On a Long Ago Night (21 page)

heart, but he did not delve deep enough to reach my words of

wisdom. That is still the property of my true son. It is you I will

instruct in the way to reach earthly paradise. After all these years in

prison, I have had much time to think long and hard on what was

and what will be.

I pray that it is not too late for the heart of a good woman to

bring all I desire for you to light. She is a treasure. The key to a

treasure for you, certainly. A well-read and much learned scholar

with a knowledge of languages equal to your own. In fact, she was

able to decipher the long letter I sent to you as a test, the one

written by many scribes in many tongues. I thought this most clever

in a woman. I'm sure she will remember the contents of this

correspondence when you meet. It will give you something to

seriously discuss with her. I will tell you what I remember of her so

that you may hastily seek her out. Her name is Honoria. A wellborn

English lass. I met her aboard a merchant ship called the

Manticore
. She wore mourning black, for the loss of her dear

mother, I believe. You must find this girl. I suffer torment and

torture because you do not know her. Pain brings out the truth in

me. You suffer for lack of knowledge. Honoria will suffer until she

gives it to you, but then you will have all the treasure you need.

What the devil was the old man talking about? Had seven years in a

French prison leached all the wily sense out of the old brigand's

head? Joshua doubted that. The old man was a survivor, clever.

Doubtless his wits were as intact as ever. It was Joshua who had

little reason to use his faculties these days. No influential

connections, and no money to purchase a cushy preferment. He had

a leaking roof over his head and made barely enough from the

collection plate to keep himself in cheap gin. It was a hell of a way

to live, but he'd grown used to it. And used to having no reason to

use the wit and intellect he'd been born with and honed so carefully

with study. Now, here was this puzzling letter from his father

telling that he was to—what? marry?—this Honoria.

"How am I to do that?" He rubbed the three-day-old stubble

on his chin, then took a long quaff of spirits from a dented and dull

pewter mug. "I'm a dutiful son, you old sod, but what the devil do

you really want me to do?"

Menzies read the letter again, and yet again. Someone

knocked on the rectory door, but he ignored it. He got up and paced

for a while across the creaking, rotting floorboards. Mice scurried

along the wainscoting, not in any great hurry to escape from sight.

Then it came to him in a flash.

He went back and looked carefully at the ancient, wrinkled,

marked-up paper. It was a code, of course! His father would be

closely watched. His jailers would suspect him of having many

secrets, so if Abraham Menzies went to the trouble to smuggle a

letter to his son from the depths of a French prison, the message

would be important. And it would be hidden.

Rereading the document, he realized that there were slight

differences in the handwriting in some of the words, and faint

marks by others. When he read only those words, the message was

clear.

Stolen gold and gems. Spanish captain stole way to earthly

paradise. Woman bring to light treasure. Key to treasure a

knowledge of languages. She decipher the letter I sent to you.

Clever woman will remember the contents. Discuss with Honoria.

Wellborn English lass. Merchant ship called
Manticore.
She wore

mourning black for mother. This girl suffer torment and torture.

Pain brings out the truth. Honoria suffer until she give it to you.

Then you will have the treasure
.

Joshua Menzies rubbed his jaw again. "Well now, isn't that

interesting?" He smiled, for the first time in a very long time. "So

the old bastard
did
send me word of where he hid his spoils before

the French attacked. The letter just never got to me."

Apparently it had been stolen by a Spaniard and the code

deciphered by this Honoria chit. What was required of him was to

find a girl who had been in mourning while aboard a certain

merchant ship. Surely he was still clever enough to find the records

of this ship called the
Manticore
. Then, his father thought that all

that would be needed to make Joshua Menzies a wealthy man was a

little pain and torture of a fragile, delicate woman.

Menzies's smile widened. "I'll enjoy that part."

"I have a letter from your mother," Edward Marbury said after

silence had drawn out between, them and become uncomfortable.

The statement lifted James's dark, resentful mood. "Is she

coming?" He leaned forward with sudden eagerness. "Is she?" A

servant had appeared and cleaned up the spilled coffee and

gathered up the remains of James's broken cup. He had a fresh cup

of coffee beside him now.

"Yes." His father's smile was bright and happy. When the

slender, long-faced man smiled, James could see the resemblance

between them. His father claimed they were alike in spirit, but

James wasn't so sure.

"The stubborn woman has finally agreed to sell the inn you

bought for her and come live in England. I've never fancied myself

as an innkeeper," his father went on. "So I'm pleased to find out

that I won't have to spend the rest of my life—" He made a

dismissive gesture. "Doing whatever it is innkeepers do."

James laughed. "I can see you standing behind a bar and

telling a customer who wants an expensive bottle of wine that the

port he fancies is no good. Or insisting that the maids change the

bed linen every day."

His father was not a man who joked easily. He nodded at

James's jest, and said, "If your mother wanted me to help her with

her inn, she knows I would do it. Though you are correct about my

lack of business wit." Unlike most aristocrats James knew, the

Viscount of Brislay had no disdain for those in trade or commerce.

