Читать книгу The Complete Regency Bestsellers And One Winters Collection - Rebecca Winters - Страница 75
ОглавлениеCassandra came across the rooftops in darkness and down into the interior of the brothel on Brown Street without being seen by anybody. An easy climb given the footholds and the balconies, but on gaining the room the note had instructed her to come to she could tell that something was wrong. Very wrong.
The chamber door was wide open and the man Cassandra had been looking for was already dead on the floor by the window. Crossing to the glass, she tested the locks, but rust inside the catches told her nobody had come this way. With care, she dropped to her knees and checked beneath the bed, knife in hand and ready to strike. Only the empty space of blackness.
She was glad for the silence in the room for it gave her a moment to think. He had not taken off any of his clothes. There had been no struggle at all and he was unmarked save for the wound at his neck. Money still lay in his pockets when she checked and an expensive leather briefcase languished in full view beside the doorway.
His right arm was bandaged, the thickness of the casing beneath his jacket belying the injury. His other arm was positioned above his head, the gold ring on his finger seen in the light.
Not a robbery then. Not a targeted wealthy man who had come to the wrong place at the wrong time and run into one of the shady characters off Whitechapel Road. Someone he knew had done this, a strike from behind without a notion that it was about to happen.
Walking to the bed, she took the bag and flicked open the buckles. Surprise made her eyes widen. Nothing lay inside, every pocket emptied and all the compartments clean. The perpetrator had been after this then, the contents of the satchel, and for such information had been willing to kill. Loud shouting made her stiffen, the sound of boots coming up the steep stairwell and voices in the night.
With only a whisper of noise she crossed from the room to the doorway and let herself out. She couldn’t be found like this—in the garb of a street boy with a weapon in her belt—and she did not have the time in hand to make it up the next flight of stairs to safety without being noticed. With care she picked the lock of the room opposite and eased herself through the door. No one was in the bed and for that she was more than thankful. Dulling the noise of the closing door with the cloth in her jacket, she jimmied her foot up against the wood and flipped the latch.
* * *
Nat did not move a muscle from the alcove he stood in by the window, his breath shallow. Outside the noises were getting louder and inside the intruder stayed immobile. Was the newcomer a child? A youth of the house, perhaps, trying to escape the nefarious pursuits as best he could? The glint of a knife told him otherwise and he was across the room before the other knew it, his hand hitting out at the arm that was raised and knocking the weapon away.
He knew it was Cassandra Northrup even before she turned, the scent and the feel of her, the knowledge of each other burning bright. Bringing her against him, he felt the lines of her body even as she fought him, the fuller contours unfamiliar.
‘Stop, Sandrine.’ Whispered. Danger was everywhere and the discovery of a lady within the confines of such iniquity would be scandalous. Her breath was ragged, the warmth of it against his hand where he held it flat across her mouth.
She stilled, as much to listen to the noises outside the door as to obey him, her head tipped to the wood, jumping as a heavy knock sounded against it.
‘Don’t open it. A man is dead and I cannot be found like this.’ Whispered and frightened behind his fingers, the quicksilver change into a woman startling.
‘Hell.’ He let her go. She filled out the boy’s clothes much more generously these days, though the thinness was still there, too.
‘Take everything off and get under the covers.’ Already he was peeling away his own clothes, throwing each piece against a chair. Randomly. Trying to give the impression of haste and passion mixed in a room that was conducive to neither.
‘Sex,’ he said as he saw she was not moving. ‘This place expects it.’
He pulled one dusty quilt off the bed and hung it over the other chair, hopeful in hiding the fact that female attire was missing. On a quick glance an observant onlooker would imagine them beneath.
‘Open up.’ A voice of authority. Probably the law.
It was enough to make her decide as her fingers flew to the buttons of her jacket and shirt, the lawn chemise beneath left on as she added her boots to the pile of clothes.
He brought those beneath the sheets with them, her body underneath his, concealed. He heard her gasp as the door opened, the correct key finally fitting the lock and giving way.
‘What the hell...?’ He barely needed to feign the anger as he looked around, two men in the uniform of the constabulary and the woman he had seen downstairs accompanying them. ‘Get out, immediately.’ He made himself sound breathless, the full blush of ardour in the words, a client in the middle of a ‘paid for’ assignation and surprised by the interruption. He also used his most aristocratic tones, the persona of a simple fellow disappearing into expediency. And carefully he shielded her from view.
