Leopard in Exile (16 page)

they were to his taste or not. He was more grateful for her stubbornness than he would ever willingly let

her know, for in some sense Wessex felt it protected her from him. No one who ever knew her would

need to waste a moment's worry about running roughshod over the Duchess of Wessex. She was as

unyielding as the bedrock itself.

A little over an hour and a quarter after his arrival at Dyer Court, His Grace of Wessex, a vision in grey

from foot to crown, arrived at Mooncoign. It was nearly dark when he drew the chaise-and-pair up

before the portico, but no torches were lit, nor had he seen the banner displayed that would proclaim

Sarah as resident beneath her own roof. Yet the servants at Dyer Court had been certain that Sarah had

come down from Town following the Royal wedding, just as the two of them had planned in what now

seemed another lifetime.

A groom came running to take the horses' reins, and Wessex dismounted from the carriage. He walked

quickly to the door, which was already swinging open..

Buckland was standing ready to greet him. Wessex's spirits lifted. If Buckland were here, then Her Grace

certainly was. But his hopes were to be almost immediately dashed.

"Good evening, Your Grace."

"Good evening, Buckland. Is Her Grace at home?"

"No, Your Grace. But Her Grace left a letter for should you come to receive it."

Buckland showed him to the Duchess's parlor, where Wessex waited while Buckland fetched the key

that would open the strongbox hidden beneath the hearthstone and presented him with Sarah's letter and

its enclosures. Hie letter was admirably terse—Sarah had never been one for long drawn-out

roundaboutation. His wife had packed herself up without so much as a by-your-leave and left for the

Americas, to entangle herself once more in the dangerous affairs of the French King in exile.

Wessex could not fault her caution at any rate. She had not left the information lying about for anyone to

find. Now a cheery fire crackled upon the hearth and Wessex, fortified by a strong whiskey-and-soda,

studied the letter that had sent Sarah upon her quest.

As he read it, Wessex groaned inwardly. No wonder his beloved lady had taken off without even a maid

to bear her company! Lady Mend's letter sounded half-demented—and with good reason, Wessex had

grudgingly to admit. For Louis to vanish was bad enough. For him to vanish while on an errand touching

so nearly upon his true identity was a dark omen indeed.

His conscience, what there was of it, did not trouble him for his part in the Young King's disappearance

from the chessboard of Europe. Louis had been missing for twenty years: it would not unduly change

matters did he continue absent, and Wessex had come to like the lad and understand his wish to live free

of crowns and intrigue. But to vanish well, one needed funds. Earlier in his career, Wessex had spent

some time in the New World on the White Tower's business, and one memorable adventure had left him

with a Spanish ransom in gold to be disposed of. He had deposited it at a convenient bank, using his

identity of the moment, and thought little more about it. Having little use for the money himself, and having

resolved to set the Young King beyond reach of either the Corsican usurper or Wessex's own English

masters, Wessex had given Louis the passwords that would allow him to claim the gold that Don Diego

de la Coronado had deposited at Nussman's Bank years before.

Only he and Louis knew the money was there. But Don Diego was known—at least within the

Tower—as one of Wessex's cover-identities. The All Agents warrant for his capture, dead or alive, was

still in effect. Did the unknown enemy mean to strike at Louis… or at Wessex?

Either way, Sarah had gone sailing into danger a fortnight past. Wessex flung both letters into the fire and

watched the flames consume them, then rang for Buckland and began giving orders. The White Tower,

the mole, d'Charenton, Talleyrand's new ambitions, all vanished from his mind in an instant Whatever

dangers Sarah faced, he would share them with her.

It lacked a few days of the Lammastide when Wessex's preparations were complete, aided by the fact

that the one place the White Tower was not searching for him was in his own country. Even if Koscuisko

or Rutledge betrayed his whereabouts, it would take Misbourne time to put someone into the field to

snare him, and before that event could possibly take place, his yacht,
the Day-dream
, was crewed and

provisioned.

