The Return of the Prodigal (24 page)

Court frowned. “But…but you gave him your blessing, Rian. Hell, you all but ordered him to take care of her, before they left you to…before they left you out there.”

Lisette got to her feet as Rian put a hand to his head, seemed to stagger slightly. She slipped her arm about his waist, to hold him steady. Good God, couldn’t these people see he was injured? His arm, the still-fresh graze to the side of his head. The exhaustion so evident on his face?

“I did what, Court?”

“Here, sit down, you foolish man,” Lisette ordered, glaring at Courtland Becket. “You, get your brother a glass of wine, something to eat. Shame on you, all of you. Have you no eyes in your heads?”

“Lisette, for the love of God…” Rian said even as he subsided onto the couch.

“She’s right. Out, everyone, if you please,” Ainsley said quietly, and the room quickly cleared, except for Jacko, who remained standing, his arms across his generous stomach, glaring at Lisette and Jasper, whose expression said without words that he’d wait for the small army that would be needed to move him an inch from where he stood. “Jacko, you too, please.”

“There’s something wrong here, Cap’n,” Jacko said, still staring at Lisette. “The cat amongst the pigeons, Cap’n, remember us saying that might be one way he’d do it?”

Callie raced back into the drawing room, carrying a plate of cakes, and handed it to Lisette before winking at her and running out again. The girl closed the double doors as she left, but Lisette was fairly certain none of the Beckets had moved more than a few prudent feet away from those closed doors.

Ainsley poured a single glass of wine at the drinks table and handed the glass to Rian, who was frowning as he stared at the carpet at his feet. “All right, Jacko, I take your point. You may stay. But that’s all. If you have arguments, I’ll listen to them later.”

There was movement at the doorway to the foyer, and Lisette gasped as a tall, black-as-night woman pushed back one of the doors and entered the room. “Loringa,” she said before she could stop herself.

But of course it was not Loringa. The woman was Odette, Loringa’s twin. Good, for Loringa’s evil.

Odette walked over to Rian, placed one gnarled hand on his head. “All blessings to the Virgin, to whom I prayed so hard for you. And she sent you two angels to bring you safely home.”

“Odette,” Rian said, smiling up at her. “You have no idea how many questions I have for you.”

“You saw her, yes,” the old woman said, nodding her head. “She still lives. I still feel her. Her hatred, her rage. Later, we will talk,” she said, turning to Lisette. “I wish to hear all about my sister, my twin. Just as everyone wishes to hear about your
papa,
the monster Beales.”

“Oh, shit…so much for careful explanations,” Rian said, collapsing against the cushions.

Jacko swore, slapped his fists hard against his thighs. “I knew it! Cap’n, I knew something was shifty here. After what Brede told us about that day? Edmund’s whelp? The boy brings that bastard’s whelp here? Better he died, much as I don’t want to say that.”

Jasper came around the couch in an instant, not stopping until he stood bare inches from Jacko, glaring down at him, his massive hands drawn up into fists. “Miss Lisette is Jasper’s friend, like the Lieutenant here. You got yourself a problem with her, old man, then you got yourself a problem with Jasper, too. And Jasper, he’s thinkin’ you mayhap don’t want to have yourself a problem with him.”

“Could you possibly faint, or something, Lisette?” Rian whispered to her as he wearily pushed himself to his feet. “It would be really helpful, I think, before Jasper does something I’ll later be forced to regret.”

Lisette agreed. A quite romantical yet practical solution, at least for the moment. She lifted the back of her hand to her forehead, sighed loudly, rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling and tipped herself sideways on the cushions, caught halfway between relief at being out of this horrible conversation and an insane, truly uncalled-for urge to giggle.

T
HE EXPLANATIONS
had been difficult, taking many hours over several days, as just when Rian thought Ainsley was done with his inquires, he’d come to him with another one.

Then there was Odette, hungry for any and all information about her twin. Lisette had walked a fine line there, bless her, between sympathy for Odette, who seemed to take responsibility for her sister’s evil ways, and her own rather intense hatred for Loringa.

