Leslie Lafoy (25 page)

She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at his back as he ambled on, apparently oblivious to how he’d just all but poleaxed her. Was he saying that Barrett was falling in love with her? No, the rational part of her brain contended. Barrett was a man-about-town, a rake, a committed bachelor. Men like that didn’t tumble head over heels. They were too smart, too experienced, and far too jaded to let themselves be swept off their feet.

Aiden stopped, looked over his shoulder, then turned and came back to her. He said nothing, though; just met her gaze and cocked a brow in silent question.

“I can’t,” she managed to stammer.

“Can’t love him? Can’t walk away? Can’t what?”

Love him? Her heart skittered and panic shot through her veins. “Walk away,” she declared, desperately seizing the safer possibility.

“Why?”

How John Aiden could be so calm … Her heart pounding frantically, Belle tried to draw a full breath. And failed. “I need him to help me find the treasure,” she offered, snatching at the wholest of the notions careening through her mind. “And I can’t just leave him to fend off murder charges on his own. I’m obligated to stay and see that his name is cleared.”

“Why?”

Oh, God. The man was positively relentless. “He’s in this mess because of Mignon and me. And because leaving would be selfish and he deserves better. He’s a good, decent, and honorable man.”

“Would his being a handsome devil happen to be a consideration, too?”

“A slight one,” she admitted, grateful that he hadn’t pressed any further on the nature of her feelings.

“Just slight?” he teased, his grin wide and knowing.

“All right, a significant one,” she allowed, seeing no reason to maintain pretenses. “I’m not made of stone.”

He sobered only slightly to admonish, “Just be honest with him, Belle. Please. If you owe him anything at all, it’s that.”

Her nod seemed to satisfy him and he turned away, motioning with his head for her to come along. Obediently, she fell in beside him, pushing her hands deeper into her pockets as her gaze skimmed over the pavers and her mind chattered.

Barrett deserved honesty, yes, but she thought that more than anything else, he deserved to be happy. He deserved to have every minute of his life filled with the kind of joy that had been in his eyes as he’d pressed her back into the pillows. And if Aiden was to be believed, the light in his eyes hadn’t been from having found another willing woman in a long line of them. According to Aiden,
she
made Barrett happy. Being with her was different for him.

Which, she ruefully had to accept, was most definitely not within her realm of experience with men. There had been a time, long ago and for a very brief span, when she’d wanted to make Henri happy and had tried everything she knew to make him so. Nothing had achieved that end, however, and she’d abandoned the effort. In a single moment, she remembered, looking back. As she’d sat alone at the dinner table. She’d surrendered the entire campaign with a simple shrug and no great sense of having lost something important.

Making Barrett happy, on the other hand, didn’t seem to require any conscious effort at all on her part. At least not any that she’d noticed herself making. It just seemed to happen on its own. They talked, they teased, Barrett’s smile went wide. His eyes sparkled. And in those moments, he made her feel acutely, deliciously alive.

The feelings Barrett stirred in her were completely apart from those she’d ever experienced with Henri. Theirs had been a forced union, one neither of them had truly wanted. Initially it hadn’t engendered much emotion beyond indifference. In time it had evolved to a true dislike and an abiding regret.

From the first moments with Barrett she’d been on unfamiliar ground. She’d been physically attracted to him from the start. There was no denying that; she had never even tried to evade his advances. But where was the line that separated physical desire from love? she wondered. Had she crossed it? How did you know that you loved someone? Was the realization supposed to spring up from nowhere, certain and full and blinding a person to all but the revelation? Her mother had maintained that a woman would simply
know
when she met the man of her heart.

Isabella lifted her gaze from the ground. The back side of the carriage house lay straight ahead. Carden had moved on to his assigned place and Barrett stood alone in the shadows, waiting for her and Aiden to arrive. What were her feelings for him? He certainly inspired confidence. A myriad of things could go wrong this evening, but she wasn’t the least bit worried; Barrett could be counted on to handle his part of any disaster both competently and swiftly. The basic plan he’d laid down was solid and well conceived; there was no question as to his intelligence or his logic. Trusting him with life and limb didn’t require any leap of faith. She knew that he’d watch her back just as carefully as she would watch his.

