Rogue's Destiny, page 2
Silently, Jack cursed. “Has someone hurt you?” he demanded.
His only answer was another great sob.
“Did you come from London?”
A small sniff, a deep breath. “From High Wycombe, m’lord.” Before he could form another question, she plunged on, as if his gentle tone had unleashed a torrent of pent-up emotions. “I be a good girl, m’lord. Me da has a farm, with chickens, cows, and pigs we send to market in the city. I was just walking along the road when I was took. Put in a carriage I was and a cloth tied about me eyes. Couldn’t see nary a thing until I got to this devil’s place, wherever it is. There’s sinning here, m’lord. Terrible sinning. Me da will never forgive me for getting meself to such a place. Put me out to starve, he will. Without a shilling. And then I’ll be no better than the hoors around me. So go away. I won’t have you, not fer all the coin in your pocket.”
When the girl finally paused for breath, Jack managed to insert a word. “Am I to understand you were abducted and brought here without your consent?”
“Me, want to come to this devil’s place? You must be daft!”
Thank God she wasn’t as meek and put-upon as her weeping had sounded. “Have your tears been effective, child? Are you still a virgin?”
Her head came up, her shoulders straightened. “I am that! And I’ll stay that way ’til my wedding to Tom Healey. If he’ll still have me,” she added with a renewed hiccup of a sob.
Jack held out his hand. “Come, child. I’ll take you home. No tricks, I promise. My friends and I may lead shocking lives, but we are not totally depraved, else you’d have been ruined hours ago. I’ll even speak with your father. And I will make certain,” he added grimly, “that no member ever again forgets himself long enough to kidnap a virgin.”
The girl eyed him with considerable doubt. “Ye don’t look like a man I should trust, m’lord. Too handsome by half—more like the devil in disguise, even if your hair’s as blond as mine.”
“That may be,” Jack replied evenly. “Nonetheless, I don’t ravage virgins.” Once again, he offered his hand. Evidently deciding he was her most likely means of rescue, the girl accepted it and scrambled to her feet. The man in charge of Tobias Brockman’s private army, known as Harding’s Hellions, towed her past the still-grunting couples as rapidly as possible and down the remaining quarter-mile of tunnel, tossing a negligent wave to the gatekeeper before exiting into the star-filled night.
The sun was well up by the time Jack drove his matched bays into the heart of Mayfair. The girl’s outraged father had succumbed to reason after a more than generous application of golden guineas, and the determined virgin was safely restored to her mother’s heaving bosom. Although Jack suspected the elder female’s emotional outburst was due more to what the village might think than concern for her daughter.
As he drove into the mews behind his townhouse on South Audley Street, his lips curved into a tight smile. Chalk up another rescue for Harding’s Hellions, even if they were seldom tasked with saving fair maidens. That was his problem, was it not? Jack Harding to the rescue, no matter which side of the law his activities put him on. And tonight it had nearly got him pitchforked by an irate farmer, assuming the worst.
Nearly a decade ago, he had tried to help the cottage weavers who were being replaced by factory machines. Tried to help a young widow beset by problems in every direction. A widow who was now the blissfully married mother of three.
Leaving his heart in a pile of ashes at her feet.
Jack turned his curricle over to a groom, stalked through the garden entrance into the kitchen, nodded to Cook and her helpers. Up the stairs. A yank on the bell for his valet. Just time enough for a bath, fresh clothing, and breakfast, and then it was off to work. His brother might sleep the day away after a night at West Wycombe, but Jack could not. No silver spoons for bastard sons and rebellious rogues.
He wouldn’t have it any other way.
Chapter Two
Québec, Lower Canada
Victoire stood on the deck of a Durham boat as it docked beneath the towering cliffs of the north bank of the St. Lawrence River. The deep shadows cast by the cliff should have been welcome after days of sitting in the sun in an open boat, but she was caught in the miasma of pain that had enveloped her ever since she woke to an Abenaki campfire and the grave faces of two native hunters. Pierre du Bois, they told her, was no more.
