Rendezvous (9781301288946) (8 page)

"You can give the general a message for
me," he said. "Tell him I've changed my name to Carrington, that he
can stop worrying that I will drag the illustrious name of Carr
into the gutters."

Charles heaved a disappointed sigh. "I
suppose I cannot blame you for your attitude. Father was completely
unfair. He despises intelligence work, yet he never hesitates to
use the information spies provide when drawing up battle
plans."

"Spying is a necessary evil," Sinclair
said, imitating his father's gruff, stentorian tones. "But dirty
work, not fit for a gentleman. Let someone else's son do it!"
Sinclair concluded his impersonation by banging his fist upon the
desk. Shrugging his shoulders, he forced a laugh. He had given over
trying to please his father a long time ago. The old man had been
outraged when he discovered Sinclair had traded his cavalry
commission to become part of army intelligence. General Carr had
used his considerable influence to get the appointment canceled.
Sinclair had retaliated by resigning from the army altogether, thus
becoming the first Carr male in five generations who would not go
to his grave wearing regimentals. He continued to work for the army
as a civilian spy and had not spoken to or seen his father since.
That had been over five years ago.

Sinclair blocked his father out of his
thoughts except for the times such as this, when Charles made a
feeble attempt to effect a reconciliation.

"The general is not such a bad old
fellow," Charles ventured. "He has always treated me quite
decently."

Sinclair rocked back in his chair,
regarding his guileless younger brother with an amused
smile.

"That is because you always do exactly
what he wants, Chuff."

Charles stiffened defensively. "But I
like being in the cavalry."

"I am glad that you do." Sinclair
spared his brother's feelings, although sorely tempted to point out
that Charles would have liked whatever the old man told him to
like. Sinclair was fond of his younger brother, but he knew that
Charles was weak-willed, easily led just like Sinclair's mother and
two sisters.

"I will admit the general can be a
proper martinet when crossed," Charles continued. "But you've
always defied him ever since I can remember. I often wondered how
you dared."

"My philosophy has been the same with
Father as it is with the rest of the world. You can do what
everyone else thinks you should and be miserable. Or you can please
yourself and let them all curse you. Then someday when you're an
old man, at least you're not likely to have regrets about the way
you've lived your life."

Charles looked troubled. "And don't you
ever have any regrets, Sinclair?"

It was a strangely perceptive question
to come from Chuff, almost too perceptive. Sinclair got abruptly to
his feet, dismissing the question with a laugh.

"I'm not an old man yet, even though I
know I must seem like a graybeard to you. Ask me your question
again twenty years hence."

He crossed the room, scooped up his
brother's boots, and thrust them at Charles. "Get these back on. I
assume you came here by stage. I want to make sure you are on the
next one going out before Darlington finds out about this
outrageous stunt you and your friend Tobias have
pulled."

Reluctantly Charles took the boots and
began to struggle into them. "Aye, I shouldn't like to land Toby in
the suds. He's a good fellow."

But obviously not possessed of the
secretive nature required for intelligence work, Sinclair
thought.

"I expect Darlington will ask Toby if
there was any return message," Charles said.

"Have Toby tell the colonel that when I
have anything to report, I will send it through the usual
channels." Sinclair laid pointed emphasis on the last words. "He
can also say that I have met the Varens woman."

Something in Sinclair's tone of voice
must have alerted Charles, for he glanced up sharply, red-faced
from his exertion in donning the boots.

"Oho! A woman is it? Up to mischief
again, I daresay."

"My dear Chuff." Sinclair regarded his
brother with wearied patience. "Where do you come by this notion
that I carry every female that I meet off to my bed?"

"Because you do. At least, all the
pretty ones."

Sinclair grimaced. Charles would be
astonished to learn that over half of the conquests attributed to
Sinclair were the result of barracks-room gossip and Sinclair's own
boastful attitude as a youth. Sinclair admitted to a certain amount
of flirtation with the ladies, because he had discovered that
flirting always kept affairs from drawing too near the heart.
Becoming too serious about any relationship was one more set of
shackles Sinclair had managed to avoid.

Choosing not to reply to his brother's
comment, Sinclair fetched Charles's still damp coat from the
peg.

Charles stood up slowly. "This has
turned out to be a rather short visit," he said in forlorn
accents.

"Bad timing, old fellow. In a few
months, when this work is done, I'll look you up and we'll spend a
night carousing and scouring the streets for wicked
women."

Sinclair's words coaxed a faint smile
from Charles, but as he helped Charles into his coat, the young man
sighed. "I suppose you won't be slipping to Norfolk to see Mother
anytime soon, either."

"Regrettably, no. You must give her and
the girls my love.” The girls? Sinclair rolled his eyes at his own
choice of words. His sisters were older than himself, spinsters
both of them because none of their suitors had ever measured up to
the general's exacting standards. Eleanor and Louise had been
pretty enough in their youth, soft and blond like Sinclair's
mother, like Charles. It was rather ironic, Sinclair thought, that
it was himself, the wayward son, who was the only Carr to bear a
strong physical resemblance to the general.

Even after Charles pulled his cloak
around him, he attempted to linger. Sinclair took his brother by
the arm and guided him inexorably toward the door.

"Mother will be terribly disappointed
to hear you can't come home for so long," Charles said.

"Can't be helped." Sinclair felt
ashamed of himself for sounding so cheerful. Although he did
occasionally slip home to see his mother when he knew the general
would be gone, the visits were more penance than pleasure. His
mother invariably began crying over his disreputable life, then his
sisters would join in. Weeping females always made Sinclair
uncomfortable. They generally could never find their own
handkerchiefs and ended by snuffling against the shoulder of one's
favorite frock coat.

