The Return of the Prodigal (23 page)

But this time she had been too quick for him, picking up her skirts and running back to the caravan, leaving him to wonder what she was running from now, her father…or him.

“J
ASPER
’
S BEEN WANTIN
’ to tell you he’s that sorry, Miss Lisette, tyin’ you up and all.”

Lisette looked across the table to the big man, who was peering at her worriedly. “Oh, Jasper, that’s all right. Were you thinking I was angry with you? I understood. It’s you who should be angry with me, for cutting myself loose, going to the manor house. I put us all in danger.”

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “You did do that, yes, Miss Lisette. The Lieutenant, he was fair to out of his mind, findin’ you gone.”

Lisette nodded. “He was angry.”

“No, not so you could notice. Scared? Yes, that’s it. Jasper thinks he was scared. Him with but the one arm and all, wonderin’ if he could be any use. But Jasper never saw a man so hot to save his lady.”

“I’m not his lady, Jasper,” Lisette said, watching as Rian spoke with a tall, bearded man at the small serving bar of the waterside inn. “He…he feels a responsibility for me.”

“That what you call it, Miss Lisette? Jasper’s only a plain soldier, a simple man. But we call it love.”

Tears immediately stung at her eyes, but she blinked them away. Rian may have spoken of marriage, but he had never spoken of love. No, he felt responsible for her, no more. Responsible for taking her virginity, even though she’d offered it to him. “It’s many things, Jasper. But I don’t know that any of those things could be called love. Ah, here he comes. And he’s smiling. He must have been able to hire a boat.”

“We leave with the tide. A small boat, but seaworthy,” Rian told them, sitting down in the only vacant chair at the rude table. He smiled at Lisette. “How do you go aboard ship, my lady? Walking, or will Jasper carry you?”

She lowered her eyes to the tabletop. “I said I would go, Rian Becket. There is no reason to
leer
at me. I want to apologize to your father, to your family, for what my family has done to them all. It’s only right. After that, I will leave. There must be convents in England.”

“Dozens, I’m sure. And I don’t care what you try to tell yourself, as long as you get on the boat,” Rian said, drinking from the tankard Jasper had provided for him. “We’ll save the idea of you leaving for an argument to enjoy at some other time. Ready? We still have to fetch the sleeping Thibaud. What do you think of tying a bow around his neck, before I present him to Ainsley?”

Lisette walked beside him, back out into the street. “You do know that you’re very annoying, Rian Becket, don’t you? Entirely too pleased with yourself.”

“I shouldn’t even be alive, Lisette,” he told her, taking a deep breath of the heady air of the Channel. “And I return to my family with news of Edmund Beales, and a sure way to catch him, now that we know he’s planning a return to London.
Pleased
does not really begin to explain how I feel.”

“He is my father, Rian.”

He sobered. “I’m sorry, Lisette. I keep forgetting.”

“I don’t,” she said quietly.

“Jesus. I’m sorry, Lisette. Again. I can’t think of him as your father, or Nathaniel Beatty, or the
Comte
Beltrane, but only as Edmund Beales.”

“I was going to betray you, you know,” Lisette told him as they walked back the way they had come, to where the caravan was now sitting outside a blacksmith shop, as Jasper had decided to give the thing, its contents and Gog and Magog to a blacksmith, as he considered smithys to be exceptional people, by and large.

“Lisette, stop. For the love of God, what’s past is past.”

“Oh? And what happened on this island where you lived, Rian Becket? Is that all in the past as well? You’ll go back to Thibaud now, cut him loose, and tell him you forgive him?”

“You know what I mean, Lisette. You didn’t know what you were doing. Edmund Beales, Thibaud…? They did.”

“But I did, Rian, I did know what I was doing.” She stopped on the flagway, pulling up the hem of her gown. “Look! Look at what I knew.” She ripped at the hem and then poured out the gold coins, the pair of
gads
into her hand.

“What the hell is that?
Two
of them?”

