He nodded like a dimwitted fool and took her hand, turning it slowly, and kissing the soft palm. She knew her effect on him, he thought, her warm hand still held in his. She knew that he was stunned; and she would attempt to manipulate him, but he didn’t mind. Odd, but it was so. Suddenly he felt her fingers tighten slightly in his grasp as he returned her smile. Was she also a bit stunned as well? He would soon see. He knew he had to regain his confidence, sorely diminished by Teresa Carleton. He had to regain his mastery. He could, if he wished, make this glorious creature bend to him. He could and he would . . .
His thinking stopped cold in its tracks. Her name was Melissande and he was here to marry her by proxy to his cousin, Douglas Sherbrooke.
Etaples, France
Douglas was in the middle of Napoleon’s naval invasion stronghold, although anywhere from Boulogne to Dunkirk to Ostend and all points in between could be considered part of his “immense project.” It was, actually, one of the safest places to be in France, particularly if one were an English spy, for there was no security at all and people came and went and looked and talked and listened and even drew sketches of all the ongoing work. Douglas marveled at the thousands upon thousands of men who labored around the clock in the basins and harbors and on the beaches, building hundreds of transports of all kinds. Alongside the score upon score of workers were soldiers, and they did little as far as Douglas could tell. There was constant activity everywhere.
Douglas wore a private’s uniform, new and shining but three days before, and now appropriately soiled and wrinkled. He’d been scouting about as he’d waited for Cadoudal to contact him, gleaning information from the loose-mouthed officers and enlisted soldiers in the neighboring taprooms. All he could do was wait. His French was flawless, his manners just as they should be—commiserating with the enlisted men, joining in their complaints and grievances—and listening to the officers from a discreet distance, exhibiting due deference. All the talk was of an impending invasion simply because Napoleon had visited the many encampments along the coast two weeks before, assuring the men that soon, very soon now, they would cross that dismal little ditch and teach those English bankers and merchants that it was the French who ruled the land and the sea. Fine words, Douglas thought. Did Napoleon really believe that the English peasantry would rise up and welcome him as their liberator when and if he managed to cross the Channel, smash through the English navy, and land at Dover?
Two days passed. Douglas was bored and restless. As it turned out, he got Georges Cadoudal’s instructions from a one-legged beggar who sidled up to him, stinking like rotted cabbage, and poked a thick packet into his coat pocket. The blighted specimen managed to get away before Douglas could question him. He read the letter twice, memorizing the precise instructions, then carefully studied each of the enclosed papers and documents. He sat back, thinking now of what Cadoudal expected him to do. He shook his head at the complexity of it all, the sheer heedless arrogance of it. Georges Cadoudal was imprudent at all times, outrageous upon occasion; he was at once brilliant and feckless; failure chaffed him and as of late, he’d known few successes, as far as Douglas knew.
It was obvious he’d spent hours formulating a plan to rescue this damned girl, this Janine Daudet. However, since Cadoudal was the brain behind the plot to kidnap Napoleon and create insurrection in Paris, setting the Comte d’Artois, the younger brother of Louis XVI, promptly on the throne, and since he held more than a million francs from the English government, Lord Avery was inclined to meet his demands. Obviously Georges couldn’t take the risk of attempting a rescue himself. Obviously he knew that Douglas was an expert on General Honoré Belesain and that was why he’d asked for him specifically. Obviously, he believed Douglas would succeed. Douglas wondered if Georges knew of Belesain’s scaly reputation with women. Damnation.
The following morning Douglas was fastening the buttons of his unfamiliar britches and straightening his stark black coat. Once he reached Boulogne, he would become an official functionary from Paris, sent by Bonaparte himself, to oversee the preparations for the English invasion. He devoutly prayed that Cadoudal’s papers were in good order. With all the English money he’d gotten, Georges could afford the best forgers. Douglas didn’t want to be discovered and shot as a spy.
