Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Anaïs dragged herself up from the black depths of a dream to a shaft of feeble moonlight cutting across her eyes. She lifted her hand to block it out, and realized she was shivering with cold. And there was something . . . something just beyond her conscious mind. A heavy thing, like a sense of impending doom. Or the remains of a nightmare.
Scarcely half awake, she considered turning over to bury her face against Geoff’s chest. To draw in his scent and summon back the memory of his hands flowing over her, of his lips tasting and tempting. But even the exquisite memory of what they had shared could not offset the weight of apprehension. And the chill at her back told her he was long gone from her bed.
Levering up onto her elbow, she looked about the room. She lay naked atop the counterpane, and the outer draperies had not been drawn. Her evening gown and underthings still littered the carpet, just puddles of white and aquamarine in the gloom. Geoff’s clothing was gone.
Anaïs dragged a hand through her hair and tried to remember what had awakened her.
A sound. There had been a sound.
Rising and jerking on the robe Claire had left across her chair, Anaïs snatched the blade she kept sheathed beneath her pillow, then moved soundlessly toward the dressing room. She was fully awake now, her every sense alert.
There. She heard it again. A subtle, almost mournful sound. And yet something not quite human, either, like the flow of an underground river. She went through to Geoff’s room, and entered without knocking.
Sheets pooling about his slender waist, he sat bolt upright, already half out of bed, the pale moonlight casting him in an eerie white glow. Despite the chill, both windows were flung wide. The sound came again, like the sough of the wind, but her entire focus was upon him.
“Geoff?” Anaïs hastened across the room, dropping the knife into her pocket.
He thrust out an arm. “Stop!” he rasped.
But she stood at the edge of the mattress now. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“It’s the water,” he murmured, his eyes focused not upon her, but somewhere in the depths of the room. “The water. Can’t you see it?”
He was dreaming.
She perched on the bed, one leg tucked beneath. “Geoff, wake up,” she said, reaching out for him. “There’s no water. It’s just a nightmare.”
“Hush,” he whispered, his palm still held outward. “That’s it. Do you see? The water?”
A faint breeze seemed to stir through the room, rippling the curtains. She set a hand to his cheek, wondering if she should wake him. “Geoff, there’s no water.”
“The darkness,” he rasped. “The sand. It’s in her shoes. She feels it.” This time he seized Anaïs by her upper arms, dragging her to him as if she were weightless. “Good God, why doesn’t she see?”
She landed awkwardly across his lap. “See what?”
“The moon is bright,” he said, wrenching her arms hard enough to bruise. “The waves are calm. She can’t—she can’t . . .”
Anaïs set a hand to his cheek. He was shuddering as if with cold, but his skin was feverish. “Geoff, who?”
“It’s too late.” The choked out the words. “It’s too dark. Tell him it is too dark.”
Vaguely frightened now, Anaïs forced Geoff’s face around and into the white moonlight.
Later she could not have said the moment at which she grasped the fact that the chill in the room was not just a chill. That Geoff was not asleep, that he was not even present. Or at least, a part of him was not. His lupine eyes burned down into her, wild like nothing she’d ever seen or could even have imagined. And despite the gloom, his pupils were like tiny shards of onyx, glittering and multifaceted.
As if he saw through the eyes of another.
And he did, she realized. Dear God, he did.
“Geoff?” Her voice was thready. “Come back. Please.”
Suddenly, the air surged about them in surreal, unpredictable currents. The sheer draperies, already tossed by the breeze, began to float. There was a low sound, like wind roaring in a distant tunnel followed by a loud thwap! Anaïs looked around to see that L’Art de la Guerre had blown from the desk. It lay upon the floor, its pages ruffling back and forth like a wheat field in the wind. Then the papers in his traveling desk lifted and began to spin about the room in a cyclone of foolscap.
Anaïs cast her eyes about the room as a lock of her hair whipped across her face. “Geoff, what’s happening?” she cried, clinging to him now.
His grip on her arms tightened, if such a thing were possible. “She is going to die,” he whispered. “She is going to die. He is pushing her under. Holding her. Killing her.”
