waters—but to where? I wasn’t sure how much my father had overheard, but his crime in this was far greater than what mine was about to be in the eyes of the court. Surely the sacrifice of his daughter was worth saving the family’s lives?

  “Nonetheless,” Father said smoothly. “I should say for shame, Lord Cavanaugh, for feeling that you need to compel any woman, let alone a gently bred girl, to lie with you in your bed.”

  I felt my eyes go wide even as Cavanaugh stiffened. “How dare you!” he spit out, his face turning a shade of purple. “How dare you insinuate—”

  “And how dare you,” my father returned, cutting him off. “From what I overheard, you are behaving as boorishly and scandalously as the most common of brigands—and trust me, I can repeat it to the word, to the letter.”

  That stopped me, and I shot a glance to the shadows of the garden. My father could generally be expected to remember no more than what room he’d most immediately left. Was Meg somewhere, lingering in the darkness? Had he brought her here?

  “What I heard was a man reduced to creating trumped-up nonsense in order to cajole, coerce, and then downright threaten a woman of proud and noble standing to be his doxy. Really, my lord Cavanaugh. I did not expect much of you, but I did expect more than this.”

  “ ‘Trumped-up nonsense’!” exploded Cavanaugh. He yanked the copy of the letter out of his doublet and shoved it at Father. “This is hardly ‘trumped-up nonsense.’ This is an accounting of treasonous and criminal activities taking part on your property with your full knowledge and approval. Do not even think to say that because you are an absent landowner, you are not responsible for what goes on at your estate.”

  “I would not ever give up the responsibility for my estate,” my father drawled in response. “It’s not in my nature.”

  “Then you deny what these papers hold?” Cavanaugh seethed. “Because I am here to tell you, you cannot. The accounts of these men are incontrovertible. They are bonded and sealed. They are telling the truth.”

  “Ah, the truth!” My father said the word with relish. “The truth.” He folded up the papers and handed them back to Cavanaugh, who took them with clipped precision. Then Father reached down and flicked our hands apart as if the very sight of us joined caused him revulsion.

  The player in me, the manipulator, wanted to take the floor now. My father was clearly not going to deny the reality of what those letters held. He was caught dead to rights, a traitor to the Crown. Harboring the unclean infidels on our land would cause his downfall and the ruination of our family, and even Cavanaugh began to relax, seeing that Father had no recourse. I knew I should step forward now and smooth things over, assure my father that I, of course, wanted nothing more than to remain with Cavanaugh in any way he would have me.

  But something held me up, some niggling suspicion that my cause was best served by keeping quiet. It chafed to appear weak, but how many times had I gotten what I most desired by appearing to be weak and helpless, moments before going in for a verbal strike?

  Father glanced at me sharply, almost as if I’d spoken, and I merely beamed at him. The show is yours, Father. Please don’t make this any worse than it already is.

  “Very well, then,” Cavanaugh said. “If you are in accord—”

  “But the truth is such a tricky thing, is it not?” my father continued, as if Cavanaugh had not spoken during his prolonged reverie. “The truth can serve as a charm or a curse. As with yourself, Lord Cavanaugh. How well you have benefited from a secret closely held.”

  Cavanaugh narrowed his eyes at Father. “What in the devil are you talking about?”

  “Tell me, good fellow. How is your father doing?”

  “My father?” Cavanaugh’s gaze darted to the entrance to the garden, as if he were afraid that the man, once summoned, would appear from their vast estate to the south. He did well to be afraid. Robert Cavanaugh, current Marquess of Westmoreland, was a fierce man to behold. Angry, brash, and vital, he bashed his way through every social gathering he attended, setting the women atwitter and the men on their heels. It was hard to believe the slender, foppish Cavanaugh came from such stock, except that his mother was as pale and raven-haired as he, shrinking ever away from her earthy husband. The court gossips had consigned their union to the flames the moment Cavanaugh had been born, with Westmoreland taking on one mistress after another.

  When Cavanaugh had assured himself that his father would not be pounding his way into the garden, he flicked his gaze back. “My father is well, thank you.”

  “A proud man, he is.”

  “I fail to see what relevance this has to anything,” snapped Cavanaugh. “My father would scarcely give you the time of day.”

  “Oh, I think he’d give me far more than that, Lord Cavanaugh, for what I know about you.”

  From another man those words would have been dismissed as mere folly. But my father had been a court insider for longer than Cavanaugh had been alive. I stared at him now, as completely at sea as Cavanaugh was. “What are you talking about?” Cavanaugh asked, gathering his hauteur around him like a cloak. “You know nothing about me.”

  “Indeed.” Father’s demeanor had completely changed now from charming jester to cunning politician. “Then allow me to tell you a story. I could produce my own letter on the subject; I think you’ll recognize the hand of she who wrote it. But we are far from that necessity, I should think.”

  “What letter?” Cavanaugh began, but my father held up his hand.

