Regency Rogues: Candlelight Confessions

Returning from the kitchen, where she had made herself a much-needed pot of tea, she froze on the threshold of the parlour.

Elliot was immaculately turned out, not a crease in his olive-green coat of superfine nor his biscuit-coloured pantaloons. The gloss on his tasselled Hessians showed not a speck of dirt. In contrast, Deborah was horribly conscious of her hair pinned up anyhow under its cap, her work smock, her grubby fingers. Why did he always have to see her looking at her worst? And why did he always have to be so much more attractive, every time she saw him? Taller. More muscular—those pantaloons fitted like a second skin. More everything! And why did he have to smile like that? And why, when she was quite resolved to forget all about him, was she so absurdly pleased to see him?

She clutched the tea tray to her chest. ‘How on earth did you get in?’ The shock of seeing him, as if he had just walked out of Bella’s story, combined with the traitorous shiver of simple pleasure which had been her first reaction, made her sound aggressive, but better that, than let him see the effect he had on her.

‘It would be a poor Peacock indeed who could not break into a house with such flimsy defences,’ Elliot said with a grin, relieving her of the tea tray and giving her no option but to follow him into her own parlour.

‘I did not think to see you again.’ Deborah sat down on the edge of a chair by the fire. She longed to pour her tea, but was afraid her hands would shake.

Elliot raised a brow. ‘Surely you must have known I would call?’

‘We said goodbye last night.’

‘You said goodbye.’

Deborah gazed at him helplessly. He waited for her to say something, but she began measuring leaves from the little wooden caddy. Water splashed as she poured it from the kettle into the pewter teapot. ‘I brought only one cup.’

‘I hate tea,’ Elliot said, sitting himself opposite her.

She poured her drink, took a sip and then a deep breath. ‘Why are you here?’

Her antagonism didn’t fool him. She was as nervous as a cat, but she hadn’t been able wholly to disguise the fact that she was pleased to see him. Elliot handed her the newspaper. ‘I thought you might like to see this.’

Deborah scanned the report, her face lightening to a shadow of a smile as she read. ‘I woke this morning persuaded that I had imagined the whole episode. I can’t quite believe it happened even now, despite seeing it reported in print.’

‘Fortunately, there is no indication that anyone knows I had an accomplice, but all the same, you must have a care not to let slip, even inadvertently, anything which might betray you.’

‘I won’t,’ Deborah said, thinking guiltily of the account she had written just this morning of the episode, reassuring herself at the same time that she had changed sufficient details for it not to matter. ‘There is nothing to fear, I am sure. You did not strike me as a worrier, Elliot.’

‘I am not worried for myself, but for you. I care little for my own safety, but I would rather not have yours on my conscience.’

‘You don’t. It was I who persuaded you, if you recall.’

‘I would never have allowed myself to be persuaded if I had not wanted you with me,’ Elliot said with a wry smile. ‘How does it feel, to be so vicariously notorious?’

‘Vicarious,’ Deborah replied pithily. ‘I feel as if it was someone else who clambered down that rope. Though I must confess, my conscience has been bothering me rather belatedly. That painting was very valuable.’

‘And you’re worried about what I’m going to do with the ill-gotten gains,’ Elliot said. ‘No, don’t look like that, I can’t blame you. I’m surprised you haven’t asked before.’

‘I am ashamed to admit that I most likely did not because I didn’t want a reason not to go,’ Deborah confessed. She put down her half-drunk cup of tea. ‘Why do you do it, Elliot? I mean, I can understand, that it’s partly what I wanted—the sheer thrill of it. I can understand, too, that you find civilian life rather boring compared to what you’re used to, but—to say that you care little for your own life as you just did—I can’t believe that you are hoping to be caught.’

‘Of course not. I am bored though, that is a part of it. My sister thinks I need gainful employment and she’s probably right,’ Elliot said, grimacing.

‘Gainful doesn’t sound very like you. I didn’t know you had a sister. Is she in town?’

‘For the moment. Lizzie is married to a dour Scot, who has plans to whisk her away to the Highlands for the birth of their first child.’ Elliot grinned, happy to be sidetracked. ‘I foresee some epic battles between her and her mother-in-law and I know who I’d put my money on. Lizzie is short of neither opinions nor the will to enforce them.’

