A Reckless Beauty (22 page)

“Oh, Brede, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize, I didn’t see. You’ve been carrying the whole world, haven’t you?”

Instead of answering, he only closed his eyes, sighed and turned onto his side, his back to her, sliding into sleep.

Fanny looked to the rocker, and to the chaise on the far side of the bedchamber. Looked to Valentine, lying in her bed. And knew where she belonged.

It wasn’t only Rian’s death or even her childishness that had pushed Valentine to drink tonight. It was
all
the deaths, all the years of war.

He’d looked tired unto death himself, the first time she’d seen him, Fanny remembered now. And all she’d done was to add to the crushing weight already bearing down on him.

He’d reached for her, had seen something in her that he felt he needed, and in return she’d taken from him, selfishly. Now it was time to give something back. He needed her, even as much as she needed him.

She blew out the last of the candles and crawled up beside him, slipping her arm around him to anchor herself in the small space he’d left to her.

Kissed the fevered skin of his neck.

And fell into a dreamless sleep.

V
ALENTINE WOKE AT DAWN
, years of habit overruling the drink he’d downed the previous evening, and rolled over to see Fanny asleep beside him.

Now, wasn’t
that
interesting?

He had a vague recollection of stumbling back across the beach in the dark to Becket Hall from
The Last Voyage
with her brothers and Jack, none of them walking too straight or thinking too clearly.

He remembered the Voodoo priestess pulling him aside and pressing a key into his hand. Vaguely, he could recall being handed a candle, and then finding his way to Fanny’s bedchamber.

And something about boots? He chuckled softly. Oh, yes. He remembered now. He’d landed on the floor like a beached whale, hadn’t he? What a blow to his immense consequence. The Earl of Brede, helpless on his back, his idiocy displayed in front of his lady wife.

He looked up at the flowers embroidered on the canopy. He didn’t remember those. Indeed, he couldn’t seem to remember anything beyond being dumped to the floor by a rogue rocking chair intent on maiming him.

So how had he gotten into her bed?

His poor, sweet Fanny. He must have shocked her down to her toes, seeing him so badly cup-shot. Well, he’d at least spare her the sight of his sorry self this morning.

He eased himself upright, his stockinged feet hanging over the side of the bed, and waited until the room stopped spinning. Which it did, one moment before someone started beating at his temples with a pair of hammers.

And something furry clearly had died in his mouth. He moved his tongue from side to side, and decided that, whatever it had been, it was still there. He’d never drink mead again, and he’d shoot the next man who told him the honeyed, homemade brew was a harmless concoction.

Valentine gathered up his boots, his jacket and waistcoat, and felt the weight of the key in his pocket. He might want to keep that, in case she locked him out again, which he wouldn’t blame her for doing.

Looking toward the bed one last time, wishing himself back in it, curled up next to Fanny, who looked so malleable at the moment, so innocent and trusting in her virginal nightrail, he padded across the large chamber to the door and stepped into the hallway.

He turned, careful to close the door without the latch making a sound, and then figuratively jumped out of his skin as a raspy female voice whispered from behind him.

“Come with me now. I give you the
traitement
to take the ache from your head.”

Valentine turned to look at the Voodoo priestess. “If it’s anything like our English way, a hair of the dog that bit me, then I’m afraid I’ll have to politely decline, madam,” he said, wondering if the woman had stationed herself outside the door all night, waiting for him.

Odette smiled, her teeth blindingly white in her dark face. “No, I did not spend the night pacing here. I heard your eyelids open, and I came to help you. Come, I have made a place ready for you down the end of this hallway, and laid out everything you need.”

Valentine followed her. “You heard my—Hell, woman, I thought I was the only one who heard that. Like cymbals crashing inside my head.”

Odette chuckled, her shoulders shaking. “You will wash, you will dress and you will drink the liquid in the glass I put beside the basin for you. Drink it all, and then walk in the sunshine on the shore for ten minutes. You do not know how to pray to the Virgin, but the Lord’s Prayer, three times, should also work.”

“And this will cure me?” Valentine asked, peeking into the room Odette had indicated, to see his
portmanteaus
there, a change of clothing laid out on the bed. Why, she’d even matched his preferred waistcoat to his jacket.

He’d seen many things over the years, met many different sorts of people, been forced to consort with some unique characters during the course of his exploits. But Odette was outside his experience.

“Fanny will cure you, and you, her. That is the way since before time. But, yes, the potion will help rid you of the poisons you put in your body.” She touched his arm, holding him in place for a moment.

