BLOODLINE: Our Father's House

Trenton

Part One

The Early Years

Prologue

Belle Terre

The beginning

1775–1807

The Leeward Islands

ON SEPTEMBER 27, 1775, the crew of the rogue corsair Vixen attacked the English merchant ship The Edmond Troy off the coast of Martinique, seizing three casks of gold worth a king’s ransom. As soon as the contraband was taken aboard and The Edmond Troy began to slip beneath the waves, the Vixen set a southerly course toward the island of Barbados.

The crew found refuge a few days later in a sheltered cove northwest of the township of Bridgetown. One of her crew, a conscript by the name of Pascal Ribaut, stood guard that first night and watched the play of moonlight on the crystalline water that washed in shallow waves against the shore. Palm trees melded into the blackness of a slope that led upward to a precipice above.

Three years earlier, kidnappers had dragged the unconscious Ribaut from a Liverpool alehouse and thrown him into the hole of the Vixen, releasing him only when they were well out to sea. Pascal had suffered a torturous enslavement aboard the pirate vessel, never once being permitted to set foot on land. Now, he found himself suddenly desperate to feel the sand beneath his feet, to be done with the hell ship, as he had never longed for freedom before. The repairs to the Vixen would take less than a week to complete--enough time to execute his daring escape.

The hardships of captivity made him appear older than his twenty eight years. His stocky frame and muscular limbs would serve him well in his bid for freedom. His chance came three nights later when the sky darkened with the heavy clouds of an approaching storm. After the crew had bedded down for the night, he retrieved four leather water bags he had secretly filled with gold and hidden beneath the canvas in one of the lifeboats. One by one, he secured them with a length of hemp and lowered them into the sea. Seizing a torch secured to the mast, he raced the length of the deck, setting fire to half buckets of pitch he had also concealed in the lifeboats. As the roar of flames traveled across the deck, he bounded up onto the rail and dove into the sea.

He reached the shore and dragged himself onto the sand. He lay gasping for breath. Overhead a streak of lightning illuminated the beach and a worn pathway leading to the steep rise overlooking the cove. He pushed himself to his feet, ran toward the sandy hillside, and scrambled to the top of the precipice. From there, silhouetted against the flames, he could see the crew’s frantic attempts to save the Vixen from the same fate that had befallen The Edmond Troy days earlier. Pascal threw back his head and laughed for the first time since his capture. He imagined the crew’s rage, should any of them manage to extinguish the flames and survive to reach their destination, only to discover the gold in those casks had been replaced with ballast stones.

******

Pascal created a stir when he staggered into Bridgetown the following day, claiming to be the only survivor from the ship that had burned on the horizon the night before. Pirates, he told the onlookers. It was his great good fortune to be alive. With the few coins of gold he had secreted in a small leather pouch around his neck, Pascal was able to secure lodging in a dockside alehouse and purchase supplies and a small skiff.

On nights when storm clouds again concealed his movements, he returned to the deserted cove and took to the sea to retrieve his fortune. When he had collected all of the gold, he sailed to the opposite side of the island with four wooden crates he had secretly constructed. He ordered them to be delivered back to him in Bridgetown. Thus, Pascal Ribaut, a conscripted cabinetmaker’s son from Liverpool, was able to establish himself as a gentleman, vowing he would never leave the island paradise fate had led him to.

Within five years, Pascal’s fields of sugar cane and tea stretched across the rolling hills as far as the eye could see. He built his great house Belle Terre, which would become one of the largest plantations on Barbados, rivaling Island Sun to the south, home of the Englishman St. John, and Poinciana to the north, settled by the Dutchman Gunter Zantner.

Pascal soon realized he could increase his fortune by taking consignments from his neighbors and traveling beyond the islands to search out new markets willing to pay premium prices for the raw sugar and tea he and the other planters produced in abundance. He purchased his first ship, the Athena, soon followed by two smaller vessels, the Cameroon and the Zeus.

