The Seducer (27 page)

“When will that be?”

“I
told
you. Tonight.”

“It may not be until tomorrow or the next day,” a third voice said. “It may take him some time to discover where your Kent holding is.”

Diane barely suppressed a startle. She had not realized that there was someone else in the chamber. This other man must have arrived while she dozed.

He also spoke French, but, like Tyndale’s, it was not native.

“He damn well better not keep me waiting,” Tyndale said.

“He may not come at all,” Gustave fretted.

“He’ll come.” Movements at the other side of the chamber reached Diane. “I will go to the house to wait for him, now that you are here.” Tyndale switched to English. “If this French fool decides to be heroic for his new lady love, take care of it. If he tries to interfere, kill him.”

A hand caressed her hair. Gustave’s hand? No, a different scent floated to her, of a different man. Tyndale. She almost recoiled physically when she realized he had touched her.

“Yes, lovely,” he muttered. “But spoiled forever, and of no good to me at all anymore, except to get her husband here.”

A shiver chilled Diane.
No good to me at all anymore.
Jeanette said Tyndale had spoken the same words to her when he found her.

She heard Tyndale leave the cottage.

“I do not like this,” Gustave fussed again. “She is sleeping too long. He gave her too much, I am sure.
Just a little,
he said,
so that she sleeps and is not a nuisance,
but it looked to me that a good deal went into the tea.”

“It is not a mistake he would likely make.”

“He is not a god. He makes mistakes.”

“Not this kind. Besides, she is no longer sleeping. She has been awake for some time now. Haven’t you, madame?”

It shocked her to be addressed directly. She debated whether to attempt to continue the ruse. With Tyndale gone, she was not so afraid anymore.

Besides, she was curious about this third man.

She pushed herself up. Her head felt odd, as if someone had stuffed it with cotton. She rubbed her eyes and oriented herself to the wood plank floor, and the two windows with open shutters. The light showed that it was early evening.

Gustave sat in a chair near her cot. He smiled with relief.

“See, she is fine,” the other man said. He sat at the table near the windows, a silhouette backlit by the setting sun.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Just another man who badly wants an accounting with your husband.”

She took in his beard and dark hair and pale, sickly pallor. Peering harder, she tried to make out the details of his face.

Her inspection amused him. He turned.

Suddenly, shockingly, she found herself looking into her own eyes.

He sensed something was wrong. His smile disappeared and he cocked his head curiously.

She could only gape at him.

“She is going to swoon,” Gustave cried.

She held up a hand. “I will not. Do not concern yourself.” Composure returned. “Who are you?” she asked again.

“That is not
your
concern,” the man said.

“I should say it is. You have helped abduct me. You lie in wait for my husband.”

“Tell me, madame. Who is your husband? If you satisfy my curiosity, perhaps I will satisfy yours.”

“Daniel St. John.”

“I knew him by another name.”

“You are mistaken.”

“Not about this man. I think that
you
are mistaken, which means he cannot be your cousin.”

She gazed at his eyes. It was as if the shadowy images from her mirror, the phantom face that would emerge sometimes, had come to life. “No, he is not my cousin,” she said in English so that Gustave would not understand. “When I was a child, he found me abandoned on a property he had acquired. He put me in a school, and saw to my care and education even though I was not his responsibility. Every year he journeyed to visit me, even when it meant returning from great distances to do so, and risking his safety to enter France during the war. By whatever name you knew him, that is who he is to me. He is the man who gave me a life after another man had thrown me away.”

His smile disappeared before she was done.

“What did she say?” Gustave demanded.

“Nothing of interest to you. Go outside, Gustave. Get some air.”

“What? Why? I do not think that you should be alone—”

“
Leave.
Good God, man, what do you take me for? Just go.
Now.
”

Alarmed by the outburst, Gustave rose like a puppet yanked up by strings. “I will be close by,” he assured her. “Just call if you have need of my assistance.”

With his departure, a heavy silence filled the room. Diane watched the man who sat at the table. She let her memories, what few there were, attach to his eyes and his mannerisms.

