His wife had not seen him clearly. Her reasons for it, Olivia could not begin to guess. But the duchess’s most common jibe—that Marwick wholly misread her—was materially contradicted by these letters, the ink of which was blurred and smeared, the creases thinned. Each page had been handled repeatedly, folded and unfolded again and again.
She stared at the lot. I should burn them. Reading them would not aid his recovery.
But it was not her right to decide that for him.
She put them back, carefully replacing the book that had lain atop them—then paused, frowning, and gave the book a little shake.
It was hollow.
Holding her breath, she opened the cover—and discovered, nestled in the carved-out innards, his pistol.
A chill ghosted down her spine. I am not that kind of thief. I have a specific purpose here.
But the purpose was self-defense. And a pistol would aid that cause immeasurably.
Undecided, she carried the pistol over to the foot of the bed, laying it on the carpet before turning to the matter of the locked chest.
As she had feared, the lock was not simple, and refused to yield to her hairpin. But Lilah, the thief turned typist, had contended with such locks. She had said once (as Amanda had gasped with shock, throwing Olivia pointed, censuring looks, looks that condemned her for encouraging such talk) that when a lock was complex, it was easier to leave it locked; to attack whatever it was attached to, instead.
Olivia had prepared for this. She had stolen a small hatchet from the garden shed. She was crafty like a thief; perhaps she was born to it, this state of evil her natural mode. How awful. She would not think of it.
There was a fractional gap between the brass plating of the lock and the wood of the chest. She fit the edge of the axe into this gap and pried. The plate loosened just enough to permit her to crack the trunk open. But the opening was not wide enough for her hand.
On a deep breath, she slammed the blade down into the gap. The clang was so loud that her heart stopped; she hunched there, daring not to breathe, waiting to be discovered.
But nobody came. She heard nothing save the deep silence of idle afternoon: the maids had completed their morning rounds, and the staff was now gathered for a late luncheon that Olivia herself had scheduled, on the pretext that they should all be together, should the housekeeper be offered the position and wish to meet them.
Her own absence would raise brows, no doubt. But everyone would think they understood it. Sour over being replaced, surely she would not desire to meet the new housekeeper.
She laid down the axe. Now she could see the mechanism of the lock, the cylindrical shaft that pierced the body of the chest. She grasped the edges of the plate, braced her foot against the chest for ballast, and pulled. It required her to rock the lock from side to side, but she made a millimeter of progress, and then another. Her arm and shoulder began to burn; she allowed herself ten seconds’ rest, to recover her breath and let her muscles ease, before resuming. Another millimeter—now a quarter inch, all at once—
The lock came out in her hand.
She looked at what she had done, and she was shocked. Fear, true fear, was a cold ringing note, like the first note that opened a symphony, a single pure tone that built and built, until it shuddered out through the air, and the orchestra joined in, and became a maelstrom.
There would be no disguising what she had done to this trunk. At his first step into the bedroom, he would see it and know.
She threw up the lid. A sob burst from her. The chest held nothing. Nothing of interest. A wreath of dry roses. A wedding dress of antique gold lace, scented heavily with lavender. She pawed it aside and found hidden in one of its flounces a photograph: Marwick standing beside a small, fox-faced brunette, a woman with a face like a heart, with eyes that were long and exquisitely formed, a smile like a cat’s.
Olivia stared at the woman. Margaret de Grey, late Duchess of Marwick. She was as perfectly formed as a porcelain miniature. Dark and sultry, her cupid’s-bow mouth naturally glamorous. She wore a collar of diamonds that a czarina might have envied. And she had had him, and she had discounted and abused him. Why? How could she have done it?
There was no time for this.
Olivia put down the photograph and groped under the dress—then gasped as her hands closed on smooth leather.
Gently, so as not to rip the dress (But why not? Why mustn’t she rip it? It should be ripped. It should be burned; why did he save these things?), she pulled out the portfolio.
He keeps a dossier . . .
Margaret de Grey had no doubt lied about many things—but she hadn’t lied about this. The papers inside were organized into neat, alphabetized sections, the names familiar to those who followed politics: Abernathy. Acton. Albemarle. Axelrod. Barclay. Balham.
Bertram.
She slid out the papers, replaced the portfolio beneath the dress, and turned once more to the picture.
Marwick looked so young in the photograph. There was a hint of a smile on his lips—not sarcastic, not ironic. He looked full of life, hope, energy.
He had deserved so much better than the woman beside him.
He deserved so much better than to be thieved from by his housekeeper.
She sat paralyzed, gripped by numb horror. Her valise was already packed. Once below, nobody would stop her from slipping out the back passage to the street. Why was she about to weep? Why could she not look away from his face?
It is too late. You have done it. The lock is ruined. He will know. It is done.
“Good-bye, Alastair,” she whispered. “Be better. Be well.”
“What,” came his cool reply from behind her, “are you doing?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Fear was a chasm that opened beneath her, stealing her balance as Marwick stalked toward her. She stumbled backward until her shoulders hit the wall. “I—I wasn’t . . .”
