“And looking as delightful as ever,” Valère said, smiling and executing a bow that took in all the young ladies, before returning to Serena. “I am so relieved. What happened here last night, then?”
“We’re not terribly sure,” Serena said, her manner deliberately vague. “I believe Major Doverton was pursuing a particularly nasty set of smugglers.”
“What a terrible business!”
“Indeed.” She regarded him directly. “I’m sorry, we are not in a position to receive visitors.”
“Of course, I realize that. Which is why I’m so glad to have caught you on your walk. To be frank, Lady Serena, if you could spare me just a minute more of your time, I’d also hoped to speak on another matter? A mutual friend…”
Serena presumed he meant Catherine. “Of course. We may take a turn around the front terrace. Girls, go in to Miss Grey and I’ll join you in a moment.”
The girls, more than happy to obey, all but bounded up the front steps and into the house.
“It’s about Miss Winslow,” the Comte de Valère confided as they strolled along the front of the house.
“I thought it might be.”
“The trouble is, I fear I might have inadvertently raised expectations which I cannot fulfil.”
Serena regarded him without favor. “In what way can they not be fulfilled?”
“Alas, while she is charming company, I do not love Miss Winslow. And I am the kind of man who can only marry for love.”
“Then you should have been more careful,” Serena snapped, annoyed and hurt for her friend, who had seemed to be more than half in love with the Comte.
“I know it and am sorry for it. I can only blame it on my solitude, my loneliness in this place. I am, you might say, forever a stranger.”
“You were brought up here, were you not, monsieur? I can’t imagine you are friendless.”
“In England as a whole, of course I am not. Here in Blackhaven, I had no acquaintances. But this is no excuse. I am hoping you might explain the matter to Miss Winslow? Or give me advice as to how to let her down as gently and kindly as may be.”
“I think you give yourself too much credit, sir,” Serena said with coolness. “Miss Winslow will hardly go into a decline over you or any other man she barely knows.”
“Of course not,” he said hastily.
They had reached the end of the house, and Serena turned to walk back again. But the count remained, looking along the side of the building toward the old part of the castle. “May we walk around this way? I would love to see the original castle.”
Serena hesitated between civility and irritation with him for his carelessness toward her friend’s feelings. Irritation won.
“I’m afraid not today. My presence is required indoors.”
“Of course,” he said, offering his arm in understanding spirit.
Although Serena had no desire to take his arm, this time, civility won, and she laid her fingers lightly on his forearm. His manner was unthreatening as he placed her hand more comfortably in the crook of his elbow, only then his fingers tightened, her hand was trapped and she found herself trotting around the side of the house after all.
“Monsieur, I believe I made myself plain!” she said, outraged.
“Oh, you did, which is why I have been forced to take rather more drastic measures. In my pocket I have a dagger and a pistol. The blade, I shall use on you if you don’t stop squirming. The pistol I shall use on the first of your servants stupid enough to interfere with me.”
Stunned, Serena stopped trying to wrench her hand free and stared at him. Without slowing, he took his free hand from his pocket and showed her a wicked dagger that looked alarmingly well-used.
“What do you want?” she whispered.
“I want my gunpowder, which I’d never have left here if I’d guessed it would be such a damned palaver to get it out again.”
“You’re not an emigre at all, are you?”
“Ma mie, I’m not even a comte,” he said contemptuously.
“You’re a Bonapartist! A spy!”
“I am. Although I’ve never before been forced to work with such an inept set of bunglers as the fools who’ve been failing to remove my gunpowder from your cellar for some time now.”
“They removed some of it,” Serena retorted.
“Ah. I wondered if you’d noticed. It was you who tipped off the soldiers, then.”
“Of course.” She half-stumbled through the arch into the old castle courtyard. “And I’ll never give you the cellar key!”
