It was no good. The storm raged outside and Douglas raged inside. Even Hollis was looking thin about the mouth. The entire household was tense, silent.
That night Douglas slept in Alexandra’s room. He slept deeply simply because Hollis had slipped laudanum in his wine. He dreamed of Alexandra and she was standing there at the stables, laughing, patting her mare’s nose all the while, telling Douglas that she loved him, loved him, loved him . . .
And then he was awake and Alexandra was standing there beside the bed, speaking to him.
CHAPTER
22
HE STARED THEN blinked rapidly. It wasn’t so very dark in the bedchamber and that was surely strange for it had been black as pitch when he’d gone to bed. But no, there she was, standing next to the bed, and he could see her clearly, too clearly really, and she was smiling gently down at him, saying, “She is all right.” But she hadn’t really said anything, had she? Yet he’d heard those words clearly in his mind.
It wasn’t Alexandra. He reached out his hand and she stepped back very quickly, yet she hardly seemed to move, but he knew that he’d touched her sleeve, though he’d felt nothing, just the still air.
He felt a deep strangling fear, fear of the unknown, fear of ghosts and goblins and evil monsters that lived in cupboards and came out at night to bedevil little boys.
“No,” Douglas said. “No, you’re not bloody real. I’m worried sick and my mind has dished you up to torment me, nothing more, nothing, damn you!”
Her hair was long and straight and so light a blond that it was white, and the gown was billowing gently around her yet the air was still and heavy with the weight of the storm. He had, of course, seen her before, rather his mind had produced her before with a goodly amount of fanfare. She’d come to him that long-ago night when Alexandra had tried to escape him. She would have succeeded in escaping him had his mind not brought her to him.
Suddenly, without warning, Douglas saw Alexandra in his mind’s eye. She was in a small room lying on a narrow cot. Her gown was wrinkled and torn. Her hair was straggling around her face. She was pale but he saw no fear. Her wrists and ankles were tied with rope. She was awake and he could practically see her thinking, plotting madly for a way to escape, and that made him smile. She had guts. Then he saw just as clearly the small cottage where she was and the village. It was Etaples.
Georges Cadoudal had a sense of irony.
He said aloud, his voice low and slightly blurred, “This isn’t possible. You’re not real. But how . . .”
“The storm will be gone early in the morning.” The words swirled and eddied in his mind. She was leaving, gently and slowly she backed away and she was smiling at him and nodding slightly, moving backward, always moving, more like floating, and then she was simply gone.
Douglas refused to accept it. He leapt from the bed and he ran in the direction she’d gone. Nothing. He lit the candle beside the bed and held it up. The room was empty except for him. He was breathing fast, his heart pounding hard with the shock of it, the fear of it.
“You wretched piece of nothing, come back here! Coward! You ridiculous mind phantom!”
There was no sound save the rain beating steadily against the windows and the occasional branch slashing and raking against the glass.
He stood there for a very long time, naked and shivering and wondering. He had a headache.
At dawn the rain had slowed to a drizzle. At seven o’clock, the clouds parted and the sun came out.
Douglas came downstairs, fully dressed, and strode into the breakfast room. He drew up short. Tony Parrish was seated at the breakfast table drinking coffee and eating his way through eggs and bacon and kippers and scones.
He looked up and smiled at his cousin. “Sit down and eat. Then we’ll leave. We’ll find her, Douglas, don’t worry.”
“I know,” Douglas said and joined him.
Tony waited until Douglas had eaten steadily for several minutes. “What do you mean you know?”
To tell the truth? Ah, no, not the truth, but it would be a treat to watch Tony’s face change until he was regarding him like a Bedlamite. He just smiled, saying, “Georges Cadoudal took her to Etaples. We’ll leave in just a few more minutes. We’ll make the tide and be in France, with luck, in eight hours. Then we’ll hire mounts and be in Etaples in the early morning.”
“How do you know where she is, Douglas? Did Cadoudal leave a ransom note?”
“Yes,” Douglas said and took a bite of toast. “Yes, it was a note. I would have left sooner but the storm prevented it. Is Melissande with you?”
“Yes, she’s sleeping.”
“Ah.”
“While you’re eating, tell me about this Cadoudal fellow and why he took Alexandra.”
Douglas told him the truth, there was no reason now not to. He didn’t tell him of Cadoudal’s plan nor his million guineas from the English government to bring Napoleon down, sow insurrection in Paris, and put Louis XVI’s brother, the Comte d’Artois, on the throne. But he told him of Janine Daudet and how the woman had told her lover Georges Cadoudal, that he, Douglas, was the father of her child. She’d been too afraid to tell him that it had been General Belesain or one of the men he’d given her to who had impregnated her. And then she couldn’t take it back. She hadn’t known that Georges would seek retribution until it was too late.