Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) (21 page)

Renold looked to Angelica. His face was pale, with a white line around his mouth. “Let’s go home,” he said.

Chapter Twelve

The townhouse blazed with lights as Renold and Angelica approached. Angelica’s absence had been discovered, the alarm given. The house servants were up and standing in hushed groups in the courtyard. Their outcry as they saw their master and his wife brought Estelle and Deborah hurrying onto the gallery.

Tit Jean was not there. He had sent runners in every direction in search of Renold, and was himself out looking for him. Estelle was nearly incoherent in her relief at seeing them safely returned, though she was horrified at Angelica’s scrapes and bruises. Deborah, eyes sharp, demanded to know where they had been and what had happened.

Renold had no time for explanations. Handing Angelica over to the two women, he shut himself into his dressing room where he was extremely, if usefully, sick.

It was not going to be enough. He had never been quite so completely drunk or drugged to near insensibility in his misbegotten life. Careless hilarity waned in his veins with an overwhelming need to lie down somewhere and sleep like a dog. He could give in to neither, but had to keep moving, force himself to think, to plan. There was too much to be done.

If he had been more in control there in the alley, he might not have killed the younger Skaggs brother. To risk leaving him alive and able to follow after them was something he could not afford at that particular moment. Besides, the man had been about to put his filthy hands on Angelica.

There had been that other one, the man who had paid to have Angelica taken. He had retreated, a more cowardly move than expected. Most fathers would have fought to prevent leaving a beloved daughter in the hands of an enemy.

His hands. God help him.

He could not afford to think of Angelica as she had been, bound and helpless, in that back room. He would not remember the feel of her in his arms and the degrading need to take her while she was grateful to him, while she might not, could not, resist.

No.

No. But neither was anyone going to take Angelica from him.

Reeling from the dressing room, he struck the door, then clung to it, breathing in harsh gasps. He put a hand to his face, fighting the disorientation, the hovering stupor. His fingertips were slippery with the sweat seeping from his hair. A violent shudder rattled his skeleton and made his teeth chatter. He clenched his jaw, bracing against it.

It passed. Somewhat. Enough that he noticed voices coming from the courtyard. He pushed erect, swaying until he found his balance. Fastening his gaze on the French doors to the gallery as a goal, he made toward them.

Tit Jean had returned. He was there below, surrounded by a half-dozen people, all trying to give him the news that he might end his search, that the lost were found.

Matters could now proceed. Renold summoned purpose and authority, injected it into his voice as he called out to the manservant.

“Yes, maître?” Tit Jean’s voice, mellow, concerned, obliging, floated up to him out of the dimness.

“Pack,” Renold commanded. “With all speed. We leave for Bonheur within the hour.”

At Tit Jean’s side, another face swam into view. Michel. No doubt he had been alarmed enough to join in the search when Tit Jean came to him for news. He looked as if he had dressed hurriedly, leaving his hair in a tangle of rough curls and merely wrapping his cravat twice around his throat.

Hands on his hips, his friend called up to him, “Bonheur, Renold? Have you given this serious thought?”

“Not a great deal,” Renold answered, his voice wavering as he was shaken by a sudden, helpless laugh. “It doesn’t matter. The alternative is — unacceptable.”

“I see,” Michel said, and perhaps he did. He went on, “If you must go, can you bear to have company?”

Renold felt an odd coolness brush the back of his neck. Shivering with it, he said, “You have also discovered an urgent need to be gone from New Orleans?”

“I only thought you might have need of companionship in your exile,” he answered.

The look on the other man’s face was sincere, and only a little cajoling. Renold wavered while his thoughts moved with something less than their usual precision.

Another figure separated itself from the group in the shadows. Deborah’s clear tones assailed him. “If you insist on this ill-considered course,” she said with some acerbity, “then you may as well have as much support as possible, not to mention the extra right arm.”

“Pleading his case for him, chère?” Renold said in carrying tones. “It doesn’t seem like you.”

His half-sister put her hands on her hips. “I would be less inclined to increase our forces if you appeared more able.”

“Flattering,” he answered after no more than an instant. “Also amazing evidence of forethought. One would almost think you care.”

“I care about Angelica and what she has been through, both tonight and all the other nights with you.”

He tilted his head. “She has been complaining?”

“Not at all,” came the short reply. “She is as private in her way as you are in yours, dear brother. But I don’t have to hear her complaints in order to understand how she must feel.”

“Your fellow feeling, then, leads you to think she requires Michel in her entourage. But for what purpose? To prevent her recapture by kidnappers, or to protect her from me?”

“You are her husband; it’s your job to protect her,” Deborah said. “However, Michel may be required to protect you from her when she discovers what you have done.”

“Yes, I take your point,” he agreed in haste, then added, “Where is she now?”

“Taking a bath in the kitchen. She felt the need, and couldn’t wait for it to be brought to her dressing room.”

