Lovely Lying Lips

by Valerie Sherwood

  “We could be making love at our leisure in our own bed tonight,” Tony had sighed, regarding her with rueful though kindling eyes.

  “Ah, but isn’t this more fun?” She had flashed a gamin smile at him and his hard face had relaxed.

  “Margaret, Margaret,” he had murmured. “When will you grow up?”

  “Never!” she had promised lightly, holding out her white arms to him and letting her gown of amber velvet, darkly spangled with gold and brilliants, glide down her lithe body to the floor. And then, tauntingly, with a wicked little upward smile at him, her chemise.

  As always, Tony Warburton had been rocked by the sight of her proud, naked loveliness. “You cast two shadows,” he had muttered, for the moonlight coming in through the leaf pattern of the trees struck against the window glass and rendered a lighter and a darker shadow for each of them. “Yet you seem to shine with your own light....”

  Margaret, so sure of herself, had laughed contentedly and thrilled as he took her—almost reverently—into his strong arms.

  “So I am two women—a light and a dark.” She lifted her head, swanlike, for his kiss. “It is a portent, Tony.” Teasingly. “The moon shadows say you will have two women in your life!”

  Tony Warburton never answered. His lips had found hers and the wildfire passion that always surged tinderlike between them worked again its old magic. His only answer was a soft sound deep in his throat, and Margaret’s own sigh matched his as she melded her body against him.

  It was the last time they had ever made love. The next week had found them quarreling, with Tony impatient to wed. And then had come that terrible afternoon at Huntlands when Ralph Pembroke had fought Tony for her and lost. No—she had lost. She had lost Tony, and then her beauty.

  She had lost everything.

  The moon shadows had been right. They had predicted two women in his life.

  She wrenched herself back to the present. “Here, try this on.” She held out a garment to Constance, watched as she struggled into it.

  “This is beautiful,” sighed Constance, looking down at the partially constructed velvet bodice, of a rich lustrous purple just now being overlaid with silver braid. She kicked out the flowing trained skirt that matched the bodice and swept out behind her elegantly.

  “Yes, it does move well,” said Margaret with just a hint of shakiness in her voice. “And with a silver-mauve petticoat—of thin satin, I think, it should do very well on a dance floor.”

  That was the first word that Constance had had that Margaret envisioned a future for her that included dancing. She was almost afraid to ask where she would be dancing.

  In the spring she found out.

  “There is nothing for you here on these lonely moors,” Margaret told her in an almost offhand manner. “You are going north. To Somerset, to your Uncle Clifford at Axeleigh Hall. I have already written to him and he has arranged everything. And you will need these clothes, for life is very festive there.”

  Constance felt her breath leave her. In these lovely ball gowns she would dance at Axeleigh Hall, home of the father she could never claim! Margaret had arranged it all. She was going north, north to her heritage!

  Resolutely she put from her the thought of Dev. He had left her, run away with Nan. She would take this sudden bounty that life offered, seize it with both hands, cling to it! She would forget him!

  Her world would have rocked beneath her had she known the bitter truth—that Dev, ambushed on the Great North Road in early spring, had taken a slash from a saber and had lain, more dead than alive, in a hut outside Lincoln while Nan nursed him.

  “Go south and bring Constance to me,” he had asked Gibb weakly. “For we’ve such a haul of gold as will take us to America—and to her heart’s desire.”

  And Gibb, fearing this was a last request, had ridden south. And returned with the news that Constance was gone.

  Dev’s face turned gray when he heard it, and he rolled over on his side and would not speak. Nan and Gibb tiptoed out and left him alone with his sorrow and his grief.

  But when he mended at last—and he seemed now uncaring whether he mended or not and took a long time healing—it was a new and harder “Gentleman Johnny” who harried the highways. He was not so “dainty in those he robbed” now. Although he passed by the feeble and the elderly and never robbed a child, Gibb had seen him seize a necklace from around the neck of a beautiful woman so hard that the pearls cascaded like frozen tears as he ripped it off. A slender dark-haired woman. It was the memory of Constance that drove him.

  He had become bolder too, now that Constance was not there to plead with him to “have a care for his life.” Now he brazenly harried the shipping. Careless how his gold slipped through his fingers, hardly a cottager along the road but had known his largess. It bought him places to hide, allowed him to slip out like a shadow to pounce upon an unfortunate dray or wagon and demand “toll” to pass safe through his territory. And safe he kept them. Safe from other marauding highwaymen. He shot two ruffians who interfered with him and had a celebrated swordfight with another. When ambush was attempted, he and Gibb came out the victors, triumphing over their kind and leaving them dead behind them, their bodies fallen to the great slabs of Roman stones that made up the Great North Road.

  “Gentleman Johnny” had forgotten he was ever Deverell Westmorland, grandson of an earl. He had become a dangerous man, “king” of the Great North Road.

  Mistresses he had many and they meant little to him, passing through his hands like the gold and as soon forgotten. Not one of them ever reached his ice-bound heart.

  Constance had done that to him—Constance who had loved him. And if she had been aware of it, it would have broken her heart.

