After an hour of this, he had remembered to return for his phone. Karla had still not come back and so he’d waited for her until he thought he would literally go out of his mind with a kind of sick terror. From then on he’d wandered the streets, shouting and calling, ignoring the cars which nearly knocked him down in the fast thoroughfares of Monaco, haunting casinos and lobbies like a deranged figure.
Sometimes he railed against Karla, blaming her for everything that had happened, and then he’d remember what he’d done—how things must have looked to her—and he would cry self-pityingly. He had left so many messages on her phone, pleading with her, begging her to answer, but she never switched it on. Wryly he remembered that when he’d first met her, her unwitting partner in crime, Maarten Kropp, had installed a tracker on her phone to follow her movements: what Hayden would have done to know where she was now. It hurt him as though he’d been struck when he realised that—whatever cons they’d pulled since then in the time they’d been together—in the past year everything between him and Karla had been based on trust. Now he’d blown it.
He’d barely slept in two days and, as he finally staggered through the doors, he felt as though he would collapse to the floor. He would return to his bed, get some sleep, and then if she’d not returned he would go. Where was irrelevant, though ideally there would be a big enough rock for him to crawl under for an eternity.
As he shuffled through the lobby, a hand grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. He tried to get his eyes to focus: although his head hammered as though a team of merry dwarves were digging for gold, his drunkenness had long been replaced by a wearying fatigue.
“For feck’s sake, man. You look like a tramp.”
Hayden tried to smile but it turned into a grimace. Still holding onto his sleeve, Uncle Coilin stood slowly from his seat, eyeing Hayden warily. The older man was dressed in a tweed suit and, despite his corpulence and thinning ginger hair, looked almost dapper.
“Where is she?” Hayden blurted out. “I need to find her.”
“Ah ah!” Coilin now tightened his grip around Hayden’s wrist while wagging a finger of the other hand. “You and I need a little chat first. A cup of tea, that’s what you need to start the day.”
“I don’t need a cup of fucking tea!” Hayden’s voice rose threateningly and he tried to yank his arm free. The other man, however, had a surprisingly tenacious grip and didn’t let go as he glanced around the room where a few other guests had looked up in shock at the pair of them.
“Not another fecking word,” murmured Coilin, leaning in close to Hayden’s ear. “She’ll see you in her own good time, but if you try to get past me I swear I’ll break both your fecking legs.” He smiled, sweetly, a good-natured gentleman chiding his long lost friend, but in his slightly rheumy eyes was a threat of unspeakable aggression.
With a sigh, Hayden raised his free arm and indicated his willingness to remain in the lobby, but it was only when he moved to sit beside the table where Coilin had been only moments before that the older man released him. Taking his seat, Hayden noticed a short, twisted walking stick, its length shiny and black but for a knot of brown wood on the end.
“My shillelagh,” Uncle Coilin said, resting his portly behind across from Hayden.
“Your Sheila-what?” mumbled Hayden, his eyes darting around the room, hoping against hope that Karla would appear at any moment.
It was Coilin’s turn to sigh. “Fecking ignorant English bastard,” he muttered, then smiled sweetly before lifting the stick in his hands. “You know,” he mused, to no one in particular, “the traditional way to prepare a Shillelagh is to butter it all up with lard then hang it above a fire, so that the smoke cures it, all black and shiny like.”
“Is that what you did?” Hayden asked, feigning curiosity, his eyes searching, searching.
“What? Me go to all that trouble? What sort of fecking idiot do you take me for? I picked this one up in Dublin. People tend to get all peculiar when you try to take, I don’t know, a knife or a gun on a plane these days. Security gone mad, if you ask me. But a good stick, ah, no one would take that from an old man.”
As he spoke, he leaned forward, and though he wasn’t looking directly at Hayden the younger man started to recognise the menace in his words and stopped hunting for Karla. “What are you doing here?” he snarled.
“Karla called for me, and when Karla calls, I come.”
“Where is she? I want to see her.”
