Etienne had the other man pinned but Delisle was not defeated and swiftly used the advantage of those seconds to crack Etienne with the butt of the gun he still held. When May saw him do that, a rage so powerful it shook her to the core overtook her. She raced forward and kicked the Frenchman’s arm. The pistol flew into the air.
Etienne, stunned but not beaten, flung himself on his antagonist again and shouted, “It is over, Delisle, it is over!”
“Damn right it’s over! All of ye, on yer feet!”
May whirled and was never so glad to see anyone in her life as she was to see Bill Connors, followed by John Groom and Zach, the little stable boy. Bill and John must have arrived home sometime that night! Bill rushed forward and grabbed Delisle, while John grasped Etienne in a tight grip. Zach rescued the pistol from the grass and held it on the recumbent figure of Jem Foster, who moaned and whimpered, holding his useless arm.
“Let him go, John,” May cried, alarmed at how pale Etienne had become. “He is not one of them!”
“That’s the gent what’s bin livin’ in the little house in the woods,” Zach cried, proud of his—for once—superior knowledge over John, who lorded it over the small boy. “He’s the one the mistress ’as bin visitin’.”
The gunfire resounding in the clear, still night air had brought Stainer, two footmen and Hannah running, and they all heard Zach and gazed at Etienne. The two footmen exchanged knowing looks at the boy’s innocent revelation, and even Hannah looked shocked as she gazed at the young Frenchman.
“Those are clothes from the attic trunk,” she blurted out. “I recognize those blue breeches as the ones Lady Maisie van Hoffen had me put up there after the fellow who owned them left.” The abigail looked from Etienne to May and back again, a puzzled expression on her honest face.
May felt a flush burn into her cheeks. No better than she should be. She could almost hear the unsaid words, could feel the sweep of opinion. It was what she had guarded against her whole life, but now her actions in protecting Etienne would ruin her. Just like her mother after all. No one would ever say it to her, but they would whisper it to each other. Regardless of the fact that it was her own staff that was witness to this debacle, in days—no, hours!—the news would travel the county that she had secreted a man in her folly. All her dreams for living at Lark House and doing good for the children, the school, all would be for naught, because no one would dare consort with a young lady of ill repute.
Etienne moved forward, his chin raised, his mien noble even though his shirt was bloody and grass-stained and his hair tousled. “I am Lord Etienne Roulant Delafont, cousin and heir presumptive to the Marquess of Sedgely.” He put his arm around May’s shoulders, and she sagged against him, grateful for his support. “Come, my love, they will need to know soon.”
At the unaccustomed endearment she gazed up sharply into his eyes. What was he doing? What game was he playing? Mrs. Connors and two chambermaids ran down the lawn and joined the small crowd. One of the little maids gasped at the sight of the gentleman with his arms around the mistress in such a bold way.
He looked down into her eyes with a soft tenderness that made May weak with love. She reached up and touched his cheek, grateful just that he was alive. If her reputation was ruined she would live the rest of her life in seclusion and not count the cost too high for the life of her beloved.
But Etienne squeezed her, smiled down into her eyes and spoke again. “I am going to tell them. They should all know.” He gazed at the servants, collecting every one of their attention as he surveyed them all. “Your mistress and I met in London last spring. Lady May was concealing me in her folly, for I was in grave danger from these two. I was doing secret work for the government and so could not reveal myself, but now it can be told. We are in love and will be married as soon as possible.”
Chapter Nineteen
Pearl gray dawn peered into the rose and yellow breakfast parlor through lace curtains. For all the world like an old married couple, Etienne and May sat in silence at the round oak table sipping steaming cups of coffee.
Their long ordeal was finally over, and now others would take care of the details. Bill Connors had enlisted the help of a couple of the sturdier cottagers from the home farm to round up the miscreants and take them to the village constable and to justice. May had told them about the third man, Dempster, who was to be found in the woods near the folly. She told him to inform the constable that he could visit later for the whole story. She had no idea what to tell the man about Delisle and his cohort, but maybe Etienne would have an idea of what to say that would not bring himself into it. She was too tired to think.
John Groom and Zach had been sent out to find Cassie and Théron, though Etienne doubted whether Théron would allow himself to be taken docilely to a strange stable without his owner present. He was in no shape to assist, and had barely been able to limp up to the house. He had gazed at Lark House in silent amazement as they approached it, not having realized before how large a home May owned.
One moment of levity occurred. As they walked away from the copse, Etienne had glanced back at the sparkling jewels in the grass, and expressed concern that they should be gathered up and returned to a safe. May had sent a sideways glance his way. “I really don’t give a fig if they lay there until Christmas,” she said. “The gold yes, but the jewels, no.”
“What? But they are your mother’s jewels! So very valuable.”
“Paste. All paste. A hundred pounds’ worth of glass.”
Etienne had laughed, though his face was still lined with weariness and pain. “So the two quarreled over a collection of glass gemstones! How fitting.” They had walked up to the house arm in arm.
