A Lily Among Thorns(92)
Of course, Lady Brendan chose that moment to become very concerned about the arrangement of the ice buckets for champagne and actually followed him to the kitchen demanding he return to give his opinion. He had forgotten how difficult les aristos could be about any service one provided them. At least the customers in his family’s bakery were not quite so used to getting their own way every moment.
“Madame, I assure you there will be no trouble with the buckets,” he said as patiently as he could, trying to meet her eyes deferentially without breaking his neck on the narrow back stairs. “We will arrange them together l’instant même that I assure myself we have not left your exquisite pastries behind at the Arms.” On this last word René reached the kitchen.
Lord Brendan stood in the middle of the room, being gaped at by Arms staff and the Hathaway twins. His wrists were manacled behind his back, and extremely official-looking men stood on each side of him. One of them, René saw with a chill, held a deck of cards in one hand. France had so needed that information about the state of communications between the English and the Prussians.
Lady Brendan, several steps behind him, continued over the absolute silence in the kitchen, “I assure you, monsieur, it makes no odds. The crème brûlée will be quite—” She reached the door and stopped abruptly. “Ah, merde.”
It would have greatly relieved René’s feelings to say the same, and a deal more besides. It took all his will to merely glance at Lady Brendan in mild perplexity. “Why is your husband in irons in the middle of your kitchen, madame?”
“I—I—” she floundered.
Oh, merde. First Elbourn, then Sir Nigel, and now this? Brendan figured it out a second after René did. “You knew about this?” he asked his wife in helpless disbelief.
“N—no—”
“Amélie?” The man looked suddenly defeated. Defeated and old.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was my duty, but it was not easy.”
Brendan’s lips twisted unpleasantly. “And you always do your duty, don’t you, Amélie?”
“Please, my lord,” she whispered, trembling.
“Your duty is to me.”
“My duty is to my king.” Her voice was barely a thread. René thought she would be in hysterics before too long. She had always struck him as nervy as a thoroughbred—an aristo to the core. “And—how could you risk James, my lord?” she added, louder.
Brendan turned red as a lobster. “James! It’s always James with you! You think I don’t see? You married me for my money, you little slut, and now you want to get rid of me so you can be free to play the whore with my own son?”
Lady Brendan’s eyes widened. “How dare you suggest such a thing?” she demanded, her voice high. “James is like a son to me, you filthy old lecher! Of course I married you for your money—why else would a sixteen-year-old girl marry an old man like you? But I was a wife to you for twelve years and I was fond of you. I cried when I knew you would be executed!” A couple of the kitchen boys gawked openly at her splendidly heaving bosom. If he stayed at the Arms long enough, he would have to talk to them about that later.
“I only turned to this to buy you the things you wanted. Where did you think the money was coming from to pay for all your damned hats?”
Since René happened to know that most of the money went to pay Brendan’s gaming debts, this struck him as rather unfair.
“I hope you drown in your crocodile tears!” Brendan concluded with a flourish.
“Even if I did, I would outlive you!” She looked shocked by her own effrontery, but continued headlong, “You talk about doing my duty! You are only angry that I did not meekly take the blame as you’ve been setting me up to do for years! I was so blind—I didn’t even see it until she told me how you’d been using me, always had been, just like he used her—” She stopped suddenly in horror, her hand flying to her mouth and her eyes flying to René.
He felt all the blood slowly drain from his face. Serena. His sirène had been talking to Lady Brendan, and now Lady Brendan had helped the Foreign Office arrest her husband. Serena was working against him. He had wondered, when she went to that party at the Elbourns’, but he had dismissed the idea as impossible. He’d thought she was trying to please Elijah’s idiot of a respectable brother.
Serena was closer to him than anyone. He knew she must have guessed who nearly all his people were, and he had let this happen. Mon Dieu, it was his fault, all of it, nearly all his people bound for the gallows because he was a fool.