by Teresa Grant
They had passed the first hurdle.
Gabrielle glanced out the inn window. “This does seem loweringly tame compared to what everyone else is doing.”
“Waiting can be the hardest part,” David Mallinson said. “And without us to meet them they’d be able to make it no further than this inn.”
The two of them and Gui were in a first-floor private parlor of this inn along the road to Calais. The clothing and papers that would take Paul St. Gilles and Juliette Dubretton and their children out of France were stowed in a false compartment beneath the wicker hamper on the back of their barouche, presently in the inn’s stable. No one had thought to question the fashionable aristocratic party, all easily recognizable and plainly bent on pleasure.
Gabrielle smiled at David. She’d always thought he had a kind heart, but she hadn’t realized quite how much until now. Such a pity she couldn’t find a man like him or Rupert who was interested in her. They were both much finer men than Antoine Rivère had been.
Gui paced across the room and poured himself a glass of wine from the bottle on the pier table between the windows. “That doesn’t make the waiting easier.”
Gabrielle bit her lip. “Don’t. I can’t help but worry—”
“I’m sorry, Gaby.” Gui crossed to her side and gripped her shoulder. “But in his position Rupert would be the safest of any of them if they’re discovered. Except perhaps Malcolm.”
“I would have said so a few days ago,” Gabrielle said, looking up at her brother. Her pretend brother. No, she couldn’t stop thinking of him as a brother. “But now I’m not at all sure Lord Dewhurst would come to his rescue.”
“He would.” Gui held the glass out to her. “He’d want to save the family from the scandal if nothing else.”
Gabrielle took a swallow of wine, deeper than she intended, and coughed. “There is that.”
Gui squeezed her shoulder. When she made to hand the glass back to him, he shook his head and curled her fingers round the glass. She took another fortifying sip. “You must be worried about Mr. Tanner,” she said to David.
“I—” He opened his mouth as though to protest, then said simply, “Yes.”
She sensed that single word was an admission of trust. She looked into his eyes and smiled. An answering smile broke across David’s reserved face.
Gui wandered back to the windows and picked up a fresh glass. “If—Good God.” He froze in the midst of uncorking the bottle of wine, gaze fastened on the view outside the window.
“What?” Gabrielle sprang to her feet and ran to his side, prepared for armed soldiers or her husband in irons. Instead she saw a chaise drawn up in the inn yard. An ostler had hurried forwards to see to the horses. A man in a top hat and blue coat who must have descended from the carriage was speaking with the ostler. Then he turned towards the inn. “Dear God,” Gabrielle breathed.
“What?” David hurried to her side.
Gabrielle reached for Gui’s hand and squeezed it hard. “My father-in-law.”
“What the devil is Dewhurst doing here?” David watched Dewhurst stride towards the inn.
Gabrielle swallowed. “Suppose he’s learned that Rupert—”
“There’s no proof of that.” David touched her arm. “It could just be a coincidence.”
“Well, whatever it is, we need a plan of action,” Gui said. “We have a fugitive arriving at any moment whom Dewhurst will recognize.”
“Do we have any laudanum?” Gabrielle asked. She was only in part joking.
“Whether it’s a coincidence or not,” David said, “that’s the way to play it.”
“With laudanum?” Gui asked.
“As a coincidence.”
Gabrielle and David hurried out the door onto the landing. In the hall below, Gabrielle could hear her father-in-law’s decisive accents and nearly native French. She couldn’t quite make out the words, but she caught something about “dark-haired man.” Dear God, was he trying to describe St. Gilles? But from her one glimpse of him at an exhibition at the Louvre she wouldn’t have called St. Gilles dark haired.
“Lord Dewhurst!” She gathered up the jaconet folds of her skirt and and ran down the newel staircase. “We saw your carriage through the windows. What a surprise!”
“Gabrielle.” Relief flashed across Dewhurst’s face as he stared up at her. “Thank God.”
Gabrielle nearly skidded on the stairs, caught herself on the railing, and ran down to her father-in-law’s side. “Were you looking for me?”
“For Gui.” Dewhurst caught her hands in a hard grip. “Is he with you?”
