Promise Me Tomorrow (29 page)

“We went for a stroll in the garden, and he asked me to marry him. He said he loved me.”

“Of course he does. We knew that all along.”

“He has to ask Father, of course, but I am sure Father will not refuse.”

“Lady Ursula is none too fond of Bucky,” Nicola reminded her friend.

“No. But she is much more frightened of my turning into an old maid. Much as she cherishes hopes that Lord Lambeth will offer for me, she is much too realistic to believe that it will ever really happen,” Penelope replied. “She won’t object.”

“That’s wonderful.” Marianne hugged Penelope. “I wish you very happy.”

“I will be. And thank you. I can never hope to repay you for what you’ve done.”

“Nonsense. Bucky would have realized that he loved you at some point. We just gave him a little push.”

The evening wore on. Finally it was almost midnight, and Lady Buckminster stopped the band and announced that everyone should go outside onto the terrace. Marianne had made sure that she was near the doors when the announcement was made, so that she could slip outside and take up a position exactly where she wanted to. She stood at the top of the steps leading down to the garden, leaning against the pillar. She had slipped the lacy cream-colored shawl around her shoulders, as if against the cooler evening air. She saw no sign of Bucky or Justin; they should already be in their places. Marianne’s hand knotted around her fan. She forced herself not to turn around and scan the crowd. She must not seem as if she was looking for anyone or as if she was suspicious. She could hear the crowd building up along the terrace and knew that she simply had to hope that her attacker was there and watching her.

The first fireworks went off with a boom, bursting in a shower of light over the pond. The guests on the terrace let out an exclamation of delight. Marianne waited through two more rockets of light, then moved down the steps and onto the grass, standing to the side of the garden path and away from the steps, where she hoped she was clearly visible. She also hoped that her movements would have caught the villain’s attention and roused his curiosity. She waited for another burst of color to light up the sky, then, for good measure, let another one pass.

Finally she started off, walking neither quickly nor slowly, winding her way down the garden path until she was out of sight of the terrace. She walked more quickly then, but she was careful not to hurry. She must simply look like a woman going for a stroll alone, enjoying the beauty of the rose-scented night and the fireworks. Her ears were attuned to the slightest noise, but she heard nothing—no crunch of pebbles, no sliding of a shoe along a path. The back of her neck prickled, and her heart was pounding double-time. She felt terribly vulnerable and exposed.

Ahead of her she saw at last the corner of the hedge behind which Justin should be waiting. She did not even allow herself to think of what she would do if Justin was not there or not ready. With even steps she approached the hedge and rounded it. With relief, she saw Justin waiting at the end of the hedge, where the path turned to head toward the arbor. He was a strange figure, tall and broad-shouldered in a woman’s evening gown that ended absurdly a few inches below his knee, exposing his trousers and polished black evening shoes, and with an ill-fitting wig perched on his head.

With the hedge blocking her from her pursuer’s eyes for a few precious moments, Marianne flew to Justin, taking off her shawl. She handed it to him, and Bucky, standing behind Justin, grabbed her hand and pulled her quickly around the end of the hedge and into another row of bushes. Bending over so that the shorter bushes would conceal them, he led her around first one corner, then another. They were able to straighten up then, concealed behind another high hedge, and they tip-toed quickly along it. Bucky peered around the hedge carefully, then stepped back and motioned Marianne forward so that she could look around the corner of the hedge.

When she did so, she saw Justin, now seated on the small bench in the rose arbor. His back was toward the path he had taken, and he was facing forward at a slight angle to Marianne’s sightline. She could not see his features in the shadow, but she could see the pistol he held ready in his lap.

Then, on the path behind him, moving quickly toward the arbor, came the figure of a man. It paused for an instant, looking at Justin’s back, then started forward. Marianne’s hands clenched at her sides, and she waited tensely, hoping that Justin was aware of the man’s approach. She could hear Bucky’s quickening breath behind her as he peered around the hedge above her head.

Justin had indeed heard the sound of feet on the graveled pathway, and he turned his head to the side, away from the direction from which the man would approach, so that their prey would not catch a betraying glimpse of Justin’s masculine features until he was into the arbor.

“Mrs. Cotterwood,” the man said as he stepped into the entrance of the arbor, and Justin whipped back around to face him, bringing up the pistol in his hand to level it at the other’s chest.

The other man stopped abruptly, a gasp torn from his throat. He stared at Justin, surprise, then fear, flashing across his face.