  Now with spring blanketing the moors with wild flowers and softening with blowing grasses the shapes of the far high tors, Margaret began constructing a dress for herself. A dress of shimmering bronze silk and copper lace—a dress of dreams.

  “Oh, Margaret,” whispered Constance, staring down at the lovely dress. “ You’re going with me!”

  And Margaret lifted her head from her careful stitching and gave Constance a radiant look. “There is a masked ball held every year at Huntlands. Even though his father is dead, I understand Tom Thornton still keeps to the old custom. We will attend this ball—you and I. And there I will deliver you into the hands of my brother—and return at once to Dartmoor.” She held up a silencing hand as Constance started to protest. “The world believes me dead and I wish them to go on believing it.”

  You wish Tony Warburton to believe it, and to you he is all that matters, thought Constance, and the knowledge hurt her—like the deep probing of an old wound.

  But her heart would have beat faster if she had known the wild dream that was forming in Margaret’s flame-red head.

  She was going back to the Valley of the Axe. Back to the Midsummer Masque at Huntlands, back where she had once been a beauty and a belle.

  She was going to dance with Tony Warburton.

  One last time.

  Part Two

  Midsummer Madness

  Now she feels she has in vain crossed a bleak and endless plain,

  Where God was not, where good and evil blend,

  And she knows she stands at last at a crossroads with her past,

  A place where truth must out and lies must end!

  Torquay, South Devon,

  Early Summer 1684

  Chapter 18

  The worst thing that happened to delay their going was the matter of the boots. The heel came off one of Margaret’s riding boots and she frowned down at it. “I am sure it can be pounded back on,” she muttered. “But who’s to say it will not come off again? And these boots have grown shabby and scuffed with all this walking across the rough ground of the moors. I really need a new pair....” Her face brightened. “You were saying only yesterday that if we are to attend a ball you wished you could practice your dance steps. We will both practice our dance steps! We’
ll run down to Torquay, where I’ve no doubt I can purchase a very good pair of boots. And we’ll stay at the inn and dine in the common room and snare us some fellow to dance with!”

  Constance looked up in excitement. Not only to Somerset, but to Torquay as well—she could hardly credit it!

  Morning found them on their way to Torquay, for once Margaret had set her mind to do a thing she moved on it immediately.

  They came riding down out of the bracing winds of the moors into the balmy breezes of Torquay and Constance saw for the first time the rugged red cliffs and sandy beaches that overlooked Tor Bay and the English Channel. Little more than a village built on steplike terraces that rose from the beach, with flowers spilling over the low stone walls. Small though it was, there was nevertheless a good bootmaker here and Margaret quickly took herself to his shop, leaving Constance to prowl about the ruins of ancient Tor Abbey with its lovely pointed arch portal. South of the gateway she found the thirteenth-century building they called the “Spanish barn” because four hundred Spanish prisoners—survivors of Spain’s ill-fated Armada—had once been crammed into it.

  Bursting with lore, and with an armload of yellow flowers she had purchased from a vendor, Constance climbed the steep terraced hillside to the inn where they would stay the night. Margaret was waiting for her, pacing about outside in her riding clothes and riding mask, tapping with her whip on her new boots.

  “I’m trying out my new boots,” she called blithely to Constance, as she pushed back her red hair, which was blowing in the salt breeze. “Now’s the time to find out if they rub!”

  Constance had expected this expedition to be like the one to Totnes—having Margaret, despite her brave talk, retreat to her room and have her meals sent up. But it was not. Still clad in their riding clothes and riding boots—and with Margaret’s black velvet riding mask firmly in place—they took a position at the long board in the inn’s common room to await their dinner.

  They were awaiting something else too, Constance guessed, and she was proved right when into the common room walked a well-dressed though dusty traveler—who stopped at sight of them and stared.

  “It would seem we’re making an impression,” murmured Margaret, whose slow smile below her mask showed her even white teeth. “Yes, I think the gentleman dances. Observe the swinging way he walks, Constance, the fine cut of his clothes. Let me do the talking,” she added hastily as the stranger approached and found a seat across from them at the common board, for there was only one long table on either side of it were wooden benches for the guests.

  “A mild climate this,” he greeted them with a smile. “But perhaps you ladies are no stranger to it?”

  “No, this is our first time here,” admitted Margaret, giving him a languorous look. “We are from Wiltshire.”

  Encouraged, the gentleman introduced himself to Mistress Perdant and Mistress Dacey as Owen Carey of Wales, traveling “for his health.” Constance, who knew something of Dissenter politics, judged him to be one of the itinerant couriers who were marching all across England to drum up interest in Monmouth’s cause. She yearned to ask him about it, but was discouraged the moment she mentioned politics by a kick beneath the table from Margaret. After that she kept her eyes cast down upon her trencher.

  If that annoyed the dark young Welshman, he did not show it. Faced with two beautiful women, he ignored the shy one and conversed with the worldly Mistress Perdant.

  Carey had, it seemed, been recently across the ocean. Holland, thought Constance, where the Duke fled after discovery of the Rye House Plot. But she kept silent. And under Margaret’s adroit questioning as they consumed their pilchard and wine, the Welshman admitted—indeed bragged—that he knew all the new dance steps.

