What a Hero Dares (15 page)

“I did. He’d found himself neither fish nor foul after Liam died, poor soul. Unable to return to his cottage at the Manor, unwilling to remain with the Coopers. Now he’s with his grandson, and I don’t think that’s the worst that could have happened to him. Trixie, now that we’re all here, Zoé and I have had an idea.”

“Oh, here we go.” Val drew up a straight-back chair and turned it about before straddling it. “Is this idea any better than the one that had you dragging yet another enemy across the Channel to us as if we didn’t already have enough?”

Kate laughed.

So did Max.

Zoé hadn’t had siblings. She’d always wondered what it would be like to have brothers, sisters, a large family around her. To love her, to love them...to have them tease her unmercifully? No, she hadn’t considered that part. She had to decide if she liked it. So far, she thought she might.

“We’ve been considering the woman,” she explained as Max led her to a chair and all the other men could finally sit down. Valentine Redgrave seemed to be a law unto himself, although Daisy had given him a shake of the head and an indulgent look that told Zoé the man was no fool; he just had his own way of living his life.

“The Exalted One, or Leader, or whatever she’s called,” Daisy said, nodding. “I’ve seen her.” She looked to Val. “We’ve both seen her. Masked, unfortunately. She’s evil. Sheer evil. A murderess.”

The shy, lovely Rose moved closer to Daisy, and squeezed her hand until her knuckles whitened. Not in some offer of comfort, Zoé thought, but for protection. There was a story there with these two women, but she wouldn’t ask. What she did notice was that Tariq had taken up a position behind their shared couch, both long, well-shaped hands grasping its back as he shot what seemed to be concerned looks at the fair-haired Rose.

“We think she’s more than that. We think she’s—Max?”

“We think she’s a victim. Was one, that is. Possibly even one of the wives who turned the tables on their husbands. We believe she also may have acquired a—forgive me, ladies—acquired a taste for the ceremonies, along with a hunger for power.”

Zoé lowered her eyelids and took a quick peep at Trixie, who’d gone pale beneath her subtly applied rouge.

The room went silent for a few moments, before Adam Collier entered once more, still looking into a small, hand-held gilt-edged mirror secured to a ribbon on his wrist. In his absence, he’d applied a black beauty patch in the shape of a star, Zoé noticed, and was looking at it worriedly, as if it might fall off, which could only be considered a blessing.

“Hi-ho again, everyone. Am I now unfashionably late? Not that it matters. I’m back, so let the festivities begin. Mademoiselle
Charbonneau
,
I beg a second chance. I know I have it this time,”
he trilled as he ignored everyone else in the room in order to make a beeline straight at her, sweeping her an elegant leg that, remarkably, did not send him toppling over on his backside.
“J’ai passé cette journée nostalgie pour l’instant de notre élevage.”

“Indeed,” Zoé returned, straight-faced, extricating her hand from his faintly damp grasp.

“You numbskull,” Kate chortled. “You just said you spent the day longing for the moment of your and Zoé’s
breeding
.”

The boy looked at Zoé, who nodded, and then staggered backward, clutching his hands to his ruffled chest.
“Sacré bleu!”

“Adam, you’re excused,” Trixie said as the laughter died away.

He turned to the dowager countess and bowed. “Thank you, ma’am. I meant no harm.”

“I know that. You don’t have any harm in you, or much of anything else, more’s the pity. However, what I meant was, you’re excused. I’ll be sure someone brings your dinner to your rooms. Daisy? If you’d be so kind as to escort Rose to her chambers?”

“There’s no need. Miss Rose, it would be my honor,” Tariq said, one palm to his chest as he stepped in front of the couch.

“You’re very kind, sir,” Daisy responded rather apprehensively, “but I don’t think—”

But Rose was already on her feet. “I...I should like that above all things, sir.”

“Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch,” Valentine said as all the gentlemen sat down once more after Rose had departed the room. “I suppose Piffkin will be all over the man tomorrow, vetting him, asking his intentions. But at least maybe I’ll get him back. I rather miss the old rotter.”