But, slowly, they had been questioned out, talked out. And Jasper may not have gotten his parade, but he was quite grandly toasted into happy inebriation at The Last Voyage, and then carried back to Becket Hall on the shoulders of five sweating, groaning men.

Rian had sat with his sister Elly, who was confined to her bed with a precarious pregnancy, so that Jack Eastwood had made Rian promise a half-dozen times to not say anything that might upset his wife. She’d cried over his injured arm, but then told him that if there was ever a man who could conquer the world with only one arm, it was her brave brother Rian.

And then there was Fanny. God help him, there was always Fanny.

She’d ridden with her husband to Becket Hall, arriving in the middle of that first night, banging down his bedchamber door, throwing herself into his bed and kissing him, pummeling him for staying away so long, and then kissing him again, even as she called for Brede to come into the room, join them.

“Fanny, you’re in my bed,” Rian had reminded her as he managed to prop himself up against the pillows, as there had once been a time when Fanny believed herself to be in love with him, and Brede knew it.

But the Earl of Brede had only sat down on the side of the bed, admonished Fanny to stop drowning her brother with her tears, and then told him what he wanted to know—about how he had seen Rian, gravely wounded, and armed him with a pistol before leaving him, to take Fanny back to Wellington’s headquarters.

“Yes, I remembered most of that earlier, actually,” Rian had told him. “We did the right thing, Valentine, both of us. A difficult thing, but the right thing. You told me we’d won the battle, and I prepared myself to die a storybook hero. Quite a day, all in all. Although I will apologize for saddling you with this incorrigible brat.”

“Wretch,” Fanny had said, lying down beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I love you so, Rian. Brede? Don’t we love him so?”

“We’re mad about him, my darling, yes,” Brede had drawled, winking at Rian.

Ah, God, he was home. Finally, blessedly, wildly, insanely
home.

In a few days Morgan and Ethan would join them, and then Chance and Julia. All of the family together again, all to celebrate the return of the prodigal, as Lisette persisted in saying.

All of the family together again, to hear everything about Edmund Beales, to make plans, to prepare for the inevitable, to do all their possible to ensure that inevitable ended in success, and a new, lasting peace for all of the Becket family.

“You’re very quiet,” Lisette said as they stood together on the shingle beach, looking out at the Channel. “I suppose we’re both rather talked out, yes? Even Jasper, who is so happy in his new home that is a long, long way from Shrewsbury, he tells me. Rian?”

“Hmm,” he said, wondering why he had once thought leaving Becket Hall so important, believed it so vital to have himself an adventure. He would never tire of looking at the Channel from precisely this spot. Not ever. Well, at least for a few months…

“I leave in the morning, Rian Becket,” she said. “Ainsley was kind enough to arrange for me to be taken to a convent near a place called Challock Forest. Do you know it?”

He looked at her in surprise, and sudden anger. “No, I don’t know it, and neither will you. You’re not going. You’re staying here, Lisette, and you and I will be married. I’ll be damned if you’ll bury yourself in some convent, not for your father’s sins. I won’t have it, do you hear me?”

Lisette rolled her eyes. “I believe they hear you in Becket Village, thank you,” she told him, wrapping her arms tightly about her waist. “But where I go and what I do are not your decisions, Rian Becket, and they never were. And you’ve seen them. In the village, the way they look at me. It’s just as I thought it would be, no matter how kind your family pretend to be. I can’t stay here.”

“Jacko and the others will come around, Lisette. You just need to give them some time. Some old wounds got opened, seeing you, knowing who you are. But that’s all, old wounds. You didn’t cause them.”

She closed her eyes, rubbed at her upper arms, as if she’d taken a sudden chill. “I can’t believe he’ll come here. He has so much, in Paris. Why must he come here to England? I don’t understand.”

“Ainsley says Beales has ambitions. With Bonaparte gone, he’s lost some of his influence, I imagine, no matter how he has aligned himself with Talleyrand. We can only wonder who all he owns in London, and how highly placed those men might be. He has to be stopped, Lisette, you see that, don’t you? No matter what happened in the past, he has to be stopped now. He’s a dangerous, ambitious man with the conscience of a snake.”

“Maybe he’s dead. Maybe I killed him.”

