Rake Beyond Redemption (10 page)

‘You know I would not be made welcome here.’ The sardonic lines appeared, deepened. ‘I have enough integrity not to take advantage of Venmore’s absence. I’ll not be with you within the walls of the Pride.’

Marie-Claude tilted her head. ‘I know you won’t explain, so I won’t ask again. But I can’t believe the rift’s so serious that you won’t set foot beyond the door.’

‘Believe me, it is.’

‘Then I must accept it. But there’s no one here, Zan.’ Soft, velvety, persuasive, her voice, her words eroded his will-power. ‘No one will be here to disapprove if that’s your concern. Meggie’s not here. You need not stay long. A glass of brandy, if nothing else. Please come, Zan. Stay with me.’

She placed a hand on his arm. Her eyes were shining with love, beguiling with unspoken hope. Answering her clasp on his arm, he gave the reply he knew she wanted.

‘How can I resist such a charming invitation, Madame Mermaid!’

His mouth was warm on hers, the flames of desire
leapt into a conflagration, and shook him to the core as his mouth took and ravished. The flames leapt from him to her, scorching.

He lifted his head, looking down at her with an expression that sent a ripple of concern through her. It was quite speculative, perhaps not very pleasant. The lines beside his mouth were deeply etched.

‘What are you thinking?’ Marie-Claude asked, suddenly anxious. For a moment she had sensed a darkness, a sadness in him despite the fire, the heat of his embrace.

But then he smiled and the darkness was gone. ‘I’m thinking that I have no desire to leave you. Very well. I’ll see you to the door. And drink a glass of brandy.’ His smile acquired a touch of malice. ‘I’ll do it if only to challenge the absent Hallastons.’

L
eaving Zan to collect his mare from the stables, Marie-Claude ran up the steps and flung open the door into the entrance hall, which was empty. Untying the ribbons of her bonnet, she considered her victory. Zan had at last agreed to set foot inside the Pride. It would be quicker for her to fetch the brandy herself rather than run Wiggins to ground in the kitchens. She would take it into the library where—

She stopped in her tracks as she heard the footsteps above her on the first floor. She looked up to where a figure appeared at the top of the staircase and leaned over the banister to smile down at her. The curl of rich brown hair, the shine of silver-grey eyes.

‘Harriette!’ Pure pleasure was her first reaction. ‘How lovely to see you. I didn’t expect…Did you send a letter I’ve not received?’ And then the brush of uncertainty. Of doubt. Of fear. ‘I thought you were settled at The Venmore. Is something wrong?’ Her heart tripped. ‘Is it Raoul?’ But surely not. Harriette was smiling.

Harriette ran down the stairs. ‘No, no. Raoul is too
full of the new pony to have time and thought for anything but what it eats, when it sleeps and when he can ride it again. You know how it is!’ She clasped Marie-Claude’s hands to search her face. Nodded as if satisfied. ‘Marie! How well you look!’ They stepped into each other’s arms. Five years of affection and sisterly closeness. ‘Sea air suits you. You’re glowing again.’

‘Yes. It does. The weather’s been a blessing. I have spent so much time outdoors.’ She saw the shadow in Harriette’s eyes behind the smile. The fine lines of tension. Felt the grip of Harriette’s fingers around her own. ‘Is Luke with you?’

‘Yes.’ Harriette turned her head to glance up the stairs, waiting.

There was something here between them…And suddenly Marie-Claude knew why they had come. It was as if she could scent the suspicion, carried in on the wind. She
knew
why Harriette had come. But she would still make Harriette say it.

‘Why have you come?’ she demanded more sharply than she had intended.

‘We just thought—I thought—it would be good to spend a few days here with you. I thought you might be too much alone.’ A tumbled rush of words. But it was not in Harriette’s nature to dissemble. ‘That’s not it! I received a letter,’ she remarked bluntly.

‘A letter.’ Marie-Claude felt a cold hand close around her heart. ‘And the purpose of this letter?’

‘Well, it seems that…’

And Marie-Claude felt anger pulse in her veins. She knew very well, did she not? Some local busybody who would see fit to inform the Earl and Countess of Venmore that their sister-in-law, obviously French and
flighty, was spending her time with a self-confessed smuggler. Far too much time and unchaperoned, even if she were a widow! He might be a gentleman by birth, but she wagered there would be any number of local matrons who would view his dissolute lifestyle as scandalous and her acquaintance with him questionable.

Well, she would not have it. She would not be questioned and criticised as if she were a child. She would spend her time with Zan if she chose.

‘And who might have sent you this communication?’ she asked, deceptively sweetly, before Harriette could find a reply to her previous demand.

‘It was unsigned.’

‘But it brought you here hot-foot?’