  “But you must show us!” cried Margaret. “As you can see, we are all alone here.” And indeed they were for the moment the only guests in the common room. “The floor is spacious and if music could be brought, we could dance a measure!”

  Not one to overlook an opportunity to dance with so lustrous a lady, Owen Carey beckoned the landlord who promptly brought out a battered viola da gamba and launched into a fair rendition of “Greensleeves.” Soon he was playing what Owen wanted him to and Owen himself had thrown a leg over the bench and was nimbly demonstrating his steps upon the floor.

  “Now is our chance, Constance,” murmured Margaret. “Observe well, for you may yet be dancing these steps in Somerset!”

  But demonstration was not enough. Owen Carey, with a flourish, insisted Margaret join him on the floor. Although she laughed that she would cut a poor figure in her riding boots, she held up her skirts with one hand to keep her spurs from catching in her petticoat and moved about, as light-footedly as did he.

  Constance watched raptly, memorizing the steps for later practice.

  And then it happened.

  Owen Carey, who had been heavily fortifying himself with the landlord’s smuggled wine, cried, “I must see the face of this lady who has stolen my heart!” And with the words, snatched away Margaret’s mask.

  The result was immediate and electric.

  Margaret’s arm flashed back and she delivered a stinging slap to the Welshman’s face at this impertinence. Margaret was a strong woman and her blows were not to be taken lightly. Caught off balance, Owen Carey was knocked backward. But her striking hand did not register on Carey with half the force of her scars. He slipped and fell to one knee, skittering across the floor. Still staring, he scrambled up and ran outside just as the music of the viola came to a sudden discordant halt.

  Constance could cheerfully have killed the Welshman. She was terrified lest he had not only ruined their venture into Somerset but sent poor Margaret into perpetual solitude.

  She watched in an agony of doubt as Margaret bent down and retrieved her mask from the floor. Margaret’s green eyes were calm as she rose, her expression as impassive as if nothing untoward had happened. Only her hands betrayed her. They shook a little as she smoothed back her flame-red hair and fastened the mask on once again.

  “Never mind,” she reassured a white-faced Constance. “This has happened to me before. Give the landlord a coin, will you, Constance? For he has contributed mightily to our merriment this night.”

  With regal aplomb she strolled toward the stairs, her handsome skirts swishing about her new riding boots.

  Constance felt her throat close up. She was vastly proud of Margaret as she gave the uneasily smiling landlord a coin and followed her up the rude wooden stairway that led up to their bedchamber.

  They left early in the morning, leaving behind them the flower-choked stone walls and the wheeling seabirds, the puffins and the kittiwakes and gulls, and heading back toward the high tors with their blowing grasses, their soaring buzzards and falcons. They did not see the Welshman again.

  At first Margaret thought to wear a black wig for their journey north, but just before leaving the moors she discarded that idea. “I do not like wigs,” she confessed. “I feel a deal more comfortable wearing my own hair.”

  “But suppose Tony Warburton recognizes you?” faltered Constance. “What then?”

  Margaret shrugged her elegant shoulders fatalistically: what would be would be.

  Only later did Constance, heartsick, come to realize that Margaret wanted Tony to recognize her, to single her out from the crowd—whatever the cost.

  Margaret instructed her as they rode north.

  “From talking to you, I’ve learnt of your strong Dissenter views,” she told Constance. “Be not so frank with them when you reach Axeleigh. My brother Clifford is an easygoing man. His wife was a lightskirt and flighty but Clifford staunchly believes that everything will work out if one only gives it time.”

  Constance gave her an uneasy look. “And what of Claxton House? What shall I say about my life there?”

  “With all but Clifford avoid the subject,” counseled Margaret. “Yorkshire is far away and Clifford will claim you as a distant cousin.”

  “
But legally I am still Hugh’s ward. If he were to find out where I am, so vengeful is he that he might come to Somerset to claim me!”

  “If he were to be so foolish,” Margaret’s voice was dry, “Clifford would deal with him. And if Clifford were ill or away, a word to Tony would be sufficient!”

  Pride rang in her voice and a picture sprang up before Constance of Tony Warburton—the picture the locket showed. For once when they were caught on the moors in a drenching rain they had come running in to tear off their cloaks and shake them and stand before the welcome fire to warm themselves. And Margaret, pulling off her wet cloak, had torn free the locket, which had somehow become entangled in the collar of her cloak.

  Constance saw it fall—and snap open as it landed. She bent to pick it up and the firelight revealed a face to stop the heart. So this was Tony Warburton! A pair of cold gray eyes looked back at her from a strong sardonic face with clean-cut features, a face that looked as if laughter would light it with a wicked grin. His dark hair was silky and thick, cascading to his shoulders, his brows straight and dark, his jawline strong and clean-shaven. Margaret had not exaggerated when she had said he appealed to women! Constance hated him for being so handsome—and so faithless.

  She had snapped the locket shut and in silence handed it to Margaret. The next day she noted that Margaret was again wearing it around her neck but on a different and slightly stronger golden chain.