by Julia Ross
“But something happened? Something important?”
Mrs. Siskin crushed the handkerchief in one fist. “Yes, but Bess was dying, poor thing, before it all spilled out. It had weighed on her conscience something dreadful, and she was desperate to make her peace before she was taken. She feared she’d burn for all eternity, and she wanted it made right.”
“Though it seems terrible, it would have been her duty to demand the name of the father while Rachel was in labor,” Sarah said gently. “No loving God could condemn her for doing only what the parish required.”
“No, no!” Mrs. Siskin collapsed onto a chair by the window. “You’ve got the wrong end of the stick entirely! Bess sinned very terribly, though she’d never have done it if Mr. Medway hadn’t put her up to it.”
“Mr. Medway? Her husband?”
“Ronnie Medway was from Devon, a Stonebridge man,” Mrs. Siskin said, as if that explained everything.
Sarah’s heart contracted as if a ghost had laid a hand on her arm. “From the village of Stonebridge, near the south coast?”
“Yes, he and his half brother both. Medway was a fisherman.”
“Is he still living?”
“God rest him, no! He was taken not three weeks after Bess delivered your cousin. His boat went down in a storm. Divine retribution—that’s what Bess feared, and that’s when she took to drink. Though she could never tell me what the matter was, not until she was dying, right up there in that bedroom above our heads. She said she couldn’t die easy unless she first tried to put things to rights, and she charged me to do it for her, if I could.”
The sun slipped behind a bank of cloud, plunging the room into a damp gloom. Sarah felt ill, though she didn’t know what she feared.
“What did she want put to rights, ma’am?” she asked.
“Why, that she and her husband had taken so much money to keep such a terrible secret!”
Mrs. Siskin pressed her crumpled handkerchief to her eyes and burst into tears.
GUY arrived back at the Anchor the next day seething with impatience and wet with rain. He had been forced to spend the night at Grail Hall.
The earl and countess had covered up their surprise at his astonishing arrival with well-bred ease, so he could hardly respond to their hospitality with a brusque demand for the guest list from almost two years before. Yet he had hardly slept. Even though he had just ridden the best part of fifty miles in half a day, he had lain awake for hours staring at the bed canopy and thinking about Sarah.
She haunted and obsessed him. His hands ached for the touch of her skin. His groin ached for the depth of her embrace. He wanted to see her laugh and hear her talk. She was extraordinary—perfect and imperfect, human and real and maddening—and he loved her.
Yet a fierce battle raged in his heart.
Could it be true that Sarah wanted only his body and his protection—and not his heart—just as Rachel had? And if that was the case, could he blame her? He had deliberately ensnared her in a web of lies. He could hardly, after that, demand her trust.
He strode into his bedroom at the inn and tossed aside hat and gloves, then rapped at the connecting door. His boots were splashed to the knees. Dirt speckled his breeches and the tails of his coat. Had Ambrose de Verrant come home to his wife like this, fresh from combat, and demanded his marital rights? And had his lady spurned him or welcomed him? After all, she would probably have been forced into marriage—
Sarah opened the door. Her cheeks colored like the petals of an orchid reflecting the setting sun.
Guy made himself step back, or he would have seized her and kissed her and carried her straight to his bed. He brushed one hand over his face, rubbing away flecks of mud.
“I’m sorry to come to you in all my dirt,” he said. “I had to make sure right away—”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m fine. You saw Lord Grail?”
He nodded. “Twelve guests stayed there that June to attend a scientific convention on the latest ideas about Egypt.”
“Egypt?”
“Pharaohs, pyramids, hieroglyphics. Ancient Egypt, long before Alexander. Grail is a patron.” He held out a slip of paper. “One of these men must have been Rachel’s lover.”
Sarah read rapidly through the list, before she glanced up. “But several of these names are Italian or French, and this—is this German?”
“Dutch. If the baby’s father returned home from Grail Hall to somewhere in Europe, that might explain why Rachel came here to a Channel port.”
Sarah walked back into her own room, poring over the list again. “None of these names rings a bell, but then why would it?”