“Who?” she cried. “Charlotte? For God’s sake, who?”
“Charlotte,” he murmured. “Poor Charlotte. She did not see . . .”
Then Anaïs felt his grasp go slack. Geoff fell back against the headboard, his chest heaving like bellows, Anaïs tumbling over with him.
For a moment it was as if time held suspended. As if no one breathed. Then the roar receded like a vanishing train. A deathly stillness settled over the room. The draperies fell limp against the sills. The cyclone of white flew apart, the scattered papers hitching up against furniture legs and wainscoting like so many dead leaves.
“Grazie a Dio!” she whispered, setting her forehead to his shoulder.
“Anaïs?” The word was all but silent.
“Geoff?” she managed. “Are you . . . here?”
For what seemed an eternity, he said nothing. But she could feel him slowly returning to himself. Then, his breathing rough, Geoff’s arms came around her, wide and strong, and she knew that he had returned to the present.
She clung to him, burying her face against his neck, half afraid and trembling inside.
When he spoke, it was as if the words were dragged from him. “It will be soon, Anaïs,” he said, still gasping. “We are out of time.”
Anaïs pushed herself up and he let her go. His eyes were his own again, and filled with grief. “Are you all right?” she whispered, searching his face for reassurance.
His breath was steadying. “Aye,” he finally said. “Well enough.”
A shock of his dark hair had fallen over one eye. Gently, she pushed it back. “What just happened?” she whispered. “Can you tell me? Can you even explain it?”
He shook his head, and set the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Not really.” His voice sounded hoarse. “I was just . . . trying to see. I’m sorry. Did I frighten you?”
“Not in the least,” Anaïs lied. “And you didn’t try to see. You did see. Something. The water. The sand. Do you remember?”
He dropped his hands as if resigned. “Oh, aye,” he murmured. “I found Giselle’s toy. That, and the handkerchief. The letter DuPont brought. I used them.”
“To try to open the door.” She cast her eyes round the disordered room. “And it looks as though it worked rather well.”
He shook his head again. “Not at first,” he said quietly. “But you see how it is. It’s . . . it’s like a sort of madness comes upon me. I hate it. It frightens people.”
Anaïs thought it was rather more than that. “It doesn’t frighten me,” she said again.
He gave a sharp, exasperated laugh. “When I was a lad, I hid it from my mother when the spells came,” he said. “She was terrified. The doctors . . . they told her I had a mental disorder. That eventually she would have to put me away.”
“Good Lord,” said Anaïs. “Surely she did not listen?”
He was quiet for a moment. “No, she took me to someone who was not a doctor,” he finally answered. “A . . . a sort of governess who had trained in Vienna, and who worked with children who were thought mentally disturbed. Mad.”
She laid a finger to his lips. “Stop using that word.”
Geoff watched her for a time, his eyes smooth as blue water now. “Your mother,” he said quietly, “she is a sister to the Earl of Treyhern, Sutherland said.”
Anaïs dropped her hand. “Yes,” she murmured. “Why?”
His gaze fell. “It was his wife,” he said. “She was the governess.”
“Aunt Helene?” Anaïs was amazed. “But . . . but they have been married ages.”
“My mother did not know they had married,” he said. “She thought to buy her away from the earl. To offer her more money. Mamma was desperate, you must understand. It was that, she believed, or an asylum.”
Anaïs laughed. “I should have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation,” she said. “But Helene does have a gift for dealing with children—and uncommon good sense.”
“It was the latter which saved me,” he said. “She told my mother I was perfectly fine. To let me be, and ignore the doctors.”
A memory stirred in the back of Anaïs’s mind. “And then you found your mentor,” she said. “In Scotland, yes?”
His smile was wistful. “Ah, that is a very long story,” he said. “Another tale for another night, perhaps.”
But Anaïs was not sure they would have many more nights.
She pushed away the thought. “Well, you have the Gift,” she said. “And all that matters is that you’ve learned to deal with it.”
“Aye, until I need it,” he said, his expression bleak. “And then it’s like calling up the devil. But the devil can’t help Charlotte Moreau, can he?”
