The Secrets of a Scoundrel (28 page)

Chapter 21

P
hillip’s reaction to the announcement of their final destination was a puzzled, “Corfu? Where’s that?”

“The Ionian Islands. Northern Greece,” Nick told him. “Gorgeous place. Horrible reason to go.”

Then came the mad dash in the wagon full of crates, barreling southeast from Paris to Dijon. There, he had the crates of weapons loaded onto a river barge and took the River Saône south through the lush countryside of Burgundy, all the way to its confluence with the Rhone at Lyons.

Nick was well aware that if they had attempted the overland route with their heavy cargo, they would have had to choose to contend either with the Alps to the east, the Midi-Pyrénées to the west, or the wild, rugged country of the Massif Central down the middle. To say nothing of the temperamental weather in that high country and the early snowfalls and the unreliability of finding fresh horses as needed. Instead, the rivers of France allowed them to float right past these mighty obstacles with all due haste.

Still, though it was the fastest route, Nick found it agonizingly slow and much too quiet, considering that Virginia’s life was at stake. He sat restlessly on the barge hour after hour, watching the graceful landscape of France drift past like his life passing him by. Thirty-six years old, and what did he have to show for it but a lot of scars?

He tried to ignore the churning uncertainty about where his life was really going to go from here as the scenery slowly unfurled: quaint towns and tiny villages; picturesque bridges under which they glided; sleepy vineyards brown and spindle-branched, tucked in for the winter; glorious chateaux where the haughty local lords presided; ancient forts and castles in the distance; Roman ruins; spectacular mountain peaks that loomed against the skyline.

All the beauty merely pained him without her by his side.

Never in his life had any woman ever affected him this way. She had turned him inside out, and if Limarque hurt her while she was his captive, Nick also vowed the most savage sort of revenge on the man and his whole gang.

Bloodthirsty fantasies of doom and dismemberment seemed just a tad excessive as the Rhone finally carried them down to Avignon, past the palace of the popes. From there, it was an easy journey to Marseilles on the Côte d’Azure, where he hired a plain but fast vessel whose captain was willing to take his gold (well, Phillip’s gold) without asking too many questions about what was in the crates.

As the French vessel pulled up anchor among the cloud of squawking seagulls, Phillip turned to him, the sea breeze running riot through his Virgil red hair. “Finally, we can head for Greece!”

“We go by way of Italy,” Nick replied. “It’ll be faster.”

“Oh! I’ve never been to Italy before.”

He clapped the boy on the back in wordless encouragement, then they stood at the rails and watched the fishing boats farther out working their nets.

Nick looked askance at Phillip, studying him with a watchful eye. He wondered how the boy was doing. They had become great chums on their journey, and Nick was doing his best to keep the lad’s spirits high and his own dread to himself. He did not want to scare him any worse about his mother’s safety.

Probably should have sent him back to England, he reflected, but figured he could keep a better eye on her son this way. There was no telling what the baby would-be Order agent might do if he were left unsupervised. No doubt, it would be something rash and foolhardy, more likely to get the little cork-head into some new scrape and only cause more headaches for
him.
Beyond that, well, truth be told, Nick was glad of the pup’s company.

It kept him from obsessing any more than he already was about rescuing Virginia and ripping Simon Limarque limb from limb.

He was not proud of the fact, but he no longer really gave one damn about Virgil’s missing book or those kidnapped girls. He could not even think about either of those disasters compared to the knowledge that the only woman who had ever really mattered to him was probably being tortured to reveal the book’s codes.

He tamped down more fantasies of death and destruction at the thought and tried to join in Phillip’s enthusiasm about the dolphins following their boat.

With a quick sail eastward along the Côte d’Azure, then, dipping south to swoop between Sardinia and Napoleon’s home island of Corsica, it was not long before they reached the Italian port town of Livorno, where they disembarked.

Once more, the crates were loaded onto a hired wagon, and once more, he bribed the livery operator not to ask questions. They went thundering through Tuscany into the Le Marche region, or, as he told the boy: “Right across the skinny part of the Boot.”

