Rogue's Destiny, page 3
“No, no, Granpère, I wish to stay here!”
“Impossible, child. You are clearly meant to shine in greater depths than Québec society can offer. And under the sponsorship of my brother’s heir and his wife, you will be introduced to the pinnacle of London ton. In fact”—Lord Claude offered a faint smile—“I must say the thought of setting the cat among the pigeons warms me. It is fortunate you are no longer a child, my dear. You will be able to hold your own quite nicely. Ah, yes . . .” The chevalier’s voice trailed into silence, seemingly lost in intriguing thoughts of his granddaughter taking on the Darrincotes and the English ton in a grand clash of culture and wit.
“Then I must truly go?” Victoire asked in a very small voice.
Lord Claude’s head snapped up; his blue eyes, crinkled at the corners, fixed on his granddaughter. “Go? Of course you must go. It has been long arranged. Have I not been attempting to send you to England since you turned eighteen? But you and your father were stubborn as mules!” Lord Claude dismissed the subject with a flick of his hand. “Enough said. Yes, you must go, but not immediately. There must be a proper period of mourning, and I must have time to make arrangements. Late summer or early fall, I think, before winter makes the passage too dangerous. Meanwhile, you will return to the good sisters.”
Victoire opened her mouth for a final protest, took a deep breath, and swallowed her words. Everything he said was true. “Oui, Granpère,” she murmured.
Lord Claude held up one long elegant finger. “There is something more you should know.”
“Quoi?”
A sly smile lit her grandfather’s face. “You will be an heiress,” he said. “A not-so-small matter of fifty thousand pounds, promised by my father if any of my offspring should ever return to England. Since you are all I have, the money is yours. It has been held in trust by the old duke’s man of business for all these years, where, if the man is not an arrant knave, it has grown to even more. A dowry ample enough to win any man you choose.”
“Mon Dieu!”
“Victoire!” grandfather and mistress exclaimed in chorus.
“I do not wish to be an heiress. I will not be hunted for my fortune. And I will not buy a man for his pretty face, his fine manners, or his . . . his endowments.”
Felice gasped. Claude Darrincote’s face twisted in a grimace as he tried to repress a bark of laughter.
“I have always refused to go to England,” Victoire said. “What will happen to the money if I never return?”
Lord Claude thought for a moment. “I believe it reverts back to the estate—to my brother, the present duke. Or possibly to my nephew Launsdale, his heir.”
“You are sending me to people who would gain fifty thousand pounds if I were dead?”
Claude Darrincote regarded Victoire over fingers steepled in front of his face. “Enact me no dramas, child. Everyone will be delighted to see you.” He paused, frowning. “Caution, however, is not amiss. We must make certain you have sufficient funds to support yourself, should anything go wrong. At least enough for you to return to those who love you.”
“Explain, please, these people in England, for I am having shivers up my spine.”
A shadow crossed Lord Claude’s face as he considered the family he left so long ago. “My brother is a widower and favors the country. I presume Launsdale and his wife will sponsor your come-out. They live in London and have a chit close to your age.”
“This is the family who will not inherit the fifty thousand pounds?”Victoire challenged once again.
Lord Claude waved away her concern. “A mere bagatelle. Launsdale will be a duke one day. To him, fifty thousand pounds is nothing.”
She considered the problem. “Perhaps. Nonetheless, I trust you have a solicitor in London as clever as the one my father has in charge of his money here in Québec. The British, I’ve heard, have odd notions about females controlling money. I want no nonsense about my access to papa’s funds.”
“Ne fâche pas. It will be arranged.”
Felice Arsenault, who had not left Victoire’s side, squeezed her hand, her eyes assuring Victoire that she perfectly understood her reservations. Understood just how helpless a woman could be. A frisson of fear crept up Victoire’s spine. Over the past few days she had made a genuine effort to convince herself she would enjoy exploring a new culture, meeting new people, using her wits to adapt to a whole new world. She had assured herself she could cope. But now . . .
Now she knew the truth. Granpère was tossing her to the wolves, sending her from one den of iniquity to another. One all the more frightening for being an unknown. “Mais non!” she cried, the enormity of this step into the unknown sweeping away all thoughts of compliance.
