Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) (15 page)

“Money, possibly. A fight, maybe. Or you.”

“Me?” The word was doubtful.

“For the rut and bruising of joyous rape. Or the price they can get from somebody else for the same.”

She didn’t understand him, not completely, but there was no time for more. Stepping in front of her, he drew his cutlass from his belt with a rasping whine.

The fourth man came from behind. Robed as a friar, with his face hidden by cowl and half-mask, he lunged at Angelica. A hard arm whipped around her chest, crushing her breasts, squeezing the breath from her. She gave a gasping cry, at the same time snatching at Renold. Her fingers closed on his shirt and she twisted them into the fabric.

The friar cursed in obscene rage. He brought his free hand up and around in a vicious slap. It landed with stunning force, jarring her head into a sharp throb, making her ears ring.

It did not break her hold. Instead, it sent a wave of red fury through her brain. Twisting, she struck out with one free hand and felt her nails rake bare skin, heard a satisfying hiss of pain from somewhere inside the friar’s cowl. His grasp loosened.

It was Renold who broke her grasp as he swung. Immediately, he ripped her away from the other man, dragged her to his hard frame. The lamplight, wavering in the wind, kissed the steel of his cutlass with an unearthly glow of red and gold, blue and orange. The curved tip winked, ready, vicious, waiting.

“Now,” he said as he gathered the men crowding toward him with a single glance. “Come on. Sacrifice of blood is an old and venerable Mardi Gras tradition. Sometimes it’s a bull — other times an ass or two will do.”

One moment the men crouched to spring, the next they were gone, melting, sidling, plunging into the crowd. Within seconds, there was no one near Angelica and Renold except gaily bedecked maskers with vacant, smiling faces.

The last marcher appeared, then, bringing up the rear. It was a fiddler, playing as he capered in a harlequin costume and a fool’s hat set with jingling bells. He looked neither right nor left, making music only for himself. Then he was gone, and the sound of his fiddle and his bells faded into the night

Renold made no further excuse to remain in the streets. Piercing the shadows with a stiletto gaze, wary as a dunghill cock in a pigpen, he wound his way back toward his own door. The silent curses in his mind relieved his tension if not his anxiety.

He should have known. There had been the other attack to warn him, if only he had heeded it. More, there had been his instinct; the whole thing had, until now, been entirely too easy.

Scum, the dregs of Gallatin Street. Or more likely from the swamp around Girod, that area ten blocks from the river so crime-ridden and depraved that even the police never set foot inside it. He felt sick at the thought of Angelica in their hands. Animals, unfit to touch the hem of her gown.

But then, he himself was the same.

It was no surprise to find the man waiting for him outside the gate. Small, quiet, shadow gray and thin-voiced, he stepped forward with his hands held together at the level of his top waistcoat button. His eyes caught the lamplight on their shiny surfaces, making them glisten with a hectic excitement that told its own tale.

“One moment,” Renold said before the little man could speak. Turning to Angelica, he said, “I won’t be long. Ask Tit Jean to bring a tray of wine and brandy to the salon, if it pleases you, while I attend to this small matter.”

Her gaze as it rested on his visitor was appraising, but she offered no objection. Stepping inside, she moved away in her demure nun’s garb. He watched her until she was safely in the house before he turned back to his visitor.

“So have your hounds found the scent, or was it another false trail? Tell me quickly, for my patience is not endless and I’m a little tired of finding myself cornered with nothing to do except stand and draw blade.”

“You needn’t wait any longer. They’re found.” The mouse-like man’s voice was so soft it did not penetrate more than a foot beyond where he stood.

“Both?” Renold’s frown turned rigid with distrust.

“Aye. Two men, right descriptions. Came off the right boat, too, in a manner of speaking. Young one swam ashore, so it seems, but took a while to make his way home. The other caught hold of a log and hung on until the thing fetched up near the bank.”

“Well away from civilization, I surmise.”

The other man gave a bobbing nod. “Downstream, clear away from any town, nothing but bottomland and woods. The old man was sick, just about gone when a fur trapper from back in the swamp came across him, took him in. Was some time before he could get word out. T’other went after him then, brought him out.”

Renold was silent while his thoughts slid swiftly through his mind. He said, “How long ago?”

“Can’t rightly tell you that, your honor. You didn’t say you wanted to know.”

“An oversight. You have their direction?”

The little man drew air through his sharp teeth. “Did have. They left.”

Renold subdued his irritation with difficulty. “It was in Natchez, perhaps?”

“Don’t know why you’d think it,” the other man said with a shake of his head. “Was up Baton Rouge way, dive by the wharf where they rested a day or two. They got poor taste in lodging, all things considered.”

“I assume,” Renold said trenchantly, “that you mean something by that?”

“Gave themselves airs, or at least the young one did, talking about a plantation, how rich he was going to be. Stupid, might have got themselves killed, what with folks thinking they had money. Except Mrs. Bowles, their landlady, knew they were nigh broke. She looked.”

“You are going to tell me that such a fine, upstanding lady, the heart and soul of curiosity, failed to ask where the two gentlemen were going?” Renold drew a purse from his pocket and stood weighing it in his hand.

The other man licked his lips. His gaze jumped up and down, following the movement of the purse. He said, “Now I think on it, she did ask. The younger one wouldn’t say, the older one just kept raving about his daughter. Sent to find out where she went after that explosion, was told she disappeared, hadn’t been seen since. Drove him fair daft, it did. They left next morning.”

“The date at the time was?”

“Better than a week ago, far as I can make out.”

Not a particle of interest was allowed to invest Renold’s features. His tone musing, he said, “I would expect they went north.”

