A Reckless Beauty (19 page)

“Later, friend. Ainsley will want to talk to you as soon as he’s turned Fanny over to the women. He’s been haunting the shoreline for this last week, prowling it, actually, watching the horizon, waiting for Fanny, for more news on Rian. I don’t think he’s slept, the poor bastard. He’s such a strong man. Intelligent. Decisive. It’s unsettling, seeing him vulnerable, hurting. But he’s still very much in charge, Valentine. Don’t think he isn’t. Ainsley Becket makes our Iron Duke look like a babe in arms when it comes to keeping a steady hand on the reins.”

Valentine looked at Jack, who was still the handsome rogue he remembered, for the most part. But now he had a settled look about him, an easy assurance that came from, perhaps, being part of a family. Being married. Being loved. Most definitely a far cry from the wary, sharp-eyed adventurer he’d once been. Maybe Jack had been the smart one, had gotten himself out in time. Waterloo and the tense, dangerous months leading up to that battle had been just one more brick placed on Valentine’s shoulders…and one he wished he could have avoided carrying.

“The lord and master of Becket Hall, hmm? The
captain?
And if I don’t want to talk to him? Will he have me walk the plank, do you suppose, or will he order me dropped down a well, the way I hear the smugglers do it?”

“So you know. Fanny or Rian told you. Very well, I have no argument with that—God knows you know how to keep your own counsel.” Jack dropped his hand. “But who put the stick up your ass? There was a time you’d find the whole subterfuge exciting or, at the least, amusing.”

Valentine shook his head, let out a ragged breath. “Forgive me, Jack. I’m not used to having to answer for myself. I’m less used to admitting my failings.”

Jack clapped his arm over Valentine’s shoulder and turned him toward Becket Hall. “You mean, Rian, don’t you? Don’t, friend. His death isn’t your fault, Valentine. It was war. God knows we both understand that nobody’s safe on the battlefield. I only thank you for taking him in hand, helping him live out the dream he’d always longed for. Rian is…he was a splendid young man. A bit of a dreamer, I’ll grant you, but he made his own choices. In the end, we all do.”

Valentine looked up at Becket Hall as they neared the steps leading to the terrace. “And you chose this place.”

Jack grinned. “Let’s just say this place, this life, chose me. When you meet Eleanor, you’ll understand. It was complete and utter surrender on my part, Valentine. And I couldn’t be happier. Now, come on. Let’s get this over with, all right?”

“I suppose we may as well. I’ve seen Becket. Who else is waiting for me in there?”

“Fanny told you about us, correct?”

Valentine nodded. “Eight children. Seven now.”

“Yes…seven now,” Jack said quietly. “We’re still having some trouble, getting used to that. All right. Chance is the oldest, but he’s not here. He’s helping at the War Office, hoping for some sort of information that might lead him to—”

“Edmund Beales,” Valentine supplied for him. “Fanny told me about the island, and what’s happened since.”

“Fanny? I doubt she knows the half of it, although Rian probably told her some of what’s been happening.”

“Enough to have her frightened half out of her mind that Edmund Beales will be arriving at any time, to repeat the massacre on the island,” Valentine told his friend. “She was afraid to come home, Jack—now that her protector is gone.”

Jack stopped walking down the terrace, turning to move to the stone balustrade looking out over the Channel, and Valentine followed him. “Christ. She’s still a child, isn’t she?”

Valentine leaned his elbows on the balustrade, looked to his left and idly wondered how in hell, lacking a wharf, they were going to get Molly off the yacht. “Not really, I’m afraid. Not anymore, and for more than one reason,” he said, lowering his head. “So Chance isn’t here. Who is?”

“Court—Courtland. Steady as a rock, Court is. And fiercely loyal. Spencer’s still here, that’s the last remaining brother. He fought in Canada and America, poor bastard. Marriage has softened him some, but he’s got a temper. He put his fist into a wall when the Sergeant-Major showed up to tell us about Rian. Becket Hall is damn near built like a fortress. Spence broke a few knuckles. Mariah—that’s his wife—never said a word. She just fetched a bucket of ice from the icehouse and stuck his hand in it. They’re quite a pair.”

“Sounds as if you’ve got a fondness for all of them.”

“They’re my family. We’re a hodgepodge, but we all seem to suit each other. Callie’s here—she’s the youngest, and Mariah and Eleanor, of course. Morgan married Ethan Tanner a few years ago.”

“Aylesford? Interesting. And how does the infamous Earl fit in here?”

“Remarkably well. Some of us only play the fool.”

