“How long since you have heard from him?”
She had it down to the moment, but gave him a rounded answer. “His letters ceased arriving two months before I left Virginia.”
The skeptical look returned for a different reason, perhaps her alarm was baseless. “That is not that much time, Beth.” Perhaps letters had arrived after her departure.
She would have agreed with him had the times been different. “Without a revolution around it, no. But under the circumstances, there is much cause for concern. My father was a faithful writer. A letter or more came upon every ship that arrived in port. Without fail, Duncan. Without fail.”
Duncan led the way from the harbor, his expression thoughtful as he turned toward Beth. She was in many ways an innocent still. And she did not know of the darker side of men, no matter what she professed.
He broached it as delicately as he could, knowing how well she loved the man. “Beth, perhaps he did not want to return.”
Her eyes filled with anger at the insult. Then, just as quickly, her emotions simmered down. She shook her head as they left the town behind them. “You do not know my father, or you could not say that. He loves his wife and daughters, his home in Virginia, and the life he has made for himself there.”
“Then why did he leave?” Duncan pressed.
“I have already told you that: to help. He is a selfless man,” she said fiercely.
She would not believe that her father chose to lose himself, to desert his wife and family. That might be the way for other men, but not Philippe Beaulieu. Tears gathered in her throat, formed by fear.
“No, something has happened to him.” She turned her eyes to Duncan. “I know it.”
He reached across the pommel to place his hand reassuringly on hers for a moment. He believed that she believed what she said. Whether it was true was another matter, but he would act as if it was, until they discovered otherwise.
“Do not think on it until we know. Worry never helped a cause.”
Beth knew he was right, but she could not help the thoughts that crowded in her mind, trying to win possession of her.
“It’ll be all right, mistress,” Jacob chimed in, unable to remain quiet in the face of her distress. His voice rose like that of a young skylark singing praises of the rising sun. “If anyone can find him, Duncan can.”
Sometimes it was hard, Duncan thought, taking the lead. He smiled once more at Beth and prayed that the situation was not as black as he feared.
They journeyed more than two days to her grandmother’s estate. Rather than look for proper shelter at an inn, they slept upon the road. Duncan felt it was safer that way, and Beth saw no reason to contradict him. She blessed the God who watched over her that He had formed her so differently from her sisters. Otherwise she could have not endured the hardships she faced.
When they arrived on the grounds of the Beaulieu estate on the morrow of the third day, Beth was appalled by what she saw. The sight warred with the treasured memory she had retained in her mind. Frayed around the edges, touched with nostalgia, the estate, in her memory, was a thousand times better in appearance than what she looked upon now. The grounds were sad and sagging, like an abandoned widow left to die alone, overrun with weeds and the poison of neglect. The building was in disrepair. This was not the house of sunshine her father had told her about and that Beth remembered.
Yet she knew that there was no mistake. This was her grandmother’s house. There was much for her to recognize and grieve over.
“Are you sure you are not mistaken, Beth?” Duncan prodded. She had been, after all, a child the last time she had walked here.
She slowly shook her head, numbed.
“I’m sure.” The words were a whisper, not from fear of being overheard, but from disappointment. “It looks so sad, so forgotten.”
Her father could not be here, she thought. He would not have remained and let his birthplace look like this.
“Many lose the will to smile in a revolution,” Duncan told her practically. He slid from his horse and handed the reins to Jacob, who was quick to jump down from his. “Jacob, I want you to remain here with the horses until I come for you.”
His words dissolved the aura of sadness about her. She looked at Duncan from atop her horse. “We are not riding up to my grandmother’s door?”
“It may not be your grandmother’s any longer,” he told her matter-of-factly. “And it may not be your grandmother who waits now within.” He looked toward the house. He saw no one at the windows, no one on the grounds. But that did not mean it was empty. “I’ve heard that many of the mansions belonging to the aristocracy have been seized and now each house many families rather than one. If that is the case here, I do not want to alert whoever is within that we are approaching.”
The thought of the house where her father was born, where he had spent so much of his youth, defiled in this manner appalled Beth and stirred her indignation. Quickly she dismounted and handed her reins to Jacob.
Duncan caught her arm before she could take a step forward. “I would rather that you remained here with Jacob.”
She glared at him. Did he think he was going to stop her so close to the threshold, after she had come all this way? “And I would rather that you remembered that you are with me, not I with you.”
The only way to win this argument would be to tie her up and he had no time for that, though the thought tempted him.
Duncan hissed through his teeth, “Very well, but be quiet.”
Her temper was short. “I was not about to trumpet my entrance.”
His concern for her welfare had his own temper cut in half. He struggled to keep his voice low. There was no knowing who might be within hearing. “With that mouth of yours, I can never be certain.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again. Arguing would not get them anywhere but at each other’s throats, and they needed to be allies now, not opponents. She waved him on.
Softly they stole across the overgrown grounds and slipped up to the house. They made their way not to either door, but to a window that looked out upon an overgrown section of the once beautiful gardens, gardens Beth recalled roaming with her father and grandmother.
