The Return of the Prodigal (14 page)

She smiled at him, magnanimously accepted his apology. “I forgive you,” she told him. “But I do not forgive the
Comte.
What did he do in London that was so terrible? And thank the saints he did not steal
all
of
Papa
’s name.”

Rian reached out, took her hand, lifted it to his lips. “Lisette, the
Comte
is a bad man. If he is who I think he is, an exceedingly bad man. Cold, vicious, intelligent. I promise you, he’ll never come near you again.”

Lisette blinked furiously, attempting to produce grateful tears. “Thank you, Rian Becket. I told you he was a bad man, remember? But what did the
Comte
do to you, to your family? I still don’t understand.”

Rian rubbed the back of her hand across his cheek, kissed her fingers. “It was a long time ago, Lisette. Almost eighteen years ago. A lifetime ago. An ancient history that somehow refuses to die.”

She stroked his cheek. “Tell me. I want to understand.”

He got to his feet, as if he didn’t wish to be looking at her as he spoke, and he told her a story. A story she already knew.

About two men, partners, licensed privateers sailing the waters of the Caribbean together in the hope of becoming very rich men. About the partner who married the beautiful young woman, about the female child this woman bore him and his plan to leave the life, return to England with his wife, his child, all his acquired children. His dream of building a new life there, for all of them.

He told her of the other partner’s fury that the partnership would be dissolved, his lust for his partner’s wife, the betrayal that had led to the near death of the partner and a terrible massacre on that partner’s island home. Men, women and children, chased down, slaughtered. The beautiful wife murdered, the infant and some of the other children hidden in the interior of the island, saved by one of the loyal servants.

A man betrayed. Geoffrey Baskin.

A young wife murdered. Isabella Baskin.

A child hidden. Cassandra Baskin.

A servant. Odette.

The story was the same.

But not the names.

By the time Rian turned away from the stream, looked at her, Lisette was sobbing silently into her hands.

“So we sailed to England, Lisette, those of us who were left, and we became the Beckets. Ainsley Becket is my father, in my eyes. The others are my sisters and brothers. The crews of the
Black Ghost
and
Silver Ghost
my extended family. And all of us with no recourse, no revenge, because Edmund Beales had died, supposedly at the hands of his crew, who weren’t happy with the way he planned the division of everything he’d plundered on our island, Ainsley’s share of all they had gathered over years of privateering. We changed our names because Edmund Beales had made us enemies of the Crown by tricking Ainsley into attacking English ships. We all died that day at the hands of Edmund Beales, and we’ve spent these past nearly eighteen years attempting to be reborn.”

Lisette took several deep breaths, longing to scream, longing to call Rian a liar. But he wasn’t lying. She knew that. Deep inside her, she knew that. Her
papa,
the man who had driven up to the convent and whisked her away to a new, glorious fairy tale life, was a monster.

She had to hear more, had to hear the rest.

“But…but if this Edmund Beales is dead?”

“He’s not. We live in Romney Marsh, Lisette. A part of England very isolated, very different from the rest of the country. The people who live there—less people than there are sheep, many say—live a hard life, a struggling life. One way to put food in their childrens’ bellies is for the men of Romney Marsh to become smugglers, taking their raw wool across the Channel to France, to be sold for a price far exceeding anything they could earn in England, and then bringing back brandy, tea, silks, to be taken inland, sold.”

“And you Beckets became smugglers in this Romney Marsh?” Lisette asked, trying to understand. “Because Edmund Beales stole all of your money?”

At last Rian smiled. “He would have needed a few more ships to do that. Ainsley had been planning for years, how he would one day return to England. He’d ordered the house built before he ever met Isabella, married her. I think he began planning the day he took in my brother Chance, not wanting to see him one day forced to live the life of a pirate, as privateers, Ainsley believed, were a dying breed. More than half of what he’d gained plundering Spanish ships, French ships, sometimes American ships, he sent to that house. Once he married Isabella, he sent more, even more anxious to leave the life, as they called it, take us all to a life of respectability. No, Lisette, we didn’t need to smuggle to exist. As Beckets, we were respectable at last, living our own quiet lives. But the people who had accepted us, never looked twice at us—they needed our help.”

Lisette patted the ground beside her and Rian sat down once more, seemingly having overcome the need to pace as he spoke.