She had felt the need because she had been mauled and handled and left trussed up in a barrelhouse like some sordid parcel without worth. Who could blame her for wanting to remove the stench of it? He had a strong urge in that direction himself, and would attend to it when time permitted.

Coming to an abrupt decision, he said to Michel, “There is something in what Deborah says. The upriver steamer leaves at dawn. We will be on it with or without you.”

“Fair enough,” Michel said, his face creasing in a grin as he began to back toward the courtyard gate. “I’ll see you at the wharf.”

Renold lifted a hand in acknowledgment. The moment the gate clanged behind his friend, he swung back toward those waiting below. His voice quiet, yet with the sting of a rebuke, he said, “Well? Is there nothing any of you can do to make ready for departure? Or do you require detailed instructions?”

They scattered.

Renold stood where he was with his hands clamped on the railing. Listening to the receding scuffle of footsteps and murmuring voices, he arranged in his mind the various tasks he would need to see completed before the night was over. The first of these was to inform Angelica of their departure. It was not a task he relished.

Finding exact words, however, much less convenient excuses, proved unnecessary. Angelica emerged from the kitchen a few seconds later. With her hair trailing in wet, wheat gold strands down her back and her dressing sacque pulled around her, she paused to stare up at him.

As he drew breath to speak, she shook her head so that water sprayed from the dripping ends of her hair in silver droplets. “Never mind, I heard,” she said in clear, bell-like tones. “Wait there. I’ll come up to you.”

It was odd, and oddly affecting, to be the recipient of her concern. If he had been more himself, he might have assessed the difference. As it was, he could only seek to minimize the disturbance it caused inside him.

He was waiting inside the bedchamber when she came through the door. His trenchant glance at Estelle, who followed, was enough to recall to her the many tasks she must accomplish elsewhere. Muttering something about clothing left in the laundry, the maid whirled and went away, closing Angelica in with him.

“You have no objection to leaving here?” he said abruptly.

The look in her eyes was speculative. “I don’t know, I haven’t considered. But what of you? This is your home.”

She considered Bonheur as her property, and why should she not? Hadn’t he kept all other knowledge from her? His thought processes were so muddled, however, that the adjustment to her manner of thinking was an effort.

He said, “I am at home anywhere. I believe it will be better for you at the plantation. Certainly there will be less disarrangement.”

“I suppose that’s as good a description as any for what happened,” she said with a wan smile. “Regardless, I will admit I’m surprised. I would have expected you to stay in order to go after whoever is behind it.”

“Brandishing a sword and dire threats? I might, if there was only my own safety and convenience to consider. It’s different with you involved.”

She looked away from him, hesitating before she said, “Why am I in it at all? Can you tell me that? Is there someone who has a grudge against you and might consider that you could be reached through me? Or am I an obstacle in some other way I can’t begin to guess?”

He felt a burning constriction inside his chest as he recognized the source of her second suggestion. What had he done that she could entertain the notion he was behind her abduction? Why should such a thing occur to her?

He said with considerable force, “I am capable of many things, but hiring waterfront scum to dispose of my obligations is not one of them.”

“I’m sorry,” she said as a flush flared across her cheek bones. “I only — that is, you—”

“I treated you with some violence and a complete lack of the respect due a lady, which makes you consider that I might have a tendency to murder.”

“You have been saddled with me against your will when you thought, perhaps, that I would die and leave you as you were before I accosted you on the
Queen Kathleen
.”

“Now that is an appealing conceit, but we both know who accosted whom. Moreover, you should understand by now that I do nothing against my will. I thought I had made it clear that you are here because of the strength of my desire to have you near me. Why in the name of God’s holy hell should I act contrary to my own interests?”

“I don’t know, but Ma Skaggs said—”

“Tell me,” he demanded as she paused, then listened carefully as she complied. He watched her face, analyzed the quiet timbre of her voice, but could discern nothing to show that she realized her abduction might have been planned as a rescue.

Shrugging when she finished, he said, “As flattering as it may be, the description of the man who paid to have you brought to him is hardly exact or meaningful. To an old harridan like that, any well-spoken man of reasonable cleanliness would have to appear a paragon.”

“Yes, I suppose.” She lifted a hand, running her fingers through the long, wet strands of her hair. Encountering a mass of tangles, she frowned a little as she worked through it.

“Allow me,” he said, stepping to the dressing table and picking up the hairbrush that lay there. At the same time, he indicated the stool before the mirror.

Her manner took on a certain wariness. “I’m sure you have other things to do, if we are to leave so soon.”

“It’s being taken care of.” That was true only up to a point, but there was no reason to admit it.

She sent a doubtful glance toward the stool. As he remained politely adamant, she moved to settle upon it. He stepped behind her, gathering the long silken weight of her hair in his hands, lifting it free from where it clung to her dressing sacque. It had begun to dry, but was cool and damp to the touch. With care and attention, he chose a section and began to ply the brush on the ends, working upward.