Читать книгу The Return of the Prodigal - Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

“LORINGA, YOU FRIGHTENED ME!”

“Nothing frightens you, devil’s child. If you fail when you leave us, it will be that lack of respect for fear’s warnings that will be your destruction. But you are wise to fear me while you are here.”

Lisette watched as her father’s constant companion, the self-proclaimed Voodoo priestess, plodded across the carpet and sat down heavily, glared at her in the candlelight.

“Don’t be silly. I don’t fear you,” Lisette protested as she continued to pack a small portmanteau, hastily shoving in the few bits of simple clothing she had carefully chosen for her journey. “I should have said that you startled me. That is all, Loringa. Because I don’t believe in you.”

“You say you eat only from the common pot,” Loringa reminded her, smiling, the gap between her front teeth seemingly growing wider by the day. “You believe.”

“I believe you are capable of drawing up potions, poisons. I believe that it’s you who keeps my own papa chewing on those strange leaves, so that he rarely eats, he rarely sleeps. I believe you are evil pretending to do good. But none of that makes you a priestess.”

“I am Dahomey. Your maman, she was born in New Orleans, she understood the power of the Voodoo. She entrusted your life to me, remember? Voodoo is powerful. And I am the most powerful of the powerful. I saved that boy, didn’t I? Nobody but me. He was as good as dead when he was brought here.”

Lisette didn’t have an answer for any of that, so she continued her packing, sweeping her brushes and a hand mirror from the dresser and tossing both on the bed.

“Not those, servant girl,” Loringa scolded. “A teacher’s daughter, an orphan working as a lowly servant, does not have pretty silver brushes.”

“I’ll simply tell him I stole them.”

“And that will explain away the initials carved on their backs?”

L.M.B. Lisette Marguerite Beatty. Lisette replaced the brushes and mirror without further comment. She supposed she should have thought about that herself. Truth be told, the woman really did unnerve her. Still, the brushes and mirror had been her papa’s first gift to her. She longed to take them with her, have something of him to look at, to remember why she was doing what she would do.

After Loringa left, she’d pack them. The old woman worried too much.

“Don’t you have something else to do, Loringa? Sticking pins in one of those strange dolls, saying your rosary while you burn feathers and stroke that ugly fat snake of yours? If the nuns knew what goes on here, they’d be telling me to run back to them before lightning strikes from the sky, cleaving this house—and your head—in two.”

The old woman sat back in the chair and laughed, the sound rich and full, belying her years. “You mock me because you do not understand. I have the power. Your papa, he knows this, and is grateful. Who do you think keeps him safe all these years?”

“So you say,” Lisette grumbled, closing the portmanteau and fastening the two leather straps. One day she would succeed in convincing her papa to send Loringa away, and theirs would be a normal life, the sort she had dreamed of as she grew up alone and lonely in the convent, believing herself to be without family. “So you seem to have convinced him. It makes my stomach sick.”

“Sick with the jealousy you feel. Because he needs me, and he does not need you, devil’s child. You merely amuse him, even now. But you wish to make him love you,” Loringa said, pushing herself up, her colorful skirts covering feet she could no longer house comfortably in anything other than a pair of man’s slippers she had cut holes in so that her misshapen bones could protrude in places. Her coarse, graying black hair was in a thick braid wrapped tightly about her head, her round cheeks had begun to lose their fight with the years and her hands were large, like a man’s, and gnarled, like old tree branches.

If Loringa was so powerful as she kept saying, why didn’t she fix herself—her hands, her feet? In her body, she was an old woman.

But the eyes? Loringa’s black bean eyes were alive. Too alive. And they saw too much, just as the ears heard too much.

Loringa was, to Lisette, a malevolent spirit. At the same time, it was Loringa who told her stories of other days, years ago, and of her father’s bravery, of his daring adventures in the islands. Of his sorrow.

“I do more than amuse him. He needs me, Loringa. He came for me as soon as he could. And he has allowed me this most important mission.”

The priestess shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose so. He loved the mother of the child. He is curious about you. A man grows older, and he begins to think about death, and who he might leave behind to remember him. A man is never dead, while someone remembers him. I will go before him, to make ready for him, so it will be left to you to keep his memory.”

Lisette softened, aware that Loringa truly cared for her father. “Tell me again, Loringa, please. Tell me about my mother…and the rest.”

“To give you courage as you go into battle? To remind you why you’re doing what you will do?”

