Now that he had mentioned it, she was weary beyond all bearing, almost to the point of being unable to think. She gave a small nod. “Where will you sleep?”
“I will be quite comfortable on the gallery with Paul and Nathaniel. Vinot is there also, you know, as he must stay for this business of a dawn meeting.”
“Are you sure?” she asked doubtfully.
“Most certainly. Though night air is said to be poisonous, I can’t think it true. We always slept outside in hot weather when I was a boy. I’ll quite enjoy the change.”
She went to him and gave him a hug, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “You’re an old humbug, and I won’t take your bed, but I am grateful for the offer all the same.”
“Please, chère. I would be much easier in my mind with you there beside your mother.”
It required further protests and more assurances, but exhaustion won in the end. Her father changed in the dressing room, covering his nightshirt with a foulard dressing gown. Taking an extra pillow and giving her a cheery good-night, he let himself out into the hall. Reine undressed, slipped one of her mother’s nightgowns over her head, blew out the lamp and crawled under the baire.
Sleep that had threatened to drop her in her tracks only a few moments before deserted her now. She was insufferably hot. Her borrowed nightgown was too tight in the neck, so it strangled her every time she turned over. She seethed with unsettled longing, was haunted by images of what should have been taking place in these midnight hours. She pictured Christien alone in his bedchamber. To ease from her bed and go to his would mean running the gauntlet of children’s cots and pallets that lined the hallway, but might be managed. He would not turn her away; she was almost sure of it.
It was pride more than the consciousness of sinful intentions that kept her in place. He had thought her capable of living a lie, of concealing the truth about Theodore’s disappearance. He had never expected to marry her, but meant only to lure her husband from his hiding place with the fiction. He had foisted himself upon her, upon them all, without regard for how any of them might be hurt by it. He had desired her, made love to her, taught her to anticipate married bliss, but had no permanent place for her in his affections or his life. If she went to his bed now, it must be as a supplicant, a female so lost to her own worth, so at the mercy of her desires, that nothing else mattered.
She couldn’t do it, though her heart stung with the salt of her unshed tears.
No, she couldn’t.
Could she?
She stared into the darkness while her mind turned in endless circles to reach, finally, the inescapable negative answer. And when she had accepted it, taken it deep inside her, sleep came down like a hammer blow.
Bright sunlight poured in gold streams around the shutter edges when she woke. Its heat was already stifling, made harder to bear by the steamlike rise of moisture left from the rain. Reine’s mother was awake and surprised to find Reine beside her, though she apparently approved the arrangement.
As she complained of thirst, Reine slid from the bed and poured water for her from the bedside carafe. She thought of getting dressed, but all she had to wear was her wedding gown. She borrowed a dressing gown from her mother to use until she was certain Christien was awake and Alonzo could remove her clothing from where it had been transferred to the armoire in his room. Until then, she was trapped here. Her father would have to act as host to their guests until she could join him.
So much that must be put back the way it was before. Everything. Almost everything.
“Ring for café au lait, will you, chère?” her mother asked. “I believe I could relish a roll, as well. I do hope one or two are left from last night.”
“I’m sure they are,” Reine said, summoning a smile as she moved to do as she was bid, turning the bell crank set into the fireplace mantel. “It’s good you’re feeling better.”
“I do seem to be,” her mother answered. Then her lips flattened. “Theodore did come back, yes? Or did I dream it?”
Reine turned sober, as well. “He was there, at the chapel.”
“But changed, so changed. Oh, Reine…”
“Don’t think about it.”
“The wedding didn’t take place, did it? I mean…”
“I know what you mean. No, it didn’t.”
“All praise to le bon Dieu that you were spared that much. Oh, but the talk! How people will smack their lips over such a rich morsel. It’s not to be borne!”
“If not this, then it would be something else,” she replied in clipped tones. “They must always have something to enliven their dull lives.”
“But all of us are touched by it, as I’m sure you must agree. The question is what will happen next.”
“After the duel, you mean?”
“Duel? What duel is this?”
The words were edged with alarm. It was clear her mother remembered next to nothing of the events at the chapel. Choosing her words with care, Reine told her what had transpired.
“Alors,” her mother said in fading tones. “Do you think…Is there a chance Theodore may not survive?”
Reine could not tell whether dread or anticipation was uppermost in her mother’s voice. “One always exists in these things.”
“I was only thinking of you, you know. Well, and of how awkward it would be to have him here again, to sit at the table with him, know he is sleeping just down the hall and…and all the rest. He is quite…quite hideous, chère.”
All the rest.
That phrase covered so much, including Theodore coming to her bed with his rage and bitterness, his maimed face and his body made corpulent by inactivity and indulgence.
“As you say,” Reine answered in spite of the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “He may have other plans. It has been his choice to stay away all this time.”
“But why? I don’t understand.”
“Morbid fear of Monsieur Vinot, it appears. Now that he has seen him and discovered how frail he has become, he is less impressed by his past reputation. But of course, it’s Christien who will meet Theodore.”
