Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (35 page)

She had tried not to dwell on that on the long ride here, trusting, instead, to what her father had told her about the man.

“He is a fair and reasonable man. A man of honor,” she insisted heatedly, as if saying it aloud would make it so. Beth bit her lip. She had no right to drag Duncan into this, nor Jacob, either. Her eyes washed over them both. “You may retreat if you wish.”

Retreating wasn’t the point. He was no coward. But
not a fool, either, except, it seemed, where she was con
cerned.

“What I wish is to keep you safe.” Duncan nodded toward the encampment in the distance. “This isn’t the best way to do it.”

To his surprise, she yanked the reins from his hands. “I cannot stay here and debate this with you any longer, Duncan.”

Beth kicked her heels into the horse’s flanks. The horse immediately responded and galloped quickly down the incline toward the encampment.

“Now we look as if we’re chasing her,” Duncan bit off as he urged his stallion on. Jacob’s bay was right behind him. “Wonderful. The soldiers will all see and fire on us. The gods have visited a plague upon me, and its name is Elizabeth.”

Hearing him, Beth pulled on her reins and slowed her
horse. She turned in her saddle, waiting for them to join her.

Guilt pricked at her conscience once more.

“You needn’t come, if you don’t want to,” she repeated, aware that the color in Duncan’s eyes had grown dark. “I’ll understand. This is not your affair.”

Jacob was first to reach her. “I shall accompany you, mistress.”

He was eager to serve, if not so eager to ride into a camp full of soldiers. A camp of soldiers, any soldiers, made Jacob decidedly uneasy. His conscience was not so clear that he could walk freely around enforcers of the law and feel no anxiety.

Duncan let out a breath as he pulled up beside Beth’s horse.

“We both will, though heaven have mercy on our souls.” He gestured toward the camp. “Because they very well may not.”

Summoning all the bravado he had at his disposal, he rode beside Beth into the camp. To all who looked upon him, Duncan gave the appearance of a man who was accustomed to having his wishes carried out.

Soldiers trickled out from the tents. Others were in the open, practicing maneuvers, and turned to watch. Some looked at the incoming three with mild interest, while others regarded them with marked suspicion in their eyes.

Duncan cautioned Beth and Jacob to look neither to the left nor the right, merely ahead, toward their destination—the only tent within the camp that had two guards posted before it.

But as they approached the tent, a lieutenant emerged from within, summoned by the call of one of the guards.
Young, brash, and full of the authority of the uniform he
wore, he was quick to grab the bit on Beth’s horse.

“Hold, Duncan,” Beth hissed, without turning around.
There was no need to. She knew that Duncan had his hand on his sword, ready to leap to her defense.

The lieutenant regarded her with dark blue eyes that had no feeling behind them. “What business do you have in this camp?”

She matched his arrogant tone. “I am here to see La
fayette.”

The men at the tent’s entrance exchanged knowing looks at the sound of her voice. The lieutenant’s face remained impassive.

“There are many who wish to see the commander. Take your grievances elsewhere.” He turned his back, ready to dismiss her.

Her voice stopped him from leaving. “They are not grievances.”

He turned slowly around. “Pleasures, then?” A smile slid over his face like a snake slithering along the ground. He approached and rested his hand on Beth’s thigh. “Perhaps I should test them first for him. Great men in history had food tasters. Why not a whore taster as well?” He leered at her.

Beth’s heart quickened, knowing that Duncan did not understand the words, but could easy comprehend the intent behind them. Her eyes narrowed as she looked down at the officer.

“Lafayette would cut your heart out.” She said the words quietly and with such conviction that the man feared the risk in attempting to prove her wrong.

Uttering a curse, he dropped his hand and became formal once more as he drew his shoulders back. Behind him, Beth saw the two guards attempting not to laugh.

“I am afraid that I cannot—“

Beth wouldn’t let him finish. With the air of someone born to authority, she charged him to, “Tell Commander Lafayette that Elizabeth Beaulieu requests an audience with him.”

