Praise for Kasey Michaels

A Reckless Beauty “A Reckless Beauty [is] a cannon shot. Drama by the boatload, danger around every corner, and heartwrenching emotion await readers.” —A Romance Review

A Most Unsuitable Groom “From the first page to the last this continuation of the Beckets of Romney Marsh saga is a well-crafted novel. Emotional intensity, simmering sexual tension, characters you care about and political intrigue – plus touches of humour and a poignant love story – all come together in this hugely entertaining keeper.” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

The Dangerous Debutante “Her characters shine as she brings in fascinating details of the era, engaging plot twists and plenty of sensuality.” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

Shall We Dance? “Brimming with historical details and characters ranging from royalty to spies, greedy servants to a jealous woman, this tale is told with panache and wit.” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

The Butler Did It “Michaels’ ingenious sense of humour reaches new heights as she brings marvellous characters and a too-funny-for-words story to life. (…) What fun, what pleasure, what a read!” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“I didn’t think you were coming,” he said quietly, returning her look.

“I said I would. I don’t lie, Rian Becket.”

“I didn’t remember.”

“Do you remember this?” Lisette asked, as she untied the satin ribbons at the throat of her dressing gown and then shrugged back her shoulders, sending the dressing gown sliding to the floor, revealing her sheer white night rail.

Rian sat up higher against the pillows, smiled.

“Vaguely.”

“You try to be amusing? And this?” she continued, slowly walking towards him as her fingers worked the small front buttons of the gown. She stopped, smiled, eased one wide strap from her shoulder, then the other. She looked straight into his eyes, and allowed the night rail to join the dressing gown on the floor.

“Oh, yes. I believe I remember now. A white witch or an angel. I’m never quite sure.”

“Does it matter which I am, Rian, witch or angel? As long as I am here, yes?”

USA TODAY bestselling author Kasey Michaels is the author of more than ninety books. She has earned three starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, and has been awarded the RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America, the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, the Waldenbooks and BookRak awards, and several other commendations for her writing excellence in both contemporary and historical novels. There are more than eight million copies of her books in print around the world. Kasey resides in Pennsylvania with her family, where she is always at work on her next book.

The Return of the Prodigal
Kasey Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Karen Solem, who makes it all happen.

With love.

CHAPTER ONE

HE SAT IN THE GARDEN because that’s where Lisette had put him, and Rian Becket had already learned that arguing with the strong-willed, determined Lisette was as equally productive as attempting to joust with the moon. And as fruitless as wishing his left arm back.

Strange, though, how he seemed to simply do whatever Lisette wanted him to do, almost without question.

Perhaps it was because she reminded him somewhat of his sister Fanny. That same sort of tall, lithe body. That same shimmer of blond hair, although Lisette’s was devoid of curl, more of a silky curtain that fell past her shoulders than the unruly mass Fanny was forever cursing. More sunlight to Fanny’s moonlight.

And most definitely that same unshakable belief that they were completely in charge of him.

Fanny had always believed herself his keeper, had always attempted to order him about, nag at him. Lisette was her equal, if not even more unwavering in her belief that she had been put on this earth to tell him what to do, and he had been placed on that same earth to obey her.

That might be the reason.

That, or the fact that he truthfully couldn’t muster much interest in where he sat, what he ate, or even where, precisely, he was. He was existing, floating above the everyday, and the feeling was rather pleasant. He could almost hear Fanny crooning to him, as she would to any of the horses that might be upset in a storm, or whatever, “Nothing to fear, now is there. Nothing to see, nothing to worry such a fine brave soldier like you.”

Yes, he thought, chuckling at his sudden insight—simply not caring, that also might be the reason.

Rian closed his eyes against the late afternoon sun that would soon drop behind the high stone walls of the French manor house, amused at his own amusement. Wasn’t that strange?

He was a lucky man, lucky to be alive. That’s what Lisette told him, had harangued him with during the long weeks and months of what she insisted upon calling his recovery.

Recovery? His wounds may have healed at last; the sword swipe to his midsection, the leg bone shattered by rifle shot, whatever in hell had happened to his head that kept him from remembering anything beyond the first few hours of the battle Lisette told him was now known simply as Waterloo.

But unless Lisette knew of a way for him to regrow most of his forearm and all of his hand below his elbow, he was not recovered. He was far from whole, far from alive.

“And again, alas, far from caring,” he muttered, believing his mind was now running in a circle, repeating itself, but still not entirely unhappy as he looked up at the blue sky. After all, the sun did still shine, the sky remained blue. “Green grass, pretty pink flowers…pretty Lisette.”

Yes, pretty Lisette. Her accent was French, although her English was rather adorably precise. Odd in a servant girl, but Lisette had told him that her father had been English, a teacher, and her mother French. Both of them had died, one within months of the other, and Lisette had been forced into service, having no other way to earn her bread and cheese.

Her employer had been a childhood friend of her mother’s, a minor French aristocrat who had somehow survived the Terror and even flourished, his sympathies all with England and the French monarchy, although only inwardly. Outwardly, he had been a loyal supporter of whatever faction in power in Paris at the moment demanded of the citizenry. He’d been imprisoned twice, Lisette had told Rian, once years ago by Robespierre himself, once again by Bonaparte, but he had always found a way to survive.

Rian remembered all of this through the dint of repetition, as Lisette had told him, and told him again, and again, until he was finally able to remember every word. Such a sad story. Such a pretty girl.

He would be eager to meet this clever man, if he cared. Which he probably didn’t. Besides, that would mean the two of them would have to indulge in polite conversation, and that prospect was too fatiguing to contemplate.

He knew that the man had found him among the prisoners some escaping French had taken with them, hoped to use to trade for their own freedom if the chasing English caught up with them. He’d rescued Rian, brought him to this place, and left him in Lisette’s care as he traveled south, to Paris, to watch Napoleon Bonaparte be expelled from France one last time.

Surely that was all he needed to know.

There had been other English soldiers brought here to safety, Lisette had told him, although he had never seen them. Two, she’d said, who had recovered and then been returned to troops passing by on their way to march triumphantly into Paris. Two others who had died of their wounds.

He was the only one still remaining at the manor house, the château, whatever this place was called, and strangely reluctant to be deemed well enough to leave.

Did Lisette have anything to do with that reluctance? No. Impossible.

Well, now, he was doing his share of thinking today, wasn’t he? He wasn’t sure if this was something to celebrate. It was much easier, drifting.

But, as long as his brain seemed to be waking up, he might as well think about Lisette. Much better to think of her, than to push down an almost overwhelming need to scratch the itch on the back of the left hand that was no longer a part of him.

Was it pity he saw in her eyes when she came to his bed? Never revulsion, bless her, but then, she was at heart a simple girl, attempting to unravel a complex man.

“Or a very thick man,” Rian said, smiling slightly, feeling ashamed of himself once more. Perhaps this was good. At least shame was an emotion. Perhaps he was beginning to wake up from the months’ long slumber he’d allowed himself, indulging his pain, both the physical, and the pain that he felt only in his heart.

Damn! It was about time!

He looked down at the leather-bound journal Lisette had found for him a few weeks ago. He’d written only three lines today. What a lazy creature he was, or else he’d become sick of his own maudlin scribblings.

Once he’d written of a brave adventurer, a man of spirit and daring traveling the world, slaying dragons, dazzling all the beautiful women. Even Fanny, who thought she knew everything about him, had never known of the journals he kept hidden beneath a floorboard in his rooms, of the poetry, the supposed epic he had been writing for years. His brothers had jokingly called him a poet, but they also had never known how right they were.

They had also called him a dreamer, and he did once have dreams. Lofty. Soaring. Full of ideals and promise. He would go to war, he would have grand adventures, and then he would write about them. He would become famous, like Lord Byron. He would go to London, be fêted, even honored by the Prince Regent.

Oh, what ambitious dreams he’d had!

Now? Now, when he forced himself to write, he wrote of silly things; the shapes he saw in the clouds, the many names he could give the color of Lisette’s hair, the beauty of peas, floating in a sea of gravy. Insane things. Or else he’d write of stormy nights, lonely walks through tangled forests, demons and dangers behind every tree. Despair, hanging like low clouds over every horizon.

Mindless rambles, or melodramatic drivel. That’s all he could muster. All because he’d lost his arm? Was that something to be maudlin about? Probably…

What had he written today?

Alone in a world of strangers; unfit, unknown, no longer whole;

Does the world go on without him?

Lovely ladies, where are your smiles and sweet simpers now?

Dear God, how pathetic! Pathetic, self-pitying nonsense. A waste of ink and paper.

He crumpled the page in his hand and tried to rip it from the journal. But that was an exercise that took two hands, and the journal only slipped from the arm of the chair and went flying across the grass.

“Damn!”

“There is a problem? And what bee has flown in to your bonnet today, Mistress Becket?”

Rian closed his eyes, gritting his teeth. “Go away, Lisette. I’ve been working on a way to choke you using only one hand. I may soon perfect it.”

“Not the silly clown today, I see, but the dour-faced malcontent, threatening mayhem. I tremble in my shoes, truly.” Lisette bent down to pick up the journal, smoothing out the rumpled page and reading it before she closed the thing and slipped it into her pocket. “Where have all the ladies’ smiles gone now? Yes, I can see why the ladies would have smiled at you, Rian. When you’re asleep, I can see it, for then both the too-silly smiles and the scowls disappear, and the hopeful poet emerges. I should like to see the poet awake. But for now, my impatient patient, it’s once again time for your medicine.”

“Hang my medicine,” Rian said, getting to his feet, tucking what was left of his forearm into the buttoned front of his jacket. “I don’t want to shock you with such a revelation, but I’m as whole as I’m going to get, Lisette.”

“So you say. For months, throughout the hot summer, I despaired of you, for so many wounded turn putrid and die in the summer. And for these past weeks I’ve waited for the questions. But they never come, do they? ‘Where am I, Lisette? Who has taken me in? Why has this person done so? What is his name? When will I be strong enough to return to my own home? Who won the battle, Lisette?’”

Rian turned to her at that last question. “We took the day, Lisette. I know that, at least.”

“And how do you know that? I told you the name of the battle in which you were wounded, but I have a great memory for all that we’ve spoken of, you and I, and we have never really spoken of the battle. You never told me what you did there, or even asked who won the day.”

God, she could drive a man to distraction. Pushing at him, always pushing, pushing.

He frowned, trying to remember how he knew they’d won the battle. But thinking too deeply was beyond him, and caring to think was a nebulous thing, something he felt he should be able to master, but a desire that always seemed somehow just beyond his grasp for more than a few moments. “I don’t know. But we won that day, just as we won the war. You told me we won the war, so it stands to reason we won such an important battle.”

“So many thoughts strung together. Very good, Rian. I had begun to think that feat beyond you. But are you correct? Or I have lied about everything, and you could be a prisoner of war, Rian Becket. Perhaps we have cared for you, plumped you up like a Christmas goose, in order to ransom you back to your family. War has made France desperately poor, and we needs must find money any way we can. Your uniform bespoke of the officer, and officers are often beloved sons of rich families,” Lisette pointed out, holding out the small silver tray on which sat a tumbler filled with a liquid that smelled of cloves but, he knew, tasted of filthy socks. “Perhaps I am in fact your gaoler.”

“No, not my gaoler. Just my tormentor, always trying to confuse me.”

“No, Rian Becket. Not confuse. Wake you up. Make you angry. Make you do something.”

“There’s nothing I want to do, Lisette, except perhaps to kiss you. It’s the most pleasant way I can think of to shut you up.” Rian looked at her, looked at the tumbler, and said, “And I don’t want that, thank you. I’ve had enough of your potions.”

