A Reckless Beauty (20 page)

“He’d still be so much your enemy? After all this time?”

“No less than he’s mine, if for different reasons. Now, if there’s nothing else, please excuse me as I—Fanny.”

Valentine leapt up from his chair and turned to face the door to the hallway, to see her standing there, her eyes wide, her complexion as white as chalk.

“Fanny,” Ainsley said gently, “come over here to me, my dear. What did you hear, hmm? What did you—Fanny!”

But she was gone.

“Christ! What did she hear? Where would she go? Where would she run to? Quickly, man.”

“Sit down, Valentine,” Ainsley told him. “Give her some time by herself.”

“But if she heard me say that I might have been able to bring Rian back if she hadn’t been with me—”

“Yes, I understand that. I’m afraid there’s enough pain for all of us in this, enough blame for all of us to share. For now, let her be, let her grieve. Jack will be in the main drawing room, with the others. Just turn to your right as you leave here and follow the hallway. Tell him I suggested you and Court and Spence visit
The Last Voyage.
Choose a dark corner and tell them what you’ve told me, please. It’s enough I’ll have to deal with Jacko.”

Valentine didn’t want to repeat his story. He wanted to find Fanny, hold her, tell her nothing had been her fault. But he realized Ainsley Becket was probably right. He’d needed time alone himself once he’d finally put all the pieces together, God knew. Valentine didn’t much care for taking orders. But this was Ainsley Becket’s house, and Fanny was his daughter.

“Oh, and one thing more,” Ainsley said as Valentine headed for the open doorway. “Sit as far as possible from Spencer while you’re first doing the telling. I don’t think Mariah would appreciate it if the boy broke his other hand on your head.”

“Sir, I—”

Ainsley shook his head slowly. “No. Going over what has happened, time and again, aids nobody. We move on from here. That’s what we must do, what we’ve always done. We survive.”

Valentine looked to the open doorway one more time, his chest tight. “Survive. Yes, I used to think that would be enough. To survive. But it isn’t, sir. It really isn’t. Not anymore.”

“No, and it never was,” Ainsley told him, walking to the French doors, to look out over the Channel. “But, sometimes, my new friend, it’s all we have….”

V
ALENTINE’S
MEETING
with Jack and the Becket brothers hadn’t gone especially well, but at least it had been mercifully brief and relatively bloodless. He’d left them where they sat, Jack making small motions with his head, encouraging him to leave, and he’d walked down past the mermaid figurehead, having decided to row out to the
Pegasus
to check on the horses.

But the yacht wasn’t anchored in the small harbor. He stood, his hands jammed on his hips, considering the possible ramifications of this development, until he heard a voice behind him.

“Sent your captain off to near Littlestone-on Sea, milord, where there’s deeper water and a dock. It was either that or a winch, and we didn’t much feel like haulin’ that out for a couple of horses. Sent Jacob Whiting, too, to ride the mare and bring your stallion back here with him.”

Valentine turned about, to see what could only be a wizened old seadog, right down to his bandy legs and skinny shanks. “And my yacht?”

“Told your man to shoo it off home. Don’t need such a silly thing here, do we now? Can’t even mount a single decent gun on it, can you? I’m Billy, by the bye. An’ I know you. You’re the one what left our Rian to die.”

Valentine’s stomach knotted. “Yes, that would be me. But I didn’t see you in the tavern, Billy. Were you perhaps hiding beneath the table?”

Billy’s grinned, showing a new, rather raw gap squarely in his bottom jaw, where another of his teeth had recently lost the battle to the tooth drawer. “Nobody ever sees me. That’s m’talent. Hit you good, didn’t he? And you didn’t so much as blink, or hit him back, neither, him with only one good hand.” Billy poked his tongue at the new gap, then ran it around his lips, smiled again. “Don’t be doin’ that with Jacko. He’d just hit you again, twice as hard. Then he’d start in with the kickin’, once he had you down. That’s Jacko, and all you need to know about him.”

“The man’s twice my age.”

“So? He’s twice as big, too, grantin’ that most of it’s round his middle now. One hit, that’s only to be expected. But never two. Two, and you’re showin’ him your soft underbelly, and that’s never good.”

“I’ll remember that, thank you. Are you going to hit me now, too, Billy? A single hit, of course.”

“Me? No. Spence did it all, I’m thinkin’. And now he’s sorry, like he always is when he goes off his head. That wife of his is goin’ to give him what for anyways when she hears about it. They’re still there at the
Voyage,
you know, talkin’ about things, figurin’ you did the right thing. Hurts, though. Rian was a good boy. A dreamer, but a good boy.”

“He was a soldier, Billy, and a man—not a good boy. And he died a soldier’s death. A hero’s death. I’d like you all to remember that.”

Billy worked his closed mouth for a few moments, and then spit on the ground. “That he was, that he was. But now we’re short a
man.
Bad times coming, and we’re down a man.”

“No, Billy, you’re not.”

