by Joan Wolf
Gacé hesitated, then lowered his eyes to the print. Adam knew quite well what was there. The will bequeathed all the Duc’s English and French property to Marc together with a handsome dowry for Ginny. For Nanda there was the amount of her own dowry and guardianship of both children.
There was a long silence, then Gacé took a deep breath. “Very well,” he said.
Adam went to the door and called in Captain Ross and Lieutenant Castleton. Gacé signed his name and the two soldiers signed as witnesses. Then they went out again, leaving the two men alone.
“For how long have you been planning this?” Gacé asked in a steady voice.
“Since the day I heard you were coming to Baden.”
“Eh bien.” Gacé made a gesture of resignation. “Give me the gun.”
Adam opened one of table drawers, took out a revolver and placed it on the table. He picked up the will, folded it and put it in his pocket. “There is only one bullet,” he said and walked to the door. He did not look back.
The men outside were waiting for him. “What shall we do with the other man’s body, my lord?” Ross asked.
“Bury it. Then all of you head back to London.” Adam’s somber face relaxed into a smile and he said with palpable sincerity, “I thank you gentlemen for your service to your country. You performed admirably. I need not tell you that not a word of this …excursion…must ever leak out.”
The men burst out in a chorus of promises. Anderson was beginning, “What about the Duc…” when the sound of a single shot came from inside the farmhouse.
“I believe the Duc has solved that problem for us,” Adam said calmly. “Ross, if you will come with me, we’ll return his body to Niederwald for burial.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was dark by the time Adam rode into the courtyard of Niederwald Castle with Gacé’s body tied to his own horse. The Duc’s aim had been true; he had shot himself directly through the heart. Adam gave instructions for the body to be removed to the icehouse, then he walked to the castle. The major domo told him Nanda was in the upstairs salon.
She met him on the stairs. “Adam!” She was white to the lips. “What has happened? I saw you ride in. Is Matthieu….” She paused, her eyes filled with anxiety.
“Let’s go back to the salon,” he said, putting a steering hand on her shoulder. “I can’t talk to you out on the staircase.” Obediently, she turned and preceded him up the stairway. He closed the door of the salon behind them and regarded her gravely. “Sit, Nanda. I have some good news for you.”
She sank onto the delicate pale blue sofa. “Good news?”
“Yes, good news. Gacé is dead. He shot himself through the heart.”
What little color there was in her face fled. “Shot himself,” she repeated. “Matthieu shot himself? But … how did this happen?”
“He asked me for a gun,” Adam said mendaciously, “and I gave him one.”
She became even whiter. Adam glanced around the room and saw decanters on the corner table. He poured something into a glass, and brought it back to her.
She sipped and choked a little, but the color came back to her face. “You had better tell me what happened,” she said in a stronger voice.
He sat beside her, picked up her hand, and began to talk. What he told her was true, except for the slight edit about Gacé’s suicide. “I couldn’t let him go, Nanda,” he said. “Not after he had read that memorandum.”
“I know, darling,” she said. “I’m not blaming you.”
“I told the steward to wait until tomorrow morning to send for the local magistrate and the local priest,” he said, holding her hand so tightly it hurt. “Our story is that Gacé was shot by accident and that you want him buried next to his former wife.”
“They will investigate,” she whispered. “They’ll want to know how this happened. There will be questions, Adam.”
“We won’t be here to answer them,” he returned calmly. “I want you to put together a few changes of clothes for yourself and the children. Your dresser, Miss Fergus and Miss Braxton will have to come as well. Tell them to get ready. We are leaving at dawn.”
She stared at him, horrified. “But… Matthieu! We can’t just leave him.”
He looked steadily into her eyes. “There is nothing you can do for him now, Nanda. Staying here to see him buried would only result in placing us all, including the children, in danger. Gacé has friends and relatives in Baden who will want to know more than we want to say. But they will bury him in consecrated ground, which they wouldn’t do if they knew the truth. For our own safety, we must leave Niederwald immediately.”
