Petals in the Storm fa-2

by Mary Jo Putney

  Morier murmured, "Good show," and returned to his document.

  Northwood worked for two hours, the back of his neck prickling with knowledge of the candle burning toward that lethal trail of gunpowder. He excused himself when he could bear no more, and had no trouble looking sick. Morier and the other clerks who had come in commiserated about his illness and thanked him for making the effort.

  As he left, Oliver reflected that it was enough to make even a man without a conscience squeamish, but he repressed his disquiet. In spite of casual friendliness, he knew the other members of the delegation looked down on him, thought they were more intelligent than he was. Well, they were wrong; he would have more power and wealth than any of them.

  He hailed a cab in the Rue de Faubourg St. Honore and returned to his house, then changed into riding dress. The time had come to call on the Count de Varenne and let him see what a knowing one Oliver Northwood was

  With luck Le Serpent would also have the promised bonus waiting: the gorgeous, unobtainable Margot Ashton would finally be in Oliver Northwood's power.

  As early as was decent, Helene Sorel sent a messenger to Candover's lodgings to see if he had learned anything. Less than three-quarters of an hour later her footman returned with the unwelcome news that the duke had not been seen since the previous afternoon.

  Though the day was pleasantly warm, the implications of the news chilled Helene to the bone. Perhaps the duke's absence was not significant, but given the disappearances of Maggie and Robert Anderson, she must assume the worse.

  If the unknown Le Serpent had seized the other three, was Helene also on his list?

  Briefly she was tempted to flee back to the country, to her two daughters and safety. With the conspiracy so close to culmination, Le Serpent would never bother to follow her there. What could she do alone, without help?

  Her hands curled into fists and she rejected that solution. If worse came to worse, and she, too, disappeared, Helene's own mother would take care of her granddaughters faithfully and well. But if there was any action Helene could take, she would do it rather than live a craven.

  But was there anything she could do? Helene was too unimportant to convince any government officials that danger was imminent even if she knew what form the plot would take, which she didn't.

  Her hands unclenched and she got determinedly to her feet There was something she should have thought of sooner, and she would see to it right now.

  The sound of the hammer being cocked freed Rafe from his momentary paralysis. The stark resignation on Anderson's face had caused an elusive memory to click into place, and Rafe was reasonably sure he knew who the blond man was.

  His voice crackling with authority, Rafe said, "Varenne, shooting Anderson would be a serious mistake. Remember that you said you were never profligate?"

  The finger that had been tightening on the trigger paused, but the count was annoyed as he glanced over. "Don't interfere, Candover. You are worth keeping for your potential value, but a spy is not the same category."

  "If he were only a spy, that might be true," Rafe agreed, his gaze steady on the count. "But the man you are so wastefully about to kill is Lord Robert Andreville, brother of the Marquess of Wolverton, one of the richest men in Britain."

  "What!" Varenne's gaze snapped back to his intended victim. "Is that true?"

  "Yes," Anderson admitted. "Does it make a difference?"

  For a long, tense moment Varenne weighed the potential benefits against the risks. Then he uncocked the pistol and thrust it back under his coat. "Yes, it does. Though if you're lying, I can always eliminate you later."

  "It's the truth," Rafe said tersely. "I went to school with his older brother."

  Varenne nodded absently, his mind already on other matters, then left with his gunmen. Rafe felt a shudder of distaste as he wondered how many of the brute's other chores were going to be casual, efficient murder. Probably he had put the two men in the same cell so that Rafe would be properly intimidated by witnessing Anderson's execution. It would have been a very effective demonstration.

  As the sound of steps disappeared from the anteroom, the blond man let out an explosive breath and slumped back against the stone wall, his eyes closed from reaction. After several moments, he opened his eyes and said with commendable calm, "I thought my sins had caught up with me that time. I owe you a considerable debt, Candover. How long have you known who I was? For that matter, how did you recognize me? My brother and I don't look much alike."

