A Stranger at Castonbury

chapterr Six

That had to be the place.

Jamie drew up his new curricle at the gate of the tiny, ramshackle cottage set at the edge of a wood several miles from Castonbury and far from any other houses or villages. The shutters were all drawn and no smoke curled from the chimney. With the overgrown gardens tangled around its peeling walls, it looked deserted. But his contact had assured him she was there.

When Jamie had gone looking for Alicia Walters, he had found it no easy task. She had fled from the Dower House at Castonbury as soon as Harry had returned from Spain. Her ruse had been discovered, and no one on the estate was sure where she had gone. His father, despite his blustering threats of hangings, hadn’t chased after her, and his siblings were too relieved at learning that their brother was still alive to care. Only one person had seemed concerned about her, and that was the Castonbury estate manager, William Everett.

‘I know what she did was terrible, my lord,’ he had said to Jamie as they walked over the fields. ‘But she must have been coerced in some way, I’m sure. She was too gentle to come up with such a scheme herself. I fear something amiss might have happened to her.’

Jamie had learned a great deal about reading people in Spain, about gauging the true thoughts and emotions they hid behind their words. Everett had worked for the Montagues for a long time and had a reputation for scrupulous honesty and openness. Jamie saw that his words were true—he did believe Alicia to be a good woman pressed in some way to do a bad thing. The man was concerned about her safety now.

And what was more, he cared about her. In his eyes Jamie could see the raw fear, the tenderness, when he said Alicia’s name. The tentative spark of hope. He was afraid he himself had looked just like that when he first saw Catalina. Lovestruck. Foolish.

So Everett saw good in Alicia. But he didn’t know where she had gone. Neither did anyone else on the estate or in Buxton, and most seemed to wish she would stay gone. But finding people who didn’t wish to be found was something else Jamie had learned in Spain. When he went to London to settle the financial accounts, he had looked up some of his more disreputable contacts and got to work.

That work had led him here, to this deserted-looking cottage. It didn’t look like a place where anyone could live, especially not a gentle lady with a small child, but perhaps that was its attraction. No one would think to look here, especially since it was actually close to Castonbury, plus the owner of the land had been abroad for a long time and would charge no rent. He wondered at the cunning mind that had discovered this clever hiding place, that had thought up this dastardly scheme in the first place

Jamie braced his leg against the seat and grimaced as he studied the silent house. He didn’t need to use the stick to get about as much any more—the long walks over the estate to survey what needed to be done had helped with that. But the day in the curricle had made the scars stiffen.

‘You just need to get on a horse again, get out in the hunting field,’ Phaedra had said, sure that a good gallop could cure any ill. But he had laughed and told her that was still a long way in the future, and he had bought this curricle instead. Just one more thing he couldn’t yet do that was expected of him as the heir.

Or maybe it was the knowledge of what he had to do now that made his leg ache. He had hoped that in coming back to Castonbury he would at least have been able to find some peace, to cease to fight the battles of the world. But there could be no peace until this strange matter was dealt with once and for all.

And he was the only one who could do it. It was his name that had been used to dishonour his family. He had to end it.

Jamie lowered himself from the high seat and tied the horse up to the garden fence. He watched the house surreptitiously the whole time, pretending to be absorbed in his task, and he was rewarded by the flicker of a curtain at an upstairs window. He glimpsed a flash of pale hair before the fabric fell back in place.

Someone was there, after all. Was she alone?

Jamie pushed open the broken gate and made his way carefully up the overgrown path. The silence seemed to roar around him, the wind through the trees, the rustle of the old, dried leaves and dead flowers under his boots, the creak of the house.

At the door, Jamie rested one hand on his hip where he could feel the weight of his pistol tucked inside his coat and raised the other to knock. The sound echoed hollowly, and for a moment he could hear nothing. Then it came to him, the faintest brush as of slippers on a dusty floor. If his senses hadn’t been trained to high alert in Spain, he would have missed it.

Then it went quiet again.

‘Miss Walters?’ he called gently. ‘I know you are there. It’s Jamie Montague. I just want to speak with you.’

There was a small rustle again, and then nothing.

‘Please, Miss Walters,’ he said. ‘I mean you no harm. I don’t want to have to return with my brothers, who might not be so peaceable.’

After a long, tense moment, there was the scrape of a lock being drawn back and the door opened a couple of inches. Through the crack Jamie saw a blue muslin skirt and a flash of a pale cheek. She gasped when she saw him, and he thrust his booted foot into the gap in case she decided to slam it shut again.