‘Yes—Marie, it said that—’ Harriette turned her head, relief obvious. ‘Ah! Luke…’

Luke Hallaston, Earl of Venmore, descended the stairs more circumspectly than his wife, smoothly elegant as always, and leaned to kiss Marie-Claude’s cheek. Marie-Claude saw the deep affection for her, the look of concern in his eye. And a glint of some deeper emotion in the sharp green. There was a strong will behind the Earl of Venmore’s handsome face that it was never wise to discount. It had been strong enough to fight for Harriette’s love in the early days of a marriage beset by scandal and danger, strong enough to risk his life to bring Marie-Claude to safety in England, even when her veracity as his brother’s widow was in doubt. On this occasion her deep love and gratitude to him was marred by irritation.

‘Harriette was about to tell me why you felt the need to come all this way on a whim and ask after my good health,’ she observed tartly.

‘It’s not that, Marie. We were just concerned—’

‘Concerned for me? I can think of no reason why you should be. As you see, I am in perfect health. Perhaps you will explain.’

‘Yes. We need to talk.’ His hand was gentle on her arm, soothing her obvious annoyance. ‘We’ll go into the library—’

A voice interrupted from the doorway. Low and smooth and full of humour. Dangerously unaware. ‘Marie-Claude, I’ve just—’

There was Zan, coming to an abrupt halt.

‘Ah!’ A soft exhalation. ‘I see you have unexpected visitors. Now, this should prove to be entertaining.’

He stood, back lit by the evening sun, face cast in shadow, but the tautness in Zan’s stance could be felt. The edge to his voice could be tasted, sharp as young ale. No one moved as if all were turned to stone by the Gorgon’s stare. Marie-Claude felt the weight of it press down on her shoulders, on her heart with a terrible forewarning.

She knew that she must intervene before…before what?

‘Zan…’ Shaking off Luke’s hand, she stepped towards him, which did nothing to break the tension. The only sound was Harriette’s low murmur of rejection.

The atmosphere tightened unbearably. Marie-Claude found herself isolated, Zan rigidly motionless in the doorway, her family, Luke and Harriette, at the foot of the stairs. All her earlier certainties drained away. What was here in this room that she did not understand?

‘Zan!’ Harriette whispered with what could only be an expression of anguish on her face.

Whilst Luke walked slowly to Marie-Claude’s side,
placing a proprietorial hand on her arm, but his eyes were on Zan.

‘Ellerdine.’ How dismissive he was. Luke’s voice was more hostile than Marie-Claude could have believed possible in a man who had given her all the physical comfort of her present life, all the emotional ties of family that she had lost with Marcus’s death. His hand on her arm was heavily controlled.

‘Venmore.’ If Luke was hostile, Zan’s reply was viciously cold. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’

‘No. I’m quite sure you didn’t. I expect you thought you had a free hand to wreak all the havoc you could. Where you failed once to destroy what was most valuable in my life, you would succeed the second time.’ Luke laughed harshly. ‘And break my innocent sister’s heart into the bargain if I read the circumstances right.’

‘Luke!’ Marie-Claude could only gasp at the crude accusation. It felt as if she were held fast by invisible hands and unable to escape, some winged creature set in amber. How was it possible to grasp the waves of intense emotion that swam in the room, beating at the walls? Here was more than a casual dispute between neighbours. Here was more than a distant acquaintance that had gone sour. Here was pain and grief and betrayal. She looked to Harriette for enlightenment, but Harriette was staring at Zan, eyes wide in horror, face pale as the lace at her throat.

Marie-Claude turned to Zan, lifting her hands in bewilderment. ‘What is this?’

But it was Luke who replied, ‘I wager he’s not told you the truth, has he?’

‘About what? I know Zan’s a smuggler, if that’s what you mean. Is that so heinous a crime?’ She glanced at
Harriette, expecting support from that quarter at least. Captain Harry would hardly damn a fellow smuggler out of hand.

But silently Harriette shook her head.

‘There are worse crimes,’ Luke admitted. ‘Did he tell you the rest?’

No. No, he hadn’t. He had refused to give any account of the reason for the enmity between the families. As had Meggie. In her innocence, Marie-Claude had denied it, arguing that it could not be so very bad. From the antagonism in Luke’s face, Marie-Claude began at last to fear that it could.

‘He said you would not approve of our…of our friendship,’ she said.

‘Not approve?’ Luke showed his teeth. ‘By God, I would damn him to hell for daring to lay his hands on you!’

Marie-Claude drew her arm from Luke’s hold and walked across the space to stand before the man who was being accused of unmentionable crimes.

‘Zan? Will you explain to me?’

‘My dear Madame Mermaid! So trusting!’ She thought it was a sneer and her heart quailed. ‘Let my cousin and her virtuous husband explain.’ Zan’s eyes were dark, were almost black, flat and bleak, his expression set and unyielding. There was nothing of the passion that had existed between them.

And then his words made some connection in her brain.

‘Your
cousin
?’

‘Oh, Zan,’ Harriette murmured. ‘So you did not even tell Marie that!’

Marie-Claude brought her eyes back to Zan’s, willing him to say something, anything, to put it all to rights. For a long moment he returned her gaze and she saw
emotion storm in the depths. The lines that bracketed his mouth became deeply indented.

