The Truth About Lady Felkirk

by Christine Merrill

  The girl did cry now, pulling an already-damp handkerchief from her sleeve and wiping at her eyes. ‘She would never have given herself to him willingly. And she would not have stayed with him had she not feared something even worse would happen should she leave. She should have let me come home. I’d have helped her.’

  Will sat beside her and gave her a gentle pat on the arm, pressing his own dry handkerchief into her hand. Even in tears, she was pretty. In a few years, she would be as beautiful as her sister. But until she was of age, she had no choice but to accede to the wishes of her guardian, just as Justine had done. ‘You needn’t think that. After all, what could you have done?’

  ‘I’d have killed him,’ she said, vehemently. ‘I’d have struck him down with the same poker he used on you, before I let him touch me. And I would not have let him hurt Justine, ever again. But she would not tell me the truth. She is not like me. She thinks of no one but herself, she never complains and she will not ask for help, no matter how much she needs it. She thinks she must be the strong one.’

  He remembered her, in this very room, stroking his arm in the dark, kissing the scar as though the brand he bore was a mark of honour. It had been after the strange dream where she had demanded to be left alone. She had all but admitted the truth to him, talking of her difficult life.

  At the time, he had been full of sympathy for her. He had vowed that he would keep her safe. But today, when she needed him, he had walked away as though she did not matter to him. Even after she had announced that she was willing to go to the gallows if it might spare him the risk of a duel, he had refused to trust her.

  He took Margot by the hand and pulled her up from the mattress, walking her towards the door. ‘Do not fear, little one. That time is over. From now on, I will be her strength.’

  ‘Fine words,’ she said, almost spitting them back at him. ‘I have heard similarly vague promises from Mr Montague himself. But know, Lord Felkirk, that I will not allow you to treat my sister as he has done. She is not some pretty bauble to be used and discarded when you are bored with her.’

  ‘That was never my intention,’ he said softly.

  ‘Intentions mean nothing,’ she said, with a dismissive wave, ‘if they are undone by one’s actions. You claimed to love her. And yet, at the first sign of real trouble, you mean to cast her out.’ She turned to glare at him. ‘You will forgive me if I think my sister has suffered enough at the hands of men. In short, my lord, if you do not want her, do not think you can send her back to Montague with a clear conscience. It would be better to have her arrested and let her take her chances with the courts than to return her to the suffering she has endured from that monster.’ And with that, she was gone, slamming the door so hard that even the stone walls seemed to shake.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Justine.’

  She woke with a start to find Will standing over her bed, a dim outline in the darkness. For a moment, she hoped that he had changed his mind and would gather her in his arms to assure her that it had all been a horrible dream. When he did not speak, the hope changed to fear. As she did with Montague, she lay perfectly still, feigning sleep and hoping that he would pass her by, just once.

  ‘There is no point in pretending any more. I know you are awake,’ he said, taking a taper from the bedside and lighting it with the last coals of the fire. ‘Dress and come with me. There is something I must show you, before tomorrow.’ Then he removed himself from her room, as though allowing the privacy to prepare herself.

  Come back, she wanted to whisper. Come back to me. There was no need to be so distant. What had they not shared with each other, these last weeks? Could they not have one last hour together? Even if he did nothing but sit silently in a chair while she dressed, it would be better than being alone.

  But their time to be together had passed and the distance between them was more than just the space between their rooms. She had cried herself to sleep worrying about what was likely to happen when morning came. But not before writing a full account of what had happened in Bath, so she might give it to the duke. If Will brought a second, there would be no other man he might choose. Perhaps, if she delivered a full confession before the fight began, Bellston might call a halt to it and save Will’s life.

  She pulled on a gown and found stockings and shoes, wishing she had asked what it was that was expected. When she had seen him just now, he’d been fully dressed. But since it was the same coat he had worn in the afternoon, she suspected he had not gone to bed.

  He should be resting. If he meant to carry out his foolish plan, dawn would come soon enough and he must be ready for it. Perhaps the duel was worrying him more than he let on. Perhaps he meant to run away with her. That was too much to hope for. There was something funereal in his demeanour that was far more frightening than his anger had been.

  When she was finished dressing, she found him waiting in the hall for her, a candle in his hand to light their way. He preceded her down the steps and through the servant-less corridors to the main floor. The house was still asleep. The hall clock chimed three as they passed it, on their way to the back of the house.

  From there, they went to the servants’ stairs, down again, through the kitchens and beyond, down another flight of steps to a part of the house she had never seen. She could feel the cool air rising from the brick walls and see the racks upon racks of bottles. The wine cellar? ‘Where are we going?’ she finally raised the nerve to ask.

  ‘To get you what you wanted, from the first moment you arrived here.’

  For a moment, she could not think what that might be. Then she remembered.

  The diamonds.

  He had told the truth, in Bath, when he had claimed to know where they were. Their location had come back to him, with the rest of his memories. Then it would have been better had they stayed lost. ‘It does not matter,’ she said.

