“Hear him! Hear him!” The calls were growing more frequent.
“Perhaps these persons find facing cannon fire relaxing. Enjoy meeting the charge of galloping cavalry. Find the screams of dying men music to their ears.”
“Hear him! Hear him!”
“Perhaps,” Reynaud shouted above the chant, “these persons love the agony of a severed limb, the loss of an eye, or the infliction of torture such as this.”
And Beatrice covered her mouth in mingled horror and pride. For on his last word, Reynaud flung from his body his coat and waistcoat and pulled his shirt half down his arms, revealing his upper back. Sudden silence descended on the hall as Reynaud pivoted in place, the light reflecting off the ugly scars snaking through his tanned skin. In the quiet, the sound of linen ripping was loud as Reynaud tore off the remainder of the shirt and threw it to the floor.
He raised one hand, outstretched, commanding. “If such a person is in this room, let him vote against this bill.”
The room erupted into cheers. Every peer was on his feet, many were still shouting, “Hear him! Hear him!”
“To order! To order!” the peer in the gold and black robes called to no avail.
Reynaud still stood, his chest bare, his back straight in the middle of the hall, proudly displaying the scars she knew had shamed him. He glanced up and caught her eye. Beatrice stood up, clapping, the tears standing in her eyes. He nodded imperceptibly and then was distracted by another peer.
“He’s won it,” Mr. Graham shouted. “They’ll vote, but I think it a mere formality. Your uncle can no longer vote on the Lords, and Hasselthorpe and Lister haven’t shown.”
Lottie leaned toward him. “You must be disappointed.”
Mr. Graham shook his head. “I’ve decided Hasselthorpe isn’t a leader I want to be following.” He looked sheepishly at Beatrice. “I’m almost certain he was behind that scene at Miss Molyneux’s ball. In any event, I intend to vote for Mr. Wheaton’s bill.”
“Oh, Nate!” Lottie cried, and threw her arms most improperly about his neck.
Beatrice looked down, smiling as Lottie and Mr. Graham embraced.
“Sir! Sir!” a servant called. “Gentlemen are not allowed in the ladies’ side of the gallery!”
Mr. Graham raised his head only fractionally. “She’s my wife, dammit.” And while gazing in a most romantic manner into Lottie’s eyes, he added, “And my love.”
And he kissed her again.
This was too much for Beatrice’s already overwrought emotions. She found herself wiping tears from her cheeks. In order to give her friends more privacy and to compose herself, she slipped from the gallery, quietly descending the back stairs. In the dark passageway below, she stood by herself, leaning a little against the wall.
Why had he done it? Just last night he said he never wanted to talk of his scars again. Then why reveal them to a roomful of strangers? Did the bill mean so much to him—or, wonderful thought, had he done it for her after all? Beatrice felt selfish, wanting his reason to endorse the bill to be her. The lives of so many soldiers were at stake. Perhaps he’d done it simply of noble consideration for the veterans. But then there’d been that glance he’d given her… Oh, she must not read too much into a mere glance!
While she’d been silently contemplating all this, the lords had quieted, but now they roared again, and she could tell by the shouts of “Blanchard! Blanchard!” that Reynaud had carried the day for Mr. Wheaton’s bill. Her heart was nearly overflowing. She turned blindly to return to the gallery, but in doing so bumped into a large male form.
Beatrice looked up with an apologetic smile on her face, but it died when she saw the man she’d run into. “Lord Hasselthorpe!”
The peer looked ghastly. His face was blanched a greenish white, and it shone with sweat. He’d been staring at the closed doors to the Lords, but at her voice, he turned to her and his eyes seemed to focus and then grow cold.
“Lady Blanchard.”
“TO THE TRUE Earl of Blanchard!” Vale cried, not a little inebriated, as he held up a foaming tankard of ale.
“Blanchard! Blanchard!” Munroe, Hartley, and most of the rest of the rather seedy tavern they sat in cheered. Vale had stood the entire small, smoky room drinks twice already.
They were at a booth in the corner, the table scarred and pitted from numerous previous patrons. The barmaid was buxom and pretty and had at first obviously held high hopes for them. Now, however, after a half hour of concentrated effort, she’d turned her ample charms on a table of sailors sitting nearby. Reynaud couldn’t help but think how different her seduction of Vale would’ve ended seven years ago.
