Dear Impostor Read online

  “Now,” Psyche said, her tone icy. “I want to know just how this has come about, and I want to know everything!”

  A pause, while the two men eyed each other, then the thin little man swung to face Psyche, as if hoping for a more receptive audience.

  “She–” he gestured toward Simpson–“she hired me to play a part, Miss, at a private party. Promised me five quid, she did.”

  “Yes, but you never turned up to assume your role, did you?” Psyche pointed out calmly, her voice cool. “So why should you be paid for nothing?”

  The man blinked; his eyes were a pale hazel. His features were regular, but he had an unfortunate spotty complection. “Ah, um, that is–”

  ”Why didn’t you come?” Simpson demanded, then blushed. “Begging your pardon, Miss, but he promised!”

  ”He lost his nerve,” Gabriel put in. “I met him by accident at the back of the theater, and when your carriage pulled up, he told the driver I was the Marquis of Tarrington.”

  Which meant, Psyche suppressed a shiver, that this man knew that Gabriel was an impostor. If he were intelligent enough, he could hold that knowledge over their heads like the Damocles sword it was. They must be very careful.

  Gabriel met her gaze very briefly. He knew the danger, too; she could tell from the slight narrowing of his eyes.

  “I got a bit nervous, you see,” the actor was saying. “And anyhow, I thought I would get the part of Iago in the next production at the theater, or at least one of the lords, but t-they gave the part, all the parts, to other actors.”

  Psyche wasn’t surprised. “You’ll forgive me for asking, but do you have much experience on the stage, sir?”

  “Green, Thomas Green, at your service.” Green gave her a low bow. “I’ve played over half a dozen parts, Miss. I played the second murderer in Macb—the Scottish play, and a footman in the last but one farce. And would have done much more, but I have this stammer–but only when I get nervous, you see.”

  “And do you get nervous before you go on stage?” Psyche couldn’t help asking.

  “Always,” the little man answered sadly. “That’s why I only get small parts, and lately not so many of those. But anyhow, you promised me a nice sum, and I’m short on my rent, and me landlady’s threatening to toss me out into the street. So I’m here now, and I want to play the part.”

  Psyche bit her lip, and it was Gabriel who answered.

  “We really don’t need you any longer for that role, I’m afraid,” Gabriel said. “Since I was forced to step in when you didn’t keep your appointment.”

  Green blinked, and his dismay seemed tinged with belligerence. “B-but–”

  “But we can offer you another,” Gabriel added quickly.

  The little man brightened. “What is that?”

  “You will be my secretary,” Gabriel explained. “You’re the son of a clergyman, recently engaged in this post, and you’ve never been on stage in your life. You are unfailingly loyal to the Marquis of Tarrington, who is me. Can you do that?”

  “Of course,” the actor said, puffing out his chest. “I will be the p-perfect secretary, sir–milord. No one will ever know different.”

  Psyche swallowed hard. Perhaps it was better to keep this man under their eye, but somehow her original plan, which had seemed so simple and fool-proof, just kept getting more complicated. Who was going to turn up next? Six white horses and a fairy godmother?

  “You will be paid according to the original agreement, with enough for your lodging right away, and I will give you a job to do–that is, you can read and write, can’t you?” Gabriel paused to inquire.

  “Of course!” Green looked wounded. “How you think I could learn me lines–my lines.”

  “Yes, of course.” Gabriel didn’t seem too impressed. “While you are here, your job is to keep your mouth shut as much as possible; don’t talk to the servants; remember, as a secretary of good family, you’re above them in class, so don’t lower yourself to gossip.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and winked toward Simpson, who sniffed. As if she should care about this poor excuse for an actor turned secretary, her expression implied. Psyche had a mad desire to giggle.

  “And what is my task?” Green asked, fingering his shabby hat, which he still held in his hands.

  Gabriel walked across to the book shelf. Some of the less valuable books which had overflowed the library’s crammed shelves–Psyche’s parents had been great readers–had been put into this smaller room. He picked up a faded volume and flipped open a page.

