She turned to face Bink, and the hand she touched him with came back wet. It was covered with blood, and his face was a grim, grey mask, his eyes, tiny points of light.
“Bink. Bink,” she shouted. “He’s bleeding.” She jumped from his lap and tore open his coat. “Help him.”
Chapter 27
Bright sunlight poured through the bedchamber window. Bink sat on the edge of the bed letting it burn through him. If only it could burn away the pain in his heart.
He looked around the room. Paulette’s things had been delivered from all the various locations where they’d been strewn.
Her trunks from Greencastle sat in the adjoining dressing room. The small bag she’d taken to Scotland was there also, her hairbrush cleaned and placed, waiting for her lovely hair. Rowland had brought her lap desk over earlier, and it sat on the writing table under the window, along with a package addressed to him.
After they’d all but carried him out of Agruen’s foul den, he’d insisted on coming to Hackwell House, where he’d been cleaned and re-stitched and put to bed for a while. Hackwell, who was, in fact, in London, had sent his own valet to help him dress, and he’d made it as far as the shirt, trousers and boots before sending the man away.
He should struggle into his coats and his neck cloth, and go and converse with Hackwell and his stalwart lady who had, after all, refused to go down to Sussex.
But his heart felt like it was torn in two. Paulette wasn’t here. He hadn’t heard her moving about in this chamber they were meant to share.
He glanced at the package from Shaldon again. The letter enclosed might as well have been a deathbed message. It described in terse, unflowery script Shaldon’s feelings for Bink’s mother—and she also a spy, for the rebels in Ireland.
Bink shook his head. He’d not seen that in her, ever.
Shaldon had also told of his pride in Bink, and his plan to publicly acknowledge him as his son. He’d even enclosed the title and deed for Little Norwick.
And there was also a ring, a gold heart with a ruby center. The Spymaster’s candor didn’t extend to explaining where he’d found it.
Bink struggled up and lurched to the table, sliding the ring out and holding it up to the light. The marking inside would make no sense until matched with the other rings.
And this ring was properly Paulette’s. He dropped it back into the wrapping. He would leave it with her when they separated.
He fumbled his way back to the bed and plopped down.
A light step in the hall made him turn, but the catch in his side stopped him. He must stop moving around, the surgeon had said, else he would pull the stitches out again.
Anyway, this would be Thomas. He’d have spotted the valet’s departure and had come knocking to cadge Bink for the day’s story, since Hackwell had banished him from the room while the surgeon was working. The less Thomas knew of spying the better, else he’d trade his yen for the army for something more adventurous.
And given the boy’s natural disposition, perhaps more suitable.
Instead of a knock, he heard the latch turn. He rose and faced the door just as Paulette slipped in.
She was a vision, in the blue dress she’d worn the night he’d first kissed her. She was beautiful, bruises and all. And she smiled at him.
He had no words.
At his choking, her brows drew together. “You’re up.”
He nodded.
“Is that wise? You lost so much blood. Perhaps you should sleep more.”
No more sleeping. He had things he must do. “You look lovely. Are you all right?”
“Yes. Of course. I used another chamber to bathe. Even with the laudanum they gave you, I feared you might wake.”
“You’ve been here all along?”
“I was here until I knew you were well settled. Then I went back to the solicitor’s office. I wanted to collect my letter and my rings and talk to my…to Filomena a little more.”
“What have they done with her?”
“She’ll be released, my uncle said, to return to Spain, where she’s plotting against Ferdinand. Him I believe. But not your father.” She laughed ruefully. “What a cheat he’s pulled on us.”
“Yes. I want to talk to you about that. Come.” He reached for her hand. “Let us sit down.”
There were two chairs by the window table.
“Shall I call for some tea?” she asked.
“No. Maybe later.”
He escorted her, though in truth he felt as wobbly as a bow-legged baby, and it was her helping him toddle into the chair.
He watched her arrange the blue skirts and prop an elbow to lean on. Horizontal rays of late summer light illuminated the purpling on one cheek and the shadowed mottling around her eye.
She’d been his to protect and still she’d been taken. He felt every bruise of hers like it was his own.
“I…Paulette, I will regret to my dying day attacking your father. No. Don’t interrupt.” Her mouth had opened and he raised a hand. He must get this out. “I should have looked more closely that day. I should have engaged my brain. I should have realized Dickson might be lying. But I’m a beast. A belligerent bull. It’s what Gibson—the man who raised me—used to tell me. It’s a good thing in fierce battles, but…”
But not in a marriage. Not with a lovely woman who deserved better.
“If you want that Scottish divorce, I’ll give you it.”
Divorce?
The word poked a fresh wound right into Paulette’s heart, and her first inclination was to lash back at him.
Except…the words had been so awash in pain, she leaned closer. His handsome face, as bruised and battered as her own, was turned in her direction, his soul shining out through his eyes. The strong jaw had indeed taken many punches—for her. He was the same as that day on the road to Cransdall when he’d boosted her into a tree to rescue her father’s gift. Not a beast at all, but a gentleman, a man of honor.
