Violet v-5

by Jane Feather

  The twins were sitting on the sand, and a fragrant curl of blue smoke rose from a cigar David was smoking. Between them was a bottle of cognac. Pulled up at the shoreline was a rowboat. They were talking and laughing in low voices, and Julian felt the skin on the back of his neck contract. He'd heard that sound before. He'd seen them like this. Relaxed, satiated. Taking a break before they returned to the cringing, battered little girl who had lain on the grass in front of them.

  He stared in cold dread, expecting to see the glint of silver hair against the sand, the diminutive figure, pale and naked, her torn clothes scattered over the ground where they'd been stripped from her body.

  But he could see nothing in the wavering light of the lantern on the sand, or the weaker light of the moon.

  Gabriel had drawn a knife from his belt, and his gray eyes flickered sideways in a silent message. Julian nodded, his hand closing over his pistol.

  They slipped, two powerful wraiths, from the concealment of the rocks and approached the two men.

  Tamsyn lay in the bottom of the boat, her nose pressed to the gunwales as she fought wave after wave of nausea. The drug Cedric had given her was wearing off, but her head was still muzzy and the nausea was almost impossible to control. She fought it grimly, dreading the thought of lying in her own vomit, trussed as she was like a Christmas goose. Her hands were tied behind her back and then roped to her ankles. She'd still been unconscious when they'd done that, but not later… when they'd pawed her, opened her shirt, lifted her skirt…

  She closed her eyes tightly and hung on through another wave of sickness. So far that was all they'd done. She'd given no sign that she was conscious, and they were going to wait until she came to before they really settled down to enjoy themselves. Charles's drunken slur played in her head, his lewd chuckle as he said that there was no pleasure in necrophilia. David had muttered something about the governor, and then he too had laughed and put his hand roughly inside her shirt. Then they'd left her and she'd heard them on the beach, talking and laughing. They'd come over several times to look at her, and she'd stayed inert, her face pressed against the rough wood of the gunwales as her mind slowly cleared and she tried to think how she was to get out of this particular pickle.

  It seemed as insoluble as the situation with Cornichet. Whether rape was a softer alternative to flaying was something she cared not to debate. Her death was the ultimate intention both then and now. If only she didn't feel so sick… but, then, perhaps if she vomited all over the loathsome twins, they'd find her too disgusting even for rape.

  It was a possibility. They'd have to lift her out and put her on the sand, since presumably the narrow and awkward shape of the rowboat didn't lend itself to leisurely violation. And presumably they'd have to loosen her bonds. And then, if she was violently sick, it would take them off guard, and if she had some room to maneuver, maybe she could do something.

  It was a forlorn plan but all she had. She lay still, listening, waiting for a change in the tempo of their voices, a footfall in the sand that would indicate an approach.

  What she heard was a soft, sighing sound, a thump, a shuffling of sand. Then footsteps. Tamsyn struggled onto her back. Moonlight shone on her white face, where beads of sweat dewed her forehead and the hard lines of the timbers were imprinted on her cheek.

  Julian was looking down at her. How had he come to be there? His body was very still, and his blue eyes were hard and bright and questioning, and she could feel his anger and his resentment in every aching bone of her body. Tears of weakness sprang to her eyes as she lay still, gazing up at him. Now he knew everything. His knowledge burned in his eyes and scorched her with his contempt.

  Then Gabriel came up beside him, and his warm, loving anxiety poured over her. “Och, little girl, how could you do this to me?” he said, bending to lift her.

  But abruptly, Julian pushed him aside. “Leave her to me.” It was a harsh command issued on a ragged breath, but Gabriel took a step back.

  Julian bent over her, slipped his hands beneath. her, and lifted her up. The motion, the change in position was too much. With a groan Tamsyn turned her head away from his body and vomited miserably onto the sand, splashing his boots.

  “I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I knew it would happen the minute I moved.”

  “It doesn't matter,” he said, and the gentleness of his voice surprised them both. He set her down on the sand, and she rolled onto her side, retching feebly while he cut the ropes that bound her. When she finished, he wiped her mouth with his handkerchief and took the twins' bottle of cognac from Gabriel, hovering anxiously beside him. “Have a swallow of this.”

