Sweet Deception (38 page)

“I’m sure you’ve heard that I’m looking for Thomas Harding.” Derick slipped a coin onto the bar. “Have you seen or heard anything of him lately?”

The owner pulled the coin across the bar with one
hand and slid a pint to Derick at the same time with the other. “Nope, but I ’ave something else ye might be interested in ’earing, if ye can give me a minute.”

“Of course.”

“Marie!” the man yelled over his shoulder to the equally plump woman drying mugs at the end of the bar. “Go fetch the boy.” Then the owner turned back to Derick and nodded to a table in the corner. “I’ll meet ye over there as soon as I finish up ’ere.”

Intrigued, Derick settled himself in a scuffed wooden chair, his back against the wall so he could survey the whole room. He couldn’t imagine what the barkeep could have to tell him, but he certainly knew that information often came when and from places he’d least expected.

He took a long draw of the ale while he waited, enjoying the simple stout flavor that washed his tongue—different from the lighter brews he’d sampled in France, Belgium and Vienna. He wondered how the ale in America would taste, whether he would like it.

The thought struck him that he had never once before wondered whether or not he would
like
living in America. Rather, it had just been a place far from Europe where he could make a fresh start. A land of opportunity, where his name would mean nothing, where he could forg—

“Thanks for yer patience, m’lord.” The owner of the Swan and Stag sidled up to the table and pulled out the other chair, his brow raised in question. Derick nodded and the man lowered his girth as the chair groaned. “As I was sayin’, I ’aven’t seen Harding in days, but just yesterday, I did see one of them other fellows I’d told you about.”

Derick straightened in his chair as the hairs on the back of his neck followed suit. “Yesterday?” He’d assumed when the barkeep had first mentioned the stranger that he’d been referring to Farnsworth. Was
there another player entirely? Or was the man just a vagabond or a tourist? “Where? When exactly? What was he doing?”

“Don’t know what ’e’d been in town doing,” the man said, “but I saw ’im cutting across the field behind me stable ’ere, ’eading away from the village. Near dark, I’d say.”

“Which direction?”

“East—southeast, more like.”

The same direction as Aveline Castle and Wallingford Manor. Damnation.

“And you’re absolutely sure it wasn’t Harding you saw?”

The owner pursed his lips. “O’course.”

Who was this stranger? Was
he
the man that had snuck into Wallingford Manor while they’d been recovering Farnsworth? And how the hell was Derick going to find him, too?

“Seeing ’ow interested ye was in ’earing if I ever saw the man again, I set one of me grooms to follow ’im,” the barkeep said with a sly smile. He raised a beefy hand and flicked his fingers. A young lad shuffled over to the table, head bent. “William ’ere can take you right to ’im.”

Energy buzzed through Derick, as did a multitude of questions. “Excellent, but I’d rather pay a visit to this stranger alone.” If this man were mixed up in any way with treason and murder, Derick wasn’t about to put the groom at any more risk than the barkeep already had. He hoped the boy had been smart enough not to have been seen—not only for his own protection but so he hadn’t scared the man off. “Can you describe exactly where you followed him to?”

The boy nodded. “Yes, sir. He went into one of them caves, north of the creek. Not the big one, but the one what sort of looks like a keyhole. Do you know it?”

“Yes.” Derick drummed his fingers against the scarred tabletop in a slow rhythm, belying how quickly thoughts
flew through his mind. Hadn’t Emma’s first attempt at her equation pointed about there? Yes, he remembered making a joke about a cave-dwelling hermit living there for the past decade. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Though hermits were not unusual, they were typically well known to the estate owners and townsfolk—some even making their livelihood in such “hermitages.” Whoever this man was, he was no hermit.

But what if he was a killer, a traitor who’d used the cave as his home base when he was in the area? What if Emma had gotten that part right?

Derick leapt to his feet, dropping coins on the table—some for the owner, more for the boy. “With my thanks,” he said over his shoulder as he rushed to get his horse.

He briefly thought about getting Emma as well. But no, she was safely tucked away at Aveline Castle with his mother’s journals. He wouldn’t risk her any more than he would that young groom. After he’d interrogated this stranger would be soon enough to let Emma in on whatever he discovered.

