Sins of the Past (The Star Elite's Highwaymen Investigation Book 2)

by Rebecca King

  Zach sighed. ‘Have you ever contemplated leaving the Star Elite?’

  ‘Yes, to be fair, I have,’ Duncan admitted. ‘But we are friends, not just colleagues. We have all been through roughly the same experiences in life. We all have the same attitude toward criminals and work for the same goals. We have all faced the same enemies and have fought for our lives. We are a group of men who work to ensure that justice is always served. But that isn’t all we are. If I didn’t have the Star Elite in my life, I know I would replace it with something else. Like every other man in this country, I would find something else to do to ensure that food was put onto my table and my family had a warm home to live in. I may not have the long hours in the saddle, the lack of sleep, having someone shoot at me more frequently than I would like to challenge me, but other people survive without it. I am sure I could too, especially seeing as I would have a family, my wife, my children at home to share my days with.’

  Zach nodded. While he had listened to Duncan’s impassioned speech his gaze had remained locked on Clarissa’s home. He contemplated what life would be like if he could call the house, or a similar house like it, his home and look at Clarissa as his wife. Strangely, it didn’t seem all that unusual. He didn’t struggle to fit her into the role as his wife. In fact, the more he contemplated it the more he realised that Clarissa fit into his future as if she had been made to be a part of his life. He didn’t struggle to envisage himself spending his future with her. Even the thought of having a child with her was attractive. He didn’t baulk at the idea and try to think of something else whenever he contemplated a young boy or girl with both their features. Instead, he began to wonder which of them a child would look like.

  ‘Damn, I barely know her,’ Zach growled once the realisation began to dawn of just how much he had started to feel for her in a really short space of time.

  ‘Just because you admit to how you are starting to feel about her now doesn’t mean you have to act upon it. Spend time with her and be sure that it is her that you want before declaring your feelings. I confess that I took a risk when I acted upon my feelings for Phoebe. I had no idea she felt the same way, or that a marriage to her would work. We have been lucky in that we fit together. Our differences make our relationship interesting rather than boring. We argue, of course we do, but we also kiss and make up and accept each other’s eccentricities. Phoebe puts up with a lot, I know that, so I have to compromise as well,’ Duncan warned. ‘What I don’t want is to end up like her uncle, or one of those bombastic husbands who expects his wife to be subservient.’

  ‘A wife like that is nothing more than a whore and a maid,’ Zach growled. ‘I couldn’t think of anything worse than being married to someone who was too meek and mild to stand her ground against me in an argument.’

  ‘You will have to accept her waywardness for what it is and understand that there might be aspects of you that she doesn’t like very much but will have to live with,’ Greg warned. ‘I am not married, but I wish I were.’

  Zach blinked at him because this was the first time that Greg had admitted such a thing. ‘Really? I should have thought you would be one of the men who wouldn’t ever marry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In all the years I have known you I have never seen you show any interest in the women we meet in the taverns,’ Zach replied.

  ‘That’s because I have no interested in making a tavern doxy my wife,’ Greg muttered ruefully. ‘Moreover, I have never met anybody I can envisage being my wife. I hope I recognise her when I meet her.’

  ‘You will,’ Duncan replied firmly. ‘I know you will. The emotions either slap you upside the head with a resounding thwack or creep up on you slowly. I don’t know which is worse because by the time you have recognised the emotions that slowly build up over time you are too far gone to do anything to stop them. On the other hand, if you are hit in the head with overwhelming emotions like I was, you act like a damned fool and can’t do anything to stop the way you feel. Before you know it, your entire life has been tossed on its head like mine was.’

  Zach grinned. ‘Like proposing within days of meeting her.’ He knew that was what Duncan had done with his precious Phoebe. At the time, all the men had thought he had lost his faculties but, now that they were wed and everyone had seen how happy Duncan was, nobody could blame him for taking a chance. He was one of the men who was eager to get home whenever the opportunity arose, and Zach envied him for it.

  ‘I think I am going to have a word with her,’ Zach sighed. ‘I don’t know much about this because I have never felt this driving need to keep seeing any woman before. Even when I am not with Clarissa, I am thinking about her. All the damned time. It is like she is with me wherever I go.’

  ‘It sounds like you have already joined the club, my friend,’ Duncan mused with a wry smile. ‘Just do what you feel and know is right. If she feels the same about you then nothing will keep you apart, not your doubts, or hers, or even your work with us.’

  ‘What do I do if she doesn’t feel the same way?’ Zach murmured.

  Duncan grinned. ‘You are going to have to fight for her.’

  Zach cursed and shook his head. He knew already that he would if he needed to because after his conversation with Duncan, he really couldn’t contemplate a future without Clarissa in it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The first thing to register on Clarissa’s senses was pain. It lanced up the back of her head so fiercely that she felt sick from the strength of it. Despite the discomfort, Clarissa forced herself to look around the room she was lying in. It was difficult to remember what she had been doing, and how she came to be lying upon the floor in the library.