Valentine didn’t know what else he could add to that bit of early-morning profundity. His head still hurt too much for deep thinking. So he merely gave a slight bow of his head and thanked the woman.

“She’s very afraid, you know. She’s seen things. I did not know she could see things, as even I do not see all things, to my shame. But Mr. Ainsley, he told me it is sometimes that way with the Irish. Still, she cannot see all that I can see, for the good
loas
protect her. You’re a good man, Brede, I
do
see that. You are her future. Only give her time to make her peace with her past, even as you make peace with your own. It won’t be long. Have patience. Patience, and a firm hand. You’ve caught her as she moves between the child and the woman. Wait for the woman—for she is winning now.”

Valentine opened his mouth to comment on Odette’s words, but she had already turned her back on him and was walking away down the hall, shuffling in her worn carpet slippers, singing a song in a mix of French and some other language he didn’t understand.

Not, he realized, that he understood much, if anything, about the woman. Odette, the Voodoo priestess. A priestess? He could believe, or he could not believe, and his more skeptical self did not. He’d seen too many tricksters, too many gullible people who had crossed their palms with silver in the hope of hearing what they wanted to hear.

Still, Ainsley Becket kept the woman around, and Valentine doubted that Ainsley did that only in order to hear what he wanted to hear.

So Valentine stepped inside the bedchamber and stripped out of his wrinkled clothing. He washed himself, cleaned his teeth, carefully shaved himself with the razor Odette had left for him—although Wiggins kept to the illusion that his master could not perform such a task on his own—and donned his smallclothes, buckskins, a fresh white shirt.

He tied his own cravat without bothering to look into a mirror as he did so. He donned the clean waistcoat and the dark blue superfine jacket. He used a towel to wipe Fanny’s fingerprints from his boots and then pulled them on—another task Wiggins would like to believe beyond him.

And, lastly, he drank the potion, all of it, and headed down the stairs to find the terrace, and the now sunlit beach.

Courtland was already on the terrace, leaning his forearms on the stone balustrade, eating an apple as he looked down onto the beach.

“Best thing for you after a night like we had,” he said, turning to Valentine, holding up the apple. “Of course, some would say a thin gruel or a dish of tea strapped with molasses. But I favor apples.”

“Odette gave me something to drink,” Valentine told him. “I don’t know if I should admit to it, but I feel remarkably better.”

“Said your prayers to the Virgin?”

“Ah, yes, thank you. I knew there was something I’d forgotten.”

“Don’t forget them. She’ll know.” Court turned back to watching the beach. “She always knows.”

Valentine walked over to the balustrade, to look down at the beach, wondering what had so captured Courtland’s attention. What he saw was Sergeant-Major Hart and another man, all the way down near the water, walking up and down in front of a long line of men.

Men. And boys. Women. Girls. Young, old, fat, slim, tall, short. A smattering of children. All of them standing at least somewhat at attention, and with broomsticks resting on their shoulders.

“I’d better go say those prayers,” Valentine said, blinking. “I think I’m suffering an hallucination. Although I am fairly certain that’s Sergeant-Major Hart. Who’s the other fellow?”

“Oh, that’s Clovis. Clovis Meechum. He was once Spence’s batman, when he fought in America. They’re drilling the troops.”

The corners of Valentine’s mouth twitched in amusement. “Of course they are. I should have realized as much.”

Courtland finished his apple and threw the core in the general direction of the “troops,” although it fell far short of them. “The gulls will take care of that,” he said, licking at his fingers, and then he motioned for Valentine to follow him to the nearest set of stone steps leading down to the beach. “We were sailors, all of us, and many know nothing else,” he explained. “But Spence believes we should prepare for a land battle, as well. He says it’s a different sort of discipline needed there.”

“And you’d send women out to fight? Children?”

“Whoever wasn’t there that day on the island still knows what happened. We’ve all been fighting the same damnable memories for over seventeen long years. If Beales makes no distinction in who he kills, we can’t afford to limit whom all is prepared to fight, now can we?”

“No, I suppose not.” Then he remembered something he had asked Fanny. “Have you ever considered leaving here? Simply packing up and going somewhere else?”

Courtland nodded his head. “That’s why Ainsley commissioned the frigate, just in case we were forced to leave. But, really, where would we go? We ran once, out of necessity. But we won’t run again. If Rian lived long enough, if they found a way to make him tell them where we are,
who
we are? Why run, to be always looking over our shoulders for him, when Beales will eventually come to us?”