“Piffkin is Val’s valet, just recently abandoning him in order to serve Daisy’s sister. Rather as some sort of knight errant, or possibly
duenna
. Tariq will have to pass muster, I expect. I’ll explain later,” Max whispered. “Did you see Trixie’s reaction to what you said? And now she’s cleared the room of innocent ears.”

“I suppose you’re going to attempt to kick me out, as well,” Kate said, sighing. “I’m not a child anymore, Trixie. I’m betrothed, for pity’s sake.”

“Yes, pet, I know. Simon is a saint. But I wouldn’t wish to force you to listen at the keyhole. You may stay. There’s little you don’t know, in any event. So,” the dowager countess went on, “now you want to know just who this woman might be, correct? And I have to tell you, sadly, I haven’t the faintest idea. I need more information. You saw her, Valentine. Describe her, if you please.”

Val shrugged. “It’s as Daisy said. She was masked, and on horseback to boot. I’d say she’s tall, though, well shaped, has no trouble riding astride. She speaks with command and has a...has a taste for deviant pleasures. She’s violent, clearly favors the knife. We know she slit the throats of two women while we were there, and cheerfully—
cheerfully
—took a blade to one of her own Devil’s Thirteen who had displeased her.”

Favors the blade, does she?
Zoé leaned closer to Max. “Mine,” she breathed softly. “You’re too polite, and might hesitate. I won’t.”

He answered her, also in a whisper. “That’s two for you and none for me. We’ll discuss the matter, later, and perhaps come to an obvious conclusion.”

“No,” she answered, realizing she’d just stepped into a trap of her own making. “They’re both mine. You’ve plenty of others to choose from.”

“We’ll settle this later. In bed.”

“You’re insultingly confident.”

“True. But I’m also right, aren’t I?”

“And too cocky.”

“I am? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that complaint from you before.”

She felt her cheeks going hot. “Oh, shut up.”

Trixie clapped her hands, calling everyone back to attention. “No more whispers. Valentine, do you have more for us? We need to know everything.”

Valentine looked at his sister, clearly not wanting her to hear what came next, and then added quietly, his head down, “She had the man tied to their obscene altar and personally removed his manhood before setting the others to use their blades to put him out of his misery. I’ve never thought of the devil as a woman, but I now believe in at least the possibility.”

“The blade is so much more...personal. One could even say intimate. Clearly she despises men, even as she uses them. And her fellow females, as well. If we now know what she hates—what does she love?”

“Nothing, Trixie,” Zoé answered with renewed confidence, now able to use more bits and pieces to assist her in putting together the puzzle presented by this Exalted Leader she’d observed in Ostend. Trixie’s conclusion about who might favor the knife she would ignore; she was brought up to it, and pistols made too much noise. “I suspect not even herself, not in the way others love, but in reality
admires
herself and her own extraordinary brilliance. She believes herself magnificent, unbeatable. Unstoppable. No, she may covet, but she doesn’t love. Men, power, wealth. They’re still all second to her hate for those she believes inferior. In other words, everyone but herself.”

“Or in yet other words, my pets, she’s mad. Insane. I have some familiarity with that condition.”

Zoé knew she had the bit between her teeth now, but couldn’t seem able to stop herself. This was why the Crown had at last agreed to take her on. For her knowledge of languages, for her brain. “Brilliantly so, Trixie. That makes her extremely dangerous, but also vulnerable. She’ll take mad chances, believing herself the smartest, and always the inevitable winner. She’ll make a mistake, if we push hard enough in the right places. Max and I believe she’s already walking a fine edge. I only wonder what she wanted of you, Max, as clearly that was Anton’s assignment, to watch you, to bring you to her when she decreed it. Because, considering how long Anton has been playing our friend, and then turning us against each other, whatever her plan is for you, it’s of long-standing.”

“Perhaps you’re wrong, Zoé,” Val said. “Perhaps she can love...or as you said, covet. She may have glimpsed my dear brother here across a ballroom floor, or while out riding that black savage of his, hell-bent for leather, and been instantly smitten. Remember, Max, we still all wonder at how well you and that scruffy beard attract the ladies.”

