A Proposition for the Comte

by Sophia James

  ‘Don’t let anyone see you. It will be a strong lead if we can identify the one who comes here.’

  Violet frowned. How many times could Aurelian de la Tomber save her from death? When did he become tired of killing men to see her safe? The hours when they had lain together breathing each other in seemed distant for the spaces between them now lay in lives and lies and danger.

  She began to shake unexpectedly, small shivers at first and then large tremors that overtook everything. Her very existence had become one of enormous highs and dreadful lows, a mix of fear and hope and desperate need.

  She saw Aurelian watching her from across the carriage. He had not sought the place next to her but sat instead opposite her.

  ‘I will not let them hurt you.’ Formal words with little emotion or connection. She screwed her hands into the fabric of her skirt and held her fingers tight.

  His whole demeanour was stiff, the pistol held across his lap as he scanned the road outside. He was expecting the others, she supposed, the ones the man had spoken of, though inside the inn he had implied they would not be coming.

  Scaremongering, she imagined, and intimidation. When nothing seemed quite as it ought there was a far greater propensity for chaos. Constant shivering made her feel sick to the stomach, a lack of any food and water overlaying that. But this was not the time to admit weakness and so she sat up straighter and willed her fears back into the box that they had escaped from. A sudden tiredness came over her, the lack of sleep catching her unawares and she closed her eyes for a moment to rest them.

  She awoke as the carriage stopped at a small tavern screened by a row of trees.

  ‘Where are we?’

  Aurelian was sitting close beside her now, his shoulder had been her pillow, the linen in his shirt creased from her sleep.

  ‘We have made a slight detour and the driver is enquiring about horses for us to use before he goes on with the carriage to London. We will head out on a different road after I find you clothes that are more comfortable and less...feminine.’

  ‘A disguise?’

  ‘It would be best.’

  ‘It is dangerous?’

  ‘No. It’s more that I do not want others to remember us and talk. Addington Manor is a day and a half’s ride away from here and we will camp in the woods on the way.’

  * * *

  Within an hour they were ready, her new clothes unfamiliar but comfortable. She was no longer a lady but a youth, a groom who rode beside his master, a man of business on their journey to Essex.

  She was amazed at how easily Aurelian had procured all the items needed. With very little fuss he had found sleeping mats and blankets, a pot, two knives and pewter cups to tie on the saddle of the horses he had bought, the coinage he had handed across to the tavern master substantial.

  He was wearing the clothes of a trader or a traveller and she smiled at the comparison. Whatever he wore suited him, the rougher spun fabrics and oldness of his garments lending him another charm.

  She imagined what it might be like without the pressures of society upon them, simple travellers wending their way through the countryside on a humble quest. The thought was beguiling, to disappear from all that she was and to have Aurelian beside her.

  How much her life had changed in the last few weeks and if the danger of it still tracked them at least this side journey to Addington Manor offered a small respite.

  * * *

  Aurelian looked over at Violet as they made their way east. He was glad for the promise of a quiet and uninterrupted time. The danger of everything was lessened in this change of direction for no one would be looking for them here.

  Violet was a proficient rider, her legs guiding the roan mare easily, and the morning sky was clear of rain. He could barely remember a time when he had felt so free of worry, the fear of losing her melting into the joy of reunion.

  ‘When did you learn to ride?’

  ‘When I was a young girl, Papa was adamant I should have a good seat. After I married Harland, though, I seldom got on a horse so this is exhilarating.’

  When she laughed her eyes sparkled and the red tail of her hair beneath the hat caught the light.

  ‘Yesterday I was sure that I would die, Aurelian, and yet today...’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe we are here, on horseback, together and safe.’

  He liked the joy in her voice. ‘Wait till tonight when we sleep under the stars. Do you know the constellations?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you are in for a lesson, and a good one at that.’

  She laughed again. ‘I used to wonder what it would be like to feel as truly happy as I do now. I wish we could have met years ago when I was young.’

  ‘How old are you?’ His voice was full of humour.

  ‘Twenty-seven.’ She grimaced.

  ‘Ah, so very ancient. How old were you when you married Harland?’

  ‘Twenty. Just. It seems like a century ago.’

  ‘There should be a mandate,’ he replied. ‘Marriage ceremonies can only be performed for those above the age of twenty-five.’

  ‘I’d sign that. Who can truly know their mind when they are so young?’

  ‘Do you know it now, Violet?’

  She blushed and he leaned over to take her hand. It was small and warm and her fingers folded into his own.

  * * *

  Hours later the dusk was upon them and Aurelian dismounted and motioned to her to do the same.

  ‘We will walk from here. There is a river close by and the trees will shelter us from any notice.’

  She did as he asked and followed him in, pushing the bare tree limbs aside and grateful for the other greener bushes that dotted their pathway. Fifteen minutes later he stopped and tied his horse to a tree, removing the saddle with a quick and easy movement before walking over to her.

  The shadows made it all colder and although there was no snow on the ground it was freezing.

  ‘I’ll have the fire going in a few moments,’ Lian said, dealing with her saddle in exactly the same way as he had his own.

  Stretching, she tried to get the cricks from her back. It had been years since she had ridden so far and she felt the pain of muscles she had not used in a very long while.

  Still, as he laid out their bedding and looked around for wood to light a fire she made herself do the same, collecting an armful of dry sticks in a matter of moments.

