Fire at Midnight (13 page)

“Bastard!” Tarry said.

“Give me a pistol,” she demanded, furious. “I’ll get James back safely even if I have to shoot Falconer myself!”

Jacques stepped forward and offered her a small pistol. “Do you know how to fire it?” he asked.

“I will manage.” She stalked down the hallway to her room, no longer feeling any qualms about her participation in the trap being set. She felt no fear, only a stony, unwavering sense of purpose. How
dare
he steal her brother!

Jacques waited until Rachael and Tarry were out of earshot before he turned to Winstanley with a conspiratorial grin.

“My brother doesn’t have James,” Jacques told him. “I had a man place a foundling on his doorstep with a forged note from Rachael requesting a meeting. Sebastién will believe that Rachael has offered her brother as a guarantee that no trap is being set. It was a way to make him believe he has a hostage.”

“You must tell Rachael,” Winstanley urged. “She will be out of her mind with worry. She may even try to kill your brother.”

“If he suspects a snare, he may try to harm her. She will be more convincing if she believes he has James,” Jacques argued. “This way, she is armed and able to protect herself.”

He did not confide his concern that Rachael might be tempted to warn Sebastién of the trap. Her reluctance to take part in the plan had made him doubt her reliability. It had been necessary to make her believe she had something at stake.

Sebastién would have no reason to doubt the infant on his doorstep was Rachael’s brother. He would feel safe in attending the meeting with her, and he would never learn that Jacques had tricked her as well. Sebastién would be led to believe the woman he had allowed to escape with her life had plotted against him, which would only add to the torment Jacques had planned for him.

The balmy night turned cooler, and a buffeting wind carried the salt spray inland, filling the air with the pungent scent of the sea. At the small cottage atop the hill, a pair of unsecured shutters slapped against the building.

“Mon Dieu!”
Sebastién shouted. “Is there no quiet place?”

Mrs. Faraday peeked into the room just as Sebastién poured himself a liberal portion of rum. It was a familiar scene. He haunted his study and drank too much. His moods were varied shades of black and gray, and what had once been courage was becoming recklessness.

During his initial burst of rage after finding Rachael gone, he had tossed the mantua into the fire with such a display of temper that he seemed to have burned her in effigy. For days, he had said nothing about his departed “guest,” but when he had finally spoken of her again, it had been to speculate on whether or not she was the Customs informant. He was behaving like a man racked with guilt.

One by one, his friends had come to warn him that his brother was aware of the location of his hideout and might arrive at any moment with a regiment. The housekeeper had urged Sebastién to leave, but he seemed to care little about what fate awaited him.

“The rum decanter is almost empty,” he informed Mrs. Faraday, with a curt nod toward the liquor cabinet.

“I would have to walk the house with a cask strapped to my back to keep it filled,” she replied, tired of hearing that particular grievance.

“Another sly nag about my drinking.”

The words were flawlessly enunciated. He could hold a fair amount of liquor with no outward sign of it other than a flair for rudeness, which he also possessed when sober.

The shutters continued to bang, and now there was a faint cry mingled with the mournful howl of the wind.

“What was that?” Mrs. Faraday asked.

“The wind,” Sebastién said. “The damned shutters.” The sound came again, a shrill wail followed by the shriek of the wind. “A cat,” he speculated, “come to harmonize with the damned shutters!”

The sound repeated, a short screech dissolving into a petulant squall. The shutters rattled in accompaniment. Sebastién started toward the door, but Mrs. Faraday hurried to intercept him.

“Let me shoo the cat, if there is one.”

“Non,”
he said. “I want
le chat
to remember me.” He marched through the parted study doors, crossed the hall, and flung wide the front door, Mrs. Faraday behind him.

A shutter cracked against the frame as a renewed cry broke out at his feet and he stared down at a heavily swaddled bundle on his doorstep. Pushing past him with a sound of distress, Mrs. Faraday bent and scooped the small parcel into her arms, hurrying with it into the warmth of the cottage.

