Swept Away (46 page)

Marshal Bertrand leaned forward to whisper something in Bonaparte’s ear, but the general raised a hand, cutting him off .

“I was told I had a visitor, a Madame Muiron-- a very old and dear friend--but I see only this...this woman of questionable origin before me. Is this your idea of a poor jest, Captain?”

“Unfortunately, the situation is far from amusing, general. I invited you here in the hopes you could clear up some questions pertaining to your arrest.”

“My
surrender
, Captain, was conducted with strict adherence to the codes of war. What is more, not only do I find this an odd time to be questioning such a thing, but I hardly expect you have the authority to be doing so on your own. When you have finished playing your games, feel free to address me again. In the meantime, I left an extremely tasty leg of mutton chilling on my table.”

He turned to leave and his gaze skimmed past the lone figure standing by the door. It stopped...skipped back again and settled with a shocked jolt of recognition on Emory Althorpe. Emory’s lip was still leaking blood down his chin and drops had stained the front of his shirt. In a remarkable display of recovering his wits, the general offered up a weak smile.

“You should try to remember to duck the next time, m’sieur.”

“Excellent advice,
Colonel Duroc
,” Emory said quietly. “I shall endeavor to take it to heart the next time I am ambushed.”

There was a second flicker of surprise--or was it panic?--in the gray eyes before Marshal Bertrand stepped between the two men. “You are plainly and stupidly unaware to whom you are speaking, m’sieur.”

“Ah, yes. Forgive me, my mistake. After you abdicated the Spanish throne, you were still permitted to retain the rank of general, despite your brother’s displeasure at the way you allowed Wellington to chase you out of the Penninsula.”

Bertrand stared a moment, then swelled his chest with indignation. “We shall not even dignify such an outrageous insult with a response, m’sieur. Kindly step out of the way that His Excellency might pass.”

“If it was His Excellency, I might be inclined to do so,” Emory said, moving parallel with the marshal to firmly establish himself as an obstacle in the doorway. “Granted, he is a little heavier than he should be to play the part, but his brother’s girth has been expanding steadily since he crowned himself emperor of France. The hair is a shade lighter, the chin rounder, but if your only exposure to the man was across a battlefield and through a spyglass, you would not know you were in the company of the wrong Bonaparte.”

“The wrong Bonaparte?” Maitland gasped.

“Indeed, Captain. Allow me to introduce General
Joseph
Bonaparte,” Emory said evenly. “Older by a year than Napoleon, but sharing enough of a likeness to have generated more than one mistaken report concerning the emperor’s whereabouts.”

“What were you planning to do?” Emory asked. “Wait until you had word your brother was safely in America before you threw off the pretence and revealed the hoax to the world? How much did you pay Le Renard to guarantee you would be kept on board a ship in the middle of a harbor where access to visitors would be severely limited and the chances of being discovered dramatically reduced?”

Barrimore, standing quiet until now, as stunned as the others in the room, looked hard at Lord Wessex. “That was your idea,” he said tersely. “You were quite vehement, in fact, in insisting he remain isolated.”

“Isolated, yes, and his movements restricted,” Wessex replied, startled by the implied accusation. “But only because we dared not risk another escape! Not with--” he glanced at Emory-- “not with Althorpe’s whereabouts unaccounted for. Good God, man, you are not suggesting...!”

“I am suggesting there is a fox in the henhouse, sir, and he must be flushed out,” Emory said quietly. “Thanks to documents now in Captain Maitland’s hands, we have established Le Renard is someone who has access to the foreign office and is more than passingly familiar with the codes used in secret dispatches.”

Wessex looked genuinely desperate for a moment before he turned suddenly and stared at Colonel Ramsey. “Renard. By Christ...we went to Oxford together,” he whispered. “You were nicknamed the fox because of your ability to sneak women in and out of your rooms at any hour of the day or night. And right up to a month ago, you were in London, working out of the foreign office.”