  She took a gulp, and the fire burned down her gullet and into her heaving stomach. And miraculously, the queasiness began to abate. She wiped her damp forehead with the back of her arm and looked helplessly up at him. His features were granite, but his eyes were confused.

  She turned to look at Charles and David, lying still on the sand. “Are they dead?”

  “No, just resting after a knock on the head. Have they touched you?” The question was almost dispassionate, but now his eyes were livid.

  She shook her head carefully. “Not much. They were waiting for me to come to. Cedric put something in the champagne… I don't know what it was. I don't know how long I've been unconscious. But it wasn't dark when I was in the library.”

  “It's close to eight o'clock now.” He turned away from her, as if satisfied that she was sufficiency recovered to dispense with his attention. “What do you think, Gabriel?” He nudged the still figure of Charles with his toe. “They won't be out for long.”

  “How about we strip' em naked, put' em in the boat, and send them out to sea?” Gabriel said promptly. “They'll probably get picked up sometime tomorrow, more's the pity, but what a sight they'll be!”

  “You'd have to row the boat,” Tamsyn pointed out.

  “And then how would you get back to shore?”

  “Swim,” Gabriel said with a grin. “I'll row them out beyond the headland. The tide's going out, it'll take them a goodly way out to sea by morning.”

  “You'll be swimming against the current, and it's strong around here,” Julian pointed out.

  “So am I,” Gabriel said, still grinning. “You going to help me strip them, Colonel?”

  “With pleasure.”

  Tamsyn watched as the twins were rendered white and naked on the sand. They both stirred and groaned as Gabriel tugged off their boots.

  “Funny thing!” Gabriel frowned. “Seem to have hurt their feet in exactly the same spot.”

  “Yes,” Tamsyn said. “I owed them a favor.” Julian's eyes darted toward her as she sat on the sand.

  He fought the persistent and exasperating amnesia that had swept over him first when he'd seen her lying in the bottom of the boat, and she'd gazed up at him in silent, anxious plea, and his heart had turned over with joy that she was alive, and he'd forgotten his hurt and anger in his joyous relief and the need to hold her in his arms.

  Coldly, he turned away from her to help Gabriel heft the inert figures into the rowboat.

  Tamsyn shivered, but the night was warm and the chill was within her. She'd seen his eyes, and she could read his thoughts as if they were an open book.

  Gabriel stripped to his long woolen drawers and helped the colonel push the boat into the lapping surf, then sprang over the side and fitted the oars into the rowlocks. David stirred, groaned, and his eyelids fluttered. “Go back to sleep, laddie.” Gabriel tapped him gently on the jaw with his heel. It had looked to Julian like the lightest of touches, but David fell back again, inert.

  The power of this unpredictable giant was not to be minimized. “You're not intending to kill them, are you?”

  Gabriel shook his head, saying cheerfully, “A day in the broiling sun on the open sea will do nicely, Colonel. I'll even leave them an oar, if you like.”

  Julian looked at the naked bodies and thought of them bobbing on the open sea under the
midmorning sun, waiting to be found by a fishing boat. It was a pleasing prospect. “Leave them one,” he said.

  Gabriel nodded. “And you'll take the little girl back home.”

  “I'll not deny her the shelter of my roof for another night,” Julian stated flatly. “After that, since your business is done here, I imagine you'll have no further need of my hospitality.”

  Gabriel frowned in the moonlight; then he said neutrally, “Leave my horse where he is. I'll collect him and my clothes when I get back.”

  Julian stepped back to the sand, watching, hands on his hips, as Gabriel pulled strongly toward the opening of the cove. Then he turned around. Tamsyn was sitting on a rock, her hands clasped lightly in her lap, her head bent as if she were looking for something in the sand.

  She raised her head, and her eyes were large and strained in her pale face. “So you know everything now.”

  Julian raised an eyebrow. “I can't believe that,” he drawled. “There are no more secrets, no more illicit little plots percolating in your devious mind? You'll have to forgive me if I find that hard to credit, Violette.”

