A Sister's Quest

by Ferguson, Jo Ann

  Alexandre opened the door with a grand bow. “Prince Charming, if you do not want me to order Rusak to fire his shotgun in the back of your head, I suggest you release Mademoiselle Levesque posthaste.”

  For a trio of heartbeats, no one moved. Michelle saw Bartholomew fingering the trigger of his gun. Abruptly he drew it away and shoved her forward. Alexandre caught her before she could strike the ground. He steadied her on her feet and set her beside the road. Although he offered her a smile, he turned back to the carriage.

  “Have a pleasant journey home, Prince Charming. If you will excuse us, we have a bit of unfinished business to deal with north of here.”

  “You need not waste your time looking for me, Vernier. We can finish that business right here.”

  Michelle whirled as she heard LaTulippe’s mocking voice. The pistol in his hand was pointed at her.

  LaTulippe continued in the same falsely genial tone, “I expected you would turn up as soon as I sent your mistress off with this young fool who thinks more of his tarnished honor than his father’s wrath.”

  “Shoot him!” urged Bartholomew. He choked back his next words as the jab of the shotgun barrel reminded him that Rusak stood behind him out of sight from the road.

  “Why don’t we let this princeling go?” suggested LaTulippe as he dismounted from his horse. Two other men appeared from the trees to flank him. “Then we men can discuss this matter, Vernier.”

  Alexandre did not move away from the carriage. Any sudden step toward Michelle would guarantee LaTulippe’s pulling the trigger. Keeping his pistol hidden behind his coat, he rested his foot on the step of the carriage. The door remained at his back to block an attack from behind, although his own safety was not his highest priority as he waited for LaTulippe to make a mistake.

  “Why don’t you make this easy on all of us?” LaTulippe asked. “Give me the code, and we will find you a place in the new government.”

  “A place for a man who betrayed his ideals to save his life?” Alexandre snorted in derision. “Such a man would have as little worth to Boney as to any leader.”

  “’Tis not your life you are bargaining for, but hers.” He emphasized his words by waving the pistol at Michelle. “Give me the clue to the code.”

  Alexandre chuckled. “Do you think I am carrying it with me? What good is it when I do not have my book that Michelle gave to you? Once, I might have been able to recall what was said to me in Vienna, but you beat it quite literally out of my head.” Michelle moaned, but he did not look at her. “Neither of us has anything worthwhile. We both have lost.”

  “Have we?” LaTulippe’s finger caressed the hammer of his gun. “Or could it be that you have both and are here only to save your mistress?”

  “I am here to save Michelle, but I do not have the damn information any longer. You have it!”

  LaTulippe laughed as he looked at Michelle. “Why didn’t you tell your lover about how a candle burned in your room all night before you brought me his book? Haven’t you shown him the pages you copied?”

  “You are mad, LaTulippe!” Alexandre said with a snarl.

  “Am I? Am I, Michelle?”

  “No,” she whispered. Her gaze reached out to Alexandre as he knew she wanted her hands to. “Alexandre, I tried to tell you. At first there were too many others around; then we …”

  Alexandre cursed under his breath, then louder. Verflucht! She had tried to tell him, but he had not heeded her, although he should have guessed she would do anything she could to help him with his work. If he had, he would not have needed to chase after LaTulippe and leave her unprotected.

  LaTulippe said, “It seems we are back where we started. You have the coded information and the key to it. I have your mistress. Is she worth the trade?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alexandre!” she cried. “You said I should not have given him the book to save you. You said—”

  “I was wrong.” When he heard LaTulippe’s laugh, he did not react. Instead he held Michelle’s wide-eyed gaze as he added, “It seems there were some more lessons I had yet to learn.”

  “May I suggest you make your next lesson getting your copy of the information and the code and bringing it to me without delay?” LaTulippe chuckled again. “Tell him where it is, Michelle.”

  “No! You will send your men to my family’s house again.”

  “Tell him, or …” He drew back the hammer.

