Clandestine (12 page)

But he only wanted to be rid of crazy, redheaded Sarah Callaway.

She had responded to his radiant presence like a schoolgirl caught in the presence of a fairy-tale prince. Every word of Rachel's infatuation made sense. No female could ever meet Guy Devoran, even for a day, and not remember him for a lifetime.

Yet, as Sarah had surmised in the endless hours of darkness alone in her bedroom, he'd thrilled her with his luminous attention only because he knew it would make her uncomfortable.

Lord Jonathan had no doubt agreed to the plan. The cousins had hoped that an hour of gentle mockery among the orchids would be enough to persuade her to go back to Bath and leave the hunt to the men.

If she did not feel so committed to Rachel, it probably would have done. Nothing could be more humiliating than an attractive gentleman's showing his pity for a plain schoolmistress through insincere gallantry, however flattering.

Yet she was not, for all her self-doubt, as easy to break as an ivory figurine.

Sarah lifted her face to the sun and laughed at herself.

In spite of her racing pulse and general sense of discomfort, she regretted nothing. With Guy Devoran's help, she was bound to solve the mystery and rescue Rachel, whatever the reasons for her disappearance.

Sarah only wished she knew what Mr. Devoran was hiding. In the meantime, she would try to enjoy this outing and what remained of the day.

The horses were fresh and keen, trotting with pricked ears as if they expected a stable at the end of their journey, rather than a return trip back to town.

“You know Hampstead well?” she asked.

“Well enough. It's a great road to let out a good horse. Of course, there was a time when everyone came to take the waters. Many still come for their health, or for inspiration away from the foul air of London.”

“Inspiration?”

Tendons flexed in his wrists as he steadied his team. They trotted down a small hill.

“Hampstead is full of lodging houses for artists and writers, as well as invalids. Pony carriages and donkeys still carry visitors out to the Heath.”

“Could Daedalus have been one of them?”

“Not if you insist that he met Rachel soon after Christmas. Winter is hardly the time to come to Hampstead for one's health.”

The horses began to climb. A redbrick church tower soared above the rooftops of the small town ahead of them. Within a few more minutes they had passed a tollhouse, and Hampstead welcomed them with detached mansions nestled among small groves of trees, then rows of respectable brick houses.

The carriage turned down a side street to pull into the yard of a small inn. The sign had faded to some indistinct green shapes on a background of pale yellow. The tiger swung down to take the horses' bridles.

Guy Devoran leaped from the carriage and held up his hand to help Sarah step down.

“We'll take a little refreshment here,” he said, “before we drive back to London.”

“But Mr. Penland's address?”

“This is it.”

Sarah glanced back at the row of elegant redbrick facades in the street. A nervous shiver trickled up her spine.

“Which house?”

“None of them. This is the Five Oaks.”

She met his dark gaze and swallowed. “Rachel lived at an inn? I don't quite—”

“Come, let's take tea and we may find out.”

They walked into a small parlor and took a seat. Mr. Devoran ordered tea and cakes.

“I seek one Harvey Penland, Mr. Trench,” he said when the innkeeper returned with a tray. “Does he still work here?”

“Bless my soul, sir! The lad upped and left for his folks' place in Norfolk nigh on two weeks ago.”

“Norfolk?” Sarah asked faintly. “He
worked
here?”

“That's right, ma'am. Penland's a Norfolk lad, born and bred. Spent a year learning horses in Newmarket, and then drifted here to Hampstead. A smart enough fellow, though cheeky with it. You'll maybe have seen him, sir, mucking out the stables, though I can't imagine that any gentleman such as yourself would ever have taken much notice of the boy.”

“No, I don't recall him. Yet might Mr. Penland have run errands for local residents without your knowing?”

“Well, I suppose so, sir. We sent him out on little jobs for the inn often enough. A reliable lad. Trustworthy. I'm sorry to have lost him.”

“Then he might have delivered letters by hand and collected the replies to post without anyone else's knowledge?”