He knew he had them as they faltered, a rush of apology. ‘I am sorry, sir, but there has been a murder just reported in the house. If you could get dressed and come downstairs, we need to ask you some questions.’
Releasing a long rush of air, Nat nodded. ‘Give me a few minutes and I shall be down.’ No entreaty in it. Just authority.
The door closed behind them.
Silence.
Warmth.
Her skin against his own.
And then a curse. In French.
He pulled away and stood, making no attempt at hiding his body. ‘Did you kill him?’
‘No.’
‘But you know who did?’
She shook her head.
‘God.’
‘Why did you help me?’
‘Misguided instinct, though I am certain I shall now pay for such kindness. Is there a way out of here that does not involve going downstairs?’ He reached for his clothes and began to dress.
‘Yes.’
‘Then I would advise you to take it.’
Already she was up, her shirt and jacket quickly donned, the boots following.
‘I will expect you tomorrow.’
‘Pardon?’
‘At eleven p.m. Through the window of my town house to explain all this to me. Properly.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then I will come to see you instead.’
‘I will be there.’
‘I thought so.’
‘Will you be able to manage...everything?’
‘Easily.’
She smiled. ‘I always liked your certainty, Monsieur Nathanael Colbert.’
The music inherent in the way she said his name made him stiffen, and then she was gone.
* * *
His indiscretion was all over the town by midday, a lord of the first water visiting a brothel in the back streets of one of the worst areas of London and being caught out in doing so.
‘You should have sent for me to come with you, Nat,’ Stephen said as they sat in his library drinking brandy. ‘Why the hell did you think to go there in the first place?’
‘A man whom the prostitutes thought was acting strangely had been seen in the vicinity for each of the last two nights. They said he had slept at the brothel and was tall and well to do.’
‘Was the dead man our murderer at the river, then?’
‘No. He was short and stocky with ginger hair.’
‘Memorable.’
‘Exactly.’
Hawk suddenly smiled and leaned forward. ‘There is something else I am missing here, Nat. It’s the youngest Northrup daughter, isn’t it? She was there at Whitechapel with you?’
Nathaniel ignored the query.
‘The man killed at Brown Street last night was in the room opposite to mine and I heard nothing.’
‘You paid for a room?’
‘With a wide view of the street below. If the same man the girls spoke of was there, I would have seen him, Hawk, but I didn’t.’
‘Do you think the murder was related to our case?’
‘Perhaps. The contents of the dead man’s satchel was missing, though I found this in the corridor on my way down the stairs.’ He dug into his pocket and brought out a single page of writing. ‘Do you recognise the hand?’
Stephen looked carefully and then shook his head. ‘Do you? It’s a list for things from a chemist by the looks of it.’
‘If I did, this case would already be half-solved. Will you do something for me, Hawk? Can you ask around to see if anyone saw anything? I do not want to seem interested because...’
‘Because implication is only one step away from imprisonment and Cassandra Northrup’s presence at Whitechapel will make everything that much harder again. Society does not seem exactly enamoured by her pursuit of the nefarious and a woman like that will only bring the old Earl’s wrath down upon your head with even more than the usual vigour.’
‘Remember that puppy we had at school, Hawk, the one we hid for a term in the woodcutter’s shed, the one you found off the roadside on the way to Eton?’
‘Springer. My God, he was the best dog I ever owned.’
‘Sixteen weeks of sneaking out twice a day with the food we had saved from the dining hall and then another jaunt for exercise. One hundred and twelve days before you could bundle him up and take him back to Atherton.’
‘An unfortunate start to life, but he had the heart of a warrior till the day he died. But what is your point, Nat?’
‘Cassandra Northrup is a fighter just like that dog and for some damned reason I feel compelled to help her.’
‘You said she had betrayed you in France.’
‘So did Springer. He bit you, remember, that time at the cliff....’
‘Whilst trying to save me from falling.’
Nat drew his hand through his hair and wiped back the length of his fringe. ‘What if Cassandra Northrup once did the same for me, Hawk? What if what she said she did and what she really did were two different things?’
‘You are saying she might have betrayed you to save you?’
‘I am.’
* * *
Cassandra had dressed carefully in a dark jacket and loose trousers, the cap she wore covering her face and her hair knotted in a bun at the back of her nape.
