The Return of the Prodigal (20 page)

Lisette tried to swallow, but her mouth and throat had gone horribly dry, and tasted of metal.

“But he lied, to her, to himself. No sin, though, to lie to a man who sells other people. He put his seed in that white belly, and he left, disgusted. His heart, his mind, once again his own. His dreams, once again grown large. New Orleans? It was not big enough for such an ambitious man. The world is not big enough for him, even as he conquers it.”

Loringa stood up, walked out of the shadows, and Lisette took a quick step backward, for the woman carried her snake with her, wrapped three times around her forearm.

“Why did he go back to New Orleans? Because he did go back. Ah, so tragic, yet so necessary. The parents, the wife, so suddenly sick, so suddenly dead, no matter how devotedly I nursed them. And the money? The pretty plantation house and lands, the auction house, all so suddenly his.” Loringa stroked the flat head of the fat snake. “But it wasn’t to be. How he cursed when he heard the news. The bulk was for the granddaughter, the sweet Lisette, and could not be threatened or cajoled from the bank.”

Lisette listened because she could not ignore the horrors she was hearing. “He could have killed me as well, and taken everything.”

“No. A cousin to your
maman,
he would get it all should you die. If not him, his children. On and on, name after name, but none of them your
papa
’s. Your
grandpère,
he did not like your
papa.
But only one more year, you silly little girl, and all that treasure that he earned will be yours. A journey to New Orleans with your loving
papa,
a smile, a curtsy, and all that beautiful money, the plantation, the auction house, they will all be yours.”

Loringa’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper.
“For as long as you live.”

“Loringa, for shame. Frightening the girl.”

Lisette whirled about to see her father standing just inside the doorway. He had changed his clothing, and was now dressed in funereal black from head to toe, looking as strangely handsome as she’d always thought him. Except now she saw the lines around his mouth for the cruelty that was there, and the dark of his eyes for the devil that lurked behind them. She’d thought he still mourned her
maman,
idiot child that she was. He had murdered her mother!

“You’re a monster. A monster who killed my mother. And for what?
Money?
”

“Money? No, don’t be juvenile. Money is only a means, my dear, not the end in itself. Power is the answer. And money buys power, builds power, holds power. If you had paid more attention to your lessons, your reading of the dear Machiavelli? I had so hoped. I admit my weakness, my hope. A man in the autumn of his years, investing all his silly paternal aspirations in the only fruit of his loins. But do not fear, Lisette. We will be together for some time yet.” He smiled, his eyes remaining emotionless. “At least until New Orleans. After that, my poor daughter’s weak mind may keep her confined in the most elegant madhouse I, her devoted father, can find for her.”

Lisette lifted her skirts and broke into an immediate run, almost making it past her father before he caught her by the elbow and flung her back into the center of the room. She nearly fell, but struggled to keep her feet beneath her. “You stand there alone,
Monsieur le Comte.
Perhaps Rian Becket isn’t as easily captured as I was.”

“A man with one arm? He’s probably halfway to Calais by now, running home to safety, with Thibaud agreeably following. So nice of you, by the way, to help point us in the correct direction.” He reached into his pocket and retrieved a small green leaf, slipped it between his tongue and cheek. “Denys, however, I fear was not quite so grateful. Would you like one of his ears, my dear? I’d give you his tongue, but—” he shrugged, spread his hands palms up, almost apologetically “—it was so many years ago. I’m afraid I didn’t think to save it. I could have had it pickled, couldn’t I, instead of having it boiled and fed to him, bite by bite.”

Lisette wanted nothing more than to run at the man, rake her nails down his smirking face. She even took a step toward him. Two.

But then the events of the night all collided at once, exploding in her head. The floor seemed to be rushing up to meet her, and she could only seem to stand back and watch herself fall….

R
IAN STOOD WITH
a handkerchief tied around his mouth and nose, watching as the fourth and last body was unearthed and Thibaud used the end of the shovel to push back the oilcloth in which all the bodies had been wrapped.

Not even rude wooden coffins. Damn the man!

None of the bodies had as yet decomposed all that badly, however, although their mothers may have been horrified to see what had happened to their handsome soldier sons.

The first had been the most difficult. It had taken Rian a few minutes to steel himself to the idea of looking at a dead man’s face while praying it wasn’t the face of one of his brothers.

But it hadn’t been. The poor bastard’s nearly white-blond hair had been enough to tell Rian that the man was a stranger.

The second had been so short of stature that he knew even before the oilcloth was pushed back that, again, the body could not be one of his brothers.

The third had given him a start. The body, long enough. A thick mane of coal black hair.
Spence
he had thought, until he’d ordered Thibaud to peel away the oilcloth, and there were no scars on the naked body, scars Spence carried from his time in America.