In 1780, at the age of thirty four, Pascal traveled to Aberdeen, Scotland. He sought out the wealthiest merchant in the city, Ferris Moynahan, and met Moynahan’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Kate. Deciding that he had rather have the buxom Kate than cultivate a business relationship with her family, Pascal spirited the girl back to Barbados. Enraged, Ferris Moynahan, vowed to avenge his family’s honor by destroying Pascal Ribaut.

In 1781, Kate bore Pascal his only son. With a secretive glint in his eye, Pascal named the boy Edmond. Two years later, Ferris Moynahan made good his threat, kidnapped his daughter and returned her to Scotland without her son. He was convinced Pascal would not follow Kate if the boy was left behind.

The crafty Scotsman’s first act was to confine Kate to a convent. His second was to petition for the dissolution of her marriage to Pascal Ribaut, claiming she had been kidnapped against her will, and the marriage was, thankfully, without issue. Pascal convinced himself, and later his son, that Kate had arranged her own abduction from the island, and leaving Edmond behind was her way of telling him she wanted no part of him, his father, or Belle Terre.

Six years after his mother disappeared from Belle Terre, young Edmond had become an incorrigible eight-year-old. Realizing the boy needed a woman’s hand to transform him into a proper gentleman’s son and heir to what had by now become the most prosperous estate on the island, Pascal set off in search of another bride to warm his bed and to take charge of his son and his house.

He traveled to New Orleans leaving Edmond in the care of his longsuffering caregivers. There he met the wealthy widow Marie Marchand. Larger in stature than Pascal, with pleasant features and an iron will, Marie accepted her new suitor’s proposal and left her late husband’s business in the hands of his brother. After a hurried wedding, she and her own six-year-old son, Paul, accompanied Pascal back to Belle Terre.

When Marie cast eyes upon her disheveled stepson for the first time, she determined then and there that she would take Pascal’s son in hand and infuse a sense of civility and proper sophistication into him, and do the same with Belle Terre, which showed signs of woeful neglect.

After a time, Pascal grew tired of his domineering bride and sought pleasure in whoring and drinking in the many grogshops on the island. Marie declared that she and their sons would not be shamed by Pascal’s scandalous behavior, and ordered him to leave Belle Terre and find another house to defile. Pascal selected a secluded spot to the north of Belle Terre and, in 1792, built a house for himself, which he called The Villa. Marie allowed him back at Belle Terre only on special occasions. They both appeared curiously content with the arrangement, acting almost affectionate toward one another on the rare occasions when they met.

Pascal Ribaut died in March of 1801, at the age of fifty five. Edmond was twenty years old, and Paul just eighteen. Surprisingly, Marie announced that she had her fill of the hell Pascal had put her through and wanted nothing that belonged to her husband. She willingly relinquished all claims to Belle Terre and the fleet of ships, and gave Edmond papers naming him the owner of both. To her own son, Paul, who had shown a penchant for whoring and drinking to rival his stepfather, she gave The Villa. She felt that Pascal would approve.

The stepbrothers accompanied Marie to the docks on the eve of her departure and watched her board the Athena for the voyage back to New Orleans. Judging from her determined march up the plank and the fact that she did not bother to turn and look back, it was obvious the Widow Ribaut had no intention of returning to Barbados, ever. Paul merely shrugged and flung an arm about Edmond’s shoulders, and steered him in the direction of the nearest tavern.

******

Ever restless, and deciding plantation life was not for him, Paul followed his mother to New Orleans within a matter of weeks. The city promised pleasures that would appeal more readily to a young man. He quickly met and married Lettie Sharples, a known street whore older than he, who soon informed him she was pregnant with his child. Once Paul sobered up and realized his predicament, he fled back to Barbados, leaving Marie and her solicitor to arrange an annulment of the marriage before Lettie gave birth to the child he vowed was not his. Several months later, he received word that on April 1, 1802, Lettie had given birth to twins, a son and a daughter, Philip and Delphine. Again, he adamantly declared to Edmond that he was not the father.

In the spring of 1805, four years after the death of his father, Edmond sailed to New Orleans to purchase new cultivation equipment for Belle Terre. His first call was to see Marie. Genuinely pleased to recognize the gentleman he had become, and flattered by the attention he showered upon her, Marie persuaded her stepson to be her guest for a month before returning to Barbados.