“Good God!” Justin burst out. “Winborne! It’s you?”

“Winborne!” Marianne and Buckminster repeated in unison and started out from their hiding place toward the tableau in the rose arbor.

Justin leaped to his feet and reached out to grab Fanshaw Winborne’s arm, but Winborne jumped back agilely and took off at a run up the path. Justin tore off after him, pistol in one hand, holding up his skirts in the other, so that they would not hamper his running. Lord Buckminster flew after him, with Marianne bringing up the rear. They tore through the garden, dodging around bushes and trampling through flowers. Justin and Buckminster were shouting at Winborne to stop, and Winborne was yelling also—it sounded to Marianne as if he were calling for help.

On the terrace, the guests turned their attention from the finale of the fireworks show to see the strange chase through the garden. Winborne was heading around the side of the house toward the front driveway, and the crowd moved along the terrace in the same direction.

Justin was almost on Winborne. Dropping both his skirts and his gun, he made a flying leap and crashed into Winborne, knocking him to the ground. In an instant Buckminster joined them, pulling Justin, who was seated astride Winborne, pummeling him, off the other man. Then he reached down to haul Winborne up, too.

In the night air, Lord Chesfield’s voice carried clearly from the terrace. “I say, why is Lambeth punching Fanshaw?”

“What I want to know is, why the devil is he wearing a dress?” came Mr. Westerton’s rejoinder.

Marianne was some distance behind the men. She stopped to catch her breath at the edge of the garden, watching the show, as was everyone on the terrace. She started forward, and at that moment, an arm wrapped around her waist from behind, lifting her off her feet, and a man’s hand clamped over her mouth.

“You’re a very difficult woman to catch, Miss Chilton,” he growled and hauled her back into the gardens.

T
HEY HAD CAUGHT THE WRONG MAN!
Marianne struggled against her attacker, kicking back with her heels and wriggling wildly.
Justin and Bucky would go on arguing with Cecilia’s brother, and all the while the real attacker would carry her off and dispose of her!

The man grunted as her heels connected with his shin, and his hand tightened involuntarily against her mouth. The movement pressed her lips painfully against her teeth, but Marianne saw her opportunity and sank her teeth into the fleshy area beneath his thumb. He cursed and jerked his hand away, and Marianne let out a scream.

Justin whirled around and saw what was going on. Understanding flashed across his face, and he dropped his hold on Fanshaw Winborne’s shirt front. “Fuquay!”

He started toward Marianne and Reginald Fuquay, in whose grasp Marianne was held, but Fuquay whipped out a small pistol and placed it against Marianne’s temple. Justin came to an immediate stop.

“Fuquay, what the devil are you doing?” he asked. “Don’t make things any worse for yourself. Put down the gun.”

“That’s right,” Marianne said. “Everyone has seen you now.”

“I want a horse,” Fuquay told Justin. “I will exchange her for the best mount in Lord Buckminster’s stables.”

“Of course,” Bucky agreed. “Whatever you say. I will give you my own horse.” He turned and shouted to one of the servants, who had by that time come out the kitchen door and were gaping at the spectacle before them.

One of the footmen took off at a run for the stables. Justin took two steps toward Marianne.

“Stop! Unless you want to see her dead!”

Justin raised his hands placatingly. “Of course not. I’m not trying to hurt you. I want to talk to you. Where will you go, Fuquay? Are you going to become a fugitive, running from the law? No one has been hurt yet. Maybe we could still work something out. None of us wants a scandal, after all. Perhaps if we talked…Why don’t you put down the gun? Tell us why you have been making these attacks on Mrs. Cotterwood.”

“Oh, God!” Fuquay cried, his breath catching in a sob. “I’m ruined anyway.”

“It isn’t the worst yet, though,” Justin assured him. “If you put down the gun, we can talk. But if you harm Marianne, I won’t rest until you are hanging from a noose. Think of your parents, man, your family. Save them the humiliation of that!”

Fuquay let out an inarticulate noise. Marianne felt his arm loosening around her, the gun falling away.

There was a loud crack and flash from the terrace. Fuquay cried out and released Marianne as he fell to the ground.

Marianne shrieked and bolted toward Justin, who was beside her in an instant, pulling her into his arms. They clung together for a moment in relief, then turned back to Fuquay. He lay crumpled on the ground, blood covering his face.

“Oh, God,” Marianne whispered, covering her mouth. Her stomach turned.

