Fascination -and- Charmed (73 page)

“You will make certain of no such thing.”

“I most certainly shall.”

“This is no longer in your hands. It never was.”

Pippa’s face shot up. “No, it was never in my hands. Neither was it in yours.”

In the darkness, his smile was harshly determined. “It may not have been in my hands once. It certainly is now.”

She had done this. She had created a ghastly disaster.

A crashing sounded from somewhere above them.

Pippa stood still, holding Calum’s coat around her. “What is that?”

He raised his chin and listened.

“They’re coming!” a young voice shouted. “They’re coming. They’re coming. They’re ’ere!”

Calum made a growling noise and muttered, “Little ruffian.”

“Max?” Pippa frowned. “That’s the boy, isn’t it?”

Calum had no opportunity to respond before the thin little boy with red hair leaped down the steps leading to the pool area. “I’m the advance party,” he shrieked, flinging his arms in circles. “Come to warn you of an attack.”

“Max,” Calum said—rather reasonably, Pippa thought. “Kindly return to the castle and your bed at once.”

Pippa turned her back on the boy and hoped he would not see the condition of her clothing and report, possibly in screeching tones, that she appeared to be wandering the grounds almost naked.

“I’m returnin’,” Max yelled. “Got to go to ground. Saw you and the lady leave and thought you might want to arm yourselves. It’s terrible.
Terrible,
I tells you.”

“Max—”

“They’re after me ears,” the boy shouted. “And me nose and me tongue.”

Pippa flinched and shivered at the same time. “Ask him what he’s talking about, Calum.”

“A lord ’as arrived,” Max announced firmly. “A lord with an angry face and a loud voice and flashing eyes that cut right through you. Me bones bleed, I tells you.”

“Oh, no,” Pippa whispered. “Oh,
bother.
”

“Bother seems a trifle mild for the occasion,” Calum remarked. “I think we’d best get you to your rooms.”

“Good idea, sir,” Max said, jumping up and down. “Then you’d best make haste to the battle. That other lord—I mean Papa—Papa is sitting on the angry lord’s chest.”

Pippa looked anxiously at Calum. He pulled her against him and started hurrying uphill.

“That’s it,” Max yelled. “Go and rescue the angry lord from me papa. Or don’t rescue him. Don’t make much difference now.”

Calum halted so abruptly, Pippa clung to him to stop herself from falling.

“Why wouldn’t it make a difference?” Calum asked.

“Oh, well”— Max capered around them —“Lady Justine was screaming and the visc—Papa—got furious and killed the angry lord. ’E asked me t’sit on the corpse while ’e went out and killed all the others what come. The army.”

“Calum,” Pippa said, horrified, “Etienne has somehow discovered my…He has discovered what’s happened and he’s come with an army.”

“An army. An army,” Max chanted, leaping and whirling. “An army come and we killed ’em all.”

“Oh,
my God,”
Calum said. He lifted Pippa into his arms and ran uphill with her all the way back to the castle.

Psst!” Calum bent over, one index finger to his lips, and crept toward a flunky stationed outside the salon where he would have expected to find Lady Justine and Struan enjoying a companionable after-dinner conversation.

The flunky, his face almost as pale as his powdered wig, ducked his head and peered suspiciously at Calum.

Calum crooked his finger and uttered another loud “Psst!”

Copying Calum’s crouch, the man came toward him on the balls of his shiny-slippered feet. His little calf muscles popped out like partridge eggs inside his white silk stockings. “Sir?” he whispered, his exaggerated steps creating a picture reminiscent of an albino cockerel scratching in a farmyard.

“Good man for staying at your post,” Calum said into the man’s ear when he drew close enough. “Not a sound, now. I’ve got to get in there without being seen.”

The man reared up somewhat and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He nodded, but Calum saw no comprehension in his bright brown eyes.

“Carnage, I understand,” Calum said.

The man brought his face very close to Calum’s and said, “You’ll be all right, sir. Happens to all gentlemen now and again.”

“Not to me,” Calum informed him. “And I’m not going to stand by and allow it to happen here without putting up a fight.”

“You do that, sir,” the man said, walking a circle around Calum. “It’ll make you feel a lot better just knowing you’ve—er—dealt with it, so to speak.”

The instant the man finished speaking, he backed away for several yards, then turned and broke into an ungainly, flapping run.