A fortnight after his arrival, Marie’s brother-in-law, Lucien Marchand, took Edmond aside and produced a personal invitation to dine at the home of the most famous mulatto courtesan in all of New Orleans, an invitation Lucien himself had arranged. A few days later, the two men entered the house of Jeanne Arnaud and her daughter, Mignon, on North Rampart Street. Once introductions were made, Jeanne glanced beyond her fan in the direction of the stairs and nodded discreetly. Lucien offered a bow and a telling smile. Edmond turned to witness the descent of a creature even more beautiful and lavishly gowned than Jeanne herself, her seventeen-year-old daughter, Mignon.

That night, Edmond Ribaut fell in love for the first time in his life. Three weeks later, he secured Jeanne’s permission to take Mignon back to Belle Terre as his mistress, and Jeanne as her daughter’s companion.

Mignon died in childbirth at Belle Terre in 1807. When Jeanne placed her granddaughter, Desiree, in his arms, Edmond fell in love all over again. Several months after the death of his brother’s mistress, Paul disappeared from the island. No subsequent searches located him. His fate remained unknown until years later.

For the next two decades, Edmond’s life revolved around Belle Terre, his daughter, and the woman who cared for her, with no forewarning of the tragic events that would alter their lives and the history of the great house forever.

Chapter One

Two decades later

The port of Bridgetown, the island of Barbados

June 3, 1827

IN THE MIDNIGHT BLACKNESS, the slave ship Hammer held its position beyond the breakwater of Carlisle Bay. On shore, a panicked citizenry manned their weapons, determined to hold Ethan Herrod’s death ship at bay.

Warned off by a single cannon shot in open waters three days before, the pox-ridden vessel now showed no signs of life, only the sounds of scudding hemp and the creaking of timbers. About her, the stench was foul with rotting flesh and human waste. Concealed by the darkness, a gaunt figure shuffled across her deck while less than a quarter of her original cargo of two hundred eighty-eight savages clung to life in the festering cesspit below, chained together in their own filth. Without water or a meager ration of tainted gruel since the day before, the Hammer would give up her dying to the last man before sun set upon the island the following day.

Ethan Herrod gripped the rail and struggled to keep his sight, blurred with fatigue, trained upon the blazing torches staked out along the shore. He intended this to be his final voyage for the human cargo that made him one of the most feared white slavers to set his sights upon the west coast of Africa. He couldn’t recall an exact time or incident when the fires of ambition had ceased to burn in his breast. But he was weary beyond reckoning, sick unto death of forays into the steaming pits of hell, journeys that had begun two decades earlier. At forty and three years, he wanted only to return to the world he had forsaken, one sweetened by the horrors he had traded in its place.

This last expedition to the Rio Pongo had gone wrong from the beginning. Shabutu and his warriors had reached the encampment with their captives a fortnight behind schedule. They had driven the miserable bastards better than three hundred miles from the interior in abominable heat and through blinding torrents to the flooded camp, a march less than half survived. Those who had were starving and sickened with parasites that fed upon their blood. Little remained of the fierce warrior heritage that proclaimed the Eboe kings among their own kind.

Shabutu had reclined upon his litter and laughed openly at Herrod’s rage. Take the pitiable cargo, or set sail with only a ballast of teak to show for his trouble.

Herrod’s hand crept to the weapon strapped to his side. Instantly, six warriors surged forward, their spears poised to strike. He released his grip and forced the sudden surge of fear from his features.

The old chief had only to give a sign and those naked savages would impale him to the earth and serve him up to the starving coffle for sustenance. Instead, Shabutu gave another wheezing imitation of mirth and waved them aside. He knew the captain of the slaver was no coward. Neither was Shabutu himself a fool. Herrod brought gunpowder, whiskey, and weapons from across the sea to exchange for the captives he provided.

Shabutu had been Herrod’s contact in the trade since the white devil had first ventured up the Rio Pongo. Once powerful and proud, he now suffered from a lifetime of excesses. Liquor and opium had robbed him of his cunning and, more frightfully, of his judgment.