“If you’ve noticed, I’ve never needed your key.” Releasing her squashed hand at last, he grasped her arm instead and dropped the dagger back in his pocket. “Try to run or scream or even just annoy me, and I’ll cut you in pieces,” he warned in amiable accents.
He produced the cellar key in one hand and whistled loudly. “Calling for my transport,” he said jauntily, and unlocked the cellar door.
To her surprise and relief, he didn’t pull her into the cellar but to one side of the door. His other hand grasped the dagger once more, his attitude quite incongruously casual.
The curricle came rumbling around from the front of the house, the servant trotting beside the horse. Drawing level with the door, he looped the reins through the handle and loped inside the cellar.
As his footsteps faded down the stairs, the rumbling of another vehicle reached Serena’s puzzled ears. A horse and cart trotted briskly through the other arch.
The blatancy rendered Serena speechless for several seconds while the two ruffians on the box leapt down. One of them looked horribly familiar—surely the man who had threatened her with a dagger. Which seemed to be becoming a common occurrence in her life.
“You can’t,” Serena blurted at last. “It’s broad daylight! My people will be looking for me! And if they don’t stop you, the soldiers will!”
“No one will stop me,” he said with a quiet confidence that was far more frightening than bluster.
“What idiocy makes you imagine that?” she demanded.
He smiled and placed the very tip of the dagger at her throat. It was only for an instant, but long enough to drive the breath from her body in fear. He said, “I have the earl’s sister. And I’ve been in Blackhaven long enough to realize that no one will risk her. As long as I have you, I can do exactly as I wish.”
Her instinct was to wrestle and scream, and indeed she did give an almost involuntary jerk, but the flash of the dagger and the memory of his other threat kept her silent and still. The pistol I shall use on the first of your servants stupid enough to interfere with me. She couldn’t risk that. They’d already shot Tamar.
Chapter Eleven
While Tamar, who was interested in everyone, enjoyed getting to know the castle people, and was glad of the young ladies’ company, it was Serena he wanted in the room. His shoulder ached like the fiend, but it seemed to hurt less than her absence. And she’d barely been gone two hours.
His heart lifted when the children appeared and announced that Serena would be in shortly. But he could not be still. Fully dressed now in poor Braithwaite’s clothes—which weren’t a bad fit and were certainly a damned sight finer than any he’d ever owned—he paced, throwing teasing remarks to the girls as they chattered.
He needed to see Serena before he left. He didn’t know why. It was just necessary. As necessary as his going. That he might hurt her tore at his heart. That his absence might not hurt her, ate at him. All of which proved that they shouldn’t ever see each other again. This, whatever this was, had already gone too far… certainly for his peace. He had to do the honorable thing and remove himself from her life.
Impatiently, he glanced out of the window, which looked onto the front of the house. He’d glimpsed the sisters walking back toward the house that way. And he was glad the visiting curricle had gone. Damned cheek, whoever it belonged to. Serena must be back in the house by now. Perhaps he should just ask one of the girls to fetch her? Or go i
n search of her himself? The farewell would be easier in company where he couldn’t give in to any of his natural desires to take her in his arms or blurt out his feelings. Whatever they were.
He was just turning away when he heard the clop of hooves and the rumbling of wheels, and saw the damned curricle again. A well-dressed gentleman in a tall hat was driving it, and beside him sat Serena, her hands folded in her lap. But something about her posture screamed at him. This was wrong. Or perhaps he was just furious to see her with another man.
“Who is that fellow?” he demanded.
Immediately, the girls clustered around the window. Helen, at the front beside him, wrinkled her nose. “It’s the Frenchman, the Comte de Valère. What is she doing with him? He’s an emigre and we think he admires Serena. Only he’s like Sir Arthur.”
He never had time to ask in what way he was like Sir Arthur, for trailing behind the curricle came a horse and cart. And he was sure the driver and the unsavory looking men who lounged among the casks and barrels looked familiar. So did the barrels.