  “You can sit here, in this very comfortable, warm room,” he nodded toward the fire in the hearth, “and Jowers will see that you have your meals on a tray–excellent cook they have here, too–and all you must do is copy this for me.”

  The actor had glowed at the thought of food and easy surroundings, but he frowned a little at the page Gabriel held out. “But this is a collection of sermons.”

  “Yes, I’m thinking of a career in the church after I leave this role,” Gabriel said, his tone perfectly serious.

  Psyche turned another giggle into a cough with the greatest of difficulty. If there were anyone less suited to becoming a man of the cloth–

  Simpson rolled her eyes, but she maintained her usual dignified silence.

  Green eyed the book, and the pen and ink and paper Gabriel had now unearthed from the small desk drawer. “I suppose I can do it. I–uh–I’m not a very swift writer, my lord.”

  “That’s fine; there’s no rush,” Gabriel assured the man. “And I will suggest that Jowers bring you a glass of wine, just to help you relax and get into the role.”

  Green’s expression looked positively blissful.

  “We will leave you to it,” Gabriel said. He held the door open and motioned to both women to exit. Outside, he nodded toward the footman hovering nearby. “Bring my secretary a glass of port, if you would.”

  “But only one,” Psyche added. “We don’t need a drunken–um–secretary on our hands.”

  The footman nodded and left to fetch the wine.

  “No, that would be counterproductive,” Gabriel agreed. “We want to shut his lips, not open them.”

  Psyche did not return his smile. There was still a great gulf of misconception to cross.

  “Simpson, you may leave us,” she said.

  The dresser nodded. “Yes, Miss,” she said, and her glance at Gabriel was both speculative and pitying. No one liked to cross Miss Hill when she was in that mood.

  Simpson retreated, the footman had disappeared. For a moment, they stood alone in the hallway.

  “Now,” Psyche said, her voice grim. “You–”

  The door to the library opened. She had forgotten Percy.

  “I demand to speak to Lord Tarrington,” her cousin said, in his usual self-important style. “I have waited long enough–”

  ”And so have I, for a little peace in my own house!” Psyche snapped. “You have nothing to say to Lord Tarrington, Percy. I can manage my own affairs.”

  “But, Psyche–”

  ”Leave us, Percy. Now!”

  “If you need assistance to the door, I should be happy to help you find the way,” Gabriel suggested, his blue eyes glinting with mischievous anticipation.

  Her cousin eyed the other man’s stature and muscular build with alarm. “No, no, I would not lower myself to–” He frowned, looking affronted. “Yes, well, when you realize the error of your judgment, Cousin, when you need help with this fortune-hunting libertine–”

  ”Out!” Psyche shrieked, at the last vestige of her patience.

  Percy sniffed and turned toward the outer door, pausing only to pick up his hat and gloves from the hall table. “You’ll be sorry,” he muttered, determined as always to have the last word.

  Psyche ignored him. In a moment, the front door closed, a little too hard, and Psyche drew a deep breath. “Let us retire to the library.”

  Gabriel walked across the hall and motioned for her to enter�
��Percy had left the chamber door ajar–then followed her into the room.

  Psyche walked across the floor, glanced down at one of the comfortable chairs that her father had chosen for his own use, then paced up and down instead, too agitated to sit.

  Gabriel shut the door behind them. The silence was balm. Just to have Percy out of the house seemed to make the atmosphere lighter. Psyche drew a deep breath and swung to face this man of mystery who had somehow become so entangled in her innocent–well, almost innocent–pretense.

  “Who are you?”

  Gabriel’s lips lifted, but his eyes were shadowed by emotions she could not begin to decipher–she felt a moment of real trepidation. What kind of man had she allowed so unknowingly into her life?

  “That depends on whom you ask,” he said, his voice quiet.

  “Spare me any more riddles.” She waved away his words. “Why on earth did you take up the pose of my fiancé? Are you an actor, too, or-or what?” She was almost afraid to hear his answer.

  “I have been many things,” the man said.

