Triumph in Arms

by Jennifer Blake

  Shutters banged open at the French doors. Daylight sprang into the room from the front gallery. Glass shattered and Paul catapulted into the salon with the great hound Chalmette, teeth bared, at his side.

  All heads turned in that direction. Chalmette crouched while his rumbling growl rolled over those assembled in the violent tableau, and his red-tinged gaze fastened on Marguerite in her distress. Christien, his eyes black and utterly without remorse, looked from Chalmette to Theodore.

  And then he stepped aside.

  Chalmette, eyes feral, gathered powerful muscles, began his leap from halfway across the room. His great body soared, suddenly silent, forefeet tucked, teeth bared. Theodore tried to slash out, but Reine tightened her one-handed clutch on the saber’s hilt, swinging her weight from it. Theodore began a guttural scream.

  The hound slammed him backward as he took his throat. Reine was dragged down with the pair. She heard the saber hit the floor and clatter away, heard distinctly the sound of crunching bone.

  Marguerite landed on top of her, still screaming, strangling her with her small arms. Reine rolled with her in swift escape from the melee. Then she covered her daughter’s face, breathed curses and prayers into her bright, sweet-smelling hair.

  Theodore’s screams ceased. Chalmette growled once more and was quiet.

  “Papa,” Marguerite whispered. “Oh, Papa.”

  25

  “Alonzo said you’re going.”

  It was Paul who spoke, standing in the bedchamber door with his hand on the knob as if ready to bolt if need be. Christien did not look up from the careful folding of his hand-stitched white linen shirt. Smoothing the collar, placing the cuffs just so, he settled it into the top of his portmanteau with the care he might use with a newborn babe.

  “It’s time,” he answered.

  “Why? Everything is back the way it was. I mean, Theodore is gone, Reine is a widow, and you still own River’s Edge.”

  “I signed the deed back over to your father.”

  Paul bent an outraged stare upon him. “Why would you go and do a thing like that?”

  “I had my reasons.” Christien gave him a wry glance as he buckled the bag’s leather straps. “But if it’s your lack of a sparring partner that worries you, you will always be welcome in any salon on the Passage. I’ll pass the word to make it so.”

  “That’s not it at all,” the boy said. “You’re needed here.”

  “What’s required is my absence. The sooner I’m gone, the sooner the gossips will find new meat.” He didn’t meet Paul’s eyes as he spoke. Mature beyond his years, that young man had too much of his sister’s skill at discerning hidden motives to take the chance.

  “You think that, then you’re a fool. They’ll just want to know what you found out that made you take off.”

  Christien’s smile turned ironic around the edges. “An excellent shot by way of argument. It might even have found its mark if I didn’t understand too well the local outrage over what Pingre pulled on her.”

  “So you’ll cut and run, leave Reine to pick up the pieces on her own.”

  “She has you.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  Nothing Paul said was new to Christien. He’d turned it over in his mind like a chicken scratching in a dung heap during the long hours since they all returned to River’s Edge. What he had discovered was about as savory. The truth was, he didn’t deserve to stay, could find no earthly excuse that wasn’t ignoble and preeminently self-serving. That being so, he’d spoken to Vinot, also the other sword masters, before they gathered up their families and departed, had listened to their advice and made his plans. Now all he had to do was dredge up the guts to act on them.

  “Look,” he said, trying for patience. “I came here under false pretences. I had a purpose and followed it like a berserker with a bloodied knife, cutting down whoever got in the way. I could use all my good intentions as a shield, but what good is that? There are still two graves to be accounted for. I’d rather not add to the total.”

  “You saved the ones who matter.”

  Christien’s smile was tight as he lifted his portmanteau from the bed. “I’ll take that as my epitaph. Do you know where I might find your sister?”

  “Outside, walking under the oaks. She said not to let you go without saying goodbye.”

  It was confirmation, if any was needed, that what he was doing was just as she expected. He made no reply beyond a grim nod of understanding, not the least reason being because his throat was too tight. With portmanteau in hand, he left the bedchamber, went past Paul down the hall and quitted the big house.

  His black stallion was waiting at the mounting block. He tied his portmanteau behind the saddle, atop the box that held his swords. Giving his mount a shriveled apple from his pocket to pacify him, he went in search of Reine.

  She had her back to him as he came upon her under the oaks, a solitary figure in a black gown with gray trimming that blended with the evening shadows. The mourning was for Pingre, of course; who else? And the sight of it sent a ripple of fury along his veins. He paused a moment to allow all vestiges of it to fade, also to gather his defenses, before he moved forward again.

  She swung to face him, the hem of her skirts stirring a small drift of dust from the grass. Her eyes were dark blue and liquid yet calm, her hands lightly clasped at her waist. She tilted up her chin a fraction as she searched his face.

  “So you’re really going,” she said, the words like ice tinkling against a crystal julep glass.

  He inclined his head. “It seems best. The furor over this business will die down faster if I’m no longer around.”

  “It’s for my sake, then.”

  “And mine.” He indicated her black dress. “I don’t think I can stomach two years of watching from afar while you mourn Pingre twice over. Besides, I have no right to be here.”