The household being awake anyway, May had asked Mrs. Connors if she felt up to making a restorative meal for his lordship and herself. Of course the woman had said yes. She had eyed Etienne with questioning eyes at first, but after Hannah whispered something to her about his role in saving May’s life in the London episode—she had recognized the man’s name as soon as he had introduced himself—the woman looked more kindly on him, and created a breakfast fit for royalty.
They had eaten, and May had allowed no one else but herself to see to the precious task of bandaging Etienne’s poor throat. She eyed him over the rim of her coffee cup, and then finally set it down. He was gazing off into the distance with a sad look in his brown eyes. What irony, she thought, that she must now submit to a false engagement to a man she would marry, if he would really have her. The only man she would marry, she corrected herself.
“How could you say that?” she muttered, her voice echoing strangely in the silent room. It was disorienting seeing Etienne in her home, in the prosaic surrounding of her pretty rose and yellow morning room. “How could you say we are engaged when it is not true?”
“I only thought of your reputation, little one. So much better to be secreting your heroic fiancé than some escaped murderer.” His voice was bitter, but he added a sad smile to soften his words.
She ignored the last part. “My reputation? What is going to happen to my reputation when they find out it is all a sham and we do not marry?”
“We will think of something. These people love you,” he said. “I saw it in the satisfaction that man, Connors, took in taking your attacker to justice. The way the small boy claimed the right to bring back your beautiful mare. The way your maid and cook whispered, and agreed to wait on me when they realized I had some small hand in helping you last spring. If they think I have cruelly used you, they will rally around you and save you from public opinion.”
But who will save me from my own heart, when you leave? she thought. That, though, was reflection for a quieter time, when she was alone with her thoughts. “You don’t know anything about the English countryside,” she said. “One word to the vicar and I will be ruined anyway, for regardless of the reason, I still secreted you in my folly and visited you for long hours, alone.” As she said it, she realized that it sounded li
ke she blamed him, but she didn’t.
He came around the table and knelt in front of her, taking her hands in his. For one wild moment she wondered if he would really propose to her now. What would she say? How would she react, knowing he married her only to save her reputation? She would say yes, of course! She would have him on any terms.
“I am still a wanted man, or I would truly ask you to marry just to save your reputation. But I tried to kill my cousin. I tried to murder him for the title and for the money! And I will tell the constable the truth, when they come to speak to us. I must be honest, finally.”
A cold hand of fear clutched at her heart. “No,” she cried, turning her face away, refusing to gaze in honest brown eyes that swore he was telling the truth. “I do not believe you ever did any such thing.” She tried to ignore the pain of his words, his first words, that if he could he would marry her just to save her reputation. She had thought it would be enough, when it occurred to her that he might do just that thing, but it wouldn’t. “I will not believe it of you!” she repeated, pushing away the pain. “You are not capable of plotting cold-blooded murder.”
“It is true,” he said, squeezing her hands and pressing them to his heart.
“You could not be so despicable.”
“Believe it, for it is true.” He dropped her hands and rose, pacing to the window and gazing out over the sunny landscape. “I will tell you all. It is the only way you will believe me, for you have a too-good opinion of my worth. I would have you know the truth of me. I fear you have made me into a paper hero, little one, and as much as it hurts to do it, I will shred that flimsy thing, for you must know the truth.”
As the morning sun rose, Etienne first told her about how the present marquess’s great grandfather had a brother who moved to France, married a Frenchwoman and bore sons, who had sons, who had sons, to the present—his—generation. The male line had not carried on as well in England, so that was how he, Etienne Roulant Delafont, came to be the present marquess’s heir presumptive.
Always he had known he was related to the English titular head of the family, but had not been aware that in the intervening years other closer claimants had died, bearing only daughters or no progeny at all. And so he was the heir without even knowing it.
Meanwhile, he got himself in a little trouble, he said with a wry smile. Paris, in the days following the end of the war, had been a boisterous and rowdy place. Englishmen arrived in flocks looking for merriment and debauchery. Delisle ran a gambling house, and Etienne, looking to make a little money from the so-willing English, had taken to gambling. He had always been very good at games of chance, spectacularly good, in fact. But in one memorable night—or perhaps it was two nights, he had not slept, that is all he knew—he had lost a fortune that had been advanced to him by Delisle.
Etienne frowned. “I cannot believe I had such bad luck! I have always been skilled and lucky, a very good combination at the games of chance.”
“How could you have such a prolonged losing streak if it was pure luck?” May asked. They sat talking over yet another cup of steaming coffee. “You would think that at least you would break even.”
Running his thumb around the rim of the china cup, Etienne slowly shook his head. Then his dark eyes widened. “I wonder . . . but how?”
“What has occurred to you?”
“Always I have wondered why Delisle, who is greedy and devious in the extreme, was so philosophical about the unspeakable amount I owed him. I will tell you the rest of the story, and then you tell me if something does not seem right.”
Delisle learned by chance, Etienne continued, that he, Etienne Delafont, was the heir presumptive to the English Marquess of Sedgely, and that Sedgely was actually traveling through France at that very moment, and had stopped in Paris for a few weeks.
