The Return of the Prodigal (15 page)

And Chance? He had gone back to the War Office, offering his services once news of Bonaparte’s escape had reached England. But that was London, not Brussels.

Courtland! Oh, God, Court! The steady one, the solid one, the one they all teased as being plodding and boring. But it had been Court who had first come up with the idea of riding out as the Black Ghost. Court who had led them all, the magnificent cape of the Black Ghost flying out behind him as they crashed into the larger numbers of the Red Men Gang time and time again.

Rian had thought often of his family, how they were mourning him, even as he built his strength, and his courage, to return to them a changed man, physically and in his mind.

But it had never once occurred to him that they might be mourning the loss of more than one Becket son.

He had to control himself. Tens of thousands had traveled to Brussels to repel Bonaparte. Lists and lists of names had been published in the London newspapers. Becket was a common name, not at all unusual in England.

His brothers were fine. Spence and Chance, home with their wives and families. Court, stodgy and proper as ever, driving everyone at Becket Hall insane with his careful care of them.

Rian whirled about to glare at Lisette. “Where? You have to know where, Lisette. Where are these men buried?”

She shot to her feet. “But I don’t! I truly don’t, Rian. I had been in…that is to say, I had been serving at the
Comte
’s holding in Paris, and had only just been returned to the manor house in time to ask for the duty of nursing you. I know nothing of these men. I was not there. I did not
know!
”

He barely heard her. His brothers. Oh, God, his brothers!

The sun was slipping below the horizon, leaving the pathway in growing shadow, and Rian vaguely became aware of the chill in the air. He would see the
Comte
tonight, and have his answers. He held out his hand to Lisette, and she took it. “Another question for the
Comte
then, when we meet. Come along, Lisette. We have to catch up with Jasper and the caravan before it grows too dark. We’ll speak of this again later.”

“I didn’t know, Rian,” she said again. “Please believe me. I did everything I could for you. And you lived! You still live, if you don’t throw away that life tonight in some act of brave stupidity!”

“I’m not going to die, Lisette. Not before throwing Edmund Beales at Ainsley’s feet.” He squeezed her hand and they walked along together in the gathering dusk, neither of them speaking again until they came to a clearing beside the weathered and tipping gravestones, to hear Jasper talking to himself as he unloaded food and the brazier from the back of the caravan.

O
NCE AGAIN
, Lisette had no appetite. Perhaps because she had swallowed enough lies to keep her stomach roiling and unhappy for years to come.

She sat in the caravan, because it had begun to rain, and she saw no point in remaining outside and getting soaked to the skin. That, she believed, made her practical. French.

Did her deceitful, lying ways make her English, like her
papa?

Why couldn’t she tell Rian Becket the truth? All of the truth? Why was she still protecting the man who had given her life, only to take the lives of so many others?

From her best reckoning, she had already been born when this terrible attack on Geoffrey Baskin’s island home had occurred. Yet Rian had said nothing about Edmund Beales also being married, having a wife and child of his own even as he coveted the wife of his privateering partner.

She should have asked him, except that it had taken her long hours of thinking, of weeping silently into her fist in the dark inside the caravan, to figure out a way to ask the question: this man, this Beales, did he also have a family?

Lisette wished herself back in the convent, a nameless orphan. She wished that grand coach and the high-stepping horses in the traces had never stopped at the convent gate.

For a time, as she had tried so hard to sleep the previous night, she wove a fantasy wherein she was not the
Comte
’s daughter, that he had come to the convent to avail himself of a daughter, any girl child who might be there, and Lisette had not been the only orphan confined behind those tall convent walls. He had come to acquire a daughter who could act as his hostess in Society, lend him respectability, possibly even pity for the widower raising his daughter alone, presenting her to that same English Society while at the same time gaining himself entrée to the finest houses, the finest people.

He had seen her, she had seemed presentable and of the right age, and he had claimed her.

Would that this was true!

In her heart, she hoped she was no more than a part of some larger plan formulated by the
Comte.
In her heart, she knew she was his daughter…and, as his daughter, as his blood, still little more than a part of his larger plan.