“I can’t do this. Not again,” Thibaud complained as the shovel connected with the fourth and last skull. They’d already been waiting for him to finish vomiting, as he had done several times. “Even if you kill me, you can’t make me do this again.”

“Lieutenant?”

“Never mind, Jasper. He’s right. And he has no respect for these men. I’ll do it myself.”

Thibaud all but threw the shovel at him, and Rian walked to the head of the shallow grave, to where Thibaud had hauled the body half out onto the ground. He went down on his haunches and carefully used the blade of the shovel to sweep more dirt from the oilcloth, looking for an edge he could exploit to push back the cloth from the face of the corpse.

But when he did, he realized two things. One, this last body also was not one of his brother’s.

Two, it was the naked body of a woman.

Rian looked up at Jasper. “Have we been digging in the wrong place? These were the four graves together, the freshest graves. Lisette said there were four. All Beckets. I don’t understand.”

“It’s a puzzlement, for sure. Sun’s comin’ up, Lieutenant,” Jasper told him. “If we’re done here, Jasper thinks we should put this one back and be gone.”

Rian bent to pull the oilcloth back over the woman’s face.

“Wait!”

Rian looked up at Thibaud, who had labored for a long time, his ankles tied together with a rope leaving him only a foot or so of slack, so that he could dig, but he could not run. “Do you know her?”

The man dropped to his knees, using his hands to pull back the oilcloth all the way, exposing long, matted red hair that half covered the rather sunken face.

“Huette? It’s Huette. He said…he said she had gone back to Marseilles, to her mother. My God,
why?
”

T
HEY WERE BACK
at the new encampment, and Jasper had prepared coffee for them all on the brazier.

The horses had been unsaddled and Rian sat on the ground, reclined against one of the saddles, watching Thibaud, his wrists tied together, as he two-handedly sipped from a tin mug.

“We haven’t had a chance to talk, Thibaud. Who was Huette?”

The man shook his head. “No more. Just kill me. You’re going to, anyway, so do it.”

Rian ignored the request. “The
Comte
’s mistress? Yours?”

Thibaud sighed, took another drink of the strong coffee. “She was nobody. A housemaid. She took…she was assigned to the others. Taking them their meals, doing some nursing after they spent time with…time with the
Comte.
You were still too close to dying to be questioned, only those other three. She wouldn’t have said anything, told anybody what she’d seen. He had nothing to fear from her. She was little more than a child herself. Damn!”

“She saw the results of the men being tortured by the
Comte.
I see. No, he wouldn’t want anyone alive to talk about such a thing. So there were three others, not four, as Lisette was told. Dying for a name,” Rian said, slicing a look at Jasper, who only hung his great head, shaking it sadly. “Did you help him, Thibaud?”

The man lifted his head, his eyes that of a man who already considered himself to be dead, a man with nothing left to hide or protect. “I helped him. But only with the men. I knew nothing of Huette. I swear it. We’re old now. Too old for this. I told him so. He’d promised, those were the old ways, and he’s learned new ways. Politics, secrecy, the right man put into the right place. Brilliance, he’d say, not blood. Times…times change. He
promised.
And then we heard the name, and that blackhearted bitch swore she could feel the other one, from…from some other time, years in the past. And it all began again…and I could see. I could see…he liked it. He still liked it. He wanted it all to be true.”

Rian squeezed the handle of his own tin mug so tightly he felt the metal digging into his palm. “They were tortured because their names were Becket, correct? How, Thibaud? How did he know the name Becket?”

“Are you going to kill me? Because I’m hungry. I guess it shouldn’t matter, if I’m a dead man. But to go to Hell hungry?”

“Jasper will get the loaf,” the big man said, getting to his feet. “You’ll be all right, Lieutenant?”

“I don’t think Thibaud presents us much of a danger, thank you, Jasper.”

“Like the leopard he was and is, always with the bloodlust. He only hid his spots….”

“The name
Becket,
Thibaud,” Rian asked again, “how did he know it?”

Thibaud sighed, spilled out the last of his coffee onto the ground. “I brought it to him.”

“
You
did. Interesting. Go on.”

The man scrubbed at his ugly face with both hands. “In London, a few years ago. He had so many plans, and they were working. We’d come back to London, to be introduced to
Society.
If Bonaparte won, we would have power. If England won, we’d have power. Always with a foot in every camp, that’s the
Comte.
All he wants.
Power.
” Thibaud all but spat the word. “One of his fools, his dupes, Rowley Maddox, the high and mighty Earl of Chelfham, was doing the honors. Stupid man, ambitious man. It all went to hell somehow.”

