Jennifer Horseman (47 page)

The pirate Black Garrett was not just Lord Garrett Ramon Van Ness but also a British military spy. Which was also why the militia did nothing to stop him that day, which was why no one, least of all him, could stop him. A hero in two nations, "Dear God, no . . ."

The denial came as an impotent whisper against the rush of the creek behind the tavern, the hum of crickets and the noise of frogs. Frightened, not sure exactly why, he looked up at the night sky. A thousand stars shone in the ink black night, and he stared until the tiny pinpoints of lights blurred, fading into a dark backdrop for his anxious train of thoughts.

For he realized his only problem was that he had the wrong country.

Minding Garrett's lesson to always hold back the bit on the run home, Elsbeth gripped the reins until Gypsy fell into a fast trot, then a walk. Manny would have a fit when he saw the foam over her fine mare. Aye, but it had been a week since Gypsy had last been exercised and she needed to stretch her legs. Like Garrett, she had not the heart to deny the creatures. Besides, the day had dawned so beautifully that she wanted to reach the mountain summit before having to turn back for tea. So she had given the prize mare rein, and what a wild ride it was.

"Of course," she told her horse as she led her through the courtyard, "Manny will not care at all what excuses I make. 'Missy, 'ow'd ye like to be run until ye soak ye clothes w'th sweat?' To which I will point out, 'human beings do not sweat, Manny. Human beings perspire.' To which he will point out, 'amounts ta the same thing, a sweat and a chill, a cold if ye didn't have ye brother's own gift with the creatures,' and on and on he'll go. Oh Gypsy," she said with a wipe at the thick foam covering the horse's neck, "I wish you could tell him how badly you wanted to run with me. Why, God," she neatly switched audiences, "why did you not give the creatures tongues as well? There's no sense to it—"

The young lady stopped as she caught sight of Juliet staring out the window. Sitting at the window every day for the past two weeks . . . how sad she looked! What had Garrett done to her? And why, oh why, wouldn't anyone tell her about it?

"Elsbeth, I can only say Juliet has been through much. She needs solace and time, time to think and time to heal. . . ."

Elsbeth had not seen so much emotion in her mother's face since they lost Edric, and so she had agreed, promising not to disturb their new guest. A beautiful young unmarried woman whom Garrett sent to them in hopes they could provide, "A measure of comfort and safety . . . which for now means solitude and silence."

Yet, as her creatures knew, there was only so much silence Elsbeth could endure.

Lost in a hazy stupor of fragmented memories and thick emotions, Juliet's days fell into a pattern of watching the shifting shadows and subtle changes of color and texture to be seen through the window. The play of light shifted from a dawn of coral pinks to the white sun of a summer day, before at last turning to a golden yellow that dissolved into long nights of milky starlight. She sat quietly, drinking the rich pine scents and the sweet redolence of the flower garden below, as she watched shadows stretched over the farthest edge of the blue-green lake.

Lady Evelyn came each morning and evening, and it was strange, Juliet thought now, as she turned from the window to the needlework on her lap, the comfort she found in her company. They'd talk of things: of Juliet's life in Paris and of her mother; then of Lady Evelyn's family, Garrett's sisters, nieces, and cousins; of a two-hundred-year-history of Van Ness ancestors and how their lives were interwoven with history and spiced with anecdotes that brought smiles and sometimes even laughter to Juliet's face.

Many of the stories revealed the underlying emotional currents within Garrett's family: the pain and difficulty Lady Evelyn had with raising Garrett, loving him but forcing herself to accept the emotional distance he kept ever since the first time she sent him away, and the way in which Edric had finally filled that void. She learned about Garrett's sister Jane, a quiet and scholarly girl, more like her father than any other. Jane was given to letters and poetry. . . . "Always lost in books and ideas, which put her closer to Garrett than the others. Not pretty like Elsbeth or nearly as lively, she married Lord Fenden Olswald, a first son, quite a well known botanist and Shakespearean scholar himself. Jane's happy marriage has given me two granddaughters, Marguerite and Elizabeth, perfectly angelic children, not like mine. . . ."

