Columbine (29 page)

But Dianna was neither penitent nor ashamed of what she had done. Instead, she was furious with Pbre Vernet’s betrayal and frightened of what had become of Kit when Robillard and the others had dragged him away.

She stopped near the window when she heard the heavy footsteps echoing on the wooden stairs, and she didn’t turn when she heard the key scraping in the lock. Whoever it was, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a greeting beyond the straight, proud line of her back. Absently she scratched the frost from the window pane and noticed the snow that had begun to fall. October still, and yet winter had already come to New France.

“Look at me, mademoiselle.” ordered Robillard crossly.

“If we are to be friends, ma chore, I expect to see your pretty face.”

“Friends!” Now Dianna wheeled around, hands clutched tight into fists at her sides.

“How could I ever be friend to a vile creature like you?”

The Frenchman’s face grew mottled above the grimy lace collar, his eyes narrowing into the pouchy folds beneath them. His expression was one that Dianna remembered well from her uncle: hungry expectation, as if she were a sweetmeat to be gobbled up in one sharp bite, changing to ugly belligerence with her refusal. Refusals were dangerous—she remembered that from Sir Henry, too—but nothing could make her give in. She belonged to Kit, and to Kit alone.

?

“There are other words to call you iffr/end is too fine,” snapped Robillard angrily.

“Bonne ami, mistress, whore–what you call yourself matters little.

You will do whatever I ask, whenever I wish it. Why else would I have kept you here, warm and safe, instead of making you share the fate of that batard Sparhawk?”

“What have you done to him?” she demanded.

“I

swear, if you have hurt him—” “Ha, and what would you do to me, eh? This time you don’t have a gun to pretend you’re a man.” His laugh was a mean-spirited little bark.

“Sparhawk is not so comfortable as you, non, but he still lives.”

“Wherever he is, I’d rather be with him than you!”

“That is unkind, ma petite fine.” Robillard shook his head, the cool morning light glinting on the single earring he wore.

“Let me tell you my plans for him, and then you will perhaps change your mind towards me, eh? The Indians with me are Mohawks, and I’ve promised them Sparhawk for their village divertissement. Already they wager over how much pain he will take before he cries out. They enjoy their torture, oui.t Perhaps they’ll burn him alive or cut out his tongue and make him eat it or slash at his belly until—” “Stop it!” Dianna cried shrilly, her hands tight over her ears.

“I won’t listen anymore!”

“Have you heard, ma chbre,” he continued, smilling, “that the Mohawks eat the flesh of other men?”

“Nay, stop!” She was trembling with what he described, knowing none of it was exaggeration, and she could not bear to think of Kit suffering that way.

“Why do you hate him so? What has he. ever done to you?

The smile abruptly disappeared.

“I hate him for what he is, mademoiselle, a Sparhawk and an Anglais. Sparhawks ruined me with their crops and their cattle and their little farmers everywhere I look. Sparhawks try to eat away at New France in the name of your fat Queen Anne, and Sparhawks drove the beavers away, and what did they leave me? An indigent.t” “That can’t be so,” said Dianna slowly.

“Kit says there haven’t been any beavers near Wickhamton for thirty years.”

“Eh, what else would he tell you?” he asked furiously.

“This Christophe is even worse than his father.

He set the Pocumtucks against me and threatens me in my own house with his governors and soldiers.

He won’t even let me defend my honor and my name and fight me like a man, but insults me and then runs back to his grand manor house.

“But his fine living days are past, ma chore.” Robillard’s smile returned, and he hooked his thumbs into the fringed sash slung low under his belly. Almost swaggering, he gradually closed the distance between Dianna and himself.

“At one word from me, his blessed Wickhamton will be burned and looted like Deerfield. I will claim the Sparhawk house for my own and the Sparhawk land for New France.”

Slowly he reached out to Dianna. He wore a gold ring on his middle finger, the knuckle swollen above it, and his nails were rimmed with dirt.

“I know I will have these things of Sparhawk’s, because already I have his woman.”

h “Y u don’t have me,” rDianna said with such ve-emence that his outstreted hand froze awkwardly in midair, “and you never will, any more than you’ll have Plumstead or Wickhamton or the rest.”

Furiously Robillard jerked back his hand, using it to tug at the beard along his jaw.

