Daring (32 page)

C
ha
pter

33

“
I
don’t believe it,” the duchess said, pulling her head in from the window as the coach shuddered to a stop. “There’s another carriage blocking our way. Don’t the idiots know this is private property? Frances,” she shouted, “take care of this immediately.”

An athletic-looking grandmother in her fifties, Frances jumped down obediently from the box to confront the driver of the obstructing vehicle. A friendly argument ensued in the middle of the road, and then a woman’s plea for peace rose above the furor.

“I know that voice.” Maggie leaned over Rebecca and Ares to draw back the leather curtains. “It’s Mrs. Macmillan.”

“Mrs. Who?” the duchess said, pulling out a flask of whisky from her cloak.

“Connor’s mistress,” Maggie said as she slid off the seat to the door.

The duchess almost choked on her wee nip. “His what?”

“You remember Ardath,” Rebecca said with a smile. “Connor brought her here last spring. She got in a fight with that horrid old man at the fair who was trying to sell his
daughter’s favors. She had him thrown in the clink and found the girl a good home.”

“Ah.” Mo
rn
a nodded in remembrance. “A lovely woman. But I thought she planned to give Buchanan the mitten when they got home.”

“She did.” Maggie stepped very carefully over Mo
rn
a’s guns to reach the door. The woman was a walking arsenal. “However, despite the end of their romantic association, they’ve decided to remain friends. I wonder what on earth she’s doing here.”

“
I
’ve brought news about Sheena,” Ardath explained a few minutes later when Maggie asked her that very question.

They were huddled together on the hillside road a few yards before it ended abruptly in a densely wooded footpath. The previous Jacobite rebels who had owned the castle had done everything possible to block access to their stronghold, intending to repel British soldiers. Enormous boulders had been rolled down the hill like bowling balls to prevent easy passage.

Maggie felt a gust of wind rustle through the skeletal beech coppice behind them. “Sheena isn’t dead, is she?” she asked in dread.

Ardath, who looked travel-worn and frazzled, absently stuffed an unruly red curl under her hat. “She is not, but I daresay she will be when Connor finds out what she’s done. I’m terrified of how he’ll take this.”

“What has the little fiend been up to now?” Rebecca asked, limping up behind them.

Ardath turned. “She planned her own abduction and eloped to Gretna Green with the man Connor had forbidden her to see. The criminal I defended to Connor’s face turned out to be a cad. Or half a cad. At least Henry had the decency to marry her.”

Maggie was indignant. “Oh! To think that they dragged me into their nasty plot, and I was so concerned about her.”

Ardath sighed. “The silly girl is quite sorry she involved you. It seems she mistook you for Philomena Elliot. She thought you’d be the perfect witness to the abduction because Philomena had never seen Henry before, and, quite
frankly, Philomena isn’t known for her brains. The whole wretched affair was an act. You were used to convince Connor she’d been kidnapped.”

“I can’t believe I risked my neck trying to rescue such a deceitful creature,” Maggie exclaimed.

Ardath nodded in agreement. “The carriage driver also sends his apologies for his part. The man was truly concerned that you were hurt when you fell in the courtyard.”

“This is a criminal act in itself,” Rebecca said angrily. “Connor will certainly have the marriage annulled. And if he has any sense at all, he’ll thrash Sheena soundly for what she’s put us all through.”

“He will do neither,” Ardath said, “although she is doubtless deserving of both. The brat is pregnant, married, and worried sick about his reaction. So is her husband. They have employed me as an intermediary, a position I resent but have accepted to protect Connor’s name. He does not need another embarrassment at this stage of his life. The public is already clamoring for safety in the streets.”

The duchess frowned at Maggie. “We’d best not repeat the story about the scarecrow then. It doesn’t make him sound very competent.”