She’d seen into the heart of him. She’d take his rich gifts over any jewels.
She reached for his hand. “I might be with child. Your child. And you might leave a woman but you’d never leave your child.”
“I’d never leave you, but I’ll understand if you send me away. You deserve better.”
“There is no better. And I love you.”
His throat bobbed with a fierce swallow. “I have something for you.”
She clung to his hand and stayed him. “Hold there, Mr. Gibson. This is where you say ‘I love you, too’.”
A grin spread over him, like every part of him was smiling. Ah, but she knew he loved her.
“Shaldon—my father—was right. The match is brilliant. I love you, too. And if you’re keeping score, I said it first.”
A chuckle bubbled up. “So you did. Now what do you have for me?”
“Shaldon sent this along. The deed for our home is in here as well.” He tipped a package to spill out a ring and slid it onto her middle finger where it wobbled loosely. “He went to the Peninsula himself to deliver the replacement ransom and found this among your father’s things in Lisbon.”
A large golden heart held a ruby that pulsed in the rays of the setting sun. Her own heart started to pound in tandem.
She pulled the other two rings and the blood-soaked letter out of her pocket, slipped off the heart ring and fumbled the puzzle together, two hands clasping a heart. “Filomena said she got her part of the ring from my father. She thought there were only two parts and he had the other. But he didn’t. He’d given that part to my mother, and he’d kept the heart. I guess. Shall we ever know the whole story?”
“We’ll ask Shaldon before he dies again.”
“My poor mother.” She shook her head. “Or mothers. You know, Bink, I’m the same as you. I’m a bastard too.”
Moisture pricked her eyes and she blinked. “My father was a scoundrel. I couldn’t bear to have you hand off our child and your own self to another woman. I would track you down and th
rash you without mercy.”
He squeezed her hand. “You won’t have to.”
She handed him the rings. “Shall we see if there really is a code here?’
“Let’s look at those markings.”
As they bent their heads together, his scent engulfed her, soap and clean linens, and a hint of the alcohol used on his wound.
“These marks on the heart don’t look like much,” he said. “Perhaps they’re just from the jeweler’s tongs gripping hot metal. I don’t see any key here.”
She pulled out the letter. “Filomena, Kincaid, Tellingford and I had a long chat.” She put the paper aside and fingered the rings. “Tellingford thinks my father’s man, Jock, had the key to whatever code my father was using, but he’d been coshed on the crossing, and couldn’t remember father’s last message. Filomena said my father would have made allowances for that possibility, and would have laid in another—or perhaps two more paths to the treasure.”
“If there really is a treasure.”
She looked at him through her lashes. “I didn’t tell you… Jock had claimed my father left a great fortune for me. Forgive me.”
He lifted her chin and studied her. “You had expectations of treasure, yet you married me anyway.” A smile cracked his face.
“One doesn’t pass up a house, an income, and a man who can kiss like you.”
He leaned forward but she held up a finger and stopped him. “There is a treasure, at least, that much Jock did swear to.” She chewed on her lip. “Though when Mama denied she’d ever been a spy and said the stories he’d told me about her weren’t true, I doubted his treasure story also.”
“He was speaking of Filomena.”
“Yes. And why could he not just tell me the truth, directly?” She shook her head. “Because he too was a spy and a liar, and nothing is ever a straight path with them.”
He drew her head to his chest where she heard his great heart beating fiercely.
“I’m glad you’re not a spy, Bink. And I don’t truly care about this hidden money.”
“Not at all?”
“Well, perhaps I do. Perhaps a little. I suppose I won’t entirely stop wondering.”
“So perhaps we should look for one of the other crooked paths your father laid. He sent you Jock, who was no help, and the ring, which has proven ineffective, the letter to your mother, which holds no clues, and this.”
He slid the wooden box closer.
She drew in a sharp breath, her chin lifting. “And there’s also the message he wrote to me.”
She unfastened the lid and drew out the yellowed paper, Bink’s breath warming her ear.
“But it’s not a letter,” he said.
He’d read that also, when he’d searched her things. Of course he had.
Never mind. “It’s a poem.” She read the terse script aloud:
A sweet girl named Polly
Curled up with her dolly
And spent the whole morning in play.
She ought have been learning
From books, pages turning
At work at her letters all day.
A quill you must take
And write without break
Until all of your letters are true.
Be good, do not shout
And help Mama out
Whenever she’s weary and blue.
And when it is night
Put all away right
And snuggle up tight in your bed.
Into dreams you will glide
On your back or your side
Sleeping happy, beloved, and fed.
If the tides they do shift
Know this box is my gift
And I think loving thoughts of my Polly.
With this chest’s treasure thrive
For the rest of your life
And be healthy, long-lived and jolly.
His lips touched her neck. “Hmm. About as good as Byron, I’d say. I always liked a good rhyme. Perhaps I shall start calling you Polly. I’m already thinking loving thoughts of you.”
She chuckled and reached for the ring. “What do you make of these marks?”