“He told you about me,” he said defensively. “That is how you know about—you are using that now, to confuse matters.”

“He told me very little about you. I am telling you who I am, and who he is to me.”

His glance darted around, as if his mind sought some escape from this conversation.

“Where was this property where he found you?”

She almost felt sorry for him. “If you are Jonathan Makepeace, you know where it was. Hampstead.”

His eyes closed. “Hell.”

He sounded angry and resentful. That hurt. As a girl she had dreamed of finding him. She had imagined running to him and jumping into his arms. Maybe when he visited Hampstead that was how she greeted him when she was a child. She had always heard laughter in her fantasies of their reunion, not an angry, startled curse.

“He let me think you were dead,” she said, wanting to hurt him too. “I realize now it was a kindness. He let me believe that the card game with you had been by chance. He never told me that you were involved with Tyndale, or that he deliberately ruined you.”

“So now you know the kind of man he is.”

“Oh, yes. He is the kind of man who would omit the truth about you, to spare me my small childhood dreams. He never let me know that my father had been part of Tyndale’s scheme to rob those people of their lives and property. It was your ship that was supposed to find those poor souls on the coast, wasn’t it?”

He said nothing. He did not look at her.

“Did you even set sail, to try and save them?”

“The gold and jewels were in hand. Tyndale . . . if they were not rescued, we could keep it all, far more than the payment we were to receive. It was decided early on. We all knew how it would be. I had debts . . .”

He shrugged, as if to make light of the decision. Diane could see his eyes, however. She could see the guilt. The shrug itself appeared tired and heavy, one of resignation rather than indifference.

“I could not have changed things,” he said. “Tyndale had arranged everything. He would not even give me the final destination, lest I decide to go for them anyway.”

She doubted he had argued with Tyndale very hard, if at all. His tone indicated he had not.

“It is a wonder my husband did not kill you.”

“Better if he had, maybe. He took everything, even you.”

“You
left
me. And it seems to me that he took what you had built on that betrayal.”

A flame of anger lit his eyes. The energy died almost immediately, however. They sat in silence, strangers in every way except the most important one. Diane could feel the familial bond tugging her. It kept her from hating or fearing him. It made her ache for some acknowledgment.

It broke her heart.

Gustave’s face suddenly peered in the window. Jonathan snarled a curse, and the face disappeared.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“A scientist. A great mind, to hear him tell it. A fool, if you ask me.”

“What was his gain in this betrayal?”

“A library.”

“A library? He allowed people to die for some books?”

“Those books included a treatise with a mathematical proof. He was not sorry that the man for whom he kept the library, and to whom he was to send the treatise, died. The proof became Gustave’s own, and secured his reputation. He scoured every page in that library for whatever else its owner had written and noted, and built his fame upon another man’s brilliance. No, Gustave was not sorry the ship did not come, even if he had been the one to introduce Tyndale to those people.”

He focused his attention on his fingers, as he tapped them against the tabletop. Gustave’s sins had ceased to interest him.

“He put you in a school, you said. You were well cared for, then.”

“Yes.”

He tapped some more. “The midwife wanted to give you to a farming couple when you were born. But I had loved your mother, and could not give you up. In the long term, it would have been better for you. I did not see you much, but you seemed happy enough when I did, but . . . Then, after that card game—I could not take you with me. I did not even know where I was going.”

“I understand.” And she did, in her head. Her heart was less rational. The fact that he had abandoned her still made it burn, but this new evidence, that he had wanted her enough to keep her when she was born, muted it with something that resembled forgiveness.

“Where was the school?”

“In Rouen.”

He smiled, and shook his head. “I often thought about you, and wondered . . . and the last two years, you were no more than a day’s ride away.” His gaze sharpened, just enough to make her cautious. “Do you know who he is?”

“Daniel St. John.”

“There were no St. Johns or Saint-Jeans among the people Tyndale promised to save. No St. Johns, or St. Clairs, the other name he has been known by.”

“Well, it is the only name I know.”

