Trapped by Scandal (15 page)

“Nonsense. This is my calling, and I find it a deeply satisfying one. Let us go back to the kitchen. Marguerite will be growing impatient for that second present.”

William left an hour later, feeling the imprint of the child's kisses still on his cheeks and the warmth of her little arms hugging his neck. She was more precious to him than anything in the world, and that terrified him because it weakened him.

FOURTEEN

T
he three men sat around a fire in an upstairs chamber of the Gull, a small inn just up from the busy quay at Dover harbor. They were drinking hot spiced wine, and two of them looked cold and pale, still huddled in their boat cloaks after a particularly rough crossing from Calais. The third, Everard Dubois, his swarthy, angular face distinguished by a strangely shaped eyebrow like a question mark, was clearly more at his ease, lounging in an armchair, his cloak cast aside on a settle beneath the window, as he read through a sheaf of documents.

“So finally, Barras wants us to take him,” he murmured. “And thank God for it. But what's changed? Ducasse has only been in London a couple of weeks. God knows where he was before that. We've been keeping an eye on him, of course, but he's not been doing anything out of the ordinary. Just idling around amusing himself, as far as I can tell.”

One of the others sneezed violently and cursed, burying his nose in the steam from his tankard. “Doesn't sound much like Ducasse,” he mumbled. “Maybe you've been out of Paris too long, Everard. Barras says he was sighted
in Austria, and we have information that connects him with the Duc d'Enghien and the émigré Army of Condé. There are sympathizers aplenty among the émigrés in London, and it's thought he's organizing support for another Royalist plot.”

“Yes, and all those émigrés are under watch.” Everard Dubois sounded impatient. “Ducasse has not made contact with any of them.”

“Maybe you've missed something or someone,” one of his companions suggested with a snide smile. It was rare to catch the Lizard in any kind of carelessness.

Dubois did not dignify the comment with a response. He returned to his perusal of the documents they had brought him. Paul Barras was the generally acknowledged leader of the Directory that had controlled France since the fall of Robespierre. He was a wily politician, an expert manipulator, and for the moment, at least, his orders were set in stone.

Everard Dubois knew which side his bread was buttered, but these orders also satisfied a long-held need of his own. An impersonal, politically justified reason to exact vengeance against William Ducasse. The man had thumbed his nose at the Committee of Public Safety and slipped again and again through all the traps Everard had set for him. Now in these orders lay his opportunity to see his old enemy's head roll at the guillotine.

How he had longed in the last couple of weeks to slip the assassin's blade between Ducasse's ribs, but he had restrained himself, knowing full well that without direct orders from Paris, he would fall foul of the powers that be.
Guillaume Ducasse, Viscount St. Aubery, was a powerful enemy of the state and at his most dangerous when he was seemingly quiescent. Everard was well aware of that and had been convinced that he was plotting something. There would be a network operating with him even if they weren't immediately visible, and a premature strike might remove the Hydra's head, but others would sprout quickly enough in its place. They had to spread the net wide enough to catch them all. Now it seemed Barras himself had decided it was time to behead the beast.

“Were you told whether we are to break him here or take him straight back to France?” he inquired. There had been no instructions in the papers he held.

“Both, if possible. But if he's too tough a nut to crack, then he goes back to the experts. He's to be taken and returned alive, that much is definite.”

“Mmm.” Everard nodded, quietly resolved that once he had his hands on his old enemy, he would wring every last truth out of him and enjoy every moment of doing so, before he returned him to his masters in Paris.

“So what now?” one of the men demanded with another vigorous sneeze.

“Well, I, for one, am for my bed and a warming pan,” his fellow sufferer declared. “I'm frozen to the bone, haven't felt my feet for hours.”

“You haven't supped as yet,” Everard pointed out mildly. “The ordinary here does a decent enough supper.”

“I've been puking my guts out for the last six hours; the last thing I want is food. You coming, Gerard?” He headed for the door.

“
D'accord,
Luc.” Gerard hauled himself from his chair by the fire and followed his friend, with a brusque nod of farewell to Everard Dubois.

Everard stretched his feet to the andirons and sipped his spiced wine. He had few men in London, so these two would be welcome additions as he started this new operation. Ducasse knew, of course, that his old nemesis was in the city. Everard had made no attempt to conceal his presence. The émigrés he was keeping under surveillance were all to be found in the same five square miles that also contained Ducasse, and he could not watch each and every one of them from some remote corner of London, so he moved around on the outskirts of fashionable Society, not a full participant but a familiar and unremarkable figure who drew little attention to himself. It was inevitable that Ducasse would be aware of his presence. So the element of surprise was lost to him.

There had to be some other way to snare the bird. He leaned forward for the jug on the hearth and refilled his goblet. Ducasse was not a man who could be snatched from the street or ambushed in some dark alley. He was too formidable a swordsman and marksman for such an attack to be certain of success, and Everard knew there would only ever be one chance. So he had to take a more roundabout approach.

