A Midnight Dance (34 page)

How many nights had he taken himself in hand and drained his cock thinking about it?

He felt his cock thicken as the images swirled in his mind. He could already hear her delicious cries of agony.

Just when he’d grown tired of fantasizing, just when he thought he’d have to devise a plan to make it a reality, her father had fortuitously died.

And Leon had wasted no time rushing to her.

“Fucking little whore.” He whipped his goblet at the wall, gaining little satisfaction when it shattered. All his patience and cajoling had been for naught.

Intending to pay her a visit to offer his “condolences,” he’d spotted Sabine and her cousins on a cart that eve. Not knowing where they were heading in the middle of the night, his instincts had urged him to follow her discreetly. What he got in the end was a chest of silver and the shock of his life.

He never imagined he’d see her enter a camp of men. Or be witness to her deflowering.

He couldn’t believe she’d tossed her virginity away on Jules de Moutier. A man who wasn’t even a
noble
any longer. A man whom
he
outranked. And judging from her mewing and bucking, she loved every minute of it. He supposed he’d always sensed she had the soul of a harlot.

But she was supposed to be
his
personal harlot.

And she would be. He loathed being denied. She had no idea what he was capable of when he wanted something. She had no idea how elaborate and far-reaching his schemes had been.

“The Moutiers got what they deserved. Isabelle got what she deserved. And so, too, did Sébastien—everyone, in fact, who got in my way.”

This was far from over. He wasn’t through with Sabine Laurent. Or Jules de Moutier.

Jules, Luc, and their party of twenty men marched across the grounds. Dragged from the château with a sword to his back, Gaubert, the Archbishop’s assistant, was reluctantly leading their party to the Archbishop’s chapel. Focused on the ever-nearing stone structure located past the shrubs and statues in a remote corner of the gardens, Jules’s dark mood was a sharp contrast to the bright early morning sun.

Only twenty feet away . . . Only a few heartbeats more . . .
Jésus-Christ
, after five years he’d have his confession, then revel in it.

Jules reached the door first and placed his hand on the latch.

“At last the time has come,” Luc said at his side.

It had. Drawing his sword, Jules threw open the door and rushed inside. The heavy stench hit him hard and slid down his throat. He choked back a cough. The sight before him cleaved him where he stood.

He froze.

So did his blood.

While the men recoiled at the foul fetid air, he could do no more than to take in the Archbishop, quiet and still, his swollen head tilted to one side, a grotesque purplish blue, as he hung by a rope from one of the ceiling beams.

Jules lowered his sword slowly.

“NO-O-O-O-O!” The cry came from Gaubert but echoed in Jules’s soul. The assistant pushed past the men and raced to his master. Dropping to his knees he wailed, the words “No!” and “Why?” his grief-stricken chant.

“Dieu . . .”
Luc said.

Incredulous, Jules approached. The abominable odor increased the closer he got. The only man who could end Jules’s turmoil was suspended off the floor. A noose around his neck.

“Commander.” The urgency in the voice dragged Jules’s attention to one of his men. He held a note. “This was on the ground.”

Jules sheathed his sword and took the note.

“Cut him down,” Jules ordered, his heart heavy.

Merde
. Was this nightmare ever to end? Was he ever to know why their lives had been destroyed?

As one man righted the chair that lay on its side under the Archbishop’s dangling feet, Jules hauled Gaubert up.

“Explain this.” Jules shoved the note at him.

The man was pale. The parchment quaked in Gaubert’s hands as he read its contents.

“I—I can make no sense of it, monsieur, any more than I can make sense of—of—” Choking back an anguished sob, he glanced at the Archbishop, who was being freed from his noose.

“What woman does he speak of?” Jules demanded, his patience frayed to a mere thread—ready to snap. “Why did he turn against my father?”

“Your—Your father, monsieur? Who would that be?”

Jules snatched the note out of the assistant’s hands and held it inches from his face. “The Marquis de Blainville!”

Gaubert’s eyes widened. “Forgive me, my lord. I didn’t know who you—”

“Answer. His. Questions,” Luc ordered.

The older man swallowed. “I—I don’t know anything. The monsignor was a private man. I do recall that your father and the Archbishop were at odds, but that was years ago, before the Marquis’ arrest. I don’t know the reason for their discord, I swear. As to the other matter, about the . . .” Gaubert lowered his voice when he said, “
Woman
. . . It’s rather a delicate subject.”

Jules released him abruptly.
Dieu.
Gaubert was making him pull information out of him an agonizing bit at a time.

Frustrated, Jules handed Luc the note and stalked away, toward the monsignor’s body.

Jules gazed down at the Archbishop de Divonne, now on the marble floor, dressed in his costly red robes, death silencing his secrets.

The man had gone to great lengths to ensure that they would never have an encounter. First the ambush. Now this.

Why suicide? He could have devised another plan to gain the “satisfaction” he sought, without ending his own life. And
where
was the missing silver? Had the Archbishop been behind its disappearance from the Laurent land at all? Jules assumed that he and Luc were the “enemies” mentioned in his note. Or were there others?

