“THEY’RE BACK, already making their way across the beach,” Courtland said, walking into Ainsley’s study, Rian and Jack behind him. Courtland shrugged completely into the jacket he’d carried into the room with him and then tried to smooth his hair. “Billy, too. They’re back so soon, not even a full night and day gone. I wonder if that means good news or bad.”
Ainsley motioned them all to chairs. “Perhaps I should ring for refreshments, a plate of cakes? Rian, tuck in your shirt, if you please. Are you hungry?”
Rian grinned as he perched himself on the wide wood of a window embrasure. “Only for adventure, Papa.”
Ainsley gave an elaborate sigh. “This must be the price a man pays for having sons. Daughters wouldn’t be so eager to expose themselves to danger.”
“Fanny would. Morgan, too, if she wasn’t a mother now,” Rian said, then lost his grin as Courtland glared meaningfully at him. “Um…do you think Bonaparte will actually be able to escape Elba? That’s why Spence went to Calais, right, to find out? There’d be war again with England, if that were to happen.”
“Don’t make me sorry I woke you, Rian. If all you can do is to point out the obvious,” Courtland told him tightly, “perhaps you’d be wise to just sit there quietly, before you’re sent back to the nursery.”
“That will be enough, thank you, Courtland,” Ainsley said placidly as he heard voices in the hallway and then got to his feet as Spencer stood back to allow Mariah to enter the study ahead of him. They might not have tarried long in Calais, but somehow she seemed to have acquired a new gown. “Miss Rutledge,” he said, inclining his head slightly as they walked across the room to stand directly in front of his desk, “your son is upstairs.”
“True enough, sir, and I’m anxious to see him, even as I know he’s been in capable hands,” Mariah said, her gaze sweeping the large room as she mentally toted up the number of occupants. “I’ve come here first, to apologize for what I’ve done. It was stupid of me, sir, and even selfish.”
“Not to mention reckless. But you’d do it again, wouldn’t you, Mariah?” Ainsley asked her kindly and Mariah’s shoulders sagged with relief.
“Yes, sir, I would. If I’m to be a part of this family, I feel I should first prove myself worthy.”
“By first, I’ll assume, listening at keyholes, and then stowing away on the Respite—and giving Spencer here fits, I’m sure,” Ainsley said drily, wondering if he’d ever been that young and impulsive. “So tell me, Mariah, did you prove yourself worthy?”
She opened her mouth just as Spencer put his hand on her arm and stepped half in front of her. “I locked her in my hotel room the moment we got to Calais. She didn’t do any harm, I promise.”
“Except to your pocketbook,” Jack remarked from the couch across the room. “That gown’s a French design, isn’t it? I seem to remember Eleanor showing me a pattern much like it in one of her magazines. Did you even get a sniff of the man we’re after or did you spend all your time in the shops?”
Mariah looked up at Spencer, watching the tic that had begun to work in his cheek. She’d made a fool of him, embarrassed him. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as Rian laughed at Jack’s comment. “Please, let me tell them about—”
“No,” Spencer told her quietly. “I don’t want you involved in this. Go tend to your son.”
“Don’t order me about like one of your crew. You go tend to him if you think he’s been mistreated in the single day we’ve been gone.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Well, then, what is the point?”
Ainsley had leaned forward in his chair, resting his chin in one hand as he watched the quick, terse exchange between his son and Mariah. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but he was fairly certain they weren’t whispering sweet words of love to each other, not if he could measure their feelings by the stubborn expressions on both their faces.
“Ahem,” Ainsley said at last, when it appeared that the pair in front of him had lapsed into a staring match. “Why don’t you two sit down. Spencer, you tell me what happened in Calais. As Mariah said, William is in good hands.”
“Yes, Spence, you look ready to explode,” Rian commented from his perch. “Will there be an attempt to free Bonaparte? Will there be war again? What have you learned?”
“More than any of us hoped to know, Rian, and if believable, none of it good,” Spencer told his brother as he watched Mariah take the chair directly in front of Ainsley’s desk.
