Читать книгу Scars of Betrayal - Sophia James - Страница 8

Chapter Two

Nay, Languedoc-Roussillon, France—October 1846

The stranger had forced himself into stillness. She could see it as he stood, his heart and breath calmed by pure will-power as he raised his blade and stepped forward.

So many were dead or dying; such a little space of time between the living and the departed and Cassandra expected that she would be next.

A knife she had retrieved from the ground felt solid in her fist and the wind was behind her. Left handed. Always an advantage. But the rain made steel slippery as he parried and the mud under her feet finished the job. As she fell her hat spun off into the grey and her plait unfolded into silence. She saw the disbelief in his eyes, the hesitation and the puzzlement, his knife angling to miss her slender neck, pale against all else that was not.

The shot behind sounded loud, too loud, and she could smell the flare of powder for just a second before he fell, flesh punched with lead.

He could have killed her easily, she thought, as she scrambled up and snatched back her cap, angry with herself for taking another look at his face.

Mud could not mask the beauty of him, nor could the pallor of death. She wished he might have been old and ugly, a man to forget after a second of seeing, but his lips were full and his lashes were long and in his cheek she could see the dent of a dimple.

A man who would not bring his blade in battle through the neck of a woman? Even a fallen one such as she? The shame in her budded against the futility of his gesture and she went to turn away. Once she might have cared more, might have wept for such a loss of life and beauty and goodness. But not now.

The movement of his hand astonished her.

‘He is alive.’ Even as she spoke she wished she had not.

‘Kill the bastard, then. Finish him off.’

Her fingers felt for a pulse, strong against the beat of time, blood still coursing through a body marked with wounds. Raising the knife, she caught the interest of Baudoin behind and, moving to block his view, brought the blade down hard. The earth jarred her wrist through the thin woollen edge of his jacket and she almost cried out, but didn’t.

‘Take your chances.’ Whispered beneath her breath, beneath the wind and the rain and the grey empty nothingness. Tonight it would snow. He would not stand a hope. Cleaning the knife against her breeches, she stood.

‘You did well, ma chère.’ Baudoin moved forward to cradle the curve of her chest, and the same anger that had been her companion for all of the last months tasted bitter in her mouth.

She knew what would come next by the flare in his eyes, knew it the moment he hit her, his sex hardened by death, blood and fear, but he had forgotten the knife in her palm and in his haste had left her fighting arm free.

A mistake. She used the brutality of his ardour as he took her to the ground, the blade slipping through the space between his ribs to enter his heart and when she rolled him off her into the mud and stood, she stomped down hard upon his fingers.

‘For Celeste.’ She barely recognised her voice and made an effort to tether in her panic. The snow would help her, she was sure of it; tracks could be hidden beneath the white and the winter was only just beginning.

‘And...for you, too.’ The sound was quiet at first, almost gone in the high keening of wind, a whisper through great pain and much effort.

Her assailant, his grey eyes bloodshot and sweat on his brow underpinning more extensive injuries. When he heaved himself up, she saw he was a big man, the muscle in his arms pressed tight against the fabric of his jacket.

‘You killed him too cleanly, mademoiselle.’ Not a compliment either as he glanced at Anton Baudoin. ‘I would have made him suffer.’

He knew how much she had hated him, the prick of pity behind his eyes inflating her fury. No man would ever hold such power over her again.

‘Here.’ He held out a silver flask, the stopper emblazoned with a crest. ‘Drink this. It will help.’

She meant to push it back at him, refusal a new capacity, but sense kept her quiet. Half a dozen days by foot to safety through mountainous land she held no measure of. Fools would perish and she was not a fool.

The spirits were warm, slung as the metal had been against his skin. The crest surprised her. Had he stolen it in some other skirmish? She could feel the unfamiliar fire of the whisky burn right down into her stomach.

‘Who was he?’

‘A bandit. His name was Anton Baudoin.’

‘And these others?’

‘His men.’

‘You were alone with them?’ Now his eyes only held the savage gleam of anger. For him or for her, she could not tell. Against the backdrop of a storm he looked far more dangerous than any man she had ever seen.

As if he could read her mind, he spoke. ‘Stop shaking. I don’t rape young girls.’

‘But you often kill men?’

At that, he smiled. ‘Killing is easy. It’s the living that’s difficult.’

Shock overtook her, all the horror of the past minutes and months robbing her of breath and sense. She was a murderer. She was a murderer with no place to run to and no hope at safety.

He was wrong. Everything was difficult. Life was humiliating, exhausting and shameful. And now she was bound for hell.

The tall stranger took a deep swallow from the flask before replacing the lid. Then he laid his jacket on the ground, raising his shirt to see the damage. Blood dripped through a tear in the flesh above his hipbone. Baudoin’s shot, she thought. It had only just missed killing him. With much care he stooped and cut a wide swathe of fabric from the shirttails of one of the dead men, slicing it into long ribbons of white.

Bandages. He had tied them together with intricate knots in seconds and without pausing began to wind the length tightly around his middle. She knew it must have hurt him to do so, but not in an expression, word or gesture did he allow her the knowledge of that, simply collecting his clothes on finishing and shrugging back into them.

Then he disappeared into the house behind, and she could hear things being pulled this way and that, the sound of crashing furniture and upturned drawers. He was looking for something, she was sure of it, though for the life of her she could not imagine what it might be. Money? Weapons?

