Unmasked by the Marquess

by Cat Sebastian

  He thought of Robin, without family, without protection. He remembered what lengths she had gone to when her sister-in-law had been left similarly alone. And he imagined what would happen to his half sisters if Mrs. Allenby died. For all he knew, they had friends and relations by the dozen. But he would do his part to let the world know that the Marquess of Pembroke stood by his family.

  “Three thousand each,” Mrs. Allenby repeated. “I didn’t think you had that much at the ready.” Her eyes opened wide. “Oh drat, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “You’re quite right. I don’t. But I can put a thousand pounds a year away, so that when Amelia comes of age she’ll have her three thousand, and then when the other two—” for the life of him he could not recall their names “—come of age, they’ll have the same.”

  “Frances and Eliza,” she said.

  He nodded. “Frances and Eliza,” he repeated.

  “I hardly know what to say.”

  He rose to his feet. “Don’t say anything. If my father had lived, he would have done more, and we both know it.”

  “You’re wrong there. If your father had lived, he’d have run the estate into the ground. I loved the man, but he couldn’t keep sixpence in his pocket. Now, I think you ought to go into the drawing room.”

  Alistair didn’t think he had it in him to play the part of the elder brother, but he followed the sounds of laughter and conversation to the drawing room door. There, in the same room where he had listened to the cat-carrying astronomer while flirting with Robin, were the three Allenby girls and an elderly woman.

  With a start he realized that the other woman was Miss Cavendish, the treacherous Aunt Agatha. What the actual devil was she doing in this house? Or anywhere in London, for that matter? He had driven past the house Robin and Miss Selby had leased for the season and found it closed up, the door knocker removed and no trace of servants within. He had assumed that Miss Cavendish had returned to wherever it was she came from. Northumberland, or perhaps whatever circle of hell was reserved for people who played fast and loose with laudanum. If Robin had been hurt, Alistair would have seen that old witch in a noose.

  The two younger girls fell awkwardly silent when they saw Alistair at the threshold. Amelia rose politely to her feet and dropped into a curtsy.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Miss Cavendish said.

  Ah, so they were both equally delighted to see one another. It was so much more comfortable when antipathy was mutual.

  “Delighted, ma’am,” he responded, bowing first to her and then to the girls.

  “I’ve had a letter from Louisa,” Miss Cavendish said, looking impossibly smug. “Or, I should say, Lady Gilbert. She and Lord Gilbert are staying at an inn in the Lake District. They traveled directly there from Scotland.” If she had stuck her tongue out at him or thumbed her nose, she still wouldn’t have looked more smugly satisfied with herself than she did that moment.

  “How lovely for them,” he responded affably, as if it were not at all insulting that Gilbert had not bothered to write to his own brother but Louisa had found time to inform her sister-in-law’s poisoner. Perhaps Gilbert’s attention was taken up by his bride. Or perhaps Alistair had thrown away all brotherly confidence by behaving like a controlling bastard for so many years. “And where is Mr. Selby? Did either he or Miss Church accompany them on their wedding trip?” He made this reference to Miss Church with a very pointed look at the old lady.

  Miss Cavendish narrowed her eyes, and remained silent for the moment it evidently took her to conclude that Alistair knew about Charity’s double role but was not going to reveal it. “Not that I know of,” was her only answer.

  He forced himself to sit down and drink the tea Mrs. Allenby poured him. He listened to the middle child—Frances, he recalled—play the harp, and admired one of Eliza’s drawings. Only Amelia remained reserved, quietly observing him.

  Why had they gone to Scotland? He couldn’t make sense of it. They had the special license and they had Robin to give consent. There was no need to go all the way to Scotland; with Gilbert’s arm in a sling and Louisa still recovering, it would have been a grueling journey. Robin would not have allowed it unless it were absolutely necessary.

  He tried to breathe but it felt like his lungs were in a vise. Every shallow breath sent pain through his chest.

