by Lisa Chaplin
“You ought never to have looked below your station, even for a friend.” Mama had scolded her so many times Georgy had long since gotten over her impish desire to say, But, Mama, you’re also a baronet’s daughter.
Two days before their engagement was made official, Francis had died suddenly of a mysterious illness. Nasty whispers circulated that he’d died of an overdose of the Duchess of Gordon’s ambition. Mama, in her duty visit (as she’d put it) to the sixth duke, Francis’s brother John, had been told in no uncertain terms not to expect him to step in for his brother to make her daughter a duchess.
The Polite World had spent weeks laughing at the silly, ambitious Duchess of Gordon and the daughter no duke wanted . . . so here they were in Paris. Had been since June, without a single offer in sight. The attention of the Vicomte de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s own stepson, was a balm, but even to Mama it was obvious Eugene wasn’t serious.
Georgy shook herself from her reverie and went into the afternoon room to greet her visitors. She turned to the gentleman, leaving the . . . lady . . . obviously more worthy of her interest, for later.
But the gentleman sitting on her chaise longue took her aback. Harsh featured, hook nosed, and a known woman hater, he jerked to his feet with his customary objection to manners, refusing to admit that a Gordon could outrank a Pitt. “Lady Georgiana,” Lord Camelford greeted her, with a bow bordering on insolence. “I know we haven’t been formally introduced. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve called on you.”
His voice said clearly that she should acknowledge the honor he’d done her in coming—but the words popped out of her mouth before she could stop them. “Good gracious, surely you of all men aren’t here to propose to me. You don’t need my money, do you?” Then her hand almost slammed over her mouth. If the Mad Baron took offense—
To her relief, Camelford chuckled. “I like the word without any bark on it. I don’t need your money, nor do I want you. I do need something from you, however.”
She sighed. “Thank heavens for that. But I am intrigued to know . . .” Suddenly recalling Camelford wasn’t her only visitor, she let her gaze shift to the right—and she gasped.
She’d never seen or imagined a woman so—so, well, beautiful. Truly, a poem could be written to her sylphlike loveliness. She was Venus arising from her shell. Small and gently curvaceous, skin like real peaches and cream, hair of a perfect strawberry blond with a subtle overtone of moonlit silver through it, so glossy—melting blue eyes, a classic nose, and even dimples in the creamy skin . . . a luscious peach-pink mouth that truly tipped up in that mysterious half slant that men called “the signature of Venus.”
For the first time in her social whirl of a life, Georgy had seen a young woman who fit the clichéd soubriquet of “The Incomparable.” She was certain that, once seen, this perfection of face and form would never be forgotten.
“Lady Georgiana?”
Oh, heavens, even her voice was soft, as lyrical as music! This woman would set London on its ear. She couldn’t believe Camelford wasn’t even looking at the woman . . . Georgy knew she was being horribly rude, but she couldn’t stop staring. Belatedly she pulled herself together. “Yes, I am Georgiana Gordon. How good of you to call, Madame . . . ?”
“Recamier,” the other murmured, smiling: a Botticelli come to life. “Jeanne Françoise Recamier, my lady. I hope you’ll forgive the impudence of my calling when we’ve never met.”
“Certainly,” Georgy said stupidly, holding out her hand, then retracting it and curtsying as good manners required. In a lemon silk day gown, when Madame Recamier also curtsied, she looked like liquid sunshine. “You’re most welcome. I’ve already called for tea for us.”
“Tea is pap,” Camelford snarled, breaking in on the dreamlike state Georgy had fallen into. “I need to talk to you without this woman here, and I’d appreciate it taking place now.”
“I’d heard you were eccentric, but I assumed you’d been taught the manners of a gentleman. It seems I was wrong,” Georgy said, using the gentle but chilling tone she turned on impudent tradesmen or social climbers. “If you will return tomorrow at two, my lord, I will see to it that my mother and I are at home for you.”
Camelford jerked to his feet and stormed out.
Madame Recamier winced a little as the door slammed behind him. “Well, one cannot say he doesn’t know how to make a lasting impression,” she said, mouth quirked up, eyes glimmering with fun.
