Pale Moon Rider (48 page)

She took the list and read the inventory of jewels, bullion, and coin, and when she finished, her hand was trembling.

“This is not possible,” she whispered.

“Your grandfather must have believed your uncle had a change of heart.
Noblesse oblige
again. The unspoken bond of the nobility to take care of one another.”

“It must have taken months to remove so much …”

“And I wager every box, crate, or pouch must have passed through Roth’s hands, then Vincent’s, then your uncle’s.”

She swallowed hard and looked up. “This belongs to Antoine. How did they expect to get it?”

Tyrone pursued his lips. “I can offer a guess, but it is a rather unpleasant one.”

She stood a little straighten “There has been very little about this past week that
has
been pleasant,
capitaine.
Please go on.”

“To put it bluntly, then, I do not think your uncle expected you or your brother to escape
France
alive. I think he was counting on the fact Robespierre would be very thorough in removing any legal claimant to the fortune they had smuggled out of
Paris
for your grandfather. If that happened, the vaults would be discreetly emptied and because no one could be sure what measures the
duc
had taken to safeguard his wealth, no one would ever know it had gone missing. I would further speculate the three of them—Roth, Vincent, and your uncle—were on the verge of toasting their very good fortune when you and your brother arrived on Paxton’s doorstep seeking his protection. Rather like rabbits fleeing into the fox’s den to take shelter from a storm.”

Renée looked from one somber face to the other. “My uncle never mentioned anything about any inheritance to either me or my brother. If anything, he—he treated us as if we were a great burden.”

“I don’t doubt that you were. But like all good thieves they came up with a viable alternative, or at least your uncle did.”

It was too much to absorb at once and Renée shook her head. “I do not understand.”

“Going back to what you said the other day, as the last surviving male heir, any titles and assets accorded to the Duc d’Orlôns now belong to your brother. Finn does not, I imagine, refer to him as Your Grace without reason.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Antoine is the twelfth Duc d’Orlôns, Marquis de Mar, Comte de Laborde, Baron de Dreux-Brézé, Maréchal Beauvau, and Chevalier de Valenciennes; possibly there are more, I cannot think.”

Dudley and Tyrone exchanged a glance, with brows raised. “Yes, well, for the sake of brevity, let us just say your uncle saw the perfect way to make a legitimate claim on at least a portion of the fortune locked away in his bank vaults. By having himself declared your brother’s legal guardian, any assets your brother had would be held in trust until he came of age, and Paxton, naturally, would control the trust. The fact that a written inventory exists would tend to support the idea that your uncle was planning to use it as collateral, perhaps, or proof to his creditors that he would one day make them regret their efforts to bankrupt him. Fortunately—or unfortunately for Paxton—Roth and Vincent discovered his little scheme and assumed, probably correctly, that he planned to cut them out of the deal. Roth retaliated by showing your uncle how easily
he
could be cut out of the deal, and—”

“Are you saying Colonel Roth shot my uncle?”

“In the same conversation Robbie heard about the duplicate gems, he heard Roth admit that he shot your uncle because he was getting greedy and had been making plans to double-cross them.”

Renée stared at Tyrone for a full minute before she turned and paced from one end of the library to the other. “It is almost too
fantastique
to believe they would go to such lengths.”

“I’m still guessing, but I would say they were prepared to go even further,” Tyrone said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“Your marriage. Apart from the prestige of marrying into an old and noble family, Edgar Vincent would not have benefited from the union financially or otherwise. But suppose he and you had wed and you had produced a male heir? A legitimate heir to inherit should an unfortunate accident befall your brother, or … should he be hung for committing a crime he did not commit.”

She paced another length of the room. “For any of this to be possible, they would also have to have known Antoine was the last heir. How could they know this for sure?”

“Between the three of them, with their various connections in the army, the black market, and the banking industry, they obviously had a good scheme going to smuggle gold and jewels, even émigrés out of
France
. They were by no means the only ones engaged in saving lives for profit. Many enterprising English businessmen have made a tidy profit charging a percentage of what they have smuggled out of
France
in both human and monetary cargo. But I am guessing somewhere along the way, our greedy triumvirate must have decided their shares could be much larger if those fleeing aristocrats never made it out of Paris. Oh, they brought a few out safely so they could offer proof of how successful and reliable their routes were, but the rest were left to fate and likely never made it past the first guard
-
post. Roth, for instance, would only have to pass an anonymous tip to the Committee of National Security telling them where and when the
aristos
would be trying to sneak out of
Paris
.”

“You are saying they deliberately betrayed men and women to the
gendarmerie?”

Alarm and disbelief had turned her eyes the color of
midnight
sapphires and Tyrone required a deep breath. “Renée—”

“The Duc de Blois and his family were arrested at the gates of
Paris
,” she gasped. “Jean-Luis, his father, his mother, his brothers … their children! And … oh!” She froze for a moment before her pale, shaking fingers flew upward to cover her mouth.
“grandpère
—he was taken away to prison the night before he was to leave for the country.”

“I imagine Roth and Vincent were both pleasantly surprised to discover Paxton had a sister married into one of the noblest families in
Paris
, whose father-in-law was one of the wealthiest
ducs
in the old régime.”

Renée let out an anguished cry and the hot splash of tears ran down her cheeks. She stumbled back and her leg hit the corner of a chair. It threw her off balance, not enough to cause a fall, but enough to send her staggering against the wall.