“While some of us only fool ourselves,” Valentine said quietly, looking out over the water. “All right,” he added quickly, before Jack could question his unguarded statement. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

“Anyone would think I’m marching you to your execution,” Jack said, indicating with his arm that they should continue walking toward the French doors near the end of the terrace. “Oh, one more thing. I don’t know if Jacko is going to be in Ainsley’s study. But if he is, ignore him.”

“Fanny mentioned the name. Who is he, again?”

“You know, I’m never sure. He’s been with Ainsley from the beginning, I can tell you that. He was probably quite formidable, years ago, but he’s gone to fat, and to drink, more now than ever. Still, I wouldn’t cross him, or hope to see him coming out of the dark for me. Just a word of warning.”

“I’ll keep that word in mind. Shall we?” Valentine said, and Jack stepped forward to open one of the French doors.

A
INSLEY
B
ECKET
stood up behind his desk and walked around it, crossing to Valentine with his right arm extended. “Your lordship, welcome to Becket Hall. I only regret the circumstances.”

Valentine took the man’s hand, felt the dry, warm, firm grip. “As do I, Mr. Becket. My most sincere condolences on the loss of your son.”

He looked around the room. A sandy-haired young man with a short but full beard and steady eyes waited a moment, then also moved forward to offer his hand.

“Courtland?” Valentine asked. “I’m Valentine.”

Courtland nodded and stepped back, and a second man, taller, leaner, dark and rather Spanish-looking, slightly inclined his head to him as he stood behind a chair, his hands on the back of it, the right one heavily bandaged. “And you’d be Spencer.”

Spencer held up his injured hand. “Forgive me my lack of manners, my lord,” he said, and then added, “Valentine. Our brother wrote us about you. Said he’d mistaken you for some indigent, applying for work as his batman. I always thought Rian was smarter than that.”

“He had his reasons,” Valentine said, smiling faintly at the memory. “He was a good man, and a brave one. You all have my sincere sympathy.”

“Rather have the boy,” an older man, stout of body but keen of eye grumbled from his seat on one of the leather couches. He hauled himself to his feet and headed for the doorway. “I’ll leave you to it, Cap’n. I’ve no stomach for hearing what I don’t want to hear.”

“Very good, Jacko,” Ainsley said and they all watched the man leave before Ainsley turned to Valentine once more. “A glass of wine, Valentine?”

“Thank you, sir, yes.” Valentine looked at the two Becket brothers, at Jack, and then asked Ainsley, “Is it possible, Mr. Becket, that you and I could speak…alone?”

He watched as Courtland just stood there, expressionless, and Spencer Becket quite obviously bristled. Jack had described them very well. The only thing he’d left out, Valentine was sure, was that they were both obviously intelligent and potentially dangerous men.

Ainsley handed Valentine a fine crystal wineglass half filled with a rich burgundy liquid. “I see no reason to deny your request. Gentlemen?”

Courtland grabbed Spencer’s arm and pulled him toward the door, and Jack, with one last curious look at Valentine, followed after them.

“More comfortable now?” Ainsley asked, retaking his chair behind the large desk and motioning for Valentine to sit down wherever he chose.

“Yes, sir, thank you,” Valentine said, pulling a straight-backed chair away from the wall and placing it in front of the desk.

“I’ll begin, if you don’t mind,” Ainsley said, picking up a brass paperweight and balancing it in his palm. “And, to do that, let me apologize for saddling you with the care and welfare of my impetuous daughter.”

“My impetuous wife,” Valentine corrected, looking levelly into those remarkable blue eyes.

Ainsley didn’t blink. Nothing in his posture betrayed his surprise. But then his hand slowly closed around the paperweight. “Indeed.”

Valentine raised a hand, rubbed at his forehead. “That was cow-handed of me, wasn’t it? Forgive me. But, yes, Fanny is now my wife. Since yesterday morning, in point of fact, and in all ways since last night.”

“And it was necessary for you to tell me all of that?”

“Yes, it was, it is. I made a mistake, a terrible mistake. For my own selfish reasons, I took advantage of a young woman in the depths of despair over the loss of her brother. I have no excuse for my actions, none. But they can’t be undone.”

One corner of Ainsley’s mouth rose slightly, his blue eyes twinkling. “My lord Brede, my daughter—none of my daughters—does anything they don’t want to do. If Fanny married you, that’s what she wanted to do. It remains to you whether she comes to regret her actions.”

Valentine couldn’t sit still. He drained his wineglass and placed it on the desktop, then got to his feet. “She loves Rian. She sees me as…as someone to protect her, keep her safe. But she came to Brussels, followed him, because she loved him. Loves him.”

