“Now, my dear Arabella,” he said in a soft lilting voice, as if nothing had happened, “now, I shall know the truth from you. Be quick about it for your husband must be near.”
“I cannot help you, Gervaise. I don’t know anything about the Trécassis emeralds.”
She saw a sudden transformation in him. His dark eyes widened. He smiled at her unpleasantly. Now, for the first time, she was afraid. He said in that same soft lilting voice, “You know, my dear countess, you are really quite lovely. Perhaps it would not be a bad thing at all to have you for my companion, at least until your wealthy husband provides me with ample compensation. Of course, I would prefer the emeralds, but if you will not tell me where you have hidden them, I shall not repine. You will enjoy Bruxelles, Arabella. You will enjoy me as a lover. You will enjoy me until your husband pays for your release. Ah, but perhaps then you won’t wish to return to him. What do you think?” She laughed, actually laughed at him. She didn’t know where that wonderful laughter came from, but she was thankful for it. It sounded nearly sincere to her own ears. “Do you really believe you could force me to accompany you? Do you really believe I would allow you to rape me? Do you really believe that my husband wouldn’t kill you with his bare hands if I hadn’t managed to do it first? Do you believe in your wildest fantasies that I would prefer you to my husband? No, I can see that you can’t even dream that to your advantage.
“Now, I know nothing about your emeralds, Gervaise. Yes, now I can see that the thought of dragging me screaming and kicking from here gives you pause. It should because you would never know anything but hatred from me and the threat of death. Doubt it not, Gervaise.” She heard a man’s deep voice behind her. “No, I would kill you before my wife could, you pathetic little bastard. And as she said, I would do it with my bare hands.”
Arabella whirled around to see the earl standing quietly in the open doorway. In his outstretched right hand he held a pile of bright green stones, sprays of diamonds flashing around them. Huge green stones that glittered in the dim candlelight. The de Trécassis emeralds. But Justin wasn’t carrying a weapon. “Yes, monsieur, I have your bloody emeralds.” Her heart leapt at the sight of him, so calm, so in control as he always was. “Justin, oh, you’re here. I knew you would come quickly. I am sorry that I lost my gun, so very sorry. If I hadn’t, surely I could have killed him by now. Please forgive me.”
“No,” he said. He smiled at her, not a gentle smile, but one that held great love and rage, an odd combination, but she understood it and accepted it. It would always be so between them, she realized in that instant. They were so alike that they would fight like demons from hell itself, but then there was such a deep bond between them that it could never be severed. It would but become stronger. She knew that as surely as she knew that both of them would survive this night.
The earl said finally to Gervaise, “We knew you would come back tonight.
There was no other choice since I had ordered you to be gone from Evesham Abbey tomorrow. Would you have left, I wonder, if you hadn’t found the emeralds? Or would you have lurked about in the woods somewhere, hoping to try again?”
“No,” the comte said. “I would have taken one of the women and held them captive until you returned to me what was mine. The emeralds are mine.
Give them to me.”
The earl only shook his head, though his hand, filled to overflowing with those emeralds, was still outstretched toward Gervaise. “Yes, that would be a better plan. But it won’t happen. Did you think me a fool, Gervaise?
I knew weeks ago that you were not the Comte de Trécassis. Although my informant was uncertain as to your true heritage, I ordered him to keep looking. Yes, monsieur, I sought more knowledge of you. I didn’t want to order you out of my house until I knew what you were about. I guessed you were a bloody little fraud, I knew you were dangerous, I just didn’t realize how dangerous until after Arabella and I found Josette’s body, until after I realized you had caused the collapse in the old abbey, endangering Arabella. It was then I knew it was something in the earl’s bedchamber. What other room was there that you could not enter with impunity? How you must have gnashed your teeth when I kept the door locked.
“But enough. I searched your room, you know, just this afternoon while Arabella kept you out of Evesham Abbey. Without the exact instructions Magdalaine wrote to Thomas de Trécassis of the hiding place of the emeralds, I knew I should never know what it was you sought. With the instructions, it was all quite simple. The frustration you must have known all these weeks. I could almost feel pity for you if you weren’t such a villainous little sod.”
“Damn you, the emeralds are mine!”
The earl shook his head. He turned to Arabella. “I really wish you had remained safe at the ball.”
Gervaise looked at the earl. It was all so very easy. There, the earl, all his attention riveted on his wife. The stupid man had no gun.
Gervaise pointed the pistol at him. “I will have them now, my lord. Give me those damned emeralds.”
The earl, to Arabella’s shock, merely stared at Gervaise, his look one of boredom. Bored? “As you will, monsieur,” the earl said. “They are really not all that important, you see.”
“I don’t trust you. Why didn’t you bring a weapon? You are planning
