Jack had not contacted me. I tried not to think about what that meant. After all, plans took time, particularly if they were secretive. His silence did not mean he had lied or changed his mind. But the fact had to be acknowledged—I had no immediate alternative other than to obey Reynard’s orders. Even running to my grandfather, if I could manage to escape unnoticed, was risky. For if Reynard found some way to inform the earl of my part in the smuggling ring there was no telling how my grandfather would react.
Still, every inch of my being rebelled at the idea of giving in to Reynard’s commands. I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all, to lash out at God for letting this happen to me. Was no one listening to my prayers?
That afternoon, my time ran out. I emerged from the kitchen door into the garden and looked up to find Rory standing at the edge of the marsh. I wasn’t certain how long he’d been waiting, but he leveled a hard glare at me and then turned to leave. It was clear I’d been summoned, though at least he gave me the courtesy of allowing me to follow behind him rather than escorting me to Greenlaws like a prisoner.
I glanced back at the door, wishing I could step back inside and pretend I hadn’t seen him, but I knew that if Reynard was forced to send someone after me again I would not like the consequences. I exhaled in frustration and discouragement and followed Rory out into the marsh paths. Though he’d disappeared into the fen only a minute before, I never caught sight of the back of his scruffy red head, even when I emerged on the lawn before Greenlaws.
The butler led me through Robert’s study to the billiard room in the back corner of the house, just as he had a few short days prior. I gritted my teeth as he opened the door, prepared to meet Reynard’s smug visage, but his was not the first face I saw. Instead, I met the jaded gaze of a man I didn’t know, who relaxed in a mahogany leather wing chair with one ankle resting across his opposite knee. In his hand, he cradled a glass of warm amber liquid, which he lifted to sip as he took in my appearance through narrowed eyes. His clothes appeared rumpled and travel-stained, as did those of Jack and Harry, who stood immediately to his right in front of the open French doors. Neither Jack nor Harry looked particularly pleased, and I felt a stab of apprehension upon seeing Jack’s fierce scowl.
It was obvious I had interrupted some sort of discussion. Reynard sat at one end of the settee across from the stranger, smiling his sly, self-satisfied smile, while Robert sulked at the opposite end. Robert looked up at my entrance and glowered. Apparently, he’d not taken my rejection well. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes.
“Ah, Miss Winterton,” Reynard drawled. “I see you’ve finally come to your senses. With impeccable timing as always.”
I arched a single eyebrow at his statement, uncertain whether he was needling me or attempting to make a joke. None of the men seated rose to their feet or offered me a chair, so I clasped my hands in front of me and stood straight. It appeared I was being made to understand my place.
“Are you resigned to your fate?” Reynard asked me. Belying his lazy demeanor, there was a sharp glint in his eye that told me to tread carefully. He would not be fobbed off again by a display of shock and anger. The blackguard was determined to have his victory.
I could feel Jack’s eyes on me, but I refused to look at him, not with the others looking on. He’d said that Reynard was bluffing about informing on me to the authorities, but facing Reynard’s hard stare I trusted that assertion even less. In any case, Jack had not contacted me. So it appeared I had no choice.
I glared daggers at Reynard and swallowed the hot retorts that burned on my tongue so I could speak in as calm a voice as I could manage. “Until the loan is paid off. Until my debt is settled.”
I could see in his eyes that we both knew it was a lie. Reynard would never let me stop. But my pride would not let me agree to anything else. I had to believe there was some way out, an ending to this terrible farce.
“Agreed,” he replied with a nod that said he could afford to be magnanimous in this since he was getting his way in everything else.
The man in the chair beside him lowered his leg, recalling our attention. “This is Miss Winterton?”
I stiffened upon hearing his thick French accent.
“Oui, monsieur.” Then Reynard turned to me with mock courtesy. “Allow me to introduce Colonel Junot.” He paused for effect. “Lately of la Grand Armée.”
