Honour's Redemption Page 2

  Chapter One

  London, Seven Dials October 1, 1810

  “C’mon,” slurred Sir Brandon Thornley. The baronet half-stepped, half fell down from the hackney as it halted.

  Lucian Merristorm, late of the 14th Light Dragoons, peered up at the swaying sign of a blue horned figure. A grimace of distaste twisted his lips. “Some other gaming hell.”

  “But I’ve heard it’s best for high stakes,” Thornley said petulantly. He swayed and grabbed hold the hackney’s open door.

  A burst of laughter and raucous lyrics came from within the establishment as its outer door opened.

  Thornley turned. He threw a negligent bow to the gentleman who strolled out of the club. “My lord,” he drawled at Stranton Merristorm, Marquess Halstrom. Sir Brandon watched the elegant figure halt and run a negligent glance over Merristorm. Satisfaction filled him at the utter revulsion that darkened Lucian’s saturnine features when he saw Halstrom.

  The baronet flicked a glance at Merristorm’s father. His smirk faltered when he saw the marquess’ dark eyes bear into him with cold cutting inquiry.

  For a second Thornley feared Marquess Halstrom sensed his hatred, read his plan for revenge. He turned and found Merristorm’s gaze locked on the man given the sobriquet Hellfire by his close acquaintances. The loathing on Lucian’s features pleased but still puzzled Thornley.

  The marquess touched his hat to his son. “Take care in your choice of friends.” Without a glance at the baronet, Halstrom strolled to the crested coach that awaited him.

  Thornley climbed back into the hackney. He ignored Merristorm’s black look. “I’d heard he frequented the Blue Devil. Dammed if I thought we’d have the misfortune to meet him.”

  Lucian stared out the window.

  “The infamous Hrycus Club,” Thornley continued and pretended to take a long pull on his flask. He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “You do realize that was the Hellfire, Marquess Halstrom? The King of Debauchery.”

  He watched Merristorm stare at his reflection, so like his parent’s, in the coach window’s glass. I’ll get him drunker and learn it yet. “Let’s go to the Oyster and Crabs. Heard they’ve a new shipment of brandy.”

  * * *

  Lucian lurched out of the Oyster and Crab on unsteady feet. As he neared the edge of the flag-way one of his feet came down on a large unkempt bundle. He tried to halt but lost his balance on the unstable footing and went down hard on one knee. Swearing profusely he gathered his strength and heaved upright.

  Behind Lucian a loud string of oaths erupted. By the time he managed to get steady on his feet and turn, dull thuds and weak pain-filled screeches filled the air. Lucian struggled to focus on the blurry vision before him. Then he realized Thornley was stomping and kicking wildly at something writhing in the street.

  “Leave t’dog be,” Lucian slurred. He took a stumbling step forward, half fell the step to the street and lurched into Thornley. Lucian grabbed hold his arm. “Leave the beast...”

  “The curr tried to trip me,” Thornley hissed. “No right bein’ nuisance in the street. ” He jerked from Lucian’s hold and drew back his foot.

  Looking down Lucian saw a pair of bone thin arms clasped protectively over a small head. Alarm bolted through him. “Whatch that?” he slurred. He instinctively stepped in to block Thornley’s kick. Pain shot through his shin as the other’s boot collided with vicious force. Throwing his weight forward Lucian bore the man down. When Thornley struggled he put his hands on the man’s shoulders and knelt on his chest. “You damnable fool–leave be.”

  When Thornley bucked, Lucian put a hand to the man’s throat and tightened his grip.

  Thornley pushed frantically at the hold, his struggle to breathe harsh grunts.

  With a groan Lucian released him and pushed up. “Be on your way,” he snapped. His hands fisted as Thornley stood and glared. “Now,” he snarled. After Thornley stomped off whimpers penetrated Merristorm’s brain.

  Turning Lucian stared at the bundle of rags. He half stumbled to it and grasped one of the arms. An oath escaped as he pulled the painfully thin boy up.

  “Lemme go mister,” a high pain-filled voice begged. “Dinna mean no harm.”

  “What’s yer name?” Lucian asked.

  “Lemme go.”

  “Your name,” cracked Merristorm in a tone brooking no opposition.

