Sins of Omission (33 page)

June 1686

Paris, France

Max found his job as a tutor to be surprisingly flexible.  Madame Benoit was only too happy to have the house to herself for a few hours, allowing Max to take the boys on field trips, as long as they returned in time for their dinner.  The children loved the outings, during which Max pointed out various sights and taught them the English words and phrases for what they were seeing.  They were happy to have a little adventure and leave the stifling schoolroom.  Max, on the other hand, used the outings to familiarize himself with seventeenth-century Paris, and mentally file away useful information which would help him formulate his plan.  He’d have only once chance to get it right, and this time he wouldn’t be creeping behind Hugo with a rock.  This time, nothing would be left to chance.

Max usually made sure that the boys were falling-down tired by the time they got home, so while the children napped, Max availed himself of the opportunity to study the Everly residence which was a forty-five-minute walk from the Benoit’s house.  After a week of observation from a strategically selected vantage point, Max was disappointed to say that he’d learned very little.  He’d seen a red-headed young man come and go, as well as several servants, and a boy of about ten, who strongly resembled Hugo.  An older man came by once, and left a short while later.  Otherwise, there was very little activity of interest.  Max hadn’t seen Hugo or Neve, so wasn’t even entirely certain that he was watching the right house.  At this rate, he’d still be planning his revenge a year from now. 

Max decided that perhaps he might need to change the location of his stake-out.  He walked around the block; his hat pulled down low and his manner unhurried.  There was no need to attract attention.  He was just a respectable tutor out for a walk during his free time.  Max sauntered around the back of the house.  There was a sizeable garden surrounded by a tall iron fence.  The garden was lush at this time of year, but Max could still see several benches placed beneath the trellis dripping with roses.  A little fountain, more a birdbath, was in the center of the garden, and a path led from the door to the birdbath and to the gate built into the fence.  Max gingerly pulled on the gate, but, of course, it was locked.  The good thing about the garden was that it wasn’t a typical, well-ordered English garden where the flower beds and neatly trimmed hedges outranked natural chaos.  This garden was slightly more unkempt, perhaps because the inhabitants didn’t employ a gardener.  Therefore, it was much easier for a person who wanted to observe the family to stay hidden. 

Max pulled out the spyglass he’d borrowed from Captain Benoit’s study.  The captain had departed a week before and wouldn’t be home again for several months, so Madame Benoit invited Max to use the captain’s study to work on his lessons, which couldn’t be better if he’d planned it himself.  Max trained the glass on the windows of the upper floors, hoping to catch sight of someone in the bedrooms.  It was late afternoon, and the slanted rays of the summer sun reflected in the wide windows, making it difficult to make anything out, but Max remained in his position, certain that if he waited, he’d see someone.  He’d positioned himself in such a way that he wouldn’t be seen either from the street or from the house, hiding behind a large lilac bush.  The blooms had died away, but the leafy branches offered excellent cover.

Max stepped from foot to foot, tired of standing in one spot.  He still hadn’t seen much after skulking about for nearly an hour.  It had to be going on six p.m., and he was hungry and tired after spending most of the morning herding the boys around town.  He’d give it another fifteen minutes, then call it a day.  Max was just about to unlace his breeches to take a piss when he noticed movement in one of the upstairs rooms.  He forgot all about his need and pointed the spyglass at the window.  His heart nearly skipped a beat when he saw Neve.  She approached the window, holding a small child.  The baby looked remarkably like her, but Max couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl since it was wearing a white gown, the type that could be worn by either sex.  Children in the seventeenth-century were dressed like girls regardless of the sex until they were toilet trained, at which point their clothes resembled that of the adults. 

Neve seemed to be talking to the child as she threw the window open.  Max couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the cadence of her voice carried, and he closed his eyes as he listened to her familiar voice.  It was strange to see Neve after all this time, especially with her hair swept up and wearing a period gown, but she actually looked even more beautiful than she had when wearing a pair of jeans and a sweater, with her hair loose about her shoulders.  The gown and hairstyle gave her a certain maturity, but did little to hide her natural sensuality.

Neve turned away from the window and Max lost sight of her, but it took him a few minutes to slow down his heart.  He finally relieved himself, put away his spyglass, and drifted back out into the street.  He now knew several things: he had the right house; the baby was thriving, and Hugo had to be somewhere nearby.  What he didn’t know was why he hadn’t seen Hugo or Neve leave the house, or how to go about achieving his objective.  Perhaps he had to watch the house in the morning rather than in late afternoons.  Perhaps they liked to rest before supper, and that’s why he’d been unable to make any progress.