“It was a rather small scissors, Lisette,” Rian told her, wishing she’d stop thinking about those terrible hours at the manor house. She’d told him about the man, Denys, and how she blamed herself for his death. She carried too many heavy loads, his Lisette.

“Yes, I suppose so,” she said, shrugging. “So you don’t mind that I am going away?”

“You’re not going, so no, I don’t mind.”

“Oh! You are such a stupid man!”

She turned to leave him, but he grabbed onto her arm, turned her around so that they were melded together, belly-to-belly, as he looked down into her face. “You are such a stubborn woman. I told you, Lisette, we’re going to marry, you and I. There’s no other ending for us.”

“You told me you would
court
me, Rian Becket. I think I liked you better weak and feeble. Is this how you court? Ordering me? Telling me?”

“If you’re going to run away, then yes, that’s what I’m doing. I’m
telling
you. God, Lisette, I’ve only been home for a few days, and they’ve been damn busy ones. I’m sorry if I haven’t had time to
romance
you. But, curse it all, I’ve got both my hands full with—Christ! Is that it, Lisette? Now that we’re here, we’re safe, have you had second thoughts about a silly poet with one arm?”

She looked up at him, blinking back sudden tears. “I told you, Rian Becket, and now you’ve proved me right. You don’t know me. You don’t know me at all. You stupid, stupid man!”

He didn’t try to hold on to her as she backed away from him, lifted her skirts, and ran back up the beach, toward Becket Hall.

Ten minutes later, at least able now to pretend he was calmer, he climbed the steps to the stone terrace that ran along the entire rear of the house and entered Ainsley’s study through the French doors. Sat himself down on the couch that faced his father’s desk, glaring at the man who sat behind it, reading a London newspaper.

“A problem, Rian?” Ainsley asked, looking at him from overtop the newspaper.

“She can’t leave,” Rian said without preamble. “Tell her you changed your mind. Tell her she’s a prisoner. Tell her anything, but don’t let her leave.”

“I’m not in charge of the young woman, Rian.”

“That’s the damn problem. Nobody’s in charge of her. She thinks and does stupid things. Brave things, but stupid things.”

Ainsley bit on his bottom lip, almost as if he was biting back a smile. “Such as…? I know she volunteered to nurse you. I know she helped you escape, and all the rest of it. But is there something you’re not telling me?”

“I love her,” Rian heard himself say, and he immediately felt like the worst fool in nature. “I should probably be telling
her
that, shouldn’t I?”

“It seems reasonable, yes. So why haven’t you?”

Rian lifted his abbreviated left arm. “This, for one. Not that she seems to mind.”

“So
you
mind, but she doesn’t?”

“When you say it that way…” Rian said, getting to his feet, to begin to pace. “I promised to court her. She said I didn’t really know her, she didn’t really know me, that circumstances had flung us together. So I promised that, if she’d agree to come home with me, I’d court her. Woo her. Hell, I’ve barely had time to
talk
to her in these past few days.”

“And now she’s leaving.”

Rian vehemently shook his head. “No, I can’t let that happen. Papa—Christ! Maybe I should go talk to Elly, or Mariah. They’re women, they’d know what I should do.”

Ainsley folded his hands on top of the newspaper. “I don’t wish to shock you too much, Rian, but it’s Cassandra you might wish to speak to first. She’s rather the romantic of the family, other than you, of course—at least you used to be, until this young woman appeared to confound you. Eleanor would tell you to talk to Lisette, reason with her. Mariah might advise you to abduct her, drag her in front of the vicar. But Cassandra? Her head is full of romantic notions.”

Rian smiled, shook his head again. “Poor Court. One of these days he’s going to give in, give up the fight, just so she’ll let him alone.”

“He’s thirteen years her senior, considers himself her brother, as well as much too old for her. Totally logical assumptions. But Cassandra has never seen him as she does you and Chance and Spencer, has never considered him her brother. And the older she gets, the more interesting I find the dance between them.”

“My wager would be on Callie,” Rian said. “You don’t mind?”