Coilin turned his eyes towards Hayden now and, for a minute, said nothing, his lips pressed tightly together. Shit. Hayden recognised that expression enough from Karla and, for a moment, his courage failed him.
“Is she upset?” he asked, lamely.
The older man let out a hollow laugh. “Let’s see. She comes back to find you with your cock out and some porn star, naked, on her hands and knees.”
“She wasn’t on her hands and knees and I didn’t have my cock out!” Hayden snapped.
“Oh, but she was naked. You don’t deny that, I see. Perhaps the two of you were making preparations for the vicar’s tombola, or whatever it is you lousy limey shitebags get up to when you think no-one’s looking. Ah! Our tea!” Coilin’s eyes lit up as a waitress momentarily appeared between them, placing a tray with two cups and a steaming silver pot. He smiled jovially at the young woman and then, when she departed, lifted the pot. “Lemon or milk?” he asked.
Hayden waved his hands in irritation. “I need to talk to her. It’s not what she thought.”
“No, no, of course it isn’t.” As he spoke, Coilin poured a stream of golden liquid into his cup before taking a small flask from his inside pocket. “A little something to help the morning after. Are you sure you won’t join me?”
Begrudgingly, Hayden accepted the flask after Coilin had added a dash of clear spirits to his drink. Swigging it back, some kind of volcano exploded in his throat and he almost spat out the alcohol.
“My own recipe,” said Coilin with a wink. “Sorts the men out from the boys. I used to splash some on Karla’s bread when she was a baby. Would help her sleep if she was teething.”
“That explains a lot,” Hayden muttered.
Ignoring him, Coilin settled back in his chair and sipped his tea. Despite the bitterness of the poteen, Hayden also sipped from the flask, though more slowly this time.
“In answer to your question, I’m here because Karla asked me to. She thought you might need some help with this Marquis of yours.”
“Help?” Hayden sneered. “What kind of help can you give?”
Raising one eyebrow, Coilin stared hard at Hayden. “Well, the kind of activity you were thinking of last night, I might not have been at my best, though even I must admit I would have been tempted—though not where my darling niece is concerned, you understand.” Placing his cup on the table, he stared levelly at the other man. “She wanted information, so I did some digging around.”
This made Hayden scoff. “What the hell could you find out in a couple of hours? I had my brother look for all that we need to know.”
“Your brother?”
Again Hayden waved his hand in irritation. “He works in the City. He’s found out enough about Valmont—he knows that he’s rich, and where the money is.”
“And does he know about the prostitution rings? And the special parties that this Marquis de Valmont likes to organise?”
That stopped Hayden in his tracks. He thought of the scars on Eloise’s buttocks and shuddered. “No, he doesn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me.”
Coilin leaned back in his seat. “All of it’s very hush-hush, of course. It always is with these upper class types. After all, they’ve had centuries to get it right—most of the rest of us have only been playing catch up for the past couple of hundred years or so.” He shrugged and sipped his tea before looking at Hayden over the rim of his cup. “The flask, sonny.”
Passing it back to him, Hayden couldn’t help but ask: “So, these parties. Any details?”
Pouring a
little of his poteen in his drink, the other man frowned. “Not too many details, though I know I haven’t asked the right people. Yet. All I can say is that this one leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”
“For any man who can say that after your home brew, it must be strong stuff indeed.”
Now Coilin regarded him seriously. “You think you can just make it all right with a couple of jokes, don’t you? You go and break my niece’s heart and then you sit down here as though nothing’s happened.”
Shame suddenly overwhelmed Hayden and, despite himself, he blushed deeply. “It wasn’t like that,” he began to protest, but his voice sounded petulant even to his own ears.
“And what was it like?” Coilin asked. “Ah!” He sat back and waved a hand in disgust. “Save it! I don’t want to hear. All I know is that Karla was crying her eyes out last night. I’ve never seen that, never seen it before in my life. And over you as well!”
Hayden sat in silence, staring at his hands. For all that it tasted foul, he wished he could have Uncle Coilin’s flask back so that he could crawl inside it and drown his self-pity.