“Coveted by a she-devil. Lovely,” Max said sourly. “I’m flattered all hollow just at the thought.”

Nobody laughed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

M
AX
LISTENED
INTENTLY
at the dinner table as Zoé told the story of seeing the Exalted Leader and her concubine, assistant, lover, sap-skulled devotee—whatever in Hades was the purpose of the man. He hoped she might say something, think of something she hadn’t told him earlier, but he should have known better. Zoé knew how to observe, how to take in only important information and commit it to memory, and then relay it in a clear, concise manner.

Trixie spoke next. “Dark-haired, on her way to forty, definitely English. You two think probably no more than sixteen or eighteen when she was brought into the Society, perhaps even younger. That’s more than possible. A second wife, or even a daughter, or else she’d be too old now to connect her with my son’s Devil’s Thirteen. Still, a long time ago, and I was not familiar with many of them. I have to take my mind back, concentrate.”

“Please, before you do that, Trixie,” Daisy said, “you did say daughter, didn’t you? That’s obscene.”

Max turned to his grandmother, his expression one of
do we tell her?

Trixie laid down her fork. “Jessica, Gideon’s dear wife, was very nearly just such a victim, and believed all these years that her father was responsible. Happily, his journals proved the case otherwise. And before you ask, Adam was also destined to join the Society, as sons were always encouraged, even
educated
to follow their fathers. Fortunately, some would say, my son died before any of his offspring were more than children.”

Zoé reached over and squeezed Max’s hand under the table. It was, he supposed, a lovely gesture, but he didn’t want her feelings for him to be clouded by pity.

Soon after, none of the diners seeming to have much of an appetite, everyone adjourned, the men to linger over brandy and cigars, the women heading back to the drawing room.

Except that Max believed he and Zoé had learned enough about the Society for the day, and held her back when she moved to join Trixie and Kate. He grabbed up a cigar from Gideon’s well-guarded supply, allowed Dearborn to light it for him, and led Zoé to the music room, and the French doors leading to the gardens.

“That may have been rude,” she pointed out as they made their way along the path lit by well-spaced lanterns hanging from poles. “In fact, I know it was. I was going to ask Trixie more about your brother’s wife.”

“Yes, I know, but since the answers don’t have anything to do with the point, we’ll leave that to Jessica, if she so chooses to tell you. For now, I just want to enjoy the evening.”

“And what smells like quite a lovely cigar. May I have a puff?”

Max handed it over and watched as she rolled the tip of the thing between her lips, and then drew in a breath, savored it, before blowing out a loud of blue smoke. Watching Zoé with a cigar was a most powerful aphrodisiac.

“A million times superior to those weeds we shared in Pamplona. But the wine was fairly memorable.”

“We drank enough of it,” Max said as they came out from the gardens and he could see the scars in the ground where once the dower house had been, hiding its macabre secrets in its basement ceremonial chamber. Supposedly, Gideon planned a croquet ground and tennis court in its place, with the new dower house to be build where Trixie wished—certainly not where the original had stood. “We were lucky to be alive after that near debacle, when the reed slipped sideways in my mouth and my lisp suddenly disappeared.”

“Yeth, that’th thertainly tho.” Zoé grinned and took another puff, then handed back the cigar.

“Amusing. You weren’t the one trying to get the reed unstuck from his molars before the ambassador got too curious. I damn near choked on the thing.”

“What’re those ruins over there? The closer we get, the more I think I can smell burnt wood. It has to be the dower house you told me about. Is that why we’re out here?”

“No, there’s nothing left to see. Although it is amazing how its loss changes the landscape. It was once connected by underground tunnel to the foaling stable up on the hill. You can’t see it in the dark. Anything of value is gone from both places, including some interesting framed communications to my grandfather and father concerning their cooperation in a French invasion. I don’t suppose we’ll hang them in the portrait gallery anytime soon. Would you like to see that? The portrait gallery, I mean, although I suppose we could consider at least part of it our own rogue’s gallery.”

“Another time.” Zoé slipped her arm through his, leaned in closer to his body. “Besides, I’m sure that wasn’t your original plan when you brought me out here.”