At precisely twelve o’clock, looking every inch the officious functionary, whose authority in all likelihood exceeded his brains and his manners and his breeding, he made his way to Boulogne to the residence of General Honoré Belesain, not a difficult house to locate since it belonged to the mayor and was the largest mansion in the entire city. The general was the good mayor’s guest. The good mayor, upon further inquiry, hadn’t been seen in over three months.
Douglas did know just about everything about General Belesain. Nothing the general did could surprise Douglas. He was a brilliant tactician, a competent administrator, though most details were attended to by aides. He was vicious to both his prisoners and his own men, and he was more than passing fond of young girls. He fancied himself both the epitome of a military man and of a lover. Douglas knew that his wife, evidently long-suffering, was well ensconced in faraway Lyon with their four children. The general was on the portly side but believed himself a god amongst men. He lacked control and lost his temper quickly and with deadly results, as his men and the young girls he fancied discovered to their own detriment. In sexual matters, he wasn’t known for his gallantry, even when in the best of moods. He many times drank himself into insensibility after he’d had sex.
The mayor’s house was three stories, a soft yellow brick that had mellowed with age, large and rectangular, and covered with thick ivy. It was set back from the road, its long drive lined with full-branched oak trees, green and abundant in early summer. The mayor was obviously a man of substance. Or had been. There were at least a dozen soldiers patrolling the perimeter or simply standing guard outside the several doors to the house.
He looked up, wondering which of those third-floor rooms held Janine Daudet. He wondered if the general had raped her yet and then he knew that of course he had. Who would have stopped him? He prayed the general hadn’t played his perverted games with her. He wondered if the general had any idea who he was holding. There was no way of knowing because the general was more arrogant, more perverse, than any leader Douglas knew about.
An aide, Grillon by name, Douglas knew, came to greet him in the large entrance hall. He swaggered in his importance and in his fine scarlet uniform with all its braid, yet there was also an air of wariness about him. He was uncertain face to face with this unknown man; he was also a bully when he knew the rules and the players. Douglas gave nothing away; he was enjoying the fellow’s unease. He counted four more soldiers in the entrance hall.
“I am Monsieur Lapalisse. You, of course, know who I am. I will see the general now.” Douglas then looked about the house, quite aware that the lieutenant was studying him closely. He tried for a supercilious expression, but it was difficult, for Douglas had never been good at sneers. He saw a cobweb in the corner and that helped his lip curl.
“Monsieur Lapalisse,” Grillon said at last, “if you will wait but a moment, I will inform the general of your presence and see if he wishes—”
“I am not in the habit of waiting,” Douglas said, looking the young man up and down and finding him lacking. “I suggest that you announce me immediately. Indeed, let us go now, together.”
Grillon fidgeted, then quickly turned on his heel. The general was suffering from a headache. He’d overindulged the previous night and was paying the price today, the fool. He’d not known exactly when this damned bureaucrat was to arrive, but he should have realized it would be exactly when he didn’t wish to see him. The general was also nervous about this man’s visit because no one higher in the government had notified him of it. Well, to hell with him.
General Belesain was standing behind his cluttered desk, eyes cold, body stiff, his forehead furrowed. When Douglas entered beside Grillon, he straighte
ned to his full height, but Douglas wasn’t fooled. His attitude was both wary and defensive. Excellent, Douglas thought as he strolled into the large salon as if he owned it. He gave the general a slight nod, saying in his perfect French, “It is a pleasant day.”
“Yes, it is,” General Belesain said, taken off balance. “Er, I am informed you are from Napoleon’s war committee, although I do not understand. He was here not long ago and expressed his pleasure at how his invasion plans are progressing.”
“A committee is such an amorphous sort of entity,” Douglas said, striving yet again for a supercilious smile and a Gaelic shrug. “I am not a representative of any committee. I am here as Napoleon’s personal, er, investigator.”
The general stiffened even as his jaw slackened and his brain quickened. “Investigator?”
