Since the Surrender (8 page)

“Freshly arrived in London and you came straight to see us. I am flattered, indeed.”

“As you should be,” he agreed, which made her laugh. “Any unsavory rumors concerning your establishment floating about that might deter visitors?”

“No more so than usual. None that our usual crowd would spend a moment believing.” The Duchess ran her brothel as tightly and cleanly as Captain Eversea had run his regiment. “The crowd has only been a bit thin for nigh on a week or so. Perhaps a day or so longer than that? Please do tell Lord Kinkade that Marie-Claude is pining for him. He is her favorite visitor.”

“Visitor.” What a polite euphemism for someone who routinely vigorously pressed Marie-Claude into a mattress. Chase suddenly wondered whether he wanted to press MarieClaude into a mattress. She was one of the girls who had decided a pout suited her. It certainly did. Her pillowy mouth could tempt a man into writing her into his will, into doing rash, reckless things for her if she would only do certain things with it.

“I’ll…tell him.”

The Duchess noticed the direction of his gaze. “What can we do for you this evening, Captain Eversea?”

The “we’ had a whiff of appealing decadence, and she knew it. Chase acknowledged that with a leap of a brow and half smile, and tried to imagine those four lovely girls transferring their attentions from faro to the needs of his body. But it was like trying to grasp hold of a reflection in water: the harder he tried, the more scattered and turbulent it became—the image wouldn’t take shape. He was suddenly freshly angry with Rosalind.

Because not even forty women clamoring to pleasure him for forty nights could assuage the particular need that had led him here. He’d come here to forget. But now it was clear that he first needed to make himself remember.

All of it.

“I’ll have whiskey,” he told the Duchess. “And keep it coming, please.”

What the devil!

Rosalind’s head swung like a weathervane in a windstorm, searching for that voice. And then she saw him.

Or…it?

Gooseflesh rose on her arms. At the top of a ladder pushed against the wall near that enormous marionette was a…man. But at first glance he seemed indistinguishable from the puppet. His hands glance he seemed indistinguishable from the puppet. His hands were so gnarled and brown they appeared carved of wood, his cheeks glowingly ruddy and as hard and round as if he were using them to store nuts; in contrast, gravity softened and drew his jaw ever downward. Now, as she took him in, the laps on either side of his face made him look like the marionette’s cousin. His eyes were large, a peculiar crystalline shade of blue, and pouched in folds of skin. He was smiling, a weary sort of smile. The sort a marionette couldn’t accomplish on its own. He wasn’t made of wood, after all.

She realized her hand had flown up to cover her overtaxed heart. She lowered it abruptly, embarrassed and more than a little irritated. She was beginning to resent the havoc this odd museum was wreaking on her nerves.

The man’s eyes shone with amusement. “My apologies, madam. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I thought perhaps you were addressing me when you apologized for intruding, since no one else is about.”

An easy enough mistake, since she had been talking to no one in particular, just like a looby. In truth, she likely would not have seen the man at all if he hadn’t spoken or moved. And this unnerved her, too. As though crossing the portals of the Montmorency Museum put one at risk of becoming an exhibit.

Waiting for her reply, the man applied himself to what appeared to be puppet maintenance. He tested the puppet’s arm joint as tenderly as he would touch a cherished human, not a lump of wood deliberately carved to be ugly.

Rosalind’s heart slowed as she watched the soothing ministrations.

“Oh, no, please accept my apologies,” she finally managed. Her voice was a bit thready. “I’m not usually such a ninny. It’s just that it’s so very still here and I…I thought I was alone. I was musing aloud.”

She quite deliberately did not mention the ghost. Or the hallucination. Whatever the man in puffy drawers might have been. He nodded, as though this made perfect sense. “’Tis a quiet place, the Montmorency. One might be tempted to muse aloud.”

Good heavens. An understatement.

“Are you a caretaker here at the museum, then, sir?”

He straightened the marionette’s trousers over its skinny wooden legs with a tug. “Aye, but of the puppets, mainly, madam. My family has been puppeteers for centuries. And I do a bit of carpentry for the museum now and again, too. You were admiring the painting?”

