Compromised Miss (25 page)

‘We have just arrived.’

‘Luke…’ She could think of no appropriate words. For a moment she had thought he had come for her. For what other possible reason could he come to Lydyard’s Pride? But all was now clear. Or not clear at all. If he had come, as she had so foolishly dreamed, to declare an undying love and heal the wounds, he would not have brought an audience, would he? Nor had he made a move to approach her, having stopped far more than an arm’s distance from her with a politely formal bow. His mouth was stern. It was Adam who had smiled, kissed her hand. Luke stood with a distance separating them. She was his wife, but he could not bear to touch her. Where had the ridiculous notion of an undying love come from? So Harriette, the perfect hostess despite her unconventional attire, fixed the vestige of a welcoming smile on her lips.

‘Come into the library. There should be fire in there. Has no one looked after you? Ring the bell, Adam, if you will, for Wiggins. I can offer you brandy or port. Food will take longer…’

She opened the door, hearing the flood of inconsequential words as nerves chased through her, and closed her lips. Luke had come to her. There was no need for her to take
the initiative, to smooth over the social discomfort. Let him explain.

Adam hung back. ‘I’ll go and see what the kitchens can offer,’ he ventured with a glance at his brother. ‘Leave you two together.’

They were alone in the library as she had often imagined over the past days. But nothing like in her imagination. In her dreams there had never been this impenetrable barrier.

‘Well?’ She turned to face him, seeing immediately that Luke looked tired, but beneath the prints of a draining weariness she recognised a bleak determination. His eyes were steady and cool on hers and he did not look away.

‘I don’t believe you are a Wrecker,’ he stated bluntly.

‘No. You said. I remember.’

‘I was wrong to say it, even more appallingly wrong to think it. And I know I hurt you.’

‘Yes. You did. It no longer matters.’ Surprised, unsmiling, Harriette took a breath, proud of her control.

‘It does matter.’ She saw muscles along his jaw tighten. ‘There are things that I must tell you, Harriette. If you will listen.’

‘So I presumed, since you have made the journey here. I thought we were done with talking. As I recall, our last conversation was…not amicable.’

‘No, it was not.’ She saw his hands clench at his sides, the tiniest of movements before he forced them to relax. His spine was rigidly upright. ‘I want in part to put that right. I need to tell you the truth. I should have told you weeks ago.’

‘Truth? What is that? Do you know the meaning of the word?’

Even to her own ears Harriette sounded unreceptive, but she was not of a mind to make this easy for him. What could
he possibly say that would make things any better between them? Why tell her the truth now? Luke had still not touched her, not once. Not even taken her hand in formal acknowledgement, when it was her ridiculous desire to throw herself into his arms and cover his face with kisses.

But she would hear him out. Harriette sat, wishing briefly that she had skirts that she could dispose elegantly about her, but, hands folded neatly, she resigned herself to listen as he began to speak, as controlled now and glamorous as she had remembered him, the scar fading to no more than a silvery line, his voice low, deliberate as if he weighed every word.

‘What I would say will not excuse my refusal to take you into my confidence, but I hope it will go some way to explain it. I think you should see this first.’

Taking it from his pocket, he handed her a little miniature in an intricate frame that fitted into the palm of her hand. The woman—hardly more than a girl—smiled back at her with the bluest of eyes. Her fair hair curled in artless ringlets from her crown to her shoulders, held there by a blue ribbon. Just a pretty girl with joyful laughter in her painted eyes. Harriette turned the frame over.
Marie-Claude de la Roche
.

‘Marie-Claude. So this is the woman you sought. She’s lovely.’ Harriette looked up, puzzled, cold fingers gripping her throat. ‘Who is she?’ Would he tell her, at last, that this was the lady who owned his heart? She ran her tongue over suddenly dry lips. ‘Is she your lover?’

‘She is—’ Taking the miniature, Luke placed it on the desk, hesitated, then began again, choosing his words carefully. ‘It’s possible that she is the woman Marcus married. That she is my brother Marcus’s widow.’

Harriette found that she could breathe again. Marcus’s widow. Luke’s sister by marriage, not his estranged and
lost love. Yet what did that matter now? Marie-Claude de la Roche might claim no place in Luke’s heart, Harriette acknowledged with hard cynicism, but then neither did she. Then she remembered.