It was nearly a straight shot through central Italy to Ancona on the Adriatic Coast. The weather here was not an impediment for travel as it had been in France. It was warmer and drier, and though the ground was hilly, the terrain had long been tamed by trusty, old, Roman roads.

Their hired horses, however, did not appreciate their insistence on haste. They lagged, refusing to budge at anything over a trot, as though personally insulted that any foreigner should come to Italy and not even care about the peerless beauty on all sides that had been the glory of this land from time immemorial. What sort of British barbarian could race past Venice with barely a glance?

“Get on, you nags!” He cracked the reins over their rumps. Then he joked to Phillip that they must be Italian horses, used to the strolling,
andante
pace of life.

Inwardly, it took all he had to keep a cheerful demeanor. He did it for the boy’s sake, telling himself that once he had Virginia back safely—if, God willing, she wasn’t too damaged from her ordeal and in need of many weeks of recovery—their trip back to England would be leisurely and beautiful.

The three of them, almost like a family.

But for the moment, haste was of the utmost.

It was now early December, and as they passed through Italy, they saw glimpses of Christmas preparations under way: Advent processions with candles, statues of the Virgin, and ancient hymns, children in white running from door to door making their traditional visits to elderly neighbors in a token of goodwill and bringing them little presents. Nativity scenes were under construction in every village square they passed.

As a rule, Nick hated Christmas. For a spy, it was undoubtedly the most painful time of year. Even more so now.

Finally, arriving at the horseshoe-shaped port of Ancona, their eyes bombarded by the shocking cobalt blue of the Adriatic, they changed transport one last time. Nick hired a small ship, the brig
Santa Lucia
, two-masted, square-rigged, with six guns for protection.

The
Santa Lucia
was large enough to carry their cargo but small enough that it took only a dozen hands to sail—in this case, all the grown males of the colorful Fabriano family. They were a good-natured lot, continuously taunting and teasing each other: the captain, Antonio, and his crew of his seven grown sons and five assorted nephews.

Nick immediately liked them and felt they were men he could trust. He took the captain aside and told him this could take a while and that at some point, there could be trouble. The old, tough, weathered Italian had merely smiled in a manner that gave Nick to understand that, indeed, this was a very good crew to have on hand.

Phillip, for his part, was delighted when he discovered that the Fabrianos sang opera buffa instead of sea chanties when they worked the sails. They were also avid fishermen, constantly trailing their hooked lines off the sides of the ship, and they invited the young English lordling to try it. They told him they would try to net a swordfish.

At last, the Fabrianos were ready to go, promising all their wives that of course they would be back in time for Christmas. They got all the crates loaded in short order and finally pulled up anchor.

“Now,
” Nick told Phillip, “we sail for Greece.”

Fortunately, the Ionian Islands were the northernmost island cluster of Greece in the Adriatic, so they reached the archipelago quickly.

Well north of the island of Ithaca, the legendary home of Odysseus, Corfu had been a holiday spot since Roman times. It had spent the past four hundred years under Venetian rule before being taken over by the French.

As of 1814, however, it had passed from French to British control. To the best of Nick’s knowledge, his country’s interest in the sultry, golden island was not in the day-to-day management of local affairs but mainly as a strategic base of operations for the Royal Navy.

The Navy was headquartered, however, well south, on the eastern side of the island at the capital, Corfu Town, facing the mainland.

Nick had been directed to the remote northern shore of Corfu, to the town of Sidári.

He was to report to a quayside
taverna
called the Seahorse Inn, where he would be given directions to the Villa Loutrá, a luxurious hillside estate where the private auction would be held.

As they sailed to Sidári, he wondered what the Navy would make of all the foreign vessels arriving at this sleepy coastal village, especially at this time of year.

It was hardly the usual season for an influx of holidaymakers. With winter rainfalls and temperatures in the sixties, in December, Corfu was hardly the summery paradise that it became in spring.