He said he would kill Rian Becket for having touched his daughter
without his permission.
Who would he have given permission to touch her? The highest bidder?

Lisette wiped at her moist eyes, one after the other, as she shrugged out of the too-large blouse and voluminous skirt, leaving herself clad only in her own shift, one definitely too well-fashioned to belong to a mere house servant. But she so loved the feel of the soft material against her skin, she could not bear to leave such fine things behind. She had planned to tell Rian, if he asked, that her underpinnings had been cast off from one of the
Comte
’s houseguests, given to her in return for services rendered the woman during her visit.

Now that all seemed so petty, so silly. Small lies to cover small problems.

It was the big lies that terrified her now.

She should tell Rian Becket the truth, everything that she knew. But she couldn’t. Not yet. Much as she knew her world, her lovely new world, had all been a lie, a sham, she was still her father’s child, still blood of his blood. She could wish his evilness exposed, wish him punished, but she could not be the instrument of that punishment. He was, God help her, her
papa,
the only family she had ever known. Blood did not betray blood.

Even tainted blood.

Would Rian ever wish to touch her, even look at her again, once he knew the truth? How could he? He would look at her, and think of those broken bodies lying on the sand.

If she told him the truth, she might gain a quiet conscience, but she would lose him. She was not prepared to lose him. Not now, not ever.

She was about to pull on the gown she had worn the night they’d made their arranged escape, believing its drab gray color would be preferable as she and Rian approached the manor house, when Rian rapped on the door of the caravan and just as quickly entered, before she could give him her permission.

He stopped, half in and half out of the door, his gaze locked on her bosom. “Ah, that sparks a memory. Sadly, memory is not the same as experience.” And then he smiled.

“You are so droll, Rian Becket,” she told him, quickly pulling the gown over her head and standing as best she could so it would fall down past her hips. “And if you were please to close the door, as I don’t believe Jasper is invited to create memories of his own. Nor were you, but as you have yet to wait for an invitation about anything, I do not expect more from you.”

“Oh, wonderful, she’s happy again tonight,” Rian said to no one in particular as he seated himself on one of those nasty kegs of black powder that still frightened her whenever she thought of the prospect of lightning from the sky or a stray ember from the brazier. “Jasper, now, if you please.”

“Jasper? What are you—?” She shut her mouth as Jasper pulled himself into the caravan, fearing for a moment that, without the oxen in the traces, anchoring the thing, the caravan would tip over onto its rear. “Rian?”

“We’re leaving now, Lisette,” he told her. “Making our way across country by the light of a convenient moon—would your nuns at the convent call that God’s blessing on our mission?”

“I do not believe God has anything kind to say about your
mission,
Rian Becket. Vengeance is His, or so I have been taught.”

“You and I have studied different books, under different masters, Lisette,” Rian told her as Jasper, practically wedged between the cluttered sides of the caravan, seemed to be attempting to look anywhere but at her. “Because of that—for many reasons—you won’t be going with us tonight.”

“But—but I have lived here for…for many years. You could lose your way. You
need
me.”

Rian smiled in a way that ripped through her heart. “More than you know, Lisette,” he said, then seemed to remember that Jasper was within earshot, although how could he forget, as the man’s very act of inhaling and exhaling seemed to rock the caravan like a small ship on a large ocean. “But, for the moment, that is neither her nor there. You will remain here.”

“No. I will
not
remain here. You cannot ask that of me.” And then, as Jasper pulled one large hand from behind his back, a hand holding a length of stout rope, her anger receded, to be replaced by panic. “No!”

“I’m sorry, Lisette, I really am. To do this, to have to involve my good friend Jasper. But, as you know, I have this slight problem tying bows…or knots.”

“Rian Becket,” Lisette said, scrambling to the end of the bench, already reaching for one of the short swords she’d convinced herself she did not have the courage to ever so much as touch, “you are
not
going to tie me up. I forbid it! And I’ll have your liver on a spit if you try.”

“Aw, now see, Lieutenant? Jasper told you she wasn’t goin’ to go easy.”