There was silence while Nanda collected herself. “You’re right, of course,” she said finally. “I’ll give the orders to pack.”
“Good girl,” he said, as she rose to her feet and went toward the door.
Once there, she turned to him again. “How many carriages should we take?”
“Two. I can’t risk leaving those women. They might end up in prison if I do.”
“We could take one if you drove and I sat beside you.”
Adam smiled. “You are a woman in a million, my love,” he said. “We will take one carriage.”
She gave him the ghost of an answering smile, nodded, and left the room with her usual, swift grace. Adam went back downstairs to speak to the steward about notifying Gacé’s family.
# # #
They were on the road at five the following morning. Nanda awakened the children and, after they were dressed, she brought them into her room for a brief talk. They listened quietly; the only sign of distress they showed was that Ginny reached out to take Marc’s hand and he clutched her fingers tightly.
“Adam brought Papa’s body back last night,” Nanda concluded her carefully crafted tale. “He says it’s dangerous for us to remain here, as the French agent who shot Papa will set the government against us. Father Wellerstein will see Papa is buried next to Ginny’s mother.”
“Where is Papa now?” Marc asked.
“His body is in the icehouse, darling,” Nanda said softly. “It’s important to keep it cold until he can be buried.”
Marc’s eyes were enormous.
“When the war is over we can come back to see his grave, if you want.”
Marc and Ginny looked at each other, then they both shook their heads.
“All right. If you change your minds, tell me and we’ll arrange it.” She walked to the window and looked out. “The carriage is ready. Let’s go.”
The memory of that headlong flight through Germany was to remain a nightmare for Nanda for years to come. It was over three hundred miles from Niederwald to Stade, and Adam drove it in two days. They stopped each night at nine and were on the road again at dawn. During the day they stopped only to change horses, which took little time as Adam had made arrangements for fresh horses on his initial journey from Stade. They ate while the horses were being changed.
By the time they reached Stade they were exhausted. Adam led them to an old wood-hauling boat that was in the harbor for repairs, and at three in the morning the entire party boarded. They sailed on the morning tide.
# # #
Lieutenant Edward Singleton of the Royal Navy commanded the disreputable boat. He apologized to Nanda for the lack of luxury on board. “Lord Menteith told us we might have to wait awhile for you,” he explained, “and we thought it best not to attract too much attention. The Stade channel is full of boats like this.”
Nanda said sincerely that any place that could offer a bed and a wash looked like heaven, and since the Breman could offer both those amenities, everyone was satisfied.
The only awkwardness occurred when Lieutenant Singleton asked about Gacé. Following Adam’s request, Menteith had given the navy to understand that Gacé and Stanford were engaged on a secret mission for the War Department and might need rescue by the Royal Navy. The lieutenant had expected to be rescuing the Duc as well as Stanford and Gacé’s wife and children and
servants.
At the young man’s question, Nanda turned and precipitously exited the deck, leaving Adam to make whatever explanation he might have prepared. When the lieutenant learned that Gacé had been shot and killed by a French agent, he was horrified. Nanda’s beauty had made a great impression on him, and the thought that his own careless words had been the cause of reviving the pain of her loss appalled him.
When he expressed these feelings, Adam recommended that he leave the apologies he obviously wanted to make unsaid. “The less her grace hears about her husband the better,” he advised, which statement was perfectly true, although not in the way Lieutenant Singleton understood it.
# # #
By the second day they were rested and feeling much more like their old confident selves. One of the sailors had a pipe, with which he entertained Marc for hours. Another crew member, a wizened old sailor, showed Ginny how to tie knots. At dinner that evening the children were full of chatter for the first time since they had left Niederwald.
“Where are we going, Mama?” Ginny asked curiously. “Back to London?”
“No, darling,” Nanda replied with composure. “We are going to stay at Adam’s home for a while – Tranent Castle in Northumberland.”
