Laura Kinsale (28 page)

“Badger—” Gryf said again, helplessly. He glanced toward the stairs, afraid that Eliot or someone else might appear at any moment. When he looked back again at the butler’s shining face, it came to Gryf suddenly that Badger’s real name was Bridgewater. His father’s stories—he recalled one, of how the butler had come to be christened Mr. Badger by a mischievous boy too young to know better. Gryf had forgotten the story, but he remembered the point: no one called the dignified Bridgewater “Mr. Badger” and escaped a whaling. No one except Uncle Alex.

“Good God, you don’t think…” Gryf stopped, and checked the stairs again. He looked back at the elderly butler’s hands, still clenched firmly around his own. “I’m Gryphon,” he said softly. “Arthur’s son.” He squeezed the bony fingers. “No ghost.”

At Badger’s dubious look, Gryf smiled encouragingly. “I’m bleeding all over you. My father would’ve skinned me for that.”

He felt the old man’s hands tremble. Badger gazed up into Gryf’s face for one long, searching moment. Instead of showing relief, the butler’s wrinkled features crumbled entirely. “Master Gryphon,” he said in a quavering voice. “Master Gryphon. Welcome home, then.” And he suddenly took Gryf in a hard embrace.

Gryf patted ineffectually at the old man’s back as he wept against the bloody shirt, praying that Eliot wouldn’t come on them like this. Gryf did not have it in him to push Mr. Badger away. It was stupidity to have admitted his identity, but the elderly servant’s joy was somehow worth the risk. Gryf hadn’t imagined how good it would feel, to have someone say honestly, “Welcome home.”

In the end it was a thought of Badger’s own safety that made Gryf disengage himself. The butler stood back and produced an ivory-colored handkerchief. “Your pardon, sir,” he mumbled apologetically after he blew his nose. “I’m an old man, I am.”

“I need your help,” Gryf said. “Badly.”

Mr. Badger composed himself a little. “You do look a bit hagged, sir,” he agreed. “I’ll open a room, and bring up hot water.”

“No.” Gryf stopped the servant as he was turning away. “Don’t bother with that. Where’s Eliot?”

Badger hesitated, and looked confused.

“Stephen,” Gryf added. “He’s here?”

“Mr. Stephen—” The butler licked his thin lips. “He won’t be master now, will he? Now you’ve come home, Lord Gryphon?”

A whole new set of problems opened up before Gryf at that surmise. “Badger,” he said fiercely, “I want you to give me your word, your solemn oath, that you will never tell anyone that you’ve seen or heard of me.”

“But my lord—”

“Swear it.” Gryf took the old man’s arm and squeezed. “And then I want you to go back to your room, and lock yourself in there, and don’t come out no matter what you hear. Where’s the rest of the staff?”

“There’s no one, sir. Save the mute boy what keeps the hounds and the stable at night. The housekeeper’s
gone to her sister’s. Mr. Stephen don’t keep staff anymore.”

Gryf ran the implications of that through his mind several ways. “All right. You’re going to your room?”

“Of course, sir. If you ask.”

“I ask. Where’s Stephen now?”

“In the tapestry room, my lord.”

“Where’s that?”

Badger gave Gryf a look of surprise. Gryf reddened. “I’ve never had a guided tour,” he said, a little roughly.

“Upstairs, my lord. I can tell him you’re here, if you like.”

“No.”

The old butler pursed his lips. After a moment, he recited the directions in a low voice, while staring at the floor. Then he glanced up. “My lord, it comes to me that you’re thinking you’re in danger here, in your own home.”

Gryf tensed, waiting for the servant to withdraw his earlier loyalty and sound the alarm. But the idea apparently did not occur to Mr. Badger. He looked long at Gryf. “’Tisn’t right,” was all the old man said. “’Tisn’t what your grandfather wanted.”

“Do you swear you’ve never seen me? No matter what.”

Mr. Badger shifted his feet.

“Please,” Gryf said. “Do that for me. For my father.” If something went wrong—he did not want Badger implicated.

A bell sounded shrilly from below. They both jumped.

“That’ll be Mr. Stephen, sir. He’ll be wondering who come to the door.”

“I’ll answer it. Go on.” Gryf gave the stooped form a slight push in the direction of the kitchen stairs.