  “For once in your life, boy, shut up,” Father said. He cut a regretful glance to me. “I truly did not think he was quite this despicable, Beatrice, or I’d never have saddled you with him. I always suspected you’d dispose of him if he got too tedious, but I rather thought you two suited well enough. And he certainly had the money you were so convinced we needed, though I tell you plain, we’ve all the gold we could ever want.”

  “Dispose of me?” Cavanaugh protested. “What on earth—”

  “Gold?” I managed.

  “Allow me to put it to you as plainly as I know how, Lord Cavanaugh,” Father said, cutting us both off and returning his attention to Cavanaugh with a curl of his lip. “When I considered to whom I might betroth my only child, I wanted certain . . . assurances in place. It had to be a man she could find happiness with—and you certainly seemed a reasonable choice, though I find your newly discovered reprehensible nature to be quite a disappointment. It had to be a man who was not as smart as Beatrice. Again, you served well.” He held up his hand again to stay Cavanaugh’s blustering. “But most important, it had to be a man from a family that was more beholden to me than the reverse.”

  That seemed to dampen some of Cavanaugh’s fire. Again, in an ordinary conversation between ordinary men, this exchange would have held precious little weight. But these were men who trucked in secrets. Their idle banter had brought down some of the highest noblemen in the land. “Beholden in what way?” Cavanaugh asked.

  “Your mother—lovely woman though she is—is quite barren, Lord Cavanaugh. Always has been.” Father allowed these words to sink in as he cast a now apologetic glance my way. “I had the occasion to learn this when your mother and I met in the court of King Henry. A childhood illness rendered her quite incapable of giving birth, and she’d tested that theory often enough to know it to be true before we’d even met.”


  I widened my eyes at this shameful admission. How could my father know such intimate details about another woman at court? “Though she was newly married to your father, I fear they did not suit in temperament, and she was quick to look further afield for—ah, solace.” Again the hasty glance my way, and I stifled a groan. My father appeared to have bedded half of England over the course of the last three decades.

  “You lie,” said Cavanaugh, though his words lacked conviction. “If she is barren, then how . . .” His voice petered out, then rallied. “I am my father’s son! You have no proof.”

  “Your mother came to me, quite desperate, in the third year of her marriage,” my father said. “She had begun to fear that her husband suspected not only her barrenness but that she’d known full well her state prior to their marriage. This, as you know, would be grounds for an annulment, especially in King Henry’s time, and your father was a great favorite of the King. Truly, extreme measures were required.” Father tilted his head then, skewering Cavanaugh with a steely glare. “Fortunately for everyone concerned—especially you—your father was due for a prolonged tour in the King’s command. At my suggestion your mother fulfilled her wifely duties with him with enthusiasm for weeks before he left, then bade him off with words of true love and endless devotion. Quite a happy man, your father, and fully convinced that he’d return home to a baby after his time at the battlefront was at an end. And of course, your mother was not going to disappoint him. Within weeks of his departure, she began to show signs of being with child. As her belly swelled, so did the rounds of congratulations, but there was still one little detail to work out. You.”

  “But she was with child,” Lord Cavanaugh said dumbly. “You said so yourself.”

  “She was not with child,” Father scoffed. “She was stuffing her skirts with rags and eating herself silly, trying to put on weight. And then we found you, squalling and dirty, in a back alley of London. Your real mother was desperately poor, but she’d been a fine-looking woman in her day, before the muck of life had dragged her down. Tall, slender, and dark-haired, not unlike Lady Anne. She was strong, but she was starving.”

  By now all of the color had drained out of Cavanaugh’s face. I also felt unsteady. A secret such as this! That father had kept all these years! “What did you do?” Cavanaugh whispered.

  “We paid her in silver for you, assured her that you would have a life of luxury beyond her wildest imaginings. That you would be a lord of the land.” Father’s face had also grown tired in the telling of this tale, and I saw the lines create fissures along his skin. “She didn’t want our money, you know. She would have given you up for naught but the hope of your survival,” he said. “You shame her this day.”

  That rallied Cavanaugh. “You have no proof of this!” he blurted, and Father sighed.

  “Leave off your unholy contract with my daughter,” he said. “And go find Lady Anne. I had her write a letter to me to save my own skin should her husband ever discover our duplicity. I’m not proud of that, but neither am I stupid enough not to use it.” He shrugged. “And she wrote it without hesitation. Lady Anne trusted me not to betray her unless she somehow betrayed herself. It was a bargain she was willing to make.”

  Cavanaugh stood there a moment more, a hundred and one rebuffs, redirects, and restatements forming in his mind in true court form. But even he recognized that this threat was real, and needed to be dealt with, before he could continue his campaign with the Queen . . . and me.

  “This isn’t over,” he said, seething.

  My father smiled thinly. “Oh, but it is. Now go, and take solace in the fact that your secrets are safe with me . . . as I know mine are with you.”

  He turned to me with a broad smile and held out his arm. “Beatrice, my sweet, do you fancy a turn about the garden?”

  It was only then that I saw the faint sheen of sweat on his brow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Dread tightened my gut as my father gracefully swept me away from Cavanaugh’s stunned form and up the garden walkway. A thousand questions consumed me, but the first was also the most important.

