The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [129]
Georges Cadoudal had a sense of irony.
He said aloud, his voice low and slightly blurred, “This isn’t possible. You’re not real. But how . . .”
“The storm will be gone early in the morning.” The words swirled and eddied in his mind. She was leaving, gently and slowly she backed away and she was smiling at him and nodding slightly, moving backward, always moving, more like floating, and then she was simply gone.
Douglas refused to accept it. He leapt from the bed and he ran in the direction she’d gone. Nothing. He lit the candle beside the bed and held it up. The room was empty except for him. He was breathing fast, his heart pounding hard with the shock of it, the fear of it.
“You wretched piece of nothing, come back here! Coward! You ridiculous mind phantom!”
There was no sound save the rain beating steadily against the windows and the occasional branch slashing and raking against the glass.
He stood there for a very long time, naked and shivering and wondering. He had a headache.
At dawn the rain had slowed to a drizzle. At seven o’clock, the clouds parted and the sun came out.
Douglas came downstairs, fully dressed, and strode into the breakfast room. He drew up short. Tony Parrish was seated at the breakfast table drinking coffee and eating his way through eggs and bacon and kippers and scones.
He looked up and smiled at his cousin. “Sit down and eat. Then we’ll leave. We’ll find her, Douglas, don’t worry.”
“I know,” Douglas said and joined him.
Tony waited until Douglas had eaten steadily for several minutes. “What do you mean you know?”
To tell the truth? Ah, no, not the truth, but it would be a treat to watch Tony’s face change until he was regarding him like a Bedlamite. He just smiled, saying, “Georges Cadoudal took her to Etaples. We’ll leave in just a few more minutes. We’ll make the tide and be in France, with luck, in eight hours. Then we’ll hire mounts and be in Etaples in the early morning.”
“How do you know where she is, Douglas? Did Cadoudal leave a ransom note?”
“Yes,” Douglas said and took a bite of toast. “Yes, it was a note. I would have left sooner but the storm prevented it. Is Melissande with you?”
“Yes, she’s sleeping.”
“Ah.”
“While you’re eating, tell me about this Cadoudal fellow and why he took Alexandra.”
Douglas told him the truth, there was no reason now not to. He didn’t tell him of Cadoudal’s plan nor his million guineas from the English government to bring Napoleon down, sow insurrection in Paris, and put Louis XVI’s brother, the Comte d’Artois, on the throne. But he told him of Janine Daudet and how the woman had told her lover Georges Cadoudal, that he, Douglas, was the father of her child. She’d been too afraid to tell him that it had been General Belesain or one of the men he’d given her to who had impregnated her. And then she couldn’t take it back. She hadn’t known that Georges would seek retribution until it was too late.
“The woman’s mad!” Tony said. “Why should she serve you such a turn, Douglas? Good God, you saved her!”
Douglas toyed with a limp slice of bacon, memory ebbing and flowing in his mind. “It’s quite simple, really, from her point of view. I rejected her.”
“I don’t understand any of this. What the devil are you talking about?”
But Douglas had pushed back his chair and stood. “I will tell you on the way to Eastbourne.”
The air was crisp and cool and a slight breeze blew in their faces. Garth was full of energy and spirits and Douglas had his hands full controlling him. Both men carried pistols and knives. They both wore tall boots and buckskins and capes.
Douglas said finally to Tony, “She believed I didn’t want to take her to bed because she’d been turned into a whore by General Belesain. It wasn’t true, of course. As for the general, it’s quite possible he used her as his own private whore, for visitors, for friends, whoever. He gave her to me for my enjoyment, no reason to believe that he hadn’t given her to other men before I arrived. In any case, she was furious and hurt