“Oh, please, Rian, not this same argument again. The draught is necessary. Do you want the fever to return?”

“You could drive a man to another sort of drink, you know.” He hadn’t drunk the medicine yesterday. She’d left it with him and gone to answer a summons from one of the other maids, and he’d poured it into the ground. But today she was standing here, staring at him, and he saw no escape. He looked at the tumbler again, and then grabbed it up and tossed the vile liquid to the back of his throat, so he wouldn’t have to taste it. “There? Have I pleased my gaoler now?”

“What a good little soldier.”

Rian felt an unexpected stab of what had to be homesickness. “What did you say?”

“Excuse me? What did I say about what, Rian Becket?”

“Never mind. You just reminded me of someone for a moment.”

“And who would this be? A lady love?”

Rian smiled, shook his head. “A female, yes, but no, not a lady love. A pest.”

“Ah, then we will dispense with your memory of her.” Lisette took the empty glass from him and placed it and the tray on the grass. “Walk with me, Rian. We won’t have many more days this warm and pretty. It’s already October.”

“Don’t you have other duties?” he asked her, his mind still half on Fanny, on the last time he’d seen her. At the Duchess of Richmond’s ball? Yes, she’d looked so young and beautiful, and so very frightened as the Call to Arms rang throughout the city. But Brede would have ordered both her and his sister out of Brussels, to somewhere safe. He shouldn’t worry about her. Besides, Fanny always landed on her feet.

“I do have other duties, yes, but they’ll still be patiently waiting for me when I turn to them. Come now, exercise that leg with a stroll around the gardens. You must be stiff from sitting and pouting for so long.”

He shoved thoughts of his sister to the back of his brain, where they rested comfortably, as he really didn’t wish to be bothered with anything even resembling serious thought. As Lisette said, the day was beautiful. Too beautiful for deep thoughts. “You’re attempting to goad me into getting better, aren’t you? You’ve grown tired of being my faithful nurse.”

“Weary unto death, yes. And is it working? My goading?” she asked, smiling, her clear blue eyes twinkling mischievously as she slipped her arm through his.

“I’m not dead, so I suppose so.”

They walked in silence for a good ten minutes before Rian felt himself beginning to flag, his thigh aching, and they sat down side-by-side on a stone bench in the shade.

“So you’ll ask me no questions?”

“Questions?” He blinked several times, attempting to marshal his thoughts. Did he have questions? Of course he did. Something about this house? The man who owned this house? Was that it? Damn, he really should care more. Shouldn’t he? “No. No questions. Yes. One question. Will you come to me again tonight?”

“If you want me, yes,” Lisette said, boldly sliding her hand onto his sore thigh, the warmth of her palm bringing him a strange comfort. “I feel safe when I’m with you, Rian Becket.”

“Safe? Of course you’re safe. I’m weak as a kitten, and couldn’t possibly harm you. And what is there to fear here, Lisette? Flowers, trees, birdsong. Good food and soft beds—you in my bed. We could be in Heaven, Lisette, in Eden. I float through days and weeks of Paradise.”

Or I’m in Limbo, he added silently, fighting the comfortable fog that seemed to roll stealthily into his mind every afternoon, eventually sending him back to his bed. He’d been better, yesterday. Better today. But perhaps he’d done too much, been thinking too much? Oh, look, a butterfly….

“My employer,” Lisette told him quietly, lowering her gaze to her shoe tops. “He returns in less than a week. I know he was a friend to my parents, and I thank him for his kindness in taking me into this place during a time of war, hiding me. I am, after all, considered to be English. But lately he…he looks at me. He says things. That there is no need for me to insist on being a servant, earning my own keep. He suggests…things. I will leave here before he returns this time, and I wish you gone by then as well. The others have gone, and yet you’re still here. My…my employer may have grown weary of being your benefactor, Rian Becket, and when I am gone there will be no one to care for you. If he shows you the door, where will you go, what will you do?”

Rian turned on the bench, looking at Lisette just as she quickly wiped a single tear from her cheek. The rapid turn made his head spin, and he fought to refocus his eyes and his thoughts. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d told Lisette he was weak as a kitten, and still obviously unable to spend a full day out of his bed. A walk in the gardens had sapped all of his strength, all of his will. “I’m trying to understand what you’re saying. Tell…tell me more about this man.”

Lisette shook her head, let the curtain of silky sunlight hide her face as she looked down at the hands now demurely clasped in her lap. “What else is there to know?”

“His name, I suppose, for starters. How strange. Why have I never asked?” Rian placed his hand over hers, feeling the ice in her fingertips. Damn. He needed to concentrate, but he could feel himself becoming more detached from their conversation. As if nothing mattered, nothing in this world. Not him, not Lisette. Nothing but this pleasant sense of floating above all cares, all worries.

She pushed her hair behind her ear as she turned to look him full in the eyes. “He is the Comte Neuveville Beltane. Or at least he became the Comte once his family died in the Terror. The title, it comes and it goes, depending on who reigns in Paris. For now, it is back. That’s what he says.”

Rian scrubbed at his face, hard, to wake himself, rouse himself. “What he says, Lisette?”

Once again, Lisette averted her face. “Maman would joke about it, but she wouldn’t smile. She said the Comte came into his title the only way he knew how. Then my papa would warn her to be quiet, that necks had been chopped for less. I don’t know, Rian. That was three years ago, perhaps four now. Time is lost here.” She sighed, shrugged her shoulders in a purely Gallic way. “I am lost here, so I will go, before the Comte returns. I have made plans. I only wish I had somewhere to go. And I worry about leaving you here, with only the slovenly fools in the kitchens to care for you.”

Rian slipped his arm around her shoulders, pulled her close against his chest. “Lisette, you’re trembling. You’re really afraid, aren’t you?”

She pushed herself free of him and got to her feet, her cheeks pale. “I am not afraid! I refuse to be afraid. But I must be sensible. I am no longer a little girl. I am nearly twenty years of age now, and the Comte is a man. Men expect rewards for their generosity. I’m not foolish, I know what he means when he says I do not need to be a servant. But if I give my body, it will be my choice, not my only option.”

Rian felt humbled. “You…you have given your body to me, Lisette.”

“Because I am a fool, yes. Because you are so sad. Because I wanted to wake you, make you want life. But I can’t stay here any longer, Rian Becket. Not even for you.”

“I wouldn’t ask that of you,” he told her, wearily getting to his feet. “It’s so easy to stay here, Lisette. But you’re right. It’s time for me to go, too. I’ve played the languishing miss much too long as it is. I should go home, much as I don’t want to go there.”

“But why wouldn’t you want to rush to them, Rian? You have pen and paper, yet you refuse to write to them. I could have written to them for you. All I would have needed was to know how to address the letter, yes? You are very selfish, Rian Becket. Your family has to believe you dead, lost to them. Their pain must be terrible. How they would rejoice to see you again.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve always planned to go home, in time. And they’ll welcome me. And they’ll pity me. Oh, they’ll try to hide it, but I’ll see it in their eyes. I’m not yet ready to see that, Lisette. I need more time, time to grow stronger.”

“Merde. Never have I heard such nonsense.”

Rian chuckled low in his throat. “Merde, Lisette? And where did you learn such a word? Surely not from your teacher father, or your good mother.”

He watched as her hands drew up into tight fists, and then relaxed as a smile widened her generous mouth. “I live with the other servants. I have heard the word said, and much more. At least I am not a puling infant, hiding, bemoaning the terrible things the fates have done to me. I survive, Rian. You merely exist.”

His head had begun to ache. First the floating, and then the headache. Go home? He wasn’t ready for that, not yet. “Ah, and there is the Lisette I know. Always scolding, always pushing. Do you long to hit me? Beat some sense into me?”

“No. I want you to live, Rian Becket. I fought hard to keep you alive, and now I want you to live. The Comte? I think he only keeps what he believes he can use. That is why I made sure to send away the other soldiers when you English marched through the area. He will be angry to learn that, I’m sure. I would have sent you, if you would not have died to leave your bed. But now you must go, Rian. We must both go. I, because I know what the Comte wants from me. You, because I do not know what he wants from you. Do you understand now?”

Rian noticed a bird hopping across the grass, a large green bug snapped tight in its beak. Birds ate without arms. Ah, but could they cut their meat? Birds didn’t need to cut their meat, did they? Perhaps he should consider changing his diet? Would a diet of beetles make life easier? But not tastier, surely. Chicken legs. Yes, those he could eat with one hand. Thank God for chicken legs. But not the legs of other birds. Most bird legs had no meat. Still, there were pigeons, and squabs, and…

“Rian! You aren’t listening to me! I’m telling you that it is time for you to go.”

He continued to watch the bird for a few moments, fascinated by it, and only blinked himself back to attention with a great effort of will. “Yes, yes. Time for me to go. I heard you, Lisette. I’ll go.”

And then he turned from her, to walk back to the manor house. He climbed the servant stairs to the room assigned to him and lay down on the bed, staring up at the canopy above his head.

What had he and Lisette been talking about? He closed his eyes, eager to drift into sleep and be away from the headache. Whatever it was, she’d talk to him again. She nagged like an old woman. He smiled as he let go, let himself fall into slumber. And she had a body like a miracle….

LISETTE WALKED INTO the large study and flounced over to her favorite chair, plopping down into it and swinging one leg up and over the arm, letting it dangle in the air. “I talk and I talk, and only now and then, he listens. The man is exhausting.”

“Yes, and I can understand why. I’ve just been informed that you go to the man’s bed. You didn’t offer that small tidbit of information, Lisette, when I returned from Paris last night.”

Her heart nervously skipped a beat, but she only rolled her eyes, lifted her leg back off the arm of the chair and sat forward, her elbows on her knees. “And I’m sure I know just who informed you. What would you have had me do? Read verses from the Bible? Sing to him? Show him an inch of ankle? It takes a brick to his head to get the man to pay attention as it is. The only time he really listens is when we are in bed. I know how important this is to you, to both of us, to learn more about him. I did what I had to do in order to gain his trust.”

“I think we can safely rule out the verses from the Bible, I agree. But I left here a month ago, pleased with your progress, only asking you to try harder to ingratiate yourself into his confidence. Oddly, I do not recall telling you to bed him.”

How could she explain what had happened? How sad Rian Becket had been. So lost and alone. How she had longed to comfort him, had put her arms around him. The rest? Ah, it had happened. It continued to happen. She had no excuse, except perhaps her own loneliness. She felt no shame. She had done what she had done.

She would not apologize.

“You did not say so precisely, no. As you just said again, I was to get close to him, gain his confidence. How do you think you get close to a man? He is not a woman, to be brought posies and pretty poems. Men have needs. A woman does not live in this world for long without learning that.”

She sat back in the chair, still feigning a confidence she didn’t feel. “So I did what I had to do. But he wanders, his mind travels too much. He is still too removed from the world, at times too happy, and at others tiresomely maudlin. I cannot work miracles. I cannot even cajole him into writing a letter to his family. All these potions. We need to weaken the doses.”

“You question my judgment?”

“Ah, and look who else is here.” Lisette shot a fierce glance toward a darkened corner of the room, her anger rising quick and hot. “You blend so well with the dark, don’t you? From now on, I must insist that you announce your presence. I want to know to whom I am speaking.”

“Arrogant little brat. Perhaps I should have left you with the nuns,” the first speaker muttered, chuckling. “Better yet, I can see now that you should have been born a man.”

