14
VICTOR’S BLOOD RAN cold, then hot. Hadn’t Isa said— “You told me they were still in Paris,” he accused as he came up behind her.
When she faced him, her skin the color of ash, he realized she was as astonished and upset as he. “I swear this is the first time I have so much as heard her name in a decade.”
He dragged in a heavy breath, belatedly realizing that the servant hadn’t seemed to know who the woman at the door was, which didn’t exactly imply that Isa and her sister were seeing each other regularly.
Still, he had to be certain. Leveling a steady look on Betsy, he asked, “Have you never met this woman before?”
Betsy glanced to Isa, who said, “Tell him the truth.”
“No, sir,” Betsy said, obviously perplexed. “To my knowledge, Mrs. Franke don’t have a sister.”
How he wished she didn’t. But at least it proved that Isa hadn’t been lying to him about her family.
“You’d better send Mrs. Hendrix in,” Isa said softly.
As the servant nodded and headed back down the hall, Isa’s unsettled gaze met his. “We have to see what she wants.”
“True.” Though he could probably guess—the damned bitch wanted to ruin Isa’s life. And his. Again. “We also need to know how she found you.”
Isa grimaced. “That too.”
A few moments later, Betsy showed Jacoba into the parlor and left. The minute Jacoba saw Victor standing there, her eyes went wide. “V-Victor!” she stammered. “I thought you were at the duke’s vil—” She halted, obviously realizing she’d revealed more than she intended. “I mean, I didn’t expect you to be here.”
She was speaking Dutch, so he did, too. “No, I would imagine that you didn’t.” It took all his control not to throttle the woman . . . or haul her off to the nearest magistrate.
But he could do nothing until he had settled how to keep Isa safe from prosecution. Besides, it was Gerhart he most wanted, so he’d have to bide his time if he wanted to get them both.
He moved forward to stand beside his wife. “I’d say that it’s nice to see you again, but that would be a lie.” He glanced beyond her. “And where’s your scoundrel of a husband?”
Jacoba thrust out her chin. “I came here alone. Gerhart isn’t feeling well.”
“Good. Perhaps he’ll die. It’s what he deserves.”
“Victor,” Isa chided in a low voice. “Provoking her won’t accomplish anything.”
“Perhaps not, but it’s certainly satisfying,” he shot back. He turned his hard gaze on the sister-in-law, whom he hoped would rot in hell alongside her husband one day. “Why are you here?”
Now wary, Jacoba glanced from him to Isa. “I wish to speak to my sister. Alone.”
“That will never happen,” Isa said firmly. “After what you did to me and Victor, you’ll have to deal with us together. I’m never giving you the chance to lie to me again.” She took Victor’s hand in hers. “It’s both of us or nothing.”
He squeezed her hand, then left her to go loom over Jacoba. Time to put his investigative skills to good use. “How did you find Isa?”
With a mutinous glance, she set her shoulders. “Does it matter?”
“Most assuredly,” he countered. “If you can find her, so can others—like the authorities in Amsterdam, who are still wondering if she stole the diamonds that you and Gerhart actually took.” He flashed her a thin smile. “They’re looking for the two of you, too.”
Jacoba cast him a resentful glance. “Don’t be thinking you’re going to haul us back to gaol, Victor. The four of us are all in this together.”
“The hell we are!” he growled, taking another step toward her. “Now, tell me how you found her, damn it!”
Fear flickered in her eyes. “How do you think?” she cried, backing away from him. “We followed you.”
He froze. “What do you mean?”
“The story of your new cousin, the duke, appeared in the Paris papers because of that Vidocq fellow’s involvement. When we learned that you were in London, we traveled there. Then we just watched you and waited. We figured it was only a matter of time before you hired the Manton’s Investigations people who found you, to find your wife.” She shrugged. “So after you met with them, we followed you to Edinburgh.”
Fear fisted around his chest. He’d led them straight to Isa. “You couldn’t have followed me to this cottage today. I would have noticed that.”
“No,” Jacoba said. “Isa is the one who led me here.”
Isa gasped. “When?” she asked, her voice edged with alarm.
Why did that matter?
“If you must know,” Jacoba said with a sniff, “it was last night. I waited around, hoping to speak to you alone, but you had that Mr. Gordon with you. Then you rode off on a horse so quickly I couldn’t keep up with you, not knowing the roads. After I waited here a bit I gave up and went back to town, and came back tonight when I knew you’d be here.” She glared at Victor. “I didn’t know you would have him here.”