The next half hour passed quickly in a round of explanations, questions, answers and yet more questions. Glasses of wine were passed around, a grumbling Rian was sent to the kitchens for meat and cheese and Mariah watched Ainsley Becket’s face as often as possible, trying to gauge his reaction to the information they’d brought to him.
But his expression told her nothing, not until she told him about the few words of French Spencer had heard and her thoughts on them.
“Lions and wolves?” Ainsley repeated. “Being afraid of lions and wolves?” He sat back in his chair, rubbing at his chin. “Spencer. Your full attention if you please? On doit donc être un renard pour identifier des pièges et un lion pour effrayer des loups. Does that sound familiar?”
“Again, sir, please,” Spencer said, aware that Ainsley’s eyes had grown cold. When Ainsley repeated what he’d said, Spencer nodded. “Yes…yes, I think that’s it. That’s what I heard the man say. What is it? What does it mean?”
Mariah answered for Ainsley, who was now looking toward the dark beyond the window where Rian sat chewing on a thick slice of cheese. “I hope I have this correctly. What your father said is that one must be a fox to recognize traps and a lion to frighten wolves. Is…is that correct, sir?”
“It is. Very good, Mariah.”
“Ainsley?” Jack Eastwood asked, getting to his feet. “I don’t like the way you’re looking, sir. What does this mean?”
Ainsley looked at Mariah, wondering how much she’d overheard the previous evening, how much else Spencer had told her. But what did it matter, what did anything else matter, now? “The quote is one I’ve heard before, Jack, many times, taken from Machiavelli’s The Prince. ‘A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.’”
Mariah was fascinated. “So the one man was reminding the other to protect himself when Spencer’s questions delved too deeply, worried that Spencer was setting some sort of trap for them?”
“Shh, Mariah, not now,” Spencer said, laying his hand on her arm. He felt certain he knew what Ainsley was thinking the moment he’d said the name Machiavelli. “Papa?”
“It could have been Jules. He often sat with Edmund and myself on long nights, with Edmund reading to us, arguing that Machiavelli had the right of it—that all that was needed to succeed were your own brains and the stupidity of others. And, of course, there’s the plan itself as you’ve outlined it, Spencer. That, too, would appeal to Edmund. The sheer audacity of it. Cut off the head and the body has no power, leaving all that power for the man clever enough to gather it up. It’s a shame you couldn’t see their faces, Spencer.”
Mariah leaned forward and laid her hands on the desktop. “Sir, I—”
Spencer’s temper, held in check so long, finally broke free. “Damn it, Mariah, I said no!”
Once again Ainsley cupped his chin in his hand and watched as the two of them glared at each other and spoke to each other in hushed, hissing whispers, Spencer gesturing, Mariah stone-faced. Theirs was not going to be a placid marriage….
“Oh, all right,” Spencer said at last, literally throwing up his arms. “You’ll just tell him the moment my back is turned, anyway. Papa—Mariah saw him. She saw Renard without his mask.”
Mariah sighed in relief, even as she knew there’d be the devil to pay later, when she and Spencer were alone. “Rian? Please be kind enough to fetch me a pad of Eleanor’s drawing paper and some colored chalks. I want to make a drawing while my memory is still fresh.”
“Do that, Rian,” Ainsley said, “and then go wake Jacko, if you please. Renard, you said? I’d like Jacko’s opinion once the drawing is complete. Courtland, your opinion, as well.”
Spencer looked at Ainsley in curiosity, his anger momentarily forgotten. “Why? What are you thinking? Jacko and Court might know this Renard?”
“That remains to be seen, Spencer. Why don’t you have another cake? Bumble’s outdone himself, don’t you think?”
Spencer shook his head, grinned. “I think you’re more wily than any renard, that’s what I think. And I’ll be damned if I know what you think Mariah’s drawing is going to show any of you.”
A full half hour later, time spent informing Jacko of everything Spencer had learned in Calais, Mariah put down the last colored chalk and nodded to Ainsley.