“I thank you. I thank you all.” Reynaud was on only his second pint despite Vale’s urging to drink more. He still had a niggling fear of not being completely alert—perhaps a leftover from his years of captivity. “Without your help today, gentlemen, this would’ve been a far more difficult endeavor. Therefore, to Munroe, who so ably diverted a certain duke and requested the presence of another gentleman of importance at Westminster.”
“Huzzah!” shouted the tavern customers, most of whom had no idea what was being said. Even the barmaid waved her cloth.
Munroe merely smiled and inclined his head.
Reynaud turned to Vale. “To Jasper, who gave the deciding vote to pass Mr. Wheaton’s veteran’s bill!”
“Huzzah!”
Vale actually blushed, the color running high over his hangdog face. Of course, that might’ve been the ale as well.
“And to Hartley, who delayed the main opposition to the bill!”
Hartley also inclined his head to the cheers of the crowd, though his eyes were still grave. He waited until the surrounding tavern regulars had quieted and turned back to their own affairs and then said, “There’s something you all ought to know about Hasselthorpe.”
“What’s that?” Suddenly Vale didn’t look drunk at all.
“He denies telling Munroe that the traitor’s mother was French.”
Where another man might sputter into protestations, Munroe merely raised his eyebrows. “Indeed.”
“Why would he lie about such a thing?” Reynaud set down his tankard of ale, wishing he’d not drunk even that. They were close to something here; he could feel it.
“Perhaps it was his first statement that was the lie,” Hartley said softly.
“What d’you mean?” Vale asked.
“When he told Munroe that the traitor’s mother was French, Reynaud was still thought dead. Hasselthorpe risked nothing by throwing suspicion on him. Further, he knew that there was a good chance that Munroe would never reveal his information—the news would be too harrowing for Vale to take. Why stir up trouble when the man who might be the traitor is dead?”
Munroe nodded. “That’s true. I nearly never told Vale. But I began to think that the truth, even if bitter, was better than lies.”
“And a good thing you did, too,” Hartley said. “Because when Reynaud returned, Hasselthorpe was then backed into a corner. Should he continue his lie and implicate a now-live man? Or should he call Munroe the liar? Either way, he needed to draw suspicion away from himself fast.”
“Then you think Hasselthorpe is the true traitor,” Reynaud said quietly. “Why?”
“Think of it.” Hartley leaned forward. “When Vale went to question Hasselthorpe, the man was shot—but not fatally. A glancing wound, as I understand it. He then left London altogether and sequestered himself at his estate near Portsmouth. When Munroe questioned him, he told a lie that prevented further interrogation. And remember this: Hasselthorpe’s older brother was Thomas Maddock—Lieutenant Maddock of the Twenty-eighth of Foot.”
“You think he killed so many to get the title?” Vale frowned.
Hartley shrugged. “It’s certainly a reason to betray the regiment. Isn’t that something we’ve been searching for all along—a motive to betray the Twenty-eighth? I asked around—Hasselthorpe was the younger brother. He came into the ti
tle shortly after Maddock’s death. In fact, Maddock died after their father had passed away, but he seemed to’ve never heard the news that his father was dead. He was killed at Spinner’s Falls before it could reach him.”
“This is all well and good,” Munroe cut in, his broken voice grating. “We’ve established why Hasselthorpe might’ve betrayed the regiment, but I still don’t see how he could’ve done the deed. Only the officers who marched with the Twenty-eighth knew our destination. It was kept secret precisely so we wouldn’t be ambushed.”
Reynaud stirred. “Only the officers of the Twenty-eighth—and the superiors who ordered them on their route.”
“What are you thinking?” Vale turned to him eagerly.
“Hasselthorpe was an aide-de-camp to General Elmsworth at Quebec,” Reynaud said. “If Maddock didn’t tell him the route—they were brothers, after all—then it wouldn’t have been very hard to discover it. Elmsworth may’ve made him privy to it himself.”
“He would’ve had to get the information to the French,” Munroe pointed out.