He’d been watching her? Wait: watching her and Chase?

Had he been listening to them?

The fine hairs at the back of her neck stirred in distaste. She disliked being watched when she wasn’t aware of it, particularly in light of all that had happened recently. But she had to admit that in all likelihood she would never have seen the man if he hadn’t moved or spoken to her directly, such was his camouflage.

“I was looking at the painting,” she conceded.

He smiled faintly, appreciating her careful distinction.

“And Captain Eversea? He was looking, too?”

He must have heard her address Chase. She stared at him. He must have heard her address Chase. She stared at him.

“Yes,” she finally said, cautiously.

“What drew you to the painting?” The question seemed idle; he turned away from her as he asked it, and was now testing the mobility of the marionette’s neck. He took it in both hands and gave it such a twist that Rosalind’s hands flew to her throat. She dropped them instantly.

“It…reminded me of my sister.”

Apparently satisfied with the head, the man retrieved a cloth from his toolbox, hiked the ugly marionette’s shirt and gave its smooth wooden chest a bit of a polish with some sort of pungent oil. Rosalind was peculiarly tempted to avert her eyes. She was relieved when he pulled the shirt down again.

“Isn’t that interesting?” he mused. “The painting reminds me of my daughter.”

She was not about to tell him why it reminded him of her sister. He was not further forthcoming regarding his daughter. They regarded each other mutely for a moment.

Then he turned decisively back to his work. Next he applied the cloth to the lumpy wooden face of the marionette. She winced when he dug his fingers into its carved nostrils and twisted.

“Do…do you like the painting, sir?” She suddenly wondered what this craftsman thought of the Rubinetto.

He wiped his knobby hands on a cloth tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

“No.”

The word was inflectionless and immediate.

He backed down the ladder, each rung giving a squeak beneath his weight. He bent for the handle of a toolbox on the floor, gave her a short bow by way of farewell, and walked past her, deeper into the museum, without looking back.

By his second whiskey at the Velvet Glove, Chase was remembering the day English intelligence confirmed that the d’Alignys were spies for the French.

Lady d’Aligny, they’d said, was the niece of a high-ranking French official who had the ear of Napoleon and had been the source of information regarding tentative English troop positions. Doubtless she’d flirted the information strategically out of an English soldier, and Chase wondered whom he would need to order flogged. Or worse.

He wasn’t naive enough to feel any particular sense of betrayal where the d’Alignys were concerned, merely a fatalistic disappointment. War was war, and Englishmen were even now secretly, comfortably, moving through French society, mingling within Bonaparte’s inner circle, making friends, betraying those friends, and sending intelligence both useful and trivial back to Wellington.

And of course dancing with French wives.

It had ever been thus in war.

Colonel March had been philosophically, humorously grim. A battered old soldier, whip-lean, bent just a bit at the shoulders from an old wound, the colonel’s eyes were sharp but not jaded. Without his hat, Chase suddenly found his friend’s hair strangely poignant. Soft as cobwebs. Only a little of it left.

“We can’t suddenly refuse all of their invitations, of course, because it will reveal what we know and put our own men in danger,” the colonel had said. “They set the best table in all of Belgium. Better to know, aye?”

“Yes, sir. But what of Mrs. March? She’s a particular friend of Lady d’Aligny.”

“I’ll tell Rosalind to curtail her visits and impress upon her the reasons for it. She’ll be…greatly disappointed.” The colonel hated to disappoint Rosalind. “But she’s a sensible girl.”

It wasn’t the first word Chase would have chosen to describe Rosalind. But the colonel didn’t see his wife as clearly as he saw her.

Or perhaps he saw her only precisely as he wanted to see her. So instead he’d considered it his duty to watch Rosalind, though he had scarcely spoken to her in weeks.

Two days later he’d just made an early departure from a meeting with the colonel and two other officers, Kinkade included, when he saw her hurrying through the foyer of their house so quickly her dress sailed out behind her. She glanced furtively about the foyer before ducking into the narrow passageway leading to the kitchen, which opened up onto the servants’ entrance.

Chase instantly recognized she meant to surreptitiously leave the house.