Ramsey backed up and his hand went instantly to the pistol he wore strapped around his waist. It was drawn and cocked before anyone had a chance to react.

“No,” he said. “No, sir. I will not be set up as the scapegoat, not for this.”

“You have been clearly obsessed with Althorpe’s capture these past few weeks,” Barrimore remarked. “I would suggest that makes
you
look like the one who was desperate to find a scapegoat.”

“Of course I wanted to capture the whoreson bastard,” Ramsey hissed. “He is a traitor and a cold-blooded murderer!”

Emory frowned. “That is the second time you have accused me of murder, sir. I grant you I may guilty of some of the crimes which have been attributed to me, but I have never
murdered
anyone. Killed, yes, in honest battle when my own life or the lives of my men were at risk, but never for the sheer pleasure of it.”

“Never?”

“No.” Emory glanced briefly at Annaleah. “Never, dammit.”

“Then we may add liar to your charges, for there were witnesses to your crime.
All three identified you as the man who coldly and deliberately choked an unarmed man to death in the streets of Portsmouth. They subsequently followed you back to your ship, whereupon the authorities were later met with a hail of gunfire. You cast off and sailed away without so much as a by your leave.” He gripped the butt of the pistol tighter and curled his finger close around the trigger. “That man, the one you left broken and bleeding in a filthy laneway, was my brother, sir, and the day I shoveled the earth over his grave, I took a solemn vow to do the same to you.”

Emory’s complexion darkened and watching him, Annaleah felt her stomach give another wrenching twist. She recalled the incident he had told her about Seamus Turnbull coming upon a young, drunken lord who had kicked a small dog to death for sport. It was Seamus who had throttled Ramsey’s brother, not Emory though the blame had clearly been transferred to his shoulders.

“Put the gun down, Colonel,” Wessex advised. “You do nothing to help your cause and if Althorpe is guilty of murdering your brother, I promise you he will be held to account.”

“There is nothing to be held accountable for,” Annaleah cried, stepping forward. “He did not do it!”

“And who the devil are you to bear witness to his character!” Ramsey demanded, a small dribble of saliva forming at the side of his mouth. “A woman who bases her judgement on the strength of what he puts between her thighs!”

Anthony was only a split second slower than the others to react, but he was closest and thus the first to plow his weight into Ramsey’s shoulder, lifting him half off his feet before driving him furiously back into the wall. The gun went off with a puff of smoke, the bullet smashing through the gallery windows, chipping the frame and shattering the glass in two panes. A second shot was fired almost instantaneously, the bullet catching Ramsey squarely in the center of the forehead, leaving a remarkably neat, round red hole in its wake. Colonel Ramsey’s startled eyes focussed on the smoking pistol held in Barrimore’s outstretched hand a moment, then drifted half closed as his body slid into a dead heap on the floor.

“Good God!” Maitland looked from the marquis to the slumping corpse, back to the marquis. “Good God, sir, you have killed him!”

“Would you have preferred me to wait to see if he had another weapon concealed on his person?” Barrimore lowered the gun. It was the one Anthony had taken from Annaleah and he waited for the smoke to funnel out of the barrel before he set it carefully back on the table. “I expect he knew his story of woe and revenge would not hold up against the greater charge of treason.”

“You are all mad,” declared Bonaparte from behind the shield formed by his marshalls, Bertrand and Montholon. “I insist on being allowed to return to my quarters at once!”

“Not until we have the truth from you,” Emory said, producing the small pocket pistol and pressing it against the Corsican’s cheek. “And believe me, general, I am in a fit mood to use this if you do not admit here and now the rightful name given you at birth.”

The familial gray eyes met his over the barrel of the gun and his lips drew back in a snarl. He looked for a moment as if he would still deny the charge, but then his face cracked into a smile and he gave a short bark of laughter.

“For all the good it will do you, m’sieur, my name is Joseph Louis Bonaparte, and I have indeed played my part well. By now my brother is halfway to America, where he will be welcomed like royalty, and once again take his place at the head of an army--an army he will lead to ultimate victory over his English enemies!”