“Soon enough you will see how wrong you are, ma fine. When you hear the cries of the Mohawk braves as they drag your precious Christophe away, you will crawl begging to me.”

Dianna drew herself up as tall as she could, folding her arms across her chest to hide the shaking of her hands.

“I will never beg from you, monsieur.”

He scowled at her with disbelief.

“Not even to save Sparhawk’s life?”

“Nay, I would not.” It took every shred of self control to keep her voice from breaking beneath his scrutiny.

“I would not because Kit would not want me to and because it would make no difference to you at all.”

Robillard slammed the door without bothering to disagree, and Dianna sank to her knees onto the bare floor. If there was a way out of this for her and for Kit and for Mercy, she must find it and soon.

Carefully Kit felt his way around the four stone walls of the cellar, trying in the darkness to make his fingers see what his eyes could not. Cold, damp stones chinked with earth and moss; a floor of packed dirt; stacked pyramids of hogsheads: nothing unusual and no way out.

Discouraged, he slumped to the floor with his head tipped back against one wall, staring up at the faint square of light that marked the trap door, The thick hewn beams supporting the floorboards creaked with footsteps overhead, and Kit could distinguish the rise and fall of conversations, though not the words, of the people in the rooms above him.

Dianna’s voice was not among them. He hoped that meant she was still upstairs, and he prayed that Robillard was leaving her alone. Kit had hated the way that the Frenchman had watched Dianna last night, ogling her so blatantly while she had scrambled for her clothes, and the image twisted like a knife in his conscience. She’d looked so small, her silver eyes huge in her pale face.

Kit had wanted to kill Robillard then, and would have if the three Indians hadn’t held him back. He rubbed the new bruises on his arms, the only marks on him to show how hard he’d fought before the three had thrown him and sclothes down, into this cellar. They’d been careful enough not to injure him.

Though Kit had no delusions about their gentleness, he had no intention of ending his days in some Mohawk squaw’s stew pot, either. Damn RobiUard! It seemed that the man had been there all of Kit’s life, an irritating annoyance, a coward and a bully, but nothing worse than that. He should have stopped the man the way Attawan had advised months ago when the dying trapper had named his attacker. But Kit had believed that talking would be enough.

He sighed restlessly, staring at the trap door.

Sometimes it seemed his whole life had been nothing but wrong choices made, an endless list of “should have done.” ‘

With a groan, he buried his face on arms crossed over his bent knees and thought about Dianna. Last night he should have–God, there was another one!—be should have insisted they leave the mission.

And yet he wouldn’t wish away the magic of their lovemaking. Nay, that Was the one thing he’d done right! She was right. He could breathe her scent still on him, a comfort and torment at the same time.

What he felt for her went beyond love, or love as he’d always defined it before her. She was part of him, in his blood and in his heart so completely that he felt the separation as a physical pain.

Somehow he had to get back to her. Somehow he would steal her and Mercy away from Robillard and his Indians, and together they would go home to Plumstead, and they would wed, and they’d never be apart again.

Somehow.

Pre Vernet sat across the wide table from Frangis Robillard, his unhappiness growing by the moment.

As more and more of the mission’s carefully rationed burgundy had disappeared down Robillard’s throat, the heavy-set man came to seem less and less the gentleman he’d presented himself to be, and the more, too, that the little priest regretted his hospitality.

“And I tell you, mon pbre, that Lieutenant Hertel de Rouville himself has an interest in this affair.”

Robillard was bragging yet again.

“You wouldn’t know the lieutenant’s power or influence, stuck back here where you are, but believe me, in Montreal, he is a man others listen to. When he learns how I’ve destroyed Christopher Sparhawk and that all the Sparhawk land can now be claimed for New France, he will be pleased. Non, non, he will rejoice!”

Pre Vernet studied his hands clasped on the table.

“I am, as you say, only a backwoods priest,” he said hesitantly, “but still, this man Sparhawk did not seem to me to be quite the villain you portray.”

“Then he has fooled you as he fools so many!”

cried Robillard, slamming the bottle down on the table for emphasis.

“He is Anglais, and that alone makes him an enemy of King Louis. But he is also greedy and cruel, with no morals. You saw how he pleasured himself with his woman even beneath your holy roof!”

