At the back of the big house was a garden that had become a jungle of overgrown shrubs, wild roses and briars hidden in knee-high grass. Leading from it was a trail that meandered away into the forested no man’s land between Bonne Espèrance and River’s Edge. Dismounting, looping the mare’s rein around the arm of a lichen-covered statue at the garden’s corner, Reine set off down the trail at a run.
The playhouse was half-buried in honeysuckle and wisteria vines. Its windows on either side of the center door gave back only reflections of the surrounding woods. The door stood open and an orange tabby sat on the sill with its paws tucked under its chest. As Reine stepped inside and glanced around, the cat rose with dignity and stalked off toward the big house.
Nothing moved inside the small cottage. Its single room smelled of wood smoke, fried food and un-washed bedding. An iron pot sat over dead coals in the single fireplace. Against one wall, a cot of canvas over a wood frame served as both bed and settee. Through the open back door could be seen a small porch where sat a bench holding a wash basin. Next to it was the first steps of an outside staircase that led to a minuscule sleeping loft. Over its post was draped a man’s coat with a pair of boots beneath it.
The silence was deep, broken only by the buzzing of a fly against a windowpane.
No one was there. No one had been there for hours, perhaps not since the day before.
Whirling in a flare of skirts, Reine ran back toward the big house. This time, she approached from the rear. Mounting the steps with caution, she crossed the lower gallery to reach its center set of French doors. They were not barred. The handle turned under her hand. She caught her breath, hardly daring to think what that meant, as she eased inside.
Bonne Espèrance had been constructed in the French fashion so all rooms opened into one another. The only way to get from one end of the house to the other without passing through multiple salons and bedchambers was to use the galleries. The central doors where Reine entered opened into the summer dining room, which, in common with most of the major rooms, had double doors on either side for airflow during the summer heat.
More silence greeted her there, along with festoons of spiderwebs and dustcover-wrapped tables, chairs, sideboards and even chandeliers. A deserted feeling hung in the long room, which made Reine believe Theodore’s mother was unlikely ever to return from her sojourn in France.
She had left her injured son behind, left him in the care of only an old nursemaid. Had she really expected Theodore to join her in due time as he said, or only thought to outdistance the scandal and him with it? Reine didn’t know. She should have known as his wife, she thought. That not knowing seemed as much a tragedy as the rest of it.
Shaking off the unwanted introspection, she skirted the dining table under its dustcover of old linen sheets, stepped over the long tubular shape of the room’s carpet, which had been rolled up and pushed to one side. Tobacco leaves had been sprinkled inside for protection from insects, for the dusty-sweet smell rose from the roll as her skirts brushed against it. Smothering a sneeze, she made for the enclosed staircase that rose between the dining room and the butler’s pantry on the north end of the house. She eased up the treads as quickly as she dared.
The stairs decanted into a salon wrapped in more dustcovers. In that main room, which, like the dining room below, had access to both front and back galleries through French doors, she hesitated. Four bedchambers opened from it. On the north front corner was the bedchamber she had once shared with Theodore. Marguerite’s old crib was in one corner of it, and her old toys, just as they had been left two years before. It was both habit and instinct that urged her toward it.
“Madame, why you here?”
She stopped abruptly as Demeter emerged from the gloom, standing in the open door of that room. “You know why,” she answered after a moment.
“M’sieur Theodore, he’ll not like it.”
Reine gave her a hard stare as she lifted her chin. “I don’t care what he likes. I’ve come for my daughter. You can hand her over to me or I will take her.”
“She be the child of M’sieur Theodore.”
“And he’s been such a devoted father to her these past two years, hasn’t he? You know he cares nothing for her. Did he tell you to kill her if he doesn’t come back from the dueling ground.”
“Never would he do this thing!”
“I can show you the letter threatening it. Step aside, Demeter. Marguerite is going home with me.”
