Entering the woods, she followed the path. Her feet just knew where to go. Of course they did. They always had. She had not gotten lost the first time she came here. Without even thinking, she had found her way from the big house to the cottage.
It came into view as the clearing neared. There was no sense of a moment relived this time. It appeared crisply familiar. Snips of memories flashed in her mind, of the bushes smaller and the path wider.
She walked over to the well and peered down. The echo of a woman’s voice called in her head, warning her not to climb up because it would be dangerous.
She turned, half-expecting to see an old woman wearing a cap and simple garments at the door.
The door opened, but no woman appeared. Instead it was George, the man who lived here now. He paused and studied her.
“Do you want something?” he asked curiously. “You look ill.”
“I am not ill.” She stared at him, begging her mind to cooperate. “You said when we last met that you had been here for years. Did you always live in this house?”
He shook his head. “Used to be up there, at the stables. Was a groom in those days, when there were lots of horses here. Head groom at the end. Then, when it was empty and everyone else had left, I became caretaker, as I am now.”
Horses. Yes, of course. She saw George in her head, years younger, his hair not so white and his beard not so full.
“And the woman who lived in this cottage before you? The old lady. What became of her?”
“Alice? You know of Alice? I’ll be damned—um, sorry, you just surprised me. She stayed on a bit, but passed away, oh, ten years it is now, so I moved myself down here.” He cocked his head. “How do you know Alice?”
“I am Diane.”
His mouth fell open, and then formed a big smile. “Well, I’ll be dam— I thought you looked familiar last time. Couldn’t place it. Just a certain something. ’Course, you were just a tiny thing when you left. Quite the lady you are now, eh? Well, who would have thought it.”
Yes, quite the lady. Only one person would not be surprised by the transformation.
“Would you permit me to see the house? The inside?”
He stood aside and gestured gallantly. “Well, of course. Was your home as a child, now, wasn’t it?”
She paused at the threshold and took a deep breath. Her home. She stepped inside.
Memories assaulted her, hooking themselves to what she saw. Not to the whole space, but to details and sensations. The way the light fell on the floor from the open window. A scent, such as every house had, distinct to this place alone. The beams of the ceiling, and the way one had an edge that had split away.
The hearth. The sight of it brought complete and precise memories suddenly. The hearth in summer, cold and lifeless, and in winter, a source of warmth and rocking embraces.
She did not stay long or ask to see the other chambers above. She could not do that today. The recollections offered her no peace. They did not fill the sick emptiness inside her. Another time perhaps they would. Another day, when her heart did not know that dreadful unhappiness waited, she might enjoy finding this history that she had so long dreamt of discovering.
Steeling her courage, she returned to the house. She walked through the woods and her feet made no wrong turns. The path caused her to approach the house from an angle that showed a bit of its side and back. That image, of the half-timbers angling away from the corner upright, might have been branded on her brain.
The familiarity startled her. If the last time she had returned this way and not another, if she had not been distracted by Daniel’s kisses by the brook, she would have realized what this place was to her.
Daniel’s kisses . . . She stopped and closed her eyes and forced down an unbearable sorrow.
She found him in the house. She heard a mumble of voices and followed it to a chamber in the back of the house. Small and tidy, with a few elegant items of furniture, it appeared to be the chevalier’s private sitting room.
He and Daniel sat in two chairs near the window, sharing a bottle of wine. Both had removed their coats. They made a picture of relaxed friendship, of complete trust.
They had heard someone coming. Their talk ceased before she arrived. When she found herself at the threshold of the chamber, looking at them, they were looking back.
“Diane.” Daniel’s inflection revealed surprise and curiosity. “We had assumed the coach was one of Louis’s students.”
“It is only me.” The sharp and clever accusations had deserted her along with the initial fury. She could only look at him and wish this day had never begun.
“What is it you want, darling?”
“I came here to visit my father’s home.”
Daniel’s expression fell.
The chevalier pursed his mouth and rose. “I will leave you alone.”
She stood aside so that he could pass, then went over to Daniel. He had turned his gaze out the window, to the woods and meadow rolling down the back hill.
“Do not do that,” she said, her hand still clutching the letter. “Do not ignore me in that way. Not now.”
He looked back. She saw his expression and knew that he felt as she did, and that he also wished this day had never come.
“I am not ignoring you. I have never ignored you. You have never once been in my presence when I was not totally and completely aware of you, even when you were young and I wished I could block you out.”
He reached for her but she stepped back. With a sigh, he let his hand drop. “How do you know this was your father’s home?”
She opened her hand to show the crushed letter. “My grandfather wrote to me, in response to my letter to him. He was not going to. He does not even know who I am, but I do now. He explained enough for me to understand it.”
“What did he explain that has you so distressed?”
“That he had a daughter who died in childbirth. That she had not been married to the father of the baby. That the father took the child into his care, at a house that he owned in Hampstead.”
Her voice was rising. The words poured out, madly.
