Nicola Cornick, page 24
“Reluctantly paid off all Rashleigh’s debts in order to preserve the family honor,” Nick finished. “So what does that leave, Mr. Churchward?”
“This!” Churchward said, with the air of one producing a rabbit from a hat. He fumbled in the leather briefcase and extracted a thin pigskin folder. Nick held his hand out. Churchward, however, did not immediately hand over the file but held it for a moment, an odd expression on his face.
“This did not form part of the paperwork that I passed to Lord Hawkesbury, Major.”
“I see,” Nick said. He waited.
“You should know, sir, that this document only came into my possession shortly before Lord Rashleigh was murdered,” Churchward continued, “and with it he sent me a note demanding in no uncertain terms that I should destroy it in the event of his death.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed. “And why did you not, Mr. Churchward, if that was his wish?”
An strange expression crossed Churchward’s face. “I read the document, my lord,” he confessed. A shade of color touched his thin cheek. “Most unprofessional of me, I admit, but knowing your cousin I wanted to be sure that I was doing the right thing. And when I had read it, I decided that in destroying it, or indeed in handing it over to the authorities, I might be committing a grave injustice.”
He put the folder gently into Nick’s outstretched hand. “It is your decision, Major Falconer.”
The strangest shiver of premonition went down Nick’s spine. He was not a superstitious man but as he slid the single sheet of paper out of the folder, he felt some of Rashleigh’s venom touch him and turn him cold.
At first glance he did not recognize the document for what it was. The signature was that of his uncle, Robert Rashleigh’s father, and the deed was dated December 1798. The wavering writing suggested a man who was already very sick.
Nick had never seen a manumission form before but as he read on, understanding burst on him.
“I, Cecil Anthony John Rashleigh, twelfth Earl of Rashleigh, do grant in perpetuity freedom from serfdom to Marina Stepanova Valstoya and to all her descendants…”
Nick paused. Like an echo in his head he could hear Mari’s voice, that night at the Star House.
“I thought it would be you, because you are his heir…”
He put the paper down slowly. The patterns in his head faded and reformed; his uncle’s death seven years before, the rumors circulating in the Ton of Rashleigh’s Russian mistress whom it was said had stolen from him and run away, his cousin’s fury and refusal to discuss the incident, Mari Osborne coming to London to meet with Rashleigh at the Hen and Vulture, the anonymous letters and Mari’s vulnerability to blackmail and most of all her absolute terror when Nick had touched her…
Nick ran his hands through his hair. A suspicion was forming in his mind, so loathsome, so unbearable, that he was not sure for a moment that he wanted to face it….
Mari had been a serf. A slave. Rashleigh’s slave….
“Major Falconer?” Mr. Churchward’s voice cut through his thoughts. “I hope that you think I did the right thing in preserving the document and bringing it to you?”
“Oh, yes,” Nick said, looking from the manumission form to Churchward’s anxious face. He cleared his throat. “You were absolutely right, Churchward. Serfdom is a vile thing and it should weigh heavy on any man’s conscience to be instrumental in destroying the evidence of a slave’s freedom.”
Churchward’s expression cleared. “Thank you, sir,” he said in heartfelt tones. “You are not like your cousin.”
“No,” Nick said. “I am not.” He shook his head. “This should have been given to her seven years ago.”
Seven years, not knowing that she was free, of thinking that she was still Rashleigh’s slave….
Nick tried, and failed, to imagine how that must have felt.
He thought about Rashleigh suppressing the document for so long and demanding that it be destroyed on his death. Such malevolence could only mean one thing—that he had deliberately withheld from Marina Osborne the proof of her freedom. Perhaps she had never even known the manumission form existed. Rashleigh must have wanted to keep it to have a hold over her.
Churchward was fastening the battered leather briefcase and getting to his feet. “The only matter that still troubles me,” he confessed as he shook Nick’s hand once again, “is how one might find the lady after all this time?”