“I can do anything a man can do,” Lisette said, bristling, and then turned back to the woman in the corner. “And I’m able to do anything a woman can do. I need no potions, no spells, no dark magick. He understands now, at last. He’ll leave with me. He promised. He may forget until tomorrow, but I will remind him again, until I get through his thick skull and those vile potions you have me feeding him.”

“Don’t laugh at my potions.”

“I don’t laugh at them. I get angry with them. But I will admit he’s finally growing stronger, the fever abated at last. We’ll be on the way to his home within the week, I promise it.”

“And into danger. Better to keep him here, make him strong enough to question at length without killing him until we have our answers. I do not like this plan. She fights me now,” the female in the corner said, sounding grave, close to frightened. “She’s aware of me, I can feel it. She’ll fight you, too. Protecting her chick, you could be damaged.”

“Me, damaged?” Lisette laughed without humor, careful not to respond to this notion of killing Rian Becket. “And wouldn’t that make you happy, hmm? Then it would be the two of you again, without me here to draw on his fine affections. How do I know you won’t try to work your mischief on me, too, old woman? As it is now, I eat nothing that doesn’t come from a common pot. I trust you as I’d trust a snake at my bosom.”

“How you at times delight me, ma petit,” the man said, chuckling once more. “Now, no more fighting like cats in a sack, most especially over me, flattered as I assure you I am. If she feels the woman, Lisette, if I can at last bring myself to believe her in this, then we truly are near our goal. The plan remains a good one. Why chance the boy dying as he is questioned, if he can simply lead us to his home? Once you are inside, trusted, it will be a simple matter to find out if he’s one of them, if the man I seek is finally to be mine. Lisette? You have memorized the agreed-upon route to the Channel?”

Lisette closed her eyes, seeing the map she’d studied nightly for more than three weeks. “We walk from here to Valenciennes. I use the gold I have stolen from you to hire a plain coach at the stables at the end of Avenue Villais. From Valenciennes we push quickly to Petit Rume. Still we go west, to Armentières, ending at this place called Dunkirk, where we hire a boat from a man we see sitting, his back to the wall, at a table in a dockside tavern called Le Chat Rouillé. How do I forget that? The Rusty Cat. The man wears a red scarf around his neck, and will tell us his name is Marcel. From there, we go where Becket commands. I know what I am to do, you have no worries about me. It is your hirelings who must follow without being seen.”

The man’s voice turned silky, which was never a good thing. “I have chosen the men carefully for their long loyalty. If I don’t question your methods, it would please me immeasurably if you do not in turn question my judgment. They will watch over you, and you’ll be safe as houses, as they say. Of course, there is another saying—closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. This could all be for nothing, you know, your virginity gone for nothing. Meddlesome strangers to be dealt with, or only scraps left of my old enemy, when I long for the main meal.”

“That would hurt you, yes? You want it to be otherwise. After so many years, to finally see justice done.”

“Justice, Lisette? Ah, an interesting word,” the man said as the woman in the corner mumbled something beneath her breath. “Vengeance belongs to the Lord, we are told, and justice meted out by His hand.”

“And you believe in God?” Lisette asked, settling into her chair. She relished these discussions.

“I believe in an eye for an eye, ma petit. And then perhaps also an arm for that eye, and both legs, and at last the very heart, dripping in my hand. What was done to me, to you? No mere weak thing like justice can ever be enough.”

Lisette bit her bottom lip between her teeth, nodded her agreement. “But as you said, she may not be right about your old enemy. Rian Becket could lead us no further than to those who played havoc with your English business.”

“My business. Ah, such a lovely word for what I have done. I am no saint, ma petit, and have admitted as much to you, to my shame. I did what I did for that damned failed Corsican, but I also became wealthy in the process, so that I fear sainthood is beyond my reach. But, yes, whoever they are, they must be punished for making my life even temporarily inconvenient, especially now, when I once again plan my return to England. But if there’s more? If they are also the ones, if he is still with them—?”

“Then the heart, dripping in your hand,” Lisette said, wishing she herself didn’t feel so likewise bloodthirsty. Clearly the nuns had failed badly with her…or she had badly failed the nuns. “And Becket? What happens to Rian Becket?”

“As best we can tell, Becket is the one who cost me a large portion of my business. Remember, we got the name from one of my former associate’s associates. What do you think happens to him, ma petit? A pat on the head and a wish for a long and pleasant life?”

“No, I don’t think that. I also think he would be dead now, like the others, I’m sure, if I hadn’t been here. Thanks to those vile potions.”

“But we might have had all our answers. A child, allowed such sway. The tail, wagging the dog. It is a shame to you, my master.”

Lisette looked toward the corner. “You say that from a distance. Would you care to come out of the shadows and say it to my face? To his face?”

“Again the cats in the sack. We will probably have to deal with this animosity between you, some day. Not a pretty prospect. But not now. Lisette, ma petit, I still don’t care for the fact that you crawled into his bed. Was it pity that propelled you? The wounded soldier? Or curiosity? The girl from the nunnery, locked away for so many years? Or perhaps it’s that he has but one arm, and you feel you can best him if necessary? One but wonders.”

“One should wonder about himself, and not those who serve him the best they can,” Lisette said, getting to her feet, not wishing to prolong this particular conversation. Not when it included talk of Rian Becket’s death.

“If he hadn’t been so gravely wounded by those idiots sent to capture him. If you hadn’t been here when he arrived…”

“Then I would have no answers to your questions, would I? Not that I plan on answering any of them, in any event. It was my decision, the events cannot be changed, and there is nothing to be gained by further discussion.”

“And the boy. You feel nothing for him?”

Lisette looked straight into the man’s eyes, her blue gaze unwavering. And told him what she was sure he wanted to hear. “No. Nothing.”

“How fortunate for you, ma petit, as no matter how the game plays out in this small adventure, bearing fruit or not, Rian Becket dies.” He opened the small suede pouch he always carried with him and extracted a dark green leaf, pressed it between cheek and gum. “No one touches my daughter without my consent and lives.”

CHAPTER TWO

LISETTE LINGERED in the upstairs hallway until she heard the tall clock in the downstairs foyer strike out the hour of midnight, and then depressed the latch and entered Rian’s bedchamber. Was careful to lock the door behind her, remove the key.

He was waiting for her.

Candlelight flickered from the tall silver holders on the bureau, a half-dozen small tables. Firelight flickered in the fireplace grate.

The heavy draperies were drawn close together, obviously by a male hand, as some of the material on one window, that should have puddled on the floor, had been caught up against the back of a chair, and the second tall window still showed the white under-curtain at its center, allowing some of the light from the full moon to slice against the deep carpet.

But he had set the stage for her.

And now she would perform.

Her gaze traveled along the floor, and then climbed the foot of the ornately carved bed, slid upward to see the silk sheet he had dragged over his body as he lay propped against a half-dozen pillows, carefully keeping his abbreviated left arm hidden beneath that sheet.

Foolish man. When she could look at that face, that beautiful face, those sad, speaking eyes, and know she would soon be able to slide her fingers through the wonder of his thick hair, taste him, touch him, feel him—the arm was of no consequence.

“I didn’t think you were coming,” he said quietly, returning her look.

“I said I would. I don’t lie, Rian Becket.”

“I didn’t remember.”

“Do you remember this?” Lisette asked as she untied the satin ribbons at the throat of her dressing gown and then shrugged back her shoulders, sending the dressing gown sliding to the floor, revealing her sheer white night rail.

Rian sat up higher against the pillows, smiled. “Vaguely.”

“You try to be amusing? And this?” she continued, slowly walking toward him as her fingers worked the small front buttons of the gown. She stopped, smiled, eased one wide strap from her shoulder, then the other. She looked straight into his eyes, and allowed the night rail to join the dressing gown on the floor.

“Oh, yes. I believe I remember now. A white witch or an angel. I’m never quite sure.”

She joined him beneath the sheet, careful to approach the bed from the left, join him to his right. She would do nothing to remind him of his injury, what he seemed to consider his shame. “Does it matter which I am, Rian, witch or angel? As long as I am here, yes?”

Rian had already positioned his good arm so that she lay against it now, moved toward him obediently as he pulled her closer against his chest. “Strange how I can’t seem to care for anything, yet I dream of you, of touching you. In my dreams, I can feel the curve and weight of your breasts against my hands. Lightly rub my thumbs across your nipples, watch them tighten at that touch. Perfection. I hold you, and I taste your sweetness. First one, then the other. Like offerings on an altar, blasphemous as that is.”

Lisette stroked his strong chest, her palm sensitized by the sprinkle of soft hair. “You dream of having two hands again? Poor Rian. I never meant to torture you.”

“Sweet torture, Lisette,” he whispered, pressing his lips against her temple. “Pretty pictures in my mind.”

She’d come to him that first time a virgin. Perhaps at least partially deliberately, definitely fearfully, not quite knowing what was about to happen, having heard only of the pain, the obligation. But that was the way to the marriage bed, as spoken of by the nuns.

Perhaps the trail to a bed of mortal sin was easier to travel? Or else Rian Becket was unlike other men. Kinder. More gentle. Careful of her, mindful of her nervousness, more eager to please than be pleased.

There had been pain, most assuredly, but it had been quickly soothed, and the pain had slowly grown into pleasure. Desires, unknown, had been awakened in her. Needs, hungers.

But she wouldn’t think of that now. She’d think of what he’d just said. His dream of her, of the two of them together.

His words had put a picture in her mind as well, and with the newfound freedom she felt each time she joined him in this bed, Lisette slid her hand across his chest, to grasp his shoulder, and then pulled herself across his body, her legs straddling him as she then pushed herself up, sitting astride him.

She shook her head, shaking back her hair. Lifted her arms and tucked that hair behind her ears, to get it out of her way. The better to see him, because he was truly beautiful. Almost too beautiful to be real.

Perhaps that was her salvation, to believe that none of this was really happening, none of this was really real. And, in dreams, anything was allowed, anything was possible.

“I have two hands, Rian,” she told him as she slowly ran those hands down the sides of her neck, slid them, fingers spread, down over her breasts, cupped her breasts in her palms.

“Oh, God,” Rian breathed beneath her. “Yes, Lisette. Now touch yourself. With your thumbs. Your nipples, Lisette. Stroke them. Yes. Ah…sweet. Feel it, Lisette? Do you feel it? Look at yourself. See what you’re doing. Like small, hard pebbles. Now squeeze, Lisette. Yes, like that, just like that. I can feel it, too. Phantoms of feeling…”

Lisette threw back her head, her eyes tightly closed, succumbing to the sensations that rippled through her. She began to move without thinking, her center aching with need as she pushed herself against his swollen manhood. Wishing him inside her. Needing. Needing…

And then her eyes opened wide, because Rian was touching her now, his long fingers parting her, finding her, igniting her. She spread her legs even wider, biting her bottom lip, as her movement had somehow exposed more to him than she knew existed, a secret place buried deep, but now a found treasure, one that Rian exploited relentlessly, giving her no time to think, even to breathe.

Only time to feel, to enjoy the dream.

“Don’t stop, Lisette,” he told her, his voice seeming to come to her from far away. “Touch yourself. Feel yourself as you blossom, as you flower. My pretty Lisette. My pretty flower. Yes, yes. I can feel your need. Don’t deny it, don’t deny me the pleasure as I watch you.”

“I…I can’t…I…”

“Then now, Lisette. Make it happen now.”

His fingers moved faster, and Lisette went very still. She lifted herself toward him, able to deny him nothing.

“Now, Lisette,” Rian whispered, his voice almost raw. “Go over. Go over…”

She cried out as the throbbing began, inside of her, outside of her. Clench and release. Clench and release. Again, and again, and again…

“Rian!” she shouted when she could take no more, collapsing onto him, sobbing into the crook of his neck. “Rian…”

He rolled her onto her back even as he guided himself to her, into her, and then held on to her with his good arm, melding their bodies together.

