Unlacing the Innocent Miss

‘I am quite well, thank you, my lady.’

‘Your book.’ Lord Evedon lifted a small book from the bedside table and handed it to his mother.

Lady Evedon smiled. ‘Thank you, dear Charles.’

‘I will leave Stevens outside the door to ensure that you two ladies are kept safe.’ Lord Evedon’s gaze met Rosalind’s and she knew his words for the warning they were.

‘I shall be glad to know that we are being so carefully protected.’ Lady Evedon seemed reassured by the knowledge.

‘Mama…Miss Meadowfield.’ He bowed and left.

‘Miss Meadowfield,’ Lady Evedon held the copy of Wordsworth’s poems out to her.

‘My lady,’ she said, and with only a slight tremor of her fingers she opened its leather cover.

She read aloud, keeping her voice calm and light. She read and read, and by the time that Lady Evedon finally fell asleep the candles on the bedside table had burned low.

She sat there, listening to Lady Evedon’s quiet snores, her palms clammy even while her fingers were stiff with cold. Her mind raced with thoughts, with fears, with worried speculation. Once the constable arrived, it was only a matter of time before they discovered the truth: that Rosalind Meadowfield did not exist at all, that she had lied. Theft of this magnitude from an employer was a capital offence, and when they knew her real family name, there was no court in the land that would deal with her leniently. Prison. Transportation. Or even…hanging. Her hands balled to form fists, clutching so tightly that her fingernails cut into the flesh of her palms.

She remembered the anger on Lord Evedon’s face, his rough search of her person and his cruel grip. He believed the worst of her. He thought she had betrayed the dowager’s trust and stolen from her and that she was still hiding the emeralds. The accusation stung at her doubly, for not only was she innocent, but she had grown fond of Lady Evedon. From all she had come to learn of Charles Evedon over the years, she knew that he was a man who would not take what he believed to be a betrayal lightly. Not for Evedon a quiet dismissal. Already she knew he meant to call the constable. He wanted retribution, and he did not mean to be denied it. The guard outside the door was testament to that fact. Evedon would see her punished. And once he knew her true identity, he would see her hanged.

That knowledge had a cruel fatalism about it. She closed her eyes, trying to suppress the dread, and thought again of the black silken noose that had swung from Lord Evedon’s fingers. Did someone already know her secret? Or was it just a warning of the fate that awaited a jewel thief?

She replaced the book on top of the copy of The Times that lay upon Lady Evedon’s bedside table, her eye catching again the small advertisement she had read earlier on the top right-hand corner of the front page. Oh, to be there on the wild moorland of Scotland, so far from Lord Evedon and the chaos that was unfolding around her. But such dreams were without hope.

She rose to her feet and turned away from the bed where the dowager lay sleeping, knowing she must return to the small room that was her bedchamber even though its humble privacy had been violated. The thought of Graves and others of the servants raking through her undergarments, touching all that was personal to her, was deeply humiliating.

The letter lay on the carpet behind the door. She saw it immediately, lying pale and slightly crumpled upon the deep rose and blue threads of silk, and she knew without touching it, without even seeing it close up, that it was the letter that Lord Evedon had stuffed into his pocket downstairs in his study. The same letter that he had snatched away from her so angrily.

She walked towards it, lifted it, heard it crinkle with her touch and felt the stiffness of the paper and the broken sealing wax beneath her fingers. The large black spiky font showed the letter to be addressed to Earl Evedon, Evedon House, Cavendish Square, London. Normally, Rosalind would not have dreamt of reading a letter addressed to another, but there was nothing of normality about this evening. Beneath the low flickering light of Lady Evedon’s candles, Rosalind opened the letter and began to read.

The dowager’s snores still sounded softly within the room, but Rosalind no longer heard them. She read the words and then read them again, and she understood the reason for Lord Evedon’s anger—and his dread. A scrawl of words that Evedon would not want the world to know. A scrawl of words that could destroy him, just as he could destroy her.

She refolded the letter, knowing that fate had just dealt the final blow to her life as she knew it. She could not simply set the letter back on the carpet and pretend that she had not seen it. Once Lord Evedon realized that the letter was here in this room he would know that she had read it. And Stevens was standing guard outside the door so that she could not place it elsewhere. Besides, she would not wish another to chance upon it and read its words; Lady Evedon did not deserve that shame.

And the thought came to her that, if Evedon knew that she had this letter, he would not then call the constable. He would not call anyone. He would do nothing to risk the focus of attention upon the letter or the truth that it contained. For there could be no doubting that its words were the truth; she had seen the desperation on his face.

The realization was quiet in its dawning, a gentle waft of thought rather than a sudden inspired burst. She looked at the newspaper upon the bedside cabinet, weighing the thought in consideration for long minutes before she acted.

The newspaper ripped easily with little noise, and she read the small ragged square of words again before folding it neat and smaller still and slipping it within her pocket. She sat there for a while longer before finally folding the letter and pocketing it in just the same way.

She looked again at Lady Evedon sleeping so peacefully, all of the dowager’s demons banished—for now. A final lingering glance around the room, then Rosalind rose and walked quietly to the door.

Stevens escorted her to her tiny bedchamber at the back of the house without a single word, and she was glad of his silence.