“What scarecrow? No, don’t tell me. I don’t think I could stand another shock.” Ardath sank down wearily on a rotten pine stump, taking a swallow of whisky from Moma’s flask. Then she noticed the rifle tucked under Rebecca’s arm and the deer hound slavering at her heels. “Something else has happened, hasn’t it? What’s wrong?”

Maggie lifted her eyes to the bulk of the castle, encircled in gray-violet bands of mist. It looked like a medieval stronghold, faraway and forbidding. “Connor went up there to confront the person he believed was Sheena’s kidnapper,” she said slowly. “He went to handle the matter man to man.”

Rebecca looked up in sudden horror. “But there is no kidnapper. He never existed in the first place and couldn’t have sent that note.”

“Which means that someone else wanted to lure either me or him there.” Maggie shook herself out of her trance.

“Someone who has gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to spring a trap. But who?”

“The Balfour murderer.” Ardath came to her feet, her face as pale as chalk. “Connor always said his suspect was a wealthy nobleman without a conscience. Only a man with money could afford to lease a castle. Somehow he must have guessed that the way to get to Connor was through you.”

Chapter

34

T
hey had the castle surrounded.

Rebecca and Ares took the rear. Maggie, the duchess, and Ardath positioned themselves at the east wing of the keep where, apparently to counteract the November gloom, the inhabitants had lit candles which glinted through the cracked mullioned windows. The three women had stacked several empty wine kegs to use as a ladder beneath what appeared to be the parlor window.

At any rate, it was one of the few rooms in the castle that looked occupied. Thistle and bracken fern grew waist-high in the once-grand courtyard. Merlins and jackdaws nested on the parapets where Scottish rebels had waited for their Stuart prince. A thin wind rattled the shutters of the abandoned dovecote. The west turret bore black gauges in its side from a long-forgotten battle. The east tower
looked no better. Even the ghost
s of Glamhurst’s former glory had faded away into obscurity.

The duchess tore off her leather gloves with her teeth. “Maggie will have to climb up to have a look-see. I’ll serve as a crow while Ardath holds these barrels steady. Whatever you do, don’t let them fall.”

“Perhaps we should knock at the front door,” Ardath suggested. “I could pretend to be a gypsy selling apples.”

The duchess gave her a leveling look. “Do you have any apples?”

Ardath pursed her
li
ps. “Well, no, now that you ask, I don’t.”

“Then that takes care of that. Help me give Maggie a leg up. There’s something queer going on in that house. It’s too quiet. I hope they haven’t killed Buchanan yet. He’s a hard-hearted bastard, and there were times when I’ve been tempted to shoot him myself, but he has his good qualities.”

She and Ardath hooked their hands together to hoist Maggie into the air, then steadied the tower of barrels while she scrambled to grasp the window ledge for leverage.

“Well
,” Ardath said anxiously, “what do you see?”

Maggie blew a wisp of hair from her eyes. “There are
…
three men, no, there are four of them. Good God, these are the filthiest windows I’ve ever looked through in my life.”

The duchess glanced up. “Do you see Buchanan? Is he
a
li
ve?”

There was silence. When Maggie spoke again, her vo
ice; reflected both profound reli
ef and bewilderment. “He’s sitting on the sofa. His feet are propped on a footstool.”

“He’s dead?” Ardath whispered, closing her eyes.

A scowl tightened Maggie’s face. “Not unless that’s his ghost who just stuffed a wedge of cheese into his mouth and washed it down with a glass of wine.”

“Cheese and wine?” The duchess lowered her rifl
e in confusion. “That’s a peculi
ar way to do away with someone. What manner of man is this murderer anyway?”

Maggie rubbed the heel of her hand across the grimy windowpane, clenching her teeth as if to stem the tears that s
li
pped silently down her face. It was an eternity before she could trust herself to speak, and then the words came in halting snatches of breath. “He is
…
a prude and a
…
tyrant. A snob of the first water. The man holding Connor captive is my brother. Robert Phillipe
…
t
he sixth Due de Saint-Evremond.
”

“Your brother?” Ardath said in amazement. “The one you’ve been trying to find for years? What on earth is he doing with Connor in a castle?”

