The Return of the Prodigal

“His name, I suppose, for starters. How strange. Why have I never asked?” Rian placed his hand over hers, feeling the ice in her fingertips. Damn. He needed to concentrate, but he could feel himself becoming more detached from their conversation. As if nothing mattered, nothing in this world. Not him, not Lisette. Nothing but this pleasant sense of floating above all cares, all worries.

She pushed her hair behind her ear as she turned to look him full in the eyes. “He is the Comte Neuveville Beltane. Or at least he became the Comte once his family died in the Terror. The title, it comes and it goes, depending on who reigns in Paris. For now, it is back. That’s what he says.”

Rian scrubbed at his face, hard, to wake himself, rouse himself. “What he says, Lisette?”

Once again, Lisette averted her face. “Maman would joke about it, but she wouldn’t smile. She said the Comte came into his title the only way he knew how. Then my papa would warn her to be quiet, that necks had been chopped for less. I don’t know, Rian. That was three years ago, perhaps four now. Time is lost here.” She sighed, shrugged her shoulders in a purely Gallic way. “I am lost here, so I will go, before the Comte returns. I have made plans. I only wish I had somewhere to go. And I worry about leaving you here, with only the slovenly fools in the kitchens to care for you.”

Rian slipped his arm around her shoulders, pulled her close against his chest. “Lisette, you’re trembling. You’re really afraid, aren’t you?”

She pushed herself free of him and got to her feet, her cheeks pale. “I am not afraid! I refuse to be afraid. But I must be sensible. I am no longer a little girl. I am nearly twenty years of age now, and the Comte is a man. Men expect rewards for their generosity. I’m not foolish, I know what he means when he says I do not need to be a servant. But if I give my body, it will be my choice, not my only option.”

Rian felt humbled. “You…you have given your body to me, Lisette.”

“Because I am a fool, yes. Because you are so sad. Because I wanted to wake you, make you want life. But I can’t stay here any longer, Rian Becket. Not even for you.”

“I wouldn’t ask that of you,” he told her, wearily getting to his feet. “It’s so easy to stay here, Lisette. But you’re right. It’s time for me to go, too. I’ve played the languishing miss much too long as it is. I should go home, much as I don’t want to go there.”

“But why wouldn’t you want to rush to them, Rian? You have pen and paper, yet you refuse to write to them. I could have written to them for you. All I would have needed was to know how to address the letter, yes? You are very selfish, Rian Becket. Your family has to believe you dead, lost to them. Their pain must be terrible. How they would rejoice to see you again.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve always planned to go home, in time. And they’ll welcome me. And they’ll pity me. Oh, they’ll try to hide it, but I’ll see it in their eyes. I’m not yet ready to see that, Lisette. I need more time, time to grow stronger.”

“Merde. Never have I heard such nonsense.”

Rian chuckled low in his throat. “Merde, Lisette? And where did you learn such a word? Surely not from your teacher father, or your good mother.”

He watched as her hands drew up into tight fists, and then relaxed as a smile widened her generous mouth. “I live with the other servants. I have heard the word said, and much more. At least I am not a puling infant, hiding, bemoaning the terrible things the fates have done to me. I survive, Rian. You merely exist.”

His head had begun to ache. First the floating, and then the headache. Go home? He wasn’t ready for that, not yet. “Ah, and there is the Lisette I know. Always scolding, always pushing. Do you long to hit me? Beat some sense into me?”

“No. I want you to live, Rian Becket. I fought hard to keep you alive, and now I want you to live. The Comte? I think he only keeps what he believes he can use. That is why I made sure to send away the other soldiers when you English marched through the area. He will be angry to learn that, I’m sure. I would have sent you, if you would not have died to leave your bed. But now you must go, Rian. We must both go. I, because I know what the Comte wants from me. You, because I do not know what he wants from you. Do you understand now?”