“Yes,” Victor snapped, “I’m sure you would have preferred that I go on believing that my wife deserted me. After all, you’re the one who set me up to believe it in the first place. The one who forged the note I found in our apartment.”
She paled. “I—I didn’t forge anything,” she protested, though she avoided his gaze.
“Jacoba,” Isa chided. “We know you did it. And if you won’t tell the truth, there is nothing left for us to talk about. So you might as well—”
“All right, all right,” Jacoba said irritably. “I forged the note. But only because I had to. It was the only way.”
“To do what? Separate me from my husband?” Betrayal sounded in Isa’s voice. “So you and Gerhart could live well for the rest of your lives?”
“You owed us that!” Jacoba cried. “We took care of you after Papa died, and all we asked—”
“Was that I become a criminal.” Isa strode up next to Victor and leveled an accusing look at Jacoba. “You wanted me to turn him into a criminal, too. And when I refused to entertain the notion, you forced my hand and turned me into a criminal against my will. Then you separated me from my husband.”
“I did what was best for you,” Jacoba said stoutly.
“How do you figure that?” Victor growled.
Jacoba’s eyes glittered at him. “Back then you didn’t have two guilders to rub together!” she spat. “And your temporary post at the jeweler’s was about to end. How were you going to support her without a post?”
“You didn’t seem to care about that when you gave your approval to our marriage,” he clipped out.
“That’s because . . . well . . .”
“Because even then you were planning on using him to get into the strongbox, weren’t you?” Isa said. “That’s the only reason you encouraged the marriage.” Her voice grew choked. “Victor was sure that you two planned the theft from the beginning, and I didn’t want to believe him. But he’s right, isn’t he?”
Jacoba’s mouth flattened into a grim line. “If we hadn’t acted and you had stayed with him, the two of you would have been poor as church mice all your lives.” She waved her hand to indicate both of them. “And look at you now. Thanks to us, you have a fine business and Victor has discovered he’s a duke’s cousin.”
Victor took a menacing step toward her. “You two had naught to do with that.”
“Those investigators found you in Antwerp, didn’t they? That’s what the papers said. And you would never have gone to Antwerp if we hadn’t—”
“Destroyed my life? Set me up to take the blame for your crime?”
“We didn’t do that!” she said. “Not . . . exactly. We just . . . thought that no one would ever discover that the diamonds were fake.”
“And you made sure that if anyone did, I’d be blamed for it.” He glared at her. “How did you get the keys to the strongbox? Did you steal them out of our home when I was asleep one day and make a copy? Is that what you did?”
When Jacoba colored, he knew he’d hit on the truth.
“You conniving, devious—”
“I don’t care what you think of me!” She glanced to Isa. “I did it for you. I saved you!”
“From a happy marriage?” Isa said incredulously. “Don’t you dare take credit for anything we cobbled together from the ruins of your machinations. You didn’t do a blasted thing for me; you did it for yourself. Because you wanted to dress in fine clothes and drive a costly equipage and live like a queen in Paris!”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Jacoba crossed her arms over her chest. “Everyone wants that.”
“Not me!” Isa cried. “All I wanted was to be a good wife to Victor. To spend my days with the man I loved. Yet you separated us for your own purposes.” She slid her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Well, we’re together again, despite all your attempts. And there isn’t a thing you can do about it.”
Covering Isa’s hand with his own, Victor stared Jacoba down. “What do you want, anyway? Why go to all this trouble to find Isa? And don’t tell me any nonsense about missing her, because we both know that would be a lie.”
A bleak expression crossed her face. “You’re wrong.”
“Is he?” Isa’s cynical laugh seemed to rattle Jacoba. “Don’t even think to come sniffing around me now, begging my forgiveness. Not after what you did.”
“Isa, please,” Jacoba said in a low voice. “Just give me a few minutes to speak to you alone.”
“Not a chance,” Victor cut in. “And if you won’t say why you’ve come, then it’s time for you to leave.”
Jacoba stepped forward to place her hand on Isa’s arm. “You would let him throw out your only sister?”
Isa jerked her arm away. “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have a sister.”
“You don’t mean that,” Jacoba said in a pitiful voice that made Victor grit his teeth.
“Every word,” Isa said. “And Victor’s right. You might as well go.”
Victor let out a breath. Isa had certainly told the truth about one thing. She wasn’t a mouse anymore.
“Please, Isa—” Jacoba began.
“Now!” Isa hissed. “Before I throw you out myself.”
When Isa took a step toward her as if to make good her threat, Jacoba cried, “Gerhart is dying!”
Isa tensed.
God help him. Would his softhearted wife fall for that ploy?
