Triumph in Arms (21 page)

He meant to see if Marguerite was showing her new friends her pony or perhaps the kittens recently brought from hiding by the barn cat. She should have thought of it, Reine told herself, might have if not for the disquiet that gripped her. That Christien had that presence of mind made her throat tighten until she could not speak. Placing her hand on her father’s where he comforted her, she squeezed it, then swung from him in the direction of the kitchen.

Cook had not seen Marguerite since she gave her
pain perdu,
day-old bread dipped in egg batter, fried and sprinkled with sugar, to go with her breakfast melon.

Lisette O’Neill said she had hung over her shoulder while she was nursing her baby, but went away saying something about the kittens in the barn who suckled just the same.

One of the upstairs maids had retied the sash on her apron when it came loose.

Alonzo had seen her carrying a kitten, trying to make Chalmette let the little thing ride on his back.

No one had seen her for at least an hour, however, possibly two. A thorough canvassing of the shadows under the oaks turned up no sign of her, nor did it help anything to call the other children in and line them up in a row to be questioned.

Reine turned from all those sober young faces. She turned from the concern of their parents, who hovered behind them, also from all the people from River’s
Edge who had been called out by the alarm bell. She turned from Paul’s pinched and concerned features, from her parents’ pale devastation, from the grim set of Christien’s mouth.

She turned and faced the river. It was all that was left.

She didn’t want to think of it. The very idea brought such harrowing images, the body identified as Theodore two years ago, a child lost from a steamboat just downriver in the spring and Kingsley’s body only days ago. Still, the possibility must be explored.

“No,” Christien said, stepping swiftly to her side. “She isn’t there.” He hesitated. “At least, there’s no sign of her along the bank in either direction.”

He had accepted the possibility and seen to it. Whether it was from experience, scrupulous effort or to save her from the harrowing necessity made no difference. It was done, and done well.

Reine closed her eyes, feeling the hard pounding of her heart and the tearing pain inside that presaged heartbreak. She felt it and she knew that she loved this man, would always love him. And it was not for the way he looked, his strength or prowess with a sword. It was not for how he touched her or the way he could draw forth her most fervent responses.

No, she loved him because he understood how she felt with sure instinct, her terrors as well as her joys. It was because he bent his strength and his will to sustain hers without expectation of return. It was because he saw her for what she was and did not turn away, but accepted everything about her. Yes, even the fact that she belonged to another man.

It was then that Chalmette appeared, trotting from the direction of the barn. Around his neck was a crude kerchief of osnaburg. Attached to the fabric was a sheet of foolscap.

Paul whistled and the big bloodhound veered in his direction. He looked tired and footsore, and had a line of dried blood along one side that might have been made by a briar but could have come from a knife. He crouched at Paul’s feet, whining a little as he looked up into his face.

Paul loosened the knot that held the foolscap. With only the barest glance at it, he handed it to Reine.

Her hands shook as she took it, so it was an instant before she could make out the words. The handwriting was familiar, though it had been more than two years since she had last seen it.

My dear wife,
it ran,
I have our daughter.

“It’s from Theodore,” she whispered, looking up, her vision obscured by tears. “He has taken Marguerite.”

“Where?” her father demanded. “How did he get to her?”

Reine didn’t answer. She was reading again, though a tear splashed onto the paper, blurring the words. She dashed it away in sudden dread that she might obliterate something important.

I have taken her as surety for the affair of honor that will take place in the morning. If you care to see her again, you will make certain I survive it unharmed. This you will arrange with Lenoir. I leave the method of persuasion in your hands.

“Reine?” Christien asked, his voice urgent as he watched her face.

She handed him the note without a word. Then she watched in her turn as his skin turned gray beneath its coating of copper-bronze. And when he cursed in softly vicious phrases, she echoed them in her mind.

Theodore had Marguerite. If Christien harmed him in the duel, then he would make certain she never saw her daughter again. He would not kill her, surely he would not, but he might take her far away if only to punish Reine.

“Vinot must withdraw the challenge,” Christien said abruptly. “I’ll send my seconds to arrange it with Pingre’s friends.”

Hope leaped inside Reine’s chest only to fade away again. “You can’t do that. He will take the utmost pleasure in claiming you were too cowardly to face him.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does. I can’t imagine he will let it go without a public confrontation. Besides…”

“What?” Christien looked from her to her father, then past him to the other sword masters.

“He only asks that he be allowed to survive,” she said in deliberate clarification. “He doesn’t demand to be victorious.”

“He will expect it,” Christien said, the words as certain as they were hard.

“Then he should have said so.”

He shook his head. “It’s Marguerite’s safety at stake here.”

“He’s her father. Surely he won’t harm her. But if
he thought you’d believe he would…” She stopped, biting the inside of her lip until she tasted blood.

