The Sherbrooke Bride

by Catherine Coulter

  Both men were instantly in action although Georges did stagger a bit. Both were grateful to have something to do, anything.

  Douglas was at his wife’s side. She was moaning, her head thrashing back and forth as the cramps seized her. When they eased, she lay there panting, her eyes closed, gulping down deep breaths.

  “Alexandra,” he said, taking her face between his hands. “Alexandra.”

  She opened her eyes and stared up at him. To his astonishment, she smiled up at him. “I knew you would come. Please help me, Douglas. It hurts so very badly. Please make it stop.”

  “I’ll help you, love.” He picked her up in his arms and gently laid her onto the mattress Tony had laid close to the hearth.

  “Now, listen to me. You’re losing a babe. You are not so very far along so this will be over quickly, I promise you. Just hold on, love. Now, I’m going to press these cloths against you to get this bleeding stopped. No, don’t fight the pain. That’s right, hold my hand, squeeze as hard as you want to, that’s right.”

  He felt a shot of pain go up his arm, her grip was so hard.

  He prayed it would be over soon. He knew little to nothing about miscarriage, a subject never spoken about in a gentleman’s presence.

  Suddenly, her body stiffened, her back arching off the mattress, and she yelled. He felt the hot blood coming from her and it soaked through the cloth and onto his hand.

  She looked up at him, her eyes dumb, then her head lolled back. She was unconscious.

  Douglas kept the pressure against her.

  “Here is the hot water,” Georges Cadoudal said. “God, is she all right, Douglas?”

  “She’ll be all right. I’ll strangle her if she isn’t.”

  Georges looked oddly at him. “She told me you wouldn’t come after her. She told me you loved her sister. She knew you wouldn’t care what I did to her.”

  “She’s sometimes quite wrong,” Douglas said, not looking at Georges, not looking away from her face.

  “I thought as much. She’s unusual.” He sighed, running his hands through his hair. “I couldn’t have raped her, dammit. I’m telling you the truth. Damn, I could kill a hundred men without blinking an eye, but this one . . . I’m sorry I stole her, Douglas. It was wrong of me. You didn’t rape Janine, did you?”

  “No.”

  “The little one here was certain you hadn’t. You’re a man of honor, you see.”

  Douglas merely smiled.

  Tony brought a blanket and covered her. He laid his palm on her brow. She was cool to the touch.

  Georges Cadoudal turned away. To Douglas’s astonishment, he looked as if he were in pain. He said, as if in confession to a priest, “I brought this on her.”

  Douglas looked at him, his mouth tight. “Tell me what happened.”

  “She escaped me. I’d given her water to drink and had forgotten to tie her hands again. She disconcerted me. I don’t know how she did it but she managed to wriggle through that narrow window in the bedchamber. She landed on her face in the mud outside. She ran, she really did, ran and ran, but I chased her down. I threw her over my horse’s back. She vomited.”

  Tony said, “I have been told that a miscarriage is a very natural thing. If a man’s seed isn’t meant to remain planted in a woman’s womb, her body will expel it. It just happens sometimes.”

  “No, if I hadn’t kidnapped her, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “That’s right,” Douglas said, not looking up from his wife’s pale face. “I plan to beat the living hell out of you for that.”

  “For God’s sake, Douglas,” Tony said, “no one will ever know if he’s to blame or not. You’ve already thrashed him. What’s happened can’t be changed. She will be all right and you will have your heir. Besides, if Cadoudal really is to blame for it, he will go to hell and the devil will punish him throughout eternity.”

  “I doubt the devil will have time to punish Georges for this particular infraction. There are too many others.” Douglas paused, then added, “Another thing, Tony, I don’t give a damn about any precious heir.” Douglas stared silently toward Georges. “If she dies, I will kill you. Then the devil can have his go at you.”

  “I accept that you would have to try,” Georges said and shrugged. His left eye was already nearly closed from the blow Douglas had given him.

