My Surrender by Connie Brockway Page A

doesn’t even know you are his contact.”
    Toussaint smiled apologetically. “No. Of course not. I…It is just that…I helped mold him, you know.” This last was said with touching pride.
    Charlotte regarded him with sharpening interest. “What was he like?” She could not resist asking. “As a boy?”
    “Dand?” Toussaint mused a moment, lost in some reverie he found pleasant, for a gentle smile curved his lips. “Limb of Satan, the monks called him. Always doing what he oughtn’t, sneaking out of the dormitory to go adventuring, inciting the other lads to get up to some misadventure or other and then as glib as the devil in wiggling his way out of the proceedings when they were caught. The old herbalist Brother Fidelis used to say that God made the switch for boys like Dand Ross.”
    Aye. She could well believe that. “And the other lads?” she prompted.
    Toussaint smiled, and for the first time, Charlotte saw a hint of warmth in his chill gaze. “Ram was just as refined and tempered as a lad as he is a man. And Kit,” he frowned, “as strong in his convictions as he was in body.”
    “There was a fourth,” Charlotte said, “the one who was killed in France.”
    “Douglas Stewart.” Toussaint nodded, his face filled with inexpressible sorrow.
    “Kit said once that Douglas was their core. The glue that bound them together. He must have been quite extraordinary.”
    Toussaint frowned, as though searching his mind for an image to fit the word. “Extraordinary? I don’t know. He was a bright enough boy. As athletic as some, not as athletic as others. High-minded. Earnest. But earnestness hardly qualified one to be a fit leader.”
    Charlotte had never heard either Ram or Kit express any sentiment about Douglas Stewart that wasn’t steeped in reverence. She was fascinated. “I don’t understand.”
    “Well, Ram had address and poise. Kit had strength and determination.”
    “And Dand?”
    “Dand was the brightest. And he had charm. But a darker side, too, that even the best of them must find enticing. Douglas had…nothing.” Whatever momentary mood had held Toussaint abruptly disappeared. “Enough. It is over and done and hardly matters anymore. What does matter is that you say Dand is willing to assist you in your plan? In what manner?”
    At this, heat climbed into Charlotte’s cheeks and she was glad of the relative darkness in the steamy little room. “Brother Toussaint,” she said, “your conscience is troubled enough as it is. Let us not test it any further, shall we? Be content that Dand’s assistance will bring me no harm and will go far to establishing my credibility as the sort of woman the comte will feel he can safely compromise.”
    Toussaint’s brows pulled together in a scowl. “My child—”
    “Credibility, Brother Toussaint, not authenticity.”

6
    Northern Scotland
Christmas 1788
    “I DIDN’T SAVE yer from getting yer throat slit only to see ye shot by the militia. It don’t matter what Geoff says, I seen the redcoats meself marching up the great north road.” The bull-shouldered, grizzle-haired man stretched on his tiptoes and peered over the thick hedge lining this portion of the road. Seeing nothing, he dropped flat to his feet and turned around, regarding the boy with an ambivalent expression.
    “Time to cut bait and run, and I ain’t runnin’ too fast or too far with a lad taggin’ along. It’s been a bonny treat bein’ yer guide and companion, young sir, but time to part ways.” He squinted down nearsightedly, his broken jaw pulling his lips into a perpetual grimace. But after nearly a month in Trevor’s company, the boy recognized the expression as being as close to affection as a thief, smuggler, and very possibly murderer, was likely to achieve.
    “Yer a fair dab hand with a pick and lock and might keep that in mind fer the future. But not yet. Lads as young and tender as you—” He broke off, shaking his head. “Yer fate wouldn’t be much to