A caricature of Nathaniel Lindsay had appeared in the evening edition of a popular London broadsheet, one hand clinging on to the family crest and the other around the shapely ankle of a woman of the night. A poxed and toothless woman, her cheeks sunken with the mercury cure and rats scurrying from beneath the hem of her ragged skirt.
Lord Lindsay could not have been pleased; she knew this without listening to any gossip. He had also remained quiet about her involvement in this whole chaotic and sordid affair which, given the history between them, was a lot more than she might have expected.
Why he had been there in the first place she had no notion of, but he had been alone in the room waiting and completely dressed and when he had first pressed her against the door she had felt the outline of both knife and pistol.
Another thought also came. She had imagined she had been followed when she came to the boarding house in the backstreets of Whitechapel. Could it have been Lindsay watching?
The web of lies that bound them to each another was closing in, sticky with deceit, and yet here she was again, moving through his garden for a further encounter in his library. If she had any sense at all, she should be turning for home and ignoring his threats or packing her things and moving north for a while until the shock of seeing him again eased down into reason.
But she could not. Every fibre of her being could not.
He was exactly where he had been last time as she climbed through the window, his long legs out in front of the wing chair by the fire.
The only difference this time was that he had catered for her arrival, two glasses filled beside him.
‘I have had a trying day,’ he said as he handed one to her, ‘and as you are the reason for it I hope you will join me in a drink.’
‘A celebration of your notoriety?’ Even as she gave the reply she wished she had not, but he only smiled.
‘Yesterday the débutantes and their mothers were pursuing me with all the wiles in the world. Today they are...fleeing.’
‘Sexual deviance may appear rather daunting to any woman, no matter the size of the purse an ancient family brings.’
At that he did laugh.
‘How did you know the man who was murdered?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Then why were you there?’
‘I had word of young girls being brought in from the country.’
‘And you were attempting to locate them?’ Lifting his glass, he held it up and waited for her to take a sip. Cassandra hated strong drink, but, not wishing to annoy him further, she took a mouthful and swallowed. The burning bitterness reminded her of Nay and of all that she longed to forget.
‘The information I received gave a location, a time and a date, but when I got there the man was already dead.’
‘With a knife in the back of his neck?’
‘Yes.’ She did not blink.
‘What else did you see?’
‘A briefcase that was empty of papers.’
‘Papers like this one I found in the corridor outside the murdered man’s room.’
He brought out a sheet of tightly written words. He knew she recognised it by her sudden stillness. ‘Your father pens articles for a science journal. The editor is a friend of mine and I spent a few hours this afternoon with him. When, by chance, he showed me Lord Cowper’s latest offering the two hands appeared identical.’
‘That is what the person who put this there wanted you to think, wanted the constabulary to think. My father is the one person who can stop them.’
‘How?’
‘He funds the Daughters of the Poor, and we are making good progress in catching those who trade the lives of young girls for work in the factories and the brothels.’
‘We, meaning you. You in your boy’s clothes in the dead of night risking life, limb and reputation.’
‘Gone.’
‘Pardon?’
‘My reputation is gone. You of all people should know that.’
‘The redemption of a sinner then, brazen and unmindful. I expected more of you.’
‘Oh, I have ceased trying to live up to any expectations save that of my own, my lord. Now prudence rules over heroics, which in itself is a timely lesson for all who might rally against injustice.’
‘Society holds you up as a saint?’
‘Hardly that.’
‘But not as a whore?’
The quick punch of hurt and then nothing. By the time she had come out from that hovel of a building in Perpignan Nathanael Colbert had long been gone and she had wiped all trace of sacrifice from her conscience since.
Just a small space of hours, blurred by pain.
She was glad he had not insisted on the removal of her chemise last night for even in that darkened room he would have seen and known. Her shame. She glanced away, knowing the black anger of it would be showing in her eyes and she did not wish for him to see.
The mark on his jaw shone opaque against the firelight, lost slightly in the growth of stubble. If he grew a beard, it would be gone entirely. She was glad he had not. Had he wanted to he could have erased all memory of her for ever. As it was he must look every day into his reflection and be reminded.
The futility of everything blended with the brandy, a melancholy covering all she had hoped for once. He was as beautiful as he had been then, in every way, strong and self-assured, although the mantle of aristocracy gave him an added allure.
Shallow, she knew, but it was a fact. With a man like this she could be safe.
