The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [20]
Belesain believed Napoleon invincible on the battlefield, but he loathed him for his hypocritical bourgeois attitudes. He must tread warily. This man standing before him was nothing but a bureaucrat, a nonentity, obviously a lackey with few brains. But he did have power, curse him, which meant he, Belesain, would deal with him. If he couldn’t deal with him, he would have him killed. After all, robbers and scoundrels of all sorts abounded on the roads.
“Yes,” Douglas said. “As you doubtless know, Napoleon has always believed it imperative that plans and those carrying out the plans must be overseen. An endless task, no?”
“You have papers, of course.”
“Naturally.”
At three o’clock that afternoon, Douglas walked beside General Belesain through the encampment on the beach at Boulogne. The general hated this—this forced graciousness to a damned bureaucrat, this air of cooperation with a man he both feared and despised. He tried to intimidate Douglas, then ignored him, acting as though he knew everything and could control everything, and that made Douglas smile. Dinner that evening was with a dozen of Belesain’s top officers in the mayor’s dining room. By the time the lengthy meal was done, most of the officers were drunk. By midnight, three of them had been carried back to their billets by their fellow officers. By one o’clock in the morning, Douglas was more alert than he’d ever been in his life, waiting for his chance.
He prayed no one would discover he was really an English spy. He had no wish to die. After all, when he returned to England, it would be to his new wife, to Melissande—ah, how sweet her name sounded on his tongue—and she would be in his bed and he would keep her there until she conceived the Sherbrooke heir.
When the general challenged him to a game of piquet, Douglas gave him a bland smile, and his heartbeat quickened. “The wager?” he inquired, flicking a speck of dust off his black coat.
The general suggested francs.
Douglas showed mild irritation with such banality. Surely such a brilliant and sophisticated man as the general could come up with a more interesting . . . ah, a more enticing wager?
The general thought this over, then smiled, off center, for he was drunk. He rubbed his hands together and his eyes gleamed as he said, “Ah, yes, certainly. The winner of our little game, monsieur, will enjoy a succulent little morsel who currently lives with me here. Her name is Janine and she is very talented at pleasuring a man.”
Douglas agreed with remarkable indifference.
CHAPTER
5
Claybourn Hall
ALEXANDRA COULDN’T BELIEVE it. She stood still as a stone by Melissande’s Italian writing desk, whose surface for once held something other than a myriad of perfume bottles. She still wore her dressing gown, and her hair hung in a thick braid over her shoulder. She stared down at the single sheet of paper. She closed her eyes a moment, closed them against the knowledge . . .
You hoped this would happen.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Regardless, she’d kept silent. She’d watched. And it had happened. Melissande and Anthony Parrish, Viscount Rathmore, had eloped to Gretna Green the previous night. Slowly Alexandra picked up the paper upon which Melissande had scrawled her few sentences, words that had changed all their lives, words that were misspelled because Melissande disdained any attempt at scholarship. Alexandra was calm; she felt strangely suspended, as if something more were going to happen. She would have to take the note to her father. She would have to confess that she guessed what was happening between the two of them.
She hated herself at that moment, knew herself to be a jealous creature, petty and mean-spirited, who deserved no consideration from anyone.
After the duke had read the letter, he laid it carefully on his desktop, walked over to the wide windows and stared out