Ainsley was quiet for long moments, his chin in his hands as he watched Valentine pace the carpet. “Jack told me you weren’t an ass,” he said at last. “As I have never had reason to mistrust his judgment, I can only think that you, Valentine, are laboring under some strain. I agree, Fanny loved Rian. He loved her, very much. But don’t see bogeymen where they don’t exist. You’re a man grown. You know there are kinds and levels, even ages of love. You care for her, don’t you?”

Valentine stopped pacing to look at Ainsley. “For my sins, yes, I believe I do. But that does not excuse my treatment of her at such a vulnerable time.”

Sitting back at his ease, Ainsley said, “I’ll leave that to the two of you to sort out, if you don’t mind. I have no fears about Fanny, she takes very good care of herself. I might, however, spare a moment or two to worry about you.” He got to his feet. “In the meantime, allow me, please, to welcome you to our family.”

Valentine held up his hands, stepped back a pace. “Thank you, sir. But I’m not done yet.”

Ainsley settled back into his chair. “Go on.”

“First, let me say that Fanny told me about…about your family. I pass no judgments and will keep your secrets safe. I would, however, be honored to do what I can about this man, this Edmund Beales, if you should require my assistance in any way. In fact, I insist.”

Ainsley raised one eyebrow. “Fanny told you all of that? I admit, I’m surprised to hear it. You rather hold our collective futures in the palm of your hand, don’t you?”

Valentine shook his head. “I would never do anything to hurt Fanny. I’ve already done enough, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s going to take some time to hear all that
you
think, and to tell you anything else you should know. As for my former partner—”

Valentine sat down once more, using the arms of the chair to pull himself closer to the desk. “I’ve another confession to make, Mr. Becket, as well as something to say. Something that’s been bothering me since I last spoke with Rian.”

Ainsley picked up the paperweight once more, keeping his silence.

Valentine rubbed at his mouth, collecting his thoughts, putting them in order, and then began his story.

“The evening of the battle, when Rian didn’t return from carrying a message to one of our commanders, Fanny and I went looking for him. Fanny…Fanny thinks we didn’t find him, but that’s not correct. I did find him.”

Ainsley’s hand closed tight around the paperweight once more.

“Let me keep this brief, sir, and I promise to fill in the details later if you wish. But, for now, let me give you an idea of the situation as I saw it. Fanny was where I’d put her, inside a cow shed, next to the body of Rian’s horse. He wasn’t there, and all I could think was that some French soldiers found him and decided to use him as a shield as they made their escape, or even take him, an officer, for ransom. In any case, he was gone, he wasn’t there. His sword, however was, and it was bloody. He’d engaged the enemy, put up a fight. But where was he? I went out into the dark, to assure myself that no French stragglers were still out there before I could feel it safe to take Fanny back to our encampment. What I found was Rian, propped against a tree trunk, badly injured.”

“How badly?” Ainsley asked, his voice tight.

“Very badly, sir. Jupiter had fallen on him, injuring something inside the boy, I think, and he had a bullet wound to his leg. And then there was—but I’ll tell you about that in a moment, if I can, because there’s something to say first. As we spoke, the French came back, and Rian begged me to give him my pistol, as he felt he was dying and he wanted me—ordered me—to get Fanny to safety.”

“She shouldn’t have been there.”

“I agree, sir. I most heartily agree. But I was left with limited choices, and with Rian telling me there were three or more French who, it seemed, had dragged him from the cow shed, then abandoned him when they heard my pistol shot as I put Jupiter out of his pain. I had one pistol, one shot. I had Rian’s sword. I had two horses. And I had Fanny, left unprotected a good thirty yards away, in the cow shed.”

“You
left
him there.”

“I did,” Valentine said, looking straight into Ainsley’s eyes. “I cocked the pistol for him and did what he asked me to do. I got Fanny out of there. That’s when she was shot, as we rode off. I also heard another pistol shot. I’m sure that was Rian, doing what he wanted to do, which was to take one of the Frenchmen with him, making his sister’s escape easier.”

At last Ainsley reacted. He dropped his head into his hands. “Sweet Jesus. God.
Sweet Jesus.
They hacked him to pieces, didn’t they? That boy, that good, good boy. My beautiful boy…”

Valentine sat forward, put his hands on the edge of the desktop. “Possibly, that’s what happened. And possibly not.”

Ainsley lifted his head, looked at Valentine, his emotions sharply reined back under his control after his short lapse into fatherly grief. “Explain yourself.”