“Bloody amazing,” Calum said aloud. “This whole
place
is bloody amazing.” And he loved it. He loved every turret and tower, every worn stone staircase and passageway and every nook and cranny filled with the unseen, unremembered memories of centuries of Franchots before him. For an instant he closed his eyes. What would Pippa say if she knew his “friend” was none other than himself?

He stood tall, flattened his back to the wall and edged closer to the nearest of the salon’s closed doors.

“Hell and damnation!” reached him in muffled tones from inside the room. Didn’t sound like Franchot, though. “I’m through with it, I tell you,” the voice announced. “I have taken all I will take, and now the time has come to seize matters with my own hands.”

A murmur followed, a placating female murmur, unless Calum was much mistaken. Bloody hell, Justine was trapped in there with some marauding maniac.

He should have armed himself, but now it was too late. Casting about, he fixed his eye on a pair of ancient steel battle-axes displayed on the wall.

Tiptoeing close enough to reach the axes was a simple matter and they were easily enough lifted from their brackets.

Calum returned to his place beside the door and held both axes in his right hand. Stretching out his left arm, he made contact with a door handle, turned it stealthily and flung the door open with all the power in the fingers of his very strong left hand. And he praised God for giving him the gift that had brought such disapproval in his schoolroom days—equal dexterity with either hand.

Quickly, hoping it would not be seen by anyone inside the room, he dropped his arm to his side and held his breath. The element of surprise could be his most valuable ally here.

Carefully securing a firm grip on an axe in each hand, Calum waited.

What he waited for was unclear to him.

“Come in! Or stay out!” a loud male voice demanded. “Or shut the bloody door!”

Justine would be beside herself with fear.

Bracing himself, Calum lifted the axes aloft and charged, praying as he went that his opponents would not be armed with pistols or, in fact, armed at all. “Back!” he roared, rushing to the center of the dramatically proportioned chamber. Holding his arms above his head, he brandished his evil-looking weapons and glared. “Leave us, Lady Justine. The rest of you—against the wall or I’ll have your heads!”

Moments passed—and more moments. Nobody moved.

“What is it, Calum?” Lady Justine asked at last. “Are you unwell, dear sir? Something you ate, perhaps?”

Calum looked around the room. The thudding of rapid footfalls made him spin toward the door just in time to see Max, his freckled face crimson, his green eyes avid, leap into sight and come to a panting stop a few feet from him.

“In God’s name,” Struan said in a voice that held complete disbelief, “what
are
you about, Calum?”

“You were a marvel, sir,” Max said. “An absolute marvel. Wasn’t ’e…Papa?”

Struan wrinkled his nose. “Hmm. A marvel.”

Calum looked from Lady Justine to Struan to Max and back to the one newcomer in the salon. The young man was disheveled, his clothes splattered with mud as if from a long, hard ride.

“I thought…” Calum spun in one direction, then in the other. There was no one else in the room. “I understood some dangerous altercation was in progress here.”

“Well,” Struan said, “it isn’t. Put down those ridiculous axes.”

Calum realized his arms had begun to ache and lowered them awkwardly. “There is no corpse?”

Lady Justine gasped audibly.

“No,” Struan said, clearly annoyed. “Kindly avoid frightening Lady Justine with your wild talk. Are you in your cups, man?”

“No, I am not in my cups.” Calum felt dangerous.

Calum felt a fool.

“Sabers,” Max said darkly. “I think they’re ’iding somewhere about. I ’eard the lady shout about sabers. An army is ’ere somewhere, I tell you. They’ve said they’ll kill everyone if they’re given away.”

Calum stared at the boy.

“Max,” Lady Justine said, “do come and sit with me. You are oversetting yourself. What you heard me say was
Saber.
Saber is this gentleman’s name.” She indicated the dejected-looking fellow sprawled on a chaise with no apparent care for the boots that were muddying blue brocade upholstery.

“You shouted it,” Max said stubbornly, walking slowly toward Lady Justine.

“I said it excitedly,” she told him. “Saber is one of my favorite people—my only cousin, in fact, and I was delighted to see him.”

“ ’E looks the ruffian to me,” Max insisted. The flush had left his face and his carrot-colored freckles stood out sharply.

“Brat,” the man on the chaise said disgustedly. To Calum he said, “We meet again, Mr. Innes. You remember me?”