  "I wasn't certain-it was an educated guess that struck me when Varenne cocked the hammer of his pistol." Feeling a little weak-kneed himself, Rafe folded down into the straw. "Your expression reminded me of how your brother Giles looked after his wife died. Even if I was wrong about your identity, it was obviously worth a try."

  "I'm glad your mind worked faster than mine did," Anderson, or rather Andreville, said fervently. "It never occurred to me that my connections would make any difference."

  "I had the advantage of knowing that Varenne was interested in holding me for ransom if his other plans fell through. He also agreed to let me ransom Margot." Rafe studied the other man's face. Now that the relationship had been confirmed, it was easier to see subtle traces of family resemblance. "I know Giles from Eton, where he was a couple of years ahead of me. Though he doesn't come to London often, when he does we always try to get together for an evening. Occasionally he has mentioned his scapegrace younger brother Robin."

  "That must make for lively dinner conversation," Andreville said dryly.

  Rafe grinned. "To say the least. Did you really manage to get expelled from Eton your very first day?"

  Andreville gave a rueful smile. "It's true. I wanted to go to Winchester, but my father insisted that I follow in the footsteps of countless Andrevilles to Eton. It was a busy year. The old boy didn't want to be defeated by an eight-year-old child, so I had to get myself expelled from three public schools before he let me go where I wanted."

  "What made you so set on Winchester?"

  "I had a friend going there, and my father was against it. Either reason would have sufficed," he said wryly. "Though you were stretching a point by assuming my brother would be willing to ransom me. Given my checkered past, he might be relieved if I vanished without a trace before I can embarrass the family any further."

  "Giles would never do that." Rafe thought for a moment. "Even if he had trouble meeting a ransom demand, I thought that you had inherited considerable property from someone else."

  Andreville nodded. "My great-uncle. The Andrevilles produce a black sheep every generation or so. Uncle Rawson was the last one before me, so of course we got along splendidly. But if I were a common, garden variety spy, I would be in no position to ransom myself- this is not a lucrative profession."

  Rafe shrugged. "The Candover estate could have stretched to another twenty or thirty thousand pounds if necessary."

  Andreville looked at him with surprise. "You would have done that for someone you hardly know, and don't much like?"

  Uncomfortable that his companion had picked up that concealed resentment, Rafe said shortly, "Margot wouldn't like it if you were killed. It would have been convenient if you'd gone to Eton or Oxford, though. If you had, I'd have known you already, and been spared considerable confusion."

  Andreville looked scandalized. "Attend those hellholes when I could be experiencing the joys of Winchester and Cambridge?"

  Rafe laughed. "I assume that you work for Lord Strathmore. How did you come to know him?"

  "There is some vague family connection between the Andrevilles and the Fairchilds. Lucien and I always got on well, but since we went to different schools, we seldom saw each other," Andreville replied. "I heard.about the famous Fallen Angels, of course. In fact, I once met Lord Michael Kenyon when he was serving on the Peninsula, though he didn't know me by my real name. But that's another story."

  He pushed himself to a sitting position. "I'd finished my first year at Cambridg
e when the Treaty of Amiens went into effect, so I decided to take a year off and do the Grand Tour. As I traveled through France, it became obvious that it was only a matter of time until war broke out again. When I came across some information that I thought might interest the British government, I sent it to Lucien, because I knew that he had taken a position in Whitehall.

  "Lucien immediately came to Paris to tell me that he was working in intelligence and to ask me if I would be willing to stay on the continent as a British agent." Andreville shrugged. "Being young and stupid, I thought it sounded like quite an adventure, so here I am."

  Thinking out loud, Rafe said, "Why the devil didn't Lucien tell me about you before I came to Paris?"

  "In this business, it becomes second nature never to say more than is absolutely necessary. Lucien sent you over to work with Maggie-there was no need for you to know that I was also an agent."

  Rafe digested that for a bit. "Yet Lucien didn't know Margot well enough to be sure that she was English."