He tore his gaze away from the sweet curve of her back, her red plaits, the vulnerable nape of her neck—as smooth as a speckled egg—as a new awareness struck him like a thunderbolt: something in her voice, something both of excitement and fear.
It held a shadow of deep happiness, yet she was not happy.
“You have news of your own?” he asked immediately. “Something that’s both pleased and upset you?”
“Yes,” she said, looking up. “Yes. I know now exactly why Rachel left you, Guy.”
He gazed at her for a moment as if the answer to all mysteries was written in the depths of her eyes.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
She sat down on a hard chair beside the window, so her face fell into shadow. “I couldn’t just sit here yesterday doing nothing, so I went to see Mrs. Lane again. Then Ellen and I walked to St. Michael’s to visit the midwife’s grave—”
“You doubted that she was really dead?”
Sarah shook her head. “No, I just wanted to see it. There was a touching verse on the headstone about repentance and the hope for salvation. However, Mrs. Lane also told me that Mrs. Medway had died at her sister’s cottage, just outside of town. So Ellen and I walked there next to see this sister—a Mrs. Siskin.”
Fifty miles was a fair distance to travel on horseback, especially for a man in a hurry. Guy’s pulse resounded through his veins as if he were still riding. He should have realized that Sarah would not rest idly at the Anchor while he was gone, yet he still felt astonished.
“You’re simply the most remarkable lady I ever met,” he said quietly.
She turned her head. “Am I? In what way?”
He dropped onto a chair, stretched out his tired legs, and closed his eyes. “Never mind! Pray, go on!”
Her skirts rustled as she stood and rang the bell. “You need food,” she said, “and coffee. I’ll order some.”
“Thank you. So what did you learn from this sister?”
Small neat shoes rapped as Sarah paced. He knew exactly how she must look: the graceful walk, the tawny eyes, the copper-and-bronze hair with just a few strands escaping over her cheeks.
“The baby was born alive,” she said.
Guy jerked upright so abruptly that he almost fell from the chair.
“Alive?”
A servant appeared at the door. Sarah ordered food and drink, then sat down again at the table. Guy pulled up his chair to join her, so they sat facing each other.
“If that’s true, how could Mrs. Lane not have known? Or did she lie to us?”
“No, she didn’t know,” Sarah said. “Rachel’s labor lasted well into the night, and the landlady was asleep long before the baby was born. However, if Mrs. Lane hadn’t kept silent to start with, Rachel might have been carried across the parish line as soon as her pains began.”
“God, it’s barbaric!”
“Yes, but no parish wants to take on any more fatherless infants, so it’s the midwife’s duty to demand the name of her lover while the mother’s in labor. That’s why I went to see Mrs. Siskin, though that isn’t what happened this time.”
Guy ran both hands back through his damp hair and tried to swallow his anger. “Then I suppose we must be grateful for the kindness of those women.”
Sarah ran her fingers over the tabletop as if her nerves were u
nraveling. “It wasn’t all kindness. Mrs. Medway already knew that she was going to steal Rachel’s baby.”
“What?” He met Sarah’s gaze, staring into the depths of her devastation, barely aware of his own. “How the devil was that done without her knowing?”
“Quite easily, I think.” She propped her forehead on both hands. “Mrs. Medway had deliberately allowed the lamp to burn down, and by the time her baby was born Rachel was barely conscious. It wouldn’t be hard to smuggle a newborn out in the dark and say that he’d been born dead.”
Guy tried to recall his fragile lover, who had turned up on his doorstep like a wounded bird in the night, her flippancy always hiding some dark sorrow in her heart. This was it. This was it.
“Dear God,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Sarah. Rachel didn’t hear the baby cry?”
“No, because Mrs. Medway handed him straight to her husband, who was waiting in the hall, and he carried him right out of the building. There was a great deal of money involved. If her baby cried then, Rachel heard nothing but her own tears.”
The list from Grail Hall lay on the table. Guy crushed it in one fist. “And one of these twelve men abandoned her to face this fate all alone.”
