Читать книгу The Complete Regency Bestsellers And One Winters Collection - Rebecca Winters - Страница 77

Chapter Six

‘Chris Hanley said what?’

Nat tried to curb the panic in his voice as Stephen answered.

‘He said that he saw Cassandra Northrup creeping from the Brown Street boarding house as though the very devil was on her tail the night of the murder.’

‘What the hell was Hanley doing there?’

Hawk began to laugh. ‘He was out on the town with a group of friends, but your question precludes other more pressing ones, Nat. If, for example, your lady was not present you might have asked if he was crazy to be so mistaken? As a judge, I would infer from your words that the accusation was true.’

‘Cassandra Northrup is hardly my lady.’

His mind whirled as Stephen continued to speak. ‘The ruination of her reputation might only be a minor concern when stacked up against such a killing.’

‘Do people believe Hanley?’

‘I’d like to say no, but I think that they are beginning to. Reginald Northrup has made no attempt at silencing his friend either, which is telling. I took it on myself to find out a little of the Northrups and if Reginald himself stands to gain anything from any discrediting of the brother’s family. One daughter is almost deaf, the second one is married and living in Scotland and the son is still a minor. Cassandra Northrup’s ruination is irrelevant for I am certain Cowper would have made a will stating his preferred guardians for Rodney and for the trustees of his estate.’

‘Is it the title he wants? From all accounts the Northrups are not as rich as he is.’

‘No, not that. Just the influence, I am presuming, for the title is more than safe. Rodney is the direct heir, but there is another more pressing fact that you should know, Nathaniel, given your recent championing of the youngest Northrup daughter. Cassandra Northrup may not be the lady that you think she is. She is reputed to take many more risks than she should.’

‘Risks?’

‘She does not seem to give much account to her reputation. It seems she is not averse to wandering the same streets the prostitutes do in order to save some of them. Kenyon Riley was touchy when I asked him further about it.’

‘You saw Riley?’

‘Yesterday at White’s. He bought rounds for all and sundry and I had the feeling some personal celebration was in the air. He spends a lot of time with the Northrups so perhaps he has finally decided to offer for one of the daughters.’

The wheel turned further and further. Cassandra Northrup had become the beauty Nat had predicted she would all those years before and even encumbered with two failed marriages she was...unmatched.

Swearing, he poured himself another drink.

She ransacked him with her beauty. That was the trouble. The history between them had also had a hand, their marriage, their trysts around Saint Estelle and the small villages before Perpignan, hours when he had imagined her as his forever wife safe at St Auburn and providing timely heirs for a title steeped in the tradition of first-born boys.

Lord, what groundless hopes. In every meeting thus far she had never given him an inkling that she hankered for more between them other than the safe keeping of hidden secrets arising from betrayal.

And now a further problem. She was innocent of the murder of the man at the brothel, but could he just leave her to fight the accusations herself? He knew that he could not.

‘Is our membership in the Venus Club complete, Stephen?

‘Yes?’

‘When do they meet again?’

‘This Saturday. I thought to go there after making a showing at the Forsythe ball.’

‘I will accompany you then. I would like a chat with Christopher Hanley.’

‘So you will still be involving yourself with Cassandra Northrup’s plight?’ The laughter in his friend’s eyes made Nat wary. Sometimes Stephen had a knack of finding out things from him that he did not wish to divulge.

‘There may be no one else to help her.’

Hawk raised his glass. ‘Then I drink to an outcome that will be of benefit to you both.’ Nathaniel wondered what Stephen might have made of the fact that they had once been married and that high up on the foothills of the Pyrenees their troths had been consummated with more than just a nominal effort. He wished he might speak of it now, but there would be no point in the confidence. Sandrine had chosen her pathway and it had wound well away from his. Still, he would not want to see her made victim for a crime she had not committed.

He swallowed, for his logic made no sense. She had betrayed England and then carried on with her life with hardly a backward glance. He should not trust her.

A ring of the doorbell brought his butler into the library.

‘There is a Miss Maureen Northrup here to see you, my lord. She will not come through, however, but would like a quick word in the foyer.’