“Yes, he’s just upstairs.” Relief that Dewhurst seemed to know nothing of St. Gilles warred with confusion. “He came with Lord Worsley and me.”
Dewhurst squeezed his eyes shut. “God be praised.” He released Gabrielle’s hands and ran up the stairs, pushing past David without acknowledgment.
Gabrielle exchanged a look of confusion with David and ran back up the stairs after Rupert’s father, aware of a confused look from the serving maid and groom in the hall below.
She reached the landing as Dewhurst stepped over the threshold into their private parlor. “Gui. Thank God I’ve found you. You must come back to Paris immediately.”
“Sir.” Gui’s footsteps sounded on the floorboards, concern sharp in his voice. “Is something the matter? Is it my uncle? Or my aunt?”
Gabrielle reached the open door to see Dewhurst stride across the room and seize Gui by the shoulders.
“Of course it’s your uncle and aunt,” he said. “Can you imagine they wouldn’t be distressed to the breaking point by such a letter?”
Gui jerked away from Dewhurst’s hold. “That’s my affair, sir. Not yours.”
“What letter?” Gabrielle demanded.
Dewhurst whirled towards her. “This is a private matter, Gabrielle.”
“Private.” Gui gave a harsh laugh. “It’s more her affair than yours, sir.”
He pulled away from Dewhurst and walked towards Gabrielle. David, who had followed her into the room, made to withdraw. “No, you’d best stay as well, Worsley,” Gui said. “There’s no point in making it a secret. That was the sum of the letter I left for my uncle and aunt.”
“For God’s sake—,” Dewhurst said.
“I’m not going back to Paris with you,” Gui said, ignoring Dewhurst and moving towards Gabrielle. “It’s time this farce came to an end. Perhaps I should have said that to Oncle Jacques and Tante Amélie in person, but I fear I was too much of a coward. I left them a letter telling them I am not the son of Georges Laclos and can no longer go on trespassing on their hospitality. Easier for all of us to make a clean break.”
“Oh, Gui.” Gabrielle put up a hand to brush his hair back from his forehead. “You can’t think you can just walk away.”
“On the contrary. As I told our uncle and aunt—your uncle and aunt—I don’t see what else I can do.” He cast a glance over his shoulder. “I didn’t realize Oncle Jacques would go to Lord Dewhurst. Why did my uncle send you after me, sir?”
“Because he wants you back, you damn fool.”
Gui’s mouth twisted. “If he truly wanted me back, surely he’d have come after me himself. My uncle—my supposed uncle—has never been shy about making his wishes known. You were kind to me when I was a boy, sir, but I wish you’d stay out of this.”
Dewhurst drew a breath of frustration. The door from the passage burst open, and Rupert strode into the cross fire. “Gaby, I’ve just realized—”
He pulled up short, taking in the scene before him. “Father.” His voice turned as cold as a January wind. “What are you doing here?”
“Your father is delivering a message from my uncle,” Gui said. “He’s just leaving.”
“On the contrary,” Dewhurst said. “Rupert—”
“I have nothing to say to you, sir.”
“So you’ve made abundantly clear. I didn’t come here to see you as it happens. This is a private matter—�
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“Rupert knows,” Gui said. “I told him and Gaby.” Gui turned to Rupert. “I’ve told my uncle and aunt the truth. Or rather I left them a letter. I’m making a clean break. It’s better for all of us.”
“You don’t know what’s better for them,” Dewhurst said.
“Gui.” Rupert took a step towards him, back ostentatiously to his father. “You can’t know what your family is thinking—”
“No,” Gui said, “and neither can you. Nor your father.”
“Gui.” Dewhurst put a hand on Gui’s shoulder. “If I could speak with you for a moment in private—”
Gui jerked away from Dewhurst’s hold. “For God’s sake, sir. See to your difficulties with your own son and stay the hell out of my life. If you feel guilty because you brought me to England, I absolve you of it. I wasn’t a child.”
“You were a boy.”
“I was old enough to know I was colluding in deception.”