He looked at his tapping fingers again. “Do not let Tyndale and Gustave know you are my daughter. I do not know how they will react. Especially Tyndale.”

“You think it would put me in danger?”

“You are already in danger. If he does not know, however, I may be able to help you.” He made another vague shrug, as if he had not quite decided that he could, or would.

It was a small offer, and not a promise, but her heart tightened. She rose and walked to the table and stood beside the stranger who was her father. She looked down into her own eyes.

Years fell away during that long, connected gaze. Accusations and resentments and denials and forgiveness all flowed silently on the odd, visceral knowing that they shared. Her eyes misted, and it seemed that his did too.

She placed her hand on his. It seemed very natural to touch this sickly, wan man, because the eyes had not changed and she knew them. A small smile formed on his mouth, and she knew that too.

His hand turned so that he was holding hers.

“Will you tell me about my mother?” she asked. “And about my childhood, and all of the things that I have forgotten?”

chapter
26

D
aniel was not accustomed to bargaining from a position of weakness. He followed the servant into the library on the Kent estate, too aware that he was at Andrew Tyndale’s mercy.

Tyndale appeared as bland and harmless as ever. Only when the servant left did the nasty lights enter his eyes.

He gestured to the box that Daniel carried. “Pistols?”

“I expected you to choose them as weapons.”

“You came here for a duel?”

“Of course. You have abducted my wife.”

“She came with me gladly.”

“No, she did not. In any case, I have come to demand satisfaction.”

“I will give it to you, but only if you give me what I demand first.” He examined Daniel from beneath lowered lids. “You must think that you are a very clever man. Certainly you are a patient one, ruining us one by one over the years. Oh yes, the others have realized how long you have been at this and your role in their misfortunes. Now you concoct this elaborate scheme for Gustave and me.”

So, this was not just about the steel. The revelation increased the danger, and the stakes.

“My plans for Gustave were very simple. I never expected him to come to England and involve you. He had not sought to enrich himself with money before.”

“You thought that he would let such an opportunity pass by, and content himself with the small fame that comes from a scientific discovery?”

“The fame is not so small in his world. The scorn would not have been small, either, when he was shown for a fool.”

“True. It would have destroyed everything that mattered to him. Very neat,” Tyndale acknowledged. “And very apropos.”

“I thought so. As for his partnership with you, and then your offer of one to me, that was a gift from Providence.”

“A gift from hell, actually, since it led to our realizing your scheme.” Tyndale smiled slyly. “If you did not expect Gustave to pursue the profits of his discovery, you must have had other plans for me. Diane? A duel over a woman? How crude. Also risky. I would have won. Better to have caught me unawares and slit my throat.”

“I considered that.”

“I’m sure that you did, and still do. I don’t care for that notion.”

Tyndale walked over to the desk and removed a pistol from one of its drawers.

“You have no intention of killing me here, now, in this library,” Daniel said. “You are not that stupid.”

“If I have to, I will. There are few servants here. I had most of them sent away, except for several men who owe me their lives.” He pushed some papers to the edge of the desk. “You will sign these now. If you do, we will meet for your duel, and you will have your chance to kill me before I kill you. If you do not, I will shoot you like a dog.”

Daniel examined the papers. They deeded over to Tyndale everything Daniel owned, to repay debts unspecified.

“I would be an idiot to sign these.”

“You will be dead if you do not.”

“I think that you expect me to be in either case, since my signature will be worthless if I am not, procured as it was with a pistol to my head. I think that I prefer dying rich, thank you.”

“
She
will also be dead if you do not sign.”

“For all I know, she already is.” He gestured to the pistol. “Either let me see that she is unharmed, or use it. If you expected me to sign those papers, to buy the chance to save my own life, you have miscalculated badly. Perhaps age is dimming your wits.”

“At sixty my wits will be three times as sharp as yours have ever been.”

“If so, Diane is here, and safe.”

“That she is. I will send for her. Spare me any sentimental reunions, won’t you?” Tyndale went to the door and spoke with a man waiting outside.

