Page 17 of The Avenging Angel and the Spy
Choosing not to reply to his brother’s comment, Sinclair fetched Charles’s still damp coat from the peg.
Charles stood up slowly. “This has turned out to be a rather short visit,” he said in forlorn accents.
“Bad timing, old fellow. In a few months, when this work is done, I’ll look you up and we’ll spend a night carousing and scouring the streets for wicked women.”
Sinclair’s words coaxed a faint smile from Charles, but as he helped Charles into his coat, the young man sighed. “I supposeyou won’t be slipping to Norfolk to see Mother anytime soon, either.”
“Regrettably, no. You must give her and the girls my love.” The girls? Sinclair rolled his eyes at his own choice of words. His sisters were older than himself, spinsters both of them because none of their suitors had ever measured up to the general’s exacting standards. Eleanor and Louise had been pretty enough in their youth, soft and blond like Sinclair’s mother, like Charles. It was rather ironic, Sinclair thought, that it was himself, the wayward son, who was the only Carr to bear a strong physical resemblance to the general.
Even after Charles pulled his cloak around him, he attempted to linger. Sinclair took his brother by the arm and guided him inexorably toward the door.
“Mother will be terribly disappointed to hear you can’t come home for so long,” Charles said.
“Can’t be helped.” Sinclair felt ashamed of himself for sounding so cheerful. Although he did occasionally slip home to see his mother when he knew the general would be gone, the visits were more penance than pleasure. His mother invariably began crying over his disreputable life, then his sisters would join in. Weeping females always made Sinclair uncomfortable. They generally could never find their own handkerchiefs and ended by snuffling against the shoulder of one’s favorite frock coat.
As Sinclair maneuvered his brother to the door, for one moment he had the horrible fear that even Charles meant to burst into tears. But although Charles looked pale, he managed to smile as he held out his hand.
“I suppose this is good-bye then,” Charles said. “Dammit, Sinclair. I hate seeing you go off on these things. It would be far easier to watch you charge a row of blazing cannons than thisaffair where you won’t even know who your enemy is. I have a very bad feeling about this assignment of yours.”
Charles caught Sinclair’s fingers in a hard clasp. The gesture triggered a memory in Sinclair, his father barking at Chuff not to be a puling babe, that Charles didn’t need a candle to find his way to the nursery. The general’s orders bedamned—Sinclair had always let his brother clasp his hand, guiding Chuff up the dark stairs to his little bed.
Although much moved by Charles’s concern, Sinclair tried to shrug it off. “Are you turning fortuneteller, Chuff?”
“It is nothing to make jests about. I keep having these horrible visions of you lying somewhere dead with a knife stuck in your back.”
Sinclair had had the same premonition himself more than once—that he would end his life in just such a fashion, dying alone in some dismal set of lodgings like these. But he gave Charles’s hand a reassuring squeeze before pulling away.
“I will watch my back,” Sinclair promised. “And you take care of yourself, young scapegrace. After all, you’re the only one of my relatives I can tolerate for more than ten minutes at a time.”
He clapped Charles on the back, keeping their final farewell light. But as soon as he saw Charles out the door, the grin faded from Sinclair’s lips. He found himself doing something he had never done before.
Striding to the window, he brushed back the lace curtain and peered through the dirty panes. He watched Charles trudge down the cobbled street until he lost sight of Chuff’s stocky form in the rumble of carriages and other pedestrians scurrying along the walkway. It was almost as though he never expected to see Charles again.
Sinclair let the curtain fall, stepping back from the window. What was wrong with him? He was letting his brother’s dark fears color his own mood.
“What an old woman you’re getting to be, Carrington,” Sinclair muttered. But he was forced to admit that he too carried an inexplicable apprehension about this latest assignment. Yet he had taken far greater risks in his life. What made this time so different?
Maybe it was the woman, Sinclair thought, his mind once more envisioning Isabelle Varens’s gold hair and all too seductive curves. A woman like that could be a man’s undoing. Sinclair had seen it happen to others of his sex many times, but he had always guarded his own heart too well. Maybe he was long overdue for a fall.
Four
The manor house known as Maison Mal du Coeur perched in solitary grandeur upon a hill overlooking the sea. Outlined against the starless midnight sky, the mansion appeared stark in the simplicity of its classical design, its only ornament the balustrade at the roofline, each corner surmounted by a stone urn.
No outbuildings nestled close by, no line of trees sheltered Mal du Coeur. The white stone walls seemed to hurl defiance at the breakers crashing upon the pebbled beach far below, daring Poseidon, great god of the sea, to do his worst—buffets of wind, maelstroms, tidal waves—Mal du Coeur would withstand them all.
Slipping along the path that led to the gardens at the rear of the house, Belle paused to gaze upward at the massive walls looming over her. The hood of her cloak fell back and the night wind tangled strands of her hair about her face. Belle brushed the tendrils aside, her eyes fixed upon the moon.
Partly obscured by a mist of clouds, the crescent hung in the sky like some ghostly scimitar suspended above Mal du Coeur.
Belle shivered, overcome by the same strange brooding sensation she had had when first glimpsing the mansion fromthe carriage. She had no idea what to expect from this meeting with Merchant tonight, but she had the feeling that in some way it would prove momentous, one of those events that would drastically alter the course of her life.
She would have dismissed such notions as nonsense, an irritation of the nerves, if she had not experienced such premonitions before, premonitions that had proved all too true. That long-ago evening in Paris, in the suite of rooms she and Jean-Claude had rented-had she not somehow sensed that something was terribly wrong? The intimate supper her maid had laid upon the table had long ago turned cold before Jean-Claude had burst into the room. He had never been late before …
Lifting the hem of her gown, Belle continued along the path, hardly noticing the garden ahead of her with its low lying hedges and rosebushes set in a symmetrical line. The wind rustling the leaves, the distant roar of the sea all faded before the insistent clamor of voices from her past.
“You deceived me,” she heard Jean-Claude accuse. “You have been doing so since the day we were wed, the hour we first met.”
Then her own voice, pleading, “Please, Jean-Claude. I always meant to tell you the truth. I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to, but I was afraid of losing you. I beg you to forgive me.”