“I can't rightly say, sir. I see no reason why not, but only if he was paid smartly, mind.”

“Thank you.” Mr. Devoran tapped the side of his nose and slipped a coin into the innkeeper's hand.

“Why, thank you, sir. Mum's the word!” The man bowed his head and bustled away.

Little ripples of distress sent cold shivers down Sarah's spine. “So I was sending my letters here to this inn, not to a private house. You'd already guessed as much, hadn't you?”

He leaned back, fixing her with his dark gaze. “Since no one had heard of him, Harvey Penland couldn't be a gentleman. Yet he had to exist. He also had to have access to the mail, plus the freedom to carry letters back and forth. Thus it was likely that he was working in an inn. I just didn't know which one—”

“—until I told you. But you'd have come here and found out anyway, wouldn't you?” Sarah poured tea. The spout rattled against her teacup. “So where was Rachel really living?”

“I don't know for certain, though I made a few inquiries yesterday evening at St. John's. The curate remembers a lady of her description living alone in a rented house called Knight's Cottage near the Heath. She sometimes took long walks by herself on a Sunday, though she never welcomed visitors or went to church.”

A sick anxiety buzzed in her head. “And you think that was Rachel?”

Light limned his strong profile as he gazed out of the window. “For what it's worth, yes. I was also able to talk to the landlord last night. This lady paid him several months' rent in gold in advance.”

Her hands felt clammy. “Then Rachel was living by herself in a cottage for all those months, while writing to me about caring for six imaginary children?”

“So it would seem.”

Sarah took a slice of cake, then stared at it. “Did the landlord say whether she kept any servants?”

“The landlord provides any heavy work and sends a man to maintain the garden, and a housekeeper lives in.” Mr. Devoran glanced back at her, his eyes shuttered. “The same woman is still working there.”

The hot tea was quaking gently in her cup. It seemed impossible to keep her hands steady. The cup rattled back into the saucer.

“Then she may be able to confirm whether Harvey Penland was bringing my letters. So may we please drive out to this cottage?”

“That's been my intention all along, ma'am.”

Sarah took a deep breath and swallowed hard, before she looked back up at him. The black eyes seemed filled with regret, even apology, as if he couldn't bear to distress her, almost as if he despised himself for the necessity.

She opened and closed her fingers beneath the table, then picked up her teacup again. None of this was his fault. She had promised not to be difficult or hysterical.

“Our home was in Norfolk,” she said with quiet determination. “Rachel probably noticed Penland's accent. It might have helped buy his loyalty, if they were from the same area.”

“I'll send a man to trace him,” he said. “But either way, I think we may assume that your cousin used Jack's gold to move here after that day on the yacht. Do you have any idea why?”

Cake crumbled in her mouth like dry sand. Sarah thrust away her plate.

“No. I can't fathom any of it. And why make up all of those stories about still working as a governess?”

“Presumably so you wouldn't ask awkward questions about why she was living here alone.”

“I can't imagine what she was hiding. Yet she must have met Daedalus here.”

“On the contrary, I'm certain that she met him long before that.”

“That's impossible!” Her empty cup clattered back into the saucer. “I'd have guessed it from her letters.”

“So you still believe that your cousin can lie about the facts, but not about her emotions?”

“You've not read the rest of her correspondence, Mr. Devoran. If Rachel had met Daedalus before that day on the yacht, I'd know it.”

“Would you?” He leaned forward to meet her gaze, as if convincing her of this one point was imperative. “Why did she leave Lord Grail's house as she did? And why the devil did she work as a scullery maid at the Three Barrels?”

Sarah pushed away from the table. “I don't know, sir, because I'm still not sure that she did!”

He stood up immediately and took her elbow to lead her from the room. As soon as they reached a private corner in the inn yard, he released her.

“You promised me no hysteria, Mrs. Callaway.”