Sebastién stepped outside and glanced around the perimeter of the house, his hair buffeted by the strong wind funneling into the cottage through the gaping door.

“Close the door!” Mrs. Faraday shouted.

He immediately obeyed. The arrival of a foundling on his doorstep warranted another drink. Sebastién disappeared into his study and drained the rum decanter in a single swallow, eyeing the empty bottle with regret.

He sought out Mrs. Faraday again to remind her of the empty decanter, and found her in the center of the parlor, heedless of the mewling infant she had placed on the settee. She held a piece of parchment in her hand. Without a word, he stepped forward and snatched it from her. The message was printed in a neat, economical script.

“Of course, you will not go,” Mrs. Faraday said over her shoulder as she unfurled the infant from its cocoon of swaddling.

“Of course I
will
go,” Sebastién said. He reread the message, searching for hidden meaning in the words.

“This has the feel of a trap. Rachael would have hidden from you, not sought you out. She’s terrified of you.”

“Did I ask your opinion?” And who had given her leave to be so blunt in voicing it?

“You must not agree to it,” she insisted.

“She would not endanger her brother. She has already suffered much on his account. Or so she says.”

The baby lay naked, kicking amongst the layers of cloth and beaming up at Mrs. Faraday, who stared down at her tiny charge, surprise and confusion lighting her face.

“I can offer you absolute proof that a trap has been set,” she said.

Her odd tone prompted him to turn and face her, and he raised one brow in inquiry.

“This cannot be Rachael’s brother,” she said matter-of-factly. “This baby is a girl.”

The rotting support beams and patchy, water-stained ceiling of Tor Pub, Rame Head, framed an interior scattered with upturned, mismatched broken furniture and filthy floors of alternating dirt and hardwood. The place looked as if a faint breath expelled against a crucial joist might cause it to collapse.

Sebastién had arrived at the rough pub an hour ahead of the meeting time. The fact that he was here was proof, according to Mrs. Faraday, that he had lost his mind. He wasn’t so sure that wasn’t the truth of it. The Exchequer had granted his freedom with the stipulation that he return to France. He had initially remained for the purpose of flushing Rachael Penrose out of hiding, but now a different sort of obsession kept him in England.

The meeting was a trap, of course, and Rachael was a key participant. It was worth the risk of hanging to catch her in a plot against him, after all her wide-eyed protestations of innocence. He yearned to expose her for the liar he knew her to be.

It galled him that she thought him dim-witted enough to fall for a crude ruse such as the one she and Jacques had concocted against him. Did she believe she had found a powerful ally in Jacques? He viewed her collaboration with his brother as her final, unpardonable transgression against him.

His keen anticipation of the moment she would enter the pub had not prepared him for the reality of actually seeing her again. She hesitated in the doorway, soft features pinched, blue eyes bright and watchful.

Apprehension clouded her face, and the fragile quality that was unique to her, no matter how plucky she tried to appear, made the rough pub seem all the more sordid and unsuitable a meeting place.

It was obvious she was afraid. She had no reason to believe he would not harm her. Why, then, was she here? She knew he did not hold her brother hostage. For what reason, or reward, had she placed herself in jeopardy?

He had not expected to feel protective toward her, and he cursed himself for being a fool. She had touched upon vulnerability within him he had never known existed, and laid it bare, like a raw nerve. He was at the crossroads where heaven and hell intersected, and the signpost was Rachael Penrose. He needed to expose her for the treacherous witch she was, and soon, before her sins ceased to matter to him.

Rachael was suitably dressed for the location in a long black mantle with deep pockets, the right holding the pistol Jacques had given her. Her shoes were encased in pattens, wooden soles raised on iron rings for easy travel through the heavy mud. She drew the attached hood of the mantle forward in an attempt to conceal her face as she passed through the rough crowd.