Had Napoleon somehow heard of the death of the two soldiers he’d ordered flogged the previous week? Perhaps he’d heard of the girl’s beating, a girl whose relatives had a bit of clout? Damn the foolish girl. She’d protested, but he’d known she wanted him, the little tease, and thus he’d taken her, perhaps a bit roughly, but it wasn’t as if she wouldn’t recover to enjoy him again. She hadn’t succumbed to his logic and his charms as had the woman he held upstairs in the small room next to his bedchamber.
Belesain believed Napoleon invincible on the battlefield, but he loathed him for his hypocritical bourgeois attitudes. He must tread warily. This man standing before him was nothing but a bureaucrat, a nonentity, obviously a lackey with few brains. But he did have power, curse him, which meant he, Belesain, would deal with him. If he couldn’t deal with him, he would have him killed. After all, robbers and scoundrels of all sorts abounded on the roads.
“Yes,” Douglas said. “As you doubtless know, Napoleon has always believed it imperative that plans and those carrying out the plans must be overseen. An endless task, no?”
“You have papers, of course.”
“Naturally.”
At three o’clock that afternoon, Douglas walked beside General Belesain through the encampment on the beach at Boulogne. The general hated this—this forced graciousness to a damned bureaucrat, this air of cooperation with a man he both feared and despised. He tried to intimidate Douglas, then ignored him, acting as though he knew everything and could control everything, and that made Douglas smile. Dinner that evening was with a dozen of Belesain’s top officers in the mayor’s dining room. By the time the lengthy meal was done, most of the officers were drunk. By midnight, three of them had been carried back to their billets by their fellow officers. By one o’clock in the morning, Douglas was more alert than he’d ever been in his life, waiting for his chance.
He prayed no one would discover he was really an English spy. He had no wish to die. After all, when he returned to England, it would be to his new wife, to Melissande—ah, how sweet her name sounded on his tongue—and she would be in his bed and he would keep her there until she conceived the Sherbrooke heir.
When the general challenged him to a game of piquet, Douglas gave him a bland smile, and his heartbeat quickened. “The wager?” he inquired, flicking a speck of dust off his black coat.
The general suggested francs.
Douglas showed mild irritation with such banality. Surely such a brilliant and sophisticated man as the general could come up with a more interesting . . . ah, a more enticing wager?
The general thought this over, then smiled, off center, for he was drunk. He rubbed his hands together and his eyes gleamed as he said, “Ah, yes, certainly. The winner of our little game, monsieur, will enjoy a succulent little morsel who currently lives with me here. Her name is Janine and she is very talented at pleasuring a man.”
Douglas agreed with remarkable indifference.
CHAPTER
5
Claybourn Hall
ALEXANDRA COULDN’T BELIEVE it. She stood still as a stone by Melissande’s Italian writing desk, whose surface for once held something other than a myriad of perfume bottles. She still wore her dressing gown, and her hair hung in a thick braid over her shoulder. She stared down at the single sheet of paper. She closed her eyes a moment, closed them against the knowledge . . .
You hoped this would happen.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Regardless, she’d kept silent. She’d watched. And it had happened. Melissande and Anthony Parrish, Viscount Rathmore, had eloped to Gretna Green the previous night. Slowly Alexandra picked up the paper upon which Melissande had scrawled her few sentences, words that had changed all their lives, words that were misspelled because Melissande disdained any attempt at scholarship. Alexandra was calm; she felt strangely suspended, as if something more were going to happen. She would have to take the note to her father. She would have to confess that she guessed what was happening between the two of them.
She hated herself at that moment, knew herself to be a jealous creature, petty and mean-spirited, who deserved no consideration from anyone.
After the duke had read the letter, he laid it carefully on his desktop, walked over to the wide windows and stared out onto the east lawn. There were four peacocks strolling the perimeter, three geese, and a goat tethered to a yew bush. After a near decade had passed, at least in Alexandra’s mind, he turned to look thoughtfully at his younger daughter. He smiled at her then, actually smiled. To her astonishment, he said mildly, “Well, it’s done, wouldn’t you say, my dear? No big surprise, no startling revelations. No, I’m not taken aback by this, Alex, because Tony left me a rather fulsome letter, much more articulate than Melissande’s, much more apologetic. His honor abuses him. We will see.”
