The Moonless Night (32 page)

“Where then?” Benson asked.

“We’ll discuss it later. She won’t be so noisy when you get through with her, Everett.”

“Yes, but why do you—Oh! You mean to kid...”

“
Un enlèvement
,” Madame interrupted.

“I speak French, Madame,” Marie said. “You will have some difficulty carrying me against my will to France.” She put on a greater show of courage than she was feeling, hoping to stall for time and perhaps discover their plans.

“We’re not going to France yet,” Benson said.

“
Ferme le bec!
” Madame shouted angrily, and Benson obediently closed his beak. “Sanford won’t like it if we beat her. Better...”

“Hah.
He
won’t like it! How do you think I liked having him make up to my wife?”

“Your
wife
!” Marie gasped.

“You didn’t think I really wanted you, you silly country bumpkin,” he scorned. Madame preened, a hand to her blond curls and a supercilious smile on her cheeks.

“I think Mademoiselle wants a little something to relax her for the trip,
chéri
,” Madame said in meaningful accents. “A glass of wine,
peut-être
, to calm her nerves.”

“Excellent!” Benson said, and ran for the decanter, while  Madame fumbled in her reticule for a bottle of colorless liquid. He poured a hefty wallop of the “relaxing” agent into the wine and gave it to Madame.

“Hold her hands,” Madame said. Benson walked around behind her, again gripping her arms in a painful hold behind her back, while Madame held the glass to her lips. Marie closed her lips tightly and jerked her head away. She mustn’t drink it. Unconscious, they could do anything to her. Take her to France, or kill her if it seemed easier. She was very frightened, praying for rescue. Surely she had been missed by now! Someone would come after her!

A hand, Madame’s, came across her cheek with a hard smack. “Better do it the easy way, miss,” she said. “A pity to have to mar that platter face of yours. It is bad enough as it is. Insipid! That is what Lord Sanford thinks of you. Did you know that?
La fermière inripide
he calls you.”

“Jealous, Madame? Would you like to hear what he calls you?” Marie shot back.

“Never mind the cat fight. Get it into her,” Benson said impatiently.

Marie held her lips clenched. Madame set aside the wine with an angry grunt, took her by the hair and pulled her head back, held her nose till she was forced to open her mouth for a gulp of air, then swiftly let go of the hair to reach for the wine. The edge of the glass was between her teeth, while she wriggled desperately to avoid swallowing it. At least half of it was running down her chin and neck. Then, with success so close, Benson put his arms around her body, holding her back taut against him to prevent her struggling, while Madame tried to finish the job. In the midst of this scene of kicking feet, writhing bodies and muffled grunts of outrage, the front knocker sounded.

“Dammit, who can that be?” Benson asked, alarmed.

Madame considered it for a spilt second, then took her decision. “I’ll go and won’t let anyone in if I can help it. It might be the puppy. He was concerned for my headache. I’ll get rid of him.”

“It might be the constable,” Benson cautioned her, his voice tense with worry.

“But what if it is,
mon cher
?” Madame asked. “What have we done? They cannot know the whole yet. It is no crime to have a headache, even at Sir Henry’s ball. Better take her across the hall in case I have to let someone into the saloon. For God’s sake, keep her quiet.” As she spoke, she closed the lid of the trunk and pushed it behind the door, while Benson dragged Marie across the hall into a small room and closed the door behind him. Madame remembered in all the confusion to pick up her handkerchief, and with it trailing from her fingers, her other hand to her head, she walked to the front door.

It seemed Madame was correct in her guess. Voices trailing from the door reached Marie’s eager ears. “Madame!” she heard David say, “the strangest thing has happened. Marie has vanished. Just disappeared out of the house. She wouldn’t have said anything to you?”

“Oh
mon Dieu
! This is terrible,” Madame replied. “Disappeared? But no, she said nothing to me. I have no idea… She was there when I left, I think? Yes, surely I remember seeing her, dancing with an officer.”

“No, she was last seen with Benson,” David pointed out.

“But Benson brought me home. Did he go back? Perhaps he could tell you.”

“No, Benson’s gone, too. That’s the awful thing about it. We fear they’ve run away together,” David said, sounding very worried.