“Move, Lisette. Move with me…this time, take me with you.”

She felt his other arm come around her, something he had not allowed before tonight, felt the strength in his upper arm as he held her so tightly it became difficult to breathe.

In his mind, did he feel her flesh beneath his lost hand?

If there was a God, yes…

RIAN LAY ON HIS BACK, staring up at the canopy above his head, consciously trying to regulate his breathing.

She had been wild in his arms, and now she was quiet, collapsed against his side, her blond hair splayed out, a sweet-smelling lock tickling at his chin.

What would he do without her? It was only when she came to him, made love with him, that he could even pretend to be whole. Awake, aware.

If only they could stay here, like this, forever. He longed to be a simple man, with simple needs.

All his life had been a struggle. Well-cushioned, yes, but as with all of the Beckets, circumscribed by the past, a life spent always with one eye looking for the reappearance of that past. Always knowing theirs was an uncertain future.

He’d wanted excitement, adventure. He’d wanted to be away from the constraints of Becket Hall, from the people who all carried the shadow of the past with them.

Secrets to keep. Always, secrets to keep.

Had Fanny run home to those secrets they both hated? Had she taken the Earl of Brede with her after the battle? Had she seen what he, Rian, had seen growing between them—that the love Fanny believed she’d felt for her adoptive brother had been a pale thing when compared to the love of a man for a woman? Brede loved Fanny, that had been obvious, and Rian had been glad, hopeful that the earl would take her away from Becket Hall, keep her safe.

He wished Fanny well. He wished her happiness, and a quiet conscience.

If he returned to Becket Hall? What would she feel then? A responsibility to him?

Of course she would. She was Fanny, his sister of the heart, his twin of the heart, as they’d sometimes joked. She would feel responsible for him, insist on clinging to him, mothering him, protecting him…as if he were a child needing protection.

He couldn’t let that happen. Life moved on. Didn’t his adoptive father always say that? Whether we wished it or not, life always moved on. Rian needed Fanny to move on with her life, find her own happiness, and not feel obligated to her maimed brother.

And now there was Lisette.

Lisette, always eager to help, eager to please, yet never maudlin in her sympathy for him. Lisette, the only real thing in his comfortable world of fantasy. Lisette, who wished to leave this place, this mindless, beautiful Limbo. He couldn’t remember all that she’d said, but he remembered the fear, very real in her beautiful blue eyes. She wanted to be gone, she wanted him gone.

“Lisette?”

“Hmm? Don’t bother me, Rian Becket. I am floating here, and I rather like the sensation.”

Rian smiled. “A pity, for it’s time to come back to earth. This afternoon? You said something about the man who owns this grand house. My benefactor. Your benefactor as well. You’re really afraid of him?”

She pushed herself up onto one elbow. “I’m not afraid, Rian Becket. Your lost hand does not make you a cripple. But fear makes us all cripples. I won’t allow myself to fear anything or anyone.”

“Yes, well, thank you. That was quite profound, and you may consider me thoroughly chastened and ashamed. Now tell me again about this man, now that my mind feels clearer.” He kissed her cheek. “You do that to a person, you know. Wake me, feed my fantasies. But now to be serious. What is his name?”

“He is known as the Comte Beltrane. Neuveille Beltrane. He offered to make me his ward when my parents were killed, but I insisted upon limiting his largesse to becoming my employer. He—”

“Yes, unbelievable as it may seem, I remember all of that. But now you’re grown, and he’s looking at you in ways that displease you?”

Lisette pulled a face. “He looks at me like this…” she said, narrowing her eyes and then opening her mouth in a small smile, licking her upper lip. “Like a dog, eager for a fat loin chop to fall off the spit at his feet.”

Rian threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, surely he doesn’t look all that obvious, Lisette. Does he drool, as well?”

She shrugged, again that wordless but so meaningful Gallic shrug. “I find excuses to go back to my work. I don’t tarry long enough to see if he drools. And I won’t see him at all when he returns in a few days, because I won’t be here.” She snuggled back against him. “Will you miss me terribly, Rian Becket? They will send Voleta to tend you in my place. She is fat, and smells always of garlic. And she has this huge mole on her chin. With hair in it. Will you like that?”

He ignored her question for one of his own. “Where will you go, Lisette? Do you have any family left, either here or in England?”

Again a shrug. “My maman’s family disowned her for marrying a Englisher. To them I am English. I know nothing about my father’s family, but I will go to England, because France is no longer my home. Perhaps I will go to London and work in a fine shop, selling bonnets, yes? It will be better than here.”

Rian was quiet for some minutes, and feared that Lisette had fallen asleep before he asked her, “Would you be willing to help me get back to England?”

She remained still for the space of three of Rian’s heartbeats, and then sat up straight, pulling the sheet up over her breasts. “All Heaven and the saints be praised—the man does listen from time to time. You will leave? Break free of this hidey-hole you seem so willing to remain in forever?”

“I’m curious about your Comte, but yes, I think I’ve more than overstayed my welcome, whatever the reason behind that welcome. My father will forward our thanks, as well as remuneration for the man’s care of me. Your care of me, Lisette.”

“But you know that you still need me, Rian Becket,” she said with determination in her voice, tilting up her chin. “I will button your coat if it is cold, cut your meat when you are hungry, guide you when your French fails you. Do not argue, for you know I am right.”

“I’m not that helpless, Lisette. I can button my own coat. And I do speak and understand some French.”

“Yes. Filthy words. They are not enough.”

Rian smiled, remembering the days he would sit with some of the Becket crew who spoke French, and the words he had learned. Like merde. Gautier had invoked that word often as he attempted to untangle fishing nets snarled in the frequent storms off the coast of Romney Marsh. “Perhaps you’re right, Lisette. I only know how to insult the French.”

“Your English victory insulted us enough,” Lisette said, sliding from the bed to retrieve her night rail, slip it over her head. “But I am happy now, Rian. I will take you to your family, see you safely there. It is agreed.”

“It is agreed. I’ve already asked you to come with me, remember? Before you began arguing with me. You could stay with us for as long as you like. Indefinitely,” Rian said, coming to a decision even as the words left his mouth. The Beckets were careful who they invited to live at Becket Hall. The outside world had been given very limited access to their stronghold for almost twenty years.

But Lisette? No one had anything to fear from her.

And he would miss her, if she were gone.

“Stay with you?” Lisette pulled a face again. So comical in such a pretty face. Almost delicious. “As your servant?”

“Only if you wanted to, Lisette. Nobody at Becket Hall forces anyone to do anything they don’t wish to do.”

“Then this Becket Hall of yours must be tumbling down around its own shoulders. Do you all laugh and sing and play the grasshopper, Rian? There are no industrious ants?”

It was a simple question, but Rian ignored it, as he had learned to do concerning any question about Becket Hall or the people who lived there. “Once we’re there, you can decide if you want to stay.”

“And if I wanted to leave?’ she asked, her head cocked to one side.

“Then I would miss you,” he told her, realizing it was true.

“Thank you, that is very nice.” She lowered her gaze, as if unsure of how to respond to his statement. “The Comte will be in residence before the week is out. I told you this, yes? We should go now. Tonight.”

“Tonight?” Rian laughed. “I don’t think so, Lisette. Tonight I want you here, beside me. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

“No!” She rushed back to the bed, climbed in beside him. “They watch in the daytime.”

“What? Who watches?” Suddenly Lisette didn’t seem to be an asset to him, not if she believed such nonsense. She spoke like a child living in a fantasy world, or one who saw bogeymen where there were none.

“I tried to leave, months ago, just before you came here, you and the other soldiers. They stopped me, said I was ungrateful. They took all my wages that I had hoarded, and no longer pay me. I so want to be far away from here.”

Rian rubbed at his suddenly aching head. Prolonged thinking was still beyond him, damn it. Feeling, touching, desiring, indulging his senses—those worked for him, quite nicely. But to think, really think? That wasn’t so easy. “Far away from here, you said. That brings us to another question, Lisette. Where, exactly, is here? I should know, but I don’t.”

“Valenciennes, of course. We are closer to Valenciennes than anywhere else. I told you that, yes?”

“Probably,” Rian answered, cursing himself for not paying more attention when Lisette spoke to him. But it was so much easier to drift, to think of nothing of any consequence. Although he felt more alert tonight. Perhaps making love to Lisette helped to concentrate his mind? He could think of worse ways to nudge his brain. “I’ll need a map, Lisette. To see how far we are from the coast.”

“There is no need,” she told him quickly. “I have been planning this for some time now. Since the day the Comte stroked my hair and asked if my hair was this same color…everywhere. He is a filthy man, Rian, and I must be gone before he returns. And if he knew that you…that you had gotten to me before him, your life would be forfeit, no matter his plans for you. You see that, don’t you? For all of this, we must go. I have sneaked into the Comte’s study, I have seen a map. I have a route already decided.”

“He asked you such a crude question? Bastard. No wonder you’re frightened,” Rian said, his right hand balling into a fist. He would like to linger, to thank his benefactor, and then knock him down. How long had Lisette lived with this fear? “Are we within walking distance to the coast?”

She shook her head. “Not if anyone were to come looking for us, no. We would needs must move faster than that. But I have a plan for how to get the money we will need for the journey.”

“Of course you do. You have a head full of plans, don’t you, Lisette?”

“Do not laugh at me. You could no more fight off the Comte than could I. Oh! Je suis très stupide! Don’t frown! I’m sorry, Rian. I didn’t mean that. I really didn’t.”

“So you don’t see me in the role of protector? How shocking. Never mind, Lisette. I know my worth as a protector now. I know how useless I am. Tell me about your plan.”

“I am so sorry to have said that, Rian.”

“Lisette, enough. The plan.”

“If you’ve forgiven me? Very well. I will steal from the Comte, of course. I volunteered to houseclean his private chambers this past spring, and that lent me the excuse to rip and tear everywhere, to find every last bit of dirt. I am very good at finding dirt. I found a leather purse at the back of his wardrobe.”

“And you took it? That was dangerous, Lisette.”

She looked at him as if he’d just told her he could fly. “Of course I didn’t take it, Rian. I left it just where it was. After I’d counted the coins inside it. Gold coins, Rian Becket. English coins. Worth even more than their weight in gold now that the French treasury is in shambles. The purse is still there, and still full. I checked on it tonight, to be sure, before I came to you. That is why I was so late.”

“You’ve thought this out well, Lisette,” he said carefully. “There’s only one thing I don’t understand. Why would you wish to slow your escape by taking me along with you?”

“I said I was sorry, Rian Becket. I didn’t mean that you are helpless.”

“Yes, thank you yet again, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

“You said…you said you would miss me. I would miss you, too.”

Rian smiled, relaxed. This was what living with secrets did to a person. It made him leery even of people whose only thought was to help, to be a friend.

But then he thought of something else. Something Lisette had said to him that afternoon, something he’d forgotten until now, and her mention of ransom. “You think the Comte took me in because he might have some use for me?”

“I said that?”

“You did. More than once. Don’t dissemble, Lisette, I need to hear the truth. You said this employer of yours does nothing unless there is a reason. I don’t have my head completely up my— I do remember some things, even when my mind insists on wandering down its own paths.”

“Your mind dances in mists, Rian, but that is only because you nearly died. And you are better each day. This past fortnight, you have been very much improved. Very well. There are rumors—rumors only—that the Comte finds different inventive ways to keep himself wealthy. As a traitor to France, I am convinced, tossing his hat into whichever camp he sees most likely to benefit him. I can only think he means to ransom you, now that you aren’t going to die. It is not all that uncommon. Others have done this.”