A few moments later and he was back again, empty-handed.

‘I am heading for Perpignan if you want to come.’ Tucking a gun and powders into his belt, he repositioned his knife into a sheath of leather. Already the night was coming down upon them and the trees around the clearing seemed darker and more forbidding. The cart he had used to inveigle his way into the compound stood a little way off, the wares he plied meagre: pots, pans and rolls of fabric amidst sacks of flour and sugar.

She had no idea as to who he was or what he was or why he was in Nay. He could be worse than any man here ever had been or he could be like her uncle and father, honourable and decent.

A leaf fell before her, twirling in the breeze.

If it rests on its top, I will not go with him, she thought, even as the veins of the underside stilled in the mud. And if he insists that I accompany him, I will strike out the other way.

But he only turned into the line of bushes behind and melted into green, his cart gouging trails in the mud.

A solid indication of direction, she thought, like a sign or a portent or an omen of safety. Gathering up her small bundle of things, she followed him into the gloom.

* * *

There was no simple way to tie a neckcloth, Nathaniel thought, no easy shortcut that might allow him the time for another drink before he went out. Already the clock showed ten, and Hawk would be waiting. Catching sight of his reflection in the mirror, he frowned.

His valet had outdone himself with tonight’s dress, the dizzying hues of his waistcoat clashing with the coloured silk of his cravat; a fashionable man with nothing else to occupy his mind save entertainment. People dropped their guards around men such as this. His fingers tightened against the ebony of his cane and he felt for the catch hidden beneath the rim at the back as he walked downstairs.

He had returned from France in the early months of 1847 more damaged than he allowed others to know and had subsequently been attached to the London office. For a while the change had been just what he needed, the small problems of wayward politicians or corrupt businessmen an easy task to deal with after the mayhem of Europe.

Such work barely touched him. It was simple to shadow the unscrupulous and bring them to the notice of the law, the degenerate fraudsters and those who operated outside justice effortlessly discovered.

Aye, he thought. He could have done the work with his hands tied and a blindfold on until a month ago when two women had been dragged from the Thames with their throats cut. Young women and both dressed well.

No one had known them. No one had missed them. No anxious family member had contacted the police. It was as though they had come into the river without a past and through the teeming throng of humanity around the docklands without a footprint.

The only clue Nat had been able to garner was from an urchin who had sworn he had seen a toff wiping blood from a blade beside the St Katharine Docks. A tall and well-dressed man, the boy had said, before scurrying off into the narrow backstreets.

Stephen Hawkhurst had been asked to look into the case as well, and the Venus Club rooms five roads away towards the city had caught their attention.

‘The members meet here every few weeks. They are gentlemen mostly with a great appetite for the opposite sex. By all accounts they pay for dancers and singers and other women who think nothing of shedding their clothes for entertainment.’

‘So it could be one of them is using the club for more dubious pursuits,’ Nat expanded. ‘There are a number of men whose names and faces I recognise.’

He had kept a close eye on the comings and goings from the club across the past weeks, astonished at the numerous alliances taking place. ‘Any accusations would need to be carefully handled, though, for some there have genuine political and social standing.’

‘Hard to get closer without causing comment, you mean?’ Stephen questioned.

‘Exactly. But if we joined we could blend in.’

Stephen had not believed him serious. ‘I don’t think belonging to the ranks of the Venus Club is the sort of distinction one would want to be known for.’

‘It’s a place hiding secrets, Hawk, and privacy is highly valued.’

‘Well, I’m not taking part in any initiation or rites of passage.’

Each of them had laughed.

‘Frank Booth is reported to be a member. I will ask him to sponsor us.’

A week later they were given a date, a time and a place, a small break in a case that was baffling. Girls were ruined all the time in London, for reasons of economics, for the want of food, for a roof over the head of a child born out of wedlock. But they were seldom so brutally hurt.

Sandrine. He remembered her ruined hand and the fear in her face when he had first met her.

The rage inside him began to build. Back then Cassandra Northrup had never given him any glimpse of an identity, though with each and every day in her company questions had woven their way into the little that she told him.

The first night had been the worst. She had cried behind him in small sobs, unstoppable over miles of walking in the dark. He had not helped her because he couldn’t. The wound in his side had ached like the devil, fiery-hot and prickling, and by midnight he knew that he would have to rest.

Throwing down the few things he had taken from the cart after abandoning it many miles back, he leaned against a tree, the bark of its trunk firm behind him. Already the whirling circles of giddiness threatened, the ache at his hip sending pins and needles into his chest.

The girl sat on the other side of the small clearing, tucked into a stiff and inconsolable shape.

‘You are safer than you were before. I said I would not hurt you.’ He couldn’t understand her weeping.

‘I killed a man.’

‘He was about to rape you.’ Nat’s heart sank at the implications of her guilt. God, how long had it been since he had felt anything remotely similar? He wished he had been the one to slide a knife into the French miscreant, for he would have gutted him and enjoyed watching him die. Slowly.

Her hands crossed her heart and her lips moved as if reciting a prayer.

Had the bullet wound not hurt as much he might have laughed, might have crossed the space between them and shaken her into sense. But he could only sit and watch and try to mitigate his pain.

‘I am sure that the wrath of God takes intent into account.’