Standing, Nat looked at Hawk, who lifted his glass with a smile. ‘A further complication?’

Outside, the same dark-eyed girl at Albi’s ball stood, her maid at her side and her hands wringing at the fabric in her skirt. Underneath a wide hat he could see her face and she looked neither happy not rested.

‘Miss Northrup.’

‘Thank you for seeing me, Lord Lindsay. I will be as brief as I can be. Is there a room where we might have a moment’s privacy?’

‘There is.’ He opened the door to his left and shepherded her into the blue salon, wondering at all the conventions being broken for an unmarried woman to be alone here. He did not shut the door.

‘I wish to know what your intentions are regarding my sister, my lord?’ She did not tarry with the mundane.

‘I have none.’

He thought she swallowed, and she paled further at his reply.

‘Then I want you to stay well away from Cassandra, sir. She does not need your dubious threats.’

‘Threats? She told you I had been threatening her?’

‘Not in as many words. But unless you have some hold upon her I cannot see why she would have been willingly in your bed in that house of disrepute off the Whitechapel Road for any other reason.’

This Northrup daughter was as brave as her sister, her eyes directly on his face and no blush at all upon her cheeks.

Her voice was strange, he thought, the diction so precise. Then he saw her glance upon his lips and he remembered. She was deaf. Deaf and brave, he corrected, and trying with all her might to protect her family.

‘I was helping her. A man had been murdered in the room opposite and San...Cassandra would have been implicated had she been found there. I bundled her into my bed and pretended...’

He could not go on. This was the strangest conversation he had ever had with anyone before.

‘Pretended...? You said “pretended”?’ She mulled the word over, the light coming on in her dark eyes as she did so. ‘I see, my lord. I had thought...’ Again she stopped. ‘Thank you for your time, Lord Lindsay. I do appreciate it.’

With that she simply glided out through the door, gesturing to her wide-eyed maid to follow and was gone, the clock in the hall ringing out the hour of one in the afternoon. The butler looked as puzzled as he did.

‘If Miss Northrup returns, do you wish to know of it, sir?’

‘I doubt she will be back, Haines, but if she comes send her through to me.’

Stephen still sat where Nat had left him and from the look on his face he had heard the whole thing.

‘If Cassandra Northrup was with you, Nat, I should imagine your intentions are nothing like those you regaled the oldest Miss Northrup with? You have not taken a woman to bed in years.’

A reprimand. Given with the very best of intentions. He could no longer lie to Hawk.

‘Once, Cassandra Northrup and I were married. In France.’

By the look in his friend’s eyes this was the last confession that he had been expecting. ‘Are you still?’

‘It was never annulled.’

‘I see.’

The silence in the room heightened, a heavy blanket of question.

‘She had been captured by a group of bandits in the Languedoc region and dealt with badly. I was trying to protect her.’

‘Something that you are still doing here.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Then take care, Nathaniel, for society can be most intolerant to a woman who would live outside its rules. Even one who is both beautiful and clever.’

* * *

Saint Estelle had been small and run-down, a mountain town of old buildings and kind people.

In the morning after they had eaten they had walked along the river and he had found a shard of blue-green pottery at the water’s edge.

‘If I could buy you a tourmaline, Sandrine, I would, because that gemstone is the exactly the shade of your eyes. But as I am penniless, this will have to do.’

She took it carefully, with the hand that was not ruined, and held it up to look at. ‘Gemstone pottery?’ Her laughter hung in the earliness of the day and warmed his heart. ‘A priceless gift that I will keep for ever.’

‘For ever is a long time.’ Sadness had settled in the corners of his mind. He wanted to hold her away from danger and keep her safe. He wanted to take her to St Auburn and make her understand exactly whom she had married, the coffers of the place filled with the treasure of the past in an unending array of wealth, diamonds, gold and silver and every gemstone in between. He wondered what she would make of the expectations inherent in his title and conversely what those at the castle might make of her. Especially his grandfather.

‘Tonight I will find some leather and fashion a hole through the top so that you can wear it as a pendant.’