Her explanation seemed reasonable, to a point. The Comte couldn’t know for certain, simply because he’d worn the uniform of an officer—granted, one especially tailored for him in London—that his family had enough money to pay the Comte a ransom sufficient to not only cover the expense of Rian’s recuperation, but also provide him with a handsome profit. Besides, now that England had won the war, the Comte could find himself dangling at the end of a rope for attempting such a trick.

Then again, he might have thought Rian’s family could be his entrée into London society if he were to escort him home to England. Was that too far-fetched a notion? The Comte wouldn’t be the only Frenchman eager to make a splash in English society. Especially one who would appear to like to be allied with the victors? Yes, this prospect made more sense.

There had to be a reason that the man had taken him in, kept him here for four long months. A hope of some reward. Certainly, from Lisette’s description of the man, he was not a saint. The man could be nothing more than an opportunist.

But old habits die hard, and the one of looking at every unknown person with suspicion harder than most, especially for a Becket.

“If you say so, Lisette, then I imagine I have to believe what you believe. One way or another, the Comte sees me as a paying guest. We leave tomorrow evening, all right?”

She nodded furiously. “You will stay here, in your bed all of the day, and I will tell everyone not to disturb you, that I am in charge, caring for your new fever. You will rest, take your medicine without arguing with me, and I will bring you food, more than enough for your needs, so that we can pack it, take it with us.”

“No more medicine, Lisette.”

“But you must, Rian! You know you’re not yet entirely well. What would I do with you, on the road, if you really were to fall into another fever?”

“Leaving me behind would be one answer,” he said, smiling at her fierce expression. “Very well, another thing for us to discuss at some other time. We should probably delay our departure until after dark.”

Once again, she nodded, and then smiled, as if delighted that he shared her opinion. “We’ll walk to the outskirts of Valenciennes, where we should be able to hire a coach. Not a good one, I’m afraid, as that might raise suspicion, but one that will serve our needs. From there, we’ll stop whenever you feel the need to rest, until we arrive at the coast. A pity your fine English uniform was ruined. Does a ship passage cost a terrible amount of money? There are twenty-two gold coins in the Comte’s purse, but I don’t know what English coins are worth.”

“More than twenty? We should be able to hire our own small boat, Lisette, with that much money. One that can take us across the Channel to Dover in a few hours. Will you feel safe from the Comte then?”

“Oh, yes, I will. And then I will be English. And then you will take me to your family and they will shower me with kisses for bringing their prodigal home safe to them. I will be the heroine, Rian,” she said, snuggling against him. “I like that.”

It was so easy to smile when Lisette was being silly. So easy to forget anything else when she slid her hand onto his belly, then trailed her fingers lower, teasing him, arousing him, taking him out of this world and into one where he was still whole.…

CHAPTER THREE

“LORINGA, YOU FRIGHTENED ME!”

“Nothing frightens you, devil’s child. If you fail when you leave us, it will be that lack of respect for fear’s warnings that will be your destruction. But you are wise to fear me while you are here.”

Lisette watched as her father’s constant companion, the self-proclaimed Voodoo priestess, plodded across the carpet and sat down heavily, glared at her in the candlelight.

“Don’t be silly. I don’t fear you,” Lisette protested as she continued to pack a small portmanteau, hastily shoving in the few bits of simple clothing she had carefully chosen for her journey. “I should have said that you startled me. That is all, Loringa. Because I don’t believe in you.”

“You say you eat only from the common pot,” Loringa reminded her, smiling, the gap between her front teeth seemingly growing wider by the day. “You believe.”

“I believe you are capable of drawing up potions, poisons. I believe that it’s you who keeps my own papa chewing on those strange leaves, so that he rarely eats, he rarely sleeps. I believe you are evil pretending to do good. But none of that makes you a priestess.”

“I am Dahomey. Your maman, she was born in New Orleans, she understood the power of the Voodoo. She entrusted your life to me, remember? Voodoo is powerful. And I am the most powerful of the powerful. I saved that boy, didn’t I? Nobody but me. He was as good as dead when he was brought here.”

Lisette didn’t have an answer for any of that, so she continued her packing, sweeping her brushes and a hand mirror from the dresser and tossing both on the bed.

“Not those, servant girl,” Loringa scolded. “A teacher’s daughter, an orphan working as a lowly servant, does not have pretty silver brushes.”

“I’ll simply tell him I stole them.”

“And that will explain away the initials carved on their backs?”

L.M.B. Lisette Marguerite Beatty. Lisette replaced the brushes and mirror without further comment. She supposed she should have thought about that herself. Truth be told, the woman really did unnerve her. Still, the brushes and mirror had been her papa’s first gift to her. She longed to take them with her, have something of him to look at, to remember why she was doing what she would do.

After Loringa left, she’d pack them. The old woman worried too much.

“Don’t you have something else to do, Loringa? Sticking pins in one of those strange dolls, saying your rosary while you burn feathers and stroke that ugly fat snake of yours? If the nuns knew what goes on here, they’d be telling me to run back to them before lightning strikes from the sky, cleaving this house—and your head—in two.”

The old woman sat back in the chair and laughed, the sound rich and full, belying her years. “You mock me because you do not understand. I have the power. Your papa, he knows this, and is grateful. Who do you think keeps him safe all these years?”

“So you say,” Lisette grumbled, closing the portmanteau and fastening the two leather straps. One day she would succeed in convincing her papa to send Loringa away, and theirs would be a normal life, the sort she had dreamed of as she grew up alone and lonely in the convent, believing herself to be without family. “So you seem to have convinced him. It makes my stomach sick.”

“Sick with the jealousy you feel. Because he needs me, and he does not need you, devil’s child. You merely amuse him, even now. But you wish to make him love you,” Loringa said, pushing herself up, her colorful skirts covering feet she could no longer house comfortably in anything other than a pair of man’s slippers she had cut holes in so that her misshapen bones could protrude in places. Her coarse, graying black hair was in a thick braid wrapped tightly about her head, her round cheeks had begun to lose their fight with the years and her hands were large, like a man’s, and gnarled, like old tree branches.

If Loringa was so powerful as she kept saying, why didn’t she fix herself—her hands, her feet? In her body, she was an old woman.

But the eyes? Loringa’s black bean eyes were alive. Too alive. And they saw too much, just as the ears heard too much.

Loringa was, to Lisette, a malevolent spirit. At the same time, it was Loringa who told her stories of other days, years ago, and of her father’s bravery, of his daring adventures in the islands. Of his sorrow.

“I do more than amuse him. He needs me, Loringa. He came for me as soon as he could. And he has allowed me this most important mission.”

The priestess shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose so. He loved the mother of the child. He is curious about you. A man grows older, and he begins to think about death, and who he might leave behind to remember him. A man is never dead, while someone remembers him. I will go before him, to make ready for him, so it will be left to you to keep his memory.”

Lisette softened, aware that Loringa truly cared for her father. “Tell me again, Loringa, please. Tell me about my mother…and the rest.”

“To give you courage as you go into battle? To remind you why you’re doing what you will do?”

“I know why,” Lisette said, pulling a cloak from the wardrobe and slinging it over her shoulders. “I know I’m a motherless child, and I know why. I know why I grew up alone, with the nuns, never knowing my parents. I know what was taken from me. But I want to hear you tell the story again.”

“So that when the time comes, if it comes, you will shed no tears for the man who makes you cry out his name in pleasure in the night.”

Lisette turned her back on the woman. “Now you go too far. Listening at keyholes? Is that your magick?”

“Why do we fight, devil’s child? My own devil’s own spawn, the ungrateful child whose life I saved for her? Is it because this is so important? Yes, that is why. He isn’t truly convinced, your papa, he doesn’t believe me when I say I can feel her, that she can feel me, that this fool Becket is truly the one who will lead where we wish to go. Even if her evil master has already escaped our justice through death, we will at least be able to deal with her, and with the others that we find with her. That, after all this time, vengeance may be within reach.”

“Forgive me, Loringa. We’re both fighting the same battle.”

“We know the name. Becket. Luck was in with us in London, even as it was out, and we learned the name. Before he died in his gaol cell, before his throat was cut and stopped him, the fool, Eccles, he did nothing but bleat the name of the man who had captured him, questioned him and then delivered him to this place called the War Office, and certain death. The names Eccles heard others call him. Becket, Becket. A soldier, surely. An officer of the English Crown.”

Lisette nodded, knowing the story. “But only that—Becket. Not even a full name. It seems so little for…for all of this.”

“It was enough for your papa, enough for a beginning. We would have moved then, hunted this man Becket down, followed him to his lair, struck then. But there was much else to occupy your papa, much work to do on this side of the Channel to keep the rest of the Red Men Gang funneling gold to the cause of France. Ah, these French. War, and more war. A king, an emperor, a king again, the little emperor come and gone a second time. Now a king yet again, fat and stupid, waiting to be plucked, keeping your papa busy as a fox in the henhouse even as he plans his return to England. Whispers and intrigue—your papa’s life’s blood.”

“It takes a very wise man to be able to know which side of the coin falls upward, time and time again, and how best to lay his bets,” Lisette said, quoting her father almost word for word. “But he didn’t forget the name, and found it on the rolls of those soldiers being sent to Belgium. Becket. Not such an unusual name. Rian Becket could be as innocent as the morning dew, and all of this for nothing.”

“As were the others who carried the name and were questioned without result. They had been innocent. And I would agree that this one is as well,” Loringa said, “were it not that I feel her. I have felt her for some time, searching me out, but so much more now that the boy is here. From the moment the name was first brought to my ears, I could feel her in my heart, fighting to crawl into my head. Your papa wanted only revenge on those who meddled in his affairs, his plans for what he calls his triumphant return to England, and he found his old enemies. God is good. This young Becket will lead us where we want to go. And then, finally, it will be over. What we’d believed to be over so long ago. I pray Baskin still lives, so that your papa can take his life from him, and the lives of his sons, his daughters, all of his seed. This is his right. As it is my right to destroy my twin.”

Lisette felt that familiar pang of discomfort at the idea that her father had arranged for five soldiers with the last name of Becket to be captured, separated from all the other English so conveniently gathered in Belgium to face down Bonaparte, had ordered the five brought to him to answer questions. The other four had died of their wounds, Loringa had told her, but when the fifth man, Rian Becket, had been delivered to the manor house, Lisette had been visiting and had intervened, begging her father to let her find out what he wanted to know.

What she did not want to know was how the other four soldiers had died. This was a part of her papa she did not understand, and she only forgave him because of his great pain, his longing for justice. Still, she prayed for those four soldiers every night, on her knees. She could not undo what had been done, but she could ease her papa’s long years of torment. She could find Geoffrey Baskin for him. After that—no, she wouldn’t think of what would happen after that.

“If you feel her now, this twin of yours, why didn’t you feel her all these years? You thought she was dead, didn’t you? Is she stronger than you are, Loringa? Was she able to make you believe she was dead?”

“Odette is not stronger than I! I am the strong one, she is the weak one. Her evil keeps her weak, and goodness makes me strong. We are marassa, and I am the good twin.”

“The other side of the same coin, yes, I remember you telling me that. Bad for every good, happy for every sad. Two sides to everything. But if you are the good twin, Loringa, I shudder to meet this Odette.”

“And that is why I am here, devil’s child. You will need protection from my dangerous sister.” She reached into one of the many pockets of her apron and extracted a thin silver chain.

Lisette leaned forward, frowning, hoping her shock didn’t show on her face. “What…what on earth is that? It…it looks like a fang. A huge, ugly brown fang.”