Reynaud shrugged, pushing away his tankard of ale altogether. “He was in Quebec. Do you remember? It was swarming with the French troops we’d captured, French citizens, and Indians who’d supported both sides. It was chaos.”
“He could’ve done it easily,” Hartley said. “The question now is did he indeed do it? We have supposition and conjecture but no real facts.”
“Then we’ll have to find the facts,” Reynaud said grimly. “Agreed?”
The other men nodded. “Agreed,” they said in unison.
“To discovering the truth,” Vale said, and raised his tankard.
They all raised their tankards and knocked them together, solemnizing the toast.
Reynaud toasted the sentiment with the rest. He drained his tankard and slammed it down on the table. “And to seeing the traitor swing, goddamn his eyes.”
“Hear, hear!”
“Another round on me,” Reynaud called.
Vale leaned close, blasting Reynaud with the ale on his breath. “Shouldn’t a newly wedded man such as yourself go home?”
Reynaud scowled. “I’ll go home soon.”
Vale wagged his shaggy eyebrows. “Had a falling-out with the missus?”
“None of your goddamned business!” Reynaud hid his face in his tankard of ale, but when he lowered it, Vale was still staring at him rather blearily. And had it not been for the ale, Reynaud probably wouldn’t have said, “She thinks I don’t know how to care, if you must know.”
“Doesn’t she know you care for her?” Hartley asked from across the table.
Wonderful. Both he and Munroe had been listening in like a pair of gossiping biddies.
Munroe stirred. “She needs to know, man.”
“Go home,” Vale said solemnly. “Go home and tell her you love her.”
And for the very first time Reynaud began to think that Vale’s romantic advice might—just might—be correct.
Chapter Eighteen
Now, although Princess Serenity had married Longsword as a reward for saving her father, she had, in the many months she had lived with him, come to love her husband deeply. Hearing his terrible fate, she became quiet and withdrawn, contemplating silently what this news meant to her. And, after many long walks in the castle garden, she came to a decision: she would offer herself to the Goblin King in Longsword’s stead.
And so, on the night before Longsword was to return to the kingdom of the goblins, Princess Serenity drugged Longsword’s wine. As her husband slept, she kissed him tenderly and then set out to meet the Goblin King….
—from Longsword
Seven years of planning. Seven years of careful moves on a giant chessboard. Some of them so infinitesimally small that even his most intelligent enemies had been blind to their true meaning. Seven years that should have culminated in his becoming prime minister and the de facto leader of the most powerful country on earth. Seven years of patient waiting and secret lusting.
Seven years destroyed in one afternoon by one man—Reynaud St. Aubyn.
He’d seen the knowledge in Hartley’s eyes when he’d mentioned Thomas. Poor, poor Thomas. His brother had never been cut out for greatness. Why should Thomas have the title when it would serve him so much better? But now that old decision had come back to haunt him. Vale, Blanchard, Hartley, and Munroe. All in London at once, all putting their heads together. Hasselthorpe could read the writing on the wall. It was only a matter of time before they had him arrested.
All because St. Aubyn had returned home. He glared across the carriage at his enemy’s wife. Beatrice St. Aubyn, Countess of Blanchard now, née Corning. Little Beatrice Corning sat across from him bound and gagged. Her eyes were closed over the cloth tied across her mouth. Perhaps she slept, but he doubted it.
He’d never really paid much attention to her before, besides noting that she made a good hostess for her uncle’s political parties. She was pleasant enough to look at, he supposed, but she was no immortal beauty. Hardly the type a man might choose to die for.
He grunted and glanced out the window. The night was black with barely any moonlight, and he couldn’t make out where they might be. He let the curtain fall. However, he knew by the number of hours they’d traveled that they must be nearing his estate in Hampshire. He’d told Blanchard that he’d wait until dawn and he would; the boat he’d arranged to pick him up at Portsmouth wouldn’t come until eight. He could wait until dawn and no longer before fleeing to the prearranged rendezvous spot. First to France and then perhaps Prussia or even the East Indies. A man could change his name and start a new life in the more remote corners of the world. And with enough capital, he might even make his fortune again.
