The Complete Regency Surrender Collection. Louise Allen
silently in a chair while she dressed, it would be better than being alone.
But their time to be together had passed and the distance between them was more than just the space between their rooms. She had cried herself to sleep worrying about what was likely to happen when morning came. But not before writing a full account of what had happened in Bath, so she might give it to the duke. If Will brought a second, there would be no other man he might choose. Perhaps, if she delivered a full confession before the fight began, Bellston might call a halt to it and save Will’s life.
She pulled on a gown and found stockings and shoes, wishing she had asked what it was that was expected. When she had seen him just now, he’d been fully dressed. But since it was the same coat he had worn in the afternoon, she suspected he had not gone to bed.
He should be resting. If he meant to carry out his foolish plan, dawn would come soon enough and he must be ready for it. Perhaps the duel was worrying him more than he let on. Perhaps he meant to run away with her. That was too much to hope for. There was something funereal in his demeanour that was far more frightening than his anger had been.
When she was finished dressing, she found him waiting in the hall for her, a candle in his hand to light their way. He preceded her down the steps and through the servant-less corridors to the main floor. The house was still asleep. The hall clock chimed three as they passed it, on their way to the back of the house.
From there, they went to the servants’ stairs, down again, through the kitchens and beyond, down another flight of steps to a part of the house she had never seen. She could feel the cool air rising from the brick walls and see the racks upon racks of bottles. The wine cellar? ‘Where are we going?’ she finally raised the nerve to ask.
‘To get you what you wanted, from the first moment you arrived here.’
For a moment, she could not think what that might be. Then she remembered.
The diamonds.
He had told the truth, in Bath, when he had claimed to know where they were. Their location had come back to him, with the rest of his memories. Then it would have been better had they stayed lost. ‘It does not matter,’ she said.
‘Does it not?’ He stared back at her. ‘The stones I very nearly lost my life for have no value to you. I should think, given the things you were willing to do for them...’
‘Stop!’ If this was the last time she would be alone with him, she did not want to be reminded of what had happed. ‘You know it has been more than that, for some time,’ she said. There was no bitterness in her comment. It was too late for that.
If he knew, he did not want to admit it. There was a ghost of his old smile on his face, as though it had all been a huge joke. But the joke was over now, the memory fading. ‘Well, in any case, if I have guessed rightly in their location, you shall have them.’ His expression changed, yet again, to something different, solemn but peaceful. ‘Should something happen this morning...to me, I mean...I want to make sure that you have what you have wanted from the first: your freedom. If there is trouble, you are to take them and your sister, and go.’
He turned back to focus on the way they were taking, turning left, then right between the racks to go deeper into the room. Justine followed in silence, her mind racing. At one time, what he’d offered would have been more than enough to satisfy her. She would not be punished for what had happened in Bath. She would not have to return to Montague. Her sister would be safe.
But the preface that had come before it was unbearable. He meant for her to have the jewels if he died. She could have said the same of her father, she supposed. It was likely his wife and daughters he had thought of, as he hid them from Montague. She was to have them at last. But if they cost her lover his life, it was far too high a price to pay for them.
They had come to a corner, to a heavy wooden door with an iron ring for a handle. He turned back to her, explaining. ‘This part of the house is very old, hundreds of years, in fact. At that time, the place was more of a fortress than a home.’ He pulled on the ring and the door, which looked so solid, swung easily open, revealing an arched stone hallway, stretching forward further than the light from the candle could reach. But from what she could see of it, it was swept clean and free of cobwebs. The gentle breeze coming from it was cold and fresh.
‘This is the one thing that my mother wished she could have taken with her, when they built Bellston Court,’ Will said, with a proud smile. ‘After all this time, it is still dead useful. But not practical to replicate.’ He led the way down the corridor and they walked for some minutes, until she was sure that they must have passed beyond the walls of the house. Not a corridor, then. It was a tunnel under the yard and it led in the direction of the woods.
‘Adam and I played here, as children.’ Will smiled at the memory. ‘We were looking for Arthur, under his mountain. We were sure he must be here.’
‘The raven,’ she said, remembering the story he had told in the woods.
He nodded. ‘It was a fever dream. But I was so very hot. I heard the maids crying over how I must surely die. I did not want to. I wanted to be cool again and I wanted Merlin’s magic, so that I might live.’
‘It is cool here,’ she admitted, ‘Even in the heat of the day, I’m sure.’
‘And magical,’ he insisted. They had come to the end of the tunnel, to another wooden door as large and heavy as the first one. He pushed it open and she saw starlight through tree branches, smelled the mossy scent of pine and loam and heard the low slap of water on rock.
‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘Go left and there is a steep path, down to the pond. But right and up the hill...’
‘The path through the trees,’ she said.
‘I opened the door and looked up. And I saw a man, tall and gaunt, with a black coat.’
‘Your raven,’ she said.
‘Montague,’ he answered. ‘I must have surprised him, for he dropped this.’ He reached into his pocket and pressed a scrap of velvet and silk into her hand.
She did not need light to know it for what it was. She’d handled hundreds of them, over the course of her time in the shop, bagging up loose stones in the little sacks, pulling the gold drawstrings tight so that all stayed clean and safe. She ran her fingers over the stitching, not needing the candlelight to see the ornate M and B intertwined and the tiny gold crown embroidered above it.
‘I did not understand what it meant. I did not even find it in my pocket for another year. When I did, I told no one, because it was too late to do anything. They burned most of my playthings at the end of the summer, fearing that they were contaminated by my illness. I did not want to tell anyone of this for fear it would be taken from me and thrown into the fire. So I hid it in the nursery. And then I forgot.’
‘I did not look in the nursery,’ she said, surprised by her careless assumptions.
‘Why would you? I had not been there in years and I live in the house. But I was searching for a christening gift for Bill. And there it was.’
‘And Montague dropped it,’ she said, imagining the scene.
‘He threw it, more like. As if he was angry. And then he saw me and was gone.’ Will gave a low laugh. ‘He must have thought he’d escaped unnoticed. Then, twenty years later, the little boy from Wales appears in his shop, holding the very same bag. No wonder he split my skull. He must have been very near to panic.’
‘If he was angry because the bag was empty...’ Justine said, trying not to be excited by the story.
‘Then what happened to the diamonds?’ Will was smiling broadly now, pleased that she was following his reasoning. ‘If your father stumbled off the path and came upon this door, he might have gone inside.’ Then he turned back into the tunnel, shining his candle along the wall to reveal another door, this one of metal. ‘And he’d have found this.’
When he opened it, a blast of cold