by Lois Greiman
Tilmont’s expression was somber.
“She never showed up for the wedding, and the ring hasn’t been seen since. I never met this paragon. But Alastar had commissioned a cameo.”
“And when I showed you Clarette’s portrait you assumed it was she.”
“I thought she was one and the same for some days after I reached your estate.”
“So the two women must be working together somehow,” Tilmont said.
“That’s my guess.”
“But why?”
“That question has crossed my mind.”
“And mine,” Tilmont said. “Let us go voice it.”
They glanced about, then made a circuit around the ballroom, going in opposite directions before meeting in the middle.
Gallagher’s stomach was cranked up tight.
“She seemed unaccountably attached to horses.” Tilmont’s tone sounded strained, but whether it was nerves or abstinence, ’twas impossible to say.
“I’ll check the carriages. You have a look around the garden.” Gallagher turned abruptly away. The crowds dissipated in his mind. Worry gnawed at his nerve endings. What had he been thinking? He should have never let her out of his sight. Should have known better than to upset her, then leave her.
The night air felt cool against his face.
Tilmont’s rented vis-à-vis stood in a long queue some distance down the yard. Gallagher glanced toward it, but another row of vehicles blocked it from view. Stepping between a shiny phaeton and the cob that carried the brougham behind it, he emerged into the moonlit night. In that moment he realized someone was bending inside their rented vehicle.
“Clarette.” Relief sloughed through him, but suddenly the shadowy personage jerked from the carriage. It was a man, garbed in a short jacket with brass buttons. “Who the hell are you?” rasped the Irishman, but the stranger pivoted away.
Gallagher leapt forward, eating up the distance. “Stop!” he ordered, and snagged the man’s arm. “What the devil do you think—” he began, but even as the other turned, his dagger gleamed in the moonlight.
Pain stabbed Gallagher, but worry was even sharper. Tightening his grip on the other’s jacket, he pulled him closer, gritting his teeth against the agony.
“What have you done with her?” His voice was guttural, his worry all consuming.
The man uttered something foreign and yanked the knife free to thrust again, but this time Gallagher caught his wrist.
The blade shook between them as they struggled.
“Where is she?” Gallagher could barely force out the words. Blackness loomed, but he pushed it back, fighting for lucidness.
“Where none will find her,” the man snarled.
“Why?”
“For Delvania,” he said, and slammed his free fist into Gallagher’s knife wound.
Gallagher staggered backward as the Delvanian turned to flee, but desperation roared inside the Irishman. Gathering all his strength, he leapt. His fingers just brushed the man’s coat. But it was enough. He closed his hands and hung on. The villain stumbled to his knees. Grasping his legs, Gallagher clawed his way up the fallen body. The Delvanian kicked. The momentum threw Gallagher aside as the other twisted around, but even as he did so, the Irishman slammed a fist into his face, then climbed atop him. Groping for the hand that now held a gun, he pinned the man’s wrist to the ground.
“Where is she?” he rasped.
“Dead! Dead already.”
Insanity roared through Gallagher. He struck with all his strength. The man’s head snapped to the side, but then he smiled.
“The bitch is dead. The Ludricks will rule again,” he said, and squeezed the trigger.
The gun exploded. Gallagher braced for impact, but the bullet hadn’t been meant for him. Instead, the body beneath him jerked and went limp.
Tilmont rushed to a halt beside them, but Gallagher barely noticed. He struggled to his feet. There was something sticky on his hands. Sticky and warm.
“Someone you knew?” Tilmont asked, and bending, calmly took the pistol from the dead man’s hand.
Gallagher lurched back a step. The world was beginning to reel around him like a child’s whirligig. “I’ve got to find her.” He was never certain if he said the words aloud or just thought them in the depths of his soul. “Got to—” he said, and scrambling for coherence, tumbled into dark oblivion.
Chapter 27
The water shattered like glass when Savaana struck it. It rushed into her nose, her ears, pushed with painful force into every screaming orifice. It swallowed her up, pulled her under, tumbled her like a leaf in a wind storm. Her head struck something. Darkness blasted inside her cranium, threatening explosion, but the pain in her lungs was all consuming. She contorted, body avulsing, legs spearing downward, and suddenly she torpedoed out of the water.
Air struck her lungs like a lance, but she drew it in, knowing nothing but the sweet agony. Thinking of nothing but staying alive, of breathing.
And then she remembered.
“Clarette!” The name gurgled from her throat. She spun around. Water rushed around her, past her, pushing her downstream, but twenty yards away a dark form floated on the waves. She yelled again and swam toward the shape, but her gown was snagged on a branch. Bracing her feet against a submerged log, she ripped her clothing free, then sliced through the water toward her sister.
Clarette was facedown, arms flung wide. Savaana turned her over, babbling wildly. The face that mirrored her own looked blue.
“No! Dammit, no!” she rasped, and slapped the other’s cheek. Her sister remained limp, bobbing on the fleeing waves. “Clarette!” Savaana cried, and slapped her again.
Her eyes opened, angry and squinted. “Slap me once more and you’ll wish you were at the bottom of this stinking river!” she warned.
