Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (30 page)

“There, that should be large enough,” Duncan said, vaulting from the hole. Jacob was quick to follow him.

“She is ready,” Beth said, in a small voice.

Duncan began to pick up the body to lower it into the
grave.

“Wait,” Cosette cried.

With great difficulty, she knelt one last time by her sister’s side. To the others’ surprise, Cosette removed the single ring from her sister’s finger. Kissing the lifeless hand one last time, Cosette tucked it gently back into the sheet.

Duncan took Cosette’s elbow and raised her up to her feet once more, not standing on ceremony or pride any longer.

It was past time for that now.

Cosette nodded her thanks as she brushed off her black dress. With difficulty, she uncurled her fingers from about the ring. The rays of the early morning sun seemed to flash a beam from the center of her hand. It was only the sun reflecting itself in the circle of diamonds she held there.

“This was her wedding ring,” Cosette explained to Beth. “In sixty-nine years, it was never off her hand for even a moment. She wanted you to have it when she died.” Cosette offered the ring to Beth, but Beth did not move to take it from her. “She told me so last night.”

Beth shook her head and took a step back from the outstretched hand.

“I can’t,” she whispered. This ring was her grandmother’s, a symbol of her grandfather’s love and fidelity. It should be on her hand in death, as it had been in life.

Cosette turned toward Duncan. She understood Beth’s
reasons. She could see them in the girl’s eyes. But she
had given her word to Denise, and that was what she was
bound to honor.

The old woman took his hand in hers and placed the ring into his palm.

“Then you take it for her, and hold it until such time
as she is ready to wear it. I charge you with its keeping,
Duncan Fitzhugh.”

Duncan nodded solemnly as he placed the ring within the pouch at his side. He knew the woman’s words were not to be taken lightly.

The sigh that tore from her breast was ragged with emotion. She waved a spidery hand at the enshrouded body.

“And now, get on with it,” she ordered, as she
stepped back out of the way. “Cover her quickly so they
cannot tell where she is when they come to look for her.”

Following Cosette’s instructions, Duncan and Jacob lowered the body into the grave and swiftly covered it until the hole where she lay was filled once more.

Resting the shovel against a bush, Duncan looked at Cosette. Her eyes were red, but there were no more tears. “Do you wish to say something over the grave?”

But Cosette shook her head. “There is no need for words. She had them all while she was still alive.” With a critical eye, the woman looked over the grave. It was still too obvious. The earth looked freshly turned, and might arouse suspicions.

“Walk over it,” she ordered them.

Beth’s eyes grew huge. “Surely leaving it unmarked like this is sufficient.”

“Mademoiselle, you cannot mean that we should actually walk on her grave—“ Duncan protested.

Jacob’s eyes were wide with fear at the mere suggestion of what Cosette Delacroix had asked. He did not separate the dead from the living so easily and feared haunts when the moon rose. The old woman’s ghost might seek him out for the disrespect that her sister proposed.

“Walk over it,” Cosette insisted more firmly. “I want no indications left for them, no signs. She understands.” Cosette swallowed the agony that rose in her throat like bitter bile. “This is necessary, I assure you. And when I die, I want you to do the same for me.” She turned her eyes toward Beth, silently demanding a promise.

Beth felt numbed. “I—“

Cosette clutched Beth’s hand. “The same for me,” she repeated. “Swear it.”

Beth did not trust her voice to speak. She could only nod. She blinked back tears as she watched Duncan stomp upon the mound until it was almost flat beneath his heels. Jacob followed suit, though hesitantly, and with far less energy.

A noise seemed to rumble in the background, and Beth thought surely that it was thunder. For the heavens must be offended by what was transpiring here today.

Duncan stopped abruptly. His head jerked up and he
turned in order to hear better. The rumbling seemed to grow louder.

The look upon his face alarmed Beth. She grasped his
arm. “What is it?”

Cosette answered for him. “They’re coming,” she said solemnly.

