Susan Carroll

by The Painted Veil

  “What the devil!” Mandell exclaimed. He attempted to go to him, only to find the way barred by his grandfather's sword.

  “I fear Drummond is beyond your help, Mandell,” the duke said.

  “My God, old man, what have you done?”

  “Attempted to keep you from flinging your life away upon this woman.”

  Mandell's jaw hardened. “It is all finished, Your Grace. Briggs has remembered. I know everything.”

  “You know nothing and you understand even less. And I have no more time to teach you.” The first hint of regret crept into the old man's tone, but he was quick to quell it.

  He started down the steps toward Mandell and Anne. Mandell wrapped one arm protectively about Anne's waist. With his other hand, he drew forth a pistol and leveled it at the duke's chest.

  The duke paused, regarding the weapon with a brief flash of pained surprise. His lips curved in a smile laced with irony.

  “So it comes down to this, does it?” he asked. “We were ever adversaries of a kind, Mandell. But now that we reach the sticking point, I wonder. Do you possess the ruthlessness to fire that weapon?”

  “I beg that Your Grace will not put me to the test.”

  Anne held her breath, glancing from one taut male face to the other, alike in hauteur and unyielding pride. But where the duke's eyes were empty and cold, Mandell's roiled with pain and despair.

  The duke took another step down. “Are you in truth my grandson?” he purred. “Or only still that puling brat that sprang from de Valmiere's loins? Do you possess the steel to do whatever you deem necessary without remorse or regret?”

  “I have no desire to hurt you, Grandfather.” A fine beading of perspiration had broken out upon Mandell's brow, but the hand holding the pistol remained steady.

  “Grandfather?” the duke mocked, descending another step. “You have not called me that since the day you were first thrust weeping into my arms. I soon cured you of it, your French tendencies toward an unmanly display of emotion. But did you learn your lesson well enough to be utterly without mercy, without sentimentality? Can you kill me, Mandell, even to save your lady?”

  With a malevolent smile, the duke pointed the tip of his sword toward Anne. Mandell inhaled sharply, his eyes dilated. He cocked the pistol.

  “Mandell, don't,” Anne cried. “Don't you see what he is doing? He is goading you on purpose. He wants you to be his executioner.”

  Mandell blinked and hesitated while Anne wheeled upon the duke. “Leave him alone,” she said. “Haven't you done enough to him? Would you torment him with yet one more nightmare? Are you such a coward that you would seek this way of escaping all the pain you have caused?'

  The duke flinched at her words. He stared at her, but Anne refused to be intimidated by his icy gaze. He was the first to avert his eyes. He lowered the sword as though all the strength had suddenly gone out of him.

  “No,” he said. “You are right, milady. The fate of a duke should rest in no other man's hands.”

  Mandell exhaled a deep breath, easing back the hammer on his weapon. The duke turned away. Sparing not a glance for Nick, he stepped past his fallen grandson and began a slow ascent up the stairs, only to disappear into the darkness beyond.

  Anne and Mandell raced up to Nick. Mandell bent down to feel for a pulse. “Thank God!” he said. “He is still alive.”

  As gently as Mandell could, he managed to heft Nick into his arms and carry him to the hall below. He laid Nick out upon the floor. But it was Anne who worked over Drummond, fashioning a makeshift bandage out of Mandell's neckcloth.

  Mandell could feel the numbness of shock begin to creep over him, born of these last dread-filled hours, forcing himself to accept Briggs's terrible revelation about the old duke, racing back to Anne only to walk into that hellish scene upon the landing. If Mandell had been but a few minutes later, when he thought what might have happened to Anne, to Nick ...

  Mandell gave himself a mental shake. This was hardly the time for such grim contemplations. He eased himself out of his frock coat. Bundling it up, he used it to pillow Nick's head.

  Anne touched one hand to Nick's cheek. “He has lost so much blood, Mandell,” she said. “We must get him someplace where he can be attended properly.”