Christien met her eyes, his own dark with rigorous consideration. He gave a slow nod. “You’re right. He would prefer a meeting where my hands are tied.”

“Yes, but I can’t ask…”

Hot color rose into her face as she remembered the words of the note. Theodore misjudged her if he thought she would stoop to using her body to persuade Christien to let him live. He misjudged Christien, as well, if he considered it might be necessary.

“And need not,” he said, answering her thought before glancing again at his friends. “He can’t have taken Marguerite far, not if he expects to be at the dueling ground in the morning. We—my friends and I—can search him out, descend in force and bring her back.”

“No!” The answer was instinctive, though the temptation to leave it to his strength and ingenuity, and that of his formidable friends, was almost more than she could bear. What was it he had said once? Ah, yes.
No one touches those who belong to me.
If she allowed it, he would certainly hold true to that vow.

He would, yes, but at what cost?

“No,” she said again with a small shudder. “If Theodore saw or heard you coming, he might be maddened enough to do something he would not otherwise. I fear he isn’t entirely…responsible.” What she truly feared was the he was insane, and had been since the night he was attacked at River’s Edge.

“We would take every care to make certain that doesn’t happen.”

She met the fierce darkness of Christien’s eyes, her own drowning in liquid terror and sorrow. “I know, and I would trust to your word if anything less were at stake. But I can’t in this, not when it’s Marguerite’s life.”

He returned her regard for interminable seconds while his hands knotted at his sides. Then he inclined his head. “She is your daughter, therefore it will be as you prefer. Let Pingre have his way. With luck, it will make no difference.”

Christien would have to face Theodore with this threat hanging over him. He dare not use his full skill for fear of reprisal against Marguerite. With the lingering effects of his injury, he would be at a double disadvantage.

Could he surmount the difficulty so as to snatch some form of triumph from the meeting? Or must he accept the denial of justice for Vinot’s daughter and, yes, the danger of dying on Theodore’s sword?

Between the safety of lover or child, there could be only one choice for Reine. She would allow Christien to stay his hand, would accept that sacrifice from him if she must.

The question was whether she could live with the consequences.

“H
e has your rapiers.”

It was Gavin Blackford who made that observation as they stood in the wooded clearing with the great oak tree, waiting for Pingre and his seconds to get ready. The English swordsman should recognize them, Christien knew. The beautifully wrought dueling swords had once belonged to Ariadne, Gavin’s wife, before she sold them to Christien, and had been purchased by her in Paris and brought to New Orleans. It was unlikely there was another pair like them in Louisiana.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” he answered.

“Like the frog with the fly stuck to its nose, it does rather leap to the eye. They were lost on the night you were shot from the ambuscade, therefore…”

“Therefore, I am to be killed with my own weapon as I refused to oblige Pingre by dying from that injury.”

“Only if you accept what he offers. Others are available.”

That was certainly true. Every former
maître d’armes
present had his sword at hand this morning, from habit
if not necessity. Gavin and Caid had brought theirs as a matter of course since it was always possible that some mischance or display of temper during a duel would require their forceful intervention. “I see no reason to object. They would have been my choice if still in my possession. Could be poetic justice will be served.”

“His thought, as well, or so I would imagine.”

“Then we are equal.”

“Unless he has altered the blades in some manner.”

Christien lifted a brow as he met his friend’s bright blue eyes. “Your province, I think, to see that no such mischief occurs.”

“Oh, yes, and I will govern it as I can, but he’s a wily beast and bent on execution.”

“He’s welcome to try.”

“Oh, all my piastres would be on you, except for the minor handicaps of a great bloody rent in your side and a child’s life hanging in the balance. Tell me, should I chance it?”

Despite the brutal obscurity of their phrasing, Gavin’s words usually had a point to them. Christien had learned to take note. “If you’re asking whether I’m fit, the answer is yes, within reason. If you want to know whether I can ignore the welfare of Madame Pingre’s daughter in any degree, you should know better.”

“No, no, you mistake me,” the English sword master said with the ghost of a smile. “I inquire only for how you will neutralize the danger to the innocent while still, and inevitably, belaboring the guilty.”

“I haven’t decided,” Christien said with a frown. “When I do, I’ll let you know.”

“Excellent,” Blackford answered with fine cheer, “as long as you have it in mind.”

Christien had thought of little else from the moment he read the note from Marguerite’s father. The problem had been clearing the rage from his mental processes.

That Pingre would use his daughter as a shield was beneath contempt. It was also of a piece with his night attack on the man who dared propose a second marriage to his wife. He had been content to remain safely dead while she was the grieving widow in retreat from clacking tongues. He might care little for her as a woman, but she represented his name, his heritage, his value as a human being while she still mourned him. The prospect of a new life for her he viewed as a betrayal, one as cutting to his pride as deliberate adultery. He could not allow it.