“The Red Men Gang was unmasked and you had to flee England before you were all caught and hanged,” Rian supplied tonelessly.

Thibaud looked at him in real surprise. “So it’s true? He found the right Becket? You know all about Chelfham?”

“I know more than you might think but may have begun to guess, Thibaud. Please, continue.”

“Why? You already know.”

“Not enough, unfortunately.”

Jasper returned with the loaf, ripping off a piece and handing it to their prisoner.

“Very well. He left at once, when it all went to hell. I was left behind to…to tidy up. The Earl was out of reach and a second man already dead, but there was still one more. It was an easy thing to bribe my way into the gaol, get myself close enough to hear the name of the man who had somehow discovered him, taken him at pistol point, delivered him there. Someone he believed worked in the War Office, a man named Becket. We thought a soldier.”

“No, not a soldier,” Rian responded. “The man was Chance Becket. My brother. I remember what happened. It was he who delivered Sir Gilbert Eccles to the guardhouse—your third man, I believe. The guardhouse where Eccles was found dead, his throat cut ear-to-ear a day later. Your handiwork, I’ll assume?”

Thibaud choked on the bite of bread, coughing until Jasper generously clapped him on the back—sending both the bit of stuck bread and Thibaud pitching forward, nearly into the fire.

“Chance? You said
Chance?
The young one, the wild one? Geoff’s wharf rat? Your
brother?
My God, the witch was right!”

Rian smiled. Chance would have been delighted at the man’s response to hearing his name. “It would seem so, yes. Not just the nemesis that destroyed the Red Men Gang’s conduit of gold for Bonaparte, but your old enemy as well. I was nine that day, Thibaud, the day Edmund Beales’s three ships sailed into the harbor. Were you riding on one of them? Were you in on the slaughter? You were, Thibaud—or whatever you called yourself back then—weren’t you? Do you know how many babies we sent to the bottom wrapped in shrouds with their mothers?”

The man leapt to his feet, tried to run, forgetting that his ankles were tied together, and fell face-forward in the dirt. He lay there, his cheek pressed to the ground.

Jasper got to his feet, began advancing toward Thibaud, pulling the fat saber from the scabbard strapped to his back.

Thibaud tried to roll away from Jasper. “Wait! Wait! I can help you. I can help you get the woman back. No! Please, God, no. I didn’t mean it! I don’t want to die!”

Rian lifted his hand and Jasper shrugged, pushed the saber back into its scabbard.

“No honor among thieves, and a thief is always a coward at the heart of it. I like that in a man like you, Thibaud, I really do. Talk to me,” he said quietly, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Talk and you may live to see the sun rise again tomorrow. Tell me how you’re going to help us.”

H
ER FATHER HAD INSISTED
she be taken upstairs, under guard, to bathe and change into one of the gowns he had purchased for her in Paris.

He’d said that, as she was, she was an embarrassment to his sensibilities.

She’d told him that was highly unlikely, as he had no sensibilities.

He’d agreed to prove her right, and had backhanded her hard enough to send her to the floor.

Lisette sat at her dressing table, peering into the mirror at her swollen bottom lip, and wondered how long it would be before her ear stopped ringing like the bell that pealed every night at the convent, calling the nuns to evening prayers.

She had been an unhappy child, a lonely, solitary child, always dreaming of a better life, a family. Now she longed for her innocence, gone forever.

Loringa sat in the corner, hovered there like some aged, colorful parrot, that damnable snake in a basket at her feet. Yes, Loringa had been the beginning of it, the beginning of her questions, her worries. What would a great man like the
Comte
Beltrane want with such a horrid old crone—a witch.

That had led Lisette to listening at keyholes, to stepping quietly so that she could overhear conversations before she could be seen, to asking questions. Too many questions, obviously.

But her fears, her concerns, they had brought her to Rian Becket, and she could not regret that.

She could only fear for him, pray he had left her for the liar she was, and was already halfway to England.

Even as she looked up at the ceiling, at the room just above her head, the one with the bed Rian Becket had slept in, the room with the broken lock on the doors opening onto the balcony, and wondered why he hadn’t come for her.

But she wouldn’t even think of that right now. Better to simply take her mind back to that night, back to those heady moments on the balcony, when she had learned about a man, about the man she knew she loved.

She’d known it then, some part of her had known it, even if it had taken her this long to acknowledge her love for him. Now that she might never see him again, be able to tell him.

No! She wouldn’t think of that, either. It was unproductive. She would think about that night, on the balcony.

They’d made love gently, tenderly, as he had always done before. But then Lisette found herself frustrated with his gentleness, had surprised herself by becoming bolder, moving with him, stroking him, even asking him where and how he liked to be touched.

