Unmasked by the Marquess

by Cat Sebastian

  Having guessed that Charity would disappear did not lessen his shock at seeing it in print. He would have Nivins look into this. He would send investigators to find out where Charity had gone. He didn’t know how to find one woman, presumably dressed as a man, most certainly headed for some absurd and improbable corner of the world, but he would do it anyway. It might take years, but he’d do it.

  After all, he had put this blasted stupid idea of a boating accident in her head. But he hadn’t meant for her to vanish away from him, for God’s sake. He had only suggested it as a way for her to start fresh, to put an end to her old identity in order to be with him. That was before he understood that for Charity, starting fresh would mean giving up an essential part of her. And now she had just drowned that part of her in the North Sea.

  His heart broke for her.

  He gathered up the paper and headed back outside to make good on the promise he had made his sister.

  There were carriages lined up outside the Allenbys’ house. Alistair cast about in his mind for the date and realized it was the night of Mrs. Allenby’s salon. Well, there was nothing for it. Having promised Amelia that he would tell her any news of Robin, he would fulfill that promise without dragging his heels. He found her deep in conversation with a woman wearing a turban. When she saw him approach, her face went pale, but she rose to her feet and silently led him through a passageway into the very room where Robin had teasingly suggested a tryst.

  She looked up at him expectantly, her lips pressed together. He had not managed this in a way to minimize her shock, he realized. He was not wearing evening clothes and he was carrying a cumbersome newspaper. And while visitors to the Allenby salon did not as a rule dress or behave with much regard to convention, in the Marquess of Pembroke any deviation from propriety was conspicuous.

  “Please tell me,” she said, and he realized he had been standing silently for too long.

  “I believe he’s well. But you’ll hear about this sooner or later, and I want you to know I don’t believe it to be true.” He unfolded the paper and showed her the article.

  He watched her squint at the page as she absently patted her pockets for spectacles that she evidently did not have with her.

  “Try mine,” he said, handing her his own spectacles. Perhaps they had both inherited poor eyesight from some distant de Lacey ancestor.

  She fitted the spectacles to her face, although they were too large and likely too strong for her. He watched her eyes roam across the page of newsprint, widening when she got to the end.

  “Presumed dead.” Her brows drew together in confusion. “But you said you believe he’s well.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to say that I don’t think either you or I will see Mr. Selby anytime soon, perhaps never again in this world. But I believe he is well.”

  She gave him a firm nod and handed him back his spectacles. “I see.” She was very young, he recalled. Eighteen. Too young to be alone in her sorrow.

  “Do you want me to send for your mother?” he offered.

  She shook her head, and he impulsively caught her hand and squeezed it before heading back through the crowd and out into the street.

  Upon returning to Pembroke House, he told Hopkins that he was not to be disturbed and proceeded directly to the library. Sitting on the sofa, he could have sworn that he still smelled Robin’s fresh green scent, like springtime and lemon drops. He remembered the taste of her lips, and if he closed his eyes he could almost feel her fingers stroking his jaw.

  This room, he wanted it burned to the ground. Would he ever sit here without recalling the time he had spent here with Robin? For that matter, would he ever do anything without recalling Robin? Would he even want to?

  He poured himself a brandy. Before his senses started to dull, he penned a letter to Gilbert, explaining the contents of the newspaper article and his belief that the accident was feigned as part of Miss Church’s effort to allow Fenshawe to pass to the cousin. Gilbert would need to tell Louisa.

  It was an imprudent letter, one that should not be written. The very fact of it proved Alistair’s complicity in criminal undertakings. But Gilbert needed to know. Alistair forbore writing an admonition to burn the letter upon receipt—Gilbert could exercise his own judgment, and Alistair no longer cared. He resolved to get his brother’s temporary Lake District address from the infernal Miss Cavendish on the morrow.