‘Oh, I intended to kill him.’ Honestly said. Given back in a second and no hesitation in it.

‘I was thinking more of your assailant’s purpose. I do not think Monsieur Baudoin would have been gentle with you.’

‘Yet two wrongs do not make a right?’

He closed his eyes and felt the bloom of fatigue, irritation rising at her unreasonableness. ‘If you had not killed him, I would have. One way or another he would have been dead. If it helps, pretend I did it.’

‘Who are you?’ The green in her eyes under moonlight matched the dark of the trees. In the daylight they were bluer, changeable.

‘Nathanael Colbert. A friend.’ Barked out, none of the empathy he knew she wanted held within the word. She remained silent, a small broken shape in the gloom, tucked up against bracken, the holes in the leather soles of her shoes easily seen from this angle. ‘Why the hell were you there in the first place?’

He did not think she would answer as the wind came through into the hollow, its keening sound as plaintive as her voice.

‘They caught us a long time ago.’ He saw her counting on her fingertips as she said it, the frown upon her brow deepening. Months? Years?

‘Us?’

He had seen no other sign of captives.

‘Celeste and I.’

Hell. Another girl. ‘Where is she?’

‘Dead.’ The flat anger in her voice was cold.

‘Recently?’

She nodded, her expression gleamed in sadness. She had old bruises across her cheek and new ones on her hand. In the parting of her hair when her cap had been dislodged he had seen the opaque scar of a wound that could have so easily killed her.

As damaged as he was.

Tonight he did not have the energy to know more of her story and the thin wanness was dispiriting. If they could have a drink things would be better, but the flask he had brought with him was long since empty.

‘Can you hear that stream?’

She nodded.

‘We need water...?’

He left the words as a question. No amount of want in the world could get him standing. He had lost too much blood and he knew it.

‘Do you have the flask?’

‘Here.’

When she took it and left he closed his eyes and tried to find some balance in the silence. He wanted to tend to himself, but he would need water to do that. And fire. He wondered if the young French captive would be able to follow his instructions when she returned.

He also wondered just exactly how those at Nay had gained their information on the identity and movements of a British agent who had long been a part of the fabric of French country life.

* * *

It was quiet in the trees and all the grief of losing Celeste flooded back. Her cousin’s body rounded with child. Her eyes lifeless. The pain of it surged into Cassie’s throat, blocking breath, and she stopped to lean against a tree. The anguish of life and death. What was it the man who sat in the clearing wrapped in bandages had said?

Killing is easy. It’s the living that is difficult.

Perhaps, after all, he was right. Perhaps Celeste had known that, too, and put an end to all that she had loathed, taking the child to a place that was better but leaving her here alone.

Alone in a world where everything looked bleak. Bleaker than bleak even under the light of a small moon, the trickle of water at her feet running into the tattered remains of her boots and wetting her toes. The cold revived a little of her fight, reminded her how in the whole of those eight terrible months she had not given up, had not surrendered. She wished the stream might have been deeper so that she could have simply stripped off and washed away sin. A baptism. A renewal. A place to begin yet again and survive.

The flask in hand reminded her of purpose and she knelt to the water.

Her companion looked sick, the crusted blood beneath his nails reflected in the red upon his clothes, sodden through the layers of bandage. Without proper medicine how could he live? Water would clean the wound, but what could be done for any badness that might follow? The shape of leaves in the moonlight on the other side of the river suddenly caught her attention. Maudeline. Her mother had used this very plant in her concoctions. An astringent, she had said. A cleanser. A natural gift from the hands of a God who placed his medicines where they were most needed.

The small bank was easy to climb and, taking a handful of the plant, she stripped away the woody stems, the minty scent adding certainty to her discovery. She remembered this fresh sweet smell from Alysa’s rooms and was heartened by the fact. The work of finding enough leaves and tucking them into her pocket took all her concentration, purpose giving energy. A small absolution. A task she had done many hundreds of times under the guidance of her mother.

An anchor to the familiar amidst all that was foreign. She needed this stranger in a land she held no measure of and he needed her. An equal support. It had been so long since she had felt any such worthiness.

He was asleep when she returned, though the quiet fall of her feet woke him.

‘I have maudeline for your injury.’ Bringing out the leaves, she began to crush them between her fingers, mixing them to a paste with the water on a smooth rock she had wiped down before using. She saw how he watched her, his grey eyes never leaving the movement of her hands.

‘Are you a witch, then?’

She laughed, the sound hoarse and rough after so many months of disuse. ‘No, but Mama was often thought to be.’

Again she saw the dimple in his right cheek, the deep pucker of mirth making her smile.

‘Maudeline? I have not heard of it.’

‘Another name for it is camphor.’

He nodded and came up on to his knees, holding his head in his hands as though a headache had suddenly blossomed.

‘It hurts you?’

‘No.’ Squeezed out through pain.

When he stood she thought he looked unsteady, but she simply watched as he gathered sticks and set to making a fire. The tinder easily caught, the snake of smoke and then flame. Using the bigger pieces of branch he built it up until even from a distance she could feel the radiating warmth.

‘The tree canopy will dissipate the smoke,’ he said after a few moments. ‘The low cloud will take care of the rest.’

* * *

Half an hour later flame shadow caught at his torso as he removed his shirt, the bandages following. His wound showed shattered skin, the tell-tale red lines of inflammation already radiating.