  "That's because he knew her through me, and I said only that she was English-there was no need for him to know her real name and background."

  Rafe made a face. "I can't help thinking that matters would have been greatly simplified if there had been less secretiveness."

  "In this case, that's true." Andreville's expression darkened. "But there are times when men have died because their names were tortured out of imprisoned colleagues."

  Deciding that it was time to return to the subject closest to his heart, Rafe said, "You were going to tell me about Margot's life in the years since you met her."

  "If you're really sure you want to know. It's a hard story to hear."

  "If it's difficult to listen to, it must have been a damned sight worse for Margot to live through," Rafe said grimly. "I want to know it all."

  "As you wish." Restively Andreville pushed himself to his feet and went to lean against the wall under the window. "I believe you know how Maggie and her father and his servant were assaulted by a gang of former soldiers who were heading to Paris?"

  "Yes, it was quite a scandal in England. However, no details were known, which is why Margot was thought to have died."

  His voice flat, Andreville said, "Maggie and her father and Willis were eating in a country auberge when a half dozen or so ex-soldiers arrived, already drunk and bullying everyone in sight. Colonel Ashton tried to get his party away quietly, but someone recognized his accent as English, they were accused of being spies, and the soldiers attacked them.

  "Ashton and his man fought, of course, but they never had a chance against so many. At the end, the colonel threw himself across his daughter to protect her, hoping that her life might be spared." Andreville's fair skin drew tightly over the fine bones of his face. "Maggie's father died sprawled on top of her, Candover, bleeding from a dozen knife and bullet wounds."

  "Dear God," Rafe whispered. Margot had adored her father. To see him die like that… The thought made him ill. Well, Andreville had warned him. Steeling himself for what he feared was coming, he asked, "What then?"

  "What the hell do you think happened, Candover?" Andreville said with barely controlled rage. "A girl who looks like Maggie, in the hands of a drunken gang of ex-soldiers?"

  Rafe pushed himself to his feet and began pacing, no more able to sit quietly in die face of such an atrocity than Andreville was. With anguish, he thought of Margot's near-hysteria in the Place du Carrousel and after. Dear God, no wonder she had nightmares of clawing hands and beastly faces; no wonder she needed to be reminded that not all men were savages.

  Andreville began speaking again, his face averted. "Since they had a beautiful girl and a cellar full of wine, they were in no hurry to move on, so they settled down and enjoyed themselves. For the next day and a half, they stayed continuously drunk, raping her whenever one of them was in the mood.

  "Then I happened by, traveling in the uniform of a French grenadier captain. When the villagers saw me, the mayor came out and begged me to get the soldier-pigs to move on before they destroyed the whole village.

  "I was going to pass on by. After all, I was alone, and not even a genuine officer. But when the mayor said they had an English girl…" The fingers of Andreville's right hand splayed flat out on the wall beside him. "I had to see if I could help. So I went into the inn, praised the soldiers for their patriotism and cleverness in catching spies, chided them for overzealousness, and inspired them to get moving to Paris because the emperor needed them."

  Rafe imagined that slight, elegant figure facing down a gang of armed drunks, and understood why Margot had fallen in love with him. Lord Robert would have been hardly more than a boy himself. "How did you get them to release Margot instead of taking her with them?"

  "Sheer force of personality." Andreville said with even greater dryness. "I said that I would take the English spy to Paris for questioning myself. Her horse and luggage were in the stable, so I got her mounted and both of us the hell away from there.

  "It didn't take long to realize what kind of girl I'd rescued. She was half dead from what they'd done to her, and wearing a ragged dress covered with her father's blood. Any other woman would have been raving mad or unconscious. But Maggie…" His drawn face eased a little.

  "When I stopped the horses a mile down the road to introduce myself and assure her that she was safe, she pulled a pistol on me. It had been hidden in her saddlebag. I'll never forget the sight: her hands were shaking, her face was so bruised that her own mother wouldn't have recognized her, and she'd been through an ordeal that I wouldn't have wished on Napoleon himself. Yet she was unbroken." After a long silence, he added softly, "She's the strongest person I've ever know."

