Susan Carroll (47 page)

Our grandfather,” Nick muttered. His eyes
roved fearfully.

“It is all right,” Mandell soothed him. “His
Grace is gone.”

Nick fixed him with a look of pure misery.
“Sorry, Mandell. When Sara told me about where you were going to
take Anne. I knew. Knew it was not the Hook doing the killings. But
when I began to suspect the truth ... It was too horrible. I
couldn't tell you.”

“Don't try to talk,” Mandell commanded.
“We'll soon have you out of here, back safe with your Sara.”

Nick's lips quivered with a smile, but the
expression faded. He pressed Mandell's hand with a renewed
intensity. “You are going to have to go after the old man, Mandell.
We cannot allow him to continue.”

Mandell nodded.

Anne regarded Mandell with troubled eyes.
“But he is, after all, your grandfather, my lord. What will you do
with him?”

Mandell fingered his pistol and stared upward
toward the gallery, the darkness where the old man had vanished.
“God help me,” he said hoarsely. “I wish I knew.”

His Grace of Windermere sat behind the small
desk amidst the faded splendor of the restored bedchamber.
Scratching the quill pen across a sheet of vellum, he paused to
move the candle closer so that the light fell across the page. When
Mandell appeared upon the threshold, the duke continued to write,
not even bothering to look up.

Mandell entered, the loaded pistol still
gripped in his hand. He had not quite known what to expect, but
certainly not this degree of sangfroid even from the duke of
Windermere. It might have been just like dozens of times from
Mandell's childhood when His Grace had summoned Mandell to his
study to account for some transgression, the duke forcing Mandell
to cool his heels until His Grace was ready to deal with the
matter.

Mandell stared at the old man, looking,
almost hoping to perceive some change in him. Surely murder must
leave some mark upon a man. His eyes did appear a little more sunk
deep with weariness, but the brow was as ever untroubled, as smooth
as marble. It was like looking upon the face of a stranger. But
then His Grace had always been a stranger to Mandell.

The quill continued to scratch across the
paper, the duke pausing only long enough to remark, “There was no
need for you to have brought the pistol, Mandell. As you can see, I
am making no effort to escape. Put that thing away.”

Mandell paced over and dropped the weapon
upon the bed. He turned back, saying, “We managed to get Drummond
off in the carriage. In case you are interested, I believe he will
live.”

“Indeed?' The duke dipped his quill into the
ink and resumed writing. “And your lady? I presume you have also
whisked her out of harm's way.”

Mandell nodded. The duke paused briefly. He
frowned and said, “I do not know if it will much matter to you at
this juncture, Mandell, but I did not begin with the intention of
harming Lady Fairhaven. It was pure chance that she happened to be
there when I finally chose to dispatch Sir Lucien.”

“I did not see you come rushing forward to
clear her name. And if I had not arrived in time tonight, what
would have happened to Anne?”

“She would be dead. That might have been a
pity. She possessed more courage than I supposed. If not for her
tendency to wear her heart on her sleeve, she might have made a
tolerable marchioness after all.”

Mandell bit off a savage oath. The duke
looked up at him with a cold smile. “What did you expect of me,
Mandell? Some sign of remorse?”

“No, but an explanation would be appreciated.
You have murdered three men. It would have been four if Briggs had
died.”

“In another time, another era, no one would
have dared to question me. The power of life and death would have
been merely another of my rights as the duke of Windermere.”

“This is not another era. This is now, damn
it! There are no more feudal lords, Your Grace. Even a duke is
expected to account for the taking of a life.”

The lace at the duke's cuffs brushed the desk
as he indicated the paper with a graceful gesture. “I am writing
the confession of my actions even as we speak. All the details of
time and place, how I managed the business of my disguise.
Everything, in short, except for my motives. Those are no one
else's concern.”

“Not even mine?”

“I could explain to you, but I doubt you will
understand.”

“I beg you will attempt to do so,”

The duke merely compressed his lips and began
to write again.