Maitland stared, then walked slowly over to where they stood at the door. His own eyes were formidable weapons, glowering as they were from beneath the weathered brow. While Joseph Bonaparte displayed the good sense to shrink back against his two officers, Emory was only slightly reluctant to allow the captain to take the gun out of his hand.

Though his eyes never left the impostor’s face, Maitland carefully uncocked the hammer and addressed Witherspoon. “Get them out of here. Get them out before I forget my duty and shoot them myself. Take them below and lock them in their quarters. Put guards on the doors twenty-four hours a day and let no one in or out without my express permission. And Mr. Witherspoon... send a man over the side to seal the ports. I want no more bits of paper tossed out in the night. We cannot allow a whisper of this to escape the ship until it has been decided what course to take. Clap all the Frenchmen in irons and throw them in the bilges if you have to.”

“Yes sir. My pleasure, sir.”

Bonaparte tossed final blazing look of triumph over his shoulder before Witherspoon ushered them out the door. When they were gone, Maitland turned equally blazing eyes to Emory and held up the gun. “Have you or Miss Fairchilde any more little surprises to share with us Mr. Althorpe?”

Emory glanced at Annaleah and arched his eyebrows. “No. No, I think that about uses up our quota for the day.”

Maitland made a growling sound in his throat and walked back to the table, barely acknowledging Rupert Ramsey’s body where it sprawled on the floor. He set the gun down, careful to keep it squarely in front of him, then leaned his hands on the table and bowed his head.

“What in the name of all the holy saints am I to do now? The world believes we have Napoleon Bonaparte imprisoned on board this ship. When it comes to light he has escaped again...that we never had him...that he was able to dupe us with such a childish ruse....”

He turned his head toward the window, staring at nothing, undoubtedly seeing his entire career go up in flames before his eyes. The battles he had fought would count for nothing, the honors he won would be forgotten. He would go down in history as the fool who had accepted the surrender of Joseph Bonaparte and let his brother sail away to build another empire across the ocean.

Wessex joined him in short order, taking a seat at the table, his forehead cupped in his hands, the heels pressing against his eyes as if to contain the pressure in his skull before it exploded. Anthony helped himself to a full glass of brandy, draining it in several loud gulps before he set the glass down with a bang and went to stand at the windows.

Annaleah tried to catch his eye, but his face remained turned away and his hands stayed laced together behind his back. Emory, on the other hand, was only too willing to meet her gaze, though the message he conveyed was distinctly mixed. The ruse had been uncovered, but she had disobeyed him again by bringing the gun on board and a man was dead because of it. To make matters worse, if Rupert Ramsey was the fox, they might never know it for sure now.

“You are more familiar with the Corsican’s habits than anyone else in this room, Althorpe,” Wessex said, working his hands around to his temples. “Where would he go? Where would he feel safe? Is it
possible
he has slipped through our hands and is on his way to America?”

“His younger brother Lucien spent four years there. He has undoubtedly established a loyal base.”

Wessex sighed. “And the bastard was right. The Americans would welcome a soldier of his caliber with open arms. They would press north into Canada and join forces with the French in Quebec. He would have a vast, rich empire to rule again.”

Emory moved away from the door. His lip had stopped bleeding and he dampened a linen napkin in water he found on a side table, using it to swab away the stains on his chin and throat.

“At the time, he had a reward of thirty thousand pounds on his head but not one of his loyal Highlanders betrayed his whereabouts. They kept him hidden for three months until it was safe for a ship to transport him back across the Channel. In this instance, there is no bounty, no one is even looking for Napoleon because they believe him to be here, on board the
Bellerophon
. For that matter, the masquerade has worked in the one direction, it could easily work in the other. A wig, a sprout of whiskers and he could conceivably assume the guise of Joseph. And do not forget he would be confident of receiving ample warning from our elusive friend, Le Renard, should anyone’s suspicions be roused.”