Much as you would yourself, my friend, thought Pre Vemet. For him the memory of the woman reunited with her child, the man bending tenderly over them, was a much stronger, much sweeter image than the one Robillard kept repeating. And although the priest had no first-hand experience with venal sins, he was astute enough to recognize them in others, and was certain Robillard desired the woman himself.

“His lands will all be mine,” said Robillard with expansive satisfaction as he tipped the last of the wine from the bottle directly into his mouth.

“All of it mine, mon pore!”

“Then you will benefit from the Englishman’s misfortune, monsieur?”

“Oui, oui, and New France, too, of course!” Ro-bi/lard kicked the chair back from the table and rose unsteadily to his feet.

“But it’s time I took to my bed, mon pore, I’ve—” But once Robillard let go his grip on the chair, he tumbled forward to the floor and stayed there, snoring open-mouthed on his back. Slowly Pre Vemet came to stand over the man. The priest reminded himself that vengeance belonged to God, not lowly men. But this, perhaps, seemed more a case of fighting a wrong.

Swiftly he called to Indian woman, giving her orders in her own tongae, and then hurried up the twisting stairs. He tapped at the locked door even as he fitted the key into the lock.

“Mademoiselle?” he whispered. The room was dark, no light showing beneath the door.

“Mademoiselle, are you awake?”

He opened the door and ducked barely in time to avoid the crash of the earthenware chamber pot

“Stay back, monsieur,” warned Dianna tersely, grabbing the slat-back chair she planned to use as her next weapon.

“You betrayed us, and I’ll have no guilt from serving you the same?

Humbly Pre Vernet bowed his head and nodded, acknowledging her reproof.

“Oui, mademoiselle. I could beg your forgiveness, but there isn’t time, not if you and your family wish to escape.”

Dianna studied him warily.

“Why should I trust you again?”

“Because you have no other choice?” asked the priest uncertainly.

“Come, we must free your—your husband while that man Robillard sleeps.”

Dianna didn’t hesitate, but grabbed the blanket she used as a cloak and ran after the priest. In the hall she paused long enough to see Robillard stretched out on the floor, his mountainous belly gently rising and falling. How long would he remain like this, she wondered? With a shudder she rushed into the kitchen.

Pre Vernet had already unlocked and lifted the heavy trap door, holding it open by its iron ring.

Uncertainly he leaned over the edge, peering into the dark cellar.

“Monsieur?” he called.

“Monsieur Sparhawk?”

Suddenly Kit flew out from under the lip of the floor, attacking the priest like a great lion and rolling over and over with him in his grasp until they bumped into the trestle table. Kit grabbed Pbre Ver-net by the throat, tightening his fingers while the priest began to gasp and clutch ineffectually at Kit’s arms.

“Nay, Kit, stop it!” cried Dianna, grabbing Kit’s shoulders to pull him away.

“He’s going to help

US!”

“Dianna!” Abruptly he freed the priest and caught Dianna in his arms instead.

“Praise God you’re safe!

They didn’t hurt You?”

She shook her head. Briefly Dianna savored the comfort of Kit’s embrace before she pushed back against his chest.

“We must hurry, love, while Rob-il lard sleeps!”

“Ivre, monsieur,” croaked Pre Vernet, massaging his throat as he pulled himself to his knees, and

Dianna rapidly translated for Kit.

“He’s had too much wine.”

“Then our lives may still be worth more than three hops of a louse!” Effortlessly Kit lifted the little priest to his feet and led him to a chair.

“Forgive me, sir, I didn’t realize—” But Pre Vemet waved his apology away.

“It is no more than I deserved, mon fils, though I wonder that this man Robillard would dare to fight with you two. Your guns and other belongings are there on the chest.” He shook his head sadly.

“Such spirit, ah!

No wonder you Anglais have prospered in this wilderness I ” Kit found his knife, his, fingers tightening on the hilt in anticipation as he turned toward the room in which Robillard slept, bPt the priest called out and staggered to his feet.

“Ia God’s name, I beg you, no killing beneath His roof! That man has drank enough to stop a bear. He can’t harm you now.”

Reluctantly Kit tucked the knife back into the sheath on his-belt, and Pre Vemet sighed heavily.