The Misguided Matchmaker (3 page)

Garth
cast one pathetic glance in Tristan’s direction. His eyes held the furtive look
of a fox that, trapped by hounds, knows his fate is sealed. “Agreed,” he said
in a strangled voice and as Tristan watched in horror, the Fifth Earl of Rand
fell forward onto his knees beside Caleb Harcourt’s desk and, clutching his
high-crowned beaver like a basin, cast up his accounts.

Madelaine
Harcourt had no way of knowing if the person pounding on the door of her
grandfather’s small house was friend or foe—a fellow Royalist come to help care
for the dying aristocrat or a Bonapartist bent on revenge toward the emperor’s
most outspoken critic.

Since
the first rumor of the Corsican’s escape from Elba reached Lyon five days
earlier, bands of men sympathetic to the emperor had been gathering on the
street corners talking excitedly of his return to power. Today, with the news
that he and his loyal
grognards
had reached Grenoble, these same men had
taken to roaming the streets, smashing the windows of shops and homes of known
Royalists. Her grandfather’s butler cum valet had already deserted his post, as
had the sour old woman who had doubled as the housekeeper and Madelaine’s
chaperone for the past six years. She could scarcely blame them.

Silently,
she crept to her chamber window, which overlooked the front entrance of the
house, pushed aside the drape, and peered out. Darkness had fallen, but the man
hammering on the door was clearly outlined in the bright light of the moon. He
was tall—much too tall to be one of the French aristocrats who frequented the
house.

For
long, terrified minutes, she stood pressed against the wall until finally the
pounding ceased and she released the breath she hadn’t realized she was
holding. With a sigh of relief, she hurried across the narrow hall to where her
grandfather lay propped high on his pillows. His eyes were closed, his
breathing horribly labored, his aquiline features waxy with the look of death.

She
felt sick with grief. Grandpère had always been so fierce, so proud,
so
impossibly autocratic. She couldn’t bear to see him like
this, clinging hour after torturous hour to one small spark of life—stubbornly
refusing to bow to the grim reaper until the moment he himself chose to die.
Bending over him, she placed a tender kiss on his wrinkled forehead.

Without
warning, the sound of breaking glass shattered the silence of the house.
Madelaine’s heart leapt in her breast. Dear God! The intruder had smashed a
pane in the French doors. Even now he must be reaching in to turn the knob and
gain entry.

Desperately,
she looked about her for a weapon to defend herself. Her gaze lighted on a
marquetry chest standing against one wall and she remembered that, among other
things, it contained the velvet-lined box in which her grandfather’s dueling
pistols were stored. They weren’t loaded, but the intruder had no way of
knowing that. Running over to the chest and opening it she lifted one of the
lethal-looking firearms from the box and grasped it in both her hands.

“Is
anyone here? Answer me if you are.” There was no menace in the intruder’s voice,
but his strong guttural accent was that of the Paris streets. Madelaine’s pulse
quickened; she took a tighter grasp on her weapon.

Moments
later, a man in a dusty riding jacket and buckskin pants loomed in the chamber
doorway, his head just skimming the lintel. Unruly black hair framed his thin,
brigand’s face and his strange, pale eyes raked her with a look that nearly
buckled her knees.

“
Arretez-vous
!
One step more and I will shoot.” Madelaine heard the tremor in her own voice,
but she managed to keep the pistol pointed at his chest, though it waved
drunkenly in her trembling fingers.

“Mademoiselle
Harcourt?” The stranger eyed the pistol warily. “
Mon Dieu!
Watch where
you’re pointing that thing.” He looked again and his mouth relaxed in a wolfish
grin that raised the hair on the back of Madelaine’s neck. “The next time you
threaten to shoot someone, mademoiselle, you might consider cocking the
pistol.”

With
a sudden movement that took her completely unaware, he whipped the weapon out
of her grasp with his left hand and laid it down on the top of a nearby bureau.
“Also these things are generally more effective when loaded. Like this one is.”
He raised his right hand and Madelaine found herself staring at a small but
lethal-looking pistol. “A word of advice. Never point an unloaded gun at a man.
If I had meant you harm, you would already be dead.”

Madelaine
backed up until she was pressed against her grandfather’s bedstead. “Who…who
are you?” she stammered, her heart pounding. “What do you want?”

Tristan
returned the pistol to the waistband of his trousers and studied the woman
questioning him before he answered. His lips parted in an unconscious smile. If
this dark-haired waif with the boyish figure and huge, frightened eyes was
Caleb Harcourt’s “fine, strapping daughter,” she was a far cry from the lusty
peasant he had expected to find. He looked again. Unless he was mistaken, she
was also a good inch or two taller than her intended bridegroom

He
gave a cursory bow. “I’m Tristan Thibault. I have come in answer to a request
from le Comte de Navareil.”