In her hand she clutched a half-crumpled sheet of foolscap. In two strides he was within a few feet of her. “Good day, Mrs. March. Where are you going?”

She visibly started. Halted in her tracks.

And then her shoulder went back stiffly in resignation. She turned very slowly. Her eyes flared hotly when they met his. His question had been very direct.

But then, he was generally very direct, as she knew.

“You seem to be everywhere, Captain Eversea. And yet we speak very rarely these days, don’t we?”

Impressive gambit, indeed. An attempt to put him on the defensive.

“Are you reluctant to answer my question, Mrs. March?”

A hesitation. He could sense the tick of her thoughts.

“Is my destination truly any of your business, Captain Eversea?”

She’d tried for imperiousness. She was the wife of his commanding officer, after all.

But he just smiled a slow, grim, entirely comprehending smile that soon had her fidgeting nervously with the sheet of foolscap in her hand. She was clever but young, and doubtless inexperienced when it came to lying, simply because it didn’t come naturally to her. Otherwise she would have known her evasiveness was tantamount to confession.

to confession.

“It most certainly is my business if you intend to visit with Lady d’Aligny after the colonel has requested you not to do it.”

She went visibly still. To her credit, she didn’t deny a thing, or lie about where she intended to go. But he saw a wounded flicker in her eyes. The message rustled; her hand was shaking. Somewhere out in the garden a bird gave voice to a series of trills.

“But she’s my friend.” She’d tried to measure out the words evenly. But he’d heard the pain in her voice, and his fingers curled involuntarily into a fist. She held up the message, as though displaying evidence of friendship. “She invited me for tea. She misses my company, she says, and I miss hers, and it’s been but three days since I’ve seen her. Surely just for tea…” Something approaching stubborn defiance began to harden her lovely features. “Surely there could be no harm in tea, Captain Ever…”

She trailed off at the cold, implacable expression on his face.

“She’s not your friend, Mrs. March. She’s using you. This is war. The colonel doubtless has made his wishes known to you with regards to the Lady d’Aligny. Don’t be a child.”

He’d said it firmly. But gently, gently, too. As though the message she held was a loaded and aimed pistol and he was attempting to talk her into lowering it.

She dropped her eyes to the message quickly, her fine brows diving. Trying to disguise her hurt and disappointment and confusion.

He’d seen all of it, anyway.

And in that instant he felt her hurt so acutely it might well have been his own.

And, absurdly, that was when he became truly furious at the d’Alignys.

And what kind of soldier did this make him when suddenly the welfare of Mrs. March meant more to him than the d’Aligny betrayal?

She lifted her head again. They regarded each other wordlessly for a moment. Her pale eyes seemed unnaturally bright. Two faint spots of pink had appeared high on cheeks.

“How do you know she’s not my friend? Perhaps she cares for me because she enjoys my company, and not simply because I might do her the good fortune of betraying the British army to her in some useful way. And I swear to you, I never have.”

This was so desperately, staggeringly naive and surprisingly, maturely ironic that for a moment he didn’t know how to respond.

“I know you never have, Mrs. March. Your husband would ensure you were never able to, and he would never put you in that position or use your friendship with Lady d’Aligny in that way. I fear your loyalty to Lady d’Aligny is admirable but misguided, Mrs. March, and you must abandon it.”

It was no pleasure to disappoint her, to watch her struggle with a betrayal. Perhaps the first she’d ever known.

But suddenly her eyes glinted bright as flints and the high color in her cheeks blazed.

Ah. And here was the temper Mrs. March tried so valiantly to disguise.

“Despite what you might think, calling me Mrs. March again and again does not impose a greater distance between us…Captain Eversea. One might think you’re attempting to remind yourself that I am a Mrs…. March.”

He froze.

A brutal warrior, was Rosalind March. She’d identified and aimed straight for his weakness as no one before had. She’d rendered him speechless and momentarily helpless for the first time in his life. Unfortunately, his weakness was also her own.

She knew she’d gone too far. She stared at him. Her mouth parted just a bit in shock. She’d frightened herself with her own recklessness.

He couldn’t yet speak. He was gruesomely ashamed that she was correct.