“That’s right,” Douglas said, not looking up from his wife’s pale face. “I plan to beat the living hell out of you for that.”
“For God’s sake, Douglas,” Tony said, “no one will ever know if he’s to blame or not. You’ve already thrashed him. What’s happened can’t be changed. She will be all right and you will have your heir. Besides, if Cadoudal really is to blame for it, he will go to hell and the devil will punish him throughout eternity.”
“I doubt the devil will have time to punish Georges for this particular infraction. There are too many others.” Douglas paused, then added, “Another thing, Tony, I don’t give a damn about any precious heir.” Douglas stared silently toward Georges. “If she dies, I will kill you. Then the devil can have his go at you.”
“I accept that you would have to try,” Georges said and shrugged. His left eye was already nearly closed from the blow Douglas had given him.
Tony said nothing. Georges moved over to the dirty front window of the farmhouse. Several moments passed in silence. Then Georges cursed and cursed again. Tony and Douglas looked up. Georges jerked open the front door.
Janine Daudet stood there, dusty and disheveled and alone, a pistol in her hand.
She grabbed Georges, shook him, yelling at him all the while in French. “Tell me you didn’t ravish her, tell me—” Her voice dropped into stunned silence. “Douglas, you are here?”
“Yes.”
“Who is that man?”
“He is my cousin, Lord Rathmore.”
“Ah, the woman, your wife. What is wrong with her? All that blood . . . oh God, Georges, you didn’t murder her?”
“No,” Douglas said calmly. “She miscarried.”
Tony watched the woman keen softly to herself, watched Georges Cadoudal gather her into his arms and attempt to soothe her. He gently removed the pistol from her hand and slipped it into his pocket. The woman was saying over and over, “It is all my fault, my fault, my fault.”
“Enough of this caterwauling!” Douglas yelled. “Be quiet, Janine. It is certainly your fault that Alexandra is here, scared out of her mind I’ll wager, because Georges threatened to rape her, as revenge for what I supposedly did to you.”
“Ha,” said Georges. “She wasn’t scared, Douglas. She has steel, that one, all the way up her backbone. And she talks like no woman I have ever known in my life. She made me feel like a naughty schoolboy who should have a switch taken to his backside.” But he knew he’d frightened her and he was sorry for it, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to admit it aloud because that would make it real and that would make the guilt weigh so heavily upon him that he didn’t think he could stand it. He didn’t understand it. He’d killed with no remorse in the past and he would do whatever necessary in the future to bring the Bourbons back to the French throne. But this one particular woman was different.
“What are you doing here, Janine?”
She raised her head at Douglas’s voice. “I had to come when I realized what Georges had done. I had to stop it. I knew I had to tell him the truth.”
“And what is the truth, chérie?”
Janine pulled away from him, her eyes on her dusty riding boots. “He raped me—no, no, not Douglas—the general. Many times and he made me do humiliating things to him and to other men and he watched many times when he gave me to other men, and always, always, Georges, he threatened to kill my grandmother if I refused to obey him. The child I carry won’t know his father for I don’t know. Oh God!”
There was utter silence except for her low sobs.
“Why did you blame Lord Northcliffe?” Georges said. Tony started at the austere formality of his tone and his words.
“He was kind to me.”
“A noble reason, surely!”
“It was close enough,” Douglas said smoothly. “She feared you wouldn’t want her if you knew what General Belesain had done to her. I was a better father for her child than any of those bastards.”
Georges hissed through his front teeth, “All those bloody men should die.”
“Quite possibly,” Douglas agreed.
Tony said after a moment of tense silence, “All this is quite interesting, but isn’t the scoundrel responsible for all this misery enjoying himself at this moment? All these bloody unknown men will remain unknown. Why don’t we go teach this Belesain fellow a lesson he won’t ever forget? Why shouldn’t he be the one to pay for all this misery?”
Georges Cadoudal didn’t often smile. He was merciless in achieving the ends for the causes he believed in. He couldn’t afford softnes
s and all lightness and humor had fled from his life many years before when he’d watched his mother and father and two sisters murdered by Robespierre. He was a man committed; a man committed didn’t smile.
He smiled more widely.