She threaded a hand through his hair again. “So tell me,” she encouraged. “Tell me exactly what happened tonight. You took the dog, and the other things. And then what?”
He lifted his broad, bare shoulders. “Nothing came,” he said. “Nothing but that awful darkness. It’s haunted me, Anaïs, since we got here. But nothing came so I tried to sleep. It happens that way sometimes, just as the conscious mind begins to slip away . . .”
“And you fell into that odd little crack between sleep and wakefulness, didn’t you?” she murmured. “I think everyone feels it to some extent. But for you it is—well, you know what it is. And you are all right now?”
“Yes, but Charlotte is not,” he replied, grasping her arms again. “Anaïs, think. When did she say they were going on holiday?”
“The day after tomorrow,” said Anaïs swiftly. “Why?”
Geoff closed his eyes. “Lezennes is going to drown her,” he whispered. “He means to lure her out—a moonlight walk by the sea—and plead his case one last time.”
Anaïs jerked upright. “Oh, Geoff. No.”
But his gaze had turned inward. “But she . . . she rejects him,” he went on. “He all but knows she will. And he is prepared. That is why he is taking her away. Away from the house and the servants. Her priest. Even you, perhaps.”
“My God, it would be so easy!” Anaïs whispered. “In the dark, in her skirts and crinolines—she would not have a chance in the water.”
“He will say she tripped,” Geoff whispered. “That a wave came out of nowhere. That they were wading and he could not save her.”
Anaïs clapped a hand to her mouth to still her gasp.
“A romantic walk, hand in hand.” Geoff’s eyes were closed now. “He . . . he holds her under. The surf crashes over them. It does not take long. She is so small.” He stopped, and swallowed hard. “So small and tired. After all she has been through, she has so little fight left in her.”
“But—but that’s monstrous!” Anaïs cried. “We must tell—”
Just then, the clock in the stairway struck four, the sound doleful in the gloom.
Anaïs squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, Geoff!” she whispered. “This is Friday! This is already tomorrow!”
“Aye, it is that.” He sat up, and set her a little away. “Anaïs, we must make ready to leave. We must take them with us in the night. It’s the only way.”
“Yes.” Anaïs rose and went to the window to stare across the street at Lezennes’ house “Yes, it is the only way. But first I must go and warn her.”
“Will she believe you?”
Anaïs turned, the hems of her wrapper whipping round her ankles. “I shall do my best,” she said determinedly. “I know—I shall ask her to go with me to confession this morning. She won’t think it odd. And once we get to St. Nicholas’s I’ll tell her everything. I can show her my mark if it comes to it.”
“Aye, now that she’ll recognize,” said Geoff, unfolding his long, lean, and very naked body from the bed. “It might do the trick. At the very least, I don’t think she’ll tell Lezennes what we’re up to. But somehow you must convince her that she is safer with us than with him. Still, I cannot like it. I have not gained her trust—and you may not have done, either.”
“Then we resort to ladders and laudanum,” said Anaïs grimly.
“So you managed to unlock the windows?”
“Yes, all of them.”
“Good girl,” he said, snatching up his drawers.
“Oh!” she said witheringly. “I do wish—”
He froze, and flicked a glance up at her in the gloom. “What?”
“I do wish you did not have to put those back on,” she blurted, then snagged her lip in her teeth. “Ah, but now is not the time, is it?”
And if she were wise, there would never be another time . . .
Was she? Was she going to be wise this time?
His mouth twisted. “Afraid we must press on, love,” he said, shoving a leg in. “Wake the house. I want everything packed, loaded, and on the way to Ostend by midmorning. Petit must go along, and tell Captain Thibeaux to make ready. We sail for England tomorrow.”
Promptly at half past ten, Anaïs stood on the Vicomte de Lezennes’ doorstep in her most demure dress, her prayer book tossed into the market basket swinging from her elbow. To her surprise, one could not actually hear her knees knocking.
The door was opened by a gray-garbed servant whom Anaïs recognized vaguely as one of the downstairs maids. She bobbed a curtsy but did not open the door very wide.