  “Oh, there's one secret,” she said dully. “But only one, and you might as well know it. I love you. I love you so much it hurts. And I'll never love anyone else in the same way.”

  Her hands fell to her sides. “There, now,” she said. “That's all of it. I've tricked you, and I've used you. I've lied to you, and I've rearranged your life to suit my own purposes. I forced you to leave Spain, and I'm the illegitimate daughter of a Penhallan and a robber baron. But I love you with my heart and soul, and I'd give my last drop of blood if you ever needed it.”

  She stood up. “But of course you won't ever need it, so I'll go now. And you need never fear that our paths will cross again.” Turning from him, she began to walk back across the sand.

  “You omitted to mention puking all over my boots in that catalog of wrongs,” Julian said.

  Tamsyn stopped. She turned slowly. “I suppose you're entitled to that,” she said. “Entitled to mock. Why should you believe in my love? Anyway, it's a poor thing. I know it can't excuse or make up for what I've done to you.”

  “Dear God,” he said. “I'm assuming this extraordinary show of humility was brought on by that drug Penhallan gave you. I trust its effect isn't permanent.”

  It was too much! All Tamsyn's sorrow and weakness went up in a puff of smoke. She was not going to walk out of his life a broken reed. Colonel, Lord Julian St. Simon was going to have something else to remember her by. “Oh, you despicable bastard! You are an unmitigated cur!” She swooped down, grabbed a handful of sand, and threw it at him. Darting sideways, she picked up the empty cognac bottle. It flew through the air and caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder, before rolling onto the sand.

  “Diablillo! Virago! Termagant!” Julian taunted, grinning as he ducked one of Gabriel's boots.

  “Espadachin! Brute! Bully! Unchivalrous pig!” she hurled back, searching for another missile. “You can't even accept an apology gracefully!”

  Julian dived for her, bringing her down onto the sand. He felt extraordinary, struck by a blinding epiphany. He'd been reborn in some fashion, his hurt and anger vanished in the mists of incomprehension. It no longer mattered how or why this had all started. What mattered was the now. She loved him. He did believe her, every word of her declaration. He believed it because he knew it was how he felt himself He'd fought the knowledge… he'd been fighting it for weeks… and now he'd lost the battle. She was a lawless, unethical, manipulative, illegitimate half-breed, no possible wife for a St. Simon, and he didn't give a damn.

  Scissoring her legs with his own, he pinned her arms above her head, subduing her with his weight. “When did you decide you loved me?”

  “Weeks ago,” she said, lying quiet now beneath him, reading the light in his eye, a trickle of incredulous hope beginning to seep into her veins. “But I knew you didn't think you could love me in the same way, although I knew that you did… and I was hoping that when we were together in Spain, maybe you could learn to look into your heart. But I still had to deal with Cedric… it was something I felt I had to do… for Cecile, and for my father. But I gave up my big plan to ruin him publicly, because then you'd have known the whole story, and I thought you'd be unhappy to discover how I'd been deceiving you.”

  “Unhappy, eh? You're a mistress of euphemism,” he declared with a wry quirk of his lips. “But maybe you can find a euphemistic explanation for blackmail? Just to enable me to live with it, you understand.”

  “It wasn't blackmail, it was restitution.”

  “A little better. Keep trying.”

  “The diamonds were my mother's,” she said quietly, and finally told him the full story. “It was only justice,” she finished.

  “Only justice,” Julian mused, his body still pinning her to the sand. “I suppose I can live with that. A woman with a fine sense of justice, not a blackmailer at all.” He nodded judiciously. “Yes, I think I can live with that.”

  “You're very heavy,” Tamsyn said. “I don't want to puke all over you again.”

  Julian with a muttered exclamation promptly rolled off her.

  “I have to go back to Lanjerrick.” Tamsyn sat up.

  “My sense of justice hasn't been appeased… and Cesar is still there.”

  Julian got to his feet and pulled her up. “Then let's pay your uncle a visit.”

  “You don't have to come with me.”

  “Oh, but I do,” he said. “I too have a very fine sense of justice.”