The blood drained from his head so fast he felt dizzy. He threw up the window, shouting something that he meant to be “Hoi!” but seemed to come out as Serena’s name. Everyone below looked up at him.
Serena looked desperate and afraid. She shook her head violently. The man beside her seemed to wave in a jaunty manner, but the blade in his hand was terrifyingly clear.
“Jesus Christ,” Tamar whispered and slammed the window as the men on the cart grinned up at him. Both vehicles sped off down the drive.
If ever he had to use the brains God gave him, now was the moment.
Think, you idiot!
This comte fellow was in command of the little party, and after last night, he must have known his game was rumbled, even if his identity wasn’t. And so, he’d moved quickly to obtain the rest of his store.
But Tamar knew where he was going. All he had to do was get there first and pray they weren’t stupid enough to harm Serena before their task was complete. He couldn’t afford to think of her fear now.
“Horses,” he said striding across the room and out the door. “I need horses and men.”
In the entrance hallway, Mrs. Gaskell was demanding of Paton, “Where has Lady Serena gone? She said nothing to me!”
Paton opened the front door to tumultuous knocking. Jem the gardener fell into the house.
“Just the man,” Tamar exclaimed, running downstairs.
“Lady Serena’s gone off with some bloke in a curricle!” Jem panted. “And she doesn’t want to go, I know she doesn’t! And those behind have pinched the powder!”
“In a nutshell,” Tamar said grimly. “Jem, can you ride?”
“I can cling on.”
“Good enough for me. Get horses saddled for us and as many other men as you can find to ride them, as long as there’s one horse left. Large men, preferably. Paton, I need someone to make use of that remaining horse to ride to Major Doverton with a message. It’s urgent.”
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Gaskell cried, her hands clutching her face.
“The Comte de Valère has abducted Serena,” Maria said grimly from the top of the stairs. “And stolen the gunpowder. Lord Tamar is going to get her back.”
God willing. Please, God, be willing…
*
It had been several years since Serena had taken the road up to the old fort. It hadn’t been raining then, and she hadn’t been in an open carriage. Of course, the fort hadn’t housed prisoners-of-war at that time either. Nothing much had happened there at all, despite it being the original barracks of the 44th before they’d moved into Blackhaven over a hundred years ago.
As they drove up the hill, she easily recognized the fort’s distinctive castle-shape and square, crenelated tower. The horse and cart toiled up behind them.
It was an isolated spot, with only an inn about a mile further on. But any hope Serena had harbored that the prison guards would stop them, or even shoot her abductors, died as they drew nearer.
It was a prison, full of foreign inmates hated by the rest of the country. The guards were not so concerned with people approaching as with their charges trying to leave. No one watched their arrival from those crenelated towers. Or if they did, it was from glazed windows, with very little obvious interest. Only a massive, iron door guarded the outside.
The rain had gone off again by the time they arrived at the fort, but Serena was cold and wet and her hair dripped down inside the collar of her pelisse.
Valère’s men seemed to know their task without instructions. Three casks were quickly unloaded at the front with one of the men, and then the cart pulled off the road. Valère urged his horses around to the back of the prison behind the cart, to the first tower which was surrounded by badly overgrown bushes and trees. But they’d been there before, she realized. They’d actually cleared a patch immediately behind the tower, large enough for the cart and the curricle to stand with ease, even for the curricle to turn so that the horse faced the fort.
When both vehicles had halted, the rest of the men jumped down and got to work. First, they kicked aside the brush they must have laid down earlier to keep the ground dry, and gave the horses something to crop to keep them still and content. Then, they unloaded the barrels and casks from the cart, and pulled more out of their hiding places in the bushes. They set about laying trails and fuses. Even Valère was so busy, she thought she could walk away without him even noticing.
“This is madness,” she told him urgently. “You’ll probably kill half the inmates. And what if some do get out? It’s only a matter of time until they’re recaptured. They can’t all have the means to pretend to be emigrés like you!”
