Leslie Lafoy (33 page)

Belle locked her knees and closed her eyes, trying desperately to keep herself upright as the world spun around her and her heart tore in two. Barrett. Oh, dear God in heaven. They had Barrett. She had to get him back. Whatever they wanted, she’d give them. Where they wanted, when they wanted. If they hurt him …

Fear evaporated in a sudden, red-hot anger. If they’d hurt him, she’d make them pay. She’d track them through hell and back and she’d make them pay.

The dull drone of quiet conversation drifted past the edge of her awareness and she focused on it, letting it ground her. Her pulse wouldn’t slow, but her mind calmed just enough for her to grasp a bit of reason from the rubble of her existence.

“Who is ‘we’?” she demanded, lifting the note and looking between the two men. “Do either of you know?”

Carden shook his head. O’Brien nodded, though, and crisply replied, “Odds are it’s the de Granvieux women and Emil Caribe.”

She blinked, stunned. “Rose and Emma?”

“I gather you know them?” Carden asked, his brow cocked in the same way Barrett cocked his when surprised and trying to appear still in control.

“Their father was having an affair with Mignon when he died,” she explained. “He left a sizable portion of his estate to her. Rose and Emma and their mother were furious and fought the will in court.”

“But they lost,” Carden finished for her.

She nodded, her mind leaping forward to the implications. “That they’d want Lafitte’s treasure and be involved in Mignon’s murder makes a perfect, if sick and demented, sense. Recompense and revenge.”

“And this Emil Caribe?” Carden pressed.

“He was Mignon’s lover when the news came of our inheritance. All of his money is through his wife’s family and she’s the sort to never let him forget it. He claims to have served with Lafitte for years. He could have known that the treasure was in London and been the one to send Mignon after it.”

“To follow her and take it from her once she found it,” Carden suggested. “To have wealth his wife didn’t control.”

Belle nodded, her mind still racing. “But why involve Emma and Rose?” she wondered aloud. “He didn’t need them to carry through his plan. With them in league, he has to share the treasure. Why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he want to keep it all for himself?”

O’Brien snorted. “He’s sweet on one of ’em.”

“The only person Emil Caribe cares about is Emil Caribe,” Belle countered with absolute certainty. “If he’s courting one of the sisters, then there’s something to be had from it. The question is what that might be.”

“Some folks,” the Irishman said, “call it earthly delight.”

The tone of his voice suggested that he thought her naïve about such matters. Why his presumption irritated her, she didn’t know, but she was determined to put an end to his illusions. “He could have rented his delights locally, Mr. O’Brien. And for considerably less than it’s costing him to support and squire the de Granvieux sisters. Why bring them with him all the way from New Orleans? I know Emma and I know Rose. They wouldn’t tolerate being kept in lowly quarters. Why would Emil willingly agree to that kind of expense?”

O’Brien was too busy studying her through narrowed eyes to say anything. Carden, however, replied, “You’re assuming that he’s doing it willingly. Perhaps the sisters have a bit of leverage on him and used it to force their way into his plan.”

No wonder Carden was Barrett’s good friend; the two of them thought so very much alike. Talking with Carden, thinking aloud with him, was so very much like working through matters with Barrett. But he wasn’t Barrett. Not at all. “It’s possible, I suppose,” she admitted, tilting her chin up and furiously blinking back the hot, welling tears. “But I don’t have the slightest idea of what that leverage might be.”

“If’n that’s the case,” O’Brien contributed, his manner a bit more subdued than previously, “and if’n Caribe’s as greedy and selfish as you say he is, then they stand a good chance of windin’ up dead for all their schemin’ with ’im.”

Even as she was deciding that he could very well be right, Carden added, “As could Barrett. Simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Simply for having the misfortune of being in Mignon’s path that night at the theater. Simply because his secretary had let her into his office so that she could trap him into helping her. The tears welled again and again she blinked them back. “Not if I can prevent it,” she declared, shifting her gaze back to the ransom letter crumpled in her fist. Six o’clock at St. Paul’s.

“You’ll sign over the grant?” Carden asked, sounding, she thought, a bit uncertain.

“Without hesitation,” she assured him while telling herself that he hadn’t meant to question either her integrity or her devotion to his friend. He didn’t know her, didn’t know the special kind of relationship she and Barrett had.