“I’ve no need to see the drawing, thank you, Mariah. You may pass it to Jacko. Jacko? By now you know what I suspect, I’m sure.”
Jacko took the drawing pad and then pulled out a pair of spectacles and propped them on his nose. Everyone watched him as he squinted at the page, looked overtop his spectacles at Ainsley, looked at the page again. “It could be him, sir, if he were a good twenty years younger.”
“Could be whom?” Spencer asked as Courtland stood close to Jacko to look down at the drawing. “Let me see that.”
Courtland handed Spencer the drawing pad. “It’s a very good likeness, most especially the nose. You’re very talented, Mariah, nearly on a par with Elly. Papa? Didn’t he leave us a good six months before the—that is, didn’t he use his share to open a tavern in Saint Kitts, giving up the life?”
Spencer felt his temper rising once more and got to his feet. “What are you all talking about—who are you talking about? You had me traveling back and forth to Calais for weeks, not knowing what I should even have been looking for—whom I should have been looking for. Damn it, what haven’t I been told?”
“Oh, sit down, Spencer,” Mariah said, understanding his anger but also anxious to hear about this man she had drawn. This terrible, cruel monster.
“Ha! Hear that, Cap’n? Not even bracketed yet, and she’s got a stout ring in his nose to pull him around by,” Jacko said, then sobered. “Could be the whelp. He had one, remember? The age would be about right.”
Ainsley nodded, and then smiled thinly at Spencer. “I’m sorry, son. I hid nothing from you. We’re learning this just as you are. It was Mariah who first made me suspect, giving us a name. Renard. The Fox. Not his real name—many of us took other names when we came to the islands, hoping to one day return to England and go back to a more normal existence. There was something about the man that made him fit the name.”
“The nose,” Mariah said, nodding. “The sharp features.”
“He’d been with us for years,” Courtland said. “Ever since I arrived on the island, at least. So you think he turned traitor, went over to Edmund?”
Jacko snorted. “If there was enough money in it, Georgie Fox would have wiped the devil’s own ass for him—um, your pardon, Miss Rutledge.”
“There’s no point in dissembling, as I think we all know what we’re discussing. George Fox, Mariah,” Ainsley explained, “was the man I trusted to keep our accounts for us. Each ship we took as licensed privateers, each cargo we captured…in other ways. The men in the crews shared their portion of our profits equally and Fox wrote everything down, figured out those portions. What went to the Crown, what went to the men, what came to me as Captain. A bookkeeper, you’d say.”
“Got sick as a dog aboard ship,” Jacko said from behind her. “Worthless for anything save numbers. But he knew everything, Cap’n.”
“Not quite everything, Jacko,” Ainsley reminded him. “Only you, Billy, Pike and I knew the location of our—” he looked at Mariah “—bank. If he had known, possibly Isabella and everyone else would still be alive.”
“No, sir,” Courtland said, refilling Ainsley’s wineglass. “Beales was there to kill, no matter what. If he couldn’t torture for answers, he would have tortured for sport. And now he’s back, most definitely back, or at least Georgie Fox’s son is. Mariah’s drawing proves that. There can be no question.”
“Just as there can be no question that it was Edmund Beales who risked Eleanor’s life by tricking the Black Ghost into attacking her ship as it was bound for England,” Jack added, not looking at Jacko as he spoke. “If you’re handing out chances to have a piece of the man, Ainsley, I’m in for whatever it takes.”
Mariah kept her expression blank, even as she longed to ask a thousand questions about Edmund Beales, the Black Ghost, what had happened to Eleanor.
Spencer shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Jack had just as good as said that Ainsley had been guilty of attacking an English ship—the worst crime possible. They all seemed to have completely accepted Mariah into this conversation, into the most private secrets any family could ever have—secrets that, if revealed, could end with them all hanged in chains.
They’d accepted her because she’d been brave, fearless actually, and because she had brought them important if damning information. But her involvement had to end now.
