“You have been busy this morning.”
“Aye, well that’s not the best of it.” He paused and handed the second sheet of paper to Tyrone. “This is a list of the contents of a certain bank vault in London. The approximate value and the name of the claimant is on the bottom.”
Tyrone unfolded the sheet and skimmed down the list, but just as his lips were pursing to whistle their astonishment, he came to the bottom line. He shot a quick glance up at Dudley for verification and got a wry smile in response.
“Kind of gives you a warm feeling all over, does it not, to know her uncle was taking such good care of her, finding her a fine, fertile husband, keeping the boy in close check with a false arrest warrant.”
“Son of a bitch,” Tyrone muttered.
“Aye. It also makes you wonder if the pearl alone will be enough to draw Roth out. What is a mere two hundred thousand when there are millions being held in trust for the Duc d’Orlôns.”
“Millions?”
Both men turned at the sound of the soft query. Renée was standing in the doorway, looking battered and fragile and frightened anew.
“I thought I told you to stay upstairs.”
“You said you were going to discuss what to do about Finn. I … thought I might be able to help.” Her gaze went to the list in Tyrone’s hand. “I heard what you said about the pearl. I knew it was of some indigene value to the government of France, but … to be worth so much. It is difficult to believe.”
“Well, brace yourself for another surprise.” Tyrone came out from behind the desk and extended the sheet of paper. “It seems we have also discovered the tree where your grandfather buried his treasure.”
She took the list and read the inventory of jewels, bullion, and coin, and when she finished, her hand was trembling.
“This is not possible,” she whispered.
“Your grandfather must have believed your uncle had a change of heart. Noblesse oblige again. The unspoken bond of the nobility to take care of one another.”
“It must have taken months to remove so much …”
“And I wager every box, crate, or pouch must have passed through Roth’s hands, then Vincent’s, then your uncle’s.”
She swallowed hard and looked up. “This belongs to Antoine. How did they expect to get it?”
Tyrone pursued his lips. “I can offer a guess, but it is a rather unpleasant one.”
She stood a little straighten “There has been very little about this past week that has been pleasant, capitaine. Please go on.”
“To put it bluntly, then, I do not think your uncle expected you or your brother to escape France alive. I think he was counting on the fact Robespierre would be very thorough in removing any legal claimant to the fortune they had smuggled out of Paris for your grandfather. If that happened, the vaults would be discreetly emptied and because no one could be sure what measures the duc had taken to safeguard his wealth, no one would ever know it had gone missing. I would further speculate the three of them—Roth, Vincent, and your uncle—were on the verge of toasting their very good fortune when you and your brother arrived on Paxton’s doorstep seeking his protection. Rather like rabbits fleeing into the fox’s den to take shelter from a storm.”
Renée looked from one somber face to the other. “My uncle never mentioned anything about any inheritance to either me or my brother. If anything, he—he treated us as if we were a great burden.”
“I don’t doubt that you were. But like all good thieves they came up with a viable alternative, or at least your uncle did.”
It was too much to absorb at once and Renée shook her head. “I do not understand.”
“Going back to what you said the other day, as the last surviving male heir, any titles and assets accorded to the Duc d’Orlôns now belong to your brother. Finn does not, I imagine, refer to him as Your Grace without reason.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Antoine is the twelfth Duc d’Orlôns, Marquis de Mar, Comte de Laborde, Baron de Dreux-Brézé, Maréchal Beauvau, and Chevalier de Valenciennes; possibly there are more, I cannot think.”
Dudley and Tyrone exchanged a glance, with brows raised. “Yes, well, for the sake of brevity, let us just say your uncle saw the perfect way to make a legitimate claim on at least a portion of the fortune locked away in his bank vaults. By having himself declared your brother’s legal guardian, any assets your brother had would be held in trust until he came of age, and Paxton, naturally, would control the trust. The fact that a written inventory exists would tend to support the idea that your uncle was planning to use it as collateral, perhaps, or proof to his creditors that he would one day make them regret their efforts to bankrupt him. Fortunately—or unfortunately for Paxton—Roth and Vincent discovered his little scheme and assumed, probably correctly, that he planned to cut them out of the deal. Roth retaliated by showing your uncle how easily he could be cut out of the deal, and—”
“Are you saying Colonel Roth shot my uncle?”
“In the same conversation Robbie heard about the duplicate gems, he heard Roth admit that he shot your uncle because he was getting greedy and had been making plans to double-cross them.”
Renée stared at Tyrone for a full minute before she turned and paced from one end of the library to the other. “It is almost too fantastique to believe they would go to such lengths.”
“I’m still guessing, but I would say they were prepared to go even further,” Tyrone said quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“Your marriage. Apart from the prestige of marrying into an old and noble family, Edgar Vincent would not have benefited from the union financially or otherwise. But suppose he and you had wed and you had produced a male heir? A legitimate heir to inherit should an unfortunate accident befall your brother, or … should he be hung for committing a crime he did not commit.”
She paced another length of the room. “For any of this to be possible, they would also have to have known Antoine was the last heir. How could they know this for sure?”