Her hair had caught the wind and the many-coloured lights of it tumbled wild with her curls, the length reaching the contour of her hips.

‘Mama always insisted that one gift required another in return. She said that in the giving of a present there should also be the taking of happiness.’

He stood still as her hand came against his cheek, tracing the line of his throat downwards.

‘The gift of the power of womanhood is one I could bestow upon you if you should so desire it, Nathanael.’ Beneath the laughter in her words there was another cadence, full of promise. ‘My cousin Celeste used to say that I should find it one day, this knowledge of the sensual, and that men would not be able to refuse such an authority from me.’

‘She was right.’ Gravity had crept in under humour and he could hear the steady beat of his own heart in his ears.

‘So you accept?’

‘I do.’

They were far from the village and he had seen no sign of others for many miles. Besides, the road out of Saint Estelle lay upon the opposite bank of the river, past the line of trees, out of sight.

Last night had been frenzied and passionate and furious. Today a languid peace reigned, a quiet acceptance of each other’s needs.

‘Come.’ She held out her hand and he took it, following her into the shadow of the trees until they reached an overhang of cliff, the rocky outcrop of the Pyrenees sheltering a little bowl of meadow. It was noticeably warmer.

‘Here, away from the wind we can love each other.’ Bringing two blankets from her bag, she laid them down as a bed.

Within a moment she had removed her clothes, lying on the wool without any sense of shame, burnished like an angel from one of the old religious paintings that graced his grandfather’s library.

Reaching for his fingers, she placed them upon her right breast and leaned into the touch. His other hand she splayed in the warmth of the space between her legs, her thighs apart and waiting. ‘I am yours for the day, monsieur. I am yours until the sun lies upon the horizon and the dusk is reached. My gift for your gift.’

Positioning the other blanket to keep out the cold, his fingers began to move with a will of their own, up into the warmth of her, up into the swollen wet darkness where feminine magic lingered. She did not draw back. He slipped in farther and heard her sharp intake of breath. Playing her tenderly and feeling the answer of her muscles against his hand, the first tremble of release as frenzy tightened. Taking ownership. He did not let her move away as her whole body shuddered into climax, roiling waves clenching skin to muscle.

She cried out, once and then again, her head arched back so that daylight filled her, the sweat of climax dampening her skin and making her rigid with lust.

The scent of her between them, the hard erectness of nipples, the loss of self into a frenzy of feeling. Shivering need brought her arms about him, her nails gouging trails into his shoulder. Joined. For ever. Locked into union.

Moments passed in silence, the heat of her slackening to limpness.

When he brought his mouth onto the peak of her right breast, she simply clasped her hands about his head and nudged him closer. Like she might do a suckling baby, guided to the source.

Quiet. Still. Primal. The reclamation of all that had been once before and now was again. The gift of belonging. The heavy punch of sex and now the softer pull of place. Home. With Sandrine. He shut his eyes and took the offered gift, grateful and indebted.

In all of his life he had never felt as loved.

* * *

They woke to the sound of evening birdsong, the dusk across their blankets. With slow care she moved atop his manhood, filling herself with the largeness, moving in her own rhythms and refusing any help.

Her gift, she had said, and his taking. When she pinned his hands against the earth and told him that she was in charge he had allowed it, the sky above and the meadow beneath. She did not let him come until the sun had fallen almost to the horizon, the tension in him stretched to the full ache of friction, a thin hot pain of need.

And then she had taken each of his nipples between her nails and pinched. Hard. Jarring.

He had climaxed as he never had before, emptying himself into her, wave after wave, involuntary, uncontrolled. And she had taken him in, wanting his seed, drawing him up as the final gift of the day. He felt the undulating motion of her insides around him and knew without a shadow of doubt that he could love her. For ever.

On their return to Saint Estelle the tavern keeper was full of the news of a group of men who had come into the town looking for two strangers.

‘The leader was a big man with dark-brown hair and a scar across his cheek. Here.’ His fingers drew the shape of a crescent. ‘He appeared very angry.’

