It was there his godfather found him. Comte de Lorgny was a kindly man, but one not given to sensitivity or introspection. To give him his due, he had a great deal on his mind at the moment, chief of which was to ask a huge favor of his charming godson.
“News from home?” he inquired, taking a seat on the marble bench next to Nicholas’s tightly strung body.
Nicholas shoved the letter into his pocket. “Nothing to signify,” he replied with utmost casualness. “It seems I’ve got to return to England. Tomorrow.”
The comet’s round face paled slightly. “Then perhaps now is as good a time as any for our little talk.”
It took a moment for Nicholas to rouse himself from his furious abstraction. “Little talk?”
“About the future.”
“With due respect, sir, I wasn’t aware that our futures were in any way connected.”
Comte de Lorgny cleared his throat and looked miserable. “Not as yet,” he allowed. “Perhaps you’ll allow me to explain a few things to you?”
At that moment Nicholas wasn’t interested in any explanations. His mind was preoccupied with how he was going to return to England as quickly as possible. And what he’d find when he got there. He simply nodded, paying scant attention while the little old man rambled on about the unsettled social conditions in France, the uprisings of the peasants, the troubled situation in Paris.
“Not that I think it will come to anything,” he added hurriedly. “France has stood for more than a thousand years—the rabble won’t be allowed to destroy it. Nevertheless, I am troubled, deeply troubled.”
Nicholas made a noncommittal noise. He could hire passage on one of the merchant boats that plied their trade, both legal and illegal, between Calais and Dover. He was more than adept at turning a blind eye to the occasional cask of brandy. Surely he’d be able to find passage…
“So I’d like you to take Ghislaine,” the old man was saying.
“What?” Nicholas forgot about smuggling for the moment to stare at his godfather in shock.
“I’d like you to take Ghislaine with you to England. I’ve worked out an escape route for Madeleine and Charles-Louis, if things ever come to that. But there is only room for three, not four. And we will not leave if we don’t know Ghislaine is safe.”
Nicholas was having trouble making sense of the old man’s ravings. “Safe? What the hell are you talking about?”
The comte flinched. “The political situation,” he said with a trace of asperity. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? It’s extremely volatile. If things continue as they are, we’ll be safer if we leave the country for a while.”
“Then leave the country.”
“It’s not that simple. Certainly, if we left now, we could all be together. But I’m not prepared. I have investments, obligations…”
“In other words, no cash.”
De Lorgny winced. “You put it bluntly. But yes. I will have to liquidate certain holdings in order to live with a modicum of comfort until this unfortunate situation improves. I am concerned that if we wait that long, we’ll have to use the final escape route I’ve arranged, and that route doesn’t allow room for a young woman. Therefore, I’m asking you as a gentleman and a friend to take Ghislaine with you.”
“No,” Nicholas said flatly.
De Lorgny was no longer pale. He was red with sudden anger. “No?” he echoed. “Just like that. You can’t—”
“I certainly can. You know as well as I do what taking her with me would mean. I would have to marry her.”
The words fell in silence on the golden autumn afternoon. “Perhaps I have been mistaken,” Comte de Lorgny said carefully. “I had thought there might be a… tenderness of feeling in your heart toward my daughter. A certain—”
“You are mistaken,” he said flatly. “Any tenderness of feeling is on your daughter’s side, not mine. She is a child. I am not in the habit of bedding children, or of marrying them. You will have to make other arrangements.” His voice was cold, implacable, his heart a block of ice. Deliberately he shut out the image of Ghislaine, with her huge, mischievous eyes; her elfin face; the slender, boyish body that was far more enticing than he let her father know. He had no room in his heart for softness, kindness, or vulnerable little girls.
“Even though you know you might be putting Ghislaine into mortal danger?”
“It’s not my responsibility, monsieur. It’s yours.” He rose, feeling distant, angry. “I think I’d better make arrangements to leave.”
De Lorgny didn’t move for a moment. “I cannot change your mind?”
“You cannot.”
“Then it would be best if you left. Now.”