At Anaïs’s request, she shook her head.
“Très sorry, madame,” she said in stilted English. “But Madame Moreau is mal de—de—”
Fear stirred in Anaïs’s chest. “She is ill?”
“Oui, merci—ill, and not to receive the callers.”
“How very dreadful.” Gingerly Anaïs pushed a foot over the threshold. “She seemed quite the thing last night.”
The maid bobbed again, and cast her gaze down. “Désolé, madame,” she said again. “It was—how do you say—oui, quick? She will be well soon, it is to be hoped.”
She moved as if to close the door, but Anaïs did not extract her foot, and in fact managed to wedge an elbow against the door frame. “Oh, but if I could just see her a moment,” she pleaded. “Just long enough to assure myself that it is on no account my fault! Oh, but this is frightful. We kept her up late—playing the pianoforte to entertain us, no less! How thoughtless we were. I feel quite horrible about it now.”
“Non, madame,” said the girl, her voice a little unsteady now. “It is the wish of His Lordship. Madame is not for disturbing.”
Anaïs put the other foot over the threshold, and wedged her basket in as well. As she’d hoped, the girl finally backed up a pace. “The vicomte, then?” she said, left with no alternative. “Might I speak with him? Just to reassure myself?”
The girl flicked a quick gaze up—almost a warning shot across the bow—then, after a final moment of hesitation, threw the door fully open. “Bien sûr, madame,” she said. “If you will just take the chair?”
Anaïs sat as instructed, and looked about the entrance hall. A longcase clock by the stairs. An umbrella stand by the door. A very fine rug. All appeared perfectly normal. For a moment, she closed her eyes and tried to move through the house in her mind. This was not the first time she’d done it, either. And she might well have to do it in the dark tonight.
Eyes still closed, she tried to relax. Perhaps something would come to her if she tried to open herself to the void. Some snippet of meaning, or hint of what Lezennes was thinking.
It was no use. Nothing came—not that she had really expected it would.
In short order the girl returned, eyes still downcast, and motioned for Anaïs to follow.
Anaïs rose and trailed after the maid, counting off her steps, mentally noting the distance from hall to stairs. The number of steps. Two paces across the landing. Six more steps.
Lezennes met them at the top of the staircase, and bowed smoothly. He wore an elegantly embroidered banyan over his white shirt, the sleeves folded back to reveal a band of black satin, and had not put on a cravat.
“Madame MacLachlan, you have returned,” he murmured, his gaze running almost clinically up her length. Perhaps seen in the light of day—and absent the lubrication of fine wine—Anaïs’s actions of the previous evening seemed suspicious to him now.
“Oh, Your Lordship!” she said, setting a plaintive hand on his arm. “Do tell me how poor Charlotte goes on. Do, pray, reassure me. Oh, I am just beside myself at the thought we may have overtaxed her or overset her in some way last night?”
He smiled thinly, and gave one of those airy, elegant waves of his hand. “Not at all,” he said. “Do set yourself at ease. It is nothing—a little headache. I merely wished her to rest.”
“Well, thank heaven,” said Anaïs. “I had hoped she and I might walk to church together this morning.”
“I’m afraid that is out of the question,” said Lezennes.
Anaïs tried to look wide-eyed and innocent. “Might I go in to see her, then?” she begged. “Just for a moment? Perhaps I might bring her something. A little calf’s-foot jelly, perhaps?”
He hesitated, a sort of smirk upon his face, then Lezennes gave a little bow. “You are all kindness, madame,” he said. “A brief moment will not hurt. But you will see that all is well. Please follow me.”
It was on the tip of Anaïs’s tongue to tell him she knew quite well where Charlotte’s room was, but she suspected at once that the vicomte did not mean to let her from his sight.
She was to be proven right. They strode through the passageway and past Charlotte’s room to a door at the very end of the hall. Lezennes opened it to reveal a small, elegantly furnished sitting room with additional doors to either side—a connecting room, she realized, between Lezennes’ bedchamber and Charlotte’s. The man was utterly without shame.
