Honour's Choice

by Joan Vincent

  “Get them. At once,” Donatien ordered. He rose and went to light the brace of candles on the mantle.

  The roused men cursed fluidly in French as they stumbled down the stairs. One look at their master straightened them to attention. “The time of the shipment is changed?” asked Letu in French.

  “Non,” Donatien answered. He poured a drink from a bottle of wine taken from beneath the table beside the only comfortable chair in the room. “Someone followed me.”

  Gano rubbed the back of his hand across the stubble of his beard. “Where is he now?”

  Donatien placed the branch of candles on a table before the only window in the room. “He will be here very soon.”

  The pair bowed. Letu crept into the back room while Gano slipped into the room that held the front door.

  “Petit, my slippers,” Donatien ordered in English. He swirled his glass’s contents, breathed in the bouquet.

  The dwarf struggled to remove the master’s boots.

  “Do your bones tell you it will rain on the morrow?”

  Petit raised his large head, his watery eyes wide with question. “Oui.” A slap silenced him. He gulped, stared at the reprimand in the master’s eyes. “Y—yes,” he lisped in English and feverishly tugged on the slippers.

  With a wave of a white hand, Donatien said, “Go.”

  Petit bowed and back away.

  Donatien ran a long-nailed finger contemplatively around the rim of his wine glass. “And the last shall be first,” he murmured with a brittle sneer. He leaned back and waited.

  When the back door slammed open some time later Gano’s curses announced success. Letu slunk into the chamber where Donatien waited, a crushed beaver hat in his hand. His nose had been bloodied and his jerkin torn.

  Gano plodded in bent over under the weight of a great-coated figure. With a curse he half-threw, half-dropped his burden in front of his master. When he straightened, the red swelling along one jaw and his right eye bespoke an embarrassing difficulty in securing their prisoner.

  The portly man steepled long white fingers and studied the figure at his feet. Blood beaded a fine line around the man’s throat—Letu’s fine hand. The planes and angles of the lean face were very familiar.

  “Make him comfortable in the cellar,” he sneered.

  Chapter Two

  Sussex March 18, 1809 Saturday

  Donatien tossed his gloves and hat into Petit’s waiting hands and let his greatcoat fall to the floor. “Bring a glass of wine. I shall eat after I visit with our guest.”

  “Gano is with him, monseigneur,” Petit answered in French. He scooped the wool coat off the floor and watched the portly gentleman smooth the few blond strands of hair across his head.

  Donatien took the proffered wine and went to the cellar. The glow of a lantern hung from a beam lit his way down the stairs. At a flick of his head Gano bounded up them.

  Standing outside the lantern’s circle of light, George studied the young man whose hands were shackled above his head with his buttocks barely touching the dirt floor. He had had the prisoner stripped of all but his shirt and riding breeches to enhance the discomfort of the March cold in the dank cellar.

  Hadleigh’s head lay back against the wall. His angular features were sharper from two days with little food. His prisoner assessed him with defiance. With an expertise that had helped him survive, that gave him success, Donatien saw a minute flicker of something else. Something he could use to find out why Tarrant followed him and if the man knew anything about the gold.

  A hand to his false paunch, Donatien sauntered closer. He halted at the man’s side to force him to strain arms and neck to turn and look up at him. A wry smile twisted the Frenchman’s lips when Hadleigh did not attempt to do so. He ran the tip of a sculpted nail below the edge of the iron manacle that cut into the man’s wrist.

  When a tremor shook the wrist, Donatien purred, “Good evening, Mr. Tarrant. Are you quite comfortable?” he asked with exquisite concern. His ironic chuckle broke the silence.

  Ambling back to the circle of light, Donatien removed the lantern from its hook. Turning, he cocked it so its shield sent the light into Tarrant’s eyes. As his captive turned from it, Donatien walked to within inches of Hadleigh’s bare feet.

  “How unfortunate,” he sighed. Congealed blood stood in soldier straight lines down the soles of Tarrant’s feet. More blood pooled beneath them.

  Donatien set the toe of his polished boot atop the makeshift wooden stock. “Such neat, straight, red lines.” He enunciated each word with slow perceptive sarcasm, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere. He smiled and sipped his wine. “I do wish you could see them. Marvel at them as I do.”

