Not Quite Married (36 page)

She looked around her in the dim light. This was the little church she had attended as a child . . . where she was confirmed . . .

where she had done charity work . . .

How could he have learned about the baby? Tears welled in her eyes. She hadn’t said a word to anyone, not even Jeannie . . . who probably suspected something by now, but would never have said anything about it. Or was the story of a baby just a ploy to gain the sanctimonious vicar’s cooperation . . . to make him believe he was setting a brazen and unrepentant sinner right?

Did it matter? She and her baby—Aaron’s baby—were prisoners of Raoul’s greedy and depraved father. Her last bit of hope flickered out, carrying her spirits with it.

When Louis took her by the arm and led her to the railing before the altar, she didn’t resist. But as she stood there, avoiding the marquis’s purposeful stare and waiting for the vicar to return, a horrifying new thought occurred to her. When it was over and she was married to Louis, it still wouldn’t be over.

What would the marquis do to the Hennipens when he no longer needed them to ensure her cooperation, and they became merely witnesses to the fact that she was forced to the altar against her will?

A SMALL KNOT of servants sat huddled by the fireplace in the kitchen of the Hennipens’ home, warming themselves and wondering at the events that were taking place in the house.

Their master and mistress and their lady guest had received some visitors and then left abruptly with them, without saying a word to any of the staff . . . even to Lady Brien’s maid, who was beside herself with worry.

The sound was faint enough at first, but the butler, whose ears were sensitive from years of close attendance on sound and gesture, detected it. He grabbed the globed candlestick from the kitchen table and jerked open the door that led to the carriage turn at the front of the house. Three riders on horseback came up fast out of the darkness. As they bore down on him, he scurried to the front steps and stood squinting past the limits of his light, trying to make out who they were. He could see only that they were big men, equipped for the foul weather and a hard ride.

“Dyso!” Lady Brien’s maid rushed out the door behind him and waved frantically to the three men. The butler sagged with relief as the three approached and he recognized the scarred giant who had spent time at the Hennipens’ some time ago.

“Come in out of the weather,” he beckoned, leading them inside.

“Robert! Captain . . . Dyso . . . thank God you’ve come!” Jeannie cried, touching the others only briefly before throwing her arms boldly around Hicks’s neck.

“They said at Harcourt that she had come here.” Aaron asked Jeannie, looking around, “Where is she?”

“I don’t know. I was upstairs after dinner and they were in the drawing room . . .” Jeannie halted, shaking her head, and the Hennipens’ butler took it up.

“There were four men . . . one called himself a marquis. They arrived in a carriage with horses tied behind. I admitted them and then went out to call the grooms to see to their horses. When I got back inside, they were all gone . . . Lady Brien, the master and mistress.”

“Dammit! Where would they have gone?” Aaron asked of himself as much as the butler. “A marriage—he has to have taken her someplace to say vows. Where would be the closest place to get married?”

“St. Anne’s is the closest church. There is a new vicar there . . .

something of a narrow wicket . . .” The butler snapped to attention to give them directions. “Half a mile back down the road, then left at the fork . . . and another three miles or so straight on . . . to the edge of the village. You can usually see the cross by night.”

“Hurry,” Jeannie said, giving Hicks a squeeze before releasing him. “They’ve been gone the better part of an hour!”

LIGHT FROM THE rectory windows glowed a dull yellow as they reined up a safe distance outside the churchyard. Above the stone wall, Aaron glimpsed a coach and four and a single man pacing back and forth with what appeared to be a gun in his hands. There was a flash of red just inside the open gate, at the side of the bushes. A second guard was lighting and drawing on a pipe. The scent of the tobacco began wafting toward them in the light breeze. Clearly, the marquis and his men weren’t expecting any trouble.

Aaron smiled, as he put a finger to his lips to signal for quiet and then swung down from his horse. The others dismounted and leaned close to listen while removing their raincloaks and stretching aching shoulders and legs.

“Dyso, you take the one by the gate,” he said, motioning. “Make it quiet. Then spread out to cross the courtyard. I’ll get the one by the coach. The rest are inside.”