“Then do not be troubled,” Nick said. He gave the lawyer a rueful smile. “I know precisely where to find her. You can trust me to put the matter right, Mr. Churchward.”
After the lawyer had gone out, Nick folded the manumission form and put it carefully in his wallet, and went into the library where Rashleigh’s papers were stored. Hawkesbury’s clerks had been thorough and meticulous. Everything was filed by year and carefully annotated. But they had not known what they were looking for and Nick did. Sitting down on the window seat he turned to the ledgers for 1798 and 1799. This was the period immediately after Rashleigh had inherited from his father and so there were a great many estate papers. There was a note of all the Russian property and their sale and a note of the number of serfs belonging to each estate. Their names were not given and they were listed in the column under possessions and household items for inclusion in the sale. Nick felt repulsed to see this further evidence of his cousin’s inhumanity.
On one page, dated December 1798, he found a note in the estate manager’s cramped hand of the purchase of a parcel of land at Svartorsk and a note that Feodor Valstoy, his wife, Maria, and two daughters aged ten and twelve had been granted their freedom from serfdom and established on a farm there.
On another page he found a detailed listing of all the jewelry that Rashleigh had inherited from his father and brought back to England, fabulous jewels of dazzling quality, a staggering fortune. Nick thought it entirely possible that Rashleigh might have sold them and squandered the money like the wastrel he was, but the rumors he had heard at the time, the rumors to which he had paid little attention, had suggested otherwise.
And in a third entry he found payment of passage to the port of London for Robert Rashleigh and Marina Valstoya.
He was beginning to understand now why Mari had struggled so hard to conceal her true identity from him. She was almost certainly a runaway slave and a thief. Or, more precisely, she had thought she was, because his blackguard cousin had never told her she was free.
He wondered again about the ledger entries. Why had Rashleigh, who had never been known for his generosity, given Mari’s family their freedom? They had been given land and liberty from serfdom. Mari had come with Rashleigh to London. It looked like a bargain, an exchange….
Nick froze as an icy revulsion trickled through his veins.
An exchange. Their freedom in return for Mari’s body…And, judging by her fearful reaction to physical intimacy, it had been an arrangement made under duress.
At last the pattern made hateful, horrible sense. Her fear, her vulnerability, her absolute, desperate determination to keep the truth from him….
He put the ledger under his arm and went out into the hall.
“Danton,” he said, “I shall be leaving for Yorkshire in the morning.”
The butler looked a little pained. “Already, sir?”
“I am afraid so,” Nick said. “There was something that I left unfinished and I have to go back.”
Those are matters that cannot be set to rights, Mari Osborne had said, but Nick knew this could not be true. He would not allow it to be. He would give her the freedom that had been denied to her for so long. He would hear her story. He would bring Rashleigh’s hateful legacy into the light.
He was going to go back and he was going to put matters right.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ash—With me you are safe
NICK’S FIRST IMPULSE on arriving back in Peacock Oak had been to go directly to Peacock Cottage and demand an interview with Mari. When he arrived there, however, there was no answer to his knock. The house looked as though it had been closed. He had only been gone for ten days, yet it seemed that much had changed.
He was obliged to go across to Cole Court, his impatience simmering inside him and desperate for a way out. The Court was also strangely silent and when the butler answered the door to his knock it was to inform him that the house party had ended and the guests departed.
“No one is at home except for me.” Laura Cole came forward to greet him and he saw that she was limping. “The most tiresome thing, Major Falconer—I twisted my ankle when I was out riding only two days ago and so cannot walk, let alone ride. And the hunt is to go out tomorrow and here I am stuck at home like a dowager aunt.”
She gestured to him to precede her into her private study. “However, this is most auspicious in one sense as I have been hoping to speak with you if you returned to Peacock Oak and it seems that now I have my chance. Tea, Carrington, if you please.”
In the study Laura sat down with a gasp of relief then smiled up at him. “I apologize that I cannot invite you to stay here for your visit, Major Falconer, but with Charles away—” here a flicker of pain crossed her face “—and the house party ended it would not be appropriate.”
