Nicola Cornick

Unmasked


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believe in coincidences,” Mari said bleakly. She put the empty glass down gently on the balustrade. “I think I shall retire. Laura will understand that I am tired after the day’s festivities.”

      “I will come with you,” Hester said at once. She stood up and brushed down her skirts. “This ball bores me. It is the same old faces. I shall drop you at home and then travel on to Half Moon House.”

      Mari’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, Hester!”

      The light spilling from the ballroom windows was bright enough to illuminate Hester’s rueful expression.

      “I know. You think me wanton.”

      “It is not that,” Mari said. She struggled with her feelings for a moment. On the nights when Hester did not come back, she lay in her bed and fretted the night away as though she were Hester’s mother. “I worry about you, out on your own, in bad company. And then there is Lord Teague. If he knew…” She stopped.

      Hester snapped her fingers. “John is my friend, nothing more.”

      “But he wants to be more,” Mari argued. “He cares about you. He loves you, Hester!”

      Hester slipped her hand through Mari’s arm. “Let us not quarrel,” she pleaded. “You are tired and anxious, and I am bored. You know how these events stifle me. So you will go to your bed and I will go—”

      “To someone else’s,” Mari said dryly. She sighed as she spoke for there was no changing Hester. She and her husband, Jack Berry, had been as wild as each other, forever encouraging one another to new feats of madness. From things that Hester had said, Mari had understood that she and Jack had quarreled like cat and dog, and yet something had bound them together. In Jack’s case the madness had ended in an early death on the hunting field. In Hester’s, Mari was not sure where it would end.

      They went back inside and Hester sent a footman to fetch their cloaks. As they crossed the hall to leave they saw Nick Falconer emerging from Charles Cole’s study. For one infinitely long, loaded moment his eyes met Mari’s and she stared, unable to look away. She thought of her own words and Hester’s response.

      He is a difficult man to deceive….

      You must lie to him! You could bring us all down….

      It was true. If Nick Falconer knew her history, knew everything his cousin Rashleigh had known, then conceivably it might ruin all those whom she cared about the most. For herself, she sometimes felt so tired of the struggle to be free that she did not care. But she could never bring danger to Hester or Laura. They had shown her nothing but kindness and friendship. Even so, looking into Nick Falconer’s dark eyes and wondering what he wanted from her, Mari had a conviction that she could not escape their encounter unscathed.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Witch Hazel—A spell is upon me

      NICK AWOKE EARLY the morning after the ball and made his way downstairs. Streaks of silver dawn light were fading from the sky. The musicians, their faces drawn with tiredness, were packing up their cases. The servants were starting to scrub, polish and dust the house back into a state of tidiness. Nick knew it would be some time before his fellow guests rose from their beds, so he partook of an early breakfast and set off to walk a path that led up through the beech woods to the fells above.

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