  His emotions were a welter of confusion, anger tied up with loss and regret. Worst was the certainty that he could have managed things better. Surely there had to have been some way he could have convinced her that she was the only person he wanted to spend his life with, that even if their marriage made him a scandal and an outcast, his life would be immeasurably better simply for having her in it. He was ashamed of himself for not having shown Robin what she meant to him while he had the chance, for having let her believe he cared for his status and good repute more than he cared for her.

  From the ground floor he heard the sound of a small commotion, followed by the tread of slippered feet heading upstairs. He scrambled upright, suddenly and irrationally hopeful. He knew it couldn’t be Robin. For her to come here, of all places, would be reckless beyond belief, but what if—

  The door opened, and Mrs. Allenby walked through. “There you are,” she said with obvious relief. “All in one piece.” She came closer and peered at him. “Not too badly foxed, I should say. No plans to do anything desperate?”

  Hopkins waited at the threshold, plainly mortified at having let an intruder into his master’s inner sanctum. Well, it was too late for that, he supposed. He gestured for the butler to leave and shut the door.

  “My dear madam,” he said, trying and failing to bring his voice to its haughtiest tones. “I have no idea what I have done to deserve the honor of this visit. Do you not at this very moment have a salon to be presiding over?”

  “To hell with the salon, Pembroke. Amelia told me about poor Mr. Selby and I came to see if you needed anything. I knew you’d be quite alone. It’s not the sort of loss you could openly grieve, I’m sorry to say. But you must see that you cannot be alone, my dear.”

  “I’m quite at a loss.” He summoned up all his reserves of chilliness. “Forgive me for being obtuse, but—”

  “Enough.” She spoke sharply. “The more you go on this way the more concerned I become. My heart breaks for you.”

  “You misunderstand. He is not dead.”

  She put a hand over her bosom and he saw tears spring to her eyes. “You poor child.”

  Oh, fantastic. She evidently thought him delusional with grief, which he supposed was the only logical explanation for his insistence that Robin was not dead despite a newspaper article saying otherwise, but what was surprising was that she seemed truly distraught for him. Why should she care? And as for poor child—he simply could not let that stand.

  He gritted his teeth. “I am two years younger than you, madam.”

  “True, but you’ve been on ice these last fifteen years. You’ve done no living at all in that time. You’ve guarded your heart so closely, and then the one time you let your defenses down, this happens.” She took one of his hands and chafed it between her own. “Now, I cannot leave you alone. If there’s someone else you wish to summon instead, I’ll leave. But I won’t leave you alone.”

  There wasn’t anyone else. Gilbert was hundreds of miles away, and nobody else could be allowed to know the extent of Alistair’s grief. She was wrong. He didn’t need company. He didn’t need anyone, least of all Portia Allenby, to bear witness to his misery. But as she rubbed his hand—the sort of gesture he might expect from Mrs. Potton, or from his own mother if his mother had been the affectionate sort—he felt his control slip away.

  “How did you know?” he finally asked.

  “I’ve seen how Mr. Selby looks at men, or rather how he doesn’t look at women. He was spending so much time with you, and one never hears about you with women.”

  Alistair wanted to interject tha
t one never heard of his liaisons with women because he was discreet, a concept she might not be overly familiar with, but he decided that was rather a moot point by now.

  “And then you came to Amelia tonight,” she continued, “plainly overwrought, so of course I knew.” She led him back to the sofa. “When was the last time you ate?”

  He sat. “I don’t recall.” He must have had lunch, but couldn’t remember.

  She went automatically to the bell pull. With a start, Alistair realized that of course Mrs. Allenby would know where to find everything in this house. She must have spent countless evenings here with Alistair’s father. No wonder she knew how to get past Hopkins.

  “Enough brandy.” She collected his decanter and glass and pushed them aside with the firm authority of someone used to tending to half-drunk men. That was something else she must have learned in this house, he supposed. “It’ll only make tomorrow worse, and tomorrow will be bad enough. Believe me.”