There was only a small grunting sound as Dyso eliminated the first guard. Keeping to the shadows, the three crept forward in the grassy courtyard, giving no hint of their presence until Aaron was close enough to lunge for the guard and whack him soundly on the head with the butt of his pistol. The man fell like a log, but Aaron and Hicks caught him just before he hit the ground with a thud. A moment later, a thumping came from the carriage and Aaron opened the door. Squire and Mrs. Hennipen lay in the footwell, trussed hand and foot, their mouths stuffed with rags.

As Aaron and Hicks freed them, Mrs. Hennipen was frantic.

“Albert—is he all right?” she cried softly, pulling him into her arms as they worked to free his hands and feet. “Albert, look at me—” The squire seemed barely conscious at first. “His heart—Albert!”

“I’m all right,” the squire said in dry, forced tones as he struggled up.

Frantically, she looked up at Aaron. “We must get the doctor—from the village—”

“No.”
The squire gamely began to haul himself up and out of the carriage floor. “I’ll be all right.” He looked at Aaron and Dyso and recognized the big servant. “Thank God you’re here. That bastard has your lady.” He looked at his worried wife. “I’m not going anywhere until I see that cursed Frenchman get what’s coming to him.”

Aaron grinned and clapped the squire on the shoulder. “Stay here.” He pulled a pistol from his belt and thrust it into the older man’s hands. “Don’t use it unless you have to. How many of them are there?”

“F-four, I think,” Hennipen answered. “All well armed.”

Aaron turned to Dyso as he surveyed the outline of the building in the gloom. “Do you know this place? Can we reach the chapel through there?” He gestured to the nearest door. Dyso nodded.

“Is there another way in?”

Another nod.

“We’ll have to separate . . . hit them on two fronts. I’ll go this way. Hicks, you and Dyso go around the other side. Don’t make a move until you hear my voice.”

They turned to go, but Aaron caught Dyso back by the arm and scowled at the cold, violent set of the big man’s scarred face.

“We’re here for your lady. We don’t have time for old grudges.”

Aaron fancied there was a ghost of a smile on the big man’s face as he nodded.

Suddenly Aaron was alone at the church door. He pushed it back and entered a dimly lighted stone passage, walking in a crouch.

His scabbard scraped the doorway and he quickly flattened against the stone wall to listen for signs of his detection. There were voices in the distance, but it seemed his entry had gone unnoticed. Ahead of him the hallway opened on one side into a niche filled with pegs full of cloaks and vestments and shelves . . .

a sacristy.

The voices dwindled to a single nasal drone that grew more irritating as he approached the sanctuary. A tapestry-weight curtain was all that separated him from them now, and he peeled back the edge of it to determine their positions and potential for opposition. It was just as the squire had said. Four of them inside.

An elegantly dressed older man, a young fop, a fellow who looked fit enough to give an accounting of himself, and a disinterested waterfront tough holding a musket.

Brien stood at the front of the church, before the steps that led up to the altar. Above her, waxing righteous about the wages of fornication, was a lean and vituperative vicar. Behind her stood a richly attired older man with lace at his wrists and a smile that contained about as much warmth as an Atlantic iceberg. Beside her stood a whey-faced dandy who looked every bit as miserable as she did. And she
was
miserable. Her face was pale and strained, her eyes seemed huge and oddly vacant, and she was clutching a rough carriage blanket around her as if it contained the promise of salvation.

BRIEN FELT AS cold as the stone walls of the chapel itself. For the second time she stood in that beloved chapel . . . trembling . .

. being swallowed up by another’s ambition. All she could think was that a month ago she’d had everything a woman could want in life and she’d thrown it all away.

“Do you, Louis Armand Phillipe Trechaud, take this woman to wife?” With some prodding from the marquis, the vicar had finally gotten down to the real business at hand. “To love, honor, and protect her as long as you both shall live?”

“Of course he would.” A clear, deep voice rang out. “If he were a man to take a woman at all.”

Shock registered through the whole wedding party at the sight of a man with drawn sword bursting through the sacristy curtain.

Before anyone could react, Aaron vaulted up the altar steps and planted himself beside the stunned vicar, his sword tip leveled at Louis Trechaud’s throat. Brien stared at him in disbelief, unable to respond at first.

