“Beat you to it!”
Olivia stepped behind the shelter of a broad oak, her heart in her throat. Across the street, the door to a townhouse had just opened, discharging three footmen with luggage, and then a nanny and two boys, neither of them older than nine. The boys raced each other down the stairs into the waiting coach, jostling each other, their faces alight.
She had not allowed herself to think on them before. But in the law office, when the barrister had pulled down a volume of Debrett’s to contemplate the affected parties, she had stared at those three names printed so small beneath Bertram’s entry and felt something break inside her. In the wake of its shattering, her cold rage had deserted her. She had barely been able to speak.
She had not known how to explain what ailed her. She had asked Alastair to return her to the bachelor’s flat on Brook Street so she might rest. But instead, she had lain awake through the long slide of the morning, this first morning of the new year, thinking of the names: Peter, James, Charlotte.
On the doorstep now appeared a nanny, who made her way sedately down the steps. Trailing her was a little girl of four or five, whose hair was as red as Olivia’s. The girl managed the first step, then wobbled around to face the doorway. “Mummy, up,” she cried.
Olivia dug her fingers into the bark. That little girl was her blood. Her half sister.
An elegant brunette stepped into the clouded afternoon. She was adjusting her hat, a confection of feathers and lace that perched atop her chestnut curls at a rakish tilt. She wore eighteen years of marriage very lightly. At the right angle, she would look no older than thirty.
Her hat settled to her satisfaction, she bent down, putting her face on a level with her daughter’s. Some private conference passed between them. The girl nodded, then hooked her arms around her mother’s neck and laughed as she was lifted.
Lady Bertram carried her daughter down the steps to the coach.
Olivia loosed a breath. Anger, frustration made a sick, toxic churn in her gut. She should have listened to Alastair; should not have set foot outside the flat without him. Had she listened, they would have paid a call together, this very afternoon, to this handsome brick house. No children would have greeted them. For the luggage being strapped to the roof of the coach suggested a long journey. Olivia would never have seen the faces of the half siblings who must pay now for their father’s crime.
The footmen, having strapped down the bags, sprang off the coach to the ground, causing the vehicle to rock gently on its springs. She heard a muffled whoop from the interior, the glee of an excited boy ready for adventure.
Lady Bertram emerged from the coach, following the footmen back into the house.
Olivia made herself look away. The path she had walked through the trees curved out before her. It was only ten minutes’ walk back to the flat. She could return there, wait for Marwick. Never speak of this outing.
But how would she forget the little girl? That girl looked so much like her, they might have shared a mother as well as a father. And the boys, their eager innocence . . .
A frustrated syllable lodged in her throat, sharp and solid, choking. No! But she could neither voice it nor swallow it. She waited, staring again at the darkened doorway, as though an answer might appear there, one that would crush these doubts swarming through her.
She knew that little girl’s future. It was taking shape right now as the barristers drew up a suit, as they laid plans to expose an old injustice. In an office in Chancery Lane, a little redheaded girl was being turned into a bastard. And nobody knew better than Olivia how Charlotte’s future would look from now on. The sly remarks, the veiled leers, the snickered gossip of the self-righteous—how much worse would these be for a girl whose father was a cabinet member, the PM’s right-hand man? His disgrace would draw the attention of the nation. This little girl would not be able to escape infamy simply by boarding a train. It would follow her everywhere, documented in newspapers from Cornwall to Scotland.
That would be Bertram’s fault. Not Olivia’s! Her rage insisted that she place the blame where it belonged.
Yet she would be the instrument of this scandal. She would be the actor who ensured that for the rest of their lives, these children would always see a dim flicker of recognition after introducing themselves to strangers. She would be the cause for the moment that followed, that sinking in their stomachs as they waited to learn whether they would be scorned, or pitied, or generously spared.
She had borne the indelible mark of bastardy without pain. But would they? Would that little girl know how to lift her chin, square her shoulders, and dismiss the weight of the world?
By keeping silent, she would care for them better than her father had ever cared for her. But then there would be no justice—and moreover, no safety.
