Page 116 of Beneath the Devil's Mask
“A boy who presumed to sit down to play cards with a duke and attempted to cheat his betters. An upstart banker’s son.”
“And Albert Glossop?”
“Ah, Mr. Glossop. He was the one who showed me the possibilities of what a blade of steel could do when wielded by a man not afraid to use it to rid the world of inferior beings. It was so easy to cut Glossop down and vanish into the night. The braying ass!”
“That was how it all began? You had no other reason for killing Glossop than you thought him a fool?”
The duke frowned and did not answer him. His hand tightened about the quill and he resumed his writing with a vengeance. Mandell was left with the uneasy sensation that there was something more that his grandfather was not telling him. After so many other horrors, what else could there possibly be?
Mandell felt impervious to any further shock. He was determined to have the truth from the old man, all of it.
Splaying his hands upon the desk, he bent over the duke and repeated his question. “Why did you begin your night stalking with Albert Glossop, Your Grace?”
The duke flinched, but said, “Stand erect, Mandell. Do not lean upon my desk. You know I have always found that an annoying habit.”
When Mandell did not move, the old man flung down his quill. He stirred restlessly in his chair, his brow furrowing as he seemed to wrestle with some inner dilemma. He stared past Mandell toward the window, as though he expected to find the answer somewhere out there in the dark of the night.
At last, he sighed and murmured, “I suppose I may as well tell you the whole. It can make no difference now.”
He waited until Mandell removed his hands from the desk and straightened. Then the duke began slowly, “Glossop was indeed a fool, but that was not my main reason for eliminating him. The young idiot had recently acquired a friend from France who was acquainted with the de Valmieres.”
A tension shot through Mandell. He thought he was prepared to hear anything. But matters suddenly promised to take a direction he had never anticipated.
“My father?” he asked numbly.
“No, your father’s family. It seems the French king finally decided to overlook the de Valmieres questionable loyalty during the revolution and restored them to their estate. This finally left them at leisure to send an envoy to make awkward inquiries. An envoy that I sent back with false answers. Mr. Glossop unfortunately became aware of this fact and threatened to tell you unless I paid him a considerable sum. Scarcely the action of a gentleman.”
“What was the nature of these inquiries, Your Grace?”
The duke stared down at his paper and fidgeted with his quill.
“The envoy was sent to ask about me, was he not?” Mandell prompted. “My father’s family was seeking to discover my whereabouts.”
“Yes, but mostly they were trying to find out what became of your father?”
“My father? Why would they come to you for —” Mandell broke off, stunned by sudden comprehension. “You know. You know where my father is.”
The duke rested his head against the back of the chair, his heavy-lidded eyes seeming weighted down by a great weariness. “Yes, I have known. All this time. He came, journeying to myestate in the north, not long after you had been placed in my care, Mandell. De Valmiere expected to find both you and your mother awaiting him with open arms.”
“How could he have expected that? You told me my father abandoned my mother and me in Paris.”
“He may as well have done. He ordered Celine to take you and come to England. If the young fool could have got his head out of the clouds and away from his infernal music, he might have known my Celine better. She was not a woman to tamely accept such commands. She took you and went back to Paris to look for her husband, but he was gone.”
“Gone where?”
“To make certain his own family, his brother and sisters, got out of the country, when his first duty should have been to his wife and child.”
“But he assumed my mother and I were already safe.”
“He should have made sure.” The old man slammed his fist against the desk in a rare display of passion. “Instead, he comes jaunting to see me months after it was too late to save my beautiful Celine.”
The duke’s lips twisted with a bitter cruelty. “I took great satisfaction in informing the fool how his feeble efforts had gone awry. I described to him Celine’s death in vivid detail, and for added measure, I told him that you had perished, too.”
“You bastard!” Mandell said. “All these years, you permitted me to believe that my father had deserted me, that he was a coward.”
“And so he was. After I told him about your mother’s death, he still could not act the part of a man. He wept like a babe, with that vulgar Gallic emotion I find so repulsive. He sobbed until I could endure the sound no longer. I got down my sword.”
“No!” Mandell rasped. But his denial was to no avail.