Rian noticed a bird hopping across the grass, a large green bug snapped tight in its beak. Birds ate without arms. Ah, but could they cut their meat? Birds didn’t need to cut their meat, did they? Perhaps he should consider changing his diet? Would a diet of beetles make life easier? But not tastier, surely. Chicken legs. Yes, those he could eat with one hand. Thank God for chicken legs. But not the legs of other birds. Most bird legs had no meat. Still, there were pigeons, and squabs, and…

“Rian! You aren’t listening to me! I’m telling you that it is time for you to go.”

He continued to watch the bird for a few moments, fascinated by it, and only blinked himself back to attention with a great effort of will. “Yes, yes. Time for me to go. I heard you, Lisette. I’ll go.”

And then he turned from her, to walk back to the manor house. He climbed the servant stairs to the room assigned to him and lay down on the bed, staring up at the canopy above his head.

What had he and Lisette been talking about? He closed his eyes, eager to drift into sleep and be away from the headache. Whatever it was, she’d talk to him again. She nagged like an old woman. He smiled as he let go, let himself fall into slumber. And she had a body like a miracle….

LISETTE WALKED INTO the large study and flounced over to her favorite chair, plopping down into it and swinging one leg up and over the arm, letting it dangle in the air. “I talk and I talk, and only now and then, he listens. The man is exhausting.”

“Yes, and I can understand why. I’ve just been informed that you go to the man’s bed. You didn’t offer that small tidbit of information, Lisette, when I returned from Paris last night.”

Her heart nervously skipped a beat, but she only rolled her eyes, lifted her leg back off the arm of the chair and sat forward, her elbows on her knees. “And I’m sure I know just who informed you. What would you have had me do? Read verses from the Bible? Sing to him? Show him an inch of ankle? It takes a brick to his head to get the man to pay attention as it is. The only time he really listens is when we are in bed. I know how important this is to you, to both of us, to learn more about him. I did what I had to do in order to gain his trust.”

“I think we can safely rule out the verses from the Bible, I agree. But I left here a month ago, pleased with your progress, only asking you to try harder to ingratiate yourself into his confidence. Oddly, I do not recall telling you to bed him.”

How could she explain what had happened? How sad Rian Becket had been. So lost and alone. How she had longed to comfort him, had put her arms around him. The rest? Ah, it had happened. It continued to happen. She had no excuse, except perhaps her own loneliness. She felt no shame. She had done what she had done.

She would not apologize.

“You did not say so precisely, no. As you just said again, I was to get close to him, gain his confidence. How do you think you get close to a man? He is not a woman, to be brought posies and pretty poems. Men have needs. A woman does not live in this world for long without learning that.”

She sat back in the chair, still feigning a confidence she didn’t feel. “So I did what I had to do. But he wanders, his mind travels too much. He is still too removed from the world, at times too happy, and at others tiresomely maudlin. I cannot work miracles. I cannot even cajole him into writing a letter to his family. All these potions. We need to weaken the doses.”

“You question my judgment?”

“Ah, and look who else is here.” Lisette shot a fierce glance toward a darkened corner of the room, her anger rising quick and hot. “You blend so well with the dark, don’t you? From now on, I must insist that you announce your presence. I want to know to whom I am speaking.”

“Arrogant little brat. Perhaps I should have left you with the nuns,” the first speaker muttered, chuckling. “Better yet, I can see now that you should have been born a man.”

“I can do anything a man can do,” Lisette said, bristling, and then turned back to the woman in the corner. “And I’m able to do anything a woman can do. I need no potions, no spells, no dark magick. He understands now, at last. He’ll leave with me. He promised. He may forget until tomorrow, but I will remind him again, until I get through his thick skull and those vile potions you have me feeding him.”

“Don’t laugh at my potions.”

“I don’t laugh at them. I get angry with them. But I will admit he’s finally growing stronger, the fever abated at last. We’ll be on the way to his home within the week, I promise it.”

“And into danger. Better to keep him here, make him strong enough to question at length without killing him until we have our answers. I do not like this plan. She fights me now,” the female in the corner said, sounding grave, close to frightened. “She’s aware of me, I can feel it. She’ll fight you, too. Protecting her chick, you could be damaged.”

