Surrender to a Stranger (57 page)

“When you disappeared, I felt as if my world had shattered all over again. I realized I no longer cared about having vengeance on this damned revolution. I have something far, far more precious to care about. You. And when we get home, I will shower you with my love, Jacqueline. I will wrap you in it and protect you with it until you are healed and we can both put the past where it belongs—in the past.”

She shuddered with an agonizing mixture of joy and fear and continued to cling to him like a lost child.

“But before we can do that, you must trust me,” he continued, taking her face in his hands. “And you must show me that trust by getting into the boat and going with my men to the ship. I cannot risk having you with me. If something happened to you, it would cripple my ability to act. Do you understand?” he demanded softly.

“Promise you will come back to me,” she sobbed, tears flowing down her face as she struggled to accept what he was asking her to do.

He gave her a tender smile. “I promise to come back to you, Jacqueline. Always.”

He bent his head low and captured her lips with his. Their kiss was deep and long and desperate, he seeking to fill her with the strength and power of his love, she seeking to hold him with her for as long as she could. Finally Armand broke the kiss and gently set her away from him. He took her arm in his and led her to the skiff.

“Sidney, you are to see that Mademoiselle de Lambert is safely aboard
The Angélique
before coming back for me and the boy, is that clear?” he demanded as he helped her into the boat.

Sidney regarded him seriously. “Aye, Captain.”

Armand nodded, and the men in the skiff began to powerfully pull their oars, guiding the heavy boat into the rough water. Armand stood on the shore and watched them a moment. Then he turned and began to walk along the beach toward the road they had taken from Calais. Jacqueline sat in the boat and stared at his dark form as it grew smaller, silently praying for God to keep him safe and let him find Philippe.

Suddenly a horse appeared, carrying not one but two figures. As they thundered along the beach toward Armand Jacqueline realized it was Nicolas, holding Philippe a helpless prisoner in front of him. Fear stabbed into her heart. She screamed. The crew stopped rowing.

“Shoot him!” cried Jacqueline.

“We cannot,” replied Sidney in frustration. “He is using the boy as a shield, and besides, our weapons are useless this distance from the shore.”

Armand calmly watched Nicolas approach. He had drawn his pistol, but as Nicolas drew near he could see that he also held a pistol, and it was pointed directly at Philippe’s temple. Nicolas reined in his frothing mount some ten meters from Armand, and the two men warily assessed each other.

“I give you two seconds to drop your weapon, St. James,” ordered Nicolas, “or I will blow the boy’s head off.”

Armand did not hesitate. His pistol fell onto the sand.

“He is not armed—we must turn back!” cried Jacqueline in horror.

Sidney hesitated a moment, obviously reluctant to disobey Armand’s orders.

“They will be killed!” she insisted, her heart pounding in terror. “We must turn back!”

“Head toward the shore,” ordered Sidney.

Nicolas watched the boat filled with armed men change its course and begin to row toward the shore. “If your men return, it will be to see your dead body, and I promise you, whatever happens, I will make sure Jacqueline does not live.” His voice was deadly serious.

Armand turned to look at his men. “Continue to the ship,” he shouted harshly across the water. “Under no circumstances are you to return here, is that clear?”

The boat stopped. Slowly it resumed its course toward
The Angélique.

“Now then, Inspector,” said Armand calmly, “I would ask that you release the boy. It is me that you want, and I will be happy to turn myself over to your custody if you let him go.”

Nicolas smiled. “Tell me, St. James, how is it that you are always so damned polite?” he drawled sarcastically. “I mean here you are, about to die, and yet you still manage to act so ridiculously civilized. Is that your aristo blood showing?” he wondered acidly.

Armand shrugged his shoulders. “I myself have never felt that titles and bloodlines had anything to do with being civilized. After all, titles give men power, and power can make men extremely uncivilized, as you yourself can attest to.”