‘Don’t touch.’ Her directive came as she saw he was about to sear the edges of skin together with a glowing stick. ‘It is my belief that dirt kills a man with more certainty than a bullet and I can tell it is infected.’

Crossing to him, she wiped her hands with the spare leaves and poured water across the sap. When she touched him she knew he had the fever. Another complication. A further problem.

‘I have been ill like this before and lived.’ He had seen her frown.

Lots of ‘befores’, she mused, lines of crossed white opaque scars all over his body. The thought made her careful.

‘You are a soldier?’

He only laughed.

Or a criminal, she thought, for what manner of man looked as he did? When he handed over the flask of water, she did not take a drink.

‘I will heat it to clean the wound. It might hurt for it has been left a while. If you had some leather to bite down upon...?’’

He broke into her offered advice. ‘I will cope.’

* * *

Stephen Hawkhurst’s voice made Nathaniel start, the echo around the marbled lobby disconcerting as all the years past rolled back into the present.

‘You look as though you have the problems of the world upon your shoulders, Nat. Still thinking of the Northrup chit, I’d be guessing: fine eyes, a fine figure and a sense of mystery. Her uncle, Reginald Northrup, will be at the Venus Club tonight. Perhaps you can find out more about her from him.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘A few years ago when I was in Paris I heard a rumour about a woman who sounded remarkably like Cassandra Northrup.’

‘What did it say?’

‘That she was kept a prisoner in southern France and that she was not released for quite some time.’

‘I see.’

‘Her rescuer was also mentioned in detail.’ The flint of gold in his friend’s eyes was telling and there was a certain question there.

‘It was you, Nat, wasn’t it? And she was one of theirs?

‘Whose?’

‘The French. One of their agents.’

Anger sliced in a quick rod of pain. ‘No, Cassandra Northrup never held loyalty to any cause save that of her own.’

‘Others here might disagree with you. She is the chairwoman of the charity Daughters of the Poor.’

‘Prostitutes?’

Hawk nodded, leaving Nat to ponder on how the circles of life turned around in strange patterns.

‘She must have been a child then, and scared. God, even now she looks young. And you got home in one piece, after all.’

One piece? How little Stephen truly knew.

Taking his hat and cloak from the doorman, Nat forced away his recollections and walked out into a cold and windy London night.

* * *

They were all there, myriad affluent men gathered in a room that looked much like a law chamber or a place of business. Nat was glad that Stephen stood beside him because he still felt dislocated and detached, thrown by the reappearance of a woman he had thought never to see again.

He recalled Cassandra Northrup’s eyes were exactly the same as they had been, guarded in their turquoise, shuttered by care and secrets. But her hair had changed from the wild curls she had once favoured and she was far more curvaceous.

If her eyes had not given her away her left hand would have, of course, with the half-finger and the deep scar across the rest of her knuckles.

It had been a newer wound back then in the clearing, when she had reached forward and laid one cool palm across his back. He had flinched as she brought the knife she carried upwards to cut away the badness.

The pain had made him sweat, hot incandescence in the cool of night as she simply tipped the heated flask up and covered ragged open flesh.

The camphor helped, as did her hands threading through places on his spine that seemed to transfer the pain. Surprise warred with agony under her adept caresses.

The poultice was sticky and the new bandages she bound the ointment with were from the bottom of her shirt. Cleaner. Softer. He could smell her on them.

He wished that he had the whisky to dull the pain. He wished for a bed that was not on a forest floor, but some place warmer, more comfortable, some place where his heartbeat did not rattle against the cold hard of earth.

‘If you sit, it should help with the drainage.’

He was shivering now, substantially, and went to drape his jacket around himself to find warmth, but she held it away and shook her head.

‘You are burning up. The mind plays tricks when the fever rages and as I cannot shift you to the stream we will have to make do with the cold night air instead. I had hoped it would snow.’

Her accent was Parisian, the inflection of the drawing rooms and the society salons where anything and everything was possible. He wondered why the hell she should have been in Nay, dressed in the clothes of a lad, and when he inadvertently blurted the thought out aloud, he saw her flinch.

‘I think you should sleep, Monsieur Colbert.’

His name. Not quite right. But he needed to be quiet and he needed to think. There was danger here. He wished he could have asked her who she was, what she was, but the camphor was winding its way into the quick pricks of pain and he closed his eyes to block her from him.

* * *

He would be sore in the morning if he lived. The wound or the fever could kill him, but it was the bleeding that she was most concerned about. She had not been able to stop it. Already blood pooled beneath him, more hindrance to a body struggling with survival.

Tipping up the flask, she took the last drops of water.

She was starving. She was exhausted. The embers of the fire still glowed in the dark, but outside the small light the unknown gathered.

Baudoin had not existed alone and she knew that others would follow. Oh, granted, this stranger had hidden their tracks well ever since leaving Nay, his cart discarded quite early in the piece. She had watched him set false lures into other directions, the heavy print of a foot in a stream, a broken twig snagged with the hair from her plait, but she knew it would only be a matter of time before those in France’s underworld would find them.

She held far too many secrets, that was the problem. She had seen some of the documents Baudoin’s brother had inadvertently left in Celeste’s chamber, documents she knew had been taken from the carriage of a murdered man on the road towards Bayonne. A mistake of lust and an error that would lead to all that had happened next.