Of course, given the crop-killing cold snaps and bizarre middle-of-summer frosts they had seen in most of Europe this past year, due to the giant volcano eruption on the other side of the world, a winter visit to the Greek islands was a welcome change, indeed.

Perhaps if questioned, the organizers of the auction planned to tell the Navy that the visitors were merely Christmas guests of some local grandee.

More likely, Nick mused, they had already taken care to pay off the right people and were not concerned about the Navy’s interference.

At any rate, when they finally dropped anchor off the coast at Sidári, Nick left Phillip aboard with the merry Italians and rowed ashore alone to scout out the territory. He wanted, above all, to see if Simon Limarque had already arrived. Poor citizens of Sidári, he mused as he rowed through the placid waves, they had no idea what manner of visitors were about to descend on their village.

They were to be overrun by criminal merchants of all stripes, along with their henchmen. And that was the role Nick knew he must play, as well.

Thus, it was not Baron Forrester but the wicked Jonathan Black who stepped out of the rowboat into ankle-deep seawater. With the shallows sloshing around his black, waterproof boots, he dragged the dory up onto the golden sands, then paused to glance around, his eyes narrowed against the beaming sun.

He scanned the various ships moored nearby in acute suspicion, then spotted the Seahorse Inn among the several
tavernas
lining the docks. Heavily armed as usual in light of the dangers lurking at every hand, he took a stroll through the seaside village to get his bearings first and scout out the territory, looking for threats.

Without the presence of summer-season visitors, Sidári seemed nearly deserted. He wandered the cobbled streets, between rows of little stucco houses, either whitewashed or painted some pastel color, all with red-tiled roofs and flower boxes waiting for the spring.

From some of the houses, he smelled the food the women inside were cooking: fish and turtle stew simmering, lamb roasting, pork frying, pastries baking.

Hearty, welcoming smells of Greek food.

He passed a palm tree here and there, lemon trees shivering in the chill, and a few old olive trees with dramatically gnarled branches, their silvery green leaves slightly grayed with winter. Walking past the Orthodox church, he nodded to a long-robed monk who was sweeping the tiled floor at the church’s entrance. The old bearded monk with his pillbox hat nodded back to him, but warily eyed the sword and pistols at his waist.

Not wanting to wear out his welcome, Nick returned to the quay and stepped into the Seahorse Inn. The little seaside pub was nearly empty but for a few old peasant men, rustic locals in traditional garb playing backgammon by the hearth.

He ordered a shot of ouzo from the curly-headed barmaid, then nodded politely to the villagers. Living on an island favored by holidaymakers, no doubt, the people of Corfu were used to being visited by strangers.

Still, Nick did not yet ask for directions to the Villa Loutrá, for that would only invite these folk to start asking questions of him, in turn.

He wanted to remain as anonymous as possible for now. There’d be time to start cultivating the locals—always a useful spy tactic—once he got accustomed to the place and ascertained who else among the criminal participants of the Bacchus Bazaar had already arrived.

Especially Limarque.

Unfortunately, as he downed his ouzo, he was beginning to suspect that in his push to make the best possible time, he had beaten most of the other participants here.

That meant, maddeningly, that he was going to have to wait and do nothing until they began arriving.

Bloody hell.

Finishing his drink, he paid for it with one of the Greek
drachmai
he had changed for Italian
lire
back at Ancona. They no doubt would have accepted British coins, but that would have announced him outright as an Englishman.

When he noticed the buxom barmaid with her rosy cheeks and raven curls watching him, he smiled at her. She might be a useful source of information later.

“Efcharistó,
” he murmured softly as he set his empty glass on the counter.

“Parakaló!
” she answered in surprise.

He made sure to tip her well and gave her a wink full of promise that they would meet again. Then he left the
taverna
and returned to his boat.

M
eanwhile, down in the cargo hold of the
Black Jest,
the “cargo” had no idea where their captors were taking them. They only knew it was very cold, with great, wild tossings of the ship and howlings of the wind, and then it got warmer, the seas calmer.