Lebansart. Cassie drew in her breath and knew that Nathanael had felt her fear.

‘Did they say where they were going next?’

‘They didn’t say and I didn’t ask, but they left Saint Estelle before the noon hour and there was no talk of a return.’

‘We will stay here then for a few days longer.’ Nat dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. ‘If they should return at any time at all, I would like to be told of it.’

‘Who exactly is this man, Sandrine?’ The question came a few moments later when they were once again back in their chamber.

‘Guy Lebansart. He was an acquaintance of Anton Baudoin.’

‘What does he want?’

She shrugged her shoulders and turned away. Me. She almost said it, almost blurted it out before biting down on the horror. The document she should never have read shimmered in her memory.

* * *

Cassandra spent the morning at the school at Holborn. Kenyon Riley arrived around midday and walked into her office.

‘Is Maureen here, Cassandra?’ His voice was tinged with the accent of the Americas, and he sounded happy.

‘She went to run an errand in town. I should not imagine that she will be long.’

‘You look busy.’

Cassie observed the large pile of papers that littered her desk. She tried to be organised, she really did, but with the amount of work she had, such a thing was never easy.

‘My sister told me the good news about your betrothal.’

‘Did she? I was wondering if she would ever get around to mentioning it to anybody else.’ His smile was wide.

‘Reena is more contented than I have ever seen her.’

‘She deserves to be.’

‘I agree and I don’t think she could have chosen more wisely.’

He watched her, his dark eyes perplexed. ‘And what of you, Cassandra? Is there someone in your life, too?’

‘You have been listening to rumour, I think?’

‘More than rumours. Lord Christopher Hanley, your uncle’s friend, claims he saw you in Whitechapel with Lord Lindsay. A large section of society is heeding him.’

‘Well, I have never played a big part in the life of the ton so it will suit me to be even more reclusive. What can they do, after all?’

‘Believe me, attack is the best form of defence. Come with your sister and me to the Forsythe ball and stare the naysayers down.’

‘Apart from sounding risky, did you consider the possibility you might be ousted because of your association with me?’

He laughed. ‘My uncle is one of the richest men in England and he is dying. No one would chance offending the next heir to the dukedom.’

In that moment Kenyon Riley seemed more like Nathaniel Lindsay than he ever had before. Powerful. Certain. Unafraid.

Perhaps he was right. Cassie had already flouted convention with the keeping of her maiden name and no true proof of her being at Brown Street existed anywhere save with Lord Lindsay. She did not believe that Nathaniel would abandon her as she had him in Perpignan.

‘Maureen is having a fitting for a new gown this afternoon. You should go with her for you have worn the shades of mourning for all the months that I have known you. Perhaps it is time to branch out and live a little?’

‘You sound just like Reena.’

‘If I do, it is because I care about you and because Lindsay is a good man, an honourable man.’

She nodded her head. ‘I know.’

‘He is also a man who would not ruin a woman’s reputation lightly.’

‘He didn’t.’

‘Good.’

When he left her office she leaned back in her chair and looked out over the street at the front of the house.

Nat was indeed much more honourable than he would think her to be, in the light of what had happened on the outskirts of Perpignan.

They had remained in Saint Estelle for almost two weeks, always putting off their leaving for yet another day so that they could walk to the hot pools above the village or to the abandoned cottage on the other side of the river and pretend that this was their house and their life. Entwined in each other’s arms, the particular glow of lovers blocked out the rest of the world and the world became blurred and ill defined.

Until one morning when Cassie awoke to the knowledge that her menses had not come and her breasts felt sore and full and heavy.

Pregnant? She counted back the days and the weeks and always came up with the same conclusion. She was overdue and her body was telling her that things were changing inside.

Elation was her first thought and then caution. Caught out in the countryside in conditions that were hardly conducive for an early pregnancy she knew Nathanael would worry. So she said nothing.

In Perpignan she would see a doctor and then she would tell him. She knew the town and the people there. She felt at home in the narrow streets by the river. Her hand with the ruined finger crept to the secret she held in her stomach and she cradled the joy. Their child. A child born of love and of passion. Tears threatened, and she swallowed them away.