Charlotte reclined upon a divan by the windows, the door to her bedchamber open. “No, Louisa, the red shoes, please,” she said, motioning to someone beyond Anaïs’s line of sight.
“Look, ma petite, who I have brought you,” said Lezennes, striding into the room.
Charlotte’s head turned slowly. “Anaïs!” she said, moving as if to rise.
“No, no, you mustn’t get up!” said Anaïs. “I know you are unwell, and I can stay but a moment.”
A ghost of some inscrutable emotion passed over Charlotte’s face. “Lezennes wishes me to rest,” she said. “Tomorrow we travel. But how lovely to see you. Do sit down.”
“Only for a moment,” said Anaïs, glancing up at Lezennes as she sat. “Perhaps the vicomte will join us? We promise not to chatter about bonnets or ribbons, sir, if you will? And then you will see that I mean to keep my promise. I will stay but briefly.”
Some of the suspicion seemed to leave his face then, and he took the seat next to her—which he had doubtless meant to do all along.
“Thank you both, by the way, for a lovely evening,” Anaïs said, neatening the folds of her skirts. “It was quite the best meal we’d had in an age, my lord. Perhaps, Charlotte, your cook can be persuaded to give her soufflé recipe to Mrs. Janssen?”
“I shall see to it before we leave.” But Charlotte was looking wan and uneasy.
It was only then that Anaïs realized a maid stood in the doorway to Charlotte’s room, her arms heaped with clothing.
“Yes, all those, Louisa,” Charlotte said to her. “Thank you. You are too kind.”
“Oh, you are packing!” said Anaïs.
“Yes. Well, Louisa is doing it for me.”
Anaïs wagged a finger at her. “Well, if you mean to take the train, Charlotte, do be careful.”
“Careful? In what way?”
“Pack all your most important things in one small bag and keep it to hand,” said Anaïs warningly. “Things of sentimental value, especially. I once had my trunks stolen—in Gloucestershire, of all places! I was going to visit my grandmother, and one way or another my trunks were snatched! Can you believe it?”
“But how dreadful!”
“Oh, it was,” said Anaïs earnestly. “Luckily, Mamma had the foresight to pack all my keepsakes and a change of clothing in my handbag, or I wouldn’t have had so much as a pair of clean drawers when I got to—oh, your pardon, my lord!”
Lezennes lifted one eyebrow. “Not in the least, Madame MacLachlan,” he said coolly. “We all wear them, n’est-ce pas?”
Anaïs giggled. “To be sure, we do!”
They spoke on for a time about the pleasures of the seashore, and their various childhood memories. Anaïs had none, for her family had been too busy with the farm and their vineyards abroad—and she with her travels to Tuscany.
But she spoke of none of that, maintained her bourgeois façade, and spun instead a hilarious story about how her sister had once fallen headlong off the Cobb at Lyme Regis—and if anyone noticed that the tale was only slightly altered from one Miss Austen had once told in a novel, they were kind enough not to mention it. Anaïs’s fictional sister limped away with only her pride and her petticoats wounded, their family holiday intact.
Charlotte then began to speak of her plans to entertain Giselle with sandcastles and seashell hunting during their coming trip to the shore. But as if the topic made him uncomfortable, Lezennes jerked at once to his feet.
“Charlotte, really, you must have your rest if we are to travel tomorrow.”
Anaïs knew it was her cue to go.
“His Lordship is quite right, of course,” she said, swiftly rising. “Now, Charlotte, don’t get up. I am going to run home and send the kitchen girl back over with a little bowl of my calf’s-foot jelly. You must warm it up and spoon it slowly, now—oh, and a book!—I have a book I think you might like.”
“One of your unusual novels, madame?” enquired the vicomte, with only a faint curling of his nose.
Anaïs managed to blush. “Oh, no, my lord, ’tis just a volume of Mr. Coleridge’s poems,” she said. “But I thought it might make for easy reading during your travels tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” said Charlotte swiftly. “I’m sure it would prove diverting.”
Anaïs bowed her way from the room, wishing them a marvelous holiday and counting her steps as she went. And all the while she looked about for obstacles that one might most easily trip over in the dark.