“Yes, thank you, Jasper. Lisette, put that down, sweetheart. You wouldn’t hurt Jasper.”

Lisette kept her tight, two-handed grip on the small sword. “No, I wouldn’t. He can’t help himself. He’s…he’s besotted by your pretty face! But I am not. And you will not tie me up and leave me here while you go off to put your head in the mouth of the lion.”

“Jasper? You heard her. She would never hurt you. Do what you have to do.”

“Sorry, miss,” the giant said, pushing himself forward, completely between Rian and herself. He took hold of the sword by its blade. “Dull as a spoon, miss, seein’ Jasper has been busy and has yet to sharpen it.” He gave a quick yank and Lisette realized it was either she let go of the thing, or she would end up nose to groin with the giant.

The next thing she knew, she was turned about, her forehead pressed against the small square door at the front end of the caravan, and her wrists were being tightly bound behind her back.

“So really, really sorrowful, Jasper is,” he lamented as he then turned her around and gently eased her onto the cushioned bench.

“Now tie her ankles together, Jasper, and secure the ends of the rope to a leg of the bench.”

“You are a hateful, hateful man, Rian Becket. Don’t you trust me?”

“No, sweetheart, I’m afraid I don’t,” Rian said, and Lisette’s head shot up, no longer watching as Jasper trussed her to the bench, but now looking at Rian in the dimness, all her considerable anguish probably showing naked on her face.

“But…but I told you. I told you everything. I did, Rian Becket, I did!”

He shook his head, sighed. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. And you know what, Lisette? When I have the
Comte
at sword point, when I demand he tell me everything he knows about you, you had better pray he doesn’t tell me anything I don’t want to hear. Jasper, that’s good enough. Now the gag.”

Lisette heard the word and immediately began to tug on her bonds, feeling the rope biting into her wrists, her ankles. She bucked, willing herself free of the bench, even though she already knew that it had been nailed to the floor of the caravan. “Wait, wait!” she pleaded as Jasper, looking as if he might be ill at any moment, pulled a bright red handkerchief out of his pocket. “I didn’t want to tell you, for it would do no good for you to know. I…I know where the soldiers are buried.”

Rian put out his arm, motioning for Jasper to be still. “Where, Lisette? Where are they buried?”

“Here. Here in this very graveyard. Well, no, that’s not true. Not in the graveyard, because it could not be known if they were Catholic. But just outside, with the other unconsecrated. The…the
Comte
made a great business of it, being the good man who had tried so desperately to save them. If you had died, you would have been buried there, too.”

And still she lied. Because the soldiers had not been buried there, not originally. They had been placed in shallow graves on the small grounds of the estate, until she had begged her
papa
to bring the poor bodies at least somewhat closer to God. Once she had promised never to visit the cemetery, her
papa
had agreed to the new graves.

Too many lies, complicating her existence, invading her dreams. She went to her knees, every night, to pray for those four poor doomed men, but she had never seen their graves after the day of the interments.

“The graves, Lisette. Are they marked?”

She shook her head, her blood pounding in her ears. “But they are four, all together, and only a few months old. They shouldn’t be difficult to find. But why, Rian? You can’t mean to disturb the dead.”

“I don’t want to, but yes, that’s precisely what I’m going to do. As you said, the graves are still fairly fresh, no more than four months old. I should still be able to…to recognize a familiar face, God help me.”

“Ah, Lieutenant, sir, they won’t be pretty faces,” Jasper said, sighing.

“Nothing about this is pretty, Jasper. The gag now, please.”

“No! I will be quiet, Rian, I promise. There is no need to—”

The rolled handkerchief pressed against her tongue even as it pulled on the corners of her mouth, turning her roar of outrage into a garbled protest that ended on a sob. Jasper tied the ends tight, tangling some of her hair painfully in the knot, and she felt tears stinging at her eyes.

“In case you’re still struggling to decide where your loyalties really lie, I suggest you consider praying that we come back safely, Lisette, to untie you,” Rian told her, and then he kissed her cheek—how dare he kiss her cheek!—and he and Jasper were gone, the door closing behind them, leaving her in the dark.