by Karen Ranney
Ever since she’d issued her decree, he’d not visited her once. For that fact she told herself she was profoundly grateful. In her mind she portrayed him as nothing more than a parent of her student, a delusional thought that she was able to continue for hours at a time. Until, of course, she saw him or Margaret spoke of him, which she did often. And then her pretense would come tumbling down like a flimsy structure of blocks, to lie jumbled on the floor.
She missed him. Intently. At night she’d sometimes awaken and lie staring at the ceiling, clenching the sheets with both fists. Once, she’d even awakened at the end of a particularly sensual dream, on the precipice of release. She’d called his name into her pillow and beat on the mattress, but it didn’t eradicate the need or ease the loneliness.
“I’ve come to invite you to the warehouse,” he said to Margaret. “There’s a ship due to arrive from the Orient, and I know you’d like to see the treasures for yourself.”
“May we really, Papa?” Margaret asked. She glanced at Jeanne. “Please, Miss du Marchand, say yes, and we can spend the whole afternoon there.”
A temptation? Or a foolish idea? Perhaps even a dangerous one. Jeanne folded her hands in front of her and looked at Douglas inquiringly.
“You should plan on visiting the MacRae empire, Miss du Marchand. You can see our vault of gold ingots.”
“We have so much more than that,” Margaret said, standing and going to her father’s side. She turned and looked at Jeanne. “You should see the warehouse, Miss du Marchand. It’s like the most enchanted place in the entire world. Please, may we go?”
His look dared her to refuse. Did he know that she was feeling rash—or was it lonely—enough to take his dare? Foolish man, she’d thrust her fist at God Himself. She was more than capable of declining Douglas MacRae.
“We have our lessons,” she said softly.
Let him command her, and then there would be no assent on her part, and no responsibility for what would inevitably occur. Or perhaps it was only what she wanted to happen. But he remained silent, watching her, refusing to order, relinquishing his role of employer for that of tormenter.
Ask me, and I’ll come. Tell me, and I’ll be the first at the door. But still, he said nothing.
Disappointed, she turned to Margaret. “We need to finish up our study of history today,” she said.
Douglas looked down at his daughter’s frowning face. “We’ll do it some other time, Meggie.” He glanced at Jeanne. “I’ll leave you to your lessons, then,” he said, placing his hand on his daughter’s head. He did that often, a benediction of touch that was gentle and almost unconscious, as if he reassured himself that she was near. Margaret, in turn, always smiled up at him—the two of them in harmony with each other.
It was a perfect familial moment, one that made Jeanne’s stomach clench.
After he left, the room seemed less bright, as if the storm had intensified or the gray day suddenly dimmed even more.
Jeanne turned to Margaret. “We have an hour before luncheon. Shall we make the best use of our time?” She forced herself to smile brightly at the child.
Margaret frowned at her, but returned to her desk and picked up her slate nonetheless.
“You know you wanted to go, Miss du Marchand,” she said a moment later.
Jeanne glanced at her, surprised.
“My cat was like you sometimes. I’d give her a piece of fish but she’d pretend not to like it. Papa said it was her pride that was hurting. She’d wanted to catch the fish herself.”
Jeanne stared wordlessly at Margaret, unable to decide what was worse: being likened to a cat or the fact that the child was extraordinarily perceptive.
The stairway was fetid and close, the smell of refuse and unwashed bodies emerging from the depths.
Nicholas, Comte du Marchand, held his lace handkerchief firmly against his nose and tried not to breathe as the stench increased.
“This is your idea, Talbot?” he asked the man in front of him.
The goldsmith turned, his unapologetic grin illuminated by the lantern in his hand. “Where else do you expect me to find a man to do your bidding, Count?”
“My title is an ancient one,” Nicholas said, pinching the handkerchief close to his nose. “Pray do not offend me by using it like a club.”
Talbot only grinned again, and descended another of the slippery steps. “Mary King’s Close dates back to the seventeenth century, your lordship,” he said mockingly. “Almost as old as that title of yours, I’d venture.”