“What
tale is this, monsieur? My grandfather maintains no correspondence with Paris
these days.”

“Paris?”
The stranger raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Ah, my accent!” He shrugged. “Be
assured, mademoiselle, I come not from Paris, but London.”

Before
Madelaine Harcourt could comment on this bit of information, the occupant of
the bed behind her stirred. “Who’s that with you,
ma petite fille
?” a
voice asked weakly. “Was I dreaming or did I hear him say he comes from London?”

Tristan
stared past the wild-eyed young woman to find a frail, silver-haired old man
with a nose like an eagle’s beak and deep-set eyes that searched him out in the
shadowed room.

“You
heard right, sir.” He stepped to the foot of the bed. “I have been sent by
Caleb Harcourt to find his daughter and take her back to London as you
petitioned.”

“
Dieu
soit loué
, my prayers have been answered in time. Take her, monsieur. Take
her to safety before the Corsican fiend reaches Lyon—before his evil minion,
Fouché, takes revenge on the granddaughter of his old enemy.”

“No,
Grandpère! Do not speak so.” Madelaine Harcourt grasped her grandfather’s thin
hand. “Do not ask me to leave you and go to a father who has never wanted me.
You will only force me to disobey you—something I have never before done.”

The
old man’s smile was tender and his rheumy eyes glistened with moisture. “It is
not you who leave me,
ma petite fille
, but I who leave you—and where I
go, you cannot follow.”

He
grimaced, obviously in pain, and his hawkish features took on an even more
ghastly pallor. “The
Anglais
who is your father does want you. He always
has. Have you never wondered who provided the funds that kept us in comfort all
the years of Bonaparte’s rule, when most Royalists were destitute?”

He
gasped for breath. “Forgive me,” he murmured, his voice fading to a whisper. “I
deceived you about your father because I feared I would lose you if you knew
the truth. It was your foolish mother who was at fault, not her English
merchant.”

Madelaine
Harcourt raised his withered hand to her lips. “It does not matter. I would
never have left you anyway.”

Her words were lost
on the crusty old aristocrat. As Tristan watched, the fingers clutching his
granddaughter’s hand fell slack, his eyes drifted shut, and with a final
heart-wrenching sigh, he relinquished his tenuous hold on life.

M
adelaine Harcourt threw herself
across the inert form of her grandfather in a paroxysm of grief that totally
unnerved Tristan. He crept silently from the room, leaving her to grieve in
private, but the sound of her racking sobs haunted him long after he could no
longer hear them. It was obvious she sincerely loved the old man and felt his
death had brought her world tumbling down about her ears—much as his had
tumbled some twenty years before when he’d witnessed the accident that had left
his poor mother crushed beneath the wheels of a runaway carriage. Even now he
could feel the bewildering emptiness, the searing pain that had scarred his
young soul forever.

He
stood at the window of the small first-floor salon and stared into the darkness
of the winter night, wondering how he was supposed to handle this latest
development in this supposedly simple assignment Caleb Harcourt had blackmailed
him into taking.

So
far, everything that could possibly go wrong had done so. First, that
monumental fly in Europe’s ointment, Napoleon Bonaparte, had had the ill grace
to escape from Elba and land at Provence on the very day Harcourt’s frigate put
Tristan off at Calais. Word of the Corsican’s return had spread like wildfire
across the country and thousands of former soldiers had donned their
war-stained uniforms and flocked to the emperor’s cause. Over and over, as he
rode the long miles south to Lyon, Tristan heard the cry, “Down with the hated
Bourbons!
Vive I’empereur!
” Caleb Harcourt couldn’t have picked a worse
time to send a former British spy into France to retrieve his Royalist
daughter. They would need the devil’s own luck to make it safely back to
England.

Then
he’d scarcely finished introducing himself to Madelaine Harcourt’s grandfather
when the old fellow closed his eyes and breathed his last. Now he must convince
a grief-stricken young woman to put her life in the hands of a complete
stranger representing a father she had not seen in fifteen years.

“Monsieur
Thibault?” Madelaine Harcourt’s voice interrupted his musings, and he turned to
find her in the doorway of the salon. She was deathly pale and her eyelids were
red and swollen, but all things considered, she looked remarkably composed. The
lady was obviously made of sterner stuff than her fragile appearance would lead
one to suppose.

“I
will need your help, monsieur.” Her voice sounded flat, devoid of all
expression. “I have wrapped my grandfather in his quilt, but he is too heavy
for me to carry alone.”

“Carry?
Where are you planning to carry him, mademoiselle?”

“To
the church of St. Bartholomew the Martyr. To the Navareil family crypt. He must
have a proper burial
catholique
in a place consecrated by the church.”