Nicholas managed a civil nod, turning away from the bitter old man. It was then he saw her.
She must have heard almost every word that had been spoken. Her father’s request that he take her with him. His flat-out refusal and renunciation of her.
She didn’t look like a child at all. Her face was pale, with two bright red spots of emotion on her high cheekbones. Her eyes were very dark in her white face, and her wide, mobile mouth that could tilt so enchantingly was now ashen and trembling. She looked at him, and there was misery, love, and hatred in her eyes. He was going to turn his back on her, and never see her again. And he’d never wanted her more.
Ghislaine sat in her kitchen, the black dog curled peacefully beneath her chair, her small feet together, her strong hands clasped loosely in her lap. Sooner or later she would have another chance, and next time she couldn’t make a mistake. It had been hard enough the first time. Her hands had trembled when she added the rat poison, her brow had been dripping sweat, and one of the scullery maids had had the temerity to ask her if she was feeling well.
She’d responded with her usual coolness, wiping her brow and hiding her trembling hands from the kitchen full of witnesses. She should have been feeling utterly glorious. The man who’d destroyed her family was going to die, at her hands. She would no longer be a victim. She would be a victor, someone who grabbed vengeance by the throat and shook it into submission. Those mesmerizing dark blue eyes would be shut forever, that handsome body would be still and cold. He would be dead, along with everyone else she’d cared about. He’d be where he belonged.
Except that it hadn’t worked out that way. For two days and nights he’d suffered, and then, blast him, he’d recovered. Weak, barely able to tolerate much more than the broth and toast that his evil-looking valet prepared for him, he’d still managed to cheat death. This time.
But her chance would come again—it was bound to. And next time she wouldn’t make a mistake. She’d put enough in the food to kill a horse. Make it mercifully swift for him, though he didn’t deserve mercy. And then she could either make her own meal of his poisoned food or accept the gallows.
She was wrong when she thought that everyone she cared about had died. She cared about Ellen, about the scandal that would follow. If there was some way to spare her, she’d take that way. But short of abandoning her plans for revenge, there was nothing.
Maybe, once she was certain he was dead, she’d run. Just disappear. There were plenty of ponds and lakes nearby, and the ocean was less than a day away, even on foot. Maybe she’d rather no one ever found her body. Just disappear.
She’d decide when the time came. For now, all she could do was be patient, and determined. Her resolve couldn’t waver. If it did, she would remember her parents, small, shriveled, pathetic. And very, very brave, as they climbed the steps to the scaffold for their final meeting with Madame La Guillotine. Or she would think of her little brother.
Nicholas dreamed of her that first year. When daylight came, and his thoughts were his own, he banished her presence. But at night, in sleep, she’d return to haunt him. Her slender body, her rippling laughter, her delicate hands and merry smile. And he’d wonder whether he hadn’t made a very grave mistake.
The situation in France went from bad to worse, but he told h
imself Comte de Lorgny was too savvy a man to wait too long. He would get his family and his fortune safely out of France, and he’d marry his daughter off to some other wealthy foreigner. Besides, as he’d told the man, it wasn’t his responsibility. It wasn’t guilt he was feeling when word came that the king had been arrested when he tried to leave the country. That all of France was in turmoil. That the guillotine had started its dreadful work.
His father had left a great deal less than Nicholas had expected. The estates were encumbered, falling into ruin, and there was no money to put them right. He did what any right-thinking gentleman would do, and turned to the gaming tables. Sometimes he lost, but more often he won. It was after a particularly lucrative night that his Uncle Teasdale had found him at his club, nursing a late-night brandy before returning to the slightly decrepit confines of his father’s London house. He usually listened to the news of France with only half an ear, preferring to ignore the plight of that unhappy country and its inhabitants. Tonight, however, was fated to be a different matter.
“Thought you might want to know,” Teasdale had said, settling his impressive bulk in the chair opposite him and signaling for his own brandy.
“I probably don’t,” Nicholas said lazily. “When people think I should know things it’s usually something unpleasant. What do you think I should know?”