Daniel had donned the armor of cold emotion before journeying to this manor, but now cracks appeared in it. Relief that Diane was safe, and anticipation of seeing her, briefly flooded him, followed immediately by ruthless anger that Tyndale had dared to threaten her safety.

He turned away so that Tyndale would not see either reaction. “This is an impressive property,” he said. “I could not help but admire it as I rode in.”

“It is not as large as my family’s seat, of course. That would never do, but in many ways it is a superior holding.”

“Has your brother, the marquess, ever seen it, so he could admire that fact?”

“Once, soon after I bought it twenty odd years ago.”

Twenty years ago. It had been purchased with those jewels and gold. Tyndale was goading him by letting him know that they now played the final hand in a game begun long ago. A hand that Tyndale expected to win, as he had all the others. Daniel swallowed the fury and memories that wanted to rise in response to the reference.

“You do realize that others know I have come here.”

“Your wife’s letter said nothing of this estate. You could have gone anywhere in Kent.”

“Others were present when I received the letter. They know I came looking for you.”

“You came here, but did not find me—that will be the story the servants give. I was not here, nor was Diane. You left, and looked elsewhere.”

“Margot knows that you took Diane.”

“The word of a courtesan, and one kept by a merchant at that, will have no weight. As it happens I am spending today and the next several days with an old friend, who will swear I was with him the whole time. The Earl of Glasbury. He owes me the favor. As for your wife, she ran away from you, you forced her to return, and she ran away again.” Tyndale paced as he spoke, until he forced himself into Daniel’s view. “Did you think that I would forget to see to such things? I am insulted.”

Daniel was glad that he was, for the simple reason that it had him alluding to his plans and intentions. Thus far, the revelations had not been encouraging. Diane might be safe now, but if Tyndale intended murder he could not leave her alive as a witness.

He regretted demanding to see her. It could have forced Tyndale’s hand with her. If she remained ignorant . . . From the corner of his eye he noticed Tyndale studying him. No hand had been forced. Tyndale had decided how he would do this from the start.

“I would have my curiosity satisfied on one point,” Tyndale said. “Who the hell are you?”

“I am the son of your past and the witness to your sins.”

“Spare me the bad poetry. Who are you? You knew what was in the library, but I remember no child in that family.”

Daniel had dreamed of the day when he would let this man know who had brought him down. He had lived for the moment when Tyndale’s nose would be forced into the hell his own actions had wrought. Now, suddenly, it did not matter.

Let Tyndale wonder. Let him worry. Let him always wait, lest another son of the past arrive.

“My father had been given liberty to use the library and had commented in my presence on its owner’s experiments. Scientists enjoy discussing their theories to any who will listen. Dupré can explain that to you. After all, he knew that an important mathematical proof would be found in those papers and notes.”

Tyndale’s lids lowered. “You could not have been more than a boy at the time. What would you understand about proofs and theories of electricity?”

“What I did not know or understand, others have explained. Not everyone who waited on that coast died. Not every person you betrayed was executed. I am not the only one who remembers what you did. Kill me, but you will not kill the past. The war protected you, but that is long over now. Others will come for you now that they can.”

Tyndale’s expression both fell and hardened. Daniel saw a speck of doubt join the uglier lights in his eyes.

A commotion in the hall drew their attention. The door opened and Diane walked in. Before an arm pulled the door closed, Daniel caught sight of one very worried French scientist and of another man with a beard, probably one of Tyndale’s servants.

Diane walked over to Daniel and gave him a light kiss. Her eyes met his with a wonderful expression of warmth and love, but she also conveyed a message of caution in that brief look.

She turned to Tyndale. “I trust that you will not return me to that crude, musty cottage.”

“You will stay here. The servants have been dealt with, so I do not need to hide you any longer.”

“I do not understand why you ever did. If you merely desired a meeting with my husband, you could have called on him as other men do.”

“I do not call on such as your husband. I call
for
them.” He turned a sly smile on Daniel. “You never told her, did you?”