Sense reined in fantasy. He was all but promised to the beautiful and clever Lady Acacia Bellowes-Browne, a woman who would suit him exactly and in every way. She wondered if he ever thought of the hurried marriage in the village by the river where Mademoiselle Sandrine Mercier had married Monsieur Nathanael Colbert, two names plucked from a half-truth and settled in the register like impostors.
At this very moment all he looked was angry.
‘Every time you come into my life, Sandrine, it seems chaos follows.’
‘I am no longer Sandrine.’
‘Are you not?’ He came closer, the largeness of him disconcerting. England seemed full of small men with the smell of a woman about them, the indolence of life written upon their skin in softness, the bloom of ease apparent. Nathaniel Lindsay had none of these qualities. He could have been transported here from an earlier time, the menace and threat of him magnified in a room filled with books and quiet pursuits. She would be most unwise to ever think that a lord like this could offer safety after all that she had done to him.
‘What other woman of the ton would dress as a lad and walk the back streets of hopelessness in the midnight hours? Your father must be demented to allow it.’
At that she laughed. ‘The days of a man’s ordinance over me are long gone, Lord Lindsay.’
‘Even a husband’s?’
She had wondered when he would mention it, had been expecting him to from the very outset, but the word still made her blanch, the beat of her heart hurrying with the reference.
‘If our marriage was deemed to be a binding agreement, then our years apart must allow grounds for question. But given the circumstances, I should imagine it was not.’
He smiled, but the steel in his eyes hardened.
‘Why were you there, at the brothel?’ She needed to know if he was friend or foe.
‘Two women were killed a month ago beside the Thames in Whitechapel. I was following up a lead to find the man who did it.’
Every word he said made their relationship more dangerous. ‘Do you have names?’
‘No.’
‘Other clues, then?’
‘I am looking for a tall and well-heeled man. His hair is dark.’
‘Such a one has been seen by the children we have rescued on a number of occasions.’ She wondered why she told him.
‘Which is why you were at the de Clare ball, no doubt. Scouting?’
‘You read my intentions with too much ease for comfort of mind, Lord Lindsay.’
‘Do I, Miss Northrup?’ Something had changed between them in just this single second. She felt the tension in the room shift to something less certain.
‘What happened after I last saw you with Guy Lebansart?’
‘I grew up. I paid the debts I owed and I grew up.’
‘You sacrificed others to save me? Why?’ Anger creased his brow.
She felt the breath in her hollow, felt the beat of her heart flatten into some new and risky unease, and did not speak.
‘I never asked that of you.’ Said in the manner of a man who was not comfortable with indebtedness. ‘Nor did I want it from you.’
She had had enough. ‘You think that you might control everything, my lord? You think that people should only march to your drum, the drum of the morally justified? Are you now one of those men who cannot see another side of an argument, the side where good and bad mix in together to create a new word, an in-between word, that allows life?’ Whirling around, she went to stand at the window. Part of her thought to slip through it into safety, but another part understood that without explanation she might never be free of him and he was dangerous. To the life she had built which depended to a large extent on her being accepted by those she mingled with.
‘After leaving you I stayed in Perpignan. I was shocked by all that happened, you understand. Celeste’s family needed time to know of the demise of their loved one and I needed a space to myself before...’ She stopped.
‘Before you returned to England?’
Jamie. Jamie. Jamie.
Under each and every word said his small and beloved face lingered and it was all she could do to hold him safe.
‘I have forged a life here. My life. Once, a very long time ago, I was someone else.’
A traitor. A wife. A victim.
A woman who had used every part of her wiles to save the father of her baby. She did not flinch as he watched her. She did not think of the marks on her breast or the weeks of fever that had followed. She thought only of Jamie.
As if Nathaniel Lindsay’s fingers had a mind of their own they went to his chin and traced the damage. ‘I thought that I knew you then, but now...’
‘Now we are strangers travelling in different directions, my lord.’
Away from each other? Away to safety.
Turn and go now. Turn and go before he touches you and before the quiet way he gives his words makes you foolish. It is the only way that Jamie can stay safe.
With a quick snatch at the curtain, she lifted her leg across the sill and was gone.
* * *
Nat stood and watched her run, her shadow barely there against the line of trees, blending in the moonlight.