Inside the room, there came the creak of a wooden bedstead, the rattle of slats. Marguerite called out in high-pitched distress. “Maman!”
Reine expected her to come running. Seconds ticked past and she didn’t appear. By degrees, the explanation for it came to Reine. She could not come. She was being restrained, perhaps tied up in some manner. Rage unlike any she had ever known washed through her.
She stepped toward Demeter and kept moving. She was going to her daughter if she had to walk over the old nursemaid.
At the last moment, Demeter shifted to one side. Reine ran the last steps that took her into the bedchamber.
It was in chaos, as if someone had raged around it, inflicting as much damage as possible. The doors of the armoire hung askew. The clothing she had left behind, evening gowns and capes, day gowns unneeded while she was in mourning, had been dragged from it and cut into ribbons. The toilette articles on her dressing table were smashed, with powder and perfume spilled into the wreckage. The bed had been torn apart, the mosquito baire ripped from its metal rings, pillows disemboweled of their feathers and cotton pulled by handfuls from great cuts in the mattress. Lying on its foot was the sword used to inflict all the damage, a cavalry saber that had once hung over the fireplace mantel, beneath a portrait of Theodore’s great-grandfather as he had appeared when he wore it as a musketeer of the ancien regime.
Reine noticed the destruction with only the outer fringe of her attention. Her gaze went at once to the crib that stood in the corner. She plunged toward it.
“Maman,” Marguerite cried with tears filling her eyes and her arms thrust through the crib’s slats in supplication. The small bed was too short for her, so she lay at a cramped angle across it.
Reine cursed softly, repeating words she had heard Christien whisper as she saw the strips of torn sheeting that encircled her daughter’s small waist and ankles and that bound her to the slats. With hands like claws, she dragged at them, desperate to free her. They were knotted several times and of linen too stout to give to anything except a sharp blade of some variety.
“Get me a pair of scissors, a knife, anything,” she said over her shoulder. All the time she spoke, she was pulling at the bindings around Marguerite’s waist, trying to push them down over her small hips.
“M’sieur Theodore won’t like this at all,” Demeter said in querulous repetition. “Wait for him, madame. Soon, soon, he comes. Ask him. He will give her to you if you ask.”
She was to beg, as if Theodore had the right to keep her child from her. Perhaps he did in a legal sense; she didn’t know. But no right existed that allowed him to take her and tie her up like an animal. Reine half turned toward the nursemaid, stabbed a finger toward the saber. “There, hand that to me at once.”
“Think, madame,” Demeter said, even as she bent to take up the weapon and pass it to Reine. “You will only anger him.”
“He doesn’t know what anger is,” she snapped. Leaning over the crib, she lifted a strip of the binding, passed the blade under it and slashed upward. With vicious strength then, she cut the other strips that held Marguerite, feeling as if she could tear the crib itself apart with her bare hands.
The final strip of linen came unwrapped. Leaning the heavy sword against the crib, Reine snatched away the pieces and flung them from her. Reaching with both arms then, she picked up Marguerite and caught her in a close hug, rocking her back and forth. And she couldn’t tell whether that movement was to calm her daughter or soothe her own shuddering rage.
“Oh, madame,” Demeter said in a tone like two sheets of foolscap rubbing together, “you don’t know what you’ve done.”
Reine didn’t answer. With Marguerite’s arms still around her neck and her small legs clamped about her waist, she strode across to the door once more. She passed into the large salon, ghostly under its dust cloths and dimness caused by closed shutters, then turned toward the dark entrance to the stairwell. Shifting Marguerite so she sat on her hip, Reine turned in that direction.
Theodore appeared ahead of her, rising from the lower floor like a demon from hell. A grim smile tugged the good side of his mouth upward. “Going somewhere, chère?”
She halted where she stood. He didn’t pause but stepped into the salon and bore down upon her. Reine glanced around a little wildly. Another staircase led down from the front gallery beyond the salon’s French doors. But those doors were locked inside their barred shutters. She could never get through them before he was upon her.