“The tooth of the alligator,” Loringa explained, moving her hand, setting the tooth on the end of the chain to swinging lazily in the air. “Fed by all of my most powerful ingredients saved from the islands, soaked in feuilles trois paroles in the mavoungou bottle, used to make the broth, you understand, the migan. This is my gift to you, this gad, this protection from the bad loa. But you will still need your wits about you at all times. Odette worships the bad loa.”

“And you expect me to wear that monstrosity around my neck? How could I hide it from Rian Becket?”

“Keep it with you. Find a way,” Loringa ordered, pushing the necklace on Lisette.

She grabbed the thing gingerly by its chain, quickly laid it on the bed. To touch the tooth itself, she felt sure, would be to have it burn her palm. Be calm, stay calm, she warned herself. Don’t let Loringa see. “Only if you tell me again about my mother. Tell me, while I finish packing up my things for my daring escape from my lascivious employer.”

Loringa sighed, returned to her chair.

“The story does not change with the telling. It was good, for many years between your papa and Geoffrey Baskin. They were partners, friends. The Letters of Marque, the adventures, a share in the booty allowed us by the Crown. Not pirates, not buccaneers, child. Privateers. All of the adventure, your father would say, winking at me, but all within the law. They would both return to England one day, rich men, as others had done before them.”

“And then Papa sailed to New Orleans,” Lisette said, at last slipping the gad into the pocket of her cloak.

“A blessed day, a cursed day. He met your maman, your sweet maman, and brought her back to the islands with him as his wife. And Geoffrey Baskin saw her, broke the Lord’s Commandment, coveted her.”

“And, wanting her, he betrayed Papa.”

“Your papa wished to leave the islands, but Geoffrey was not ready to go, to end it. He was always greedy, and he had turned to the blood thirst. More, he always wanted more. He wanted your maman. Even as she nursed you at her breast, he wanted her. I saw it, I felt it, I tried to warn your papa, but he trusted his good friend, Geoffrey Baskin.”

Lisette nodded. What she and Loringa spoke of was a story, a tragedy, but it was also Lisette’s history. “Papa trusted him when he said he wanted only one last voyage, one last adventure together, one with more bounty in it than either of them would ever need. But he had already betrayed Papa, lied to him, and when Papa sailed into the middle of what was supposed to be a group of unarmed merchant ships, it was to find that he was outmanned, outnumbered. And worse, he’d been tricked into attacking English ships. He lost almost everything, but he survived.”

“Only to return to his island home to find your maman dead. Everyone dead. A slaughter that left no man, woman or child alive. Even the animals—nothing breathed on our island. And all the booty, all your papa would take to England to begin a new life, now in the bowels of his partner’s ships. I watched from the trees, keeping you silent in my arms, while Geoffrey Baskin raped your mother for refusing him, for spitting in his face, for cutting him with the knife she had hidden beneath her skirts. Twice he raped her, on the sand, in front of everyone, and then he turned her over to his men. In my dreams, I still hear Marguerite’s screams. I could do nothing, child, Odette’s evil paralyzing me. It was all I could do to pray, invoke the good loa to keep you shielded from her eyes, for your papa would need you in his sorrow.”

Lisette blinked back tears for the mother she’d never known. “I thank you for that, Loringa. I know we have our differences, but I thank you for that. I only wish Papa could have kept me with him.”

“To live like him, branded a pirate, forced to flee the hangman? The nuns kept you safe, and your papa hunted Geoffrey Baskin and his traitorous crew, seeking vengeance. But it was not to be. He learned that Baskin and both his ships, overburdened by the weight of so much treasure, had floundered in a storm, that God had meted out His own justice. How your father hated God for taking his revenge from him. I despaired of your papa then, that he would destroy himself, but there was still you, his Marguerite’s child, and he would rebuild, find another way to fortune.”

“Helping Bonaparte, taking sides against the England that would have sentenced him to hang if they’d found him,” Lisette said, glancing at the clock on the mantel, knowing it was time she went to Rian Becket, led him away on a moonlit path of lies. “The same England he wanted to return to two years ago and longs to return to now, to live in the open at last. He says I’m to have a Season, but that is probably impossible now, after what I’ve done. But I don’t care.”

“A discussion for another day. Your papa, he always has his reasons, and he has always planned to return to England, no longer a fugitive, with or without you, foolish girl. But now this Becket, this man Odette protects, this man who could know Geoffrey Baskin? I am right, I know I am, and your father will at last get his revenge.”

“As will I,” Lisette said fervently as Loringa once more pushed herself up from the chair and left the bedchamber without another word.

Lisette sat down on the edge of the bed, her eyes dry now, her resolve strengthened. Geoffrey Baskin and his crew of murderers had taken her mother from her, had nearly destroyed her father, had stolen so many years of her life. Nothing she did now, to help her papa find this man, would be too much for her. Nothing.

Especially now.

How much did she believe in Loringa and her Voodoo? That was a question she didn’t want to ask herself, didn’t want to answer. Just as she was now going to keep a secret from the woman, and from her papa, who wouldn’t allow her to leave here tonight if she told him what she now knew for certain.

Lisette sighed, got up from the bed, and opened the bottom drawer of the bureau, extracting the small velvet pouch she’d hidden there along with Rian Becket’s other few possessions she’d taken from him that first night he had been brought to the manor house. His belt buckle, his gold epaulets, the coins she’d found in his bloodied purse. She plucked at the strings until the pouch opened, and then dumped its contents on the bedspread.

She reached into the pocket of her cloak, at last giving in to her excitement, her fear; her hands trembling, her breathing ragged, painful.

And laid the gad’s twin beside it…

WHEN THE DOOR to his bedchamber finally opened some ten minutes after two o’clock in the morning, Rian was there to grab Lisette by the elbow and pull her quickly into the room, shutting the door behind her.

“You’re late,” he told her once he’d kissed her roughly, released her. “I was about to come hunting you.”

Lisette put up her hand, stroked his cheek. “Such impatience. I had to wait until the house was quiet. Cook was fussing about in the kitchens, demanding my help as she prepares vegetables for the Comte’s return. Word was sent ahead. He arrives as early as tomorrow, so we have almost left it too late. You feel feverish. Are you certain you can walk to the place where I have decided to rent the coach? It is a distance of at least two miles across the fields.”

Rian knew he was far from well, but he didn’t need to hear Lisette say so. “I’ll be fine. What’s that?”

“This?” She held up the small portmanteau. “You expect me to travel without fresh linen? Without tooth powder? I think not, Rian Becket. I have provided for you as well.”

“Yes, you have. I hope the Comte wasn’t too fond of these breeches. Give me that.”

She held the portmanteau away from him. “Don’t worry, Rian Becket, I will carry it. But you, the man, should take charge of this, yes? There will be less questions that way.”

He watched as she reached into the pocket of her cloak and extracted a small bag. It was heavy with coins as she placed it in his hand. “Your Comte may not come after us in particular, Lisette, but he might be tempted to retrieve his coins. Do they hang thieves in France?”

She shrugged. “Madame Guillotine, I would suppose. Every village still has her. Much neater, or so I’ve heard it told. But he will not find us, not if we move quickly. Where is the cloak I brought you this morning?”

“On the bed, beneath the covers, in case anyone decided to come check on me,” Rian told her, and then watched as she uncovered the thing and brought it to him. “And the food, Lisette. It’s wrapped inside a pillowcase and in the drawer beside the bed.”

“You make a very good conspirator, Rian Becket,” Lisette told him, retracing her steps and returning with the pillowcase. She opened the portmanteau and shoved the case inside, redid the straps. “And now, if there is nothing else, I suggest we use the front stairs, to avoid any of the servants who might still be awake.”

“Leaving by the front door? That’s daring. And a good suggestion, if you have the key.”

She smiled and pulled a large iron key from that same pocket in her cloak. “It hangs on a nail with all the others, on a board just outside the kitchens. Or it did, until I plucked it up. Are you frightened, Rian? I’m frightened. What will they do if they catch us?”

Rian had thought about that for most of the day, and didn’t much care for any of the answers that had occurred to him. Mostly, having poured his daily draught of medicine into the top of his boot as he’d distracted Lisette by asking her if she heard carriage wheels outside the window, he felt alert, much more awake than he had in weeks. If the fever was also back, that was a small price to pay to feel more in control of himself.

He’d have no more of draughts, of vile-tasting medicines, for now. Time enough for both once he and Lisette were safely at Becket Hall, and Odette was fussing over him like a hen with one chick.

He was glad he was going home, after avoiding even the thought of his return for so long. His brothers, his sisters. Ainsley and Jacko and all the others. Yes, they’d fuss over him and make him uncomfortable, they’d look at him with sympathy in their eyes. But they could all move beyond that, someday.

But now was not the time to feel nostalgic. It was time now to ask himself some very important questions.

Why had he been brought here from the battlefield he felt certain had been many miles away? Lisette’s answer, that it was a matter of ransom, didn’t seem logical to him, not when his thinking was clearer.

Who, precisely, was the Comte Beltrane?

Was it happenstance that Lisette had come to his bed?

Was it convenient that she felt this need to escape the manor house, even more convenient that she had chosen to take him with her?

Who was it, he tried to remember, who first suggested she help him return to his home?

Most importantly—could he trust her? Could he trust his family’s safety to her?

“Rian? You stand here like a statue. Are you afraid to leave? Because I will go without you.”

He looked at her intently. “You’d do that, Lisette? Leave without me?”

“Absolument!”

And he relaxed. “I believe you would. What a heartless little creature you are,” he told her, smiling as he depressed the door latch. “Now hush.”

He stepped into the hallway, listened for a full minute, and then motioned for her to join him. Together, careful to keep to the carpets laid not quite end-to-end along the hallway, they made their way down the long staircase that was broken by a marble landing.

They were halfway down the remaining stairs when it was Lisette who grabbed his arm, held him back.

Rian listened, and heard it. Voices, coming from the drawing room directly across the width of the foyer from them.

French. Two men, speaking French. Well, a fat lot of good that was going to do him, Rian decided, looking to Lisette.

She put a finger to her lips, leaning her head forward, as if to hear better.

And then she turned to him, her eyes wide and frightened, her cheeks so suddenly pale he worried that she might be about to faint.

“Le Comte,” she whispered, and then pressed her hand to her mouth as if holding back a sob.

Rian looked to the slightly opened doors. Damn. He wanted to see the man for himself. Confront him. Thank him, play the grateful guest—but also confront him. Attempt to take his measure. Measure his motives.

He started forward, managing to go down two more steps before Lisette nearly tackled him, trying to hold him back.

“I want to see,” he told her quietly.

“And me?” she asked him, her whisper fierce. “You’d do this to me? You’d be so cruel?”

“Damn.” With one last look toward the drawing room, Rian took Lisette’s hand and they made their way quickly and quietly to the large double front doors.

Lisette’s hands were shaking so badly that Rian took the key from her and inserted it in the lock, alternating his gaze between the lock and the open doors to the drawing room.

The latch, when it turned, sounded to him like cannonshot.

They both held their breath. Rian counted to ten, slowly, before he moved once more.

Then they were outside, the door closed once more behind them, and Lisette was pulling him down the few marble steps to the gravel drive. “Hurry, hurry.”

This time Rian did shake her off, pushing her as she frantically kept trying to drag him away from the manor house, so that she landed on her rump in the gravel, the portmanteau beside her.

“Sorry,” he said shortly, moving to his right, toward the well-lit windows that fronted the drawing room. But it was no good, the windows were too high. He stood very still, attempting to marshal his thoughts. Looked all around, for something to stand on. There was nothing.