“Who are you?” the vicar demanded.

“What do you think you are doing?” The marquis lurched forward.

“Make no sudden moves, gentlemen,” Aaron warned him back, pushing the tip of his blade harder against Louis’s neck. “Or this farce of a wedding will become an earnest funeral.” He glanced at Brien. “Are you all right, my lady?”

“Yes,” she managed numbly, clearly in shock. “All right.”

“How dare you desecrate a House of God,” the vicar sputtered.

“The same might be said of you, vicar,” Aaron snapped, sweeping the gathering visually, noting a sword that he hadn’t seen earlier, hanging at the marquis’s side. The odds were four to one. Where the hell were Hicks and Dyso? “This wedding is not one of mutual consent. It couldn’t be.”

“Forced or not,” the vicar protested, “she is with child and must be put to rights.”

Aaron glanced at Brien, who was rubbing her face frantically, fighting to regain control of her faculties. She could lend no support to his next pronouncement.

“If she is with child, my good vicar, the fault is
mine,
not his.”

“And who the devil are you?” the marquis sneered, edging closer, his hand inching toward the hilt of his blade.

“Her husband. Her freely taken, duly pronounced, fully documented
husband.
And unless you are eager to lose this sad excuse for a son, you’d better spread your arms out at your sides and keep them away from that blade.”

“H-husband?” The vicar looked from Aaron to the marquis, whose eyes were darting over the scene with recalculation. He pointed to Louis. “But you said he was the father.”

“It’s a lie, of course,” the marquis declared, raising his arms as ordered, but also edging back slowly toward the two men standing in front of the first pews. “Get on with the vows, vicar.

He cannot prevent you from performing your anointed office.”

While Aaron’s attention was focused on the marquis’s movements, the better dressed of the other two men slid silently closer to the chancel railing . . . out of Aaron’s line of sight. Then he made his move, lunging up the steps past Louis—only to be intercepted in midair by an explosion of human muscle from the nearby pulpit. Hicks collided with Cornelius Pitt and together they hit the slate floor with bone-cracking force.

The fourth man jolted forward to help, and Aaron plunged down the steps, pushing Brien’s bridegroom into him and sending both men crashing back against the front of the family boxes. The groom tried to crawl away, but the marquis grabbed him and shoved him back at Aaron, who was now struggling furiously with the other henchman for control of the musket. They traded several blows before Aaron managed to double him over with a kick to the groin . . . then wrenched the musket free and brought it down full-force on his head.

In a rage, Aaron turned on Louis, who produced a pistol but hesitated too long before using it. He slashed at it with his sword just as Louis fired—the deflected ball splintered part of the altar railing. Abandoning his blade, he wrestled with Louis and delivered several blows that ended with a ferocious uppercut.

Louis flew back across the front pew with a shriek and rolled along it, trying to keep his feet.

The marquis de Saunier backed down the center aisle, cursing his son’s weakness and reading in the shifting fight the collapse of his desperate plan to reclaim all Raoul’s death had lost him. He shot a look at the doors behind him, calculating the odds of help from the men still outside . . . recalculating them as he realized that for Brien’s rescuers to have made it inside, the men out there had to be either down or fled.

With a furious string of curses, he turned to flee down the aisle and out the main doors. Before he reached halfway, Dyso sprang out into the aisle, blocking the way.

“You,” the marquis said, drawing his sword. “Out of my way.”

Dyso’s eyes burned and his chest swelled as he faced his one-time tormentor.

“I once had your tongue for your insolence,” the marquis said with a growl. “I’ll have your head this time.” He lunged at his former servant with his blade raised.

Dyso swayed, avoiding that fierce downward cut, then reversing sharply to grab at the marquis with his bare hands. Brushing only the edge of the nobleman’s coat, he drew back and crouched, waiting for the next attack. The marquis came at him again and again, slashing viciously . . . each movement a killing blow that narrowly missed its target. Dyso moved quickly, feinting, dodging, and rolling across the tops of pews to avoid the blade.

Each near miss made the blood roar that much louder in the Frenchman’s head and drew him farther down the center aisle toward the altar . . . and the rest of the fighting.