Whispered words. Hot and frantic words. Sharp intakes of breath rather than leisurely sighs. He taught her, really taught her, how to kiss; how to open her mouth to him, how to take his mouth in return.

Dueling. Battling. Inhibitions were for those who would shrink at making love on a balcony in the middle of the night, the chance of discovery always with them, even as passion blurred the lines between reality and what was, what could be, what urged them on, and on. And on.

She vaguely recalled the sound of the large bolts holding the wrought iron balcony to the stone squeaking rhythmically as they moved together, faster and faster and faster.

Who had first heard the shout? Rian? Herself? She couldn’t remember, not even now. But someone had heard them, had stopped beneath the balcony, yelled up at them to identify themselves, show themselves.

Lisette had begun to giggle. If she stood up, at this very moment, she most certainly would be
showing
herself. All of her, naked as the day God had made her.

Lisette smiled at her reflection in the mirror, remembering how Rian Becket had cursed beneath his breath, locked his legs hard around her and then rolled them toward the closed doors. They’d still been melded together, which was absurd, and when their combined bodies crashed against the door the old, rusted lock had given way, so that they continued to roll, back into the room.

And he’d continued to love her, the two of them laughing into each other’s mouths as they’d taken and given with complete abandon. Locked together…yet free at last.

Free then, even while still here, at the manor house, under her father’s roof, where she was once more…and far from free.

Lisette sighed, picked up the brush Loringa had fetched for her, as the silver-backed set was still in the caravan, along with the matching mirror, her change of clothing, and the evidence that would, if he discovered it, damn her forever in Rian Becket’s eyes. The two
gads,
sewn into the hem of that gown.

Unless he had guessed. Unless he had realized that she had not wanted to lie, but had been unable to tell him all of the truth. Unwilling to believe that her entire life had been a lie. That her
papa
was a monster.

Too late, she had allowed herself to truly believe the worst.

Now poor, terrified Denys was dead. Her selfish stupidity had killed him. And now Rian was probably out there somewhere, plotting a romantical way to rescue her as if she was some fairy-tale damsel in a tower, and could get himself killed in the process.

So it was up to her to be practical.

She opened the top drawer of her dressing table and carefully extracted the scissors she had used just a few weeks ago to trim at her hair, and concealed it into her palm. Slowly, praying Loringa wouldn’t notice, she then eased her hand down to her side and slipped the scissors into her pocket. The blades weren’t that long, only two inches, she believed, but they were straight and sharp, and she would not hesitate to use the scissors as a sort of knife.

She’d say a rosary afterward, perhaps even perform a novena, but she truly believed God would forgive her.

Then she made a great business out of searching that same drawer for a blue ribbon to match her gown, and tied back her hair at her nape, exposing all of her swollen left cheek already faintly blue with bruising. Let the man see what he had done to her, this man who had given her life and then murdered her
maman,
and may he burn in a thousand Hells.

She stood up, faced Loringa. “I’m ready to go back downstairs.”

The older woman pushed herself up from the chair, picked up the basket by its handle and held it out to her. “Carry this.”

Lisette shook her head. “I will not. I refuse. Utterly.”

“Damballah-wèdo doesn’t please you? A powerful Dahomey god, Damballah-wèdo. We do the
danse vaudou
with him, and the initiates go into a frenzy of devotion. You would like it, the
danse vaudou.
You would writhe and shiver as he took you past all understanding, and then you would feel the power.”

“You’re really rather annoying, Loringa, do you know that?” Lisette said, surprising herself at the even, almost bored tone of her voice. “I am not a child, to be frightened by your stories or your snake.”

“Then take him. Carry him.”

“All right. Give him to me, and I’ll toss him out the window. Perhaps this great snake god of yours is so magical that he can
fly.
”

“You challenge me?” Loringa gestured toward the door. “I can make you sicken. I can make you die.”

“That makes you a murderess, Loringa, not a priestess. All you are fit for is to be his slave, do his bidding.”

“I am
not
a slave! Never say such a word to me. I am Loringa, and all-powerful!”

Lisette could still hear the ringing in her ears, but wondered now if it was not her own blood, singing in her ears, telling her to not be afraid. “More powerful than this twin of yours, this Odette you spoke of to me? When I meet her, I will ask her about you, and she’ll tell me the truth. How you chose a dark path with Edmund Beales. You’re not the
good
one, Loringa. You’re nothing but a bully and murderess—and a slave who does his bidding, eager for his pleasure. The pleasure of a monster. I feel sorry for you. I almost feel sorry for that poor snake, kept locked in a basket.”