The Saint

by Madeline Hunter

  “It was not weakness that you took advantage of, but trust and affection. Why didn’t you make it complete? You knew about Bianca and me, Witherby. Why didn’t I get a blackmail note too? Why this elaborate game to bring me here?”

  “It would have been just like you to take the fall, Laclere. Or worse, use it to find us out. I have known for months that you were looking for us. Your sister told me. Oh, she does not know the meaning of your absences, but I saw what you were up to when she described your frequent journeys and your deep interest in Milton’s life. I knew it was just a matter of time. And that drama with the earl and Hampton—eventually you would remember that one other person knew Glasbury’s secret. Your sister.” He lifted the pistol off the mantel. “You really should have left it alone.”

  Vergil watched those fingers close on the weapon. “The accidents at Laclere Park. It was not Nigel trying to kill Bianca, but the two of you trying to kill me, wasn’t it?”

  Bianca’s head snapped around. She looked at Witherby and Mrs. Gaston with shock. Vergil felt the chill of fear shake her.

  Nigel’s eyes widened. “You thought I was trying to kill my cousin?”

  “Do not pretend that you do not have it in you,” Bianca said softly.

  For some reason, that checked Nigel’s indignation. His face flushed and he averted his gaze from her.

  “It entered my mind,” Vergil said. “However, if Mrs. Gaston was visiting that day that Bianca and I went to see your uncle’s effects, I think it is safe to say that the shots that missed us came from her.”

  Nigel turned in horror to Mrs. Gaston. “You said that you were in the park when I found you gone on my return. That you had slipped out so they wouldn’t find you in the house.”

  “Laclere is guessing, Nigel. He is making accusations without basis.”

  “The rock fall, that was you, Witherby,” Vergil said. “You had just arrived that morning. You saw me following Bianca, and followed me yourself.”

  “You were getting too close, Laclere. We learned that you had taken Milton’s place in Manchester. Eventually you would learn about the visit to Mr. Thomas. I did not make the choice easily.” He gestured with the pistol. “Nor do I make this choice easily, either. However, I see no alternative. I think we will all take a walk now. The sea is beautiful this time of day.”

  Bianca subtly cringed. Nigel went white. Vergil gazed at that pistol, and at the tight resolve on the face of a man he had trusted as a friend.

  “Witherby, I did not come to France alone.”

  “You came here alone.”

  “I am ahead of the others by a half hour, no more. The carriage must stay on the roads, while I rode cross-country. In minutes the others will be here. Even if they are delayed and you succeed in forcing us off that cliff and getting away, they know about Mrs. Gaston already, and will soon learn about you.”

  “You are bluffing. You would never risk having anyone else learn about your brother, or about you and your ward.”

  “I can trust the men I told.”

  Witherby gestured more distinctly toward the door with the pistol. “If what you say is true, I have nothing to lose. I will take my chances. Let us go. You, too, Nigel.”

  Mrs. Gaston began to rise.

  “No,” Witherby said. “You stay here.”

  Turning Bianca under his arm, Vergil followed Nigel out of the cottage. Witherby and the pistol hovered at their side.

  “It was her idea, wasn’t it?” Vergil asked, glancing back to where Mrs. Gaston sat on her chair.

  “Not really. It was a game at first. When it worked with the first one, when this money just appeared so easily—it wasn’t hard at all. The wonder is that it doesn’t happen all the time. All those secrets that half the world already suspects but pretends they don’t—hell, Lord Fairhall wasn’t even very discreet about his taste for little girls.”

  “Are you her lover, along with Nigel?”

  Witherby shook his head. “My interest in your sister was not a feint, Laclere. Mrs. Gaston and I are only friends, and business associates.”

  They approached the barren orchard. The tree branches made a web of snarled lines against the sky. Vergil looked at Bianca’s face. She was being brave, but her eyes glistened with worry and fear.

  He tightened his hold in reassurance, and stretched his hearing for the sounds of a carriage.