“Yet Rachel never betrayed him,” Sarah said urgently. “She must really have loved him—”
“Because she spent her days in Cooper Street writing frantic letters to this swine, until she feared, at last, that his abandonment was final?”
They were interrupted by the arrival of a maid carrying a tray with hot coffee, beef, and bread.
Guy filled two cups. “Mrs. Medway and her husband were paid to steal the baby?” He looked up at Sarah. “By whom?”
“By his half brother. But that terrible night weighed on the midwife’s conscience. So on her deathbed she told her sister all about it.”
“And the husband?”
“Had drowned three weeks after the baby was born.”
“Any chance that he was murdered?”
Sarah’s face blanched beneath the freckles. “I don’t know! His boat went down in a storm. I assume it was an accident.”
“But a convenient one. Never mind! Obviously, this brother had arranged everything long before that, and no one attacked the midwife, who’d have been an even more damning witness.”
“No, not as far as I know. Mrs. Siskin only said that the gentleman behind the whole scheme was a lord who was prepared to pay very good money for a healthy baby boy, especially one with blue eyes and golden hair—”
“Oh, God! Don’t tell me!” Guy’s chair clattered back against the wall as he leaped up from the table. “This man took the baby down to Devon?”
“Yes,” Sarah said. “Mr. Croft and Mr. Medway were raised together in Stonebridge: same mother, different fathers.”
“So Croft was Falcorne!” Guy spun about to face her. “Did the child die later?”
“No,” she said. “I believe that he’s still very much alive, and so does Rachel—because Mrs. Siskin wrote to tell her so, right after her sister died last April.”
“And Rachel left me the day the news of that fact arrived in Hampstead?”
Sarah smoothed out the list of names, her fingers stroking the crumpled paper, though Guy had already committed each one to memory. “She had to go after her little boy as soon as she knew. Any woman would.”
“What the hell difference would another day or two have made? If I hadn’t been away at Birchbrook—if she’d waited, if she’d told me—I could have helped her!”
She looked up, her eyes desolate, but she cut a slice of bread and beef, and set it on a plate.
“You should eat,” she said. “Men always need to eat.”
Guy laughed, but not from mirth. “Thank you—I’ll eat later. Let me get this straight: when the baby was first stolen, Mrs. Medway and her husband were sworn to secrecy, but as she lay dying—over a year later—the midwife begged her sister, this Mrs. Siskin, to contact Rachel to tell her the truth?”
“Yes.” Sarah refilled Guy’s coffee cup. “Mrs. Siskin swore to all of this on her Bible.”
“How the devil did she know where Rachel was living?”
“She didn’t. But Mrs. Medway left her sister a little legacy for the purpose, and Mrs. Siskin hired an investigator, who discovered that Rachel’s letters were being sent via Grail Hall.”
“And no one ever forgets her.” Merely from habit, Guy sipped at his coffee. “So this investigator found the servant who’d been acting as Rachel’s go-between—the same one Jack interviewed—and that boy sent him to Bath, where he discovered that Rachel’s letters were now coming from Hampstead. After which, he managed to unmask Harvey Penland, and the rest was easy. The man should work for British Intelligence.”
“Apparently he did, years ago,” Sarah said with a dry smile. “On the Peninsula, under Wellington. So Mrs. Siskin was able to tell Rachel that Mr. Croft had taken the baby to Devon, which is why she went down there that Easter.”
Guy set his cup on the table and choked down some bread. He must keep up his strength. He was going to be forced to do some more very hard riding very soon.
“Yet she didn’t know who had the baby?”
“No,” Sarah said. “Mrs. Siskin only knew that he was being raised as the son of a very wealthy man, who could give him every advantage in life. Yet how can that compensate for stealing a newborn from his mother and telling her he was stillborn?”
“It can’t,” Guy said. “Because the child must be either Lord Berrisham or little Master Norris. However, Croft would never have admitted to anything, and as soon as Rachel confronted him, he warned his master. So that’s when Rachel first came to the attention of the man we’ve been calling Daedalus—”
“It’s Lord Moorefield,” Sarah said. “I’m certain of it.”
