Tempted By Fire

by Thea Devine

  "And so now you seek to find him?" Marie asked, her words wobbly from the bounce of the cart. "Why now, why here?"

  "Because there is nothing else I can do," Jainee said unhappily, pulling on the reins with all her might as they came to a crossroads. "And which will be the best road to go —I do not know."

  ******************

  They came to Hungerford as the sun rose high and the road became clogged with wagons heading for the village.

  Jainee did not know what to expect when they finally entered the village limits, but it was not nearly as big a place as she had hoped. Still, there were several shops lining the one winding main street, and there were vendors come to sell their produce and their wares, and there was a bustle and a vitality to the proceedings that was very pleasing, and which gave her hope she might somehow stumble on a clue.

  She did not even know what she intended to do or say, and as she maneuvered the cart into the traffic and along the serpentine main street, she took mental note of the places at which she might inquire and formulated several questions which would seem innocuous enough on the surface.

  The last problem with which she had to cope was what to do with the cart and the mare, and the simplest solution to that seemed to be to leave it somewhere nearby, could she find a place, and put Marie in charge.

  This was not accomplished quickly, but after a time, she was 454

  able to secure a space toward the bottom of the street from the shops in which she wished to visit, and she left Marie there.

  The walk up the winding street was somewhat arduous, and she had not prepared well for that with her flimsy kid slippers and thin paisley shawl which did not stand up well against a stiff spring breeze.

  However, there were several likely shops and how she was dressed was of no moment in comparison to the possibility of discovering some piece of useful information within.

  In very short order, she visited the dressmaker's, a pastry shop, a bootmaker, the booklender's, the tea shop and the shop which sold all manner of wares from material to trimmings to furniture. In all of them she asked one of two questions: was there a school nearby; or, she was looking for a relative she had not seen in many years, someone who had reportedly moved in or around Hungerford and had had with her a baby at the time who was probably a boy of seven or eight now. Did anyone know of such a person, because she had come to deliver some very good news after everyone had given up hope of finding them.

  There was no school nearby, that she established very quickly and it dashed a very significant hope she had that the child might have been sent to one to be educated as would befit someone of his lineage.

  In the second case, she was met with either blank stares or questioning of such depth and pure malicious nosiness, that she could not bear to continue the charade. In any event, there had been four or five newcomers with babies within the last seven or eight years, but unless she came forth with names and details, she found that these close-mouthed country people were not going to discuss one of their own with a stranger.

  Marie was sitting patiently as a buddha when she returned to the cart. "Ah, madame. Have your efforts proved fruitful?"

  "No. Perhaps." Jainee took the reins from Marie and sat holding them loosely in her hands. "No one will talk, except to say there are a half dozen families with young children who arrived in the time period which is most likely. No names, no details." She cracked the reins and the mare moved forward. 455

  "But we must find out something more definite then," Marie said.

  "They will not talk."

  "Perhaps I— ?"

  "You?"

  "You are too beautiful, madame. I am one of them. Let me try, my lady. It could not hurt."

  Jainee agreed, and Marie debarked and went along the street, accosting strollers and several of the produce workers who had set up along the way and in the market square at the top of the street.

  She was back within fifteen minutes. "They are uniformly a close-mouthed lot," she said disparagingly as she climbed into the cart. "They tell nothing unless you find the proper question or the correct story. / came upon the right story and so I have found out some names. There is the family Brooke, the family Goodstone, a Mrs. Colethorp . . . each of whom are fairly newly come. So there is no time to waste, madame. We must seek these people out immediately."

  Jainee snapped the reins and the mare moved forward. "I am amazed at your luck and your cleverness, Marie, but surely there is no urgency to begin the search today. It will take some inquiries to discover their direction in any event."

  "No, no, madame. We will find out today. We are so close—so close."

  "And it is also likely that it is not any of those people, despite your excellent discoveries."

  "I think we should ask at the dressmaker's, madame. Whatever the make-up of the family, a woman always needs a dress."

  Jainee felt suddenly as if a stiff wind were buffeting her around, but it almost seemed ill-tempered to argue when Marie only sought to aid her in her search. "By all means, inquire at the dressmaker's."

  She halted the cart and Marie stepped down and walked briskly up the winding street and disappeared soon into the shop. She reappeared very quickly looking disgusted and annoyed and when she stepped up into the cart, she turned and

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  spat on the ground behind her.

  "These English! So stiff, so reticent. Ah! They have heard of the family Brooke only, close-by Southam Manor, two miles in the opposite direction. So we must go there, madame, and begin the search."

  "Why so?" Jainee said, lifting the reins again. "Already you have made more progress than could ever be expected, and all in the course of a couple of hours. My father is dead; there is no urgency about proceeding today. Tomorrow will do."

  "Oh no, madame, there is great necessity."

  Jainee stiffened as she felt something dig into her ribs. "Marie!"