Maggie slowly slid to the ground “That’s exactly what I intend to find out. Stay here. I’m going inside.”

C
h
apter

35

“
R
obert. Robert Phillipe.” She kept repeating his name in disbelief, hardly aware that Connor had jumped up to support her until the three other men in the room rudely bumped him out of the way.

Claude, Robert, and a third man she did not know at first. Tall, elegantly dressed with his arm in a sling, he guided her to a chair.
“Assieds-toi,
Marguerite,” he said with a sympathetic c
lucking of his tongue. “Sit, ché
rie. I warned your brother this would be difficult, but he simply couldn’t wait another day to see you. There was truly no easy way to do this, and of course, he needed to be sure.”

His voice faded into the buzzing of a hundred bees in her ears. She stared at him as he knelt, his concerned face coming into focus. “Sebastien,” she said numbly. “Sebastien the spy. Papa’s secretary.
That
Sebastien.
Mon Dieu.
I thought you were dead. Oh—the wounded man. It was you. You’re the one who followed me here from Edinburgh.”

“Yes, it was me,” Sebastien admitted. “Claude ran me through in the woods before I could unmask myself. I have been in Scotland for months, waiting for the right moment
to approach you. I must say you’ve developed quite a nose for trouble.”

“For months?”

Connor hunkered down in front of her, grasping her cold hands in his. “You’ve had a shock, lass. So did I. I knew Sebastien as a retired spy, a friend to the British. I had no idea he was so closely connected to your life.”

“Oh, Connor.”

“Take a sip of wine,” he urged her. “Everything will be all right.”

She drank the entire glass that Claude solicitously brought her; in the back of her mind she kept thinking that Connor was due for a little shock himself when he heard about Sheena’s selfish prank. But even her concern about that vanished as she gazed across the room at the silent man who dared not approach her, his face hidden in shadow.

Her brother. He was alive.
Thank you, God. Thank you, God.

“I know it’s you, Robert. Why are you hiding in this old castle? Is this intrigue still necessary after all these years? It was you that followed us across the moor, wasn’t it? Robert, answer me. Oh, you’ve made me so angry. You and Sebastien in your frightening masks.”

“The last thing I wanted was to frighten you,” he said softly.

She handed her empty glass to Sebastien, rising to her feet “I never gave up hope. Why did it take you so long?” She gripped his hands, trying unsuccessfully to turn him toward her. “Why?” she whispered. “Why won’t you look me in the face?”

“The soldiers torched the house that night, Marguerite,” he explained solemnly, refusing to move away from the window. “You were correct in remembering that you ran up the staircase to warn Jeanette. Unfortunately, the soldiers had gotten there first. You burst in before I had a chance to help.”

She was grateful for the wine that had warmed her as Robert began his story, filling in the gaps in memory that had haunted her since her last night in the chateau. She did not acknowledge how much she appreciated Connor’s powerful arms around her shoulders, but she doubted that
she would have been able to endure the truth which Robert painfully revealed.

“The room was on fire,” Robert continued in a voice so low she had to strain to hear it. “Jeanette had been burning Papa’s papers when the police arrived. They incriminated several of our friends.”

Maggie closed her eyes. “They killed her.”

“They raped her,” Sebastien corrected gently. “They interrogated her, then left her to burn to death while they searched the rest of the chateau.”

Maggie shook her head in frustration, tears burning her throat. “I still don’t remember. Why can’t I remember?”

“It’s a blessing, perhaps,” Robert said, turning finally to regard her. “I shall never, ever forget the look on your face when I found you. You were kneeling over Jeanette’s body, a little tigress trying to defend her with an ancient sword. Claude and I had to drag you outside to get you to safety.”

Maggie rubbed her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Why did you keep this from me, Claude?”