None of it, even combined, amounted to love and she knew it. She’d never carried explosives into the dark with men she didn’t trust and respect. It was a fundamental requirement of self-preservation. Barrett wasn’t any different in that than any one of a dozen men with whom she’d worked.

Why that realization saddened her, she couldn’t fathom in a definitive way. She wanted him to be special, to be more. Largely, she supposed, because she knew to the center of her bones that he was. How precisely—beyond the physical appeal of him—was a mystery, though.

Beside her, John Aiden said quietly, “Two trills in quick succession.”

She didn’t bother to acknowledge the reminder, but let him walk away to take up his post. Barrett, she knew, ambling up to join him, wouldn’t dream of questioning her ability to remember the warning signal.

He cocked his brow and tilted his head to the side and in the expression she clearly heard his unspoken question.
Is there a problem?
She smiled up at him in reassurance as she reached to the small of her back and withdrew the revolver.

Barrett did the same, angling the muzzle toward the ground between their feet as he checked, yet again, the cylinder to be sure it was loaded.
Always certain,
she thought, grinning as she edged toward the corner of the carriage house.

The trill of a night bird came from the darkness to her left. Carden was in place and all was clear. She waited, aware of Barrett moving to the far side of the building. Another trill came; this one from Aiden on the right. Pausing just long enough to collect Barrett’s quick nod of assent, she moved out of cover and slipped up the side of the outbuilding, keeping to the shadows.

He’d been right about Larson not posting constables to watch for his return. Now if only she could be equally right about where Mignon had stashed the remaining pieces of the map. The quicker work they made of the foray, the better. Barrett was just as likely to be right about the presence of Mignon’s killers as he’d been the absence of Larson’s men. Her skin prickled at the thought, but she reminded herself that if Barrett trusted Carden and Aiden to keep watch, then she could, too.

Reaching the front corner of the building, she poked her head around to check and, seeing Barrett moving swiftly and silently up the edge of the yard, quickly rounded it and moved to the stable door. It opened without a sound and she slipped inside. Pulling it barely closed behind her, she listened and let her eyes adjust to the darkness of the interior.

Hearing only the sound of her own breathing, she relaxed and let her heartbeat slow. Certain of Mignon’s tendencies, Isabella swept her gaze around the structure and objects nearest the door and then set to work, one hand skimming over surfaces and along joints, the other firmly gripping the butt of the revolver. A search of the framework on either side of the door produced nothing. Reaching up, she poked her fingers into the left corner of the header.

“Seek and ye shall find,” she whispered, carefully pulling the tattered strip from its hiding place. The light was dim at best, but sufficient for her to know in a single glance that she held the rest of the verse in her hand. The valuable piece, the piece that would allow them to put together all the rest of them and find Lafitte’s treasure. It took everything she had to suppress a peal of laughter and even more to tamp down the urge to run out into the yard and call Barrett off his part of the search. Resolutely stuffing the slip into her pocket, she forced herself to continue to look for the last missing section of Mignon’s half.

Careful examination of the other side of the header and of all the seams between the door and the windows on either side of it produced nothing. Isabella sighed and studied the ancient, obviously retired carriage parked in the far corner of the space, the stalls that lined both walls, and knew instinctively that Mignon wouldn’t have gone that far.

Barrett might have been right, she admitted, making her way back to the door. Mignon might well have had only one piece left to hide by the time she actually reached the yard. She listened at the door for a few seconds and, hearing nothing, eased it open and peered out into the yard.

Her heart instantly slammed up into her throat. A horrible pain throbbing where it had torn free of its moorings in her chest, she swallowed hard and clenched her teeth. It was all the time and preparation she could allow herself. Adjusting her grip on the revolver, she slipped out of the stable, knowing what she had to do.

*   *   *

Barrett looked down at the muzzle pointed at his gut, at the bandaged hand wrapped around the grip, and then back up into eyes too old for a young man’s body.

