Petals in the Storm (38 page)

"For what it's worth, Varenne says so." As his eyes adjusted to the light, Rafe realized that his companion looked considerably worse for wear, with his left arm cradled awkwardly in his lap and his face badly bruised. Forgetting his jealousy, he exclaimed, "Good God, man, what did they do to you?"

Anderson smiled humorlessly. "In a tribute to my legendary ferocity, Varenne sent four ruffians to invite me here. I attempted to decline, but they insisted."

Something clicked in Rafe's memory. "The morning after you disappeared, the bodies of two unidentified Frenchmen were found near your lodgings. Did you have anything do with that?"

Anderson's smile became more genuine. "I was
very
reluctant to accept their hospitality."

Surveying the slight build and almost feminine good looks of his companion, Rafe realized that he had been guilty of still another misjudgment. With a half smile, he said, "Remind me not to get into any arguments with you."

"I doubt I'd be a danger to a husky sparrow at the moment."

Anderson's pallor was extreme even for someone of such fair coloring, so Rafe crossed the cell and knelt by him in the straw. "Better let me take a look at that arm."

He whistled softly at the sight of the ugly swelling that had completely engulfed Anderson's left hand and wrist. As he began a careful examination of the injured area, he said, "Did you hit someone too hard?"

"No, I was fairly intact when I arrived here. However, Varenne was interested in chatting and I wasn't."

The sheen of sweat on Anderson's face showed how much his studied casualness was costing him. Rafe's reluctant admiration for his rival increased. "It looks like one of the bones in the wrist is broken, and three fingers," he said. "Luckily, the fractures look clean.

Let me help you take your coat off so I can bandage the area. That should help some."

Rafe took off his waistcoat and tore it into strips, then undertook the basic medical work learned in the hunting field. As he did, he was struck by a gut-wrenching image of that same elegant hand caressing Margot. He froze, fighting sick jealousy, while he told himself furiously that it was neither the time nor the place for such self-indulgence. After a long moment, he managed to resume his ministrations.

For his own self-respect, he took special care to make his efforts as painless as possible. Even so, the procedure nearly broke the younger man's stoicism. By the time Rafe had finished the bandaging and rigged a sling for the arm, Anderson was lying full-length in the straw, sweat matting the edge of his hair. Rafe guessed that he must be half unconscious from pain.

After his ragged breathing had steadied, Anderson said, "Since Varenne ended up capturing Maggie anyhow, maybe I should have just written the damned note."

In answer to Rafe's questioning glance, the blond man explained, "The count wanted me to write Maggie and lure her out here. Said he'd break bones until I agreed. I didn't mention that I was left-handed until he'd already neatly fractured three fingers, and by then he'd wrecked any chance of my handwriting being normal. He should have been working on the right hand."

As he settled down on the straw at Anderson's feet, Rafe found himself chuckling at the dark humor of it. "I'd like to have seen Varenne's face when you told him that."

"You wouldn't have enjoyed it—he broke my wrist from sheer irritation," Anderson said dryly. "Still, I've been in worse prisons. The straw is fresh, the blankets clean, and since this is France, they serve quite a tolerable wine with the meals. At this season, the temperature is reasonable, though I'd rather not winter here."

Rafe tried to repress his shudder at the prospect. Surely Varenne would not keep them for so long.

Anderson said, "Professional curiosity dies hard. Did Varenne give you any idea what he's up to?"

Rafe brought his companion up-to-date on the interviews with von Fehrenbach and Roussaye, mentioned the death of Lemercier without elaborating, then repeated what Varenne had said about his motives.

After asking several probing questions, Anderson sighed and closed his eyes briefly. "Missed by a mile. I feel like a damned fool."

"You have plenty of company in not deducing what was going on," Rafe said bleakly. "Everyone was wrong." Rafe most of all.

After that, there was little to say. The two men sat in the gradually fading light without talking. Though there were many things Rafe would have liked to ask Anderson, none of them seemed appropriate.

As the hours passed, Rafe concluded that the worst part of imprisonment must be boredom. The cell was too small to stretch one's legs, the stone walls were singularly unstimulating, and if he had to spend any length of time here, he'd soon be raving.

He envied Anderson's tranquility. Worn down by pain, the other man slept for much of the time. But even awake, he had a philosophical relaxation Rafe doubted he could ever match. Of course, Anderson claimed prior experiences with incarceration; perhaps practice perfected one's skills.

At dusk, dinner was delivered with the usual caution, one man setting a tray inside while another stood guard with a shotgun. The meal was a very decent beef stew with bread and fruit, accompanied by a jug that held about a gallon of red wine. Besides pewter bowls and mugs, the only utensils were soft, easily bent spoons that wouldn't make effective weapons. Though the tray, bowls and spoons were collected later, the prisoners were allowed to keep the wine and drinking vessels.

There wasn't enough to make a man drunk, but it was sufficient to loosen tongues. The two men were talking in a desultory fashion about what Varenne might be planning when Rafe found himself asking, "Why is Margot the way she is?"

After a long pause, Anderson said, "Why didn't you ask her?"

Rafe laughed harshly. "I didn't think she would tell me."

"If she won't, why do you think I will?"

Rafe hesitated, trying to think of a compelling argument. Instead of a direct answer, he said, "I know I have no right to ask, but I want—rather badly—to understand her. I knew her very well once, or thought I did, and now she's a mystery to me."

After an even longer pause, Anderson said, hostility in his voice, "Ever since Maggie heard you were coming to Paris, she's been different—moody and unhappy. I met her when she was nineteen and I know very little about her earlier life. However, I do know that someone started a job of wrecking her that the French bloody near finished. If you're the one who did that, I'll be damned if I'll tell you anything."