Her heart hurt just to look at them.
When Duncan approached the window, she looked at him with wonder. This was, after all, the home of her ancestors, and thus her home as well.
She placed a hand on his arm to stop him. “We are to enter like common thieves?”
His hands upon the casement, he stopped only long enough to answer. “There is nothing common about you, Beth, and we are not here to steal. I am doing this to guarantee our safety as best I can. Now, would you argue with me over every step?”
She sighed and shook her head. He was right.
Duncan eased the casement opened. His hands braced, he easily vaulted into the somber-looking house and completely disappeared from her view.
Beth’s heart quickened. She looked over her shoulder to where they had left Jacob. But she saw neither Jacob nor the horses. They were well hidden. She might as well have been alone.
“Duncan?” she whispered urgently, rising up on her toes to peer inside. She saw only shadows. “Duncan, are you in?”
In reply, Duncan suddenly raised his head into the window, startling her. “Well, I’m certainly not without, now, am I?”
This was no time for humor. “Give me your hands, you frightened me.”
“Why?” With strong arms, Duncan swiftly pulled her inside the house. “Did you think something had happened to me? Were you worried?” The thought entertained him greatly.
She refused to give him the satisfaction he sought. “No, I was afraid I would have to rescue you.” She rested her hand on the hilt of the pistol that she had sheathed in the belt at her waist. “And that would take up more precious time.”
She took her first look around the room in fourteen years and grew silent. It was the library. There was a mournful layer of gray upon every
thing, as if nothing had been touched for a long, long time.
Without knowing, she placed her hand on Duncan’s arm. “Do you think it’s been abandoned?”
He lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “It has that look about it.”
It didn’t make any sense to her. “But my father arrived here more than eight months ago. He should be here now.” She looked around as if searching for something that would prove her wrong, that it hadn’t been abandoned. Only darkness met her gaze, despite the sun that shone without. “He would not allow it to deteriorate to this extent. He often told me that this was his favorite room.”
Duncan moved slowly about the room. The outer door, leading to a hall, he presumed, was closed. “Perhaps he had no say in the matter. Perhaps he was not free to do what he wished.”
Beth swallowed, knowing what Duncan was delicately skirting around. This was not the time for niceties, only the truth.
“You think he is a prisoner, don’t you?”
He spread his hands slightly. “Or in hiding. The highborn are not loved here these days.”
“But he came to help.” How could anyone want to harm a man like her father?
Duncan draped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him, offering comfort.
“Madmen with a cause do not listen to simple words, Beth. They claim to hear a voice no one else hears.” He had come up against a few in his time, but they were of a singular bent. Here, in France, there were bands of men like that. Duncan felt his blood run cold. “They cannot have their hearing cluttered by logic and reason.” He looked down at her face. “Or goodness.”
Beth looked slowly around the shadow enshroud room. “Do you think that he is—?”
“Dead?” Duncan whispered softly.
She could not bring herself to form the word, but merely nodded.
“No.” It was a lie, but for a good cause. “Come, let us move softly through the house and see what there is to discover.”
So saying, he pushed her behind him as the door began to open.
Chapter Twenty-five
The door opened very slowly, as if the person on the other side was hesitant to see what was within the room. The woman in the doorway was dressed in black from head to toe. It made her fragile frame appear only more so. Her slight shoulders were stooped with age and the oppressive weight of sorrow. Her white hair was wispy, and what there was of it was pulled back in a tight twist she wore fastened close to her scalp. It made her head appear almost skeletal.
There was not fear in her eyes, but outrage. The sound of her voice surprised them, for instead of cracking, it was full-bodied and angry. The words she shouted at the intruders she saw were in her native tongue and full of indignity.
The old woman shuffled forward, ready to do what little harm to them she could with the cane she leaned upon, the cane her nephew had brought her as a gift.
“Be gone. Out with you, vultures. We are not dead yet!” she cried in French.
She wielded the cane like a sword and caught Duncan about the shoulder and head as he moved quickly to shield Beth.
“By God, what matter of old crones do they grow here?” Duncan cried as he lifted his hands before his face. The woman countered by hitting him soundly across the ribs.
“Thief, cutthroat, away with you and yours!” the woman cried breathlessly in her native tongue.
The bit of light that was struggling in through a tear in the draperies shone on the head of the cane. Beth recognized it as the one her father had had especially made for his aunt. She had seen him pack that very cane in his trunk before departing.
“Aunt Cosette!” she cried out, as she stepped away from the shelter of Duncan’s body.
Her arm raised to strike again, the old woman stopped abruptly at the sound of her name. Thin brows drew shrewdly together and she cocked her head like a bird examining the ground. She lowered the cane to the floor, then turned toward the window. With small steps, she arrived at her destination and pulled the draperies back. There was only silence in the room.
The silence, Beth thought, of the dead.
Cosette returned to the two in her library and examined the girl closely. Her small, dark eyes squinted, as if that would somehow rouse a memory for her and resurrect it.