Lezennes abandoned her at the top of the stairs after wishing her a good day, then returned to Charlotte’s sitting room. Anaïs watched him go, more certain than ever that she was grateful not to have Geoff’s gift. Grateful not to know—not to feel—the evil that lurked inside such men. For it did not take a gift to see that Lezennes watched Charlotte like a hawk, and meant to keep doing so until she was either betrothed or dead.
Anaïs was determined it would be neither.
Pensive and deeply worried, she went back across the Rue de l’Escalier and let herself in. After setting her basket aside, she trailed through the public rooms of the house. Seeing no one, she peeked through the back window to see a fourgon sitting in the alley at the end of the rear yard. Attired in tall boots and snug breeches, Geoff was on board, helping Petit strap the baggage down.
After permitting herself a few moments to admire the view, Anaïs let the curtain drop, then went directly upstairs and through her room into Geoff’s.
His volume of Coleridge poems still lay amidst the tidy stack of books. After flipping through it to be certain it contained the poem she wished, and that the flyleaf bore no sentimental inscription, Anaïs carried it back through the dressing room.
She tossed it on the bed, opened Nonna Sofia’s box, and shuffled through the tarot until she found the card she wanted.
Il Cavaliere di Spade. The Knight of Swords.
For an instant, she closed her eyes and pressed the card to her breast.
It was entirely possible, she knew, that she would not see the card again. After more than two centuries of being handed down from one generation to the next, her family’s tarocchi would be incomplete—and it would be her doing. The pack would be rendered utterly useless.
The thought left an odd catch in her throat.
At least it was not her card. It was not le Re di Dischi.
And yet, strangely, Anaïs no longer wished to take that card from the box, either. Her girlish fantasy—and her nonna’s prediction—seemed far, far in the past, and there was a longing inside her now that had nothing to do with a foolish pack of cards.
Anaïs had begun to feel the passage of time most acutely. She was suddenly tired of waiting. Indeed, she felt almost silly for having done so. She wanted a life, a husband and children to love. She no longer cared if her beautiful Tuscan prince never turned up.
In fact, she almost wished he would not. She almost wished . . .
Ah, but that would not do.
Still, while Anaïs had no wish to dishonor Nonna Sofia, there was no mistaking the fact that something had changed inside her. She was beginning to question the wisdom of waiting for the perfect man. In truth, the whole prediction seemed so harebrained, she wondered she’d ever believed it at all. And save for Maria, no one else knew. The story was too outlandish to bear repeating.
But Nonna Sofia had repeated it—or at least her tarot had. Time and again, the card had turned up for Anaïs. Time and again, the King of Pentacles had been her destiny.
But if she tossed le Re di Dischi to the four winds, if she never got il Cavaliere di Spade back from Charlotte, did it really matter? She did not want to read i tarocchi. She did not mean to consult the cards ever again in any seriousness. The reading she’d given Charlotte still troubled her. She did not want this Gift her blood had cursed her with; no, not even this faint, watered-down version of it.
It made her think again of Geoff; of the young boy he once had been, frightened and floundering in the dark with no one to guide him.
And suddenly the oddest thought struck her.
Why had there been no one?
How could his mother not have known the Gift for what it was? The blood had come either from her or from Lord Bessett. One of them should have recognized the signs, should have known Geoff needed help—and should have found it for him. A Guardian, a Preost to counsel him, a mentor within his circle of blood—someone, for God’s sake. It was how the Gift had been protected for eons.
Instead, his mother had taken him to doctors. She had feared him mad.
For the first time, Anaïs realized how little sense that made.
Good Lord, no wonder he had felt so deeply for Giselle Moreau—and for Charlotte, too. No wonder he understood so well the fear and uncertainty she suffered as a mother; why he had been unwilling to hurt her, to take the child away. It was likely what the doctors had tried to do with him.
And Charlotte knew her daughter possessed the Gift. How much harder her life would have been had she not known! Anaïs could scarcely fathom the concern that such a strange, fey child would instill in an unsuspecting mother’s heart.