  “Hastings should be here at any moment. He was coming right behind me with the carriage.”

  Even under Anne's gentle ministrations, Nick groaned and stirred. His eyes fluttered open, at first hazed and bewildered. Then he focused upon the marquis.

  “Mandell,” he said, weakly raising one hand. Mandell clasped it between the strength of his own.

  Our grandfather,” Nick muttered. His eyes roved fearfully.

  “It is all right,” Mandell soothed him. “His Grace is gone.”

  Nick fixed him with a look of pure misery. “Sorry, Mandell. When Sara told me about where you were going to take Anne. I knew. Knew it was not the Hook doing the killings. But when I began to suspect the truth ... It was too horrible. I couldn't tell you.”

  “Don't try to talk,” Mandell commanded. “We'll soon have you out of here, back safe with your Sara.”

  Nick's lips quivered with a smile, but the expression faded. He pressed Mandell's hand with a renewed intensity. “You are going to have to go after the old man, Mandell. We cannot allow him to continue.”

  Mandell nodded.

  Anne regarded Mandell with troubled eyes. “But he is, after all, your grandfather, my lord. What will you do with him?”

  Mandell fingered his pistol and stared upward toward the gallery, the darkness where the old man had vanished. “God help me,” he said hoarsely. “I wish I knew.”

  His Grace of Windermere sat behind the small desk amidst the faded splendor of the restored bedchamber. Scratching the quill pen across a sheet of vellum, he paused to move the candle closer so that the light fell across the page. When Mandell appeared upon the threshold, the duke continued to write, not even bothering to look up.

  Mandell entered, the loaded pistol still gripped in his hand. He had not quite known what to expect, but certainly not this degree of sangfroid even from the duke of Windermere. It might have been just like dozens of times from Mandell's childhood when His Grace had summoned Mandell to his study to account for some transgression, the duke forcing Mandell to cool his heels until His Grace was ready to deal with the matter.

  Mandell stared at the old man, looking, almost hoping to perceive some change in him. Surely murder must leave some mark upon a man. His eyes did appear a little more sunk deep with weariness, but the brow was as ever untroubled, as smooth as marble. It was like looking upon the face of a stranger. But then His Grace had always been a stranger to Mandell.

  The quill continued to scratch across the paper, the duke pausing only long enough to remark, “There was no need for you to have brought the pistol, Mandell. As you can see, I am making no effort to escape. Put that thing away.”

  Mandell paced over and dropped the weapon upon the bed. He turned back, saying, “We managed to get Drummond off in the carriage. In case you are interested, I believe he will live.”

  “Indeed?' The duke dipped his quill into the ink and resumed writing. “And your lady? I presume you have also whisked her out of harm's way.”

  Mandell nodded. The duke paused briefly. He frowned and said, “I do not know if it will much matter to you at this juncture, Mandell, but I did not begin with the intention of harming Lady Fairhaven. It was pure chance that she happened to be there when I finally chose to dispatch Sir Lucien.”

  “I did not see you come rushing forward to clear her name. And if I had not arrived in time tonight, what would have happened to Anne?”

  “She would be dead. That might have been a pity. She possessed more courage than I supposed. If not for her tendency to wear her heart on her sleeve, she might have made a tolerable marchioness after all.”

  Mandell bit off a savage oath. The duke looked up at him with a cold smile. “What did you expect o
f me, Mandell? Some sign of remorse?”

  “No, but an explanation would be appreciated. You have murdered three men. It would have been four if Briggs had died.”

  “In another time, another era, no one would have dared to question me. The power of life and death would have been merely another of my rights as the duke of Windermere.”

  “This is not another era. This is now, damn it! There are no more feudal lords, Your Grace. Even a duke is expected to account for the taking of a life.”

  The lace at the duke's cuffs brushed the desk as he indicated the paper with a graceful gesture. “I am writing the confession of my actions even as we speak. All the details of time and place, how I managed the business of my disguise. Everything, in short, except for my motives. Those are no one else's concern.”