“I told you he would not like it,” Demeter muttered, backing away from them both, sidling along the wall until she reached a protective corner.
Reine barely heard her as she turned back toward Theodore. “Step aside, if you please,” she said with resolution. “I’m taking Marguerite home.”
He laughed. “Now, why would you do that when you are both where you belong?”
His hair hung in sweaty strings, she saw, his shirt limp and damp with perspiration, and dirt smudged his pantaloons. A long streak of red ran down his sleeve, spreading from a cut in the fleshy part of his neck, just above the collar of his shirt. She moistened her dry lips, holding her daughter closer as Marguerite began to make small whimpering noises. “It seems you survived the duel. Christien, Monsieur Lenoir, must have honored his intention to let you live. It’s over. You can let us go now.”
“What of this?” He hunched his shoulder toward the neck wound. “I said nothing about being bloodied. I don’t call this honoring anything.”
“Did you think he would allow you to slice him to pieces at will? You could not be so foolish.”
“Are you quite sure he didn’t?” He gave a snorting laugh, jerking his chin toward his injury again. “With the exception of this pitiful attempt at defense, of course.”
Horror congealed her blood, turned her heart as cold as ice. Was it possible Christien had failed to protect himself? Where was he now? Where were the others, the seconds and the doctor who should have seen to Theodore’s wound? Had they gathered around Christien as he fell, leaving Theodore to fend for himself?
“He…he wouldn’t do that,” she whispered. “Marguerite isn’t even his child.”
“No, she’s mine.” His gaze turned reflective. “Or so we must suppose. You, ma chère, were so avid in your passions it’s difficult to be sure they never overcame you with another man. Perhaps she belonged to King, hein? He confessed, while drinking to our success at shooting Lenoir from the saddle, that he’d always had a yen to get under your skirts. Not that it was any surprise, I’d seen him watching you. Maybe he did more than think about it.”
“That’s a vile thing to say.” Odd, but she could see a resemblance between the two men now where she never had before, something in the eyes and red wetness of their mouths.
The discovery was made with only surface attention while she shuddered inside with cold dismay, crying in the depths of her soul for Christien.
“Vile to be forced to think about, but there you are. A man gets these fancies while laid up with a broken head and only a piece of battered meat for a face.”
“Don’t!” she whispered, wishing she could shield Marguerite’s ears. The urge to run beat up inside her once more. She might have chanced it, might even have tried fighting past him if she had been alone. But she had little hope of succeeding while Marguerite clung to her, hiding her face in her neck, growing heavier with each passing second.
“As you will,” he said in a travesty of consideration.
“You killed Kingsley. Is that why, because he was unwise enough to…to…”
“To admit he lusted after you? Oh, no, it was for something far more important, a matter of money.”
If that was supposed to put her in her place, it failed. Revulsion wiped away self-consciousness. “I’m relieved. I would hate to be the cause of a man’s death.”
“Of course, there’s always Lenoir. We don’t have to guess about him now, do we? Everybody knows exactly what the two of you have been up to.”
The last words were savage, but she barely flinched at them. “What do you care?” she demanded as rage returned, pushing aside her fear. “It didn’t matter what was happening with me or Marguerite until another man came into it.”
“Would you have wanted me to care? Would you have tended my wounds and nursed me with such dedication as you gave Lenoir?”
“You—you were my husband. It would have been my duty to nurse you.”
“I am still your husband,” he said with snide satisfaction. “And I have been reminded there is a world beyond this tomb of a house. I mean to step into it, now that Vinot is too feeble to prevent it. I knew I had only to wait, that it was a mere matter of time.”
“Do you really believe he will stop now? He’s waited as well, waited all this time for revenge.”
“Could be he won’t live that long.”
“That’s your answer to everything, is it, to kill those who stand in your way?”
He lifted a hand in negligent dismissal. “It has the advantage of being permanent.”