Herrod knew the old chief could turn against him in an instant. Hell, that black ape was not beyond sacrificing his own kin to round out a coffle--like the wench Nemi, the fourteen-year-old mulatto who had been forced aboard the Hammer four seasons past. She was Shabutu’s own spawn, gotten off a white missionary captive who had mercifully died expelling her shame upon the dirt floor of a filthy prison hut.

The girl had offered no resistance but stoically joined the procession up the plank at Shabutu’s command. A mantle of raven hair and a filthy scrap of grass cloth about her waist covered her nakedness. Her golden flesh was free of the markings of her tribe. She was unworthy, the lowliest of all beings in her sire’s kingdom. Herrod had felt his senses quicken as he watched her approach from the deck above. She would fetch a handsome price upon the block. The stupid bastard had unwittingly delivered up a prize easily worth more than five of the others. Once the Hammer was underway, Herrod had ordered her brought to his cabin.

******

Herrod braced himself against the railing. The darkness masked the brutal ugliness of his bearded features. His face was pitted with scars from the same scourge that had attacked his crew and cargo. He had survived the pox two years after his flight from New Bedford. It was all that kept him alive now, imprisoned aboard his own ship.

He reached for the glass secured around his neck by a frayed leather strap, raised it to his eyes, and scanned the harbor. More than a dozen vessels stood silhouetted against the blazing torches along the water’s edge, their flaming devil’s dance reflected in the shallow waters. Herrod’s lips drew back in a scowl. She was there, the Athena, the stoutest vessel in Edmond Ribaut’s armed merchant fleet. He should have sunk her when Ribaut sailed within range of his own twenty pounders three days past.

The stench of the crippled slaver had flown upon the winds across the open sea, proof of its desperate plight to any vessel within hailing distance. The Athena, carrying no cargos, had gained steadily on the slaver. Ribaut himself had shouted the warning: keep away from Barbados or face certain death should he and his crew attempt to force their way onto the island.

Swifter than the Hammer, the Athena now stood at the ready to carry out Ribaut’s threat. His old enemy had not wavered in his determination, nor slackened his vigilance.

Herrod drew a ragged breath and tightened his grip on the rail. For years, Edmond Ribaut had permitted slavers grudging access to Bridgetown’s port, allowing them just enough time to deposit their human cargos. While Ribaut openly disavowed the use of slave labor to work his own fields or serve his great house, Belle Terre, he was powerless to stop those whose beliefs were less noble than his own. Men like Herrod provided the slave labor to work the vast sugar cane and tea plantations across the island. Though Herrod found the island profitable, he quickly set sail for friendlier ports once his business was concluded.

******

Four years past had changed everything for Herrod. With the harbor in sight, he had refused then to yield the channel as the Athena, outbound for South Hampton, continued on a collision path with his own vessel. The Hammer’s crew had stood at the ready, waiting for the order to put about, fear stamped on their grizzled features. God’s blood, the captain had never so brazenly challenged his nemesis before.

The men looked fearfully from Herrod to the wench Nemi, standing at his side. Ever since Herrod had ordered the Hammer away from Shabutu’s encampment, he had acted the fool over that one. He was bewitched, oblivious to the hatred that blazed in the girl’s eyes when he looked away. If he didn’t give way now, they would all be plunged into the churning sea beneath the Athena’s keel.

Enraged, Ribaut ordered his vessel to break away, only to turn and pursue the slaver. By God, Herrod had gone too far this time. He would blow that hell ship from beneath him once and for all.

Eager to rectify Herrod’s foolhardiness, his first mate shouted for the sails to be struck in a desperate attempt to appease the enraged master of the vessel bearing down on them.

Herrod spun about as the canvas cracked overhead. He drew his weapon and trained it at the culprit. The mate’s scream ended in a choking gurgle as the bullet tore through his heart. Instinctively, the crew surged forward but halted their advance in midstride, looking beyond the madman to the girl climbing onto the rail.

Nemi wavered for an instant, her hair whipping wildly about her body, terror stamped upon her features. Herrod’s hoarse denial followed her down into the water. From the deck of the Athena, Ribaut’s bellow for aid sent his own first mate, Crispin Pike, into the churning water.