“Really? What would make you think that?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps it was somebody else, earlier, whispering in my ear. For God’s sake, Max, are you going to make me beg?”

“It’s a warm night,” he said, taking her hand, rubbing his thumb against her palm. “There’s a stream that runs near the greenhouses, and as I recall, the water pools in a deeper area somewhere in the trees before continuing on over the rocks. I haven’t been there in a while, and Gideon’s always making changes to the scenery, the course of the water. His last brilliant idea nearly collapsed one of the greenhouses. I think I can find it.”

“But alas, not by standing here, running your mouth,” Zoé pointed out facetiously.

They set off together, the dying light of dusk joined by what was left of the full moon that had already begun to reflect off the hundreds of small glass panes that made up the greenhouses.

Gideon had certainly been making a mess of things, Max thought as he bent and lifted Zoé into his arms as he carefully stepped across areas of upturned soil still raw from having so recently served as a new route for the stream. And now, with the Coopers gone, he imaged the mess would remain until the Society was nothing more than a bad memory.

But, then, if the course hadn’t been changed to make water more conveniently close to the greenhouses, then the disturbed groundwater wouldn’t have collapsed the old tunnel inside one of them, and they might all still be in the dark as to what happened at Redgrave Manor all those years ago. Unaware they had enemies in their midst. Mortal enemies.

Zoé was laughing now, as she hung her arms around Max’s neck. With the cigar still clamped between his teeth, and puffing to keep it lit, he’d begun breathing harder as, following alongside the stream, he climbed up the gradual slope that led into a purposely planted sweep of trees. There was nothing more natural-looking than one of Lancelot “Capability” Brown’s designed landscapes. But did the man have to favor hills so much?

“Keep this up, and I’ll have to do all the work when we get there,” she told him, kissing the side of his neck. “Odd. You’re not complaining.”

“More like contemplating,” he said, thanking the moonlight and his own sharp eyes as the deeper pool at last came into sight. “Besides, I don’t want to give you time to change your mind.”

He must have become lightheaded from the climb, the smoke he’d inhaled, because he’d just said the dumbest thing possible for a man with his intentions.

“You can put me down now. And you mean before I can remember that just because we are more than, well, companionable in some ways, that doesn’t mean there’s any reason to believe there will ever be more than that between us. That there ever was more than that between us, even if we thought differently at the time.”

“Have you written all of that down somewhere, committed it to memory?” Max asked, searching the bank for a grassy area wide enough for the both of them. “Perhaps you’ll favor me with a copy, so we don’t have to endure this discussion again.”

“Now you’re angry,” she said, settling on the bank to remove her evening slippers, roll down her hose and toss it aside.

Max stripped off his evening jacket and waistcoat, kicked off his own shoes, and sat down beside her, his chin raised as he began work on ridding himself of his neck cloth. “Nonsense,” he objected, rolling the cigar to the side of his mouth. “I’m never angry. Do you need help with those buttons?”

“No more than you require any with yours,” she told him, reaching behind her for the few buttons necessary on her high-waist, otherwise loosely fitting gown. She lay on her back, using her bent knees to raise her enough to slide the gown down over her hips, then sat up to disentangle it from her legs. “Wrinkled Magret will understand. Even dirty. She’s a common-sense, earthy woman. But I would rather not have to burn something again.”

Max’s hose was dispatched of, along with his knee breeches and underdrawers, leaving him to stand up once more, now wearing nothing but his long-tailed shirt. “As long as Magret’s happy.” He put his hands to the shirt buttons, attempted to control his breathing. “If I might point out something? You’re lagging behind.”

It was true; she was having some trouble with the thin satin ties and small buttons of her fitted shift and silly cotton drawers. “Begin without me,” she gritted out, glaring up at him.

The cigar once again gripped between his teeth, he laughed at her frustration, then teased her by removing his shirt, giving her more than a hint of his arousal. “I believe I already have.”

“Damn you, Max Redgrave.”

“It’s nice to know one is appreciated for his...finer attributes.”

Zoé stood up, finally released from her silken confinement, and began pulling at the pins in her hair. “How deep is this pool, do you remember?”