  “Because Theodore died? It wasn’t your fault.”

  He allowed himself a wry smile. “Wasn’t it? I tried to usurp his place. I deliberately enticed him out of hiding in the name of justice. Though I may not have struck the death blow, I was the instrument of it all the same.”

  “Or you could say he caused his own death. If he had been different, had acted otherwise…”

  “That isn’t the worst of it.”

  She met his eyes, her own shadowed with equal parts of dread and fortitude. “What…what do you mean?”

  He looked away, unable to watch her while he said it. “I have no right to River’s Edge. I cheated your father out of it. He was playing deep the night I won it, but would not have staked so much if I hadn’t goaded him into it. And when everything he owned was on the table, I palmed an ace and it was mine.”

  “But…why?”

  “An extreme action of the Brotherhood, if you will. Vinot was certain Pingre was alive. He’d heard whispers, thought he saw him once in a Gallatin Street dive despite his being almost unrecognizable. He asked my help in forcing him out of hiding.”

  “And you obliged.”

  Something in her voice disturbed him. He turned back to search her face, but saw only pale composure and pride. “I owed him so much,” he said after a moment. “He took me in, taught me everything I knew. Sophie, his daughter, was like a sister. How could I refuse?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “If you think…” he began, a frown growing between his eyes.

  “Apparently, I’ve done little enough of that,” she said in brittle self-condemnation. “It never occurred to me a man would go so far to settle an old debt.”

  She thought he had taken her into his bed as part of his ploy to bring Pingre out into the open. Anger that she understood him so little robbed him of words for an instant. When he could speak, his voice was harsh. “No. That had nothing to do with it. The cheating, the proposal and all the rest, but not that.”

  “You never intended to marry me.”

  “It was doubtful from the first that the wedding would take pla
ce. Pingre was almost certain to show up beforehand.” That did not answer what he would have done if her husband had not appeared. Not at all.

  “You had a lucky escape, then.”

  “I don’t know about that.…” he began.

  “Never mind. We are better for your coming here, when all is said and done.” She went on quickly before he could inquire deeper into that assertion. “You saved Marguerite from the loup-garou, and we must be thankful for that much.”

  “I would have said you saved her. If not for you—”

  “Don’t!” She turned swiftly away. “I can’t bear to think of it. If I had not held on to the saber…”

  “If you had not held on, he might have cut your throat when Chalmette took him down, or Marguerite’s. But don’t think about it. Push it to the back of your mind until the pain of it is gone.”

  “Is that what you do?” She gave him a quick glance over her shoulder.

  Was it? He hardly knew. Christien only shook his head. “How is Marguerite? Her poor little hands—will they be all right?” He’d wanted to slaughter Pingre for the sweetling’s frantic terror and bloodshed, had been preparing for it when he saw Chalmette ready to make his leap. Stepping aside to allow it had seemed right. Yet somewhere inside him was lingering regret that he had not struck the final blow. He did not care to be remembered by Marguerite only as the man who killed her father, but he could have counted the deception he’d undertaken as worth something if he had ended his persecution.

  “Children are very good at pushing horror into the back of their minds and closing the door on it,” Reine said softly, “though I don’t say she won’t need more attention for a time or have nightmares. At least their monsters will no longer visit her in the flesh. Anyway, she’s in the kitchen at the moment, displaying her bandages to everyone who will look and being hand-fed cookies and milk. Well, and sharing them with Chalmette, who is even more her trusted companion than he was before.”

  “The cuts weren’t serious, then?”

  “One or two went fairly deep, but she has use of all her fingers.”

  “And your mother?”

  Reine’s lips moved in a grave smile. “She’s still asleep, the first untroubled rest she’s had since…well, since that night two years ago. She is literally spent with blessed relief, I think. She thought she’d killed Theodore that terrible night. It was she who damaged his face so badly, you know.”

  All this time, Madame Cassard had been hiding what she thought was her guilt as a murderess. It explained a great deal, Christien thought. The pity of it was that all her fear and repentance had been for nothing. Another black mark against Pingre that he’d allowed it, hidden behind it.

  “What actually did happen that night?” he asked. “Your father told me a little when I first came, and you added to it, but I’ve never quite gotten the straight of it.”

  “There’s little enough to tell. Less than we once thought, anyway.” A tendril at her temple waved as she shook her head. “You know Marguerite had been ill. Theodore was driven mad by her crying, so went into town. Everyone at Bonne Espèrance was upset because of his uncle, who hovered near death from a wasting sickness. Demeter was tending him, making batch after batch of one of her concoctions for pain, so had little time for a mere childhood complaint. The stomach upset was passed to the dying man, so they claimed, and he passed away. Everything was so strained that I brought Marguerite home to River’s Edge.”

  It seemed noteworthy that Reine had thought of River’s Edge as home in spite of having been married for several years, Christien noted, but he only nodded his understanding of the situation she had laid out.

  “Her fever was extremely high, but finally broke in the middle of the second night here. She fell into a natural sleep and the crisis seemed over. I left her in my bed in the bedchamber where I’d slept before I married. It had been hours since I had sat down, days since I’d snatched more than a quick nap, and suddenly I was exhausted but starving. I meant only to find a little something to eat and drink in the kitchen, then go back upstairs. But I woke up with my head on the kitchen table and screams ringing in my ears.”