“The doctor’s bills are enormous,” Jacoba went on hastily when she saw she had her sister’s attention, “and the money is running out. You have to help us. You have to help him.”
“Because the two of you took such fine care of me?” Isa said in an acid tone.
When Jacoba looked taken aback, Victor wanted to crow. His softhearted wife was no longer a fool when it came to her manipulative sister, thank God.
“You have so much now, what with that fine shop of yours,” Jacoba complained. “And Victor is cousin to a duke! I don’t know why you can’t just—”
“Give you some of it?” Isa said in clear outrage. “After everything you did to us?” She narrowed her gaze on her sister. “My partner and I built that shop with the sweat of our brows. I worked for years to get to the point where I don’t have to worry about my next meal and the rent for this cottage. If you think I’ll give you and Gerhart a single penny, just so he can gamble it away, you’re out of your mind.”
Jacoba’s face flushed in shock. Then her gaze turned calculating. “I wonder what Mr. Gordon would say if he knew that you created a fake parure used in a crime. Or what Victor’s cousin the duke would say if he knew Victor’s wife had a criminal past.”
With a low growl, Victor lunged for Jacoba, but Isa grabbed his arm. “Let me handle this.”
She left his side to bear down on her sister. “You have the audacity to threaten us?”
Jacoba blinked, then backed away as it finally dawned on her how angry her sister was.
Relentlessly Isa stalked her. “If you so much as hint to anyone what happened in Amsterdam, I’ll report you to the Dutch authorities myself, even at the cost of my own freedom. I’ll see you both hang before I allow you to blackmail me!”
Jacoba came up against the wall, and anger flared in her face. “And what will happen to your child then?” she said hotly. “Tell me that, dear sister!”
Isa froze, and Victor’s heart plummeted into his stomach. Surely he hadn’t heard Jacoba correctly. “Child? What child?” When Isa turned toward him, her face awash in guilt, he growled, “What the devil is she talking about, Isa?”
“Don’t you know?” Jacoba said, glaring at her sister. “When Isa left us in Paris, she was carrying your child in her belly. Lord only knows what she’s done with it.”
Victor gasped.
With a growl, Isa whirled on her sister and stalked over to swing the door open. “Get out, you scheming bitch!” she hissed. “Get out of my house before I strangle you with my bare hands!”
Clearly taken aback by Isa’s vehemence, Jacoba said plaintively, “There’s no reason to get upset. Can’t we all discuss this like civilized people?”
“Out!” Grabbing her sister’s arm, Isa dragged her toward the door. “Get. Out. Now!”
Victor could only gape at them, his mind racing. He had a child? Where? What had Isa done with it? And why hadn’t she told him?
Jacoba was protesting so loudly that Betsy came running, and Isa cried, “Get her out of here before I kill her!”
When Betsy tried to take Jacoba by the arm, Jacoba snatched it free and flashed Isa a hurt look. “We’ll speak again when you’re calmer. I know you don’t mean what you’re saying. You wouldn’t abandon your family.”
“Watch me.” Isa took a step toward her.
Jacoba’s eyes went wide. Then she turned and ran for the door.
“And don’t you dare come back here, you . . . you leech!” Isa shouted, running into the hall after her.
Victor rushed out just in time to see Jacoba leave through the front door, slamming it behind her. Before he could even question Isa, she turned to Betsy and said, “Have Rob saddle my horse.”
When Betsy headed for the door, Victor called out, “Wait just a moment, Betsy!” He turned to Isa. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“To follow her to wherever Gerhart is,” Isa said resolutely.
“Not until you tell me about my child, you’re not,” he ground out.
Panic showed in her face. “We need to know where those two are hiding. Surely you must see that!”
“I do. But someone else can follow her. Indeed, that’s probably best, since she wants to get you alone and may lie in wait for you if you run after her.”
He walked up to Betsy. “Tell your stableboy to go after the woman who just left here and find out where she’s lodging. And tell him to make sure she doesn’t see him doing so.”
Betsy blinked, then glanced beyond him to Isa. “Madam?”
Isa came up to stand beside him. “Do as he says.”
The servant frowned. “But madam, why are you listening to this . . . this . . .”
“He’s my husband, Betsy,” Isa said tersely.
Poor Betsy looked as if someone had just slapped her. “Your . . . your husband?”
“Yes,” Isa said. “And the woman who just left here is indeed my sister. I will tell you everything later, but for now, all you need to know is that my sister separated me from my husband years ago. And probably means to do it again, if she can.”
Betsy’s shocked expression gave way to one of anger. “Does she, now?” she snapped. “Well, then, we’ll just see about that! I’ll follow her myself if I have to.”