Nicholas’s ancestors had helped finance the Norman invasion of England, but he didn’t bother attempting to educate the goldsmith.
The pit they descended into was a series of streets that had, for some odd reason, sunk into the ground not long after they were cobbled, creating a settlement beneath the city. Beyond the darkness, he could see a flicker of torchlight and lantern, and could hear the echo of laughter.
“Don’t be afraid, your lordship. Those aren’t ghosts.”
Nicholas frowned at the younger man, wishing that he’d tumble down the steps into the darkness. He doubted anyone would ever find the body.
“Don’t be absurd,” he said between clenched lips. “I’m not a child, to be afraid of the dark.”
“There’s more down here than the dark,” Talbot said. “There’s a tale that plague victims were walled up in here. You can still hear their screams if you keep quiet.”
“A gruesome history,” Nicholas said dryly. “Do you not know any more pleasant stories?”
“Queasy, your lordship?” Talbot’s laughter echoed against the soot-covered brick.
Nicholas took a step forward and placed the head of his cane against the man’s back. “Did you know, Talbot, that there is a blade located inside this walking stick? A short jab and you’ll be one more corpse.” He glanced around, surveying the blackened bricks and deep shadows. “I’ll venture that more than one body has been left here over the years.”
Talbot stepped forward, and glanced over his shoulder at Nicholas. “My pardons, your lordship, I meant no disrespect.” Before Nicholas could comment, he disappeared into the shadows. “Don’t step on any old bones, your lordship,” he said, his amused voice disembodied and echoing.
Nicholas followed his path, by necessity placing his hand on the slimy brick wall and picking his way down the steps. The glow of the lantern abruptly disappeared from view, leaving him in total darkness.
The skittering sound around him increased, punctuated by high-pitched squeaks. He detested rats.
“Have you lost your way, your lordship?” Talbot said, suddenly appearing at the bottom of the steps surrounded by a nimbus of light.
“Is it absolutely necessary to come to this…” He hesitated for a moment, knowing that there was no appropriate word for this dungeon. “Place?”
“It gets easier a few feet up ahead, your lordship.”
Nicholas grimly smiled, thinking that once he had the ruby, he would never again be forced to consort with the goldsmith.
The floor abruptly sloped beneath his feet, rendering him momentarily disoriented. He stopped and focused on the light ahead. As he walked downward toward it, he realized that Talbot had entered a tavern.
He ducked his head below a low-hung lintel, and entered a wide smoke-filled room. A corpulent man dressed in a stained shirt with rolled-up sleeves was tapping a keg that sat on rockers on the bar’s surface. He looked up at their entrance and studied them for a moment before nodding at Talbot. Nicholas fingered the neck of his walking stick and reassured himself that he was somewhat protected.
He never underestimated the situations in which he found himself. Neither did he believe in the goodness of his fellow man. His cynicism had kept him alive these last few years when the society he’d known had disintegrated around him, leaving only anarchy and mob rule.
Several men hunched over the bar with elbows planted firmly on the wood and hands cupped protectively around chipped tankards. One
man was attired in a low-slung cap, and boasted a few days’ worth of beard. But it was his foul-smelling clothes that had Nicholas pressing his handkerchief to his nose again and wishing he’d brought his lavender water with him.
Talbot whispered something to the tavern owner and the man responded with a jerk of his chin. Nicholas followed as Talbot wended his way through the smoke-filled room toward a table in the rear. A single man was seated there and at Talbot’s appearance he kicked out a low-slung stool to his left and gestured toward it with his hand.
Talbot sat and a moment later Nicholas did as well. Folding his hands over the top of his walking stick, he studied the man to his right.
His face was round, marked with scars and small pustules. The flesh hung in folds to his chin, as if he’d recently lost a great deal of weight. His eyes were brown and badly bloodshot, either from the liquor, smoke, or illness. The hands that clutched his tankard were large, fleshy, but his nails were surprisingly clean. Most of his teeth were missing but those that remained were brown stubs.