Even with Acacia he had never felt this connection, this need to protect her from all and sundry. Cassandra Northrup made him crazy, witless and sad, yet the feel of her slight body against his in the warm waters of the high pool above Bagnères-de-Bigorre lingered.
Shimmering against reason.
They had gone there by chance, a traveller’s tale remembered, a small, ancient and lonely pool set amongst the mountain scrub, steam rising like God’s breath from the very bowels of a restless earth.
She had forged on ahead from the little house by the river, trying to escape him, he was to understand with time, hurrying along the mountain passes without looking back, though when he had found her a good two hours later she had given no explanation and he had not wanted to ask for one.
After that they had moved with their own thoughts across the landscape, always climbing higher. An image of Alph the sacred river running to measureless caverns and sunless seas took his imagination. Sandrine was like a sylph, light of foot and pure of heart, her hair in the grey mists the only bright and shining beacon.
His wife.
He had never been married before and the troth was surprising in its power. She was young, he knew that, but under her youth there was wisdom and discernment born from an adversity he could only wonder at.
His.
For better or for worse.
He quickened his pace. Already she was thirty feet in front of him and the slope was steepening, but to his left was the grotto he had found many years before, the steam even from this distance visible.
‘There.’ He pointed, and she shaded her eyes and looked, a smile rewarding his discovery.
‘We can take a bath?’
He nodded and took her hand because the shale was treacherous and he did not wish for her to slip.
Later, in the cold winters of London, he would think of this time and try to remember each and every moment of it. Back then the relief of another chance at life after their sickness had made him feel exhilarated.
He could smell the sulphur as they came across the last rise, the warmth of air in the wind blowing towards them. Like an invitation, and just for a moment, he imagined them as the only people upon the entire planet, lost in the universe. He wondered if the fevers had taken his reason because he seldom thought like this, the flowery rhetoric of the Romantic poets on his tongue. Perhaps it was Sandrine who made him such but he didn’t like to think of what that might mean.
Nat’s side ached, and he still felt hot, but a day out amongst the clouds had revitalised and settled him.
‘Will others come?’ Her voice was small.
‘Not now.’ Already the light was falling. Another hour and it would be gone completely.
When she smiled, he smiled back, his aching bones crying out for a warm soak in a mineral pool. She dipped in her fingers, the ruined hand swallowed by opaque water, nestled in heat.
‘You have been here before?’
‘A long while ago.’
‘Is your home near?’
This time he merely shook his head and sat down, taking off his boots and placing his socks carefully within the leather so that they did not get damp.
She was watching him, her eyes filled with delight. A joyous Sandrine was so different from the one he more usually saw, the dimples in her cheeks deep and the quiet creases of laughter charming.
‘Put your clothes under mine when you have them off. That way they will stay dry.’
Within a moment he was naked, wading into the water and dipping down. She had turned away, allowing for privacy, but he did not care. Closing his eyes, he waited till she joined him.
‘I cannot ever remember feeling so good.’ Her words were quiet as she lay back, spreading her hair across the surface, like a mermaid or an enchantress, the colour in each strand darkened by the water. She had not pushed off from the bottom for every other part of her body save her face and neck was hidden from him.
Most women of his acquaintance would have simpered and hesitated, a lack of clothes precluding all enjoyment. But not her. She simply took what was offered with a brave determination, the mist beading her eyelashes and small drops settling on her cheeks and lips.
‘It is said in these parts that this pool contains the soul of a sea sprite who lost her lover.’ Another flight of ridiculous fancy. He grimaced.
‘How?’
‘The sprite changed him into a merman so that they might always be together, but his jealous wife threw flames upon his form and he dissolved into steam.’
‘Water and steam. They still live together?’
Sandrine’s hand came up from the pool and she cradled both elements. ‘Legends and science. My mother would have peered into this pool to see what lived inside of each drop.’
‘The new and unseen frontier of science?’
‘You know of this? She looked puzzled and faintly incredulous.
‘When I am not killing people I can be found reading.’
Her laughter rang across the quiet, echoing back. ‘A warrior and a scholar. If you were to go to the salons of the wealthy, Nathanael Colbert, you would be besieged by women. Celeste would have been one of those had she lived.’
‘How did your cousin die?’
‘By her own hand. Baudoin’s brother Louis was her first lover and when he was killed she had no more heart for life.’
‘Difficult for you. The one left.’
