When Maidens Mourn (32 page)

“Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever see any of it again,” said Arceneaux. “We have the illusion of being free here, but we’re not really. Whatever happened to all the prisoners of the Hundred Years’ War? Do you know? What happens to the prisoners of a war that never ends? Is this my destiny, I wonder? To live out my life alone in a dusty, dark garret, scrabbling for a few shillings here and there, teaching bored little boys to speak French and—” His voice cracked and he shook his head.

Sebastian said, “Two weeks ago, Mr. Hildeyard Tennyson asked the daughter of one of his associates for her hand in marriage. Word of the betrothal was kept private due to the intended bride’s recent bereavement. But I can’t believe Miss Tennyson didn’t tell you, her dear, beloved friend.”

For a moment, Arceneaux sat motionless. Then Chien nuzzled his head against his friend’s side. The Frenchman ran one hand down the dog’s back, his attention seemingly focused on his companion. “She told me, yes.”

“I’ll admit the significance of Tennyson’s betrothal escaped me at first. But as my wife—far more acute in such matters than I—pointed out, a woman of Miss Tennyson’s temperament and independent ways would never have continued living as a mere sister-in-law and hanger-on in the houses where she herself had been mistress for more than a decade.”

Arceneaux continued to stare silently out over the river, his hand running up and down the dog’s back.

Sebastian said, “She must have been upset and in need of comfort. You had already declared your love for her. Yet you would
have me believe that you still didn’t ask her to marry you? That you didn’t press her to marry you?”

“No.” The world was a soft, halfhearted lie nearly lost in the wind.

Sebastian quoted,

He paused, then said, “Were you thinking about violating your parole and going back to France?”

“No!”

“I think you were. I think you changed your mind because Gabrielle Tennyson finally agreed to marry you.” Sebastian suspected that was probably when the two lovers had first lain together, but he wasn’t going to say it.

Arceneaux scrambled to his feet and took a hasty step forward, only to draw up short. “All right, damn you! It’s true. I thought about escaping. Do you imagine there is a prisoner of war anywhere who doesn’t sometimes dream of breaking his parole and escaping? Who isn’t tempted?”

Sebastian stared at the young French lieutenant. In the fitful moonlight his face was pale, his eyes like sunken bruises in a pain-ravaged face. The wind ruffled the fine brown hair around his head, flapped the tails of his coat. Sebastian had the impression the man was holding himself together by a sheer act of will. But he was coming dangerously close to shattering.

“Did she agree to marry you?”

Rather than answer, the Frenchman simply nodded, his gaze turning to stare out over the wind-whipped waters of the river.

I’m half sick of shadows,
thought Sebastian, watching him. He
said, “There’s something you’re still not telling me. God damn it, Lieutenant; the woman you loved is dead. Who do you think killed her?”

Arceneaux swung to face him again. “You think if I knew who killed her, I wouldn’t make them pay?”

“You may not be quite certain who is to blame. But you have some suspicions, and those suspicions are weighing heavily on you. It’s why you’re here now, risking your parole. Isn’t it?”

The wind gusted up, stronger now, scurrying the tumbling dark clouds overhead and obscuring the hazy sickle of the moon.

“Who do you think killed her?” Sebastian demanded again.

“I don’t know!”
The Frenchman’s features contorted as if the words were being torn from him. “I lie awake every night, wondering if I might somehow be responsible for the death of the woman I loved.”

“Why?” pressed Sebastian. “What makes you think you might be responsible?”

Chien rose to his feet, his gaze fixed on the rubble-strewn bank, ears at half cock as he trotted a few steps toward the bridgehead and then stopped.

Arceneaux went to rest a hand on the dog’s neck. “What is it, boy? Hmm?”

Sebastian was aware of an inexplicable but inescapable intimation of danger that quickened his breath and brought a burning tingle to the surface of his skin. He scanned the ruins of the ancient palace, his eyes narrowing as he studied the piles of stone and timber, the long line of broken wall with its empty windows a dark and melancholy tracery against the stormy sky.