“One of our crew, Pike, once our ship’s carpenter and a good man, he’d married a local woman and joined his new family’s trips across the Channel. Up until the moment his sawed-off head and that of his wife’s brother were sent back to her in boxes by a group of thugs who called themselves the Red Men Gang. Pike’s murder was a warning for the local boatmen and sheep herders—stop your smuggling runs, or pay the price.”

Lisette protectively held a hand to her neck. “That’s barbaric!”

Rian shrugged. “It’s something Edmund Beales would do without so much as a blink, although we didn’t consider that at the time. All we knew was that one of our own, a survivor of the massacre on the island, the betrayal at sea, had just died a terrible death. So,” he said, sighing, “the
Black Ghost
began to ride out, protecting the local smugglers on their runs, searching for this Red Men Gang, looking to exact revenge.”

He was telling her a story, a fascinating story. And, one by one, the pieces were all falling into place. The consequences of trusting the wrong man, the price paid for love, the horrific coincidences of life…of death. “The
Black Ghost?
But you said the
Black Ghost
was a ship?”

“Ainsley’s ship, yes. When he had been Geoffrey Baskin, he had also been the Black Ghost. The mask, the cape, the funereal black as he stood on the deck, commanding his men. A perfect disguise for a man who intended to live openly in England again one day, and a sight to strike fear in the hearts of ship captains under command to yield or be sent to the bottom. I was too young to ever see Ainsley that way, but he must have been glorious. He’s still the most magnificent, impressive man I’ve ever met. But, to explain, my brother Courtland donned the costume, became the Black Ghost. We’ve all taken our turns as the Black Ghost.”

“Even you?”

Rian smiled at the question, looking suddenly very young, even abashed. “Even me. There’s not a lot for bored, adventure-hungry young men to do on Romney Marsh, Lisette, except to dream of glory. But then Papa Ainsley found out what we were doing.”

“Oh, dear. He wasn’t happy?”

“He wasn’t happy, no. We’d exposed ourselves to scrutiny from London, from the War Office most especially, who had heard that English gold was making its way to Bonaparte, most probably via Romney Marsh. Our coastline is perfect for smugglers, Lisette. A million places to hide, too few of the Waterguard to cover every inlet, every cunning little harbor capable of landing small boats, our close proximity to Calais and elsewhere.”

Lisette twisted her fingers together in her lap. Once again, she’d heard this story. Her
papa
had admitted to smuggling English gold to Bonaparte until he’d nearly been discovered, captured. But that had been the action of a French patriot, hadn’t it? “So…so what did he do, your so magnificent
Papa
Ainsley?”

“We got lucky. A recent new friend of the family heard some names. My sister Elly—I told you about her—went to London along with the man who would become her husband, Jack Eastwood. With more luck and some skill, the Red Men Gang was exposed, and Jack saw a man, just a glimpse of him, and, eventually, we heard another name.”

“Nathaniel Beatty,” Lisette breathed quietly, her last hope crashing to the ground.

“Yes, very good, Lisette. Nathaniel Beatty, Edmund Beales—the
Comte
Beltrane. Maybe, possibly, all the same man. This is all complicated, I know, but after Jack and Elly were so successful, we had another piece of luck when my brother Spencer went to London on another search entirely and happened upon a man known to have been second-in-command to Edmund Beales while he was in the Caribbean. That man, named Jules, died before he could be questioned, but we knew then for certain. Edmund Beales is alive. What we don’t know, can’t know, is how he knows any of us survived.”

“Because of what is happening now? That is why you think this?”

“What else can I think? We congratulated ourselves. We’d learned about his existence, without betraying our own. But we were wrong. Somehow, some way, Beales knows about us. Not where we are, thank God, and in the one hundred or more square miles of Romney Marsh, it could take him some time to find us, even if he knew to look in Romney Marsh, that is. We’ve known for some time that we need to find him, destroy him at last. For Ainsley, for all of us.”

“So that is what you’re going to do, Rian Becket?” Lisette asked him, barely able to force the words past her lips. “You’re going to kill him?”