This morning Lady Evelyn had found herself talking of Garrett's late wife, Lucinda. "We thought 'twas such a fine match at first. They were both wild and impetuous, Garrett so young and obviously taken by her. In the beginning we were all taken by her, and she was ever determined to have the affection of each one of us. For me she pretended to like gardening and flowers, for Jane, poetry—oh how she praised Jane's poems! —She used to bring Elsbeth little gifts, small things, a guinea pig, a new frock, or a pretty doll, and she would sit Elsbeth down in the window seat and make her tell all about her studies and animals and friends, as if such nuances of a child's life really mattered to her. We were all quite taken until one day Elsbeth knocked on her door and she overheard Lucinda tell her maid, 'If it's that little brat come to pester me again, I shall scream.' Elsbeth cried for three days, she was so heartbroken. Another slip of her tongue revealed she had never read one of Jane's poems. Bit by bit like that the illusion began to crumble. . . ."

A knock at the door interrupted Juliet's reveries. Thinking it was Lady Evelyn, she softly bid entrance. Elsbeth swept into the room, looking like a fresh breath of summer air, having bathed and changed from her ride. She wore a white dress trimmed in blue ribbons and ruffles of lace. The pretty dress reminded Juliet of the three trunks sent from a fashionable London shop for her, trunks that remained unopened, stacked neatly in the closet, for she chose instead to mend and wash the skirt and blouse Gayle had given her. She had not seen the young lady since arriving and she suffered a moment's awkwardness, the very same she had first felt.

Elsbeth would have none of that, however, and looking a bit mischievous and guilty, she came right to the point of her visit. "I am sorry to interrupt your solitude like this. Mother said not to, you know. I suppose I'm breaking the law, but Garrett always talks of civil disobedience when a law or rule is unjust and this, I think, is a good example of what he means by that high-minded ideal. I think, nay, I know!—you've had enough solitude to last your lifetime. Tis such a lovely afternoon and I thought you might like to walk around the lake. And before you answer me, you should know that the one thing, the only thing, I don't have when we stay at the castle here in the country is ... is a friend."

Juliet's shy smile was a thing to behold. "A friend . . . I think I'd like that very much."

A knock sounded on the door, interrupting the low voices of the men within. Carl opened the door, a slight bow of his graying head served as an apology for interrupting the gentlemen. "A Mr. Rob Peterson to see you, sir. He says it's important. Naturally, I told him they all say it's important but he insisted I make the announcement-"

"A moment, Carl," Garrett said as the admiral and Colonel Cameron stood to leave. "Admiral?"

Admiral Kingston took Garrett's hand to shake. A strange feeling had filled him, so alarming he tried desperately to shake it. This was not the last time he'd ever see Garrett, he kept reassuring himself; certain the forbidding feeling sprang from the tragedy of losing Nelson. . . . Despite these mental reassurances, he held Garrett's gaze too long, suddenly unable to release his friend's strong hand.

"Admiral?" Garrett questioned.

"I ... I wish it was over, Garrett."

"The last trip; the beginning of the end of French tyranny, I know." Garrett said, trying to reassure the admiral. "Two weeks in Bristol, a month or less in France, and I'll turn The Raven home for the last time."

"When you meet your agents in Bristol, if there is the slightest discrepancy—"

"My agents will understand my need for absolute safety during my final appearance in France. They've not failed me yet."

"Aye . . . aye." The small man released Garrett's hand at last, taking Leifs. "Leif, I count on you to watch over each and every move he makes." Leif nodded solemnly, and the admiral turned his gaze back to Garrett. "May God be with you," he whispered, the very same words that sent thousands through the centuries to battle, and with a bow, he and the colonel took leave.

Leifs stern gaze came to Garrett with an unspoken accusation.

"Leave it be, Leif," Garrett said in a low voice, like the hiss of a snake, a warning. "It must be done and I will do it."

"Aye, and get the French guillotine for the trouble. Kingston has never acted afraid, an unnatural sentiment from him, you must admit. One that perfectly reflects my own dream."

