Unmasked by the Marquess

by Cat Sebastian

  Stranger still, the house was oddly quiet. The walls were cheap and thin and the carpets were worn and not plentiful. Footsteps echoed down corridors and between rooms. But today it sounded like Charity might be alone in the house.

  She threw on the clothes she had worn yesterday and made her way downstairs. The drawing room was empty and no fire burned in the grate.

  “Louisa?” Nothing. “Aunt Agatha?” Still nothing. She crossed to the dining room. Empty. Perhaps they had a garden party or luncheon that Charity had forgotten about. Perhaps they had gone to the dressmakers or the fabric warehouse.

  In the vestibule, Louisa’s evening gloves still lay on the table by the door. Why had none of the maids brought them to her bedchamber? Why hadn’t Louisa done it herself? She flew down the final flight of stairs to the kitchen. It was quite empty. She rummaged through her brain for any useful information—it was not the servants’ usual half day off, nor was it a holiday.

  “Mr. Selby, sir?” A small voice. She turned and saw the little maid who lit the fires in the morning. She had on a gray frock a good two inches too short. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the sleeping draught—the sleeping draught, goddammit, what had been in it?—but for a moment it seemed only yesterday that Charity had been the child with a soot-smeared face and a too-small dress.

  “Janet, where is everybody?”

  “Lud, sir, we thought you’d gone off with the others.” The child’s Cockney accent did something to break the spell. “The old lady gave us the day off. Gave us sixpence apiece too, she did. I only came back early because it looks about to rain.”

  “Bear with me Janet. I fear that I’m at a total loss. Strong drink, you know. Ruins the mind. Remind me where Miss Selby and Miss Cavendish have gone, will you?”

  “They went with Lord Gilbert. I don’t rightly know where, but Miss Selby had me help pack her portmanteau. She was crying something terrible. I thought mayhap somebody died, but the lady didn’t pack any black clothes.”

  Surely Louisa would have left a note if she had been called away on an emergency. No, this business smelled of deceit and secrecy and nobody knew that scent better than Charity herself.

  Her head still felt slow and filthy and basically useless, like a bad drain. She tried to puzzle out half-remembered fragments of her conversation with Aunt Agatha. The old lady had been worried about Charity marrying Alistair. No, she hadn’t said precisely those words, had she? She had been worried that Charity would agree to a match. She smacked her aching forehead. It was not her own marriage, but Louisa’s, that Aunt Agatha had been contemplating. Louisa, too, had been worried about Charity’s plans. Now Louisa and Gilbert’s urgent whispers and sudden silences took on a new and troubling light.

  She ran upstairs to where Louisa’s gloves still rested on the table in the vestibule. Underneath the gloves was a folded square of paper. With shaking hands, she opened it.

  Dear Robbie,

  By the time you read this, I’ll be well on my way to Scotland. Aunt Agatha told me not to risk leaving you a note, lest you try to stop us, but I couldn’t let you think that we had been harmed. I hope to see you soon. Wish me happy, dearest!

  Your own sister,

  Louisa Selby

  She folded the letter and slid it into her coat pocket. An elopement was far from ideal, but she had no doubt that Gilbert would marry Louisa, rather than leave her compromised and abandoned at some dirty inn. More troubling was the idea that Louisa would spend the next days or weeks believing herself to have gone against Charity’s wishes, to have broken Alistair’s heart, to have destroyed their fortunes and their futures. And the more time passed, the more she’d work herself up and become thoroughly miserable.

  There was nothing for it but to ride out and explain matters to her. Over Charity’s dead body would Louisa have weeks of unnecessary guilt and sorrow.

  She stepped outside and sighed at what she saw. There were black clouds looming in the north, which surely was the direction the pair of young fools had gone. They would have headed for Scotland.

  What Charity needed now was a fast horse, and she knew of only one place to get one.

  Alistair decided that today was an excellent day to meet with his solicitor. A hangover was bad, and meeting with solicitors was inevitably trying, so combining the two seemed an efficient way to minimize the number of unpleasant hours.

  Also it would give him something to do besides rush over to Robin’s house and say a dozen things she wouldn’t want to hear.