Unless . . . A slow smile curved his thin lips. There was a full frontal approach that
could
surprise his quarry. If Everard were suddenly to be seen in Society, at Almack's, riding in Hyde Park, at Tattersalls, innocently attending the more public social events, no longer on the fringes
of Society but a visible and active participant, Ducasse would certainly be taken aback. A cultivated French émigré would draw no remark in fashionable London. Indeed, the Chevalier Everard Dubois would probably be welcomed as a refreshing addition to the usual social circle. And such a position would afford him much greater access to Guillaume Ducasse. There would be some soft point in the man's armor that could be exploited. Everyone had something.

No, brute force was not the answer; subtle pressure might well be.

He drained his goblet and went downstairs to the noisy ordinary for his supper.

It was almost noon when William reached his lodgings on Half Moon Street after his visit to Knightsbridge. He was oddly restless, and he didn't have to look far for the reason. Hero. Last night's encounter had thrown all his carefully assembled detachment to the four winds. He wanted to see her . . . no, he
had
to see her. She had become a compulsion he could not resist.

But what did it matter now? Once they had met again, the dam was breached. Besides, he needed to talk with Alec, who was so much in his twin sister's company that it was inevitable they would come face-to-face. Better to control those meetings himself and thus ensure that Hero's impetuosity was kept on a tight rein. Even as he told himself this, William knew he was desperately rationalizing his submission to that irresistible compulsion.

He changed from his riding britches into dark silk knee britches and coat, a plain black stock at his throat. The days of sansculottes and the red bonnet were long gone. He walked from Half Moon Street to Grosvenor Square and crossed the square garden, where the leaves, already reddish brown, were beginning to fall and crunch beneath his feet. He bent to pick up a shiny conker from beneath a horse chestnut tree. It was large and luscious and reminded him of his childhood so vividly he could smell the roasting chestnuts on the braziers around the gardens of the Tuilleries Palace, where he had often played as a small boy, and hear the satisfying smack as his conker struck true against his rival's. His mother had taught him the game. It was one beloved of English children, and his own boyhood friends had taken to it with his own eagerness. He dropped his prize into his pocket and looked for another. Next time he saw Marguerite, he would teach her how to play.

A clear, light voice behind him said, “I'll challenge you to a game, sir.”

He spun around. Hero came towards him along the narrow gravel path, a bright shiny conker in her hand. “Alec and I still play for hours.” She regarded him with her head slightly tilted, a questioning gleam in her green eyes, a quizzical little smile on her lips. “Although I daresay he'll be too busy for some weeks for such frivolity.”

“Oh? How so?” He held himself back from her with supreme difficulty.

Her smile widened. “I think you should let him tell you himself. Were you coming to see him?” Carefully, she
had not included herself in the question, although the unspoken words hung between them.

“I thought to do so,” he replied. “I had a question for him.”

“Then come and ask it, but don't be at all surprised if you find him less than coherent.” She took his arm in the most natural gesture in the world, and he could not for the world find an objection. “Is it not the most beautiful day?”

William couldn't help smiling at her bubbling pleasure in the crisp, sunny autumn day. She was bursting with some secret, her step more of a dance than a sedate walk as they crossed the road and mounted the short flight of steps to the front door. Hero rang the bell, and it was opened immediately by a bowing footman.

“My lady . . . Viscount St. Aubery.” He bowed them into the hall.

So William had been here before, Hero thought, and wondered when. She certainly hadn't seen him. Alec seemed to be getting rather proficient at keeping things from her. “Come above to the small parlor. Alec will most probably be there.”

William followed her up the wide sweep of the horseshoe staircase, aware of the atmosphere of excitement in the air. The maids they passed all seemed to be smiling, and even Jackson, who appeared on the landing as they reached it, bore an expression that could almost be called a smile.

“His lordship is in the small parlor, my lady,” the major­domo said, moving to open the door for them.

“Oh, has Nan chased him away again?” Hero said with a chuckle. “Alec, dearest, you have a visitor.”

Alec, who had been standing dreamily gazing into the fire, whirled around, then beamed as he saw William. “Come in, come in. Sherry or burgundy?”

“Sherry, please.” William perched without ceremony on the arm of the sofa. “So, children, tell me what is going on.”

“Marie Claire had her baby last night, a little girl,” Alec informed him in a rush of pride.

“Congratulations, dear boy.” William shook his hand heartily. “And they are both well?”

“Oh, splendid. Yes, indeed, doing splendidly, and Marie Claire was such a trooper, you wouldn't believe.” He handed William a glass.

“Yes, I would,” William corrected. “She always was.”

“Yes, of course. For a moment, I was forgetting.” Alec's expression dimmed a little but then brightened. “But that's all in the past. Her name is Fleur.”

“Very pretty.” William approved, and his mind went for a moment to Marguerite, another delicate flower in the world.

Hero felt a strange shift in time. It was once again the three of them, in that easy fellowship they had developed during the terror and beauty of their escape.

But of course, it wasn't. “I'll go up and see them. William had a question for you, Alec, and I don't think I'm included.”

Alec looked uncomfortable, but William's unperturbed expression didn't change. “Yes, thank you, Hero,” he said.

She left them, managing not to flounce as she did so.