“You don’t understand—”
“You’re right. I don’t understand what on earth makes you think this is any affair of yours. Is it that you knew I was Georges Laclos’s bastard? Or Oncle Jacques’s?”
Dewhurst stared at him. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s one explanation for my easy acceptance in the household. It doesn’t change things. I’m still not the rightful heir.”
Dewhurst drew a harsh breath.
“If you knew—”
“I know enough to know you should stay well out of it.”
“You can have no notion—”
“What gives you the right—”
“Because I’m your father, you damn fool.”
CHAPTER 35
Gabrielle felt all the blood drain from her face. Beside her, Rupert had gone stone still. So had Gui, his gaze fastened on Dewhurst. First with disbelief, then with dawning comprehension and a burst of anger. “So that was why—You seduced a housemaid on your friends’ estate. Did the Lacloses know I was your bastard?”
Dewhurst drew a breath, cast a quick glance at Gabrielle and Rupert.
“Cat’s out of the bag, Father,” Rupert said. “And your other sins make this one laughable.”
Dewhurst’s gaze clashed for a moment with Rupert’s. Then he turned back to Gui. “Your mother was—” He swallowed. “I was very fond of her. When I learned she was with child, naturally I made provision for both of you.”
“You paid another man to marry her.”
“That’s not—”
“No sense in wrapping plain facts up in clean linen. That, I suppose, you could reconcile with your gentleman’s code. But what about passing me off as part of your friend’s family?”
“Yes.” Rupert took a step forwards, arms folded across his chest. “I should like to hear your explanation for that as well.”
Dewhurst’s face twisted. “For years I thought you were dead. You have no idea what that was like.”
“To lose someone you love?” Rupert said. “We can imagine it.”
Dewhurst spared him a brief look, then turned back to Gui. “France was in chaos in those days. Anyone could fall prey to the rabble—”
“Sounds rather like now,” Gui murmured.
“It was nothing like now. The rabble were killing without heed.”
“And now the Royalists are. Go on.”
“At last I managed to track down some of your mother’s connections. They were reluctant to talk at first, but I persuaded them.”
“Bribed them?”
“Made them see I could offer you a better life.”
“But you didn’t offer it to me, did you? You got the Comte de Laclos to do so.”
“You must see.” Dewhurst’s voice was pleading. Gabrielle could almost feel sorry for him, had she not known everything else he had done. “I saw the unique chance to give you a life you might only have dreamed of. And to make my old friend happy because he had his brother’s child back. What harm did there seem in that? Of course at the time I never dreamed—”
“That I’d become the heir.”
“No.”
“Which I assume mattered a great deal to a man of your convictions.”
“It was an unfortunate series of events.”
“Which you contributed to,” Rupert said.
“Oh, my God.” Gui stared at Dewhurst. “You didn’t—That wasn’t part of why you acted against Bertrand, was it? So I’d become the heir?”
“Of course not. I was thinking solely of—” Dewhurst bit back the words.
“Your desire for your own heir?” Rupert demanded.
“I had nothing to do with what happened to Bertrand Laclos. Who was a traitor.”
Rupert lunged towards his father and smashed his fist into his face. Dewhurst collapsed backwards on the worn carpet, blood streaming from his nose.
“Glad you did that,” Gui said. “I’ve been itching to do it myself. But he is your father.”
“And yours.” Rupert turned to Gui, as though a fact had only just occurred to him. “It seems we’re—”
“Brothers,” Gui concluded. His gaze lingered on Rupert’s. “Of all the revelations lately about my relations, that’s one I’m not sorry to hear.”
“Nor am I.” Rupert reached out and gripped Gui’s hand.
“You see,” Gabrielle said to her brother (her husband’s brother). “You can’t simply walk away, Gui, you are part of this family.” She dropped down on the carpet beside Dewhurst.
“Gabrielle,” Rupert said in a sharp voice.
“He’s hurt, Rupert. We can’t just leave him.” She tugged her handkerchief from her sleeve and put it to Dewhurst’s nose. “Tilt your head forwards, Lord Dewhurst.” Gabrielle slid her arm behind his shoulders.
“Thank you, my dear.”