“You’re a monster! You care about nothing and no one except yourself. You terrified your daughter to no purpose all these weeks, you shot Christien from the dark like a coward, you killed Kingsley. And now—”
“Now I have you where I want you, and here you will stay.”
“You expect me to live here with you? Never, it’s impossible.”
“Maybe you prefer the sword master? Too bad. He’ll never have you.”
“You mean…”
“I’ll kill you before I let another man have what’s mine.”
He seemed to be saying Christien might be alive to possess her. Sudden hope leaped inside her. It gave her courage in spite of Theodore’s threat, the swollen veins in his forehead, the flat, hard look in his eyes.
It was then that a shout sounded outside the shuttered French doors at the front of the salon. They rattled in their frames as a fist beat on them. “Reine! Open the door! Reine!”
Paul.
He could not get in. The shutters were made to withstand hurricane winds. The rusty iron bar that closed them held firm.
No matter. Her brother’s arrival was the distraction Reine needed. As Theodore swung toward the pounding, she shoved past him, speeding headlong for the stairs.
She was met by a swarm of men coming up, a cadre with grim faces and flashing steel in their hands. Mercurial and golden Gavin Blackford was there, with Nicholas Pasquale at his shoulder. Vinot followed. On his heels was Caid O’Neill with the courteously lethal Rio, Conde de Lérida, pushing them from behind. And at their head, like a dark angel of inhuman grace and strength, was Christien. Or perhaps it was his ghost, for his eyes were empty of everything except the promise of death.
She halted, teetering on one foot while fierce, breathless joy jolted through her. She could not speak, could make not a sound. It was Marguerite who cried out in welcome, reaching toward him.
This was no time for a reunion. They were blocking the way.
In stumbling haste, Reine retreated into the salon again. The swordsmen streamed around her, past her, carrying her with them as they filled the room to its echoing, plaster-friezed ceiling, making the cloth-swathed chandelier swing in a gentle arc to the shuddering thunder of their arrival. And beneath it all could be heard Paul crashing into the shutters again and again.
Theodore was no longer there. Pale and cursing, he flung away the instant they came in sight, disappearing into the front bedchamber. His running treads made a
hollow, thumping sound on the bare floor-boards.
Christien lunged after him. Reine, in a flash of memory, saw the destruction inside and what had caused it.
“The saber,” she cried out. “He’s after the saber!”
Whining death sang beneath her warning. Swinging the heavy battle sword with both hands, Theodore sprang from the bedchamber in fury. He advanced, slashing right and left, his teeth bared as he cleaved the air in his search for flesh and bone.
Christen leaped back from the first great, slashing strikes. Then he stepped into them, catching a wild blow on his rapier. Metal bit and shrieked. The blue fire of sparks dripped around their feet. But the heavy saber, wielded with manic strength, could not be held.
Gavin lunged to take the next clanging charge. He absorbed it, throwing Theodore back. But Reine’s husband, wild in his rage, whirled away, slicing at Blackford again as he turned, a swipe the Englishman parried with a twist of his wrist.
“Mon ami,” Vinot began, exchanging a swift look with Christien.
“Watch him,” Caid O’Neill warned.
“Le diable,” the conde exclaimed in virulent dread.
Too late. Theodore’s murderous, whirling, slicing path, like a dance to the rhythmic crash of Paul’s shouts and repeated blows on the shuttered doors, took him to where Reine stood. He reached out, hooked an arm around her neck and dragged her against him. The saber flashed, and she felt the sharp sting as its edge pressed against her throat.
“No, no, no,” Marguerite moaned, clutching at the blade that threatened her mother. Keening, crying, she pushed at it in hysteria, her small hands slicing along the edge, beginning to bleed. Reine, boiling with a mother’s fury, shot up her hand to catch the saber’s hilt, thrusting it from her and her child, fighting Theodore’s strong arm that threatened to slice down with it again.
Triumph in Arms Page 26