by Hope Tarr
“Oh Jack, chéri, I…”
She broke off, hating that there were clothes between them, worse yet that there were secrets. Bared skin and bared souls, that was how it should have been, could be still, if only she might find the courage to give him the answers he sought.
When he finally spoke again, his voice sounded a soft hot vibration against her ear. “Who are you?”
She lifted herself to meet him, inviting the hardness, the fury, the heat. “Does it matter? Why must it matter?” She arched her back, tempting him with her mouth and all the rest of her.
He kissed her again, this time just a brush of his closed lips across hers. “I canna help if ye willna trust me with the truth.” He pulled back to stare down at her with amber eyes that were now more wistful than angry. “Trust me, Claudia.”
And it was then that something deep inside Claudia Valemont broke. Tears gushed, so hard, so hot and heavy, that looking up into Jack’s face was like peering through a watery screen. Rivulets running into the hair at her temples, she squeezed her burning eyes closed, scarcely registering the moment when he rose up and lifted her onto his lap.
Against his chest, she sobbed, “I am Clothilde Antoinette Valemont. Ma mère…my mother was Célestine Marie Valemont.” She drew a shuddering breath, bracing herself to continue. “And my father is Gearald Drummond, the Earl of Aberdaire.”
“Your faither is the Black Earl?” He’d begin to suspect as much and yet her admission shocked him all the same.
She lifted her head to look up at him. “Yes, but why do you call him so?”
Jack hesitated, wondering how much to say. Sticking to indisputable fact, he said, “Ah well, ’tis only that the Drummonds sided with the English against Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites in the Forty-five. ’Tis said that, like his sire, Aberdaire considers himself to be more English lord than Scottish laird, but then that’s maybe no a crime, I suppose.”
“And for that Lord Aberdaire is called the Black Earl?”
He reached down and lifted a strand of hair from her shoulder. Rolling it about his finger, he answered, “That and the color of his hair, the same blue-black as yours.” In reality the moniker owed as much due to the earl’s reputation as to his hair color, but he hesitated to malign a man he’d never met based on rumor alone. Instead, he teased, “Scottish as well as French—nay wonder you’re so stubborn. How did that ever come about?”
Their enmity forgotten, she smiled through her tears. Sliding off his lap, she shifted to sit beside him. “Maman was born in Bourgogne—Burgundy—but she lived in Paris most of her life. It was there that she met my fath—the earl. Only he was not yet an earl but a young Scottish lord touring the Continent. They met at the opera. He invited her to join him in his box and they became lovers that very night. The rest, it is an old story. I was conceived and then he returned to Scotland. C’est tout.”
“How did you live?”
He could feel her stiffen. “Maman was very beautiful. It was not long before she attracted the attention of another nobleman, the duc d’Andromaque. She became his mistress and we moved into a big house on the Place Vendôme.” Eyes downcast to the small feet that didn’t quite touch the floor, she said, “That must shock you?”
He shook his head, touched her cheek to reassure her. “My faither was an English dragoon posted to the Borders. Like your parents, mine met and fell in love, or at least my mother did.” He pulled a long swallow before adding, “My faither left my maither to go back to England before I was born. She only married Tam to give me a home and a name.”
“And yet your surname is Campbell, not McBride?”
He nodded. “Aye, which suits Tam and me both, as I wasna any more anxious to own him as my sire than he was to call me son.” Minded that he’d meant to learn about her, not give himself away, he said, “So I was right in thinking you’ve ne’er labored as a lady’s maid?” He’d always known she was beyond his touch, far too fine for the likes of him, but only now did he realize how doomed, how ridiculous his foolish, fledgling hopes really were.
“Oh, Jack, how disappointed you sound. How sad you look. You make me wish I might say yes.” Embarrassed by his own transparency, he started to demur, but she shook her head. “I had a maid, Evette, though she was more like a sister to me than a servant. We grew up together, even slept in the same bed as children though we had to take care not to be discovered, of course.”
Gently he said, “You miss her very much, I think.”