  This woman had grieved his father, however much he didn’t like to think of it. And she had come here tonight out of loyalty to her lover’s child. What had she said about his grief for Robin? Not the sort of loss you could openly grieve. That was how she must have felt about Alistair’s father’s death.

  “You need food, water, and a headache powder,” she said. “I’m so sorry to see you grieve, Pembroke, but I don’t mind saying that I’m relieved to know that you’re capable of it.”

  Alistair reeled from the force of those words. To be capable of grief. To be capable of having one’s heart broken. What astoundingly useless capacities. What a shocking oversight on the part of the creator. Surely, he had been better off when he hadn’t let anyone close, when he had used his pride and rank to keep affection at bay.

  But then he wouldn’t have loved Robin, and he wouldn’t have appreciated the gift that was her love. Mrs. Allenby was correct that he had been on ice, frozen and untouchable, for those years before meeting Robin. He had been cold and protected, but not quite alive.

  “I would trade everything I have—my rank and position, my fortune, the respect and admiration of my peers. All of it, just to have Robin back.” He shut his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the pity on Mrs. Allenby’s face.

  He only realized the next morning, when he woke up in his own bed with a clear head, how much forbearance it must have required for her to refrain from pointing out that Alistair’s father had made precisely that trade. The late marquess had given up money and respect in order to have a life with the woman he loved.

  Perhaps this recklessness in the face of love truly was in the de Lacey blood. Maybe those ancestors whose portraits graced the Broughton Abbey gallery had known something after all. And maybe Alistair was a fool for having realized it only when it was too late.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Every day the post brought letters, but none gave him any news of Robin. Nivins had turned up nothing, nor had any of his investigators. It had been the longest fortnight of Alistair’s life.

  Gilbert’s letter announcing his marriage had been misdirected, and when it finally arrived it was accompanied by three other letters from Gilbert and a very pretty note from Louisa. They were grateful to Alistair for the Kent property, apologetic for having run off the way they did, and utterly confused as to what had become of Charity. As distraught as Alistair was, he was relieved to know that he still had his brother’s friendship.

  There was the usual stack of letters on estate matters, but none of them brought him that old sense of satisfaction, that small pride of victory over chaos, in seeing his business conducted properly. He had always derived not precisely happiness, but rather relief, from seeing the numbers add up in an orderly fashion, income exceeding expenditures in a way that evidenced the fundamental rightness of his affairs. It felt something like opening a clock and seeing all the gears fitting together sensibly, ticking along predictably and usefully.

  It had never brought him joy, though. A few months ago, he hadn’t expected these neat columns of numbers to bring him anything so frivolous as happiness, but rather to deliver a reprieve from anxiety. Now that he knew joy and contentment, now that he knew what it meant to have happiness in arm’s reach, it seemed that he was ruined for anything less.

  Alistair resisted the urge to go to Fenshawe himself, or to climb aboard the ships at Dover and inspect each and every one with his own eyes. Instead he stayed in London in case Robin came back. It was nonsense, but he kept thinking of those tales of hunting dogs straying from the pack and being given up for lost, only to somehow find their way across dozens of miles, arriving home weeks later, filthy and thin but otherwise fine. This comparison was not one he would share with Robin if he ever saw her again, which was seeming increasingly unlikely. But he couldn’t let go of the idea that she would somehow find her way to him.

  Perhaps this was the sort of delusion that visited grief-stricken minds. He would ask Mrs. Allenby.

  During the two weeks that passed since he received the newspaper, various Allenbys found daily excuses to visit. Mrs. Allenby, it would seem, had adopted Alistair and there was no reversing the process. She sent cakes, as if he were an invalid rather than a perfectly healthy grown man. The Allenby girls brought a box of kittens that had been born in their kitchen and abandoned by their scapegrace mother. By all rights, the lot of them ought to be drowned, and it was surely a sign of Mrs. Allenby’s poor household management that they hadn’t been. The creatures would have to be fed drops of milk, for heaven’s sake, and would likely die anyway.