  “I have the papers you asked me to draw up, my lord.” Nivins slid the papers across Alistair’s desk. “This gives Lord Gilbert a life interest in the Kent property. I think you’ll find no surprises.”

  The only surprise was that Alistair was going through with this. The Kent property was profitable and comfortable and Alistair would miss its income. But if his brother wanted to try his hand at agriculture, this would set him up. And even if he didn’t, it would give him an income and a place to live.

  It was also an apology. He shouldn’t have tried to strong-arm Gilbert into taking up an unwanted career. He wasn’t even twenty-five. He had decades ahead of him, and might as well live them in a way that brought him some joy.

  Alistair scrawled a note to Gilbert and rang for a footman to deliver it.

  “While we’re waiting for my brother to come and sign these papers, I do have another matter of business. I need you to investigate a foundling named Charity Church. She was born in Northumberland around 1794 and subsequently lived at the Selbys’ estate, Fenshawe. I’d also like you to find any records pertaining to Robert Selby, also born around 1794, possibly earlier.”

  If Nivins was at all surprised, he didn’t show it. After all, the man had been Alistair’s father’s solicitor and had likely handled matters a good deal more risqué than investigating foundlings and country squires.

  He and Nivins had tea and discussed the resolution of a border dispute in Shropshire, and then the footman returned.

  Gilbert was not with him.

  “If you’ll pardon me, your lordship, but he wasn’t home. And his man, Lord Gilbert’s valet, I mean, said that he had gone away for a fortnight. He seemed to be under the impression that Lord Gilbert had headed to Scotland with the utmost urgency, my lord.”

  “A fortnight?” He had seen his brother only last night. He remembered those mortifying circumstances only too well. Surely Gilbert would have mentioned having plans to leave town for two weeks without his valet? “Scotland?”

  Slowly and horribly, the exact nature of their last conversation began to seep into his muddled brain. How had he not seen it at the time? There was nothing like drink and solipsism to blind one to what ought to have been obvious.

  The damned fool had run off with Louisa Selby and it was all Alistair’s fault for having behaved in such a way as to convince Gilbert that he intended to marry the lady whether she liked it or not.

  Damn and hell. He excused himself, trying not to betray any signs of the urgency that he felt. The last thing he needed was servants’ gossip. Quietly, he ordered his valet to pack an overnight bag, then walked as nonchalantly as could be across the mews to the stables.

  “I’ll need the curricle readied immediately,” he told the head groom. While waiting for the horses to be put in the rig, he paced up and down the aisles of the stable.

  He noticed the empty stall straight away. “Where is Queen Mab?” That was the mare he had let Robin use, what seemed like five years past but was no more than six weeks ago.

  “Mr. Selby took her out not two hours ago,” the groom answered.

  “Mr. Selby? I was under the impression that he no longer rode any of the horses here.”

  “He hasn’t for the past few weeks, but as your lordship hadn’t given any other instructions, I saddled up Mab and he rode right off.”

  “And he hasn’t come back yet?”

  Both men looked at the sky, which was an ominous sort of gray that signaled more than
the usual London showers.

  Alistair thought of Gilbert and Louisa, making a thoroughly foolish and unnecessary trip to Scotland. Elopement was always disgraceful, and this particular elopement made everyone involved look ridiculous. Alistair had no intention of being cast as the villain in a farce, the evil marquess from whose lecherous advances the fair maiden had to escape. That was all bad enough.

  But then he thought of Robin riding through a storm on a skittish horse, and he felt a swell of fear rise up in him.

  With every clap of thunder, the mare seemed to lose a bit of her nerve. Charity had been sweet-talking her for the last several miles and they were now thoroughly irritated with one another, not to mention soaked and hungry.

  The roads were getting muddier and the rain was falling heavier. Charity was about to seek shelter in the next barn or cowshed when her attention was arrested by the sight of what looked like an overturned carriage. She spurred the mare through the mud and driving rain.