“Your godparents—de Lorgny, wasn’t that the name? Didn’t you stay with them when your father died?”
Nicholas was swirling the brandy in his snifter. He didn’t pause, just kept swirling it, his eyes intent on the rich amber liquid. “I did. What about them?” he asked, though he already knew.
“They went to the guillotine. Entire family, from what I can make out; children too. Uncivilized bastards,” he added. “Filthy rabble, making war on children.”
Nicholas kept swirling the brandy. “There’s no doubt?” he asked in a carefully idle tone of voice. “The children too?”
“There’s always doubt—you know what a mess things are over there. But my sources, damn them, are quite reliable. Too bad. You’d a fondness for them, hadn’t you?”
Nicholas raised his head and looked at his uncle’s florid face and expanding waistcoat. He had grown quite used to that empty hollow feeling. Grown used to hiding what he didn’t want seen. “I scarcely remember them,” he said. “So tell me, are you planning on attending the Chestertons’ rout?”
Teasdale looked at him for a long moment, an odd expression on his face. As if he didn’t believe what he was seeing. “Somehow I don’t have the heart for it,” he said heavily, draining his brandy and setting the snifter down with a tiny, decisive snap. “Didn’t de Lorgny have a daughter?”
Nicholas shrugged. “He may have. Come to think of it, I believe there was one. Just barely past adolescence. Named Giselle, or something.” His eyes met his uncle’s and he realized the old man wasn’t fooled. Teasdale knew him far better than Nicholas knew himself. “Ghislaine,” he said, having known it all along. “Her name is Ghislaine.”
“Was,” Teasdale corrected. And then he heaved his bulk from the chair. “I’m going to rusticate. This takes the heart out of a man. You’re welcome to join me at Amberfields.”
Nicholas shook his head. “No, thank you, Uncle. I’m quite looking forward to the Chestertons.”
Teasdale stared at him for a moment longer, then shook his head. “As you wish, m’boy.” And he walked away.
Nicholas waited until he was gone. The night was dark outside the club window, dark and silent, and he found himself thinking that it would be a fortunate thing if the other members steered clear of him that night. They might regret tangling with him.
The time passed. No one approached him—his temper was legendary, and Teasdale had warned them when he left. Finally, as dawn was streaking over the city street, Nicholas decided to return home. He looked down at his hand in remote wonder.
The brandy snifter had been crushed, the shards of glass digging into his skin. Some of the blood had already dried on his long fingers, some had pooled on the floor beneath him.
He stood up, brushing the slivers of glass from his skin, pausing long enough to pick out the larger pieces. And then, wrapping his silk handkerchief around his palm, he walked out into the early-morning light.
One week later he killed his first man in a duel. His Uncle Teasdale died within the year, but by that time even the inheritance of his estates didn’t help Nicholas’s financial situation. He sold what he could, let the rest molder, and returned to the gaming tables with a vengeance.
It took a great deal longer to go to hell then he would have imagined, given the single-minded dedication he applied to the task. Even the bottle couldn’t provide the oblivion he sought, and fleecing young men of their fortunes began to lose its charm. Particularly since he refused to cheat, and his victims were such abysmally rotten gamesters.
He’d been half-hoping Jason Hargrove would put a merciful end to his existence. He hadn’t really been attracted to his greedy, lust-filled little wife, but he seldom turned down an invitation to bed if the woman issuing the invitation was married, wealthy, and quite beautiful. When he’d deloped he’d known the man he was meeting wasn’t the type to honor that implied apology.
If only Hargrove hadn’t been such a terrible shot. Nicholas Blackthorne certainly wanted to die, but he was damned if he was going to stand around in the early-morning chill while a backstabbing fool took potshots at him. He’d finally given up and ended the farce, probably ending Hargrove’s life too. And then he’d decamped, his long-submerged survival instincts coming to the fore.
And now here he was, with someone quite determined to kill him. Human nature was odd, he thought, disdaining Tavvy’s help as he dressed with care. One might wish an unbearable life to come to an end, but it had to be on one’s own terms. He certainly wasn’t going to sit still while a petty poisoner finished him off.