“The coins,” she said rapidly, “they were for my return after I slipped away from Becket Hall, to return to my
papa
and tell him where you were. And…and these horrible things? One is yours, which I took from you when you were so ill. The other Loringa gave me, to protect me from your Odette, she said. So I
knew,
Rian Becket. I knew, even as Loringa and my
papa
could still only guess, that you were a part of the people who had supposedly murdered my mother. But I wanted the revenge for myself. I
am
my
papa
’s daughter, his blood.”

Rian shook his head, backing up a step. “No, I don’t believe that. You very deliberately assisted me in eluding Thibaud.”

“So that I could see this Becket Hall for myself, yes.”

“Because, Lisette, you were no longer sure the stories Loringa told you were true,” he said. “Correct?”

Now he was confusing her. “Yes, that’s true. I suppose. But…but when you told me a story I’d already heard, except to say that it had all happened to your family, not to mine, I kept silent. I didn’t tell you what I knew. I…I let you return to the manor house still not sure what you would find there, who you would find there. I didn’t tell you about the hideous fangs, about Loringa.”

“I’ll admit to feeling that lack, as I thought for a moment that I was looking at Odette. But, Lisette, you were coming to terms with an almost impossible conclusion—that your own father was a murderer.”

“Thibaud told me about Huette,” she said quietly. “When I was alone with him in the caravan yesterday. He tells me many things, as he tries to buy his way in to Heaven with good deeds. I was such a fool.”

Rian looked as if he was going to say something else but then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her into an alleyway, Jasper immediately taking up a position at the mouth of it, his arms crossed, his expression enough to dissuade any passersby from indulging their curiosity.

“Rian, what are you—”

He brought his mouth down against hers, hard, pulling her against his chest, not letting her go even as she struggled to be free.

But she didn’t struggle for long. It felt so good to be held, so good to hold on, hold on tight, to the one solid thing that remained in her life.

“Oh, Rian,” she said into his collar once he’d let her go, to press kisses against her hair, her forehead. “I don’t know…I don’t know who I am,
why
I am…whether I’m on my head or on my heels.”

“You’re Lisette,” he breathed against her ear. “You’re the one who saved me, gave me a reason to fight, to live.”

She sniffed, her stupid nose beginning to run, which never happened in the novels the fine French wives brought with them to the convent. “That’s…that’s very romantical, Rian Becket.”

“I’m a very romantical man,” he told her, and she could hear the amusement in his voice.

“Oh, Rian,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his jacket. “That’s the problem. You don’t really even know me.”

He put his hand beneath her chin, tilted her face up to him. “You’re right, Lisette. I don’t really know you. You don’t really know me. But we’ll fix that, all right? Once we’re at Becket Hall, and my family knows about Edmund Beales—not your father, Lisette, never your father in more than deed—you and I, we’ll get to know each other.”

He smiled, and her stomach did a small flip inside her. “We will?”

“Yes, we will. How would you like to be courted, Miss Lisette? I’m already thinking of an ode to your smile, which, by the by, I would greatly appreciate seeing more often.”

So she smiled. “And will we take long walks?” she asked him, slipping her hand into his as they retraced their steps to the flagway. “And you’ll sit at my feet in a flowery bower, and read poetry to me?”

“My very own poetry, that I’ve never shown to anyone,” he told her as they fell into step, Jasper walking behind them, his grin wide and probably almost as frightening as his frowns to anyone not accustomed to seeing this giant of a man. “And you’ll tell me each line is a miracle, even if you hate it.”

“Yes, I will,” Lisette promised as they walked into the small, dirt-packed yard of the blacksmith shop. “I mean…that is…I’m sure every line
is
a miracle.”

Rian laughed at her and after a moment she joined in, still feeling the burden of her parentage, her own lies, lying on her heart. But, thank God, a burden not quite so heavy as before. Although, she thought with an inward sigh, she had still to meet Rian’s family, and those who had survived the attack on the island so many years ago.