  Nobody was more astonished than Alistair when he realized that he had decided to keep one, a very unprepossessing tabby that seemed almost entirely composed of fluff. Alistair was still holding it after his half sisters left.

  He did not name it Robin, nor even Charity. He did not name it anything at all. But he fed it by dipping his handkerchief into a saucer of cream and letting the mite suckle away.

  One afternoon Lady Pettigrew swept into Alistair’s drawing room in high dudgeon, swathed in unseasonable furs. “Tell me that the gossips are mistaken and that Gilbert has not run off with that Selby girl, and that Portia Allenby does not come and go from Pembroke House at all hours. And Pembroke,” she said, her voice rising to a fever of indignation, “you have a rat on your shoulder.”

  “It’s a kitten, Aunt Pettigrew,” he said, removing the animal from where it was trying to burrow into its owner’s cravat. “And Gilbert did not elope—both I and Mr. Selby gave our consent to the match.” This statement wasn’t even fifty percent true, as the couple had eloped not once but twice, and Mr. Selby didn’t exist, but Alistair felt he was being precisely as honest as the situation called for.

  “As for Mrs. Allenby,” he continued, “it occurred to me that she’s the mother of my sisters, and that she’s done a damned fine job of raising them, given the circumstances. While I may have my own reservations about marital infidelity, I won’t stand in judgment of her or my father.”

  “Won’t stand in judgment?” She drew her mantle close around her shoulders, as if an evil wind blew through Pembroke House. “What twaddle is this? It’s your job to stand in judgment of those who don’t behave themselves. You’re one of the highest ranked gentlemen in the land. If you don’t uphold standards, who do you think will?”

  Not long ago, Alistair had asked the same question. He had thought it his duty to set an example. Hell, he still did. He had only changed his mind about what that example ought to be. “My dear Aunt Pettigrew,” he said in his most aristocratic tone. “If you do not find brotherly love and filial respect to be standards worthy of being upheld, then you and I shall simply have to disagree.” He drew out that last word, letting it sink in that this was a threat. If Lady Pettigrew wanted to declare war on Lord Pembroke, so be it. But Alistair outranked and outwitted her, and they both knew it.

  She begged his pardon in equally chilly tones. Alistair thought that when she got home and took stock of all the favors she wished to have gran
ted by the Marquess of Pembroke, she’d come around. And if she didn’t, it was a small loss.

  The next morning at breakfast, while Alistair was once again dipping his handkerchief into cream to feed the kitten, a letter arrived from the Broughton housekeeper. This was a highly unusual occurrence—Mrs. Jones had free rein over household matters and required no input from Alistair or anybody else. She hated to disturb his lordship, she wrote, but there had arisen a most awkward matter. A person—always such a damning descriptor, when coming from a servant—had arrived, saying she was instructed by his lordship to make a catalog of the library. Had his lordship commissioned this undertaking? Where was this woman to be housed? And what was to be done with her very strange manservant?

  Alistair walked directly to the stables and was in his traveling chaise within a quarter of an hour. By the time he realized he was still holding the kitten it was too late to turn back.

  Charity was not even pretending to make a catalog of the library. For one thing, there already was a catalog. For another, she was feeling utterly indolent after the events of the past few weeks. Lounging in the library and reading Moll Flanders—predictably, Alistair’s father had acquired all the naughtiest novels—was about all she could muster up the energy for.

  When Keating had hauled her, cold and dripping and in a very ill temper, onto the deck of the boat, she had only one thought: that she was an utter fool for having whistled down the wind a chance at happiness. Alistair was ready and willing to throw his weight around to help her, and instead of taking him up on his offer like a sensible creature, she had fled from him. If he wanted to make a scandal of himself on her behalf, then so be it.

  Now it only remained to be seen whether he still wanted her.

  “It takes something from you, coming back from the dead,” she told Keating as she lazed on the sofa in a patch of late afternoon sunshine. “I find I need to restore my strength.”