Her fault. Everything was her fault and her cousin had not even known it. The same familiar panic engulfed her, made her lean forward to catch breath, trying in the terror to hold on to the reason of why Celeste had done as she did. Cassie still felt the sticky blood across her fingers, the warmth of life giving way to cold.

Softly she began to sing, keeping herself staunch; the ‘Marseillaise’ because it was fast paced and because it was in French.

To arms, citizens,

Form your battalions,

We march, we march...

Celeste was dead. And the Baudoin brothers. How quickly circumstances changed. In a heartbeat. In a breath. She looked across to the stranger, Colbert, and determined that he was still in the land of the living before she shut her eyes.

* * *

The girl was asleep, her hat pulled down across her head and her jacket stretched over the bend of her knees. As Nathaniel looked at her in repose there was a vulnerability apparent that was not evident when she was awake. She was thin, painfully so, and dirty. On a closer inspection he saw on her clothes the handiwork of small, finely taken stitches covering rips and larger holes. Her shirt was buttoned to the throat and the jacket she wore was tightly closed. More than a few sizes too large, it held the look of a military coat without any of the braiding. He knew she still had the knife, but it was not visible anywhere. Too big for the pockets, he imagined it tucked in under her forearm or secreted in one of the boots she wore beneath loose trousers.

A child-woman lost into the vagaries of a war that could not have been kind.

He felt stronger, a surprising discovery this, given his fever, and although the wound tugged when he shifted it did not sting like it had. Still, his vision blurred as he stood from the loss of blood or his own body’s heat, he knew not which.

Camphor. Perhaps there was something in the doctoring, some healing property that would confound even the best of physicians? He resolved to use it again.

She stirred across from him, wild curls escaping from the plait and falling around her face. In sleep she looked softer, the burden of life not marking the spaces between her eyes. Her ruined left hand sat on top of the right one and fire outlined the hurt in flame. Not a little injury and not an accident either. This looked to be deliberate, a brutal act of damage that would have taken weeks to heal. It was strange to see such a battle scar on one so young. His own back was filled with the vestige of war, but he had been in the arena of secrets for some time and such damage was to be expected.

Her eyes flicked open suddenly, taking him in, fear reverting to wariness.

‘How do you feel?’ Even fresh from sleep she was observant.

‘Better.’

Her glance at his throat read the measured beat of his heart. ‘Your temperature is still high so you should be drinking as much as you can. In a moment I will fetch more water.’

A frown of concern slashed the girl’s forehead, but he was tired of thinking of her as ‘the girl’. ‘What are you called?’

‘Sandrine Mercier.’

Rolling the name on his tongue, he liked the sound of it. ‘How old are you?’

‘Almost eighteen.’ Surprisingly forthcoming, though she did not look to have as many years as she professed.

‘And your cousin?’

Moonlight caught her face as her chin lifted. ‘Celeste was twenty and she loved music. She loved everything beautiful and charming and good. She played the piano and sang like an angel...’ Her voice came to a halt.

Nat knew what she was doing because he had done the same himself when those close to him had died. A memory they might be, but in speech they came alive, drawn for others to know, almost living.

‘Did Baudoin kill her?’

Only the quick shake of her head.

One day she will be beautiful, he thought. One day she will take men’s hearts and break them. For now she was young. Too young for him. For now the stamp of grace lay in her long limbs and her boyish defiance, the promise of womanhood only hinted at.

He turned away, not wishing for her to see his regard.

* * *

He was back to being angry, his eyes the colour of a storm, not dark, not light, but the in-between shade that spoke of rain and coldness.

‘Are you a part of Guy Lebansart’s circle of spies?’ If she found out something about him, there might be protection there.

His interest ignited. ‘Spies?’

‘Men who would take secrets and use them.’

‘For France?’

‘Or for whoever is paying the most.’

His frown deepened. ‘Did you ever know any of these secrets, Sandrine?’ In his words she could hear exactly what she did not want to. Interest and intrigue. Eight months in captivity had taught her every nuance in the language of deception.

‘No.’ She kept her voice bland and low, shaking out the truth with effort. ‘I was only a prisoner.’

‘Where did they keep you?’

She did not answer, moving instead to retrieve the flask. Her mattress had been in a room off Celeste and Louis’s chamber, a sanctuary she tried very hard to seldom leave. Lying low, she only ever ventured out when the early hours of the morning saw each inhabitant befuddled by strong drink, her cousin included. But Celeste had made her own bargain with the devil and had won conditions to make the tenure livable. Cassie’s thoughts went again to Celeste’s beautiful voice and her smile. When memory was selective, everything was easier.

‘I will get water and then we should leave. If others follow—’

He cut off her worry with two words.

‘They won’t.’

The confidence of a victor. So fragile. So absolutely flimsy. Baudoin had said no one would ever dare to challenge him and look at what had happened. Her French uncle had been certain, too, of the route west and then lost his way into peril.

Everyone could be bought for the price of pain or promise or vanity. She wondered what Monsieur Nathanael Colbert’s price might be. Her own was freedom and she would never give it up again for anyone.