  She was about to lose patience, yet again. She found that her hands had clenched into fists. “Just tell me the truth!”

  “I have earned my living for the last decade at games of chance,” he told her, his eyes oddly distant, his tone matter-of-fact.

  She gazed at him in horror. “A gamester?”

  He met her gaze squarely. “Yes.”

  And she had introduced this man to her family, allowed him to meet her little sister! “You are a cheater, a dishonest–”

  ”I never cheat!” Gabriel answered quickly. She seemed to have penetrated his unnatural calm at last. “That is, unless my opponent cheats first.”

  “And you were down on your luck and in need of a few pounds to get you into your next game?” It began to fall into place. “How fortunate that you should come across an actor with a bad case of stage fright.” No, Psyche thought, shaking her head in confusion. There were still pieces of the puzzle that did not fit. “But what about Freddie Wyrick. How did you convince him to pretend to be your old school mate?”

  He gazed at her steadily, his aspect hard to read.

  Slowly, Psyche felt her legs turn weak. She sank into the chair behind her. “It was not a ploy; it’s true. He was your school mate.” Images of Gabriel—his smooth manners, his impeccable speech, his graceful dancing and socializing—flashed through her mind like scenes from a play. And she knew with a dreadful certainty that he was not the lowborn gamester he claimed to be.

  “You are well born, are you not?” she almost whispered.

  “You are disappointed that I am not a lowly thespian? Being of good birth is somehow worse then aping my betters?” he asked, his tone light. But his eyes were dark with those emotions she still could not read.

  She felt a spasm of distaste cross her face. “What’s worse is that it means,” she explained, putting her jumbled thoughts together out loud, “that your passion for gaming was so extreme that you lost your own inheritance–”

  ”No, I did not lose my position in life over gaming. I gamble only to survive,” he told her, his calmness somehow convincing. “Not for the thrill of it.”

  “Then, if excessive losses did not cause your fall, the only other reason–there must be some terrible scandal–”

  The expression on his face stopped her. Oh, God, what was it? What had she stumbled upon?

  “I have committed sins enough, Miss Hill,” he said, his words barely audible. “I do not need to march them out for your inspection. I will play my part for your benefit, and my own, then I will leave this house as soon as possible. And you need never see me again.”

  He turned and left the room with a swift economy of steps.

  Psyche raised quaking hands to her forehead, her mind aswirl with new implications and a headache of monstrous proportions.

  Chapter 10

  Psyche rubbed her temples and grimaced at the pain. She took a slow breath, still chilled from the tone of his voice, the look in his eyes. What had he done? What had she done, letting this man into her house, giving him access to her young sister, her elderly aunt? Oh, dear, oh dear. She must find some way to deny him time with Circe–yet how was she going to explain it to the governess. To Circe, for that matter! Her little sister could be so head-strong.

  She stood up, her knees still rubbery, and headed for the staircase. She climbed two flights, and despite her wish to stop in her own bed chamber and climb into bed, pulling the covers over her head, forced herself to climb another flight to the nursery level and check on her sister. She glanced into the schoolroom, finding it tenanted only by her sister and the governess, both absorbed in a French lesson. Circe was reciting a French poem, her expression abstracted, as if her thoughts were elsewhere.

  Psyche smiled in relief–no doubt the best light of the morning had waned, and Circe had agreed to put aside her brush and canvas for a while. She slipped out again and did not disturb them. She descended to the next landing and retreated to her room; she would lie down for just a while, and shut her eyes, and perhaps when she woke, this would all be merely a bad dream . . .

  She spent the rest of the afternoon in her room, somehow sure that Gabriel was also in retreat and would not trespass over the bounds of propriety. She replayed their last interview in her mind; she thought she had sensed hurt in him, hidden somewhere deep. There was that look in his deep blue eyes–the way they darkened when emotion stirred within him–though one had to look close to tell. He had perfected his insouciant pose over the card table, after all, playing for stakes higher than she could imagine. So she was probably wrong; who was she to think she could see through this trickster, this impostor, this professional liar?