  “Clem,” he snuffled.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Better’n ye,” the lad said with sudden spirit.

  “Show me,” Merristorm demanded, and staggered after the lad.

  * * *

  It was near six in the morn when Lucian stumbled up the stairs to his upper floor flat. He missed a step but caught himself. Leaning against the wall he wearily slid down to rest on the stair. He pulled his flask from his pocket and guzzled down what remained.

  Dropping the flask Merristorm propped his elbows on his thighs and lowered his face into his hands. Not much was clear after he had seen his father except for Thornley’s abuse of the starving beggar boy. The two incidents would exact their price of guilt and memory even though he’d taken the boy to the home he funded.

  “Gotta find ‘nother drink,” he growled, and then heaved up and faced the stairs. “Can’t be worse than those dammed Galician Mountains in Spain. Bloody mountains–” Lucian abruptly terminated the thought. To recall the dead ensured unbearable pain.

  When he finally made it to the top of the stairs Lucian staggered through the unlocked door of his flat and fumbled around until he managed to light a candle. Knowing the bottles in the fetid sitting room were empty he took up the candle. In a drunken haze he entered his bed chamber.

  “Yessss,” Lucian hissed seeing the half empty bottle of port on the table beside his bed. He slapped the candle down unaware that hot wax splattered across his hand. He jerked up the bottle. Brandy sloshed across his grimy shirt and jacket.

  “Hell’s end,” Lucian swore, tilted up the bottle and downed what remained. Then he tossed it aside with little care for where it landed.

  “Damme . . . damme,” he muttered as he toppled face down on the bed. With syllables elongated by exhaustion, by dread, he moaned, “Him . . . boy . . . hell’s fire.

  “Daren’t . . . sleep,” he garbled and twisted onto his side. “Mus . . . n’t,” Lucian slurred as he rolled onto his back. “Ple’se no . . . no . . . sleep.” But before the last word fell silent the nightly waged battle was lost.

  * * *

  The brandy slid down Captain Lucian Merristorm’s throat like silk over a curvaceous thigh. Fingernails lightly trailed through the dark wiry curls across his chest then meandered below his waist.

  “The soldier is ready for action, señor,” purred the lush señorita curled against him in the large bed.

  “For king and country,” quipped Merristorm. He rolled over taking the woman with him.

  Lucian heaved up but found he was atop his charger in the midst of battle. A French cuirassier reared a mount before him. The clash of their sabres birthed stars as they clanged and sang a duet to the muse of death.

  Though his arm grew heavier with every stroke, Lucian grinned, certain this time he would succeed. He rejoiced, awaited death.

  But the Frenchman hesitated before striking a fatal blow. Lucian struggled to restrain his hand but it thrust his sabre under and up, through metal, cloth, flesh, bone. “No,” he wailed.

  Blood streamed down Merristorm’s sabre, darkened his glove and cuff. It ridiculed his desperate thirst for la mort. He stared across the corpse-strewn battlefield. Sharp biting pain–too well remembered–twisted Lucian’s gut. He alone still lived. His spirit keened.

  Blinding white wisps of clouds obscured the bloody gore. It evaporated and Lucian stood in a field of lush green grass.

  “Bloody hell,” he moaned but found it impossible to move his gaze from the Norman tower of Halstrom Keep. Unwillingly, he looked upward, to the wall walk where his fiancée struggled to escape
his father.

  “I am coming, Jasmine,” Lucian screamed as he raced into the Keep’s inner ward. Fear hot as molten iron flowed in his veins when a shrill scream punctuated his arrival.

  Lucian lunged for the stairs but found his feet too weighted to move. Another shriek drew his gaze again upward. Jasmine frantically clawed the air as she tumbled downward.

  “Catch me,” she implored.

  Lucian’s heart nearly burst with the effort as he inched toward her. He stretched out his arms to catch her.

  A blur flashed before his eyes accompanied by a whiff of roses. Then a horrid flesh-crushing bone-snapping thud reverberated over and over.

  Kneeling, Lucian cradled his fiancée in his arms.

  “Why did you not come in time?” Jasmine moaned.

  “I tried! I tried,” Lucian cried. Her glassy eyed stare accused. “Forgive me. Please forgive me.”