‘When we reach the next town, hide your face with this.’ He tossed her a scarf, dirtied with dust and blood. ‘And tuck your hair well into the crown of your hat. If anyone asks a question of you, look stupid, for there is safeguard in a simple mind. If you could walk with more of a swagger—’

She cut him off. ‘I know what to do.’

He swore at that, roundly, and began to collect his things.

* * *

Reginald Northrup was a large man, his face florid and his smile showing a mouth with at least a few teeth missing. The brandy he had hold of was in a glass as oversized as he was. The sweat on his brow reflected the light above him.

‘It is a surprise to see you here, Lindsay. I hear you aided my niece the other evening at the de Clare ball?’

The man who sat near Northrup turned to hear his answer.

‘Indeed. The last pieces of a falling chandelier knocked her unconscious and a doctor was called.’

‘I am certain Cassandra herself could have remedied any wound she received. She has a knack for the healing and her mother was just the same.’

‘Her mother was reputed to be one of society’s beauties, was she not?’ Hawk’s question. Nat could not quite let go of the thought that he had voiced the query for his benefit.

‘She was, but Alysa Northrup died a good many years ago when one of her science experiments went wrong. Had she lived a century ago she might have been burned at the stake as a witch, for there were rumblings in all quarters about her unusual endeavours and none of them was kind.’

The easygoing stance of the man hardened, giving Nat an impression of much emotion.

‘She was a beautiful woman, Reg.’ Lord Christopher Hanley, sitting next to Reginald, had imbibed too much strong drink, lending his speech an air of openness. ‘None of the other débutantes that year could touch her in brains or beauty. I thought for a time it was you she was sweet upon until your brother snaffled her up right under your very nose and made her his wife.’

Northrup seemed out of step with such a confidence. ‘Both girls are as odd as their mother was. You will do yourself a favour by staying out of the way of them, Lindsay. Indeed, most gentlemen in society have done so already.’

Hawk beside him laughed. ‘I think it might be the other way around, sir, for even though they seldom venture into the social realm your nieces rebuff all interested parties with alacrity.’

‘If they turn their noses up at everything, it is because their father has too little left of his wits to bid them marry. Maureen has already reached a grand old age and I fear that she will always remain a spinster. Rodney, their brother, shall have to no doubt house them when he inherits the properties.’

By the look on Reginald Northrup’s face Nathaniel judged that he was not pleased about the fact. The terms of an entailment, perhaps, that left him with little to fall back upon?

‘The younger daughter was married in France, if memory serves me well? I remember it as quite a scandal at the time, Reg, and she never took on his name.’ Hanley spoke again, and Nathaniel stiffened. Another ache hooking into the cold prick of betrayal. He wondered what she had done with the ring he had given her, his mother’s ring, a single, pure, verdant emerald set in white gold.

‘What was the story of her groom?’ Nat addressed Reginald Northrup directly.

‘Oh, up and gone by all accounts, for she arrived home in a melancholic state that took a good year to recover from. I doubt any new husband would have put up with such gloom for that length of time, though my brother was happy enough to have her back and never questioned the marriage. He lives in his own world of science and experiments much the same as his wife was wont to. It was this interest that drew them together in the first place, I suppose.’

The layers of truth peeled back and, within the Venus Club in a room gilded with ostentation and excess, Nat found himself disheartened. It was what had happened after that which Nathaniel failed to understand: the closeness and then the unfathomable distance. He shook away his thoughts as Hawk spoke again.

‘Reginald is asking if we wish to join him at his country home for the Venus Club’s August celebrations, Nat. I said we would be more than delighted to accept his offer.’

‘Indeed.’ The taste of bitterness in Nathaniel’s mouth was strong, for nothing here made sense to him. Why had Cassandra Northrup never married again given the fragile and unorthodox legality of their nuptials?

She was beautiful. More beautiful than any other woman of the ton, even in the dreary guise of a widow. Aye, muted dove-grey suited the tone of her skin and the colour of her eyes and hair.

Her hair had been longer once, falling to the line of her hips in a single swathe of darkened silk as they had pulled themselves out of the river.

He had realised the danger the moment they awoke in the barn they had found in the late afternoon of the day before after walking for many miles. A sense of threat permeated the early morning air, and he was a man who had always relied on instinct.

Sandrine had stirred as he stood, straw from the beds they had fashioned still in the threads of her hair. Everything about her was delicate. Her hands, her nails, the tilt of her chin as she listened.

‘Someone is here?’

‘More than one. They do not know we are inside, however, or their voices would be quieter.’

He saw how she drew the knife from her sleeve and held it at the ready. Her hands were shaking.

Six of them, he determined, from the footsteps and the whicker of horses. By himself he would have taken them on, but with Sandrine to protect...?

Placing a finger to his lips he drew her to one side of the building and indicated a hole at the bottom of the boards.

‘Crawl through and make for the river. If they see you keep running and jump. Stay in the middle where the water flows fastest for at least a mile. After that I will find you.’

Fear sparked in her eyes. ‘I cannot swim well.’

‘Just put your arms out to each side and relax...’

He did not finish because a shout interrupted them and Nat knew their tracks had been discovered.

‘Go.’

A quick nod and the space where she had been was filled only with the scent of her and the sound of someone lifting the catch upon the door.

Unsheathing his knife Nat breathed out, another blade at his belt tilted so that the hilt was easily accessible. The dry straw also caught his eye. He would not make this easy for them and a fire would buy them some time. He hoped to God that Sandrine had reached the water way undetected.