“You did not do it for robbery, that I know,”
Mandell said. “The phantom in the cavalier hat is not, as everyone
supposed, the Hook.”

“The duke of Windermere, a common footpad!”
The duke gave a snort of laughter. “Hardly, but it was useful, my
doings being confused with the Hook's petty theft. While the
constabulary searched thieves' kitchens for a one-handed rogue, it
kept them from interfering with me.”

“And so you are not a common thief. Only a
common murderer.”

“Far from common, Mandell. A dispenser of
justice, a killer of fools, a social arbiter perhaps. But never a
common murderer.”

“What sort of justice was it that made you
attack poor Briggs? He had never done any harm to you.”

The duke's lip curled with contempt. “He was
stupid enough to come and inform me of how he had injured my
grandson and heir in the process of halting a drunken brawl.”

“Briggs was frightened that night. He came to
you for help.”

“And he received it. The only possible help
for such a simpleton, a yard of naked steel. He looked surprised
when I ran him through. I rather believed I wounded his feelings as
much as anything else.”

Mandell probed his grandfather's eyes for
some sign of madness. It would have been a comfort to think the old
man mad. But his eyes remained remarkably clear with that same cold
reason, that lack of compassion that had ever characterized the
duke.

“Briggs was ... is my friend,” Mandell said.
“His devotion to me—”

“The relationship was never a credit to you,”
the duke interrupted.

“His devotion to me,” Mandell continued
through clenched teeth, “was such that even after you had nearly
killed him, he preferred to keep silent rather than expose you, for
fear of giving me pain. When I forced him to tell me tonight, he
wept like a babe.”

“How touching,” the duke said. “I could have
spared you both the discomfort of such a maudlin scene had my hand
been a little steadier that night.”

His Grace flexed his fingers. “My rheumatism,
you know. It interferes with my capabilities. I am not the
swordsman I once was as a younger man. That is why when I killed
Sir Lucien, I decided that I had better be certain and employ a
pistol at close range.”

He shot an ironic glance at Mandell. “You
will not pretend to mourn his death, I trust?”

“No, but I would not have shot him down in
cold blood, either.”

“He was a dog, not a man. A sniveling cur who
presumed to attack one of my blood in a vulgar tavern. I derived a
great deal of amusement from tormenting Sir Lucien first, stalking
the coward until I believe I drove him quite mad. But in the end,
there could only be one fitting payment for Fairhaven's offenses,
and that was death.”

The duke gave a slight shrug as though
already dismissing all thought of Sir Lucien from his mind.

“So you have been committing these murders—”
Mandell began.

“Executions,” the duke corrected.

“You performed these executions merely
because certain people chanced to offend you?” Mandell asked in
disbelieving accents. “What about that young man Keeler? He was
little more than a boy.”

“A boy who presumed to sit down to play cards
with a duke and attempted to cheat his betters. An upstart banker's
son.”

“And Albert Glossop?'

“Ah, Mr. Glossop. He was the one who showed
me the possibilities of what a blade of steel could do when wielded
by a man not afraid to use it to rid the world of inferior beings.
It was so easy to cut Glossop down and vanish into the night. The
braying ass!”

“That was how it all began? You had no other
reason for killing Glossop than you thought him a fool?”

The duke frowned and did not answer him. His
hand tightened about the quill and he resumed his writing with a
vengeance. Mandell was left with the uneasy sensation that there
was something more that his grandfather was not telling him. After
so many other horrors, what else could there possibly be?

Mandell felt impervious to any further shock.
He was determined to have the truth from the old man, all of
it.

Splaying his hands upon the desk, he bent
over the duke and repeated his question. “Why did you begin your
night stalking with Albert Glossop, Your Grace?'

The duke flinched, but said, “Stand erect,
Mandell. Do not lean upon my desk. You know I have always found
that an annoying habit.”

When Mandell did not move, the old man flung
down his quill. He stirred restlessly in his chair, his brow
furrowing as he seemed to wrestle with some inner dilemma. He
stared past Mandell toward the window, as though he expected to
find the answer somewhere out there in the dark of the night.