Two pairs of surprised eyes stared at Adam. “My father has invited you for a visit,” he explained easily. “I’ve told him about you and he said he would like to meet you. You’ll be able to tell him all about your adventures.”
“Rescued by the Royal Navy just in time,” Ginny said proudly.
“Napoleon couldn’t catch us!” Marc seconded.
They both beamed with satisfaction. A good night’s sleep and two days of doting attention by their mother and every other adult on the boat had done much to restore their equilibrium. Nanda’s eyes, warm with amusement and gratitude, met Adam’s.
He rose from the table. “Come along, you two. Bedtime. Let’s find Miss Fergus and Miss Braxton.” As Nanda made to rise he gave her a quelling look. “I will escort these two young hellions to their respective caretakers and then come back. I want to talk to you.”
Surprised, Nanda sat down again and Adam shepherded the children to the door.
He was back in fifteen minutes and found her sitting where he had left her. She lifted her eyebrows. “Did they go without complaint?”
“Let’s say they went,” he returned, a gleam of amusement in his blue gaze. “Come up on deck for a little while, Nanda. I really must talk to you.”
“Very well.” She rose with smooth grace from her chair and walked to the cabin door. They went up the stairs and out onto the deck. The crew members were up front and the women and children were below in the sleeping cabin. They were alone.
Adam turned to look at her as she stood beside him at the railing. They had been alone together on the box of the carriage, but he had needed all his energy and concentration for driving. They had both been so concerned with the necessities of flight and of reassuring the children that they had barely spoken to each other except on those two topics.
Now, for the first time since they had left England, they were truly alone. The sun had set and the moon was up, filling the deck with a white light that showed him her face almost as clearly as if it had been day. She was wearing a serviceable brown cloak pulled over the plain russet-colored dress she had worn for the last two days. Her hair was pulled back and knotted securely at the nape of her neck, a style that afforded him an excellent view of her profile as she stared out at the moonlit water.
Her nose was sunburned from the long hours spent on the open box, but otherwise the face was the same as the one that had haunted his dreams for months. She turned and regarded him gravely. “What do you want to say to me, Adam?” she asked.
For the last few weeks he had thought of her mainly as a responsibility, someone whose welfare he was strictly charged to guard. And, because of the weight of that responsibility, his feelings toward her had been detached. As she, wrapped up in her concern for the children, had been detached from him.
But now the sight of her in the moonlight, the sound of her voice, brought back the piercing desire which had always hit him like a blow whenever they had met previously. More than anything in the world he wanted to reach out and pull her into his arms. He wanted to possess her, now, this minute, right on the deck of this ship.
But her face held no answering desire, and he must not claim her, assert his rights over her as a conqueror, or he might lose her altogether. So he forced himself to turn away and stare out at the night, hoping she had not read his feelings in his eyes.
“We must make some decisions about the future,’ he began resolutely. “I arranged for us to go to Tranent because it has easy access to the sea and because you can be quiet there. I can go up to London and deal with any questions that might arise.”
She looked at his profile. “You said Matthieu made a will naming me as guardian of the children?”
“Yes. I have it with me. Menteith is the executor. I shall turn it over to him.”
“I see.”
He turned to her abruptly. “It was the best way out, Nanda. Gacé knew that.”
“I know it too, Adam.” Her voice was calm. “I have been thinking about it and I know you’re right. There is no point in either of us saddling ourselves with a useless burden of guilt in this matter. What happened would have happened no matter what our personal relations had been. The fault was Matthieu’s, and it’s only right that he be the one to bear the punishment. And we will do what we can for him. His name will remain clear – which is what he would have wanted most of all.”
As he listened to her quiet voice he felt a deep sense of thankfulness for her. She was so…so sane. He felt suddenly very peaceful, as though her words had healed an ugly wound he had refused to acknowledge even to himself. For reasons that were purely personal he had hated Gacé, and so, paradoxically, being the instrument of his death had left him with an uneasy conscience. Listening now to Nanda’s sensible voice, he knew that she was right. There was no point in feeling guilty over what had been inevitable.