  It was indeed a carriage on its side. The horses had become unhitched and were wandering freely in an adjacent field. But there was no sign of coachman or passengers. She wanted to believe that they had walked away from the accident, but who would leave a pair of matched carriage horses out in the rain? And she knew at a glance that nobody had walked away from this accident. They were either dead or in need of help. As much as Charity would have liked to catch up with Louisa before nightfall, she wasn’t leaving injured travelers on the side of the road.

  As she approached, she could see the carriage’s wheels still spinning. Perhaps it had only just now overturned, then. She dismounted her mare and looped its reins over a fence post. Sounds were coming from inside the carriage, which had to be a good sign, she supposed.

  But then she heard what the voice inside the carriage was saying. “Louisa!” The voice was anxious and loud and definitely belonged to Gilbert de Lacey. “Louisa!”

  Charity ran the rest of the way. Since the carriage was on its side, she had to climb on top of it to reach a door. “Open the door, Gilbert!” she cried.

  “I can’t! My God, is that you, Selby? Louisa hit her head, and I can’t get to the door without heaving her about. And one of my arms doesn’t seem to be quite the thing.”

  She managed to open the door and peer inside. Louisa, evidently unconscious, had a gash across her forehead. One of Gilbert’s arms was at a nauseating angle. “Is she breathing?” she demanded.

  “Yes,” Gilbert answered immediately.

  That basic fact established, she resolved not to think any more about their injuries. What she needed now was strong men to get them out of the carriage. “I’m going for help. Was Aunt Agatha with you?”

  “No, she—”

  She cut him off. “Did you have a coachman?”

  “Yes! Oh my God—”

  “I’ll be back.”

  She found the coachman, a boy of no more than twenty, facedown in the ditch that was supposed to provide drainage for the road. He was quite insensible but not bleeding, and she was at least able to drag him out so he didn’t drown. Then she grabbed Louisa’s valise, climbed back on the mare and rode for the farmhouse she thought she had glimpsed in the distance.

  There was one other task she had to complete. Louisa would need careful nursing. Charity wouldn’t leave Louisa’s fate up to the ministrations of some incompetent stranger. But only a woman could nurse another woman. In the shelter of a woodshed, she struggled into Louisa’s soaked gown. Then she ran for the farmhouse and pounded on the door.

  By the time they got Louisa out of the carriage and into the farmhouse, the rain had stopped and Louisa was half awake. She kept asking after Gilbert, which was so bloody typical of her that Charity nearly felt reassured.

  The farmers must have been put out by the arrival of four strangers, three of whom were badly injured, but they seemed to be making the best of things. Their good-natured acceptance might have been helped along by the fact that Charity loudly and repeatedly referred to Gilbert as “his lordship.” Gilbert’s habit of shaking coins out of his purse like he was sprinkling salt on a fresh cut of beef probably also went some distance in winning the couple’s cooperation.

  When she introduced herself to the Trouts as Louisa’s relation, Miss Church, Gilbert hadn’t batted an eyelash. In the commotion of rescuing Louisa from the carriage and bringing her into the house, she hadn’t found a moment to explain her disguise to the young man. How he supposed Louisa to have acquired a relation in the middle of nowhere, and where he supposed Robert Selby to have disappeared to, Charity could not guess. Either he was a consummate actor or as gullible as a newborn baby, and at the moment she didn’t much care which.

  It was arranged that the coachman was to be kept in the kitchen, where the farmer’s wife wrapped him in a blanket and gave him a mug of broth. Gilbert, who insisted that he’d decamp to the nearest inn as soon as he had his bone set, sat in the parlor awaiting his fate. Louisa was to have the spare bedroom with Charity attending her.

  Once they had gotten Louisa dry and warm, there was nothing to do but mop the blood off her head. If it had been anyone other than Louisa—hell, if it had been herself—she would have dismissed the quantity of blood as exactly what you’d expect from a head wound. Oceans of blood, but there probably wouldn’t even be a scar in a fortnight. But since it was Louisa, Charity could not be so complacent. When she looked at Louisa, pale hair spread out on the pillow, she still saw a young child, fragile and in need of protection.