“Shut up,” snapped Nicolas. “Remember, I am the one holding the gun.” He held it close to the boy’s head and watched Armand, fully enjoying the incredible sense of power the moment was giving him. “You are just like the Duc de Lambert,” he sneered. “Always so polite. Always so civilized. Pretending to treat men like me as equal, when in reality he saw me as nothing more than a serving dog. He was happy to take my advice, to use me for my financial brilliance, without which his fortune would have collapsed like a house of cards. I built his fortune up from the brink of ruin. And in return he paid me a paltry salary while inviting me to be a constant guest at his château. He introduced me to the finest foods and wines, splendid artwork and magnificent furnishings, lavish gardens and ridiculous clothes, whetting my appetite for a world he knew I would never be able to afford.”

“Forgive me,” interrupted Armand, “but if you were as brilliant at business as you claim, surely in time you could have built your own fortune.”

“Over the course of a lifetime, perhaps,” mused Nicolas. “But I had nothing to get started with, and I was impatient to lead the life I had watched for years as an outsider. And of course, before the revolution, merely having money did not open the doors to the finest social circles in France. You still did not have the rights of the nobility. They were very careful to keep those to themselves.”

“And so you sought to marry Jacqueline.”

Nicolas smiled. “With her as my wife, they would have been forced to open their doors to me,” he replied. “I wanted her the first moment I saw her. Of course she was only fifteen at the time. I had to wait, and watch as she grew from an innocent young girl into an incredibly desirable woman. I tried to be nice to her. I did not want to scare her. I wanted her to genuinely like me.”

Armand lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t think you have been very successful in that area,” he remarked.

Nicolas scowled. “She thought I was beneath her,” he spat contemptuously. “She did not share her father’s newfound philosophies concerning the equality of men. She had learned the lessons of her class too well, and was loath to give them up.”

“Sometimes to change you need to grow,” suggested Armand, thinking back to Jacqueline’s narrow opinions when he first met her. “She could not grow while sheltered in the Château de Lambert.”

“I could not wait for her to grow anymore,” spat Nicolas. “There were already a dozen mincing fools sniffing at her door. I had to go in to Charles-Alexandre and make my claim on her.”

“Very romantic,” commented Armand dryly. “I am amazed she turned you down.”

“She did not get the chance to,” replied Nicolas. “Her father laughed in my face, and then turned around and betrothed her to that spineless idiot.”

“Now that is something we can both agree on,” stated Armand. “De Biret really is a spineless idiot.”

“I knew he would desert her at the first hint of danger,” sneered Nicolas. “And I was angry at the duc for humiliating me. So I arranged for him to have a little rest at the Luxembourg.”

“Which ultimately led to his execution.”

“That was unfortunate,” admitted Nicolas. “Sometimes the outcome of these things cannot be predicted.”

“And then you arranged for the arrest of her brother, Antoine.”

“It was necessary,” replied Nicolas. “I told Jacqueline that if she would only become my mistress, I would protect her and her family. But she foolishly refused my offer.”

“Imagine that,” commented Armand. “And in retaliation, you planted false letters in her home and denounced Antoine, which led to his arrest and subsequent death.”

“I merely meant for his arrest to be a show of strength,” protested Nicolas defensively. “Once she agreed to my terms, I would have cleared his name and had him released.”

“But you did not anticipate Jacqueline getting herself arrested in the process.”

“No,” he admitted. “She was always so controlled and elegant. It never occurred to me she would attack a member of the National Guard.”

“Her brother was ill, and the soldiers were beating him,” pointed out Armand. “But of course, again that was something you did not anticipate.”

“Sometimes the soldiers take brutish pleasure in their orders,” Nicolas allowed.

“As do the men who lead them.”

Nicolas scowled. “And then she was sentenced to death. I had been cheated of having her. That was not acceptable. And then, just as I was finally about to have what should have been mine all along, you came in. You stole her from me, and in doing so did irreparable damage to my career. I had let both the treacherous Mademoiselle de Lambert and the Black Prince escape from my grasp. I can tell you, I paid for that mistake. I knew that to redeem myself I had to get you back. But when I trapped you, I could not prove to the Committee of Public Safety that I had actually snared the Black Prince. It was not until Jacqueline broke you out of La Force that they decided to believe me. I was told to either capture you, or be tried and executed for treason.”

He shifted in his saddle, still holding tight to Philippe, who was watching Armand closely, silently waiting for some kind of signal.

“I do hope you understand, therefore, that I cannot allow another escape. My own life is at stake. Which is why I cannot take the chance of returning you to Paris for execution.”