She did not answer, but in her eyes there was such grief that he moved closer and took her hand, waiting till she regained composure. All the things that she did not say were written in hard anger upon her face.
‘How did this happen?’ His thumb traced the line of her ruined finger because he knew that to speak of such travesty would be a balm.
‘Baudoin and his brother were always at odds with one another over my cousin. Once, when we first came to Nay, I tried to drag Celeste back from getting involved in an argument and Anton slashed out at me.’
Anguish solidified inside of him, and he attempted for her sake to push it down. ‘I see you holding it now and then, rubbing at the finger that is missing?’
She smiled. ‘It hurts sometimes, a phantom pain as if it is still there.’
The small fragility of her hand made the wound seem even more mindless. The ring of his mother’s that she wore was far too big and he touched it.
‘I will have it resized, Sandrine. So you do not lose it.’
Puzzlement in her eyes was tinged with surprise. ‘I should not expect you to honour a marriage that was forced upon you when you were too sick to resist.’
‘The church may disagree.’
Their world stood still, steam the only thing moving between them, up into the growing blackness. Their shared night-time kiss also shimmered in the promise.
‘A poor reward, no doubt, for all your endeavours to save me.’ The grasp of her fingers slid about his own.
‘Ah, but it could have been worse. You might have been old or ugly or had the tongue of a shrew.’
She laughed.
‘No. I think on balance I was not at all hard done by.’
The lustrous colour of her hair caught at them, claiming him, binding them as one.
* * *
Alive.
She was still alive and so was he and she was pleased her attempt to escape him had come to nothing. In the silence above the world she allowed her head to rest upon his chest, listening to his heart.
The beat of vitality against her ear, the course of blood and hope and energy. It had been so long since she had been held this way, with care, like a porcelain doll shimmering in the wind. With only a small nudge she might shatter apart completely and she did not want to move. No, here she wanted to know what it felt like to breathe in the sensual and be rewarded by its promise. The lump in her throat thickened. She did not love Nathanael Colbert and he did not love her back but they were man and wife, a pair beneath the gentle hand of God, and in this, His place, a natural pool of light and water and warmth.
For so long she had been fighting alone. For all the months of Nay and then the year before that, her mother’s death embedded in her sadness.
Could she not let it go for one moment on a hillside in the wilds of the Pyrenees and in the company of a man who looked at her as if she was truly beautiful?
No ties save that of a marriage that would never be real. If she survived this flight to Perpignan she would return to England, ruined by all the accounts that would follow her, she was sure of it. But would she ever again be offered the chance of this?
The skin across his arms was brown and hard, the indigo of his tattoo strangely distorted in the water. She touched it now, traced the curl of serpent with one finger and then leant her mouth to the task.
Tasting him.
He breathed in deeply, and Cassandra felt the power of which Celeste had spoken all those months before. Not a limited sovereignty or a slight one. When her fingers slipped higher to his face she outlined the features: his nose, his cheeks, the swell of his lips and the long line of his throat.
His eyes watched her, fathomless, twin mirrors of the sky and the water and the mist, but fire lurked there, too, and it was building.
‘I am only a man, Sandrine. So take care that you do not cross boundaries you have no wish for me to traverse.’
‘What if I do?’
There, it was said and she would not take it back, not even when the flicker of wariness crossed into grey and she saw in his soul the first thought of ‘why?’.
If he asks, I shall walk straight out of this pool.
But he remained quiet and the turn of hardness, his sex, budded beneath the limed water.
It was what she needed, this truth of reaction, no whispered lies between them stating a future that could never be. For this moment she felt like a woman reborn, the girl in her pushed back by a feeling that was new, creeping into the place between her legs and into her stomach. Heavy. Languid. Damp.
Lost in the transfer of all she had suffered.
And in control of everything.
* * *
He did not speak because he was a man who understood small nuances. It was his job after all, seeking truth and finding exactly what it was those buried under the shifting tides of war needed to survive.
Sandrine needed oblivion, and he needed her to find it. It was simple. A translation of grief.
She was weightless against him, her thinness in the water disguised. He was glad he could only feel: the small mounds of her breasts, the flat plane of her stomach, her long legs draped around his waist as if they had a mind all of their own.
Opened to him. Waiting.
He wrapped the fine length of her hair about his wrist, tethering her, gentling her, the cold in the air and the heat of their bodies making light work of the joining, and when his lips came down upon her upturned mouth he did not hold back.