“Me, damaged?” Lisette laughed without humor, careful not to respond to this notion of killing Rian Becket. “And wouldn’t that make you happy, hmm? Then it would be the two of you again, without me here to draw on his fine affections. How do I know you won’t try to work your mischief on me, too, old woman? As it is now, I eat nothing that doesn’t come from a common pot. I trust you as I’d trust a snake at my bosom.”

“How you at times delight me, ma petit,” the man said, chuckling once more. “Now, no more fighting like cats in a sack, most especially over me, flattered as I assure you I am. If she feels the woman, Lisette, if I can at last bring myself to believe her in this, then we truly are near our goal. The plan remains a good one. Why chance the boy dying as he is questioned, if he can simply lead us to his home? Once you are inside, trusted, it will be a simple matter to find out if he’s one of them, if the man I seek is finally to be mine. Lisette? You have memorized the agreed-upon route to the Channel?”

Lisette closed her eyes, seeing the map she’d studied nightly for more than three weeks. “We walk from here to Valenciennes. I use the gold I have stolen from you to hire a plain coach at the stables at the end of Avenue Villais. From Valenciennes we push quickly to Petit Rume. Still we go west, to Armentières, ending at this place called Dunkirk, where we hire a boat from a man we see sitting, his back to the wall, at a table in a dockside tavern called Le ChatRouillé. How do I forget that? The Rusty Cat. The man wears a red scarf around his neck, and will tell us his name is Marcel. From there, we go where Becket commands. I know what I am to do, you have no worries about me. It is your hirelings who must follow without being seen.”

The man’s voice turned silky, which was never a good thing. “I have chosen the men carefully for their long loyalty. If I don’t question your methods, it would please me immeasurably if you do not in turn question my judgment. They will watch over you, and you’ll be safe as houses, as they say. Of course, there is another saying—closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. This could all be for nothing, you know, your virginity gone for nothing. Meddlesome strangers to be dealt with, or only scraps left of my old enemy, when I long for the main meal.”

“That would hurt you, yes? You want it to be otherwise. After so many years, to finally see justice done.”

“Justice, Lisette? Ah, an interesting word,” the man said as the woman in the corner mumbled something beneath her breath. “Vengeance belongs to the Lord, we are told, and justice meted out by His hand.”

“And you believe in God?” Lisette asked, settling into her chair. She relished these discussions.

“I believe in an eye for an eye, ma petit. And then perhaps also an arm for that eye, and both legs, and at last the very heart, dripping in my hand. What was done to me, to you? No mere weak thing like justice can ever be enough.”

Lisette bit her bottom lip between her teeth, nodded her agreement. “But as you said, she may not be right about your old enemy. Rian Becket could lead us no further than to those who played havoc with your English business.”

“My business. Ah, such a lovely word for what I have done. I am no saint, ma petit, and have admitted as much to you, to my shame. I did what I did for that damned failed Corsican, but I also became wealthy in the process, so that I fear sainthood is beyond my reach. But, yes, whoever they are, they must be punished for making my life even temporarily inconvenient, especially now, when I once again plan my return to England. But if there’s more? If they are also the ones, if he is still with them—?”

“Then the heart, dripping in your hand,” Lisette said, wishing she herself didn’t feel so likewise bloodthirsty. Clearly the nuns had failed badly with her…or she had badly failed the nuns. “And Becket? What happens to Rian Becket?”

“As best we can tell, Becket is the one who cost me a large portion of my business. Remember, we got the name from one of my former associate’s associates. What do you think happens to him, ma petit? A pat on the head and a wish for a long and pleasant life?”

“No, I don’t think that. I also think he would be dead now, like the others, I’m sure, if I hadn’t been here. Thanks to those vile potions.”

“But we might have had all our answers. A child, allowed such sway. The tail, wagging the dog. It is a shame to you, my master.”