Tristan
couldn’t believe his ears. “You cannot be serious?” But he could see from the
stubborn set of her chin that she was very serious indeed.

He
consulted his newly acquired gold watch. “It is close on midnight,
mademoiselle. Lyon is crawling with Bonapartists, and the mood of the streets
is ugly. Can you imagine the kind of trouble we might well encounter if we
tried to transport the body of a known Royalist through such a
mêlée
?
Surely there are local officials who attend to such matters, even in times of
political upheaval.”

“The
city officials are all Bonapartists and my grandfather’s sworn enemies. They
would not bury him in the family crypt, nor even in consecrated ground,” she
said flatly. “I have already failed him by not securing a priest to give him
the last rites; I will not compound my sins by letting him be buried in ground
from which
le bon Dieu
cannot claim his soul.”

Tristan
groaned. He had spent enough time in France to recognize the importance of such
religious strictures to the papists. Ordinarily, he would gladly honor her
wishes, but present circumstances were anything but ordinary; Lyon was a powder
keg that could explode at any moment.

“I
am sorry, mademoiselle,” he said gently. “What you propose is not only
dangerous, it is impossible without a conveyance. I have searched the mews
behind the house. Except for one small roan mare, you grandfather’s stables are
empty.”

“There
is the gardener’s burrow.” She shuddered, as if the thought of transporting her
grandfather’s body to its final resting place in such an undignified manner was
too horrible to contemplate. “I do not ask that you risk your safety, monsieur.
The church is not far; I can easily wheel the barrow there myself. I ask only
that you help me carry him to the garden. If you will do this much, I promise
that once I have seen him properly interred, I will go with you to England and
my father.” Her voice broke. “There is nothing left for me in France.”

Tristan
gritted his teeth. He couldn’t help but applaud her loyalty to her
grandfather…and her courage. Somewhere deep in his soul he even understood the
pain she was suffering, but understanding it and acting upon it were two
different things. He would not be a party to risking her life, as well as his
own, for the sake of a burial ritual. Nothing on earth could make him change
his mind on that score.

Nothing,
that is, except her tears.

Hell
and damnation! Before he could make his case, her wounded amber eyes turned
into two pools of glistening liquid and a lone tear trailed down her pale cheek
and splashed onto the somber gray fabric molding her breast. He had always been
a fool where weeping women were concerned, and there was something about
Madelaine Harcourt’s tears that he found particularly unnerving. Another teardrop
followed the first, and he felt his resolve crumble like a defenseless fortress
put to the battering ram.

He
wasted the next few minutes trying to convince her she must take what
belongings she needed for the trip to England with her to the church. She
flatly refused. “First things first,” she declared stubbornly. “I will take
care of my own concerns once I’ve completed my duty to Grandpère.”

Tristan
had two choices; acquiesce to her demands or drag her kicking and screaming to
Calais. Grimly, he carried the quilt-wrapped body of the old count to the
garden, then trundled the wheelbarrow through the opening in the garden wall
and onto the tree-lined street beyond.

A
group of men, in the same ragged uniforms he’d seen earlier in other parts of
the city, had gathered outside the gate. They fell silent as the bizarre little
funeral cortege approached, but Tristan was alert to the ominous undercurrent
rumbling through the crowd. He’d seen such gatherings as this in Paris; it had
all the earmarks of a mob spoiling for trouble.

Madelaine
Harcourt walked ahead of him, seemingly unaware of the danger she was in. The
lantern she held aloft cast a bright circle of light, but her face was hidden
beneath the cowl of her gray wool cloak.

A
young soldier with one empty sleeve pinned to the shoulder of his bloodstained
uniform leapt directly in front of her shouting, “
Vive l’empereur
!”
Without pausing in her stride, she pushed back the cowl, letting it fall to her
shoulders, and stared the soldier straight in the eye. With a curse, he fell
back, and Tristan exhaled the breath he’d been holding.

The
light of a pale three-quarter moon filtered through the bare tree branches
above, lending an unearthly beauty to Madelaine Harcourt’s lustrous dark hair
and graceful gray-clad form. Head high and eyes straight ahead, she looked
every inch a latter day Jeanne d’Arc leading her troops to battle.
Miraculously, the sullen crowd parted before her. A few of the men even crossed
themselves as she passed.

With
a sigh of relief, Tristan followed her around the corner of the garden wall
with his creaking, wooden-wheeled barrow, and onto a narrow cobblestone street
that appeared to be empty of demonstrators. They had won the moment; only time
would tell if they won the day. Even now he could hear shouting in the distance
and what sounded like gunfire—and a reddish glow in the night sky bore
testimony to the fact that somewhere in the city buildings were being torched.

“It
is only a short way now, monsieur,” Madelaine Harcourt said. “You can see the
church steeple ahead.” Tristan gave a noncommittal grunt. Tightening his grip
on the barrow handles, he concentrated on following the bobbing light of her
lantern.