He looked exactly like what he was—a man who would kidnap or kill, depending upon the amount paid him.
“I hear you want an errand done,” the man said, his burr of accent so thick that Nicholas could barely understand his words.
“Yes,” Nicholas said, leaning forward. He told the man exactly what he needed.
When he finished, the man stared into his tankard, and then slowly nodded. “I’ll do it.”
“How much?”
When the man answered, it was Nicholas’s turn to remain silent. He was running out of money, but it seemed as if he had no other choice. If only his daughter had been the biddable girl she’d once been, he would not have had to resort to such tactics. Finally, he nodded in agreement.
The price decided upon, Talbot ordered them each a tankard. Nicholas was wise enough not to refuse, but at the same time he wasn’t going to drink anything in this foul place.
A few minutes later, he gave the man the information to carry out his assignment, and then stood, carefully hiding his disgust. It would never do to alienate those he needed.
Turning, he made his way from the tavern, leaving the haze and smoke behind. As he began to climb the steps he had the unwelcome feeling that he had just left the pits of hell.
Chapter 23
“M y father thinks you’re very beautiful, Miss du Marchand,” Margaret said one day.
A proper governess would chastise Margaret for her comment, or explain that it was not polite to offer an opinion about a person’s appearance. After all, it was character that counted more than beauty. But she didn’t say those words. Instead, she only stared at the child. “What makes you think that?”
“He said it,” Margaret said, concentrating on the book in front of her. A small smile tilted her lips and Jeanne studied her for some moments in order to ascertain whether or not Margaret was being mischievous. But it seemed as if she wasn’t, after all, because a moment later she spoke again and the topic was different.
“The dressmaker’s coming tomorrow, Miss du Marchand. I’m to tell you that I need the afternoon free.” She glanced over at Jeanne, an earnest expression on her face. “Would you please tell Papa that I really shouldn’t be taken from my studies?”
“Why?” Jeanne asked, confused. It was not the first time she’d been relegated to monosyllabic replies around the child. Jeanne shook herself mentally. “Why, Margaret? Do you not like the dressmaker?”
“I like her as a person well enough, Miss du Marchand. It’s just that I have no patience for new clothes.” Margaret sighed heavily. “I would very much like to be able to click my fingers together and have my clothes be ready for me. Instead, I must stand there for hours and hours and be fitted. They measure and they poke, and they take so long, Miss du Marchand.”
“You should be grateful that you have a father who is wealthy enough to provide lovely dresses for you.” Jeanne looked over her spectacles at Margaret and tried not to remember when she’d felt the same as a child being pinned into her court dresses. Hours had seemed like years. But time had a way of speeding up the older one became. Months now felt like weeks, and a day only an hour.
“Is that why you only have three dresses, Miss du Marchand? Were you poor as a child?”
She really should do something about the child’s ability to render her speechless so often.
“No,” Jeanne said. “My father was quite wealthy. But circumstances change, Margaret. One should always be grateful for what one has at the time.”
Margaret nodded. “Perhaps it would be bearable if you would go with me,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like a few new dresses? Papa wouldn’t mind.”
“But I would,” Jeanne said, frowning at her charge. “I could not accept them.”
“It could be part of your salary,” she said, her smile so beatific that Jeanne studied her for a moment.
“You haven’t said anything to him, have you?”
Margaret shrugged.
“Margaret MacRae,” Jeanne said, irritated.
“He said you were beautiful, Miss du Marchand. Beautiful.” Margaret sighed heavily, such a dramatic and overwrought performance that Jeanne almost smiled.
“That was very nice of him, Margaret, but it still does not change the fact that he should not be buying me dresses. I can afford them well enough on my own.”
“Then you’ll go with me?”
Jeanne shook her head.
Margaret frowned at her, obviously disappointed, and studied the book in front of her again. This time, Jeanne noticed that she was squinting.