  He heard nothing but the close roar of the surf.

  “How did you know about my brother, Witherby?”

  “His reclusiveness. His lack of marriage, despite being a viscount. It is a common pattern. No doubt many others suspected. As for Manchester, and Mr. Clark, that was an accident. I saw him entering a bookseller almost two years ago, and then leaving with a letter. I merely asked in the shop for the name of the man who had just left, and learned it was Mr. Clark. A pound procured the information that his letters came from Manchester. Well, it was a delicious mystery, and I had to look into it. Imagine my shock at learning how he had debased your family with that mill and that lover.”

  “And your friendship with me counted for nothing as you exploited that.”

  Witherby’s face flushed. “I did you a favor. You got the title, after all.”

  “I did not want the title, least of all at such a cost.”

  Nigel, pacing ahead of them, suddenly halted in his steps and looked east.

  “Thank God,” he muttered.

  Vergil and Bianca turned. The speck of a carriage rolled along the road, growing larger by the instant.

  Witherby tensed beside them. For an instant his eyes went wild with panic. Then he sighed deeply and composed himself. The pistol fell, to hang limply from his arm by his side.

  “Who is it?” he asked quietly in the voice of a man needing to know what he faced. It was the request of one friend to another, so that preparations could be made.

  “Hampton and Burchard. St. John made one of his ships available to bring us over, so he may be with them.” Vergil glanced to the cottage, where Mrs. Gaston remained. “I expect that my brother also insisted on riding along, although I suggested he remain in Calais.”

  “Almost the entire Dueling Society, then.”

  Not only the Dueling Society. As the carriage rolled up beside the cottage, it was clear that Dante sat up with the coachman because the carriage was full. After Hampton and Burchard and St. John stepped out, a man remained inside, his hook-nosed profile backlit by the far-open window.

  The Dueling Society did not react much to seeing Witherby. Vergil could read them reaching the necessary conclusions, however, and saw the dismay in their eyes.

  Adrian walked over and removed the pistol from Witherby’s hand. “You will not be needing this just yet. If you choose pistols, you can have it back then.”

  Bianca stiffened under Vergil’s embrace. She looked up into his eyes with a worried expression that made his heart clench.

  Witherby shook his head. “I will only do it that way if you allow Mrs. Gaston to leave first. Otherwise there will be a trial and all of it will come out, Laclere. Your brother, the earl—all of it, I swear.”

  Dante overheard. He strode forward with flaming eyes. “She does not go free, Vergil.”

  Vergil released Bianca and took him aside. “If she goes back to England, if we swear the evidence we have against them—not only our brother’s name will be ruined, but those of other men. Your name will come up too. I can’t allow it, and if her freedom is the price of silence, I will pay it.”

  “What about what I am willing to pay? I don’t see this as only your decision.”

  “If you think about it, it will be your decision as well.”

  Dante’s expression turned hard. “Then let me stand to him. It is my place to do so.”

  “It is not yours any more than it is Pen’s.”

  “I’ll be damned if it isn’t.”

  “Dante, you are not a good shot, and if he chooses sabres you will have no chance at all. He will kill you.”

&nb
sp; “He may kill you.”

  Vergil looked back at Witherby, whose face had gone impassive. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Vergil nodded to Adrian, who entered the cottage. It took him a while to explain things to Mrs. Gaston, and Vergil wondered just what Burchard was saying to her. When they emerged, her face was flushed and Adrian’s dark eyes glowed.

  Wellington climbed out of the coach, and subjected Mrs. Gaston to a scornful examination. “I trust that I will not see you again in England, madame.”

  She turned even more red.

  The Iron Duke gestured to the road. “I recommend that you head west. If I catch up with you on the road later, I cannot promise to behave as a gentleman.”

  Composing herself and assuming a disdainful expression, Mrs. Gaston walked toward the stable where Nigel’s hired coach waited. She did not look back.

  Wellington turned his attention on Witherby and became the image of barely contained rage. “Tell him to choose his weapons.”