“Oh Papa, I knew, I knew, but I wanted . . .” Her father chuckled and shook his finger at her. “You too realized what Lord Rathmore would do, my dear?”
“Not that they would go to Gretna Green, but perhaps that they would refuse to go along with the wedding . . . I can’t lie to you, Papa. But I hadn’t realized that you also—”
Alexandra stood there, wringing her hands, her distress enough to make any fond parent soften. Her guilt was growing, not subsiding. The duke watched her for a moment, then said, “Yes, I knew Tony wanted Melissande and that she wanted him. I have never before seen two people more enraptured with each other so quickly. Tony is a fine young man—intelligent, witty, and blessed with good looks, an important ingredient to females. Further, he is nearly as rich as the Earl of Northcliffe. Doubtless he will offer a settlement to rival his cousin’s; indeed in his letter he gives me his assurances. I imagine his guilt must prick him sorely, as I said—much greater than yours, Alex!—for did he not betray his cousin and take the woman the earl had chosen away from him? Ah yes, he despises himself for what he has done, now, of course, that he has done it, and there is no going back. Conscience, I’ve found, is all the more potent once the deed is done and irreversible. But despite this lapse, this quite unfortunate behavior, the viscount appears an honorable man. He will bring Melissande back here, and very soon. She, the minx, won’t want to see us because she knows she’s disaccommodated your mother and fears a great scold, but her husband will force her to come.” The duke smiled into the distance. “Tony Parrish isn’t a man to be wound around a woman’s finger even though the woman is so beautiful it makes your teeth ache just to look at her. Aye, he will bring her back regardless of her pleas and her tears and her sulks.”
“But I did guess, Papa, I truly did.” There, it was out, all of it. She stood stiff and miserable, waiting for the parental tongue to flay her.
The duke took his daughter’s hand and raised it to his lips. “All I regret is the immense bother occasioned by this irresponsible act. It is never a father’s wish to have any of his offspring wed across the anvil in Scotland. A duke’s daughter, in particular, isn’t supposed to behave with such a lack of propriety.” The duke paused then, and a myriad of expressions crossed his face. He said abruptly to Alexandra, “You want the earl so much, then?”
“You guessed that as well? Oh dear. It is revolting. I
am as transparent as the fish pond.”
“You are my daughter. I know you and I am rather fond of you.”
“It’s true. I have loved him, Papa, for three years, but now . . . now, I will not even have him as a brother-in-law.”
She looked up at her father, desolation and pain in her fine eyes.
The duke said abruptly, “I just received a letter from your brother. I will tell you the truth, Alex. Even the settlement Tony will doubtless provide won’t save this family. Your brother has left England in disgrace, on his way to America, he writes. He leaves immense debts behind him that will bankrupt me utterly. Even Tony’s settlement, generous though I know it will be, won’t settle the debts. I’ve been wondering what to do, thinking, worrying, struggling, but now . . . ah, now perhaps there is a ray of light.” He turned on his heel and left the library, leaving Alexandra to stare speechlessly after him.
In approximately one hour Tony Parrish and his new viscountess would arrive at Claybourn Hall. She was sulking, enjoying a truly royal snit, he knew, and it made him smile. He’d informed her in no uncertain terms that they had to return to her father’s home, that he had to make things right again. She’d pleaded and begged; she hated her guilt and didn’t want her nose rubbed in it. She’d even cried on his shoulder, immensely beautiful crocodile tears, he’d observed aloud to his new wife, who had then promptly flown into a passion. He’d laughed. Outraged, Melissande had thrown one of her hairbrushes at him but he’d simply thrown it back at her. She was so stunned at his retaliation, she was dumbstruck. He left the room, telling her to be downstairs in ten minutes. Another hairbrush had struck the closing door. She’d come down in eleven minutes and he’d looked at his watch and frowned at her. He said nothing. She had obeyed him. She would accustom herself, in time, to obeying him without scenes and tantrums and without using any extra minutes.