He looked at her, his expression intense. “No. I told you, Lisette. Only if I have no other choice. What I’m going to do, Lisette, is pack the bastard up and throw him at Ainsley’s feet, trussed up tight like those rabbits we turned over the spit last night. Ainsley’s revenge, not mine. Jacko’s revenge, Court’s revenge, Chance’s revenge. The revenge of every man who sailed back into our harbor to find his wife, his children, dead on the sand.
That’s
what I’m going to do, or I’m going to die trying.”

He got to his feet, not looking at Lisette, and took off into the trees, leaving her to sit alone on the bank of the stream, wishing she’d never been born, if being born had meant to live long enough to have her every dream shattered.

“T
HE SCENERY IS BEGINNING
to look familiar, Jasper,” Rian said as he sat up on the seat in the small space his new friend’s huge body afforded him. “That church spire over there?” he said, pointing. “I don’t think we’re more than two miles from the manor house. Make for the spire, Jasper. We’ll camp nearby.”

“Beside a church, Lieutenant? Are we looking for prayers?”

“I don’t think prayers are going to help us much, my friend, not when we’re planning what we’re planning. But where there are churches there are always graveyards, and usually land uncluttered by the living, who don’t seem partial to having all their neighbors underground, liable to walk at night.”

“Jasper would be all scared and such like, if he didn’t think you were funnin’ him.”

“I’m sorry. There’s bound to be some cover nearby, that’s all I’m saying. We look like a Gypsy equipage, and Gypsies aren’t always welcomed with open arms. If we keep our distance, the villagers will keep theirs. And we don’t want them admiring that cannon, now do we?”

“Not unless one of ’em was wantin’ to buy it, no. So we settle in, have ourselves some supper—and then what? Wait for dark?”

“That seems reasonable. The last time I was outside the manor house, attempting to look in, I decided I needed a ladder. How do you feel, Jasper, about your Lieutenant
climbing
you?”

Jasper’s grin was a delight, and Rian thanked his lucky star for putting the giant man in his way. He could do nothing without him. Without his caravan, with the weapons that were almost an embarrassment of riches.

“Lisette has been sleeping most of the day again,” he said as Jasper turned the oxen onto a small, dirt-packed lane leading west. “My guess is that she’s preparing to be awake all night, knowing that we’ll arrive soon, knowing that my best choice is to approach the manor house in the dark.”

“She’d think all of that?”

“Oh, yes indeed, she would. She thinks a lot of things, Jasper. I just wish I knew the half of them. But what frightens me to my toes is how very quiet she’s been for the last day and night, how wonderfully cooperative. You don’t know her well, Jasper, but I can safely tell you that
quiet
and
cooperative
are not words that would normally spring to mind when I think of Lisette.”

“But we’ll be taking her with us when we’re off to reconnoiter? Jasper doesn’t think that sounds a good idea, Lieutenant.”

“It’s not,” Rian agreed. “Just be ready to act when I give the word, all right? Don’t question, just do. And remember, I won’t like it any more than you do.”

“No, sir, but you won’t be the one doin’ it.” Jasper sighed, a prodigiously complicated movement of his massive upper body following. “So pretty. Mayhap you’re wrong, Lieutenant?”

“I’d like to be wrong, I
want
to be wrong. But what if I’m only even a little bit right? Can we take that chance?”

“No trustin’ in women, eh? It’s a sorry, sorry world we live in, Lieutenant, that it is.”

Rian heard the small wooden toggle being shifted behind the foot square wooden door behind him, and put a finger to his lips just before the door opened inwardly and Lisette’s face appeared in the opening. “Ah, the sleeping princess awakes.”

“Where are we?” Lisette asked without preamble. “Are we near? I need you to stop, Jasper, if you please.”

“Close enough, I think, yes,” Rian told her as Jasper pulled hard on the thick leather straps that served as reins and the oxen, never seemingly in a hurry, immediately stopped still in the traces. “Yes, thank you, Jasper. You go ahead with the caravan, and Lisette and I will follow on foot. I feel the need to stretch out my leg a bit.”

“Still sore?” Lisette asked him before he could climb down from the seat.

“Sleeping on the damp ground doesn’t help it, no,” Rian said, grinning at her. “Perhaps tonight you could reconsider your maidenly bower?”

Beside him, Jasper choked and coughed and turned as red as the scarf tied around his massive neck.

