Crimson Rapture (55 page)

The
sound of a carriage approaching was heard by all. "Ah," Petiers
laughed, his voice carrying eerily through the silence of the forest,
"here she comes now. A little late but..."

Here
she comes—echoed in Justin's mind over and over. He choked back a loud
"No," starting forward to stop what would happen, but Jacob caught
his arm in a fierce grip and their eyes locked. "You've got to see it,
Justin. You've got to know for sure."

Justin
stared into Jacob's fine blue eyes, seeing only Jacob's pain, a pain he knew
was for him. He wanted to yell it wasn't true, there was a mistake—somehow,
someone would explain what was happening. Instead he fixed his eyes ahead.

Christina
was lost to a game of teaching her son his numbers, thinking he could learn one
and two as easily as mother and father. Little Justin thought the point of this
game was to catch her fingers, which was boring, far too easy to be fun, and he
decided instead to reach for the ropes of hair wrapped around his mother's
head. He lunged for the target and fell hard against her just as the carriage
came to a halt. Voices sounded from outside and he felt his mother tense.

Raymond
eyed the three nicely dressed gents who stopped him on the road, at first unalarmed.
He was smiling.

"We'd
like to speak to your lady." One fellow smiled back pleasantly, and before
Raymond could respond, two of the men went to one side while the first man
brought his mount to the other. Raymond suffered a moment's uncertainty, and
just to be safe, he stood up and lifted the seat to get his hands on the pistol
he kept there.

Closed
against the chilly air, the shutters were suddenly lifted from the outside and
Christina gasped as she looked at the two unfamiliar faces on the one side and
the one familiar face on the other. She pulled Justin tight against herself.

"The
letter, madame" was all he said.

"What
letter? What do you want? I—"

"Do
not," he warned, "make me draw a pistol. Your driver has just reached
for his and he will go first." He looked at little Justin, who was staring
back in confusion, not liking this man's goatee, his sudden appearance, or his
mother's fear of him. The little boy reached out to sock his face and Petiers,
smiling, caught the small hand in his. "Your boy will be the second."

Christina
stared in a moment's horror.

"Your
son, madame."

She
reached slowly into her bag.

No
one could hear what was being said but all knew it was Christina in the
carriage. Justin had caught a brief glimpse of that red-gold hair just before
the man pulled his mount to the side and blocked the view. He desperately
struggled to explain why Christina was using the Johnson carriage and driver
rather than theirs and Chessy. There seemed only one explanation, an
explanation he could not face.

She
could not ask Chessy to participate in this treachery.

He
could not face it until the very moment the small hand reached through the
window, holding the letter out to the man. Reality crashed into his mind like a
blinding white light of pain. She might have just shot him point-blank in the
head, not once but a thousand times.

Jacob
signaled loud and clear and, with a surprising charge, seven men with drawn
pistols quickly surrounded the carriage and the three mounted agents. There was
a smattering of horses' hooves, shots and cries, as the three men fought for
some balance to aim their own quickly drawn pistols. A shot fired, then another
and another and two men fell dead. Christina screamed and fell to the floor,
covering Justin with her body. Shocked, Raymond stood like a marble monument to
Lot's wife, frozen, not knowing who to shoot until he saw Justin, the last to
emerge from the forest.

Petiers
fell from his mount onto the lifeless body of Robert, feet away from his other
man. "You killed them! You—oh, my God!" He burst into tears of rage.
"My men—"

Seven
pistols aimed at one man.

Overwhelmed
by the sight of the two dead bodies of his men and his own crashing defeat,
Petiers slowly stood up. Crazed with madness, he did not hear Jacob's demand to
drop his weapon. The demand was repeated but all he saw was Justin Phillips and
to this target he raised his pistol and aimed with trembling hands.

Seven
shots fired in close succession and Petiers too fell dead on the road.

Christina's
body jerked with the thunderous explosion. Little Justin could not grasp the
point of this game. The floor of the carriage was hard, his mother's body
stifling, the noise hurt, and the smell of smoke, mixed with his first scent of
blood and death, all brought an unearthly wail. He wanted up! Christina could
not move, would not move, not for her life, not even after the silence told her
it was over. There was no thought except that her child was in danger.

"Drag
the bodies to the gravedigger. The paupers' lot for them." Jacob snapped
orders to the men. After staring blankly at the torn and bleeding mess that had
been Petiers, Raymond found himself quite sick, and Jacob waited until the
bodies were removed to ask, "Did you have anything to do with this?"

"No
sir! No sir!" Raymond was a rush of words. "My mistress just tells me
to drive the lady to town and I do that. I pick her up and head down the road
and then, then these three men stop me and say they want to speak to the lady.
Well, I didn't know and so I drew my own pistol and—"

"All
right." Jacob stopped him. He looked at the carriage, then at Justin.

A
small voice came from inside.

"Jacob?
Jacob! Is that you? Is it over?"

The
soft voice affected Justin like a whip cracking in the air. His gaze shot to
Jacob for help. No help could be given, not in heaven or on earth and Justin
suddenly kicked spurs hard into his mount's side. The fine stallion leaped into
the air, horse and rider swallowed by the forest.

Jacob
turned back to Raymond. "Take her back to the house. You two." He
pointed to the two men. "See that she gets there and stays there."

Christina
could not comprehend why, if the danger was over, no one was coming to her.
After hearing Jacob speak to Raymond and sensing the danger over, she had
lifted Justin to her arms to quiet him. Cautiously, she raised her head through
the open shutter. For a brief moment she met Jacob's eyes and that one look
frightened her to the depth of her soul.

