Pale Moon Rider (24 page)

Roth, who had seen his companion’s handiwork on more than one occasion, offered up another wan smile. “Yes, well, keep the blade well honed because I made the same promise to Paxton if he attempts to double-cross us again.”

Vincent chuckled and returned the knife to its sheath. “I would have thought you, of all people, would have considered greed to be one of the stronger virtues in a man.”

“Greed, yes. Stupidity no, although I am surprised his spine turned out to be stiff enough to try cutting us out of the d’Orlôns fortune.”

“Could be he just turned sentimental on us,” Vincent snorted derisively, “thinking they were all dead. I wager you could have blown him over with a feather when his poor dead sister’s children appeared on his doorstep.”

“It was a full year’s work convincing the Duc d’Orlôns and his sons to trust our network of couriers. And with what he finally put into our vaults, we could have lived like kings the rest of our natural lives. We still can if you do your part and put a brat in her belly right away.”

Vincent spread his hands. “I shall give it my best effort, you may be sure. But what if the brat is a girl?”

“You can drown her, like a kitten, and try again. We need our own legitimate heir and the sooner the better. I don’t trust Paxton to keep to his end of the deal, not when he has already tried once to cut us out.”

“It’s a good thing you found those papers in his office.”

Roth nodded. “If he had successfully applied to make himself the boy’s legal guardian, he would have had sole control over the estate until the boy came of age. When I confronted him with it, the bulbous bastard actually found the ballocks to say he saw no reason why he should have to share with us anyway, since he was, as his dead sister’s only living relative, the legitimate trustee. I tell you”—Roth clenched his jaw at the memory—“he is lucky I did not put the bullet through his ear instead of just taking off the lobe. Lucky for him as well that I was content—for the time being, anyway—just to see him piss himself yellow and beg for mercy.”

“Unlucky for the boy to have come running into the library when he did.”

“On the contrary, if we had not found a use for him, he would be long dead by now. This way, the boy shouldered the blame for the shooting and the girl proved willing to do whatever it took to keep him out of gaol. Even marry you,” he added sardonically, “despite the lingering odor of the waterfront that clings to you. Once you have your own legitimate heir, however, all three of them become expendable. The treasure in the vaults will be discovered and the lineage traced to the fruit of your loins”—he raised his glass in a mock toast—“grandson to the late, lamented Sebastien d’Anton and the newest little Duc d’Orlôns.”

Vincent frowned. “You said all three?”

Roth glared at him. “Good God. You are not going soft on me as well, are you?”

“She is a very beautiful woman. I could be content taking her to my bed every night.”

“You will be bored within the month. Ladies of the nobility are not inclined to get down on all fours or suffer splinters in the back from being slammed up against a stable wall. And I warrant the only thing she knows to do with an apple is eat it. Of course, you could always use a little gentle persuasion on her, but bruises tend to attract unwanted gossip.”

“You would know this firsthand, of course. What was that woman’s name, now? Angelina? Ernestina? Was there even enough left of her face for a proper identification when you got finished with her?”

Roth’s eyes glowered a warning. “That was ten years ago, and she was a whore.”

“It was seven years ago and she was the daughter of a prominent magistrate. You are forgetting, Roth, I know all of your dirty secrets. I even know where some of the bodies are buried—the ones who couldn’t quite bear up to your demands.”

Roth flushed as red as the rubies and Vincent was about to laugh at his own wit when the soft crunch of gravel outside the window forestalled any movement or sound from either man. Roth, with his hand already curling around the hilt of his sword, reacted first. He was on his feet and out of the door before Vincent could heave himself off the seat, and by the time he did, the colonel already had the point of his blade against the throat of a man pinned to the side of the coach.

“Who the devil is he and why is he sneaking around like a cur?”

“I was just about to ask the same question,” Roth said on a snarl, edging his blade upward, forcing the man up on tiptoes.