I studied the officer more closely. He was perhaps thirty and sported a thick head of hair and a well-trimmed mustache. Even lounging in ill-fitting commoner’s clothes, he held himself with the haughty condescension of the privileged. His sneer fairly dripped with the disdain I perhaps unfairly attributed to the French, but the only frog-eaters I had ever met were Olivia and Reynard. The fact that their countrymen had slain my brother, and their liquor was slowly killing my father, only made me more predisposed to dislike any French man or woman I met.
“I am beginning to doubt your proposed plan of action,” the colonel told Reynard.
“Don’t let her drab appearance deceive you.” Reynard’s eyes traveled up and down my form, making me want to cross my arms over my chest to hide from him what I could. “Once she’s properly attired, our little sparrow will play the part admirably. Miss Rockland should own something more suitable she can wear.”
I glanced around at the others, wishing someone would tell me what he was talking about. Robert and Harry would not meet my eyes, and Jack’s mouth was clamped into a thin line. His gaze cut to the side and I felt the rebuff like the slice of a knife.
I scowled. “What plan?” I snapped, wishing I could tell Reynard, tell all of them, to go to the devil instead.
His lips curled. “It seems you’ve acquired a new lady’s maid for your upcoming voyage, my dear.”
I nearly snarled at his deliberately vague response. “Stop talking in riddles, Reynard.”
He leaned back into the settee, crossing one leg over the other, and then gestured to his fellow Frenchman. “Colonel Junot needs to return to France. Post haste. And you are going to escort him there.”
Chapter 30
I
stiffened in shock, but refused to acknowledge the insidious trickle of fear spreading through me. Reynard couldn’t possibly be serious. He wanted me to travel to France, to actually board a ship and leave England, with this strange man posing as my lady’s maid?
I flicked a glance at the scowling colonel. “But he’s…”
“A prisoner of war? Yes.” Reynard tilted his head in satisfaction. “But not for long.”
I’d heard the British government often granted parole to captured enemy officers, while the regular soldiers remained locked up in prisons and aboard floating hulks, but I’d never actually encountered any of those men. Thurlton was not a parole town, and one of the stipulations of an officer’s conditional release was that he remain in the village he was assigned to. His sense of gentlemanly honor was supposed to keep him in place.
It was ridiculous.
How could anyone expect these men to not try to escape? To not attempt to return home to their loved ones? If, rather than dying, my brother had been taken as prisoner and then granted parole somewhere in France, I would have expected him to make every effort to return to England. I would have anticipated that he place his obligations to king and country and family above honoring a promise made to some foreign government.
So the fact that Colonel Junot was attempting to return to France did not surprise or unsettle me so much as the implication that I was being ordered to help him do so.
“Escort him…?”
“Yes, Miss Winterton,” Reynard replied very slowly, clearly savoring my horrified expression. “Some of those gems you delivered. They were payment from Colonel Junot’s family for services to be rendered. He is going to pose as your lady’s maid and accompany you on your voyage to visit a sick family member in Amsterdam.”
I paused to consider his words. “But we won’t be going to Amsterdam,” I guessed.
<
br /> “Perhaps a storm blows your ship off course.” He arched his eyebrows. “Perhaps you find yourself forced to land a little further west.”
In France. In the company of smugglers and a prisoner of war. It was beyond scandalous. It was blatant treason.
My mind whirled with all of the implications. Maybe I’d known about the letters I’d passed to Captain Haywood; maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I’d been threatened or manipulated by rogues and blackguards. But in this instance, there could be no doubt: I would be aiding an enemy of the British government to flee the country and return to France, where he would undoubtedly resume his command in their army and take up arms again, to kill and command others to kill British soldiers. Soldiers like my brother Erik.
That realization made my body go cold.
How could I possibly do such a thing? How could I even consider it? I looked to the other men in the room. Why didn’t one of them put a stop to this? Why did they remain silent?