"Move
it!" Jacob suddenly shouted at Raymond, and almost instantly the carriage
jerked into motion. The old man brought the carriage around and then pressed
the horses to a fast pace. Christina looked back to see Jacob sitting on his
mount, staring after her with the same frightening look.

"Jacob!
Jacob? What happened?"

Jacob
couldn't hear her but would not have answered even if he had. When the carriage
and its escort were out of sight, he retrieved the letter from the road,
mounted again, and turned his horse to the direction Justin took. A direction
that led, he knew, to a certain hell.

* * * * *

Christina
paced in front of the mantel in her own bedchambers. Little Justin was asleep
in the nursery. The servants had been called back. Yet no one had come to her
to explain. No one had explained why her door was locked.

And
where, oh where was Justin?

After
creating a hundred and one unlikely explanations for the locked door, she
plopped into a chair and forced herself to face the unimaginable. She went
through the events piece by piece. Jacob and his men rescued her at the exact
moment she handed the letter to that man. How did they know where to find the
agents? The answer came immediately. Justin had men following them; there was
no other explanation. For how long? Had they seen the French agents accost her
on the walk?

No,
she realized. Surely Justin's men would have come forth to save her. Wouldn't
they? But if they hadn't? Her thoughts traveled over the conversation from the
point of view of someone watching from a distance. Her heart started pounding
and she jumped up as she began to grasp what had happened.

Chessy
brought her note to Justin. But his men, Jacob included, knew nothing of it.
They had witnessed the interaction between herself and the agents, one in which
she pretended willingness to betray her husband. And the—

"Oh
no, they couldn't have thought—" she said out loud and stopped, suddenly
seeing how it might have looked when she handed the letter to that man,
especially if one had not heard his threat to fire a pistol at her son.

Jacob...
that explained everything! He thought her in compliance with the agents. Oh!
How could he?

Just
as she felt a burst of furious indignation, she remembered. The letter, madame.
The letter, madame. The letter, madame. The French agent knew of the letter she
carried and he knew because he had gotten her note from Chessy. Justin never
received her note and, oh God, was Chessy killed?

He
must be dead! Poor sweet Chessy! If he were still alive he would have told
everyone of the mistake! The awful mistake! Someone must be sent to look for
Chessy!

She
rushed to the door and began pounding, calling for help.

* * * * *

Downstairs,
lying on a sofa in darkness, Justin listened to her cries. For a while the
noise drowned out his thoughts and for this he was glad. He poured the last of
the brandy bottle into his glass and drained it whole.

After
trying to stifle the violence of his emotions, a violence he had tried to
quench by running seven miles to dive into a lake of near freezing temperature,
swim for nearly an hour until the numbness in his limbs threatened to drown
him, and all this finished with two bottles of potent brandy, he lay in the
darkened study remembering. Remembering every detail of each of a thousand
memories he had of her. He was trying to see them from a different perspective,
her perspective, a perspective born of the intent to deceive.

He
could not do this. He tried over and over but the memories spun clear in his
mind. That shy smile, the sweet music of her laughter, the welcome of her small
body to his touch. Christina laughing with his son. These could not have been a
facade. Sometime, somewhere in the midst of their time together, she had loved
him.

The
pounding stopped abruptly upstairs.

The
trouble was he had seen that smile and heard her laughter, he had even owned
her passion in the last two weeks. This, when she was planning to do something
that could have seen him hanged. Rationally this made no sense. How could she
have done this? To do it, she could not just be malevolent and cruel, but sick
of mind. Sick in a way other people named evil.

Christina
and evil...

"No"
came in a rush of emotion that brought him to his feet, throwing his emptied
glass into the fireplace. The violence brought a tumble of confused thoughts.
She had done this—he had seen it with his own eyes—yet she couldn't have. She
couldn't have!

Richard
was mentioned. Did they threaten her with exposing Richard? Would she trade
Richard's reputation for his very life?

He
set up suddenly and shook his head, trying to calm down just long enough to ask
the one question he had to know. Nothing made sense but the violence of his
emotions, a violence that was the only life force left in him and, while he
knew the danger, he had to find out. He had to know! With the bottle still in
hand, he left the study and climbed the stairs.

Jacob
heard this and rushed out from the parlor. "No, Justin!" He called
from the bottom of the stairs. "Don't go up there! Her trunks are packed
and ready! I can see her on the ship—"

Justin
stopped but never turned around. "I have to know" was all he said and
this in a voice so calm Jacob had reason to fear for Christina's life.

"Oh
lord..."

Near
crazed with anxiety, Christina jumped up at the sound of the door being
unlocked. Justin opened the door and slipped inside. Suffering a rare moment's
disorientation, he leaned against the door.

"Oh,
Justin!" She started for him.

"No!"
He held up his hand to stop her. She took in his disheveled appearance, the
nearly empty bottle of brandy, the madness in his eyes. "Don't come near
me," he said simply. "Whatever you do or say, just don't come near
me."

She
froze with an incredulous moment of disbelief. He thought what Jacob thought.
He thought her guilty of that horrendous crime and, "Oh Justin, you don't
really believe it? You can't—"

"Oh
no, Christina. No more innocence, please. No more deception or lying. No
pretending that what I saw didn't happen. I just want the truth. Just tell me
why. Why did you do this?"

"But
I didn't do it! I can—"

He
flung the bottle against the wall. "Damn you girl! Don't lie to me!"
Steffen saw you meeting with them—right here on the front lawns after dark. He
saw you! Just like I saw you! Saw you hand them a letter that would hang
me!"

"No,"
she cried. "I didn't—I mean I did meet with them... No—they met with me...
while I was walking. They were waiting in the forest—"