Listening through the closed door, Marie knew that if she didn’t act now, if Madame got David to believe her story, she was in for a very bad ordeal, worse than it had been thus far. She wondered that David had come alone. What had happened to Sanford? No matter, it was now or never.

Benson held her against him in an iron grip, one hand firmly clamped against her mouth, the other holding her around the waist, with her back to him. She was nearly powerless, but if she could get free long enough for one loud shout it would be enough. She took a deep breath, jerked her head away to get one of Benson’s fingers between her teeth and bite down on it with all her strength, while simultaneously lifting one foot to give him a kick in the shins with her heel. The hand at the mouth came away, and she screamed. “David! David, I’m here!”

To her amazement, David seemed not to have heard. She heard him talking on, asking Madame more pointless questions. Before she had time to shout again, Benson had sworn off a stream of low curses and raised his hand to strike her a blow across the face. Madame’s sharp slap was but a love tap compared to this. The full force of a grown man’s strength was in it. It sent her reeling against a table. She had never been struck by a man before, hardly ever by a woman, though it was not unknown for Biddy to give her a cuff when she was younger. To see a man sink so low, and hit so hard, shocked her.

Before she recovered from her shock, a greater one occurred. The window exploded; with no warning whatsoever a black form came hurtling through it. Benson as well as herself was momentarily startled into immobility, but the man without an instant’s hesitation took a leap at Benson. It was Sanford, with such a fierce expression on his face Marie was half afraid of him, even while she drooped with relief.

Caught off guard, Benson was sent flying against the wall as a fist hit his jaw. He had soon recovered himself and raised his own fists for battle. Marie was as innocent of seeing grown men fight in earnest as she was of being struck. She stood mesmerized as they danced around, raining incredibly hard blows on each other. There was the ugly sound of flesh hitting flesh and bone—a dull
whuck
of a sound.

It was both fascinating and revolting at once. They didn’t say a word, either. Just glared as if they’d be happy to kill each other. She could feel the hatred between them in the air. The strangeness of it, combined with her fatigue and shock, robbed her of half her faculties. For full two minutes she didn’t think to lend Sanford a hand. But really, it was not at all necessary. Had he been getting the worst of it, no doubt it would have occurred to her.

At length she tore her eyes from the bloody spectacle long enough to discover a weapon—a rather ugly but large and heavy vase. Benson was already sinking to the floor, his face battered, but she hit him across the side of the head for good measure.

Sanford, panting and with a welt across his chin, stepped over the body that was now on the floor between them, still looking fiercely murderous. “You bloody fool!” he shouted at her, just before he pulled her into his arms. She was ready to retaliate for this injustice, but the manner in which he clutched her to him, tightly and possessively, removed any odium from his description. After nearly squeezing the breath out of her, he held her back and looked at her, touching her red cheek with his finger. She knew from his eyes he was going to kiss her, but she didn’t expect he would do it so forcefully. The half smile on his lips led her to expect a gentle, tender embrace. She awaited it breathlessly, but he was in no gentle mood. He kissed her very roughly, indeed, as though it were a penalty he was exacting for her being a bloody fool. He kissed her as hard as he had been hitting Benson, with the same hot blood and violence. The embrace left her as shocked as the blow.

Then he pulled her head on to his shoulder and said in a shaking voice, “If I didn’t love you so much I’d beat you. If I had the strength, I would, anyway. What possessed you to come charging into the lion’s den all by yourself?”

“Oh,” she answered, smiling and undismayed by his ill manners when she discovered their cause to be anxiety, “but if I had told Papa I was coming, he wouldn’t have let me.”

“Then he would have shown more sense than he usually does.” He cocked an ear to the door, to hear Madame and David rushing towards it. He opened it and bowed formally. “Welcome to my parlor, et cetera. Do come in, Madame. You will want to try your hand at rallying Benson around to his senses. Don’t be in any hurry, or I will have to knock him out again.” Madame flew to Benson and knelt on the floor beside him, while David smiled broadly.

“I see everything went all right. How’d you get in, Ade? When I went around to the front door to distract them, you were still at the other window.”