Except that tree, on the other side of the gravel drive.

Rian ran for it, stood beneath it, measured his chances of reaching that first low branch and swinging himself up onto it.

With two good hands, he could do it easily. With one?

“Help me,” he told Lisette, who had picked herself up from the gravel and was now glaring at him as she held the portmanteau in one hand and slapped at the back of her skirts with the other.

“I should murder you,” she told him, still whispering. “You want me in his bed? You’re that cruel?”

“This is no time for dramatics, Lisette,” he told her, holding back a smile. The woman was livid! She was livid, and he felt alive for the first time in months. “See if you can help boost me up to that first branch. I want to see this host of mine.”

“No! He is old, he is ugly. He is inconsiderate, coming home a day early. Bâtard. Rian, please. You promised we’d go. We must hire the coach and be gone before sunrise.”

Rian looked once more to the tree, once more to the windows.

His good mood soured. He was useless, less than useless. He couldn’t even climb a damn silly tree!

Lisette was crying softly now, and his decision was made for him.

No matter what he wondered about the man in the drawing room, Lisette was who she said she was. An innocent, frightened half out of her mind. And his savior. It was enough that he would remember the manor house, be able to guide his brothers back to it once he returned home.

He held out his hand to Lisette and, together, they began the long walk to the outskirts of Valenciennes.

CHAPTER FOUR

LISETTE COLLAPSED ONTO the thin, uncomfortable seat of the hired coach and cursed her papa. She’d been shaking inside for over three hours, and still felt none too steady.

What had he been thinking?

To add authenticity to her escape?

She could still feel the clench in her stomach as she’d heard her papa’s voice, realized he was no more than twenty feet away. And mocking her. The things he’d been saying! Hinting at filthy things, about how he would bed her, teach her how to pleasure a man the way he wanted to be pleasured. And then he’d laughed, both he and his friend Renard, that horrid, sharp-nosed man who made Lisette’s flesh crawl.

She believed she could understand why he had done what he’d done, said what he’d said. So that she would look truly appalled, and Rian would be given yet another reason to trust her. But did her papa have to say those things to the terrible Renard?

She disliked her papa’s friends, all of them. They laughed too loudly, they drank too much, and when her papa was not watching, they looked at her too hard. But she didn’t tell her papa that, because these were his crew, he’d told her, and they had been with him from the beginning, in the islands, and they were the only men he could truly trust in a world that each year found a new way to go utterly mad.

He had other friends, her papa. Important, powerful friends. Like the man, Charles Talleyrand, who had joined them for dinner one night while she had been in Paris with her papa. That man had dressed well, had spoken well, was a gentleman of privilege. But he had also looked at her too hard when Papa wasn’t watching.

Sister Marie Auguste had been right. Men were no more than a necessary evil.

“Here now, you’re shivering,” she said, turning to one of those necessary evils, frowning as she saw the perspiration on his brow, the white line around his tightly compressed lips. “I don’t understand this, Rian. You were well, yesterday.”

“I hadn’t walked for hours in a cold drizzle yesterday,” he said, pulling his cloak more fully around himself. “Two miles, Lisette? It was three miles if it was a step.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you’d come with me, if you knew it was that far. But we’re safe now, on our way to the coast, with dawn only an hour behind us. They will have missed me by now, and you as well. How soon do you think they will come looking for us?”

“I don’t understand much French, Lisette, but I heard the Comte. I heard him say your name, and I listened to the tone in his voice. He’s not going to let you go so easily.”

“Or you,” Lisette reminded him, lest he tell her they should part ways, so that he could travel home safely, without being chased all the way by her papa. After all, he was a man, and therefore probably selfish at his core. “I told you. The Comte, he does nothing without a reason. I don’t know why he wants you, but he does.”

“So much for believing in Good Samaritans,” Rian said, smiling. But his teeth were chattering, and Lisette quickly slipped out of her own damp cloak, to lay it across his chest. “Damn. Maybe I do need one of those vile draughts of yours.”

Lisette reached down to open the portmanteau and made a great business out of searching it for the bottle of medicine she knew wasn’t there. She’d had enough of Loringa’s potions, confusing him, keeping him perhaps too muddled to find his way home. “It isn’t…I…I can’t find it, Rian!” She pulled underclothing from the portmanteau and dug deeper. “It’s—no, wait, here it— C’est une tragédie! I have brought the wrong bottle! It was dark, and I was fearful of lighting a candle. Oh, Rian, no!”

She held up the dark blue bottle with its cork seal.

He looked at it owlishly. “What is it?”

“Not the medicine for your fever,” Lisette said, sighing. “It is laudanum, to make you sleep. For the headache, for the pain from your wounds. It will do nothing for your fever. Rian, I am so sorry. You will die now.”

He looked at her, one eyebrow raised, and then laughed. “My loyal nurse cheers me no end. I won’t die, Lisette. I’m weeks past dying. But I will avail myself of some of that laudanum, once we’ve stopped for the night.”

“Because you’re in pain? Where? Tell me. Where is the pain?”

“In my ears. I keep hearing silly chattering in my ears.”

“You are not amusing, Rian Becket. Not at all.” Lisette replaced the bottle and threw the underclothes back in on top of it. But this was good. He would take the laudanum instead, as she had hoped, and he would sleep. She needed no more of the confusion she found when he held her in his arms at night, as he made love to her. “I liked you better when you were sleeping. My pretty poet, with the face of an angel. I will mix some with water for you when we reach Petit Rume.”

She felt his heated fingers against her nape as he took hold of her collar and pulled her back up straight on the seat.

“We’re not heading toward Petit Rume, Lisette,” he told her, and she looked at him in very real shock. “I begged a rude map from the fellow back at the stables, and he drew me the most direct route to the Channel.”

Lisette nodded furiously. “Yes, yes. And Petit Rume is a logical step in that journey.”

“Exactly. Think, Lisette. We’re fleeing the Comte, a man you believe will follow you, try to bring you back to the manor house. He would expect you to head for the Channel, and England. After all, you are English, and you say you have no one in France to care for you. It’s only, as you said, logical. So, instead of traveling west, as I assured the stable owner we would do, we are heading directly north.”

“North?” Lisette fought an urge to pull down the side window, stick out her head, look for the men who were following after them. “But what is north?”

“Belgium.”

“But…but—”

“We are no more than forty miles distant from Brussels, although there is no reason to travel that far before heading to the west once more. I’ve studied maps of Belgium, Lisette, so much so that I can very nearly see them in my mind. I’ve ridden the miles between Brussels and Nivelles to the south, and Tubize to the east, reconnoitering for Wellington. The land is easy to travel, and the people friendly to the English. We’ll make our way to Ostend, where I first landed, and take ship there.”

“But…but wouldn’t the Comte think you would do that?” Lisette asked him, racking her brains for a way out of this unexpected disaster. “He has to know you might take us to more familiar…territory?” She crossed her arms in front of her. “So my way is better, yes?”

“No way is better, Lisette,” he said, rubbing at his forehead as if his head ached. “Yours is one way, mine is another. I chose mine.”

Lisette wasn’t ready to give up. “But mine is probably faster.”

“Yes, and if I were to leave you when we next stop to rest the horses, and used some of the Comte’s lovely English gold to buy myself a mount, I could be in Ostend tomorrow night. Now let me rest, all right? Either I rest, or I’ll soon be casting up my accounts all over your shoe tops.”

“Your stomach is sick? Then perhaps I should give you some of the laudanum now?”

He shook his head, and then winced, clearly having caused himself pain. “I need my wits about me, Lisette. And, when next we stop, I need to search out a pistol, a sword. I feel naked, and I’m supposed to be defending you.”

“That’s very nice of you, Rian Becket,” Lisette grumbled, settling against the back of the seat, knowing she had lost the battle. “When we are finally safe with your family, and if you have not had occasion to throw up on my shoes, I will tell them all how brave you were.”

How brave you were…

Rian squeezed his eyes more firmly shut, his body swaying slightly with the movement of the coach, wishing away the words that kept repeating, repeating, inside his head as he floated in and out of a dream.

Brave? Had he been brave? He didn’t remember, couldn’t remember. God only knew how hard he’d been trying to recall what had happened that day, how he had come to be wounded, how he had been brought to the Comte’s manor house.

A residence approximately three miles outside of Valenciennes. He knew that now, too. And after seeing it drawn on the stable owner’s crude map, he knew that Valenciennes was more than forty miles away from the battlefield now spoken of as the battle of Waterloo.

It made no sense. None of it. Who rescued a wounded soldier from the field and then moved him to a place more than two days’ travel away?

Why hadn’t he thought of all of this sooner, as he’d begun to recover from his wounds? He’d tried to rouse himself, he really had, but then he’d fade away again, become interested in a sunset, the way light played across Lisette’s hair, the smoothness and sweet smell of his sheets, even the texture of the meat in his mouth as he chewed it. He could stare for hours at the trees outside his window, fascinated by the way the passing breeze stirred the leaves into pictures for him…houses, boats, even prettily spotted cows.

Cows in trees. How asinine.

Yet it had been so easy to keep drifting away, to be enthralled by pretty pictures, pretty colors, almost able to forget that he was no longer a whole man, even stop feeling tingles and itches in a hand that was no longer there.

It damn well had been easier without the fever.

But no. No more medicine, and at least now he wouldn’t have to find ways to pour it away rather than drink it. Because he had to concentrate his mind. Lisette depended on him. And he might have put her in more danger than she could possibly comprehend.

So he let his new, waking dream take him back to that day, the morning of the battle. Pushed himself to remember.

He’d spent the morning riding out, relaying Wellington’s orders, carrying messages back to the Duke as he and Bonaparte waited for the mud to dry on the field between them, waited for the first man to give the order to begin the battle.

Yes, he remembered that. Jupiter had been magnificent. Never tiring, always ready to give his all for his master, even as the long day wore on and there were more messages, requiring more riding. Dodging French patrols, galloping over rough terrain, never shying at the crash of the cannons, the sharp barks of the rifle volleys.

One last command, one last mission, even as dusk came early with the smoke from the cannons, the rifles. One more, and he would be done. They would take the day, he was almost sure of it, and it was a message of a small victory that he carried back to Wellington with him, tucked up inside his jacket.

Rian’s breath came faster in his half sleep. Because he was remembering things he had not been able to remember until this point. He imagined he could even see himself, as he stood to one side, an observer. Watching himself as he would a character in a play.

The shot had come out of nowhere, only a half mile from Wellington’s headquarters, an area he’d supposed safe. Jupiter had immediately stumbled, but not gone down. When Rian urged the horse forward, the animal responded, even as Rian could see blood running down the bay’s flank.

A shelter, just ahead. A bloody cowshed. Get Jupiter inside. Hide him as you draw your sword, cock your pistol, pray there is no pursuit.

No, Jupiter, don’t go down. Stay on your feet. Don’t give up.

Damn! They’re coming. Too late to steal Jupiter, you bastards. You’ve shot him. How many out there? Three? Five? Leave Jupiter for a moment, step carefully outside the cowshed, listen for the enemy.

The sharp crack of a rifle.

God! My leg! I can’t stand.

I’d so wanted to see Becket Hall again….

Rian sat forward with a start, his eyes open wide, seeing the men advancing toward him, speaking a mix of English and French, gesturing to the one holding his shoulder, wounded by the single shot of Rian’s lone pistol. They put their own pistols away, advancing only with their swords drawn. Smiling. Hands, reaching for him as he propped himself up on one knee, swinging his sword in a wide arc…

“It makes no sense!”

“What? Rian? Rian! Wake up, you’re dreaming!”