But Geoff’s background was a mystery that would have to wait—and wait forever, perhaps, for both Geoff’s past and his future were swiftly becoming none of her business. For good or ill, her days with him would soon be at an end. And she could not help but wonder—once he had returned to England, the Brotherhood, and his almost-fiancée—if he would not find himself a little relieved to be shut of her.
She had no wish to think about that, and her pathetic sniveling would not help Charlotte. Taking the book and the card, Anaïs bounded off the bed and went to her desk by the door, then yanked open the drawer to snatch a pencil. Turning the card to the light, Anaïs drew a fingertip down the drawing, taking in the knight’s bowed head. His drooping sword. The backdrop of a barren, colorless landscape.
An empty life. An abandonment. A swordsman with no enemy to fight.
It was similar, she thought, to the life of a Guardian denied.
Anaïs slammed shut the desk drawer and bent her head to her task. In the thin margin at the bottom of the card she wrote but three words:
Tonight. Be ready.
Laying the pencil aside, she looked at it.
It was vague, but it would have to do. It was almost unnoticeable, too. Indeed, at first glance, it was merely an old card such as anyone might tuck into a book to mark one’s place. A worn and slightly unusual one, yes, but most people would not likely give it a second glance.
Charlotte, however, would remember it well. It was the card that had brought tears to her eyes. When she saw it again, she might well study it in great detail, searching for some small sign of her father.
The father who was far, far from dead.
The father who wanted her very much.
Swiftly, Anaïs paged through the book of poetry looking for her favorite poem. It was “Frost at Midnight,” Coleridge’s ode to the longing he felt for his home, for his birthplace in the English countryside.
She found it, and circled just a few words:
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birthplace . . .
It was unlikely anyone would look closely at a few circled words. Almost everyone marked passages of poetry, or bits of prose one wished to study or to remember.
It was also unlikely Charlotte would look closely. She probably wouldn’t even open the book tonight.
Anaïs cursed aloud, and heartily. No, Charlotte would likely tuck it amongst her things—perhaps into that one piece of hand baggage Anaïs had warned her to prepare.
She heaved a great sigh. That likely had not occurred, either.
Indeed, it was rather more likely Charlotte would have tossed the book into the bottom of a traveling trunk, and would scream bloody murder when awakened tonight. And if she did not—if, by some miracle, Anaïs managed to quietly rouse her and plead their case—it was probable Charlotte would wish to dress, to pack a portmanteau, to search out her favorite hair ribbon or shoes . . . to do all those silly things women were apt to wish to do when leaving home—or in this case, leaving everything behind.
And then they would have to get past Lezennes’ maid, and snatch Giselle.
Dear God, this was going to be impossible.
Anaïs felt her shoulders slump. But what choice did they have? Lezennes clearly did not mean to leave Charlotte’s side, for he had been dressed for the privacy of his home. He certainly did not mean to permit Anaïs to speak with her alone.
Just then, there was a knock at the open door and Geoff strode in, his boot heels heavy on the floor, a riding crop in hand. Anaïs turned in her chair to look at him. He was breathtakingly handsome in his snug coat and form-fitting breeches, his long hair tossed into disarray by the spring breeze.
His eyes, however, were somber and questioning. “Well?” he said.
Anaïs shook her head. “He is suspicious,” she said. “He says Charlotte is unwell.”
“So you did not see her.” His voice was flat with disappointment.
“No, I inveigled my way in, though it took some doing,” she said.
Geoff sat down on the edge of her bed, looking disconcertingly as if he belonged there. “That’s my girl,” he said, his smile wan. “Ever the devious one.”
“But Lezennes would not leave us alone,” she went on. “Not for an instant. But the maid is packing, and they go in the morning by train.”
“At least we know that much.” But he was tapping the crop pensively against his boot top.
Anaïs showed him the book and the card, and explained her plan. “What do you think?” she asked, perching on the bed beside him. “Too risky?”
Geoff cocked one brow, and read over the verse. “Well, the verse proves nothing,” he murmured. “I’ve circled a dozen such passages in the book myself. As to the card, it’s old, it’s worn, and the words almost blend into the design. One would have to look awfully closely to notice. No, by gad, it could be brilliant.”