‘But Adam said that Marcus was not married.’

‘So we thought. Yet I am told that this is the young woman whom Marcus inexplicably married at some point in the campaign in Spain before he met his death. Without telling any member of his family who she was, where he had met her or why he had felt the need to wed her in haste in such difficult times. This has come into my possession, too.’

Luke placed before her a document, stained, travel worn. Opening it, Harriette read the proof of marriage between Marcus Hallaston and Marie-Claude de la Roche.

‘I don’t understand why you must keep this secret,’ Harriette stated flatly.

Luke prowled restlessly to the window and back again to lean against the carved marble of the fire surround, hands dug deep in the pockets of his breeches.

‘At some point after Marcus died, his wife—Marie-Claude de la Roche—fell into the hands of a Frenchman who goes by the name of Jean-Jacques Noir.’ He nodded as Harriette drew in a breath. ‘Yes, the same. A man who made it his business to discover her history and her connections. Those connections led him to me. It was Noir who sent me the miniature and this.’ He pushed himself upright, walked to her and held out a letter. ‘You see it is addressed to me specifically.’

And Harriette, smoothing the much creased document, read:

This is Marie-Claude de la Roche, the legal wife of Captain Marcus Hallaston. There is a child from
this marriage. A boy. The woman and her child are at present living under my protection. If you wish to make contact with her, there will be a price to pay. If you are not willing to pay my price, you will never see her or the child, your brother’s son.

Harriette raised her eyes as the words struck home. ‘So there is a baby, as well?’

‘So it seems.’

‘And this is blackmail?’

‘Yes.’

‘But…’ she frowned, unwilling to accept the truth in the brutal words ‘…how do you know the truth of this? Could it not just be a mercenary ploy to gain money from you?’

‘It could. Read on.’

You might consider that this is all falsehood, the document a forgery, and that I have no proof of my claims. Dare you risk it? Do you dare to allow the child, your brother’s son and your heir as it stands, to be brought up in my care?

‘Monsieur Noir knows how to twist the blade, does he not?’ Harriette shivered at the thinly veiled threat in the words. ‘Do you think the marriage licence is genuine?’

‘It could be a forgery—but dare I take the chance? He holds all the cards. And, to change the image, I am working blind, dancing to every tune he plays because, as he says, I dare do no other.’

‘I understand that, Luke. But why did you not tell me? Why did you allow me to think you were engaged in something so despicable as spying for Napoleon?’

‘Read on to the end,’ Luke advised heavily, turning his
back to stare unseeingly at the view of cliffs and sky from the window.

Harriette did so, blood chilling to ice as the tone of the letter grew infinitely more threatening.

It will cost you heavily to release Marie-Claude de la Roche from my control. I will inform you of the terms in due course. I advise you not to speak of this to anyone or instigate a search. If I hear any evidence of this, I will have no compunction in taking immediate action. It would be no difficulty for me to hide a young woman and her child from you. She could be very useful to me. There are valuable opportunities for so pretty a girl and her protector in a town where the French army is billeted. Her youthful attractions would fetch a high price. I am sure that you understand me.

And Harriette—as must Luke—understood the threat very well. She ran her eyes down the single page once more, taking in the vicious cruelty behind it. From the moment this package had been delivered, Marie-Claude de la Roche must have filled his mind. Who she was, where she might at this moment be, if there was indeed a child from a legal union with his brother—Luke would have no true idea. But Jean-Jacques Noir had the right of it. Luke dare not risk it being the truth. The girl being at the man’s mercy, with her youth and innocence being offered for sale to soldiers in an army town, and Luke doing nothing to prevent it—well, that was too terrible an outcome to contemplate.

‘So that’s why the gold was delivered. Monsieur Noir’s price for the girl’s freedom.’

‘Yes. I would buy the woman and her child, even at
Noir’s extortionate price, if I could rescue them in no other fashion. And if the marriage lines are genuine…Well, I have no choice, do I?’

‘And his letter to you—the one that I read?’ Harriette had the grace to blush.

‘Fixing time and place for the deal to be done.’

Harriette frowned. ‘So why did you need Captain Henri? I presume he is tied to this?’