“We’ve got less a week in which to prepare,” Spencer said, breaking the silence that had taken over the room once more. “Let’s consider a plan that came to me on the trip back from Calais.” He turned in his chair. “Court, you and Rian and Jacko take the Respite and the Spectre at first light and make for the waters around Elba. Kinsey is preparing the ships and two crews. The crews are probably already loading provisions. By my reckoning, if you catch a good wind and stay close to the shore, you can make it in four days, five at the most.”
“To do what, Spence? Watch helplessly as Napoléon sails past us? Wave to the ships, perhaps? The Emperor’s got close to one thousand well-trained soldiers on that island with him and, from reports we’ve read, there are enough ships in the harbor to transport them all.”
Ainsley got to his feet and walked over to the table where dozens of maps were always spread out for him to study. He placed a fingertip on one of the maps. “No, Court, Spencer’s right. Two obviously well-armed sloops lying close to the island and making themselves extremely visible would attract considerable attention. Even a fool such as the man supposedly acting as Bonaparte’s gaoler would put his ships and the men on the island itself on the alert, increase their patrols. Bonaparte will leave Elba at some point in time, of this I’m certain—but his escape could be delayed. And a plan delayed is more often than not a plan destroyed.”
“What do we do if they ask to board us?”
Ainsley, still leaning over the map table, turned his head toward Courtland and smiled, his eyes alert, alive, a part of the young and daring Geoffrey Baskin in those eyes. “Why, Courtland, you’ll invite them to tea, of course. You’re merely curious citizens like so many others, come to gawk at the Little Corporal in his cage. You might allude to the fact that you’d heard rumors that Bonaparte was planning an escape quite soon and you thought it would be great good fun to watch.”
“Be idiots, you mean, Cap’n,” Jacko grumbled from his seat. “Rich, brainless fools with more hair than wit, out for a lark. We can do that easy enough. We’ll just let Rian do all the talking.”
Rian tossed the remainder of his bit of cheese at the grinning man; Jacko snagged it out of the air and took a healthy bite out of it.
Spencer and Mariah exchanged glances and she put her hand on his arm. This man had shown her a future and she’d be damned if she’d let him die before they and their son could see it. “You plan to go to London, don’t you?” she asked him in a whisper. “I’m going with you.”
Spencer looked Ainsley, then leaned in close to whisper back at her. “No, you’re not. I’ll take Rian, who obviously doesn’t want to sail to Elba. Thanks to your drawing, we’ll all recognize this Renard bastard now when we see him.”
“But I’ve seen Nicolette. She’ll be there, too. Renard brought her to Calais. It stands to reason he’ll bring her to London, too.”
“Then you’ll draw us another picture. You’re so good with the chalks, remember? But you’re not going to London.”
“I’ll follow you at any rate, Spencer. You know I’ll find a way.”
He looked at her for a long moment and she didn’t blink. Damn.
“Spencer?”
“Yes, sir?” he said, turning his attention back to Ainsley.
“I’ll assume you plan to travel to London for the celebrations?”
Spencer nodded. “We could leave tomorrow. Meet with Chance at his house in Upper Brook Street, make it our headquarters while we’re there. Chance wouldn’t want to miss this and he and Julia would be expected to attend the festivities if they’re in town. Billy has already agreed to go to his country house and fetch him to London to at least meet with us.”
“I agree that Chance has to be involved,” Ainsley said, returning to his chair, “but I hesitate to bring Julia into this, so that decision will be left to Chance.”
“To Julia, you mean,” Jacko said, chuckling.
“True enough. Ethan and Morgan are somewhere in Shropshire, presenting the twins to a pair of his maiden aunts, so they’re lost to us. And neither Jack nor Eleanor can show their faces, I’m afraid, not after what happened last year. It might be better to have Chance speak with his former superiors at the War Office, alert them as to what he believes to be a plot against His Royal Highness and the others. But, before you argue with me, Spencer, I agree that we’re too personally involved to simply inform the War Office and then do nothing but hope for the best. Rian, you may forgo the sea voyage and travel to London with Spencer, as you’ve already been there and know Chance’s location.”