James did not think his father disdained anyone, except the

dishonest and dishonorable.

James finished his coffee and said, "You set a hard example

to live up to, sir."

His father gave another dismissive flick of his hand.

"Nonsense. I love the woman. You know, sometimes while I spent

all those years looking for her I almost convinced myself that I was

a fool, a dreamer. I'd go through months of telling myself that I'd

put a pretty, but foolish and feckless girl up on an impossible

pedestal. That even if I found her, the love I thought we'd had could

not have survived the years. I'd tell myself that she was too young

to have truly loved me, that she'd found someone else, that she

wouldn't even remember me if we met again. I gave myself every

excuse I could think of to call a halt to the search. But I could never

forget the first time we looked at each other. I could not forget the

way that frightened girl helped the others in the burning convent

escape when the French soldiers set the town on fire. I could not

forget the way she organized a refugee camp and bullied a supply

sergeant to feed those terrified people. I could not forget how she

nursed the wounded. She was fearless and strong. I remembered

how she thought she was too tall and awkward, and how she

blushed when I told her she was the most beautiful woman in the

world. I remembered how she looked at me when we were married,

and the first time we—" He blushed, and cleared his throat.

There were some things about his parents James did not want

to know. He glanced up at the pastel cupids and clouds painted on

the ceiling. "When will she be here?" he asked as he got up to fill a

fresh plate with food from the silver chafing dishes on the

sideboard.

"She sailed the day she mailed the letter. I'm surprised it

arrived before her. Independent chit," his father complained.

"Always has to make her own arrangements and do everything her

own way. I could easily have sent my yacht for her, or had a

carriage waiting at Dover." For all his complaining, James heard

his father's pleased pride at his mother's stalwart nature. "Ah, well,"

he went on, picking up the duke's letter again. "At least Graciela

will be here in time for your wedding."

Wedding. James paused with a bite of roast beef halfway to

his mouth, and the scrap of meat dangled in midair while he turned

a distraught gaze on his father.

Wedding. He had vowed he would do it, but—

Somehow the thought of having his mother at the wedding

ceremony made the whole enterprise more real. They thought he

was really going to go through with this, didn't they? These two

people who had loved and longed for each other for decades, and

had found ecstatic happiness when they were reunited, were

planning his wedding. His loving parents thought that he was just

like them, didn't they? He should never have told them about

Honoria. They'd romanticized his relationship with a woman it

turned out had lied to him about who she really was.

He had come to England with every intention of finding the

innocent woman he had taken advantage of in Algiers, but that was

before he knew…

"Honoria doesn't need me," he told his father. He was a fool

to think she ever had. She was cold. Hard. Unfeeling.

But she had not felt hard in his arms; her flesh had been

supple and warm. Need had stirred in her huge blue eyes. And her

wit, how he had missed the sweet sting of her wit! Ha—the woman

had a tongue that could flay him alive in more languages than he

could count. She had a terrible temper. She hated him. Besides, she

had lied to him.

You lied to her
, he reminded himself.
Once. No, twice
.

Perhaps the second time he had thought it was the truth, and

had pretended it was all these years. He didn't know. She certainly

hadn't questioned it.

His father ignored his desperation; his gaze was on James's

fork. "Either eat that or put it down, and then we will talk."

"I don't want to talk."

"You want to run away."

James placed the fork carefully on the edge of the plate and

made himself face his father and the situation head on. "What I

wanted was to save a woman I had wronged from spinsterhood, or

worse. I have discovered a woman with wealth and position—who

does not need me."

His father was as adamant as cold steel. "You still wronged

her."

No one ever asked if he needed her. He'd never asked

himself. He knew that he did not want to give up his name. "But—"

"Would you have Captain Russell take your place?"

White hot anger flared through James, and frustration hit him

so strongly that he shook. He found that he was standing on his feet

when the reaction settled down to something like sanity. "I am not

jealous of Russell." He said it to try to make his father understand,

and to convince himself of it. "I have never been jealous of 'dear

Derrick.'"

If "dear Derrick" had married her as he should have, James

would not have found himself in this situation. But if "dear

Derrick" had acted like a man—

"Of course not," his father said, and took a sip of coffee.

When he put the cup down he asked mildly,

"What are you going to do about him?"

James threw his napkin decisively on the table. "I'm going to

get a Special Marriage License—that's what I'm going to do."

"You want me to translate a letter?"

He held. the tattered paper toward her. "Here it is."

When she did not move, Diego Moresco tilted his head to one

side and smiled his winning smile at her. He exuded bright, brisk

confidence, with an undertone of masculine danger. The danger,

she suspected, was that she found him the most masculine male she

had ever encountered. Faced with the reckless, rascally

attractiveness of Diego Moresco, she could scarcely recall what

Derrick looked like.

She looked around the room, with its Oriental furnishings lit

by the warm glow from brass lamps. The scent of night-blooming