His Mask of Retribution. Margaret McPhee

thought again that, in truth, he was no ordinary highwayman.

      The clock in the corner on the mantelpiece chimed midnight. Misbourne left his son and his wife in the drawing room and made his way to his study. He needed time to think, needed space away from his wife’s incessant weeping, because his heart was filled with dread and his stomach churning with fear over the gamble he had taken.

      ‘Had he released her she would be here by now,’ Linwood had whispered and Misbourne knew that his son was right. Yet he could not admit it, even to himself. He needed a brandy to calm his nerves. He needed time to gather his strength and hide his fears.

      But everything changed when he opened the door to his study. For there, on the desk that he had left clear, lay two pieces of paper like pale islands floating on the vast sea of dark polished mahogany. One was a smooth-cut sheet of writing paper, and the other was a crushed paper ball. His heart faltered before rushing off at a gallop. He hurried across the room to the desk. The writing paper bore his own crest, but it was not his hand that had penned those three bold letters and single word.

      IOU Misbourne.

      The ink glistened in the candlelight. His hand was shaking as he touched a finger to it and saw its wetness smear. He whirled around, knowing that the words had only just been written. Behind him the curtains swayed. He wrenched them open, but there was no one there. The window was up and the damp scent of night air filled his nose. He leaned his hands on the sill, craning his head out, searching the night for the man who had the audacity to walk right into his home to leave the message. But not a single one of the lamp posts that lined the road had been lit. The street was dark and deserted. Not a figure stirred. Not a dog barked. And of the highwayman there was no sign.

      He knew what the crumpled ball of paper was before he opened it. The letter he had sent to the highwayman. A letter that could have been used against Misbourne. A letter that could cost him much in the wrong hands. Crumpled as if it were worthless. The villain knew what the document was. He knew, and there was only one man left alive with that knowledge. Misbourne felt sick at the thought. It was everything he had guarded against. Everything he had prayed so hard to prevent. He shut the window and closed the curtains, knowing it would do little good; the highwayman had been in his home, the one place that should have been safe.

      He filled a glass with brandy, sat behind his desk and drank the strong warming liquid down. His eyes never left the words written upon the paper. Misbourne was more afraid than he had ever been, both for himself and for Marianne. He knew there was only one thing to do when the highwayman next made contact. If the highwayman next made contact.

       Chapter Four

      Marianne sat perched on the edge of the bed. The fire that the highwayman’s accomplice had set last night had long since burned away to nothing and the air was cool. The early morning light seeped through the cracks of the window shutters, filtering into the bedchamber. The bed was only slightly rumpled where she had lain awake all night on top of the covers. She had not climbed within the sheets, nor had she worn the nightclothes that the accomplice had left neatly folded upon the dressing table. She had not even removed her shoes.

      It had been the first night in almost three years that Marianne had spent alone. And she had barely slept a wink. All night she had waited. All night she had feared. But the highwayman had not come back to hurt her. Instead, he had filled the room with candles to light the darkness of the night. Eventually, as night had turned to dawn, her fear had diminished and all she could think of was the highwayman in the rookery and the look in his eyes as they had met hers. She thought of the villains quailing before him, of the wary respect in their eyes, of how he had kept her safe.

      He was tougher, stronger, more dangerous than any villain. And she remembered how, last night, she had physically accosted him, clutching at him in her panic, even barring the door so that he would not leave. She closed her eyes and cringed at the memory. He knew. She had seen it in his eyes. Yet he had not said one word of her weakness, nor used it against her. She slipped off her shoes and moved to sit on the rug in the bright warmth of the narrow beam of sunshine. And she thought again of the man with the hauntingly beautiful amber eyes and the dark mask that hid his face, and the strange conflict of emotion that was beating in her chest.

      When Knight opened the door to the yellow bedchamber his heart skipped a beat. The words he had come to say slipped from his mind. He stared and all else was forgotten in that moment as he watched Marianne hurriedly rising from where she had been sitting upon the floor. The room was dim, but small shafts of sunlight were penetrating through the seams of the closed shutters. She was standing directly in the line of a thin ray of light so that it lit her in a soft white light. There was an ethereal quality to her, so soft and pale with such deep, dark, soulful eyes.

      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.’