Fire at Midnight (24 page)

Sebastién’s eyes issued a flinty warning to Tarry.

“I’ve promised Duncan that I will take him ashore once I’ve tended his wound, but he’s eager to leave now, alone. That would be dangerous,” Tarry said. His face was set.

“I’ll have two men stand guard outside the door while you sew up that gash.”

Sebastién suddenly crossed his arms over his chest as if to still a violent impulse.

“Come, Duncan,” Tarry said to him as he began the downward climb to the lower floor chamber. “Come along nicely now.”

One of Winstanley’s men drifted to either side of Sebastién, and he fell into step with them, although his eyes told Tarry there would be hell to pay later.

“I don’t expect any trouble,” Tarry told the men as he swung the door shut.

The door had barely closed when Sebastién spun on Tarry in a rage. “You idiot!” he seethed, voice low. “We waste time here!”

“We’d have left a quarter hour ago, if you’d not been so obstinate.” Tarry dropped down on all fours and began to rummage under the bed. He withdrew a small square tin and threw it at Sebastién. “Now I’ve got to darn that stubborn hide of yours before either of us can leave.”

“You are mistaken if you expect to lay hands on me,” Sebastién warned.

“I should stitch that gaping hole beneath your nose shut first,” Tarry shot back.

“Touch me,
enfant
,” Sebastién snarled, “and you will be the one in need of a surgeon.”

“Then bleed to death!” Tarry hissed. “If this delay costs Rachael her life, I’ll kill you myself.”

At the mention of Rachael, Sebastién yanked open the tin and extracted a needle, a coil of thin twine, and several narrow strips of clean white linen, slapping the items into Tarry’s open palm. Tarry eyed the needle with apprehension, and Sebastién snorted in disgust and snatched the needle and twine back out of Tarry’s hands.

“It’s no different from mending a tear in your shirt,” Sebastién said. He fed the twine through the eye of the needle and handed it back to Tarry, laughing at Tarry’s white face. “
Pardonnez-moi,
I forgot that a man of your station does not repair his own shirts.”

“I’ve no whiskey or the like to give you. This is going to hurt like hell.”

“Just as well,” Sebastién said wryly. “Get me drunk and I will not remain mute for very long.” He reached out and gripped each end of the small dresser, fingers growing white from knuckle to fingertip when Tarry began to wield the needle.

“It might distract you if we talk,” Tarry suggested. “Do you know where they’ve taken her?”

“The boy boasted that Victor has made himself at home in my cottage,” Sebastién replied, the edge in his voice as much from anger as from pain.

“The boy?” Tarry inquired.

“Oui.”
Sebastién jerked as the needle penetrated his flesh. “A strange one, about your age. When I attacked you, I thought it was him.”

He shuddered when Tarry took the final stitch. Tarry used his knife to cut the excess twine and stepped back to survey his handiwork.

“You know, Frenchman,” Tarry said, “if I were wiser, I would have allowed Winstanley to shoot you.”

Sebastién turned to face him. “Why is that?”

Tarry shrugged as he fumbled through the contents of the tin. “Because you’re my rival.”

“Your rival?”

“For Rachael.” Tarry withdrew the container of salve, collected a small amount of it on his forefinger, and began to apply it to the newly sealed gash. “I had hoped that she would be here. I wanted her to see me as dashing, worldly, courageous, and handsome. The way I suspect she sees you.”

“Yet you stopped Winstanley from shooting me. Why?”

“Because I have misjudged you. I’ve learned you’re innocent of most of the mayhem credited to you.”

Sebastién swore colorfully and bolted upright. Tarry looked on helplessly as the bandage he had applied to Sebastién’s head began to unravel, like a mummy becoming unbound.

“How do you know I am innocent?” Sebastién demanded.

Tarry hesitated. “Because I took part in pilfering enough evidence to hang Brightmore,” he admitted in a rush.

Sebastién’s hand went to his wounded head. He looked around for a chair, found one, and sat down. “That was you?” he asked, incredulous.

Tarry nodded. “It was my father, Phillip, and I.” He began to reapply the bandage. “You will not believe what we found. Bolts of silk drying in the backyard. Bags of tea seasoning in the sun. Records of high-duty items that never saw a pence paid on the import! Brandy imported in oil casks well-plastered at each end and oiled on the outside. No doubt the duty he paid was for oil and not spirits! His receipts list only Portuguese wine, levied at a fraction of the duty he would have paid for French wine, but his cellar was filled with French wine.”

Sebastién shook his head in disbelief.

“We found the source of the tobacco black market,” Tarry continued, “boxes upon boxes of ready-filled clay pipes. The Crown never licensed Victor as a tobacconist! We discovered three-hundred packs of wool, no doubt waiting to be exchanged for tea or Lyon’s silk,” Tarry added, knowing the export of English wool had been outlawed to protect the British wool trade. “There was a written record of wrecking—that is how we learned that Victor had used you as a scapegrace for his crimes.”

“The Dane found the ledger. How did it happen that you left it behind?”

“We were in the process of carting away the evidence when we heard men approaching. We gathered the most valuable items and fled. The cabinet was left behind.”

“What was more valuable than the ledger?”

“A covered chamber pot.”

Sebastién wrinkled his nose and looked at Tarry as if he had lost his mind. “A chamber pot?”

“A solid gold chamber pot,” Tarry elaborated. “When I pulled away the cover I discovered counterfeit Customs seals. Brightmore has been marking goods with a set of rather official-looking seals. I dare say the Crown will not find the implied royal sanction amusing. They’ll want to hang him once for each seal, I reckon,” he speculated with glee.