“I know why,” Lisette said, pulling a cloak from the wardrobe and slinging it over her shoulders. “I know I’m a motherless child, and I know why. I know why I grew up alone, with the nuns, never knowing my parents. I know what was taken from me. But I want to hear you tell the story again.”

“So that when the time comes, if it comes, you will shed no tears for the man who makes you cry out his name in pleasure in the night.”

Lisette turned her back on the woman. “Now you go too far. Listening at keyholes? Is that your magick?”

“Why do we fight, devil’s child? My own devil’s own spawn, the ungrateful child whose life I saved for her? Is it because this is so important? Yes, that is why. He isn’t truly convinced, your papa, he doesn’t believe me when I say I can feel her, that she can feel me, that this fool Becket is truly the one who will lead where we wish to go. Even if her evil master has already escaped our justice through death, we will at least be able to deal with her, and with the others that we find with her. That, after all this time, vengeance may be within reach.”

“Forgive me, Loringa. We’re both fighting the same battle.”

“We know the name. Becket. Luck was in with us in London, even as it was out, and we learned the name. Before he died in his gaol cell, before his throat was cut and stopped him, the fool, Eccles, he did nothing but bleat the name of the man who had captured him, questioned him and then delivered him to this place called the War Office, and certain death. The names Eccles heard others call him. Becket, Becket. A soldier, surely. An officer of the English Crown.”

Lisette nodded, knowing the story. “But only that—Becket. Not even a full name. It seems so little for…for all of this.”

“It was enough for your papa, enough for a beginning. We would have moved then, hunted this man Becket down, followed him to his lair, struck then. But there was much else to occupy your papa, much work to do on this side of the Channel to keep the rest of the Red Men Gang funneling gold to the cause of France. Ah, these French. War, and more war. A king, an emperor, a king again, the little emperor come and gone a second time. Now a king yet again, fat and stupid, waiting to be plucked, keeping your papa busy as a fox in the henhouse even as he plans his return to England. Whispers and intrigue—your papa’s life’s blood.”

“It takes a very wise man to be able to know which side of the coin falls upward, time and time again, and how best to lay his bets,” Lisette said, quoting her father almost word for word. “But he didn’t forget the name, and found it on the rolls of those soldiers being sent to Belgium. Becket. Not such an unusual name. Rian Becket could be as innocent as the morning dew, and all of this for nothing.”

“As were the others who carried the name and were questioned without result. They had been innocent. And I would agree that this one is as well,” Loringa said, “were it not that I feel her. I have felt her for some time, searching me out, but so much more now that the boy is here. From the moment the name was first brought to my ears, I could feel her in my heart, fighting to crawl into my head. Your papa wanted only revenge on those who meddled in his affairs, his plans for what he calls his triumphant return to England, and he found his old enemies. God is good. This young Becket will lead us where we want to go. And then, finally, it will be over. What we’d believed to be over so long ago. I pray Baskin still lives, so that your papa can take his life from him, and the lives of his sons, his daughters, all of his seed. This is his right. As it is my right to destroy my twin.”

Lisette felt that familiar pang of discomfort at the idea that her father had arranged for five soldiers with the last name of Becket to be captured, separated from all the other English so conveniently gathered in Belgium to face down Bonaparte, had ordered the five brought to him to answer questions. The other four had died of their wounds, Loringa had told her, but when the fifth man, Rian Becket, had been delivered to the manor house, Lisette had been visiting and had intervened, begging her father to let her find out what he wanted to know.

What she did not want to know was how the other four soldiers had died. This was a part of her papa she did not understand, and she only forgave him because of his great pain, his longing for justice. Still, she prayed for those four soldiers every night, on her knees. She could not undo what had been done, but she could ease her papa’s long years of torment. She could find Geoffrey Baskin for him. After that—no, she wouldn’t think of what would happen after that.

“If you feel her now, this twin of yours, why didn’t you feel her all these years? You thought she was dead, didn’t you? Is she stronger than you are, Loringa? Was she able to make you believe she was dead?”

“Odette is not stronger than I! I am the strong one, she is the weak one. Her evil keeps her weak, and goodness makes me strong. We are marassa, and I am the good twin.”

“The other side of the same coin, yes, I remember you telling me that. Bad for every good, happy for every sad. Two sides to everything. But if you are the good twin, Loringa, I shudder to meet this Odette.”

“And that is why I am here, devil’s child. You will need protection from my dangerous sister.” She reached into one of the many pockets of her apron and extracted a thin silver chain.