Fabulously wealthy was the marquess, and yet Etienne had nothing. Was that right, Delisle whispered to Etienne. The Englishman had everything, and he, a Delafont, too, had been left by the war with nothing. He should kill the Englishman and inherit all that lovely money, and the title, too!
Etienne had agreed.
“How could you agree to it? How could you go along with such a terrible plot?” May whispered. The tale seemed so incongruous, so dark and terrible and yet told in such bright, sunny surroundings. She stared at the man before her, the man she would have sworn she knew as well as she knew anyone on earth.
Etienne glanced away from the window toward May. “Ah, now you begin to see how unworthy I am of your sweetness, and your giving.” There was a dark and terrible sadness in Etienne’s brown eyes. His face was haggard and shadowed by beard stubble and the bandage around his throat and across his brow, where the butt of the gun had struck him, made him look so very vulnerable.
Even now, even as he told her this awful story, she wanted to take him into her arms and nestle him against her heart. What did that say about her, that she would take an admitted criminal to her bosom? She turned away, afraid, suddenly, that her love was misplaced and yet irrecoverable.
• • •
She could not even bear to look at him, Etienne thought. And so she should not. He would tell her everything, for he thought that she was beginning to love him a little, and he must destroy that sweet feeling so she could continue her life without him and be happy with some other man, someone who deserved her. There was no one alive who did, but perhaps she would find someone to love who at least was not such a villain.
“I had done a lot of things during the war. I fought against Napoleon’s men with the Belgians for a while. But never had I killed a man in cold blood. My first attempt in France to kill my cousin was weak; I could not stomach the job. And then I thought that if I could find my way into the marquess’s room, I would steal some money and go away, to Italy, or even to England. Always I have had a soft spot for England.”
He gazed at May. And never more than at that moment, he thought. Never more than when his very heart was engaged to a woman who represented to him the best England had to offer. Courage, fortitude, inner strength tempered by a sweetness so vivid it pierced his heart like an arrow shot true from Cupid’s bow; all of that she had and was. And yet she was not for him. He roused himself and continued, pausing only as a footman came in to clear the table and bring in more coffee, at May’s request. He took a cup and drained it, then continued his tale.
“But he carried nothing of value, and I left the room upon being discovered by the marquess and his paramour. Delisle threatened me for the first time. If I did not deliver the money I owed him, even though I had been cheated at the tables and he knew it, I would be the one to die. And I had thought him a friend!”
May frowned and glared down at her cup, and pinched up a pleat of the lace tablecloth. If Delisle knew Etienne had been cheated at the table, who better could have arranged it than himself? And he was the one from whom the first knowledge of Etienne’s inheritance had come. What was the connection there?
“And so I assaulted my good cousin again,” Etienne continued, pacing away from the table and staring out the window once more. “On the packet from Calais, while it waited in dock to cross to England, I . . . how do you English say it? I ‘coshed’ him. I was supposed to then finish him with a knife, slit his throat—you see the irony of this, eh?” he said, touching the bandage at his throat. May glanced at him, and the pain in her eyes made his pitiful joke fall flat. She would turn from him in hatred before he was through his story, and yet he must tell her all. He must be the assassin of any gentle feelings she cherished for him in her generous heart.
“I was to slit his throat and leave him to bleed to death, alone, on the deck of the ship.” He spoke in a monotone, remembering the dark of the night, the wet deck, the tang of the salt air, and himself, standing over the big man’s body. “I could not do it,” he whispered. “I did not even know him. Was he a good man? What was his life like? I could not kill him so coldly. And so I raised the alarm so he would be found, and escaped, aft
er I was sure people came to his aid.”
May glanced up at him with a puzzled expression. Her blue eyes were a deeper color, he thought, gazing into them. She was weary but so rigidly she held herself, so upright, his little English miss. He wanted to sweep her hair out of her eyes and kiss her, but he maintained the absolute control he had promised himself.
“You called the watch to save his life,” she said pensively. “So why did you come to England?”
“I had to escape Delisle, and as I was in Calais, it was easiest to stow away aboard a packet to England. What I did not know was that Delisle had his English toady watching me. He reported everything, and they caught up with me in England. I was still the English marquess’s heir, they said. They would kill him, I would inherit, and they would take an additional ten thousand pounds, or they would incriminate me. I had no defense, for I was guilty of trying to kill him, no? And Delisle had my signed note to pay him a great deal of money. It would not look good for me.”
May frowned. “So the attack . . . the first one in England. Was that you?”
“No, it was Delisle and Jem Foster. I had been following them, afraid of what they would do, and I stepped in at the convenient time and chased them off. I made a very poor assassin, you see. I wondered if I should stay in London. Perhaps as heir I was entitled to something; I did not know about English law. Delisle and Jem decided they were on their own, but that it was still worth their while to kill the marquess. Once I had inherited—for they did not think I would be able to resist coming forward with my claim—then they would step in and extort money from me.
“Or they would abduct the marquess and hold him for ransom. I had met the marquess by that time, and had no wish to see him dead. And I had met Emily. I knew that I should leave England before I was caught, but I stayed.”
The Rogue's Folly Page 17