Guy strode back and forth, vaguely aware that his wet boots squelched on the carpet.
“Why?”
“Because of the way he treats Berry.”
“That’s not enough, Sarah! Both Norris and Moorefield have sons about the right age. Both employed Croft at about the right time.”
“No,” Sarah insisted, standing up. “It’s Lord Moorefield! And if Rachel managed to get one glimpse of the toddlers, she’d have known right away that Berry was hers.”
“For God’s sake, Sarah! Even if you’re right, the earl would never have agreed to see her, let alone allow her anywhere near the little boy. No, she must have returned to London defeated, then hid in those lodgings on Goatstall Lane, where either Moorefield or Norris soon sent Croft—calling himself Falcorne—to terrify her into silence.”
Sarah blazed like the setting sun. “Why won’t you accept that Lord Moorefield is Daedalus?”
“Because you’re relying on intuition, not facts. We’ve no evidence that Rachel’s ever even seen the child.”
“Yet—even though she was afraid—she went back to Devon again. After writing to me as she did, that must have taken enormous courage.”
“Courage? More like foolishness!” Guy ran both hands back over his hair. “Why the hell didn’t she come to me for help, instead?”
Sarah crumpled back to the chair. “I don’t know, but Rachel didn’t leave the house in Hampstead because she didn’t love you, Guy. She left to go in search of her son.”
“Even that’s a huge assumption!”
“Yes,” she said. “But at least the baby lives.”
Guy stopped dead. His rage evaporated.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to shout at you.” He strode back to the table to set his chair upright, then stood with one hand resting on the rail, gazing down at her. “I know you’re happy about that, so why do you still feel so much dread?”
She shook her head. “It’s all right. We’re both upset.”
“I shall avenge your cousin, Sarah. Daedalus has finally flown too high.”
“No,” she said. “Only his son Icarus flew too close to the sun and was drowned.”
“In thi
s case, our villain may still lose his child, but I swear to you that the little boy won’t suffer for it, either way.”
She pushed away from the table to walk restlessly about the room.
“Yet there are so many mysteries left. Obviously, Rachel left Grail Hall that Christmas when she could no longer hide that she was with child, then she fled to Cooper Street to be near the coast.” Sarah picked up the list of names. “Yet her genuine letters from Grail Hall mention nothing about any of these men. Instead, she only wrote glowing accounts of remembering her meeting with you at the Three Barrels. Why?”
A horrific suspicion flashed into his mind that Sarah thought he was still hiding some desperate truth.
“Do you think that I was there at Grail Hall, as well? That I could be the father of this child, and am hiding that from you?”
She looked so startled that he immediately wished the words unsaid.
“Goodness, no! I don’t doubt your word in that.” She dropped back to her chair. “Yet don’t you see? In all those first letters when she was writing about you, Rachel must really have been inspired by falling in love with the father of her baby.”
Guy sat down and leaned back to study her face. Sarah was still afraid and he wasn’t sure why.
“I’ve already realized that,” he said. “Not very flattering to my pride, is it?”
“Nor mine!” She laughed with a flash of bravado. “Why she didn’t tell me the truth? Why did she hide her real feelings for this unknown lover and pretend it was all about her memory of one day with you?”
“Perhaps the man’s married,” he said. “Perhaps she knew he would abandon her.”
Sarah stood up and began to pace the carpet again. “Why does life have to be so chaotic and unpredictable, Guy?”
Not sure why he felt so bloody uncomfortable, he glanced out of the window. The sun had broken through the clouds to sparkle on the damp cobblestones.
“I don’t know. Perhaps there are always hidden patterns, though sometimes we can’t see them.”
She laughed again, though he feared it was only the laughter of a heartbreak that he knew no way to mend and wasn’t even sure he understood.
“Because it’s a maze,” she said. “So all we have to do is find the end of the right ball of string, and we’ll be led straight out into the sunshine.”