  ‘Does it not?’ He stared back at her. ‘The stones I very nearly lost my life for have no value to you. I should think, given the things you were willing to do for them...’

  ‘Stop!’ If this was the last time she would be alone with him, she did not want to be reminded of what had happed. ‘You know it has been more than that, for some time,’ she said. There was no bitterness in her comment. It was too late for that.

  If he knew, he did not want to admit it. There was a ghost of his old smile on his face, as though it had all been a huge joke. But the joke was over now, the memory fading. ‘Well, in any case, if I have guessed rightly in their location, you shall have them.’ His expression changed, yet again, to something different, solemn but peaceful. ‘Should something happen this morning...to me, I mean...I want to make sure that you have what you have wanted from the first: your freedom. If there is trouble, you are to take them and your sister, and go.’

  He turned back to focus on the way they were taking, turning left, then right between the racks to go deeper into the room. Justine followed in silence, her mind racing. At one time, what he’d offered would have been more than enough to satisfy her. She would not be punished for what had happened in Bath. She would not have to return to Montague. Her sister would be safe.

  But the preface that had come before it was unbearable. He meant for her to have the jewels if he died. She could have said the same of her father, she supposed. It was likely his wife and daughters he had thought of, as he hid them from Montague. She was to have them at last. But if they cost her lover his life, it was far too high a price to pay for them.

  They had come to a corner, to a heavy wooden door with an iron ring for a handle. He turned back to her, explaining. ‘This part of the house is very old, hundreds of years, in fact. At that time, the place was more of a fortress than a home.’ He pulled on the ring and the door, which looked so solid, swung easily open, revealing an arched stone hallway, stretching forward further than the light from the
candle could reach. But from what she could see of it, it was swept clean and free of cobwebs. The gentle breeze coming from it was cold and fresh.

  ‘This is the one thing that my mother wished she could have taken with her, when they built Bellston Court,’ Will said, with a proud smile. ‘After all this time, it is still dead useful. But not practical to replicate.’ He led the way down the corridor and they walked for some minutes, until she was sure that they must have passed beyond the walls of the house. Not a corridor, then. It was a tunnel under the yard and it led in the direction of the woods.

  ‘Adam and I played here, as children.’ Will smiled at the memory. ‘We were looking for Arthur, under his mountain. We were sure he must be here.’

  ‘The raven,’ she said, remembering the story he had told in the woods.

  He nodded. ‘It was a fever dream. But I was so very hot. I heard the maids crying over how I must surely die. I did not want to. I wanted to be cool again and I wanted Merlin’s magic, so that I might live.’

  ‘It is cool here,’ she admitted, ‘Even in the heat of the day, I’m sure.’

  ‘And magical,’ he insisted. They had come to the end of the tunnel, to another wooden door as large and heavy as the first one. He pushed it open and she saw starlight through tree branches, smelled the mossy scent of pine and loam and heard the low slap of water on rock.

  ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘Go left and there is a steep path, down to the pond. But right and up the hill...’

  ‘The path through the trees,’ she said.

  ‘I opened the door and looked up. And I saw a man, tall and gaunt, with a black coat.’

  ‘Your raven,’ she said.

  ‘Montague,’ he answered. ‘I must have surprised him, for he dropped this.’ He reached into his pocket and pressed a scrap of velvet and silk into her hand.

  She did not need light to know it for what it was. She’d handled hundreds of them, over the course of her time in the shop, bagging up loose stones in the little sacks, pulling the gold drawstrings tight so that all stayed clean and safe. She ran her fingers over the stitching, not needing the candlelight to see the ornate M and B intertwined and the tiny gold crown embroidered above it.

  ‘I did not understand what it meant. I did not even find it in my pocket for another year. When I did, I told no one, because it was too late to do anything. They burned most of my playthings at the end of the summer, fearing that they were contaminated by my illness. I did not want to tell anyone of this for fear it would be taken from me and thrown into the fire. So I hid it in the nursery. And then I forgot.’

  ‘I did not look in the nursery,’ she said, surprised by her careless assumptions.

  ‘Why would you? I had not been there in years and I live in the house. But I was searching for a christening gift for Bill. And there it was.’

  ‘And Montague dropped it,’ she said, imagining the scene.

  ‘He threw it, more like. As if he was angry. And then he saw me and was gone.’ Will gave a low laugh. ‘He must have thought he’d escaped unnoticed. Then, twenty years later, the little boy from Wales appears in his shop, holding the very same bag. No wonder he split my skull. He must have been very near to panic.’

  ‘If he was angry because the bag was empty...’ Justine said, trying not to be excited by the story.

  ‘Then what happened to the diamonds?’ Will was smiling broadly now, pleased that she was following his reasoning. ‘If your father stumbled off the path and came upon this door, he might have gone inside.’ Then he turned back into the tunnel, shining his candle along the wall to reveal another door, this one of metal. ‘And he’d have found this.’

  When he opened it, a blast of cold air struck her, causing her to pull the shawl tighter around her shoulders. ‘The ice house?’