The Abenakis had escorted her to the river and seen her aboard a cargo boat to Québec, where, as the boat sailed down the St. Lawrence, poignant memories rang through her head, vying with the pain of loss. Pierre du Bois, father and woodsman extraordinaire. Pierre du Bois, son of a drummerboy for the French General Montcalm. Pierre du Bois, who had lived with the Abenaki for many years after the British won the deciding battle for control of Lower Canada. Pierre du Bois, a child of two contrasting worlds, who had somehow married into the English aristocracy.
Ta promesse. L’angleterre! Her father’s last words echoed through her head. Your promise. England.
“Ah, no,” she murmured as she gazed at the tall cliffs. J’ai peur. There! She’d admitted her fear, if only to herself. But it was more than that. She was appalled. How could she have made that long-ago promise to Papa? Yes, Granpère was not a suitable guardian, but she could always return to the convent. She was quite happy teaching English . . .
No, she was not. At least not for the rest of her days. She wanted so much more. She wanted . . . Papa.
She wanted life to be as it always was.
Nothing stays the same.
How perfectly sensible, Victoire sneered, mocking her common sense.
The gangway thunked down, breaking her reverie. She gazed up, up, up to the shadowed immensity of the cliffs above. And shivered.
Lord Claude Darrincote was so much the black sheep of his family that they paid him a quarterly allowance to stay as far away as possible. His father, the fourth Duke of Ravensden, had seriously considered India, as well as Jamaica, for his wayward offspring, but when young Claude protested he could not bear the heat, the duke settled on Upper Canada. Claude, never one to do as he was told, jumped ship in Québec, choosing life among Frenchmen still bitter over the loss of the northern half of the continent to the British a mere quarter century earlier. Claude’s defiant letter to his father stated that he preferred hostile Frenchmen to life in Toronto among Englishmen who were bound by the same conventions and rules he’d happily left behind.
Le Chevalier Claude, as he was known in Québec, thrived, pausing his revelry only once, just long enough to marry and beget a daughter, Angelique, who died in her second childbirth, the babe with her, when Victoire was three. Astoundingly, in spite of a succession of mistresses of wildly varying aptitude for mothering a small child, Victoire thrived. Between convent schooling, the life lessons learned in her grandfather’s elegant Chateau Liberté, and the summer months spent roaming the woods and streams of Lower Canada, as well as the states of Vermont and upper New York, she had acquired one of the most remarkable educations a young woman could have.
She was at home in an Abenaki fire circle or in an elegant French salon, comfortable in fringed leather or in fashionable gowns imported straight from Paris. Although far more knowledgeable of the vagaries of men than most young women, she had also learned a remarkable amount about women of vastly differing backgrounds. From the nuns in the convent to her grandfather’s mistresses, from bare-bosomed Abenaki women to the ladies of Québec society who bared almost as much in their fashionable low-cut evening gowns.
And now she would need every skill, every bit of knowledge she had acquired to travel far from home, leaving not only her people but her culture behind. She must become an anglaise. An Englishwoman in a country that had been an enemy of France for hundreds of years. Of course there was the little matter of the Norman Conquest in 1066, which had essentially displaced the Anglo-Saxons on the supposedly impregnable island with an overwhelming array of Norman noblemen. Victoire’s lips toyed with a smile. Perhaps the British conquest of Canada could be seen as justified retaliation. And, bien sûr, the English were quite puffed up by their recent victory over Napoleon at Waterloo.
Tant pis. Too bad. She would have to smile and smile, and keep her opinions to herself.
But it would not be easy.
Victoire paused to catch her breath at the top of the long, precipitous staircase, which led from the docks to the city far above. A quick glance over her battered clothing, and she winced. Her fastidious Granpère would not approve. But having been raised more on French practicality than English upper class manners, she shrugged. What did her clothing matter compared to the death of her papa and the most terrible thought of being sent away from everything she had ever known and loved?
Victoire turned toward Chateau Liberté and forced herself to put one foot before the other.