  Donatien crouched at the feet, met Hadleigh’s gaze. His smile grew wider, broader. He sipped wine and swirled it in his mouth while he raised the lantern closer to his prisoner’s face.

  “Letu takes great pride in his work, Mr. Tarrant. I am, at times, hard pressed to keep him in check.”

  Hadleigh met George’s dark-eyed gaze; saw nothing of life as he knew it. He closed his eyes to ward off the lantern’s glare. “Th—thank you—” he rasped, and then swallowed, trying to moisten his dry mouth. “Thank you for the warmth,” he continued with a touch of bravado. “It is ... a bit cool down here. Perfect for blaps lethifera.” He arched a brow; waited to see if the reference to the noxious cellar beetle was understood.

  A cold peel of spittle-ladened laughter broadsided his face. Hadleigh flicked his tongue across his lips and wondered at the tang of evergreen. He narrowed his eyes trying to memorize this Englishman’s features. The eyes did not match the squire’s appearance. Who was this man? “Qui étés vous?” Hadleigh asked.

  Donatien’s lips thinned to a fine line. “What is this gibberish? Mayhaps you will speak the King’s English if Letu visits you.” He twisted his lips into the semblance of a smile.

  “I shall permit him to practice his art every—” Donatien drew one of his sculpted nails along Hadleigh’s jaw, “ah—hour. Mayhaps more frequently, perhaps less.”

  Rising, Donatien shrugged negligently. “Think about whether he will come or not. About what he will do when he does. Reflect on how much time you have between his visits.” He chuckled and returned the lantern to its hook. “Every hour ... mayhaps less.”

  His soft haunting chuckle floated behind him as he went up the stairs. It slithered into Hadleigh’s mind. He fought the urge to strain against the irons on his wrists and the crude wooden stocks that held his ankles.

  In its place he prodded forth a memory of a day when fear had not won. It had been a cold January day when his uncle, the Earl of Tretain had come to him at Eton. The earl told him of the coaching accident. His mother and father were dead. Sorrow and fear had almost overwhelmed Hadleigh. In the midst of paralyzing emotions the hawk-visaged earl had comforted him, told him not to worry. Tretain’s estate, Trees, became home.

  Tarrant managed a smile despite his pain. That first summer at Trees the eight-year-old Baron de la Croix had welcomed him with the charm to which no one had yet proven impervious. An orphan himself, André had broken through Hadleigh’s reserve as no one else ever had.

  Awed by the younger boy’s tales of his adventures with Lady Tretain—Tante Juliane to André—who had rescued the baron and his sister from France at the beginning of the Revolution, he recalled their comfort now. Then Hadleigh recalled the scar on his left wrist. André had had him swear an oath and sign his name in blood before telling even one of the tales.

  Hadleigh focused on his left wrist on that long ago day; he pictured the shiny blade poised above it. He could see André’s face as he waited to begin the story of how Lord and Lady Tretain had really met, married, and thwarted French abductors.

  * * *

  March 25th Saturday

  “You are certain of these men?” Donatien asked Gano.

  “Oui,” he grinned. “I knew it would not matter what pay I promised.” He patted the ornate dagger in
a sheath strapped to his side. “Ce poignard —this dagger—will satisfy their demands as it did those of Monseigneur le Duc de Veryl.”

  A sharp snap froze Petit in place. “Monseigneur, you wish me to bring a stool to sit on while you converse with M. Tarrant?” he babbled nervously. “I am certain he will speak with you this time. He will tell you what you want to know.”

  Donatien stared at the dagger’s ornate handle.

  Petit anxiously looked at his master’s upraised hand. “Did you not tell me there is a need for more horses, monseigneur?”

  No one in the room breathed. The master had killed too many when in this strange mood.

  “Do we need more beasts to carry the gold?” Letu asked loudly. When Gano glanced his way, he crooked one of his fingers toward the monseigneur.

  Gano immediately dropped to his knees before Donatien and touched his forehead to the floor.

  The wild eyes stared down at him, then moved to Letu. “Yes. We need ten more. We travel tomorrow. Make certain all is in readiness.”