  There was one obvious reason why Gilbert would have gotten married in Scotland, and it was that Robin wasn’t with them. In which case, where had she gone? Had she decided to stop being Robert Selby and simply vanish? He felt his heart lurch at the notion. He wanted her here with him, not alone and nameless.

  He forced some tea down his throat and hoped he didn’t look like a man whose mind was reeling. There could be another possibility, he realized. Perhaps she had determined that exposure was imminent, had feared that she would be revealed as an impostor, and hadn’t wanted Louisa’s marriage invalidated when her signature was revealed to be forged. That was even more alarming, because if she truly feared exposure, she would do anything in her power to prevent Louisa from being implicated. That would mean she would have to disappear, to hide. And he knew his Robin well enough to fear that she would hide too well for him to find her.

  He rose to take his leave, blindly going through the motions of wishing them all a good day. When he reached the door, he felt a hand on his elbow. It was Amelia, looking grave and concerned.

  “If you hear from Mr. Selby,” she said, “will you send me word? It is very strange that he left town without saying goodbye to my mother or to me. We were friends, you see. Or I thought we were.”

  Some of his pitying comprehension must have shown on his face, because she hurriedly added, “No, not in the way you’re thinking. Mr. Selby isn’t interested in . . . marriage.”

  Incredulously, he realized she thought Robin a gentleman who preferred men. Which wasn’t far from the truth, in fact. “Quite right.”

  And now she was giving him a pityingly understanding look. “I saw you at your ball,” she whispered. “In the garden.”

  A month ago he would have assumed that she meant to blackmail him, that she was after his money or his honor. But now he understood that she was saying this out of concern for her friend, and she thought her friend’s lover would know his whereabouts.

  He chose his words carefully. “I saw Mr. Selby a week ago in Bedfordshire, but not since. When I saw him, he was quite well. I give you my word that if I hear of him I will tell you myself.”

  But even as he spoke, he feared he would hear nothing from Robin.

  Charity had taken this road more times than she could count. She ought to know it by heart, she ought to have memorized every sheep-dotted hill and every crumbling wall. But on her previous returns to Fenshawe she was too preoccupied by thoughts of seeing Robbie and Louisa, too busy thinking of the stories she would tell them about what she had seen at the market, at the fair, at Cambridge. She hadn’t had any attention to spare for the landscape.

  But there would be nobody at Fenshawe today. So now, on her last trip down this road, Charity could properly appreciate every tree and gate and cottage that she would never see again.

  She had granted herself leave to be quite disgustingly maudlin, and didn’t even care that she was making a right mess of her cravat by letting tears fall all over it. She would bid goodbye to the only real home she had ever known, and since there was nobody around to see, she could cry as much as she liked.

  The lane bent, and now she could see Fenshawe itself, nestled between two hills. She tried to commit the sight to memory: gray stone, gabled roofs, windows and chimneys arranged at a time when symmetry must not have been much in fashion.

  Her eyes caught on a detail that was out of place—she could quite plainly see smoke curling dark gray against the clear blue sky. They had closed the place up entirely when they left for London. The couple who looked after the house lived in the old gamekeeper’s cottage. Perhaps they had ventured into the house for some reason and lit a
fire. Still, she spurred the horse a bit faster.

  Once she had Mab fed and watered in the stables, she made her way across the courtyard. This would be the last time she crossed the courtyard, the last time she pushed the kitchen door open. It ought to feel monumentally significant, but instead she felt like she was watching herself from a great distance of space and time.

  “I thought it would be you,” said a familiar voice.

  She gasped and turned to where Keating stood, leaning against the scullery door. “I thought you’d be long gone. How could you possibly guess that I’d come here?”

  “You’d never bugger off without throwing some flowers on your fellow’s grave. Figured you’d turn up sooner or later.”

  Of course he was right. She started to cry—really, she hadn’t quite stopped since the last round—and found herself pushed by the shoulders into a chair by the fire.