“You’d be wrong, now, your honor. Went south, toward New Orleans, asking along the way about a fair-haired lady. Sort of like the one here with you.” The little man stared, eyes bright, face twisted with cunning.

“Could you possibly be speaking of my wife?” Each word fell in distinct clarity, lethal with warning, from Renold’s lips. “I should not like to think so.”

“God, no. No, indeed. My mistake.” Retreating, the man stuffed the purse in his hand in his pocket as if fearful Renold might decide to take it back, and his life with it.

“Remember, then.” He could trust himself to say no more. Nodding dismissal, he stood quite still in the shadows as the slight figure scurried off.

So Edmund Carew had survived after all.

He had survived and discovered, perhaps, that his daughter had departed for New Orleans in the possession of a man who could be an enemy. Too wily to confront him head-on, Carew had attempted to pry Angelica from his grasp. The men he had found for the purpose had been inferior, so he had failed.

Carew, alive. Carew, frantic over his daughter, taking a hand in the game once more.

He should be glad, Renold thought. It would still be possible to avenge Gerald Delaup’s death, still be feasible to use Angelica to destroy the man who had caused it.

And yet. There was a new consideration in the game.

Angelica the fair, the beautiful, the good. She would not condone being used, would not easily forgive any punishment inflicted on her father. How was he to proceed without losing her?

That had not, in the beginning, been a part of Renold’s calculations. If he had thought at all of how she would feel, he had considered that her objections could be easily overcome, by subterfuge where possible, by force if necessary.

It would not be so easy. The standards she set were high; she would accept no deviation from them. She could never give her trust, much less her love, to a man who deliberately pushed them aside.

But what was to say she would ever love him in any event? What right did he have to expect it? And if that prize was so far out of his reach, then what did he have to lose?

There was one chance.

He might, if he acted swiftly and with care, bind her to him with tender cords of passion. Desire, once roused, was a powerful bond between a man and woman. If she could be convinced no other man would ever give her the same pleasure, the same surcease, then she might remain with him. Yes, and if that passion and desire should create a child, then he would have a true hostage with which to hold her.

Yes. It was the one chance. She was fair and good, but she was also a woman capable of great passion. It was inside her, suppressed but visible in brief flashes like storm lightning. He wanted to free it, longed to be the one for that sweet task as he had never longed for anything in his life.

It was not selfish despotism, not all of it. She needed him, if she could be brought to see it — needed his help to free herself from the staid precepts and strict principles that ruled her life. She was lovely, but could be so much more that was warm and giving, sensual and inviting. He wanted to see that, could not bear that any other man should.

It was a risk. She was all instinct and febrile intelligence. She might see through what he intended to its black core of deceit. If she did, it would be over. On that point, he could not be more certain.

A child. Her child. His child. Did he dare? He was not, himself, immune to the pain of loss. Any small, fragile hostage of his blood would hold him in its tight little fist as well as its mother.

What would he do if she took his child away? What?

“God,” he said, a whisper both a curse and prayer. He stood still, staring blind and beseeching into the night sky.

There was no answer.

Angelica was half-asleep when she heard the bedchamber door open and close. She had waited for Renold in the salon for what seemed like hours, but he had not appeared. Every possible explanation had run through her head in that time: He might have sent her inside to keep her safe while he fought off more attackers, might have decided on a visit to another woman, might, even, have forgotten he was to join her. Fear had become doubt, doubt had turned to annoyance, annoyance had descended, by way of anger, to hurt disdain. She wanted to flounce over in the bed, sit up and demand where he had been. The only thing that stopped her was knowing that such a question must show how much the answer mattered.

Opening her eyes to slits, she watched from where she lay on her side with her head pillowed on one arm. The fire had died away; the only light was the dim glow of a moon behind the curtain. He was a blue-tinted shadow as he undressed with silent efficiency, sliding out of his coat, punching studs from the holes, stripping off shirt and trousers in a series of well-practiced motions. He bestowed his clothes neatly on a chair and turned toward the bed.

Would she ever get used to his nakedness? At least there was no need to look away now; she could hold her gaze in one place long enough to discover precisely how he was made.

Different. Powerfully male. Beautiful in an aesthetic sense that had nothing to do with gender. Threatening in an odd way she felt without comprehending the full extent of it.

He paused beside the mattress, staring down. Did he know she was awake? Could he tell?

She closed her eyes and lay perfectly still. And thought how, just short days ago, she could never have dreamed of lying there at all.

The mattress behind her gave with his weight. A draft of cool air infiltrated the covers as he slid beneath them. He turned toward her, shifting, she thought, to support himself on one elbow. She quelled a faint shiver of alarm. Or was it expectation?

“Angelica?”

His voice whispered over her. With it came the scent of fine brandy. It was strong, though not overpowering. She considered in silence what. that might mean.

“Mon ange?”

A loving endearment. It was a pleasant conceit, but she could give herself no great credit. Unfortunately.

“I didn’t mean to leave you so long. I just—”

His voice faded. She was still listening to the echoes of it when she felt the warm brush of his hand on her shoulder.

Her breathing altered. What to do? Recoil? Strike out? Scream? While her brain grappled with the problem she lay as still as a hunted rabbit. And waited with discomfiting anticipation for what he might do next.

He leaned over her and touched the heated firmness of his lips to her temple, feathering a line of precise and delicate kisses to the turn of her ear. At the same time, he cupped her shoulder, kneading it with supple fingers and in ever-widening circles. At the center of her back, he swept downward in a long, soothing stroke. His hand came to rest at the first gentle swell of her hips. He left it there in tacit possession. The tip of his tongue, moist, hot, flicked inside her ear.