At last he sighed and murmured, “I suppose I
may as well tell you the whole. It can make no difference now.”

He waited until Mandell removed his hands
from the desk and straightened. Then the duke began slowly,
“Glossop was indeed a fool, but that was not my main reason for
eliminating him. The young idiot had recently acquired a friend
from France who was acquainted with the de Valmieres.”

A tension shot through Mandell. He thought he
was prepared to hear anything. But matters suddenly promised to
take a direction he had never anticipated.

“My father?” he asked numbly.

“No, your father's family. It seems the
French king finally decided to overlook the de Valmieres
questionable loyalty during the revolution and restored them to
their estate. This finally left them at leisure to send an envoy to
make awkward inquiries. An envoy that I sent back with false
answers. Mr. Glossop, unfortunately became aware of this fact and
threatened to tell you unless I paid him a considerable sum.
Scarcely the action of a gentleman.”

“What was the nature of these inquiries, Your
Grace?”

The duke stared down at his paper and
fidgeted with his quill.

“The envoy was sent to ask about me, was he
not?” Mandell prompted. “My father's family was seeking to discover
my whereabouts.”

“Yes, but mostly they were trying to find out
what became of your father?'

“My father? Why would they come to you for —”
Mandell broke off, stunned by sudden comprehension. “You know. You
know where my father is.”

The duke rested his head against the back of
the chair, his heavy-lidded eyes seeming weighted down by a great
weariness. “Yes, I have known. All of this time. He came,
journeying to my estate in the north, not long after you had been
placed in my care, Mandell. De Valmiere expected to find both you
and your mother awaiting him with open arms.”

“How could he have expected that? You told me
my father abandoned my mother and me in Paris.”

“He may as well have done. He ordered Celine
to take you and come to England. If the young fool could have got
his head out of the clouds and away from his infernal music, he
might have known my Celine better. She was not a woman to tamely
accept such commands. She took you and went back to Paris to look
for her husband, but he was gone.”

“Gone where?”

“To make certain his own family, his brother
and sisters, got out of the country, when his first duty should
have been to his wife and child.”

“But he assumed my mother and I were already
safe.”

“He should have made sure.” The old man
slammed his fist against the desk in a rare display of passion.
“Instead he comes jaunting to see me months after it was too late
to save my beautiful Celine.”

The duke's lips twisted with a bitter
cruelty. “I took great satisfaction in informing the fool how his
feeble efforts had gone awry. I described to him Celine's death in
vivid detail, and for added measure, I told him that you had
perished, too.”

“You bastard!” Mandell said. “All these
years, you permitted me to believe that my father had deserted me,
that he was a coward.”

“And so he was. After I told him about your
mother's death, he still could not act the part of a man. He wept
like a babe, with that vulgar Gallic emotion I find so repulsive.
He sobbed until I could endure the sound no longer. I got down my
sword.”

“No!” Mandell rasped. But his denial was to
no avail.

The duke continued remorsely, “He was a
coward to the last. When I approached him, sword drawn, he only
looked at me. He made not one move to defend himself, profaning
Celine's name by whispering it with his last breath. It was but
simple justice, his life in retribution for hers.”

“Oh, God!” Mandell groaned. After so many
years of denying kinship with his father, he felt at one with the
man, could fully understand the complete despair and agony of the
young chevalier's final moments, the way he must have welcomed the
sword thrust that ended his life.

Mandell stared at his grandfather, the regal
old man dwindling to become something twisted, evil, and hideous in
Mandell's eyes. His breath shallow and rapid, he stalked toward the
duke, his hands clenching and unclenching.

The duke did not stir. Only his eyes shifted
to regard Mandell with chilling understanding.

“Now you would like to kill me and you could
do it swiftly and without mercy. You are not so very unlike me,
Mandell, except that you are driven to act from passion, whereas I
have always been ruled by cold logic.”