  “Not even mine?”

  “I could explain to you, but I doubt you will understand.”

  “I beg you will attempt to do so,”

  The duke merely compressed his lips and began to write again.

  “You did not do it for robbery, that I know,” Mandell said. “The phantom in the cavalier hat is not, as everyone supposed, the Hook.”

  “The duke of Windermere, a common footpad!” The duke gave a snort of laughter. “Hardly, but it was useful, my doings being confused with the Hook's petty theft. While the constabulary searched thieves' kitchens for a one-handed rogue, it kept them from interfering with me.”

  “And so you are not a common thief. Only a common murderer.”

  “Far from common, Mandell. A dispenser of justice, a killer of fools, a social arbiter perhaps. But never a common murderer.”

  “What sort of justice was it that made you attack poor Briggs? He had never done any harm to you.”

  The duke's lip curled with contempt. “He was stupid enough to come and inform me of how he had injured my grandson and heir in the process of halting a drunken brawl.”

  “Briggs was frightened that night. He came to you for help.”

  “And he received it. The only possible help for such a simpleton, a yard of naked steel. He looked surprised when I ran him through. I rather believed I wounded his feelings as much as anything else.”

  Mandell probed his grandfather's eyes for some sign of madness. It would have been a comfort to think the old man mad. But his eyes remained remarkably clear with that same cold reason, that lack of compassion that had ever characterized the duke.

  “Briggs was ... is my friend,” Mandell said. “His devotion to me—”

  “The relationship was never a credit to you,” the duke interrupted.

  “His devotion to me,” Mandell continued through clenched teeth, “was such that even after you had nearly killed him, he preferred to keep silent rather than expose you, for fear of giving me pain. When I forced him to tell me tonight, he wept like a babe.”

  “How touching,” the duke said. “I could have spared you both the discomfort of such a maudlin scene had my hand been a little steadier that night.”

  His Grace flexed his fingers. “My rheumatism, you know. It interferes with my capabilities. I am not the swordsman I once was as a younger man. That is why when I killed Sir Lucien, I decided that I had better be certain and employ a pistol at close range.”

  He shot an ironic glance at Mandell. “You will not pretend to mourn his death, I trust?”

  “No, but I would not have shot him down in cold blood, either.”

  “He was a dog, not a man. A sniveling cur who presumed to attack one of my blood in a vulgar tavern. I derived a great deal of amusement from tormenting Sir Lucien first, stalking the coward until I believe I drove him quite mad. But in the end, there could only be one fitting payment for Fairhaven's offenses, and that was death.”

  The duke gave a slight shrug as though already dismissing all thought of Sir Lucien from his mind.

  “So you have been committing these murders—” Mandell began.

  “Executions,” the duke corrected.

  “You performed these executions merely because certain people chanced to offend you?” Mandell asked in disbelieving accents. “What about that young man Keeler? He was little more than a boy.”

  “A boy who presumed to sit down to play cards with a duke and attempted to cheat his betters. An upstart banker's son.”

  “And Albert Glossop?'

  “Ah, Mr. Glossop. He was the one who showed me the possibilities of what a blade of steel could do when wielded by a man not afraid to use it to rid the world of inferior beings. It was so easy to cut Glossop down and vanish into the night. The braying ass!”

  “That was how it all began? You had no other reason for killing Glossop than you thought him a fool?”

  The duke frowned and did not answer him. His hand tightened about the quill and he resumed his writing with a vengeance. Mandell was left with the uneasy sensation that there was something more that his grandfather was not telling him. After so many other horrors, what else could there possibly be?

  Mandell felt impervious to any further shock. He was determined to have the truth from the old man, all of it.

  Splaying his hands upon the desk, he bent over the duke and repeated his question. “Why did you begin your night stalking with Albert Glossop, Your Grace?'

  The duke flinched, but said, “Stand erect, Mandell. Do not lean upon my desk. You know I have always found that an annoying habit.”

