The English Heiress (16 page)

Stifling a cry of joy, Marot ran quickly through the house to the kitchens. As he went, it occurred to him that what he did was stupid. De Conyers might turn aside, go back to the woods, run and hide. He pushed that idea away. It was not possible. The meeting and his victory were ordained. That conviction sustained Marot when he came to the back door and saw no one. Although he knew he should remain inside the house, where his enemy could not see him and he would have the advantage of surprise, there was enough suspicion of his own sanity under Marot’s reiterated conviction of ordained fate to make it impossible to do that. Strangling his fears, he hurried along the path behind the house toward the clump of trees that shaded the stables.

The howling of the dog had disturbed Leonie more than she admitted. She had spoken the truth to Roger; she was not afraid. However, the voice of the little dog, a small, seemingly frail creature sent to her by her uncle all the way from England as a gift, brought back her whole easy, happy life before the revolution. The dog, named Fifi because it was the silliest, most useless name Leonie could think of, epitomized the old life—full of grace, intelligence that was rarely tested, love, and beauty. Fifi was a King Charles spaniel, exquisitely beautiful, with long, silky black-and-white fur, but she weighed no more than four kilos. As a puppy she had fit into Leonie’s hand.

Leonie remembered her practical mother, accustomed to hunting dogs and work dogs, staring at the tiny creature with amused bewilderment. But in the end they had all come to love Fifi. She was affectionate and very, very clever. She could be taught anything—to do tricks, play games, carry messages. Many times Leonie remembered her mother speaking with exasperation about Fifi’s size. Such a clever dog could have been extremely useful if it were larger, Marie said. It was a shame to breed such silly creatures. Still, it was Leonie’s pet and Marie did not deprive her daughter of any reasonable pleasure, not even such a foolish one.

Dead too, Leonie thought, tears rising to her eyes so that she was half blind. Although Fifi’s body was far sturdier than one would expect from so small an animal, it was inconceivable that the little bitch could survive alone. She had been hand-fed, cosseted, since the day she was born. Even if no one had killed her on purpose, because she was a symbol of the hated aristocracy, Fifi could neither hunt nor forage for herself, Leonie thought. But it was odd, very odd, that the howling had been so much like hers and the black-and-white mottling on the animal that had run out the woods… No, I will not think about anything so silly, Leonie decided, and she kept her eyes resolutely on the path directly in front of her, not permitting herself to look hopefully for another flash of black and white so that she could call, “Fifi, Fifi,” and again hope to hold that soft, wriggling bundle of joy.

Thus, Leonie did not see the shadow slipping along the trees, past the side of the stable. She was too fixed in her self-discipline to hear the indrawn breath and low curse Marot uttered when he realized the figure was that of a woman, not of Henry de Conyers. In the next moment he saw, in the low moonlight, that the woman’s hair was pale. Yet the stride was that of a young woman, not the stiff totter of a gray-haired crone. Blonde hair was a rarity in Saulieu. Marot’s heart leaped with joy. The only woman in the area he knew to have pale hair was de Conyers’ whelp. If she was here, so was her father!

As Marot reached this conclusion, Leonie drew abreast of him. He shoved the pistol he had been carrying back in his pocket, let her take a step or two more, jumped out and seized her from behind, one arm going around her throat and the other around her waist.

Chapter Nine

As soon as Leonie was a few steps clear of the grave, Roger turned his attention to filling it as quickly as he could. Reverence for the dead was a good thing, but care for the living was more essential. Roger was quite sure that if Henry de Conyers knew what was happening he would be far more anxious to be sure his daughter was protected then to have himself covered with earth with slow dignity. Fortunately, Roger thought as he threw and pushed earth into the grave, Leonie was walking very slowly. He should be able to catch up with her before she reached the house.

He had in fact, just thrown the last shovelful of earth on top of the mound when Leonie reached the edge of the maze. With a sigh of relief, he put the spade and mattock back in the shed, closed the door, and hurried around the chapel into the alley between the trees that led back to the house. He was more than halfway down it when he heard a single choked shriek. Before his mind had clearly comprehended what it meant, Roger was running desperately along the path. His body reacted to the signal of danger, although he had not yet thought of what to do when he arrived.

Indeed, his mind was still frantically asking Where? Where? when a fusillade of shrill barking drew him instinctively to the left toward the back of the house. In seconds he saw Leonie struggling in the grip of a man. Without thinking of the pistols he carried, Roger launched himself forward again, but before he could reach Leonie’s attacker, a small black-and-white animal charged from the trees beyond the stables, leaped high, and seized the man by the leg above the boot. Marot uttered a bellow of rage and pain and kicked out, but the gesture did not free him. Jaws locked, Fifi hung on as grimly as any bulldog, her turned-up snout permitting her to cling rather than leap and slash in the usual canine attack.

Marot roared again as his own jerk tore the flesh of his leg, since Fifi’s jaws would not yield. Unthinking, reacting only to his own pain, he released his hold on Leonie to strike at the dog. Instantly Leonie twisted away, hitting Marot as she went, and simultaneously Roger struck him in a wild, flying leap. Both men crashed to the ground, Roger on top, while the violent shock tore Fifi loose from her hold.

