The Player (Rockliffe Book 3) by Stella Riley

Author:Stella Riley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2015-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

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FOURTEEN

This time the silence was positively deafening. Sarre stood very still, watching Caroline closely and, when she swayed slightly, he was across the room in three strides ready to catch her if she fainted.

She didn’t. She rammed the heels of both hands into his chest and, in a voice of mingled tears and rage, said, ‘Where is he? What have you done to him?’

‘Nothing.’ She hadn’t understood yet. Of course she hadn’t. How could she? Stepping back, he said, ‘Perhaps you should sit down.’

‘No! Do you think I’m spending one more minute in this house? How dare you carry me off in this way?’

‘It isn’t quite as it seems. If you’ll just listen for --’

‘I’m not listening to you. You’re no better than Lord Sheringham!’

Sarre winced inwardly. ‘I --’

‘Where is Claude?’ The terrible seething in her chest was threatening to choke her. ‘He – he was there when we stopped to change horses but I didn’t see him after that. What have you done? Oh God. If you’ve hurt him …’ She stopped, trying to breathe. ‘Tell me where he is!’

‘I’m trying.’ He let his voice sharpen into command. ‘Sit down and listen.’

Caroline sank bonelessly into the chair. ‘Well?’

‘The man you know is not Claude Duvall.’

‘Of course he is!’

‘No. Claude Duvall went to the scaffold over a century ago. Your highwayman merely … borrowed his name for a time.’

‘Why should I believe that?’ A small kernel of doubt started to grow amidst all her other emotions. ‘What difference does it make, anyway?’

‘Since Duvall doesn’t actually exist, quite a lot.’ Sarre paused and decided that the sooner this was over the better. ‘I take it that you want to see him?’

‘Of course I want to see him! What do you think I’ve been saying?’

‘Eh bien.’ With a smile, he slid smoothly into character. His posture, his accent, the timbre of his voice, his entire manner … everything changed. ‘Caroline, chérie … I am so sorry. Never did I mean to cause this distress. I am, as you see, quite unharmed.’ And, with the merest suggestion of a shrug, ‘But – just as I tried to warn you – a disappointment, I think.’

Caroline stared at him, her eyes were huge and the blood drained slowly from her skin. She wanted to say that this wasn’t possible … but she couldn’t. She couldn’t say anything at all. She wanted to be sick.

In front of her, Claude Duvall vanished as easily as he had appeared, leaving only the Earl of Sarre who, with apparently unruffled composure, turned away to pour a glass of wine and set it on the table beside her.

He said, ‘I can only apologise. It was never meant to go this far.’

Caroline wet her lips and tried, again, to find her voice. She said unevenly, ‘It was you. All the time … it was you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’ The word cracked in the middle.

‘Not, as I said, to bring us both to this. For the rest, does it

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