“Oui, I do,” she answered, eyes growing moist. “I begged her to come with us to England but she was to wed Pierre, the footman, and her life she said must be in France with him. And so one morning very early she and I exchanged clothes, for we are of a size. She sat at my window in my favorite yellow gown and with her light hair hidden beneath a black wig while I slipped from the house, pretending to be her. I carried a market basket over my arm and hid my hair beneath a cap and so I made my way to the farmer’s cart that was waiting to take Maman and me to Calais and…and to the ship. Only Maman…They had taken her the week before and…and cut off her head…” Shoulders bowed, she seemed to grow smaller before his very eyes.
“Hush, you’re safe now.” Reaching around her to trace slow, soothing circles on her back, he wondered at the miracle that, after what had befallen her mother, Claudia could bear to have him touch her. “You dinna have to go on, mind. If it’s too painful…”
She lifted her chin, as she did when she was girding herself to be brave, to be strong. Poor Claudia, only now was he coming to appreciate just how brave, how strong, she was.
She lifted world-weary eyes to his face. “No more secrets, chéri. I want to tell you all of it. I only hope that when I have finished, you will not hate me too much.”
“I could never hate you,” he told her and meant it though the skeptical look she sent him caused a trickle of fear to slide down his spine.
“We shall see,” she whispered and then looked away to gather herself before taking up her tale. “At first we told ourselves Maman would be safe—she was only a courtisane and of common blood. But her protector was a duke and after he and his family were taken, we knew it was but a matter of time before they came for her and perhaps me as well. We began to m-make plans for l-leaving but…but we waited t-too long. Too long…”
She’d begun to shake. He could hear her teeth knocking together and that frightened him almost as much as did the wild, hunted look in her eyes.
He tightened his arm around her, began to rock her as if she were a small child. “Oh, Claudia, oh, sweeting, I’m so sorry.”
Gaze fixed on the wall, she continued, “I watched, you know. The day they bore her to the scaffold, I was standing in the back of the square. Her gown was torn and dirty and her hands were bound, but when her turn came she held her head high and climbed the steps to the scaffold without once faltering. Someone threw an egg—it struck her just below the eye. She begged the indulgence of the borreau and withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket—Maman was never without her handkerchief—and wiped the blood and yolk from her cheek. Then she turned back to him and nodded and he beckoned his assistant forward to arrange her hair.”
She turned back to him. “Before placing the head in the lunette, they cut the hairs away from the neck so they do not interfere with the blade, did you know?”
He did, of course, but was too ashamed to say so.
She nodded, seemingly satisfied with his silence. “She laughed then, high enough so that I could hear her all the way in the back, and called out, ‘Ce n’est pas nécessaire, Monsieur Sanson.’ It was then that she lifted off her wig with a flourish and tossed it into the lap of one of the tricoteuses knitting in the front row. A hush fell then for her real hair was clipped close to the scalp and so white that at first she appeared bald. Until that day I had never been permitted to see her without her powder and her paint and her wig.” Mouth trembling, she looked up at him as new tears slipped down her cheeks. “I was her daug
hter, Jack, but I never really saw her.”
Jack felt his heart squeeze in on itself in his suddenly too tight chest. Arm about her shoulders, he crooned, “Hush, sweeting, ye’re safe now, safe in my arms.” Dear God, how he hoped and prayed that might be true.
He thought of the myriad disasters that might have befallen her earlier that day, a woman travelling alone on the open road, and felt a sharp shaft of fear quiver down his spine. As for Aberdaire, the earl was an unknown entity and Jack resolved then and there that, father or not, Claudia would not face His Lordship on her own.
Wishing he might draw her against his body and shelter her for all time, he pulled her closer. “Does Aberdaire ken you’re in Scotland?”
She reached up and swept a hand beneath her one eye, then the other, smearing the tears. “I cannot be certain that he knows I still live. When I arrived in London and learned from his housekeeper that he had left for Scotland, I did not leave my name.”
“And yet you’ve no sent word to him, no in all this time? Why not, Claudia?”