The girl thrashed wildly against her rescuer’s outstretched arm. Instinctively, he delivered a decisive blow to her jaw and seized her about the waist. Amidst shouts of encouragement from the Athena and silence from the Hammer, Pike managed to secure the hemp rope about them both and signaled to the crew above. Ribaut gripped the rail. The small figure slumped against Pike was hardly more than a child.

The image of his own daughter caused a surge of fury to tighten about his heart. Like his Desiree, the girl’s skin belied her origins, but other signs were too obvious to deny. She was chattel, to be traded as freely as those wretches whose cries echoed from the bowels of the Hammer.

Captain, look!

Ribaut swung about, his eyes widened in disbelief as Herrod trained his weapon upon the helpless pair suspended midway to the deck of the Athena. At the instant the slaver’s weapon discharged, another shot rang out. Ribaut lowered his pistol as Herrod crumpled to the deck of the Hammer.

With a cry, Pike gained the rail and twisted out of the rope, scrambling away from the unconscious girl.

Get her below!

The crew of the Hammer had not approached their captain slumped on the deck, but watched in stunned silence as the crew of the Athena navigated their ship away from the slaver and made for the open sea. It was, they would declare later, as if Satan himself had taken possession of Edmond Ribaut. He had watched them from the rail, fire flashed in his dark eyes, his hawkish brow drawn taut. Wind whipped his black hair about his powerful shoulders. No words could have made his intent plainer. Henceforth, the Hammer and her crew would find no welcome in the waters of his island.

******

Herrod’s lips twisted in a sneer. Overhead a streak of heat lightning rippled through the massing thunderheads. The rains would come soon, extinguishing those bloody torches. It remained to be seen whom providence favored. He needed time, only a little of it.

Chapter Two

A TALL FIGURE PUSHED his way through the men gathered on the ridge and strode down the sandy slope to the water’s edge. Edmond Ribaut glanced at the gathering fury overhead and cursed softly. It defied reason that anyone could still be alive on that cursed scow. Yet, his instinct fueled the doubts that robbed him of sleep the past two nights. Once before, he had consigned Ethan Herrod to hell only to realize his old enemy possessed an uncanny talent for survival.

That Herrod would sail the Hammer within sight of the island was the act of a fool, or a desperate man. For three days, she had remained just beyond the range of cannon fire, with the mark of death clearly upon her. For the first two nights, the faint glow of a single lantern had been spotted on her deck. Was it a ruse? The bastard was taunting him. He could sense it.

******

From the crowd of rumpled and weary vigilantes, young Philip Marchand watched his brother-in-law Edmond stride impatiently from one position to another. Three days had passed since Crispin Pike had bounded up the steps of Belle Terre and pounded on the door. The Hammer had been sighted just beyond the breakwater, headed for the harbor. As Edmond and the newly appointed captain of the Athena raced toward town, he had remained behind to dispatch messengers to every outlying plantation summoning help to the watch. More than a dozen of their neighbors had answered the call, their angry voices were now shouting for Herrod’s head.

******

The slaver had halted its progress toward the harbor at the first cannon shot from shore, and the long wait had commenced. Hours passed, and then days. Tempers flared, and oaths rang out as the plantation masters maneuvered for the best position, a shorter watch, and a palatable repast. Only Edmond, Philip, and the servants who accompanied their masters appeared able to withstand their discomforts without complaint.

Hayes St. John lowered his great bulk onto the sand and mopped his neck with a soiled handkerchief, drinking deeply from the flask his servant Scipio offered to him. He choked on the sand-laced whiskey and spat, flinging the container at the servant with a resounding curse. He sullenly searched the faces grouped nearby, his ire rising.

Damn his son’s brazen stupidity. In three days’ time, young Tyler St. John had made only a cursory appearance at the watch before he disappeared again. St. John squinted at Edmond’s back and felt a shiver of apprehension race through him. Pray God, Ribaut had failed to take note of the rascal’s absence.