“You, sir? ’Tisn’t your place, my lord. I—”

“Just go,” Gryf said impatiently, allowing a little of his captain’s imperative to color his voice. “Do I have your word you never saw me?”

Mr. Badger took a few steps, and then turned. He looked at Gryf unhappily. “I swear, my lord. Because you ask. But I don’t like it.”

T
he tapestry room was mercifully easy to find, on the second floor, directly across from the huge staircase landing. Gryf climbed the stairs alongside his own shadow, cast by candles from inside clear bubble globes set at intervals on the carved rail. His outsized silhouette passed over gilded frames and paintings: men in wigs and women in high, stiff collars, and one that made him stop, in spite of himself—the saintly Titian masterpiece that Gryf had been told of when he was a boy.

He wrenched his mind back to the business at hand as he approached the door at the head of the stairs, hoping to God he had gotten the directions right. With no idea of what Stephen would be doing and no knowledge of the layout of the room, Gryf reckoned his best approach was complete surprise. He cocked his revolver and took hold of the knob, shoving the heavy door wide before he had a chance to listen to his own second thoughts.

The door crashed open with a hollow boom. The effect was everything Gryf could have hoped. Stephen Eliot, dressed in his shirt sleeves, leaped up from an
armchair by the fire and turned, exclaiming, “What the—”

Gryf leveled the revolver. “Move away from the bell, Eliot.”

Stephen’s face lost its look of shock. He seemed to regain his composure instantly. With a quizzically cocked brow, he took two steps to a position just out of reach of the bellpull. “What’s this?” he asked softly, his eyes on the gun.

“I want Tess.”

A stillness came over Stephen’s taut figure. He surveyed Gryf. “Everett, isn’t it?” he said slowly. “It’s been some time. London, I think…the season past.”

Gryf stayed silent. Thunder rumbled sullenly in the background, and a stray draft lifted one of the dull-colored tapestries and sent a fluttering ripple along its lower edge. He could see Stephen sorting possibilities in his mind.

“You want my wife,” he said after a moment. “I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning.”

Without lowering the gun, Gryf reached behind him and swung the door shut with a crash as loud as the first. “I understand we’re alone here,” he said deliberately.

Stephen’s blue eyes flicked with faint contempt over Gryf’s figure. “Have you shot all the staff, then? Rather messy business, by the looks of it.”

Gryf suppressed a spark of admiration for Stephen’s calm. He could have used some of that sangfroid himself. His hand was steady, but he had an irritating urge to look down to see if his palm was bleeding again. He fought down the panicky thought that the old butler’s actions had all been an elaborate charade and the local blues would be arriving shortly. Stephen’s self-possession was doing exactly what it was meant to do:
subtly shifting the balance of power. “Eliot,” Gryf said, “tell me where she is.”

“My wife?” Stephen inclined his head curiously. “I remember now—you were one of the spurned suitors. Perhaps you should have made a pair after all. It appears that you’re both lunatics.”

“Oh, yes,” Gryf agreed. “Completely mad.” He raised the revolver and fired at the mirror above the fireplace. Glass exploded over Stephen’s head and came down in a waterfall of silver shards onto the mantel. “But serious,” he added with a slight smile.

Stephen had jumped when the gun went off. He turned back toward the shattered mirror. “So I see.” He looked ruefully at Gryf. “Before you take it upon yourself to redecorate the entire room in this manner, let me tell you that my wife is in France, in an asylum.”

“No games, Eliot. She’s not in France. And she isn’t your wife anymore.”

For a split second, Stephen’s urbanity cracked. His face lost a shade of color. Gryf fingered the trigger under the other man’s probing stare.

“God in Heaven,” Stephen murmured. “I see now.”

Gryf took a step forward. His boot grated on shards of glass. “Where is she?”

“You’re Meridon.” The tone in Eliot’s voice was dead certain. “How the devil did I ever mistake it?”

It was disconcerting to be identified with such speed. Gryf had hoped to edge around the truth, to reveal it when it might do him the most good.

“Cousin,” Stephen said, and held out his hand. “By God, it’s good to see you. We all thought—”

“I know what you thought,” Gryf snapped. “I’m not here for a family reunion. Let’s understand each other, Eliot—Robert Stark is in the custody of the military governor in Tahiti. I put him there.”

Eliot had completely regained his self-possession. “Did you?” he said thoughtfully. “And now you’ve come after your new wife. Do you love her, Cousin? Or was your marriage just part of some obscure plan to dispossess me?”