The reaction was not unexpected. What they had not counted on, he and Vinot, was the lengths Pingre would go to in order to remove his rival. They had looked for him to surface in order to reclaim his rights as a husband, even at the risk of a meeting over his past deeds. They had planned no defense against attempted murder, had not imagined he would hold his own daughter hostage to protect his miserable hide.

It was a costly mistake for which Christien took full responsibility. His task now was to make sure the price wasn’t more than Reine could pay.

Gavin and Caid laid out the piste, removing any broken branches, twigs, briars and vines that might trip
the unwary and marking the boundary lines with powdered lime dribbled from the bunghole of a wooden keg. By rights, the task should have been overseen jointly with Pingre’s seconds, but they had declined the office. They were sure the former sword masters had a better grasp of the requirement than they did. More than that, they were unlikely to dispute with such dangerous gentlemen if it was not to their liking. They were quite free to do as they pleased.

All was done, rather, with the greatest of fairness, the lines being drawn so neither man would have the rising sun in their eyes. Pingre was allowed to call the toss of the coin for position. To Christien went first selection of the two weapons presented. They took their places as the sun came up, striking through the trees, sending their long shadows slipping ahead of them over the grass.

A warm breeze stirred the leaves overhead to a soft murmur, like an audience waiting for the play to begin. Birds whistled in the distance. A grasshopper left the area with a clicking sound, as if its knees were popping. Somewhere a dog barked and cattle lowed, waiting to be milked. The sky overhead was rinsed to palest blue by heat and sunlight.

Pingre was sweating, Christien noted. For all his base preparations, he was still nervous of the outcome. As well he should be.

The man’s gaze moved over the gathering, from the few distant neighbors to the swordsmen and on to Paul, who stood to one side. Chalmette drooped next to him, his long face hangdog and lost without little
Marguerite. The man’s eyes settled on Vinot, a thin, dark form in the forefront of the gathered spectators. It seemed Pingre felt the need to keep an eye on the father of the young woman he had wronged. That was also wise of him. Not that Vinot would interfere at this point; he was far too experienced in these affairs for that kind of error. Yet neither would he permit the slightest deviation from the rules of conduct.

In the pitiless light of day, it was easy to see one reason Pingre had elected to remain hidden from society. To a man of overweening pride, vain of his appearance and his attractiveness to women, the destruction of his face must have come as a blow. Healing would have taken months; the scars would never go away. Pingre’s beard concealed some part of the damage, but its unkempt state added to the feral, not quite human, look of him. It was no wonder Marguerite had seized on the name she had given him.

“Salute,” Gavin called.

Christien swept up his blade in crisp respect for an enemy in this ritual form of combat. Pingre’s movement was sloppy, with a derisive edge that plainly showed respect for nothing and no one, least of all himself.

“En garde!”

Their blade tips came together with hard purpose. They watched each other above them, gauging will, strength and purpose.

“Begin!”

Christien allowed Pingre the first attack, deflecting it with a parry in quarte and a riposte that taught a quick
lesson in caution. He would not attempt a lightning coup, would not essay a crippling blow, but neither would he be easily touched. They settled then to a series of small passages to see precisely what each was made of.

Pingre was a competent swordsman. At a guess, he had spent much of his time practicing over the past two years. How had that been accomplished if he seldom ventured into town?

“You are to be congratulated on your skill,” Christien said conversationally. “Who has been your
maître d’armes?
”

“No one you would know.”

“Try me. You might be surprised.”

“A gentleman sent from Paris by my mother, Monsieur Thibaut. He was with me for a year.”

“Long enough to instruct you in the finer points, yes, and perhaps instruct a sparring partner.”

“As you say.”

The answer was short, though not merely because Pingre was reluctant to admit he was right, Christien saw in the middle of an adroit parry. He was also growing winded. He might have practiced, but it was without the dedication that builds endurance.

It also came to him in a flash of memory who Pingre’s partner must have been, the only man it could have been.

“To kill your sparring partner was somewhat rash. What did Kingsley do to deserve it, I wonder? Oh, but permit me to guess. He failed to kill me but demanded to be paid regardless.”

“Greedy bastard deserved to die. He tried to blackmail me. Me! We fought. He went into the river.”

“An accident, was it? I had thought it a duel.”

Pingre made a sound that might have been a grunt or a laugh while parrying in his turn. “Oh, yes. Naturally.”

“Though like Vinot and myself, you did not consider Kingsley a gentleman, I believe. Your standards seemed to have undergone considerable revision.” His opponent obviously felt he could get away with his ridiculous claim. What then did he intend to say was behind Christien’s own death? The right of the cuckold husband to defend his honor? It would not be the first time such a defense was used.

