The Return of the Prodigal (17 page)

“Yes, sir!”

But when they got there, when Rian opened the door to the caravan, it was to see pieces of rope on the floor, a large knife on the bench. And no sign of Lisette.

He picked up the knife, carried it out to the small campfire, showed Jasper the blood on the blade. “I did this, Jasper. I forced her to this while trying to keep her safe—and keep myself safe, too, I admit. May God forgive me, my friend, because Lisette never will.”

Jasper took the knife from him, wiped the blade on the grassy ground to clean it. “Where would she go, sir?”

“Where else, Jasper? What other avenue did I leave her but to go back to the manor house, try to find answers for herself? Strike the camp, Jasper, we have to relocate ourselves, quickly, just in case she sends her father’s men after us, although I doubt she’d inform on us willingly.”

“What else would she do, Lieutenant?” Jasper asked, already moving toward Gog and Magog.

“Question him. Being Lisette, demand that he tell her that everything I said was a lie. And if she is his daughter, Jasper, a man who would send his own child to what he believes to be the bed of the enemy, how important do you think it will be to him to keep her alive if he can’t convince her of his innocence? We have to believe she is now his prisoner. To believe anything else, Jasper, would probably kill me faster than any French bullet.”

D
ENYS DIDN
’
T SLEEP
in the attics of the manor house. Lisette had never been sure if that was because he couldn’t speak, and the maids were afraid of him, or if the small room above the tack area of the stables simply felt more comfortable to the silent, sad-faced man.

She was only grateful that it would be fairly easy to approach him, take him away with her, back to the caravan, without anyone being aware of her presence on the grounds.

Lisette made her way slowly, stepping carefully as she passed by the small carriage house where her
papa
’s men were housed, sometimes only a few of them, sometimes more, up to two dozen at a time, sleeping cheek by jowl, she supposed, in such close quarters.

For a man as wealthy as the
Comte
Beltrane, the manor house seemed so very modest, but he also held the house in Paris, and Lisette hadn’t given it much thought. Not until he’d told her one day that he never planned to remain forever in France, even if Bonaparte had succeeded, and saw no reason to expend more than necessary on a home he would rarely visit again. No, his real home was England, and he would return there, live there openly, a very rich, a very powerful man to whom kings bowed if they knew what was best for them.

She’d laughed at that bit of silliness, Lisette remembered as she drew closer to the stables, thinking her
papa
had been teasing her with a silly story.

She didn’t think that anymore. She had thought both his houses grand, as anything larger than her small cell at the convent would be grand. But when she thought about the thing, really thought about it, as she had done for the past several days and nights, it was the furnishings that were grand, not the houses. He would take the furnishings with him, when he went to London to frighten kings.

Had he planned to take her, as well?

She’d pleased him, at least at first, she was sure of that. So happy to have someone to call
papa
, so delighted with every new sight, every new taste, every new piece of silky clothing. And the books! So many books to read,
real
books, not just holy tracts. Her
papa
had particularly recommended Machiavelli to her, and she had tried, seriously tried, to pretend an interest, but she thought the man more than a little full of himself, and his view of the world, the limited intelligence of its peoples, rather depressing.

When had it all begun to change? When she’d first been brought to the manor house when Loringa was in residence? Yes, it had been Loringa. The woman frightened her, with her dark talk, her dark laughter, her dark ways. Even as she told Lisette about her poor murdered
maman,
her own heroics on the long ago day of that murder, Lisette had felt that there was more, things Loringa refused to tell her.

But she was home, she had her
papa,
and it would be ungrateful, even sinful, to question him, to question her new existence…ask why, dear God, it had taken the man so very long to come for her. Why he had left her alone for so long.

Lisette stopped at the huge doors to the stable and rethought her plan. Surely there was another door, a smaller one, somewhere else? With a look toward the trees separating the stable from the house, she began walking around the building, and soon located a smaller door in a one-story wooden outcropping seemingly stuck to the larger structure.

She put her hand on the latch and pushed down, holding her breath.