“That the man who had seduced his daughter was in shipping, but was ruined over a dozen years ago, and that he and the child disappeared.”
Daniel watched her, waiting.
“That the man’s name was Jonathan. Jonathan Makepeace. Not Jonathan Albret, as you let me believe. Albret was my mother’s name.” The inner agitation got the better of her. She wanted to hit him, pound him. She threw the letter at him instead. It bounced off his face and onto the floor. “You deceived me. You let me look for his family without even knowing his right name.”
“Yes, I deceived you.” He rose and came to her.
“Do not touch me.” She paced away, around him. She swung her arm at the chamber and everything beyond. “How did you come to have this place?”
“I came to have it because of a night of cards.”
“You got it through gambling?”
“I was very young and Jonathan just assumed he would win. It started out simply, and grew.”
“As it did with Andrew Tyndale?”
“Much the same. By the end I was far ahead. Your father was a reckless man. He bet everything he had left—his two ships, his London house and this one—on one cut of the cards against everything I had won.”
“I have been living in my father’s house in London too?”
“No. I sold that one and bought another some years later.”
“And you let him do this? Let him bet everything?”
His lids lowered. Darkness flashed. For a moment, he was the Devil Man again. “Oh, yes.”
“No wonder you made your fortune so quickly. You stole it from another man. You took everything from him that night! That is how you got your first ships, isn’t it?”
“That is how I got my first ships.”
“How could you do that? Ruin him like that. You did not have to agree to that last bet.”
> “I was glad to agree to it. I did not like your father. In fact, I despised him. He had a weakness for gambling and that is what ruined him, not me.”
She could not believe the way he said it. Flatly. Coldly. “You astonish me. You destroyed his life and ruined mine, but you have no remorse. None at all.”
“I have no remorse for him. I regret that an innocent was hurt. The way it affected you was an unfortunate consequence.”
“An unfortunate consequence! That is a neat way to put it, Daniel.”
He stepped forward, to block her pacing. His hands closed on her arms and he looked down at her. “I knew nothing about you. He was not married; he had no family. I did not know there was a daughter until I saw you.”
Something in the way he looked made her wary. There was a softness in his expression, and real regret, but not for the past. It was the way he had looked that day in the carriage on the way to the Tuileries, when she had demanded information.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the question forming stuck in her throat. She knew in her heart that she would not want to hear the answer. “How did you come to have me?”
“The last bet included this property, and everything on it. When I arrived to take possession, I found you here.”
The devastating truth hammered away at her composure. Her father had abandoned her. Walked away and left her to fate’s whims.
She should probably be grateful that Daniel had not foisted her off on the local parish. Perhaps one day she would be. Right now the devastation was getting so vast that there was no room for gratitude, or for anything except a hundred questions.
Some of those questions prodded insistently. “Why did you deceive me? Why not just tell me this in Paris? I do not think it was to spare me the pain. If you let me think he had another name, if you let me ask for information on the wrong man, you must have had a good reason.”
He walked away and faced the window. Not ignoring her. She could tell that, despite his gaze on the hill beyond, his mind was completely with her.
Her anger rose, as if to form a shield against the blow that her soul knew was coming.
“It was not in my interest to have anyone realize that you are Jonathan Makepeace’s daughter.”
“Why?” It came out a frustrated yell.
He turned. “Because Jonathan was an old friend of Andrew Tyndale, and I did not want Tyndale to know that I had met Jonathan, ever. I did not want Tyndale to know who you are, and surmise there was a connection to that night of cards all those years ago.”
The admission only confused her more. Her head swam with bits and pieces of things, with impressions and words all jumbled together.
She crossed her arms over her chest, to hold herself together. “The duel. You said it was not only about me. You said Jeanette would not object because she knew the whole story.”
Her heart screamed with silent yells, some accusatory, others beseeching. “Was it your plan from the start, to find a way to challenge Tyndale? Not really because of me, but for other reasons? Is that why you did not want him to know of my connection to Jonathan? Daniel, did you bring me to London and make me a lady to lure Tyndale into that duel?”
She caught a glimpse of the answer in his expression. Then his face blurred as stinging tears overflowed from her eyes.
“It was my plan at first, Diane, but I could not do it in the end. That it turned out that way after all was not my intention.”
He had not only deceived her. He had intended to use her.
She could not bear it. She could not stay to hear more.
Crying so hard that she could not see, she stumbled from the chamber and ran out to the coach. Daniel’s voice followed, calling her name.
chapter 23
The ragged man was following him again.
Gustave glanced back. It was the same thief whom Adrian had pointed out, the one with the beard. The man seemed to loiter around the district where Gustave had taken his rooms. No doubt Adrian had been correct, and this was a pickpocket who preyed upon the men of business and law who walked these streets. He must have recognized the foreign cut of Gustave’s coat and decided he would be easy pickings eventually.