  Letu fingered his forelock. “As you say, monseigneur.”

  “Petit.”

  The dwarf’s stubby fingers shook as he poured a half glass of his master’s precious elixir. He held up the small tray and when Donatien took the glass, drew a breath. When his master headed for the basement, Petit grabbed the stool and scurried after him. On the wall he saw the shadow of Letu’s hand rise to strike Gano and fervently thanked God that was all that had answered the mention of the Duc de Veryl.

  Scampering past Donatien, Petit thrust the stool down a short distance in front of Tarrant. He took care not to look at the prisoner’s feet. At a flick of his master’s hand he bowed deeply and scurried back to the foot of the stairs.

  “So impolite, Mr. Tarrant, to fail to greet a visitor.” Donatien threw back his frock coat’s tails and sat, his knees incongruously higher than his waist. He gazed at the young man’s bowed head, but remembering the Duc de Veryl, saw himself.

  Hadleigh trembled but raised his head until his eyes encountered his tormentor’s wine glass. Mr. George indeed.

  “Petit, fetch Mr. Tarrant’s greatcoat,” Donatien ordered. He followed his prisoner’s gaze to his glass.

  “What do think, sir? Do you wish to taste this special fruit of the grape?” He cocked his head, then leaned his forearms on his knees and chuckled. “It would be such a waste to fling it in my face.”

  At Petit’s return, he gestured the dwarf to cover Hadleigh with the coat. “See how gentle my servant is, sir? Yes, Petit, tuck it closely under his chin.

  “Here,” Donatien held out his glass. “Let him drink.”

  Hadleigh clenched his jaw.

  “Drink, monsieur, please,” begged Petit in a harsh whisper.

  Startled by the genuine plea, Tarrant sucked in a portion. He closed his mouth, rolled the cool liquid with a juniper tang from side to side, and swallowed.

  “You have been taught to savour wine, Mr. Tarrant. And you know horseflesh.” Donatien sighed heavily.

  “Your circumstance,” he waved languidly at Hadleigh’s feet, “recalls my youth.” Again he paused; a scene from the past veered to the fore from his memory.

  Watching him, Tarrant wondered if his captor were mad. The cold rough surface digging into his back and the painful cuts in his feet told him that was a foolish thought. An irrational hope.

  “Mr. Tarrant, who else has Lord Castlereagh sent?”

  The quietness of the question filled Hadleigh with sudden unreasonable fear even though Letu was not present. He clamped his teeth tightly together to hold back a moan.

  “Surely you do not mean to waste my time denying you know the Secretary?” Donatien bemoaned. “You do not, truly do not, wish to anger me. I dislike how anger alters me. I do not wish you to discover that,” he said, then sighed.

  “You have a choice.” A twisted grimace answered Hadleigh’s puzzlement. “Long ago I was in a place much like this. But I had no answer to give that would halt my torment. No choice.”

  “Who else comes, sir?” he asked, not unkindly.

  “Maggots and other French vermin,” Hadleigh sneered.

  “Mmmmm,” Donatien murmured. A smile played at the back of his eyes. “French vermin?” He gave a harsh chuckle. “George is not a French name. I am but an English squire.”

  Hadleigh saw him raise his hand. Spellbound, he watched the thumb move to the third finger and slide away. Once, twice, three times the fingers moved. He didn’t hear the snaps until Petit called for Letu.

  Steps on the stairs rang as Donatien stood. He tore the greatcoat from Tarrant. “I shall leave you to Letu’s kind ministrations, dear sir. You know how to stop him.”

  Stop him, thought Hadleigh as Letu squatted before his feet. He refused to look at the man; refused to see the knife. When it cut, a fiercer burning joined the mental writhing that he had, with great effort, managed to contain.

  Pain. Fear. Love. They were always found together, he realized with concise clarity. But their order? Their linkage? Was each to the other inevitable?

  Pain. It circled the wrists that were fastened above his head, traveled down his arms, and settled across his throat. It seared his feet.

  Fear. The spectre of continued torture danced before him.

  Love. Dear God, preserve me from betrayal, André.