Suddenly,
out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow detach itself from the wall and
fall in behind him. Every nerve in his body instantly sprang to attention. He
looked down to make certain his pistol was safely tucked into the waistband of
his trousers; then, glancing over his shoulder, he found a small man with
stringy black hair and a face like a worried ferret trailing behind him.

He
took another look. “Devil take it, is that you Forli?” he asked, recognizing
one of the Allies’ top agents—a man nicknamed the Oil Merchant because he had
gained entry into Bonaparte’s household on Elba by selling olive oil to his
mother and sisters. Tristan had worked with him earlier when Forli and he had
both infiltrated Fouché’s Ministry of Police in Paris.

Madelaine
Harcourt stopped dead in her tracks. Wheeling around, she stared at him with
wide, startled eyes. “Monsieur?”

Tristan
brought the barrow to a halt. “It is all right, mademoiselle. Monsieur Forli is
a…friend.”

“A
friend?” Her eyes narrowed, but she turned back without question and resumed
walking toward their destination.

Tristan
picked up the handles of the barrow. “What in God’s name are you doing in
Lyon?” he quietly asked the little man who had fallen into step beside him.

“I
rode up from Grenoble to send a message to Paris via the semaphore relay—a
warning that King Louis and his cabinet that Bonaparte intends to enter the
capital by March 20, the birthday of his infant son, the King of Rome. But
alas, I was too late; the semaphore is already in the hands of the
grognards
and by morning, the city itself will fall.”

Tristan
cursed under his breath. The bizarre situation he found himself in was
worsening by the minute. “I had heard the Corsican was moving fast; I had no
idea he was moving
that
fast—and gathering support as he goes, if the
crowds I’ve seen in Lyon are any example. So what now? Will you ride northward
to the semaphore relay at Roanne?”

“Not
I, milord. The climate of France grows too unhealthy. I was on my way south to
my parents’ home in Tuscany when I saw you ride into the city. I changed my
plans and followed you here. My curiosity was piqued as to what would bring the
infamous British Fox to Lyon at this particular time.”

Forli’s
dark gaze slid to the barrow Tristan was wheeling. “Dare I ask why you have
become so lost to discretion you have taken to carting the evidence of your
political activities about in a wheelbarrow?”

“This
is not one of my bodies, you fool. I am merely helping a lady bury her
grandfather.”

“Ah,
the statuesque Mademoiselle Harcourt. My associate here in Lyon tells me she
and her grandfather are well known in Royalist circles.”

Forli’s
beady black eyes gleamed suggestively. “A lovely creature, to be sure. Still,
are you not being a bit foolish? Fouché’s power as Minister of Police was
diminished when the Corsican was banished to Elba, but now that the tide has
again turned against the Bourbons, he will be up to his old tricks. Should you
be recognized by one of his minions, your days would be
numbered.
He has sworn to revive Madame la Guillotine in your honor, as well as mine.”

Tristan
scowled at the little man trotting beside him. “I have heard Fouché’s threat;
he will have to catch me first.” His gaze slid to Madelaine Harcourt’s rigid
back. Something about the tilt of her head told him she was straining to hear
their conversation. “Keep your voice down,” he warned. “The lady believes me
merely an employee of her father, which, in this case, I am.”

Forli
nodded. “The very rich British merchant, Caleb Harcourt.”

“You
know Harcourt?”

“I
have never met him personally, but I have sometimes gathered information for
him when I was not busy spying for Castlereagh.” Forli’s voice held a note of
bitterness. “I will say one thing for him,
he
pays his debts. I have yet
to be paid by the British war office for my stint on Elba and doubt I ever will
be now that Bonaparte has escaped—though God knows I warned them often enough
that to put Colonel Neil Campbell in charge of the Corsican was like setting a
mouse to guard a lion.”

Tristan
nodded his commiseration. He, too, had back pay coming, which he fully intended
to collect when he returned to London. Adjusting his grip on the macabre load,
he followed Madelaine Harcourt into the courtyard of St. Bartholomew’s.

Forli
stopped outside the gate. “So now you, too, are in Harcourt’s employ, milord.
May I ask in what capacity?”

Tristan
considered his answer carefully. He was loath to discuss his plans concerning
Madelaine Harcourt; but he might need Forli’s help. “Harcourt has decided to
call his little bird back to the nest and he sent me to fetch her,” he said
finally.

“How
wise! Without the old count to protect her, she would be easy prey for every
unscrupulous
roué
in Lyon.” Forli’s lips parted in a travesty of a
smile. “Farewell then. I wish I could be of help. I owe you. I shudder to think
what my fate would have been had you not come to my aid during that fiasco in
Paris three years ago.”