It was unnerving to feel one was being watched. Gustave did not like the notion that there had been times when this man may have been following him and he had not been aware of it.
Perhaps this thief even knew about the shed across the water.
The thought appalled him. That could be disastrous.
Enough was enough. He would let this thief know that he had been noticed, and that it was time to shadow some less astute man.
Gustave slowed to a stroll. He finally stopped to examine the books outside a printer’s shop. From the corner of his eye he saw that the thief did not move on, but merely paused and waited. That was bold.
Annoyed, Gustave walked rapidly. He put some space between himself and the man, and entered a coffeehouse. Taking a table near the window, he watched as the man came into view and walked by.
And turned and entered the coffeehouse too.
And walked over and sat at Gustave’s table.
Really, it was too much.
“If you expect me to pay you to leave me alone, you have misjudged your prey, m’sieur.” Gustave spoke angrily, only realizing at the end that he had spoken French and this criminal would never understand. He trusted that his tone conveyed the message well enough, however.
The man smiled and removed his hat. “I thought that it was time we spoke.”
To Gustave’s amazement, the reply came in French as well.
“I seriously doubt that you and I have anything to speak of.”
“We have much to speak of. For example, we can speak of how you are being led to the slaughter.”
“See here—”
“No, you see here. Right here.” He pointed at his eyes.
Puzzled, Gustave peered closely at the man’s eyes. A jolt of astonishment made him dizzy. “My God, it is you! But you are dead!”
“Not dead. Just buried for a long time in drink and stinking poverty.”
“This is such a shock. . . . What do you mean I am being led to the slaughter?”
“You are being used. You will be ruined.” He leaned across the table. “First me, then Hercule, now you. Lured to ruin, one by one.”
“How preposterous. I am not being lured to anything.”
“Aren’t you? Then why are you in England?”
Gustave looked down his nose. “That is my affair alone.”
“Yours alone? No one else is involved in your affair?”
Gustave shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “You were not lured to ruin. Your character brought you to it, as did Hercule’s. You always wanted easy wealth, and he always wanted glory.”
“And what have you always wanted, Dupré? Are you in England seeking it now?”
A stab of concern made Gustave shift again. “Of course not.”
“Then I am mistaken. I am just a man too fond of spirits, who has seen schemes that don’t exist.” He rose. “And to think that I came all this way to warn an old friend. Had to stow away under a stack of canvases to cross.”
That concern pricked again, ruining Gustave’s contentment that this ghost was departing.
“Wait. Sit. Have some coffee. Tell me what scheme you see.”
They waited until the coffee came, and the ragged man called for some cakes and let Gustave pay for them.
“Speak,” Gustave demanded, getting suspicious that he was being fleeced for a free meal.
“When I lost everything, I fled to the Continent. There were debts in England— Well, it is an old story. I lived in Naples. One day over two years ago, right after Napoleon went to Elba, I was at the docks and I saw one of my ships. Oh, it had been changed somewhat over the years, but I knew it.”
“So you saw the ship. What of it?”
“I lost the ship to Edward St. Clair. The ship was now owned by the same person, only older and wit
h a different name. Daniel St. John.”
Gustave startled.
“When I made my way to France, I heard about poor Hercule. Strange that a private confidence to an English officer became public knowledge.”
“And you think that St. John—”
“He often dined with the officers in that regiment. I think that this one, when in his cups, was indiscreet. Odd to learn of that connection between St. John and the officer. That is what got me thinking.”
“I am sure that you are building castles out of air. It is too much a coincidence. You and Hercule—it was years apart.”
“Perhaps. But I ask you this—are you a coincidence too? You are in England suddenly, very busy with something. Have you ever met this St. John, or St. Clair, or whatever his name is?”
Gustave’s mouth felt peculiar. Too moist.
“Is your current affair connected to a meeting with St. John?”
Gustave swallowed. “If you are right, why?”
“Me, Hercule, and now you. There are only two explanations. At first, I thought St. John was someone who knew about our connection, from when we were young. However, I wonder now if he merely is an agent for someone who does.”
“An agent? It is a long time to be an agent.”
“Not if he works for someone with power. Someone who can be his patron. This St. John has had great success. He is well received here in England.”
“But who?”
“Someone, perhaps, who would prefer that our association to him was buried with our fortunes and reputations. Someone with ambitions, who would not like the world to know about certain things that happened long ago.”
Gustave was sipping some coffee as the implication hit him. Suddenly his stomach felt sour.
“Tell me Dupré, have you had any dealings here in England with Tyndale? Is that little shed you visit across the river his shed too?”
“Shed? What shed? You are mistak—”
“The reason I ask is this: St. John has had dealings with Tyndale recently, and St. John knows about that shed. I know because I saw him there one day.”
Diane found herself adrift as she had never been before. She experienced the rootless, aimless existence that she had always feared. She had left the school, trusting that the truth would spare her from such a life. Instead, the truth had thrust her into it.
The Seducer Page 25