Fire at Midnight (36 page)

“
Grand-père.”
Sebastién greeted Hugh Falconer with a respectful inclination of his head.

Hugh Falconer was a striking man. His coloring was as stark and vivid as his personality. Cotton white hair framed his sun-darkened face, and his eyes were more green than blue. A square jaw alluded to an obstinate nature and white, even teeth made him look more feral than friendly. His small, upturned nose was lost amid the wrinkled terrain of his face.

He was tall and slender, with a wiry build. The handsome black riding suit he wore was outlined by a generous amount of gold braid, lending his appearance a stringent, military air.

Rachael might have escaped his notice entirely had it not been for Sebastién’s arm placed possessively around her waist. Hugh’s eyes clouded with contempt as they raked over her.

“You’re not the first Frenchman to be tempted by ripe English fruit,” Hugh told him. “Was she worth it?”

“Rachael had no part in this,” Sebastién replied.

“Rachael … Penrose?” Hugh guessed.

Hugh’s eyes moved over her again and she was glad Sebastién had not withdrawn the support of his arm. His rasping cackle was barely a laugh. “Were you aware that your English whore works for Customs?” She felt the arm around her flex and tense. “Oh, do you prefer that I speak in French?” Hugh asked.

“If you are going to insult her, I would prefer that you not speak at all.”

“She has helped to ruin you.”

“I am not ruined,” Sebastién replied. “Close to hanging, perhaps, but the Falconer legend will only be enhanced by an execution. That should please you.”

“There will be no justice for you in this court,” Hugh charged in a gravelly voice. “Your accuser was raised on the right knee of England!”

“You do not aid my cause,” Sebastién warned, indicating the miffed-looking Porter with a shallow nod of his head.

Hugh seemed to notice the judge for the first time. He dipped into his vest pocket and withdrew a creased piece of parchment as he approached the bench. He handed the worn paper to Porter.

Porter frowned as he adjusted his spectacles, unfolded the paper, and read the message scrawled upon it. He looked up in surprise, glanced over at Simon, and then returned his attention to the paper.

Hugh crossed the room and rejoined his grandson.

“Some blackguard named Simon demanded a ransom for you. If I had not seen a posted notice of your trial, you would have been executed before I could learn of your predicament.”

Sebastién’s brows drew downward as a frown creased his forehead and he looked at Simon, who slowly reddened under his steady, incensed regard.

“You intended to collect a ransom for me?”

“Victor told us to kill you,” Simon explained. “I promised a share of the ransom to any man who would cross Victor and deliver a ransom note. We did not expect you to escape.”

Emerald tugged at the bloodied cuticle of his thumb. “We did not expect you to
live,”
he archly disclosed. He laughed in response to Simon’s glare of warning.

Simon appealed to Hugh. “I sought only to spare your grandson’s life,” he said.

“Menteur,”
Sebastién spat. “Liar!”

“Have you any other witnesses?” Porter inquired of Jacques.

Jacques’s gaze swept over Simon and Emerald. He sighed. “My witnesses are from the rogues’ gallery,” he said. “If they disagree, which one of them will you believe?” He shrugged. “I’m not sure what
I
believe at this point,” he said.

“Your brother expects to be exonerated,” Porter said.

“Oui,”
Sebastién staunchly concurred.

“What remains, then, is a question of the degree of guilt supported by the evidence,” Porter said. He glanced over at Sebastién. “Will anyone speak for you, sir?”

Rachael looked up at Sebastién, but he resolutely shook his head. His eyes settled on The Dane, who still waited for the signal Sebastién would not give. He turned back to Porter.

“Non,” he said.

Rachael groaned, and The Dane mouthed an obscenity as a flush of annoyance crept over his fair skin. Desperate, she looked to Eleanor, whose eyes rested on her son with a look of entreaty.

“Could she really be so different from the woman you knew as Mrs. Faraday?” Rachael whispered.

Sebastién’s arm tightened around her, and she felt tension vibrate through his frame as he held her. He drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “Perhaps my housekeeper will speak,” he said.

Eleanor stepped forward, only to be restrained by Phillip’s hand.

“Porter knows you,” Phillip cautioned. “You cannot present yourself as his housekeeper. If Porter believes you are attempting to deceive him, your son will suffer the consequences.”

