Nicola Cornick - Unmasked

“I had better let you go and dress,” she said. “You will be unconscionably late for your own ball as it is. I will hunt up Hester and make sure that she is ready, too.”

“You will come, won’t you?” Laura caught her hands. “Just for a little time? Please, Mari—”

Mari had been intending to spend the evening quietly, but now that she saw her friend’s pleading face she relented. “Oh, very well. Just for a little. I suppose it cannot do any harm.”

“So that is your opinion of the fabled hospitality of the Coles,” Laura said, laughing, as she waved a farewell and made her way toward the terrace. “I will see you in a short while.”

The gardens were deserted now. The sun was sinking behind the fells and the blue of twilight was settling beneath the trees of the woodland garden. On impulse, Mari slipped off her shoes and stockings and squeezed the blades of grass between her toes, relishing their cool freshness. Like Laura she was exhausted, for she had been tense all day with the strain of meeting the guests, of discussing her garden designs with them, of playing her part and putting on a show. Now that evening had come and the shadows had fallen she wanted the relief of sloughing off that personality, washing it away along with the heat of the day. The trouble with reinventing herself was that every so often she wanted to shake off respectable Mrs. Osborne and be Mari, the girl who had always had a streak of wildness in her.

She stood by the fountain and looked longingly at the refreshing shower of droplets. Her mouth felt dry just thinking about its cool, quenching pleasure. She looked around. There was nobody there. Temptation beckoned. No one would see her. Retreating into the dark shade of pines that bordered the cascade, she started to strip off her clothes.

IT WAS PAST EIGHT o’clock at night when the mail coach from Skipton to Leyburn stopped at the gates of Cole Court and deposited two parcels, seven letters and Nicholas Falconer.

Nick had spent the day in Skipton, speaking with the various forces of law and order that had so far singularly and spectacularly failed to capture the Glory Girls. He had left behind him a disgruntled Captain of the Yeomanry, two angry justices of the peace and a fuming town constable, who were all most put out that the Home Secretary was suddenly taking an interest in their local affairs. Nick had left Dexter Anstruther to smooth them over and Anstruther would be joining him in the morning when all their baggage had arrived from London. For now, Nick was able to look forward to a reunion with Charles Cole, who was one of his oldest friends, and the promise of the legendary Cole Court hospitality.

He threw a word of thanks to the coachman, shouldered his kit bag and started off up the driveway before the lodge-keeper could protest that he had the gig standing by to convey the Duke’s guest to the house. The coachman looked at the groom and they both cocked a curious eyebrow at the lodge-keeper. Visitors to Peacock Oak were frequent, for the Duke and Duchess of Cole kept open house, and that very day had unveiled their new pleasure gardens to an audience of invited guests. Most visitors, however, did not travel by mail coach, nor carry their own luggage.

“That’s the Quality for you,” the lodge-keeper said, shrugging, as he bent to lift the sack of mail. “Do as they please.”

“Quality? Him?” The groom stared up the driveway after the fast-disappearing figure. “Shabby as you like and no servant?”

But the coachman knew better. “Old soldier,” he said wisely. “Carries his own kit.”

“That’s Major Falconer,” the lodge-keeper boasted. “Heir to a Marquisate. Scottish title, mind, but even so. I heard he was at school with his grace.”

“Well, stone the crows,” the groom said, scratching his head. “You never can tell.”

They sat watching Nick until he passed a turn in the driveway and was swallowed up between the huge oaks of the home park. Then an irritable voice from within the coach asked when they were to resume the journey. The coachman recollected himself and picked up the reins and the lodge-keeper waved a cheery hand and hefted the sack of mail away.

As the sound of the coach died away, silence settled once again over Cole Court and Nick shifted his bag from one shoulder to the other to ease the ache. This was not how he would have chosen to spend his army furlough, despite the pleasure of renewing acquaintance with his old friend, but then Rashleigh had never had any consideration for the needs of others and it was typical that in his death he would cause as much trouble as in life.

Nick had shied away from all social engagements since Anna’s death, preferring instead the rigors of life on campaign. Somehow the physical hardship of army life assuaged the guilty ache in his soul that he had not been there to help Anna when she needed him. But now he had been obliged to put aside his own preferences for a little and rejoin the Ton even if it was only as a cover to hunt down a notorious criminal.

Nick thought about the girl at the tavern frequently, more often than he wished. The memory of her haunted him, superimposing itself on the older, more faded memories of Anna, demanding his attention in a manner that both obsessed him and fed his guilt. He did not seem able to escape her. He had held the girl in his arms and had wanted her. He had desired her more than any woman he had known. He had dreamed about her every night for a week after they had met in the tavern, vivid erotic dreams from which he had woken panting and hard, desperate to assuage the ache in his body. It seemed like a double betrayal of Anna’s memory to want to make love with a woman who must be a harlot and a murderer, and the guilt flayed him alive. For hours he had sat with his miniature of Anna clasped in his hand, trying to force his thoughts back on to his dead wife and away from the woman who had bewitched him. He had turned his back on all women since Anna’s death, yet suddenly he found himself lusting after a girl who was everything that sweet, delicate Anna was not. He had tried to bury the memory and turn his heart to ice again but he could not forget the girl in the tavern. His emotions, once reawakened, were not so easy to turn off again and he hated himself for it. He had fallen slave to lust and he did not seem able to escape it.

Thinking and hoping that it was just a physical need for a woman—any woman—he had sought out one of the most celebrated courtesans in Town. Their encounter had been torrid and intense and entirely devoid of any real emotion on either side. At the end of the night she had kissed him affectionately and invited him to call on her again whenever he chose, and he had left feeling strangely unsatisfied. His body was sated but his mind felt sharp and unfulfilled. He needed to find the woman from the Hen and Vulture again. He wanted her with an ache that was ever more powerful.

As he walked up the driveway toward the lights of Cole Court, Nick’s thoughts turned inevitably once more to the girl in the tavern. Could such a woman really be Glory, the infamous highwaywoman whose band was responsible for the rather quixotic robbing of the rich to give to the poor? Nick was of the opinion that Glory would not have been so notorious were it not for the fact that she was a woman. Her deeds had caught the public imagination like a latter-day Robin Hood. Ballads and poems were written in her honor. She was talked of in the taverns and the clubs, her exploits celebrated in toasts and speeches. She was a popular heroine. And now he was here to track her down so that Lord Hawkesbury could hang her. He would likely end up the least popular man in the country if he carried it through. But leaving aside Lord Hawkesbury’s commission, he had a personal quest to fulfill. Glory, the girl in the tavern, had played him for a fool and he wanted revenge.