* * *

She heard the commotion in the barn as flame leapt from straw, hot through the missing frame of a window.

Colbert had set the place on fire and as a diversion the plan was inspired. Already she saw two of the men retreating, their attention caught so firmly on the blaze they did not notice her as she ran past a line of weeping willows to the river bank.

Where was he? Why had he not come out after her? How long could a person breathe in the smoke and flame of straw? The quick report of a gun sent her under into the cold, down amongst the green of weed and the dirty swirl of mud. She pushed up and away, using her hands as he had told her, spread out as wings, the surface finally in sight, a faint glitter of day where only darkness had been and then she was out, air in her lungs again, a promontory cutting off any sight of the burning barn and distance-dulling noise.

Warm tears of fright ran against the chill, the quick rush of water taking her faster and faster, and the bank a good many yards from her on either side.

Had Nathanael Colbert died in the fight? The wound in his side and the remains of the fever would have sapped his strength and yet he had made sure she had the chance of safety before seeing to his own. He only knew her from her time with Baudoin, a girl marked with the horror of it and yet he had done this for her. Without question.

She wished he was here, behind her, as she was forced along in the rapid current, dragged down with the heaviness of her oversized boots.

And then he was there, reaching for her as she went under yet again, the water in her throat making her cough.

‘Put your arms around my neck.’

He was solid and sturdy, the muscles in his shoulders keeping her up in the cold air. His hair had been released from the band he kept it secured with and was falling in wet strands down his back. She wondered how he could keep going as the water flow quickened and rocks appeared, the fall of the river changing and whitening into rapids.

‘Don’t let go,’ he called over his shoulder, one hand fending off a jagged outcrop as they bounced into its path. Then they were free again, down onto a new level of river, softer and quieter.

Cassie could tell he was tiring, the gulps of air he took ragged and uneven. Blood from his wound stained the water crimson about them as damaged flesh opened to pressure. But still he did not stop, waiting until the bushes turned again to countryside before striking in for shore.

The mud under her feet was thick and deep as she gained a purchase. For a good long while they lay there, on the bank, the greyness of the sky above them promising rain. Freezing.

‘Take...your clothes...off.’ Even he was shivering.

The first soft drift of snow came unexpectedly, landing on her upturned face in a cold and quiet menace.

‘Take your...heavier clothes off...th-then get into the base of the hedge and dig. The l-leaves will be warmer than the air and they will p-protect you.’

He made no attempt to move himself, the flakes of snow thicker now. Again red blood pooled beneath him.

She came to a decision without conscious thought. He had saved her twice and she could not leave him here to perish. Unbuttoning what was left of his shirt, she sat him forward and took away the sodden cotton. His jacket was long gone, probably discarded when he first went into the river. A chain hung at his neck, a ring secured upon it, white-gold with a large clear emerald.

Was he married? Did a woman wait at home for him, hoping? His eyes this close were ringed in dark blue, grey melting into the colour seamlessly. Watching her.

‘Go.’

But she could not. Unsheathing the knife along the line of her lower arm as strength returned, she stood and cut a pile of branches. The leaves that lay at the base of a hedge she fashioned into a bed and rolled him into it, placing many more leaves and plant stems on top and using the brush as a shield to keep the snow away. Then, climbing underneath to join him, she snuggled in, jacket and shirt gone, skin touching skin.

Already the day had darkened, the dusk misting in early with the weather, more clouds on the horizon.

‘Will they find us?’

‘Not today. S-snow covers everything and whoever is looking will have to w-wait it out.’

Their small lair was becoming darker as the snow caught, layering and thickening. The wind, too, had lessened and heat was beginning to build. She liked it when his arms came about her, holding her close, the beat of his heart even and unhurried and his breath comforting.

For this one small moment they were safe.

She was glad when he stopped shivering, their warmth melding together to create hope.

* * *

Nat had awoken from their lair of snow beneath the bushes to a room with a fire burning bright. An older man and woman sat observing them, a youth standing near the window.

‘Our dog found your tracks leading from the river and we brought you here early this morning.’

Looking about, he saw that Sandrine and he had been placed on a bed together, a thick feather down quilt across them. He knew immediately that they were both naked, for she was tucked about him as if in sleep her body had sought the warmth she so desperately needed.

‘Your clothes and boots have been washed and repaired and should be dry by nightfall. The doctor said you were to stay very quiet for the wound at your side would have taken much in energy from you and could open again if you are not careful.’

A headache pounded in Nat’s temples, impairing his vision, the room swimming as their words were lost into a droning noise. Sandrine was still asleep, their voices making no inroad into her consciousness.

Shaking his head, he tried to distil the blurriness, but the pain only intensified and so he desisted. He could not even move a muscle; a heavy stupor anchored him to the mattress, and a tiredness that defied description seeped through. Alarm furrowed his brow, but when the dark claimed him he no longer had the vigour to question it, demand it different.

Sandrine was awake before him when he next surfaced and she had moved a good distance away, a rough linen shift now in place across her shoulders. A grey blanket was wedged in the space between them and no one else was in the room. A fire danced in the grate.

‘Madame Dortignac has just left. She brought chicken broth if you want some.’