“The housekeeper will come forward.” Porter scanned the crowd with an impatient scowl.

Eleanor looked at Phillip in alarm.

“You cannot present yourself as his housekeeper!” Phillip urged again in a low voice.

“Perhaps not,” Eleanor replied, “but I
can
truthfully claim to be his mother!” She slipped past Phillip with a determined set to her jaw.

Hugh stared as Eleanor came forward and gasped in outrage when she stated her name, complexion suddenly as white as his hair.

“I don’t fear you any longer, Hugh,” Eleanor told him. “You’ve already done your worst to me by stealing my son.” She turned her attention to Porter, effectively dismissing Hugh. “Sebastién Falconer is my son,” Eleanor told Porter. “His father was Henri Falconer of Marseilles.”

“I cannot consider you an unbiased witness,” Porter said gently. “You
are,
after all, his mother.”

“She is no mother to him,” Hugh spat. “She is here to dishonor the Falconer name!”

Phillip took an angry step toward Hugh, but Sebastién thrust out an arm to forestall him, the length of chain dangling noisily from his wrists. He was intent upon the exchange between his mother and grandfather.

Hugh spun toward the judge with an indignant scowl.

“This is a private matter,” he said. “I will not shake my family tree while English peasants sit beneath it.”

“One might suspect you have something to hide,
Grand-père
,” Sebastién said in a deceptively light tone.

“Your son wishes to hear how you murdered his father,” Hugh said coldly.

Eleanor drew a sharp breath and gaped at Hugh.

“What lies have you told him?” She saw that Sebastién waited. “I was barely seventeen when I met your father. I was enchanted with Henri,” she recalled with a wistful smile. “He was quite charming.”

“It was a mistake to allow him to visit England,” Hugh muttered. “Henri would be alive today if not for the Englishwoman he married against my advice.”

“You told me she murdered my father,” Sebastién reminded Hugh. “You have never told me how he died.”

Eleanor’s luminous gray eyes grew dull and her face twisted with emotion.

“I understand your hatred of me now,” she told Sebastién. Her chin lifted. “I would never have harmed your father, Sebastién. I loved him.”

“She may not have plunged a dagger into his heart,” Hugh put in, “but she barred the physician from the room when Henri needed treatment. My son might have lived.”

“Who made such a claim? Fantlereau himself?” Eleanor challenged. “If so, the miracle was promised
after
the patient died!”

Eleanor held up her hands in frustration at the condemnation in Sebastién’s expression. “Your grandfather would have you believe I coldly resisted treatment for Henri, but that is not so.” She ignored Hugh’s disparaging snort. “Henri had been thrown from his horse and then trampled by the beast. His injuries were so terrible that Fantlereau, Hugh’s physician, was called.”

“Fantlereau was a student of Fagan,” Hugh added.

“But he did not have the skill of the King’s personal physician,” Eleanor argued. “Fantlereau sought favor by courting members of the French aristocracy. I learned his true nature when I found myself fending off his advances after Henri’s accident, and he dared to suggest that I would soon be a widow. He was cruel, ambitious, and dangerously inept.” She turned her attention to Sebastién. “He bled Henri. Henri was badly injured from the fall, and the bloodletting only weakened him more. Fantlereau would have continued to bleed him, but I locked Fantlereau out of the chamber because he was only adding to Henri’s suffering. Your grandfather has always blamed me for his death.”

“I had envisioned sinister figures grasping daggers or poisoned goblets of wine,” Sebastién said in a flat voice.

“Ignorance and greed killed your father,” Eleanor said softly. “Not I.”

Sebastién nodded, frowning. He studied his mother for a moment, started to speak, and then stopped himself. Rachael reached out and clasped his hand, and his gaze quickly returned to his mother. “Why did you abandon me?” he blurted.

“Hugh never stopped blaming me for Henri’s death. I was sick with grief and left alone with two babies in a hostile household in a foreign land.”

As she struggled to frame a reply, Hugh drew a chair aside and sat down stiffly. The gold braid trim of his coat caught the weak light as it filtered through an adjacent window, molding him in a pale outline.

“I decided to take my children and return home to England. It was a plan made in secret with the aid of Jeanette, one of the maids who had befriended me.”

