by Hazel Hunter
Greystone blinked. “Catherine?”
“Call me what the French do,” she chided. “Ruban.”
Everything came clear to him in a rush: how Ruban had been able to hide for so long on English soil, the remarkable amount of intelligence he gathered, and why he never allowed anyone who had seen his face to live.
No one could know that the sadistic brute who inspired terror in some many was a petite, delicate-looking woman.
As he surged up Catherine rammed her boot against his throat and cocked the gun. “Put down the blades, my lord, or I will shoot you now.” She shifted the angle of her aim to his lower abdomen. “Men can live without their cock and ballocks. I have parted several from their treasures. You will not wish to live once I have, of course, but that is not my concern.”
Greystone released the hilts, and the daggers clattered to the floor beside him. “How is it that you are Ruban?” He still couldn’t quite believe it.
“The Minister of Police named me that, for the ribbons I wore around my neck. A little reminder of all those who met Monsieur Guillotine during the revolution.” Catherine wrinkled her nose. “Rather passé now.” To Jean-Pierre she said, “Mon couer, do get that coil of rope we brought, and a nice, sturdy chair for the gentleman.” She returned her attention to Greystone. “What have you done with Jennet Reed, William? Before you lie, I know my men put you both in the hidden library.”
“She’s gone. I told her to run while you were searching the study.” He prayed she remained unconscious long enough to save her life. “How did you come to serve Bonaparte? You are as English as I am.”
“I would set fire to myself if I was,” she assured him. “Long before my family became the Tindalls, they were the Tullys.”
Greystone blinked. “You are Irish.”
“Aye, and the prettiest of my line.” Her voice took on a distinctly different accent. “From the shadows we Tullys have been fighting for Erin for generations. My grandparents created the Tindalls, so we might pose as part of English society. But our efforts cost a great deal, you see.”
Any hope to persuade her with an offer of a pardon if she came over to his side died in that moment. Even he had heard whispers of the Tullys, said to be the most pitiless and secretive of the northern rebels. He also knew her kind despised his government so much they would rather die than accept amnesty.
It also made sense of why she would serve the enemy. “The French pay their spies very well.”
“More than you can imagine. My family went in with them for the coin,” Catherine said, using her upper-class English voice as if to mock him. “For me, the lure was always the work. I discovered during my training that I have a true talent for it.” She shrugged. “And the fucking. I do enjoy that as well.”
Jean-Pierre returned with the chair and the rope, and hauled him from the floor before he tied him up. Catherine stepped back and kept the pistol leveled at his head the entire time, so Greystone didn’t try to resist. Once he had been secured, she tucked the pistol away and began rummaging through the cabinets.
“I will question him,” she told Jean-Pierre in French as she began assembling a collection of kitchen knives. “Go and collect the others, and prepare the horses. Then search the rooms upstairs. If you see the girl, do not harm her. Bring her to me.”
“Jacques wants a taste of her,” Jean-Pierre said in the same language, and gave Greystone a broad smile. “Maybe you let him do her on the kitchen table after you kill this one, eh? You know how you like to watch them cry and beg.”
Catherine turned around and regarded him.
Her lover lifted his hands. “I want you to be happy, that is all.”
“I will be happy when we are back in Paris.” She picked up a carving knife and used it to point to the door. “Go.”
Ignoring their gruesome hilarity required all of Greystone’s concentration, for he had very little time left to decide how to manage the situation. He had never been captured, and all of his vials of poison remained concealed upstairs. This was what Pickering had faced at his end, and he had goaded the agents into killing him.
Somehow he must do the same.
“I am sorry about that,” Catherine said as she came over to him with a carving knife. “You know how trying it can be, working with Jean-Pierre’s sort. All ballocks and no brains. But now we must move on to the interrogation. Where have you hidden Jennet Reed?”
“As I told you, she left. I told her where to find my horse, and what to do as soon as she got home.” Greystone stared past her. “Likely she has arrived at Reed Park by now, and is sending her man for the magistrate.”
“Well, if that is true, we will make that our next stop.” She expertly sliced open the front of his shirt. “A pity, too, for I had hoped to preserve my friendship with your lady love. Her goodness often grows monotonous, but she has provided excellent cover whenever I must decamp to the country.”
“Leave her out of this,” he said tonelessly. “She is a civilian.”
“That is the problem with you English. You regard women as beneath you, unable to be your partners in the war effort. In Erin, we are all soldiers.” She began ripping off his shirt with the efficiency of someone who had done the same many times.
“Jennet is an innocent,” Greystone reminded her.
Catherine chuckled. “That she is. I am sure it will be vastly entertaining to reveal my true self to her before I cut her throat. Never would she have suspected her giddy friend to be an agent for the French. Her talent for reading people never worked on me.”
“She loves you as a friend.” It would break her heart when she discovered Catherine’s deception, too. “We never expect the people we care for to be heartless monsters, and that is your specialty, isn’t it? Your life is nothing but one endless masquerade.”
“You say that with such disapproval.” She made a tsking sound. “I know you are the Raven, William. You can stop pretending you care for anything but the next kill.”
