Anne Ashley - Lord Hawkridge's Secret

His distinctly unpleasant smile was a threat in itself. ‘I’m a patient man. I can wait.’

She didn’t doubt that he was in earnest, and so decided it might be in her own best interests not to annoy him further, and merely regarded him uncertainly for a moment, as she positioned her back against the tree trunk beside him. ‘May I have my pistol back?’

‘No, you mayn’t!’ he snapped, slipping it into his own pocket. ‘You can sit still and be quiet.’

She dutifully obeyed the hissed command, until sometime later when the church clock at Kempton began to chime the midnight hour. ‘I can’t hear anything, can you, Hawk?’ There was no response, so she remained quietly scanning the woodland surrounding them for a further lengthy period. ‘Of course, whoever it is who is meant to be coming might be in quite a different part of the wood,’ she suggested as the clock solemnly tolled the passing of the hour.

This won her a brief, considering glance from attractive, almond shaped eyes which were noticeably less angry now. ‘There are others positioned about the area.’

She didn’t attempt to conceal her amazement. ‘You brought others from London with you?’

‘Only my servants. My groom is somewhere about.’

She relapsed into silence again, considering what he had told her, and, more importantly, what he was keeping to himself. ‘Then you must have attained help from Sir George Maynard,’ she finally announced, after deciding the local Justice of the Peace must have been the one in whom he had confided. ‘I hope Sir George’s people don’t stumble upon some hapless poacher,’ she added, after failing to elicit a response.

She was more successful this time. ‘If they see anyone, then I suspect it will be someone thus engaged. I expressed my doubts to Sir George when I saw him yesterday evening.’ He sounded quite matter-of-fact, as though he wasn’t expecting a successful outcome to the night’s escapade. ‘It’s such a deuced odd location. Why arrange an assignation in a wood when you can hold a meeting in the comfort of a house, or inn? It just doesn’t make sense.’

‘But that’s what the man told me, Hawk,’ she assured him, at last feeling the effects of sitting too long on the cold, damp ground.

His response to the shiver was to reach out and place an arm about her, drawing her closer to share the warmth of his voluminous cloak. Only for an instant did she stiffen, then he felt her relax against him, as she had done on scores of occasions in the past. He smiled to himself, remarking as he did so, ‘Anderson was near dead when you found him. He could not have been too coherent.’

She raised her eyes to the rugged profile that had remained etched in her memory during their years apart. ‘Anderson? Was that his name? What was he doing down here?’

‘He was an agent, Emily. And a damned good one.’

She frowned at this. ‘A spy, you mean?’

‘If you choose to describe it so, then yes. But he was working on behalf of this country. He was obtaining information for a man who is determined to uncover a network of spies.’

Again she studied the strong contours of his face, her eyes coming to rest on the shadow of stubble covering the cleft in his chin. He seemed inclined to confide in her now, so she felt no compunction in asking, ‘Is that what you do?’

‘Only in as much as whenever I discover information which I think might prove valuable I pass it on. My objective is somewhat different. I am determined to uncover the identity of the man who was responsible for the late Lord Sutherland’s demise, and who has been the brains behind several successful jewel robberies.’

Emily had read reports in various newspapers during recent years of the theft of certain well known and highly valuable items of jewellery which, as far as she was aware, had never been recovered. She had also known the late Viscount Sutherland, and remembered well those occasions when he had stayed in Hampshire with Sebastian. They had been very close friends since boyhood, more like brothers, and she didn’t doubt that Simon’s death must have been a bitter blow to the man beside her.

‘I did read an account of his death in the newspaper, Seb,’ she admitted softly. ‘But I understood that it was an accident.’ All at once she knew that this wasn’t the case. ‘What really happened?’

He gazed down at her, and even in the gloom she couldn’t fail to see the sadness in his eyes. ‘He committed suicide, Emily. For the sake of the family, Simon’s young brother and I did our best to make it appear an accident. I had been with Simon that evening. About an hour after I had returned home, his brother Michael came to fetch me in the carriage. He had been staying with Simon for several weeks, and had been out with friends that night. When he arrived back at the house, he discovered Simon in the library, slumped over the desk, the note he had left splattered with his blood.

‘We destroyed the note, and Michael and I informed the authorities that Simon was recovering well from the death of his wife. I told them that he had planned to spend some time with me in Kent, that we intended, among other things, to hold a competition at my ancestral home to see who was the best shot, and that I had left him earlier in the evening cleaning his pistols. The truth of course was very different.’

His sigh seemed to hang in the night air for a long time. ‘Two months before, his wife had been journeying to her parents’ home in Surrey when her coach was attacked. She had been carrying several items of jewellery with her, including the famous diamond necklace Simon had bestowed upon her shortly after their marriage. The report in the newspapers stated that she had suffered a miscarriage shortly after the attack and had died as a result. This was not true. She was violated, Emily, and then strangled. The female companion travelling with her suffered a similar fate, and the coachman and groom were murdered also.

‘Poor Simon never recovered from the death of his wife and his unborn child. Had I known what he intended to do that night I would never have left him. But I vowed, when I saw him laid to rest beside his wife, that I would avenge their deaths, no matter how long it took me.’

For several minutes Emily didn’t trust herself to speak. She may have been gently nurtured, shielded from birth from the more unsavoury aspects of life, but she knew well enough what had happened to Lady Elizabeth Sutherland.

‘Dear God!’ she muttered at length. ‘How dreadful…And how totally unnecessary. Those responsible for the attack on Lady Sutherland didn’t need to resort to such lengths. Why didn’t they simply steal the jewels and go?’

‘Because they’re unspeakable fiends, that’s why,’ he spat between gritted teeth. ‘Lady Sutherland and her servants are by no means the only ones to have fallen foul of those devils over the years. When Lady Melcham’s diamond necklace was stolen from her home, her butler became a further casualty. Although the authorities have no idea as to the identities of the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes, it is generally believed that the brains behind them is someone of my own class, someone who moves freely in Society and discovers by various means the whereabouts of these highly prized items of jewellery at times when they are most easily purloined—when they are being carried about the country, for instance, or when they are left in a house while the master and mistress are away, with fewer servants to guard them.’

As Emily sat quietly digesting what she had learned, something occurred to her as rather odd. ‘You mentioned that all the pieces stolen are well known. That being the case, how on earth do the thieves dispose of them? Surely no one in this country wealthy enough to purchase such highly prized items would be foolish enough to do so, and risk prosecution?’