Lisette leaned forward, frowning, hoping her shock didn’t show on her face. “What…what on earth is that? It…it looks like a fang. A huge, ugly brown fang.”

“The tooth of the alligator,” Loringa explained, moving her hand, setting the tooth on the end of the chain to swinging lazily in the air. “Fed by all of my most powerful ingredients saved from the islands, soaked in feuilles trois paroles in the mavoungou bottle, used to make the broth, you understand, the migan. This is my gift to you, this gad, this protection from the bad loa. But you will still need your wits about you at all times. Odette worships the bad loa.”

“And you expect me to wear that monstrosity around my neck? How could I hide it from Rian Becket?”

“Keep it with you. Find a way,” Loringa ordered, pushing the necklace on Lisette.

She grabbed the thing gingerly by its chain, quickly laid it on the bed. To touch the tooth itself, she felt sure, would be to have it burn her palm. Be calm, stay calm, she warned herself. Don’t let Loringa see. “Only if you tell me again about my mother. Tell me, while I finish packing up my things for my daring escape from my lascivious employer.”

Loringa sighed, returned to her chair.

“The story does not change with the telling. It was good, for many years between your papa and Geoffrey Baskin. They were partners, friends. The Letters of Marque, the adventures, a share in the booty allowed us by the Crown. Not pirates, not buccaneers, child. Privateers. All of the adventure, your father would say, winking at me, but all within the law. They would both return to England one day, rich men, as others had done before them.”

“And then Papa sailed to New Orleans,” Lisette said, at last slipping the gad into the pocket of her cloak.

“A blessed day, a cursed day. He met your maman, your sweet maman, and brought her back to the islands with him as his wife. And Geoffrey Baskin saw her, broke the Lord’s Commandment, coveted her.”

“And, wanting her, he betrayed Papa.”

“Your papa wished to leave the islands, but Geoffrey was not ready to go, to end it. He was always greedy, and he had turned to the blood thirst. More, he always wanted more. He wanted your maman. Even as she nursed you at her breast, he wanted her. I saw it, I felt it, I tried to warn your papa, but he trusted his good friend, Geoffrey Baskin.”

Lisette nodded. What she and Loringa spoke of was a story, a tragedy, but it was also Lisette’s history. “Papa trusted him when he said he wanted only one last voyage, one last adventure together, one with more bounty in it than either of them would ever need. But he had already betrayed Papa, lied to him, and when Papa sailed into the middle of what was supposed to be a group of unarmed merchant ships, it was to find that he was outmanned, outnumbered. And worse, he’d been tricked into attacking English ships. He lost almost everything, but he survived.”

“Only to return to his island home to find your maman dead. Everyone dead. A slaughter that left no man, woman or child alive. Even the animals—nothing breathed on our island. And all the booty, all your papa would take to England to begin a new life, now in the bowels of his partner’s ships. I watched from the trees, keeping you silent in my arms, while Geoffrey Baskin raped your mother for refusing him, for spitting in his face, for cutting him with the knife she had hidden beneath her skirts. Twice he raped her, on the sand, in front of everyone, and then he turned her over to his men. In my dreams, I still hear Marguerite’s screams. I could do nothing, child, Odette’s evil paralyzing me. It was all I could do to pray, invoke the good loa to keep you shielded from her eyes, for your papa would need you in his sorrow.”

Lisette blinked back tears for the mother she’d never known. “I thank you for that, Loringa. I know we have our differences, but I thank you for that. I only wish Papa could have kept me with him.”

“To live like him, branded a pirate, forced to flee the hangman? The nuns kept you safe, and your papa hunted Geoffrey Baskin and his traitorous crew, seeking vengeance. But it was not to be. He learned that Baskin and both his ships, overburdened by the weight of so much treasure, had floundered in a storm, that God had meted out His own justice. How your father hated God for taking his revenge from him. I despaired of your papa then, that he would destroy himself, but there was still you, his Marguerite’s child, and he would rebuild, find another way to fortune.”

“Helping Bonaparte, taking sides against the England that would have sentenced him to hang if they’d found him,” Lisette said, glancing at the clock on the mantel, knowing it was time she went to Rian Becket, led him away on a moonlit path of lies. “The same England he wanted to return to two years ago and longs to return to now, to live in the open at last. He says I’m to have a Season, but that is probably impossible now, after what I’ve done. But I don’t care.”