Gryf didn’t bother to answer that.

“I hope all this unpleasantness isn’t for the purpose of putting me out,” Stephen added. “You could have managed much more sensibly, you know. Just come back and prove who you are, and I would gladly stand aside. I don’t know why you’ve waited so long.”

But the small, cold smile in Stephen’s eyes said he knew exactly why. Gryf said skeptically, “Of course. It wouldn’t bother you at all to give up Ashland.”

“Naturally, it would. But if you have some proof of who you are, I wouldn’t have much choice, would I?”

“You seem to have convinced yourself who I am easily enough.”

Stephen shrugged. “I can see certain…resemblances between you and Lord Alexander. Ill-considered impetuosity, for one thing. But I’m afraid my childhood recollections would hardly hold up in a court of chancery, should I choose to submit them to examination. Which wouldn’t really be in my self-interest, now that I think of it.”

“You might give your self-interest a little more thought,” Gryf said. “I have ample proof to make things uncomfortable for you.”

“Then it’s to be blackmail merely?”

“Call it a trade. I want Tess.”

“Tess. I should have thought she was still amusing herself with man-eating flowers in equatorial Africa or some such place.”

“At the hotel in Dover they told me differently.”

“Ah.” Stephen looked down, his hands clasped be
hind his back, and flipped a shard of mirror over with his foot. “You do have a talent for ferreting out unpleasant details. Assuming I can produce her, then—what do I receive in return?”

Gryf waggled the gun. “Besides not having a bullet put through your head?”

A ghostly flicker of lightning at the window punctuated the words, and a roll of thunder followed.

“That wouldn’t be a clever move,” Stephen said calmly as the rumble died away. “If you really want to find her.”

Gryf wanted to believe that Stephen meant she was still alive. But it was too easy to imagine himself in the other man’s position, staring down the barrel of a gun and looking for ways to gain time. Stephen would deal, whether he had anything to deal with or not.

Just as Gryf was about to do.

“I’ll give you Ashland’s signet,” he said. “And then I’ll disappear for good.”

Stephen looked up abruptly from the floor, and Gryf blessed himself as an extraordinarily lucky bastard. It had been a wild chance, that Tess had not handed the ring over to Stephen, but Eliot’s expression of surprise was not feigned.

“The signet,” Stephen echoed. He smiled faintly. “You do know how to make a trade, Cousin. You have it with you?”

“Do you have Lady Tess with you?” Gryf responded dryly.

“She’s belowstairs, actually. In the cellars.”

Gryf’s heart leaped, but he kept his face emotionless. He stood back from the door and jerked his head. “Let’s go.”

Stephen made a move, not toward the door, but toward the small table where he had been sitting. Gryf
stepped forward in quick reaction and Stephen froze. “The lamp, Cousin,” he said, looking sideways at Gryf. “We’ll need to take the lamp.”

There was no gas at Ashland; the ancient house was lit by candles or oil. Gryf didn’t trust Stephen with any possible weapon, even a lamp, but there was little choice. To carry the light himself, along with his heavy revolver, was just as precarious. He gave Stephen a brief nod. “Left hand. Just keep your right where I can see it.”

Stephen obeyed. He lifted the lamp and preceded Gryf out, ignoring the threatening gun with aristocratic panache. The man was well-suited to be master of Ashland, Gryf thought, and the notion carried a strange lack of resentment. He himself felt like what Eliot had called him once, a rustic yokel, following his cousin down the magnificent staircase and through the vaulted entry into rooms and corridors he could not have imagined in his craziest dreams of richness. He did not even know what they were for, these bare, stately halls of statuary and gilded plasterwork that gleamed in the moving light of the lamp. His muddy boots set up an echo on floors laid in fabulous patterns of colored marble, and when they passed into a long gallery with high, shuttered windows all along one side, he instinctively avoided stepping on the red and gold carpet.

Stephen stopped suddenly in the gallery, and looked back at Gryf. “Our ancestors,” Eliot said, raising the lamp so that dark portraits leaped out from the damask-covered walls.

Gryf glanced at them and back at Eliot suspiciously.

Stephen smiled. “You aren’t interested?”

“Not at the moment.”