‘No.’ The thought of food turned his stomach. Outside it was pitch-black and the noises of the house were stilled. Late, then? Around two, perhaps, though he had no real measure of time.

‘It has rained heavily all day,’ Sandrine said after a moment, ‘and I heard them say that the river has come up.’

‘Good.’ The threads of protection began to wind in closer. ‘Any sign of our presence will be long gone from the mud on the banks.’

‘They brought in a priest for you. I think they were worried you might not survive.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. It has been a full two days since you last awoke.’ Anxiety played in her eyes. ‘He asked if we were husband and wife before he left. When I said that we were not he was displeased.’

‘A result of our bedding arrangements, I suspect. They think that I have ruined you.’

‘The priest tried to make me go to another room, but I felt safe here and told him that I would not.’

She looked so damn young sitting there, the dark beneath her eyes worrying him and the homespun in her shift showing up the fragility of her shoulders. Her hair had been pulled back into a loose chignon, small curls escaping around her face. Feeling the punch of her beauty Nathaniel breathed out and glanced away, angry at the effect she so easily engendered on the masculine parts of his body, even in sickness. He could not remember any woman with such sway over him.

Safe?

If he had felt better, he might have laughed at her interpretation of security. Looking around for his sword and gun, he found them next to his carefully folded clean clothes and polished boots to one side of the bed.

‘Did they say who they were?

She nodded. ‘Farmers. They own the land between the river and the mountains behind, a large tract that has been in their family for generations. The Catholic priest who came was certain that God was punishing us for...for....’ She did not finish.

He smiled. ‘Our sins of the flesh?’

A bright stain of redness began at her throat and surged up across her cheeks.

‘Life or death requires sacrifices, Sandrine, and if you had not removed my clothes and kept me warm I would have perished. An omnipotent God would know that, and I thank you for it.’

A myriad of small expressions flitted across her brow: humour, puzzlement and then finally acceptance.

‘Are you always so certain of things, Monsieur Colbert?’

‘Yes.’

At that she laughed properly, her head thrown back and her eyes dancing. Not the pale imitation of laughter that the society ladies had perfected to an art form, but a real and honest reaction that made him laugh, too, the medicine of humour exhilarating. He could not remember ever feeling like this with another woman before, the close edge of a genuine joy pressing in and a camaraderie that was enticing.

But when he reached out to touch her fingers humour dissipated into another emotion altogether. Connection, if he might name it, or shock, the sear of her flesh burning up into the cold of his arm.

She had felt it, too—he could tell she had as she snatched her hand away and buried it into the heavy grey of the blanket. Her face was turned from his so deliberately that the corded muscle in her throat stood out with tension, a pulse beating with rhythm that belied calmness.

* * *

Nathanael Colbert was as beautiful as he was powerful and even with the fever flushing his cheeks and tearing into the strength of him he still offered her protection. Outside, the night clothed the land in silence and inside his warmth radiated towards her, the barrier of wool insubstantial.

If she had been braver, she might have reached over and removed it, so that their skin could touch again as it had done before, close and real, offering safety and something else entirely.

Urgency. Craving. A yearning that she had no experience of, but that was there in her flesh and bones, the call of something ancient and destined, an undeniable and inescapable knownness.

Shocking. Wonderful. She did not wish him to see the remnants of all she thought so she turned away, pleased when he did not demand her attention or reach out again.

An impasse in a cold and wind-filled night, the mountains of the Pyrenees filling a darkened sky and a fire measuring out the passing moments in warmth.

One and then two. Enough to regain composure and push away the thoughts of what might have been between them should they have given it a chance. An ache wormed its way across her throat and heart before settling lower. Loss could be a physical hurt, she would think much later, but right now it was a wondrous and startling surprise.

Chancing a look at him, she saw he lay back against the pillows, the sheet pulled away from the dark nakedness of his skin, muscle sculptured under the flame light. Still sick, she realised, by the sheen of sweat across his brow and the high colour in his cheeks. She wondered how the wound at his side had fared from such exertion, but did not dare to ask him, given the state of her racing heart.

‘I will protect you, Sandrine. Do not worry.’

The words were quietly said.

‘From everyone?’

His lips turned up, the dimple in his right cheek deepening.

‘Yes.’

She did not wipe away the tear that traced down her face, but waited to feel the cold run of its passage, the blot of moisture darkening the yellowed counterpane as it fell. As his breathing evened out she knew he was asleep, his body needing the balm of rest. Turning with as little noise as possible, she watched him, his breathing shallow and fast and his dark eyelashes surprisingly long.

The past few days rushed up at her, the chaos and the hope. Baudoin and his brother had been bandits whose livelihood was made by taking the riches from aristocrats travelling the roads towards the north and west, but Guy Lebansart was a different story altogether. He boasted about working for the French Government, though Sandrine knew enough about the houses and land that he had accrued to know that more lucrative pickings had taken his fancy.

Lebansart blackmailed people and he hurt anyone who got in his way—even Anton Baudoin had been scared of him. He had been due to arrive at the compound with a good deal of gold in exchange for information found on a man Baudoin’s men had killed on the highway. But Nathaniel Colbert had arrived first.

A coincidence.

Sandrine thought not.

Glancing again at the stranger, she frowned. What were his secrets? Closing her eyes, she fervently prayed that Lebansart and those who worked for him would never catch up with them.