Even as he asked the question, he realized he was selfishly glad she hadn’t. Whatever happened now, the cherished memories of the past two months were his for all time.
“It was bad enough that I was penniless and a refugee but to come to him as a condemned horse thief would be…unthinkable. Certainement he would refuse to own me if he were ever to find out.”
“Well, he’ll no find out from me, I swear to you,” he vowed, taking her cold hand in his and pressing it to his lips, all the kiss he now dared give her. “And if it’s on Linlithgow and Castle Aberdaire that you’ve set your heart, I’ll see you safe there.”
“But will you not get into trouble, Jack? Before you could have said I escaped but now…if someone were to see you taking me—”
“Nay worries.” He forced a smile as though his heart were whole instead of chipping into tiny bits at the surety of losing her. “Mind I’m like One Eye the Cat—I’ve nine lives at the verra least and like as no a tenth in waiting.”
“Oh, Jack, you are so good to me. I do not know what to say, how to thank you.”
He’d promised himself no more kissing, but when a smile broke through her tear-streaked face, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to match his lips to hers. This time the kiss was sweet. She was sweet. And soft. And willing. All he need do would be to ease her onto her back and…
Disgusted with his own weakness, mortified that he’d been on the verge of taking advantage of her distress, he tore his mouth away and set her from him. Hands on her shoulders, he held her at arms’ length, willing his head to clear of impossible dreams. “Christ, Claudia, I’m sorry. We mustn’t. I mustn’t…”
Fierce violet eyes met his refusal. “Why must we deny ourselves? I know that you want me, Jack. I can see it in your eyes, feel it in your touch.”
“Oh aye, I want you.” He stroked a finger down the side of her face, following the track of a half-dried tear. “So much that betimes it hurts my heart just to look at you. To be close to you day upon day and know I havna the right to touch you is torment such as I wouldna wish on my verra worst enemy.” She opened her mouth to protest again, but he laid two fingers across the sweet lips he could still taste on his own. “But be that as it may, I willna take advantage of a woman placed in my charge. ’Tis bad enough I’ve kissed and fondled you…and you an earl’s daughter.”
“An earl’s bastard,” she corrected. “And thus no better born than are you.”
He still held her hand. Tracing a thumb over the delicate thread of blue vein cutting diagonal across her slender wrist, he said, “Even if you dinna have so much as a drop of noble blood and were the servant you made yourself out to be, I’d no defile you.”
“Oh, Jack,” she said, biting her kiss-swollen lower lip. “I thought surely you must know.” She laid her free hand on the side of his face, her fingers feeling like snow on his flush skin. Holding his gaze with her own sad, soulful eyes, she confessed, “You cannot defile me, chéri, for I have no innocence left to lose.”
Chapter Fourteen
Feeling as though a dagger was being twisted deep inside her heart, Claudia rose to cross the room to the window. Bedsprings keened as Jack got up to follow her.
Coming up behind her, he laid his big, warm palms on her shoulders. “Who is it who hurt you, lass? You’ve only to tell me his name and he’s as good as dead.”
The same words issued from another man’s lips would have sounded a hollow boast, but this was Jack and, coming as it did from him, the oath stood as a simple statement of fact. Claudia thought she might drown in the warmth rushing her heart. That he assumed she’d been ravished only spoke to how dear, how noble, how very good he was.
“Oh, Jack,” she said on a sort of strangled half-laugh, half-sob. Feeling far older than her five and twenty years, she reached across her and covered one of his hands with hers. “I am so tired of pretending, of hiding—especially from you.”
“Then dinna hide, mo chride, my heart, but tell me all. I promise to listen and no to judge you.”
“Very well, then.” She swallowed deeply against the chalk dryness coating her throat and, her hand still atop his, admitted, “I am—was—a courtisane as was my mother before me. But there has only been one man,” she hastened to add because suddenly it seemed so very important that he not think too badly of her.