“Between the three of them, with their various connections in the army, the black market, and the banking industry, they obviously had a good scheme going to smuggle gold and jewels, even émigrés out of France. They were by no means the only ones engaged in saving lives for profit. Many enterprising English businessmen have made a tidy profit charging a percentage of what they have smuggled out of France in both human and monetary cargo. But I am guessing somewhere along the way, our greedy triumvirate must have decided their shares could be much larger if those fleeing aristocrats never made it out of Paris. Oh, they brought a few out safely so they could offer proof of how successful and reliable their routes were, but the rest were left to fate and likely never made it past the first guard-post. Roth, for instance, would only have to pass an anonymous tip to the Committee of National Security telling them where and when the aristos would be trying to sneak out of Paris.”
“You are saying they deliberately betrayed men and women to the gendarmerie?”
Alarm and disbelief had turned her eyes the color of midnight sapphires and Tyrone required a deep breath. “Renée—”
“The Duc de Blois and his family were arrested at the gates of Paris,” she gasped. “Jean-Luis, his father, his mother, his brothers … their children! And … oh!” She froze for a moment before her pale, shaking fingers flew upward to cover her mouth. “grandpère—he was taken away to prison the night before he was to leave for the country.”
“I imagine Roth and Vincent were both pleasantly surprised to discover Paxton had a sister married into one of the noblest families in Paris, whose father-in-law was one of the wealthiest ducs in the old régime.”
Renée let out an anguished cry and the hot splash of tears ran down her cheeks. She stumbled back and her leg hit the corner of a chair. It threw her off balance, not enough to cause a fall, but enough to send her staggering against the wall.
Tyrone was beside her in an instant. She flinched from his to
uch at first, but he was adamant and drew her into his arms. Across the room, Dudley looked down at the floor, out the window, up at the ceiling, anywhere but at the young woman weeping bitter tears into Tyrone’s shoulder. As for the dauntless highwayman, rogue, and steely nerved thief, he felt the sobs wracking her slender body and he did not know what to say or do to make the hurt go away. He buried his lips in her hair and tightened his arms around her even more, though he doubted he could hold her much closer than he was already. He met Dudley’s gaze over the top of her head and signaled quietly that he should leave, a request Robbie did not hesitate to oblige.
Renée curled her hands around the precise folds of Tyrone’s lapels and choked the sobs to the back of her throat. When she was steady enough, she lifted her face from his shoulder and saw the truth in his eyes.
A huge silvered tear slipped over her lashes and she bowed her head again.
“How can a man,” she cried, “betray his own family?”
“Greed does funny things to people. It makes them do things they would never have dreamed of doing in a normal, rational state of mind. The same thing can happen with love, I’m told,” he added under his breath.
She shook her head with incomprehension and though she tried valiantly to dash the spent tears off her cheeks she only succeeded in smearing the wetness further. With a grim twist on his lips, Tyrone undertook the task himself, then held his finely monogrammed handkerchief over her nose.
“Blow,” he ordered.
She obeyed with such childlike compliance it only heightened the fury blazing through his veins. There was a decanter of wine on the sideboard and two empty glasses and he steered Renée gently into a chair before he filled both glasses to the brim.
“Drink this,” he ordered.
She started to refuse but he pressed a glass into her hand and insisted. “Drink. You have been nursing me for almost a week now, I should think I have learned a little about ministering to the wounded.”
Huge, dark eyes filled with incomprehension and pain rose to his, causing another hot flush of emotions to tighten his expression.
“What are we going to do?” she cried softly.
“We are going to give the bastard whatever he wants,” Tyrone said calmly. “And then I am going to kill him.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Bertrand Roth leaned back in the hot, steaming bathwater and drew deeply on his cigar. He felt much, much better. The pressure of the past few weeks had been building up inside him with the strength to test the willpower of a normal man ten times over and tonight, he had finally succumbed. The whore had served him well; he had come so many times, he had lost count, in every unwilling orifice she had tried to deny him. Unfortunately, because of his exuberance, it had been necessary to pay extra to the proprietor of the brothel for the discreet removal of the broken and bleeding body. It was not the first time, nor likely to be the last, though he did try to control his rages during these episodes.
He glanced down in disgust at his chest, at the four glaring stripes clawed across his flesh. Frowning, he tested the marks with the tip of a gnawed finger to see if they had stopped bleeding yet, then muttered a small oath as he dribbled some brandy over the open wounds. The liquor stung and burned and gave rise to a deliciously sadistic throb in his flesh, but the surge was brief and the pleasure faded as quickly as the pain, and he took a deep swallow of the brandy before leaning his head back again.
The door opened behind him, the draft causing the steam to swirl away in tiny circles.
“I gave specific instructions I was not to be disturbed. If you have brought more water, take it away and keep it hot until I ring.”
He heard the door close again and the distinct snick-t of the key turning in the lock. A second later, something else equally distinct and ominously cold was pressed against the back of his neck, just behind his ear.
“Colonel Roth. Sorry to interrupt your bath. I would have arranged a more convenient time to meet, but I wanted to be certain there would be no unexpected interruptions.”