“They conspired to steal my grandsons from me!” Hugh accused.

“How was it that you left France with only Jacques?” Sebastién asked.

“You were taken from me,” Eleanor said.

“Non,
you were rescued!” Hugh amended.

“Allow her to tell it,” Sebastién said curtly.

Hugh reacted as though his grandson had struck him. His mouth worked, but no sound escaped.

“We fled one night after everyone had gone to bed. Jeanette’s husband, Paul, had arranged for a small boat. Jeanette carried you and I carried Jacques. We left minutes apart. I reached the boat with Jacques, and waited for Jeanette to bring you.

“Suddenly, I heard Jeanette screaming as she came running toward me with you in her arms. Hugh followed her on horseback, lashing out at her with his riding crop. I will never forget the sight of Jeanette trying to protect my child from a whip wielded by his own grandfather.”

“I would not have harmed my grandson,” Hugh said diffidently. “Not so his mother, or her conspirators.”

The look that passed between Hugh and Eleanor left no doubt in Rachael’s mind that Eleanor had risked her life that night.

“When Jeanette fell, she rolled to protect you from the hooves of the horse. I watched as Hugh snatched you up like some prize from the hunt. He was laughing.

“Hugh rode toward us brandishing that terrible whip. I fought Paul as he lifted me into the boat. I vowed I would not leave without you. We struggled, and I fell and struck my head.” She pushed back her soft gray hair, revealing a small scar. “I do not remember the voyage, or even being removed from the boat in England.”

“How long was it before you remembered me? Was I struck from your memory as well?”

“You were all I thought about!” Eleanor protested. “As soon as we arrived in England, I asked a friend in France to look for you. Your grandfather was clever and powerful, and there were too many places to hide you. You were in Marseilles, then Bordeaux, then Montpellier, then Paris, then Toulon,” Eleanor recalled. “As soon as I learned where to find you, Hugh moved you again. I was always a step behind.”

A look of comprehension crossed Sebastién’s face and was swiftly replaced by anger.

“Summer in Saint Brieuc, spring in Saint Quentin, fall in Foix, winter in Wassy. You used to make a game of it, eh,
Grand-père
? I saw more of France in my childhood than most adults see in a lifetime. Was I the doted-upon grandson or the pawn in your game of revenge?”

Rachael pictured him as a child, shuttled from one region of France to another as Hugh plotted to keep him out of Eleanor’s reach. He grew up believing his mother had abandoned him. The man who had raised him was cold and demanding, and she was the only person with whom he shared a relationship of any depth.

“I traveled throughout France until I was eight years of age, and then I stopped traveling,” Sebastién said carefully. “Grandfather summoned me home to Marseilles. I remained in Marseilles until I was sixteen.”

His tormented expression clearly asked his mother,
Where were you during all that time?

“She claims she could not find you!” Hugh chortled. Sebastién’s jaw tightened in reaction to the taunt.

“Just before your seventh birthday, I received word that you had died of a fever,” Eleanor said. “The news came from the same man who had searched for you all those years and claimed he could not find you. I learned much later that he had been in your grandfather’s employ. I was told your remains had been placed in the family vault, and that I was banned from the property. I would not be allowed to visit your grave.”

She turned to Porter. “I was stunned to discover my son was alive, but even more shocked to learn of the crimes he had supposedly committed. I am the housekeeper,” she confessed. “I deceived my son because I wanted to discover what sort of man he had become. I learned that he is a good man. I only wish I had been able to change the circumstances of his upbringing,” she added, with a hate-filled glare directed at Hugh. “It saddens me to see where his grandfather’s influence has led him.”

“All families have bones to rattle within their closets,” Porter said. “And England has privateers of all flags in her gaols. The concern I have is that your son may commit future crimes against England in the name of France, particularly now when there is tension between our two countries.”

“You will execute him just because he is French!”

“Hugh, be quiet,” Eleanor snapped.

“You will be silent, or I will have you removed,” Porter warned Hugh ignoring his outraged glower. “If I am to consider leniency, I must be convinced that the accused is not a threat to England.”

R
achael felt the brief snatch and slide of Sebastién’s fingers on her gown as he tried to stop her from approaching Porter and failed.