“If you will not bring the others, I will accompany you.”
“If I ride up with a companion, we will be told neither Tyndale nor Diane is there. I fear that if I do not play this game his way, he will do her harm.” He also feared that even if he gave Tyndale satisfaction, Diane was in danger. He would not want her telling the world that he had abducted her, even if he thought his reputation could survive the accusation.
Louis ceremoniously laid the sabre and box on the table.
“I doubt it will be so honorable,” Daniel said.
“Bring them. It is the safest way for him. He will not want suspicions and accusations of murder. And such a man never believes he can lose.”
“Then it will be pistols. He has no advantage with sabres.” Daniel smiled bitterly as he lifted the box of dueling guns. “I had promised her to give it up.”
“She will not want you to give it up so much that you are dead.”
“No, I expect not.”
“When you see him, remember—a clear head. A cold heart. Sangfroid is essential.”
“So you have always taught, old friend.”
Daniel tucked the box under his arm. “Years ago I asked you to leave this to me, but I now have a favor to ask of you.”
“Certainement.”
“If I fail, and she is harmed in any way, kill him.”
“D’accord. Of course. It will be a privilege, and a pleasure.”
“She is so lovely. So young. Like a little sparrow.”
Diane did not stir or open her eyes. Upon waking, she had decided to pretend that she slept on. She did not want Andrew Tyndale to see her fear.
She had not intended to sleep, but had nodded off anyway. It had been delicious to escape like that into her dreams. She wished she could have stayed there until Daniel came.
She could smell the damp of the cottage. Even the little cot on which she slept had a musty odor. The humble home had not been aired in months before they arrived.
She guessed that they were on one of Tyndale’s properties. He had not brought her to the big house where there would be servants, but hidden her here instead.
The man who spoke was not Tyndale. It was the other one, the funny little Frenchman named Gustave, who had been waiting in the carriage outside Margot’s garden. She guessed that Gustave did not speak English, because Tyndale had only used French with him, and sometimes English with her when she guessed he did not want the Frenchman to comprehend.
The threats had been in English.
“So innocent. So—”
“Oh, hell, enough. You sound like a swooning fool. She is his wife, and, like all women, she is a whore.”
“You are barbaric to speak of her like that. I do not like this. A woman—it is not honorable,” Gustave said. His voice was very close. She could feel him leaning over and peering at her.
“I told you, once he arrives we will let her go.”
“When will that be?”
“I told you. Tonight.”
“It may not be until tomorrow or the next day,” a third voice said. “It may take him some time to discover where your Kent holding is.”
Diane barely suppressed a startle. She had not realized that there was someone else in the chamber. This other man must have arrived while she dozed.
He also spoke French, but, like Tyndale’s, it was not native.
“He damn well better not keep me waiting,” Tyndale said.
“He may not come at all,” Gustave fretted.
“He’ll come.” Movements at the other side of the chamber reached Diane. “I will go to the house to wait for him, now that you are here.” Tyndale switched to English. “If this French fool decides to be heroic for his new lady love, take care of it. If he tries to interfere, kill him.”
A hand caressed her hair. Gustave’s hand? No, a different scent floated to her, of a different man. Tyndale. She almost recoiled physically when she realized he had touched her.
“Yes, lovely,” he muttered. “But spoiled forever, and of no good to me at all anymore, except to get her husband here.”
A shiver chilled Diane. No good to me at all anymore. Jeanette said Tyndale had spoken the same words to her when he found her.
She heard Tyndale leave the cottage.
“I do not like this,” Gustave fussed again. “She is sleeping too long. He gave her too much, I am sure. Just a little, he said, so that she sleeps and is not a nuisance, but it looked to me that a good deal went into the tea.”
“It is not a mistake he would likely make.”
“He is not a god. He makes mistakes.”
“Not this kind. Besides, she is no longer sleeping. She has been awake for some time now. Haven’t you, madame?”
It shocked her to be addressed directly. She debated whether to attempt to continue the ruse. With Tyndale gone, she was not so afraid anymore.
Besides, she was curious about this third man.
She pushed herself up. Her head felt odd, as if someone had stuffed it with cotton. She rubbed her eyes and oriented herself to the wood plank floor, and the two windows with open shutters. The light showed that it was early evening.
Gustave sat in a chair near her cot. He smiled with relief.
“See, she is fine,” the other man said. He sat at the table near the windows, a silhouette backlit by the setting sun.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Just another man who badly wants an accounting with your husband.”
She took in his beard and dark hair and pale, sickly pallor. Peering harder, she tried to make out the details of his face.
Her inspection amused him. He turned.
Suddenly, shockingly, she found herself looking into her own eyes.
He sensed something was wrong. His smile disappeared and he cocked his head curiously.
She could only gape at him.
“She is going to swoon,” Gustave cried.
She held up a hand. “I will not. Do not concern yourself.” Composure returned. “Who are you?” she asked again.
“That is not your concern,” the man said.