‘I’d have liked to have a sister,’ Deborah said with a wistful smile. ‘I don’t have any family. My parents died when I was very young and my uncle, who became my guardian, was a bachelor, very set in his ways. When I came back to live with him after finishing school, he didn’t know what to do with me. He didn’t like Jeremy, he told me that he was only marrying me for my inheritance, but he didn’t make much of an attempt to stop me either. “You must make your own bed, and don’t come running to me if you don’t like lying in it,” he said. Not that I would have,’ she concluded, with a twisted little smile.

Did she know how much she had given away with that last little sentence? Elliot wondered, touched by her pride, angry on her behalf at the need for it. ‘Is he still alive?’

Deborah shook her head. ‘He died five years ago. I rarely saw him once I was married. I often wish I had made more of an effort.’ It was surprising how guilty she felt even now, and no amount of telling herself that Uncle Peter had made no effort to keep in touch either made any difference. She had been afraid to let him see her and had kept him at a distance as she kept everyone else. ‘I don’t know how we came on to this subject,’ she said brusquely, ‘you cannot possibly be interested in my rather pathetic life.’

‘I’m interested in you, Deborah.’

She concentrated on tucking a stray lock of hair back behind her ear, dipping her head to cover the faint traces of colour in her cheeks. ‘I can think of any number of topics more interesting.’

Elliot was much inclined to pursue the subject, but his instincts warned him it would be unwise. Teasing out secrets was second nature to him. Knowing when to stop lest he betray just how much he had garnered was a subtle art, but one which he knew he had mastered. Though it had to be said, he admitted wryly to himself, that Deborah was proving to be more of a challenge than any close-mouthed diplomat. ‘Why did I invent the Peacock, then? Does that constitute a more interesting topic?’

Deborah nodded. ‘Provided it does not also constitute an intrusion. I would like to know, for you puzzle me. Your victims are selected too carefully for them to be random. Do you have some sort of personal grudge against them?’

‘What makes you say that?’ Elliot asked sharply.

‘I don’t know.’ Deborah frowned. ‘I suppose I cannot believe you do it for personal gain and there are too many robberies for it to be simply the thrill of it which drives you. You’d have become bored by now if that was it.’

‘You are very perceptive. It is to be hoped that none of the gentlemen at Bow Street has your wit.’

‘None of the gentlemen at Bow Street has my inside information. Is it too personal? I will understand if you don’t wish to say any more.’

Elliot drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. His instincts were to confide in her, though common sense told him that by doing so he was taking an unwarrantable risk. Not of deliberate exposure, she would not do that, but an inadvertent comment, a remark let slip in the wrong company—how could he be sure she would not do that?

He just knew. She was as close as a clam and, of her own admission, she lived like a hermit. Besides, he wanted to tell her. He wanted her to know. ‘You were right about my victims,’ he said. ‘They are very carefully selected. All of them were at some point responsible for the supply chain—or lack of it—to the army. Medical supplies, orderlies and doctors, boots, basic rations, horses. Most of all horses. They kept us short of all of those things, because after all, what does an army need to fight except guns? Even if you can’t get the guns to the battlefield. Even if you can’t get the men wounded by those guns misfiring back to a field hospital. What do they care? They don’t,’ he said flatly. ‘I know they don’t because all my letters and protests and reports fell on deaf ears at the time, and now—well, now it is done and everyone wants to forget all about it, so there is even less point in letters and reports and protests.’

‘So you take what will hurt them instead.’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what I do.’

‘Did you lose many men because of such shortages?’

‘Yes.’

‘Friends, too? Forgive me, but it seems to me such a very personal thing you are doing, there must have been someone …’

‘There was. My best friend.’ Elliot gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles showed white.

‘Henry,’ Deborah said gently. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Elliot nodded curtly.

‘I truly am sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you; you don’t need to say any more.’

‘I want to,’ Elliot said, surprising both of them. ‘I want to tell you.’ He swallowed repeatedly, cleared his throat. ‘We joined up together, Henry and I, I told you that already. We worked our way through the ranks together, though he was much too ill-disciplined to keep his stripes for long. He made it to captain once, but it only lasted about six months. He was a first-class soldier. We always looked out for each other. When I needed an extra pair of hands, I always turned to Henry. He was quick with his fists, but he knew the importance of keeping other things close, which was important in my—my alternative line of business.’