“Mais oui,” Claude Darrincote intoned. “You will go. You will triumph. You are strong enough to survive them all. A life here with a decadent old man can only diminish you. Go, my child. Show them what such a remarkable combination of intelligence, beauty, and daring can accomplish.”
“A challenge, ma petite,” Felice murmured. “Go with God. You will need Him, I think.”
“And remember,” Lord Claude added, “we are as close as the next ship to the Canadas. They must all pass through Québec.”
To herself, Victoire murmured, “Amen.”
Chapter Three
London, September 1818
“You have visitors, sir.”
The hint of disdain in his butler’s tone brought Jack’s head around, one eyebrow raised in query. “Well, show them in.”
“They are in the kitchen, sir. Lord Cheyney with a person who is dripping all over Cook’s clean floor.” Biddeford sniffed. “Soaked to the bone he is, like a drowned rat. Lord Cheyney alleges the man’s just come from a swim in the Thames, stopping only long enough to find the viscount before coming here, though why he should appear at your door in such a state I am sure I don’t—”
“Cut line, Biddeford.” Jack was already heading for the green baize door that led down to the kitchen. What had Avery dragged in this time? Undoubtedly another soldier, come home after years of fighting Napoleon to find jobs scarce and sympathy even more so. Inevitably, they turned to their major, Avery, Viscount Cheyney, who in turn looked to his older brother for help. Fortunately, Wellington’s cast-offs made excellent additions to Harding’s Hellions.
But what was so urgent Avery was dragging the poor man. dripping wet, into his kitchen?
As Jack reached the bottom of the stairs, his brother gave him a laconic wave from a chair at the end of long deal table. Behind him a man jumped to full attention from a stool set in front of the kitchen fireplace, steam visibly rising from his tattered clothing.
“May I present Sergeant Thomas Dudley?” Avery said. “As fine a soldier as one could ask for and honest as the day is long. Tom, my brother Harding.”
Dudley, his back ramrod straight, snapped a salute, a pose which somehow did not look incongruous from a man in ragged wet clothing to the bastard son of an earl. “Mr. Harding, sir!”
“Rest easy.” Jack turned to his housekeeper, who had hurried to join the rest of the staff in the kitchen as word of their strange visitor spread throughout the house. “Mrs. Biddeford, would you be good enough to lend your sitting room for a private conversation with my sergeant?” After a nod to acknowledge her curtsey and murmur of assent, Jack added a request for dry clothing, calmly certain that Martha Biddeford, who had met many challenges during her employment at South Audley Street, was capable of producing almost anything on short notice.
Jack waved a hand toward a corridor leading off the kitchen. “Come, let me hear what’s brought you to this sorry pass.”
“Bless you, sir. The major says as how you’re the only one who can help,” Dudley said as all three crowded into the sitting room, which was warm from a fire Mrs. Biddeford ordered lit for her “aching bones” on all but the warmest days of the year. The scent of lavender permeated the air, with just a hint of fresh bread drifting down the corridor from the kitchen.
Jack seated himself at the housekeeper’s desk, waving his brother and the former sergeant to straight-back wooden chairs close by. “Begin,” he ordered.
Dudley swept a lock of straight brown hair back from his broad forehead, shifted his weight, precipitating a creak of overtaxed joints in a chair never intended for more than a housemaid enduring a scold. “It’s right sorry I am to trouble you, Mr. Harding, and you too, Major, but we didn’t know what else to do. Couldn’t stand it no more. It was ask for help or die.”
“Understood, Sergeant,” Avery assured him when Dudley paused, looking as if he expected to be thrown out on the instant.
“Continue,” Jack ordered. “You have my full attention.”
Tom Dudley drew a deep breath, pursed his lips, and offered a curt nod. “Here’s the right of it, sir. Me and some of the other troopers, we stuck together all these months since the cavalry didn’t need us no more. There’s always one of us with food to share, when a man on his own is like to starve. Nobody wants us, y’see. No work for the men who fought and bloody near died so those who stayed safe in their beds could live high as they please. ‘T’ain’t fair, Mr. Harding. Not fair atall.”