“He already knows the name. Becket.”

“Yes, we know that now, don’t we?” Courtland said, picking up a handful of small stones, to begin tossing them across the beach. “We think that must have happened when Jack and Eleanor went to London in hopes of unmasking the leader of the Red Men Gang. You know about that?”

Valentine nodded, watching the long line of hopeful soldiers milling about, forming themselves up into four distinct lines. “The smuggling gang Beales was using to funnel gold to Bonaparte. Fanny told me some of it, and Ainsley filled in most of the blank spaces for me after dinner last night, before we went to the tavern.”

“Good, that makes this easier to explain. One mention of the name wouldn’t have meant much to Beales. But then Spence and Mariah took their turn last year, both in Calais and in London, although our participation during the Peace Celebrations was not known to anyone save Wellington. But if, somehow, the name was heard again, involved in an entirely different—well, we’ll say
adventure—
it would have piqued Beales’s interest.”

“And sent him on the hunt.”

“Except that suddenly Bonaparte was loose, and Beales would have been fully occupied doing whatever in hell he thinks he’s doing on the Continent. He didn’t have time for what he’d see as a minor irritant here in England.”

“But he does now.”

“Yes, he does now. There’s still one thing in our favor. We know who he is, but he still probably doesn’t know that we’re anything
but
Beckets. Spence, Eleanor, Rian, all of us, we were only children seventeen years ago. He wouldn’t have recognized them, and most probably doesn’t realize who we really are, other than enemies who have put a spoke in the wheel of his grand plans. Spencer was careful not to let everyone remain alive to report back to Beales.”

Valentine wasn’t so sure about that. Becket was a common enough name, but whoever had hunted Rian had a particular Becket in mind. Still, as Ainsley had pointed out last night, Rian also had been to London; he may have been seen. “So you’re hoping Beales could still believe you’re…what? Just another gang of smugglers, among so many operating along our coastline from one side to the other? Kent? Sussex? Cornwall? A thousand different places. Even so, that would explain Jack’s mission in London, but not Spence’s.”

“We know. It’s all pretty much of a muddle, and we can’t really know how much Beales knows, how much he might suppose he knows. What hurts us most is that I stupidly rode out as the Black Ghost a few years ago, when first we began guarding our own local smugglers from the Red Men Gang. If Fanny didn’t tell you, Ainsley’s ship was the
Black Ghost,
Chance and Jacko’s, the
Silver Ghost.
Ainsley himself was called the Black Ghost. It’s a mistake that can’t be fixed.”

Valentine knew the how of it wasn’t important, not how Beales had first heard the name Becket. What mattered most to them all now was what they were going to do about the danger Beales presented. “So you’re planning a completely defensive maneuver?”

“No. Ainsley’s had men all over the Continent ever since we first realized Beales is still alive. So far, we haven’t been able to locate so much as a hint of him. We know he was in London using another name, and he’s probably used a dozen different names. We’ll keep trying, but in the end, it will be him who finds us, as we’re the ones staying in one place.”

“Your own armed fortress, with flat, open land in front of you, the Channel behind you. Good defensively, unless attack comes from both land and sea, and you’re caught in the middle. Still, there’ll be no way Beales can physically approach without his presence alerting you. Is there anyone else who can help?”

“We’re isolated here, far from being of interest to anybody. Romney Marsh is its own country, even though it’s a part of England. And we’re our own country inside of it, almost as if we were back on our island. With Bonaparte and the fear of invasion finally gone, there still will be the Waterguard about, more free to look for smugglers. But there will be fewer troops stationed here, which means less protection. A final confrontation here is inevitable. Perhaps even destined.”

“So Fanny thinks,” Valentine said quietly. “I want to take her, you know, take her away from here, keep her safe. She was only a child when Ainsley and Beales had their falling out. This isn’t her fight.”

“What happened on the island was considerably more than the result of thieves falling out, Valentine. It was a massacre.” Courtland turned to look at him. His short beard covered his lower jaw, but Valentine felt sure that jaw was set as tightly as the man’s lips. The man was remembering something, obviously something far from pleasant. Then Courtland nodded his head. “But you’re right, of course, and Fanny is your wife now. So you’ll take her?”

“I’ve been absent from my estates ever since word of Bonaparte’s escape reached England. There are several matters I probably need to personally attend to, yes, and they will take me away from here for at least one month, possibly two. I can’t leave Fanny here during that time, not if I hope to sleep nights. You do understand that, don’t you?”