Roth started to turn his head but the muzzle of the gun gave a quick jab to discourage him. His hand jerked at the same time and the inch of ash at the end of his cigar dropped into the water, sinking beneath the surface in a scattering of gray and black flakes.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“I think you know who I am, and I think you know what I want. The only thing we have to discuss is the terms of the exchange.”
Roth’s eyes widened. Starlight! How the hell had he found him here, in a ratty little brothel in Spon End?
“I know most of your habits,” Tyrone said, correctly interpreting the cause of Roth’s scowl. “The bad as well as the abhorrent. And for what it is worth, I am exquisitely close to just pulling the trigger now and blowing your brains across the room.”
“If you do, you will never see the old man alive again.”
“Ah, but neither will you.” A shifting of wool brought the ominous baritone closer to Roth’s ear. “And I would at least have the immense pleasure of seeing you dead.”
Roth’s fine, pinched nostrils flared. He was aware of half a dozen things at once, beginning with the fact he was at a glaring disadvantage. He was naked in a tub of water. His gun and sword were on the opposite side of the room. He had not told anyone he was coming here tonight, nor did he particularly want anyone to find him, dead or otherwise, in an establishment known to cater to the less palatable tastes of its clientele.
“You surprise me, Captain. A beautiful woman, I might understand, but I did not know you harbored an affinity for old men as well.”
“Let’s just say I cannot fully enjoy the company of one without easing her concerns about the other.”
“Indeed. I should think Mademoiselle d’Anton would be quite enthusiastic in expressing her gratitude in getting her manservant back. May I inquire what you are offering in exchange for all this bliss?”
“What do you want?”
Roth felt a measure of composure returning. Despite his threat, the bastard had not come to kill him; if he had, he would have done so by now. He had come to negotiate for the old man’s release and he could not do that if he killed the man who held the key to the gaol cell.
“What do I want? What is an old man’s life worth?” Roth drew on his cigar and exhaled a slow, thin streamer of blue-white smoke. “The property that was stolen from us, of course. In particular the pearl brooch and the rest of the goods you took from Edgar Vincent several months ago. I presume you still have them?”
“I might.”
“As well, Lord Paxton is terribly worried about his niece and nephew; I would be remiss if I did not convey his fondest desire that they be returned to the bosom of his family with all due assurances, naturally, that there would be no repercussions for their unseemly behavior.”
Tyrone snorted. “Tell Lord Paxton he has about as much chance of seeing his niece and nephew again as he does getting his hands on the fortune belonging to the Duc d’Orlôns.”
“I am afraid I do not follow—”
The muzzle of the gun gouged deep again and Roth bared his teeth in a grimace.
“Shall we agree not to play stupid here, Colonel? I have seen the inventory, I know all about the jewels and the bullion being held in Paxton’s bank. I also think I have it pretty well figured out how your little scheme worked. So has Mam’selle d’Anton and her brother. What they choose to do about it is their business, of course, but I doubt either of them are feeling particularly generous toward anyone who was a party to having their family murdered.”
“Nor are they likely to see a pence of it themselves should they be charged with the brutal murder of Edgar Vincent.”
“Which we both know is as valid a charge as the one against Antoine d’Anton for the attempted murder of his uncle.”
“As it happens, the burden of proving or disproving the charges has been removed. The old man wrote out a full confession this morning wherein he ad
mits that he not only assaulted Lord Charles Paxton some weeks ago in London, but he killed Edgar Vincent last night. Shot him point blank in the head, right between the eyes.”
“Which you, naturally, are prepared to accept, even though it is a lie and an innocent man will go to the gallows?”
“Has your opinion of the state of my conscience improved over the past five minutes?” Roth inquired wryly. “Do you honestly think I give one whit if the man lives or dies, if he is innocent or guilty or merely convenient in providing me with an opportunity to rid myself of a noisome, arrogant, blundering fool.”
“Such high praise for your own partner.”
“Vincent was getting careless. It was only a matter of time before he outlived his usefulness. The same with Paxton. I should have done away with that yellow-livered coward when I had the opportunity. It might amuse you to know he departed Harwood for London before dawn this morning. I imagine by this time tomorrow he will have emptied the vaults of any and all evidence of anything held in trust for the Duc d’Orlôns.”
“Including your share? How unfortunate.”
“He will not get far with it,” Roth said, clamping his teeth around the end of the cigar. “Edgar Vincent had men in every seaport. A word in the right ear and the fat oaf will find himself wearing chains around his ankles and going for a swim. And if Vincent’s men do not get him, the French will. They have agents watching his bank day and night. If he thinks he can walk in empty-handed and walk out again carrying chests of gold and jewels, well, more fool he.”
“You are taking the loss rather casually.”
“It has been a profitable venture for three years now. I have an appreciable amount put aside already and once we conclude our negotiations for Mr. Finn’s release, I shall have considerably more.”
“What guarantees do I have that you will let the three of them walk away?”
“My word, for one thing.”
“Don’t make me laugh. These triggers are extremely sensitive, I would not want to blow your head off by accident. I will want full pardons in writing, duly signed by a magistrate of my choosing.”
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