Chapter Nineteen
The room went quiet, Denis facing me in the middle of it. I heard his men rumbling to each other as they shut down the house for the night, and the wind, cold and straight, rattling the windows and moaning under the eaves. Denis and I were nearly of a height, I half an inch taller. His dark blue eyes, staring straight into mine, held vast and cold fury.
"I told you why I needed to find Cooper," he said in a voice that could have chilled hell itself. "And what I would do if you did not assist me."
"And I grow weary of your threats. I will make one of my own. If you lay a finger on any of my friends or their families, I will kill you. I might have to wait a long time before I can find a way, but I will do it. I will come after you and never stop."
His eyes did not move, did not even flicker. "You have tried my patience many a time, Captain, and I have ever looked the other way. Do not imagine I have done so because I am kind. I've done it because I saw that your intelligence and your bloody stubbornness could be useful to me. I have aided you so that I would make sure you aided me in return. I have spent considerable time and resources on you. You owe me this favor, and you will do it."
"Not when you lie to me." I clenched my hand around my walking stick, feeling the sword loosen inside it. "If you want to speak of a man telling me what I wish to hear… Your tale of Cooper rescuing you from the streets was calculated to invoke my sympathy. It was very touching."
"I told you no lies. Cooper did rescue me, I am grateful to him, and we did form a bond of friendship. Enough that I am willing to risk being alone in a room with you in order to persuade you to help me find him."
"If Cooper believed that someone was trying to kill him, he would seek you, knowing that you could protect him better than anyone else," I said. "Therefore, I must ask myself why would he run in the opposite direction, unless you were the person who wanted to kill him."
"I do not know! "
Denis's voice rose into a roar, his facade cracked at last.
The door swung open, and the man who'd been standing guard looked in worriedly. "Do you need me, sir?"
Denis didn't bother to look at him. "No."
The man nodded but shot me a warning look as he withdrew.
After the door closed, I watched as, moment by moment, Denis reigned in his rage.
"I have not lied about Cooper," he said, when he'd regained control. "I admit that, in the past, I have not always told you the whole of a matter, but in this instance, I have given you everything. Cooper has protected me since I was a lad. If he met someone he thought would be a danger to me, he would lead the man on a merry chase through the marshes and pay the windmill keeper to stay quiet."
"Even while he's badly injured? Knowing that any moment could bring fever and death?"
Denis nodded. "He has defended me in similar fashion before, leading away danger and not returning until said danger was dispatched. I wish to find him before he dies because of it."
"You mean that he is being self-sacrificing rather than acting from fear?" I was not certain I believed that either.
"Cooper does not know the meaning of fear. He fears nothing, and that sometimes leads him into trouble." Denis stopped, the near-smile he sometimes employed twitching his lips. "He is much like you in that regard."
For some reason, I could not feel amused. And I had seen Cooper fearful before-when he anticipated the wrath of Denis.
"I will take you to the windmill," I said. "But you will not bludgeon the keeper into telling you what you want to know."
"Sometimes pain, or fear of it, loosens the tongue," Denis said.
"In such case, your victim will tell you anything to make you stop."
He gave me a nod. "I agree that there are better ways to bargain than with torture."
The argument hovered there, waiting for one of us to end it. "First light," I said. "If that's when we leave, I'll to bed."
"You do that, Captain," Denis said, forever needing to have the last word. As usual, he did not say good night.
At first light the next morning, I rode out with Denis and one of his tame pugilists-three horsemen in the dawn.
The day was mostly clear, with a few thin, high clouds overhead. Last night's wind had died off, making for a pleasant Monday morning's ride.
Grenville had been up when we left, preparing for his journey back to London. He'd advised me to take care when we said good-bye. I agreed with him.
None of us spoke as we made our way north, taking the road that skirted Blakeney, on through Parson's Point and to Stifkey and Wells. We turned north after that, following the path that went nowhere but the windmill.
The windmill stuck up out of the salt grasses like a lone tree in the middle of a plain. Our horses headed for it steadily, Denis neither pushing too fast nor lingering. I'd never seen Denis use any transport but his lavish carriage, but he was proving to be a competent horseman. He'd not grown up in the saddle, as I had, but somewhere he'd learned good horsemanship.
The tide had turned in the night, and now the sea crept for the marshes slowly but steadily. We needed to finish our business quickly, or the water would cut us off.
We left our horses in the yard with the cow and mounted the few steps to the windmill's door. Denis tilted back his head to look up at the windmill, studying it, assessing it.
I wondered if his power came from his ability to learn-to look over something and decide right away whether he could use it, and then discover everything he could about it. People or windmills or horsemanship would be all the same to him.
The pugilist thumped on the door but Waller did not answer. When five minutes had passed, Denis signaled his man to break open the door.
The pugilist-Morgan by name-did nothing so dramatic as crash it down. He brought out a small iron bar and hammer, wedged the bar against the door handle, and brought the hammer down on the bar. The door handle broke away, and Morgan widened the hole it left until he could get his hand inside and unbolt the door. A housebreaking technique, one that did not make much noise.
We went inside through the small foyer and to Waller's living quarters. Food sat on the table, half eaten, the chair pushed back in haste. Waller had seen us coming.
Denis signaled to Morgan, who silently left the room and ascended the ladder to check above. I showed Denis the trapdoor which led to the small room beneath where I'd found the blood, and he insisted that we both descend to it.
I flashed my lantern around the low-ceilinged room, and Denis looked into every damp corner. He even thumped the floor in places, looking for more trapdoors. But the stone floor was solid. Anything dug below this would hit water.
We went back up the ladder and all the way to the top of the windmill in Morgan's wake. We passed the gear room, where the great wheel turned the gears that ran the pumps.
The keeper's bedchamber had three large windows, through which I scanned the surrounding land. The villages were small in the distance, nothing else out here but bending marsh grass and the wide gray sea, which was drawing ever closer.
Nowhere did I see a man, running or otherwise-not Waller, not Cooper.
"Check the house," Denis said to Morgan, pointing out the window at the ruined miller's cottage.
"The tide's almost here," I said. "We'll be cut off if we linger."
"Then we'll be cut off." Denis's voice was hard. "The keeper has plenty of provisions, and he obviously keeps his cow fed. We wait."
We went back to the kitchen while Denis's pugilist left the windmill and made his way to the miller's house. I found a pot of coffee, still warm, and poured liquid into a cracked mug. I took a sip and made a face. Still, I continued to drink, as it was better than no coffee at all.