  “No!” Michelle moaned, but her voice was swallowed by Bartholomew’s shout.

  Guns fired along the road. A splotch of red exploded across the front of the man standing next to LaTulippe. She huddled on the ground. A hand grasped hers, and she tried to pull away. She shrieked for Alexandre as she looked up at LaTulippe’s vicious smile.

  When he raised the pistol to aim it at her, she grabbed a handful of dirt and flung it in his face. He shrieked a curse as he clawed at his eyes, but was drowned out by the ear-shattering crash of a pistol firing. She watched LaTulippe fall into a widening puddle of blood.

  “Liebchen?”

  She flung her arms around Alexandre’s neck and clung to him as she sobbed out all her fright. “Thank you for saving me,” she whispered.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t?” When a finger tapped her shoulder, she moved away reluctantly, then said in a gasp, “Rusak! Thank—”

  Come, Michelle. Hurry.

  “Yes, we should leave,” Alexandre said.

  She glanced at him and smiled. He must have been learning more signs in the past days.

  No. Michelle, come, carriage. Hurry.

  Looking at Alexandre, she saw he was as confused by the emphatic signs as she was. Carefully not looking at the dead men at the back of the carriage, she went with Rusak to the open door. She covered her mouth with her hand as she stared at Bartholomew’s blood-soaked coat.

  In a barely audible whisper, he murmured, “I could not let him kill you.”

  Michelle tore her gaze from him to look at Alexandre’s shocked face. Her eyes must be as wide with amazement. Putting her hand on Bartholomew’s arm, she said, “LaTulippe is dead, and I am alive. Let us get you to—”

  He asserted in his most imperious tone, “No … doctors. I … I … dead man. Tell me … tell … me … Do you … did you … ever love me?”

  “Of course,” she lied as she took his already cold hand between hers. “How could I know you and not love you, Bartholomew? You made me believe I could be a princess. You—”

  Alexandra’s hand on her shoulder silenced her. He drew her away from the carriage door. Reaching past her, he closed Bartholomew’s sightless eyes. Then he pulled her into his arms. When he bent to kiss her, she answered his passion for only a second.

  Tugging away, she cried, “Why did you wait so long to come for me?”

  He pulled off his coat and wrapped it around her ruined dress. “We have been here since about three hours after LaTulippe put you in that barn. The two of us could not storm his stronghold and be sure we would keep him from killing you. We knew he would bring you out eventually. He did.” With a sigh of regret, he shook his head. “Unfortunately we did not consider that your prince would be caught in the cross fire.”

  As tears bubbled up in her eyes, he turned her toward where his horse waited. “What about the carriage?” she whispered.

  “When we get to the allied camp, we can send someone back for it.”

  “The allied camp?”

  “This game is not yet done,” he said as the excitement returned to his voice. “We have to get the pages you copied and deliver them with the code to my contact at Charleroi, Liebchen. Shall we go and see what we can do to free France from Napoleon’s dreams of conquest once and for all?”

  She smiled as he lifted her onto the horse. His enthusiasm was contagious. When he mounted behind her and sent the horse along the road with Rusak riding close behind, she did not look at the carnage behind them. She must think only of the future bought with those lives.
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  A future she wanted to spend loving Alexandre.

  Epilogue

  … and that is why I brought you to Zurich, dear daughter. Here we could be safe from the French government. I had intended to take you back to France, so we could find your brother and sister. All my attempts to seek Dominic and Brienne’s whereabouts have failed, blocked by that pint-sized dictator. Mayhap someday he will be gone and our family will be together.

  In the meantime, I have worked to further the goals of his enemies. Not against France, but against Napoleon. It has been simpler to leave you at St. Bernard’s, because I could not take you with me during my trips out of Switzerland. It would have been too risky for you as well as inconvenient in my guise as an unfettered woman.