Lisette’s face disappeared and the small door slammed shut, leaving Rian nothing more to do than to climb down from the seat and wait for her to appear from the back of the caravan, which she did moments later, still in the act of slinging a thin woolen shawl woven in bright reds and blues up and over her head, to settle softly around her shoulders. It was a graceful move, the move of a dancer, perhaps, and he enjoyed watching her, even if he didn’t enjoy the thought that she might be a dancer, a performer of some sort, enlisted by Edmund Beales to ingratiate herself with him.

“I still think you look ridiculous, you know,” she told him as the caravan slowly moved off down the road that was little more than a pathway. “You look nothing like a Gypsy.”

“A one-eyed Gypsy at that,” he told her, grinning as he lifted the black handkerchief Jasper had helped him tie over his head, and then pull down over his left eye. Not that his disguise was so limited, for he also wore brown baggy wool trousers that fell at least two inches too short over his uncomfortable wooden clogs, and a frayed white, full-sleeved shirt beneath a once fine flowered waistcoat. The long red sash at his waist was, in fact, more to help hold the trousers in place than it was for “show.”

“You should have allowed me to go into the shop when we stopped for luncheon,” she told him, tugging at the low, scooped neckline of her white blouse that closed with a drawstring and was tucked into the incredibly small waist of her red, flounced skirt. If he didn’t know she was almost entirely held together by strategically placed pins, he would think she’d been born to wear such an outrageous outfit, even with her shining blond hair. “I am in constant danger of these ridiculous clothes falling off me.”

“In that case, I might want to rethink keeping one eye covered,” Rian told her as they turned and began to walk along the roadway. “And I thought you had to…you know.”

“No, not really. I just wished to be out of the caravan.” She stopped, turned in a slow circle, to see what he saw, trees on both sides of them, and nothing much behind them. “Where are we?”

“Close, but not too close,” he told her as they began to walk again, she using one wheel rut, he walking along the other. “Is there anything you wish to discuss with me, Lisette?”

She shook her head. “No. I understand what you are doing, and why you are doing it. But I cannot yet believe that the
Comte
Beltrane is also this Edmund Beales, this terrible, terrible man. And I don’t think you are sure, either.”

“I’m not entirely certain, no. Maybe you could help me with that?”

She looked at him, her eyes gone wide. “Me? I have never even heard this name, this Edmund Beales, until you told it to me. Your family has such a sad story, Rian Becket, but that does not make the
Comte
your old enemy.”

“You’re defending him now?”

“No! He wants me in his bed. The daughter of his childhood friend. That makes him a lecherous old man, but it does not make him a murderer, a heartless person who did what you say this Edmund Beales did a world away from here.”

“What I
say
Beales did, Lisette?”

She shook her head once more, the last of the day’s sunlight to still make its way through the trees surrounding them glinting against her blond head. “What you
know,
Rian Becket. What you told me, what I agree to believe. There is a reason he saved your life. I agree, there is a reason. But is it the reason you suspect? That is all I ask you to consider.”

“Nathaniel
Beatty,
Lisette. We can’t forget that, can we? Or that, as you believe, and I think I could believe, he took your father’s name with him to England as he made himself rich funneling English gold to Bonaparte.”

“I said I believed that, yes.” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “It is one possible answer. But there are so many more.”

“Coincidence? Crossing paths with Beales again so many years after the island could also be seen as a coincidence. But I prefer to think of it as fate. The kinder Fates, at last bringing us full circle, where we can avenge all those innocent lives.”

“You are a romantic man, Rian Becket, in an unromantic world,” Lisette cautioned him, kicking her colorful skirts out in front of her as she walked. “You spin fantasies, scribble your stories. You told me as much. I’ve seen some of them, remember?”

Rian silently agreed that she had a point. He did sometimes weave fantasies, stories. But not this time. He was sure of it. This was here and now, not the scribblings of a hopeful writer longing to become another Lord Byron, another darling of the
Ton
in London, a city he dreamed of conquering one day. Of course, that had all been before Waterloo, before the loss of his arm. Then again, Byron hadn’t fared all that badly, and he had a crippled foot.

“What I told you yesterday wasn’t a story, Lisette, it was what happened. Less than what happened, because I wished to spare you the worst. I appreciate your warning, but as I said, I’m not planning to kill the
Comte.
We will take him to Becket Hall, and Ainsley will know who he is, and what to do with him.”