The door to his bedroom opened. Tavvy of course, never bothering to knock. “You sure you’re ready for this?” he asked, his swarthy face disapproving. “You still don’t look quite steady on yer pins.”
Nicholas waved an airy hand at him. “I’m perfectly fit. At least, fit enough to deal with the cook, if indeed she is our Lucretia Borgia. I still can’t imagine why she’d want to kill me.”
“Finding people who want to kill you isn’t the problem, Blackthorne,” Tavvy said. “Finding people who don’t want to kill you will be a great deal more difficult.”
Nicholas found himself amused. “I haven’t lived an exemplary life,” he allowed. “As a matter of fact, I was more than ready to have it ended for me. Until this.”
Taverner snorted. “You sure you wouldn’t want to just eat whatever gets put in front of you and take your chances?”
“A week ago I would have done just that. Now I have a new interest in life. It’s amazing how having someone try to murder you can give you a new lease on life.”
“It can that,” his valet drawled, but even Nicholas couldn’t miss the dark shadow of concern in Tavvy’s flat black eyes. “I’ll tell her to bring up the tray myself, shall I?”
“Do that,” Nicholas said, running a hand through his rumpled hair and smiling sweetly. “I’m ready to be entertained.”
Chapter 4
“Penny for your thoughts,” a gentle, mellifluous voice broke through Ellen’s abstraction as she sat with her brother in the Shakespeare garden at Meadowlands, and she looked up, straight into the warm gray eyes of Antony Wilton-Greening.
“Tony!” she shrieked, maidenly decorum abandoned as she flung herself against his broad chest.
“Honestly, Ellen, you’d think you were twelve years old instead of someone on the shelf,” her brother, Carmichael, said irritably. “Stop pawing Tony and let the rest of us greet him.”
At her brother’s sharp words, sudden self-consciousness flooded her, turning her pale face pink with embarrassment, and she tried to pull away in shame. But Tony, dear, sweet Tony, caught her h
and and pulled her arm around his waist, keeping her snugly by his side. “I happen to like having Ellen paw me,” he said lazily. “And unless you intend to kiss me, Carmichael, there’s plenty of room left for you to greet me. I am rather large, you know.”
“A mountain.” Carmichael, whose diminutive height was a sore point with him, sniffed, even as he pumped Tony’s hand with enthusiasm. “It’s good to see you, Tony.”
“Good to see you, Carmichael. And especially good to see Ellen,” he said, reaching down his large hand and tucking it under Ellen’s chin, tilting her face up to his. “How’ve you been, chickie? I haven’t seen you in town these ages.”
“I’ve been rusticating, Tony. Town’s no place for me nowadays. There are too many people still looking for husbands. I don’t want to crowd the lists.”
“Lord, Ellen, next thing I know you’ll be wearing little lace caps and sitting in the comer gossiping with all the old maids,” he said, shaking his head. “Promise me you’ll never go that far.”
“I promise,” she said, smiling up at him. He was right, he was a mountain. A huge, loose-limbed giant of a man, he was taller than almost everyone on the London scene, with the possible exception of Harry de Quincy, and Harry didn’t count because he was all fat. Tony hadn’t a spare ounce of flesh on him, and every part of him was solid, implacable muscle. He needed no padding in his exquisitely tailored waistcoats, no sawdust in his clocked stockings. He was just a great deal of very solid, very handsome, very indolent male. His waist beneath her arms felt warm and hard, and she was suddenly self-conscious again.
This time he let her go, with only a quizzical glance in her direction as she sat down on the garden bench again, pulling her shawl around her shoulders. His face was a fitting complement to his body. Handsome, somewhat lazy, with a defiant beak of a nose, strong chin, marked cheekbones, and curiously dark eyebrows at odds with his golden-blond hair. Since he almost always had a smile on his wide mouth, he seemed the gentlest of men. If Ellen had the thought that he could be anything but, she had nothing on which to base that suspicion. Just instinct, and an occasional intense expression in his otherwise limpid, smiling gray eyes.