“Weren’t doin’ nothing’, sar. Weren’t sneakin’ no-wheres neither. Were just walkin’ up to the ’ouse, is all.”

“Do I know you?” Roth demanded, his eyes screwing down to slits.

“Th—the name’s Dudley, sar. Robert Dudley. Mister Tyrone, sar, ’ee said as ’ow I were to fetch ’is maps an’ bring ’em ’ere, an’ fetch ’em I ’ave. Right ’ere, sar, see?” He fumbled to point at a bulging leather pouch slung over his hip. “Tied my ’orse to the post, I did, an’ were just tryin’ to walk past quiet-like is all. I ’eard voices, ye see, an’ didn’t want to disturb no one.”

“So you stood here eavesdropping on our conversation instead?”

Dudley
’s jaw dropped.
“No sar!
Never ’eard owt. Only ’ears in one ear anyroad, sar, since I fell off’n me ’orse an’ ’ee kicked me in the nog.”

Roth bared his teeth in another snarl and Vincent sighed from the door of the coach.

“For God’s sake, man, let the dog go on his way. You truly are becoming annoyingly obsessed with this Starlight business, imagining spies behind every bush, a thief lurking in the guise of every twisted drudge. I, for one, will happily launch a display of Chinese rockets when you finally catch the bastard and hang him.”

Roth’s arm lost some of its belligerence and with a snap of the wrist, the sword was returned to its sheath. “Go on then,” he said to
Dudley
. “Get about your business.”

“Aye sar. Yes sar. Thank ’ee, sar.”

Dudley
limped past, his stride broken and uneven, his body slanting drastically to the left each time he put his weight upon the poorly mended leg. Roth continued to glare after him, watching the seesaw gait and bristling under Vincent’s coarse chuckle.

“Indeed, a dangerous-looking villain. Another moment and I have no doubt he would have knocked us cold with a roll of maps and stolen the teeth out of our heads.”

Roth eyed the bottle in Vincent’s hand. “Do you really think it wise to drink yourself into a stupor this early in the day? We still have a great deal to do and it would help to keep
all
of our wits about us.”

“You
still have a great deal to do,” Vincent countered with a sneer. “My part doesn’t begin until the wedding night.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
yrone had his head tipped forward and his eyes closed. His body swayed gently while his hands caressed and seduced, and Renée found herself breathless again, her eyes scalded by a rush of unexpected and unwanted tears.

The room they had slipped into was the conservatory. It was as neglected and musty as the rest of the house, with paneled walls and poorly painted depictions of various musical instruments scattered about to provide the proper atmosphere. Tyrone was at the piano, his profile etched darkly against the glare from the window behind him. Renée was seated on one of the chaises beside him, her back stiff, her head bowed, her hands clasped tightly in her lap as she listened to the sweet, melancholy chords of a sonata. Her father used to say her mother played
f
aire les anges pleurer
—to make the angels weep—and it had been one of Renée’s early disappointments in life to discover she had no natural musical talent and embarrassingly little coordination when it came to playing the piano. She used to listen, however. With her eyes closed, she would be transported as Celia d’Anton played to drown out the sounds of looting and shouting in the streets of
Paris
.

Tyrone had called her brave, but she was not. He had told her to have courage but that, too, was an easy commodity for a reckless man to summon. He had held her and kissed her and comforted her but when she would have asked him a hundred, a thousand, questions, he had set her aside like a child whose bruises have been soothed and taken a seat at the piano, looking for all the world as if it were just another act of another play being staged for the benefit of an invisible audience.

Was that all it was to him? An act? A play? A game of chance? He was a man of so many contradictions she doubted she would understand the rules if he sought to explain them. She was still astounded by the heights of his audacity. Surveyor of turnpikes! A public servant constantly under the eye of town authorities, the military, the wealthy merchants, and the citizens of the parish who paid heavy tolls to the same man who donned a cloak and tricorn by night and robbed them of their profits. How did he do it? Where did he come by the nerve? How did he maintain two such different identities without losing himself completely?