She put her fist to her mouth, biting hard on her knuckle. How completely she’d forgotten her original aim! Alastair had distracted her. He had, quite unwittingly, filled her head with empty dreams. He offered her nothing permanent, only the brief, fleeting distractions of pleasure. But somehow she had built castles on air. She was still not safe. He would not be with her forever.
But it wasn’t necessary, she thought suddenly, to make a public matter of this secret. All she needed to safeguard herself was to ensure that Bertram knew he could never hurt her—not if he wished his marriage to her mother to remain unknown. The truth could remain locked in a lawyer’s vault. The moment something happened to her, it would be exposed—but only then. That was all Bertram needed to know.
The baroness emerged from the house, wearing the slightly harried air of a woman beset by last-minute errands. She was a woman who loved her children: that much was evident. She would certainly want to know if their happiness depended on her husband’s good behavior. Her confident carriage, the arrogant tilt of her hat, made Olivia feel certain that she had the kind of poise and savvy required to ensure Bertram’s good behavior. As long as it protected her children, she would certainly keep him in line.
Olivia could put an end to all of this right now, safely, with the aid of the baroness.
She took a deep breath and started across the grass. “My lady,” she called as the baroness reached the coach. “I must speak with you.”
The woman startled, and then stared at her as one might a loathsome insect. “Must you?”
She thought Olivia a beggar, perhaps, for Olivia’s dress was much soiled from recent travel. “You don’t know who I am, but I assure you, I—”
“Oh, I know who you are.” The baroness rapped smartly on the door to the coach, which swung open. Into the interior, she directed her next words: “Mr. Moore,” she said. “Come handle this, please.”
Alastair threw open the door. “Where is she?”
Bertram, ensconced in an armchair before the fire, looked up in goggling astonishment. “What in the devil!”
Footsteps came thudding up. A footman grabbed Alastair’s elbow. “Your Lordship, he busted through—”
Bertram leapt to his feet. “Are you deranged? Coming in here like this!”
Deranged? Alastair choked down a black laugh. For two hours he’d waited in that empty flat, time crawling past, the door standing shut, listening for her footsteps. And perhaps, yes, in that slow crawl of time, he’d begun to lose pieces of himself, for sanity had supplied no solid reasons for her continued absence. She would not have run off; he’d given her no cause.
Or had he?
Since their conversation by the pond in Shepwich, she’d not seemed herself. Why had he not demanded, pressed her, for an explanation? Cowardice: he did not want to know what bothered her. He did not want to be forced to deny her the words she so clearly needed to hear. He could not love her. He could not keep her. In his old life, she would have had no place. In his new life . . . he had no faith in himself with which to make promises.
But in this new life, he waited with his heart inching up his throat, with anxiety edging into anger as the minutes dragged onward. What strange hell was this, in which a man could not keep a woman, but found her absence so profoundly terrifying that his overriding instinct was to kill someone to ensure her safety?
He withdrew his pistol from his jacket. “Deranged,” he said. “That’s a fine accusation from a man who would murder his daughter.”
“What in God’s—” Bertram sucked in a breath and stepped sideways. “Not in front of my children!”
Only then did Alastair notice the two young boys sitting cross-legged in the window seat, wide-eyed, a game of checkers forgotten between them.
Their pale, stricken faces checked his rage for a single moment. And then it flamed hotter yet. “Would that your concern encompassed all of your children. What have you done with her?”
Bertram looked over Alastair’s shoulder. “Take the boys away,” he said urgently to the footman.
For a single dark moment Alastair contemplated forbidding it. Using the safety of these children as a barter for Olivia’s. “Perhaps it would edify them to learn what you truly are.”
Bertram took a shaking breath. “Please.” He brought his hands together at his chest, clasping them into a prayerlike posture. “I have done nothing to her. Please, let them leave.”
One of the boys whimpered.
Alastair stepped aside to clear a path to the door. “Get them out.”