  Tony said nothing. Georges moved over to the dirty front window of the farmhouse. Several moments passed in silence. Then Georges cursed and cursed again. Tony and Douglas looked up. Georges jerked open the front door.

  Janine Daudet stood there, dusty and disheveled and alone, a pistol in her hand.

  She grabbed Georges, shook him, yelling at him all the while in French. “Tell me you didn’t ravish her, tell me—” Her voice dropped into stunned silence. “Douglas, you are here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is that man?”

  “He is my cousin, Lord Rathmore.”

  “Ah, the woman, your wife. What is wrong with her? All that blood . . . oh God, Georges, you didn’t murder her?”

  “No,” Douglas said calmly. “She miscarried.”

  Tony watched the woman keen softly to herself, watched Georges Cadoudal gather her into his arms and attempt to soothe her. He gently removed the pistol from her hand and slipped it into his pocket. The woman was saying over and over, “It is all my fault, my fault, my fault.”

  “Enough of this caterwauling!” Douglas yelled. “Be quiet, Janine. It is certainly your fault that Alexandra is here, scared out of her mind I’ll wager, because Georges threatened to rape her, as revenge for what I supposedly did to you.”

  “Ha,” said Georges. “She wasn’t scared, Douglas. She has steel, that one, all the way up her backbone. And she talks like no woman I have ever known in my life. She made me feel like a naughty schoolboy who should have a switch taken to his backside.” But he knew he’d frightened her and he was sorry for it, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to admit it aloud because that would make it real and that would make the guilt weigh so heavily upon him that he didn’t think he could stand it. He didn’t understand it. He’d killed with no remorse in the past and he would do whatever necessary in the future to bring the Bourbons back to the French throne. But this one particular woman was different.

  “What are you doing here, Janine?”

  She raised her head at Douglas’s voice. “I had to come when I realized what Georges had done. I had to stop it. I knew I had to tell him the truth.”

  “And what is the truth, chérie?”

  Janine pulled away from him, her eyes on her dusty riding boots. “He raped me—no, no, not Douglas—the general. Many times and he made me do humiliating things to him and to other men and he watched many times when he gave me to other men, and always, always, Georges, he threatened to kill my grandmother if I refused to obey him. The child I carry won’t know his father for I don’t know. Oh God!”

  There was utter silence except for her low sobs.

  “Why did you blame Lord Northcliffe?” Georges said. Tony started at the austere formality of his tone and his words.

  “He was kind to me.”

  “A noble reason, surely!”

  “It was close enough,” Douglas said smoothly. “She feared you wouldn’t want her if you knew what General Belesain had done to her. I was a better father for her child than any of those bastards.”

  Georges hissed through his front teeth, “All those bloody men should die.”

  “Quite possibly,” Douglas agreed.

  Tony said after a moment of tense silence, “All this is quite interesting, but isn’t the scoundrel responsible for all this misery enjoying himself at this moment? All these bloody unknown men will remain unknown. Why don’t we go teach this Belesain fellow a lesson he won’t ever forget? Why shouldn’t he be the one to pay for all this misery?”

  Georges Cadoudal didn’t often smile. He was merciless in achieving the ends for the causes he believed in. He couldn’t afford softnes
s and all lightness and humor had fled from his life many years before when he’d watched his mother and father and two sisters murdered by Robespierre. He was a man committed; a man committed didn’t smile.

  He smiled more widely.

  “Jesus,” he said. “How should I kill him? There are many methods, you know. Many, indeed. I have quite a range, a lot of choice. Shall it be slow? Shall we make him scream and plead and beg to know the final moment of his miserable life? Shall I use the garrote?” He rubbed his hands together, his eyes alight, his mind racing with plans and strategies.

  Douglas said, “You forget that he is surrounded by more soldiers than I could count. He lives in a fortress. He has guards accompany him everywhere. He also knows me by sight and you and Janine.”

  They brooded in silence.

  Tony said, “He’s never seen me before.”

  “Oh no,” Douglas said. “This isn’t your fight, Tony.”