  Alarmed, Adrian strode over to him and gestured for Vergil to come as well.

  “You must not,” Vergil said. “If you do, what reason will you give? It will only feed the flames of rumor about the Foreign Minister.”

  “Damn it, man—what reason will you give?”

  “My sister’s honor.”

  “Hell, no one will believe that.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “It must not be you, Your Grace,” Adrian said forcefully. “Any of us, but not you.”

  “Not any of us, Adrian. Me.” Vergil said.

  Wellington narrowed his eyes on Witherby in disgust. “If you fail, Laclere, he is mine.”

  St. John had been speaking to Witherby. He came toward them. “Sabres,” he said. He reached into the carriage and retrieved two swords.

  Vergil returned to Dante. “I want you to stay here with Bianca, so she is not alone. Will you do that for me?”

  “Damn it, Verg—”

  “I ask for my sake, Dante. Not yours.”

  He did not actually agree, but he did not refuse, either. The others began walking toward the orchard. Nigel, looking shaken, humiliated, and relieved, sought the sanctuary of the cottage.

  Wellington, Witherby, and the Dueling Society disappeared into the trees. Twenty paces away Bianca stood rod straight.

  Forcing containment on the emotions trying to submerge his sense of justice and duty, Vergil opened his arms.

  She ran to his embrace.

  “Do not say anything,” she whispered, stretching up to his kiss. “Nothing. I will not lose you today. My heart knows it.”

  Those big blue eyes could create a world that existed only for them. He savored the bliss that she could inspire in him. “I must speak. I must tell you how much I love you, Bianca.”

  “You have told me often before, Laclere, in ways more meaningful than words.”

  “I find myself thinking that if I die today, loving you will have been the best thing in my life. So it is important to me that you know that I love you, very clearly. I would never want you to wonder.”

  Her lids lowered and she flushed. “As you wondered?” she whispered.

  He kissed each lid and her cheek, and held her face so his lips could taste hers. “A man’s pride can be a stupid thing. My heart has always understood you. I just did not want to accept what it meant for me, that is all.”

  He held her to his body, trying to absorb her into his essence. He had not had time to be grateful she was safe, and relief now washed through him, shaking his soul.

  She looked at him with an expression of love and trust that obscured the danger waiting.

  “Go inside with Dante, Bianca.”

  He walked away, but she did not go into the cottage. At the edge of the orchard he looked back and saw her still outside, watching him.

  From the threshold to the cottage, Dante watched as well.

  Vergil’s gaze swept the cliff line and the gray void of the ocean beyond. There was something elemental about nature’s forces on the coast. The violent abstractness of the sea, the bleakness of the cliffs and beaches—civilization ended where that water began, and man and his rules simply disappeared in a wave.

  He joined the others. Witherby already held his sabre, and Hampton walked over to give Vergil the other one and take his coat.

  “An appropriate setting,” Hampton said quietly.

  “Yes, as places for dying go, a seacoast is among the best.”

  Hampton gave one of his rare smiles. “I always thought so.”

  St. John came up alongside him. “We seem destined to assist each other in unpleasant matters, Laclere.”

  “It would appear so.”

  “The chevalier is not here, so it is left to me to remind you of his first lesson. A clear head, and cold blood. The mind must rule, not the heart.”

  Vergil doubted his mind would rule entirely. The justice of this course did not make it easy, and the man waiting was not a stranger, nor completely evil.

  Hampton and St. John stood aside. Under the watchful gaze of Wellington and the Dueling Society, Vergil walked over to Cornell Witherby.

  “Hell of a thing,” Witherby said. “To have practiced together all these years, and to now find ourselves doing it for real with each other.”

  Vergil suddenly saw all those years. His mind pictured Witherby at university, always ready with a joke and indifferent to his studies. He saw Witherby excited when his first poem was published, and bringing life and humor to the meetings of the Dueling Society.

  More recent memories flashed through his head too—those of Penelope, happy for the first time in years because of this man.

