The Pirate Bride
Page 19
She smiled. Then she gave him a curt nod.
“Yes, no, and Maribel Cordoba.”
The breath went out of him. Spots appeared before his eyes. The pen fell from his hand and landed somewhere. The blank page in front of him remained pristine. No notes were needed.
“Repeat, please,” he managed.
“Yes, no, and Maribel Cordoba,” she said, and this time he saw it.
Saw the tilt to her nose and the gleam in her eye when she gave him an answer that she found to be quite clever. Saw the red color of her curls and the emerald color of her eyes.
“Maribel Cordoba.”
He hadn’t said those words in years. Eleven years. Saying them now felt wrong, as did seeing a grown woman in the place where a child had been.
“Yes,” she said. “And to be precise, I also am here in regard to my mother’s claim, and I did not participate in what has happened to your office. However, a word of warning. Your sister does have quite a temper, so you might think twice before you interfere with her romance. Was the fellow really not the right sort for her?”
“He seduced her into meeting in an open field near the river rather than courting her properly at her home, and when cornered he offered her up as someone who would pay his ransom. So I would say yes, he is not the right sort. But truly, you are Maribel Cordoba. The Maribel Cordoba from Spain?”
She gave him a sideways look. “Yes, but then you know that because my mother brought you money some two weeks ago, and she definitely would have mentioned that this was regarding an issue between the French and a citizen of Spain. Are you trying to hedge on this? Because I have brought a receipt.”
She handed him the paper, and he read it then pushed it back across the table toward her. “Look at the signature. That was signed by my brother Quinton. I was away two weeks ago.” He shook his head. “You are here, aren’t you? I never thought I would see you again, but here you are.”
Color rose in Maribel’s cheeks. She was lovely when she was angry, much more so than when she was a girl aboard his ship. How old must she be now? Two and twenty perhaps, possibly older.
“If this was not an urgent matter, I would leave and return with my grandfather. However, he is ill and cannot come himself. As I said, my mother is distraught and cannot be relied upon for her facts or, quite frankly, for her behavior. Thus, I am the only remaining member of the family with whom you can discuss this matter.” She viewed him primly. “You have seen the receipt. I wish a refund at once.”
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
Her gaze swept the length of him and then returned to his face. “I know you are a Valmont and you are apparently not Quinton. Your sister calls you Jean-Luc, so I will answer by saying I believe you are Jean-Luc Valmont.”
“Yes, I am,” he said slowly as he decided how to proceed.
It was apparent Maribel did not recognize him. He knew all the arguments against revealing his identity, and he could not disagree.
Gradually he became aware that she was speaking again. “So,” he heard her say as his focus returned to the woman seated before him, “I will expect to have the items listed on that receipt returned to me immediately.”
“I, well …” He shook his head in hopes that he could dislodge something appropriate to say. “Since my brother signed the receipt, he is the one who would have to verify what has been left with us, and he would be the one who would return it. Unfortunately, he is in Paris and not expected back until the end of the month.”
Yes. That ought to buy some time.
“That is unacceptable,” she said as she rose. “Your father is the man in charge of this endeavor. It says so on the sign beside the door. Marcel Valmont & Sons is what I read. So, since the son who took my grandfather’s money is unavailable, Marcel Valmont himself should easily be able to stand in his stead and handle the transaction.”
Jean-Luc stood and stuffed his shaking hands in the pockets of his coat. “Under normal circumstances I would agree. However, since I know nothing about this case, I will have to investigate further and—”
“Sir, excuse me.” Mr. Landry stood at the door. “Your next appointment has arrived. I put him in Mr. Quinton’s office. Shall I tell him you’ll be right in?”
Jean-Luc managed a nod before he turned his attention back to Maribel Cordoba. “I’m sorry. My next appointment is here.”
An appointment that certainly hadn’t been on his calendar this morning. But then, neither had meeting Maribel Cordoba again.
She gave him another of those looks he remembered from their time at sea. “I am leaving reluctantly, and only because you have made a decent case for rescheduling this appointment. I can see that you will need time to look over the transaction documents.”
“Thank you,” he said, hoping his relief did not sound so obvious in his voice.
“I will see you tomorrow, then. Same time.” She cast a glance around the room and then turned her attention back to him. “Although I would suggest we meet in your brother’s office. You seem extremely distracted, and I wonder if it is because of this mess. Do consider it, won’t you?”
Jean-Luc left the question unanswered, holding his breath until the redhead was safely outside the building. He was still staring at the closed door when Landry stuck his head into the office.
“Your next appointment, sir?”
“Oh,” he said, “I thought you were just trying to help me get rid of Miss Cordoba.” He straightened his jacket and walked over to Quinton’s office, throwing the door open as he stepped inside. “Good morning, Mr. Valmont.”
Maribel was nearly home when a carriage caught up with her. Gaby Valmont climbed out and hurried to fall into step beside her.
“I am so sorry for all the trouble I am sure I have caused you.” She stepped in front of Maribel. “Please let me make it up to you.”