“Lord Avenall?” Damn the axes that made him look like an ass. “We seem doomed to meet in less than tranquil circumstances.”

“Life is less than tranquil,” Avenall said. “Please call me Saber. Justine has told me she thinks highly of you. Anyone trusted by Justine is trusted by me.”

Calum could not be certain, but it seemed probable that young Avenall was a little the worse for drink. “Thank you, Saber. You seem in ill humor. Has some ill befallen you?”

Saber gave a barking laugh. “Divest yourself of the war tools, Innes. And get one of the damn flunkies around here to bring more cognac. I find myself in need of a great deal more cognac tonight. You must all join me.”

“A drunkard,” Max said suddenly and too clearly. “Beware the drunkard, Fast Freddy always told us. And ’e ought to know. ’E
was
a drunkard.”

“You should be in bed,” Calum and Struan said in unison. Calum wasn’t certain who Fast Freddy might be, but he had a good idea that discovering that person’s identity in this company might not be at all the thing.

Saber pushed himself to his feet, walked unsteadily to the soaring plaster fireplace emblazoned with the Franchot coat of arms and began to tug on a satin pull.

“I believe there’s port in the decanter,” Lady Justine said.

Saber tugged and tugged and tugged. “Don’t want port. Mewling female swill. Cognac!” he said with full lung support. “Come along, Innes—and you, Hunsingore. You’ll join a man in finding the courage to do what he must do.”

“The boy,” Lady Justine said in a small voice. “Have a care what you say in front of the child, Saber.”

Max, as if suddenly realizing he might miss a show, shot to sit beside Lady Justine on a stiff little couch. He crossed his bony knees inside the green velvet breeches that were part of the clothing Struan had rapidly supplied before leaving London.

Lady Justine leaned over to look into the child’s face and smiled. She brushed back the straight hair that drooped over his eyes and kissed his brow.

Calum waited for an outcry of disgust. None came. Instead, Max nestled into Lady Justine’s side and seemed satisfied to sit thus indefinitely.

“Can
you
get hold of a flunky, Innes?” Saber asked, sounding desolate. “I shall die if I don’t get some brandy.”

“Calum,” Innes told him. “Call me Calum. Do you think you’ve had enough brandy, Saber?”

“Never,”
Saber announced, just as Figerall, the castle steward, made a surprising appearance. Evidently he’d been informed of conditions requiring the attention of a servant of great authority. “Finally,” Saber said, bunching up his lips. “I should damn well think so. Cognac, man. And be quick about it.”

Figerall, short, bald and ruddy, looked at Lady Justine. There could be no mistaking the respect in his manner toward her, or the fact that he seemed to expect her to tell him the right thing to do.

“Kindly bring cognac,” she said. “And I think some coffee would be nice, Figerall. I know the hour grows a little late, but could you perhaps persuade Mrs. Biston to send up some sandwiches? Substantial sandwiches?”

The steward’s smile was for Lady Justine alone. He bowed calmly, said, “As you wish, my lady,” and withdrew.

“Sometimes you have to be firm with these people,” Saber said, his words slurring. “Show them their place. Good enough. A good start. From now on, I’m taking control of the things that matter in my life. No more acting the flunky to that cousin of mine.”

The effect of his announcement was electric. Struan looked hard at Calum, who raised a brow before checking Lady Justine’s reaction. Pink had spread over her rounded cheekbones and there was a brilliance in her dark eyes.

His sister was a lovely woman, Calum thought, and found that simply thinking about her as his sister brought a rush of pride.

“Franchot being hard on you?” Struan asked in a tone that encouraged trust.

“I’m three and twenty,” Saber said, spreading his booted feet. “No longer a child, in God’s name. I want control of what’s mine, I tell you. I want Shillingdown and all that goes with it, and I want it
now.
”

Lady Justine cleared her throat. “You should sleep, Saber, dear. You’ll think more clearly in the morning and then you can start to decide how best to present your case to Etienne—and to Grandmama.”

Calum’s interest was sharply piqued. “What does the duke have to do with control of your estate?” he asked before realizing his interest would appear inappropriate.

“He’s my guardian, damn his eyes,” Saber said, with no sign of reticence on the subject. “My father and the previous duke were brothers. My pater, God rest his soul, died at sea. Intelligence for the Crown. Highly secret stuff. Attacked by pirates, and all aboard murdered.”