“No, let Rob do it,” Victor put in. “He’s less likely to be noticed.”
Betsy took his measure in one swift glance. “Very well, sir.” She marched off like Joan of Arc hunting down her first Englishman.
The door shut behind her, and the hall fell eerily silent. Isa faced him then, her cheeks as pale as death, and he all but forgot about Jacoba. He had a child. A child.
He stared her down. “I take it that your sister told the truth about my . . . my . . . Devil take it, I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl!”
“You have a daughter.” She drew a ragged breath. “She’s nine years old, and her name is Amalie.”
His gut twisted into a knot. “Your dainty-footed ‘servant’ Amalie?”
Eyes darkening, she nodded.
Fury roiled up in him like smoke billowing out of an inferno. “When the hell did you intend to tell me?”
She flinched. “I was about to when Jacoba showed up. You may recall that I said I had something important to relate, before we could go any further in our plans.”
“That’s the understatement of the decade,” he snapped.
He raked his fingers through his hair. He had a child. A daughter, for God’s sake. And Isa had kept it secret from him all these years.
Something suddenly occurred to him. “That’s why you wouldn’t let me know where you live. Because you were afraid I would find out about her.”
“Yes,” she said stiffly. “You had already questioned my fellow shopkeepers about me. Fortunately, I always kept my daughter’s existence fairly private, so they didn’t know about her. But I knew if you questioned my neighbors here, you would learn the truth.”
Fighting for calm, he scanned the hall and glanced up the stairs. “So where is she?”
“She’s away at school right now. There’s no school for girls in Edinburgh, so I had to enroll her in one just across the border in England. That’s where I was for the past two days—taking her to school. The term began yesterday.”
So his daughter had actually been in town the day he’d arrived. And Isa had hidden her from him!
“I want to see her,” he bit out.
“You can’t,” Isa said.
That sent him over the edge. “The hell I can’t! She’s my daughter!”
“Do you want to keep her safe?” she cried. “Because if you do, you have to leave her alone as long as Jacoba and Gerhart are loose in Edinburgh.”
That gave him pause. “Damn it, Isa—”
“I know. It’s not what you want. It’s not what I want, either.” She took several steadying breaths. “But until we can deal with them, it’s safer for her if they don’t know where she is.”
A sudden terror for the girl he’d never even met engulfed him. “How can you be sure they don’t already know?”
“Jacoba called her ‘your child.’ Wouldn’t she have said ‘your daughter’ if she’d known?”
He gritted his teeth even as he acknowledged her logic. “I suppose.”
“Besides, she said she followed me out here last night. That was after Amalie had gone off to school, so she wouldn’t have seen her. No one in town knew about Amalie. And Mr. Gordon certainly wouldn’t have mentioned her to a stranger—not without telling me.”
Mr. Gordon was quite a determined advocate for Isa and obviously more than capable of protecting her privacy.
Isa softened her tone. “You know that if we go running to England just so you can see her, they’ll follow us. And I don’t trust them within a mile of her. I don’t think they’d hurt her, but . . . but I don’t want her to know them. Do you?”
“Not if I can help it,” he growled. “But I can keep them off our trail.”
“As you did in coming to Edinburgh?”
He muttered a curse. She would bring that up.
“It’s safer this way,” she said. “You know it is. Besides, it’s better for her to stay where she is until we decide what to do about our marriage, and how to handle Gerhart and Jacoba. After everything is settled, we can tell her our plans.”
He considered that a moment. “So where is this school of hers?”
“I’m not telling you,” she said softly. “Not until I’m sure you won’t go running off there and lead them to her.”
That roused his temper all over again. “Damn it, Isa, you can trust me not to do anything that might hurt her.”
Just then Betsy came in, frowning as she overheard his cursing. “Rob says he’ll stick to the woman like a barnacle, he will.”
“Good,” Victor clipped out, his eyes still on Isa’s ashen face. “Thank you, Betsy.”
When the servant nodded and then looked expectantly at her mistress, Isa said, “Forgive me, Betsy, but my husband just found out that he is a father, so he and I have a few matters to discuss.”
To say the least.
“Oh, Lord, that’s right!” Betsy cried. “Poor little Amalie! She thinks her da is dead. She’ll be so happy to hear she’s got a father.”
Isa swallowed. “I certainly hope so.”
So did he.
“You’re a lucky man, sir,” Betsy said earnestly. “That girl is a dear, has been since she was a wee thing. Rather rambunctious, if I do say so myself, but clever as can be. She’ll make you right proud of her.”