All the gaps in Billy’s mouth showed now, thanks to his wide grin. “All right, then. Suppose that’s only fair.”

Valentine watched as Billy turned back toward
The Last Voyage.
What strange people. Blunt, fierce, but then a grin and an “All right, then.” Clearly, he’d passed some sort of test he hadn’t realized he was taking. Billy, whoever he was, had accepted him.

Absently rubbing at his tender right cheekbone, Valentine walked closer to the shoreline and began walking along it, back toward Becket Hall. He needed to see Fanny. Apologize to her, for so many things. Make sure she was all right, that she didn’t blame herself for Rian’s death.

But what would he say? How could he convince her?

He’d walked about one hundred yards before he looked up, glanced out at the horizon and then turned inland, toward the terrace.

Fanny was sitting up on the balustrade, a light cloak over her shoulders in the cool breeze coming off the Channel, her white-blond hair blowing in that breeze, her feet dangling over the mix of sand and shingle a good twenty feet below her.

She was looking out to sea, her expression impossible to read from this distance.

Should he go to her? She certainly wasn’t hiding herself from him, was she?

He didn’t wave to her, but just walked to the nearest set of wide stone steps and climbed to the terrace, walked down its length to where Fanny still sat, waiting for him.

He leaned his forearms on the balustrade beside her, clasped his hands in front of him. Looked out at the same horizon Fanny was concentrating on so closely. Said nothing.

“Has anyone fed you?” she said at last.

Valentine whipped his head around to look up at her. “Pardon me?”

She wouldn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him. They were cursed, both of them. And Rian had paid the price for what they’d done.

“I said, has anyone fed you? It’s a simple question.”

“No. No, I haven’t eaten. Not since last night, I suppose. It doesn’t matter.”

“No, I suppose not.” Fanny shifted slightly on her perch. “How could you bear to have even touched me?”

“A better question, Fanny. How can I bear not touching you now?”

She turned her body away from him then, lifting her legs up and over the balustrade, dropping her feet to the stone terrace. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t gone to Brussels…if I hadn’t gone to the battlefield…if I hadn’t raced out after Rian as if he couldn’t possibly take care of himself…”

“Fanny, no…” Valentine said, gathering her into his arms. “If Bonaparte hadn’t escaped from Elba. If he’d never been born. What happened, happened. Don’t do this to yourself, sweetings. It serves no purpose.”

She pulled away from him, even as she longed to stay in his arms. “I’ve ruined two lives, Brede. Rian’s, and yours. You’ll never be able to forget that you left him there…and I’ll never be able to forget the reason you did. Go away, Brede. Please. Go home. There’s no reason for you to stay here.”

“Fanny—”

“No! Don’t say anything else. I loved Rian. I did! And then I married you. He was gone, and I turned to you. I’m willful and I’m selfish and the only thing I can bring you is disaster. It’s enough that…that I killed one man.”

“Fanny, you didn’t
kill
anyone.”

She looked at him, her eyes blazing green fire. “If I hadn’t been there, Brede. If I hadn’t been with you when you found Jupiter, when you found Rian—would you have left him there to die? No, don’t answer me. I know you wouldn’t have done that. You would have picked…you would have picked him up, brought him back. You would never have left him.”

“I might never have found him, if I hadn’t been worried about you. That’s the only reason I went out there into the bushes, Fanny. To make sure nobody was approaching the cow shed. It was full dark, impossible to continue a search, with some of the enemy still nearby. Alone, I would have simply returned to headquarters and resumed my search in the morning. Rian would have been gone. Or dead where he fell. It would have made no difference.”

Fanny looked away from him. Did he have to sound so
rational?

Valentine pressed his advantage. “And, if you hadn’t come to the battlefield, Fanny, I might not even have realized that Rian had gone missing until the next day. But you were there, and when you ran for your horse, to ride out looking for him, I went with you. So stop this, stop it now. Rian’s last words to me were about you, having me promise to take care of you.”

Her bottom lip began to tremble. “He gave me to you. All…all I could think about was myself, what my life would be like without him. And all he…all he thought about was me, when he should have been thinking about himself. I want him back, Brede. I want him back, so I can tell him how sorry I am. But I can’t have that, can I?”

She had her arms wrapped tight around herself, rocked back and forth slightly where she stood, all but keening in grief.

“No, sweetings, you can’t.”

She lifted her chin. “I’d like you to go, Brede. There’s nothing here for you. Rian would understand.”

“Fanny, you’re my wife now. If I leave here, you’re leaving with me. But that’s a battle we don’t have to fight right now, because I’m not leaving. I’ve already told your father as much.”

“That’s…that’s not what you wanted this morning. You couldn’t wait to leave me here. Could you? What’s changed, Brede? I don’t understand.”

“I suppose it was something your father said to me, earlier. About ages and levels. Something I should have understood on my own. That, and perhaps your brother Spencer knocked some sense into my thick head. You’re my wife, Fanny. I’m your husband. We can’t either of us change the past, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find a future.”