Five days later on the way into Perpignan she began to bleed. Only a little, but enough to make her understand that she needed to be somewhere quiet and peaceful, to simply stop and relax. Each morning for the past week she had felt sick on awakening and the nausea had not abated till the noon. She wanted a hot bath and a hot meal and a bed that she could stay in that was comfortable and safe.

She wanted a doctor’s reassurance and the time to tell Nathanael that he would be a father, in a place where they were not looking over their shoulders for any sign of who followed them.

They had seen no trace of another since they had left Saint Estelle, always keeping away from the main roads and shadowing the rivers as they ran from the mountains down onto the plains below.

Perhaps they were safe now and whoever had been following them had given up completely. She knew Lebansart hailed from a place farther north. Had he realised the futility of chasing them and had returned home? She prayed that it might be so.

Taking the shaded alleys, they came into the outskirts of Perpignan at sunset and stopped on the left bank of the Basse River. The fortified walls stood before them and in the distance on a high citadel the Palace of the Kings of Mallorca sat, its limed walls pale in the last rays of sun.

Cassandra loved this place, with its warmth and its gentle winds off the sea. When first she had come she had been entranced to finally be able to speak the language of her mother and to feel the heat of the sun on her hair, the colours of this part of the world so different to the greyness of London.

Perpignan and the busy Mercier household had been a revelation, and the fact that she was only a cousin had made no difference to the generosity of her uncle. Celeste’s mama, Agathe, had been dead a good two years so that was yet another thread that held the cousins together.

Another time.

A lost life.

A whole family gone.

She turned to look at Nathanael who sat leaning against a low stone wall, watching her.

‘This was where I lived with Celeste’s family. I came here to get well.’

‘Hell!’ His expletive was round as he stood. ‘You never told me that. Would those at Nay have known of this?’

She shrugged, his anxiety seeping into her contentment. ‘Perhaps they may have.’

‘Then we cannot enter the town, Sandrine.’

‘You think those who followed might find us here?’

‘I know they will.’

The shadows around them moved in a way that was suddenly dangerous, the branches taking on the outline of shapes of men in her mind. Never again. Never again would she allow herself to be under some other person’s rule.

He must have seen her fear for he moved closer. ‘We will strike north tomorrow along the coast and find a ship to take us to Marseilles. I have friends there.’

She shook her head. Another trek across the countryside and with the further promise of snow. The reserves she had been storing up were suddenly no longer there and now it was not just her life she had to protect. She had to stop, the cramping pains in her stomach no longer able to be denied and ignored. ‘You should leave, Nathanael. While you can. I cannot go on.’

It is me that they are after. Lebansart could pass you on a street and not know your face. Thus far you are safe.

She wished her voice did not sound so afraid, the cold air of an oncoming night making her shake. She had killed Baudoin with her knife. She could not be responsible for the death of Nathanael Colbert, too. Not him. Breathing in, she suddenly knew just what it was she must do. With all the effort in the world she smiled.

‘You have bought me home and it isn’t as unsafe as you imagine. Celeste’s family has a position here, a power. I can be protected.’

She should take off the marriage ring held in warm white gold around her finger and give it back, but she could not quite make herself do that. For the first time in a long while she felt virtuous.

‘You cannot possibly think that a group of bandits whose secrets you know would stop pursuing you because of some aristocratic courtly authority? These people exist under far more brutal rule.’

Shaking her head, she placed one hand across his. She would go to the home of Celeste’s father’s best friend and his wife. She knew without doubt that they would keep her safe.

It all comes down to this, she thought, his life and her child’s safety. There was no room in any of it for her.

The ache around her heart physically hurt as she gave in to all that she knew she must do.

‘We have been flung together out of expedience and I thank you for the protection you have given me and for the things you have taught me, but...’ She swallowed away the ‘but’ and began again. ‘We are different in everything that we are and I want to go home, back to a life that I know. I am not used to such...a lack of luxury, you see, and eventually we would both feel embittered by our differences.’

