His Mask of Retribution

He realised he was staring and pulled himself together, entering the room and setting the breakfast tray that he carried down on the nearby table. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked embarrassed to have been caught sitting in the sunbeam. His eyes dropped down to the stockinged feet that peeped from beneath her skirt, then travelled slowly up the wedding dress, all crumpled and creased from sleep, to the smooth swell of breasts that rose from the tight press of the bodice. Her hair was a tumble of white-blonde waves over her shoulders, so long that it reached almost to her waist. She looked as beautiful and dishevelled as if she had just climbed from a lover’s bed.

His gaze reached her face and he met the darkness of her eyes with all of their secrets and steadfast resilience. And that same ripple of desire he had experienced when he first looked at her whispered again. He closed his ears to it, denied its existence. Her blush intensified beneath his scrutiny and she stepped away, twitching at her rumpled skirts and shifting her feet to try to hide her stockinged toes.

He wanted to ask her why a twenty-year-old woman was so terrified of the dark. It seemed much more than a spoiled girl’s foible. He knew how hard she had fought to hide her fear from him, and were he to ask the question she would, no doubt, deny all and tell him nothing.

‘From Pickering?’ He gestured towards the heavy ornate pearls around her neck.

She nodded. ‘You knew that I was on my way to be married before my father told you, didn’t you?’ Her eyes looked different today. Lighter, a rich brown, and the contempt had gone from them. Something of her armour was back in place, but he had a feeling she had not pulled down her visor. Her manner was still guarded, but less hostile than it had been.

‘It is a society wedding of interest throughout the ton.’ He shrugged as if it were nothing of significance and did not tell her that he had made it his business to know all there was to know of Misbourne, or that he had been waiting and watching these two months past for an opportunity to take her from her father.

‘And yet still you held us up.’ He could sense both her curiosity and her condemnation.

‘You think me ruthless. And when it comes to your father I cannot deny it.’

‘You should not have hurt him,’ she said and he saw her eyes darken with the memory of what had happened upon the heath.

Yet he could not apologise. He could not say he regretted it. Or that he would not have done the same, or more, again. ‘I regret that you had to witness such violence.’

‘But you do not regret what you did.’

He shook his head. ‘Your father deserved much more.’ It was a harsh truth, but he would not lie to her.

She swallowed and something of the defensiveness slotted back across her face. No matter what he knew of Misbourne, he admired her loyalty to her father—the courage with which she stood up to a highwayman to defend the bastard so determinedly. His eye traced the fine line of her cheek, the fullness of her lips. He caught what he was doing and felt the muscle clench in his jaw. With a stab of anger he averted his gaze and began to walk away. She was Misbourne’s daughter, for pity’s sake! He should not have to remind himself.

‘There were seven men in that alleyway,’ she said in a low careful voice, ‘and you are but one man, yet you did not use a pistol.’

Her words stopped him, but he did not look round. ‘A pistol shot would have brought more of the rats from their holes.’

‘Why did you help me?’

The question, so softly uttered, cut through everything else.

He turned then, and looked at her, at the temptation she presented: those eyes, so soft and dark as to beguile a man from all sense.

‘Why would I not?’

‘You hate my father.’

Hate was too mild a word to describe what he felt for Misbourne. He paused before speaking, before looking into the eyes that were so similar and yet so different to her father’s. ‘Regardless of your father, while you are with me I will keep you safe.’

Safe. It had been such a long time since Marianne had felt safe. There had been times that she had thought she would never feel safe again, no matter how well guarded and protected she was by her family. She studied his face. In the shaft of morning light his eyes were golden as a flame. He was a highwayman. He had beaten her father and abducted her. He was holding her prisoner her against her will. She had watched the most brutal of London’s lowlife cower before him. He could be anyone behind that dark silken mask. But whoever he was, he had not used her ill, as he could have. He had brought her candles to light the darkness. And he had saved her. He had saved her—and he had bested seven men to do it.

She met his gaze and held it, looking deep into those amber eyes, trying to glean a measure of the man behind the mask. He was not lying. A man like him had no need to lie.

The expression in his eyes gentled. His hand moved as if he meant to touch her arm, except that he stopped it before it reached her and let it drop away.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

She stared up into his face and could not look away. And the highwayman held her gaze.

‘Yes,’ she said at last and nodded. ‘I am fine.’ She had said those words so many times in the past three years, but only this time, standing there in a shuttered bedchamber with a masked man who had abducted her, was she close to telling the truth. ‘The letter that you think my father holds.’

He gave no response.

‘I know you believe he understands…’ She saw the flicker of something dangerous in his eyes, but it did not stop her. ‘Will you ask him again and tell him exactly what it is that you seek?’

‘I have already done so.’

She gave a nod and relaxed at his words. ‘I heard you and your accomplice talking about a document…He will give it to you this time.’ Her father would give whatever it took to redeem her. ‘I will stake my life upon it.’

The highwayman said nothing. He just looked at her for a moment longer and then walked away, leaving her locked alone in the bedchamber.

Five minutes later Marianne heard the thud of the front door closing and the clatter of a horse’s hooves trotting away from the house. She knew that it was the highwayman leaving. The accomplice’s footsteps sounded on the stairs; she heard him come along the passageway and go into a nearby room. There was the noise of cupboards and drawers being opened and closed, then the accomplice unlocked her door, knocking before entering.

‘If you will come this way, my lady, I am under instruction to show you to another room in which you might spend the day. One in which the shutters are not closed.’

He took her to the bedchamber on the opposite side of the passageway. The daylight was light and bright and wonderful after the dimness of the yellow chamber. She blinked, her eyes taking an age to adjust. The walls were a cool blue, the bedding dark as midnight and the furniture mahogany and distinctly masculine in style. Over by the basin she could see a shaving brush, soap and razor blade, all set before a mirror, and she knew whose bedchamber this was without having to be told. Her heart began to pound and butterflies flocked in her stomach. She hesitated where she was, suddenly suspicious.

Something of the apprehension must have shown in her face for all she tried to hide it, for the accomplice smiled gently, reassuringly.

‘He thought you would prefer the daylight. The sun hits the back of the house in the afternoon.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You need not have a fear, lass. I am to take you back to the yellow chamber before he returns.’

She looked round at the accomplice and the grey mask loosely tied to obscure his face. ‘Could you not simply have removed the nails from the shutters?’

‘No, Lady Marianne.’ The accomplice glanced away uneasily.

‘Because it is at the front of the house,’ she guessed, ‘and you fear that I would attract attention?’

‘It is rather more complicated than that. The shutters must remain closed. Those in the master bedchamber too.’

‘The yellow bedchamber…’ She hesitated and thought of the hairbrush. ‘It was his mother’s room, was it not?’

The accomplice gave a hesitant nod.

‘And this is his house.’

He looked uncomfortable but did not deny it. ‘I must go,’ he said and started to move away.

‘You said he was a good man.’

The accomplice halted by the door. ‘He is.’

‘What he did to my father on Hounslow Heath was not the action of a good man.’

‘Believe me, Lady Marianne, were he a lesser man, your father would be dead. Were I in his shoes, I don’t know that I could have walked away and left Misbourne alive.’ He turned away, then glanced back again to where she stood, slack-jawed and gaping in shock. ‘For your own sake, please be discreet around the window. Being seen in a gentleman’s bedchamber, whatever the circumstances, would not be in any young unmarried lady’s favour.’

He gave a nod of his head and walked away, locking the door behind him.