What would they think of her? How would they look at her? Perhaps the romantical, forgiving Rian would be her only friend in Romney Marsh. If so, although it would break her heart, she would have no choice but to leave. Rian had fought enough battles for her….

“Lieutenant!”

Lisette and Rian ran to the back of the caravan, where Jasper held the door open, pointing to the dimness inside.

“What is it, Jasper?” Rian asked, but Lisette was sure he already knew, just as she already knew. Thibaud had escaped.

Lisette turned in a quick circle, believing she could already feel a knife blade sinking between her shoulders.

“He’s long gone, Lisette,” Rian said, kicking at the rear wheel in disgust. “Damn it! How did this happen? We gave him the laudanum.”

“Jasper smells vomit, sir,” Jasper said, slamming the door on the caravan. “Must have swallowed it down as Jasper told him to, then somehow brought it back for another airin’ once Jasper was gone off with you to the inn. And all those weapons in there, too. Jasper’s that sorry.”

“It’s all right, Jasper,” Lisette said, shivering in the noon sunlight. “He…Thibaud doesn’t have any money,” she said, searching for something encouraging to say.

“He had his pick of the weapons in there,” Rian said, kicking the wheel one more time. “He could either sell them, or use one to steal what he needs. But it’s a long way to Paris.”

Lisette nodded, understanding. With the manor house burned down, surely her father had gone directly to Paris, to heal the wound she’d inflicted on him, to gather all of his crew, as he called them, to him. “But Thibaud
knows,
Rian. He heard us talking. He knows you live at Becket Hall. He knows Becket Hall is located somewhere in Romney Marsh. He’s going to tell my father. Oh, God, Rian, what are you going to do?”

He pulled open the door to the caravan once more and retrieved the small portmanteau, stood back as Jasper gathered up his own meager belongings and then went inside the smithy to tell the smith that everything else was his, as long as he hid the caravan, because someone might come asking questions the man couldn’t answer, and not be happy with that answer.

“Rian?” Lisette repeated, watching him as he struggled into his jacket, sure that this was not the time to offer to assist him.

“Chasing after him would be fruitless, Lisette, and we don’t have the time. We sail on the tide, hie ourselves to Becket Hall and warn everyone. We’ve waited years, but we won’t have to wait much longer. Edmund Beales will take his time, measure his chances, but he will come to us, knowing the man he knew as Geoff Baskin will be waiting for him. We just have to be ready.”

“A fight to the death between long-ago friends, now bitter enemies,” Lisette said quietly, and for once didn’t think either Rian or herself to be overly romantical.

“Yes, to the death. It has been a long time coming, Lisette. Thibaud’s escape might even be a blessing, in some ways. To have him come to us.”

“To your home? Oh, Rian, how can that be? A place where your women and children live? That’s so dangerous.”

His smile was small, but definitely amused. “Say that again once you’ve seen Becket Hall, Lisette, and met the people who live there. Come on—Jasper, you’re ready? This adventure isn’t over yet, not by a long chalk. In fact, in many ways, it has only just begun.”

R
IAN KEPT SNEAKING
looks at Lisette as the coach moved along the last miles to Becket Hall.

He’d explained that Romney Marsh was beautiful, in its own way. Vast, mostly flat, yes, but with lights, colors, that amazed.

She kept insisting he had transported her to an alien world.

But as the road turned toward the sea, she actually dropped the side window and stuck her head out, taking in deep breaths of air, marveling at the gulls that circled, screeching, at the sight of the dark water in the fading light that cast an eerie glow over the waving grasses and occasional low hills.

“I like this, Rian Becket,” she told him, pulling her head back inside the coach, adjusting the bonnet he had purchased for her in Folkestone, along with a new gown to replace the bedraggled thing she’d slept in for days. He wanted her to make a good first impression on his family, to not feel like the wet cat he had dragged home, which was how she’d described herself as they’d walked off the ship in Folkestone in the middle of a downpour.

“You do? I had begun to think you disliked England, possibly just on general principals.”