“Arceneaux,” he said warningly, just as a belching tongue of flame erupted from the foundations of the old guard tower and the crack of a rifle shot echoed across the water.

“G
et down!” Sebastian shouted as he dove for cover behind the half-built cornice.

Looking back, he saw Arceneaux stagger, a bloom of shiny dark wetness spreading high across the center of his waistcoat.

“Arceneaux!”

The Frenchman’s knees buckled slowly, his head tilting back, his face lifted as if he were looking at the sky.

Sebastian scrambled into the open to grab the man as he fell and dragged him into the protective lee of the stonework. “Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, clutching the shuddering man to him.

Chien crouched beside them, his harsh barks splitting the night.

The entire front of the Frenchman’s waistcoat was wet with blood, his mouth open and gasping in great sucking wheezes that blew little bubbles in the wet sheen on his chest.

Sebastian knew only too well what that meant.

He ripped off his cravat anyway and rolled it around his fist to form a thick pad.

“No…point…” Arceneaux whispered as Sebastian pressed the cloth against the gaping, oozing wound in his chest. Then he choked and blood poured from his mouth and nose.

“You’re going to be all right,” Sebastian lied, hauling the wounded man up so that his back lay against Sebastian’s own chest in a desperate attempt to keep Arceneaux from drowning in his own blood.

Arceneaux shook his head, his eyes rolling back in his head. “Gabrielle…”

“Talk to me, Philippe,” shouted Sebastian, the Frenchman’s warm blood pouring over his hand as he desperately pressed the padded cloth to Arceneaux’s shattered, jerking chest. “Who would want to kill you?”

The jerking stopped.

“Philippe?
Philippe!
”

Beside him, the dog whined, his nose thrusting against the Frenchman’s limp hand.

“Damn,”
said Sebastian on a hard expulsion of pent-up breath.

Despite the coolness of the rising wind, he was sweating, his breath coming in quick pants. Shifting carefully, he eased the Frenchman’s weight off his own body. He could smell the acrid pinch of burnt powder, see the drift of gun smoke as he slewed around to peer cautiously over the edge of the stone wall.

Nothing.

He focused his gaze on the remnants of the old medieval tower that lay to the right and just below the broken stretch of palace wall. Most of the tower’s superstructure was long gone, leaving only a curving section of stone foundation perhaps four feet high. Studying it, Sebastian estimated that the shooter’s position lay some two hundred yards from where he crouched, possibly three. It would have been a difficult shot to make in good light on a calm day. At night, with clouds obscuring the moon and a wind kicking up, most men would have said it was impossible.

But not a trained rifleman who could bring down a running rabbit at three hundred yards in the dark.

Sebastian swiped the back of his hand across his forehead. The problem was, why would Jamie Knox want to kill Gabrielle Tennyson’s French lieutenant? It made no sense.…

If
the shooter was indeed Jamie Knox, and if his intended target was actually Arceneaux and not Sebastian himself.

A faint flicker of movement showed above the jagged top of the tower wall, then stilled. The shooter was still there.

Sebastian considered his options. He was essentially pinned down. He had a flintlock in his own pocket, but the pistol was small, its range limited. Against a rifle over any distance, it was useless.

Right now, he was protected by the solid length of the half-constructed cornice that ran along the edge of the bridge. But if the shooter was to shift—or if he had a confederate who could come in from the west—Sebastian would be as exposed at the end of that long, open bridge as a target in a shooting gallery.

He needed to move.

Shifting his gaze, he assessed the distance from where he lay to a stack of dressed stone that stood perhaps a third of the way back toward the bridgehead. Sebastian had heard enough Baker rifles in his day to know exactly what was shooting at him. The Baker was a single-shot weapon. But a good rifleman could reload and fire four times in a minute.

An exceptional rifleman could make it to five.

Sebastian had no doubt that the man shooting at him was an exceptional rifleman.

That meant that if Sebastian could lure the rifleman into firing, he would have at most twelve seconds to make it to the safety of that pile of stones before the shooter finished reloading and was able to fire again.