  “I don’t know about that, it—”

  Alexandra moaned softly; she opened her eyes to see Douglas over her, smiling gently. She felt his hand pressed against her. “Am I going to live, Douglas?”

  He leaned down and lightly kissed her mouth. He said very quietly, “Oh yes. I have missed your impertinent tongue, madam. I have missed your pathetic flights of French. Most of all I have missed holding you against me.”

  She was crying; she didn’t want to but the tears fell and trickled down the sides of her face. He wiped them away with his fingers. “Hush, love, I don’t want you to make yourself ill. Hush. Now, just hold still. Are you warm enough?”

  She nodded, gulping.

  “I will continue the pressure for some more minutes. Then I’ll bathe you and make you more comfortable.”

  “I lost our child. I lost your heir, Douglas, and that is all you wanted from a wife, from me. I did promise to be a brood mare but I’ve failed. I am so very sorry, but—”

  “You will be quiet. It happened and that is that. I want you to be all right. You are what is important. Do you understand me? I’m not lying. It’s the truth.”

  He hated the pain in her eyes, the pain of her loss, the pain of what she believed to be an irreparable loss to him. He would convince her otherwise. And eventually she would believe him. He started to say something but saw that she was no longer crying. Her eyes had narrowed. It was remarkable how she could be crying pathetically one moment and looking mean as hell the next. “What is that French hussy doing here? Did she follow you again, Douglas? I won’t have it, I tell you! Tell me what to say to her, please.”

  “All right. Say, ’Je suis la femme de Douglas and je l’aime. Il est à moi.’ ”

  She looked at him suspiciously.

  “You are telling her that you are my wife and that you love me. You are telling her that I belong to you.”

  “Say it again.”

  He did, slowly.

  Alexandra opened her mouth and shouted the words to Janine Daudet.

  There was stunned silence, then Georges said thoughtfully, “I prefer your rendition of merde, I think. It brought the entire Hookams bookshop your English aristocracy love so well to a standstill.”

  Douglas smiled, something he wouldn’t have thought possible. As for Alexandra, she was still thin-lipped as she looked at Janine Daudet. “Tell her, Douglas, tell her that if she ever again lies about you, I will make her very sorry.”

  Douglas didn’t hesitate. He spoke rapid French to Janine. She stared from him to Alexandra, then nodded slowly.

  Georges was rubbing his jaw as he said to Douglas, “Thankfully you didn’t break it.”

  “You deserve that I thrash you within an inch of your life. However, I agree with Tony. I want to see Belesain pay for his crimes.”

  “Your eye is quite black,” Janine said. “Did she do this to you?”

  “No, but it doesn’t sound odd to think that she would be quite capable of blacking both my eyes.”

  It was one o’clock in the morning. There was no moon. Dark clouds hid the few stars that would have shed light on the three men as they ran, bent low, from the shelter of one tree to the next.

  There were no lights coming from the mayor’s charming house in Etaples. There were four guards patrolling the perimeter. They were bored and tired and they spoke in low voices, trying to keep themselves awake.

  The three men were on their haunches not fifteen yards from the guards. Douglas said low, “Tony, take down the one on the right. You take the one at the far corner over there, Georges.”

  “But that leaves two of them,” Tony said.

  “Don’t worry, they’re mine,” Douglas said and he rubbed his hands together. He saw that Georges would disagree and quickly said, “No, I am a better fighter in the dark. Obey me in this. Once we’re away from France, you can kill entire battalions, Georges.”

  Georges didn’t like it. He was always the one in control, the commander of any and all raids. But he owed Douglas; he also respected his abilities, and thus held his tongue. Further, it hurt to talk because Douglas had hit him so hard in the jaw. Also it was difficult to see clearly. His right eye was now only a tiny slit.

  They waited in absolute silence until the four guards were at their farthest points, then they scattered, hunkered down, appearing just shadows in the night.