Switching up the schedule with Madame Benoit would be easy enough.  She was a remarkably flexible woman, probably due to the fact that she’d had to get used to living with a husband who always came and went, rather than stayed at home and ruled the roost.  She liked the freedom to make her own choices, and having the boys out of the house in the late afternoon would give her an opportunity to rest after her morning chores and social calls.  There weren’t many, but Vivienne had a couple of friends who came by for a cup of chocolate, a pastry, and a gossip.  They were all wives of the captain’s associates, so they had much to talk about, and Max heard them laughing through the closed door of the parlor.  At times, he envied their camaraderie.  He missed having friends.  He missed Simon, and even Mrs. Harding.  She’d often given him a cup of tea and a biscuit when he was a boy, and talked him through his adolescent trials when his own mother couldn’t be bothered.  It’d been a long time since anyone cared about him, and Max felt a bone-deep loneliness steal over him, especially at night when he was alone in his room.

Max decided to watch the house several times a week, and his initiative eventually paid off.  He watched with trepidation as Neve emerged into the garden with the baby each morning.  The child seemed to be ready for a mid-morning nap, so Neve positioned the baby in her lap while she enjoyed an hour outdoors.  Sometimes she read, and sometimes she just sat quietly, her face turned to the gentle sun.  Although her features were relaxed, Max noted a tension about her which hadn’t been there before.  Neve was no longer the young woman he’d known in the twenty-first century.  There was a certain wariness about her, as if she’d been through a lot, and was now preparing herself for some unseen danger.  Was life with Hugo not quite what she’d bargained for? Max wondered as he watched her.

A young woman joined her outside on the second day, her golden curls framing her lovely face, which despite its classical beauty looked wan.  The girl sat next to Neve, and they chatted quietly, so as not to wake the baby.  The girl must have recently been ill since she moved a little slower than normal and was terribly pale.  The red-headed man made an appearance as well, smiling at the girl in a way that suggested that their relationship was something more than lady/servant, or just friendship.  She rested her head on his shoulder as he sat down next to her, and his arm came around her, loosely, but with a hint of possession, nonetheless.  But where was Hugo?  Was it possible that he wasn’t here at all?

It had taken Max three more days of observation before he finally spotted his prey.  Hugo came out into the garden with Neve and sat on the bench.  He reached for the child, and Neve carefully placed the baby into the crook of his arm.  Max was shocked by Hugo’s appearance.  This was not the man he’d met a year ago.  That Hugo had exuded physical strength and robust health, but the Hugo who sat in the garden now looked pale and drawn, and his movements were careful, as if any sudden jolt would cause him great pain.  Max trained his spyglass on the man and watched him with rapt attention.  Hugo seemed in good spirits despite his physical discomfort, and Max could see the genuine affection between him and Neve.  She did seem to be fussing over him though, which made Max wonder if Hugo had been ill as well.  Perhaps there’d been an outbreak of something in the house, which would explain the lack of activity and the less-than-blooming appearance of the occupants.  Max turned the glass back to Neve.  She appeared to be well enough, but she looked tired, and there was a constant look of worry in her lovely eyes.  What had happened to make her look so concerned, and what was wrong with Hugo?

Max kept up his vigil for two weeks, familiarizing himself with the routine of the household.  The one thing that remained constant was Neve’s outings with the baby.  Hugo came outside from time to time, as did the other girl, but Neve made an appearance around the same time every day.  Max couldn’t help noticing that both Hugo and the girl appeared to be recuperating from whatever it was they’d suffered from.  Hugo was moving with more assurance, and his color was healthier than it had been two weeks ago.  He was still mindful of his left side, but he was obviously on the mend, which meant that Max had to act soon.  He didn’t want Hugo at the top of his game.

Max returned to his stuffy garret, threw open the dormer window and took a sip of warm red wine.  He’d been biding his time long enough.  It was time to put his plan into action.  Strange how sometimes small, insignificant things suddenly took on new meaning based on the events currently taking place in a person’s life.  Max had hated visiting the Paris catacombs with his friends when he took a backpacking tour of France shortly after graduating from the university.  He’d tried to opt out of that particular excursion, but his friends ridiculed him for being scared, and to prove them wrong, Max had reluctantly gone along.  He’d hated every moment of being submerged beneath the ground, surrounded by millions of dead eyes, boring into him as he tried not to focus on the fact that these people had once lived, loved, and suffered.  The catacombs had been the ultimate oubliette, a place of forgetting, but had eventually become a tourist attraction since people couldn’t stay away from the haunting experience of walking through a graveyard of bones and skulls. 