“A discussion for another day. Your papa, he always has his reasons, and he has always planned to return to England, no longer a fugitive, with or without you, foolish girl. But now this Becket, this man Odette protects, this man who could know Geoffrey Baskin? I am right, I know I am, and your father will at last get his revenge.”

“As will I,” Lisette said fervently as Loringa once more pushed herself up from the chair and left the bedchamber without another word.

Lisette sat down on the edge of the bed, her eyes dry now, her resolve strengthened. Geoffrey Baskin and his crew of murderers had taken her mother from her, had nearly destroyed her father, had stolen so many years of her life. Nothing she did now, to help her papa find this man, would be too much for her. Nothing.

Especially now.

How much did she believe in Loringa and her Voodoo? That was a question she didn’t want to ask herself, didn’t want to answer. Just as she was now going to keep a secret from the woman, and from her papa, who wouldn’t allow her to leave here tonight if she told him what she now knew for certain.

Lisette sighed, got up from the bed, and opened the bottom drawer of the bureau, extracting the small velvet pouch she’d hidden there along with Rian Becket’s other few possessions she’d taken from him that first night he had been brought to the manor house. His belt buckle, his gold epaulets, the coins she’d found in his bloodied purse. She plucked at the strings until the pouch opened, and then dumped its contents on the bedspread.

She reached into the pocket of her cloak, at last giving in to her excitement, her fear; her hands trembling, her breathing ragged, painful.

And laid the gad’s twin beside it…

WHEN THE DOOR to his bedchamber finally opened some ten minutes after two o’clock in the morning, Rian was there to grab Lisette by the elbow and pull her quickly into the room, shutting the door behind her.

“You’re late,” he told her once he’d kissed her roughly, released her. “I was about to come hunting you.”

Lisette put up her hand, stroked his cheek. “Such impatience. I had to wait until the house was quiet. Cook was fussing about in the kitchens, demanding my help as she prepares vegetables for the Comte’s return. Word was sent ahead. He arrives as early as tomorrow, so we have almost left it too late. You feel feverish. Are you certain you can walk to the place where I have decided to rent the coach? It is a distance of at least two miles across the fields.”

Rian knew he was far from well, but he didn’t need to hear Lisette say so. “I’ll be fine. What’s that?”

“This?” She held up the small portmanteau. “You expect me to travel without fresh linen? Without tooth powder? I think not, Rian Becket. I have provided for you as well.”

“Yes, you have. I hope the Comte wasn’t too fond of these breeches. Give me that.”

She held the portmanteau away from him. “Don’t worry, Rian Becket, I will carry it. But you, the man, should take charge of this, yes? There will be less questions that way.”

He watched as she reached into the pocket of her cloak and extracted a small bag. It was heavy with coins as she placed it in his hand. “Your Comte may not come after us in particular, Lisette, but he might be tempted to retrieve his coins. Do they hang thieves in France?”

She shrugged. “Madame Guillotine, I would suppose. Every village still has her. Much neater, or so I’ve heard it told. But he will not find us, not if we move quickly. Where is the cloak I brought you this morning?”

“On the bed, beneath the covers, in case anyone decided to come check on me,” Rian told her, and then watched as she uncovered the thing and brought it to him. “And the food, Lisette. It’s wrapped inside a pillowcase and in the drawer beside the bed.”

“You make a very good conspirator, Rian Becket,” Lisette told him, retracing her steps and returning with the pillowcase. She opened the portmanteau and shoved the case inside, redid the straps. “And now, if there is nothing else, I suggest we use the front stairs, to avoid any of the servants who might still be awake.”

“Leaving by the front door? That’s daring. And a good suggestion, if you have the key.”

She smiled and pulled a large iron key from that same pocket in her cloak. “It hangs on a nail with all the others, on a board just outside the kitchens. Or it did, until I plucked it up. Are you frightened, Rian? I’m frightened. What will they do if they catch us?”

Rian had thought about that for most of the day, and didn’t much care for any of the answers that had occurred to him. Mostly, having poured his daily draught of medicine into the top of his boot as he’d distracted Lisette by asking her if she heard carriage wheels outside the window, he felt alert, much more awake than he had in weeks. If the fever was also back, that was a small price to pay to feel more in control of himself.

He’d have no more of draughts, of vile-tasting medicines, for now. Time enough for both once he and Lisette were safely at Becket Hall, and Odette was fussing over him like a hen with one chick.