Half an hour later, Derick tied his mount off about a quarter mile from the cave. He’d go the rest of the way on foot. He checked his pistol and tucked it away, just in case he needed it, then headed deeper into the woods.

He smelled the smoke first, a light wisp on the breeze, like that from a cook fire. It was soon followed by the aroma of roasting meat. He slowed his step, moved more quietly. As he got closer to the small clearing where the keyhole cave was situated, it was evident from the tamped-down undergrowth that at least one person had been passing here fairly regularly. He could now see tendrils of smoke rising from a small unattended fire just outside the mouth of the cave. A rough spit had been erected over the fire with what looked to be a large rabbit skewered on it.

Derick crouched low, hidden by a large oak, and waited for the stranger to show himself. Could this be
the man he was truly after? If so, it raised more questions than it answered, but that was nothing new. Things so often were more complicated than they seemed, particularly when it came to treason. His instincts told him he was close to uncovering the truth now, and the thrill of the hunt pumped through his veins as he waited for his quarry to show himself.

He didn’t have to wait long. Less than a minute passed before a man emerged from the mouth of the cave. A tallish man, though not overly so, a lean build, dark hair—just as the owner of the Swan and Stag had described. A wave of gray smoke from the cook fire obscured Derick’s view of his face, however, and by the time it cleared, the man had come around and now stood with his back to Derick. He crouched down to check his supper.

Derick took the opportunity to catch the stranger unaware. He pulled his pistol, hoping he wouldn’t need it but intending to be prepared for any eventuality.

“Stop what you are doing and place your hands where I can see them.”

The man tensed—Derick felt it as much as saw it—but did as he was ordered. When the man’s hands came into view, Derick noticed the man was older than he’d expected, knuckles more pronounced, skin more lined. But still strong enough to kill Farnsworth, he’d wager.

“Now, stand slowly and turn around.”

The stranger obeyed and Derick got his first look at the man’s face.

His heart kicked so violently, he nearly dropped his gun. It listed sideways in his grip, almost forgotten. His first thought was that there was no way he could have been prepared for this. His second was that he was staring.

Staring into eyes so familiar that he might as well be looking into a mirror.

“Hello, my son.”

D
erick’s grip on his pistol tightened, and he righted the weapon, aiming straight at the Frenchman’s heart. “It was you?”

Hardly the first thing he’d ever imagined saying upon finally meeting the man who’d sired him, but there it was. Of course, he’d never expected to meet the man under these circumstances.

Damnation. Could any person alive have ever been born of more duplicitous parents than he had been? Should he prick his finger right now, he wouldn’t be surprised if the blood that welled from the wound was as black as the ebony hair he and his sire had in common.

He couldn’t seem to stop staring at Charles Moreau. While he’d never met him, Derick knew his name well. During that last ugly confrontation he’d had with his mother, she’d gloated over how she’d insisted upon Charles as Derick’s middle name to honor her lover and how Scarsdale had never suspected, as Charles was as common an English name as it was French.

“It was me, what?” Moreau asked carefully. His English was very cultured, very natural—but why shouldn’t it be? The man had lived here as his mother’s secret
lover for more than a decade before Scarsdale had discovered them. Moreau still held his hands in the air and his eyes had not left the pistol Derick held on him. A perplexed frown formed between his eyebrows.

As the shock of seeing Moreau dimmed, Derick’s thinking cleared. Moreau clearly played some part in this. However, if the Frenchman had been his mother’s accomplice, why hadn’t he just left England when she killed herself? It made little sense for him to still be around…He had no reputation in England to protect.

Something was off. He’d best guard his words carefully and let Moreau do the talking so he could get to the truth.

Derick affected a casual shrug with the shoulder not attached to the hand that held his pistol. “Squatting on my land. I’d heard reports and came to investigate.”

“I see.” Yet one black brow winged high in clear disbelief. Derick wondered if he looked so arrogant when he made the same gesture, as he knew he did often. “And reports of a vagrant necessitate a pistol?”