Anaïs beamed up at him for a moment, then her face fell. “Ah, Geoff, what are the chances?” she asked. “Why would she look at it tonight? What if she really does have a headache? She’ll likely just toss it aside.”
But Geoff caught her upper arms in his hands. “It is a good idea, Anaïs,” he said firmly. “Besides, it’s all we’ve got. And if that doesn’t work—well, then we pray she doesn’t scream the whole house awake, and we try to persuade her to go.”
Anaïs held his gaze a little sadly. “Oh, we will persuade her,” she murmured. “You should have seen Charlotte today. She looked . . . frightened. I think she knows, Geoff. Is it possible Giselle has—I don’t know—seen something?”
Geoff had risen, and begun to pace the room. “It’s hard to say,” he murmured. “Children and their parents generally cannot read one another.”
“Nonna Sofia could read my cards,” said Anaïs.
Geoff considered it. “But you were the fourth generation down,” he said crossing his arms and leaning back against the doorframe. “The blood was thin. Still, who knows? The Gift is strange, especially when it’s strong. It is more likely Giselle can read Lezennes, or sense the evil in him. Hell, I can sense that much without laying a hand on the bastard—I beg your pardon. My language suffers from my frustration.”
“Lud, never mind that!” Anaïs sighed. “At the very least, I think Charlotte knows Lezennes means to propose marriage to her one last time. And she knows she means to refuse him.”
“Aye, and that alone might be enough to make her run,” Geoff muttered, arms still crossed resolutely. “I pray to heaven, Anaïs, that I’m doing the right thing. That Charlotte will be well and that we will get her child safely away. And by God, if I have to stab that bastard Lezennes through the heart to get the job done, then so be it.”
And that, Anaïs later realized, was the moment she fell completely, utterly, head-over-heels in love with the formerly cold and aloof Lord Bessett. The moment when the prince of her dreams became not a dark, dashing Tuscan rogue, but a practical and quietly ruthless Englishman with eyes like arctic ice and hair kissed by the sun. The moment when she realized that her great-grandmother’s dream was not necessarily her own, and that fortunes, perhaps, could be altered if one truly willed it so.
Of course they could be altered.
Wasn’t that precisely what they were doing here? They were saving Charlotte from an awful fate. Snatching Giselle from a man destined to use her ill. None of it was written in stone—and if it was, then why were they any of them there? Of what use was the Gift at all?
The reality—the possibility—caught her breath and stole it away with her heart.
Nonna Sofia was gone, and allowing her dream to keep living would not bring her back to Anaïs. It would not make her any less dead—and it need not make her any less important. Nonna Sofia had been right about a great many things—well, everything, really.
Just not this.
On this score, she was wrong—or at the very least, Anaïs prayed she was.
A little unsteadily, she rose from the bed and went to him. Setting a hand to Geoff’s cheek, she stood her tiptoes and kissed him lightly. “Has anyone ever told you, Geoffrey Archard, that you are utterly amazing?” she whispered.
His eyes warmed. “Oh, aye?” he answered. “What was that for?”
Anaïs drew away, but did not remove her hand. “I am not perfectly sure,” she admitted. “But I’ll tell you when I have finished working it out.”
At that, he threw back his head and laughed. Anaïs flashed him a wry smile, then went to the bed, and jerked the coverlet off.
His arms fell, his brow furrowing. “What are you doing with that?”
Anaïs draped it over her arm. “I don’t think Monsieur Michel will grieve over it when he gets his house back,” she said, “any more than he will grieve over those old blades he keeps upstairs.”
“His swords?” Geoff’s eyes widened. “Rolling them up and taking them along, are we?”
“Just the sharp ones,” she said, breezing past and kissing him again. “After all, they do say if you mean to sup with the devil you’d better bring a long spoon.”
“Oh, aye, they do say that.” He followed her from the room. “And the connection here would be . . . ?”
She turned in the passageway, the coverlet still draped over her arm. “Well, one of us might have to stab Lezennes through the heart,” she said breezily, “but I should like us to have a good length of blade when we do it.”