He was glad he was going home, after avoiding even the thought of his return for so long. His brothers, his sisters. Ainsley and Jacko and all the others. Yes, they’d fuss over him and make him uncomfortable, they’d look at him with sympathy in their eyes. But they could all move beyond that, someday.

But now was not the time to feel nostalgic. It was time now to ask himself some very important questions.

Why had he been brought here from the battlefield he felt certain had been many miles away? Lisette’s answer, that it was a matter of ransom, didn’t seem logical to him, not when his thinking was clearer.

Who, precisely, was the Comte Beltrane?

Was it happenstance that Lisette had come to his bed?

Was it convenient that she felt this need to escape the manor house, even more convenient that she had chosen to take him with her?

Who was it, he tried to remember, who first suggested she help him return to his home?

Most importantly—could he trust her? Could he trust his family’s safety to her?

“Rian? You stand here like a statue. Are you afraid to leave? Because I will go without you.”

He looked at her intently. “You’d do that, Lisette? Leave without me?”

“Absolument!”

And he relaxed. “I believe you would. What a heartless little creature you are,” he told her, smiling as he depressed the door latch. “Now hush.”

He stepped into the hallway, listened for a full minute, and then motioned for her to join him. Together, careful to keep to the carpets laid not quite end-to-end along the hallway, they made their way down the long staircase that was broken by a marble landing.

They were halfway down the remaining stairs when it was Lisette who grabbed his arm, held him back.

Rian listened, and heard it. Voices, coming from the drawing room directly across the width of the foyer from them.

French. Two men, speaking French. Well, a fat lot of good that was going to do him, Rian decided, looking to Lisette.

She put a finger to her lips, leaning her head forward, as if to hear better.

And then she turned to him, her eyes wide and frightened, her cheeks so suddenly pale he worried that she might be about to faint.

“Le Comte,” she whispered, and then pressed her hand to her mouth as if holding back a sob.

Rian looked to the slightly opened doors. Damn. He wanted to see the man for himself. Confront him. Thank him, play the grateful guest—but also confront him. Attempt to take his measure. Measure his motives.

He started forward, managing to go down two more steps before Lisette nearly tackled him, trying to hold him back.

“I want to see,” he told her quietly.

“And me?” she asked him, her whisper fierce. “You’d do this to me? You’d be so cruel?”

“Damn.” With one last look toward the drawing room, Rian took Lisette’s hand and they made their way quickly and quietly to the large double front doors.

Lisette’s hands were shaking so badly that Rian took the key from her and inserted it in the lock, alternating his gaze between the lock and the open doors to the drawing room.

The latch, when it turned, sounded to him like cannonshot.

They both held their breath. Rian counted to ten, slowly, before he moved once more.

Then they were outside, the door closed once more behind them, and Lisette was pulling him down the few marble steps to the gravel drive. “Hurry, hurry.”

This time Rian did shake her off, pushing her as she frantically kept trying to drag him away from the manor house, so that she landed on her rump in the gravel, the portmanteau beside her.

“Sorry,” he said shortly, moving to his right, toward the well-lit windows that fronted the drawing room. But it was no good, the windows were too high. He stood very still, attempting to marshal his thoughts. Looked all around, for something to stand on. There was nothing.

Except that tree, on the other side of the gravel drive.

Rian ran for it, stood beneath it, measured his chances of reaching that first low branch and swinging himself up onto it.

With two good hands, he could do it easily. With one?

“Help me,” he told Lisette, who had picked herself up from the gravel and was now glaring at him as she held the portmanteau in one hand and slapped at the back of her skirts with the other.

“I should murder you,” she told him, still whispering. “You want me in his bed? You’re that cruel?”

“This is no time for dramatics, Lisette,” he told her, holding back a smile. The woman was livid! She was livid, and he felt alive for the first time in months. “See if you can help boost me up to that first branch. I want to see this host of mine.”

“No! He is old, he is ugly. He is inconsiderate, coming home a day early. Bâtard. Rian, please. You promised we’d go. We must hire the coach and be gone before sunrise.”

Rian looked once more to the tree, once more to the windows.

His good mood soured. He was useless, less than useless. He couldn’t even climb a damn silly tree!

Lisette was crying softly now, and his decision was made for him.

No matter what he wondered about the man in the drawing room, Lisette was who she said she was. An innocent, frightened half out of her mind. And his savior. It was enough that he would remember the manor house, be able to guide his brothers back to it once he returned home.

He held out his hand to Lisette and, together, they began the long walk to the outskirts of Valenciennes.