For a moment the lieutenant stood there, balancing his weight on his toes as he seemed to debate whether or not to allow himself to be intimidated. The look Beth gave him never wavered. Finally, he turned on his heel and grudgingly withdrew.

Duncan looked around them uneasily. They were obviously the center of attention. All eyes seemed to be focused on the ragtag threesome on horseback. Duncan wondered if they were going to have to fight their way out.

“Why couldn’t your father have been taken to the Tower of London instead of the Bastille?” Duncan complained to her under his breath. “Then at least I could understand what was being said, instead of enduring all this foreign babble.”

Beth smiled at his choice of words. “Here, Duncan, you are the foreign one.”

In the next moment, the tent flap flew back once again, this time with a vengeance. The lieutenant stepped forward. It was plain to see by his expression that he was not happy about the situation. He would much rather have sent her swiftly on her way.

“The commander will see you.” He took a step for
ward when all three began to dismount. “Only you,” he
cautioned Beth pointedly.

Beth looked over her shoulder at Jacob and Duncan. Not for the world would she take the risk of leaving
them outside. There was no way to foretell what might
happen to them.

“They come with me,” Beth informed the lieutenant, leaving no room for him to argue with her. “You may enter and protect your commander, if you fear us.” Her mouth momentarily curved in amusement, and she saw that her words had rankled him. So much the better. “We mean no one any harm. We come with an entreaty that only Lafayette is able to help us with.”

Stiffly, the lieutenant pulled aside the flap and let them enter, his face a mask of contempt and anger.

Here was one, Beth thought, who gladly fought in this revolution. She prayed God the same couldn’t be said for Lafayette.

Beth entered and saw the newly appointed Commander of the National Guard standing over a table, studying several maps that were spread out over the rough-hewn surface.

At thirty-two, the former darling of the American
Revolution and Washington’s personal favorite had seen
two insurrections and successfully survived the first. He felt extremely wearied by the world in which he found himself living. Where once the issues were crystal clear, like a mountain stream, now they had gotten obscured, as muddied as the banks of the River Seine. As the new commander, he sought for a peaceful transfer of power from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, but in his heart he knew this was not to be, and his choice bedeviled him.

He looked up as Beth and the others entered. There was no recognition in his eyes as he quickly took account of her. There was only a dark suspicion.

He was not the smiling, handsome youth she remembered, the one who had made her very young heart flutter when, though wounded, he’d taken her hand in his and politely kissed it. With that one action he had forever endeared himself to her.

Though there were lines now about his face, and he had filled out his uniform more aptly, he was still quite attractive.

But much, much sadder in appearance.

Lafayette blew out an impatient breath. His days and
nights were filled with complaints and his dreams were
filled with the cries of unavenged gentry, mingled with the entreaties of his ancestors. He constantly fought the
war without and struggled with the war within. He stood now just a step beyond a crossroads, and though he had
chosen a path for himself, he did not know if it was the right one.

He would have sold his soul to know.

It was all he could do to keep his indecision from his
men. A leader could not afford to be thought of as vac
illating. What’s more, he feared himself at the helm of a ship that would not go where he steered it.

Lafayette stepped forward, studying Bern’s face now as intently as he had studied the maps a moment ago.

“Do I know you, Mademoiselle?” Lafayette asked, in
French.

“We met once,” Beth replied in English. “In America. At a plantation owned by my father.” She watched him struggle with a memory, attempting to bring it to
the fore. “You were very handsome and very brave.
Washington couldn’t sing your praises enough,” she remembered with a smile. The smile reached her eyes as she added, “You were very kind to an eleven-year-old girl.”

She knew the exact moment he remembered. The evidence was in his eyes.

Lafayette nodded, vaguely envisioning her the way
she had been. A very young girl with laughing eyes and
skillful hands she had inherited from her father. The circumstances returned slowly to him. He remembered that he had been wounded and Beaulieu had taken him into his own home to see to his care.

