Banquet of Lies (2 page)

“My daughter isn’t easy to fool.” Her father’s words were curt.

The shadow man was silent for a moment, as if thinking how to escalate the threat. Time was not his friend; at any moment someone else could wander out into the garden. Even Thornton might come looking.

He finally shrugged. “I have men working as staff at the ball. If she doesn’t heed the note, they will find a way to get her out.”

“On what signal? You’re here alone, as far as I can make out.” Her father was dismissive.

Gigi shrank even smaller. Her father was warning her there could be more of them in the garden.

“The signal will be my failure to return to the party by a certain time.” The man spoke coldly, unwillingly.

For the first time, Gigi realized what she had been too shocked to before—he spoke in English, the perfect English of an Englishman. This was a traitor—not an enemy spy.

Her father seemed to deflate. “I don’t have it, you fool. I’d have given it to you to safeguard my daughter—you’re quite right. But I don’t have it to give. Your intelligence is wrong. I was the red herring this time; it’s already gone. Long gone.”

He spoke with frustration and anger, but Gigi knew he was lying. She had never seen her father at work in the field before, had never seen this side to him.

“You must be lying.” The shadow man spoke through gritted teeth, and her father gave an involuntary cry, as if he were hurt.

Giselle peered around the marble block, her legs shaking with the desperate need to run to his rescue.

“No!” Her father briefly looked her way again as if he spoke to her, not the shadow man; as if he knew what she intended. “Please,” he whispered. “I would sacrifice anything for my daughter. Her safety is worth more to me than my life. I do not have it.” He ground the last words out between gritted teeth. “Search me. You’ll see the truth.”

There was the sound of rough handling, of clothes being torn and thrown off.

“Take off your boots.”

She looked again and saw her father bending, tugging off his boots. The moon found a small break in the clouds and shone, silver-bright, down on the garden for a few moments; she could make out blood at his throat, and his jacket, waistcoat and white linen shirt were ripped.

The shadow man’s face was still in darkness, but she could see his arm, his hand, with the knife gripped tight, gleaming in the moonlight.

She started to rise, and her father caught her eye as he pulled off his second boot.

“Please don’t,” he whispered.

“Begging now, Barrington?” The shadow man forced her father to his knees, the knife still near his throat, and Gigi saw that he held a pistol to her father’s back as well. No wonder he hadn’t tried to escape.

She tucked herself back into her hiding place, shaking.

The boots must have been checked, for she heard them kicked over in disgust.

“You
must
have it. I saw you meet with Thornton this morning—”

“A red herring, as I told you. The real document went this afternoon. The courier’s had a head start while you and your spies have watched me.”

“You’ll regret that, Barrington.” The shadow man’s voice was frighteningly devoid of emotion. “I won’t be made a fool of—and your daughter might be more forthcoming than you. I’ll make it a point to find out.” He was breathing heavily, making a lie of his calm tone. “You can think about that while you burn in hell.”

There was a shot. A terrible, final shot, and Gigi bit down on her knuckles to prevent herself from crying out.

Her father had died rather than reveal her; she would not dishonor his last wish.

She heard a low curse, and then the sound of a man walking down the path directly toward her. She curled even smaller, flush up against the marble pedestal.

He walked straight past her.

He would see her if he looked back, so she slid around the block until she was on the far side with her father.

She crawled to him on her hands and knees, her fingers reaching out to touch his face.

She had hoped. . . . But there would be no last words, no last spark of life. His eyes stared sightlessly up at clouds edged silver by the moon.

He was truly gone.

She looked back down the garden to the palace and saw a dark figure climbing the stairs to the ballroom.

He would be looking for her now, if his final words hadn’t just been a cruel taunt. And he’d be looking for the document he had killed her father for.

The document her father had given to her minutes after he left the ambassador early this morning, for safekeeping. As he always did.

T
he Duke of Wittaker’s grand mansion, set beside St. James’s Park in London, was lit warmly despite the early morning hour.

Gigi ignored the coachman’s curious look when she instructed him to take her to the back entrance, dressed in her finery as she was. Exhaustion made her light-headed, and she stumbled as she took the steps down to the gravel drive. “Please wait.”

Her journey, from the coach ride from Stockholm to Gothenburg, to the ship to Dover, and the coach to London, had passed in a blur of pain, memories and rage. She couldn’t remember a single thing that had happened in the last five days, and she needed to stop that.

She needed to
think
.

She left her trunks loaded on the top of the coach, since she doubted she could stay here. But perhaps Georges would be able to send her somewhere safe for a night or two, so she could sleep, and plan her way forward.

She climbed the steps to the kitchens with a smile, even though she was so tired it was an effort to put one foot in front of the other without falling. Georges always said he would never work in a home that had a subterranean kitchen. He’d never go back to a hellhole like the patisserie in Paris where he started out, with its dark, smoky cellar-kitchens, now he was a celebrated chef.

She stepped into a kitchen in the throes of preparing breakfast. She was glad she hadn’t arrived just before dinner. Then, no matter how much Georges loved her, he wouldn’t have given her more than a concerned glance as he got on with his job.

Eyes turned in her direction as she opened the door and stepped inside. There was a cry from the far end of the room; then Georges was making his way toward her, fierce as a hussar, trampling down those in his way.

“
Ma petite! Mon petit chou!
” He grabbed her in a tight hug, and for the first time in the five days since she’d seen her father struck down, she felt safe.

“Please speak only French,” she had the wit to whisper in his ear, speaking in French herself. She was aware of every eye on them, and she wanted no one to hear her name, or anything else about her.