“Yes, sir!” Rian said, getting to his feet, looking ready to leave within the minute.
“If I might say something, sir?” Mariah folded her hands in her lap and looked levelly at Ainsley Becket. “I know nothing about what happened with Eleanor and her husband, and won’t pry, but having another woman present would make us an unremarkable party as we, um, reconnoiter the areas where the celebrations are to take place. We’d simply be another interested party of gawkers and celebrators, even as we watch for Renard.” She turned to glare at Spencer before looking to Ainsley once more. “Or his woman, Nicolette. I saw her, as well.”
“No,” Spencer said. “I forbid it. You have a son, madam.”
“How very tiresome you are. We have a son, sir,” Mariah shot back at him. “I want him to grow and thrive in a world of peace.”
“Then I fear you are destined for disappointment, my dear,” Ainsley said, his tone somber. “There will always be ambitious monsters like Edmund Beales and the world will never be truly at peace. It is up to the rest of us to acknowledge that fact and always be alert, waiting and watching for the next Edmund Beales, and the next. Spencer—she travels with you, she’s earned the right twice over. But first, we’ll have the wedding ceremony, tomorrow, rather than Saturday, and you’ll leave for London the next day, giving Chance time to be there to meet you.” He got to his feet. “I think we’re done now, and your fiancée looks asleep on her feet. You’re all excused.”
“Thank you, sir,” Mariah said as she stood, more than eager to escape to her bedchamber without any further argument from Spencer. Besides, she felt this crushing need to see William, to hold him in her arms. She and her soon-to-be husband could take up their argument again tomorrow.
“And the rest of you, as well. You heard the Cap’n,” Jacko said, already heading for the door to open it, watch as they all passed by him, into the hallway. He closed the door behind the last of them, Rian, who looked as pleased as a boy heading for a party.
“Ah, youth,” Jacko said, returning to the drinks table to pour he and Ainsley more wine. “All Rian sees is adventure, but he’ll learn soon enough. We all do, don’t we, Cap’n, for some of us the lesson’s harder than for others?”
Ainsley had his elbows on the desktop as he rubbed at the back of his neck with both hands. “George Fox, Jacko. I don’t know what I’d thought to hear from Spencer, but I hadn’t expected to hear that. I trusted him. How blind I was, not to see, not to know. Edmund must have been planning for months, years, to betray me. To do what he did.”
“You were crazy in love, Cap’n,” Jacko said, putting the wineglass next to Ainsley’s elbow. “And planning to leave for England, take your share and leave the life behind in exchange for a new one. I’m the one who should have known, should have realized the little clerk was turning his coat. But we can’t neither of us think too long on any of that, Cap’n, what happened all those years ago. We’re sending boys to do a man’s work. Boys and little girls, God help us all.”
“You think I should go to London.”
Jacko sighed, rolling his heavy shoulders. “Will Beales be there?”
Ainsley sat back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. He hadn’t left Becket Hall in sixteen long years. When he did leave, as he’d begun to consider, he’d never imaged London as his destination; that dream had died the day he’d been tricked into sending an English ship to the bottom. “No, I don’t think so, Jacko, at least not yet. I listened to Edmund weave fantasies with his grand ideas and schemes for more than a dozen years. I know, unfortunately, how he thinks, the sort of webs he weaves, even as I still learn of the depths of his treachery and vile ambitions. But I most definitely know his capacity for evil, his genius for evil. And, God forgive me, I helped make him rich enough to live out his plans.”
Jacko grinned now. “But not as rich as he’d planned, Cap’n, not even by half. That must still stick in his craw, that we have our fair share of our takings—and the other—and not him.”
“That other you speak of, Jacko, cost me my wife, cost too many innocent lives. And, sadly, men like Edmund always find another way to gather wealth to them.”
They both turned toward the door at the sound of a knock to see Spencer already walking into the study. “Excuse me, but I found several mentions of the Grand Jubilee in the newspaper someone left in the main drawing room. The celebration will include Hyde Park, Saint James’s and Green Park. Half the world will be there. And we’ll be looking for one man in the middle of all of this. How many men will you allow me to take with us?”