Robert had closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his temple, as if to block me from his sight. Harry at least met my gaze, standing sullenly with his arms crossed as he watched my struggle. But it was to Jack that my eyes looked longest, hoping for some assistance, some sign that at least he sympathized, but even he seemed determined not to interfere. He clamped his mouth shut and stared at me as if I was no one.
I tightened my hands into fists and fumbled for some excuse to stop this awful plot. “Colonel Junot will never pass for a woman,” I protested. “He’s much too tall. And his facial hair…”
“Can be shaved.” Reynard glanced at the Frenchman. “He will slouch. And once we drown him in a shapeless garment with some strategic padding… “ His gaze returned to me, scouring my figure once again. “And provide those revenue mongrels with a worthy distraction, he shall waltz right past.”
“I don’t think it’ll be tha’ easy,” Jack murmured, finally speaking up.
Reynard shrugged one shoulder carelessly, unimpressed with his opinion. “It will suffice. You will make it suffice.”
“But how will I return?” I persisted. “On the same boat? What if the revenue men notice my lady’s maid is no longer with me?”
“Do not worry. Arrangements have been made.”
“What arrangements?”
“For a lady’s maid.”
I blinked. “But who…”
He yawned aloud and flicked his hand as if to shoo a gnat. “Those details shall be discussed later.”
I scowled, wanting to address them now. Who would be accompanying me back to England? Not a real lady’s maid, surely? A smuggler in disguise? A French spy?
Or perhaps it would be a British prisoner of war? Maybe Reynard wasn’t taking any sides in this contest. Maybe he was only interested in the profits.
It would clarify some of my confusion. After all, much of the Comte de Reynard’s family had been killed during the revolution, and the wealth and property that could not be carried with them as they fled France had been either confiscated or destroyed. They had been left with their limited holdings here in England and a hollow title. If the ancien régime was restored and a king returned to the throne of France, he had some chance of regaining at least a portion of his former inheritance. So why would Reynard help the revolutionaries who had taken so much from him by smuggling information back and forth across the channel and assisting prisoners of war to escape?
Unless he was only motivated by greed. That would fit my assessment of his character thus far more than some hidden devotion to home and country. Reynard seemed loyal only to himself. The rest of us were pawns to be manipulated and moved around his chessboard.
And I’d unwittingly stumbled into his game. The only question that remained was whether I was yet another piece…or an opponent. Would I allow myself to be pushed about like Jack and Robert, or push back when the time was right?
Reynard rose languidly to his feet. “Before we discuss anything further, we have a more pressing matter to deal with.” He straightened his cuffs as he crossed the room toward where I still stood near the door. His eyes fixed on the mirror hanging on the wall beyond my shoulder as he shrugged his shoulders in his fashionably close-fitting deep blue frockcoat, preening like a bird. “A matter of discretion. Of…reliance.”
When his hand shot out to wrap around my throat, I barely had time to react. He yanked me closer, cutting off some of my breath, and turned his head to stare angrily into my eyes. “Now, Miss Winterton. Did you tell anyone about Greybar twenty-three?”
My heart pounded in my chest and my gaze flicked unbidden toward Jack.
Reynard squeezed harder and I gasped, trying to draw breath.
“Do not even think of lying,” he bit out.
My mouth worked, but I could not make a sound until he slowly eased the pressure around my throat. I inhaled as deeply as I could, trying to calm the fear and panic rampaging through me, threatening to block all rational thought.
As I struggled to form words, Reynard’s eyes flicked to the mirror on the wall behind me. “Do not even think it,” he told one of the men in the reflection.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jack retreat back a step to resume his position beside Harry.
Reynard fastened his hard gaze on me again. “Who?” he snapped, shaking me.
“Captain Haywood. And…” My mind raced. What if I shouldn’t have shared it with Jack? What would happen to him?
Should I lie? Would Reynard know?
But I could tell that Reynard expected me to utter another name, and if I didn’t the results would not be kind. Ultimately there was no other name I could give him.