“I went back, early the next morning. Before dawn. I knew I had to bring Rian’s body home, here, to his family. But the body wasn’t there. I searched the area, thoroughly, in case I’d mistaken his position, but nothing. No sign of him. And no burial parties had been in the area up to that point. So I rode South, chasing the French. For days. There was no sign of him. And there’s more.”

“I’m having quite enough difficulty with what you’ve already told me. But continue, please.”

“I began to remember things I’d glossed over at the moment. I’d been intent on getting Fanny safely clear of the area, you understand. For these men to capture her, realize she was a female beneath her uniform—Well, Rian was right, I needed to get her gone. But the man my horse collided with as we began our retreat from the cow shed wasn’t wearing a French uniform. He wasn’t wearing a uniform at all. And then I realized something else. Something I said I’d tell you. Rian had another wound. A wicked, bloody one, to his left forearm. Slashed through to the bone.”

“And?”

“And when he lifted his arm, to show me why he felt he was already past saving, I saw the tourniquet. Somebody had tied a tourniquet around Rian’s arm to stop the bleeding, and I don’t think it was Rian. He’d have no time for that, under attack as he was. I thought about that, thought that whoever had captured him wanted to keep him alive long enough to use him as a shield, if not for ransom. But then I remembered something else Rian had said to me and my conclusions were even more disconcerting.”

Valentine stopped for a moment, collected himself. He’d spent so much time wondering about Rian’s curious words to him about Fanny, that he’d overlooked something very important.

“Rian said that he’d felt as if the men who were after him had been
hunting
him. Expressly hunting him. One horse would do five men on foot little good, and the battle was already well on the way to being lost for them. So why would they be hunting him? And, even if they abandoned him for a space when they heard my shot, they did come back. Again, sir,
why?
”

“They took him,” Ainsley said, his eyelids narrowed, his face a dark cloud of anger and real pain. “They took him because they knew who he was.”

Valentine let out a pent-up breath and subsided against the back of the chair, relieved that Ainsley Becket had come to the same conclusion. “Yes, sir. After what Fanny has told me since, I believe they did. The pieces all just seemed to fall into place. Sergeant-Major Hart had already told me that someone had come to the Thirteenth, to ask about Rian’s whereabouts, just before the battle. He thought it was one of you, looking for Fanny, but that’s not who it was. Someone was expressly hunting Rian. Not to kill him, but to take him. I will go to my grave regretting that I didn’t overrule him, try to take him with me.”

“You really were left with no other reasonable alternative at the time,” Ainsley told him. “Rian’s first and only thought would be to save his sister. His injuries were grievous, clearly.”

“I can’t imagine him surviving them for very long, no, sir. He’d lost a considerable amount of blood. If Jupiter hadn’t gone down, if Fanny hadn’t been with me—maybe, possibly, I could have gotten him past those men and back to headquarters, inflicting severe pain when I moved him. I can’t say he would have survived his injuries even if I’d gotten him to the surgeons, however. I doubt it. His death would only have been delayed, especially in the heat of Brussels. We’ve often lost more men to heat and infection than we have on the battlefield. I thought I wouldn’t have been doing him any great favor, even if I thought I could manage the logistics of the thing. At least that’s what I keep trying to tell myself. But I am certain that Rian isn’t alive now. Not as a prisoner.”

“Enough. You made a decision. You made a choice between a gravely injured Rian and Fanny. If it helps you at all, Valentine, I believe I would have come to the same conclusion. I’ve been forced to make similar decisions more than I care to remember, and I don’t envy you the sleepless nights you’ll spend second-guessing yourself. But we have to put it behind us.”

“Because of this man. This Edmund Beales.”

Ainsley nodded. “He’s getting closer. I don’t know how, but he is. I have to send someone to Chance immediately, insist he leaves London, returns to his family. Possibly even brings them here. Morgan, as well.”

“You’ve quite the fortress here, sir.”

Ainsley nodded absently, his mind busy. “I had hoped for a home, some peace. A future for my crew, my children.”

He blinked, clearing his mind, and looked at Valentine. “Beales must know something. Obviously, not yet enough. He’s also been quite busy, we believe, with his own pursuits, so perhaps he’s
saving
us until a time of his choosing. But, whatever is happening, if they tortured Rian, if he lived long enough to give them any hint of where we are,
who
we are, then we’re rapidly running out of time. Romney Marsh consists of about one hundred square, sparsely populated miles of England itself, and we’re in the most remote part of those hundred square miles. We’re sheltered, our people are loyal to us, but we aren’t invisible.”