  “Like a dog hanging about its dead master’s body. Embarrassing, it is. There’s nothing for you here, but you keep coming back. Like a ghost, haunting the place.”

  “Your metaphors are a mess,” she managed through her tears.

  “Your priorities are a mess.” He pulled a flask from his coat and handed it to her.

  She sniffed it. Gin. She drank a few swigs anyway. “Louisa’s married by now.” She heard the scrape of a chair across the stone floor, then the creak of wood as Keating sat.

  “That’s not why you’re crying.”

  “No, I’m crying because I’ll miss her. I’ll miss . . .” She tried to make a gesture that would encompass her whole life, without actually saying it.

  “Then don’t give it up. Stay Robert Selby. Who the hell cares that you aren’t? You’re as good a Robert Selby as he ever was, and probably better.”

  She had long suspected Keating of harboring revolutionary tendencies, and now she was sure of it. “I can’t. It’s stealing.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing. It’s always been stealing, right from the start, and you never let that stop you.”

  She took another swig, enjoying the burn down her throat. “I did it for Louisa. She was only a child, and a Selby.”

  “You were a child when you came here, and you’re a Selby now.” Keating was leaning forward in his chair, his hands on his knees. He ought to have left weeks ago. She was a losing bet.

  “It’s not the same.” She cringed at the whining note she heard in her own voice.

  “So you keep telling me. Here’s what you can do. Save every farthing of income from Fenshawe, put it in the bank, and leave it to the cousin when you die.”

  “He wants to marry me.”

  “The cousin?”

  She would have laughed if the circumstances were any different. “No, Pembroke.”

  He stared at her for a moment before letting out a long, low whistle. “Well, I don’t suppose he can marry you as Robert Selby.”

  “He can’t marry me at all. I’d disgrace him. Besides, I can’t put on a gown and be a lady.”

  “No, I can’t imagine you would. Nor would I. So, then. What’s it to be? Where are we to go?”

  That made her look up sharply. “We?”

  “You planning to run off with someone else?”

  She almost smiled at that. The gin had taken the edge off and she felt less tragic than she had upon entering the house. “India?”

  Before Keating could respond, Charity saw a flicker of movement over his shoulder.

  “Well, I hate to interrupt,” Maurice Clifton said, emerging from the shadowy passageway that led to the larder. “This conversation has been so entirely illuminating.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “What are you doing here?” Charity managed to say, her voice a mere whisper. Keating was already on his feet, his hand poised over his coat pocket in a way that suggested a pistol might be concealed within.

  “I knew something wasn’t right when I saw you in London,” Clifton said. “I didn’t know who you were, but I knew you weren’t Robert. You’re too clever by half. I came here to Fenshawe to see my cousin and ask him what in damnation is going on. But I find the place shut up, and when I ask any of the villagers they tell me that Robert Selby is in London with his sister, or they slam their doors in my face.” He took a step further into the room. “What I want to know is whether you killed him.”

  “Oh my God.” Charity clutched the edges of her chair. “No, he died of influenza two and a half years ago. The same year Louisa had it. He’s buried beneath the rowan tree on the south end of the property.” Keating had been quite right that she planned to leave some flowers on it before departing.

  “I feel that I’ve walked into a melodrama. You—a woman, I gather—simply decided to hide my cousin’s death and assume his identity. I scarcely know what to think.” Clifton looked on the verge of swooning.

  “Sit down, you,” Keating commanded, his voice gruff.

  Clifton sat, but otherwise paid Keating no attention. His gaze was fixed on Charity, as if he hoped to find answers written on her face. “You stole Fenshawe out from under my nose.”

  She knew it would be useless to protest that she had done it for Louisa, that she had meant to give it back. If he had overheard her conversation with Keating, he already knew that, and he didn’t care.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Oh bloody hell,” Keating protested, but she couldn’t imagine what else he expected her to say. There was no use denying it.