The latch moved easily, and the door opened.

Stepping inside, Lisette waited impatiently for her eyes to adjust to the more complete darkness after the moonlight outside, attempting to control her breathing, her rapid heartbeat.

“Denys?” she called out at last, quietly, although it seemed to her that her voice echoed in the rafters of the stables.

At the other end of the building, a horse knickered, pawed at the straw-covered wooden floor.

She moved farther into the main stable. “Denys? It’s Lisette. Your friend Lisette, remember? Denys?”

Her entire body convulsed and she bit down hard on her lips as a hand touched down on her shoulder.
Please, God, let it be Denys.
She turned around, slowly, to be met by the man’s widely grinning mouth. “Denys,” she said, returning his smile. “I’m so glad to see you. Quickly, take me to your room, in case anyone should come looking for me. I don’t want to be seen.”

Denys tipped his head to one side, frowned, made some sort of almost gurgling sound in his throat.

“It’s all right, Denys. I was very careful. The
Comte
doesn’t know I’m here. It will be our secret, yes?”

The man, slight in build, his thick shock of hair nearly all silver, nodded, and then pointed into the darkness before stepping in front of her. She followed, a part of her still wondering what on earth she thought she could accomplish, hoping for answers from a man who couldn’t speak.

But at least now, thanks to Rian, she might have the proper questions to put to him.

She had some difficulty following Denys in her skirts as he led her to a rude ladder that went straight up toward the rafters, but she managed, Denys leaning down to grab her wrist to pull her up onto the plain boards. She winced involuntarily, and he was at once all concern, leading her into his small room, a mere cut-out in the second floor of the stables, lucky to have its own door, she imagined.

“It’s all right, Denys, it’s just a scratch,” she said as he motioned for her to sit down on the low bed, the only piece of furniture in the room, and began unwrapping the strip of petticoat she had tied around the result of her first, frantic attempts to saw herself free of the ropes.

But Denys wasn’t listening, or else he had made a decision of his own regarding her wound, a two-inch-long cut that, she’d realized once her hands were free, had come perilously close to slicing a vein, if not an artery.

She watched as he poured water into a small basin from a cracked and chipped pitcher and then dipped the piece of petticoat into it before using the wet cloth to clean away the crusted and dried blood, exposing the cut to her eyes once more. Brave as she’d like to consider herself to be, she felt her stomach do a small flip, and looked away, not looking back until she could feel a new strip of cloth being wrapped around the wound.

“Thank you, Denys, that was very kind of you. How are you?”

He lifted his thin shoulders in a shrug, spread his hands in front of him in a gesture that seemed to tell her, “What can I say? I am as I am.”

“The
Comte,
he’s in residence, yes?”

Denys nodded.

“Is everyone very upset that I left?”

The man rolled his eyes up to the ceiling for a moment, as if thinking of a way to reply, and then put his hands around his own neck, pantomiming choking himself.

“What? He choked you?”

Denys nodded again, furiously, then hit his hands against his chest.

“Your fault? He thinks it’s your fault? But he knew I was going. He planned it. I don’t under—Wait. He thinks you knew that I planned to elude Thibaud? That I’d told you?”

Again, Denys nodded, then spread his arms, palms up.

“But, no, I didn’t, did I? Why would he think I would confide in you? Oh, no, Denys, don’t frown. We’re friends, you and I, of course we are. I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, why would he think I would tell you anything that might possibly get you into trouble?”

Denys seemed to have no answer for that, so Lisette sat back on the bed and thought of other questions to ask him.

“Has Thibaud come back?”

Yes. Denys made his hands into fists and punched at the air, his expression probably meant to be intense, frustrated.

“
Papa
isn’t happy with him?”

Deny’s head shake in the negative was quite emphatic.

“Oh, dear. Well, then that’s just too bad, isn’t it? We don’t like Thibaud, do we?” She smiled as Denys nodded furiously before he bent down, reached beneath the bed and pulled out a small battered tin, pulling it open and offering her one of the three biscuits inside. “That’s so sweet of you, Denys. You’re a very good host.” And then she took one, because she felt he would be insulted if she didn’t, and momentarily wondered if she’d chipped a tooth as she bit into it.