He blinked, shook his head, fell back against the seat as Lisette produced a handkerchief from somewhere and began wiping at his perspiration-drenched face.

“You’re awake now? You said it makes no sense. What makes no sense, Rian Becket?”

He swallowed, his mouth dry, so that the sides of his throat seemed to stick together, so that he coughed. “Nothing…nothing. You said it, Lisette. A dream. I was having a dream.”

“Not a pretty one,” she said, tucking the handkerchief back into her pocket. “We must stop for the day, Rian. I’ll tell the coachman.”

He held her back as she went to reach up to the small door that opened to the base of the coachman’s box. “No. We need to be as well out of France as possible before we stop. And then I’ll give you at least half the money in the purse, so that you can travel on your own. You’re not safe with me.”

She pressed her palm to his brow. “It’s the fever. You’re out of your head, Rian Becket. I won’t leave you. You’re ill. I’ve heard of this, of soldiers wounded in the stomach lasting through the hot months, only to succumb when all thought the danger had passed. Do you have pain? In the stomach?”

“No, not right now,” he told her, refusing to shake his head, because it might explode. “Only another damnable headache.”

“Then it is settled,” Lisette said, reaching once more for her portmanteau on the floor of the coach. “We have no water to mix it with, so you take just a sip from the bottle. It will ease the pain. Cook is always sipping it straight from the bottle, when her tooth hurts. It won’t harm you.”

Rian eyed the bottle warily. He’d told himself he’d had enough of medicines, and thought more clearly without them. Had begun to remember that last day. But was that better or worse than not remembering?

He knew at least enough now to keep him moving. He had to get home, back to Becket Hall. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

He’d been so busy bemoaning the loss of his arm, he’d allowed himself to wallow in self-pity; to drift, to dream, never once thinking of his family, of the danger he knew always existed for those at Becket Hall.

But he wanted the medicine, any medicine that would rid him of this terrible headache, this feeling that his body was both hot and cold, and that, although he knew better, he could swear small insects were running up and down his flesh, burrowing beneath his skin.

Once he was home, had spoken with his father and the others, told them about the mysterious Comte, then they could sort it all out and he could forego the medicines, put himself in Odette’s care. She’d know a better way to rid him of these damn fevers.

“Trust me, Rian Becket,” Lisette said, uncorking the bottle, holding it in front of him. “You’ve just to tell me where we are going. I will get you safely home.”

He reached for the bottle with his shaking hand, silently cursed himself for being weak, and took a deep swallow.

WITH THE THANKFULLY once again compliant Rian settled in his bed and sleeping soundly, Lisette wrapped her cloak more firmly about her and walked across the cleared area around the small country inn, heading for the cover of the trees. She didn’t look left or right, but only kept up her measured pace, her heart beating quickly as she rehearsed what she would say.

If the men were here, if the increasingly difficult to manage Rian Becket had not succeeded in losing them.

“Mam’selle? Mam’selle Beatty?”

She glanced behind her, to make sure no one could see her from the inn windows, and then stepped to her right, deeper into the stand of trees.

“I feared you may have lost us,” she said, looking at the three men in her papa’s employ.

“We do not become lost so easily. But it was to be Petit Rume, mam’selle,” Thibaud, the tallest of the three, said. Scolded.

Lisette looked at him levelly as she lied. She was, alas, becoming a very accomplished liar. If she wasn’t already well on the path to Hell for sleeping with Rian Becket without benefit of vows, she would say an extra rosary for this new sin. “The Englisher changed the route,” she told Thibaud. “He takes us to Calais, where he says he has friends.”

“Christ’s teeth! Friends? Our man is in Calais? It was thought the coast of England, for certain. This makes things easier for us. I have no taste for the Channel in an October storm.”

“You stupid man. How easy to cross from Calais to the English coast! Dover, this place called Folkestone—so many more. Praise God the nuns forced geography on me, yes? If I am to be followed by fools.”

“Fools, is it?” The man took a step forward, his hands drawn up into fists. “I have followed the man since before he spilled his seed into your mother. But women are good for that one thing only. If you were not your father’s daughter…”

“But I am, and he would tie your guts in a bow around your filthy neck if any harm were to come to me,” Lisette reminded him, her chin high even as her insides quaked in fear. “You’d be wise to remember that. Wiser still to get yourselves to Calais ahead of us, rather than to continue to follow, and perhaps be seen.”

“You keep him drugged with Loringa’s potions. He looks nowhere other than beneath the skirts you lift for him so he can poke you like some cheap whore.”

Before she could consider the consequences, Lisette slapped the man, hard, across the face. “You are a dead man speaking to me, Thibaud.”

Thibaud grabbed her wrist and squeezed, hard, as he brought his face, and his foul breath, to an inch away from her nose. “I would be so much better, you know. With two hands to stroke you, to tease you until you cry out in your great pleasure. Listen! I can already hear you. Thibaud, Thibaud, my magnificent prince!”

The two men behind Thibaud laughed as Lisette struggled wildly to be free of him.

At last he let her go, pushing her to the ground, where she remained, struggling to breathe. Was it monsters like this that Geoffrey Baskin had handed her poor mother over to that day?

Thibaud stood over her, his huge fists jammed into his hips, his smile gone. “We do what we do, mam’selle whore. We do what your papa has ordered, and take no orders from women. A woman once cost us much, didn’t she, my good friends, and that will not happen again.”

The other two men mumbled their agreement as Lisette finally dared to get to her feet, careful now to keep her distance.

“My…my maman? That’s who you mean, don’t you? Because Geoffrey Baskin coveted her?”

Again, Thibaud laughed, the roar of that raucous laughter causing more than a few of the slumbering birds above them to stir, fly away. “Is that the story he tells? Ha! Then, yes, that’s how it was. Yes, little whore, the gospel according to your so holy papa.”

Before Lisette could react, Thibaud had hold of her wrist again, painful now from how tightly he had held it the first time. But she was so angry; she didn’t care about the pain. “Don’t you dare mock my father and his love of my mother!”

“I mock nothing. But I don’t die twice for the same mistake.” Thibaud leered down at her. “Bah! I am too old for this! The past is gone. Is it not enough to be fat and happy now, my friends, to die in our beds, with two pretty young trollops tucked in beside us? But enough! Go! We will follow as we were ordered. God curse us for it, we always follow.”

Lisette wanted to stay, insist Thibaud explain his words, but she had already said too much, perhaps heard too much. Enough to reinforce her growing misgivings about what she had already been told this past year since her papa had taken her from the convent, enough to cause her nervous concern over what she had already done.

Because, somewhere between the plan and the execution, Lisette had decided that she would do this her own way, send Thibaud to Calais, and proceed to Ostend with Rian Becket, without these three men dogging her steps.

But none of it because she had begun to question her papa. No, most certainly not!

And, please God, not because, as she was sure the lout, Thibaud, would declare, she was a stupid woman who had begun to care too much for the sad and injured and so beautiful Rian Becket.

CHAPTER FIVE

RIAN WOKE SLOWLY at first, and then all at once, as he realized he was somehow lying in a bed, not riding in that damned, badly sprung coach. He sat up, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the fading light of the small, dying fire in the grate slowly separating that darkness into light and shadow.

How had he gotten here? The obvious answer was that he’d been carried, like some sleeping infant.

“That settles the thing,” he muttered, squeezing hard at the bridge of his nose. “No more laudanum. My head feels like I spent the night living in a bottle.”

He climbed out of the bed, but not before realizing that Lisette was not sleeping beside him. Where, exactly, were they, he wondered. Where were his clothes? More importantly, where was Lisette?

“Lisette?”

“Here, Rian Becket, at the window,” he heard her say, and he turned toward the sound, barely able to make out the heavy draperies that were closed tight.

“Hiding?” he asked, pulling back one side of the drape, to see her fully dressed in her plain gray gown, and perched on the window seat, her knees drawn up to her chin. “Or did my inconsiderate snores chase you?”

She had her arms wrapped about her legs, her chin on her knees, and was looking out into the darkness rather than at him. “I thought someone should stand watch,” she told him, at last unbending herself and lowering her bare feet to the floor. “The Comte’s men could still find us, for all your clever maneuverings. Which, by the way, have maneuvered us into this sorry inn and to its damp sheets. And the mutton at dinner was tough and stringy.”

“Then I’m happy I missed it, even though I’m starving. A thousand apologies, your grace. I had no idea you were more accustomed to luxury.”

“You mock me,” she said, brushing past him, having gathered up her half boots from the window seat.

Her mud-crusted half boots. Not the dried mud he would expect from their walk to the stable yard, but mud still fresh, wet. He could smell it.

He took the half boots from her hand. “You’ve been out walking?”

“I believe it is called patrolling,” she said, snatching the half boots from him and moving across the small room, to the bed. She pushed herself up onto it and pulled first one boot, then the other, over her feet. “We can not all rest like innocent children, unaware, when the world can come tumbling down on our heads at any time.”

She was so suddenly indignant, he held back his laughter at her expense. “Ah, not your grace, but my little General Lisette, patrolling our perimeter. And so, General, as you mention time, isn’t it still the middle of the night? Where do you think you’re going now?”

“Not me, Rian Becket. Us. And we are leaving. There is a man downstairs, in the tavern, who seems suspicious. I am not sure, but I may have seen him before, although I was careful not to let him see me. We must not linger here. I was waiting only for you to wake.”

“Bloody hell, Lisette,” Rian said, reaching for his boots, knowing he couldn’t pull them on by himself. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

She shrugged. “I told you a sip, only. The laudanum lets go in its own time. It would have been fruitless to even attempt to wake you.”

Considering the fact that she’d managed to have him carried to this room without awakening him, he supposed she was right. “No more laudanum, Lisette. Even if I ask for it. Even if I beg for it. You understand?”

“But you need your rest, Rian,” she told him as she took one of his boots and motioned for him to take his own turn sitting on the edge of the bed, which was the only place to sit in this small room under the eaves. “What do I do with a man dead from fever?”

“We’re back to that, are we? You say a quick prayer if the spirit so moves you, and leave his body in a ditch after withdrawing the bag of coins from his pocket—you might also be able to sell these boots for a good price—and strike out again for the coast. Damn, I hate needing your help this way.”

She knelt before him on the floorboards and struggled to push on the boot that had been fashioned especially for him by the talented Ollie in Becket Village, and fit like a second skin. “And then what, Rian Becket? I take myself to your home and tell them I had been bringing their son back to them—before I left him dead and barefoot in a ditch? Do you think they’d slay the fatted calf for me then, hmm? And I don’t even know where to go, do I, to deliver this so sad news? Where are we going?”

“Home,” Rian said shortly, pushing his foot deeper into the boot.

She glared up at him even as she picked up the other boot. “Maybe I don’t believe you, Rian Becket. Perhaps you are taking me to London, to sell me to some low brothel.”

Now Rian did laugh. “Where on earth do you get an idea like that?”

She tugged and tugged on the second boot. “Sometimes ladies would come to the convent, sent there by their husbands who wanted them to learn to be more obedient. They would bring novels with them and share them with me.”

“The convent, Lisette?”

She gave one last pull on the leather straps, and the boot slid up and over his calf. “My papa, he would sometimes teach the nuns English. I told you that. You remember nothing, Rian. How can I trust you to know how to get home?”

Rian looked down at her, trying to engage her gaze, but she was already getting to her feet once more, moving away from him. What a pretty girl. How little he really knew about her. “I don’t remember you saying anything about a convent.”

“Men never listen to women, when they speak of themselves. Only when the woman speaks of the man. It’s the way of men, to listen only when they are the subject of the conversation.”

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