Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (109 page)

Robert took the room’s temperature again, and found shock, some anger and a complete removal of their attention from the boy who so resembled their commander-in-chief to the woman who sat in his chair.

Then she delineated it all, all the moves and countermoves, the feints and double feints that had twisted back on themselves until there had been nights they had both worried they were in a snarl of complications from which they would not be able to extricate Jamie’s holdings. They had many handicaps, not the least of which was the need to make sure there was no trail for the opposition to follow. Each move across the board had, by necessity, been made in the dark, with the foil of having to have the board appear untouched come morning… come each and every bloody morning. It was a wonder neither of their respective heads had turned white over the last few months. The entire game had been fraught with roadblock after roadblock, but if they could not go over them they found a path in the long grass and went around, using whatever they might as a means of camouflage.

“You won’t get away with this,” Julian said, the line of his finely-carved mouth straight with anger and disbelief. “I have resources of which you have no comprehension.”

“I suppose you could start all over but I suspect you don’t have the resources to do that at present and we, as much as I would dislike keeping this little war going, do have the resources right now and I will use them to the last cent to keep you out.”

“This is not over,” Julian said, and Robert felt icy cat feet run down his spine at the boy’s tone. How had one so young and seemingly privileged been so well schooled in hate and resentment?

“I think, Julian, you will find that it is over. It would be better to acquiesce now rather than hurting yourself in an extended fight. Any further action will be decided by Lord Kirkpatrick.”

The boy’s face was as still as a death mask with fury. Robert was glad there was an entire boardroom of people here to witness what was taking place. Otherwise, he knew, Pamela would not be safe. He feared she would not be anyway.

“There’s still the house and the land that goes with it. Surely my father would want his own blood to keep that legacy now that he cannot.” The emphasis was placed lightly, but the ‘my father’ was not lost on anyone.

“Actually,” said a tart voice from the far end of the table, “the land is mine. My grandson leases it from me, but if ye look at the titles ye will find they are in my name. And I,” the green eyes were scalpel sharp, “am very much alive and very much blood. As to blood,” she paused, allowing the weight of her words to spread the length of the table, “I will say there seems little doubt ye are my grandson’s child, for ye look too much like him for it to be otherwise. But I beg leave to doubt that ye’ve even half of the heart the man possesses. If so, ye’ve made an extremely poor showin’ of it thus far.”

Finola placed a sheaf of papers onto the table, her expression a direct challenge to the young man in front of her. Neat as a pin in a dark green blouse and skirt, her hair a blaze of white in contrast to the jade eyes that genetics had bequeathed also to her grandson, she was a formidable presence despite her diminutive stature.

“The deeds to the house an’ land. I’m not a grand chess player myself,” she said, smiling as though she were merely a sweet old lady, “but I believe this is what is called ‘checkmate’, is it not?”

“He told me long ago,” Pamela said
, sighing in ecstasy as Casey rubbed the sole of one of her feet, “that he was her tenant. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time but it made sense later. He meant for me to remember. He deeded it to her awhile ago, as if he could see into the future and knew it would be necessary.”

“Mmphmm,” Casey said, for he had never quite forgiven Finola for the strange night in her cottage.

It was evening and the dark had come down some time ago, though Pamela had only arrived home a half-hour before, still slightly giddy with the release of stress and fear. She had changed out of her dress into worn denims and one of Casey’s old rugby jerseys then sat to nurse Isabelle who, having gone rather longer than was her norm between feedings, had been shrieking like an irate tea kettle so that Casey was feeling desperate by the time Pamela came through the door. Conor had fallen asleep right after his father fed him his dinner and had been moved into his bed after his mother arrived home.

Isabelle lay quiet now in her mother’s arms, sated, dark eyes wide and deep. She gazed upon Pamela’s face with an expression that seemed a tiny bit reproachful, as if to say she thought her mother had absconded for good and she was watching her carefully to make certain she didn’t bolt again.

Casey worked his fingers into the arch of her left foot and she leaned into his hands, closing her eyes.

“Oh, that’s wonderful.” She let out a small breathless gasp as he found an especially tender spot in the ball of her foot.

“Ye make that same noise when I put my tongue—”

She opened one eye. “Casey Riordan, don’t you dare say it in front of our daughter.”

He grinned. “Well, ye do, an’ she’s not a clue what I’m talkin’ about anyway. Do ye, my sweetheart?” He looked down at his daughter, who cooed agreeably up at him. Pamela rolled her eyes.

“Honestly, I think the two of you are in cahoots sometimes.”

“At least have the good grace to distract me by finishin’ yer tale.”

She yawned widely. “Where was I?”

“Ye were at the bit where ye told them how ye’d played bait an’ switch with them, an’ how yer trip to France played into that.”

“You know all this already, man,” she said, half exasperated.

“I know, but I like to hear ye tell it. It turns me on to know I’m beddin’ a wee Napoleon in the makin’.”

“I’m hardly that.” She gave him an indignant look. “And you’re perverse, just for the record.”

“Aye, just how ye like me. Now go on.”

She sighed, but saw by the look on his face that he really did want to hear the details.

“We knew they were watching Father Brandisi and Father Lawrence, but I don’t suppose it occurred to them to watch a monk who travels to France on a regular basis to see his mother. Brother Gilles handled much of the business in France for us. Of course, I led them on a merry chase when I went to Paris as well. Meanwhile Brother Gilles was there at the same time, making sure the deal over the distillery looked legitimate on the surface. Which it was, actually, only not in the way they believed it was.”

“I tell ye, the nerve of the two of ye, Robert an’ yerself—brass monkeys!” He smiled with no small pride, one trickster to another.

