Emily May - The Unmasking of a Lady

The thief gave a satisfied nod. Justice done. She glanced at the mirror. In the candlelight her eyes were black. Her face was soot-smudged and unrecognisable. For a moment she stared at herself, unsettled, then she lifted a finger to touch the faint cleft in her chin. That, at least, was recognisable, whether she wore silk dresses or boys’ clothing in rough, dark fabric.

The thief turned away from her image in the mirror. She trod quietly towards the open window.

Adam St Just found his half-sister in the morning room, reading a letter. Her hair gleamed like spun gold in the sunlight. ‘Grace?’

His sister gave a convulsive start and clutched the letter to her breast. A bundle of items on her lap slid to the floor. Something landed with a light thud. Adam saw the glimmer of pearls.

‘Is that your bracelet? I thought you’d lost—’ He focused on her face. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ Grace hastily wiped her cheek. ‘Just something in my eye.’ She bent and hurriedly gathered several pieces of paper and the bracelet.

A pearl earring lay stranded on the carpet. Adam nudged it with the toe of his boot. ‘And this?’ He picked up the earring and held it out.

Grace flushed. She took the earring.

Adam frowned at her. ‘Grace, what is it?’

‘Nothing.’ Her smile was bright, but her eyes slid away from his.

Adam sat down on the sofa alongside her. ‘Grace…’ he said, and then stopped, at a loss to know how to proceed. The physical distance between them—a few inches of rose-pink damask—might as well have been a chasm. The twelve years that separated them, the difference in their genders, seemed insurmountable barriers. He felt a familiar sense of helplessness, a familiar knowledge that he was failing in his guardianship of her.

He looked at his sister’s downcast eyes, the curve of her cheek, the slender fingers clutching the pearl earring. I love you, Grace. He cleared his throat and tried to say the words aloud. ‘Grace, I hope you know that I…care about you and that I want you to be happy.’

It was apparently the wrong thing to say. Grace began to cry.

Adam hesitated for a moment, dismayed, and then put his arm around her. To his relief, Grace didn’t pull away. She turned towards him, burying her face in his shoulder.

It hurt to hear her cry. Adam swallowed and tightened his grip on her. She’d grown thinner since their arrival in London, paler, quieter. I should take her home. To hell with the Season.

The storm of tears lessened. Adam stroked his sister’s hair. ‘What is it, Grace?’

‘I didn’t want to disappoint you again,’ she sobbed.

‘You’ve never disappointed me.’

Grace shook her head against his shoulder. ‘Last year…’ She didn’t need to say more; they both knew to what she was referring.

‘I was angry—but not with you.’ He’d been more than angry: he’d been furious. Furious at Reginald Plunkett, furious at the school for hiring the man, but mostly furious at himself for not visiting Grace more often, for not realising how lonely she was, how vulnerable to the smiles and compliments of her music teacher.

The anger stirred again, tightening in his chest as if a fist was clenched there. I should have horsewhipped him. I should have broken every bone in his body.

Adam dug in his pocket for a handkerchief. Grace had come perilously close to ruin. Even now, six months later, he woke in a cold sweat from dreams—nightmares—in which he’d delayed his journey by one day, and arrived in Bath to find her gone. ‘Here,’ he said, handing her the handkerchief.

Grace dried her cheeks.

Adam smiled at her. ‘Now, tell me what’s wrong.’

Grace looked down at her lap, at the papers and the pearls. She extracted a sheet of paper and handed it to him.

My dear Miss St Just, I have a letter of yours you wrote to a Mr Reginald Plunkett of Birmingham has come into my possession. If you want it back. In exchange for its return. I should like to return this letter to you. In exchange I want ask nothing more than your pearl bracelet.

‘What!’ He stared at his sister. ‘Someone’s blackmailing you?’

Grace bit her lip.

Adam’s fingers tightened on the sheet of paper. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Her gaze fell.

Because you were afraid I’d be angry at you, disappointed in you. Adam swallowed. He looked back at the blackmail letter without seeing it. He rubbed his face with one hand. ‘Grace…’

‘Here.’ She handed him another piece of paper. The writing was the same as the first, the intent as ugly.

‘You did what this person asked? You gave them your pearls?’ His rage made the sunlight seem as sharp-edged as a knife. The room swung around him for a moment, vivid with anger. He focused on a chair. The rose-pink damask had become the deep crimson of blood, the gilded wood was as bright as flames. How dared anyone do this to her? The sheet of paper crumpled in his fist. I’ll kill them—

‘Yes.’ Grace gathered the bracelet and the earrings within the curve of her palm.

Adam blinked. His anger fell away, replaced by confusion. ‘Then why—?’

‘Tom returned them to me.’

‘Tom?’

He blinked again at the elegant piece of paper she handed him, at the brief message, at the signature and the cat drawn in black ink at the bottom of the page. His interest sharpened. That Tom.

I believe these belong to you, Tom had written. I found them in Lady Bicknell’s possession.

‘And the letter to Reginald Plunkett?’

Grace touched a folded piece of paper in her lap.

Adam read the note again. Tom. ‘The devil,’ he said, under his breath. He fastened his gaze on his sister. ‘Was there anything else? Anything that might identify him?’

Grace shook her head.

Adam touched the ink-drawn cat with a fingertip. It stared back at him, sitting with its tail curled across its paws, unblinking, calm.

He lifted his eyes to the signature, and above that to the message. ‘Lady Bicknell,’ he said aloud, and the rage came back.

‘Apparently,’ Grace said.

The blackmail letters were clearly drafts. ‘You have the ones she sent you?’

Grace shook her head. ‘I burned them.’

Adam re-read Lady Bicknell’s letters, letting his eyes rest on each and every word, scored out or not. ‘She’ll pay for this,’ he said grimly. ‘By God, if she thinks she can—!’ He recollected himself, glanced at his sister’s face and forced himself to sit back on the sofa, to form his mouth into a smile. ‘Forget this, Grace. It’s over.’

‘Yes,’ said Grace, but her expression was familiar: pale, miserable. She’d worn it four years ago when her mother died, and she’d worn it last November when she’d learned the truth about Reginald Plunkett.

Adam reached for her hand. ‘How odd, that we must be grateful to a thief.’ He laughed, tried to make a joke of it.

Grace smiled dutifully.

Adam looked at her, noting the paleness of her cheeks, the faint shadows beneath the blue eyes. ‘Grace, would you like to go home?’ Away from the press of buildings and people and the sly whispers of gossip.

Her face lit up, as if the sun had come from behind a cloud. ‘Oh, yes!’

‘Then I’ll arrange it.’

‘Thank you!’ She pulled her hand free from his grasp and embraced him, swift and wholly unexpected.

Adam experienced a throat-tightening rush of emotion. He folded his sister briefly in his arms and then released her. How did we become so distant? He cleared his throat. ‘Have you any engagements today? Would you like to ride out to Richmond?’

‘Oh, yes! I should like that of all things!’ She rose, and the pearls tumbled from her lap on to the damask-covered sofa. A much-creased letter fluttered down alongside them. It was addressed to Reginald Plunkett in Grace’s handwriting.