He turned to her and said tenderly, “And what about us, my love? What are we going to do?”
Her large dark eyes told him nothing. “There will be a great deal of talk. I don’t mind it for myself, but I don’t want to hurt your career.”
“There will be talk if we are married now or if we wait six months or more. It will die down eventually, and it won’t hurt my career. If it were up to me, I would marry you right now, on this ship. But it’s not just up to me.” He tipped her chin up and looked into the beautiful eyes he loved. “Do you want to wait, Nanda?” he inquired gently.
Her face was pale in the white light of the moon, but at his question sudden color stained her cheeks. “We had better not delay too long if you want your firstborn to be named Todd and not de Vaudobin,” she said, her voice huskier than usual.
He felt as if she had just hit him over the head. “What?” He stared at her in stunned amazement.
She laughed shakily. “Don’t look so surprised, Adam. What we have been doing for the last few months would get anyone with child.”
“Oh Nanda.” Wordlessly he reached out and pulled her into his arms. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked, his cheek against the smooth silk of her hair.
She leaned against him. “I’ve only been sure for the last few weeks. There was no sense in burdening you with a problem you could do nothing about.”
He held her even tighter. “This answers one question then. We’ll be married immediately.”
He felt her stiffen. “Adam. If you marry me people might say you were responsible for Matthieu’s death….”
“Stop it, Nanda,” he interrupted. “Menteith will protect me. He’ll say that he ordered the mission Gacé and I undertook. It’s a highly feasible explanation. Gacé had family and friends in Baden who were likely sources of information, and I am known as an intelligence officer. No one will be able to prove that
the story I tell is false. That’s all that counts. If people want to whisper, let them. I don’t care.”
His absolutely sincerity got through to her. He felt her relax. She leaned back in his arms and looked up with a smile. “I love you so much,” she said.
“And I love you,” he answered. Inside his body desire began to beat its drum, but he knew he must wait. He wouldn’t be able to stop at a kiss; once her mouth was under his he would want all of her. The rest of their journey would become impossible. Better far to wait until they were married. It was the thought he would soon have her to himself, and for always, that enabled him to step back now. Unsmiling, he regarded her. “Get some sleep, Nanda. We’ll be home soon. Everything is going to be fine.”
She sniffed, then nodded. “Yes. You’re right. I’ll see you in the morning.” She turned and without a backward look went to the stairs and walked steadily down until she was out of his sight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
They arrived at Trenent as the sun was setting. Nanda, Ginny and Marc stared from the deck of the ship at the massive stone edifice that perched on a hill overlooking the small bay. The fact that the castle was outlined by the orange and gold sky of the setting sun made it look wildly dramatic.
“My goodness, Adam,” Nanda said faintly to the man standing beside her. “I had no idea Trenent would be so formidable.”
He grinned. “It belonged to John of Gaunt at one time, but it’s been in the Todd family for the last four hundred years. It’s more livable than it looks from the outside, I assure you. Nanda, who was well acquainted with the discomforts of Scottish castles, looked dubious, but kept silent
Adam directed the boat into the dock and in a short time Nanda, children and servants were climbing down the rope ladder onto the wooden planks of a pier. By the time they had all descended two carriages had arrived from the castle to take them along the private road that led to Trenent.
The castle as seen from the land was quite as awesome as their view of it had been from the water, but Nanda found the canon-dented walls less frightening than the thought of meeting Adam’s father. Lord Seaton was waiting for them in the great hall, and the blue eyes he turned on Nanda were polite but aloof. He smiled at the children and said they were welcome. He made no mention of the absent Duc, but arranged for his guests to be escorted to their respective bedchambers so they could rest. He was flawlessly courteous, but Nanda sensed his anxiety to have his son to himself. She thanked the earl for his thoughtfulness and for having them to stay, put pressure on Marc’s shoulder to keep him quiet, and followed the housekeeper up the stairs to their bedrooms