“Jennet need never know the truth about either of us,” Greystone said quickly. “You have shown yourself only to me. I will die here tonight, and she will believe I have abandoned her again. You can still be her friend.”
“True, if I wished to.” She tossed the torn garment aside and stood back as if admiring his bare chest. “I am not entirely heartless, William. Before my men killed Pickering, I pleasured him twice—once with my mouth. While I was searching his bed chamber he came in, you see, so I was obliged to play the swooning maid for his benefit.”
“Arthur was only a courier,” Greystone told her.
“So, it seems. Still, I can assure you that he died a happy man.” She ran her finger down his sternum and stroked his abdomen. “Would you care for one last romp, my lord? I’ve always wondered what sort of lover you would prove. Jean-Pierre told me you were quite vigorous with Jennet in the hot-house.”
Her touch felt cold, and her fingers hard as bone, as if a skeleton caressed him. “I cannot not oblige you, madam.”
Catherine grabbed his crotch, but when she felt no sign of arousal from him she lifted her hand and slapped his face. She strode away from him, her fists clenched, her back rigid. Just as suddenly she turned around, her expression serene.
“A pity, for now I must seek my amusements elsewhere,” Catherine said in a pleasant tone. “I know just the thing I will do. When we arrive at Reed Park, I will permit Jacques and Jean-Pierre to have Margaret while I force Jennet to watch. Do you think the old lady can accommodate them both at once? Or perhaps I will take both ladies with me to Paris, and allow them to entertain some of my friends there.”
“You will not touch them,” Greystone said, snarling the words.
“Their fate depends entirely on how cooperative you are, William.” She came over and stroked his face where she had marked it. “What will it be: a quick death for your lady love and her sniveling mother, or a command performance with my men, or months of servicing the Emperor’s worst? The last is not a rep
rieve, I assure you. Those fellows in our prisons are much rougher than Jean-Pierre, I fear. Your contact’s mistress held out only a few days before she confessed all, and she had been as well-used as an alley slut before I gave her to them. She was happy to die.”
Catherine would take pleasure in keeping her horrific promises; in her role as Ruban she had done far worse. “What do you want to know?”
“I already know that you came here to deliver the cipher to Pickering,” she said as she brought her blade to his chest. “Tell me where you have hidden it.”
Chapter 19
The moon shone down on Jeffrey Branwen like a baleful eye as he slowed the carriage to a stop beside the twin lions guarding the gate to Dredthorne Hall. Peering at the front of the house, he saw most of the windows had gone dark. No carriages occupied the drive, and the carts used by the staff Pickering had hired for the party had also gone. It seemed the ball was over, and all was as it should be.
The memory of seeing Jennet Reed in William Gerard’s arms came back to Jeffrey, as if to shame him.
Perhaps she had chosen to stay the night with her former betrothed. A sinful decision, but he knew her attachment to William had never truly been broken. Love such as hers often led to reckless behavior. Yet Jennet had always been a devoted daughter who had attended to her fretful, excitable mother without complaint. He knew she took it upon herself to soothe Margaret each time she had one of her panicking turns. To purposely distress her mother by spending the night away from Reed Park seemed completely out of character.
She is here, and in some trouble. I know it. I can feel it.
The sound of horse hooves drew Jeffrey’s gaze to the side of the house, where three men leading horses appeared. The trio came to tether their mounts near the front entry, which made no sense to him. No gentleman rode at night, even with a full moon overhead. One of the men stepped back and staggered as if he had tripped over a stone, and the other two snickered at him.
“Brûle en l’enfer, salauds,” the one who had tripped shouted at them.
As a student at theological college Jeffrey had been required to study French. While he had never learned to speak the language with anything more than mediocre fluency, he understood enough to translate the curse.
Burn in hell, you bastards.
Being the vicar of Renwick for nearly twenty years gave him an intimate knowledge of his parish as well. None of the families or their servants spoke French as this man had. The few travelers who came through the area did speak to each other in their own language mixed with some Welsh, but it bore no resemblance to French.
These men did not belong here, not while England engaged in a war with France.
Climbing down from the driver’s perch, Jeffrey released the skidpan to keep the horses from wandering off with the carriage. He then watched from the gate as the three men entered the house. They swaggered, as if confident, and servants never came into a great house through the front entry.
Something was indeed very wrong here, and Jennet must have gotten caught up in it.
Jeffrey would never admit it to his wife, but he secretly disliked Dredthorne Hall as much as she did. A madman had shot his sister and her future husband in the front hall, leaving them to bleed to death. Some days later Jeffrey had been obliged to leave Lucetta in Deidre’s care to hold the funeral services for the assailant and his accomplices. The house had killed them, his wife had once claimed, because it could not have his sister and her beloved. Although as a vicar he could not hold with such superstition, a part of him knew Deidre was right.
Now the French had invaded Dredthorne, it seemed. But what would they want with Arthur Pickering and Jennet Reed?