Beth looked at her, confused. “They? Who are ‘they?’ “ She looked off toward the town and could have sworn she saw a faint trail of fire drifting steadily toward them in the distance.

Fire?

Torches?

The look on Cosette’s face was composed. This was what she had felt beating in her breast this morning when she arose. She had known they were coming.

“The rabble. I knew.” She turned her face and saw
them approaching on the hill. A swarm buzzing softly,
carrying torches. Their noises would grow angrier as they came closer. “I awoke this morning and knew.” She said the words more to herself than to them.

Beth and Duncan exchanged looks. Then Duncan picked up the shovels and hid them in the bushes.

“I never argue with omens that are so strongly felt,” he told Beth. “Jacob, take the women into the house.”

Jacob took Cosette’s arm respectfully and reached for Beth’s.

Beth pulled it away before he could wrap his fingers
around her arm. “No,” Beth protested.

“Damn it, woman, I have no wish to play the martyr,” Duncan told her, a dry laugh punctuating his words. “I’ll come, too. I just want to be certain that the traces are gone.”

He nodded at the grave. He broke off a branch from the old tree and began to move it hastily about on the mound. “Take them, Jacob,” he ordered, in a low voice that Beth was not familiar with.

But Jacob was. Duncan could laugh and joke with them, and there was no difference. But when it was time to lead, another Duncan emerged. And that Duncan was never to be questioned.

Jacob reached for Beth’s arm once more. “Please,” he urged.

‘Take my great-aunt inside,” Beth told Jacob.

She grabbed at another stray tree limb that hung low. Dried, it snapped easily in her hands. She began to follow Duncan’s lead, swishing the tree limb and its scratchy branches along the ground.

By God, he was going to strangle the bloody woman someday. “You are going to be the death of me, Beth,”
Duncan snapped.

She raised her eyes long enough to flash a smile. “Two can do this faster.”

In a moment, they were done. Casting the branches aside, they hurried into the house. Duncan hustled Beth into the kitchen before him and quickly bolted the door shut behind them.

The distance between the mob and the house was growing less.

Jacob stood in the room, waiting with Cosette. There was no light in the kitchen, save a beam that squeezed through where the shutters no longer met properly.

One hand holding Beth’s, Duncan hurried to the younger man. “The doors and windows?” he asked Jacob.

“Are as secure as they were last night, when you re
tired,” Jacob vowed.

Duncan knew there was no need to check again.

Jacob was always as good as his word, and Duncan knew he could trust him with his life. As he now did with Beth’s and the old woman’s.

Cosette shook her head solemnly. “They will not hold
against them,” she warned.

Duncan drew his sword. The sound set Beth’s teeth on edge as metal left scabbard.

“They will not touch either of you while there is breath left in my body,” he vowed.

Jacob’s sword sang a muted cry as it left its sheath.

Cosette laid a hand on Duncan’s arm. “Do not give up that fine body so quickly.” When he looked at her
quizzically, Cosette nodded toward the hall. “Come with
me to the library. All of you.”

Rather than follow her, to save time, Duncan
sheathed his sword once more and swept the old woman
into his arms. “This is more expedient,” he promised her.

Cosette merely smiled indulgently and let Duncan take her where she bade him. Beth and Jacob followed quickly behind them.

Duncan set her down on the floor. He looked slowly around the room. There was more light available here, because the draperies were in disrepair. It was in the center of the first floor, but was easily gained by two doors, one on either side.

“This is not the best room from which to take a stand,” he pronounced.

Cosette had moved toward the fine old desk her
grandfather had brought with him when he had built the
house. On it stood a lantern. Striking a flint, she lit it, then settled the cover over it once more. She saw the look on Duncan’s face and knew that he thought the mob would detect the beam of light it cast. But it would not be here for long.

“We are not going to stand,” she informed him. “We are going to flee. Take the lantern, please.”

Beth did as she’d been asked. But she was not so ready to give up. Perhaps something could yet be negotiated. “But this is your home, and Father’s as well. We just can’t run away and leave it.”