“That’s the late marquess.” He pointed at one of the portraits in spite of Gryf’s words. “Your grandfather.
Lord Alexander’s portrait hung next to it.” Stephen paused as a wild, silent glimmer from outside spread a crazy geometry of light across the walls. He added in a peculiar voice, “I had him taken down.”

A cracking burst of thunder overhead made Gryf start. It echoed down the hall.

“Are you afraid of storms?” Stephen said, and his tone was again strange. Almost gentle.

“No,” Gryf said.

“I am.” Stephen stared at the blank place on the wall. “Especially here. She used to bring me here, and tell me stories about the pictures.”

Gryf frowned at his cousin. “Who?” he asked, after a moment.

Stephen looked at him, and then back at the portraits. “You wouldn’t remember, would you? No…I always heard about you, out there in India. I used to dream about it. What it would be like. Warm, I thought. When it was so damned cold in here and she wouldn’t let me have a fire or a candle, I used to think about India. I used to hate you, because I knew you must be warm.”

Gryf shifted his feet, caught between impatience and unease. “What are you talking about?”

“Childhood,” Stephen said cryptically. “At Ashland.”

There was something so set in his expression as he stared at the paintings that Gryf found himself peering through the murk too, as if expecting to see one of those poised figures step down from its canvas in the fitful balefire. He asked, half against his own will, “Who told you stories?”

Stephen was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Mary. The nursemaid. She used to lock me in here.”

“Lock you in…” Gryf was startled. “Why?”

“I suppose I was a bad little boy,” Stephen said lightly. But there was a bitterness beneath the words. He
held out his hand, palm upward, and even in the lamplight Gryf could see the old scar tissue there. “She rather favored scalding my hand over a candle flame for lesser offenses.”

“You’re joking.”

Stephen smiled slightly. “No, Cousin. I don’t consider it a joking matter.”

“I can’t believe my grandfather—”

“Your grandfather didn’t give a pin for an Eliot. He lived and breathed for Lord Alex.” Stephen’s voice softened. “We all did. When he was here…it was different. He took me riding once or twice.”

Suddenly Gryf saw it all too clearly, the picture Stephen painted, of a lonely boy in a house like this. It made him angry to understand so easily, because he had always thought of Stephen Eliot as the enemy, as the man who had taken what should have been Gryf’s own, and now…now a completely insane notion took him: that they might have been friends; that somewhere, somebody had failed them both and brought them to this. He stood there with his gun aimed at the only flesh and blood family he had left and hated whoever had made Eliot what he was; whoever had made a twisted man of a lonely boy. That was who Gryf would have killed, and gladly.

He said, “Move on, Eliot. I don’t see us making any progress toward the cellar.”

Stephen inclined his head, the aristocrat again, and went ahead as if he were doing no more than giving a visitor a tour of the house.

There was a door at the end of the gallery; he opened it, and led the way into another marble hall and through an ornate, narrow arch. He turned, as if to go left, and kept turning…too far. Gryf had the thought and the reaction at the same time, an instant late, as the lamp
tilted. He jerked back from the crash of glass and flame that exploded at his feet and ran fluidly across the opening. A yard-high wall of burning oil sprang to life. Gryf cursed viciously, caught behind it. Before he had even looked up, Eliot was gone. Stephen had picked his spot well; passages went off in the dark in three directions beyond the arch, and the fiery liquid was oozing across the stone floor toward an upholstered bench beneath a hanging banner. Gryf tore off his coat and threw it down; struggled out of his waistcoat and added that, and when the last of the flames were smothered he was left in sudden, utter darkness.

He fumbled his gun back into his hand and held his breath, listening. The low growl of thunder obscured sound, but there might have been footsteps somewhere ahead. He moved backward, with one hand on the wall, unwilling to chase Stephen into the dark.

Gryf had not the faintest idea where he was. Damn Ashland for its confusion of rooms and corridors; he would have gone straight for the cellars if he’d known how. As it was, he could not even find his way back to the entrance hall.

Staying close to the windows, where lightning gave intermittent illumination, he edged along until he came to a recess. Instead of a door, it held a statue: he nearly lost an eye on the outstretched marble hand. Around the other side, he slid his palm along the wall and encountered a doorknob. That surprised and then elated him; from what he had seen in the light of Stephen’s lamp, every public entry in Ashland was a grand one, with a full foot’s width of carved frame. This had to be some servant’s passage: a private shortcut to the kitchen and cellars. It opened silently outward beneath his touch.