Impressed by both the humor and the discretion—not speculating on what Camelford wanted from her—Georgy smiled back. “Madame, I can only—”
“No, my lady, do not apologize for Camelford’s appalling manners, when it was I who ensured he would make such a request, and that you would, ah, ask that he leave. I have, as you might say, a way with men . . . either for good or for bad.” Her eyes still twinkled. “I annoyed him greatly by not respecting the grand name of Pitt.”
Georgy blinked, but found nothing to say.
“I’d heard you appreciated pound dealing,” Madame Recamier said, in unaccented English. “Is that not so?”
“Um, yes, I do like plain speaking.” Georgy blinked again, frowning as she looked again at the vision of feminine perfection before her. Not so much as a smear of rouge, she thought in wonder. “Since we are being open, I will ask: who are you?”
The woman leaned forward, hooking a finger toward her. Georgy too leaned in. Then the woman whispered, “In certain circles I am known as The Incomparable.”
Georgy almost laughed aloud at the appropriate soubriquet. “By whom?”
The lady looked in her eyes: message or warning. “I have the honor of training certain important people who love our nation to gather intelligence for us. The cousin of the gentleman who just left us would deeply appreciate your help. He believes you may help with the, ah, small issue of that gentleman’s current geography, and with other delicate matters of state. You are also in a position to help your friend Elizabeth Sunderland, who is also working for us.”
Somme River, South of Abbeville
Duncan counted getting through Abbeville alive as another minor miracle. “Delacorte’s allies have deserted him,” he said to Cal. Anything to keep from focusing on the burning in his leg or Lisbeth’s fragility. He’d covered both their injuries with a blanket stored at the boat’s stern. No point in giving the evening fishermen a view they could describe to the gendarmes.
“I counted on it.” Cal kept the stroke shallow, propelling the boat along. The men followed his lead.
Fifteen minutes later they reached Eaucourt, with its crumbling fortress castle at one end of the village, a small farm prison at the other. They passed the house that held Lisbeth’s son, and Duncan saw nothing out of place. Delacorte’s men were hidden well.
The next town, Pont-Remy, was a sleepy village consisting of a scruffy inn and a few farms, and a half-built shipping canal going nowhere. A candle lit a window here and there as night fell like a heavy curtain dropping over the land.
Again all seemed quiet, but barely seven miles from Abbeville, it would be easy to have gendarmes awaiting them in the darkness.
As if in answer, he heard hooves in the distance. “If Delacorte sent riders ahead . . .”
Cal answered through puffing breaths and pulling strokes, “How could he? After this afternoon, he’s lost the gendarmes. There are Jacobins enough in Abbeville to be related to half the population, so he’s lost the townsfolk. He’s injured and on the run, and knows Fouché will soon be on his trail. We’re safe until he finds the funds to buy new men.”
Duncan’s fury at Cal’s being sent to watch over him subsided. The pain was clouding his mind. “I suppose you know where he keeps his son, as well?”
“Oh, aye, we passed it not long ago—but you knew that.” A small smile touched his face, lighting nothing within. “The lassie’s right to want her bairn back. No child should be raised by that man and his mother. Cruelty is his amusement, and the poor lady barely knows her
name. It’s said she dropped the bairn recently. Luckily he fell back into the cradle.”
Duncan sent up silent thanks that Lisbeth wasn’t awake to hear that.
By the time they reached the farming hamlet of Fontaine, the wider canal turned pewter in a sullen sunset. The scent of rain was in the air. Halfway up the hill, the spire of Église de Saint-Peter pierced the low-hanging cloud. Candlelight dotted windows of small farmhouses as women worked in the kitchen, and men in barns or sitting rooms. Cockerels split the air with their last calls of the day. Cows lowed, needing relief from full udders. The yowling of copulating cats came from nearby. Somewhere a dog barked, but only once.
Everything seemed undisturbed; neither the rumbling of wheels nor suspicious silence to break the tranquility. He looked at Cal. “Seems safe enough.”