"Your dream, your dream . . . The flying of the flag of danger ... Ah Leif," he dismissed this. "That flag has shadowed my whole life. The danger sign in your dream could mean anything, anything—"

"I don't know what it means Garrett but . . . but with Juliet wavin' it back and forth, back and forth—"

Garrett slammed his fist on the table. "She is safe, Leif. Safe. Nothing can happen to her. I have ten men at the castle watching her and—" He stopped, startled by the force of emotion her name brought, let alone when paired with the idea that she might be in danger. "God's curse, Leif, but I can not so much as say her name without—"

Garrett said no more, but then he didn't have to. Leif knew well how he suffered. His emotional agony increased rather than decreased with each day of their separation. An embarrassingly long parade of dozens of nameless women, long runs, drinking and gambling binges, brawls Garrett single-handedly made into wars had not helped. Even this last week of a different kind of expiation: of fasting and meditating, seeking that peacfc that strayed forever from his reach, had hardly touched it.

Garrett pulled the bell rope and Carl stepped in. Without looking up, Garrett asked him to admit Rob Peterson. "Leif," he returned to the subject for the last time. "Every last word says they don't know me yet. We will validate that fact in Bristol before Toulon. We will be safe. And my friend, that is final."

Aided by his cane, Mr. Rob Peterson made his way into the private room behind his lordship's butler. His other arm clutched a leather case that contained the papers. Leif rose to aid the old man in his effort to reach a chair.

At age seventy, Rob Peterson looked as old as a weatherworn centurion oak. Bent, frail, and reed thin, his frame could be toppled by a good wind. Yet beneath the frailty his mind remained sharper and shrewder than Garrett's next three best personal agents. Five years ago, after a particularly clever maneuver that saved the Van Ness family a tidy fortune, Garrett sent the old man an antique gold gilt clock with a retirement pension fit for a king. The clock came back with a curt note: "This handsome clock ticks closer to my death each and every second, as it ticks ever closer to your death as well, Lord Van Ness. I will not hurry it along by passing idle empty days on a park bench. With your permission, my lord, I will remove myself from your service the first and only time I fail you."

Garrett had him working every day since.

Leif offered a greeting as he poured the old man a glass of water and an ample shot of his favorite cognac. Garrett turned to view the familiar face through the light of the candles on the table. "Mr. Peterson?"

"I bring news of a tragedy," he said. In a voice weighed heavily with emotion he confessed, "A more sorry one I have not heard in all my years."

Leif stood up with a fist on the table, apparently ready to give chase. "She has escaped?"

"Indeed. Clarissa Stoddard escaped, but through . . . death's portal."

Leif slowly sunk back to the chair. Mr. Peterson drained the warm brandy in his glass, despite the certain knowledge that nothing on earth could chase away the chill of the story he must tell. For the story had nothing to do with heaven or God's earth and everything to do with the unfathomable depth of evil far, far below.

He held his empty glass for a moment before reaching into his case and removing Clarissa Stoddard's last letter. This he handed wordlessly to Garrett. Hesitating but briefly, Garrett's gaze focused to find the strained flair of her last words. Words addressed to Juliet.

To Juliet, my last living relative:

You are the only person to whom this letter could mean anything to and yet I write to you with little hope that you will ever read it. I am not sorry for your tragic fate—whatever that may be— and I suppose 'twill be no shock to you that my deep animosity for you is but a token remnant of any natural feeling I have left. Your crime might only be that, unlike me, you remained untouched by him, but that is enough, my dear Juliet, that is enough.

I should have known he'd not let me go. He might be dead in flesh, but he is alive in spirit. He won't leave me alone, he refuses to let me go. His accusing ghost follows me from room to room, task to task, appearing even in my dreams and making me relive the hell over and over again until I drop to my knees, trembling and shaking, screaming into an empty room to let me alone, please to God, let me go. Even now he waits in the shadows of the room, calling to me over and over ... as always mistaking my name for another, Anna, he says, Anna come back to me. . . .

Anna, his sister and our mother, there it is: read these words a hundred times, the effort will not change them. I once heard you telling Stella how confused you were by the terrible presence of your uncle, that our mother said your family consisted of a hundred years of barristers, that your grandparents died in an influenza outbreak, leaving her orphaned and without siblings at a young age. What pretty tales she must have spun for you! Tales that hid the horror of her past, for her parents were my father's: the Stoddards of Bristol, snipping magnates for a century and more. You are his niece and half sister to me, for I am the daughter he put in his sister, I am the daughter she left in his unholy hands. I know the madness she had to escape from, for she left me to endure it in her place. She knew he would love me in her place; she knew her daughter would have the knowledge of a father that no daughter ever should, and as I wonder at the depravity of her heart, I know a hate that is worse than the hell she made of my life.