The elderly servant bowed his head in heartfelt remorse. “Your mother made me swear I would protect you from pain at all costs. I did not know what happened to Robert and Jeanette after that night. I prayed you would not remember what you had seen.
I
…
I hoped you would forget. Keeping you safe was all that mattered.”

She shook her head dazedly. “Deep inside, a part of me remembered. Those scars never healed.”

“Nor mine.” Robert raised his face to hers, allowing the candlelight to reveal the brand he bore from that night. When she did not flinch in revulsion, but only lovingly raised her hand to his disfigured cheek, he smiled in sadness and relief.

“The doctors did not think I would survive,” he said. “My back and legs were burned as well. Sebastien sent me to the West Indies, where Papa had modest land holdings. For years I dared not try to track you down. I was sick in body and mind. I hoped that with Aunt Flora you would assume a new identity and forge a life free from fear.”

“You might have sent me word, if only to let me know that you were alive.”

“It took time to trace you,” he replied. “And who was I to draw you back into a world of danger and subterfuge?”

“Your father left behind documents that implicated many highly placed people in treason,” Sebastien added gently. “It was my job to make sure that none of the family’s enemies had survived.”

“Including members of the British nobility,” Connor guessed.

“Yes.” Robert released a deep sigh. “I had to be certain that by revealing my identity, I was not endangering her life. And, of course, that she was not an impostor posing as a de Saint-Evremond.”

She gave a faint sniff of resentment. “Why would anyone bother?”

He raised his brow in astonishment. “To lay claim to the family fortune, naturally. The estates have been restored, Marguerite. It is time to resume our old life. I am here to take you home.”

C
onnor could practically feel the excitement shoot through Maggie’s small body like an arrow, and it was all he could do not to grab her and run from the castle when she worked her hand free from his.

Home.

I am here to take you home.

He gazed at her in dread, waiting to hear her protest, to refuse, to insist she had already found her home. Instead, she stared at her brother’s scarred face and contemplated his offer as if he had just handed her the world on a platter. Love and loyalty blazed in her eyes. He felt desperate to draw her back to him, to remind her of what they had shared. He knew how much she loved and needed her family. He could protect her from danger, but could he prevent her from leaving him of her own free will?

“What happened to Jeanette?” she said in a pained whisper.

Robert averted his face. Claude gave a mournful shake of his head and began to polish the sideboard with the cuff of his sleeve. Sebastien contemplated a spot on the floor. The agony in Maggie’s voice made Connor want to shake Robert
until his teeth rattled. Hell, if there was bad news, why drag it out any longer?

“She
…
she’s dead?” Maggie said, folding down into the chair.

“She is not dead,” Robert said stiffly, “although for the disgrace she has brought the family name, she may as well be. I am seriously considering disowning her.”

Maggie shot to her feet. “This is unconscionable, punishing our poor sister because she was the victim of a brutal crime. She couldn’t help being assaulted by those soldiers.”

Connor’s upper
li
p curled in contempt. “As one man to another, I find your attitude repugnant. In fact, I’m seriously considering taking you by the lapels of your fancy jacket and throwing you out the window.”

“I’m not talking about
that,”
Robert said in horror. “I would never blame Jeanette for her bravery that night. It’s what she has made of herself since then that I abhor.”

Maggie cast a bewildered look at Sebastien. “Don’t tell me my sister has become a prostitute.”

“Not quite,” Robert replied. “However, I venture to say it is the next step. Jeanette is engaged to a butcher, but the worst part is what she is doing to support herself.” He took a quivering breath like a dragon about to blow fire from its nostrils. “It’s with the deepest shame that I inform you Jeanette has become a professional dancer. Your sister is a ballerina.”

“I’m shocked to my toenails,” Connor said with a straight face.

Maggie dropped her head back against the chair. “Somebody bring me a glass of water before I expire of the embarrassment.”