  Curious, Clarissa forced herself to take a good look around. At first, all she could see of the person sitting in the winged chair beside the fireplace was an outline. She had to blink several times to make the image settle. When it did it took her a moment to realise what she was seeing was real. Her Aunt Bessie sat with her hands tied behind her back and was staring at her as if she had never seen her before. Because she couldn’t speak, Bessie looked pointedly across the room. Clarissa slowly rolled onto her back to see what her aunt was nodding to. It was Rosamund, pacing backward and forward in front of the bank of windows overlooking the rose garden at the side of the house. She appeared to be lost in thought about something, and deeply worried. Thankfully, she hadn’t noticed that Clarissa was awake yet.

  Clarissa looked at her aunt who moved her hands in a silent plea to Clarissa to untie her. With one wary eye on her captor, Clarissa began to crawl toward the chair. The world whirled alarmingly when she knelt beside the chair, but Clarissa ignored it and quickly untied her aunt’s wrists before lying down beside her to reach under the chair and untie Bessie’s ankles as well.

  ‘Stay right where you are,’ Rosamund growled suddenly from somewhere above her.

  Forcing herself to pretend that she wasn’t going to faint again at any moment, Clarissa squared her shoulders. When she stood up, she was holding a poker she dragged out of the bucket beside the fireplace but found that she had to hold on to her aunt’s chair for support. The back of her head ached so badly that her nausea swiftly became worse, but Clarissa refused to give in to it.

  ‘What do you think you are doing? What have we ever done to you?’ Clarissa demanded calmly and quietly.

  ‘You know what I am doing. I am going to leave this place. Now. Today. I just have to think of a way of getting out of here before those damned Star Elite men come back,’ Rosamund growled.

  Bessie quickly removed her gag and stood upright before lifting another poker out of the bucket. With both women armed now, Rosamund eyed the French doors beside her warily. She didn’t give it any more than a fleeting look, but Clarissa knew that Rosamund was going to use it.

  ‘You could have just walked out, Rosamund,’ Bessie snorted. ‘There was no need to attack us in our own homes.’

  ‘You are helping them, aren’t you?’ Clariss
a murmured. ‘That’s why you were spared; why they didn’t kill us. The highwaymen know you.’

  ‘I am not helping them. I was with you all night you stupid fool,’ Rosamund snapped.

  For the first time since either woman had known her, Rosamund was hard, brash, bold. There was an air of malice about her that warned both women she was not the person they had thought she was.

  Bessie stared in disgust at the woman she had truly trusted. ‘God, I have been a bloody fool,’ she whispered. ‘I trusted you. I honestly believed that you understood who I was. I really believed that you were happy here. I didn’t know you had been with us just so you could help your thieving friends, the highwaymen.’

  ‘I am not helping them,’ Rosamund spat. ‘They aren’t my friends. Who in the Hell would agree to be held up at gunpoint for them to make off with just a couple of dresses? What kind of blazing idiot do you take me for?’

  ‘Then why are you doing this? Why are you so panicked at the thought of being prevented from leaving?’ Clarissa demanded. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I want to leave here and would have gone had it not been for you agreeing to let those damned stupid Star Elite stay here,’ Rosamund snapped.

  ‘They are here to protect us,’ Clarissa said gently although now felt that the Star Elite weren’t doing a particularly good job.

  ‘It isn’t their fault,’ Bessie murmured as if she had read Clarissa’s thoughts. Bessie looked at her niece. ‘They are looking for our enemy outside of this house. They weren’t to know that we had a viper in our midst. We were stupid enough to trust her. We had no way of knowing that Rosamund was a conniving liar.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hurl insults at me if I were you,’ Rosamund snorted. ‘Look at you, dressing like a man to keep people away so you can shack up with your precious coachman.’

  ‘My aunt’s relationship with Frederick is nothing to do with you,’ Clarissa growled. ‘Given you have enjoyed her hospitality for so many years, I don’t think it is fair of you to now scorn her. If you didn’t like her, or what she has been doing, you could have left.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t have served your purposes, would it, Rosamund? If that is what you are really called. I mean, you are here to hide from society, just like we are, aren’t you? You are a hypocrite to scorn us for doing the same as you. There are some differences between us, though. I mean, we are hiding from society so we can do what makes us happy without being criticised by judgemental people. I suspect that you are hiding from society because you have committed crimes you don’t want to go to gaol for. Now, let me see.’ Bessie tapped a finger against her chin and carefully ignored Frederick, who appeared outside the French doors and disappeared just as swiftly once he had seen what was happening. Moreover, that Clarissa had a thin trail of blood trickling slowly down the side of her face which stood out in stark contrast against the unnatural paleness of her skin.

  Clarissa slid a worried look at Bessie but Bessie shook her head, as if silently warning her not to say anything.

  Rosamund saw that look and quickly darted sideways to peer out of the French doors. She scowled at Bessie when she didn’t see anything untoward. ‘You think you know everything,’ Rosamund murmured.