  “You can take comfort in knowing that even if I win, I also lose,” Vergil said. “I will be the one who has to return to London and tell my sister that I killed the man she loves.”

  Witherby’s expression fell. In the pure, diffused light of the overcast day, he looked very young and sad. “Let us be done with this, Laclere,” he said softly. “There is nothing else for it.”

  They saluted with their sabres and the roar of the surf entered Vergil’s head.

  “You aren’t going to obey him and wait here, are you?” Dante asked as he strolled toward her.

  Bianca watched the spot where Vergil had disappeared into the orchard. “No, I am not going to obey him.”

  “Of course not. No reason for you to start now, is there? At least your willfulness spares me from playing nursemaid.” Dante passed her and headed into the trees. “Come on, then.”

  They walked quickly through the orchard. Halfway down its path, Bianca thought she heard the faint sounds of metal on metal. She and Dante broke into a run at the same time.

  They emerged onto the field of clover. Up on the rise, near the cliff’s edge, the tiny dark spots of six men could be seen against the gray sky. Specks of light flickered off the slashing sabres.

  Dante took her hand as they stumbled across the field. She could not take her eyes off those dark spots. Four of them stood like statues, stoic witnesses to the other two’s dance of death.

  “Laclere is very good at this, isn’t he?” she said. “Please tell me he is an expert swordsman, Dante.”

  “He is better with pistols.”

  She had never seen Dante so serious. So concerned. He did not look like a man who assumed his brother would win this duel. His expression sapped her confidence and fear took its place.

  She stared desperately at the distant drama and ran faster, not knowing what she rushed toward. She doubted her mere presence could stop it now.

  Worse, it might even distract Vergil.

  That thought made her halt abruptly in the middle of the field. She jerked her hand from Dante’s. “You go. I will stay here. He does not want me there for a reason.”

  Dante nodded as he turned to continue. Suddenly he stopped too. His gaze locked on the figures moving against the sky. Vergil and Witherby’s expressions could not be seen, but the progress of the duel was clear
.

  “He does not want me there, either,” Dante said. “We will wait here together.”

  He backed up and stood beside her. Shoulder to shoulder, down in the field that had ceased to exist to the men on the cliff, they watched the silent, horrible contest.

  Suddenly two forms became one. Bianca’s heart stopped and her breath left her. She waited, numb with shock, for one man to drop to the ground.

  Beside her Dante ceased breathing too. Their hands instinctively sought each other’s, and their fingers entwined with all the strength of their shared fear.

  Vergil and Witherby separated. One did not drop. Instead Witherby just stood there, as still as the sentries witnessing this ancient form of judgment.

  Suddenly he was gone, and only five men stood on the cliff path.

  “Jesus,” Dante muttered.

  It sounded more like a prayer of gratitude than a curse.

  chapter 22

  He showed some honor in the end,” Wellington said.

  He was the first to speak after the silent group made their way back to the cottage.

  Vergil held Bianca in his arms, not giving a damn who saw. None of that mattered now. He needed to feel her warmth and vitality and the world could go to hell if it objected.

  None of the world surrounding them in the cottage did.

  “I will send boats out from Cherbourg,” St. John said. “If his body is found, there will be no wounds from weapons. We can say it was an accident, that he fell from the cliff. No one will know that there was a duel under way.”

  Vergil pressed his lips to Bianca’s silken hair as he tightened his embrace. He closed his eyes and saw Witherby on the cliff.

  The man had lowered his weapon and his defense deliberately, and exposed himself to death.

  Vergil had not pressed the advantage. He had not lunged.

  He doubted he would ever forget the look in his friend’s eyes as they slowly met the gazes of the witnesses, and then Vergil’s own. One last sad smile, and Witherby had stepped back, until his boot landed on nothing but air.

  “One person will have to know,” Vergil said, relaxing his embrace of Bianca, but not letting her go. “I must speak with Pen. I will not live with a lie between us.”