She did not know if he waited outside her chamber door, standing guard for fear that she would escape the justice Evedon meant to deal her. It made no difference if he waited there the whole night through, for the roof of the scullery was directly below her window. A strange calm had descended upon her, although her hands were trembling as she quietly packed her few possessions into the small bag and swung the cloak around her shoulders. She drew the window sash up as slowly and carefully as she could, cringing as the slide of wood seemed loud against the surrounding silence. The outside air was cold against her face as she breathed in its nocturnal dampness and the freedom that it promised.

She did not look around the bedchamber, at the mean narrow bed or its empty hearth, but kept her gaze fixed on the black sky in which the moon was hidden. A deep breath, and then another, before she climbed over the sill and carefully lowered herself to the slates below.

The dull yellow glow of the street lamps eased the night’s darkness as she hurried over the cobblestones. She glanced back nervously at Evedon House. The dog had ceased its barking and the streets were so quiet and still, and she the only thing moving within them.

No footsteps followed, no breath sounded save for hers, yet her skin prickled with the sense that Evedon was there silently watching, so that she feared that he followed her.

Rosalind did not look back again. She began to run.

In a nearby alleyway, a man, dark as the shadows that surrounded him, waited until the woman had passed before stepping out from his hiding place to watch her. All around was hushed and sleeping, disturbed only by the echo of her hurried footsteps. Dressed in black, he stood where he was but his intent gaze followed the scurrying figure. He watched until she faded from sight, swallowed up by the darkness of the night. Only then, did he turn and walk away in the opposite direction, passing beneath the same street lamps under which she had fled. A small gold hoop in the lobe of one ear glinted against the ebony of his hair, and teeth that were white and straight were revealed by the smile that slid across his mouth.

‘You might run, my dear Miss Rosalind Meadow-field, but you shall not escape the scandal. Justice will be done,’ he whispered, and then setting his hat at a jaunty angle, he began to whistle an ancient Romany tune as he rounded the corner and sprang lightly up into the black coach that waited there. And then the stranger and his coach were gone, disappeared into the darkness of the sprawling metropolis beyond.

Chapter One

Munnoch Moor, Scotland, two weeks later

The night was dark and a chill wind howled through the forest. A solitary figure stood in silence, his presence concealed by the trees, watching the yard of the coaching inn. His focus never wavered from the mail coach that had stopped there, just stayed trained on the door while it opened and the steps were kicked into place. His pale silver gaze sharpened, like a hunter that sights its prey. As the lone woman alighted from the coach, Wolf smiled and knew that he had found his quarry.

The coach rumbled away into the night leaving Rosalind standing in the yard of the Blairadie coaching inn. No other passengers had disembarked; she was alone, save for the man who soon disappeared within the inn hauling the sack of letters that the coach had delivered. The lanterns swayed in the wind, creaking and sending their light dancing against the grey walls that encompassed the yard and the stonework of the stables. The hour was so late that there was no hum of voices from the inn, no blaze of lights or welcoming glow of fires. No chinks of light peeped through the curtains drawn across the windows. In the distance, a church clock struck twelve.

Rosalind glanced around the empty yard nervously, eyes searching through the dim lantern light to find the man her new employer had sent to collect her. She was unsure of what to do, whether to wait here outside alone, or follow the other man into the inn. A voice sounded, male, not Scottish like those she had grown accustomed to hearing for the past days in Edinburgh, but rather with an accent that had a strong Yorkshire vein.

‘Miss Meadowfield?’

She started, and glanced round.

A tall man wearing a long dark riding coat stood by the yard’s entrance. The brim of his hat kept his face shadowed and invisible. There was something about the figure, so dark and dangerous and predatory, that her heart seemed to cease beating and the breath caught in her throat. She thought in that moment that, despite all that she had done to escape him, Evedon had found her. And then, sense and reasoning kicked in and she told herself that, of course, he was Hunter’s man sent to fetch her.

‘You are from Mr Stewart of Benmore House?’ she asked tentatively.

The man gave a nod. ‘Come to collect the new housekeeper, ma’am.’

She smiled her relief and walked across the yard towards him. ‘That is welcome news indeed, sir.’ She was here at last. Only a few miles now lay between Rosalind and the start of her new life running the household of Mr Stewart at Benmore House on Munnoch Moor—far, far away from London and Lord Evedon.

He took the travelling bag from her hand. ‘Allow me, ma’am.’

‘Thank you.’

He turned and began to walk out of the inn’s yard. ‘We had best get a move on.’

‘Of course.’ She followed after him.

Outside the yard, the moonlight revealed the presence of a cart with a single horse parked at the road’s side, a small inconsequential vehicle almost unnoticed against the dark edge of the trees. She wondered why he had travelled in a cart rather than a gig.

The man was tall, with long legs and a big stride. Rosalind quickened her pace to stay with him.

He dumped her bag in the back of the cart and climbed up to the seat at the front, before turning and reaching a hand down towards Rosalind.

The moon was behind him, rendering his face shadowed and the features invisible. Rosalind hesitated, an inexplicable shiver running down her spine. Overhead, the night sky hung like a canopy of rich black velvet studded with the brilliance of diamond stars. The moon was half full, a white opalescent semicircle that shone with an ethereal brilliance to light the road behind Mr Stewart’s servant.

‘Miss Meadowfield,’ he urged in a tone that was hard and clipped.