Jack glanced down at his mirror-polished boots as a images of bygone days charged through his head. Not fair. Wasn’t that what had sent him on nightly raids through Lincolnshire, wearing a mask and styling himself Captain Hood after the legendary Robin Hood? And now . . .? Now he put down threats to Tobias Brockman’s many enterprises. Jack Harding’s Hellions, the armed might of the wealthy and powerful, dealing with fraud, theft, piracy, riot, and insurrection. And sometimes rolling over the rights of people he had once tried to save.
He tried—God knows he’d always tried—to keep the innocent out of it. To see both sides of a question, use force only when necessary. But Tobias Brockman had made him a wealthy man, Terence O’Rourke was his best friend, and sometimes life’s realities deviated from the path he would have chosen.
His melancholy thoughts must have shown on his face, for Dudley rose from his chair, his tone resigned. “It’s all right, Mr. Harding. I shouldn’ta come here. Nor to the Major. Mayfair’s no place for the likes of me.”
“Sit down, Sergeant,” Lord Cheyney ordered, his authority strong, even though his figure was slighter than his brother’s, his hair a shade lighter, and his blue eyes far less stormy than his brother’s. “We are not finished here. Even though Harding has allowed his mind to wander,” he added with a glare at his elder brother.
“I beg your pardon,” Jack bit out. “You brought back some unwelcome memories. Tell me your tale, Dudley. I will help if I can.”
The North Atlantic, August 1818
Water everywhere, pounding her into the whirlpool at the bottom of the falls. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, achingly cold, hair whirling about her head, arms pinned to her sides by the force of the plunging water. No matter how hard she fought for air and light, she kept dropping toward the black depths of the seemingly endless pool. A scream as the void swallowed her.
Victoire clapped a hand over her mouth as she woke, shivering, in her cold, damp cabin aboard the brig Belle Claire. A swift glance to the bunk below revealed Sister Annemarie still fast asleep. Thank you, Lord.
Since Victoire entered convent school at age five, the good sister had been nanny, governess, and eventually mentor to her charge’s venture into teaching English to the younger children. And now, in a step Victoire knew was prompted more by love than by duty, Sister Annemarie had volunteered to accompany her on her journey to England, before going on to Normandy to visit relatives she had left behind thirty years ago.
Victoire returned the Sister’s love in full measure, but sometimes—sadly, all too often—she longed for the freedom she’d had with her Papa.
The freedom to drown? mocked her oh-so-clever inner voice. The freedom to share a home with Granpère’s chère amie? Enough! Longing for the impossible was a fantasy unworthy of a du Bois or a Darrincote.
Nonetheless, Victoire couldn’t help but wonder if she should have chosen one of the many young men paraded before her when she first ventured into Québec society. If she were a wife, no one could make her go to England. But French or English, the men had been imbeciles all—simpering fops or English military so strait-laced they positively creaked in their stupid scarlet coats. And a few too high in the instep to consider a jeune fille who was the daughter of a voyageur and granddaughter of one of the most notoriously self-indulgent men in all of North America, perhaps the entire New World.
Victoire had been content, teaching at the convent, traveling with papa, occasionally appearing in society as the well-born, well-educated, young lady she truly was. Marriage, bah! She wished to be free, not wed. But Papa, knowing her grandfather for an unsuitable guardian, had agreed that in case of his death she should go to her maternal relatives in England, and extracted her solemn promise.
So go to England she must. Where she would parade herself and her fifty thousand pounds among the ton, and pray something better than avid fortune hunters would pursue her. If there was any recourse from marriage or its opposite extreme—becoming an aging eccentric pouring out love on cats, dogs, or horses—she had not heard of it. Except . . . sometimes the life of a courtesan held a certain romantic appeal. But never for long. Victoire’s pride was strong, and she’d seen Granpère bend a succession of mistresses to his will. Courtesans might have a bit more free will than wives, but in the end the beauty of even the most accomplished courtesan faded, while the laws of the land protected the wife, no matter how many children she might have borne to a miscellany of men.