He paused. Across from him, Deborah was gazing at him intently. Would she be shocked? He doubted it, somehow. More likely excited, as she was by the Peacock. That decided him. ‘The thing is, I wasn’t just a fighting man. There’s a reason why the Peacock is so able.’ He grinned. ‘Actually, it’s ironic that the very skills I learned in order to steal secrets are the same ones I use to steal their property now. Most of which, I hasten to add, was stolen in the first place.’

Deborah stared at him in utter astonishment. ‘You mean—what you’re saying is that you—you stole? At our Government’s behest? But why? What did you—oh! My God, you were a spy?’

He should have known how she would react. Her eyes were sparkling. Elliot laughed. ‘Yes, I was.’

‘Good grief! No wonder civilian life bores you. You must tell me—I wish you will tell me—I don’t know—anything, all of it—no, I don’t expect you can tell me all of it. Goodness, what secrets you must know.’ Deborah chuckled. ‘How horrified the likes of Jacob would be if they knew. You are quite right, Elliot, it is irony past price. Can you tell me more? Were you a master of subterfuge?’

Danger, even if it was vicarious, certainly brought her to life. ‘I’m afraid it was rather more mundane than that. If anything, I was a master of patience.’ He told her a few choice stories because he liked to see her laugh, because he found her laughter infectious, and he told her a few more because returning to the subject in hand was too painful, but he underestimated her.

‘He must have been more like a brother than a friend. Henry, I mean,’ Deborah said suddenly, interrupting him in the middle of a story. ‘What happened?’

‘He was wounded in the Pyrenees during the siege on San Sebastian. He took a bullet in the leg, above the knee. It smashed the bone—he’d have lost his leg, but it shouldn’t have been fatal. Only they couldn’t reach him because there were no carts and no mules.’

‘Oh God.’ Deborah covered her mouth, her eyes wide with horror.

Elliot’s knuckles were white. ‘For more than a week, he lay in agony in the blistering sun with his wound festering. He died of a fever a few days after they finally got him to the field hospital. I was with him, at the end, though he hardly recognised me. He died for want of a mule. A mule!’ He thumped his fist down hard on the chair. ‘But what do those bastards in the War Office with their lists and their budgets know of that? What does it matter, when a man with one leg would have been no bloody use to them anyway? What do they know of the suffering, the agonies that Henry and thousands like him went through, and what do they care now for the survivors?’

‘But you care,’ Deborah said, shaken by the cold rage. ‘You care enough to steal from them, to make reparations for them, is that it?’

‘The money goes to a charity which helps the survivors.’ Now that he had opened the floodgates his bitter anger, so long pent-up, demanded expression. ‘Someone has to help them,’ Elliot said furiously. ‘While they fought for their country, their country learned how to do very well without them. Now that the Government no longer needs them to surrender their lives, their limbs and their hearts on the battlefield, it has decided it has no need to reward them with employment, back pay, pensions. It is not just the men, it is their widows and children who suffer.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ Deborah said falteringly.

‘Few people do. All they see is a beggar. Just another beggar. Proud men, reduced to holding out a cup for alms! Can you imagine what that does to them? No wonder so many cannot face their families. And they are portrayed as deserters, drunkards, criminals.’

The scar which bisected his eyebrow stood out white against his tan. The other one, which followed the hairline of his forehead, seemed to pulse. How many other, invisible scars did he bear? His suffering made hers seem so trite in comparison. The grooves at the side of his mouth were etched deep. His eyes were fierce, hard. Deborah trembled at the sorrow and pain they hid, such depths, which made shallows of her own suffering. ‘I just didn’t know,’ she said simply. ‘I am quite ashamed.’ The truth was so awful, it made her conscience seem like a paltry consideration. ‘I wish now that we had taken more from that house in Grosvenor Square.’

Her vehemence drew a bark of laughter from Elliot. ‘Believe me, over the last two years, the Peacock has taken a great deal more.’

‘So it is a war of attrition that the Peacock is waging, is that it? And of vengeance?’

Deborah’s perception made Elliot deeply uncomfortable. He was not accustomed to thinking about his motivations, never mind discussing them. ‘What do you know of vengeance?’ he asked roughly.