“Pray do not concern yourself, your grace,” Nick said. “I am uncertain how long I shall be staying but I have booked a room and left my bags at Half Moon House.”
“Oh, dear!” Laura’s eyes were bright with amusement. “Josie will not like that. I am surprised that she did not turn you from the door.”
“Perhaps,” Nick said, watching her face, “she knows that my presence here is no longer a threat?”
He saw Laura color up delicately and fidget a little with her skirts. Carrington brought the tea in at that moment and Laura stirred the pot with perfect composure, although her color was still a little high.
“I hope,” she said with a little constraint, as the door closed behind the butler, “that that is true, Major Falconer, for all our sakes.” She tilted her head to look at him. “I understand, you see, that when you were here previously you were anxious to track down and arrest the gang of highwaywomen calling themselves the Glory Girls?”
“Your grace—” Nick began, but Laura raised a hand to stop him in his tracks and Nick could suddenly see that beneath the outer gentleness she had all of a Duchess’s authority.
“Major Falconer, if you please…” She waited for him to fall obediently silent and then resumed, “I assure you that this is a matter of utmost importance. So please tell me—is my understanding correct?”
She raised a brow interrogatively and Nick nodded. “It is correct,” he said.
“The Glories will not ride again,” Laura said. “Nor were they associated in any way with the death of Robert Rashleigh.”
“Your grace,” Nick said, astounded, “how do you know—” He stopped. He thought of Laura’s passion for riding, and then he looked down to see her feet peeping from beneath the hem of her gown. They were very large feet. A moment later she had whisked her skirts back to cover them and he looked into her gentle hazel eyes to see that she was smiling at him.
“They will not ride again,” she repeated, adding, “A pity in many ways, but it has to be.”
Nick was silent.
“Mari Osborne never rode with the Glory Girls,” Laura continued. She passed him a cup. “Tea, Major Falconer? Sugar?”
“Thank you,” Nick said, feeling increasingly cast adrift in this unlikely conversation. “No sugar, please.”
Laura shot him a look. “I think that you realized that, of course. Poor Mari, she is by far too bad a horsewoman ever to ride out like that!”
“I had observed it,” Nick said, taking a gulp of tea and feeling that he needed its restorative qualities.
“Quite. But the idea of the Glory Girls, Major Falconer…” Laura smiled. “That was the scheme of someone who had known immense injustice in their life, someone who wanted to ensure that others did not have to suffer the type of hardships and betrayal and cruelty that they themselves had done. May I press you to a rock bun?”
“Thank you,” Nick said automatically, thinking of Mari and all the charitable work that she had done. He had thought before that he had been very slow to see the truth. Now he was starting to realize how close he had been without realizing it. He had known that Mari must have been deeply involved with the Glory Girls, but she had been the cool planning behind the attacks, not the one who rode out to execute them. And she had done it from a sense of justice.
“So Glory was conceived as an avenging angel,” he said slowly. “Of course. She was the creation of someone who had very personal reasons for wishing to right some of the wrongs of society.”
“And,” Laura said, a thread of steel entering her gentle tones, “I am sure that you would not wish to add to the injustices heaped on that person, Major Falconer.”
“I am sure that you are correct, your grace,” Nick said wryly. He took a bite out of the rock bun. It tasted very good.
“Which brings me rather neatly to Mari herself,” Laura said, stirring her tea. “She will not thank me for mentioning this to you, Major Falconer, so pray disabuse yourself of any notion that she has asked me to speak for her.”
Nick waited. He doubted that anything else Laura Cole could say to him on this extraordinary day could possibly shock him.
“Mari Osborne has been very badly used in the past,” Laura said. “I know that to be true.” She gave a little sigh. “How much do you know of Mari’s history, Major Falconer?”
“A great deal more than I did when I was last here,” Nick said, a little grimly. “I came back in the hope that she would finally be able to tell me the whole.”