His face was terrible, rigid with rage. He looked from her, to the trunk, and then back to her. The smile that corrupted his mouth seemed to carry fangs in it.
“You are stealing from me,” he said. “Mrs. Johnson.”
“No.” But she was. “You don’t understand . . .”
It was his expression that silenced her. The way his rage collapsed suddenly and completely into contempt. “Don’t I?” He studied her now as he might some peculiar specimen of trash, distasteful, tediously in the way. “What don’t I understand?”
He did not sound as though he cared.
“We have a common enemy! Lord Bertram—I needed a way to oppose him—”
On a noise of disgust, he turned away. The sight of his broad back bewildered her into silence. She had imagined, somehow, that he might want to know what she meant.
He knelt down by the trunk. In a moment he would put everything together, see what she had taken, what she still clutched beneath her arm. She must tell him. Now. “Lord Bertram,” she said. “For years he has dogged me. You must listen. I came here specifically—”
“Did he send you, then?” He opened the trunk.
“No!” She came off the wall. But when she started to approach, he sent her a look that struck like a fist of ice. “He is abhorrent to me. Believe me. I had looked for a way to stop him, and I came here when I realized—”
“And here I thought you came to apply for a maid’s position.”
She stared at him. “Do you—do you not even wish to hear me out?”
His laughter sounded mechanical. He lifted out the hem of the wedding dress, the brocade glimmering. “This belonged to my wife,” he said. “She taught me a great deal. She left me well equipped to hear all manner of stories. I can’t imagine yours will be more surprising than hers.”
Her stomach cramped. She felt physically ill. That he would compare her to his wife . . . “I’m not like her.”
“Oh?” He looked up at her. “Did you know her?”
His tone was all wrong. Cordial, pleasant, as though they were standing
in a corner at some party, making polite conversation. “I’m not like her,” she whispered.
He fixed her in a long steady look. “You mean to say, your actions do not match your character. I am mistaking you. This is not what it seems. That’s what you mean?”
“Yes!” She hesitated. Where to begin? With the letters she had uncovered from his wife? But she had not uncovered them, she had stolen them. From Elizabeth—from his sister-in-law. How would that confession make him eager to hear, to believe, the rest of her tale? “It’s complicated,” she said rapidly. “But if you would let me explain—my mother, she and Bertram knew each other from her childhood—and I promise you, it will all make sense—”
He rose. She told herself she would not retreat, but when he walked toward her, she hit the wall again. “Yes,” he said, “I am wholly mistaken. I have misinterpreted you entirely. You have a brilliant explanation, which will show you to be not a thief, but a victim. Even, I suppose, noble in your motives.” His words assumed a mocking edge, drilling into her brain like gunshots: “Honorable. Righteous. Misunderstood.”
He gripped her arm and dragged her around, so that she looked into the grand mirror over his dressing table. Four feet high and half as wide, it showed them both: his hard mouth, his merciless, level stare. Her face looked white and blank, the face of a foiled thief, a fraud and a liar. She stared into her wide, panicked eyes. They did not look innocent.
“And yet when you pass a mirror,” he said conversationally, “for a moment, you startle. You wonder, who is that, looking back at you? This criminal face, this guilty air.” His lips twisted into something like a smile. “I am sure you have some excellent reason for your crimes. Tell me, while you were ransacking my belongings, did you find my wife’s letters?”
It hit her, like an anvil to her chest, that nothing she said now would convince him. For he would imagine that she had invented her story on the spot, after reading the letters from his wife.
Worse, if he discovered the letters she had stolen—his wife’s letters, which she carried in her apron, for she’d meant to return them before slipping out—he would misinterpret her possession of them. Did he send you? he had asked.
That she had so many letters written by and to Bertram would only make her look guilty of collusion with him.
“I didn’t want to do this,” she said miserably. “I took no pleasure in deceiving you.”
Marwick pressed his cheek to her hair. She heard him inhale, and some deranged part of her quivered to life at his nearness, at the smell of him, the warmth of his skin. The saner part of her froze like a field mouse beneath the passing shadow of a hawk. She dared not breathe.
“Of course you took no pleasure,” he murmured. His breath was hot along her skin, waking perverse echoes of last night’s pleasure. “Enjoying it would force you to acknowledge your own guilt. Far easier to imagine yourself the martyr, I imagine. Far easier to sleep at night. He must have paid you very well to do his dirty work.”
“He did not pay me,” she whispered. “I loathe him. And I do not sleep so well.”
“No,” he said after a pause. “Nor do I.” He pulled away from her. “So tell me, Mrs. Johnson. In my shoes, what would you do with yourself? Would you summon the police, or would you effect a more immediate justice?”
She could not imagine what he meant by that. She did not want to find out. “I want to destroy Bertram,” she said very rapidly. “You are right, I know what your wife did, and so I know that you and I have a common cause—”
“Oh, you know of that? How delightful.” He paused, looking struck. “Of course, that explains a great deal. No wonder you showed such courage. When did you learn of her adventures, I wonder? Before I threw the bottle? Before we met in the library? Before the garden, this morning? Well?”