“And Jack,” I admitted softly, praying I had not just placed him in further danger.
Reynard’s hand eased another fraction, and I realized he’d been anticipating that very name.
“He was part of the crew. I thought he already knew,” I added, trying to rationalize my telling him.
He didn’t respond to that comment, but continued to search my face. His thumb ran back and forth over the vein at the side of my neck. He must have been able to feel how fast my pulse was pounding. “No one else?”
I tried to shake my head, but his hand prevented me from making such a movement. “No one.”
His eyes narrowed as if weighing the truth of my words, and then his mouth curled into a vicious smile. “Good,” he leaned closer to murmur, never taking his eyes off me, even when he pressed a swift, hard kiss to my lips.
Then just as quickly, he pushed me away, making me stumble back into the wood of the door. I lifted my hand to my throat, feeling the rise and fall of my chest as Reynard returned to his seat on the settee. Still dazed by what had just happened, my gaze lifted to the men standing across the room. I knew better than to look to Robert for any comfort, and Harry had never liked me, but I sought some reassurance from Jack. Instead, his eyes remained trained on the wood above my head, never wavering. My heart squeezed in my chest, and the pain was worse than anything Reynard had inflicted.
“You may go, Miss Winterton,” Reynard declared without even looking at me. “We’ll expect your return tomorrow after midday.”
His cold dismissal barely penetrated the shock still holding me almost immobile, but somehow I managed to twist the door handle and turn to go. I closed the door carefully behind me and crossed Robert’s study. Then without conscious thought, my feet led me out of the house and down the hill into the marsh. All I knew was that I had to get far, far away from what had just happened to me. Away from Robert’s cowardice. Away from Jack’s cold stare.
I don’t know how long I walked that way, unmindful of my surroundings, but somewhere in the midst of the fens a voice calling my name suddenly penetrated the haze of my thoughts. I stumbled to a halt and turned to see Kate hurrying after me, her skirts fisted in her hands. She panted for breath as she opened her mouth to speak, but then her gaze dipped to my throat and her eyes widened. I lifted my hand to touch the marks that Reynard must have left behi
nd, wondering almost idly if they were pink and red or black and blue.
“Oh, Ella,” Kate murmured, reaching her hand out as if to touch them herself, but then she grasped my shoulder instead.
I let her pull me into her arms, reluctantly at first, and then more eagerly as I began to tremble and a whimper escaped my throat. I clung to her and wept as the waves of remembered terror at Reynard’s actions and the heartache of Jack’s callousness swept over me.
I’d never been treated in such a way, never been so violently handled or threatened, and it shook me to my core, especially knowing none of the other men in the room had done anything to stop it. It seemed Jack had started to, but then he’d backed away, cowed by Reynard’s rebuke. What if Reynard had done more? What if he’d truly begun to strangle me in earnest? Would they have stood by and let him murder me?
I had trusted Jack. Had confided in him what I couldn’t confide in others, had leaned on him when I couldn’t stand on my own. But today there had been no warmth in his gaze when he looked at me, no defiance when he witnessed how Reynard had treated me. How could I care for such a man? How could I rely on him when he would not protect me from such ill treatment?
I’d wanted to believe he was honorable in his own way. I’d wanted to see the good in him. But the truth was that he was just as much of a coward as Robert or any of the other men, blackmailed and ordered about by Reynard, happy to line their pockets for their crimes. It was one thing when I thought they were merely smuggling silk and brandy and perfume. Those actions were illegal, but relatively harmless. However, passing sensitive information to the enemy and trafficking in prisoners of war were entirely different matters that were not only disgraceful, but also treasonous. The fact that Jack had not spoken up or put a stop to it said much about his character, much that I had not wanted to believe. But when faced with Colonel Junot and the plan they proposed I take part in, I could no longer pretend. Jack was as much a criminal and a scoundrel as the rest of them.
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