Regency Scandals: High Seas To High Society / Masquerading Mistress. Sophia James

a mellow echo of vibration lost in darkness.

      Like he was lost, he thought suddenly, before dismissing the notion altogether. He was the head of the Carisbrook family and everybody depended on him. If he faltered …? No, he could not even think of the notion of faltering. Carefully he replaced the lid of the piano across the keys. Dust had collected upon the hinges and had bedded into the intricate inlaid walnut that spelled out his wife’s initials.

       Ash unto ash, dust unto dust.

      Tomorrow he would inform his housekeeper to instruct the staff to clean the music room again. It had been too long since he had forbidden its use to anyone save himself. And his wife would have abhorred the fact that her prized piano had sat unplayed for all these years.

      Still, he could not quite leave the room, an essence of something elusive on the very edges of his logic.

      Something to do with Emma Seaton. Her turquoise eyes. The scar. The sound of laughter against the sea.

      The sea?

      Was he going mad? He crossed to the window. Outside the night was still. Dark. Cold. And the cloud that covered the moon made his leg ache, shattered bone healed badly into fragments.

      Fragments.

      They were all that was left of him sometimes, a shaky mosaic of loss and regret.

      ‘God,’ he whispered into the night. ‘I am becoming as maudlin as my mother.’ Blowing out the candle, he resolved to find some solace in his library. At least till the dawn when he could sleep.

      Azziz returned to the house in Park Street just before midnight, and Emerald hoped that this time he had been careful to scour the neighbouring roads to make certain he was unobserved.

      ‘I have heard word on the docks that McIlverray is on his way to London, Emmie.’

      ‘Then he knows about the cane—why else would he come?’ She frowned; this news put a whole different perspective on everything. Karl McIlverray, her father’s first mate, was as corrupt as he was clever and had a band of loyal men who followed him blindly. Any intelligence circulating the docks of Kingston Town usually ended up in his ears and Karl McIlverray had been with her father long enough to put two and two together. He would know exactly what was inside the cane.

      Damn, it was getting more and more complicated and she wished for the thousandth time that her father had kept the treasure in the vault of a bank or in a safe where it could have been more easily accessed.

      Time. It was slipping away from her.

      How long before he arrives?’

      ‘A week or even ten days—the storms out in the Atlantic might slow them down, if we are lucky. I’ll leave a man in place to make certain we see them before they see us.’

      ‘And you?’

      ‘Toro and I will come to Falder. We can camp somewhere close and keep an eye on things.’

      Emerald was not certain as to the merits of the plan for they would be easily seen in the English countryside around the house. But if McIlverray came, she would need to be able to summon help, and quickly. She imagined the aristocratic Carisbrook family coming face to face with any of them and her heart pounded. And if someone innocent got hurt because of her …! She could not finish.

      She had to be in and out of Falder quickly and on a boat back to Jamaica, making sure in the interim that Karl McIlverray had word of her movements. Another more worrying thought occurred to her.

      ‘What if the cane is back here in London?’

      Azziz frowned. ‘It wasn’t in the house a month ago when Toro and I searched it.’

      ‘But he may have brought it with him this time. The limp still troubles him.’

      ‘Have you seen him use a cane at all in public?’

      ‘No.’ She began to smile. ‘And I do not think that he would. Each time I have been in his company he is careful that others may not notice the ailment. A cane would only draw their attention to what he seeks to hide.’

      Privacy. Sanctuary. She sensed these things were important to the enigmatic Duke of Carisbrook and her spirits lifted.

      ‘Miriam and I are due to leave for Falder soon and I can search the house easily under the cover of night.’

      ‘The Duke of Carisbrook does not strike me as a man who could be easily fooled.’

      ‘How does he strike you then?’

      ‘Tough. Dangerous. Ruthless. A man who would have little time for lies.’

      ‘Then I must be out of Falder before he knows them as such.’

      ‘Do not underestimate him, Emmie.’

      ‘You are beginning to sound like Miriam.’ She smiled and laid her hand on his arm, her fingers tightening as she remembered all the other times in her life she had depended on Azziz. If she lost him too …? If anything went terribly wrong …? As she tried to banish fear she was consumed by sadness. When was the last time that she had taken a breath in joy and let all of it out again?

      She could barely remember.

      Her father’s death, Miriam’s agedness, and a debt that was increasing with each and every passing day. She could go neither backwards nor forwards and the options of anything else were fast shrinking. What happened to people who ran out of money in London? She shook her head in fright.

      The poorhouse took them.

      The place of liars and cheats.

      A liar. It was who she had become. If she could find the map, she could fashion a home. Not a grand one, but a for-ever place. A place to stay and grow and be. A place like St Clair. She closed her eyes against the pure thread of desperation that snaked itself around her heart, because she knew that the old house was gone, up in flames, the living embodiment of the McIlverray hatred for her father. And grounded perhaps on a sense of justice, for Beau had promised Karl McIlverray far more than he had ever delivered.

      She let out her breath. Beau had promised everyone more than he had ever delivered and she needed to make it right.

      Right?

      If she hadn’t been so worried, she might have smiled at the thought. Right? Wrong? Good? Bad? She remembered Beau’s interpretation of law and doubted that Asher Wellingham’s would be even remotely similar. Enormous wealth and righteous morals were easy when you were not staring down the barrel of a gun and saying what you thought the bearer would most like to hear.

       Lies and deception.

      It was all that she was left with as truth withered under the harsher face of reality.

      Azziz pulled his blade from the leather sheath at his shin and wiped it with an oiled rag from his pocket. The movement caught her attention.

      The sheer danger of it all was no longer as exhilarating as it had once been. Now, instead of seeing the adventure in everything she saw the pitfalls, and an encounter with McIlverray worried her a lot more than she allowed Azziz to see that it did.

      Was she growing old?

      Twenty-one … twenty-two in six months. Sometimes now she caught herself looking across at other women her age as they walked the streets with husbands and children at their side.

      She tried to remember what her own mother had looked like, tried to remember the touch of her hand or the cadence of her voice and came up with nothing.

      Nothing. The emptiness of memory caught at her with a surprising melancholy. To distract herself, she began to speak of the entertainment for the following night.

      ‘There is a party at the Bishop of Kingseat’s that I am indebted to attend. Lady Flora has been generous in her friendship …’ She faltered.

      ‘Will Carisbrook be there?’

      ‘I