He was trying to figure out how he could trick the rifleman into firing—without actually getting shot—when Chien, who had been lying stretched out whining beside Arceneaux’s still body, suddenly stood up.

“Down, boy,” whispered Sebastian.

The dog hunkered into a lowered stance, eyes alert and fixed as it stared at the near bank.

“Chien,” cautioned Sebastian. Then he shouted, “Chien! No!” as the dog tore into the night, a black and brown streak against the pale stone length of the bridge.

He watched, helpless, as the dog raced up the slope. Chien was nearly to the guard tower when the rifle cracked again, spitting fire into the night.

The dog yelped, then fell silent.

“Bloody son of a bitch,”
swore Sebastian, and took off running.

He could feel the wind off the water whipping at his coattails, the rubble of the roadway shifting dangerously beneath the soles of his boots as he mentally counted off the seconds since the last shot.

…six, seven…

He swerved around a pile of broken stone—
eight, nine
—and leapt a small chasm—
ten, eleven
—to dive behind the looming stones just as the next rifle shot reverberated across the open waterfront.

A cascade of pulverized grit exploded beside his face.

“Hell and the devil confound it,” he swore, wiping his sleeve across his bloody cheek. Then he was up and running again, this time for the pile of timbers he could see near the bridgehead.

…seven, eight…

He could hear the inrushing tide slapping against the cofferdam at the base of the first pier, the rumble of what sounded like distant thunder.

…ten, eleven…

The timbers were farther than he’d realized. He skittered the last ten feet flat out on his stomach, the rubble of roadway tearing at his clothes as he braced himself for the next shot.

It never came.

Clever bastard.

Sebastian lay stretched out prone behind the pile of timbers, his heart pounding, the blood rushing in his ears. The rifleman had
obviously figured out exactly what Sebastian was doing. Rather than wasting his shot, the man now had a loaded weapon; all he needed to do was wait for Sebastian to fully show himself again, and then calmly squeeze the trigger.

He can shoot the head off a running rabbit at three hundred yards in the dark.

The wind gusted up, bringing with it the smells of the river and the creaking of the suspended walkways that ran along both sides of the partially built bridge, just above the summit of the arches. Sebastian hesitated for a moment, his gaze fixed on the darkened ruins, his ears straining to catch the least sound.

Nothing.

Rolling quickly to the far side of the bridge, he lowered himself carefully over the edge until he hung suspended, his fingers digging into a gap in the stonework, feet dangling in space above the narrow suspended walkway, the river rushing far below.

Then he let go.

He landed lightly on the boards of the walkway, the suspension ropes swaying dizzily as the structure took his weight. Then, with the massive stone bulk of the bridge now between him and the shooter, Sebastian sprinted for the riverbank, the walkway dancing and swaying beneath him.

The last arch of the bridge soared high above the tidal mudflats of the riverbed to butt into the rubble-strewn bank. He reached solid ground and paused for a moment, his senses straining to catch any movement, any sound. He scanned the dry, rutted slope of the bank, the matted half-dead weeds, the looming wreck of the ancient palace. He found himself remembering other nights in what seemed like a different lifetime, when death waited in each dark shadow and around every corner, when the rumble in the distance was artillery, not thunder, and the broken walls were Spanish villages blackened by the stains of fires not yet grown cold.

He drew a deep breath, suddenly aware of a powerful, raging
thirst. He swallowed hard, his throat aching. Then, hunkering low, he darted across the open ground and ducked behind the broken fragment of the old palace wall.

Once, this section of the palace had overlooked the river, an elegant facade pierced by high, pointed windows and supported by massive buttresses. Now only the one wall remained, stretching eastward to end abruptly just above the small round tower where the shooter waited. Moving as quietly as possible, Sebastian crept through the ruins, painfully aware of the rustle of the long, dry weeds, of each broken stone that shifted beneath the soles of his boots. He passed the yawning opening of what had once been a massive medieval fireplace, an empty doorway, a spiral of steps going nowhere. Through the gaping windows he could see the massive works of the new bridge, the dark, sliding shimmer of the river, the low curve of the old guard tower’s stone foundations.