Robert smiled grimly, the unmarred side of his face with its aquiline features actually handsome in the half-light. “Very amusing, infants. Marguerite, you are no better yourself—breaking into houses, giving deportment lessons for a living. I can see I have my work cut out for me before the wedding.”

“Wedding?” Maggie lifted her head and glanced questioningly at Connor, who froze in mid-motion with another wedge of white cheese halfway to his mouth.

“Are you offering to pay, your grace?” he asked hopefully.

Robert ignored him. “I think it might be better for us all if your acquaintance took his leave now, Marguerite. I understand that he is involved in a criminal case and probably will appreciate a reprieve from guarding you.”

Connor pushed aside the tray Claude held out, his thick eyebrows gathering in a scowl of displeasure. “This is my wedding. While you might be a person of rank in your country, I am also a man of some importance who must consider public opinion. I want to be in on planning the ceremony.”

Robert looked away.

Connor looked upset. “I am the Lord Advocate of Scotland. Does that mean anything to you?”

“I can’t say that it does.” Robert turned to Maggie. “Have I met him before today? He does seem vaguely familiar.”

“He looks like the statue in the garden that you covered in gold paint.” She braced both hands on the arms of the chair. “What are you planning, Robert? I have had more than enough trouble in my life.”

Robert withdrew his handkerchief from his vest pocket and pressed it to his nose. “Trouble,” he said with a sniff. “Could anyone possibly have gotten into more trouble than you?” He gestured to the thick dossier of papers on the sideboard. “The Chief, Marguerite? Heaven’s Court? And th
at name…
” He tsked.

“Name?” she said darkly.

Disapproval deepened his voice. “Maggie Saunders? Was there ever anything so common? I shall have to whisk you off to Marseilles for a good six months to scrub the taint of the sewers off you. With any luck Bernard won’t hear about your scandalous past until you’re a blushing bride and in the family way. He believes you have been safely locked away in a convent all these years.”

“Bernard.” Maggie paled. “Bernard is still alive?” she asked weakly.

Connor’s head snapped up. He couldn’t decide whether it was hope or horror that had caused that quivery catch in her voice, but he did know he didn’t like it. “Who is Bernard?” he demanded.

“Bernard is very much alive,” Robert said in answer to Maggie’s question. “He is also the heir to his father’s titles and Norman estate. He has been loyal to your memory, Marguerite. He never married. He always believed in his faithful heart that you two would be reunited.”

“So he finally became the seventh Comte de la Tourette.” A secretive smile crossed her face. “I can’t believe it. Do you remember the time he built that pirate ship and sailed downstream to besiege the chateau?”

Claude coughed into his hand to suppress a chuckle. “You counterattacked him with a barrage of arrows, mademoiselle. It was a grand battle.”

Sebastien smiled. “You were a very good shot, Marguerite. He didn’t sit for a week, as I recall.”

Robert was grinning from ear to ear. “And when he locked our German tutor in the dungeon? He was the bravest boy we knew.”

Connor glanced around the room in disbelief. “Excuse me. Before we break into a rousing chorus of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ would someone tell me who the bloody hell Bernard is?”

Claude rolled his eyes in disapproval.

Sebastien grimaced in embarrassment.

Robert muttered something about “Scots barbarian” and proceeded to continue his conversation with Maggie. “The nuptials will be held in Paris, of course. Bernard’s eldest brother is a priest now.”

“Nuptials?” Connor smiled nastily. “I have the distinct impression that I’m being ignored. Do you have any idea what Maggie and I mean to each other?”

Maggie sprang out of her chair to grasp his arm, talking in an undertone. “I’ll handle this in my own way, Connor. Just allow us an evening together to straighten everything out.”

He shrugged off her hand. “We’ll straighten it out now. I want your brother to understand how you and I feel about each other.”

“I’ll tell him tomorrow,” Maggie whispered.

Connor glared at her. “Tell him now.”

“Yes, tell me now,” Robert said quietly.