“Are you having trouble seeing, Margaret? Are the words like little tadpoles across the page?”
Margaret looked up, her eyes sparkling. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen little tadpoles, Miss du Marchand. What are they?”
“Are the words swimming across the page?” Jeanne said instead.
“No, they don’t,” Margaret said seriously. “Occasionally it seems as if they’re very far away. But that’s only when I’m tired or the light is dim.”
Jeanne pulled off her own spectacles and handed them to the child. “Here,” she said, “try these on and see if they help.”
The frames were too large, but Margaret managed to entwine the ribbon earpiece around each ear. Balancing the book with both hands, she stared at the page. A look of utter wonder came over her face.
“I can see everything,” she said, her voice filled with awe. “Every single thing.”
She looked up at Jeanne as she removed the spectacles. “Why don’t you wear them all the time, Miss du Marchand?”
Vanity. Not a confession she’d make to the little girl. “The older I get,” Jeanne said instead, “the less it seems I need them.” Not a large lie, in the scheme of things.
Margaret studied the frame, the gold wire that held the glass lenses together. “They seem to be a wonderful invention.”
“I thought the same when my governess discovered that I needed help reading.”
Margaret smiled up at her. “And now you’ve done the same for me, Miss du Marchand.”
There was something oddly reminiscent about Margaret’s smile. Jeanne fingered her locket, wondering why her mother came so strongly to her mind at this moment.
“Are you certain that you can spare me for the dressmakers, Miss du Marchand?” Margaret asked one last time.
“Absolutely certain,” she said, smiling and making a mental note to take the opportunity of Margaret’s fitting to discuss her vision problems with Douglas.
“Are you very, very certain? I think I should practice my tables, don’t you?”
She frowned at the little girl. “You will go.”
Margaret sighed heavily again. “If I cannot go to the warehouse, Miss du Marchand, why should I have to be fitted for dresses? The first is educational, while the second is only a bore.”
Jeanne shook her head, thinking that the child did have a point.
“We’ve done
well this week,” she said. “Shall I tell your father that we’ll go and see the warehouse?”
“May we?” Margaret’s face was wreathed in a sudden, blinding smile. “Oh, yes, Miss du Marchand. I’d very much like to go.”
“Then we shall,” she said. “As a reward for enduring the dressmaker.”
Margaret sighed and rolled her eyes, but Jeanne noted that her smile didn’t fade and she didn’t protest the arrangement.
“You’ll truly enjoy it, Miss du Marchand.”
“I’m sure I shall,” Jeanne said decorously, quite capably hiding the fact that she felt as young as Margaret at that moment, and as excited.
Hamish MacRae watched his wife treat one of the men from Gilmuir and smiled as he heard her instructions.
“You’ll wash that wound every day, Peter. I’ve told Iseabal about your injury and she knows to check it.”
She wound a bandage around the man’s hand, frowning at him while she did so.
Hamish wasn’t entirely certain he believed in destiny, but he knew that he’d been given a blessing the day Mary came into his life. He had vowed, when taking her from Scotland, to give the world to her, and she surprised him by being as eager as he for adventure. Now, nearly a decade later, what he’d promised had come true. They’d seen the African continent, Egypt, and the Orient. He’d taken Mary to his boyhood home of Nova Scotia and even become embroiled in a skirmish between an English ship and an American vessel.
Hamish had watched as Mary learned medical treatments in nearly every country they’d visited. Aboard his ship was a storeroom set aside for medicines alone—jars of ginseng, Chinese herbs, and a host of remedies Mary now used to treat an impressive list of ailments. Never had he valued her talents more than in this past year, when they’d embarked on another series of voyages—across the English Channel and back again.
In the past months their rescue missions to France had increased, and it seemed to Hamish that there were always more troubled souls needing help. Mary’s talent at healing as well as her nurturing spirit were evident every time she sat at the bedside of an ill patient or anguished about a sick child.