Denys replaced the lid without taking a biscuit for himself, and sat with the tin in his lap, waiting.

Lisette knew why she had come, and what she needed to ask. But she was reluctant to broach the subject. Still, Rian Becket must have returned to the caravan by now, and she didn’t know how much time she had before he came hunting her like some grand knight on a white horse out of a fairy tale. The man was so predictable, bless and curse him.

“Denys, I…I’ve heard some things. Things about my
papa,
things that hurt my heart, make me wonder if I should go away from here, stay far away. If I ask you some questions, will you answer them truthfully?”

The man nodded, his eyes suddenly sad, as if he felt sorry for her.

“Thank you, Denys. First, I suppose I should ask you how long you’ve been with my
papa.
”

Denys held up both hands, fingers spread. Once, twice.

“Twenty years?”

He looked up at the rafters above his head, then held out his right hand a third time.

“Five and twenty years.” Lisette’s heart began to pound in her chest. “That’s a long time, Denys. You were a much younger man then.”

He sighed audibly, shrugged.

“So you were with him when he lived in the area of the Caribbean?”

Denys, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, got to his feet, put his back against the wall, as if protecting himself from attack from the rear. She was able to count to ten before, at last, he nodded.

She attempted to put him at his ease. “It must have been beautiful there, Denys. So warm, the sky so blue. The sea as well, yes? You must miss it.”

The man smiled, his eyes closed, his clasped hands to his heart.

“You sailed with my
papa,
when he was a privateer?”

Denys opened his eyes, looked at her pleadingly, as if he didn’t want to answer any more questions.

“No, no, Denys, please don’t be upset. I need to know some things, I really do. So many things. About my
papa,
my
maman.
I want you to come with me, Denys. You don’t belong here, we neither of us do, do we? I want to take you with me, to my friends. To England. Will you come?”

He was still for so long that she began to worry that she had made a huge mistake, that Denys felt a great loyalty to her
papa.

But then a single tear made its way down the man’s thin, lined face, and he nodded. Attempted a smile that seemed more a grimace. Opened his mouth to moan…a terrible, sad sound.

Lisette quickly got to her feet. “Then we’ll go. Now, Denys, all right? Don’t bother to take anything with you, for there’s no time, and no need. But first, just one more question, please? Your answer is exceedingly important to me, for so many reasons. Just a yes or a no, Denys. Do you know this name? Edmund Beales? Is my
papa
Edmund Beales?”

Denys squeezed his eyes shut tight, his hands raised protectively to his face as he howled, loud and piteously, sinking to his knees.

“Denys, what’s wrong? What did I say?”

“I can answer that, my dear. You just asked that pathetic, disloyal excuse for a human entirely the wrong question. Didn’t she, Denys? Leon, you did well. Take her to my study if you please. I’ll join you shortly, once I have dealt with our
talkative
friend. A pity, really. But some people just don’t learn their lesson the first time, do they, Denys?”

Denys screamed again, cowering in a corner now, like a terrified child.

She had been seen! God, she thought she’d been so careful! Lisette reluctantly turned around to see her coldly smiling
papa
standing just inside the doorway. “I’ll ask that you don’t punish him for my sin,” she said, wishing she felt as brave as her words.

“I’ll agree that you have much to say to me—in the way of a confession for that sin, yes?—but I don’t believe, my dear, you are in any position to ask for favors. Or even to beg for them.”

“I am your daughter. I’m asking you, as your daughter, as your child,” she told him, shielding Denys with her own body. “Don’t hurt him.”

“Don’t bore me. Christ, anything but to bore me,” the
Comte
drawled, and then lifted one bone-white hand and snapped his fingers.

Leon grabbed at her arm, began pulling her toward the open doorway, the ladder.

“No! Please!” Lisette begged, for she would beg, not for herself, but for Denys. “
Papa,
please!”