  Will held his candle high, until he spotted a lantern set into a niche in the wall. He lit it, setting his candle beside it, to make as much light as he could. ‘What better place to hide diamonds? It is so dark here that a robber would not find them unless he was led to the spot.’

  ‘He hid them in the ice,’ she said, wondering how they were to find them if that was true. The room was still a quarter full of huge blocks, layered with sawdust and hay. The flickering lantern light on the smooth wet surfaces cast weird blue shadows around the room. They seemed to dance in time to the soft, musical drip and trickle of melting ice.

  ‘Most likely he tucked them into a crack in the wall, or dropped them on the floor. If he had put them in the ice, I suspect we’d have found a loose stone in the bottom of the ice-cream bucket by now.’ He pulled a penknife from his pocket and searched through the ice-working tools on the hooks and shelves by the door to find something for her. He pressed an ice pick into her cold fingers. ‘I could not look in spring, when I first had the idea. Winter had just passed and the room was full to the doorway. But it is very near to the time of year when your father died. The same spaces are exposed.’ Then he turned her gently to face into the room. ‘Now, you must imagine that you are your own father. You have only a few moments to conceal something of value. Where would you put it?’

  He lifted the lantern high over his head, so she could see the details of the room. While the tunnel leading to it was mortared stone, this space had been carved directly into the rock under the hillock. The walls were marked with the fissures and cracks of the excavation, any one of which could hide the jewels. Under her feet, the layer of damp sawdust that had frozen to the ground was thick enough to conceal any manner of things. If they had not been discovered for all this time, then what chance had she?

  Then she remembered Will’s words. She must think like her father. She had no trouble picturing him walking the path above. She had done it before. But now she imagined it not bright with morning sunshine, but gathering gloom. She was being stalked. She could feel the eyes on the back of her neck. But the silence of the approach told her the identity of the assailant. Montague meant to betray her. She felt her quickening pulse and the overwhelming desire to run.

  If she did, he would catch her easily and take what he wanted, just as he always did. She must not give way to panic. Her father had kept a cool head, even when death was imminent. He might have lost his life, but he had denied Montague what he’d most wanted. The thought made her smile. It gave her strength.

  She looked around the room again. ‘It would have been dark. There was no time to light a candle. And he did not want to be discovered.’ She closed her eyes tight, to shut out the lantern light, and reached out a hand. Ice in front of her. It was shockingly cold and she drew back quickly, until her shoulders were against the wall behind her. Her hand bumped against a shelf.

  That would be far too obvious.

  She worked her way along the wall, trailing hands against it, following it around the corner until she had worked herself into what little space there was between the stacked ice blocks and the wall. Then she felt for a likely hiding place. There was nothing here. She could not find a notch to hide a single stone, much less a handful.

  And then she remembered her father. When she had last seen him, he’d seemed huge to her, like a great blond bear. She had been but five. But it had been more than imagination. He had been a large man who could not have wedged himself so deeply into this space. She moved back towards the door again, until there was barely enough space for a large man. Then she ran her hands over the bumps and crevices in the wall. That was when she found the crack. It was large at the top and even larger near the floor. But in the middle, at a place about equal with the height of her shoulders, it narrowed. While much of the wall was rimed with frost, the ice in this particular place was hard and smooth. She opened her eyes, but it was too dark to see much more than what she had discovered with her touch. ‘Here,’ she said, tapping the ice with the pick in her hand. ‘Bring the lantern.’

  Will crowded close b
ehind her, holding the light so it shone over her shoulder.

  Without thinking, she leaned back into him, trying to steal some warmth from his body to fight the growing chill of being so close to the ice.

  Had he forgotten that he hated her? It almost seemed so. He did not draw away from her, but pulled her closer to shield her from the cold as she worked.

  Her hand trembled as she jabbed the pick into the ice, only to feel it slide away without leaving so much as a chip. She struck harder the next time. And harder still after that. The ice in this spot was solid, as if it had rested there until it was as hard as the rock around it. Compared to all the other problems that had come between her and her goals, it was a very small thing. But it was very annoying. She struck harder, again and again.

  And then she gasped. Just for a moment, she thought she had seen a glittering that was brighter than frozen water. She took her lover’s hand and directed it, to form a cup at the base of the crack. She struck one last time, prying outwards to lever out the last of the ice. And what looked, at first glance, like a trickle of water, split into a multitude of tiny sparkles.

  She heard Will’s laugh of satisfaction as the gems poured into his hand. She poked about for a moment longer to be sure that nothing remained hidden between the rocks. Then she ran a fingertip through the shavings of frost and felt the sharp edges of faceted stones. If she got her jeweller’s loupe and looked closer, she was sure she would recognise her father’s work in the cuts, just as she could when she looked at the stock from Montague’s safe.

  She glanced down at the little velvet pouch, still dangling from her left wrist like a reticule, and opened it so that Will might tip his hand and pour the stones inside. Then she tightened the drawstring and offered him the bag.