‘It is you,’ she said hoarsely.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ he answered. ‘Not quite as dead as you thought, I fear.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘I have my ways. Now, please let me in so we can talk in private.’ Not that there was anyone to hear but the wind and the trees, but Jamie still didn’t want his family’s business conducted out of doors.

Alicia glanced back over her shoulder and hesitated. But finally she nodded and pulled the door open all the way.

Jamie stepped into a tiny hall just as she spun around and hurried away. He followed her into a small sitting room, filled with furniture draped in holland covers and an empty fireplace surmounted by a dusty mantel. One settee was uncovered and piled with blankets. Alicia rushed over to it and picked up the child who sat there playing with some wooden blocks, a cherubic toddler with blue eyes and golden curls.

She held him tightly to her shoulder as she turned to face Jamie. Her eyes, the same china-blue as the baby’s, were bright with unshed tears but she held her head high.

Jamie remembered her from Spain, how she had scurried so quietly behind Colonel Chambers’s noisy wife, how her pale hair and plain clothes had blended into the background. Now she was just as quiet, trembling but calm, and he could scarcely credit she was the same woman who had pulled such a bold, dangerous scheme.

Perhaps Everett was right. Perhaps someone had driven her to it. Perhaps someone had forced her, blackmailed her.

But that didn’t change the fact that she had done it. And he needed answers.

‘Have you come to arrest me?’ she asked.

‘Not yet,’ Jamie answered. As he watched, the child popped his fingers into his little mouth and grinned at Jamie. Jamie could see why his father had loved the child. But it was not his son. Not the son he had once dared to dream of having with Catalina.

‘I need to know what happened,’ he said.

‘We thought you were dead!’ Alicia burst out, her calm cracking. ‘I didn’t think it would hurt anyone, and your father seemed so happy. I only wanted to take care of my little Crispin.’

‘Crispin?’ Jamie laughed. ‘You named him after my father? You are bold.’

‘I thought you were dead,’ Alicia said again.

‘So you came up with this whole elaborate scheme all on your own?’ Jamie said. ‘You found my lost signet ring after it was stolen, forged a marriage licence and found my family. Put the whole plan together and thought you could fool everyone. Very clever.’

‘Yes. I—I did it all myself,’ she said. But Jamie saw her eyes flicker, her shoulders tense. The baby frowned and fidgeted.

‘I don’t believe you. Tell me what happened, the truth, and I can help you and your son. But if you don’t there is nothing I can do for you and no place where you can hide from me.’

Alicia turned away to put the child back down on the settee and handed him one of his blocks. Jamie gave her the moment to think, and when she faced him again she nodded.

‘There—there was someone who helped me,’ she said slowly. ‘A friend.’

‘He was not much of a friend if he led you into such a crime,’ Jamie said. ‘And now he appears to have abandoned you here. Unless he is hidden in that cupboard over there.’

‘No. He is gone. I don’t know where he went, and I...’ Alicia broke off on a choked sob. ‘He said he knew what to do, how to make all this come out right.’

‘Who is it?’

Alicia bit her lip as the tears spilled from her eyes. ‘Captain Hugh Webster. You remember him from Spain? He gave me your ring, he told me what to do.’

Webster. Jamie shook his head. He should have known. He remembered playing cards with Webster in Spain. Everyone suspected the man of cheating but no one could prove it. He had always made Jamie feel uneasy in his presence, and now he knew why.

The way the man had stared at Catalina, which had made Jamie want to call the man out, should have been the only clue he needed to tell him the man was untrustworthy.

‘Of course. Webster,’ Jamie said. ‘And now he has fled to leave you to take his punishment.’

Alicia sat down beside her son, sobbing. ‘What will happen to my Crispin now? I know I should not have listened to Webster, I should never have...’

‘I will help you, Alicia, if you will help me,’ Jamie said. Despite himself he was moved by her tears, by the child clinging to her.

‘I would do anything I could to help you, Lord Hatherton, I swear it,’ Alicia answered hoarsely. ‘But what can I do?’

‘You are going to help me find Webster,’ Jamie said. He thought of everything his family had been through, he thought of what the strain had done to his father. He could scarcely believe the difference between the strong and formidable man he had said goodbye to and the frail shadow he had come home to. He thought of Giles, taking on a responsibility he had never wanted, having to contend with this false claim under the burden of the failing family finances. He thought of his sisters and what they must have gone through with all the uncertainty. And he thought of his brother Harry, who had come all the way to Seville to find out the truth, of all the hardships he had encountered on his journey. He knew that he bore some responsibility for that, but this man Webster, he must be made to pay. And Jamie knew just how to do it. He would find Webster, and then he would kill him....