Too many questions. No answers. Only gaping holes in the truth.

A morbid pull forced Jules down onto his haunches. With the rope removed from the Archbishop’s neck, the wound was visible and raw, the beginnings of decay present. He’d been dead for a while.

Glancing at the Archbishop’s arms, Jules noticed bruising peering out from beneath the man’s long loose sleeve. Pushing up the sleeve, he revealed a long narrow contusion across the top of the right wrist.

Shoving the other sleeve up, Jules turned the stiffened arms to examine them thoroughly. The left had identical bruising, except it was across the inside of the wrist.

Luc crouched beside him. “What do you have there?”

“Peculiar markings.” Jules showed him the bruises. “They’re the kind of bruising a man might sustain if his wrists are bound together with a rope.”

“Well? Out with it,” Agnes demanded the moment Jules, Luc, and the men had returned to the camp. “I’m an old woman and this suspense isn’t good for my health. Is the Archbishop ready to talk to Sabine? Did he have any information about Isabelle?”

“Yes, tell us,” Louise pressed.

“The Archbishop is dead,” Jules said.

Sabine’s heart plummeted.

“Dead?”
Vincent repeated, the word screaming inside Sabine.

Jules’s jaw tightened. “We found him hanging by a rope, made to look like he took his own life.”

“You don’t believe he killed himself?” Sabine asked.

Jules cast a glance at his brother. “I don’t.”

“I do,” Luc countered. “The Archbishop’s assistant let you read the love letters between the Comtesse de Tonnere and the monsignor. And he told you how devastated the Archbishop was to learn of her death from smallpox. Gaubert and every servant we questioned confirmed the monsignor hadn’t been himself since the Comtesse’s death. He killed himself. And with him died our chances of regaining favor.”

“No,” Jules said firmly. “It’s not over. You saw the bruises on his wrists.”

“The bruises prove nothing. We have no way of knowing how he got them. There’s no real evidence, not even in his private documents, to indicate foul play. Why delude ourselves?”

“It’s not a delusion. Whoever murdered the Archbishop also brought down our father, a man of good standing,” Jules insisted. “We’re dealing with someone clever enough to cover up his misdeeds.”

“
Dieu
, Jules, I want my life back as much as you do, but you must face the truth. The Archbishop despised our father. Enough to betray him and have him hanged. He thought he could take your wealth and your life, too. When he failed, given his melancholy, he killed himself.”

“No. It doesn’t make sense. There are too many unanswered questions.”

“Such as?”

“None of the Archbishop’s men survived the attack. How, then, did he get word he’d failed? And so quickly? How did a man who’d become a virtual recluse and who was as forlorn as the monsignor had been over the death of the Comtesse pull himself together enough to arrange an ambush in the first place? I refuse to accept his ‘suicide.’ Someone has used the monsignor to make us believe he was involved. Whoever killed the Archbishop forced him to write the note and knows the truth of what happened to our father. We’ll pursue this further. With the utmost caution.”

Luc swore. “Fine. We’ll do it your way. We’ll ask Simon for more men. Amass armies to guard us.” His tone was saturated with sarcasm. “We’ll search for evidence that doesn’t exist and entertain every possible theory of what led to our father’s arrest, no matter how ridiculous. We’ll lay blame at everyone’s feet, except our most blameless, flawless father.”

Jules’s body tensed. “Careful . . .”

Luc gave a hollow laugh. “Why, for once, can’t you admit that he wasn’t perfect? That he may not have been as innocent in all this as you claim—”

Jules grabbed his brother’s doublet with both fists. Sabine gasped.

“You dare call him a
traitor
?” Jules’s voice was low and rimmed with rage.

Sabine’s gaze darted to Raymond. He didn’t look inclined to intervene.

Luc glowered at his older sibling. “I don’t believe he was a traitor any more than I believe he was a saint. You, Jules, were his heir. I endured a side of him you did not.”

Jules released Luc. “So you’ve said. If he treated me differently, it was because he knew I accepted my duty to my family while you would not.”

“
Jésus-Christ
, I will
not
join the Knights of Malta. Can you imagine me taking a vow of
celibac
y—for the rest of my life?”

“You think sacrifices are not required of the firstborn son?”

Luc let out a sharp sigh and pulled out a folded parchment from inside his doublet. “I wasn’t going to show you this, but I now believe you need to see it. When Gaubert wasn’t looking, I took this from the Archbishop’s private papers in his library.”

Jules opened the letter and scanned its contents.

“It is written by our father’s own hand,” Luc said.

“It’s meaningless.” Jules tossed the letter with a flick of his wrist, sending it fluttering to the ground.

Luc’s eyes widened. “You believe bruising on the Archbishop’s wrists is proof of murder, yet a letter written by your own father’s hand is
meaningless
?”

“That letter could be a forgery, regardless of the signature and penmanship.”

“It even has our family seal on it,” Luc exclaimed.

Jules lifted a brow. “So did Isabelle Laurent’s letter and the letters that were used to condemn our father at his trial. Apparently
everyone
was using our seal.”

Sabine snatched up the letter and opened it.