He was in her, tasting, her throat arched upwards and their breath mingled. He knew the moment he had her assent, for she began to shiver. In her ardency her fingers scraped down the side of his arms.
‘I want to know what it is like to have a husband.’ The honesty in her words undid him.
No pretentiousness, the grandiose and flowery allowances of various ladies he had known pushed aside by a simple truth. She did not play games or set rules or say one thing, but mean another. Danger and hardship had done away with all the extraneous.
Hot. He felt hot from the pool and her skin and the building need inside him. ‘I would not wish to hurt you.’
She smiled at that, the dimples in her cheeks deep, and steam across the coldness of night lifting around them. ‘I know that you won’t. It is why I want it to be you.’
With care, his fingers dipped, the softness of woman and the heat there, and she tensed, her eyes sharpening as though pain might follow and when it didn’t she urged him further, a small sigh of release and surprise.
She was tight and tense, her eyes a clear and startled turquoise as she watched him, measuring, challenging, her hips lifting to allow him in farther though her brow furrowed as he found the hard nub of her desire.
She stilled him.
‘What is this?’
‘You, Sandrine, the centre of you.’
Relaxing even as he spoke, she allowed him closer, the feel of her body against his, her breasts more generous than he had thought them.
‘Beautiful.’
Exchanging his hand for his manhood, he pushed wide, edging inwards, filling the space of her. When her arms pulled him in he knew that he had her and, twisting his body, he came in deeper.
With the water and the bubbles and the steam about them, both lost their tapering hold on reason, the final absolution as she went to pieces, beaching waves of rigid need, and then was quiet.
He held her motionless as he took his own relief, his face held upward so that the fine mist of night cooled him, his groan of pleasure involuntary.
‘God, help us.’ He had never felt like this before with anyone, never wanted to start again and have her impaled upon him, for all the hours of the night and the dawn, only his.
He should have withdrawn, should have given his seed to the water where it would wither and die in the heat. And instead...
If she were fertile then a part of him would grow.
But she did not let him think. ‘Take me again on the bank in the cold.’ Her voice was soft and her tongue licked at the space about his chin.
A thin, brave and pale siren with no idea at all as to how much she had affected him. Lifting her into his arms, he came from the pool in a cloud of steam and laid her down in the nearly night and gazed.
‘You are so very lovely.’ He whispered the words, honesty in every syllable, and when she smiled he found the hidden folds between her legs and tasted her. Sandrine. Salty and sweet and young.
* * *
Much later he dressed her, carefully so that the cold did not creep into softness. He had marked her as his, the red whorls of his loving standing out on the paleness of her skin, telling the story of long and passionate hours. But already the dawn birds called across the wide mountain valleys, signalling in the light.
‘I did not know it could be like that.’ Her voice was guarded. ‘After Nay I was not a virgin.’
The rawness of her confession grated against the new day. A confidence she did not wish to share, but had felt the need to? He frowned.
‘No one could live in that hovel and remain...untouched, though Celeste soon worked out a way to protect me from them.’
‘How?’
‘She began a relationship with Louis Baudoin and insisted I sleep in a small room off their own.’ Taking in a deep breath she continued on. ‘I think she thought the accident in the carriage was her fault somehow. She had wanted to take a detour off the main road and it was there that the horses stumbled down the hill. Her father and his godson were killed and Louis Baudoin found us just before it snowed.’
‘A saviour?’ He hoped she would not hear the irony.
‘He took us home, and Celeste was grateful.’
‘And you?’
‘I was grateful to her.’
When people lied they often glanced down before they did so. Their body language changed, too, the arm crossing the chest in an effort at defence. Nathaniel saw all of this in Sandrine, and when she did not answer he did not press her, but the joy of communion wilted a little in the deception and in her confessions.
With the wind behind her and the shadow of her hair across her cheeks she suddenly did not look as young as she always had before. But she was not quite finished.
‘My cousin was of an age when the adventures of life are sometimes sacrificed to the safer and more conventional. I could not save her.’
Nat stood and took her hand, holding it firmly as she tried to loosen the grip.
‘It is over now, Sandrine, and the past is behind us.’
But she only shook her head. ‘No, Nathanael, it is here right at our heels, and if you had any sense at all you would leave immediately and escape me.’
His laughter echoed about the lonely and barren hills.