Stifling grief, she looked directly at him, the stillness in him more worrying than any anger.

‘Just like that?’ he finally said, flatness in the words.

She nodded. ‘It will be better for us both. I am sorry....’ She could not go on, her hands spread in front of her gesticulating emptiness. Her smile was so tight it hurt the muscles in her cheeks.

They do not know you yet. They have no idea of exactly who you are.

‘I have a comfortable life in Perpignan and I am tired of the squalor that we have needed to exist in.’

‘I see.’

No, you do not see at all, Nathanael. You do not know what this is doing to my heart.

‘We could meet sometimes, if you wish. I wouldn’t be averse to that.’

‘For what reasons, Sandrine? To demand my conjugal rights?’

She shook her head, his anger gathering in the storm clouds of his eyes. ‘To reminisce.’

‘Reminisce about all these weeks of memories that mean nothing to you or about the importance of material acquisitions? I think I shall say no.’

She could only guess at what he must think of her, one moment this and the next moment that. Disbelief flourished amongst fury as he lifted the blanket he slept on from his bag and rolled it out underneath a thick bush. ‘We will talk again of this tomorrow when you have come to your senses. By then you may see the wisdom of my arguments and the half-witted nonsense in your own. The church, too, has strict and particular ideas about the sanctity of marriage.’

Then he simply turned away.

* * *

Cassandra’s eyes felt heavy but she made herself stay awake, the moon much higher now and the true silence of early, early morning upon the grotto. They had made their beds on opposite sides of a small field of grass and he had not spoken to her again, but now he was asleep. She could hear it in his breathing and feel it in the way he had been so still for all of an hour.

She watched him from her place across the clearing, the strong lines of his body, the dark of his hair. She could not see his face because even in sleep he had not let go of his anger and had turned away from her, the knife on a bed of leather beside him. Readied.

He would protect her to the death. She knew this. He would give his life for her without even thinking of the payment.

Her chance. To escape. Her chance to leave him here, safe against the darkness while she attempted to creep into Perpignan alone and disappear. She did not know why she had not thought that Lebansart and his men would be waiting in the one place they guessed she might have returned to.

Stupid, she chastised herself. You knew how dangerous they were, but you did not think and now you have placed Nathanael in danger also. Mortal danger.

Carefully, she sat up, each fraction of movement as slow as she could make it, her breath shallow and light. Then she stood, again stopping as she came fully upright, only the wind in the trees and the far-off call of a night bird.

One step and then two, the shadows taking her beneath them, blocking out the moonlight and then an open space on the banks of the Basse, a track to a bridge across the river and the gate on the old fortified walls. Open. It had not been defended for hundreds of years, a relic of a medieval past when nothing was as safe as it was now.

She smiled at her thoughts given all that she was running from and kept to the dark side of buildings as she came into the town proper. She hadn’t brought her bag because she did not want to lift it and hear the rustle of thick canvas. But she had brought her knife, tucked into her right sleeve in leather, the hilt extending from the thick fabric of her jacket.

Almost to the Rue des Vignes. Almost there.

Then a noise. Close. An arm snaked about her throat, cutting off breath, and the face of Guy Lebansart appeared next to her own.

‘We thought you would come, Sandrine, although perhaps not quite so soon.’

The warmth of his palm as it caressed the line of her cheek made her skin crawl.

* * *

Nathaniel came awake to emptiness. He knew Sandrine was missing before he even looked, though her bag still stood beside her blanket.

Only a few minutes, he determined, the wool covering still slightly warm when he checked, but the wind had come up and she had used the noise from the trees to depart.

Last night they had not spoken at all after she had told him she needed to go on alone. He swore at the absurdity of everything and the nonsense of her beliefs. Did she truly think she could just fit in again to all that she had been and forget what was between them? Had all of the past days been some kind of elaborate deception to allow her passage into Perpignan, his presence a necessary one to alleviate the sense of danger? Only that?

Nat could not believe this to be true. There were other things that she had not told him, and he needed to find out exactly what they were.