Luke cast himself into the chair opposite Harriette, leaning forwards to stare at the floor, arms resting on thighs, and began an explanation in curt, flat sentences. Hiding a tight anguish that wrung Harriette’s heart.

‘I had to do
something
to take back the initiative in this appalling game. Hence Captain Henri Lefebvre—the young man hiding out in the guest bedchamber until a passage could be found for him to cross the Channel. He was more than willing to break the terms of his parole and his word of honour, to return home to France and freedom with a purse of gold and a set of instructions to travel the Channel ports to seek out a man who might be Jean-Jacques Noir, travelling with a woman and baby.’

He looked up at her, face a mask. ‘Should I have felt guilt on my conscience at asking a man to break his word of honour? Many would say that I was guilty of treachery, helping the enemy, but had I a choice? The boy was driven by a need to return to his mother and sisters who had no one to protect them or fend for them.’ Luke shrugged, his voice hard-edged. ‘I should feel guilty, but I cannot. And, yes, I would do it again tomorrow if I could discover and rescue Marie-Claude de la Roche and her child. It was a deliberate decision on my part. I don’t choose to make an excuse since I decided it was worth any risk, even if it tainted my own honour and name.
Even to embark on that disastrous episode at Port St Martin.’

‘So that was why you were in France,’ she murmured at the end. ‘Noir had promised to negotiate the handing over of the girl.’

‘Yes. And what a débâcle that turned out to be. Noir played with me, luring me to meet him, only to rob me and have me set upon by club-wielding brigands. A sharp warning for the future, I surmise. The bullet in the arm was not to kill, but to warn.’ He laughed, a harsh sound in the quiet room. ‘I admit I was disastrously naïve in going there and expecting to bring the girl back safely with no violent confrontation. What had I expected to achieve on my own? I was not even certain that she was there with Noir. It was an appalling mistake on my part. But now Noir has raised the stakes and I dare not refuse.’

‘I can see why you have no choice but to go along with the demands.’

‘Not if there is any chance of the girl being Marcus’s widow. If I did nothing and she was abandoned or used by Noir as he threatens—then the responsibility for the loss of Marcus’s widow and child would be on my head.’ He surged to his feet again, striding away from Harriette, but she could hear the raw emotion in his voice. ‘I could not bear it. Losing Marcus was bad enough. I couldn’t lose this young woman and her child if there was the least chance of their being Marcus’s genuine wife and son.’

Flooded with compassion for him, Harriette still chose to play devil’s advocate. ‘It could be that you are being played, a trout on a line, because Jean-Jacques Noir knows you to be rich enough to bleed and honourable enough to rise to the bait.’

‘Do you think I have not told myself that? I know all the arguments that he is merely a rogue whom I should
consign to the devil.’ Disgust lay heavily on Luke’s tongue. He turned his head to look at Harriette and added simply. ‘I can’t ignore his threats and possibly condemn an innocent young woman to a life of whoring and menace.’

‘No,’ she admitted softly. ‘Of course you can’t.’ He had too much honour, as she had always known in her heart. Too much care for those he loved. Harriette folded the letter carefully and placed it on the table with the miniature. ‘Why have you told me this? Why have you told me the truth now?’

‘The letter that you read. Noir sent to inform me that I could make a deal for the woman at Port St Villets. But since then I have had news from Captain Henri who has fulfilled our agreement admirably. That Noir is not in Port Les Villets, but at this moment he is staying at the inn, Les Poissons Rouges in Port St Martin.’

‘Port St Martin. Ah…I begin to see.’

‘I can only presume that it is an ambush, sending me to the wrong place, to strip the gold from me when he has no intention of handing over the woman who is being kept elsewhere under some form of restraint. If I could get to Port St Martin without drawing attention to myself…’

Harriette finished the line of thought for him. ‘And I have connections in Port St Martin with Marcel and the smugglers.’

‘Yes.’

‘You need my help.’

‘Yes, I do. Will you help me, Harriette? Will you organise a run in the
Ghost
as a disguise, a cover for my movements? So that I can be in Port St Martin on the night before Noir’s assignation, and Noir will suspect nothing. If it comes to Noir’s ears that there’s a contraband run, well, he’s unlikely to make a connection with me.’