“Hasselthorpe was an aide-de-camp to General Elmsworth at Quebec,” Reynaud said. “If Maddock didn’t tell him the route—they were brothers, after all—then it wouldn’t have been very hard to discover it. Elmsworth may’ve made him privy to it himself.”
“He would’ve had to get the information to the French,” Munroe pointed out.
Reynaud shrugged, pushing away his tankard of ale altogether. “He was in Quebec. Do you remember? It was swarming with the French troops we’d captured, French citizens, and Indians who’d supported both sides. It was chaos.”
“He could’ve done it easily,” Hartley said. “The question now is did he indeed do it? We have supposition and conjecture but no real facts.”
“Then we’ll have to find the facts,” Reynaud said grimly. “Agreed?”
The other men nodded. “Agreed,” they said in unison.
“To discovering the truth,” Vale said, and raised his tankard.
They all raised their tankards and knocked them together, solemnizing the toast.
Reynaud toasted the sentiment with the rest. He drained his tankard and slammed it down on the table. “And to seeing the traitor swing, goddamn his eyes.”
“Hear, hear!”
“Another round on me,” Reynaud called.
Vale leaned close, blasting Reynaud with the ale on his breath. “Shouldn’t a newly wedded man such as yourself go home?”
Reynaud scowled. “I’ll go home soon.”
Vale wagged his shaggy eyebrows. “Had a falling-out with the missus?”
“None of your goddamned business!” Reynaud hid his face in his tankard of ale, but when he lowered it, Vale was still staring at him rather blearily. And had it not been for the ale, Reynaud probably wouldn’t have said, “She thinks I don’t know how to care, if you must know.”
“Doesn’t she know you care for her?” Hartley asked from across the table.
Wonderful. Both he and Munroe had been listening in like a pair of gossiping biddies.
Munroe stirred. “She needs to know, man.”
“Go home,” Vale said solemnly. “Go home and tell her you love her.”
And for the very first time Reynaud began to think that Vale’s romantic advice might—just might—be correct.
Chapter Eighteen
Now, although Princess Serenity had married Longsword as a reward for saving her father, she had, in the many months she had lived with him, come to love her husband deeply. Hearing his terrible fate, she became quiet and withdrawn, contemplating silently what this news meant to her. And, after many long walks in the castle garden, she came to a decision: she would offer herself to the Goblin King in Longsword’s stead.
And so, on the night before Longsword was to return to the kingdom of the goblins, Princess Serenity drugged Longsword’s wine. As her husband slept, she kissed him tenderly and then set out to meet the Goblin King….
—from Longsword
Seven years of planning. Seven years of careful moves on a giant chessboard. Some of them so infinitesimally small that even his most intelligent enemies had been blind to their true meaning. Seven years that should have culminated in his becoming prime minister and the de facto leader of the most powerful country on earth. Seven years of patient waiting and secret lusting.
Seven years destroyed in one afternoon by one man—Reynaud St. Aubyn.
eatrice covered her mouth in mingled horror and pride. For on his last word, Reynaud flung from his body his coat and waistcoat and pulled his shirt half down his arms, revealing his upper back. Sudden silence descended on the hall as Reynaud pivoted in place, the light reflecting off the ugly scars snaking through his tanned skin. In the quiet, the sound of linen ripping was loud as Reynaud tore off the remainder of the shirt and threw it to the floor.
He raised one hand, outstretched, commanding. “If such a person is in this room, let him vote against this bill.”
The room erupted into cheers. Every peer was on his feet, many were still shouting, “Hear him! Hear him!”
“To order! To order!” the peer in the gold and black robes called to no avail.