  At a breathy gurgle Lucian tightened his hold. But he now knelt on a Spanish dung heap outside a stable in Badajoz. In his arms he held the dying Spanish boy Magelhaes.

  ¿Por qué no vino usted a tiempo? Why did you not come in time? In time to save me?” the boy half mumbled, half coughed.

  Bloody spittle splattered across Lucian’s face, blinding him. When he opened his eyes, Jasmine and Magelhaes stood over him.

  “You should’ve been the one to die,” they accused. “You.”

  “I have tried,” Lucian cried his torment. And woke.

  * * *

  Whitby, Yorkshire October 1, 1810

  Donatien gazed at the moon-drenched ruins of the ancient abbey high above the town of Whitby. The majestic structure had once housed life but that had transmuted to death at the time of the Reformation. Like our revolution, he thought.

  A parade of those he had killed, directly or indirectly, flashed before Donatien. An odd sensation skittered along his spine. An unrecognizable emotion flickered for a moment. He refused to recognize it.

  You shall join the fools if you become concerned about the dead. They are nothing.

  Donatien thought back to his meeting with Fouché, Napoleon’s Minister of Police, two weeks past. His anger for the reprimand received was as much with himself as with the minister. Fouché warned him to obtain absolute success in his next assignment, not merely a partial victory as in the last three. The Minister’s words echoed, “The Emperor commands it,” as Donatien envisioned that morn again.

  “So dammed careless a mistake. I knew it was foolish to seek personal revenge against Tarrant.” Donatien halted before the fireplace and slammed his palm against the mantle. “You know better. Madame le Guillotine will have your head. Then what of your grand plans?”

  He ignored the hesitant tap on the door.

  The dwarf Petit carefully edged open the door, kept his large head down as he bowed to his tall, lithe brother. “Excusez moi, monseigneur. A M. Damler to see you.”

  “Send him about his business.”

  “He says he has a missive from the Minister of Police.”

  Donatien ran a finger across the sharply pointed nails of his left hand and nodded. Alone again, he sat in a chair before the lone window in the salon. He crossed his legs, folded his hands, and set his composure for the interview.

  When M. Damler entered Donatien smelled the man’s fear. “What do you wish?” he asked in a calm, chilling voice.

  Damler hesitated, then bowed and shuffled forward. He handed over a sealed missive, and then hunched over as if to hug misery while he waited.

  The letter read, Donatien waited several minutes then raised his gaze from it. “Why does Minister Fouché send you to me about this matter?”

  “’Twas not my idea–I mean–I know you do not–”

  Donatien cut him off. “Why?”

  Damler squirmed. He gulped and blurted, “He said ye be skilled at smuggling and the like. That ye’d fix this. ’Tis not a few francs,” he continued, his features enlivened. “Afore Carrouri was–was killed two months past we’d done well.”

  Noting the catch in Damler’s voice and flash of fear across his features at mention of Carrouri, Donatien waited.

  “A fortune in jewels and coin.” Damler puffed up with pride. “More important, flintlocks and small cannon.”

  “Whose?”

  “Carrouri had men actin’ as agents for the British army. The man always chortled when he told how easy it were done.”

  “Where are the weapons now?”

  “Yorkshire.” Damler swallowed apprehension. “Fouché said ye’d be the one to get them to France.”

  Did he, now? mused Donatien to himself. A means to have my head? Or to prove my worth to Napoleon? “Sit,” Donatien motioned to a chair. “Who killed Carrouri and why?

  “No one knows. Jenkinson, the Englishman he worked with, died a week later. Some say Jenkinson’s wife Peace did it but no one will talk ‘bout either,” Damler said as he carefully perched on the chair’s edge.

  “But you err, M. Damler,” Donatien smiled. “I have not found the person who cannot be persuaded to talk to me.”

  Coming back to the present Donatien scanned the dark shadows hovering in the glassless windows. St. Hilda’s spectre which they claim appears in the abbey does not challenge me. No one can.

  Donatien lowered his gaze to the square-towered church nearer the edge of the cliff and then to the city below. It roamed down the terraces to the harbour. Near the harbour stood his target, the tavern Jenkinson had owned, the Wise Owl.