Savaana cupped her sister’s face. “I thought you were dead.”
“Well, apparently I’m not, so—” she began, then turning her head, spewed the contents of her stomach into the water. Wiping her mouth with a shaky, ice-blue hand, she added, “You’d better get me out of this bloody mess.” Her haughty accent had disappeared entirely, seeping into a more earthy dialect.
Savaana laughed, giddy with relief.
Clarette glared. “You haven’t gone mad, have you?”
“No. Absolutely not,” Savaana said, and grinned. “Take off your clothes.”
“Brilliant,” Clarette said. Her voice sounded casual, as if they sat together in some toasty parlor sipping lavender tea, instead of floating along toward unknown enemies. “You’ve got a plan.”
“I do. But you have to trust me.”
“Trust you. Good idea.” Clarette nodded and paddled vaguely, though the current was carrying them at its will. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“I told you I’m—“
“My long lost sister,” Clarette said numbly. “And it must be true, because things have been humming along swimmingly since the moment I met you.”
“Swimmingly,” Savaana said, and sank beneath the surface for an instant, weakened by fatigue and cold, but she forced herself back up, kicking furiously. “Is that a jest?” Her fingers felt numb and disembodied, but she spun her sister about to claw at the laces that bound her gown at the back.
“You decide if it seems as if I’m in the mood for making jokes.” Clarette tipped her head up, trying to keep the water out of her nose. “I’m about to drown…if I don’t freeze to death first. I’ve ruined one of my favorite gowns. And my supposed lover, Eduardo Delafonti, is now wed.”
“What?” It was damnably difficult to do anything when your fingers felt as thick as pigs’ feet.
“Not that that should matter, I suppose. Technically, I’m married, too, but for some unfathomable reason, Eduardo has decided to remain faithful. To his wife. To his wife!” She said the words as if they were crazy, then sighed, sank beneath the waves and resurfaced again, breathing hard. “Hence, I’m not bloody pregnant. I just spe
nt a fortnight traipsing around Paris alone, only to return to find you in London. With my husband.”
Savaana scowled at the saturated laces, trying to see in the darkness. “I had to learn what I could of the necklace.”
“Is that what you were doing?” Clarette’s teeth were chattering now and she trembled violently. “Because it looked like you were about to fornicate with the lusty peer right there on Reardon’s polished dance floor.”
“Well, I wasn’t!” Savaana said.
“Already did that, did you?”
“No,” Savaana said, and it was technically true.
“Hmmf.” Clarette’s eyes were closed by the time she was facing her sister again. “Why are you taking my gown?”
“Clarette.” Savaana shook her gently.
“Mmm.”
“You can’t sleep now.”
Her head had fallen back in the water. “I could if you’d quit yammering.”
“Don’t make me hit you again.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Clarette said, but her voice was groggy.
Savaana slapped her with all the force she could muster.
Clarette came awake with a start, limbs jerking beneath the waves. “Why do you keep doing that?” She sounded irritable and dangerous, but still muzzy.
“You’ve got to wake up.”
“Why?”
“Because…” She searched frantically for a reason. “Because I’ve got the diamonds.”
“Here?” Clarette’s eyes popped open as Savaana struggled with the bottom of her own gown. Finding the lumpy spot in the hem, she ripped the seam open and dragged out the stones.
They dangled dejectedly between them on the saturated thong.
“Are you insane?” Clarette asked, grabbing them. “Why are they here?”
“What was I supposed to do with them? Give them to your husband for safe keeping?”
Clarette glared as she slipped them around her neck.
“I thought he might be a little peeved when he realized you’d gone to get pregnant by Eduardo whosit.”
“I wasn’t planning to tell him,” Clarette muttered groggily.
Savaana slapped her again, then gripped her arms. Maybe to keep her afloat. Maybe to prevent further violence.
Clarette gritted her teeth. “Why the hell do you keep doing that?”
“Because I’ve been trying to find you for twenty years and now that I have I’m not very excited about watching you drown.”
“How do you feel about being punched in the eye?”
Savaana almost laughed, but just then her knee slammed into a log and she grimaced, pulling her legs up with painful effort. “Well, I guess that disproves that possibility.”
“What are you talking about?” Clarette still sounded irritable, but more alert.
“I used to think Mother kept you because you were the nice sister. But maybe she was worried someone would drown you once they got to know you. She always was kind. I don’t think—”
“You remember her?” Clarette’s voice was breathy, but whether it was from the cold or some other reason, Savaana couldn’t tell.
“Just tiny fragments. Her voice. Her touch. She used to kiss the top of my head and her hair would fall down around my face. She wore it loose and it smelled like—”
“Bellflowers.” Clarette’s voice was wispy, all but lost in the rush of the waves.
“You remember,” Savaana said, but her sister shook her head.
“Sometimes I think I do. But they’re really Nina’s memories most like.”
“Nina?”
“The woman who took me after Mother died.”
Savaana’s heart contracted. All these years she had hoped her mother still lived, but she refused to focus on death now, when life seemed so utterly fragile. “How old were you?”