“I never understood why she took up with a fecking Englishman,” Coilin continued. “‘Never trust ‘em’, I told her, but she wouldn’t listen, not with you. That’s what happens when your heart rules your head.”
This caused Hayden to snap his eyes up and stare across the table. “What do you mean?”
“Jesus!” Coilin rolled his eyes upwards. “She loves you, you stupid bastard. That’s what that means.”
His heart leaped slightly in his chest, only to sink downwards almost immediately as guilt overwhelmed him. What an idiot he’d been! Coilin, however, must have seen something in his eyes because he leaned forward and, placing his cup down carefully on the table, took hold of the shillelagh.
“There’s nothing better I’d like to do than shove this so deep up your arse it would never see the light of day in a thousand years.” His eyes were fierce and Hayden didn’t doubt that he meant every word that he spoke. “But I’d suspect you’d enjoy it a little too much. I promise you this, though: you ever cross my niece again, and I’ll take great pleasure in cracking open your skull to let some sense into that dim lump of meat you call a brain, and don’t think all your fancy body-building, pumped up preenery will stop me. Do I make myself clear?”
“I think you’ve made yourself very clear, Uncle.” The accent was French, trilling letters in a thrilling way, but Hayden couldn’t mistake the voice. He looked up to see Karla staring down at him. She looked beautiful, her black hair carefully coiffured into a bun on her head, a satin jacket covering her cream blouse and pale slacks. If she had been crying, she had masked everything behind her perfect makeup.
“You look gorgeous,” he said weakly.
“And you look like a tramp, Sebastian. Where on earth have you been all night?”
“Karla, I’m sorry—” She raised a hand and a brief look of anger flashed across her face.
“I don’t want to hear it, Sebastian.” Regaining her composure, she moved across to the other side of the table to sit down next to her Uncle. She crossed her legs primly and regarded Hayden with careful eyes.
“I see you had fun last night,” she said. “I’ve just been up to the room. That finance company in Berlin we’ve got paying for it won’t be pleased when they have to pick up the tab. We might have managed another week before they noticed, but it looks like we’ll need to move on.”
“Yes,” Hayden replied shamefacedly. “I kind of lost it after you left. I need to explain Karla—”
“Jeanne!” she hissed. “Can’t you keep your mind on anything other than that preposterously oversized organ down your trousers? We have work to do.” Her eyes were blazing again, but now he could also see pain mixed in with her anger. Whatever she was planning, she hadn’t forgiven him—not at all.
“Yes, of course—Jeanne.” He became meek, ignoring Coilin’s glances between the two. The older man was clearly enjoying Hayden’s predicament. “What do you propose we do?”
“I’ve picked up some useful details from Coilin,” she continued, as though they had just been discussing the fine, Mediterranean weather. “And I’ve managed to do some research of my own. At first I thought your original plan was utterly stupid, but now I can see its merit. The Marquis de Valmont is a rich man—a very rich man.”
“What?” Hayden spat out the word in utter surprise. “You want to go through with it?”
She raised one eyebrow. “It was your idea. Don’t you think it such a good one now, Sebastian?”
He sighed. “That was before. I don’t think we should get involved with Valmont. Didn’t your Uncle tell you about the other stuff?”
“His predilection for S and M?” She shrugged. “So what? I’ve handled worse. Until last night, I believed I was a match for any man. I’d become complacent, lost my edge.” Her eyes hardened. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
Hayden leaned forward. He needed to explain. “It’s worse than you imagine, K- Jeanne. I saw Eloise, I saw what he’d done to her.”
“Don’t even mention that woman’s name!” Karla snarled, her lips curling back from her teeth which were gritted in fury. Then she regained control of herself and smiled as though nothing had happened. “Do you know what Lupa means?”
Now he was confused. “I thought I wasn’t meant to talk about her?”
“Don’t be stupid, just answer the question.”
“Umm… something to do with wolf in Italian, isn’t it? She-wolf?”