As Sinclair maneuvered his brother to
the door, for one moment he had the horrible fear that even Charles
meant to burst into tears. But although Charles looked pale, he
managed to smile as he held out his hand.

"I suppose this is good-bye then,"
Charles said. "Dammit, Sinclair. I hate seeing you go off on these
things. It would be far easier to watch you charge a row of blazing
cannons than this affair where you won't even know who your enemy
is. I have a very bad feeling about this assignment of
yours."

Charles caught Sinclair's fingers in a
hard clasp. The gesture triggered a memory in Sinclair, his father
barking at Chuff not to be a puling babe, that Charles didn't need
a candle to find his way to the nursery. The general's orders
bedamned—Sinclair had always let his brother clasp his hand,
guiding Chuff up the dark stairs to his little bed.

Although much moved by Charles's
concern, Sinclair tried to shrug it off. "Are you turning
fortuneteller, Chuff?"

"It is nothing to make jests about. I
keep having these horrible visions of you lying somewhere dead with
a knife stuck in your back."

Sinclair had had the same premonition
himself more than once—that he would end his life in just such a
fashion, dying alone in some dismal set of lodgings like these. But
he gave Charles's hand a reassuring squeeze before pulling
away.

“I will watch my back," Sinclair
promised. "And you take care of yourself, young scapegrace. After
all, you're the only one of my relatives I can tolerate for more
than ten minutes at a time."

He clapped Charles on the back, keeping
their final farewell light. But as soon as he saw Charles out the
door, the grin faded from Sinclair's lips. He found himself doing
something he had never done before.

Striding to the window, he brushed back
the lace curtain and peered through the dirty panes. He watched
Charles trudge down the cobbled street until he lost sight of
Chuff's stocky form in the rumble of carriages and other
pedestrians scurrying along the walkway. It was almost as though he
never expected to see Charles again.

Sinclair let the curtain fall, stepping
back from the window. What was wrong with him? He was letting his
brother's dark fears color his own mood.

"What an old woman you're getting to
be, Carrington," Sinclair muttered. But he was forced to admit that
he too carried an inexplicable apprehension about this latest
assignment. Yet he had taken far greater risks in his life. What
made this time so different?

Maybe it was the woman, Sinclair
thought, his mind once more envisioning Isabelle Varens's gold hair
and all too seductive curves. A woman like that could be a man's
undoing. Sinclair had seen it happen to others of his sex many
times, but he had always guarded his own heart too well. Maybe he
was long overdue for a fall.

CHAPTER FOUR

The manor house known as Maison Mal du
Coeur perched in solitary grandeur upon a hill overlooking the sea.
Outlined against the starless midnight sky, the mansion appeared
stark in the simplicity of its classical design, its only ornament
the balustrade at the roofline, each corner surmounted by a stone
urn.

No outbuildings nestled close by, no
line of trees sheltered Mal du Coeur. The white stone walls seemed
to hurl defiance at the breakers crashing upon the pebbled beach
far below, daring Poseidon, great god of the sea, to do his
worst—buffets of wind, maelstroms, tidal waves—Mal du Coeur would
withstand them all.

Slipping along the path that led to the
gardens at the rear of the house, Belle paused to gaze upward at
the massive walls looming over her. The hood of her cloak fell back
and the night wind tangled strands of her hair about her face.
Belle brushed the tendrils aside, her eyes fixed upon the
moon.

Partly obscured by a mist of clouds,
the crescent hung in the sky like some ghostly scimitar suspended
above Mal du Coeur.

Belle shivered, overcome by the same
strange brooding sensation she had had when first glimpsing the
mansion from the carriage. She had no idea what to expect from this
meeting with Merchant tonight, but she had the feeling that in some
way it would prove momentous, one of those events that would
drastically alter the course of her life.

She would have dismissed such notions
as nonsense, an irritation of the nerves, if she had not
experienced such premonitions before, premonitions that had proved
all too true. That long-ago evening in Paris, in the suite of rooms
she and Jean-Claude had rented-had she not somehow sensed that
something was terribly wrong? The intimate supper her maid had laid
upon the table had long ago turned cold before Jean-Claude had
burst into the room. He had never been late before. . .

Lifting the hem of her gown, Belle
continued along the path, hardly noticing the garden ahead of her
with its low lying hedges and rosebushes set in a symmetrical line.
The wind rustling the leaves, the distant roar of the sea all faded
before the insistent clamor of voices from her past.

"You deceived me," she heard
Jean-Claude accuse. “You have been doing so since the day we were
wed, the hour we first met."

Then her own voice, pleading, "Please,
Jean-Claude. I always meant to tell you the truth. I wanted to. Oh,
how I wanted to, but I was afraid of losing you. I beg you to
forgive me."

But her words were lost in the raw
anguish of his cry. "You betrayed my trust, the one thing left in
all this madness I had to believe in—our love, what we shared
together. It has all been nothing but a lie."

“Before God, no! My past, who I am-yes,
I did deceive you about that, but there is one part of it that was
not a lie. I do love you, Jean-Claude. I always will."

Always will-the words echoed mockingly
back to her upon the wind, the painful recollection swallowed up by
the night.

Belle passed a hand across her brow.
Why was she even thinking about such things now, when she needed
all her wits to deal with Merchant? Memories of Jean-Claude had a
habit of creeping up on her at the worst times.

No more tonight, she vowed, moving
forward into the garden. A lantern had been lit and left resting
upon a stone bench just as Quentin Crawley had promised.

"Quentin?" Belle called softly. No one
answered, and yet she sensed another presence in the garden, eyes
watching her. The hair at the back of her neck prickled as she
moved cautiously toward the lantern.