  “Going to India isn’t good enough,” Clifton said. “Even if you managed to disappear, it would take years to have my cousin declared dead. What happens to Fenshawe in the meantime? I want a death certificate and I want it immediately.”

  “I know.” She felt like she was hearing this conversation from the bottom of a lake.

  Keating slammed his fist on the table, bringing her briefly back to the moment. “For God’s sake, Charity!” He never called her that, she dimly thought.

  “He doesn’t mean my dead body, Keating. It’s a woman’s body, after all, and wouldn’t get him Fenshawe.”

  “Otherwise you’d throw yourself off the nearest cliff? You don’t have to do what this man says, goddammit!”

  “No,” said Clifton slowly. “But the alternative is that we leave this to the authorities to sort out. In that case, Louisa’s complicity in what might very well be considered a murder would become a matter of public note.”

  The edges of her vision were going dark. “I told you it wasn’t murder. I would never have.”

  “They were married, you sodding bastard.” This was the ever-loyal Keating. “And you—” he pointed at Charity “—either act like you have some fight left in you or I’ll have to slap you.”

  “Married? But that’s neither here nor there,” Clifton replied equably. “Louisa will be dragged into whatever the judge and jury decide to make of this sordid business. So will Lord Pembroke, come to think of it. The two of you have been thick as thieves, by all accounts.”

  Charity felt her blood run cold. She couldn’t even run away—couldn’t disappear to India or America. Louisa might stand trial. Alistair would be thrown into a scandal worse than anything he had ever contemplated, worse than anything his father had ever dared commit. He would never live down his shame. She would burden him with a lifetime’s worth of humiliation.

  “Then what do I do?” she asked.

  “I certainly don’t know.” Clifton shook his head impatiently. “You’re the one with expertise in fraud and deceit. Arrange for some way to have Robert Selby declared dead.”

  “A boating accident,” Charity said, remembering what Alistair had suggested. It seemed so preposterous when he suggested it, but now it was the only way to keep him and Louisa safe. “There would be no body. You could get a death certificate if a witness attested to Selby falling overboard.”

  “There!” Clifton said with some satisfaction. “I knew you’d come up with something. And that’s not so bad after all. You were planning to run off to India anyway
. This is a mere errand to perform before you go on your way.”

  “The merest trifle,” Keating spat. “I gather I’m supposed to be the witness. Fucking boats.”

  Clifton ignored this. “Needless to say, you must also agree never to return to England or have any dealings with anyone you knew during your time as Robert Selby.”

  Her life would be over. Everyone who mattered to her—everyone to whom she mattered—would be taken away from her. She felt as cold and alone as if she truly were at the bottom of the ocean.

  “Fine,” she said. She would do this. One last effort to protect Louisa, one last kindness to repay everything Alistair had done for her. “A boating accident.”

  She really would be as good as dead. She didn’t dare write so much as a note to Louisa or Alistair to let them know that she was alive and well—as if wellness were something she could aspire to in this state.

  She couldn’t even withdraw enough money from the bank to start her new life, whatever that was to be. She couldn’t so much as pack a change of clothes. Nothing must draw suspicion.

  Nameless, friendless, penniless. That was how she entered the world, but she had made a life for herself. She’d just have to do it again. She glanced over at Keating and he gave her a sharp nod. Not quite friendless, then.

  She had made sacrifices before out of love and loyalty. This would only be one more.

  “All right, then, Mr. Clifton. We’ll do it.”

  Hopkins handed Alistair the newspaper as soon as he returned from the club, before he had even removed his gloves. “Delivered by messenger,” the butler murmured.

  Glancing at the front page, he saw it was a Newcastle paper from one week earlier. He flipped through the pages with a rising sense of cold dread.

  He found it on the fourth page. A boating accident. “Presumed dead,” the notice said. “Robert Selby, Esq., late of Fenshawe, Northumberland,” was how the paper referred to his Robin. There was more—something about an inquest and the testimony of a manservant—but the words danced before Alistair’s eyes.