“I should say it is. You have helped abduct me. You lie in wait for my husband.”
“Tell me, madame. Who is your husband? If you satisfy my curiosity, perhaps I will satisfy yours.”
“Daniel St. John.”
“I knew him by another name.”
“You are mistaken.”
“Not about this man. I think that you are mistaken, which means he cannot be your cousin.”
She gazed at his eyes. It was as if the shadowy images from her mirror, the phantom face that would emerge sometimes, had come to life. “No, he is not my cousin,” she said in English so that Gustave would not understand. “When I was a child, he found me abandoned on a property he had acquired. He put me in a school, and saw to my care and education even though I was not his responsibility. Every year he journeyed to visit me, even when it meant returning from great distances to do so, and risking his safety to enter France during the war. By whatever name you knew him, that is who he is to me. He is the man who gave me a life after another man had thrown me away.”
His smile disappeared before she was done.
“What did she say?” Gustave demanded.
“Nothing of interest to you. Go outside, Gustave. Get some air.”
“What? Why? I do not think that you should be alone—”
“Leave. Good God, man, what do you take me for? Just go. Now.”
Alarmed by the outburst, Gustave rose like a puppet yanked up by strings. “I will be close by,” he assured her. “Just call if you have need of my assistance.”
With his departure, a heavy silence filled the room. Diane watched the man who sat at the table. She let her memories, what few there were, attach to his eyes and his mannerisms.
“He told you about me,” he said defensively. “That is how you know about—you are using that now, to confuse matters.”
“He told me very litt
le about you. I am telling you who I am, and who he is to me.”
His glance darted around, as if his mind sought some escape from this conversation.
“Where was this property where he found you?”
She almost felt sorry for him. “If you are Jonathan Makepeace, you know where it was. Hampstead.”
His eyes closed. “Hell.”
He sounded angry and resentful. That hurt. As a girl she had dreamed of finding him. She had imagined running to him and jumping into his arms. Maybe when he visited Hampstead that was how she greeted him when she was a child. She had always heard laughter in her fantasies of their reunion, not an angry, startled curse.
“He let me think you were dead,” she said, wanting to hurt him too. “I realize now it was a kindness. He let me believe that the card game with you had been by chance. He never told me that you were involved with Tyndale, or that he deliberately ruined you.”
“So now you know the kind of man he is.”
“Oh, yes. He is the kind of man who would omit the truth about you, to spare me my small childhood dreams. He never let me know that my father had been part of Tyndale’s scheme to rob those people of their lives and property. It was your ship that was supposed to find those poor souls on the coast, wasn’t it?”
He said nothing. He did not look at her.
“Did you even set sail, to try and save them?”
“The gold and jewels were in hand. Tyndale . . . if they were not rescued, we could keep it all, far more than the payment we were to receive. It was decided early on. We all knew how it would be. I had debts . . .”
He shrugged, as if to make light of the decision. Diane could see his eyes, however. She could see the guilt. The shrug itself appeared tired and heavy, one of resignation rather than indifference.
“I could not have changed things,” he said. “Tyndale had arranged everything. He would not even give me the final destination, lest I decide to go for them anyway.”
She doubted he had argued with Tyndale very hard, if at all. His tone indicated he had not.
“It is a wonder my husband did not kill you.”
“Better if he had, maybe. He took everything, even you.”
“You left me. And it seems to me that he took what you had built on that betrayal.”
A flame of anger lit his eyes. The energy died almost immediately, however. They sat in silence, strangers in every way except the most important one. Diane could feel the familial bond tugging her. It kept her from hating or fearing him. It made her ache for some acknowledgment.
It broke her heart.
Gustave’s face suddenly peered in the window. Jonathan snarled a curse, and the face disappeared.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“A scientist. A great mind, to hear him tell it. A fool, if you ask me.”
“What was his gain in this betrayal?”
“A library.”
“A library? He allowed people to die for some books?”
“Those books included a treatise with a mathematical proof. He was not sorry that the man for whom he kept the library, and to whom he was to send the treatise, died. The proof became Gustave’s own, and secured his reputation. He scoured every page in that library for whatever else its owner had written and noted, and built his fame upon another man’s brilliance. No, Gustave was not sorry the ship did not come, even if he had been the one to introduce Tyndale to those people.”
He focused his attention on his fingers, as he tapped them against the tabletop. Gustave’s sins had ceased to interest him.
“He put you in a school, you said. You were well cared for, then.”
“Yes.”
He tapped some more. “The midwife wanted to give you to a farming couple when you were born. But I had loved your mother, and could not give you up. In the long term, it would have been better for you. I did not see you much, but you seemed happy enough when I did, but . . . Then, after that card game—I could not take you with me. I did not even know where I was going.”
“I understand.” And she did, in her head. Her heart was less rational. The fact that he had abandoned her still made it burn, but this new evidence, that he had wanted her enough to keep her when she was born, muted it with something that resembled forgiveness.