  Many smugglers had drunk the brandy Donatien had brought with him when he landed a week ago. With the help of the man Damler, they believed that it was a reward for a job well done. He trod carefully and so far they had accepted his explanation for his presence.

  His disguise as Bernard Geary had also proven successful. His breeches and frockcoat of expensive cloth, stained and muddied when he landed, Donatien explained away by a long and difficult land journey from Kent to this new assignment. He wore his brown hair overly long like many of the men in Whitby, though red ribbon rather than leather fastened it. When asked, he spoke wistfully of a home in Sussex, told of a stepfather who deprived him of his rightful inheritance. The men he had met in Whitby laughed when Geary jested about trafficking with the French to win back his inheritance.

  Donatien dressed carefully for this first meeting with Jenkinson’s widow. He glanced down at the same garments he had landed in, now clean and freshly pressed. His hair shone and his skill with disguise ensured that his narrow oval face beneath the navy bicorne was handsome if stark. Seduction was the way to learn who had killed her husband, Donatien was certain. Once he discovered that, it would be easy to ferret out Carrouri’s murderer and the rest of what was afoot.

  Whistling an English ditty, Donatien strolled toward the Wise Owl. He had put off meeting Mrs. Jenkinson until tonight. That women were more malleable when their curiosity grew, he firmly believed. Peace Jenkinson. They say she is a French émigré. I wonder if she is also a Royalist. Eh, bien. If so I will play on her hatred of the revolution that probably killed her family. Donatien knew Napoleon would be evil by association especially as the French emperor published a list of royalists to be killed if caught in France.

  Assuming the identity of Bernard Geary, Donatien removed his bicorne when he entered the tavern. He recognized several of the men seated around the tables. A slender blond strode past him carrying a tray that was heavily weighted with overflowing ale mugs. The narrow oval of the woman’s face was elegant with dainty brows, nose, and lips. Her hair, an early fall’s gold with russet tints flowed down her back in a long plait. It swayed seductively against her derrière as she walked. Eggshell blue eyes gleamed with intelligence and wit as she scrutinized him in a searing glance that transfixed him.

  The Frenchman thought back to a particular day in Paris during the Terror. There had been just such a face and figure in one of the tumbrels heading toward a tête-à-tête with Madame Guillotine.

  Ahh, yes. I’ve seen this face. I
t appears the rumour that Comte Bettencourt’s daughter died is not– Geary lost his thought, distracted by the length of leg and the swell of hip as the woman stretched to pass the ale mugs around a table of rowdy men. The daughter’s name was not Peace. What was it? He watched one of the men pinch her bottom. Anger flared. That it did shocked him. He never cared about insult given to anyone but himself.

  Without thinking, Geary stepped forward. The woman’s look warned him away. He mentally chastised so foolish a move and walked away. He halted at the light touch of a finger to his arm. Turning he saw that the woman followed him, her tray balanced against her thigh.

  “A stranger with a hint of manners,” she said with a slight, lilting French accent laced with sarcasm.

  Her direct gaze, her voice so musical after the harsh Yorkshire dialect, deepened the blow first sight of her had dealt Donatien. It had been only once before that a woman had roused such emotion in him. Long ago and badly ended, he thought. Years of honing sharp focus amidst chaos came to his rescue. “But a stranger no more, I hope?” he offered.

  “Hope for what you will, monsieur. I have learned one usually does not get it.” With a toss of her head she asked, “You are?”

  “Preventative Officer Geary at your service, Miss—”

  “Mrs. Jenkinson,” Peace answered and turned to go to a table of men calling for her.

  Her plait flicked Geary’s hand as she passed. The light teasing brush flicked like a barb into his flesh. This reaction is idiocy, he thought but couldn’t halt his gaze from following her.

  Napoleon demands either success or your head, Geary warned himself. But seducing Peace will not be without many rewards.

  That thought held until Peace turned and smiled. Geary imagined her as she would have appeared in court dress flirting with a courtier. Sobered, he reasserted his usual control and sauntered to her. “Mrs. Jenkinson.”

  "Take a seat and I shall serve you in turn,” Peace informed him with cool calm.

  “I only require information you can provide, madam.” He saw distrust fill her eyes and smiled blandly to put her at ease.