“Wait here.” Justin set her aside and hurried to the man, going down on one knee to take up his wrist and search for a pulse.

Marianne followed him. “Is he…?”

“He’s dead,” Justin replied grimly, rising to his feet and turning toward the terrace.

The Earl of Exmoor was walking toward them, carrying a pistol. Justin’s face flushed with fury, and he started toward the Earl, fists knotting at his sides.

“Why the devil did you shoot him? You could have hit Marianne!”

“Nonsense. I had a clear shot, and my aim is excellent. Mrs. Cotterwood was never in danger,” Exmoor answered coolly. “That is why I aimed at his head, so it would be clear of her. Pity.”

“Pity? That’s all you can say? Good God, you just killed a man.”

“A man who was about to shoot an unarmed woman.”

“He wasn’t,” Marianne protested. “He was letting go of me. I felt it. Justin had persuaded him to release me.”

“Now we will never know why he attacked her!” Justin followed his words with a hearty oath.

“Yes. I am sorry for that,” Exmoor agreed and walked over to look down dispassionately at Fuquay. “If the light had been better, I might have been able to wound him without endangering Mrs. Cotterwood. But with only the torches and not being familiar with this pistol—I grabbed it from the wall in the study—well, I could not take the chance. Odd that he should attack you like that. I suppose some men are unable to contain their lust. He was rather wild when he was young, but he seemed to have settled down in recent years.”

“It wasn’t lust,” Justin told him flatly, still seething. “He had tried to kill Mrs. Cotterwood before, and we have no idea why.”

“Kill her!” Exmoor ejaculated with an amazed look. “How very peculiar. Well! I should think you would be grateful to me for shooting him before he could be successful at it.” He cast an assessing glance at Marianne. “And you have no idea why?”

“No.”

“You were not close to him, Mrs. Cotterwood?” Exmoor asked.

“No. I had never met him until I came here this week.”

“Strange.”

“My dear, my dear.” Lady Buckminster came bustling up to them, followed by Penelope and Nicola.

The older woman folded Marianne into her embrace, hugging her to her ample bosom. “What a terrifying experience for you. You should go back to the house and rest. Tom is the magistrate, so he can take care of this.”

“Yes,” Penelope agreed and slipped an arm around Marianne’s waist when Lady Buckminster let go of her. Nicola fell in on the other side, linking her arm through Marianne’s.

They walked back into the house and went into the drawing room. Most of the men remained outside. The Squire’s wife had a fit of hysterics and had to be escorted to the sitting room to lie down by the vicar’s. The rest of the women drifted into the drawing room. It was a trifle small for the crowd, but no one seemed inclined to gather in the festively decorated ballroom.

They said little, seemingly stunned by the events of the evening. Finally Mrs. Thurston said tearfully, “I don’t understand. Mr. Fuquay was always such a nice man. I never even heard him raise his voice. What could have brought him to this pass?”

Marianne felt as if they were all looking at her. “I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t say. I didn’t even know the man! I mean, except to chat with at dinner and such.”

“He must be mad,” Sophronia Merridale declared flatly. “What else would cause him to act so bizarrely?”

“But he was so sane, so rational, so hard-working,” Mrs. Thurston protested. “My husband had known him for years and years.”

“Had he seemed troubled recently?” Penelope asked.

“No, not that I had noticed. Well…sometimes he fell into silences, but he was prone to do that. He thought a lot. Perhaps he had done it a trifle more often the past couple of weeks. I’m not sure.”

“I am sure Mrs. Cotterwood knows why,” Cecilia Winborne said venomously, rising to her feet, her eyes fixed on Marianne. “There is more going on here than meets the eye.”

“Cecilia!” Lady Buckminster exclaimed. “What a thing to say!”

“It’s true! She’s hiding something. Just look at her!” Cecilia pointed her forefinger at Marianne.

Marianne stared at her, so surprised she could think of nothing to say.

“You are being rude,” Lady Buckminster told Cecilia sharply.

“I am being truthful. She is an impostor!”

Marianne felt sick to her stomach and was sure that the color had drained out of her face.
Would they all see the guilt in her face?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was glad that her voice sounded calm, even though her nerves were jangling inside.

“I talked to the squire’s wife today. She is from Yorkshire, the very area, in fact, where Mrs. Cotterwood claims to have grown up. Both she and her conveniently deceased husband. Mrs. Halsey had never heard of any family named Morley or Cotterwood in the area. It is clear that she is only pretending to be genteel. Who knows where she comes from or who she is! I should not be surprised at what sort of connection she really had with Mr. Fuquay or why he wanted to kill her.”