“How can he? He is not fully recovered from his injury,” her mother said in querulous tones. She paused. “Perhaps they will kill each other.”
“Maman!”
“Dreadful for me to say, yes, but it would make everything much more comfortable.”
She didn’t mean it, Reine thought. Surely she did not. “By no means,” she said at her most prosaic as she opened the door to Alonzo, who had arrived with their morning coffee on a breakfast tray. “We should all of us miss Christien, ma chère maman—Paul, Marguerite, Papa and, yes, even you.” Taking the tray, she gave instructions concerning her wardrobe, then turned back into the room. “Now,” she said with a smile for her mother, “would you care for butter on your breakfast roll?”
It was past midmorning when Reine finally left her parents’ bedchamber. The cots and pallets in the upper hallway were empty, of course; she had heard the children playing for two hours and more, seen them running here and there from the bedchamber window that she had thrown open to the brief morning coolness. Blindman’s bluff and hide-and-seek seemed to be their principal choices for entertainment, though she had also seen them partaking of a breakfast of melon slices.
Marguerite had apparently dressed herself, or perhaps Lisette O’Neill or Juliette Pasquale had seen to it. Thinking it might be best if she had a look at the results, just in case, Reine moved out onto the upper gallery. From that vantage point, she framed her mouth with her hands for carrying quality as she leaned over the railing and called her daughter.
Marguerite did not appear.
Reine was not altogether surprised, given her high excitement over having playmates. She called her name again, letting the last note keen through the great oaks and out across the nearer cane fields.
Still no Marguerite.
Young Sean O’Neill came running from the rear of the house. “Mon cher,” she called down to him when he w
as close enough to hear, “have you seen Marguerite?”
“No, madame!” He turned his earnest, choir boy’s face up to her. “Not in a long time.”
He was gone again the moment the words left his mouth. From where he had disappeared behind the house came high-pitched children’s laughter. Listening closely, Reine could make out the voices of several of the children. Her daughter’s voice was not one of them.
Concern touched her, but she dismissed it. Sean was playing with the other boys, most likely, while Marguerite would be somewhere with the girls. Or she might have visited one of the swordsmen’s wives who had a baby, hanging over the cradle watching the little one nap, or else in a dressing room where it was being bathed. She could be in the kitchen, with her grandfather, or even with Christien. There was no need to panic.
Turning swiftly, Reine moved back into the house and through its width to the rear gallery. From that vantage point, she could see an expanse of yard where most of the other children played, as well as the track that led to the barns and other outbuildings. She counted the various offspring of their guests, but could not locate Marguerite’s bright head.
Down the stairs she went in a billow of skirts, almost running as she moved out the front door and around to the side gallery. Her father and a half-dozen other men lounged there. They must have received the seconds sent by Theodore already, for they seemed to be discussing the terms of the duel. She had no time for that now, no attention for anyone except Christien.
“Marguerite,” she said with a catch in her voice as she met his dark eyes. “Do you know where she is?”
He came to his feet in a single smooth movement, a frown of concern descending over his features. “I thought she must be with you.”
“No, and I don’t see her with the others.” She glanced past him to her father and the other swordsmen, who had risen to their feet. “Has anyone seen her this morning?”
“Don’t upset yourself,” her father said, moving to put a hand on her arm. “She has to be here someplace.”
That soothing platitude grated on her nerves. She wondered in a flash of insight if her mother ever felt this way when he spoke so to her. “Help me look, then,” she said in a resolute tone. “If you’ll make sure she isn’t hiding out for the sake of some game, I’ll check the kitchen.”
Christien said not a word. He merely looked at the other swordsmen with a lifted brow. That brief gesture sent them fanning out under the trees in every direction. Stepping from the gallery, then, he jogged off in the direction of the stables.
He meant to see if Marguerite was showing her new friends her pony or perhaps the kittens recently brought from hiding by the barn cat. She should have thought of it, Reine told herself, might have if not for the disquiet that gripped her. That Christien had that presence of mind made her throat tighten until she could not speak. Placing her hand on her father’s where he comforted her, she squeezed it, then swung from him in the direction of the kitchen.
Cook had not seen Marguerite since she gave her pain perdu, day-old bread dipped in egg batter, fried and sprinkled with sugar, to go with her breakfast melon.
Lisette O’Neill said she had hung over her shoulder while she was nursing her baby, but went away saying something about the kittens in the barn who suckled just the same.
One of the upstairs maids had retied the sash on her apron when it came loose.
Alonzo had seen her carrying a kitten, trying to make Chalmette let the little thing ride on his back.
No one had seen her for at least an hour, however, possibly two. A thorough canvassing of the shadows under the oaks turned up no sign of her, nor did it help anything to call the other children in and line them up in a row to be questioned.
Reine turned from all those sober young faces. She turned from the concern of their parents, who hovered behind them, also from all the people from River’s Edge who had been called out by the alarm bell. She turned from Paul’s pinched and concerned features, from her parents’ pale devastation, from the grim set of Christien’s mouth.
She turned and faced the river. It was all that was left.