  That is in the past. What concerns me, my dear child, is your future. Although I have concluded each day with a prayer that my beloved Marc-Michel will watch over all of you, I know the time is coming when I can help you no more than I can your brother and sister.

  Dear Michelle, you must be aware of your past. If you decide to return to Château Tonnere du Grêlon, you may need assistance. I suggest you find my most recent partner. He will help you deal with any problems you encounter in France. His name is Alexandre Vernier, but he might be using another name. I would describe him to you, but he changes his appearance like a chameleon changes color. You will know him by his green eyes and irreverent humor. Just contact the people at the address below, and they will help you find him wherever he might be.

  God bless you, my child. If someday you should chance upon your sister and brother, tell them how much I have dreamed of holding them again. I pray your life is filled with the peace and the family that I was denied. All my love.

  Michelle glanced up from the crumpled page to see tears running along Brienne’s face. Dominic’s mouth worked with strong emotions when he put his arm around Abigail, who wept as her month-old son nursed in her arms.

  In a choked voice, Michelle whispered, “It is signed, ‘Your mother, Sophie Rameau Levesque.’”

  Silence filled the room, which was small by the standards of the grand Château Tonnere du Grêlon. Larger than the refectory at St. Bernard’s, it did not feel crowded with the many people sitting on the faded brocade settees. The room might once have been grand, but the wallpaper was now peeling and the floors were dull. In a corner between a floor-to-ceiling window and the hearth, which was decorated with garlands for Christmas, Lucile played with an old woman Brienne called Grand-mère. Madame LeClerc had raised Brienne during the years they lived in London, hiding from Marc-Michel Levesque’s enemies. Beside her sat a woman a generation younger, Madame St. Clair who had been Dominic’s foster mother. They were now a part of the Levesque family.

  Sensing Alexandra’s gaze on her, she looked at him. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

  “I think I shall be.” She smoothed the note on her lap. “If only I had had this months ago …”

  She could not fault Frau Herbart, who had lamented losing this letter before Michelle left St. Bernard’s. In the months since, Michelle had forgotten about it. Never had she suspected that the headmistress would find it weeks later and send it on to Vienna. Slowed by the weather and the events that had exploded across Europe before Napoleon was sent into what she prayed was permanent exile, it had reached Vienna after she and Rusak left. Frau Schlissel had brought it with her when she came to Paris, but she and the letter had found their way to Château Tonnere du Grêlon only this morning. This had been the first time all day that everyone had been together so Michelle could share the letter.

  Alexandre took Michelle’s hand and led her out of the room. Climbing the wide stairs, he said nothing as they went to their room. She did not look at the bed on its raised dais or the frayed cloth of gold curtains as she flung her arms around him.

  “How much simpler our first meeting would have been if I had only known!” she whispered.

  He stroked her back. “You cannot be certain of that. You had no reason to suspect that Alexei Vatutin and Alexandre Vernier were the same man.”

  “It is Christmas Eve again.” She breathed in his intriguing male scent. “Who would have believed a year ago that you and I would be here at a French château with my family?”

  “Who would have believed that we would be anywhere together? Last year at this time, we were recovering from that mad attack on us. I wish I knew who had ordered that. It might have been LaTulippe. It might have been someone else.” When she shivered, he said quickly, “Forgive me, Liebchen, for reminding you of that.”

  “I wonder what 1816 will bring. I hope it is peace.”

  “I think that is everyone’s wish, and you, Liebchen, made it possible by not listening to me.”

  She smiled as she locked her fingers behind his nape. “I do believe you usually remember everything you hear.”

  “Except when you tell me you love me.”

  “You forget that?”

  “Only so I can exult in hearing you say it again.” He kissed her with slow, lingering hunger. “But I am glad you heeded me about looking for a better hiding place for important items.”

  She laughed. “Do you think LaTulippe’s men would have found the copied pages in a torn stocking beneath a pile of discarded clothes in the wardrobe at Brienne’s house?”

  “You have learned your lessons well.”