Wessex had prepared a wide selection of weapons and documents that should suffice for any occasion,

and he had enlisted the aid of his very superior manservant, Atheling, to accompany him upon his quest,

since on this occasion Wessex was afforded the luxury of traveling in his own persona. All the Duke of

Wessex lacked was peace of mind, for if he had possessed no warrant to risk himself in France, he had

even less to intrude upon the affairs of New Albion. There was trouble brewing there, Misbourne had

told him, and even so far from Europe there were those who knew him for what he truly was and would

take the intrusion of the Duke of Wessex into their affairs as a violent insult.

But he had less choice than if a gun were pointed at his head. If he arrived too late to save his Duchess,

Wessex swore he would not arrive too late to share her fate.

Though the tide was against them, Wessex had no intention of waiting one moment more than he must to

sail.

The moment he was aboard, he gave Captain Tarrant the office, and the ship began to move.

Day-dream
had been his father's yacht; a sixty-foot racing sloop that had made many a clandestine

Channel-crossing at the height of the Terror. Captain Tarrant felt it could make the crossing to Baltimore

without difficulty, and Wessex had liked the freedom and privacy that using
Day-dream
would give him.

No political agent was ever sanguine without a secure rat-line down which he could retreat at need, and

Day-dream
would give Wessex such an avenue of escape.

The dyked meadows of the fen-country, still thick with morning mist, slid away and vanished into the soft

grey of sea and cloud. The sail-canvas snapped and wuthered as it filled, and the ship began to move

upon the wind with the inexorable grace of a racehorse. Slowly the marsh-smells of
Day-dream's
quiet

anchorage gave way to the sharp scent of the open Channel. He felt as much as heard the ship sing

beneath his feet as lines and masts took the strain of the sails. A strong vibration passed through the deck

beneath his feet, the bow-wave sent a fine tingling salt-spray over the exposed skin of Wessex's face,

and he heard the hissing of water along the hull.

Yet some faint precognition warned Wessex that all was not as it should be. He had just turned to seek

Captain Tarrant when the sailor's shout reached him.

"Hoy! Captain! Stowaway in the hold!"

Without thought, Wessex dropped his hand to the pocket of his greatcoat, where a pistol reposed in a

scabbard of chamois leather built into the pocket. Two seamen were coming up from below, a

disheveled and struggling figure held between them.

A familiar figure.

"Hullo, Koscuisko," Wessex said resignedly.

Koscuisko glanced toward him and smiled irrepressibly. The young hussar was dressed in rough

fisherman's garb, his bare feet and cotton smock indistinguishable from those of a thousand other such

men.

Wessex motioned to the sailors. "Never mind. He's in the way of being a friend of mine."

"You must have burned your candle at both ends to get Rutledge to London and find me in so short a

time," Wessex observed idly.

The two men had gone below to Wessex's cabin, where they could obtain some privacy. Koscuisko

sprawled at his ease in a chair, a glass of French brandy in his hand. Wessex stood. He had removed his

greatcoat, but it—and its concealed pistols—hung near to hand. Koscuisko was his friend, but Wessex

had never made the mistake of assuming their loyalties were identical.

"You don't know the half of it," Koscuisko answered gaily. "Misbourne had some maggot in his bonnet

about you doing a moonlight flit, though he was glad enough to have my Lord of Rutledge returned to

him. Our friend d'Charenton has been more than active of late—Paris Station says a number of young

ladies have made their last trip to a certain address in that city, and they suspect that Mam'selle Marie

was one of them. I'd thought he might be working to get the governorship, but now I wonder if he

mightn't have two strings to his bow."

"D'Charenton almost always has," Wessex answered absently, his mind elsewhere. "This nonsense about

the Grail, for example."