“Where was the school?”
“In Rouen.”
He smiled, and shook his head. “I often thought about you, and wondered . . . and the last two years, you were no more than a day’s ride away.” His gaze sharpened, just enough to make her cautious. “Do you know who he is?”
“Daniel St. John.”
“There were no St. Johns or Saint-Jeans among the people Tyndale promised to save. No St. Johns, or St. Clairs, the other name he has been known by.”
“Well, it is the only name I know.”
He looked at his tapping fingers again. “Do not let Tyndale and Gustave know you are my daughter. I do not know how they will react. Especially Tyndale.”
“You think it would put me in danger?”
“You are already in danger. If he does not know, however, I may be able to help you.” He made another vague shrug, as if he had not quite decided that he could, or would.
It was a small offer, and not a promise, but her heart tightened. She rose and walked to the table and stood beside the stranger who was her father. She looked down into her own eyes.
Years fell away during that long, connected gaze. Accusations and resentments and denials and forgiveness all flowed silently on the odd, visceral knowing that they shared. Her eyes misted, and it seemed that his did too.
She placed her hand on his. It seemed very natural to touch this sickly, wan man, because the eyes had not changed and she knew them. A small smile formed on his mouth, and she knew that too.
His hand turned so that he was holding hers.
“Will you tell me about my mother?” she asked. “And about my childhood, and all of the things that I have forgotten?”
chapter 26
Daniel was not accustomed to bargaining from a position of weakness. He followed the servant into the library on the Kent estate, too aware that he was at Andrew Tyndale’s mercy.
Tyndale appeared as bland and harmless as ever. Only when the servant left did the nasty lights enter his eyes.
He gestured to the box that Daniel carried. “Pistols?”
“I expected you to choose them as weapons.”
“You came here for a duel?”
“Of course. You have abducted my wife.”
“She came with me gladly.”
“No, she did not. In any case, I have come to demand satisfaction.”
“I will give it to you, but only if you give me what I demand first.” He examined Daniel from beneath lowered lids. “You must think that you are a very clever man. Certainly you are a patient one, ruining us one by one over the years. Oh yes, the others have realized how long you have been at this and your role in their misfortunes. Now you concoct this elaborate scheme for Gustave and me.”
So, this was not just about the steel. The revelation increased the danger, and the stakes.
“My plans for Gustave were very simple. I never expected him to come to England and involve you. He had not sought to enrich himself with money before.”
“You thought that he would let such an opportunity pass by, and content himself with the small fame that comes from a scientific discovery?”
“The fame is not so small in his world. The scorn would not have been small, either, when he was shown for a fool.”
“True. It would have destroyed everything that mattered to him. Very neat,” Tyndale acknowledged. “And very apropos.”
“I thought so. As for his partnership with you, and then your offer of one to me, that was a gift from Providence.”
“A gift from hell, actually, since it led to our realizing your scheme.” Tyndale smiled slyly. “If you did not expect Gustave to pursue the profits of his discovery, you must have had other plans for m
e. Diane? A duel over a woman? How crude. Also risky. I would have won. Better to have caught me unawares and slit my throat.”
“I considered that.”
“I’m sure that you did, and still do. I don’t care for that notion.”
Tyndale walked over to the desk and removed a pistol from one of its drawers.
“You have no intention of killing me here, now, in this library,” Daniel said. “You are not that stupid.”
“If I have to, I will. There are few servants here. I had most of them sent away, except for several men who owe me their lives.” He pushed some papers to the edge of the desk. “You will sign these now. If you do, we will meet for your duel, and you will have your chance to kill me before I kill you. If you do not, I will shoot you like a dog.”
Daniel examined the papers. They deeded over to Tyndale everything Daniel owned, to repay debts unspecified.
“I would be an idiot to sign these.”
“You will be dead if you do not.”
“I think that you expect me to be in either case, since my signature will be worthless if I am not, procured as it was with a pistol to my head. I think that I prefer dying rich, thank you.”
“She will also be dead if you do not sign.”
“For all I know, she already is.” He gestured to the pistol. “Either let me see that she is unharmed, or use it. If you expected me to sign those papers, to buy the chance to save my own life, you have miscalculated badly. Perhaps age is dimming your wits.”
“At sixty my wits will be three times as sharp as yours have ever been.”
“If so, Diane is here, and safe.”
“That she is. I will send for her. Spare me any sentimental reunions, won’t you?” Tyndale went to the door and spoke with a man waiting outside.
Daniel had donned the armor of cold emotion before journeying to this manor, but now cracks appeared in it. Relief that Diane was safe, and anticipation of seeing her, briefly flooded him, followed immediately by ruthless anger that Tyndale had dared to threaten her safety.
He turned away so that Tyndale would not see either reaction. “This is an impressive property,” he said. “I could not help but admire it as I rode in.”
“It is not as large as my family’s seat, of course. That would never do, but in many ways it is a superior holding.”
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