“No, I wouldn’t do that. I am English, remember?” she teased, smiling at him for the first time in hours. But the smile didn’t last. “I am English because my father is English. Oh, Rian Becket, how could you have brought me here? This is going to be dreadful. They’re going to hate me. If I were your family, I’d hate me.”

“Not my family, Lisette. They aren’t going to judge you. I will warn you that my father’s good friend, Jacko, the one I’ve already told you about, might be a bit more difficult, as well as some in the village. Those that lost their loved ones that day. But they follow where Ainsley leads, and I know he will welcome you without reservations once I tell him what happened at the manor house.”

“That I attempted to kill my own father?”

“No, Lisette. That you saved my life,” he told her, taking her hand in his and lifting it to his lips. Her fingers were like ice, the cold of fear. “And Jasper, here?” he added, attempting some levity. “For him they’ll possibly put on a parade. Would you like that, Jasper, being led down the main street in Becket Village on two men’s shoulders, women throwing flowers at you?”

“Only two men, sir?” Jasper grinned. “Best be two very big men.”

The carriage turned once more, and Rian knew that now Lisette would have her first view of Becket Hall. He pointed to the open window and watched her face as she saw his home coming into view.

“Why…it’s huge!” Lisette poked her head out the window once more, heedless that her bonnet was in danger of being blown from her head in the stiff breeze off the Channel. “And, oh, so very dark and ugly.”

Rian threw back his head, laughing at her words, the shocked expression on her face as she looked at him, clearly embarrassed to have spoken so frankly. “It wasn’t constructed with beauty in mind, no,” he told her. “But you’ll be glad of those thick stone walls when the winter storms come howling out of the Channel. And in the spring? It’s better then, too. But one thing Becket Hall never is, Lisette, is vulnerable. Now look over there, before we pass by. See the steeple? Ainsley ordered a new church for Becket Village this past year, but it’s the only building tall enough to be seen over the hills and shrubs. Tomorrow, if it’s fine, we’ll walk over there, and Ollie will fit you for new shoes. Would you like that?”

“Can…can Jasper come with us?” she asked him.

“To be fitted for new boots? Certainly.”

“No, although I’m sure Jasper would like new boots. To protect me. No one would dare spit on me if Jasper is with me.”

Jasper sat up very straight, smiling at Rian. “No one does much of anything when Jasper’s about, Miss Lisette. Don’t you worry none.”

“Would you two kindly stop acting as if I’m bringing you to some horrible place filled with equally horrible people? This is my home, and now your home as well, both of you.”

“Oh, Rian Becket,” Lisette said on a sigh, “you are so romantical. It is a wonder this Papa Ainsley of yours allowed you out without a keeper.”

Rian gave it up as a bad job, and began preparing himself for the welcome he would receive from his shocked family as he came back from the dead. And he silently placed a wager with himself as to who would first mention his left arm. Jacko, he’d decided. Who else but Jacko…

L
ISETTE WAS THE LAST
to descend from the coach, Jasper lifting her at the waist and depositing her gently on the gravel drive in front of the imposing structure that struck terror into her heart, as it could soon be her prison.

The massive door opened and a rather scrawny fellow poked his head out, looking down the steps at the new arrivals. Lisette watched as the man’s eyes went wide, his mouth even wider, and then jumped as he let out a scream that should rightfully wake the dead. Leaving the door open behind him, he disappeared into the house, although Lisette could still hear him.

“It’s Rian! Sweet Jesus Christ Almighty—it’s Rian! Everybody—
it’s Rian come home to us!

“Jacob Whiting,” Rian said, grinning like a child in his obvious excitement. “I suggest you both prepare yourselves to be overrun.”

Moments later, as Lisette wondered why Rian had worried so over his return to his family, the door was thrown open all the way and a near horde began to descend on them.

A handsome, dark-haired man picked Rian up at the waist and spun him around, then planted him on the ground once more, took Rian’s head in his hands and gave him a kiss right on his mouth.