“Don’t be silly,” Maribel said as she stopped to keep from running into her. “What makes you think you’ve caused me any trouble?”
She shrugged. “Maybe because I listened to the conversation and I know you didn’t get what you came for.”
“Oh. That.” She stepped around the Valmont girl and kept walking. “It was a simple matter of scheduling a meeting with the wrong Valmont. I’m sure he will read the documents and have my money for me tomorrow.”
“Yes, I hope so.” They walked in silence until Maribel reached her doorstep. “Would you like to come in?”
“Thank you,” she said, “but I don’t think your family would like to have a Valmont pay a visit right now.”
“Your mother and mine are close friends,” Maribel protested. “I see no trouble in it.”
“Perhaps, but I will decline all the same.” She paused. “I’m sorry your grandfather is ill. Has he been seen by a physician?”
“My mother is attending him,” she said. “But perhaps a physician would be a good idea.” She shook her head. “No, forget I said that. Until your brother refunds my mother’s payment, we have nothing with which to pay a physician.”
Gaby grinned. “What if I were to tell you that I know a physician who would come and see your grandfather at no cost? He’s a very nice man and often practices at the charity hospital so that he can be of help to those who cannot pay.”
“Who is he?”
“Well,” Gaby said, “he is sort of my brother, only not. We grew up as siblings from when I was very young. My parents adopted him.” She paused. “Sort of, but not.”
Maribel gave the matter a moment’s consideration. “Yes, then, please do send for him.”
She smiled. “I can do better than that. I was on my way to fetch him home for lunch. Come with me. As long as you’ve got something to feed him, I’m certain he will allow the detour to examine your grandfather.”
“I would be forever in his debt. And yours.” Maribel paused. “However, I have been away all morning and I’m sure my mother will be concerned by now as to what is taking me so long to return.”
“Thank you.” She lingered a moment and then gave her new friend a direct look. “Your brother,” she said, “can I expect him to be fair with me?”
She laughed. “Oh, Maribel, he is so fair it is ridiculous. In fact, my brother believes there isn’t a rule in existence that is worthy of being broken. If your business affairs require Jean-Luc to administer them fairly, then you have nothing to concern yourself with. Truly, I have never met a more exasperating and boring man.”
“Thank you,” she said as she made her good-byes and watched the Valmont carriage drive away.
Exasperating and boring.
Maribel let out a long breath. Funny, because in her imagination Jean-Luc Valmont was a pirate standing at the wheel of a gaff-rigged schooner, his hair tossed like the sea-green waves beneath the vessel and his giant of an African friend by his side.
He was a man who slid beneath the rules in a vessel that could escape even the fastest enemy. And he was absolutely anything other than boring.
Exasperating? That she could agree on, however.
Certainly Gaby’s version would be much easier to deal with. Why, then, could she not get her version—the imagined man that came from the same creative mind that Mother Superior warned against—out of her head?
“Is that you?” Mama called when Maribel closed the door behind her.
“It is,” she said, following her mother’s voice to find her in Abuelo’s library. The room looked to be in much the same condition as the office she had just left.
“What happened in here?” She reached down to gather up a pile of papers that had been carelessly strewn across the carpet. “Have we been robbed?”
“We have,” she said, “but not by thieves outside the family.”
Maribel set the documents on the desk and bent down to reach for more. “These are Abuelo’s, Mama. You shouldn’t be looking through them, and you certainly should not be tossing them about as if they have no meaning.”
“Well, they don’t have much meaning,” she said, clutching a paper with a seal that looked important. “Not to me, anyway. I despair of this, but I cannot make sense of why our family has all of this and yet we are destitute.”
“Destitute?” Maribel released the pages she held and watched them flutter to the ground then sat down behind the desk. “That is impossible, Mama. I will get the valuables you’ve put on deposit with the Valmonts for you. Then we will be fine.”
Mama sank onto a chair without bothering to clear off the papers that it held. “So you succeeded, then? What a relief.” Her smile rose quickly and then became laughter. “What a mess I have made and all for nothing. Here, help me pick all of this up before your grandfather surprises us by recuperating enough to walk down here and see this.”
Maribel opened her mouth to correct her mother. To tell her that while she had not yet had assurances from the Valmonts that the valuables would be returned, she certainly would get those assurances tomorrow.
Perhaps not certainly, but likely.
Instead, she closed her mouth, rested her palms on the desk, and watched her mother transform from frantic and distraught to practically dancing around the library as she set the room to rights again.
And she said nothing. She could not. Tomorrow she would keep that appointment with Jean-Luc Valmont. She would get all the things back that had been taken from the family, and then the Cordobas would no longer be destitute.
What she could not do was explain why Mama thought that the threat to their financial security came from within the family. Surely Abuelo had nothing but their best interests in mind.
It made no sense.
Neither did the ledger beneath her hand. Ignoring Mama altogether now, she allowed her gaze to slide down the list of entries, some with dates going back more than ten years.
Each entry was written in her grandfather’s familiar handwriting. The same handwriting that had been on the letter that brought her home to New Orleans. It was the name in the other column that stopped her cold.