He was already reaching for her. “Nearly as deep as you’re tall, at least after a rain like we had the other night.”

“Good enough.” Without another word, she pushed both her palms hard against his chest, and he went into the pool on his back, arms whirling like paddle wheels as if that would help him keep his balance.

He surfaced, spat out the soggy cigar while shaking his head like a doused puppy, to see Zoé’s pale form coming toward him in a graceful, nearly flat dive, legs close together, her arms full out in front of her, her body only slightly arched.

She swam like a fish, had always delighted in the water, be it lake, pond or sea. She could have been a mermaid, for all her beauty of movement...but romantical as that thought was, it came with its impediments. He’d much rather she had legs.

As she wiped at her eyes, and tested the depth of the pool with her toes, Max swam behind her and slid beneath the surface, aiming straight for those wonderful, long, straight legs.

Even underwater, he believed he could hear her yelp of surprise when he grabbed her calves and pulled her legs apart, sliding between them to rise face-to-face, chest-to-chest with her, his arms tight around her waist. Her hair was wet and sleek around her perfectly molded head, and in the moonlight he could see her eyelashes clumping into long, curved spikes.

She was the most beautiful, sensual creature in the world, and he could barely contain his need to have her. There was a time when he’d laid her back in the warm, buoyant water of the sea, her legs scissored around his head, and come at her with his mouth and tongue until she’d screamed, and nearly drowned, or so she told him later. “Remember when we looked to cool ourselves that hot night in Cabreira?”

“Later,” she whispered in his ear. “For now, I’d rather recall our midnight dip into the Seine.”

“Oh, God,” he said as she pressed her palms against his shoulders, partially rose up out of the water, drew in her breath, and then sank beneath the surface. “I’m a dead man...”

They
visited
the Seine, they
relived
that hot night in Cabreira, only leaving the water when, facing each other, Zoé said, “I never noticed before. With your hair all stuck to your head, your ears seem to stick out. Just a bit,” she added hurriedly as he pulled a face at her. “Honestly, it’s hardly noticeab— Max, put me down!”

He did as she ordered, but only to join her on the bank, his hands going to her waist because if she had one weakness, it was her taut, highly sensitive skin. She writhed beneath him, laughing, attempting to push his tickling fingers away, until he stopped, wanting nothing more than to look down in her beautiful suddenly carefree, laughing eyes.

“I’ve missed you,” he said quietly, and her smile slowly faded.

“You missed
this,
” she responded sadly. “I did, as well. There was a time I believed I could not live, not exist a moment more, unless I could believe we’d be together this way again. That isn’t love, Max. I wish it were, but it isn’t.”

“I want to see our babies growing inside you. I want to see them suckle at your breast as I kiss their fair heads. I want to see your eyes in their eyes.”

Zoé turned her head away from him. “Oh, Max...you hurt my heart. Our children? What would they be like with parents like us? I’d fear for their souls. I fear now for ours.”

He held her more tightly, and at last she pushed her head into his shoulder, and cried. He’d known her so long, yet had never seen her cry, not until she’d told him about Georges. But she got herself under control quickly. Probably too quickly. He didn’t want to believe that something, some vital part of who Zoé Charbonneau was had died in these past long months, never to be reborn.

What did he really know about her? She’d shared her early years with him, but hadn’t told him about her father’s death. How had she even heard of his passing, as they’d been constantly on the move? She certainly hadn’t received more than a smattering of letters sent through dispatches. No, it made no sense. She would have told him.

Idiot! I’m an idiot!

His hand stiffened in the act of stroking her hair, as if the idea that had just struck him had turned him to stone. He looked up at the trees above them, then closed his eyes.

“Zoé? When...when did your father die?”

“Oh, sweet Christ, Max, not now. Let me up, I’m feeling a chill. I want to get dressed.”

He rolled off her, reached for his smallclothes, using them to dry himself. “It was that day, wasn’t it, that last day? Anton told you he’d had him killed, didn’t he?” Picking up the rest of his clothing, he got to his feet even as she stood up, turned her back to him as she climbed into her undergarments. “Zoé?
Answer me
.”