  An eerie chuckle broke into Hadleigh’s thoughts. He blinked at the still incongruous sight of his bare feet in the crudely constructed stock. An insane desire to laugh bubbled up into his throat, awakened its soreness. Hadleigh flicked his tongue across paper dry lips.

  A swarthy hand, a match to the one holding the blade, grasped his toes; the sharp edge moved under his heel, slashed upwards.

  Hadleigh stared at the blood dripping from the knife. His stomach roiled. Do not let me betray him, he prayed.

  Pain fed the fear. Fed the prayer. Preyed on love.

  * * *

  Sussex, England April 1st

  Thunder and lightning battled in the driving rain as the seven men rode into the yard on the outskirts of Lewes late Saturday evening. Donatien, disguised as George, dismounted near the rear of the house while the other six, each leading a string of pack mules, continued to the stable.

  Once inside the rotund man divested his sopping outer garments. Striding into the next room, Donatien ran a finely manicured hand over his balding pate and smoothed down the few remaining strands of hair before he sat by a roaring fire. “Petit, get these boots off,” he commanded in French.

  The dwarf hurried clumsily to do his bidding.

  His slippers on, Donatien motioned Petit to fill the glass. Then he held it before him and studied the colour of the wine. “How fares my guest?”

  “Monsieur Tarrant has been silent,” said the dwarf, his large head bent over his large-knuckled hands.

  Rolling the wine gently around his mouth, Donatien swallowed and sighed contentedly. “It is a fine wine.”

  “Oui, monseigneur.”

  “We leave before dawn.” He looked up at sounds in the back room. A moue of distaste appeared when he saw the blood splattered trousers of the two men who entered. “Those in the stable will say no more of this night’s work?”

  “Non,” Letu answered with a maniacal snigger. “Shall I do the same to the man in the cellar, Monsieur George?”

  “Not yet, Letu. I will speak with him. You and Gano rest.” After they left the room, he rose.

  Petit spidered down the stairs careful to hold the brace of candles high to light the monseigneur’s way. He swallowed hard when rats scurried away from Tarrant’s shredded soles.

  When his prisoner did not raise his head, Donatien picked up a board at the foot of the stairs. He pulled it back and struck a hard blow against the soles of Tarrant’s feet.

  Hadleigh convulsed. He moaned, but refused to look up.

  “The thin red lines are now one, Mr. Tarrant,” Donatien purred. “How many other men seek information about the gold?”
>
  Coming down from the spasm of pain, Hadleigh raised his head. He let it fall back against the wall. He gazed with pain-dulled eyes at his tormentor, strove to even his ragged breathing. “I—am the—only—one. No—one—else,” he croaked.

  “Mr. Tarrant, surely you realize that if I know your name, I know much more?” When the prisoner did not take the bait Donatien again hit his feet with all his strength.

  “If you do not wish to die fastened to this wall, the rats gnawing on your feet, you will tell me what I wish to know.” Glancing with distaste at the board, he dropped it and motioned Petit to light his way back up the stairs.

  * * *

  Hurried footsteps and the murmur of voices roused Hadleigh. Knowing movement would release a flood of torment, he remained perfectly still. The urge to scream in rage, in agony, rose. He wrestled it back into its cage.

  You have but to call and he will come. Tell him what he wishes to know, a seductive voice whispered.

  Did I see George? Hadleigh wondered, dreams and reality now an inseparable melange. Did that bastard Letu come?

  Fear, a smothering cocoon, stole his breath. It compressed his chest. I will tell.

  I must not.

  “Monsieur Tarrant? Monsieur Tarrant!”

  The urgency in the dwarf’s voice opened Hadleigh’s eyes. Everything shimmered in a black haze.

  “We are to leave, monsieur. I have been sent to ask you if you will speak. But you must be silent, monsieur,” Petit insisted. “Make no sound or monseigneur will come. You do not wish him to come.”

  The little man reached inside his blouse and drew out a slim object. “I regret this is all I can do for you, monsieur.”

  Hadleigh watched the dwarf slip the leather thong attached to the object over his hand and around his wrist. Watched Petit slowly raise it. For a brief startled moment he realized the dwarf’s intent, then everything disappeared.