“Don’t think I’m not sickened as well. But it serves little purpose for you to be bleeding over the carpet.”
Dewhurst groaned, then sat bolt upright, spattering blood not only over the carpet but on her skirt as well. “What’s that commotion?”
“More arrivals at the inn, I shouldn’t wonder.” Gui walked to the window.
Dewhurst pushed himself to his feet and strode to the window, holding the handkerchief to his nose. “What the devil is the Duchess of Sagan doing here?”
“Rupert.” Gabrielle gripped her husband’s arm. “I need you for a moment.”
Rupert let her pull him out onto the landing. “I could kill—”
“Not now, Rupert. We have the Courland sisters and Suzanne and Juliette Dubretton below. And St. Gilles and Malcolm and Monsieur O’Roarke and Simon Tanner will be here at any moment. Along with the Davenports and the Kestrel. What are we going to do with your father?”
“I could hit him again and knock him out.”
“That’s not funny.”
“No, it’s an honest suggestion.”
“Satisfying as that might be, we can’t be sure it would work for long enough.”
Steps sounded on the stairs. Gabrielle turned, expecting the Courland sisters, and instead found herself looking at her cousin Christian.
“Good lord,” he said. “What are you doing here, Gabrielle? Caruthers?” He swept an extravagant bow, got his legs tangled up, and had to clutch the stair rail to keep from falling.
“We’re on our way to the Lagarde fête,” Gabrielle said in a voice bright as polished silver.
“So am I as it happens. Suppose it’s not surprising we stopped at the same inn. Should have driven out from Paris together.”
The door creaked open below. Christian peered over the stair rail. “Good God. It’s the Courland sisters. They must be on their way to the fête as well. Quite a coincidence.”
Gabrielle flashed a glance at her husband, wondering how far they’d be able to stretch the idea of coincidence.
“A private parlor.” Wilhelmine of Sagan’s voice carried up the stairwell, ringing with confident assurance. “And a light meal as soon as is convenient.”
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�Duchess.” Gabrielle picked up her skirts and ran down the stairs. “What a coincidence. Are you on your way to the Lagardes’ as well?”
Wilhelmine of Sagan stood in the midst of the hall, dominating the scene. Dorothée Talleyrand stood beside her. Behind them, lingering back at the respectful distance appropriate to servants, were Suzanne Rannoch and Juliette Dubretton, Suzanne holding Colin, Juliette with the baby in her arms, a little girl and a little boy hiding behind her skirts.
“Madame Caruthers.” It was Dorothée who spoke. “How pleasant to see you.”
The plan was for Gabrielle to offer them the use of her private parlor. Instead she said, “We’re encountering so many friends today. My brother is upstairs with my father-in-law.”
She saw the briefest flicker of recognition in the duchess’s eyes, followed by a polite smile. “What a coincidence indeed.”
“Madame Rannoch?” Christian took a step forwards, blinking at Suzanne.
“Monsieur Laclos.” Suzanne stepped forwards with a winning smile that somehow gave the impression that she wore pearls and silk rather than gray-spotted muslin. “How lovely to see you.”
Christian’s gaze darted over her gown and simple straw bonnet. “Did—”
Booted feet thudded on the stairs. Gui and Lord Dewhurst came into view. Dewhurst’s nose had stopped bleeding, though red stains showed on his shirt collar and cravat. “Dewhurst is feeling a bit unwell,” Gui announced. “I’m going to take him back to Paris.”
Gabrielle sent her brother—Rupert’s brother, poison, she would never sort this out in her head—a look of gratitude.
Christian blinked as the men moved past him. “I say, Dewhurst, is that blood on your neckcloth?”
“I tripped,” Dewhurst said in repressive tones. “The carpet was loose.”
“Dashed shame. Perhaps we should report it to the inn—”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Gui said. He inclined his head to the Courland princesses and their supposed maids. “Ladies.”
Gabrielle released her breath as her brother and uncle stepped out of the inn. Only then did she realize she had been holding it. She smiled across the hall at Wilhelmine and Dorothée. “We’ve had refreshments sent up. Far more than we can eat ourselves. Do join us.”