“I'm not hysterical, sir,” Sarah said. “I'm furious. You've manipulated me and hidden things from me, and now you question my judgment about my own cousin's emotions. Yes, something happened to drive her from Grail Hall. Very probably it was Lord Grail himself. She never liked or trusted him—”

“Then your cousin is a damned bad judge of character. Grail's notoriously affable. I can't imagine an easier household in which she could have worked. And from what he told me this morning, visitors came and went constantly that summer.”

“But she was the governess, relegated mostly to the nursery.”

“On the contrary. Rachel Mansard had plenty of opportunity to meet the guests. You don't think every man among them didn't take the opportunity to flirt with her?”

Indignation made her spine rigid; otherwise she thought she might have folded as if struck.

“Be that as it may, sir, Rachel was an innocent girl who met Daedalus
here
. She fell in love with him here. She became afraid of him here. She fled him after Easter and ended up in Goatstall Lane. This villain persecuted her here in Hampstead, Mr. Devoran, and I can't imagine why you would even think to question that.”

A
S
R
YDER HAD SO ELOQUENTLY PREDICTED, NOTHING
could come of this situation but disaster. Guy glanced away as if simply distracted by the bustle of the inn yard.

He disliked all these machinations a little too intensely. Sarah Callaway deserved better. But not, surely, the news that Rachel could not have fallen in love with Daedalus in Hampstead in the spring, because Guy Devoran was keeping her as a mistress at the time?

“Yes,” he said, glancing back at her. “I have, within limits, manipulated you, Mrs. Callaway. I thought it necessary. That was presumptuous. Pray, accept my apologies.”

Rage sparkled in her eyes, but she swallowed, and in a sudden, entrancing change of mood, she laughed.

“Oh, goodness! I've prevaricated almost as much with you, sir,” she said. “I did so in our very first meeting and several more times since. I am entirely indebted to you, but I do wish you wouldn't try to protect me from unpleasantness by disputing the obvious truth.”

Little barbs sank into his heart. Yet Guy smiled back, even knowing that she would see that his smile was empty and rightfully despise him for it.

“We don't yet know the truth, ma'am. So we must agree to disagree for the moment. Now, do you wish to drive out to the cottage?”

“I certainly wish to find out the truth about Daedalus, sir, and thus rescue Rachel. Thank you.”

They walked back to his carriage and he helped her into the seat. His tiger swung up behind, and Guy drove out into the street.

He tried to keep his voice gentle.

“Daedalus the maze-maker escaped his own labyrinth in Crete,” he said. “You may believe that he met your cousin in Hampstead, but I'm equally certain that we'll find no trace of him here.”

“Then I hope you're wrong, sir, because what other clues do we have?”

Guy shook his head and said nothing. If Rachel was indeed the mystery tenant, she had left Knight's Cottage in January, not in April, as Sarah would assume. Yet even if that uncomfortable fact was about to be uncovered, there was no possible way for Sarah to find out that in February he and her cousin had moved back into Hampstead together.

The horses trotted on toward the Heath, straight past the place he had rented for Rachel. Chimneys clustered like a meeting of top-hatted solicitors. The walls flashed in white glimpses through the trees. The few visible windows were shuttered.

Guy had paid the landlord a year's rent in advance and still held the lease, so he knew that the house was unoccupied. Yet as they turned a corner the high oriel window in the bedroom he and Rachel had shared winked suddenly, as if the low sun conspired to bring the house back to life.

An illusion as absolute as her supposed affection for him.

Guy stared straight ahead and ignored the unpleasant clutch of distaste in his gut.

Hampstead Heath stretched away to a sky-laden horizon. Small gangs of men were working here and there with carts and shovels, making the most of the remaining daylight. Guy paid them no attention, looking only toward the whitewashed cottage that the curate had described.

He pulled up his team in front of the garden gate.

It had been almost completely dark when he had been forced to abandon his quest the previous evening to return to town for the ball. Now, in the late afternoon light, Knight's Cottage looked both charming and private.

His tiger leaped down to take the horses' heads. Guy stepped to the ground and held up his hand to Sarah.

“Come!” he said, smiling to cover his disquiet. “This is the place.”