“And if you toss the
Comte
as his feet and he says he does not know the man? What then, Rian Becket. You pick the
Comte
up, dust him off, proffer your apologies, and send him on his way?”

Rian laughed out loud. “That would be rather embarrassing, wouldn’t it? No, Lisette, I think I’d then ask him why he had gone so far out of his way as to house one wounded soldier for so long, and then give him what he wants. My sister Morgan and her husband certainly can introduce him to London Society, if that’s what he’s after.”

“Not one wounded soldier, Rian,” she reminded him in a small voice. “There were four others.”

“Ah yes, I’d forgotten. Two who died, two you returned to passing English troops. Is that right?”

She didn’t answer him. She only kept walking, five very distant feet away from him, still kicking at the hem of her too-long skirts, avoiding his eyes.

“Lisette?”

“They all died, Rian Becket,” she told him at last, almost whispering the words. “I didn’t want to worry you, while you were still so sick, so I said that two lived. I’m sorry.”

Rian felt a pain in his chest, the pain of loss, for every man who had died at Waterloo or because of that battle, was a painful loss. If they had been able to keep Bonaparte on his island prison, there never would have been a Waterloo. And yet, at the time, he, Rian, had been delighted, more than eager to be involved in a war he thought he had missed. What a fool he’d been. War wasn’t the glory he’d been so sure it was. It was a waste. Everything about war was a waste.

“Do you…do you remember their names, Lisette?” he asked her, at last giving up the comparable ease of staying to the wheel rut and walking closer to her, on the uneven packed dirt that would turn to sucking mud beneath the slightest of rains. “I could contact the War Office and their families could learn what had happened to them. Not knowing? That has to be more difficult than to know a loved one is definitely never coming home again.”

“Their names?” She looked at him, panic flashing in her lovely blue eyes. He saw it, and then it was gone, to be replaced by an overwhelming sadness. “No…no, I’m so sorry, I’m afraid I do not. They had all been in dire straits, and died quickly.”

“Forty miles from the battlefield, two days travel from the field,” Rian pointed out, deciding she looked vulnerable enough at the moment for him to push her, tempt her to, please God, finally begin to tell him something he could believe true. “If they had been left there, to be found by our own soldiers, they might have survived. Have you ever thought of that, Lisette?”

She nodded, biting her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment before blowing out an audible breath. “What the
Comte
did, it was not an act of kindness, was it?”

“No, Lisette, it was not. When did you first realize that?”

She looked up at him, her head snapping back as if he had slapped her, and then turned her back, walked to the side of the roadway and sat down on a fallen tree trunk. One, he thought for no apparent reason except his own romantic nature she so condemned, probably used years ago by highwaymen to block the road, stop carriages and rob them.

He joined her on the log, pulling the black handkerchief entirely from his head, shaking out his overlong hair. And he waited. With Lisette, he had learned, his most important move could be to not move at all. Not speak. But to just simply wait for her to fight whatever fight she engaged in with her conscience, her own secrets, and hope her better instincts, what he believed to be her good heart, won the battle.

That’s what he hoped. He also hoped he wasn’t the biggest fool in the history of civilization.

“They…um…I don’t want to do this, Rian Becket. Why do you make me do this?”

He slid his arm around her shoulders, pulled her close against him. “I don’t blame you, Lisette, not for anything, I promise. Just tell me what you think I need to know.”

He felt her nod her agreement against his shoulder, but it took her another few endless minutes to speak to him, to tell him. To grow her courage, or to sort through her lies, arrange truth and lies in pretty rows. He didn’t know which was true.

“I did learn their names, after they were dead. I never…I never saw any of them, I don’t know where they are buried, or if anyone said prayers over them. I doubt it.”

Rian felt his jaw tightening, but fought to control his growing rage. “Who told you their names, Lisette?” he asked quietly.

“No one.” She pushed out of his embrace and looked straight into his eyes. “I overheard…the
Comte
speaking with someone. They…they were all the same as you, Rian Becket. They were all Beckets. That is all I know.”

Rian’s rage turned to icy fear. “Beckets? They were all named
Becket?
” He shot to his feet, terrified. Had any of his brothers decided to come to Belgium, to fight Bonaparte? Spencer? Mariah had threatened him with every evil thing she could, but he might still have decided that this was a war that needed fighting, as opposed to the one he had fought in America.