Worthless whelp! he muttered. He had reason to curse the boy’s recklessness too many times before, his everlasting pursuits of women and the gaming tables. But nothing in the twenty-five years since his wife had presented him with his only heir had his patience been so sorely tested. Now, the young fool was panting after Ribaut’s whoring wife like a rutting stag. Delphine Ribaut was half her husband’s age. Her glacial beauty could set a careless man’s blood to boil. Scarcely a year after Edmond had married her and fetched her and her brother from New Orleans, rumors of her dalliance with the younger St. John was being retold in every plantation drawing room and grogshop on the island.

The young fool would bring Island Sun to ruin if Ribaut had reason to suspect the affair. The place had declined in the seven years since the boy had returned after being ejected from that fancy school in England and commenced his unceasing demands upon plantation accounts. Just a month past, Hayes had been forced to mortgage more sugar cane acreage to Edmond to pay his son’s gambling debts.

As Hayes’ own fortunes dwindled, Belle Terre had grown to surround the whole of Island Sun’s shrinking boundaries. It was now but a pathetic reminder of what had once been the greatest plantation on the island, when settlers had been few and the St. Johns among the first Englishmen to till its virgin soil. He felt a familiar sob of self-pity constrict his throat. He despised Ribaut, his success, and the respect he commanded throughout the island and beyond. Yet, he hated him less than he loathed his own son.

******

Edmond turned as Philip hurried down the sandy slope toward him. They’re off?

Philip grinned, a flash of youthful exuberance. How different they were, his wife and her twin brother. The young man possessed the gentle nature, the disarming humor, and loyalty. He had been quick to grasp all Edmond had endeavored to teach him, eager to prove his worth, and in so doing, disavowed Delphine’s shallow arrogance, and the coldness no amount of feigned wiles could conceal.

Edmond glanced about. Even now, if he didn’t misjudge, his wife entertained her lover beneath his very roof. Pray God it was so. Proof of her infidelity was all he needed to dispatch her back to New Orleans in disgrace, and Tyler St. John to hell.

But that mattered little to him now. Beyond the range of the guns lay a greater threat. Not while he drew breath would he allow Ethan Herrod to deposit his murderous blight upon this island. The pox would spread like windswept fire through the crowded shanties near the docks, to the fields yet to be harvested, to the gates of Belle Terre, and beyond. To The Villa where his daughter and her grandmother dwelled. Nothing must ever reach that far into his soul.

The smaller house that Edmond’s father, Pascal Ribaut, had long ago built for himself replicated the style of a Spanish hacienda, nestled in the isolated quietness beyond Belle Terre. Edmond had given it to Jeanne Arnaud after the mysterious disappearance of his stepbrother Paul. She had come to detest Belle Terre after the death of her daughter and demanded a house of her own if she and Desiree were to stay on the island. Edmond had been equally unyielding on a single point. His daughter would remain with him at Belle Terre and return to The Villa only when he was called away--until he had dispatched that damning letter from New Orleans, announcing his marriage, and ordering any evidence of Desiree’s existence removed from Belle Terre and taken to The Villa. When Delphine had stepped down from the carriage and surveyed her new home, his daughter was no longer there.

******

The torches leapt wildly in the gathering winds. Somewhere out in the darkness, three men rowed furiously against the growing swells, keeping out of the shafts of torchlight that danced across the water. The offer of twenty pounds gold for each man had brought the bravest and strongest from the shanties and grogshops, all eager for a chance to destroy the Hammer before it could reach land. If the men Edmond had chosen for the task succeeded, Herrod would meet his end and the death ship would be reduced to kindling before first light.

******

A sudden guest of wind, followed by a blinding flash of lightning offered Herrod a glimpse of the skiff now within a hundred yards of its target. Assassins! He threw the glass across the deck and raced for the steps leading below. For sixteen years, the doomed vessel had been his life. He knew every inch of it. His steps didn’t falter in the darkness.