The Scot nodded. “D’ye have a dislike of natural healers? This woman uses herbs and the like. Some of her neighbors call her a witch.”
In Cal’s eyes, Duncan saw knowledge of the labyrinth of unbalanced prejudices he’d been forced to accept during his youth, lest Annersley whip or throw him in the cupboard again. “No.” Lisbeth was shivering even with his cloak around her. “Land here.” He pointed at a tiny punt, barely an indent in the canal with two dories tied to it. “Push the boat under, then find the midshipman and help him bring the coach to the house. Even after treatment, Miss Sunderland won’t be fit to be carried far.”
“I can do it, sir,” Burton offered, with a significant look. Though as brave as a lion in battle, Hazeltine was a disaster on two feet, often with one of those feet in his mouth.
Duncan shook his head. “Just do it, Hazeltine. Help me up first.”
Cal leaned forward. “You can’t carry her. I’ll get her there sooner, lad.”
He hated to admit Cal was right. “If the glass goes in any farther . . .”
“I’ll care for her as if she were my own sister.” Cradling her like a babe, Cal stepped off the rowboat with caution and strode up the pier and onto the path.
Duncan turned inward, concentrating on his own pain. In any case, she was probably safest with Cal. Within a week of their first meeting Lisbeth was half dead, her life in tatters. Like father, like son. No matter which father—Broderick Stewart or Charles Urquhart Aylsham, thirty-fifth Baron Annersley—they had both destroyed everything they touched.
Eddie would tell me to stubble it. Guilt and fear are time-wasting indulgences. Just do your duty. “Help me out of the boat.”
His men held his elbows, but even straightening his leg made him gasp. “Burton.”
Burton slipped his arm under Duncan’s to keep him up. “Go, Hazeltine,” he ordered, panting through the pain by the time he was on the pont.
By the midwife’s gate he was nauseated, his head pounding and his leg in agony. “Thank God.” The two men made their way down the muddy, rock-strewn path to the farmhouse. There was light at the rear left side of the house. “That way.”
The midwife lived in a country house of ancient wattle-and-daub plaster, with wooden beams crossing every which way to hold the structure up. The windows were small and shuttered, facing away from the punishing Channel winds. The door was thick oak, expensive and modern, likely replaced during the Revolution or the Terror, after what he didn’t want to think.
“Come,” a feminine voice answered when Burton hit the door. Burton pushed it open with his foot, half carrying Duncan in. The room was big and wide, with a cavernous fireplace that had a bubbling copper pot of some stew that smelled delicious. Even through the pain Duncan’s stomach growled; he hadn’t eaten in a full day. Several hooks hung from the ceiling, dried-grass ribbons holding drying herbs and flowers together.
A strange structure stood near the fire, a thin, waist-high bed. Lisbeth lay on it on her back while a woman worked on her wounds, Cal assisting her.
Duncan blinked. He’d expected a comfortable woman of ample proportions, or a scraggy woman muttering incantations like the witches in Macbeth. This woman was lovely. In her forties, she was tall and curvaceous, with dark hair touched with gray in a neat chignon. Her cotton gown fell over gracious hips, feet encased in slippers. Her small nose twitched, as if smelling for changes in her patient. Her lips were lush, her top lip curved up as if she found the world amusing. Wide and brown with thick lashes, her eyes were fixed on Lisbeth as she worked.
Holding Lisbeth’s cheek wound together with his fingers while the woman worked on the shoulder injury, Cal indicated a padded wing chair by the fireplace. “Take care, Burton, his back is likely scored all over.”
As Burton settled him in, the woman glanced at Duncan. “Your brother needs tincture, Monsieur Stewart, twenty drops in brandy. Mind the time,” she added as Cal moved over to a solid table away from the fire. “If I can’t tend to him within an hour, dose him again.” She smiled at Duncan. “You must be hungry, m’sieur, but I can’t take the risk you’ll be sick.”
“I’ll be fine, thank you, madame.” He took the glass from Cal and tossed it off.