“How large a grant is it, Belle? I’m assuming it must be of considerable size to make all this effort worth the bother.”

“Half a million acres in the American West.”

O’Brien made an appreciative whistling sound. Carden Reeves simply blinked in a refined sort of way before finding the wherewithal to inquire, “Would Caribe have known that?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly and not much caring whether she ever knew the truth of it. It didn’t matter. “He could have assumed—as I did—that the treasure was the more traditional kind one thinks of with pirates. Jewels and such.” She shrugged. “But half a million acres will buy him all the jewels he or the de Granvieux girls might want.”

Six o’clock. A good ten hours away. Why such a long span of time? Why such a public place? Why not as soon as possible and on a deserted country road or in some abandoned dockside warehouse where the transaction wasn’t likely to be witnessed by a hundred casual passersby? She could sense the answer hovering just out of her grasp and knew that she had to find it, that it was vitally important.

“You’re not going to the exchange alone, you know.”

“Wouldn’t be safe,” O’Brien chimed in.

Of course it wouldn’t. And Emil knew her well enough to realize that she wouldn’t jeopardize her own safety and thus the chances of getting Barrett back alive. So why had he bothered to make the demand in the—

The answer to her questions bloomed suddenly large and full and certain. The time and place didn’t matter to Emil Caribe; he had no intention of trading Barrett, no intention of letting her get to St. Paul’s either alone or with reinforcements at her back. He hadn’t taken Barrett to trade him, he’d taken him knowing that she’d have the transfer drawn and then search heaven and hell for Barrett while she awaited the appointed hour. Emil would be waiting; not at St. Paul’s, but to step out of the shadows of some alleyway or dark corner. To that end, he’d keep Barrett alive; dead men didn’t make for good bait. Emil had learned from war. Just as she had.

Belle looked between Carden Reeves and Patrick O’Brien as she tucked the note into the pocket of her skirt. “Actually, I’m of a mind to set my own terms for the trade.”

O’Brien again considered her through narrowed eyes. Carden frowned for a moment and then sighed, shook his head and said, “I don’t know—”

“I do,” she assured him. “Do you have a key to Barrett’s house?”

“No,” he replied hesitantly, “but I know where the spare is kept.”

“Good enough,” she declared, her mind racing through the course that lay ahead. “That’s our first stop. I’ll need a more respectable dress than this one.”

“To do what?”

“Barrett’s right. It’s time to work with Inspector Larson instead of against him.”

O’Brien contributed another of his seemingly characteristic snorts. “An’ you’re thinkin’ a dress matters? Missy, Larson’s made of stone. You could walk in there bare arse naked an’ he wouldn’t get so much as a twitch in his—”

Carden pointedly and loudly cleared his throat while casting the man a warning look.

O’Brien snorted yet again and took a long, noisy, obviously disgusted slurp of what had to be ice-cold coffee.

“A dress matters,” she clarified for him, “only to the degree that it adds to the impression of respectability and credibility. Please wait right here, gentlemen,” she asked, turning and walking toward the front of the house. “I’ll be down shortly and we’ll be on our way.”

She didn’t wait for their assent or give either of them time to protest. Yes, she admitted as she made her way up the stairs, she was being presumptive and perhaps a bit high-handed, but … But it was fully her fault Barrett was in danger. Mignon had used him, certainly, and that had ended with Barrett being an innocent suspect in her murder. It wasn’t until
she’d
walked into his office that his life had been well and truly turned upside down and inside out. She’d placed Barrett in danger and it was her moral and ethical responsibility to extract him from it.

Drawing her skirts in, she passed through the bedroom door and made her way to the island of pillows Barrett had fashioned for them before the hearth. The dishes from their last decent meal sat neatly stacked to the side of the cold hearth. Their wine glasses were still on the mantel where Barrett had placed them out of harm’s way. And on the little table lay the maps of London Barrett had asked Carden to bring them.

Belle dropped to her knees before it and snatched up the candle. Placing the wick between her fingertips, she held the divining tool a scant distance over the vellum and began to slowly search for a beginning point.

And found none.