He gave her a strange look, pursing his lips under his thick mustache, but he nodded briefly. Then he looked around the kitchen, raising his arms and clapping his hands so suddenly that Gigi jumped, as did everyone else in the room.

“Thierry! You take over, and do not let me down. Every
plate to be
parfait, comprends
?” He scowled at a thin, diminutive man in an apron, pointing a threatening finger at him.

Then he took her arm and swept her into a room off the kitchen. Gigi didn’t think she imagined the sigh of relief from every person behind her just before Georges closed the door, leaving his staff to their own devices for a while.

“What is it, Giselle?” Georges grasped her shoulders with both hands. “What has happened?”

“My father was murdered.” Her voice wavered, but she had to leave again in a few short minutes to find a place to stay, so she mercilessly crushed the pain that threatened to rise up and consume her. She glanced around to compose herself. The small sitting room led into a study, and beyond, to a closed door. Georges’s bedroom, she guessed.

Her body cried out for a safe bed to sleep in.

The bone-shaking journey across Sweden to Gothenburg had taken a full twenty-four hours, and she knew without doubt that if her father hadn’t already arranged it, hadn’t already planned that they were to leave the party at Tessin Palace and get straight into the coach, already packed with their things, the shadow man would have run her to ground before she’d left Stockholm.

“Murder?” Georges let his hands fall. “You are certain?”

“I witnessed it.” She turned away and drew in a deep breath as she got herself and the threatening tears under control. “Georges, I’m afraid the people who killed my father will work out I’m in London if I send word to Pierre. He’s still in Stockholm, cooking for the Countess de Salisburg. Please, find some very discreet way of letting him know I’m safe.”

“Of course.” Georges stroked her arm, soothing her like she was a small child. And no doubt to him she was. He and Pierre always thought of her as she’d been when she was ten, grieving for her mother, hungry for something to do and for the sound of French around her.

“Thank you.” She drew in a deep breath. “I must go. Please don’t let anyone know I’m back. No one. It is dangerous for you, and for me.”

Georges frowned, looking so fierce Gigi wished the shadow man was here now so that Georges could tear him apart. Or chop him with his cleaver.

“You’re going home to Goldfern House?” he asked.

She shook her head. “That is the first place the man who’s after me will look. I have to find somewhere else. Perhaps an inn.”

He smoothed his mustache. “Would you want to be hidden but still be able to move about, or do you want to hunker down like a fox in a hole?”

“Why?”

“There is a job I hear about. I remember it because it is at a house three or four down from Goldfern. Too small a job for me, or most of the chefs in London. No prestige, you understand? Just cooking for one man, Lord Aldridge. He will pay well, but that is not the only reason to take a job. There will hardly be any parties—he is a young man, and has no other family. He will dine out, be invited out. It would be a waste of talent for me, and I am happy where I am, with my fine, high kitchen.” He gave a grin, transforming from a dark demon to a cheeky boy, despite the deep grooves in his face.

“But for someone like you, who can cook like an angel, but wants time to herself and a place to hide—who would look for the daughter of Sir Barrington in the kitchens of a small town house, almost next door to her family home, eh?”

To be right near Goldfern. To be able to keep watch on it, and see if the shadow man came to look for her there, invisible under her guise as cook? The rage that was both icy with hate and hot with vengeance rose up in her, and her hands became tight fists against her thighs. “That would be a very good place to hide.”

“
Bon
.” Georges walked through into his study and pulled out a sheet of paper with the duke’s crest on the letterhead. He sat down at his desk. “I will write a reference for you so you will get the position. They will not turn you away after they read this, I promise you.”

Georges’s brow was raised in an arrogant arch as he scribbled an almost unintelligible list of her virtues in the kitchen, and Gigi found herself wanting to smile.

“
Voilà!
” He left it to dry and turned to her again. “Do you want to stay here until this job is settled?”

She looked around her. “I don’t want anyone to know about me, or for there to be any talk.”

“Bah.” He flicked the air as if she spoke nonsense. “You are my niece, we will say, no? The beloved daughter of my brother. It is not a word of a lie. In my heart, you are like my family, Gigi. You stay for a short while, no problem.”

She felt the walls of her self-control crumbling, and gave a nod. “My things are in the coach outside. I have to pay the driver—”

“You sit. Georges will make it right.” He stormed out, as if the coachman were somehow in league with the devil and he was going to bargain for her very soul. Gigi stumbled to a sofa and sank down on it. She closed her eyes, and let exhaustion drag her under.

T
wilight had fallen as Gigi leaned against the tree four houses down from Goldfern House and wondered what she was doing.

Her father had always said sleep was as vital as good intelligence.

She hadn’t had enough, despite the four hours on Georges’s sofa this morning. But at least she’d had a bath and a change of clothes, food that was fit to grace a royal table, and the first glimmer that things would get better.

A chill breeze rustled the leaves above her, and she could smell the wood smoke and the river in the cold, heavy air. The rough bark caught at her hair, pulling at the loose arrangement under her wide-brimmed hat.

She had been too exhausted to avoid a puddle earlier, and her feet were wet and cold.

She needed to get herself together. She was about to go to her first-ever job interview. Georges had sent a note around to Lord Aldridge’s butler this morning, and she was expected. She had to get this job, and go to ground.

Her escape, her success in reaching London and her father’s death would be for nothing if she stumbled now.

She shook her head to clear it and realized she had a headache.

Goldfern House looked empty. As it should.