  “Marguerite’s?” His voice was sharp.

  “My mother’s,” she corrected. “Later we told everyone it was because she’d found Marguerite lying in a pool of blood on the bed. Actually, she had heard Marguerite crying and got up to see to her. She found Theodore with her. He’d returned from New Orleans, discovered Marguerite and I were gone and everything in an uproar because of his uncle. He came on to River’s Edge and made his way to my bedchamber. He was a little drunk, I think, and stumbled around, waking Marguerite, so she started crying. When my mother came into the bedchamber, he had picked her up from the bed and was cursing as he shook her violently, trying to make her be quiet. Maman was…She never…”

  She paused, searching for words. Christien provided them for her. “She had a difficult childhood, I believe.”

  “Her father, my American grandfather, was a strict Calvinist who did not believe in sparing the rod for man, woman, child or beast. I suppose she saw Theodore as cut from the same cloth. She picked up a silver poker and hit him in the head, then kept on hitting him until…”

  There seemed no point in lingering on that scene. “I see. And then?”

  “I’m not quite sure. Theodore apparently got away from her somehow and staggered out of the house. By the time I arrived, he was gone, though there was a trail of blood spots down the stairs and out the front door. I assume he went to Kingsley’s cabin and then was taken to old Demeter’s place back in the woods.”

  “And she took him in.”

  “He was her baby,” Reine said simply.

  Christien nodded. Never would he forget the terrible grief of the old nursemaid as she fell to her knees beside her charge with silent, endless tears running in rivulets down the tobacco-colored wrinkles of her face. Afterward, she had disappeared into the woods. It had seemed a kindness to let her go, though he wondered how long she could live with such pain and sorrow at her great age. A basket of the sweets she loved had been taken to her little house, he knew, having been told earlier that Alonzo was away on that errand. The work boss, Samson, would take men out to look for her if she didn’t appear soon. It was all they could do.

  “Within a day or two, Theodore must have heard that he was feared dead, also heard the speculation that a prowler or thief had set upon him, as we, my parents and I, suggested,” Reine went on in a somber tone. “No doubt it seemed a good thing to let everyone think for a while that he was dead, though we were ignorant of his reasons. Later, I suspect he preferred that no one see his face.”

  “Or he knew Vinot had not given up looking for him, would never give up.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Therefore, the subterfuge of digging up his dead uncle and putting him in the river, knowing he would almost certainly be unrecognizable by the time he was discovered.”

  “Which he was, except for the ring that had been placed on his finger, Theodore’s alliance ring that was a match for mine.” Her voice turned bitter. “A nice touch, that.”

  “The corpse was Kingsley’s part in the business, I imagine,” Christien said thoughtfully.

  “For which he was well paid, you may be sure, then and afterward. He assured me over and over that the search for Theodore had turned up nothing, right up until the moment his body, or what we assumed was his body, was pulled from the river. It seems now that Kingsley may have thought I knew the truth but was keeping quiet for reasons of my own. Please believe me when I say I had no idea Theodore had been living less then three miles from River’s Edge all this time.”

  “A scarred husband would have been better than a murdered one, given the gossip,” he said in understanding. “But your husband saved his hide at your expense. He allowed you to be whispered about as a murderess, to become a social outcast, and did nothing to stop it.”

  “I’m sure he thought I deserved it, that what happen
ed was my fault for leaving his bed and his home in the first place—it’s how he would have placed the blame. If he had to live in isolation, he probably felt it only fair that I do the same.”

  “Until I came along.”

  “Yes, until then.” She paused. “Where will you go now? What will you do?”

  It was a good question. He felt completely unsettled, unable to go forward, unwilling to go back to the Passage de la Bourse and endless days of teaching young fools the art of sword play. “I may sign on for Mexico. A good, straightforward fight doesn’t sound too bad for a change.”

  She met his eyes, and he thought her fingers turned white at the ends where she gripped her hands together. “You’ll be going to war,” she said in flat acceptance.

  “Fighting is what I do best, after all.”

  She opened her lips as if to protest, to give him an alternative, to ask him not to go. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. Watching her, he was swamped by memories of the taste of those lips, of the feel of her skin against his, the glory of her tight, moist heat surrounding him, taking him deep inside her. And he wanted her, wanted her daughter and the rest of her family, wanted River’s Edge and all that had almost been his with a fierce ache that made his head pound and his heart feel boiled in acid. He wanted, passionately, all the things he could not have.

  So he took the little he might be allowed, sweeping her against him and setting his mouth to hers, a taste for eternity. Then he put her from him and walked away.

  It was a damn good thing the black whinnied when he saw him coming, or he might have walked all the way to New Orleans.

  26

  Gone.

  Christien was gone, riding away down the drive. He had left her life as abruptly as he had entered it. She should be glad, should be overjoyed that she need not be married against her will, Reine told herself. She should feel nothing except relief that River’s Edge was returned to her father and everything was as it had been before. Yes, literally everything since she was once more a widow—this time, a true widow.