“You have grown up.”

She inclined her head. “And you have grown more powerful.”

It wasn’t a mantle he wore with delight. But it was necessary. “Power seems to be the only way to make things right.”

She wondered if he really believed that. Something in
his eyes, a glimmer, told her he didn’t. At least, not completely.

“Not always, Commander.”

He thought of the monarchy and of the men who had
seized power in their stead. Sometimes he wondered which was the worse.

“No,” he agreed quietly. “Not always. But you did not come all this way to debate philosophies with me, am I correct?”

He wanted her to be gone, she thought, digging in. “I will be brief. I know you are very busy.” She looked
down at the maps and wondered if there was some strategy he was mounting, and against whom. Was he to of
ficiate at the executions? She felt her heart in her throat and glanced at Duncan for courage. “My father returned to France to see if he could be of some aid.”

So this was about the doctor, Lafayette thought. He saw his lieutenant watching him, a serpent ready to strike at the slightest opportunity. “Which side did he take?”

He was more concerned with sides and not with right,
she thought, her heart sinking.

Beth’s voice took on a formal edge. “The side of hu
manity, sir. Wherever there were sick and wounded. His
first duty is to his oath as a physician.”

“I see.”

Lafayette’s eyes looked cold, she thought, desperate for a way to break through to him. “For his trouble, he has been arrested and is being held in the Bastille.”

Lafayette had recrossed to his maps. He leaned forward, his hands on the table, his eyes on Beth’s face. He saw her anguish, but his hands were tied.

“And you wish me to free him.”

“Yes.” Passion rang out in the single word.

Lafayette shook his head as he straightened. “I cannot.”

She stared at him in horror, unable to believe what he was saying to her. “You can’t mean that.”

He wished it might be otherwise, but it wasn’t. Beaulieu had known this when he had gotten involved. “On the contrary, I do.”

Beth grasped his arm. “But you fought together, side by side. He saved your life. You lived in my home. How can you just abandon him like this?” She didn’t understand how a man could turn his back on all that.

Lafayette waved a hand in the air. “That was a different time, Mademoiselle Beaulieu. We are now apparently on opposite sides, your father and I.” There was an abysmal sorrow in his eyes. “All revolutions have sacrifices, all are written in blood.”

He was distancing himself from her though he took not a step. It was something he had learned how to do in the last few years. There was no other way to withstand the horrors that surrounded him.

“This is no different than the other.” Lafayette inclined his head, already returning to his maps. “You have come all this way for nothing, I am afraid. Now, if you will excuse me—“

“No,” Beth cried, catching his arm again. “No, I will not excuse you.”

The lieutenant drew his sword with the full intent of
driving Beth off. Just as quickly, Duncan and Jacob shield her on both sides with their bodies, their swords at the ready.

Chapter Thirty-six

Tensions sizzled within the tent as swords and sides
were crossed. Tempers were frayed, and Lafayette knew
how easily lives could be lost because of that one simple factor. He was quick to step between the two opponents.

His eyes were on his lieutenant. Of the three, Lafayette reasoned that he was the most dangerous, though he would not be quick to turn his back on the taller man with Elizabeth. The man had the raw look of courage about him, and the courageous were known to do daring deeds, even when the odds were against them.

“Put up your sword, Maximillien.”

The lieutenant looked as if his very honor had been ripped from him. The dark blue eyes grew wide with indignation. He grasped his sword more firmly as a challenge rose to his lips.

“But—“

The expression on Lafayette’s face hardened. He
would brook no insubordination. He knew the avalanche
that would quickly follow.

“I said put up your sword.”

Hatred shimmered, barely contained, in the blue eyes as the lieutenant shoved his sword back into the scabbard. Only after he did so did Duncan and Jacob sheathed their weapons as well.

“What good is the blood of one innocent man on
your hands?” Duncan asked, as Lafayette turned toward
them once more.

Lafayette regarded the other man in silence for a moment. “You refer to yourself?”