“Thank God I won’t have to pretend much longer,” he returned, prying the top of another barrel.
“You’ll end up in there with the rest,” she taunted, waving one disparaging hand at the tower.
“No, I shall end up on a French ship currently waiting five miles down the coast from Blackhaven. And I believe I will take you with me for company.”
“Oh dear,” she flashed back. “Are you lonely in France, too?”
He gave a snort that might actually have been laughter, and she, appalled that he might imagine some rapport between them, looked away in disgust. Which is when she glimpsed the movement in the overgrown bushes beside her.
Instantly, her heart began to beat with hope, but, afraid of drawing attention to what she’d seen, she glanced back at Valère and the men, busy about their work. Testing her theory, she stood, meaning to jump down from the curricle on the side farthest away from the prison walls. They’d catch her again, of course, but it would slow things up, perhaps provide time for whoever observed from the bushes, to warn the prison guards what was going on.
“Do not,” Valère commanded. “Even if my dagger misses you, my men will catch you in under four seconds. They are not gentle like me.”
“A dagger is gentle in your world?” she retorted, subsiding back into the seat but casting a quick glance into the bushes. A hand emerged, and then a head. Her eyes widened impossibly, for it was Tamar.
Tamar was wounded! He should be sitting quietly in his chamber if not resting in his bed. How in God’s name…?
And so, her agony changed, from worrying about how to prevent this, to worrying about Tamar. Valère and the others had the will and the means to kill without compunction.
“Stop, now,” she commanded the Frenchmen. “I’ll scream and sing to warn them inside.”
“Sing away,” Valère said carelessly. “It’s too late to stop this now, whichever way they come.”
“Wrong.” Tamar said, erupting from the bushes, four other men at his heels. Jem was among them, and John the head groom. But she had no time to count heads, for quick as a flash, Valère was responding to the attack with his pistol, aiming it straight at the rushing Tamar. It seemed he’d forgotten his promise to use the knife first on Serena.
Or perhaps she was just
too valuable in his escape plan. Either way, she was the only one who could stop him before he fired.
“Geddup!” she yelled, seizing the reins and lashing the horses. Screaming their annoyance, they bolted directly at Valère, not only blocking his aim but forcing him back. He stumbled into the wall as Serena wrenched the horses’ heads around, and then Tamar was on him, ramming his head and his wrist into the wall.
She saw no more, for she’d flashed past them, crashing around the prison toward the road. It seemed Tamar and his allies were unaware of the explosives at the front door. And as the horses hit the road, she pulled them around again, charging straight at the Frenchman who was about to light the fuse.
He leapt, trying in vain to escape the flying hooves that kicked him and the taper across the street.
With a sob, Serena strove to slow and calm the horses she’d so deliberately riled, gentling them until they finally came to a halt. Only then did she coax them into turning. Fortunately, there was a wide stretch of grass, with no ditch between it and the road. Even so, her hands shook so much, she was vaguely surprised she didn’t overturn the curricle as they circled around and trotted in a civilized fashion back to the fort.
By then, prison guards had erupted from the iron door, gunpowder was being swept up, and a whole troop of soldiers from the 44th had appeared. Bizarrely, so had a closed carriage and Kate Grant, who was running to meet her.
Serena halted the curricle, sliding down unaided into Kate’s arms, while a soldier held the horses’ heads.
“Tamar?” she gasped to Kate. “Where is Tamar?”
Kate turned toward the side path, and Serena saw Tamar on horseback, white-faced but determined, the reins held in one hand while the other hung useless at his side. His shoulder must have been in agony.
“I think he’s looking for you,” Kate drawled.
Her eyes clashed with Tamar’s. The flooding relief in his face almost undid her.
Kate swallowed. She was afraid of crying. “Is he…is he?” she began brokenly.
“I think he’s fine,” Kate said brusquely. “Come, in you go. I’ll be with you in one moment and take you home.”
Blackhaven Brides (Books 5–8) Page 13