Tyrone was beside her in an instant. She flinched from his touch at first, but he was adamant and drew her into his arms. Across the room,
Dudley
looked down at the floor, out the window, up at the ceiling, anywhere but at the young woman weeping bitter tears into Tyrone’s shoulder. As for the dauntless highwayman, rogue, and steely nerved thief, he felt the sobs wracking her slender body and he did not know what to say or do to make the hurt go away. He buried his lips in her hair and tightened his arms around her even more, though he doubted he could hold her much closer than he was already. He met
Dudley
’s gaze over the top of her head and signaled quietly that he should leave, a request Robbie did not hesitate to oblige.

Renée curled her hands around the precise folds of Tyrone’s lapels and choked the sobs to the back of her throat. When she was steady enough, she lifted her face from his shoulder and saw the truth in his eyes.

A huge silvered tear slipped over her lashes and she bowed her head again.

“How can a man,” she cried, “betray his own family?”

“Greed does funny things to people. It makes them do things they would never have dreamed of doing in a normal, rational state of mind. The same thing can happen with love, I’m told,” he added under his breath.

She shook her head with incomprehension and though she tried valiantly to dash the spent tears off her cheeks she only succeeded in smearing the wetness further. With a grim twist on his lips, Tyrone undertook the task himself, then held his finely monogrammed handkerchief over her nose.

“Blow,” he ordered.

She obeyed with such childlike compliance it only heightened the fury blazing through his veins. There was a decanter of wine on the sideboard and two empty glasses and he steered Renée gently into a chair before he filled both glasses to the brim.

“Drink this,” he ordered.

She started to refuse but he pressed a glass into her hand and insisted. “Drink. You have been nursing me for almost a week now, I should think I have learned a little about ministering to the wounded.”

Huge, dark eyes filled with incomprehension and pain rose to his, causing another hot flush of emotions to tighten his expression.

“What are we going to do?” she cried softly.

“We are going to give the bastard whatever he wants,” Tyrone said calmly. “And then I am going to kill him.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

B
ertrand Roth leaned back in the hot, steaming bathwater and drew deeply on his cigar. He felt much, much better. The pressure of the past few weeks had been building up inside him with the strength to test the willpower of a normal man ten times over and tonight, he had finally succumbed. The whore had served him well; he had come so many times, he had lost count, in every unwilling orifice she had tried to deny him. Unfortunately, because of his exuberance, it had been necessary to pay extra to the proprietor of the brothel for the discreet removal of the broken and bleeding body. It was not the first time, nor likely to be the last, though he did try to control his rages during these episodes.

He glanced down in disgust at his chest, at the four glaring stripes clawed across his flesh. Frowning, he tested the marks with the tip of a gnawed finger to see if they had stopped bleeding yet, then muttered a small oath as he dribbled some brandy over the open wounds. The liquor stung and burned and gave rise to a deliciously sadistic throb in his flesh, but the surge was brief and the pleasure faded as quickly as the pain, and he took a deep swallow of the brandy before leaning his head back again.

The door opened behind him, the draft causing the steam to swirl away in tiny circles.

“I gave specific instructions I was not to be disturbed. If you have brought more water, take it away and keep it hot until I ring.”

He heard the door close again and the distinct
snick-t
of the key turning in the lock. A second later, something else equally distinct and ominously cold was pressed against the back of his neck, just behind his ear.

“Colonel Roth. Sorry to interrupt your bath. I would have arranged a more convenient time to meet, but I wanted to be certain there would be no unexpected interruptions.”

Roth started to turn his head but the muzzle of the gun gave a quick jab to discourage him. His hand jerked at the same time and the inch of ash at the end of his cigar dropped into the water, sinking beneath the surface in a scattering of gray and black flakes.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I think you know who I am, and I think you know what I want. The only thing we have to discuss is the terms of the exchange.”

Roth’s eyes widened. Starlight! How the hell had he found him here, in a ratty little brothel in Spon End?

“I know most of your habits,” Tyrone said, correctly interpreting the cause of Roth’s scowl. “The bad as well as the abhorrent. And for what it is worth, I am exquisitely close to just pulling the trigger now and blowing your brains across the room.”

“If you do, you will never see the old man alive again.”

“Ah, but neither will you.” A shifting of wool brought the ominous baritone closer to Roth’s ear. “And I would at least have the immense pleasure of seeing you dead.”

Roth’s fine, pinched nostrils flared. He was aware of half a dozen things at once, beginning with the fact he was at a glaring disadvantage. He was naked in a tub of water. His gun and sword were on the opposite side of the room. He had not told anyone he was coming here tonight, nor did he particularly want anyone to find him, dead or otherwise, in an establishment known to cater to the less palatable tastes of its clientele.

“You surprise me, Captain. A beautiful woman, I might understand, but I did not know you harbored an affinity for old men as well.”

“Let’s just say I cannot fully enjoy the company of one without easing her concerns about the other.”

“Indeed. I should think Mademoiselle d’Anton would be quite enthusiastic in expressing her gratitude in getting her manservant back. May I inquire what you are offering in exchange for all this bliss?”

“What do you want?”

Roth felt a measure of composure returning. Despite his threat, the bastard had not come to kill him; if he had, he would have done so by now. He had come to negotiate for the old man’s release and he could not do that if he killed the man who held the key to the gaol cell.

“What do I want? What is an old man’s life
worth?” Roth drew
on his cigar and exhaled a slow, thin streamer of blue-white smoke. “The property that was stolen from us, of course. In particular the pearl brooch and the rest of the goods you took from Edgar Vincent several months ago. I presume you still have them?”