She set her fingers on his and climbed down, then she glanced up at him, her apricot brows drawn together. For a split second they stood gazing at each other. Little sparks seemed to fire between them, as if the air sizzled, as if he might give way to a mad impulse to pull her into his arms and kiss her.

Sarah snatched back her hand and looked away.

The gate opened on well-oiled hinges. Sarah stepped aside to let Guy knock at the door. After a long silence, footsteps rapped on tile.

The door opened. A woman in a cap and apron glanced at Sarah, then dimpled a smile as she gazed up at Guy. Dust sheets, brooms, and buckets were visible behind her.

“Yes, sir?”

“You're Mrs. Harris, the housekeeper?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. But Mr. Ashdown—that's the gentleman as had the lease, sir—he went off to Italy. He's an artist.”

“No, we're looking for a lady,” Sarah said. “She lived in this cottage all last winter, up until shortly after Easter. Did you know her?”

The housekeeper frowned. “Until Easter, ma'am? No, she—”

“Never mind that,” Guy said. “The lady we seek first took the lease thirteen months ago, in late May of last year. A boy from the Five Oaks, one Harvey Penland, ran errands for her.”

“Why, yes, sir! That's right. And a cheeky lad he was, too. Yes, yes, I remember the lady very well. Sometimes she would sit for hours at a time, just staring from the windows as if her heart would break, or else she wrote letters, pages and pages of them, which the Penland lad took down to the post.”

“Did she ever meet any gentlemen, or have gentlemen callers?”

“No, indeed not, sir! Though she sometimes went walking on a Sunday, Mrs. Grant always kept herself to herself.”

“Mrs. Grant?”

The housekeeper glanced back at Sarah. “She said she was a widow, ma'am. Such a shame! Such a lovely lady! The prettiest yellow hair you ever saw, and eyes like a periwinkle. I thought she was sad and lonely, but she always said not.”

“Do you think she was ever afraid?” Guy asked.

“Afraid, sir? Well, I don't know, but then I wouldn't, would I? I'm just the housekeeper. Mrs. Grant never confided anything to me.”

“Do you know where she is now?”

“God bless my soul, sir! I've no idea. She took herself off one day without a by-your-leave, or word to anyone. Just packed up and left. Mr. Langham had to find another tenant in a hurry, I can tell you, and was lucky to find Mr. Ashdown. Now, if you'll forgive me, ma'am, sir, I need to get on. The new tenant's due any day, and the floors need doing over.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” Guy said with a bow. “You've been more helpful than you know.”

Sarah spun about and walked back to the carriage.

Guy forced himself not to follow, not to compound his sins by offering false comfort.

The garden was a pretty retreat with lawns and bushes and flowers, all hidden behind a high hedge. Rachel had lived here alone, until she had knocked on the door of his London townhouse to throw herself at his feet—and into his bed.

That was not, of course, what she had told him.

When had she first begun to spin her web of lies? During the seven months when she had truly been a governess for Lord Grail? Or in the missing five months before Jack had found her in the kitchen and asked her to spend that day on the yacht?

Whenever it had been, Rachel Mansard had caught Guy Devoran as securely as any spider ever caught its first moth. And now—to his infinite self-disgust—he was reeling Sarah Callaway into that net of sticky threads.

Sarah was standing beside the carriage, gazing valiantly across the Heath, her back upright.

Guy shook himself and strode up the path after her, though his blood burned with awareness, of her brave, resolute determination, of the wisps of fiery hair escaping her bonnet to caress her speckled cheek. A lady who spent too much time in the sun, instead of always sheltering her complexion—as Rachel had done—beneath parasols or white plaster ceilings.

She turned to face him. Her eyes were suspiciously bright.

“You've already followed up all possible leads here, haven't you?” she asked. “That's why you didn't want to bother bringing me. Other than that housekeeper—and confirming that Harvey Penland worked at the Five Oaks—you talked yesterday with everyone who might have known anything.”