She shook her head as she began backing away from him. “I don’t…I don’t think we can do that, Brede. I’m so sorry….”

She ran from him then, just as she’d run from the words she’d overheard in Ainsley’s study. She threw open one of the French doors and burst into the drawing room, running past Mariah, Eleanor and Callie, who looked up from their quiet conversation just to see her race toward the foyer and the staircase.

Fanny didn’t stop running until she was in her bedchamber. She locked the door and then stood with her back to it, breathing hard, unaware that her cheeks were wet with tears.

“Didn’t I teach you better than that, child? No matter how fast or far you run, you’ve still got all of yourself stuck to you when you stand still again.”

“Odette,” Fanny said, belatedly wiping at her cheeks as she walked farther into the darkened chamber, as all of the drapes had been closed ever since she’d last been in the room, hiding as she planned her escape to Dover. “I…I don’t want to talk right now, please.”

Odette, tall and thin, clad in mourning clothes only a few shades darker than her skin, the same unremitting black she’d worn every day since Isabella and the others had died, shook her head at Fanny’s answer. She slowly pushed herself up and out of the rocker that had sat in a corner of Fanny’s room for as many years as they’d been at Becket Hall, back before the village had been constructed, and many of the crew had slept side-by-side on the floor of the third-floor nursery. She turned around, pushed at one of its arms, set it to rocking.

“You don’t remember when you were so sick with the measles, do you, Fanny girl? How I’d sit here with you, rocking, and rocking. You all but burning up in my arms, you were so hot. All my learning, all my fine potions and medicines, and we felt sure we were going to lose you.”

“Odette, I—”

The old woman let go of the chair, to shuffle across the floor in her worn carpet slippers, one long, gnarled finger wagging. “You hush, girl. I’m still talking. Worried about your eyes, as well as your little heart, we did. Kept this room all dark, night and day. Rian sat with me, watching over you. Never left, even when we told him he could get the spots, too. He didn’t care. You were sick, and he wouldn’t leave you. Only a boy, but loyal. Loving.”

“I was too young. I don’t remember,” Fanny said, taking hold of a bedpost and hiking herself up onto the coverlet.

“Didn’t matter to him, what happened to him. Not as long as you were all right. Never did matter to him.”

“Did Rian get sick, Odette?”

She shook her head. “No, child. You didn’t make him sick. And you didn’t make him dead. Sometimes things don’t happen and sometimes they do. We can’t stop the bad things sometimes, Fanny. Not you, not me, not anybody. We can’t know. We don’t see the bad things coming at us. They just come.”

Fanny felt the first stirrings of shame, came outside of her own grief and hurt to feel a new compassion for her long-ago nanny. “You mean, the island, Odette, don’t you? What happened there.”

Odette nodded. “For so many years I kept telling myself, Odette, you should have known. You should have looked at Edmund Beales and
seen
him, really
seen
him. Him, and Loringa both.”

Fanny had been wiping at her wet cheeks with the backs of her hands. But she stopped, looked at Odette. “Who?”

The old woman smiled, showing a mouthful of still strong, white teeth. “Think you know everything, don’t you, child? But you don’t, do you? Loringa. My sister. My twin. The other side of my coin. It was she so many years ago, rousing the
baka,
casting a spell over me, to keep me blind to the danger. Let me see how much you remember of what I taught you. Tell me about twins.”

Fanny sniffled, forgetting that she’d wanted to be alone, to just lie in the dark, and concentrated on what she remembered. Odette had something to say to her. She was easing into whatever that was, as she was wont to do, but it had to be something important, or else Odette would not be here. Odette would not be so kind to her, but only tell her to stop being a baby, stop sulking, feeling sorry for herself.

“In the world of Voodoo, twins are the
marassa,
” she recited by rote. “Powerful, exceptional, privileged. They can be as strong as
loas.
They belong to different nations, and have different names. The Nago
marassa,
the Ibo
marassa,
the Congo
marassa,
the—I don’t remember.”

“The Dahomey. We are Dahomey,” Odette said proudly. “Dahomey
marassa.
Dahomey
hungan.
Priestesses. More powerful than most. For good or evil. Opposite sides of the same coin. For us, for every good there is an evil, for every left there is a right, for every up a down.”

Fanny nodded, remembering more of her lessons. They’d all learned in their childhood that to ask Odette to speak of the Voodoo was to keep her from remembering that sometimes they’d been bad children she’d planned to scold for one transgression or another. But, although she’d told Fanny about twins, she hadn’t told her that she, Odette, was herself a twin. And now she was fairly certain why Odette hadn’t said anything.

“She hates you, this Loringa, doesn’t she. Don’t twins often hate?”

“Often, yes, when they are children, and know no better. They can inflict great harm on each other. But as I grew, as I learned the depth and height of my powers, I told myself to follow the sun. So I followed your papa.”