  When Mandell did not move, the old man flung down his quill. He stirred restlessly in his chair, his brow furrowing as he seemed to wrestle with some inner dilemma. He stared past Mandell toward the window, as though he expected to find the answer somewhere out there in the dark of the night.

  At last he sighed and murmured, “I suppose I may as well tell you the whole. It can make no difference now.”

  He waited until Mandell removed his hands from the desk and straightened. Then the duke began slowly, “Glossop was indeed a fool, but that was not my main reason for eliminating him. The young idiot had recently acquired a friend from France who was acquainted with the de Valmieres.”

  A tension shot through Mandell. He thought he was prepared to hear anything. But matters suddenly promised to take a direction he had never anticipated.

  “My father?” he asked numbly.

  “No, your father's family. It seems the French king finally decided to overlook the de Valmieres questionable loyalty during the revolution and restored them to their estate. This finally left them at leisure to send an envoy to make awkward inquiries. An envoy that I sent back with false answers. Mr. Glossop, unfortunately became aware of this fact and threatened to tell you unless I paid him a considerable sum. Scarcely the action of a gentleman.”

  “What was the nature of these inquiries, Your Grace?”

  The duke stared down at his paper and fidgeted with his quill.

  “The envoy was sent to ask about me, was he not?” Mandell prompted. “My father's family was seeking to discover my whereabouts.”

  “Yes, but mostly they were trying to find out what became of your father?'

  “My father? Why would they come to you for —” Mandell broke off, stunned by sudden comprehension. “You know. You know where my father is.”

  The duke rested his head against the back of the chair, his heavy-lidded eyes seeming weighted down by a great weariness. “Yes, I have known. All of this time. He came, journeying to my estate in the north, not long after you had been placed in my care, Mandell. De Valmiere expected to find both you and your mother awaiting him with open arms.”

  “How could he have expected that? You told me my father abandoned my mother and me in Paris.”

  “He may as well have done. He ordered Celine to take you and come to England. If the young fool could have got his head out of the clouds and away from his infernal music, he might have known my Celine better. She was not a woman to tamely accept such commands. She took you and went back to Paris to look for her husband, but he was gone.”

  “Gone where?”
<
br />   “To make certain his own family, his brother and sisters, got out of the country, when his first duty should have been to his wife and child.”

  “But he assumed my mother and I were already safe.”

  “He should have made sure.” The old man slammed his fist against the desk in a rare display of passion. “Instead he comes jaunting to see me months after it was too late to save my beautiful Celine.”

  The duke's lips twisted with a bitter cruelty. “I took great satisfaction in informing the fool how his feeble efforts had gone awry. I described to him Celine's death in vivid detail, and for added measure, I told him that you had perished, too.”

  “You bastard!” Mandell said. “All these years, you permitted me to believe that my father had deserted me, that he was a coward.”

  “And so he was. After I told him about your mother's death, he still could not act the part of a man. He wept like a babe, with that vulgar Gallic emotion I find so repulsive. He sobbed until I could endure the sound no longer. I got down my sword.”

  “No!” Mandell rasped. But his denial was to no avail.

  The duke continued remorsely, “He was a coward to the last. When I approached him, sword drawn, he only looked at me. He made not one move to defend himself, profaning Celine's name by whispering it with his last breath. It was but simple justice, his life in retribution for hers.”

  “Oh, God!” Mandell groaned. After so many years of denying kinship with his father, he felt at one with the man, could fully understand the complete despair and agony of the young chevalier's final moments, the way he must have welcomed the sword thrust that ended his life.

  Mandell stared at his grandfather, the regal old man dwindling to become something twisted, evil, and hideous in Mandell's eyes. His breath shallow and rapid, he stalked toward the duke, his hands clenching and unclenching.

  The duke did not stir. Only his eyes shifted to regard Mandell with chilling understanding.

  “Now you would like to kill me and you could do it swiftly and without mercy. You are not so very unlike me, Mandell, except that you are driven to act from passion, whereas I have always been ruled by cold logic.”