Tant pis, but there it was. Life was not yet ready to dance to the tune of Victoire du Bois.
She hung over the side of the upper bunk and peered out the porthole. Dawn was breaking to the east in streaks of pink and rose, with a sliver of scarlet where the sun peeked over the horizon. And somewhere in that direction lay England, London, unknown family, and a potential husband. Or was it that simple? In her heart a shadow loomed, sending shivers of warning.
No matter. She would manage, she always did. She was not some whey-faced young miss barely out of the schoolroom. She had her sharp wit and a significant amount of gold coins sewn into her petticoats, plus jewelry fit for a princess—a coming-of-age present from Granpère—and a letter of introduction to Lord Claude’s old school friend, a solicitor in London, with whom grandfather had been in desultory correspondence for many years.
Mais oui, damn their eyes! Victoire Eleanore du Bois would survive.
South Audley Street, London
“It’s like this, colonel,” said Tom Dudley. “There’s five o’ us Lunoners from the old regiment—Will Meese, Ben Bartlett, Josh Tyner, Johnny Tubs, Ned Quinn, and me. ’N’ a month or so after we left the regiment we stumbled on to Ben Potter when he come to town ’opin’ for work. A few weeks atter that, we picked up young Jemmy Stark—you might remember ’im, Major—drummer boy for old Keep-marchin’ Murchison? About to be took for a catamite, he wuz, so we added him on, as a mascot like.
“Wandered town for months we did, the seven o’ us, livin’ ’and to mouth and endin’ up so skinny our pants near fell down to our boots. Things got so bad Bartlett took work as strong man in a hoorhouse—though it ain’t as bad as it sounds cuz he’s got special privileges, if you get my meaning.”
Jack fingered his jaw, hiding an urge to smile.
“There’s worse, sir. Josh Tyner turned cracksman, using young Jemmy for a lookout cuz ’e’s small and c’n go through a window good as an eel. Will and me, we tried to tell ’em they’d get transported or ’anged, but Josh said as how transported was better’n starved to death.” Dudley paused for a breath, then plunged on.
“Ben Potter done the best. ’Bout six months ago the river police took ’im on. ’E says hit’s cold, dirty, and sometimes downright nasty, but he likes thief-taking and the cold ain’t as bad as the mountains in Spain. But the worst”—Tom Dudley heaved a sigh—“the worst is Ned Quinn. Hurt ’is back when ’e wuz knocked off his horse at Toulouse. A right shame t’ ’appen in a battle when the war wuz already over, only bloody nobody knowed it.”
The sergeant shook his head at this inadvertent waste of lives. “Poor Ned was took by the opium. Nothin’ but a wasted stick of a man when ’e wuz fished out of the river three months ago, dead as a door nail. Gave us all a turn, hit did. Could ’a’ been any of us, lyin’ there, cold and blue. God knows we come near as close to death in Lunnon as we did in Spain.”
“Dudley,” Jack said, “ if it’s work you want, I can find something for all of you.”
“Good o’ ye, sir, and if we get out of the pinch we’re in, we’ll gladly take up your offer, but that ain’t why I’m here.”
“Then no more roundaboutation. The heart of the tale, if you please.”
“Will Meese, he reads everything ‘e can lay ’is ‘ands on, y’see, and ’e saw a notice for men to work on a canal up in t’ Midlands. Josh Tyner wuz of a mind to lay low for a while as ’im and young Jemmy ’ad a close run thing with Bow Street, ’n’ Ben Bartlett tried to protect one of the girls at the hoorhouse who was being knocked about, but the bastard turned out t’ be an M.P., and Ben was back on the street quick as y’ c’n say Jack Robinson.” The sergeant frowned, scratching his scraggly brown locks. “And as for Johnny Tubs, ’e follows Will and me about. You recollect ’im, Major. Ain’t been quite right since ’e wuz ’it on the ’ead at Vitoria, so we takes care of ’im.”
“I remember,” Lord Cheyney said, looking as solemn as Jack had ever seen him.
“The upshot of hit, Mr. Harding, is we all—all but poor Ned Quinn what’s buried in Potter’s Field, that is—”