‘Marie-Claude…’

Then his mouth tightened against whatever he might have said, and turned away from her towards Harriette.

‘No, cousin, I did not tell her.’ He inclined his head in a little bow. ‘I’ll not court difficulties before they arrive at my door. You look in excellent health. Marriage obviously suits you.’ It was definitely a sneer. He cut his eyes to Luke. ‘Tell her then, Venmore. Tell Captain Marcus’s pretty widow the disgraceful whole and put the blame where it lies. I’m sure you’ll do justice to the telling.’

‘Yes, tell me, Luke,’ Marie-Claude managed to say. She’d had enough of secrecy.

So Luke did. Sparse, undetailed, but enough to fill her with dismay.

‘It doesn’t make for comfortable listening, Marie, but you deserve the truth and you’ll not get it from
his
mouth. You never met Ellerdine, did you? He organised the smuggling runs with Harriette in the old days. But you’ll recall the night of your arrival when we rescued you and Raoul from France. The run that went wrong—when Harriette was wounded and the Preventives almost caught us all on the beach because they’d been alerted to the run. I don’t think you ever knew who was to blame for that. Adam had taken you to London before it was all finished. There was no need for you to know.’

‘Yes. I remember.’ Luke’s brother Adam had wrapped her and the baby up and transported them from the Pride. She had never known the outcome.

‘Who was it?’ she demanded. ‘Who informed on us?’

Luke lifted a cynical brow at Zan as if expecting him to reply. When he did not, Luke wielded the dagger.

‘Ellerdine, of course.’

How impossible it suddenly was to read Zan’s expression. Marie-Claude studied the hooded eyes, the unsmiling mouth. His face was engraved in stone.

‘Zan? Is it true?’

‘As Venmore says. Guilty as charged.’

‘You informed on us to the Preventives? But why? Why something so despicable, to put us all in danger?’

‘Oh, that’s simple enough,’ Zan replied calmly, as if it were merely a matter of conversation. ‘I tipped off Rodmell, the Preventive Officer, that there was a run. All part of an intricate little plan to preserve my well-planned organisation for smuggling.’

‘I don’t see—’

And Harriette, low-voiced, explained, ‘It was to keep
me
here in Old Wincomlee and to keep Lydyard’s Pride, my home, as a centre of operations for signalling and storing contraband. I gave up smuggling when I married Luke and forbade the use of the Pride with the Smugglers’ Lamp in the Tower. It threatened Zan’s ambitions. So my cousin tried to put a rift between myself and Luke and destroy my marriage so that I’d stay here and stay in the venture.’

Memory swept in from that night five years before.

‘I remember. You were wounded that night. You were hit by a bullet.’

‘Yes. The bullet was intended for Luke, not me, but still—’

‘Murder?’
She swung back to Zan. ‘You would have shot Luke? Surely that was not…’

She stopped, lifting a hand to her mouth. If Marie-Claude
had thought the truth would bring her distress, she had not known the half of it, whilst Zan simply stood there, listening, accepting. Horribly, cynically silent.

‘Is there nothing you can say to this?’ she finally asked.

She saw him take a deep breath, but there was not one flicker of emotion in his face. It was as if he did not care.

‘Why should I?’ Zan drawled. ‘It’s true enough. I put the run in jeopardy. I fired the shot that wounded Harriette. What use is there in making excuses?’ He lifted his shoulders as if to shrug off the guilt. ‘Now you’ve heard the worst. Now you can despise and condemn me as much as the rest of my family do.’

‘Not quite the worst,’ Luke interjected. ‘I don’t suppose during your
flirtations
you told her of your involvement with the
Lion d’Or.
’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Zan’s smile was viciously sardonic. ‘So why not tell her of that too, Venmore, so that you have damned me entirely?’

‘I’ll do it. It affects me most.’ Harriette stepped to stand beside Marie-Claude with an arm around her waist, but her eyes were on Zan. So, Marie-Claude thought. This was to be even worse, whatever it was. ‘It was a ship out of Dieppe full of silk, wrecked here on the coast. Brought aground by the Smugglers’ Lamp lit in this tower to signal a safe haven in a storm when there was no safe haven, only death and destruction. And you, Zan, blamed it on me. So that Luke would hate me and cast me off.’

‘Yes, I did. Not one of my most honourable moves, I admit.’ He lifted his head as if, Marie-Claude thought, to brace himself. ‘Go on then, Harriette. Don’t stop there. Tell her the rest—or are you going to let her work it out for herself? Perhaps I’ll do the honours. I was to
blame for the wrecking. Who else could have ordered the lighting of the lamp, here at the Pride, but me?’

‘No!’ Marie-Claude whispered.

‘Why not? Because if it was not Harriette, who else is there to blame? It’s what the whole neighbourhood thinks, whether it’s true or not. So not only am I a smuggler, but I’m a wrecker too.’

‘Exactly!’ Luke stated.

‘But is it
true
?’ demanded Marie-Claude.