Her eyes were sad as Cosette shook her head. “Dying in it will not preserve it.”

Beth dug in. “But if we talk to them—“

Duncan understood the old woman’s words. “There is no reasoning with a mob, Beth, and they had the look of death about them.”

It was time to leave, before it was too late. “That por
trait there.” As they turned to see what she meant, Cosette pointed toward the one hanging directly above the sleeping fireplace.

Jacob was quick to cross to it. He looked at Cosette over his shoulder, waiting for further instructions.

“Move the corner to the right, then step out of the way, lad.” It had been a long time since she had done that. The last was some sixty years ago. Denise had been with her then.

He did as the old woman instructed. Jacob had no sooner touched the portrait than the massive fireplace began to move forward.

Yawning before them was a cave. There were stone steps leading down into darkness.

“Hurry,” Cosette urged, breaking the stunned silence.
“We haven’t much time.”

“Why didn’t you take this passage before?” Duncan asked. Before she answered, he lifted her once more into his arms and hurried to the mouth of the passageway.

Cosette placed her hand at the back of Duncan’s neck to secure herself. “If we’d had the opportunity, we would have. But we were caught unaware. The mob was in our house before the sun had even risen. Touch that stone there.”

Pointing, she indicated a gray rock that looked as if it had been there since God created the earth. When Jacob laid his hand on it, it shifted down and the fireplace closed once more.

“Hold the lantern high,” Cosette instructed Beth. “There are many steps here and the way down is very narrow.”

They began to descend. The light from the lantern cast eerie shadows on walls that had not seen a human form in decades.

Duncan tested each step as he walked down. “Where does it lead?” Duncan asked.

“Far from here,” Cosette assured him. Despite everything, she had found that her hold on life was tenacious,
and she intended to continue holding until God chose to
take it from her.

“We will come out at the mouth of a cave. This pas
sageway was created when the Huguenots were fighting
with the Catholics. My grandfather thought it best to have an alternate route from the house if he ever had need to escape. Hurry, hurry,” Cosette urged again. “I do not think they brought the torches for light this time.”

Beth blanched as she realized what her great-aunt was saying. “They are going to burn the house?”

‘To the ground, I imagine.” The stoic way Cosette said it gave no hint of the sorrow she felt. She turned her eyes toward Duncan. “Come, please hurry, Duncan. She is a Beaulieu as well as a Delacroix, and they will want her blood more than mine.”

Jacob took Beth’s arm and hurried her down the stairs before Duncan could bid him do it.

Chapter Thirty-one

The mouth of the cave at the end of the long passage
way was obscured with brush and debris. Far more un
kempt than the gardens at the house had been, it hid the entrance from view to the passing eye.

Taking great care, they stepped into the light, first
Jacob, then Beth. Duncan soon followed with Cosette in
his arms.

Cosette squinted, shading her eyes. The bright sunlight was almost too much for her to bear after the dimness within the cave. The lantern which Beth had carried to guide their way had cast only a minimal amount of light.

Beth extinguished the lantern now and set it down
just within the entrance of the cave. Though she did not expect it, they still might have need of it and the secret
passageway in the future.

Instinctively she turned in the direction whence they had come.

Because of the distance, they could not hear the noise of the mob as they overran the estate, but Beth swore that she felt it vibrating in her soul.

And they all saw the smoke.

It rose into the sky, an odious and ominous billowing plume. It was a symbol of the black death that had seized the land and would continue to hold it in its grip until such time as the madness passed and people, wearied, finally returned to their senses.

Until such time as the blood lust was at long last satisfied.

Though he had set her feet down upon the ground,
Duncan kept his arm about the frail woman, offering her
his silent support. She was erect, but seemed ready to sag at any moment; he feared that she would swoon.

But Cosette’s mouth was set firm and her eyes were dry as she looked upon the frightening sight. She was, mused Duncan, incredible. He realized Beth had inherited both her strength and her courage.

Perhaps, Beth thought, as she looked at the stoic old woman, her great-aunt had no more tears left within her to shed.