“Well somewhat, I suppose,” she admitted, returning the smile. “Mind you, if we hadn’t been able to convince the board today that we had done the right thing, it would have all gone to hell in a handbasket. And it was a bloody expensive shell game. If I think about the money, I get a prickly rash. But there was no other way to make them overextend their own resources.”

“So what will ye do with the distillery in France now, darlin’?”

“Make vodka, of course. That was always my intention, I just needed to clear the board before we could go ahead and do it. Father Gilles comes from Picardy where they grow lovely winter wheat. He made the deals that we need with the understanding that we wouldn’t be buying until next year.”

“Ye have a market in mind?”

“Of course I do. We’re going to make it for Americans. Being one myself, I know that anything French is viewed as a luxury item, so we’re going to sell them the best vodka the distillers I’ve hired know how to make.”

“I’m proud of ye, woman. I told ye to fight for it, an’ ye have. I’ll not like to speak for the man, but I know Jamie would be proud of ye too. Where do ye see the boy fittin’ in to all this?”

“That will be for Jamie to decide when he comes home. In the meantime, Julian needs time to cool off. Then I will offer him something at the distillery here once it’s rebuilt. If it were Jamie’s decision, he would want Julian to learn the business from the ground up, just as he did.”

“Ye seem just the wee bit more certain that the man will come home than ye did all these months previous.”

“I heard from Yevgena,” she said. “She has a line on where Jamie might be. He’s alive, and that’s enough to know that he will survive and come home. And not a minute too soon because I am ready to hang up my Chief Officer’s hat.”

Casey gave her a lascivious look, wiggling his eyebrows at her. “Do ye still have that hat? Maybe ye could wear it to bed?”

She laughed and threw a cushion at him. He ducked and grinned, doing something to her toes that sent distinct tingles up the length of her leg.

“I’ve a wee tale to tell myself.” Casey said, his one dimple cutting a deep arc into his cheek.

“Do you then?” she asked, feeling as though a rush of champagne had replaced the blood in her veins. She was fizzy-headed with relief.

“Aye, I composed it whilst ye were out conquering small nations an’ evildoers. Here ‘tis.” He cleared his throat.

“This little piggie longed for whiskey.
This little piggie drank ale.
This little piggie had Guinness.
This little piggie drank wine to its dregs.
But this little piggie craved the taste of honey that…”

He leaned in, careful not to disturb the baby who had fallen asleep during their conversation, and whispered the rest of the extremely bawdy verse in her ear, his hand moving from her toes to her ankle and proceeding up the back of her leg.

“Those are not the words I remember from childhood,” she said, laughing helplessly.

“Aye, well, I’ve edited them to suit the purpose,” he quirked a dark brow at her and she felt the tingle grow to a thread of desire, taut and warm in her belly.

“And the purpose would be? Aaah—” she gasped, “that is definitely not a little piggy that you’re rubbing now.”

“Oh, but it does make ye squeal,” he said, a thoroughly wicked look in his dark eyes.

She quirked an eyebrow of her own at him, and gave him a slow, unsubtle smile.

Casey, never a man to look a gift horse in the mouth, lifted his daughter out of his wife’s arms with as much delicacy as one did with incendiary devices and placed her ever so gently in her cradle, cannily left by the kitchen hearth.

He turned to find his wife lying back into the sofa cushions, hair a mad tousle, cheeks flushed with victory and arousal.

She smiled, eyelids half shut and stretched out a hand. “Napoleon, is it? Well, come and meet your Waterloo, man.”

Chapter Eighty-one
Impermanent Things…

The fields around the old cottage were still damp
from the previous night’s rain but it promised to be a fine day, especially when one considered it was November and the weather was normally bleak and miserable this time of year. The early afternoon sun had settled in mellow pools along the thick brambles that half hid the old stone walls, and the earthen scent of decayed leaves and grass was thick on the air.

David walked in across the space he believed had once been a garden, for somewhere in its form and shape the land still spoke of hands that had tilled, sown and harvested. Sometimes when he sat quiet enough, he thought he heard voices from long ago: a man calling across the field; the whicker of a plough horse; the sound of a woman chiding children, her voice tempered by love.

He ducked under the old, rotting lintel of the cottage and looked for the stone in the crumbling hearth. It was a primitive form of communication but effective nonetheless. He had not checked the spot in several days. After the massacre in Noah Murray’s field, the infection in his hand had gotten worse and required further treatment, an extremely stern lecture and a dose of antibiotics that might have served a horse. In fact, David suspected they might have been horse pills. When he had come around after the stitching and resulting faint from the pain, it was to find that two days had passed. After that, his movements had been greatly restricted, though he had not minded. Then there had been the meeting with George. Beyond that he had not attended much to business.

He had chosen this spot after the original meeting with Casey that Billy had demanded. Casey was well versed in the treachery of his own country and used the isolated spot for a reason. David saw the wisdom of this, as long as one could be certain one wasn’t followed to such remote sites. For such a small country, Ireland had plenty of these cottages, long abandoned and swallowed up by feral nature. Home only to ghosts and the occasional badger, they were ideal for the drop off and retrieval of information that had to be kept secret. David liked to come here sometimes when the small, bloody city became more than he could manage and he needed somewhere quiet to think, or not think, depending on the day and its particular horrors. Besides, he was comfortable with ghosts, having been one himself in great part for a long time now. He felt like one more often than not. There were only pockets in his life now when he was certain he was fully human and not something near to invisible, drifting through the edges of life as others knew it.

He turned the stone over to find a wedge of paper, folded as his informant always folded such things, in a sharp-edged triangle.