And which part of which impersonation was she seeing now? Thieves did not learn to play the piano or speak in cultured overtones, nor did well-paid civil servants learn how to clamber up vine-covered drainpipes in the dead of night.

As if to chastise her for her thoughts, one of the long, tapered fingers struck an errant note on the keys and the music ended with an abrupt curse. Renée’s head tipped up almost at the precise moment Colonel Roth pushed the doors to the conservatory open and struck the bare flooring with the heel of his boot.

“Dash me if I am not saved,” Hart declared on an irritated sigh. “I vow m’ timing is all wrong today and there must be lead weights in m’ fingertips. The right hand is apparently blissfully ignorant of what the left is doing and the exposition is so muddled, the poor composer should have perished from mortification were he not spared the indignity by being dead already. I do most humbly apologize for the cacophony, mam’selle, but I did warn
you."

“I thought
you played very beautifully
, m’sieur,” she said with quiet honesty.

He sniffed a dismissal and turned to Roth. “And you, sir! Could you not have stamped your heel any harder in remonstration?”

“A moment more,” Roth said wanly, “and I would surely have been inspired to start a country dance.”

“Quite so.” Hart rebutted the cut with a flick of his wrist. “I dare say you would, having no better knowledge of where to put your feet in genteel company.”

“One or two places come to mind as we speak,” Roth murmured.

“Dash me. A wit and not yet
noon
. But I see you have managed to find
Dudley
, so the day is not entirely lost.”

Renée had not noticed the second figure standing in the doorway, a man of medium height and slender build who instantly snatched the felt cap off his head, dislodging a thick lock of sand-colored hair in the process.

“You brought the maps, I presume?” Hart asked in a lazy drawl.

“Aye, sar. Right y’ere.”
Dudley
kept his gaze fixed on the floor until he had limped his way safely past Roth. After a brief, intent look into Hart’s face, he glanced cautiously around the room, skipping past Renée several times before finally seeming to muster the boldness to take a hard, lingering look.

“Must I invite the colonel to wrestle you to the ground?”

Dudley
blinked and his gaze shot back to Tyrone. “Eh?”

“The maps, m’ good man.” He pointed. “Do you intend to just stand there clutching them to your bosom or do you imagine you might be persuaded to relinquish them into my care?”

“Oh. Oh, aye sar. Aye. Beggin’ yer pardon sar. Y’ere they be.”

Tyrone took the pouch and started pulling rolled sheets of parchment onto the piano. There were a score, all neatly bound with ribbon and labeled with a small wax disc. He looked at one or two, discarded another, then threw his hands up in a gesture of impatience. “Well. I simply cannot be expected to make sense of geography on the top of a pianoforte. And good heavens”—he cocked his head as a clock began chiming the hour—“you did say this would not take too long. I’ve an appointment with m’ tailor this afternoon and he can be deuced prickly if he is kept waiting. He sold me a new bolt of Banbury silk, still warm off the loom, so to speak. Seventeen guineas for the lot, but I bought every thread of it despite the extravagance. Simply would not do—would not do at all to have someone like Lord Gravenhurst with his great larded belly walking about in the same toggery. Can you imagine it?”

Roth’s teeth gleamed through a fixed smile. “It would be a veritable travesty of fashion I’m sure. Miss d’Anton”—he turned to her and tilted his head slightly through a request—“if it would not be too dreadful an imposition, might we avail ourselves of Lord Paxton’s library for an hour or so?”

“Of course.” She started to stand up, but Roth held up his hand.

“Do not trouble yourself, my dear. I know the way. I also took the liberty of telling Mrs. Pigeon we would be sequestered there and to bring us some fresh tea. If you will excuse us then?”

Hart gathered up his maps and the two men exited the room, each pausing at the door to vie for the honor of allowing the other to pass first. When they were through it, Renée continued to stare at the space they had vacated, while two paces away,
Dudley
stared long and hard at her.