The girl before her looked the way her sister had, almost three-quarters of a century ago.
Beth took a step forward. Duncan laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. He nodded at Cosette’s cane. “I’d mind that stick, if I were you.”
But Beth only smiled and stretched out her hand in greeting. ‘”Tis I, Aunt Cosette. Elizabeth.”
The eyes that looked upon her were blank for a moment. Perhaps what had happened here had been so hard on her, it had wiped her great-aunt’s memory away with it, Beth thought in despair.
“Elizabeth?” the old woman repeated between dried, thin lips. She said the name as if it was completely unknown to her.
Beth could feel her heart beating wildly in her breast.
“Out.”
Duncan felt the end of his patience drawing near. It was obvious that the old woman didn’t recognize Beth or her name. “Beth, what the bloody blazes is going on? I don’t understand a word of their language.”
The old woman raised her eyes slowly to his face. Rather than appear vacant, Duncan knew that he was looking into eyes that had seen too much, eyes within a woman who had lived too long.
Cosette inclined her head regally. “Then I shall speak in yours,” she replied, a queen making a concession for a peasant. Cosette looked at Duncan rather than Beth. “You are not part of the Revolution.”
It was not a question. She could differentiate him from the marauders. There was a scent to them, a wild look that was burned into her mind.
“No, madam, I am not.” Now that he was no longer the recipient of her expertly wielded cane, Duncan bowed graciously. He took the gnarled hand into his and pressed a kiss to it as he raised his eyes to her face. “Duncan Fitzhugh, at your service.”
The gesture pleased her. She always demanded and appreciated courtliness. Cosette smiled as she withdrew her hand.
She turned her eyes to her grandniece. “You have brought a charmer with you, I see.” Then, with tears shimmering in her eyes, Cosette enfolded the girl in her arms. “Oh, you should not be here, but it is wonderful to see you one last time, Elizabeth.” She pressed a kiss to her hair.
Beth placed both hands beseechingly on the woman’s arm. It felt as if she was holding onto a mere bone. “Aunt Cosette, where is my father?”
Cosette sighed deeply. She could feel her heart breaking a little more within her thin chest just at the mere thought of that day. The day her fine nephew had been dragged away. If it were not for the fact that the vile scum were waiting for her to die, she would have gladly done so. She had seen enough of life, and she was tired. It had been a long life, and until the last few years, a life that had pleased her well. But to see her country torn this way, to see the destruction of so many things she had held precious, wounded her mortally, as it did her older sister.
Cosette felt the tears gathering in her eyes and willed them away. Tears were for the young and the weak. She was neither.
“Taken,” she told them.
The word throbbed within her head. Beth exchanged a look with Duncan, afraid of what she was hearing, afraid of what it meant.
“Taken?” she repeated.
Cosette nodded heavily.
Duncan placed his hand on the woman’s arm to gain her attention. “By whom?”
Cosette’s pinched mouth twisted as she remembered the various titles they had bandied about.
“The ‘friends of the people,’ the ‘enemies of the Crown.’ “ She shrugged helplessly. “Make your choice, they have many names they call themselves.” Darkness entered her eyes as she spat out, “Assassins all.” Her voice choked within her throat as emotion gripped it. “What have they done to my France?”
The woman’s shoulders shuddere
d once, as if she were about to cry. Then they straightened slightly as she attempted to pull them erect again. But they would never be the way they once had been.
And neither would France.
“Grandmere?” Beth inquired hesitantly, afraid of the answer.
The smile was sad. “She is upstairs,” Cosette assured her. “She never leaves her room anymore. I do what I can for her, but there is not much to do but wait, now.”
They would want to see for themselves, Cosette thought and that was good. It had been a long time since Denise had had any company but hers.
“Come, I shall take you to her.”
Cosette turned slowly, painfully, and retraced her small steps to the door. When Duncan offered her his arm, she took it gladly, but with the grace that befitted her station in life.
“It has been some time since we have had any visitors to talk to.” She smiled at Duncan, and he could see, beneath the lines and leathery face, the handsome young woman she had once been. “It is a very unpopular thing to speak to the likes of someone like me.”
Bitterness entered the old woman’s voice as she remembered an incident from a week ago. “Women who would not have even dared touch the hem of my skirt now spit on the ground behind my back as I pass by them on the streets of Paris.”
Duncan stopped at the foot of the long, twisting staircase. “You go out?”
The thin shoulders rose and fell carelessly. “Once in a while, I must.” The look in her eyes challenged not him, but those who would dare to oppose her right. “And it is my city as much as theirs. More,” she said fiercely. “We can trace our line back to the Crusades and Charlemagne. How far back can the scum go? It was formed but yesterday in the gutters.”
Cosette shook her head reprovingly, hatred squeezing her heart in two.
She placed one hand on the banister, the other upon her cane. Duncan was tempted to lift her into his arms and carry the woman up, but he knew that while a ready arm was deemed gracious behavior, carrying her as if she was too feeble to walk would offend her delicate honor. The woman had nothing but pride left.
Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) Page 19