Where Passion Leads (Berkeley-Faulkner #1)(111)

“I am going back to the Château d’Angoux,” Mireille said in a voice that trembled with sharp emotion.

“You don’t have to. We’ll buy new things for you, whatever you need—”

“I am going back,” she repeated, her voice hardening, “and I will wait for monsieur. And when he comes back, we’ll find mademoiselle and go to England.”

“Don’t be such an idiot!” Guillaume snapped, his voice rough with exasperation. “Don’t be a fool! It’s over, do you understand? You will never go to England, you will never find Rosalie—”

“I will!” Mireille shrieked, and fell to the ground sobbing hopelessly. A few minutes later she repeated the words, her voice weary and defeated. “I will . . .”

“Mira, you are all I have, and I am all you have,” Guillaume said softly. “That is the way it always has been and it will never change. Even if you did manage to keep Monsieur de Berkeley from killing you before you explained that this wasn’t your fault . . . even if by a miracle you found Rosalie . . . they would never forgive you. Rosalie blames you now . . . she is lying on the floor of that wagon with her hands and feet tied, cursing you and me both for what has happened to her. And she’ll brood about it the whole journey across the Channel, her hatred growing. And you know monsieur well enough to be certain that he would never forgive anyone who had helped to take his woman away from him.”

“Yes,” Mireille said dully, lifting her head from the ground and watching her tears sink into the dry earth. Her voice was low and suddenly steady with dark emotion. “Guillaume, will you stop this? Can you?”

“It’s too late.”

“Then I never want to see you again,” she whispered. “Mira . . . little Mira,” he said, laughing a little at first and then looking uncertain as he realized that she meant it. “You cannot be serious . . . you are my sister, the only one I care for. This was all for you and me! You don’t want to part from me—you would be alone.” “Rosalie is alone,” she said, getting up from the ground and turning her head away from him. “At least my hands aren’t tied.”

He began to follow her as she walked away. She stopped, turning to pin Guillaume with a direct, glittering stare of hatred that caused him to freeze in disbelief and say her name pleadingly. And then she walked away, from the village, from him, from all that she had once been.

The Alvins greeted Rand at the door with pale faces.

Madame Alvin’s features were haggard with distress as she looked at Rand, whose hair was darkened from the late-night rain and his expression taut with foreboding. “What’s going on?” he asked curtly, and Madame Alvin wrung her hands.

“Monsieur de Berkeley, they did not return from the fair. They have disappeared, all three of them. I returned with my husband in the afternoon, and when I realized that they had not yet come back, I sent Jereme and some of the other boys to look for them. Jereme found Mireille, who gave him a note for you.” “Where is Mireille now?” Rand demanded, casting a glance around the great hall as if suspecting her to be underfoot.

“That foolish boy Jereme . . .” Monsieur Alvin spoke up, clearing his voice miserably. “He said that Mireille would not come back with him, and he did not force her to return. I sent him back yet again to get her. She is gone now too.”

Rand muttered an explicit obscenity and took the tiny scrap of paper from Madame Alvin’s trembling hand.

Monsieur, I did not know until it was too late. I weep for the part I have played in this, I am guilty for my actions if not my intentions. I wish I could help you, but all I know is that Guillaume was the one who wounded you in Paris and that someone has paid much money for Beau Brummell’s daughter. Guillaume said that they will take mademoiselle across the Channel to England. I pray that you will find her and that the Lord will forgive me.

“God, Mireille . . .” Rand muttered. “Why did you run? Why?” He bent his head and turned away from the Alvins, his fingers clenching around the note. He gave a short, harsh laugh at the irony of the situation, for he had housed and fed the very man who had conspired to steal Rosalie away from him. The sound was strangled in his throat. He wondered if Rosalie was hurt or frightened. “By God, I’ll kill you for this, Guillaume,” he whispered. “I’ll hunt you down like the scraggly fox you are.” Rand had experienced complete rage before, the blinding hot emotion that raced like fire in the veins, but this went beyond that point, to a frozen state in which he could think with ice-cold clarity. Methodically, quickly, his mind sifted through a dozen possibilities and selected a course of action. Monsieur Alvin watched him uneasily, shifting from one foot, to the other. Rand stood in thought for a moment longer, and then he lifted his head. “Tell Jereme to see to the horses,” he said to Monsieur Alvin, who flinched at the odd, chilling look in his eyes. “I’m leaving for Calais.”

Neither of the Alvins dared suggest the idea of sleep to him. The couple was almost relieved when he left, for his glacial manner and appearance had unnerved them both terribly.

Rand arrived in Calais and went straight to Brummell, knocking at the door of his apartments incessantly without hearing a response. Then he warned in a low voice of sincerity that he would break the portal in if not admitted immediately. There were quick scrabbling sounds from inside, and then the door was opened timidly. Selegue stood there in hastily thrown-together attire, his wiry figure stiffening with surprise.