  ‘I don’t think that I have been accommodating a traitor, I know I have. I don’t think you have been lying to me for the last couple of years, I know you have. I don’t think you are anything more than a common criminal hiding out in my house, I know you are.’ Bessie tipped her chin up. ‘Now, let me see. You were perfectly fine until you were stopped by the highwaymen. Suddenly, the men who stopped the carriage and usually kill their victims during the robbery, changed character completely and chose to spare you. Then, the morning after, you decide suddenly that this job you have enjoyed for the last two years suddenly isn’t good enough for you. You decide that you have to go and visit this relative in Scotland instead.’

  ‘Yes, the relative she never mentioned to us in the whole two years she has been living here,’ Clarissa added. ‘It’s strange, isn’t it? In all the years we have been receiving post here, I cannot remember Rosamund getting a single letter, yet she claims that she received an invitation to stay with her cousin. How?’

  ‘Now that I have had the time to recall your behaviour in my house, over the last two years not just the last two hours, I am able to see that your stories just don’t ring true. You have never asked for time off to go anywhere. Moreover, you have never had anybody visit you here on your days off, nor have you received any post. In addition to that, you have never mentioned even having any relatives, or that they lived in Scotland.’

  ‘I told you that my family died when I was young,’ Rosamund spat.

  ‘But you never mentioned that you had an extended family in Scotland,’ Clarissa added. ‘Further, you wanted to leave here because it is too isolated, and you wanted adventure, yet you claimed you were going to your cousin’s house which was also in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound adventurous.’ Bessie snorted a sarcastic laugh. ‘Believe me when I say that we are experts at being adventurous. Travelling to Scotland to live in the middle of nowhere doesn’t sound like an adventure to me. However, it would be something you are prepared to do if you know that justice is after you. After all, once you cross that border to Scotland you are living under Scottish laws. No English lawman can touch you without getting the appropriate warrants from the Scottish authorities, if the English lawman can actually find you in Scotland.’

  ‘But then the Star Elite turned up and had to ruin your plans. It must have been the worst possible scenario for you to have to live under the same roof as the lawmen you were trying to avoid,’ Clarissa mused.

  ‘Oh, I doubt that the Star Elite are interested in her, but the magistrate may be most intrigued to know she is living here,’ Bessie replied. ‘Now she has to account for attacking me in my own home and holding me against my will. God only knows where Mrs Reynolds, Nora, and Sara are. Then she has hit you over the head and injured you. She is nothing more than a violent criminal.’ Bessie’s voice shook with the strength of her distress. She physically shook as well but wasn’t prepared to allow Rosamund to get the upper hand again. Glaring balefully at her, Bessie announced: ‘The Star Elite are on their way back to the house. Zach was just seeing to the horses and will know that something is wrong when he doesn’t find Mrs Reynolds in the kitchen. Make no mistake, they will arrest you for what you have done today.’

  ‘I am not going to gaol,’ Rosamund insisted, backstepping toward the French doors.

  ‘What did you do?’ Clarissa asked before she could disappear.

  ‘I don’t doubt it was something violent,’ Bessie snorted. ‘Not many people have a mind so bent on criminality that they can plot something like this with every intention of then going through with their scheme. I mean, what normal person smacks someone over the head with a poker iron and then restrains them in their own home if they are not a criminal? What kind of person attacks kitchen staff to stop them running for help?’ Bessie pierced Rosamund with an angry glare.

  ‘Has she attacked them?’ Clarissa demanded quietly.

  ‘She told me that they are too sleepy to answer when I shouted for Nora,’ Bessie replied before curling her lip and throwing Rosamund a dour look. ‘Did you plan to make good your escape before the Star Elite returned? Did you think that they would assume the highwaymen did this? I am afraid that you made a mistake when you failed to render me unconscious, didn’t you? You knew the game was up the second that I looked at you. You either had to let me go or kill me.’

  ‘Or try to run and get far enough away so that by the time the Star Elite returned they wouldn’t be able to find you,’ Clarissa murmured.

  Rosamund didn’t answer. While Clarissa was talking, Rosamund opened one of the French doors, but before she slipped through it, she stopped to look apologetically at them both.

  ‘I am sorry for what I have done,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t intend
to lie to you, but I cannot tell you the truth. It is not something I am proud of. In my defence, I was young and foolish, and didn’t know any better. I wasn’t lying about my family being dead. I was lying about having a cousin in Scotland. I just need to get over the border and then I can start again somewhere else.’

  ‘Where you will keep lying,’ Clarissa snorted. ‘That isn’t going to resolve the past. It means that you are going to keep running from it. You will have to live with the knowledge and fear that your past can always reappear in your life even once you are settled somewhere far away. At what point do you stop running and actually face what you have done?’

  To both Bessie and Clarissa’s horror, Rosamund tipped her chin up and glared boldly at them as she said: ‘I would rather die.’