Bundling all their things together, he stuffed them into an empty space between one of the bushes nearby. He would come back for them later, but it never hurt to cover your tracks, no matter how much of a hurry you were in; spying had at least taught him that.

She would have cut along the river, he was sure of it, to cross at the next bridge. From memory the Basse had more than one bridge spanning it and was swimmable in places, though he could not see her wanting to get wet. From there she would move inwards, and the town was not so big that a good search would be impossible. No. He just had to look carefully and hope like hell that she had made the place of her destination safely.

He tipped his head, listening, but there was no sound that was different from the wind on the water and the trees, no sound that alerted him to danger or compromise. Three o’clock. The quietest hour of the night. Jogging along the track until the first bridge, he then went down on his knees.

There he had it. A fresh print in the mud showing damaged soles. She had come this way. Again he tipped his head. Now there was only the noise of the water and the first spots of rain in the wind. Tracking. His forte. He had done this so many times over so many years, following so many quarries. This time, though, the stakes were raised and he knew he had to be very careful.

* * *

‘What was in the document, Sandrine? The one Baudoin wanted me to see? Pierre said that he saw you reading them.’

‘I do not remember.’

‘Liar.’ There was an unexpected laughter in Lebansart’s voice as if they were playing a game that he liked. The taste of fear and panic was bitter in her throat, but there was something else again. Triumph, if she could name it. They had not mentioned Colbert at all.

Guy’s voice was close as he loosened her hair. ‘Perhaps you might tell me when we are alone, ma chérie?’ His fingers digging into her arm belied his nonchalance and around him others lingered. More than a few others. Ten or twelve, she supposed, and behind them in the shadows more would be waiting.

‘Silver-tongued Leb’, he was called back at the compound. A man who spun a web around his prey without fuss or contretemps. He had not even drawn his own knife, leaving that to those about him, their sharp blades seen against the dimness.

She had lost. She had rolled her dice and lost. But she had kept Nathanael safe and away in the arms of sleep.

The commotion started as a low roar and then a louder clatter. The sound of a neck breaking and a knife jammed into breath and he was there, beside her, reaching out, the touch of him breaking her heart.

Nathanael. Already the others were circling behind him, quiet in the early dawn, like a pack of wolves waiting for the command to attack.

She did not let him speak; one word and they would kill him. One wrong sound and it would all be over.

Instead she got in first, swinging her left hand around to his face and opening his jaw with the sharpened edge of her marriage ring at exactly the same time another hit him from behind, the sound of metal against his skull crunching.

He bent over, shaking his head as he did so, trying to find vision.

Do not speak, Nathanael. Do not claim me.

She thought quickly. Lebansart had ties with the government that he would not wish to jeopardise. ‘I have seen him before. He is a soldier of France so better to leave him alive. But do as you will, I really don’t care.’

Looking away, she tipped her head towards her captor, trying to bring forth all of her womanly powers. If they killed Nathanael she would die as well, but the threat of the might of the military seemed to have done its job.

‘We don’t need the army after us. So blindfold him and bring him along.’

Another thump against flesh and she turned back, the blood from his jaw spilling over his shirt and his lips red raw from a wallop. He looked dazed, barely conscious. No blades though, no telltale sign of an injury that he would not recover from.

She laughed in relief, the sound bringing the attention of Lebansart back to her before he had the chance to change his mind. ‘Perhaps we might find a place to speak, Guy.’

When his arm threaded round her and his hand cupped her breast she simply snuggled in.

‘Sandrine, the whore.’ She heard the voice of a man behind and knew that Nathanael would have known exactly what she allowed.

A whole lifetime of his years for a few moments of her shame. A tenable payment. She did not look back again as Lebansart led her away, his fingers closing in around the small shape of her ruined hand.

* * *

Nat came awake in a bed and a room, a priest at his side and the light of morning on his face.

‘Finally you have woken, monsieur. You were found beside the river Basse six days ago and have been in and out of consciousness ever since. In truth, we did not think that you would survive, but we prayed and God has answered us our call.’

Six days.

Sandrine would be long gone.

His head ached and his sight seemed compromised. The wound on the side of his jaw smarted, and he put up his hand to feel it.

