He walked over, and, wordlessly, handed her a crumpled piece of paper.
Tearing her gaze from him, she unfolded it with wet, shaky hands. The five words were barely legible, thick swashes of rusty red-brown.
DON’T WORRY JUST AN ACT
Leaning close, he turned the paper over in her hands, and her heart turned over along with it. He straightened while she read the words in black ink—the writing she hadn’t been able to make out at the trial.
When love on my sweet wife’s wings
Comes to hover within my walls
If I turn it away with untruths and deceit
’Tis myself I must blame for the fall
Trust must be earned then earned again
Ere forgiveness can overcome sorrows
Yesterday’s errors wiped from the slate
May leave room for joyful tomorrows
Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars well-turned
While I bear hope, mayhap forlorn
My love will be returned
Poetry written in prison.
Reassurance written in blood.
Tears flooded her eyes, blurring her vision. Instead of her mint-green chamber, what she saw was the damp, crowded courtyard outside the open courtroom of the Old Bailey. Instead of the soft swish of water, what she heard was the jeering crowd. And she remembered Trick’s stricken face as he tried to reach her, first with words and then with this very same note—and the expression in his eyes when he failed to succeed.
“Why?” she asked, finally ready to listen. “Why all the lies?”
He stayed riveted in place. “Before I ever met you,” he said slowly, “I made a promise to King Charles. I thought that promise, to my sovereign, was more important than my wife. I was wrong. And if I’ve lost you because of that mistake, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Oh, God, he was getting to her. Could she allow herself to feel this again? “What was this promise?”
“I was never really a highwayman. That was naught but a ruse to find some counterfeiters who were bedeviling the country’s economy, emptying the king’s purse and undermining his credibility. I was part of his scheme to uncover it.”
“Just as I guessed, only I never completed the connection.”
He nodded. “And I’d sworn not to tell a soul. I never considered that the Black Highwayman might become a wanted man. When that happened, Charles devised a plan to get rid of him, so I could live my life as the duke without anyone ever suspecting that the highwayman and I were one and the same. He arranged for the arrest and the public trial. And he had a doctor drug me to make me look ill, and that same doctor visit later and paint blue spots on my body, then declare me dead and carry me away. I suggested we use black nightshade.”
“Dwale.” The fever, the slowed breathing, the weakness, the dilated eyes. She should have realized. “It killed your mother, Trick. It could have killed you.”
“Weeks of it killed my mother, and my father recovered, after all. It was one dose. A calculated risk, and at least I knew what I was getting into.”
“It was a perfect plan,” she admitted. “Brilliant.”
“Not perfect. Because Charles still refused to let me tell you. And I was foolish enough to believe we could pull this off over a couple of days when I could give you another excuse to be gone, and you’d never find out.”
“But I did.”