Enough to recognise it. Deborah hesitated, surprised at the strength of her urge to confide, but the very idea of comparing their causes appalled her. Besides, his voice held an undertone of aggression that warned her to tread lightly. He obviously thought he had said too much already. She could easily empathise with that. ‘The painting that we stole,’ she said, seeking to lighten the subject, ‘you knew about it because of your spying, didn’t you?’

‘You’ve no idea how much ransacking and looting goes on in the higher echelons in wartime. That painting was a bribe.’

To Deborah’s relief, some of the grimness left his mouth. She asked him to explain; when he did, she encouraged him to tell her of other bribes, relieved to see the grooves around his mouth relaxing, the sadness leaving his eyes. The battered armchair in which he sat, she had rescued from a lumber room at Kinsail Manor. His legs, in their tight-knit pantaloons, stretched out in front of him. If she reached, she could touch her toe to his Hessian boots.

‘I’ve said too much,’ Elliot said, interrupting himself in the middle of a story, realising abruptly how much he had revealed, how little he had talked to anyone of his old life before. It had been too easy to talk to Deborah. He wasn’t sure what he thought of that, accustomed as he was to keep his own counsel. His instincts were to retreat. ‘I must go,’ he said, getting to his feet.

How did he close his expression off like that? Ignoring the flicker of disappointment, Deborah rose, too. ‘You have certainly said enough to make me realise how shockingly ignorant I am. I shall not look on those poor souls with their begging bowls in the same way again.’

Outside, it was grown dark. Elliot lit a spill from the fire and began to light the candles on the mantel. ‘I’d like to call on you again,’ he said.

Deborah bit her lip. It would have been so much easier, had he not chosen to confide in her, if he had not given her so many reasons to wish to know more about him. To like him. In another world, in another life, Elliot was the kind of man she would have …

But there was absolutely no point whatsoever in thinking like that. Slowly, she shook her head. The pang of loss was physical, a pain in her stomach. ‘I live a very secluded life.’

‘I’m not suggesting we attend Almack’s together. We could go for a drive.’

Why did he have to make it so difficult? ‘I can’t, Elliot. I am perfectly content with my own company.’

‘So content that you need to break into houses and climb down ropes to make you feel alive?’

Deborah flinched. ‘I thought you understood. That was an escape from reality, merely.’

‘I don’t understand you.’ Elliot cast the spill into the fire. ‘One minute, you are hanging on my every word, the next, you imply that you never want to see me again.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think that you would expect—I never considered us continuing our acquaintance after last night. I should not have encouraged you to confide in me, but I was so caught up in what you said and—I should not have,’ Deborah said wretchedly. ‘I’m sorry, Elliot.’

‘And what about last night? You are sorry about that, too, I suppose? Dammit, I was not imagining it, the strength of attraction between us. Why are you hell bent on ignoring it?’ Frustrated and confused, Elliot pulled her roughly towards him. ‘You can’t deny it! I can feel your heart beating. I can see it in your eyes that you want to kiss me just as much as I want to kiss you.’

‘No. Elliot, please …’

He was so sure, so certain that if he could just kiss her, it would rekindle the flame that had flared between them last night, but he had never in his life used persuasion on a woman in that way, and would not do so now. Elliot threw himself away from her. ‘I apologise,’ he said curtly. ‘I have obviously completely misjudged the situation.’

‘No,’ Deborah whispered, ‘it is I who did so. Last night, I gave you to think that I would—when I could not. Cannot. You have nothing to apologise for.’

It went against the grain to leave her like this but she left him no option. ‘Your servant, Lady Kinsail.’ Elliot sketched a bow.

‘Goodbye, Elliot.’ He was gone before she had finished saying the words, the front door slamming behind him. Deborah could not resist peering out into the gloom through the window, but he did not look back.

Alone in the parlour, she squared her shoulders. It had cost her dear, not to kiss him. It had cost her even dearer, that look on his face when she behaved so contrarily, but it was for the best. Elliot was not Jeremy, but it made no difference. Never, with Jeremy, had she come close to feeling what Elliot made her feel, but that just made things worse. She did not want to feel anything.

‘It’s over,’ she said to herself, pulling the curtains across the window. It would have been easier, knowing Elliot less, but it was too late for that now. Knowing him better simply made her more certain she was right. But staring into the flames of the fire, Deborah couldn’t help wishing that things were different.

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