Everyone stared at Cecilia in stunned silence. Marianne could think of nothing to say; her brain seemed frozen. All she could think was that now everyone would know.
They would all look at her in disgust and contempt, even Nicola and Penelope. She would have to leave the house in disgrace.

Then she heard Nicola’s voice saying coolly, “Really, Cecilia…such high drama. What else was the poor girl to do when you were subjecting her to such an inquisition? One would have thought you were a court of law. ‘Where were you born? Who were your parents? Where did your husband live?’ I would have told you a lot of nonsense, too, if you had tried to interrogate me that way.”

“But—but—” Cecilia sputtered, looking confused. “It isn’t the same. I know you.”

“And I know Marianne,” Nicola replied, rising to her feet. “Her family is friends with my aunt in East Anglia.”

“That’s not true!” Cecilia lashed out bitterly. “I don’t know why you are defending her, but I know that you didn’t know her before this week. She is an adventuress!”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Nicola responded, raising an eyebrow.

The other woman’s face contorted. “
She
is!” Cecilia cried, stabbing a finger in Marianne’s direction. “She has taken you and everyone else in.”

At that moment a man’s voice came from the doorway, slicing through the room like a knife. “I would be careful what I said if I were you, Cecilia. You might find yourself in the embarrassing situation of having to take back your words.”

Everyone in the room swung around to look at the doorway, where Justin lounged, his shoulder negligently propped against the doorjamb. As they watched, he straightened and sauntered into the room. “That is not the sort of slander that I take lightly when it is applied to my future wife.”

If the room had been quiet before, it was now virtually tomblike. All the women, including Marianne, stared at Justin as if they had been poleaxed.

“You—you can’t be serious!” Cecilia gasped.

Justin raised an eyebrow at her as he walked across the room. “I did try to caution you the other night, you know.” He stopped beside Marianne’s chair and looked down at her. “Are you all right, my dear?”

Marianne nodded speechlessly.

“The magistrate would like to speak to you. Do you feel up to it?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Good. If you will excuse us, ladies?” Justin cast an impartial smile around the room and offered Marianne his arm.

The room remained hushed until Justin and Marianne were several feet past the door; then the women broke into a babble. Justin smiled faintly. “I seem to have created something of a stir.”

“Justin! Why did you say that?” Marianne gasped.

Justin looked at her. He was a trifle surprised at his own actions. He had not thought about marrying Marianne until that moment, when he had stepped into the room and heard Cecilia reviling Marianne. An anger fiercer than any he had ever felt had swept over him then, and he had said the one thing that he knew would stop her words. But now, gazing at Marianne, he realized that marrying her was precisely what he wanted to do.

“How will you explain it when we don’t get married?” Marianne went on.

“Who said that we are not?” he answered.

Marianne stopped in amazement and stared at him. “You’re joking!”

“I would hardly joke about a thing like that,” he replied.

“But it’s impossible!”

He quirked one eyebrow. “Are you saying that you refuse to marry me?”

“No, of course not,” Marianne answered truthfully. The fact was that she loved him; she had known it since the day in the mine. And when he had told Cecilia that she was his fiancée, she had been filled with a rush of pleasure so great that she could hardly contain it. She wanted more than anything to marry him—to be with Justin always, to share his life, to bear his children.

“Then it’s settled.” He smiled at her and reached out to open the front door.

“It is not settled.” Marianne caught his arm. She knew that it would be low of her indeed to take Justin up on his offer. She glanced around, then pulled him into the music room, which was unoccupied. “You can’t marry me!”

“Indeed?” Justin gave her a quelling look. “And here I thought I was free and over the age of consent.”

“Don’t try that frosty aristocratic stare on me. It won’t work,” she said flatly. “You know as well as I do that you aren’t free, not really. The future Duke of Storbridge cannot marry a nobody—worse than a nobody, a thief!”

“I do agree that we should keep quiet about your present occupation,” Justin agreed. “And perhaps we should find your ‘relatives’ less larcenous methods of making money.”

“It would take far more than that to make me respectable, and you know it. The truth will come out. Someone—most probably Cecilia—will start to dig into my past and will find out that I used to be a servant. It will ruin you!”

“Hardly that.”

“It will be a blot on your family’s reputation. Your parents—”