“Toss away the gun and give me the map, guv’nor.”

Lifting his hand, Barrett deliberately eyed the newfound slip and then turned his attention back to his assailant. As he did, at the farthest edge of his focus, he caught sight of movement in the shadows of the carriage house. His blood turned to ice and his stomach clenched solid just before it plummeted to the soles of his feet.
Belle. Low and fast
.

Determined not to give her away, equally determined to cover her advance, he held up his gun hand so the other could see it without having to shift his gaze. Slowly loosening his hold on his weapon, Barrett let it roll free in the palm of his hand until it hung uselessly from his index finger. Where the hell were Carden and Aiden?

“Makes no difference to me whether you give it or I take it, mister,” the young man said. “Either way, I’m havin’ it. How’s up to you.”

She was three-quarters of the way across the yard. Just another five meters or so to go. “If you’re thinking it’s the whole of Mignon’s half of the map,” he countered, buying her time, keeping the other’s attention fixed on him, “I’m afraid that you’re going to be terribly disappointed.”

“I’m not paid to think. Give it to me.”

One meter. Barrett heaved a sigh and slowly stretched out his arm.

The man leaned forward, meeting him halfway to snatch it from his fingertips. Stepping back he laughed and sneered. “And they say that rich men’s brains is in their—” The remaining portion of the taunt snagged in his throat and his eyes widened as his face went moon white with fear.

“Wallets,” Belle finished for him sweetly, calmly. Standing behind him, she added, “I’ll have the paper from you now. Slowly and over the left shoulder, please.”

To the credit of his good sense, the man obeyed the command. As he carefully passed the paper over to Belle, Barrett flicked his own gun back into his hand and stripped the hapless fellow of his.

“Thank you,” Belle offered politely, tucking the paper into the pocket of her trousers. “And since you’re in such an accommodating mood, I have a few questions for you,” she went on as Barrett grinned in appreciation of her aplomb. “We’ll start with the most central one. Who’s paying you to retrieve Mignon’s half of the map?”

The man looked at him expectantly. What he was hoping he might do, Barrett could only guess. But if he thought it likely that he’d take control of the situation from Belle, he was going to be disappointed yet again tonight. “I wouldn’t frustrate a woman who has a gun poked in my back, son,” he drawled. “Answer the lady’s question and she’ll let you trot away unharmed.”

The report pounded through the silence accompanied by the high-pitched, fleeting whine of a bullet. Barrett’s heart jolted and his body instinctively recoiled as the yard instantly became a ballroom, the crumpling body that of a blue-eyed woman.

And then it was gone, the past swept away by the brutal reality of the present. Belle stood in front of him, the body lying at her feet, her horrified gaze riveted on the rear yard of the house to her left.
Tracking the path,
part of his mind supplied even as another part screamed,
Second shot!

He lunged for her, sweeping her gun hand outward and burying his shoulder into her midriff to drive her back and down as the report boomed and echoed, as the bullet whined and thudded into the sodden dirt beside them.

A passing notice was all he gave it. Rolling onto his side and then his feet, always keeping himself squarely between the shootist and Belle, he yanked her up and spun her about, snarling, “Run!”

How she had the breath and strength to comply he didn’t know, but she did. In a second she was gone, racing full tilt for the darkest of the shadows. Trusting her to her instincts, he whirled, dropped to his knee, and made quick work of clearing the dead man’s pockets. Shoving the contents into his own, he too darted for the shadows, his senses keenly aware of every sound, every change in the world around him.

Curtains were drawn back in the surrounding houses, window sashes were flying up and voices crying out. The shrill peal of the constable’s whistle pierced the din of Carden and Aiden’s crashing arrival into the rear yard. At the broad sweep of his arm, they both turned and sprinted toward the alley. He followed in their wake, his strides long and hard, his heart racing and his mind staggering before the onslaught of delayed realizations.

Head shot. Clean and precise. The first shot to prevent betrayal, the second so they could take the map from Belle’s pocket. Cold, ruthless evil.