“I saw Benson dragging Marie out the door and ran to the other side of the house, to see where he was taking her. He was just beginning to manhandle her when I got here. I’m afraid I didn’t wait to calm her down and go to the door. I came through the window. However, it is my house, in a manner of speaking.”

“Drew his cork, eh?” David asked, stepping closer to the prostrate body to admire its condition. “What are we to do with them? Shall we take them into town, or send the constable after them?”

“You go into Plymouth and bring the constable, Marie and I will stay here and stand guard. I don’t think Benson will be going anywhere for an hour or so. If he comes to, I’ll stick him in a closet. Better hurry. Marie is eager to get home, I should think. She is likely missed already.”

“He needs help,” Madame told them, looking up.

“Give it to him then,” Sanford replied. “We’ll go into the next room and keep an eye on the luggage, to see you don’t develop wanderlust and sheer off on us.” He turned to Marie. “Did you happen to see through the window what they did with the loot?”

“There’s a little wooden box of gold in the trunk.”

“Fine. We’ll guard it. We needn’t fear Madame will dash off without her gold, whatever about her husband.” He called to David, just leaving. “Turn the nags in the stable loose, just in case Madame becomes restless.”

For a month, David had been wholeheartedly infatuated with Madame. He steeled his heart to do his painful duty, looking to where she leaned over Benson. Crouched over, worried and frowning, she looked like an ugly, old woman. “Good idea,” he answered, and went off to do it. He felt disillusioned, a little sad, and infinitely wiser in the ways of designing women.

With a great air of offended dignity, Madame began rounding up supplies to tender care to her husband, while Sanford went with Marie across the hall, leaving both doors open to allow a view of the pair. He pulled a pistol out of his jacket and showed it to Madame Monet. “I don’t particularly want to kill either of you, but then I don’t feel like any more running tonight, either. Don’t tempt me.”

Chapter 22

Madame’s mind appeared to be not on escaping, but saving her husband’s life. She scurried about, bringing bandages and medications, while the other two sat talking, keeping a close eye on the door. “We could use Biddy,” Sanford said.

“She will have plenty to do patching you up when we get home. Your chin is purple.”

“Your cheek is red. Did he do more than cuff your cheek?”

“No, and I bit him. I hope he catches hydrophobia.”

“I hope he don’t. I wouldn’t want to discover you’re rabid.”

“What happened to Napoleon? He didn’t get away?”

“No, David prevented it.”

“Was it David who cut the chain then, and let Rawlins’ ship get out? We made sure Benson had done it for some reason.”

“No, I cut the chain myself this morning. It was Rawlins who went to free him, using the
Phoebe
and a bunch of Frenchies decked out in official naval uniforms. David went after them in
Seadog
.”

“Rawlins! You mean he is one of them!”

“Afraid so. He has been disenchanted with the navy for some time. He did not advance so far nor so fast as he felt he should. He is a little prone to brandy, however, and after his demotion he was ready for any revenge. But you were aware of that—you gave me the clue the first day I met him. Inquiries indicated he was badly dipped, therefore open to bribery. Madame knew it, of course. She set herself on to him, to seduce him from the path of duty. I had hoped that might prove a weak link in their chain—jealousy, you know, if I could make Benson think there was an affair going on between them, but they were all too deep into it by then.”

“I think he did know. One night when David and I were here, Benson was ragging the life out of the pair of them, shaking his finger under Madame’s nose. I knew then there was something between those two.”

He regarded her askance. “David told me he brought you here with him. Scatterbrained thing to do, but not so bad as your coming here alone, milady! That was downright foolish, and unnecessary as well.”

“It was not! They would have got clean away if I hadn’t wasted so much of their time, and have been gone by the time anyone came after them.”

“They wouldn’t have got far.”

“There’s gratitude for you! I, risking my neck. They were going to kidnap me, you know, and make you—Papa pay a fat ransom for me.”

“Did they quote a price? I’d like to have an inkling what you’re considered worth on the open market.”

“There was talk of a hundred thousand pounds!” she answered grandly.

“Over-valued,” was his damping reply. “One could pick up a deposed emperor for that sum.”