“Spence! Jesus God, man, do you have to always be so damn Spanish?” Rian said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth before the man named Spence grabbed him again, gave him another hug.

“Rian!”

Lisette looked to the steps crowded with people of both sexes, all of whom had suddenly gone silent as they pushed themselves to either end of the steps, to make way for the tall, dark-haired man dressed all in black.

The man moved slowly, as if not sure he remembered how to walk, giving Lisette time to really look at him. What a commanding figure! He was slim, and quite straight, his black-as-night hair a becoming silver at the temples, his features refined, aristocratic. His eyes so very bright, so very clear, even as a single tear made its way down his cheek.

Ainsley Becket. The patriarch of the Becket clan. He could be no other.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps, and looked at Rian. Just looked at him.

“Papa,” Rian said as the silence stretched, a silence filled with pain, with hope, with unimaginable sorrow being slowly drained away, to be replaced by a joy so powerful it was as if the gray, dreary day had just been flooded with sunlight.

“Rian,” Ainsley Becket said quietly, as on the steps, a beautiful red-haired woman began to weep softly, then turned on her heels and ran back into the house. “My boy…my boy’s come home.”

Lisette could barely see, her eyes were so clouded with tears, but she, at least, knew this tension could not go on much longer without tearing everyone into tiny little pieces. So she put her hand to Rian’s back, and gave him a none too gentle shove toward his father. “Don’t stand there like a stone, Rian Becket. Kiss your
papa,
and ask for his blessing.”

Behind her, the man called Spence laughed, and the too intense moment was behind them. Rian stepped into his father’s outstretched arms and everyone began to cheer, to laugh, to eventually take their turns hugging Rian, kissing him, turning him around and around like a child’s top as each person, from brother, to sister, to kitchen maid, to male servant, all bid him welcome.

Then there were more, more than one hundred men and women of all ages running across the open field from the village, led by a grinning Jacob Whiting and followed by both shouting children and wildly barking dogs. In a moment, yet another round of back-slapping and cheers and tears enveloped Rian, pulled him away from her, so that she and Jasper were left standing alone, very much outside the celebration.

“Worth everythin’, getting’ the Lieutenant back here safe. Jasper’s not never seen nothin’ like this, Miss Lisette,” Jasper said, wiping at his own streaming eyes. “Ain’t never goin’ to forget it, neither.”

“No, nor will I, Jasper. What a silly man, to ever have dreaded coming back here, to worry about his arm, his hand. Dear Lord, Jasper, I don’t think any of them has even noticed.”

“I have,” a deep voice said from behind her, and Lisette turned to look at a large man, older than Jasper by a good twenty years or more, and not quite so huge or tall. A man who looked as if he might once have been a most formidable sight, but who had now begun to run to softness, to fat. But that didn’t matter, because the man’s eyes were still young, very much alive, and completely frightening. Almost as frightening as his friendly, fatherly smile. “Who are you?”

Lisette dropped into a slight curtsy, but otherwise did not give the man an inch, for this had to be Jacko, and Rian had warned her to never show fear to Jacko, as she would not show fear to a strange dog come sniffing at her skirts. “I am Lisette, Mr. Jacko,” she said, “and this is Jasper. Rian invited us here to meet his family.”

“And he told you about me?” Jacko said, his smile making him appear as cuddly as a child’s doll, until she looked once more into his dark eyes. “Interesting, that. Come inside, both of you. The Cap’n will have questions, once he’s done being too happy to think of them.”

Lisette looked toward the knot of people standing at least five deep around Rian, and knew he had, for the moment, forgotten her. She didn’t mind. The reckoning would come soon enough, when Ainsley Becket and the frightening man now holding on to her elbow and guiding her up the steps to the open door found out who she was, that she was the daughter of their old enemy.

“Lisette! Lisette, wait!”

She turned on the stone landing, looked down at Rian, who was even now pushing his way through all the people, making his way toward the steps. “It’s all right, Rian,” she called to him, but he kept coming, his father now following in his wake as most of the people stepped back. Three other men followed, as well as a young girl with a head of remarkable honey-colored curls.