Jeffrey began walking up the drive, and his dread seemed to swell with every step he took. He was a man of God, not the law. Dealing with the enemy would be better managed by soldiers. Renwick had a magistrate, but his estate bordered the river, and he would likely have retired by this hour. The nearest regiment had been recently moved to Brighton to prepare for their voyage to Spain, to relieve the exhausted English troops there fighting in the Peninsular War.
A passage from Joshua came to him, one he had often paraphrased for his parishioners during their worst moments: Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for He is with you wherever you go.
Jeffrey stopped short of the steps at the front of the house and regarded the horses the men had left there. None of them had come from the livery stable in the village; he had often visited the stable master and knew every horse available for hire there. These animals looked as if they hadn’t been groomed or properly looked after for some time.
The brightness of the moonlight allowed him to follow their tracks from the house to the staircase tower. There, where he expected to see them disappear into the stables, they instead led into the trees, as if the men had kept them in the woods behind the hall. If the three men were agents who had come to England for nefarious purposes, the forest would have provided them with concealment for as long as they needed it.
Arthur Pickering did not come to Renwick to hold a masquerade.
Jeffrey took a step toward the staircase tower, and then nearly slipped and fell. He righted himself, and saw something wet on the ground. It had run from the woodpile bin to collect in a small puddle. Too dark and thick to be water, he bent down and smelled a coppery odor coming from it.
Blood.
“Sovereign God, abide with me now.” Murmuring that entreaty gave Jeffrey renewed strength, and he approached the bin. Blood stained the ground before disappearing under it, and when he lifted the lid he saw why.
He did not recognize the murdered man, but the quality garments he wore suggested that he worked inside the house, probably as a valet or steward. He had died suddenly and violently, yet someone had put his body here, and closed his eyes. Those two acts implied cunning and sympathy, and a murderer would not feel both at once. He must not have been the first to find the corpse.
Furious indignation rose inside him, making it impossible to pray for the poor man’s soul. More than any other sin, murder offended and disgusted Jeffrey. Carefully he closed the lid, resting his hand upon it as he made a silent promise to return as soon as he could, to attend to him properly.
Now he had to find Jennet Reed, before whoever had killed this man did.
Chapter 20
Finding her way out of darkness seemed impossible, so Jennet went to another, happier place in her dreams.
In the beginning she had not been very happy about that particular evening. Time and again she had tried to talk her mother out of attending Lady Hardiwick’s spring dance, but Margaret would not hear of it. Spending a month in bed with a nasty head cold had left her mother pale and exhausted, and genuinely in need of rest. Yet Margaret strangely determined to go out into society.
“We cannot stay shut up in this house another evening,” her mother declared as she came down stairs from her chamber, her hand clinging tightly to the railing. “I accepted the invitation, so we must make an appearance, or risk offending dear Lady Hardiwick.”
“Your voice is shaking,” Jennet pointed out as she climbed up the steps to meet her. “So are your knees. I will risk her disapproval.”
Margaret glared at her. “You cannot see my knees.”
“I can hear them knocking together.” She guided her downstairs, where she had hoped to steer her into the sitting room so she could persuade her to instead sit by the fire. When Margaret stopped in the front hall and called for their housekeeper, she knew she would have to try something else. “Please, Mama, you are not well enough to go out. The sickness might return, or even worsen. Surely you do not wish to stay in bed until summer.”
“Do not fuss, Jennet.” Margaret smiled as their housekeeper appeared. “Ah, Mrs. Holloway. Has Barton brought up the carriage as I instructed?”
The housekeeper’s gaze went from Margaret to Jennet and back again. “Yes, madam.”
She smiled her approval. “Then all I
need is my wrap and Miss Jennet’s jacket, and you have them both. You are a treasure indeed.” She turned so the other woman could drape her with the heavy silk and velvet shawl. “Come, now, my darling girl.”
Jennet and the housekeeper watched Margaret walk through the front door, her stride as eager as if she meant to go on foot to the Hardiwick’s estate.
“She has not been at the wine, I hope,” Jennet murmured.
Mrs. Holloway shook her head as she helped her into her jacket. “Nor the laudanum, Miss. I checked the pantry and the medicine cabinet.”
Once Barton delivered them to the Hardiwicks’ enormous country house, Jennet noticed her mother’s step grew slightly less purposeful. By the time they made their way inside and through the receiving line and into the ballroom, Margaret took a turn away from the dance floor. She headed directly for the row of chairs and settees placed against the side wall for the older attendees.
“No one will wish to partner an old lady like me.” Her mother craned her neck as if looking for someone, and then grimaced and pressed a hand to the small of her back. “Goodness, I can feel my bones creaking from all those weeks in bed. I must speak to Dr. Mallory about that.”
“Really, Mama, we should go home,” Jennet said as she guided her over to the most comfortable-looking settee. “You are not up to this yet.”
“Nonsense. I am feeling most invigorated.” Trembling now, Margaret lowered herself onto the cushions and sighed. “There, that is very good. I am quite cozy now. Is your friend Catherine here?”
Jennet sank down beside her. “She is back in London, I believe.” She removed her jacket and draped it over the top of her mother’s shawl. “What is this about, Mama, really? I cannot remember the last time you wished to attend a ball. If ever you have.”