She didn’t want to think of it. The very idea brought such harrowing images, the body identified as Theodore two years ago, a child lost from a steamboat just downriver in the spring and Kingsley’s body only days ago. Still, the possibility must be explored.
“No,” Christien said, stepping swiftly to her side. “She isn’t there.” He hesitated. “At least, there’s no sign of her along the bank in either direction.”
He had accepted the possibility and seen to it. Whether it was from experience, scrupulous effort or to save her from the harrowing necessity made no difference. It was done, and done well.
Reine closed her eyes, feeling the hard pounding of her heart and the tearing pain inside that presaged heartbreak. She felt it and she knew that she loved this man, would always love him. And it was not for the way he looked, his strength or prowess with a sword. It was not for how he touched her or the way he could draw forth her most fervent responses.
No, she loved him because he understood how she felt with sure instinct, her terrors as well as her joys. It was because he bent his strength and his will to sustain hers without expectation of return. It was because he saw her for what she was and did not turn away, but accepted everything about her. Yes, even the fact that she belonged to another man.
It was then that Chalmette appeared, trotting from the direction of the barn. Around his neck was a crude kerchief of osnaburg. Attached to the fabric was a sheet of foolscap.
Paul whistled and the big bloodhound veered in his direction. He looked tired and footsore, and had a line of dried blood along one side that might have been made by a briar but could have come from a knife. He crouched at Paul’s feet, whining a little as he looked up into his face.
Paul loosened the knot that held the foolscap. With only the barest glance at it, he handed it to Reine.
Her hands shook as she took it, so it was an instant before she could make out the words. The handwriting was familiar, though it had been more than two years since she had last seen it.
My dear wife, it ran, I have our daughter.
“It’s from Theodore,” she whispered, looking up, her vision obscured by tears. “He has taken Marguerite.”
“Where?” her father demanded. “How did he get to her?”
Reine didn’t answer. She was reading again, though a tear splashed onto the paper, blurring the words. She dashed it away in sudden dread that she might obliterate something important.
I have taken her as surety for the affair of honor that will take place in the morning. If you care to see her again, you will make certain I survive it unharmed. This you will arrange with Lenoir. I leave the method of persuasion in your hands.
“Reine?” Christien asked, his voice urgent as he watched her face.
She handed him the note without a word. Then she watched in her turn as his skin turned gray beneath its coating of copper-bronze. And when he cursed in softly vicious phrases, she echoed them in her mind.
Theodore had Marguerite. If Christien harmed him in the duel, then he would make certain she never saw her daughter again. He would not kill her, surely he would not, but he might take her far away if only to punish Reine.
“Vinot must withdraw the challenge,” Christien said abruptly. “I’ll send my seconds to arrange it with Pingre’s friends.”
Hope leaped inside Reine’s chest only to fade away again. “You can’t do that. He will take the utmost pleasure in claiming you were too cowardly to face him.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does. I can’t imagine he will let it go without a public confrontation. Besides…”
“What?” Christien looked from her to her father, then past him to the other sword masters.
“He only asks that he be allowed to survive,” she said in deliberate clarification. “He doesn’t demand to be victorious.”
�
�He will expect it,” Christien said, the words as certain as they were hard.
“Then he should have said so.”
He shook his head. “It’s Marguerite’s safety at stake here.”
“He’s her father. Surely he won’t harm her. But if he thought you’d believe he would…” She stopped, biting the inside of her lip until she tasted blood.
Christien met her eyes, his own dark with rigorous consideration. He gave a slow nod. “You’re right. He would prefer a meeting where my hands are tied.”
“Yes, but I can’t ask…”
Hot color rose into her face as she remembered the words of the note. Theodore misjudged her if he thought she would stoop to using her body to persuade Christien to let him live. He misjudged Christien, as well, if he considered it might be necessary.
“And need not,” he said, answering her thought before glancing again at his friends. “He can’t have taken Marguerite far, not if he expects to be at the dueling ground in the morning. We—my friends and I—can search him out, descend in force and bring her back.”
“No!” The answer was instinctive, though the temptation to leave it to his strength and ingenuity, and that of his formidable friends, was almost more than she could bear. What was it he had said once? Ah, yes. No one touches those who belong to me. If she allowed it, he would certainly hold true to that vow.
He would, yes, but at what cost?
“No,” she said again with a small shudder. “If Theodore saw or heard you coming, he might be maddened enough to do something he would not otherwise. I fear he isn’t entirely…responsible.” What she truly feared was the he was insane, and had been since the night he was attacked at River’s Edge.
“We would take every care to make certain that doesn’t happen.”
She met the fierce darkness of Christien’s eyes, her own drowning in liquid terror and sorrow. “I know, and I would trust to your word if anything less were at stake. But I can’t in this, not when it’s Marguerite’s life.”
He returned her regard for interminable seconds while his hands knotted at his sides. Then he inclined his head. “She is your daughter, therefore it will be as you prefer. Let Pingre have his way. With luck, it will make no difference.”
Triumph in Arms Page 24