Spitting out flesh and cloth, Fifi rolled to her feet, growling, ready to attack again. She was brought up short by the beloved voice that went with the beloved scent of the goddess.

“No!” Leonie shrieked. “No, Fifi. Come!”

If Leonie had known that Fifi could well distinguish between Roger and Jean-Paul and would attack only Jean-Paul because his was the scent that her goddess had cried out against, she might have risked losing that precious remnant of her old life to help Roger. She feared however, that the tiny bitch would attack the wrong man and lose her own little life while bringing disaster on them all. Besides, what help could little Fifi be? For a full minute after her instinctive order to the dog, Leonie stood gasping and trembling. She had not seen the man who seized her, but he had asked her one question, where her father was, and she knew that voice. Never, never, would she forget the voice that taunted her father while despoiling her. In the single minute after her escape from his clutches, shock was submerged by hatred, and hatred by fear as Leonie saw Roger being forced back and over by Marot.

No! If she died for it, Marot would not hurt another person she loved. Leonie ran to the stable, grabbed a heavy spoke torn from a carriage wheel, and rushed back. In the few moments she had been gone, the tide of battle had turned. Roger’s initial advantage, owing to surprise and the force with which he had hit Marot, had not lasted long. Roger was no weakling, but he had had nearly nothing to eat for two days and he was tired already from burying Henry. Besides, Marot, convinced he was fighting the Devil himself in the person of Henry de Conyers, had the inhuman strength of the insane.

After his initial cries of pain when Fifi seized him, Marot had fought in silence, grabbing Roger by the throat and twisting. First Roger had struck at him, but Marot ignored one blow that split his lips like an overripe tomato and another that opened a bleeding gash below his eye. All his attention was on his own two hands, which were closing the air from Roger’s throat, and his legs, which were lifting his left side so that Roger was toppling off him to the right.

Aware that his blows were useless, Roger tried to force his hands between Marot’s arms to break the grip on his throat. At the same time he tried to brace himself on his right knee to maintain his superior position. But somehow, he could not seem to feel the ground, and his arms were soft and as limp as scalded celery stalks. Vaguely he noted through the roaring in his ears and the bursting sensation in his chest that the moon must have set very suddenly, because it was growing as dark as in the tunnel. Then he could feel himself falling, but was he falling into the dark inside himself or onto the ground?

As Leonie approached, Marot was just coming upright above Roger, his hands still tight on Roger’s throat. His face—with the blood black in the little moonlight that remained, the eyes glittering in insane triumph—was a grotesque mask. Roger’s hands clung to Marot’s wrists, but they were slowly opening as the last of his consciousness left him. His mouth gaped wide in a futile effort to find breath.

“No!” Leonie snarled softly, and she swung the spoke at Marot’s head.

The power of that blow was far beyond Leonie’s ordinary strength. She was beside herself with hate for the murderer of every good thing in her life. In fact, she was so blind with rage that she missed her aim. The spoke caught Marot at the base of the skull, and it snapped the neck, crushed the bone and tore the soft spinal cord right in two. Marot’s head snapped back into an impossible position, the mouth gaping open but upside down in a seeming surprise that was more ludicrous than dreadful. The convulsion of his death throes tore Marot’s hands from Roger’s throat, and his body fell away, off Roger, jerking and contracting in senseless spasm.

Leonie was spared the horror of that, owing her total concentration on Roger. Just as Marot released him, his hands had fallen limply. For one instant Leonie thought she had been too late, but then she heard the breath rattle into his abused throat and knelt beside him. Fifi approached, circling Marot’s now-still corpse, growling and then whimpering and curvetting her body, tail half between her legs, half wagging, hoping this time to be recognized. So many people, who in the past had always petted her and fed her, had driven her away with kicks and blows, that Fifi had feared to approach even this most beloved scent.

Roger was breathing in deep, painful gasps, which reassured Leonie enough to permit her to turn her head from him to the dog. “Hush, Fifi,” she whispered, “hush. Come here.”

The whimpering stilled. Fifi knew what “hush” meant. Trembling, crouching close to the ground, the spaniel approached and achieved heaven. A gentle hand patted her head, gathered her close. Fifi, silent as she had been ordered, vibrated with joy.

Holding the little bitch close, with Roger beginning to stir, Leonie was suddenly, senselessly happy. An enormous burden seemed to have lifted from her soul. She could have laughed aloud for joy. She had not forgotten that her family was all gone, but Marot, he who had destroyed them, was dead also—a debt paid in full! Without realizing she was doing it, Leonie closed the ledger that recorded her bitterness and hate. She was well aware that her troubles were not over, that hunger and cold and danger were still to be endured, but with Roger beside her, and a big pot of gold at the end the rainbow, she was no longer afraid.

“Run. Hide.”

The cracked whisper drew Leonie’s eyes to Roger. Sense had returned to him and he was trying to lift himself away from her so that she could escape to safety.