He wrenched a lantern from its bracket and fled along the passageway. The stench choked him when he forced open the iron-bound door. Beneath the tiers of chained bodies lay a cache of gunpowder. He drew back and heaved the lantern. It shattered in the darkness and a sudden burst of flames leapt hungrily at the beams and planking. He stumbled back toward the door, slamming it against the spreading inferno, closing his mind to the terrified screams of those trapped below. Within seconds, he gained the deck and leapt for the rail. Pushing away with all his remaining strength, he plunged into the churning blackness.

The breath left his body as he struck the water and broke the surface. He struck out, desperate to put distance between himself and the doomed vessel.

The heavens ripped open. Torrents of rain instantly extinguished the torches on shore. Edmond’s bellow of rage was lost in another blinding flash, and a deafening roar of thunder.

Curse the fates, curse--! A second explosion, this time coming from the sea itself, rocked those on shore back on their heels. And then, another, and another, until all the fires of hell seemed to consume the scourge they had stood off for two nights. Edmond’s triumphant shout signaled the end of the siege.

The tempers that had flared so readily throughout the night gave way to cheers. It was over, thank God. Now to home, a hot meal, a soft bed, and it could be hoped, a willing wife.

Edmond and Philip watched the last of the wagons turn for home before racing for shelter themselves. Ignoring the two mounts tethered behind the coach, Philip wrenched open the door and felt himself shoved inside. Edmond swung his powerful frame onto the seat across from him and slapped his brother-in-law on the knee. Philip had stood beside him until the end. To have a son such as this!

The driver on the seat above drew his sodden cloak closer and cracked the whip above the team of matched bays. Edmond felt the strength leave his body and fatigue settle heavily about him. He folded his arms and closed his eyes. Desiree was safe. It was all that mattered, all that would ever matter to him.

There had been no time to travel to The Villa before Crispin Pike had ridden through the gates of Belle Terre three days past. Edmond glanced out into the blackness at the wind-driven rain that lashed the coach. He had been away for weeks, secretly securing Desiree’s future, only to see that future threatened by the act of a madman bent on spreading a deadly sickness throughout the island. But Ethan Herrod was no longer a threat to anyone.

Edmond shifted restlessly and rapped on the roof. The coachman pulled hard on the reins and brought the team to a halt. Before he could climb down to assist, Edmond emerged from the coach, freed his horse, and swung into the saddle.

Neither Philip nor the driver called after him as he swiftly disappeared into the night. They knew where he was going and why.

The Villa

After midnight

EDMOND DISMOUNTED AND CROSSED the terrace. The front door opened as he approached. He wondered if Jeanne’s major domo ever slept. Whether he was gone a day or his absence extended for weeks, Jeanne’s manservant was always the first to greet him at the door.

A soft light glowed in Desiree’s window. That, too, never changed. Her beacon of light, whether at Belle Terre or The Villa, was always there to welcome him back into her lonely existence. He stepped through the door, unmindful of the water that dripped onto the parquet floor.

Mist’ Edmond.

Achilles. Is Miss Desiree awake?

He watched the slender figure materialize out of the darkness. She’s asleep, of course. Welcome back, Edmond.

Jeanne Arnaud appeared to glide effortlessly across the room, seemingly impervious to his disheveled appearance. The soft rustle of her silk dressing gown measured her unhurried gait. Her gaze registered neither surprise nor rebuke. He knew that she had not been to bed but waited for his arrival. Like Achilles, she always seemed to know.

You shouldn’t have waited up. I came make sure Desiree was all right.

The child has been upset. After all, you were gone almost a month, and scarcely had she learned that you returned when you disappeared again. She has missed you.

I sent word.

She was afraid for you.

There was no need.

"No need? Mon dieu, even the servants couldn’t hide their fear, and your messengers offered little reassurance. She’s scarcely slept at all!"

"It’s over now. The Hammer has been destroyed. Ethan Herrod is dead." He brushed past her and strode wearily toward the stairs.

Where did you go, Edmond, a month this time with no word to anyone?

He paused in midstride and slowly turned to look at her.

Jeanne’s slender hands clenched beneath the folds of her skirt, yet nothing in her expression betrayed the apprehension that swept through her. Her gaze dropped suddenly beneath his fierce appraisal. In all their years together, she had never presumed to elevate herself to his