“Let her go, Jacko,” Rian ordered as he bounded up the steps.

“Oh, the pup gives orders now,” Jacko said, releasing his grip, so that Lisette roughly pulled her arm free. “Where you been, boy? The Cap’n went half out of his mind, hearing you were dead. Don’t look too dead to me. Where you been? Who’d you drag home with you, hmm?”

“That will be enough, Jacko, thank you,” Ainsley Becket said, stepping past the man and putting out his arm in a graceful gesture, as if inviting Lisette and Jasper into his home. “The drawing room?”

“Yes, sir,” Rian said, guiding Lisette inside a huge foyer furnished so grandly that it made her father’s manor house, even his mansion in Paris, seem both tawdry and much too small. Rian had been right, her father had not exactly left Ainsley Becket penniless.

And, if the foyer hadn’t been enough to impress her, the enormous drawing room took care of that lack. She could spend hours here, just looking at the decorations on the walls, the huge cabinet filled with pieces of jade, the figurines, the…oh, sweet Jesus, the immense, life-size portrait hanging over the mantel.

“Isabella Baskin,” she whispered, unable to move as she looked at the beautiful, smiling face, the mass of dark curls, the remarkable, colorful gown.

“Shh,” Rian warned her, leading her to one of the couches and pushing her down into it. “I’ll talk, you sit here and say nothing.”

She nodded, more than willing to obey him for the moment, as others filed into the room, taking up seats, sitting on the arms of chairs, all of them now looking at her, at Jasper, questions in their eyes.

Then the girl, the young woman actually, entered the room, and came to sit down beside Lisette, smiling at her. “I’ll sit with you. Just so you’re not surrounded by all these men,” the girl said. “Mariah will be down again shortly. She went upstairs to tell Elly it’s true, that Rian’s home.”

Lisette looked up at the portrait, then again at the girl. The smile, it was the same. The hair was lighter, but equally plentiful, and full of curl. She was young, no more than seventeen or eighteen, but she was already heartbreakingly pretty. In another few years, she would be heart-stoppingly beautiful.

“You…you’re Cassandra, aren’t you?” Lisette asked quietly. “You’re who I believed I was. I’m so sorry….”

Rian put his hand on her shoulder as Callie looked up at him in understandable confusion. “All in good time, Callie, I promise.” Then he walked over to his father, who was standing in the middle of the room, an island of calm. “Papa, I would like to introduce to you my friends, Lisette and Jasper. They saved my life. Several times over, actually. I owe them both everything, and more.”

Ainsley shook Jasper’s hand, patted his thick shoulder, then approached Lisette and she put out her hand. But, instead of taking it in his own, shaking it or even kissing it, he put both hands on her shoulders, drew her to her feet and embraced her, kissed each of her cheeks, spoke to her in flawless French. “Thank you, Lisette. Thank you for giving my son back to us. Anything you want, anything, you’ve only to ask.”

“I…I want nothing, sir,” she replied quietly in the same language. “And you may wish to rethink your generous offer once Rian has told you who I really am.”

“Really?” Ainsley said, lifting one well-sculpted eyebrow as he reverted once more to English. “Rian?” he asked, not taking his eyes off Lisette. “Why don’t you continue with the introductions, hmm?”

Rian shot her a dark look she ignored, and then Lisette and Jasper were being introduced to Spencer Becket, Courtland Becket, Jack Eastwood, Callie and Jacko. “Where’s Fanny?” he then asked. “Is she where I hope she is?”

“Jacob Whiting is already riding to Brede’s country seat, to fetch the two of them,” the bearded man, Courtland, told Rian. “Poor bastard, he’s besotted by his new wife. Do you mind, Rian?”

Rian shook his head. “No. I saw it in Brussels, the way he looked at her, the way she was always so out of patience with him, driving him to distraction. I’m anxious to congratulate him, offer my condolences.”