“Yes,” he said. “There's nothing more to learn here in Hampstead that will help us find your cousin.”

It was, fortunately, the truth.

Guy helped her up onto the seat. Beneath the escaped tendrils of red hair, brown flecks circled the corner of her jaw like the Pleiades, the daughters of Atlas hidden in the heavens to save them from the lust of Orion.

Avoiding his gaze, Sarah arranged her skirts. “And so I see that I'm defeated. Anything that you wish to share, you will share. Anything you wish to hide, I'll never get out of you. But I have no doubt now that I will discover nothing at all by myself.”

“Rachel did not meet Daedalus here,” he said.

She adjusted her gloves, her face pale. “No, she must have done.”

He felt desperate to make amends in any small way that he could.

“Would you like to drive up over the Heath?” he asked. “The views of London are spectacular, and the sun will be setting soon.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I should like that.”

He whipped up the horses.

They drove in silence for several minutes, while the rolling heights of Hampstead Heath opened up before them. Deep shadows filled the hollows. Pink-tinged clouds massed to the west.

“Isn't there anything else you can tell me?” she asked at last.

“Not much. Rachel apparently lived in that cottage with the discretion of a mouse. She never went into society and she never received visitors of any kind. When the curate tried to call, she told him that she wished to be left entirely alone, because she was writing a novel.”

“A novel?”

“Yes,” he said. “I'm forced to conclude that she was referring to her letters to you.”

To his immense surprise, Sarah laughed, though a bright flush raced over her cheeks. “A novel may be fiction, sir, but fiction is only compelling when it's emotionally true.”

“Ah,” he said. “So we come back to that.”

“Everything comes back to it,” she insisted. “Rachel fell in love with Daedalus after Christmas, but feared him by Easter. When she came back from Devon in May, she was forced to hide from him in Goatstall Lane. Nothing will ever make me doubt that. So some detail has been missed. If she lived here like a mouse, he must have skulked in the shadows like a cat.”

“So you won't concede that Daedalus, as she described him, may have been another product of her imagination?”

She lifted her chin and gazed away at the scenery. “I shall never in a million years believe that, sir, and neither will you, once you read her letters.”

“Then you'll still trust me that far?”

“Yes, and in spite of everything, I can't regret involving you. Yet if we fail in our quest, I trust you'll not take it too much to heart?”

The compassion in her voice froze the blood in his veins. “Why do you suppose that I should, ma'am?”

“Because you smile at me as if you're already crushed by disappointment, almost as if you fear that we shall never discover the truth.”

He glanced away, his nostrils filled with her scent, his very bones on fire.

“Nothing so very terrible, I trust, Mrs. Callaway. But yes, we may fail. And yes, I should hate that.”

It was a small reality, but all he dared offer. The necessity to hide the whole truth roared like an enraged bull in his heart.

Guy headed his team for the loveliest parts of the Heath.

There was, of course, a great irony in feeling so irate about achieving exactly what he had wanted. All the seeds of truth that he thought it possible to share had been sown. After they took root and she saw that the letters didn't sway him, the luminous Sarah Callaway would surely be convinced and agree to let him hunt for Rachel alone?

After which, he would probably never see her wild freckles again.

Enough cause, surely, for a little fury at fate?

S
ARAH
gulped in the clean evening air and tried to breathe out her distress.

It was hard to remain angry when their surroundings were so lovely. It was anyway beyond ungracious to feel anything but gratitude to Mr. Devoran, even if he refused to accept her judgment about Daedalus.

She glanced at his harsh eyebrows and perfect bones. His eyes reflected nothing but some dark grief that she couldn't understand, like the water in a deep well. Nevertheless, both his features and the scenery were a beautiful, storm-tossed celebration of nature. She was privileged to see them.

And how could she blame him? After all, Rachel had created a story of her life over the last two years as sustained and inventive as any work of fiction.

A group of red-and-white cows stood at the edge of a pond. Trees massed here and there in little copses, or bravely straggled out alone to invade the rolling heath.