  Douglas planned to take the two remaining guards when they came together. He couldn’t wait. He was grinning in the darkness. The dried mud on his face itched but he ignored it. The three of them were dark shadows on this particular night. He watched Tony make his way toward the guard. He remained relaxed. He grunted in satisfaction when Tony brought the man down, his forearm pressed hard into his throat, the only noise the man was making was a soft gurgling sound. As for Georges, he grabbed his guard, twisting his arms behind him and arching his back. He didn’t kill him but Douglas knew he wanted to. He was relieved that Georges was sticking to their agreement.

  Douglas readied himself. The guards were drawing closer. One was speaking and Douglas heard him say, “Ho, where’s Jacques?”

  “Probably relieving himself. He drank too much of that cheap wine.”

  They were nearly together. Douglas was silent and fast. He was on them before they saw him. He grinned and said in his flawless French, “Good evening, gentlemen!” He sent his right elbow into one man’s belly and his left fist went into the other man’s throat. He twirled on the balls of his feet, and slammed his foot into one guard’s chin while his other hand struck the other guard dead center in his chest. Both fell like stones. Douglas quickly dragged the two men into the bushes and straightened. He gave a soft hooting sound and Georges and Tony were beside him in an instant.

  “Well done,” Tony whispered. “Remind me not to enrage you ever again, cousin.”

  Douglas grunted. They quickly tied the men and stuffed gags into their mouths. Douglas then led the way to the side of the house to the salon where he and General Belesain had played the card game so long before. The window was locked. Douglas gently broke it, tapping it lightly with the palm of his hand.

  Tony made a cup with his hands and hefted Douglas up. He slithered through the window, dropping lightly onto the carpeted floor. In moments, Tony and Georges were with him.

  Silently they made their way up the wide front stairs, shadows against the wall, low and swift.

  There was one guard outside General Belesain’s bedchamber. He was sprawled against the wall, sound asleep, his pistol on his lap.

  Douglas tapped him with the butt of his own pistol over his right temple. He slumped over and lay on his side against the wall.

  “Now,” Douglas said. Very quietly he turned the knob to the bedchamber door. The door made no sound. Slowly, slowly, he pressed the door inward. It was perfectly silent. He stepped inside.

  He looked toward the bed but couldn’t make out the general’s body. He took another step forward then froze.

  “Ah, that’s right,” the general said low, not an inch from his ear. His pistol was pointed
in the middle of Douglas’s back.

  “Who are you, eh? A thief breaking into this house? A fool, more like. I will see in a moment. You see, I heard you, for I have the insomnia, you know? I heard you; I hear everything.”

  Douglas didn’t move. He didn’t hear any noise from Tony or Georges in the hallway not two feet away.

  A candlelight flickered and he was momentarily blinded when Belesain thrust it directly in front of his face.

  “You,” Belesain said and he was shocked. “I don’t believe this, it makes no sense. Why are you here?”

  Douglas said nothing.

  “Ah, it matters not for you will die in any case. There is no reason not to kill you now, save for one small fact you must tell me. There are four guards. I cannot believe that you disabled all of them.”

  “He didn’t,” said Tony, and slammed the door into Belesain’s arm. The pistol went flying. Douglas turned on his heel and smashed his fist into Belesain’s stomach.

  The man was wearing only a white nightshirt and presented a perfect target in the dark room.

  Georges came through the door and grabbed Douglas’s arm. “Now it is my turn,” he said and struck the general hard on the jaw. He went down on his hands and knees and remained there, panting hard, moaning softly.

  “He has gotten fatter since last I saw him,” Douglas said.

  “He could be skinny as a post and still be a pig,” Georges said, and spit on the general. “Attend me, old man. I am Georges Cadoudal and I am here for retribution. You abused my Janine. You not only kept her prisoner, you raped her and let other men rape her as well.”

  “Cadoudal,” General Belesain said dumbly, looking up. “God, it is you.”

  “Yes.”

  Tony looked dispassionately down at the general whose face had turned whiter than his nightshirt in his fear of Georges. “It is your decision, Georges. What do you wish to do with him?”