“A man doesn’t choose his enemies.” Pingre hurtled into another attack, this one with more brawn than finesse, as if made bold by his own rhetoric.

Christien, defending, was aware of the growing strain in his side. He thought the scab covering it had broken for he could feel a warm trickle inching into the waistband of his trousers. “And there is no enemy like family, is there? I say that because I heard a rumor Kingsley was your uncle.”

“That lout was no kin of mine.”

“No? Your honored grandfather may have thought differently. But say he wasn’t, one need not feel bound to uphold all the honorable conventions with such opponents, yes? What ruse did you use to defeat him?”

Contempt twisted the man’s misshapen mouth. “He was a cowhanded farmer pretending to be a swordsman. I needed no ruse.”

“I am a different proposition, apparently.”

“So you are.”

“Yet to drag a child into the business is a drop down the scale, even for you.”

“When you are a
maître d’armes?
Not knowing your level of expertise, I arranged extra protection. I think now I could have taken you without my little safeguard.”

It was exactly what Christien wanted Pingre to think. Toward that end, he had done little more than skirmish while keeping his more expert stratagems in reserve. “Do you indeed?” he inquired, all affability. “Or do you only contemplate some underhanded trick like a shot in the dark or a slash in the back? I should warn you the Brotherhood is more than a name or a handful of men fighting in the dark against those who choose to become bestial. It’s a circle of friends dedicated to hardihood, prowess and honor, each one of whom stands ready to resent injury to the others to the last red drop of his blood.” He smiled in deadly earnest. “We do choose our enemies, you see.”

To one side, where stood Dr. Laborde, come from town that morning, his seconds, Gavin and Caid, looked at each other. Behind them, where Pasquale and the Conde de Lérida stood, there was a similar shift. Though Christien had scant attention to give them while parrying rapidly in tierce, he had the impression that they came to attention like soldiers awaiting battle, a lethal phalanx of friends. And he heard the quiet hiss of blades being drawn.

“Fine lot of good that will do you when you’re dead,” Pingre, unheeding, answered with a sneer.

“Oh, but I didn’t tell you all of it,” Christien answered without raising his voice. “They each adore their wives and children and cannot suffer them to feel fear or pain. This tenderness is extended to every child anywhere who cries in the dark. Learning of an injury to the one, they draw their swords against the man who caused the hurt. And they will not rest until every single tear that falls from the sweetling’s eye has been avenged.”

Counter threat to threat against Marguerite; it was the best Christien could do. Hard on the words, he sprang forward into an attack with his most polished ruse behind it and every ounce of his will. His blade clashed with Pingre’s, slid edge to edge in a shower of sparks, slithered past guard and handle and reached warm, yielding flesh.

Pingre screamed in shock and rage as he fell back with his free hand clamped to his neck. Christien dragged his rapier free with a wrenching pull, stepped back out of guard position.

Gavin moved forward with sword in hand, a bulwark between Christien and his opponent. Turning toward him, he asked, “Are you satisfied, Monsieur Pingre?”

Murder shone from the eyes of Reine’s husband, even as blood appeared on the collar of his shirt, soaking it, running down the sleeve to drip onto the sword still in his hand. He wanted to answer in the negative; that much was clear. It was also plain to be seen that he lacked the expertise to gain the victory he craved or the nerve to go on without it.

“I’m satisfied,” he said in guttural defeat.

Christien waited for relief to take the tension from his muscles. It didn’t come. His bow was stiff, his movements almost jerky as he turned away.

Pingre growled low in his throat, the sound erupting into a roar as he sprang forward. Whipping around, Christien saw the bared teeth, the twisted lips, blood-streaked sleeve and raised blade. Taken unawares by trust in unwritten rules, he flung up his sword even knowing it could not meet Pingre’s blade in time.

There was no need.

The attack was stopped by a mighty, ringing clang with myriad echoes as four men leaped forward, Caid, Gavin, Nicholas and Rio, swords upraised in their hands. The movement set them between Christien and his enemy, a ring of steel between him and death. So they stood, holding Pingre’s blade aloft, their cold, implacable faces turned against him. Then as one, they heaved him backward.

Gavin snatched the man’s rapier as he stumbled, falling to the ground. As Pingre scooted away on his haunches, putting distance between him and his judges, the Englishman flipped the retrieved sword back toward Christien. It landed upright in the grassy earth, waving slowly back and forth, shining and bright in the morning sun.

Christien watched it an instant, then looked up, looked toward where Reine’s husband had lain sprawled, cursing with liquid rage in his eyes.

He was up and running.

Pingre was sprinting through the woods toward the
old playhouse where his ancient nursemaid, Demeter, lived, running toward his family land, his old family home. He was running toward the one place where he might keep a small child locked away from sight.