  It must be as she had first thought; he was simply out for the money, the free garments–no, he had rejected her offers of tailor and shirtmaker–then perhaps he thought he would enjoy a short respite in a house of good reputation, while he waited for her uncle to release half of her fortune so that he could be better paid than the original sum Simpson had promised–no, no, Simpson had promised that money to the little actor currently scribbling away in her bookroom. Nothing made sense; she could not find the logic in any of this.

  Oh, lord, what a tangle. Psyche shut her eyes again and tried to think of other times. Good times, before her parents had been killed, and she had been thrust into this impossible position, with her inheritance controlled by her uncle, with her person subject to Percy’s unflattering courtship. She searched for a good memory, and a scene came to her, all of them playing lawn bowls in the garden beside their country house, her mother laughing, her father’s eyes bright as he claimed victory, and a smaller Circe shrieking as she challenged his roll . . . Psyche relaxed and drifted into sleep. But then the picture changed to the wide pasture and the calm day when her father had tried out his latest toy, the hot air balloon with the new valve which he was in the process of perfecting. And how he had, at the last moment, cajoled his wife, laughing but nervous at the prospect, into the basket with him.

  They had floated up, up, just over the trees, and then suddenly the balloon dipped too low–her father seemed to be having trouble with the controls–then a gust of wind sent the balloon careening toward a tall oak. Her mother’s face was pale–even from that distance Psyche could see how pale her mother looked, and how she turned to gaze down at Psyche, her expression anxious, her mouth open in words that Psyche could not hear . . .

  Psyche tried to push away the vision, but she was deeper into sleep now, and she could not prevent the images from unfolding, as they had troubled her slumber so many times since that terrible day. Her father shouting, the balloon suddenly seeming to collapse into itself, her mother’s scream, Circe shrieking from behind her. Psyche herself had been unable to yell or speak or move; she stood as if cast in stone and watched the balloon fall to earth, the basket dipping on its side and the two figures inside cast out like rag dolls, limbs flailing, to plunge toward the hard ground.
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  They all ran, Psyche and her sister, Tellman, the other servants, ran frantically and Psyche dropped to her knees as she reached out to embrace her mother, to steady her father’s crumpled body. But it was too late. Her father had been dead when they reached him, his neck snapped; her mother had lived until the next day, but she’d never opened her eyes, never spoken to her daughters again.

  And then it was only Psyche, Psyche and Circe, and the horde of sympathetic relatives, and the shock of her father’s will.

  Psyche forced herself up from the nightmare, struggled to wake–too late to escape the memories–and found her cheeks wet with tears. She missed her parents so much. It was so hard to go on alone, to bear all the responsibility by herself. Perhaps that was one of the reasons she struggled so hard to maintain her control over the household, over everyone’s actions, her own actions. If she were unceasingly proper and took no risks, perhaps danger would never swoop out of a calm, blue sky and destroy her life all over again.

  And she was not the only one who had nightmares; she knew that Circe sometimes awoke in the middle of the night screaming, and her little sister no longer climbed up to the attic to paint in privacy; the view from the tallest window made her stomach clench, she told her sister, and she had fetched her paints and easels back down to the schoolroom. They all had scars from the tragedy.

  Sighing, Psyche went to wash the tear tracks from her face and then rang for a cup of tea. She could not go down to dinner looking woebegone; she owed it to her sister to maintain a pretense, at least, of calm. Besides, she knew in a distant corner of her mind that the rigid self-restraint she had prescribed for herself was a shield, a barrier against further hurt. No one would breach that wall of propriety, no one. Psyche could not bear to be wounded so, again. Nor could she allow Circe to be hurt once more. She would guard her sister from any contamination from this man with the shadowed past. Somehow, she and Circe would come out of this darkness, and someday, they would be whole again. To see Circe painting happily with a suitable instructor, to be free of Percy and his wiles–just to get away from all her worries–Psyche drew a deep breath and steadied her ragged emotions. She would maintain her command of the situation; she would triumph over her uncle! She would not give up, no matter how convoluted her quest for freedom seemed to become.