“Of course, I understand,” said Armand reasonably.

Jacqueline sat rigidly in the skiff watching the two men. She could not hear anything, but the darkness had faded to the cold, gray light of morning, revealing Nicolas on his horse with his gun at Philippe’s head, and Armand, unarmed, facing him.

“It really is a pity it has to end this way,” Nicolas commented sympathetically. “You would have made a wonderful spy for the revolution, had you decided to work for us.”

“You will excuse me if I am not flattered,” returned Armand.

Nicolas sighed. “Farewell, Black Prince.” He moved his pistol from Philippe’s head and pointed it at Armand.

With a cry of rage Philippe threw himself as hard as he could against Nicolas’s arm, knocking him backward. They both lost their seat on the horse and slid off into the sand.

“Run, Monsieur, run!” Philippe shouted as he scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward Armand.

Nicolas let out a snarl of fury and aimed his gun at Philippe. “You little bastard!”

Armand raced forward, grabbed Philippe, and threw him out of the way just as the pistol exploded. Shots echoed across the water, but they did not reach the shore. He could hear Jacqueline screaming. He looked up at Nicolas, who was smiling triumphantly. He made no move to shoot again. Armand frowned in confusion.

And then he felt it.

A searing, burning, icy pain gripped his chest, hot and cold at the same time, excruciatingly painful, and yet not so painful at all. He looked down in disbelief, wondering how he possibly could have been hit and feel almost nothing. Hot scarlet blood was seeping through the white of his shirt, quickly soaking it and flowing into his jacket.

Suddenly he felt dizzy and nauseated. He was vaguely aware of Jacqueline’s agonized screams. Nicolas was laughing. He tried to focus on those sounds as he dropped to his knees in the sand.

Nicolas stepped toward him, his face a mask of bitter victory. “And so we witness the death of the infamous Black Prince,” he drawled mockingly. “How utterly tragic, to come to such an ignoble end.”

Armand forced himself to remain focused as he approached. His chest was tearing him apart with every breath. The need to lie down was overwhelming, but he made himself stay erect. Just a few more steps, he told himself as he felt for his boot.
Come on, you goddamned bastard.

Nicolas took another step toward him. “Let’s not take all day, St. James,” he mocked. “Unless you would like me to shoot you again.”

“You are most considerate,” managed Armand weakly, “but I believe once is enough.”

Nicolas took another two steps toward him. “Are you sure?” he drawled sarcastically.

The icy cold steel of Jacqueline’s dagger filled his palm. With bitter determination he wrenched it from his boot and hurtled it through the air. “Positive,” he rasped.

Nicolas stared in bewilderment at the handle sticking out of his chest. He put his hand on it and looked at Armand in disbelief, as if he thought it was a trick. Then he let out a pathetic whimper of rage and fell forward onto the sand, driving the shaft of steel deeper into his heart.

Armand grunted with satisfaction and moved to get up. An excruciating current of pain shot through his body, robbing him of his ability to think. His legs gave way and he collapsed onto the sand.

“Lie still, Monsieur,” ordered Philippe, his voice small and taut. He leaned over and began to undo his shirt. “Let me see how bad it is.”

Armand groaned and closed his eyes, desperately wishing for a drink. His last thought before blackness hit was that somewhere in the darkness, Jacqueline was still screaming.

“We have to go back for him!” she wailed hysterically, her eyes blinded by tears, her hands clawing desperately at Sidney. “He is not dead—we have to go back for him and Philippe!”

“We cannot,” replied Sidney gravely. “Look.”

Jacqueline raised her eyes to the shore and her heart froze. Against the soft, smoky peach light of morning, a regiment of soldiers on horseback were thundering along the beach toward Armand and Philippe. There were more than twenty of them, and behind them was a mob of men and women carrying knives, muskets, and pistols, shouting and firing randomly into the air.

“Oh my God,” she whispered brokenly.

“To go back would be suicide,” said Sidney. “Once we got close enough to shore, we would probably kill our fair share. But we are a sitting target in this boat, and ultimately we would all be killed. I cannot allow that, Mademoiselle. Armand would never sanction such a decision. My orders are to take you safely to the ship, and return to England.”