Now, in the seventeenth century, the catacombs were not yet a graveyard, but a series of abandoned mines used to extract limestone which had been used to build most of the city; a warren of tunnels which would soon be ordered to be inspected for fear that they might undermine the city above them.  No matter, the mines were as good as the catacombs.  All Max needed was a secluded, dark place to carry out his plan.  He hadn’t taken the children beneath ground, but he’d made sure to take several walks in the vicinity of what would one day be the entrance to the
Catacombs de Paris
and find a way in.  Most of the mines had been closed off, but Max eventually found one that would serve his purpose very nicely.  He marked it on a crude map he’d drawn, and mapped out the quickest route from the Everly house to the entrance of the mine.

Max paced the floorboards until they groaned with protest, so he stretched out on his bed, put his hands behind his head, and went over every detail of his plan again.  He needed two days to get everything in order, then it was show time.

I breathed a sigh of relief as Valentine finally fell asleep.  She’d been crying on and off all night, and this morning I’d noticed that her gums were swollen, and two tiny white lines had appeared where her bottom teeth would be.  I thought it was too early for her to be teething, but some children cut their first teeth sooner than others.  I wished I could give her something to relieve the pain, but I had nothing at my disposal save alcohol, and I wasn’t going that route just yet. 

I snuggled closer to Hugo, eager for another hour of sleep until it was time to get up and start the day, but the moment had passed, and I was wide-awake.  Hugo turned onto his side and smiled at me.  “Try to sleep; I’ll get her if she wakes again.”

“She’s teething,” I replied.  “She’s in pain.”

“I seem to remember our nurse putting brandy on Jane’s gums when she was teething,” Hugo said, his eyes clouding over as they always did when he thought of his sister.

“There must be something else I can give her that’s non-alcoholic.  I should have asked Doctor LeGrand when he was here last.”

The doctor hadn’t been back for nearly two weeks, having pronounced his patients to be no longer in need of his care.  Hugo still felt some discomfort, but the redness and swelling were gone, leaving in their place a small, square scab where the doctor had cauterized the wound.  It pained him to move his shoulder a certain way, but he was getting better every day.  My mind still couldn’t quite grasp the fact that Sir Trumbull wanted Hugo dead, but now that he was gone, and the hired gun was dead, I felt slightly calmer, if not completely at peace.  Hugo hadn’t been particularly surprised when Archie told him, having already worked it out for himself, but he was relieved that Archie had been able to track down his assailant. 

Frances was recovering as well.  She’d refused to drink the blood, but had been eating meat and liver, as the doctor prescribed.  I was sure that the meat-heavy diet would replenish the iron she’d bled out and make her feel stronger.  I knew that Hugo had strong feelings about what Frances tried to do, but he hadn’t said anything to her, figuring that the poor girl had suffered enough.  Archie sat with her every day while she was abed, reading to her or just talking.  Seeing them together always made me smile, nearly as much as it made Hugo frown.  He still had reservations about their future, and made no secret of it.

“Will Archie and Frances wish to be married soon, do you think?” I asked Hugo, sleep forgotten.  Frances was still too young to get married, in my opinion, but under the circumstances, she would be safest with Archie, who loved her and would take care of her as no one else had.  She was like a wounded bird that needed all the tenderness it could get until it felt safe to leave the nest and fly again.

“I’ve asked Archie to wait,” Hugo replied sourly.  “There’s no rush, not anymore.”

“Is there some other reason you want them to wait?”  I could tell that Hugo was holding something back.  He had that closed look that meant he was up to something.

“I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for certain, but I’ve asked Gideon Warburton to look into Frances’s financial situation.  As Finch’s widow, she stands to inherit it all, but her father-in-law is claiming abandonment, and is trying to have the marriage posthumously annulled.  If he succeeds, Frances will get nothing, but if he doesn’t, she will be a very rich woman.  I think it would be best to wait and see what transpires before she remarries.  Having her marry another will only strengthen the elder Finch’s case.”

“And how do you think Archie would feel if Frances was suddenly a rich widow?” I asked.  Archie might feel emasculated by their uneven status, uncomfortable at being supported by his wife.

“Archie is no fool.  He might feel a little awkward at first, but he’ll learn to live with it.  He would be good at running the estate.”

I had to admit that a small part of me hoped that Hugo’s plans would not come to fruition.  I hated the thought of parting with Frances and Archie.  They were part of my family, part of me.  I was about to share my feelings with Hugo when there was a knock at the door.

“I’ll get it,” Hugo said as he gave me a kiss and got out of bed.  “Get some rest while Val is sleeping.

I couldn’t see who was at the door, but I heard Elodie’s voice.  “You have a visitor,
milord
.  I’ve asked him to wait in the parlor.”