  “You don't mind too much that I have Penhallan blood?” she asked hesitantly as they climbed the path to the cliff top.

  “Oh, I hardly think so,” he responded with a dry smile. “Your kinship with a murderous viscount is probably the most respectable thing about you.”

  Cedric was in the library, cradling a brandy goblet, morosely awaiting the return of his nephews, when there came a violent hammering on the front door. He sat up abruptly, listening to the servant's footsteps on the marble tiles, the sound of the bolts being drawn back on the front door.

  Then the library door was flung open, and Julian St. Simon stepped into the room, Celia's daughter behind him.

  “The cretins bungled it,” Viscount Penhallan said wearily. “I might have known they would.” He gestured to the decanters on the sideboard. “Help yourself to a drink.”

  “I wouldn't risk it in this house,” Tamsyn said tartly. “Oh, there's no fear with the cognac, or the port,” her uncle said, leaning back in his chair, regarding her through narrowed eyes. “Did you kill them?”

  “No.” Julian poured himself a glass of cognac. Tamsyn helped herself to an apple from a fruit bowl. “Not all Penhallans are murderers, uncle.” She scrunched into the apple. “Where's my horse?”

  “That magnificent beast is in my stables,” he said. “I congratulate you, he's a superb animal.”

  “A present from my father,” she said through a mouthful of apple. “I told you Cecile made a good marriage.”

  “So you did.” He turned his head against the cushions and let his gaze rest lazily on St. Simon. “So how can I help you, St. Simon?”

  “All in good time,” Julian said calmly, leaning back against the sideboard, long legs stretched in front of him, casually crossed at the ankle. He took a critical sip of his cognac.

  “I've decided you can keep the diamonds,” Tamsyn said. ''I'm going to do what my father would have wanted and tell the world every last detail of your infamy… including what you tried to do to me. I couldn't do it before because the colonel didn't know the whole story, but now he does…” She paused, catching Julian's raised eyebrows. “You do agree that I must do this, don't you?”

  “Who am I to question the baron's wisdom and wishes?”

  “If you really don't wish me to… if it will involve you in scandal, then I won't,” she said slowly. “I'll just settle for the diamonds instead. But that would be blackmail, and I know you do
n't approve of that.”

  “Blackmail?” he queried, his eyebrows disappearing into his scalp.

  “Restitution. I forgot that was what we're calling it,” she said lamely.

  “And a fine sense of justice, if you recall.” “Yes, that too.”

  “So you're going to do what your mother threatened to do twenty years ago?” Cedric held out his empty glass toward Julian, who pushed himself away from the sideboard and brought the decanter over to him. Cedric nodded his thanks. “Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  Cedric inclined his head and took a deep draft of brandy. “Then if we've concluded our business, perhaps you'd get out of my house.”

  “Certainly.” Julian put down his glass and walked to the door. “But just one more thing… a mere formality, but one should observe the proprieties, as I'm sure you'll agree.” His smile was sardonic as he offered his host a small bow. “Since it appears that you're Tamsyn's nearest male relative, however much she might regret that fact, I suppose I must ask your permission to pay my addresses to your niece.”

  “So long.as you don't expect me to walk her down the aisle,” Cedric said equably. “You may both go to the devil for all I care.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Julian bowed again. “Come, buttercup.” He swept her out of the room ahead of him.

  “Do you really wish to marry me?” Tamsyn demanded in a fierce whisper as they crossed the hall.

  “Apparently,” he said affably. “Unless it's simply my social conscience that insists I make an honest woman of you… but, then,” he added thoughtfully, “I probably shouldn't set my sights too high.”

  “Cur!”

  “Brigand!”

  Epilogue

  Madrid. Christmas 1812

  A LIGHT SNOW WAS FALLING, A FINE POWDER SETTLING ON the winding road approaching the city across the plain. The wind sharpened and a gust lifted the carpet of snow, sending it in a rolling drift toward the gates.

  The corporal outside the guardhouse shivered and turned up his collar. He stuck his head into the frowsty warmth of the guardroom. “Looks like someone's coming, sir.”