“Isabella adored Court, was really the only one to break through his silence all those years ago. I think she’d be pleased to know our daughter would be in such good and caring hands, be held safe in such a loyal and steadfast heart. He’ll ground her, she’ll lighten him. So, no, I don’t mind. In fact, I’m rather enjoying watching as the inevitable plays itself out.”

There was a light tapping at the door and a moment later Cassandra opened it a little, stuck her head inside. “Mariah said you wanted to see me, Papa? Oh, good morning, Rian. You look better every day, don’t you?”

Rian looked to his adopted father, one eyebrow raised in question.

Ainsley was already on his feet. “Come in, Cassandra,” he said, avoiding Rian’s gaze. “Your brother would like to ask your assistance, if you don’t mind.”

“You
planned
this? How could you—”

“I happened to be looking out the window while you and Lisette were speaking together on the beach. So let’s just say I may have
anticipated
this. Now, if you two will excuse me?”

Cassandra went up on tiptoe to kiss her father’s cheek, and then turned to Rian. “You need my help? How? Nobody ever needs my help. Well, they do, but they never ask for it. Everybody still thinks I’m a baby. It’s these infernal curls. One day I’m going to cut them off, no matter what Court says.”

“If he likes them, Callie, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She walked over to the couch and sat down all at once, her skirts billowing for a moment before settling. “I know. But I like to tease him. He goes all solemn and stodgy and adorable. But you don’t want to talk about Court, do you? You want to talk about Lisette, that’s what I think. She’s so pretty. And so sad. My heart breaks for all she’s suffered.”

“Her father killed your mother,” Rian pointed out, perching one hip on the edge of Ainsley’s desk. “How do you feel about that, Callie? Not how Ainsley wants you to feel, or even how he feels, but how
you
feel?”

“Am I being stupid, like Jacko, that’s what you mean, isn’t it? Lisette was unfortunate in her father, as I was very fortunate in mine. But Papa isn’t to my credit any more than Edmund Beales is to Lisette’s blame. We are who we make ourselves, not who we were born.”

Rian all but goggled at her. “You’ve grown up. When did that happen, Callie? I’ve only been gone for a few months.”

“I’ve been grown up for quite some time, Rian. But nobody notices.”

“Poor Court,” he said, grinning.

“Yes,” Cassandra agreed, fussing with the lace at her neckline. “I could feel pity for him, but I won’t.”

Now Rian laughed out loud, thinking his sister delightful, and his father a very intelligent man. “Callie, I love Lisette.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know that. We all know that. Jasper told us.”

“Jasper? Oh, hell, why not,” Rian said, joining Cassandra on the couch. “The problem is, Lisette won’t believe me if I tell her. She thinks I’m grateful to her, she thinks I feel sorry for her, she thinks that just because I—Well, you’re not old enough for that.”

“Because you bedded her?” Cassandra asked him, her expression so blank that he knew she was longing to giggle. “Shame on you, Rian.”

“Yes, thank you,” he said, having some difficulty believing he was having this conversation. “Now tell me what I should do, all right? I promised her I’d woo her, court her, that we’d get to know each other better now that we aren’t running for our lives anymore. Papa…Papa thinks you might have some ideas as to how I can do that.”

“Here, at Becket Hall, with all these people underfoot? Oh, I hardly think so, Rian. You’ll have to take her away, somewhere the two of you can be alone. But where could you go that—oh!” She turned on the couch, put her hand on his arm. “Fanny, Rian! Talk to Fanny. After all, she and Valentine are here, which means that his estate is empty except for the servants, correct? I’ve seen their estate, Rian, and it’s beautiful. So many trees, and gardens with paths winding through them. Why, he’s even got a hedge maze. Taller than I am. I got terribly lost one afternoon and Fanny had to come save me. Yes, that’s what you do. You take her there, woo her.”

Rian thought about the idea for a few moments, couldn’t seem to find any flaws in the plan. “It could work. I could tell her I’m taking her to the convent—don’t look at me like that, Callie, I’m not really letting her go to a convent—and take her to Valentine’s estate instead.”

Callie grinned, pushed at her soft curls. “Yes, and if that doesn’t work, you’ll simply have to seduce her.
Again.
”