  "I have in my hand the pistol, madame, the very one which killed your father, and with which I would not hesitate to kill you if you do not heed my instructions. We will find they family Brooke—today."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  She lifted the reins slowly and whapped at the mare's rump. Marie pressed the barrel of the pistol even more tightly against her ribs as the cart lurched forward and the mare started into a fast trot.

  "Keep your hands tightly on those reins," Marie instructed, her voice emotionless. "You do not want the mare to run away with you again."

  Jainee bit her lip and hauled back on the reins to get better control. Marie was not jesting: the gun barrel was aimed upward and just under her breast and painfully jammed against her.

  She quelled her fear, she had to. "I don't understand," she said when she felt she could be coherent —and commanding. She slanted a covert look at Marie's implacable expression. "Explain it to me. Marie—"

  "Concentrate on the road, madame. It is your only hope."

  "Hope for what? What are you doing? What is this all about?"

  "Madame talks too much," Marie said with relish, almost as if she enjoyed being rude to Jainee after all these months of posing as the perfectly obedient maid. "There is nothing mysterious, madame, except for your blindness. It is the boy."

  "The boy? You have some connection to the boy?"

  "Not I, madame — watch the road— not I: my mistress, the Murat of Italy. Did you not know? Such an innocent young thing you are, thinking that my mistress had allowed you, yes—allowed you to come to England when she had planned for the emperor to bed you to try to lure him away from Josephine once

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  more and divert his attention toward her husband as his possible successor. And then you had to mention the boy. She had forgotten all about the boy. A child with the blood of the emperor might have first claim on him, certainly a claim above a brother-in-law.

  "So, my lady, my mistress allowed you to come to England to find the boy, and she gave you myself as an agent of the King. My orders were to fin
d the boy and to kill him."

  "Dieu," Jainee whispered.

  "You took so long, madame, and all that sparring and fighting with Monsieur when you could have been on the trail of the boy. I am not a patient woman. Two and a half years, and messengers coming, and agents to help with the surveillance of Monsieur's townhouse and to follow you wherever you went. A boy in the stables, lest you got past me somehow.

  "And phut — nothing. Little accidents, to make you think that someone was after you, and to frighten you into pressing forward with your search lest you be harmed before you found him.

  "Did I think I would have to compete with Monsieur's uncle? Never. I so wish you had told me he was your father, madame; it would have saved some trouble. Because just when I think there is no point, that the secret has died with him, and I must compel you to return me to my mistress as soon as possible—you begin the search anew.

  "And so now I must complete the mission, madame, and as soon as possible. So we drive to the family Brooke and we find the boy."

  Jainee grasped tightly onto the reins with her icy hands. All these months . . . Marie a traitor, a killer, a step away from destroying her. She could barely comprehend it. It wasn't possible; Marie was her confidante, the one person in the whole of England who was from home, who was a link . . .

  "Do not slow the cart," Marie said harshly.

  They were the last words she spoke. A shot rang out, she fell forward, and the mare, startled, kicked up her heels and went hurtling down the road, overturning the cart and dumping Jainee and the mortally wounded Marie onto the track.

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  * * *

  She had left him.

  It was the inescapable conclusion, and Nicholas paced angrily in the library as he went through the events of the day yet one more time with the poor distracted Mr. Finley.

  The facts did not change, even in the tenth retelling: she had come to the stable early with her maid. She had wanted to use the cart, to prove to herself she was not afraid after that almost disastrous spill. She meant only to drive it within the limits of Southam Manor. She had gone off around eight o'clock. She had not returned.

  It was midnight by then and he had already ridden the miles between the Manor and the village and the roads all around looking for some trace of her. He had found nothing; she did not want to be found.

  But curious things stood out: she had taken no luggage. She had left no word with anyone. She had no money, at least that he knew of, although her mythical winnings as the lady in black had to be taken into account. But he had seen no sign of money, not on their journey, not in her room.

  He and Mrs. Blue meticulously searched her possessions and came away with nothing. She had worn her shawl and a plain round gown with a waistcoat bosom. Nothing to attract attention. Nothing flamboyant, almost as if she had a reason for dressing plainly.

  Not like Jainee at all.

  Mrs. Blue testified she had asked him many questions about Dunstan and he recognized the details as the parts of the puzzle she had outlined to him.

  Which meant —what? That she had gone to follow the slender thread of a trail Dunstan had left in Berwickshire eight years before? But she would have gotten nowhere; her surmises were patently guesses with no basis in fact, and she should have been home by now.

  . . . Home . . .

  The manor had suddenly become home?

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  He felt a sense of ballooning urgency and a spiralling anger that she had done this to him. He had not wanted her to leave, and she had given him no time to come to terms with her suppression of the facts.

  He didn't even know what it was yet: he didn't like betrayal. It made the deed unforgivable, and he wasn't sure, when he was thinking clearly, that Jainee was not right and he would not have listened to any such fairy tale about his uncle.

  Probably, he would have berated her for trying to manipulate him with specious stories to try to distract him from her duplicity.

  Damn her and damn. He held on tightly to the tenuous connection they had made the night before they came to Southam Manor. Such a gossamer thread of hope and burgeoning affection.