She stared at him, strangled by her own deceit, and then flinched as he put his hand to her cheek, spanning her face from temple to chin.
“I am glad you know the truth,” he said quietly. “I’m sure it did much to quell your fear of me. For you realized I was not worth the fear: you realized what a pathetic object of mockery I am.”
She shrank into herself. “No! I never thought such a thing!”
His hand tightened slightly. Just a fraction; just enough to make her aware of how close his thumb lay to her jugular. “Oh, but surely it did comfort you,” he said. “I could not be so fearsome, after all—not if the woman I’d married could conspire so freely against me, without the least fear of discovery.”
“I would”—even as she spoke, she knew the stupidity, the futility of it—“I would help you to ruin Bertram. I would help you.”
“Indeed?” He seemed to consider this, then nodded. “But conspiracies require trust. Could you trust me, Mrs. Johnson?”
This sudden turn threw her. “Yes,” she whispered. If only he would remove his hand from her throat.
“Is that so? If only you could see your expression. You’re terrified of me. How could you trust a man who terrifies you?”
She swallowed. “I . . .”
“But I have been told,” he continued in that smooth, unruffled voice, “that my judgment is flawed. Untrustworthy. I am forced to agree. Fool me once, so the saying goes. But here, now, with you—I’ve been fooled twice. So I leave it to you to help me decide, for clearly my judgment is foul: am I able to trust you? Is this the face of an innocent before me? Or do you agree that what I see in your face is the panic and guilt of a liar?”
The word cracked like a whip. “I never meant to do you harm! Think! Did I treat you like a woman who’d chosen to hurt you?”
He tilted his head, as though to see her better. “How interesting,” he said, “that you imagined you had the choice.”
His hand slid down her throat, cupping, very lightly, the span of her shoulder. His forefinger traced her collarbone through her wool jacket—a jacket that felt suddenly far too thin. He watched how he touched her, his expression opaque. “What is in that portfolio you dropped?”
He would discover it anyway. “Your evidence on Bertram.”
“So that’s why you’re here? He sent you to retrieve it?”
Suddenly she was angry. After all she had done for him, could he not even listen? “He didn’t send me. I told you. He’s my enemy as much as yours. My mother—”
“Then how did you know I had material that might destroy him?”
It was time to confess the matter of the other theft. “Your—your wife,” she stammered. “She wrote him letters—”
His palm covered her mouth. “Shh. Let’s not speak of her, shall we? She rather ruins the mood.”
As his free hand closed on her waist, she froze, then forced herself to meet his eyes, willing him to remember himself. To remember her, and what had passed between them.
But his face now was a mask of concentration. And he touched her as though she were not human, but a doll, dumb, witless, fashioned for his enjoyment. His gaze followed his roving hand, which made light little touches down her body, skimming the side of her breast, shaping her waist, molding the curve of her hip, skating—she sucked in a sharp breath—over one buttock, which he palmed and then squeezed, slowly and deliberately.
It was awful. It was the opposite of what he had done in the library—which, while more forceful, had never been brutal, for she had willed him to do it, then. Against all good sense, she had wanted it.
“Stop it,” she whispered. “I don’t want this.”
“But what a sweet body you have,” he murmured. “And I have unfinished business with it.” When he lifted his eyes to meet hers, he gave her a slow smile. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am that you’re a liar.”
She had only one choice. It rose in her mind now, the vision of the gun still lying on the carpet.
Her crimes had already compounded. There was no reason not to add to them. And—to hell with him! After all she had done, that he would not even listen—he deserved nothing from her.
His hand
slid back up her body. He leaned toward her—
Now! She twisted out of his grip and lunged across the room. He grabbed her skirt, yanking her to her knees, dragging her back toward him—but her hand closed around the pistol. She rolled onto her back, and when he saw what she held, he released her. Lifting his palms, he backed away.
She sat up, breathing raggedly, and then scrambled to her feet.
“Will you shoot me, then?”
No man should ask that question with such idle curiosity. She stared at him, struggling to regain her breath, to make her brain function. Did he not care if he lived or died? “I should shoot you,” she said bitterly. “You idiot. Perhaps you were right—all the stories about you were false. For what kind of politician does not know how to listen?”
He snarled at her. “I would rather hear—”
“Throw me the key!” She was done listening to him, too. She took a step toward the door. “Do it!”
Sneering, he pulled the key from his pocket and tossed it onto the carpet by her feet. “This is a capital offense. Brandishing a weapon with the intent to harm.”
She felt suddenly airless, as though the noose were already tightening. “I don’t mean to harm you,” she said, and then felt all at once furious again. She had said that enough. He was deaf, a fool. She opened the door and kicked the portfolio into the hall—then lifted the gun higher as he stepped toward her. “Stay there,” she said sharply.
Slowly he held out his hand. “You don’t want to harm me? Give me the gun, then. If you don’t mean to harm me, hand it over.”
A bizarre laugh spilled from her. “And now the tables have turned! But you never gave the gun to me—so why should I do it?” She swallowed the bitter taste of that laugh and stared at him. “I wanted none of this. All I wanted was my freedom.”