The aptly named Chateau Liberté, though not large enough to truly be called a castle, was a bastion of free thought and even freer actions, tolerated with only a few shakes of the head by solidly Catholic Quebeçoises solely because to be French was to accept chacun à son goût. Each to his own taste. And, certainly, Claude Darrincote’s tastes were catholic, though as far from the religious sense of that word as it was possible to get.
Still attractive at three and sixty and a mere stone heavier than the day he had been exiled to Lower Canada, le chevalier Claude remained as careful in his dress as he was in choosing his mistresses—at least the ones who stayed at the Chateau more than one night. The ever-sensible Victoire, during her walk from the top of the cliff stairs, decided there was nothing to be gained by appearing before her grandfather in all her dirt, no matter how dire the circumstances. Therefore, she sneaked into the house through the kitchen door, holding a finger to her lips to silence the gasps of Cook and his helpers. But she came to an abrupt halt at the foot of the stark back stairs that led to her room two stories above. Sacré bleu! More stairs. Sister Annemarie’s familiar outraged screech over her language echoed through her head. Tant pis. Undoubtedly, Sister Annemarie had never had to climb the endless staircase that connected the waterfront to the city above.
After a dramatic sigh, worthy of one of Granpère’s mistresses, Victoire coaxed her aching legs up those last two flights of stairs.
An hour later, only someone who knew her well would have recognized the exquisitely attired young lady as the leather-clad youth who had sneaked through the kitchen door. Long curls, the shade of pinebark, were caught in a knot at the back of her head, allowing them to fall in a cascade of warm brown, softening the strength of an oval face whose perfect line was marred by a determined chin. Sharp eyes, only a shade lighter than her hair, and a nicely female version of the Darrincote nose added to the countenance necessary to counteract her diminutive stature. Her figure helped, as well. The generous contours that had been well hidden under a loose leather shirt and leggings were now enticingly revealed in a high-waisted cream silk gown, whose width expanded in a cone-shape from beneath her bosom until it billowed around her ankles in a great circle.
And now . . . Now she must find Granpère, black sheep of the Darrincote family and tell him his son-in-law was dead. She could only hope he would not crow in triumph.
London, 1818
The first office of Tobias Brockman and Company was a small room in an ancient warehouse that stank of fish, and where the sounds of the river echoed through the thin walls by day and tavern brawls by night. Each year Brockman’s holdings grew and his office along with them, until the headquarters of Tobias Brockman and Company occupied an entire building on Cannon Street, not far from the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange, and Lloyd’s. Complete with a doorman, polished woodwork, and well-appointed furnishings, the offices on Cannon Street proclaimed Tobias Brockman’s wealth and power.
And every time Jack Harding walked through the door, he never failed to wonder what he was doing there. Captain Hood, the masked rogue of Lincolnshire, was now head of Tobias Brockman’s private army. A man who sat at a boardroom table with some of the wealthiest men of business in England and helped make the decisions that kept Tobias Brockman and Company where it was—the wealthiest enterprise in the land. An octopus whose tentacles extended from mills and mines to shipping and investments, from digging canals to influencing votes in Parliament.
And any time anything went wrong, it was Jack Harding to the rescue. Although if the matter required more of a silver tongue than a knock on the head, the call went out to Terence O’Rourke, Tobias Brockman’s adopted son, recently returned from exile in New Orleans for daring to raise his ambitions as high as Brockman’s daughter, Beth.
Terence, Jack’s best friend. Terence, who had saved him from hanging and given him the chance to be what he was now.
The Terence O’Rourke who—now that Tobias Brockman was spending more and more time at Falcon Court, his sixteenth century manor on the Thames—was making most of the decisions for the company’s international holdings.
The Terence O’Rourke who had breathed a sigh of relief when Rochelle Dessaint, the unwanted burden he had escorted back from New Orleans, abandoned him for the gaiety of Paris.
Business was going well for Terence. Life was not.
Jack nodded to his friend’s secretary. “Is he busy?”
“Not to you, Mr. Harding.”
Jack walked into Terence’s office without bothering to knock. Instead of frowning over papers on his desk, as usual, Terence was standing at a bank of windows, hands behind his back. Seeing nothing, Jack was willing to wager. “Love is hell,” he offered.