The older one sprang to his feet and flew out. But the younger remained, his jaw squaring, a stubborn look that reminded Alastair, with a painful stab, of Olivia: what she must have looked like, as a child. “I won’t leave you!” the boy said to his father, who did not deserve such loyalty.
Bertram knew that much, too. He made an angry sound. “Go now, I say!” He grabbed the boy, dragged him off the seat, and shoved him across the carpet toward the door.
“This is about that woman, isn’t it!” The boy craned to look back at Alastair, a brown cowlick flopping across his eye. “She ruined our trip!”
“What woman?” Alastair snapped.
Bertram shot him a warning look. “Do not involve him in this.”
He spoke grimly. “Ask him what he means.”
Bertram paused in the doorway, every line of his body suggesting furious reluctance. Finally, he put his body between Alastair’s and his son’s, and knelt to say, “What woman? When did you see her?”
The boy darted a glance between them. “Mummy said it was her fault we couldn’t go to Houghton today. But Mr. Moore said he would take care of her.” In a whisper, he added, “Mummy said not to tell you.”
Bertram touched his son’s hair very gently. “It’s all right.” But when he closed the door, he laid his head against it a moment before turning. “I had no idea,” he began, but Alastair cut him off.
“I am longing to kill you. I thought I knew the urge when we met at the club. Then I learned you had sent an assassin to throttle her.”
Bertram came off the door. “In God’s name, man, you are raving! I have never lifted a hand against her! I have never once—”
“No, you sent your man to do it—and today as well, it seems.” Alastair sighted the pistol, his vision seeming to telescope, so all he saw were Bertram’s lying, bloodshot eyes. “Such a pity that I will not shoot,” he said softly. “Provided you tell me, right now, where she is.”
“Moore! Moore is not my man!” Bertram plowed his hands through his hair. “He has never been in my employ! He is my wife’s . . .” His hands dropped. He cast a blind, panicked look around the room. “My wife,” he repeated. He focused on Alastair. “I know where she is. Come—come with me at once!”
Olivia opened her eyes. The room danced crazily, chairs hopping from side to side, the carpet falling toward the ceiling. She closed her eyes. Her head throbbed. She could feel her heart jumping in her chest like a frightened rabbit.
But somehow she was still not afraid.
She opened her eyes again. Took a long breath of air that felt like liquid flame. Moore liked best to choke her. She felt surprised every time she regained consciousness, but he apparently had a talent, or a flaw: he had throttled her into fainting four times now, but had not yet managed to kill her.
Then again, she hadn’t yet given him the answer he wanted.
“Where is the register?” he asked.
She squinted through the dimness of the room. She hoped it was dim; she did not remember him hurting her eyes. But her head pounded. She didn’t know why. Her memories felt jumbled. How long had she been sitting in this chair, her wrists tied behind her? She flexed her hands. Blood prickled painfully through her fingers.
“Where is it?” A chair scraped, banged against the floor. He came toward her. Perhaps he’d never had a choice in being a thug. He looked born to the part: short, squat, thickly muscled, with grizzled hair shorn close around his square head. His eyes were an almost colorless gray.
She was not stupid. She stared at him and did not answer.
He knelt down before her, taking her jaw in a painful grip, as though muzzling a disobedient dog. She did not like to see him from so close. His skin was smooth, almost lineless, a strange contrast to his graying hair. She closed her eyes.
His grip tightened. Pain formed a whimper in her throat. She did not loose it. She felt numb. It was strange, so strange, that she wasn’t yet afraid.
“Don’t be stupid, girl.”
She heard the puzzlement in his voice. He was a beast; he knew the smell of fear, and he recognized its absence, too. He understood her no better than she did.
“Do you want to die?”
She said nothing. A bell started ringing in the street outside, the kind used to alert passersby to animals being driven to market. They could not be in Mayfair. Livestock did not walk those streets.
He let go of her. “Like your father.” He made a disgusted scoff. “Stupid, stupid as the day is long.”
That idea pierced her strange remove. She could not let it stand. “Nothing like him,” she rasped.
“Stupid!” He spat the word. “Bloody dog. She never should have married him.”