“There is no one to run from,” Leonie assured him softly, helping him to sit up. “He only cried out twice, and that was a long time ago. If others were with him and had heard, they would have come already, but there has not been a sound.” She looked down, released the little dog. “Who hides, Fifi? Who hides?”

That was a familiar command. Leonie and François had often played a form of hide and seek with the little dog, one holding her while the other hid. She would then search out the concealed one. Later the game had been expanded to warn Leonie of unwelcome visitors. In the year or two preceding the disruption of her life, Leonie had been plagued by suitors who were not to her taste, and Fifi had been taught to warn Leonie when one of them was about. Delighted at the renewal of a familiar task, Fifi darted away.

Roger opened his mouth to protest, to ask where the attacker had gone and why he had not finished killing him, but only a croak came out. Upright now, he had seen the dark form only a foot away. Leonie drew her eyes from the shadows where Fifi had disappeared and saw where Roger was looking.

“Who?” he got out over the pain of his bruised larynx.

“Marot,” Leonie replied. “That was Marot, the man who…” Her voice wavered but then grew firm. “Who raped me in front of my father. I killed him.”

Roger croaked again, which was about all he would have been able to do even if he had not nearly been choked to death. He did not know which shocked him more, what had been done to Leonie or what she had been able to do. Nor did he know whether he was appalled by the relative calm of her voice or proud of it. Roger knew women of every type—really stupid, helpless, fluttering creatures who became paralyzed with fear when asked to do the simplest things without the support of their menfolk; women who pretended helplessness to trap men but whose minds were as hard and cruel as a steel trap; fine woman with brains and strength and courage, like his stepmother and Lady Alice—but all those women had been lapped in luxury and care. Roger had never dreamed a woman could endure terror, physical deprivation, the loss of all those she loved and leaned on and still remain sane—not to mention calm and capable of reacting as Leonie did.

He stared at her and she looked back quietly, then questioningly as she recognized his astonished bewilderment. “What is it?” she asked.

“Are—are you all right?” Roger croaked.

“Yes. Oh yes,” Leonie began, and then she realized there was more to Roger’s questions than a need for reassurance that she had not been physically hurt. “Oh, yes,” she repeated. “It’s all over now. I will still miss Mama and Papa and François, but they can rest in peace. And now I am free to go to England and build a new life.”

Painfully, Roger got to his feet. His knees were still wobbly, and Leonie pulled his arm over her shoulder. From the side of the house, a black-and-white streak sprang forward, growling.

“No!” Leonie commanded, “Here, Fifi. Come here.” The dog obeyed. “This is Roger,” she said. “Friend, Fifi. Roger, friend.” To Roger she said, “It is my little dog. I do not know how she survived, but she is here. She bit Marot so he had to let me go.”

The bitch had stopped stock-still at Leonie’s command, the growls dying away. Roger knelt shakily on one knee and extended a hand slowly. Fifi sniffed the fingers, found a strange male odor—not the scent that had made the goddess cry out with fear—and mixed with the male scent, that of the beloved. Then tentatively, the tail lifted a little, gave a timid, halfhearted wag. Roger reached gently upward, softly caressed the head, stroked the long ears. Up came the tail, wagging furiously as the body twisted sideways. Fifi wanted to love everyone. Far more than hunger and cold, she had suffered from loneliness, from the loss of objects on which to lavish her boundless affection.

Roger gave her another pat, slightly rougher, and whispered, “Good girl. Good Fifi.”

Even through the roughness his bruised larynx gave to his voice, Leonie could hear the distaste with which Roger pronounced the name, and she laughed softly and explained how poor Fifi had come to be called something so ridiculous. Had Roger been able to speak, he would have indignantly pointed out the uses of the King Charles spaniel, a breed with which he was quite familiar, but the pain in his throat warned him that he had better save his efforts for something more practical. Their luck had been phenomenal so far. They had better not push it further.

Originally he had hoped to be able to get his horse and carriage and leave immediately after laying Henry to rest, but that was not possible. He doubted he would have the strength to move the debris with which he had loaded his carriage or to drag it out of the stable. He was barely able to keep to his feet. Besides, they needed time to look in the strong room and hide Marot’s body. If they could have left at once, they could have let it lie where it was. If they had to remain, it would be most unwise to betray the fact that someone had killed Marot on the château grounds.

Roger could have wept with weariness and weakness and pain. His hands were blistered raw and his shoulders ached from wielding pick and shovel. His throat was on fire and he was bruised from the fight with Marot. Hunger gnawed at him and drained his energy. There was nothing he wanted so much as to lie down for a while, but he did not dare stop and rest for fear he would be unable to continue at all. He stared at Marot helplessly, trying to gather the energy to lift the body to his shoulders so that he could conceal it.

“What is wrong?” Leonie asked anxiously. She could not see the expression on Roger’s face because the moon had set and it was too dark, but she could sense his tension.

“Have to hide him,” Roger mumbled and staggered forward a step.

“You cannot carry him yourself,” Leonie said. Roger shrugged angrily. “Wait,” she urged. “I can bring a plank or a wheel from the stable and we can carry him between us on that.”