Page 65 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

“No, no, Monsieur le Duc. It was never my intention to harm your lovely lady wife. I left that tainted coffee for you.…”

Maxim remembered the cold coffeepot he’d spied on the landing that terrible morning. Caro must have poured herself a cup on her way out.

“It was, I confess, a dose calculated for someone larger,” he said, looking Maxim up and down. “I hoped that in the throes of illness, you might reveal something interesting. But alas.” One shoulder rose and fell.

“Alas?” Maxim echoed, no longer quiet. “Alas? You might have killed her by mistake. Then there was the incident with the boat. Not an accident, I presume?” Leclerc shrugged. “And I suppose that dose of laudanum you offered me afterward...”

“It would have made you very sleepy.” Leclerc made a rocking motion with his flattened hand, moving lower with each sweep. “You would have slid deeper and deeper into your tub, until your bathwater managed to do what the English Channel could not.” When he reached his knee, he slapped it. “Very bad form of you to break the glass.”

“Drowning me would seem to make it more difficult to discover all my secrets.” He sent another glance toward the crate.

Leclerc lifted his brows. “Oui. But perhaps I no longer care about those. An agent’s orders are subject to change, as you well know.”

The sun had risen high enough that the light of the candle was no longer needed to see the other man’s expression clearly, though the sky itself could hardly be called bright. How long before someone else in the house rose and interrupted this cozy tête-à-tête? What did Leclerc mean to do then?

Maxim folded his arms over his chest. “What now?” he asked, trying to sound as if the answer were inconsequential.

“Now?” Leclerc unfolded his legs and pushed to standing. The hand that had been dangling inside the crate reappeared, clutching a small pistol. “Now I mean to keep you quiet forever. No more playing Frenchman, Monsieur le Duc. You will die as an Englishman, wet with your own piss and tears.”

In spite of himself and the grim situation, Maxim laughed, a mere gust of sound, dry with irony. Once, he would have begged for a bullet to be rid of his pain. Now that such a remedy was at last on offer, he had every reason to live. “I would not be so sure, Leclerc,” he answered, shifting back to French. Had he not already proved himself a fighter?

Leclerc’s delicate mien ought to have been incompatible with the pistol, but he handled it with assurance. “Perhaps you would prefer to watch your pretty little wife die first?”

Maxim would have laughed off that remark as well, merely another empty threat, if he had not at that moment heard Caro’s delicate tread descending the stairs.

She was going for her usual walk, he supposed, and he might have been glad to have her out of the house if she did not have to pass by the doors of this very room on her way. Had she heard their voices? Had she wondered at his rising early? Would she stop to speak with him?

He tried to take a step backward, in order to block the closest door, but his bad leg wobbled beneath the unequal distribution of his weight. Leclerc shook his head, at once a pitying gesture and a warning. “No, no, monsieur. It is not for you to choose who dies first.”

Sweat broke out on Maxim’s brow when her footsteps paused on the landing. He heard a creak of hesitation, but both doors remained closed, and in another moment, she had gone on her way. In the entry hall, he heard her speak—to Geoffrey, he presumed—and finally the front door of the house closed with a thud.

Leclerc shrugged and lifted the pistol to sight along its barrel. “It seems Fate has spoken.”

“Wait.”

One brow arced; the pistol did not move a fraction of an inch. “Porquoi?”

Why, indeed? Better to let the man get on with it now, while Caro was out of the house. Leclerc would be gone before she returned and before any of her family came downstairs and found themselves caught in the crossfire.

But that damned instinct for survival would not let him surrender so easily.

“If you looked at the papers in that crate, you must have some idea how wealthy I am now. Surely there must be something that would tempt you to reconsider your plans?”

“Oh, monsieur.” He chuckled. “I have long suspected your motives for spying. You have no home, no family. No loyalty. But my heart belongs to France. I cannot be bought with your English pounds and pence.” He laughed again, derisively. “You are as pathetic as your father-in-law when you beg.”

“My father-in-law?”

“Lord Laughton, eh? When you threw him out so unceremoniously, he made his way down to the beach. I believe he meant to make his bed in one of those silly contraptions, the huts with wheels.…”

“A bathing machine?” Maxim suggested, incredulous.

“Just so. Alas for him, I had arranged to pick up a message from a colleague in that very spot. When I realized he had seen me, I knew I couldn’t let him get away. He offered me anything I wished to secure his freedom. I knew already he had nothing of value—you had made that clear. So—” He mimed striking someone with the butt of his pistol, and then tipped his head to the side, tongue lolling, to show the result of the blow. “A pity.”

Maxim sucked in a breath, feeling not guilt over Laughton’s fate, exactly, but concern for Caro, who was too tenderhearted to wish her father dead. Once more, the burden of caring for her family would fall on her shoulders. And if Leclerc succeeded where so many had failed, she would have to bear that burden alone. A wealthy widow, just as he’d said.

“A message, you say?” What did he hope to gain by stalling? The footman had surely accompanied Caro. Brent-Ashby was the last man in the house, not precisely reliable, and probably sound asleep. “About me?”

“You think always of yourself. But when you are gone, the war will continue—for a little while. I am to go to London, however, and see to it that your General Scott has given his last order.”