Because he was— Panic shot through her heart and tears filled her eyes. No, she sternly commanded herself, lifting her chin and swiping her eyes with her sleeve. She couldn’t fall apart. She couldn’t give up hope. Barrett was out there and she’d find him. He needed her. She wouldn’t, couldn’t fail him.

Telling herself that it was a matter of calming and focusing her mind to a sufficient degree for the magic to work, Belle laid down the candle. Sitting back on her heels, she laid her hands on her thighs, closed her eyes, and drew a long, slow, settling breath.

A memory slowly drifted through the chaotic whirl of her thoughts. Barrett as they’d stood in the kitchen of his house the first night they’d been together. The mischievous light in his eyes, the deliciously wicked taunt of his smile as he’d lifted his arms and offered her a choice between stepping into them or sliding the apron over them and onto his shoulders. Regret twisted through her soul; she should have thrown the apron away.

Another memory drifted over the first.
“You’re perfect just the way you are, Belle. Absolutely, stunningly perfect.”

The sound of his voice, so clear, so rich and vibrant … Her heart aching, she wrapped her arms around her midriff and rocked slowly back and forth as she desperately pushed away the possibility that she might never hear it again.

“Kiss me, Belle.”

“Love me.”

Realization came, not as a lightning bolt, but as a brilliant, breathtaking dawn. She did love him. She’d loved him from the very beginning. And hadn’t known it. God, how could she have been so blind? How could she have not seen the most wondrous and certain truth of her life when it had been standing right in front of her with open arms?

Her heart shattered and a soul-wrenching sob tore past her lips as tears filled her eyes and spilled hotly down her cheeks. “Please, Barrett,” she sobbed into her hands. “Don’t let it be too late. Please.”

Regret and fear overwhelmed her, battering her body and her mind. Quaking, she struggled to breathe, to find the strength she needed to go on, to do what had to be done.

From deep within her soul came a slow swell of resistance and burgeoning resolve. They deserved a chance to be together. To be happy. Barrett was worth all she had, all she could give. He was her life. She’d pay any price, take any risk.

Dragging a shuddering breath into her lungs, Isabella scrubbed the palms of her hands over her eyes and cheeks, and then lifted her chin and squared her shoulders.
I will find you,
she vowed, picking up the candle and setting to work again.

*   *   *

She saw the quick look the two passed between themselves as she entered the kitchen. Unwilling to give them a chance to comment on her tear-swollen eyes, Belle dropped her valise to the floor, tossed aside her redingote, unrolled the map, tapped her fingertip on the spot she’d circled, and met the Irishman’s gaze. “Do you know this area?”

He leaned close, squinted for a moment, and then straightened. “It’s near the center of Cheapside,” he said, his expression hard. “It’s a part of London mostly known for cutthroats, whores, tumbledown tenements, an’ big rats. Ain’t no place for a lady to even think about goin’.”

All of which made Cheapside the perfectly logical place to look. There was no thinking to be done. She tapped the map again. “Barrett’s somewhere in this general vicinity.”

O’Brien managed not to snort; he rolled his eyes instead. Carden tilted his head and gave her a look that she suspected he usually reserved for possible lunatics. “How do you know that, Belle?”

The hope that they wouldn’t ask had been tiny, but she felt its deflation in the most acute sort of way. “Divining,” she supplied simply. “And before you dismiss it as desperate, empty magic, understand that it’s the means by which we successfully narrowed the search for Lafitte’s treasure. It does work. If Barrett were here, he wouldn’t bat an eye.”

Carden cleared his throat and stared down at the map, a brow raised in obvious skepticism.

“Even if’n he is in there,” O’Brien all but snarled, “findin’ him’d be like comin’ up with the needle in the hayloft. He could be in any one of thousands of holes. Damn place is like a rabbit’s warren.”

“Well,” Belle countered, her hands on her hips, her resolve strengthening by the heartbeat, “I can guarantee you that Barrett didn’t walk into it willingly or under his own power. He was either dragged or carried in. And regardless of the hour at which he was, someone is likely to have been a witness. It’s a matter of finding them and getting them to point in the proper direction.”

“Haulin’ an’ forcin’ people about ain’t nothin’ noteworthy in Cheapside, miss. It’d take us a week an’ a small friggin’ fortune to track down what was seen just this mornin’. It’s a fool’s task.”