Ainsley considered the question. “Nobody who sailed with us, of course, or they could be recognized. After all, we have no idea how many of the men who sailed with Beales are still with him. We already know George Fox’s son is with him. Twenty, thirty at the most? Chance will find out where the dignitaries will be situated to view the celebrations and you can then concentrate everyone close by, alert for anything.”
“But alert for what? An armed attack? That doesn’t seem feasible.”
“Think like your enemy, Spencer. Decisions must be made as to how you will proceed, Spencer, and as I considered the thing, how I would manage the affair, I have already decided on an explosive discharge when most of the dignitaries are together in one place, remembering Guy Fawkes and his legendary attempt to blow up Parliament.”
“I’m not taking Mariah with me,” Spencer said, thinking of the destruction and death that would be caused by a large explosion of black powder. “I doubt Chance will allow Julia to accompany him, either. It’s too dangerous.”
“Miss Rutledge says she can recognize the woman traveling with Fox,” Ainsley reminded him with a smile. “She also, as I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, found her way aboard the Respite. It may be safer to keep her where you can see her, as we can’t chain her to a wall, you know.”
Jacko’s stomach rose and fell as he chuckled. “Well, Cap’n, we could.”
“I’ll ignore that, Jacko. And I’ll enjoy speaking with her at length once this is over. I’m convinced our Miss Mariah Rutledge has lived a rather unorthodox life.”
“Our Lady of the Swamp,” Spencer said, gathering up the newspapers. “I should be grateful, I know, but it’s rather unnerving to see a woman so…so…”
“Independent? Resourceful? Adventurous? Fairly fearless? So much like yourself?” Ainsley suggested, not all that helpfully in Spencer’s opinion.
“I was thinking hotheaded and impulsive, actually—which, I suppose, is also a lot like me, thank you,” Spencer grumbled, subsiding into a chair, his long legs flung out in front of him. “I, um, I told her about Virginia.”
“And?” Ainsley asked him, his expression carefully guarded.
“And she said yes, she’d accompany me.” Spencer raised his head to look at Ainsley. If there was one man he could always speak the truth to, bare his soul to, it was this man. “The idea of beginning a new life seems to appeal to her. But whether it’s me or Virginia and a home of her own that made her say yes—that I don’t know. She may just want what she believes will be a safe place for William and herself, away from Romney Marsh, and I’m merely a means to an end.”
Jacko slapped his hands on his thighs and got to his feet. “I don’t know what that means, bucko, but I think my bed’s calling me—and that you may think too much.”
Spencer watched the older man leave the room, then turned back to Ainsley. “She’s a strange woman. Willful, I guess. But I can’t deny her bravery or her good heart.”
“You’re not discussing a loyal hound, Spencer,” Ainsley said, smiling at his son. “Isabella was what you call willful. She called it knowing what—and whom—she wanted. Thankfully, she wanted me. I never understood why. Could that be your problem?”
Spencer rubbed at his forehead, smiling behind his hand. “No, I think Mariah’s my problem, and I understand why. I can’t seem to keep my hands off her, even when I know I should. We’d better both live a long, long time, because I think it’s going to take a lot of years before either of us knows why we act the way we do when we’re together. Running hot…running hotter.” He lowered his hand, looked earnestly at Ainsley. “But we won’t leave here, Papa, not until this is settled, not until Edmund Beales is dead and none of you are locked up here, worrying about the bastard.”
Ainsley’s voice was a soft purr. “This may surprise you, Spencer, but not all of us consider Becket Hall a prison.”
“I know, Papa, I know,” Spencer said, getting to his feet once more. “I sound ungrateful and I apologize.”
“Don’t. We each have to find our own place, our own happiness. But I think, son, your happiness might not be a place. Your happiness might actually be that hotheaded and fairly fearless young woman who is currently so unnerving you. Now go to bed. You’ll be marrying that young woman in the morning, remember?”