Karla’s look was ironic. “I think you’ll find that a simpler translation is ‘bitch’, and I don’t intend to let that bitch win. I called Valmont’s secretary this morning. I told him that we’d be extremely happy to accept his invitation to Mazan.”
“What!” Hayden was dumbfounded. “Are you crazy?”
“Not at all,” she answered coolly, her French accent calm and unruffled. “We go ahead with your plan. Uncle, you’ll need to stay behind: it will get too awkward having to explain an Irish relative, and in any case we may need a backup, something we can blackmail him with or something.” She was matter-of-fact now, utterly in control.
“I’m on it,” Coilin told her. Karla looked back at Hayden and shook her head.
“You’ll need to go upstairs and get changed, Sebastian. It won’t do for you to appear in front of the Marquis looking like that.” Both she and Coilin stood up. “Try not to fuck any of the maids while they’re cleaning up, won’t you? I understand it’s hard for you to keep your hands off other women, but we have a job to do remember.”
“Where are you going?”
“Uncle and I have some other arrangements to make. Oh, I nearly forgot.” She fished out her phone and quickly tapped on the screen. “You’ll find your ticket in your inbox. We fly out of Nice at three to Avignon but we’ll have to drive from there. We’ll stay at Mazan itself before going to the Chateau. Don’t worry, I’ve booked us a place in a very pleasant inn. Separate rooms of course.”
“I don’t… I don’t understand.” Hayden could feel his jaw working, but nothing coherent was coming out.
Karla looked down at him sternly. “It’s very simple. As I said, we have a job to do. I’m the bait—just do your part, Sebastian. If you don’t win, you don’t lose me for just a night.”
And then she turned to leave, Coilin looking gleeful as he accompanied his niece towards the hotel exit. Hayden watched them depart, his heart sinking with each step they took away from him.
“Great,” he muttered to himself. “That’s just bloody great!”
Chapter Seven: Valmont
Valmont felt rather satisfied with himself a day later as he watched the car follow the long, straight road to the entrance of Chateau de Tour. So named after the largest tower that rose into the bright Provençal sky, once it had been but one ancestral home that belonged to the Valmont family, scattered from the Haute-Normandie region in the north (from whence the family took i
ts name) down to the borders with Spain and Italy.
Now the only ancient chateau that Valmont preserved was de Tour, a decision that his grandfather had taken and which the Marquis had never rescinded. Despite whatever former difficulties the family had endured, his choice was no longer a question of money: it was rather that he preferred a multitude of properties across the world rather than clinging onto old castles such as this for any sentimental value.
That wasn’t to deny that de Tour was impressive. An hour’s drive from Mazan itself, the building looked rather like a fairy tale castle perched atop a low hill that gave glorious views across the mountains and valleys of southern France. The countryside around could be rugged and stony, but here the terraced fields cut into the hillsides were lush and fertile, with trees marking the borders of roads and settlements, red-tiled roofs and the occasional church tower visible in the distance.
The original building that had stood on this spot since the thirteenth century, of which the large, circular tower was the only remaining part, had been a somewhat forbidding stone fortress. One of Valmont’s ancestors had rebuilt it in the style of the Loire river chateaux, softening its features with smaller, white towers and a pale grey roof, a place where princes could frolic and play where their forebears had fought and rutted.
As such, when it suited him Valmont was very happy to receive visitors to de Tour—and today it pleased him very much. When first Eloise had fearfully told him of her failure with the Englishman, Sebastian Rider, he had been angry with her, but she had made amends and in any case it seemed that her failure was only apparent. That had made him much more amenable, and the former porn star was recuperating in his room after their morning rigours, an activity which had only increased Valmont’s satisfaction.
He had even found the time to take another form of morning ride, astride the back of his bay Lusitano, Ajax, and as he was returning from the stables to the main house, his jodhpurs flush to his strong thighs and black, supple leather boots reaching midway to his thighs, he saw the car approaching in the distance. He knew who it would be: Jeanne Duval had called the evening before, and so he stood on the broad steps that led to the main entrance watching the car approach. He still had his crop in one hand, and he tapped it gently against his boot.
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