Laura nodded. “You wish to speak with her. That I understand. But I do hope that you will not hurt her. She has had so much to bear.” She hesitated. “I am speaking very much out of line here, you understand, Major Falconer?” When Nick waited politely, she continued with a little difficulty, “I have to confess here to doing something of which I am not proud, Major Falconer. I have to tell you that I know Mari Osborne’s entire history at the hands of your cousin, the Earl of Rashleigh. I know it because when Mari first came to Peacock Oak, I asked an inquiry agent to look into her background.”
She gestured to the teapot. “Another cup, Major Falconer?”
“Thank you,” Nick said. His mind was reeling. So much for thinking that she could not shock him. “I…Uh…You…asked someone to investigate Mrs. Osborne’s history?” he repeated.
“I used Tom Bradshaw,” Laura confirmed. “You will know of him, I am sure. He is the most discreet and efficient inquiry agent in London.”
“I do know him,” Nick agreed. He shifted. “Tell me, your grace, what was it that prompted you to suspect that Mrs. Osborne was not all that she seemed—for I assume that that was the reason for your actions?”
Laura nodded. She took her cup and walked away from him toward the fire. “People assume that because I am female and a Duchess that I must be either stupid or need to be protected from the harsh facts of life,” she said, after a moment, “but the truth is that I am well able to take care of myself. I knew as soon as I met Mari Osborne that there was something…not odd about her, exactly, but not precisely right. I sensed that she was not the blameless widow of a merchant that she claimed to be.” She looked at him. “As you know, a Duchess has many an approach from undesirables, people who want to know me for my money or my influence or some other reason. I developed an instinct for it early. That was why I wondered about Mari Osborne right from the start.”
She placed her cup and saucer on the sideboard and rested a hand on its shining surface. “I never told Mari what I had done, of course. When I heard all that she had gone through, I wanted to befriend her. And the irony was that when I tried, I discovered that she wanted nothing from me other than to keep out of my way. She resisted my friendship fiercely.” Laura’s lips twitched. “Had I not been a Duchess and her next-door neighbor I believe she would have told me to go hang before she accepted my friendship.”
Nick was frowning. “Knowing a little of Mrs. Osborne’s history, as I do now, I suppose that is no great wonder.”
“No,” Laura said. “Well, eventually we did become friends. And a great deal later than that, Mari trusted me with something of her story, never knowing that I knew the whole, dreadful tale already.” Laura turned to look at him. “I knew your cousin Robert Rashleigh, Major Falconer. We all did, Charles, Henry, John Teague, myself. How could we not, when he was a member of the Ton as we all were? But I knew Rashleigh for another reason.” She moved away from him with a swish of silk. “When I was young, barely more than a child, in fact, Robert Rashleigh ruined a distant cousin of mine.”
Nick shook his head. “I did not know. I had no idea.”
“Of course not. The matter was hushed up to preserve the family honor in a manner Rashleigh had so signally failed to do. But I heard my parents speaking of it. I never forgot. So you may imagine that when I heard he was dead, I was not sorry, for so many reasons.”
She looked Nick straight in the eye. “I did not kill Robert Rashleigh, Major Falconer, and nor did Mari or Hester Teague. I want you to know that. When I said that the Glory Girls were not involved in his murder, I spoke the truth.”
Nick nodded. “I am more than grateful to you for your honesty, your grace,” he said.
Laura smiled. “I owed it to both you and Mari to reveal the truth about the Glory Girls,” she said. “Mari has kept silent out of loyalty—to protect those she cares about the most. It was time that those of us who care for her should put the matter straight.”
“You may count upon my discretion in the matter, your grace,” Nick said. He laughed. “Though I confess it relieves me to hear the Glories will not ride again.”
“Of course,” Laura said. “A gentleman in your situation cannot collude at breaking the law, Major Falconer. I appreciate that.” She looked at him, biting her lip. “There is, however, one small barrier remaining to your discovering the whole truth, Major Falconer. Mari has gone away.”