  “All of them.” She drew his mouth down to hers. When her tongue brushed his lips, he moaned with the need that swept over her.

  He drew back, shocking her. Quietly, he said, “Liebchen, I got my new orders yesterday.”

  “I know.”

  “How—” A flash of astonishment was replaced by a grin. “You have learned too much from me.”

  “Are you telling me that you are leaving?”

  “After the new year begins. It will be strange to go without Rusak, but he enjoys working at that school for the deaf.” Smiling, he stroked her shoulders. “Who would have guessed he would be the one teaching school now?”

  “He was so proud to show the Americans and Dr. Gallaudet that he could learn the French signs without previously speaking French. It seemed perfect that he would replace Monsieur Clerc as an instructor when Monsieur Clerc went with Dr. Gallaudet to the United States.”

  Alexandre’s smile faded as he murmured, “You are babbling. You always do that when you want to avoid talking about what is really bothering you.”

  “Your leaving bothers me.” She closed her eyes and whispered, “No, that is wrong. Your leaving breaks my heart.”

  “I can tear myself from that part of my life no more than I can halt breathing. We have been lucky to have had the summer together, but I must leave as soon as the holidays are over.”

  “Oh.” She drew away. That her sister and brother had found a lifetime of love had been no guarantee that she would, too. If only she could stop dreaming of the future she wanted for her and Alexandre.

  He turned her back into his arms. Gazing at his face, which displayed the scars of his last assignment, she wondered how she would be able to kiss him farewell, knowing he could die before he came back to her.

  “I already talked to Dominic. As your brother, he is your closest male relative. He has agreed to—”

  “You talked to him about this already? And what did you two agree to? For me to sail with him about the world on his ship or simply to stay here to watch my niece and nephew grow older while I pray for a home and a family of my own?”

  “Michelle, I—”

  “No! Don’t say it! I love you, Alexandre Vernier. I loved you when you were Alexei Vatutin, and I love you now. Changing your name does not change my love for you!”

  He silenced her with his lips over hers. She leaned into the kiss, wanting to savor it with every inch of herself. Nothing had changed, especially her heart.

  Slowly he raised his head. “If you would be silent for just a moment, you might understand.”

  “I understand.” The sorrow stripped the s
weetest edges from the passion. “You are leaving, but let’s not argue about it tonight. Just kiss me, Alexandre. Kiss me, and don’t say a word about the future.”

  “Even about our wedding?”

  “Wedding?”

  Laughing, he asked, “And why else would I speak to your brother about this before I talked to you? I wanted his permission to ask you to be my wife. Will you marry me? I know this question is long overdue, but, to be honest, I never thought about marriage until I thought about leaving you. I want you in my life. Will you marry me, Michelle Levesque?”

  “Yes.”

  He crushed her to him as he tasted the love he had not planned to find when he went to safeguard the daughter of a late partner. Somewhere, in the realms of memory, he could hear the sound of Sophie’s laughter. He wondered if this was what Sophie had plotted all along. Giving no time to the teasing thought, he concentrated on the tantalizing woman in his arms.

  It was only hours later, when she rested in Alexandre’s arms amid the incredible peace of sated love, that Michelle asked where they were going for their honeymoon.

  He laughed. “Are you sure you want to know? It will be, of course, the site of our next assignment.”

  “Where?”

  Pressing her back into the pillows, he whispered in her ear, “Russia.”

  Her eyes widened as she stared up at him. “You are joking!”

  “I wish I were, Liebchen. Not my choice of assignment either. If you thought Vienna was cold …” He gave an exaggerated shiver. “Of course, I shall have you to keep me warm.”

  “Always.” She ran her finger along his nose. “How do you say ‘I love you’ in Russian?”

  “I will be damned if I know.” He grinned. “I do not speak Russian.”

  She laughed, and he joined in until the sounds of their amusement became a soft murmur of joy as he brought her back into his arms. It was where she would stay, no matter where their quest for adventure took them.

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