“Four. Five, maybe.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. Nina smelled like suet. But she was better than the nuns.”
“Nuns?”
“The sisters of Wellworth Abby. They kept me for some years.”
“Seriously?”
Clarette’s scowl darkened. “Extremely seriously. Damn old cows hated me. When I was fourteen I met the butcher’s son. Life with him seemed far preferable.”
“Was it?”
She shrugged. The movement was stiff. “It was better with the architect, better still with the wine merchant.”
“I assume your name hasn’t always been Clarette.”
“At times it was Abigail, or Milicent. I was a Victoria once, I think.” She sounded foggy. “Lord Beuford called me Trixie. His wife detested me.”
Savaana shook her head. “Surely not,” she said, and rubbed her sister’s arms in a vain attempt to increase circulation. “You’re so sweet.”
“I can be sweet.”
“Help me with your gown,” Savaana said, struggling with the saturated fabric. It was as heavy as mortar against the dragging waves.
“I can be sweet, dammit! Ask any man with a hundred pounds in his—Why the hell are we disrobing?”
“Hurry.” Savaana glanced up and to the rear. But the bend blocked her view of the cliff from where they’d jumped. “I still have to undress, and they’ll be able to see us soon,”
“Good God, even I’m not that vain.”
Savaana considered that a moment, mind fuzzy with cold and worry, then shook her head. “I don’t want them to see us naked, you dolt. I want them to see our gowns floating down the river while we hide on the riverbank.”
“Because…Oh!” Clarette said. “You’re irritating as hell. But you’re not completely dense.”
“Sometimes I don’t know why I’ve searched for you so long.” Clarette’s gown drifted between them. “Hurry up. Help me with mine,” she said, and shot a glance toward the ridge above.
“Savaana?”
It was the first time her sister had ever addressed her by name. It sounded nice. Soft and almost reverent.
“Yes?”
“How well do you know this river?”
“Not well. Why?”
“I hear something.”
Savaana concentrated, listening for the sound of feet. Perhaps the river coursed close to the road here or—
“Waterfall!” she croaked.
“That’s what I thought.” Clarette was sounding hazy again, but Savaana didn’t have time to worry about that. She was frantically trying to drag her sister toward shore. It was like attempting to fall uphill. She scrambled against the current, clawing every inch of the way. Something scraped her leg. She gritted her teeth against the pain and pushed on, struggling for a branch that reached out of the water, but it seemed almost to be moving away. Her foot struck something solid, but instead of drawing away, she kicked hard. Her toes slammed against a rock. They stung like the devil, but she managed to push through the water. Grasping the branch, she dragged them both through the rushing waves.
“Hang on!” she snarled, and yanked Clarette over the top of a fat log. Saturated and slick, it was all but impossible to hold onto, but finally they were wedged between two branches. Stored beneath a sheltering overhang, they seemed safe enough.
“Are you well?” Savaana was gasping for breath, struggling to remain upright, to keep Clarette’s head above water, to prevent their garments from floating away.
“Of course I’m well. I’m splendid. Never been—”
“Oh shut up and dress the branch.”
“Dress the—”
“Break the branch off, tie your gown to it and set it afloat,” Savaana ordered as she began to do the same herself.
Clarette followed suit, fingers fumbling erratically. “Do you think this will work?”
“If they don’t kill us we’ll know it did,” Savaana said, and finishing her task, let the garment set sail. The knobby portion of the branch stuck out of the neck hole.
Clarette glanced up as it rolled downstream. “It looks rather like you.”
“Just hurry up!
” Savaana said, and Clarette sent her effigy to join her sister’s.
They waited as the gowns floated around the bend and out of sight. Still no shouts from up above.
“Maybe they saw us,” Clarette whispered, and raised haunted eyes toward the steep bank overhead. “Maybe they’re watching us right now.”
Savaana controlled a shudder, then dragged her gaze back to the water behind them. “Are you always this pessimistic?”
“Until things go poorly.”
“Tell me when that happens,” Savaana said, and reaching out, tugged her sister over the log and upstream, keeping carefully beneath the rocky embankment.
“Where the hell are we—” Clarette began, but at that second a dog howled from the hill to their right. A garble of voices was barely discernible from above, and then a shot exploded. The sisters jumped, then crouched in silence, hearts banging like wild drums, but the men above seemed to be hurrying downstream.
Finally, trembling with cold and fear, Savaana caught her sister’s wrist and tugged her against the waves, moving as rapidly as she could. Clarette didn’t argue, but after a seeming lifetime she stopped, bending over and trying to catch her breath. “Where are we going?” Her words were a harsh whisper, barely heard above the cackle of the water.
Exhaustion threatened. “Can’t risk land,” Savaana panted. “Not with a tracking dog so close. Have to get as far from the gowns as possible.”
Clarette put a hand to her side and scowled at the opposite shore. “Mine was French.”
“What?”
“My gown. Designed in France. The lace was brought from Venice.”
“So?”
“So you owe me a French gown with Italian lace.”
Savaana stared at her a moment, then shook her head and struggled upstream. “How far do you think we’ve come?”
Grim-faced and silent, Clarette staggered past.