If he had enough capital. Damnably stupid—he could see that now—tying up most of his monies in investments. Oh, they were good investments, solid investments that would yield a healthy return, but that wasn’t much good to him at the moment, was it? He had a little cash, and he’d taken what jewelry Adriana had in the town house, but they weren’t all that much.
Not enough to start again as he meant to.
He eyed the girl across from him, measuring her worth. She was his last gamble, his last chance to take with him a small fortune. Of course he’d never risk his life, his fortune, for any woman, let alone this pale child, but that really wasn’t the gamble was it?
The real question was whether Blanchard had enough regard for his bride to ransom her for a small fortune… and lose his life as well.
IT WAS WELL after midnight by the time Reynaud returned home to Blanchard House. The celebration with Vale, Munroe, and Hartley had gone on for hours more and ended in a disreputable tavern that Vale swore brewed the best ale in London. So it was rather commendable that he saw the man lurking in the shadows by the stairs at all.
“What’re you doing there?” Reynaud put his hand on his knife, ready to draw it if need be.
The shadow moved and coalesced into a boy, not more than twelve. “’E said you’d give me a shilling.”
Reynaud looked up and down the street in case the lad was a diversion. “Who did?”
“A toff, same as you.” The boy held out a sealed letter.
Reynaud fished in his pocket and tossed the boy a shilling. The lad scampered off without another word. Reynaud held the letter up. The light was too dim to see much, but he did notice there was no inscription on the outside of the letter. He mounted the steps and went inside, nodding at the yawning footman in the hall. Beatrice was probably abed by now, and he yearned to lie beside her warm softness, but the oddity of the strange missive intrigued him. He went to the sitting room, lit a few candles from the fire, and tore open the letter.
The handwriting inside was scrawling and partially smeared as if sealed in haste:
I won’t be hung.
Bring me the Blanchard jewels. Come alone to my country estate. Tell no one. Be here by the dawn’s first light. If you come after light, if you come with fr
iends, or if you come without the jewels, you’ll find your wife dead.
I have her.
Richard Hasselthorpe
* * *
Reynaud had hardly gotten to the last line when he was running to the sitting room door. “You!” he shouted at the startled footman. “Where is your mistress?”
“My lady hasn’t returned yet this evening.”
But Reynaud was already leaping up the stairs. This thing was impossible. She must be here. Perhaps she’d slipped past the footman. The note was a joke. He reached her bedchamber and flung open the door.
Quick jumped to her feet from a chair by the fireplace. “Oh, my lord, what is it?”
“Is Lady Blanchard here?” he demanded, though he could see the bed was still made and empty.
“I’m sorry, my lord. She went out this afternoon, to visit parliament, and she hasn’t returned.”
Dear God. Reynaud stared down at the letter in his hand. I have her. Hasselthorpe’s country estate was hours away, and the dawn would be coming soon.
THEY’D BEEN TRAVELING for hours. Beatrice stiffened her body, bracing as the carriage lumbered around a corner. She couldn’t use her hands, which had long since fallen asleep because they were bound behind her back, and she was afraid that if she were thrown to the floor, she’d hit her face. She very much doubted that Lord Hasselthorpe would bother to catch her.
She twisted a bit, trying to work her fingers, but it was useless. She felt the pain from where the rope had cut her wrists, but nothing else. She remembered Reynaud telling her how he’d walked for days in the woods of the New World with his hands tied. How had he withstood such torment? The pain must’ve been intense, the fear that he’d lose his hands terrible. She wished now that she could’ve said something when he’d related his experiences, conveyed her sympathy more eloquently.
Told him that she loved him.
She closed her eyes, biting hard on the cloth gag stuffed in her mouth. She would not let this dreadful man see her fear, but she wished—oh, how she wished!—that she’d been able to tell Reynaud that she loved him. She wasn’t sure why she needed to tell him. He might not even care—probably wouldn’t care. He’d shown her affection and passion, but nothing more, nothing that could be called love. Perhaps he no longer had the ability to feel romantic love. It seemed to her that in order to feel true and lasting love, once-in-a-lifetime-if-one-were-lucky real love, one must be prepared to let oneself fall. To give oneself up utterly to the other person if need be. She knew that she could do just that, but Reynaud would not let himself love.