Surprisingly, when Terence turned around, his lips were curled in a whimsical smile. “Not quite as bad it appears,” he confided, his blue eyes twinkling in an Irish face framed by coal black hair.
Oh, ho! “Well, out with a man. What secret have you been keeping?”
Terence eased away from the window, studied the toes of his boots, and, looking more than a bit sheepish, confessed, “I’ve been sneaking out to the Refuge two or three times a week. I think—no, I’m almost certain—I’m wearing her down.”
“Now there’s the best news I’ve heard in a while.” Jack had no doubt about Terence’s ulterior motive when he’d found a building close by the Brockman offices where Beth could set up her refuge for women who needed to escape their husbands’ violence. But facing the man who killed her own husband, no matter how justified, had not been easy for Beth Brockman Renfrew, Lady Monterne. Nor all the tales she’d heard about Terence escorting a strikingly beautiful woman on the long journey from New Orleans to London.
Jack flashed a grin. “Good hunting!” He was almost to the door when he paused and asked, “Do you think Tobias will stay out of it this time?”
Terence’s expression faded to grim. “God willing,” he muttered, and waved Jack on his way.
Ever since Brockman and Company moved to Cannon Street, Jack’s office had been next to Terence’s. He nodded to his assistant and entered his own private space, thinking, as he often did, how perfectly ridiculous it was for a man who was born a bastard—a man who had committed violence behind the protection of a mask, a man who had urged others to violence—to have an elegantly appointed office in a building dedicated to the workings of the wealthiest and most powerful company in the land. Absurd. Yet here he was. The desk was solid, as was his chair. The walls, the window glass, the fine paintings on the wall. The reports waiting to be read. Jack picked up one labeled, “Southampton.” There had been a series of thefts on the docks there, and it was likely he would soon have to send more than an investigator to solve the problem.
Like an old warhorse, his nostrils flared. This was his world. The reason Harding’s Hellions existed. How many men would he need? When was the best time to strike? As Jack examined the contents of the report from every angle, power surged. A sense of well-being. This was his job and he was good at it.
Québec, Lower Canada
As Victoire, the epitome of a young lady bien elevée, entered the drawing room at Chateau Liberté, Claude Darrincote looked up from a game of picquet he was enjoying with his latest fille de joie, Felice Arneault. Nearly fifty years of dissipation had deepened the lines on what had once been exquisitely handsome features, but had failed to erase his lively charm and sharp wit. In spite of a thick mass of silvery gray hair, Lord Claude looked a good ten years younger than his three and sixty years, and his outlook on life remained that of a young man embracing a world of endless possibilities for the very first time.
His companion, Mme. Felice Arneault, had lasted longer than most of his steady stream of paramours. Slim, dark-haired, delicately painted, and thirty years his junior, she was already acquainted with her benefactor’s granddaughter.
“Ma belle!” Lord Claude cried. “To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?” “A-ah,” he murmured as he took in her crumpled face, the incipient tears. “Viens ici, enfant. Tell me all.” He held out his arms.
The story was soon told, while Victoire’s Granpère looked grim and Mme. Arneault inserted gasps of horror and expressions of sympathy. Pierre du Bois, voyageur, explorer, master of forest and streams over a thousand square miles had died as he lived. “I will not go to England!” Victoire declared as she ended her story. “I want to stay here with you, Granpère. “London is full of strangers . . . and rain and fog.” Just the thought was enough to crumple her defenses. A vast, swirling cloud of gray enveloped her, smothered her. She couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe—
“Pauvre petite!” Mme. Arneault hugged her tight.
Lord Claude sat in silence for some time, clearly considering the problem, before he turned his gaze to his granddaughter. “You know your father and I were not friends, Victoire. Nevertheless, I am sorry for his loss. He was a good father, if not the kind of man I had envisioned for Angelique. His passing also means that I will lose you. For me a great sadness, for you a blessing. How you have turned out as well as you have with an upbringing exceptional enough to send your English relatives into a fit of the vapors, I cannot say.”