  Rafe realized that he was pacing around his end of the cell, hands clenched, his eyes unseeing. Never in his life had he had a stronger desire to be alone, to assimilate the horror of what had happened to Margot.

  To see her father murdered in front of her eyes; to have had her sexual initiation as the victim of a gang of brutes… How had she kept her sanity? Yet she had not only survived, but developed into an extraordinary woman. The thought of the strength and resilience that required staggered him.

  On top of the helpless pain he felt on her behalf was the crushing knowledge of his own guilt. If he hadn't hurt Margot so badly, she would not have been in France. No wonder she had accused him of being responsible for her father's death. It was true, and there was no way on God's earth that he could ever make amends for the catastrophe which he had indirectly caused.

  The frantic energy churning inside him was unbearable. Rafe, the quintessential civilized man, burned with the need to do something physically violent- preferably kill Margot's assailants with his bare hands.

  Accurately reading Rafe's expression, Andreville said, "If it's any comfort, most of the men who joined the Grand Armee that long ago are probably long since dead. One can only hope that each of them died slowly and painfully."

  "One can only hope," Rafe said thickly. He pictured one of those anonymous men being flayed alive by Spanish partisans; another dying of gangrene after ten days with a bullet in his belly; a third slowly freezing to death on the plains of Russia.

  The visions didn't help much.

  Muscle by muscle, he forced himself to relax. If he didn't, he'd go mad.

  Andreville had returned to his corner and sunken into the straw. The emotions of his story were etched on his face and shadows showed under the blue eyes. Since he also loved Margot, this must be harrowing for him to speak of.

  When he had reestablished a fragile control, Rafe said, "I suppose that after that, things had to get better."

  "Yes, though it was a bit of a quandary for me. I could hardly abandon Maggie in the middle of France, but I was engaged in some vital business. When I explained, she said that she had no reason to return to England, so why didn't I take her with me? So I did.

  "I took a flat in Paris. Because of our similar coloring, we claimed to be a brother and his
widowed sister. She became Marguerite to the world in general, and Maggie to me, because she no longer wanted to be Margot Ashton." Forgetting his injured arm, Andreville started to make a gesture with his left hand, then winced. "Even before we reached Paris, I asked her to marry me so that she would have the protection of my name. Also, of course, if something happened to me she would be a considerable heiress."

  Rafe swallowed, then said woodenly, "So you are actually husband and wife."

  "No, she refused, saying that we shouldn't marry merely because of some unlucky circumstances. Instead, she offered to become my mistress if I wished."

  So that was how it had begun. Rafe said, "I'm amazed that she could bear to let a man touch her."

  "I was amazed, too, but she said that she wanted some happier memories to replace the bad ones," Andreville explained. "I had some doubts about the arrangement-remnants of a proper upbringing, no doubt-but I agreed. I was only twenty years old myself and didn't really want to be married, yet only an absolute fool would reject such an offer from a woman like her."

  Though Andreville was glossing over what he had done, Rafe knew that it must have taken infinite kindness and patience to help Margot overcome such a shattering experience and become the passionate woman she was now. Rafe was profoundly grateful that she had had such a man to help her. With equal intensity, he resented the fact that he himself had not been the one; when she had needed him most, he had not been there.

  Needing to acknowledge what the other man had done, he said, "She was fortunate to have you."

  "We were fortunate to have each other." Andreville turned his uninjured hand palm up. "We've worked together ever since. I would move around Europe as necessary, often for months at a time. I've traveled with armies, crossed the Channel with smugglers, and generally did a lot of other harebrained, uncomfortable things that seem like great adventures when one is young and foolish." He smiled wryly. "As a child I rebelled against staid English respectability, but I must say that rebellion has lost its appeal since I turned thirty.