Powdered and painted, coiffured and patched, she’d been paraded about fashionable Paris like one of her mother’s prized poodles. She’d been just a month shy of seventeen when she’d met Phillippe du Marmac at a levee held by one of her mother’s friends and so painfully naïve, so easily dazzled that even now she bit her lip in shame to think of it. Dashing, young and the heir to the du Marmac title and fortune, he’d easily swept her off her feet. A house in fashionable Faubourg Saint-Germain, a carriage and driver, and a generous quarterly allowance had purchased him exclusive rights to her body and bed.
Gently but firmly Jack turned her around to face him, and she would have gladly surrendered an eyetooth to be able to look somewhere, anywhere, other than his knowing amber gaze. “Once you called out a name in your sleep—Phillippe. That was him, aye?”
Shuddering to think what else she might have called out, she nodded. “Oui.”
“Did you love him, Claudia?”
Startled by the question, she nonetheless answered without hesitation, “Non, there was never any love between us. Passion at first, lust if you prefer, but never love.”
Nor friendship nor respect nor even so much as simple caring, she realized, and the sudden, unexpected lump rising to the back of her throat felt as large as a brick of coal.
“That’s verra sad.”
Regarding him through the lens of misty eyes, she said, “Oui, I suppose that it is.”
“Where is he now?”
“Dead. Executed in the Place de la Revolution the month before Maman.” Pauvre Phillippe, he’d been yet another victim of the guillotine and his own noble birth. Odd that it was now that she could find it in her heart to mourn him.
“I’m sorry.” He kept his hands on her shoulders and his gaze locked on hers. “He was a gentleman, your Phillippe?”
Truth telling must be as contagious as the smallpox, for one damning admission only seemed to lead to another. “An aristocrat and the eldest son of a comte. But please, do not call him my Phillippe.”
Her voice broke off as a montage of humiliating memories fired through her mind. Phillippe, one hand grabbing a fistful of her hair as he forced her down onto her knees. The sickening smoky sweetness of his cheroot just before he pressed the burning tip to her breast. The prick of gooseflesh and shame as the last veil of her clothing fell away, leaving her standing naked and vulnerable before his hot, gloating gaze.
“He used you ill, didn’t he?” In the glow from the peat fire and the room’s single candle, Jack’s gaze bore into hers.
She opened her mouth to deny it but the expression on his fa
ce told her that her own must be as transparent as glass. Hating that her throat felt thick, she pulled a long, hard swallow. “He used me as I deserved to be used. As one who accepts such an arrangement must expect to be used. As a putain, a whore, must expect to be used.”
He slid his hands from her shoulders and tightened his arms about her. “You’re no man’s whore.”
She opened her mouth to protest but before she could he took it with his own, his hands delving into the thick tangle of her hair. “Jack?” she said as soon as she could breathe again. “Then you do not mind that I am not a virgin?”
He rested his forehead against hers. Eyes closed, he answered, “No so long as you dinna mind that I am.”
She pulled back to look at him. “You are teasing me? You are not serious?”
He opened his eyes and lifted his head. The blush bathing his face and throat told her that he was very serious indeed. In dismay, she felt his hands leave her and saw that he meant to turn away. “Forgive me, chéri, I do not mean to embarrass you. It is only that…Why did you not tell me before?”
He cocked a brow. “Well it’s no exactly the thing a man brags about, is it? Forbye I thought you must a’ready suppose I was, for you mentioned often enough how it was that I slept alone.”
Hating that she’d hurt him, albeit unwittingly, she slid a single finger across the moist seam of his beautiful mouth. “You do not kiss like a virgin.”
He made no move to return her touch but stood eyeing her warily as a deer might regard a hunter with bow braced. “I said I was a virgin, no a monk. And should you be wondering do I fancy lads o’er lasses, the answer is no.”
She smothered a smile. “I had not thought so but thank you.”
Now that the shock was wearing off, she was coming to view the prospect of all that untried masculinity as highly erotic. A deep and almost unbearable anticipation gripped her, making the girlish passion she’d once felt for Phillippe seem tepid and very shallow.