Almost, she smiled. “On that, we agree.”
He slapped her.
She saw a star flash as her chair rocked backward. His hands bit into her arms, yanking her upright before the chair hit the ground.
They stared at each other. She thought of the pistol she’d once possessed. She would have killed him, had she held it now. What had Alastair once said? It would not have troubled her conscience to have this man’s blood on her hands.
“You needn’t be such a fool,” he said slowly. “You tell me where you keep the register, you give it to me, you can go.”
He truly did think her an idiot.
“She’ll not care what you do with yourself afterward,” he said.
She swallowed. All her spit had dried up. Her mouth was as dry as dust.
He pulled a face, then rose and walked across the room to pour himself a glass of water. His body was compact, his strides neat and athletic. He was ageless; he was the devil incarnate, perhaps.
He turned back to study her, wiping water from his mouth with the back of his hand. His swallow was loud, satisfied. Taunting her. She rubbed her tongue along her front teeth and breathed deeply. It hurt.
“My mistress has no ill will against you,” he said. “You understand? If you tell me where the register is, you need never see me again.”
His mistress? “You . . .” She understood suddenly. He was not Bertram’s man, after all. He was Lady Bertram’s man. He worked for the woman she had approached this afternoon, thinking herself so cautious, so clever, in avoiding the main threat.
A laugh sawed through her, hoarse, croaking. A mistake. His face tightened. He tossed aside the tin cup. It clattered against the wall. His neat strides ate up the floorboards; he approached, fist rising. “The next sound you make,” he said, “will be your confession, or your death rattle.”
She closed her eyes. It must be death. There was no other way to explain her serenity.
A splintering sound rent the air. Moore wheeled around. The door burst open.
She realized then why she had not been afraid. She had known somehow that Alastair would come.
He lunged for Moore, and his face was the face of the man who had closeted himself in a dark room to prevent murder, but now was in the light. His fury was quick, bare knuckled, graceless. He slammed his fist into Moore’s face, knocked him to the ground, and then stomped the man’s throat with his heel. Moore looked up, his expression one of mild surprise, like a man who expects rain and finds sunshine instead. Alastair knelt down and pummeled him again. Blood spattered. Moore’s heels scrambled on the floorboards. Wet, sick sounds rose. A crack like the snap of bone. Moore’s boots fell still. Alastair punched him again. And again. And again.
“Alastair,” she said softly.
He went still. So suddenly. The silence was shocking.
He turned to her, droplets of blood sprayed across one high cheekbone. His blue eyes were wild. But they fixed on her.
“Untie me,” she said.
He rose stiffly. Walked around her. His hot fingers closed on her wrists. A groan came from Moore, and she sensed Alastair jerk.
“He’s not getting up,” she said. Moore’s eyes had not opened. He lay insensate, his nose a pulp.
The rope loosened. She pulled her hands into her lap, massaging them. They were beginning to shake. They felt very cold. She was cold all over.
Alastair was in front of her. His hands on her shoulders. He was looking at her throat. Probably it was bruised. “Olivia,” he said. His gaze lifted. She looked into it and felt a strange jolt. She was shaking.
He pulled her into his arms. He was so much warmer than she. Suddenly she was crying. Here was where she felt safe. She had not been afraid because she had known this would be the conclusion of it: she had known he would come. Here was safety, he was safety. She was safe.
“You won’t keep me,” she whispered. She wasn’t his. His world had no place for her. How would she ever feel at home? Never, never again.
She felt his hand brush up her back, along her cheek, feeling lightly, as though he feared to break her. “What?” he asked. “What did you say?”
A deafening explosion. Alastair shoved her behind him. Pivoted.
Moore’s chest was smoking.
“He moved,” came a voice she knew too well. Disbelieving, she leaned around Alastair and saw Bertram in the doorway, still aiming his gun at Moore’s body.
“He did not move,” she whispered.
Bertram cast her a bleak look. “Perhaps not. But he would have, eventually.”
“Yes,” Alastair said. “He would have.”