  He had thought he had dreamed it, except that when he had been in London, it had pulled at him as tautly and tightly as any hemp rope hauling an immovable object from one place to the next.

  He saw himself as the object, and the rope as the one rough, interwoven strength between them.

  She could not have left him.

  He felt like a child all over again. He felt that wave of loss and longing, inexplicable, and bound now with memories of the past and the urgency of the present.

  He felt inconsolable. He felt he might drown in his tears forever. He could not go into the main salon because he did not want to look at the portraits of his parents. He felt them pulling at him, commanding him. He felt as if every secret were contained in Lady Eliza's sad wise smile.

  He resisted it; in his mind, he spoke to Lord Henry: And so see what things have come to; did you know, did you? that Dunstan was so full of rage and retribution? Did she know?

  And oh, if she knew ... he didn't know if he could get past that either. The beautiful lady. The woman whose hands had soothed every hurt, whose ears had listened to his yearning for another woman, whose tender words had blunted the pain.

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  She could not have known. He just could not believe it of her.

  The portraits beckoned from the darkness of the room.

  He paced the hallway, reconstructing for the hundredth time the scenario of Jainee's flight from Southam Manor.

  Mrs. Blue came by to assure herself that he was all right. "Perhaps you would just like to take this branch of candles into the salon, Mr. Nicholas, and visit with your parents."

  "Mrs. Blue . . ."

  "They have waited a long time for your return, Mr. Nicholas. They only saw you a moment when you brought Lady Southam around. They want to know you've come back to them."

  "Mrs. Blue . . ." he protested again, but she would not listen to him. She gave him the candelabra and pushed him toward the room. "Go on, now."

  He moved across the hallway, propelled by her certainty.

  The room was in utter darkness, its beautiful brocade furniture covered with sheets. Winding sheets, he thought mordantly, to bury the soul who thought he could come to life in this house.

  He walked slowly toward the mantel and held up the candles. The flame heightened the facial part of the portraits and made them almost pop out against the darkness of the backgrounds.

  I've come home . . .

  The words formed in his mind before he could contain them.

  Father—

  Lord Henry had been easy to call father; even in the portrait, his face reflected a genuine kindliness that was tempered by an underlying steeliness. Nicholas remembered how many times he had tried to butt against his father's elegant sense of righteousness, and how many times he had fallen and Lord Henry had picked him right back up again.

  Strange he should remember that in the depths of his sorrow.

  He turned to the portrait of Lady Eliza—beautiful forever in her gilded frame, just as he remembered her from his youth. Beautiful lady ... the words formed again instantly, unpremeditatively. He could recall the scent of her perfume, and the softness of her hands as she would stroke his head when he was troubled. And her hands were firm, commanding, in charge 462

  those many times he had gone hell for leather and injured himself. She was always there, she always listened, she rarely criticized, she was much beloved by everyone around her.

  Except me . . . The words stamped in his mind hard and harshly against the sweetness of his memories. "Except me," he whispered out loud, holding the candles higher.

  Beautiful lady . . . Her love knew no bounds with him; he could do no wrong, and whatever scrape he got into, whatever his needs or his wants, she always championed him.

  / love you . . . her sad wise eyes seemed to say, as if across heaven and earth
the substance of that love could never change.

  He felt remorse grab his gut so tightly it could have been a stab wound to his heart. He felt the tears. / always loved you . . . her eyes seemed to say. . . . Nothing you ever did changed that. . .

  Nothing . . .

  Nothingness —

  "Mother," he whispered brokenly. Mother , . .

  She heard him, he knew it, he felt it like a benediction: she was his mother, purely and simply, alive or dead, forever and always. "Mother . . ."

  She knew it—she had always known it from the moment she had deemed he could stay. It was in her painted eyes, and in that wondrous accepting painted smile.

  And through his tears, he looked at her more closely, and in her sweet knowing smile, he saw the smile of Jainee.

  ******************

  She awakened with a start, utterly unaware of where she was, conscious somehow that time had passed and that she was in strange surroundings.

  It was a room, plain, unvarnished, with a bedstead on which she lay, a window with a pulled shade, an ember fed fireplace, a sputtering candle on a nearby washstand, and a man sitting in a chair opposite the bed watching her.

  "Mademoiselle Beaumont," he said cordially as she bolted into a sitting position at her realization she was not at Southam

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  Manor. "Bien. I have waited a long time for your sleep of the dead to wear away. Time is wasting, and we must get down to cases."

  Her eyes widened. "Where is Marie?" She knew the voice, oh how she knew the voice: it haunted her dreams, and it said the same words that he uttered in response to her question.

  "Where is the boy?"

  She saw him running through the sweet little house she had shared with Therese and her mother quivering at gunpoint the moment before she was caught in the crossfire between him and his associate.

  "Where is the boy?"

  The question brooked no lies, no stories. He held a pistol in his hand aimed directly at her heart. She couldn't move one way or the other without a bullet smashing right into her.

  "I don't know. Tell me where is Marie, M. deVerville?"