  The farmer’s wife brought dry clothes for Charity to change into. Mrs. Trout was short and blousy, which meant that her clothes fit Charity even worse than Louisa’s, but they were plain and sturdy and just the thing for getting covered in blood.

  “Charity,” Louisa whispered once they were alone, “how did you manage to find me so quickly?”

  The girl thought she had been stealthy, had she? Lord. “Call it a good guess,” Charity said dryly. “Listen, Louisa, I don’t mean to stop you and Gilbert from marrying, if that’s what you want to know. I never meant to stop you. I wish the pair of you happy.”

  “But Lord Pembroke . . .” The fear in her voice was plain even though she spoke in a whisper.

  Charity suppressed her irritation. However faulty Louisa’s reasoning and melodramatic her behavior, she truly had feared a forced marriage. Charity wasn’t sure what she had done to deserve Louisa’s mistrust, let alone a doctored sleeping draught from Aunt Agatha, but she’d try to ignore her hurt feelings until Louisa was well again.

  “Pembroke has nothing to do with you. He doesn’t want to marry you at all.” Charity took a clean cloth and pressed it against Louisa’s wound. “You don’t need to worry about him. Close your eyes and rest.”

  Once Louisa was asleep, she went downstairs to find Gilbert. “Miss Church,” Gilbert said, rising to his feet. His handsome face was creased with strain and fatigue, he held his arm awkwardly, but still he executed a gentlemanly bow.

  “About that,” she started. After all, if he were to marry Louisa he’d have to be let in on the secret. “You’re quite right that I’m Miss Church, but I’m afraid you also know me as Robert Selby.”

  His hesitation lasted only the barest instant. “Is that so? Well, that explains a good deal, I dare say. A dashed good deal, in fact. Well, any friend of Louisa is a friend of mine.”

  Perhaps it was his open mind that had drawn Louisa to him. Charity had known there had to be more to the man than a pretty face and a dash of charm. “I hardly need to tell you this is a secret of some importance to both Louisa and myself, do I?”

  Tapping the side of his nose, he said, “Quite right. Your secret is safe with me.” And then he went back to poking the fire with his good arm.

  Well, that had gone better than she could have expected.

  The doctor, a gaunt man of about forty, arrived at dusk. He examined Louisa’s head, looked at her eyes, and made her tell him what month and year it was.

  “She has no frac
tures, but she needs close care and plenty of rest for the next few weeks,” he pronounced, snapping his bag shut. “I don’t want her out of this bed.” He eyed Charity critically. “She might become feverish. Do you have any experience nursing the ill? If not, there’s a woman in the village who’s reasonably trustworthy.”

  Over Charity’s dead body would Louisa be entrusted to a yokel whose only recommendation was being reasonably trustworthy. “I nursed Miss Selby and her brother through all the usual illnesses and injuries.”

  “Suit yourself.” He gathered his bag and made for the door. “I’ll check on the lady tomorrow. You may bandage her wound now.”

  Charity did so; that accomplished, she sat in the hard chair by Louisa’s bed and made herself as comfortable as she could, given the unaccustomed clothes and the fact that every muscle in her body ached. She was bone-tired but knew she wouldn’t sleep. She had to look after Louisa.

  She had to look after Louisa. That was why she had been sent to live with the Selbys in the first place, to take care of a sad, motherless girl. Not that Charity had been anything other than a sad, motherless girl herself, but she had adopted Louisa’s welfare as her purpose in life, and old habits were hard to break. She stood, intending to open the windows and let in some fresh air, but got her skirts caught under the chair leg.

  How on earth did women get anything done when encumbered by acres of fabric? Stranger still was how all that fabric somehow left her so exposed. The gown had a high neckline—Mrs. Trout was a farmer’s wife, not a debutante—but Charity’s throat felt oddly naked without a cravat, her legs indecently free under the short chemise. And there were no drawers at all. Perhaps farmers’ wives didn’t wear drawers in Biggleswade, or wherever they were. But to be naked under the gown when she was used to wearing breeches made her feel even stranger.

  She heard a clock chime ten o’clock. It felt like four in the morning, she was so tired.

  The door creaked open, and she automatically turned her head.