He squinted at the rings’ backs. “How the devil did Agruen get any kind of code out of this?”
“See here,” she said. “Perhaps this one mark signifies a letter, and here where there are two, another letter. Perhaps the code marks every word or every other word or some such.” She took a pencil and slip of paper. “I’ll guess and you write down the letters.”
They worked away, without any sensible message revealing itself.
“Drat.” She pounded the lid on the lap desk.
Bink picked up the poem. “‘With this chest’s treasure thrive’…that does seem to indicate a treasure in here…‘for the rest of your life’. Hmm. The rhyme is off a bit there.”
She picked up the box. “It’s too light to be filled with pirates’ gold.”
He took it from her. “And too heavy to be a mere shell.” He felt all around. Jiggled it. Moved the hinges. Emptied all her whatnots and clawed at the interior panels. “Nothing loose. Nothing hollow. There must have been another letter Jock lost, or that your mother destroyed.”
She stood and paced. Her mother, both mothers, had destroyed plenty in her world. As had her father.
And to hell—or heaven—with them. She marched into the dressing room and came back with her mother’s hairbrush.
She smashed the brush paddle down on the box. Bam, bam, bam. A crack formed in the wood along the dovetailing.
“You must finish it, my love.” She handed Bink the brush. “I’m not strong enough.”
“I’m injured.”
“Even so you can apply more force. I’ll put you to bed afterwards with more laudanum.”
“No laudanum. But perhaps you’ll join me in bed.”
“Agreed. Hurry then.”
He searched her eyes, frowning. “Are you sure, Paulette? It’s what he left you. He made it himself, you said.”
“I’m sure. And if this doesn’t work, we’ll take it down to the brick wall in Lady Hackwell’s garden.”
Bink pounded, and winced and she would have stopped him, but suddenly a huge crack appeared on the right side, along the stout joining of one of the seams. Bink ripped at it, examining it closer. “Look here,” he said.
A slim hollow space had opened into the side panel. Her pulse ticked up, excitement simmering in her. “I see something white.” She yanked out a hairpin and probed. A piece of tightly folded parchment slid closer. “Can you reach it?” she asked.
“Your fingers are slimmer.”
She poked and coaxed, and finally got a grip on the paper, easing it out.
The tight writing set her chest pounding as though she’d run all the way from the village to Ferndale Cottage. “A note. For an account at Drummond’s Bank. For a king’s ransom.”
Bink took the paper and bent over it, inhaling sharply.
“Quite literally.” A smile creased his face. “In the name of Paulette Silva Heardwyn.”
He studied the box, and reached for the poem, squinting over the words.
“Look here.” He pointed at the second and third stanzas and laughed. “Break—out—right—side.”
She shook her head. “Can it be? It might not be real…but…we must give it back, mustn’t we?” She searched his face.
He chewed on his lip. “We truly don’t need it.” He stood and began to pace, looking much stronger. “Money, lost outside Talavera. We looked for missing money, and we found Josiah Dickson in a hovel with your father and Filomena.”
She hurried over and reached for him, and he looked down at their hands locked together.
“Next thing I knew, I was taking a priest through the mountains. Only he wasn’t a priest. He was my father, dressed as a padre. He must have been carrying the new ransom.”
“You didn’t know him?”
“I’d never met him.”
She shook her head. “Shaldon is im
possible.”
“Aye, he is. My mother was Irish, you know,” he said. “A spy, Shaldon says. For the Irish rebellion.”
“You didn’t know?”
“About her spying? No. Never.”
“Well. We are well-matched, in that way also, I suppose.”
His smile warmed her.
“He plans to acknowledge me. Now that I’m a propertied man, he wants me to stand for Parliament for one of his pocket boroughs.”
“Truly?” She squeezed his hand. “Then, if you’re to be a Member of Parliament, I suppose we must give the crown back this money.”
Bink gazed back at the broken box. “It’s your money, Paulette. All yours. And who’s to say that was British money? Maybe it was French money your father took as a prize. In any case, you may decide. Keep it. Give it back. Give it away.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “You choose, love.”
Her heart swelled and thrashed around inside her, sparking tears. She clutched the blue skirts of her mother’s gown and thought of Sela Heardwyn, locked away in the country, and so many women like her confined to their genteel poverty. She thought of Lady Hackwell and her children’s home. Of the maimed soldiers who wandered the roads and begged on the streets. Of Jenny and all the other vulnerable girls.
“We shall keep it for now. And then, I think we must give it away, without anyone knowing the money came from us.”
“Secret benefactors.”
“Yes. Yes, that would make me happy. And you, Edward Bink Gibson, you make me happy.”
“Do I then?” His lips, so soft, kissed around the edge of her cuts and bruises. “Perhaps we should marry again, on this side of the border. Just so you can make sure of keeping me.”
She laughed. “The first banns have been posted. And we know that we suit.”
“And will always.”
She glanced at his side, where a white bandage showed under his shirt. “I should not bother your stitches.”
“You won’t.”
The Bastard's Iberian Bride (Sons of the Spy Lord Book 1) Page 27