  “Are you sweating because you lied?” I asked quietly. “Is none of that true?”

  “Hmph,” Father said, though he paused to fish a handkerchief out of his doublet. A quick glance back assured us that Cavanaugh had already taken his leave of the garden.

  “I’m sweating because I told the truth,” Father said, managing a wry grin as he mopped his brow. “As I’ve told you before, sometimes information withheld is far more important than information given. But when information is given at the right time, it can change a thing drastically.” He chuckled. “I’m not used to so much honesty. It can take a lot out of a man.”

  He resumed our walk, and I tried to compose myself, but failed miserably. “All of that is true?” I whispered, hoarse with shock. “Lady Anne lied about her own pregnancy while her husband was away serving the King, then tricked him with a foundling from a London sewer?”

  “She did,” my father said, and his gaze was distant now, as if he could see the woman and her squalling infant once more. “Cavanaugh’s real mother was a beautiful woman, Beatrice—or had been, before the ravages of her circumstances had stripped the meat from her body and the youth from her face. She at first thought we were going to steal her babe to sell it into even worse circumstances. As tired as she was, as broken, she could never have allowed that. When we had finally fed her enough that she was sensible, she understood what it was we were offering.”

  “You say ‘we,’ ” I said, dry-mouthed. “Lady Anne went with you?”

  Father hesitated only a moment. “Yes,” he said. “She did not want to, but I insisted. I could trust no one else in this, could expand the circle no wider than the two of us. And, further, I wanted her to see the gift she was giving this woman, but also the obligation she was accepting. She who could never have children, taking a child from a woman who had only a child to give. I needed her to understand that responsibility, and to care for the boy with every fiber of her being, for the plan to work.” He shook his head. “I knew the mother would not give up the boy for money . . . only for the assurance that his care would be better than she could ever give him.”

  I bit my lip, wondering at these words from my father, who had never seemed to notice when I was there or not, so busy he’d been with court.

  Then I forced myself to think about my father not with disdain and derision but with a wider view.

  He cared for the other children at Marion Hall, I had to give him that. The children had started coming to us shortly after the incident in the labyrinth. Father had welcomed the distraction, and in all truth Mother had seemed to delight in caring for the children of others—even taking them in and lodging them, as it had quickly come to pass. He’d allowed that to happen. He’d given that to her.

  And he had cared for my mother, after a fashion. He’d brought the children to Marion Hall to surround her. He had never shamed her for her dark spells, even though I still felt he could do more.

  Had he also cared for me? For so long I had believed I was just a tool for him, a mouthpiece in a royal setting, a gatherer of secrets, a symbol of strength. But had I misread that situation as well?

  Rather than think on that too long, I found my mind returning to the woman who’d so bravely given up her child, that he might grow up safe. “What happened to her, the woman in London?” I asked, knowing the answer. A woman in such a desperate condition, even with money in her hand, would not live long. Not in the streets of London, where the weak were preyed upon like sheep.

  Once again my father surprised me. “I have not seen her in perhaps five years, but I visited her in the Abbey Saint Charles then, when Cavanaugh reached his majority. I gave her a miniature of the man so she could see he’d turned out rather well.” He tightened his lips. “Of course, miniatures do not reveal what lies beneath the surface. That she will never know.”

  I looked at him, fee
ling unreasonably close to tears. “You got her to a convent?”

  He shrugged and patted my hand, and though he would not look at me, I could see his own eyes were strangely bright. “It is what I would have wanted for my own daughter, were she ever to find herself in such dire circumstances. There are advantages to this life we lead, Beatrice. Kindness is the least we can give back.”

  Then with one last squeeze of my fingers, he was gone.

  I turned as well, to make my way to the Queen’s Privy Chamber. As I walked, I thought of the rabble of children that even now were carousing around Marion Hall, tearing tapestries and upending planters. My father had saved them with his gallant gesture, as much as he had saved me. But there was still the Queen herself to see, my report to give.

  And somewhere, in the dark reaches of Windsor Castle, Alasdair still hated me.

  Part of me wanted to run to him, to explain everything. But the stronger, louder part of me knew that such a path was folly. The mere fact that I’d been willing to consort with another man during my betrothal to him was an unpardonable sin, and he would not deign to know the circumstances.

  And, in truth, what sort of bride was I? At this moment I was going to the Queen to share information about Alasdair’s battle strategy. Though I did so feeling well assured that I was not putting him into harm’s way, how could I know that for certain? What if the Queen took the information that I would give her and planned some sort of false attack on the MacLeods to stir the Highland Scots to more fervent action? It would be the sort of thing she would find reasonable, a small sacrifice for the greater good.

  What of it? Before these past weeks, I had neither known nor cared about any Scottish soldiers on a spit of land thrust up out of the cold sea. I was English, born and bred, and I was a spy for that England. My words would help save English lives. My loyalty would help ensure my family’s safety. That was enough. That had to be enough.

  My heart grew colder with each step I took toward the Queen. What I found when I reached her, however, was not what I’d expected.