“If you have any left in your mouth, roll it under your tongue.” Tolerant amusement laced her tone. She threw him a wry smile. “I’d offer you a bed, but I doubt you’ll take it. Young man”—she indicated Burton—“fetch the footstool in the next room, and bring the pillows. His leg will do better lifted, and warm. Is the wound tied?”
As Burton left the room Duncan asked in hard anxiety, “Will she live?”
The woman frowned. “This wound is deep, and the glass has left dirt inside. But she is young and strong. I’ll do what I can.”
He sighed and nodded. With his leg up, his body warm, and Lisbeth in honest, skilled, and sensible hands, Duncan’s body dictated its need and he was helpless to fight it.
Fontaine, France
He woke with a start in deep night. The woman had peeled back the blanket covering his leg and was cutting his breeches. “This is the best way,” she said when he stiffened. “I’ll sew up your leg once the ball’s been taken out. I can sew your breeches after I’ve finished your back, but your shirt’s torn beyond repair.”
Something in that struck him as funny. He tried to laugh, but it was too much hard work. He closed his eyes and let the woman perform her tasks unhindered.
“He needs more tincture, Monsieur Stewart,” she said when he hissed in a breath.
Cal brought him the glass again. “Hold it under your tongue, lad. It works faster.”
Duncan obeyed, because his leg was afire again. The knife’s point dug deep into his muscle. His head spun. Cal put a stick between his teeth, a seaman’s trick to hold in screams.
“Did he complain of pain on the way here, or tell you how deep the ball went?” The woman’s voice sounded weary.
“Nary a word.” That was Cal.
A final dig into his leg muscle; a harsh growling sound escaped him with the long pull that followed, and a dull metallic clang told him the worst was over. He sighed—but then he felt the warm gush of blood, and his head reeled anew.
A cold splash, a sharp sting, and dull, hard pain and the overwhelming smell of herbs and flowers filled his head. Wasn’t lavender for headaches . . . ?
A cloth wiped his thigh. Then he felt the short, sharp stings of a needle, over and over. He gritted his teeth, but one groan escaped him, and sweat rolled down his face.
“More tincture,” the healer said tersely. “Just put the drops straight into his mouth, and then another full dose with the brandy so he will sleep. You won’t have to endure the pain much longer, Monsieur Stewart.” The woman’s singsong voice was soothing. “I’ll work on your back once you’re asleep.”
Cal removed the stick from his mouth. “Aylsham,” Duncan muttered though a clenched jaw.
“Pardonnez-moi?” the woman replied, sounding puzzled. “What does this word mean?”
He’d surely lapse into unconsciousness any moment. “My name . . . is Aylsham.”
“Bonsoir, Ill-shame . . . it is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Cl
are. I have said something amusing?” she demanded as Cal chuckled, and Duncan seethed in silence.
“Not at all,” Cal said. “My brother’s making little sense right now, I fear.”
Clare said, “He has had a hard evening and borne much pain with no complaint.”
“It’s not his way,” Burton put in. “Last year he fought for an hour with a knife in his belly. It wasn’t that deep, he said, but he left it for the ship’s doctor to pull out.”
Soft probing at his belly. “Ah, I can see why,” she said moments later. “In that position, pulling it out without a doctor’s skill might have killed him. Your brother is a sensible man.”
His world descended to the pinpricks behind his eyes. He wanted to say, Stop calling me his brother. I just met him today. He frowned, blinked, opened his mouth—
“Ah, non, he bleeds again. Cal, help me,” Clare said tersely. It was the last thing he heard.
CHAPTER 17
The Road to Valery-sur-Somme, France
August 28, 1802 (Afternoon)
THE JOLTING OF THE coach yanked Lisbeth from the black shroud enveloping her. Though she was cushioned on a pillow and wrapped in blankets, even her lips ached. Her skin had a hundred needles piercing it. The headache was like nothing she’d had—
Yes . . . it was like the first day she’d awoken in France. Alain had drugged her when she’d tried to leave him and run to Grand-mère.
She struggled to sit up. If—what if Alain—
“Rest, madame,” said a soothing feminine voice. “You are safe, with friends.”