Regret roiled in his belly. Even the servant knew more about his daughter than he did. He was never going to get those years back, never going to see her as a baby. He would be a stranger to her.
It made him want to throttle Jacoba and Gerhart. How dare they steal his chance to see his daughter grow up? How dare they?
With a worried glance at him, Isa said, “We’ll be in the parlor if you need us, Betsy. But for now we really need to be alone.”
“Of course, madam, of course. I’ll just go make sure dinner stays warm for you.”
His mind racing, Victor followed Isa as she headed back into the parlor.
She closed the door, then faced him warily. “I know you must have questions—”
“Oh yes, wife of mine, a great many.” He scowled. “Like why the hell didn’t you tell me about my daughter when I first got here?”
She tipped up her chin. “At that point, I thought you were a thief, remember? I wasn’t about to let you anywhere near her. In my mind, you were as bad as Jacoba and Gerhart.”
And he would make them pay for that. Thanks to them, his daughter had been fatherless for nine bloody years! They’d stolen those from Amalie, too.
Amalie. He had a daughter named Amalie. How would he get used to that?
“Everything I’ve done has been to protect her, to save her,” Isa whispered. “I came here so she would be as far away from my family as I could manage. I kept the truth from you so you wouldn’t be able to corrupt my child—”
“Our child!” he cried.
“Whom I raised alone!” With a shuddering breath, she turned to pace the room. “Try to put yourself in my place, if you can. I was carrying your child, and I thought you had abandoned me for the illicit riches my family had paid you off with. When Mr. Gordon took pity on me and hired me, Amalie was the only thing that kept me going through the pain of . . . of your abandonment.”
“The abandonment that I did not instigate,” he said in a hollow voice.
“I know.” She faced him again. “But I didn’t know that when you came here. All I knew was that you had left us to fend for ourselves, and now you thought to step back into our lives as if nothing had happened. Except that I also knew that English law always awards custody of a child to the father. So does Dutch law.”
Her breath came in hard gasps. “I couldn’t risk the possibility that you would try to take her from me. Not when I thought you were a thief. Surely you can understand that.”
He supposed he should be glad that she was such a fierce protector of their daughter, but resentment of all that he’d lost still beat a bitter tattoo in his veins.
So did the words of his inquisitors all those years ago. Your wife is no fool. Why would she trust a bumbling oaf like you to take care of her?
He thrust the memory back with a curse. “What about after you knew I wasn’t a thief? Last night, you didn’t say a word about her. And today, when Lochlaw mentioned her—”
“I had to be certain that you weren’t here for vengeance, don’t you see? Because taking my daughter—our daughter—would be the best revenge you could ever visit upon me.”
Pain made it hard for him to breathe. “You thought me capable of that?” he choked out through a throat gone raw. He strode up to her. “You truly believed I could rip our child from the only home she’s known, out of some desire to strike at you?”
“I didn’t want to think it. But I hardly knew you anymore. When you first came here, you were so angry. And you had good reason. You still do. I took your child from you. My family took your reputation from you, and who knows what else. Any man would want revenge after that.”
He hated that he perfectly understood her reasoning. “Not against you,” he protested. “Am I angry that I lost ten years with you, and nearly that many with our daughter? Yes. Am I furious that it was because of your family’s greed? Certainly. But not at you.”
“But I’m the one who trusted them. I’m the one who chose to believe my family when I should have believed in my husband. I know you blame me for that, as well you should. My only defense is that I barely knew you then.”
“And I barely knew you. Otherwise, I would have realized at once that you could never have deserted me. So we were both at fault in how we handled their lies. But now that ten years have passed—”
“I know you even less now!” she cried. “Can you blame me for being cautious when you’re practically a stranger to me?”
“Is that the real reason you won’t bring me to my daughter?” he ground out. “Because you don’t trust me to be a good father to her?”
“Of course not. I just want to protect her from Jacoba and Gerhart.” Her gaze met his, softly pleading. “But you must give me time to ease her into it. Please, Victor.”
He stared at her, his heart thundering in his chest. “I can wait until we root out Gerhart. But know this, Isa: I want my family back. You and her. You told Jacoba that you and I are together now. I hope you meant it.”
“I do.” Her gaze softened. “I want you back, too. You cannot know how much.”
At the look of hope on her face, his throat tightened. “You called me a stranger. But I’m the same man I was then—the husband who could never hurt you, the lover who never forgot you. Not for one second. You can trust me, lieveke.”
When her breath quickened and her eyes filled with longing, he murmured huskily, “So you know me better than you think.”
Then he covered her mouth with his.