Derick narrowed his eyes. “Yes. Now what in the hell are you doing in England, much less here?”

Moreau’s eyes narrowed in much the same way, then flicked to the pistol once more. He squared his shoulders. “Why? Are you planning on carrying out your English father’s threat?”

“What?” Derick frowned, and then understanding dawned. His mother had told him that when Scarsdale had uncovered the truth, he’d had Moreau severely beaten. Before he was sent back to France, Moreau had been warned that he’d be killed if he ever set foot on English soil again. Derick slowly lowered the pistol. “Of course not.”

The Frenchman gave one hard nod of his head, then slowly lowered his hands.
“Merci.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“You haven’t answered mine, either. Why the pistol?
Who did you really think might be out here?” he asked, suspicion clear in his voice.

“I told you why I’m here.”

Moreau snorted. “Fine. Keep your secrets. God knows you come by them honestly.” Moreau turned his back on Derick, crouching to turn the rabbit on the spit, so he didn’t see Derick flinch at that hard truth. “I thought maybe you were hunting the man that killed your mother, as I am.”

Killed my—
He couldn’t have heard Moreau correctly. Derick came around the fire so he could see the Frenchman’s face. “She killed herself.”

Moreau stood and raised his eyes to Derick’s. The stark grief in them made Derick wish to look away. Grief and a naked love that was hard to look upon, even all of these years later. Derick couldn’t breathe. If he’d felt as if he were looking in a mirror before, it was magnified now…only he saw how he would look in the future. Every time he thought of Emma.

“Vivienne would never do such a thing.”

Surely Moreau hadn’t come all the way from France upon learning of his mother’s death because he couldn’t believe she’d committed suicide. If he had, that was terribly sad, and Derick didn’t wish to be the one to have to convince him of the truth. But he would have to be. “Perhaps, not under normal circumstances,” Derick said gently, awkwardly. “But there are things you don’t know.”

Moreau threw a hand out in an effusive gesture of agitation, or perhaps denial. “There are things you don’t know, either.”

Yes, there were. About his mother, about Moreau, about why Moreau was here today. And he wanted to know them all. “Then why don’t you tell me?” he asked, not sure which answer he sought the most.

Moreau’s shoulders relaxed and he nodded. “
Oui.
I will tell you why I am here. Then you can help me avenge my Vivienne.” He removed the skewered rabbit from the fire. “Come, sit with me.”

Derick followed Moreau to the mouth of the cave, where a crude campsite was set just inside. He refused the man’s offer of roasted meat, but did sit on a log that had been pulled in to serve as a seat.

“Your mother, she wrote to me these many years we were kept apart. During wartime, the letters did not come so regularly, but they always came. I begged her, year after year, to come as well, to run away and join me in France. But Vivienne, she never would.”

“Why not?” Derick always had had the impression that she would have gone to France in a heartbeat if she were able.

“At first, it was because Scarsdale threatened to stop her family’s allowance if she tried to leave.”

Derick nodded. That made sense.

“But then,” Moreau went on, “even after her parents died and her sisters married, she still would not come.”

Derick could sense Moreau’s sadness, his confusion. Then the man lifted a shoulder and a bittersweet smile turned his lips.

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that your mother was spoiled. She’d never lived in anything less than a fine castle, and that was the one thing I couldn’t offer her. I’d given up everything to follow her to England when she was forced to marry Scarsdale, you see. We were so young. Stupid. But even if I hadn’t left everything behind to be with Vivienne, my family’s money and holdings were lost in the Terror. The only wealth I have now is what I have earned, and that was never enough for her. She had no wish to live in a small cottage, nor to do for herself.”

Moreau rose from his seat, and began to pace. “It was hard for me to understand. I didn’t care where I lived, as long as I could be with Vivienne. I would have come and lived in this
cave
”—he swung his arm in an agitated swipe—“risking my life if I were caught by Scarsdale, just to be with your mother.” Moreau let out a long,
pained sigh. “And I was very angry that she didn’t feel the same.”

Derick shook his head. This poor man, so besotted by a selfish woman who didn’t deserve such devotion. Not like Emma, who was so very worthy of love.