“Told me what?”

“Your husband is a swindler, my dear. Also a fraud and a cheat. He is an imposter, taking names as they suit him, seducing his way into fine circles so he can rob people with his schemes. Did he find you in some alley and pay you to help him? I doubt that he is your cousin, you see, so I have a passing curiosity about your relationship to him.”

The string of insults had Diane’s expression hardening.

“Do not allow your pique at losing her make you a fool,” Daniel said. “Insult her further, and you will get nothing from me.”

“I will get everything I want from you,” Tyndale snarled. “Everything you have, including her if I choose.” He closed his eyes, and forced the spurt of fury down. “Of course, you had to go and ruin her, so she is of no interest to me anymore. Unless you refuse to do as I say. Then I’ll be forced to shoot her in the head.”

Diane tried to show Tyndale no fear, but Daniel saw that the threat stunned her.

He slid his arm around her protectively. “You have a chamber prepared for her, I assume. Let her go there now so that you and I can complete our conversation.”

“Of course. My man will show you the way. My apologies for the lack of a woman to assist you, but they can never be trusted. Oh, and the locks—well, it is important that you not leave just yet, so do not bother trying to open the door.”

Diane turned her back on Tyndale. She looked up at Daniel.

Nothing could be said with Tyndale watching. Diane’s face was not visible to their captor, but Daniel knew his was, and he dared not reveal the pain burning his heart. For all he knew, this would be his last sight of her. He should be telling her things, speaking words not spoken yet and begging forgiveness for endangering her, but that was denied him. He could only gaze into her moist, expressive eyes and trust that she understood all of it.

A small, wavering smile formed despite her tears. She rose on her toes to kiss him. Her whisper barely sounded, but it reached his ears anyway.

“I know that you love me,” she said.

Diane did not undress. She had no intention of remaining the night in the chamber where they had locked her.

She strained to hear sounds that would tell her what was happening. Surely if a pistol fired the sound would reach her. With every minute that passed in silence, her belief grew that Daniel would find a way to outsmart Tyndale.

Through her high window, she watched the sliver of moon rise in the sky. She stayed awake as the night slowly slid past, thinking of Daniel. She kept all of her concentration on memories of him, as if her thoughts alone could protect him.

When half the night had passed and she was convinced that she was the only one left awake in the house, a sound outside her door told her that was not true.

She jumped from the window bench and grabbed a heavy candlestick. Tyndale had said she was of no use to him now, but she did not trust the man. He might harm or misuse her merely to torture Daniel.

Keys sounded in the locks. The door eased open. A shadow slipped in.

She began to raise the candlestick, but stopped. Her soul recognized the intruder.

“Come with me,” Jonathan said quietly.

“Where?”

“Gustave is waiting at the cottage with a horse. He will get you away.”

“You must free Daniel too.”

“I cannot do that. Nor do I want to. Neither Gustave nor I wish to see you harmed, however. If you stay, I fear that you will be.”

“Perhaps you will be as well. Free my husband. Let us all leave together. If Tyndale is thinking of murder, neither you nor Gustave will be safe if you know what he has done. You will never be missed. No one even knows that
you
are still alive.”

“You know it. If you escape, Tyndale will have to reorder his plans, whatever they may be.” He eased the door open again. “More than locks guard your husband. I cannot get to him, even if I wanted to. Now come quickly, before Gustave loses his courage, or decides that between the risk of a noose or facing Tyndale’s wrath, he would prefer the former.”

She joined him at the door, but touched his arm, stopping him. “Why don’t you take me away instead of Gustave? Whoever remains will face the most danger.”

“It must be Gustave. I am a better liar than he is, and stand a better chance when Tyndale begins asking questions.” He covered her hand with his. “As for any danger—allow me to be a father this once. Finally.”

His skin felt rough on hers, and moist in a way that revealed his bravery had not come easily. He was afraid. She pictured him these last hours, weighing her against everything else, knowing he should not respond to that primal connection they had, but succumbing to the demands of fatherly duty all the same.