The darkness was nearly total now, only a faint glow of moonlight illuminating the cell. Anderson's figure was barely visible, black against black to Rate's right. In the dark, the pain of thirteen years ago was very close. Reaching out to find the jug by touch, Rafe poured them both more wine. "She never told you what happened?"

"No."

Anderson's voice was flat, but Rafe heard an undertone of unwilling curiosity. If the other man was in love with Margot, he must also be interested in her past.

In the anonymity of the dark, it was easy to make a suggestion that never would have occurred to him by the light of day. "Each of us holds a key to part of Margot's past. Why don't we exchange information?" Anticipating objections, Rafe added, "I know it's un-gentlemanly, but I swear I don't mean her any harm."

Rafe could almost hear the factors weighing in Anderson's mind. Finally the other man said ruefully, "My father always said that I didn't have a gentlemanly bone in my body, and he was right. But I warn you, it's not a pretty story."

Knowing that it was his place to begin, Rafe said, "Margot Ashton made her come-out during the 1802 Season. Her birth was no more than respectable, her fortune negligible, it was generally agreed that she was not a classic beauty—yet she could have had any eligible man in London."

He stopped, remembering his first sight of Margot, when she was entering a ballroom. One look and Rafe had walked away from the group he was with and gone directly to her, cutting through the crowd like a hot knife through butter.

Margot's chaperone recognized the heir to Candover and made an introduction, but Rafe was barely aware of that. Only Margot mattered. At first she had been gently amused by the expression on his face. Then her smoky eyes met his and changed as an echo of his own feelings flared in her. At least, that was what he had thought at the time. Only later did he question the fact that her response had come after she had learned who he was.

Aloud he said, "It appeared to be a perfect fairy tale, love at first sight and all that nonsense. Colonel Ashton wouldn't let us become formally betrothed until after the Season, but we had a firm understanding.

I have never been so happy as I was that spring. Then ..." He halted, unable to continue.

"Don't stop now, just when we're getting to the crux of the matter, Candover," Anderson prodded. "What happened to love's young dream?"

Rafe swallowed hard. "It was simple enough. I was out with a group of friends one evening, and someone who had drunk enough to be indiscreet described how ... how Margot had given herself to him a few days before. In a garden during a ball."

He swallowed a mouthful of wine, needing it to lubricate his dry throat. "In retrospect, I can see how badly I overreacted. I was young and idealistic and completely unbalanced by love. Instead of accepting her actions as curiosity, or experiment or whatever, I acted as if she had committed the greatest crime since Judas when I confronted her the next morning. I would have been happy to accept any defense, or even a show of remorse, but she made no attempt to deny it. She simply threw my ring at me and walked out."

After another swallow of wine, Rafe gave a heavy sigh. "I decided that the people who had told me she was a fortune hunter were right and she was only sorry to be balked of her quarry. But a few days later, she and her father left England to travel on the Continent. I don't think that would have happened if she weren't as miserable as I, so I suppose you could say we wrecked each other."

With a rustle of straw, Anderson shifted position. "Let me see if I have this correctly. You asked if she had been carrying on with this friend of yours and she didn't deny it?"

In the interests of accuracy, Rafe said, "Actually, I didn't ask her. I told her what I knew."

Anderson clambered to his feet, uttering an impressive stream of profanity as he paced around the cell. At length, he said with disgust, "Given the stupidity of the British nobility, I can't understand why the whole lot hasn't died out. If you took a drunken sot's word without questioning it, you never knew the first thing about Maggie. You deserved what you got, though God knows that she didn't."

Rafe flushed, angry but not quite able to dismiss Anderson's words. "You obviously don't know much about the nobility, or you wouldn't make such a sweeping statement. No man of honor would ever lie about such a serious matter. Even dead drunk, it was surprising that anything was said. Probably even that wouldn't have happened if Northwood had known that I was betrothed to Margot."

Anderson stopped in his tracks. "Northwood? Would that have been Oliver Northwood?"

"Yes. That's right, I forgot that you work with him."

A new burst of profanity put the former one to shame. "If you aren't stupid, you are too naive and honorable to live in this highly imperfect world," Anderson snapped. "I can't believe that you would accept the word of a man like Northwood against Maggie but maybe he was more believable in those days than he is now. Obviously he was no more honest."

"Don't be absurd," Rafe said heatedly. "Why would Northwood slander an innocent girl?"

"Use your imagination, Candover," Anderson said with exasperation. "Maybe he was jealous of you. It doesn't sound like it would have required a very discerning eye to observe that you and Maggie were thick as inkle weavers. Or perhaps it was spitefulness because she had scorned him, or immature male boasting. Maybe you never had to invent exploits, but plenty of young men do. Hell, knowing Northwood, he might have lied from sheer bloodymindedness."

Feeling compelled to offer some rebuttal, Rafe said, "Why are you so hard on Northwood? Granted, he's always been a boor, and he's treated his wife badly, but that still doesn't make him a liar. A gentleman is always assumed to be honest until proven otherwise."

"What a wonderful standard. Why didn't you apply it to Maggie?" Anderson said caustically as he flopped down on the straw again. 'This
boor
you are so anxious to defend has been selling information about his country for years to anyone who will buy it. From what I know of him, I doubt that he has an honest bone in his pudgy body."

"What ...?" Rafe stammered, feeling as if he had been poleaxed. Though he had never been close to Northwood, he had known the man for more than twenty years. They had gone to the same schools, been raised by the same rules. He had never had a reason to doubt Northwood's honesty.

And yet, it explained so much. Margot's white face when Rafe had accused her of infidelity swam before him. How would he have felt if the person who should have most trusted him had accepted slander without question?

He would have felt exactly as she had: furious, and hurt beyond words. What had she said then, something about how fortunate it was that they had discovered each other's true characters before it was too late?