“No doubt he is frantic over his loss.” The intense look of satisfaction, along with almost all the color, had drained from Sebastién’s face. “Brightmore will believe Rachael knows where the seals are hidden.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The men who took Rachael have the parcel containing the ledger. I tried to buy time by saying that we had hidden the rest in the village.”

“My father took everything north for safekeeping,” Tarry said. “Nothing was left that we can use to bargain for her life.”

Sebastién sprang to his feet, stripping away the bandage Tarry had so painstakingly applied. “We’ve no more time,” he told Tarry. “My head is stitched,
cela suffit.
Enough. Have you gotten any better at wielding a sword?”

“I’ve been taking lessons,” Tarry drolly replied.

Sebastién extended his hand. “Rivals can also make effective allies when they share a common goal,” he said.

R
achael sat with rigid bearing on the cane-back chair, flanked by Simon and Emerald. Her hair streamed across her face, but she made no effort to sweep it back, afraid the movement would draw Victor’s attention and give him reason to strike her again.

When his men had first dragged her into the cottage, her uncle had been cocky and glib, but the instant he had opened the parcel his men had retrieved from the lighthouse, his sunny mood had vanished.

“You’re lying,” Victor shouted, raising his voice to be heard above the bellow of the wind. “Where have you and Falconer hidden the rest of it?”

What more could there be? Rachael had never seen him so near panic. “Your man was there.” She nodded at Simon. “He saw that the cabinet contained nothing else.”

“The Dane didn’t open the cabinet in my presence,” Simon protested. “I never saw the contents.”

“The Nordic blighter!” Victor snarled. “I shall kill that freak some day.”

“Or hire someone else to do it for you,” Rachael muttered under her breath.

Victor lunged for her, and Emerald stepped neatly into his path. “The Frenchman said the rest was hidden in the village.”

Rachael’s head snapped up at the news. “That is not true! All we found was a ledger and some correspondence. Someone else had ransacked your home before The Dane got there.”

Without warning, Victor raised his arm and backhanded Rachael. One of his rings cut her lower lip, and she tasted blood and despair. Why would Sebastién have made such a claim? The lie had convinced Victor there was additional information to be pried out of her.

“Perhaps Simon or Emerald can convince you to part with your secret,” Victor suggested.

Simon leaned toward Rachael with the look of a destructive child abandoned in a room filled with delicate china. She felt his hand descend upon her shoulder, and flinched as the pressure increased until she thought he would crush bone.

“Don’t touch her yet,” the boy’s high-pitched voice commanded. When Simon lifted his hand to Rachael’s throat despite the directive, a muscle skipped across the youngster’s smooth, gaunt cheek and his fingers sought the knife slung low on his hip.

Noting the darkening changeling aspect of Emerald’s face, Victor stepped between the men and motioned them aside. Simon relinquished his grip on Rachael’s neck with reluctance, unaware that Emerald’s hand had dropped from his knife in response.

“She doesn’t know the hiding place,” Emerald said. “Else she’d bargain with the information.”

“She knows I intend to kill her anyway,” Victor said impatiently. “She’d withhold the information just to spite me.”

“Let me see what I can get out of her,” Simon begged. He glanced in Rachael’s direction, his thin-lipped smile baring yellowed teeth.

“Why don’t you ask the Frenchman what you want to know?” Rachael shouted at them with reckless anger. It wasn’t difficult to guess the drift of their hushed conversation.

“Not possible,” Victor said in a low voice. “Perhaps I was hasty in having him killed.”

“We left the Frenchman at the lighthouse, alive,” Emerald said.

“
What?
“ Victor immediately looked to Simon for an explanation. “I told you to kill him. Why is he alive?”

Simon cast an unreadable look at Emerald. “I thought you’d want him kept alive until your property was recovered.”

Victor whispered instructions to Simon then motioned Emerald to his side after Simon had left the room. “Why is the Frenchman still alive?” he asked.

“Simon planned to ransom him.”

Victor choked. “He planned to profit from my peril, did he? I’ve given Simon a task. Follow him and see that he completes it.”

“And if he does not?”

Victor briefly considered the question. “Kill him and then finish the task for him.”

“And if he completes it?”

“Simon is not loyal. I leave it up to you. Follow your instincts.”

Outside, the wind shrieked. The frame of the cottage shook as the sound surrounded the small building like the screech of a banshee heralding death.

Rachael was gripped by a dark premonition as Simon mounted the stairs to the upper floor. A woman’s voice sounding like Mrs. Faraday uttered a volley of pleas as a commotion erupted.

A few moments later, she heard Simon’s heavy tread on the stairs as he descended, followed by a tall, muscular blackamoor. She dashed toward him, intending to pluck the swaddled infant from his arms, but Emerald blocked her path, and she had to grit her teeth to hold back the scream. Simon’s taunting grin may have been vile, but Emerald’s cold, unblinking stare was terrifying.

“The housekeeper won’t trouble us for a while,” Simon informed Victor. “She isn’t dead,” he added with a nasty smile at Rachael.

“I will need you and another man in one hour,” Victor told the blackamoor. “Go find a sword and bring him back with you.” His attention strayed to the bundle Simon carried.

James sounded weaker than Rachael remembered, his once lusty cries muted to whimpers. When she reached for the generous folds of blanket that concealed him, Emerald stepped into her path and stopped her with a slow, wordless shake of his head.

“You have a choice, Rachael,” Victor said. “James can turn up as a nameless foundling on some Highland doorstep, although I am willing to negotiate with you; I simply want the rest of my property.”