‘We stitched it and it is healing.’

Sandrine. He remembered the look on her face as she had led the Frenchman away. Pleasure. Flirtation. Relief. She had not even glanced back at him as she allowed the enemy everything.

Sandrine the whore.

He hated her, this woman who was his wife, hated her lies and her easy betrayal. He had not known her at all in the days of their flight from Nay. A stranger. A harlot. A cheat.

‘There is someone waiting for you outside. He is an Englishman and he would like to talk with you. Do you feel up to this yet?’

When Nat nodded the priest rose and left. A moment later a tall man with sandy hair came through to stand beside the bed.

‘I am Alan Heslop,’ he said quietly, ‘from the British Service, and I have come to see what you know of the Baudoin brothers. It seems you were at their compound and a fight ensued? I ask this of you because two of our agents were targeted and killed this past week, brothers whose names were on the letters taken by the Baudoins from the overturned carriage of Christian de Gennes. Letters that were known to have been in the compound.’

Didier and Gilbert Desrosiers were dead? Sandrine would have seen the documents and told of them, then. He stayed silent.

‘My sources say there was a woman. A woman was reputed to have been there.’

He opened his mouth and then closed it. Even now, after all that had happened, he could not bring himself to betray her. If the British Service had word of her involvement they would hunt her to the ends of the earth. Garnering breath, he tried again.

‘I saw no one. I left after Anton Baudoin shot me.’ Lifting his shirt, he noticed the heightened interest of the newcomer. ‘By all accounts, de Gennes’s letters were at the compound, but I could find no trace of them.’

‘Did you speak with Baudoin?’

‘No. I was there in battle and there wasn’t a chance of conversation before I killed him.’

‘I see. You will start back for England next week. The Home Office has made arrangements for you to travel by ship, though I suppose you will need to answer more questions when you return.’

‘Of course.’

‘But for now you must rest. I will have warm broth sent in from the kitchen for you have lost a good deal of weight from the beating you received. It seems you were dropped in the river to drown, but your coat snagged on a pillar as the current took you away and a group of youths found you.’

‘A lucky escape, then.’

‘Perhaps.’ The man’s glance caught his own and without another word he left the room.

When he was gone, Nathaniel began to take stock of the wounds he had incurred. A heavily bandaged head, a broken right arm and two eyes that were so swollen it was hard to see.

Sandrine Mercier had betrayed both him and England to save herself.

Closing his eyes, he shut everything out and willed himself to survive.

On returning home, Nathaniel went straight to the family seat. His grandfather, the Earl of St Auburn, stood before him, a heavy frown upon his brow.

‘A further scrape that you have no explanation for, and a newly made scar on your chin that looks like you have been in another fight. And to top it all off you have lost your grandmother’s ring. An heirloom. Irreplaceable. I am almost seventy-three years old, Nathaniel, and you have never stopped disappointing me.’

Nat stood and finished his drink. It had been a bad idea to expect that William Lindsay might have welcomed him home after hard, long and lonely months abroad. Tonight, however, with the portrait of his father upon the wall above his head, Nat had had enough of such hostility.

‘I shall be at Stephen Hawkhurst’s for the next few weeks before going back to Europe, William.’

‘Running away as usual. The St Auburn inheritance does not simply see to itself, you know. A small interest on your behalf as the one who will inherit the responsibility would not go unnoticed.’

‘I am certain you are quite competent at the helm. I am also certain that any changes I made to the estate would only incense you, after all, for we have tried that track before.’

‘Then take a wife, for God’s sake, and settle down. You are old enough to be giving the estate some assurance of longevity, some hand into the future.’

A wife.

Nat almost laughed. He had a wife already and if he could have produced Sandrine Mercier at that moment he would have dearly loved to, if just to see the look of horror and disgust in his grandfather’s eyes. But she had been lost to him in Perpignan, gone into the ether of betrayal, a woman who had not given trust a chance and who had flouted every principle of integrity.

Placing the glass carefully down on a small oak table beside him, Nathaniel tipped his head in parting and left the room.