"Are you so sure it is nonsense? At any rate, I barely had time to make my report before I had to turn

around and head back to the fens to find you. I swam out to the ship last night—and deuced cold work it

was, I assure you!—and thought I'd best lie low until we were well away. Shouldn't want to disturb good

Captain Tarrant at his work and all. And it's ho! for the colonies." Koscuisko leaned back in his chair

with the look of a man well-pleased, but though his tone was light and his words idle, the expatriate

hussar's dark brown eyes watched his friend consideringly.

"I hope you've brought more luggage with you than that, or it's going to be a long voyage," Wessex said,

willfully ignoring the undertone of their conversation. "Illy a, I know why I'm here and I have no intention

of confiding in you. But why are
you
here?"

"We're going to Louisianne to assassinate d'Charenton and start a rebellion, you and I," Koscuisko said

cheerfully.

"Are you quite mad?" Wessex asked, after a long moment. "How could… oh. I see."

This was undoubtedly the task that Misbourne had wished to brief Wessex for: a political assassination,

in a colony where the situation was volatile at best.

It was a known fact of the Shadow Game that one executed a sorcerer at one's peril. The executioner

tended to die within the year, and worse: if the sorcerer were of an especially vindictive or malignant

disposition, his curse did not restrict itself to his killer, but spread to blight the land all around… unless the

executioner were of Royal blood. Wessex had acted as executioner against a sorcerer twice, once in

Paris, and once—a particularly memorable affair—in Scotland. On those occasions he had gone forth

with the blessings of King and Church, with silver bullets in his pistol and runes marked upon his sabre,

and his foe had died safely, cleanly, and eternally.

So far as he knew, Wessex was the White Tower's only clandestine operative able to perform such

sanctions. While it was true that Koscuisko was closely related to Poland's Royal family, the

blood-magic and the land-magic ran differently there. If Koscuisko were to kill d'Charenton, there was

every chance he would die, and place Louisianne under a curse as well.

Such a thing would lead to violent unrest, perhaps even Revolution. Which might be Misbourne's ultimate

goal…

Koscuisko refused to explain by what means he'd conveyed his equipment to the ship, but he'd brought a

great deal of it, as well as a copy of the briefing book on the Louisianne Colony. As the
Day-dream

plied her way west, the two men studied it carefully. That his own country should become the handmaid

of foreign Revolution disturbed him greatly, but if Wessex were heading into a seething cauldron of unrest

he wanted to know it.

"Of course, revolution in Louisianne would be to England's benefit," Koscuisko said provocatively.

The weather was good, and the two confidential agents spent many hours on deck stripped down to

singlet and trews, only partly from choice. Life in New Albion was of necessity a thing much conducted in

the open air, and neither man wished his drawing-room pallor to expose him as a foreigner.

"Force France to withdraw resources from Europe, open the Western Frontier, bring Spain into direct

opposition with France," Wessex ticked off the points impatiently upon his fingers. "In short, war in the

New World, and there has been none there for nearly a century."

The land had been peaceful since France and England had sorted out their spheres of influence. England's

colonies were primarily matters of trade and of creating markets in the native populations, with which

they had excellent relations. Spain and France, however, saw the inhabitants of the New World less as

trading partners and more as the slave labor to found a vast mining and agricultural empire.

With time enough, the New World natives would be on a technological par with their European brethren,

and no easy prey for adventurous nations. But it would be a generation, perhaps more, before the

Iroquois, the Cherokee, and the Mohawks had the industrial base for equal competition with the East.

Until that great work was completed, they were vulnerable… and the Crown must protect them.

Perhaps even against itself.

"We are all at war," Koscuisko said with unwonted gravity. "Is it kinder to place our cousins under an

artificial protection, or to treat them as men?"

He did not press Wessex further to take up the mission. Perhaps Koscuisko feared what the Duke would

say. For himself, Wessex had no doubts.

During the long weeks at sea aboard
Triskelion
, Sarah relearned the skills that had been so much a part