“Is Abuelo awake?”
She shook her head. “He has not awakened since he fell. Is there something there that needs his attention?”
“Nothing that cannot wait until he is able to provide answers,” she said as she gathered up the ledger and stuffed it into Grandfather’s leather valise. “I must go out. Gabrielle Valmont is bringing a physician to look in on Abuelo. Would you make my apologies for not being here?” She took three steps toward the door and then turned around. “And the doctor will expect lunch. I promised Gaby,” she said. “Is that a problem?”
“Of course not,” Mama said, her smile still in place. “I will see to everything. You just go on and handle whatever it is. Nothing urgent, I hope.”
“As do I,” Maribel said just after the door closed behind her.
Antonio Cordoba sat behind the desk and looked up at Jean-Luc as if he owned the place. “Sit down, won’t you? I believe you and I have some business to discuss.”
Age had not been kind to the Spaniard, but he would have known the man anywhere. “So you lived after all,” he said through clenched jaw. “I suppose it’s true that you cannot drown the devil.”
The Spaniard laughed. “Well, not this one,” he said as he picked up Quinton’s jeweled letter opener, fashioned in the style of a small cutlass, and studied it. “Truly though, sit. Your refusal to accept my hospitality is most annoying.”
“Why are you here?”
“I am a man of business now, as are you.” He shrugged. “I find we have business in common. Namely, my father’s estate.”
“Your father is very much alive,” he said evenly as his mind struggled to reconcile what he now knew of this man with the death he thought he caused. “If I have business with any Cordoba, it is he and not you.”
“Oh, but it is me,” he said, pointing at Jean-Luc with the letter opener. “My father is an old man. He believed he was protecting my wife and child from me, so he made certain decisions on my behalf. Unfortunately, he has met with reduced circumstances of late. Most unfortunate.”
Protecting his wife and child.
Maribel.
Jean-Luc let out a long breath as he tamed the temper that was rising. Anger would never work against a man who thrived on that very emotion. Rather, he must be smart. Calm. The better man.
Help me, Lord.
“What do you want from me, Cordoba?” he managed.
“Much less than you want from me.” He dropped the letter opener and threaded his fingers together, resting them on the desktop. “I merely want what is in your vault. Had my wife not been so stupid as to bring the coins and jewels to you instead of keeping them at home as I instructed, none of this would have been necessary.”
“You are assuming I have possession of these things.”
“I know you do.” He shrugged. “I have seen the receipt.”
The same receipt Maribel had in her hands this morning. “Who else knows you are alive?”
He laughed. “Are you worried about my daughter? Trust me, Valmont, she is oblivious to my existence. My father insisted that be part of the terms of our agreement. So far I have seen no reason to break that agreement. And my wife? She has known all along, but Mary always did know how to look after herself. The old man had the money, so she joined him here in New Orleans and played the part of the grieving widow and hostess to the old man. Perhaps you’ve met her. She’s quite stunning.”
Had he met anyone named Cordoba, Jean-Luc would have remembered. As he avoided any social circle to which his parents might belong—by his own preference and against theirs—it was possible he had not seen her, although he might have, owing to the size of this city. Impossible, though, that they would have been introduced and he not recall.
“Make your point or leave,” he told the Spaniard.
“My point is you have items in your possession that were not meant to be he
re. They are mine, and my wife had no ownership in them or any right to distribute them elsewhere. You and I are both men of business. I say we complete this transaction and then go our separate ways.”
“You’re right, Cordoba,” he said. “We are men of business, but I conduct my business in a very different way than you do. I will look into your claim and speak with my father to make a decision on the ownership of anything that might be in our vaults.”
“I see.” He rose. “You know, the last time I saw you I tried to put a bullet through your heart.”
“I remember it well.”
Cordoba smiled. “I did not miss.”
“No,” Jean-Luc said slowly, “you did not. Nor were you successful.”
“I am older now, and wiser,” he said as he came around the desk to stand in front of Jean-Luc. “And I have eluded you and everyone else for eleven years,” he said as he walked to the door.
“Only because I was not looking for you,” Jean-Luc said to his retreating back.
Maribel set off walking with no idea exactly where she was going. Returning to the Valmont offices was one option, but so was going off by herself to look over what she had found and make a plan. She certainly hadn’t been able to think with Mama around, and it was unlikely she would fare better in Gaby’s brother’s presence.
So she set off toward the river and the stand of live oaks that had intrigued her since she arrived in the city. Thus far she had been practicing the art of being a proper lady and had not fallen back into her old ways.
Today, however, she would make an exception. For where better to be alone and read something as important as this ledger?
After looking around to be certain she had not been followed, Maribel tucked the strap of the valise over her shoulder and hiked up her skirt just enough to allow her to climb into a welcoming spot out of sight of anyone who might be passing by.
How long she remained in the tree, Maribel could not say. However, when the light began to fail her and her stomach pleaded for her to eat something, she folded the ledger back into the valise and rested her head against the oak tree’s gnarled trunk.