  When she placed them down near him and he gave her a blanket she took it gratefully, tying the wool around her shoulders.

  ‘You have done this many times?’

  His eyes were laughing as he looked up. ‘I have.’

  ‘I suppose self-sufficiency is a mandatory character trait for a spy?’

  ‘That it is.’ His hands were busy now with a small piece of wood as he turned a twig on its surface with a length of thin thread. Within a few seconds flame flared and, adding other twigs, he soon had a fire, a man at home in his world and in everything that it threw at him.

  The hesitancy between them was apparent. Her barrenness was only a part of a larger problem for he was the heir to the Dukedom of Lorraine-Lillebonne, a noble family whose lineage stretched across generations.

  Granted he was also modern thinking but every man wanted the chance of immortality, progeny stretching into the future and making some sense of what was and what had been. Aurelian de la Tomber would be no exception despite any protestation he might give to say otherwise. She wished she was different, younger, more innocent, more able to be the woman he needed.

  Their clearing was sheltered from the wind but she could hear it in the trees above them, whining. With the heat from the fire and the blanket he’d given her Violet felt almost warm. And drowsy, too. It was the fright she supposed from all that had happened, a fragility that made her bones weak.

  ‘Is i
t safe here, Aurelian? Will anyone have followed us?’

  ‘No. I promise it.’

  ‘The law has a far reach though?’

  ‘And we are on the right side of its jurisdiction.’

  ‘But for how long? If Cummings is involved he will find a way to blame us for the deaths of those at the inn.’

  ‘The man outside your cell was a known felon. I recognised his name and he had papers in his pocket that cannot be ignored.’

  ‘Papers?’

  ‘A docket for the payment of twenty guineas. An order for his services in your kidnap perhaps? We might be able to trace that.’

  ‘Was there a signature?’

  ‘No, unfortunately. The second man was French and the third one had this in his breast pocket.’

  Aurelian placed a charm wrought in gold on her palm. ‘Do you recognise it?’

  She knew this piece of jewellery immediately for it was the same as the one she kept hidden in the crack of her floorboards. The shock of it made her stand. ‘I do. It is a part of a necklace, a lost segment. I have another piece at home almost identical.’

  His own interest was apparent. ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘In Harland’s library at Addington Manor. He had been arguing with a woman and when they left I found a sapphire and four gold segments of chain beneath his table.’

  ‘Do you know who the woman was?’

  She felt anger surge. ‘He had many liaisons after...he began to dislike me. I never saw her though and I don’t know her name.’

  ‘Do you remember anything of her voice?’

  Violet shook her head. ‘I was upstairs and the door to his library was closed. It was the tone of the words I remember most clearly.’

  ‘The tone?’

  ‘Anger. Fury. All those things he used to be with me. If the sapphire is indeed a part of a necklace then it could be found. Jewellers tend to note such valuable articles and if we are careful we may be able to trace it.’

  ‘I will put out the word.’

  ‘Could it have been the jewellery of the one you spoke of? The Frenchwoman who you saw leave Cummings’s house?’

  Aurelian laughed then. ‘You sound just like Shay. A sleuth in the making.’

  ‘I will take that as a compliment.’

  ‘It is.’

  And just like that the feeling between them changed, the air becoming thinner and the skin on her arms rising into need. The power of sensuality surprised her.

  He felt it, too, she could see he did, for his gold eyes flared as he stood, bringing her in to him, his fingers on her cheek where she had been hit and his voice hoarse.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If it had been worse...’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  His mouth came down across hers, warm and tender with the underlying flavour of a wildness tempered and she met him halfway with her own need, unhidden and primal. An equal taking and giving, a touch that was wanted and returned, her insides melting into heat.

  They were a part of the scenery around them, melded into the greenery and the silence as they lay down, alive completely, even in the winter cold. The bed made from brush and blankets was surprisingly comfortable and as the light faded into darkness the lines all around them blurred into charcoal. Aurelian pulled the thick blankets up so that only their heads were visible as she clung on to his warmth and strength.

  Above them the stars were strewn across an endless sky, quick bursts of cloud cover only fleeting. The beauty of the wide open enormity of the heavens was something that Violet had seldom given much thought to before. She’d always had walls around her and barriers. Here the freedom brought tears to her eyes.

  ‘They drugged me when they took me from Lackington’s. I think it was laudanum, sweet smelling and fast acting.’

  ‘Yes, probably laudanum.’

  ‘Have you ever used it?’

  She felt rather than saw him smile. ‘To kidnap someone? No.’

  ‘How did you know they had taken me? Who found the ring?’

  ‘Tucker. He was waiting for me when I got back to London.’

  ‘But to find that particular inn on the road among all the others...?’

  ‘I guessed.’

  ‘Then you must be good at guessing, Comte de Beaumont.’

  Again, he smiled. ‘Oh, I am, Lady Addington. I am good at other things, too.’

  She moved towards him, face-to-face and pressing in. ‘What sort of other things?’

  His hand unbuttoned the fall of his breeches and he pushed them down. ‘Loving you. Wanting you. Needing you.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘All day while we were riding. All the hours of searching for you, too. Nothing can stop it.’

  ‘Even my inability to bear children?’

  He turned her beneath him and positioned himself to enter her. ‘Least of all that.’

  Then they were joined, heat rising in the cold, a gasp of breath, the race of blood, heartbeats gathered into a single rhythm. She cried out and the sound echoed back to them in the hollowed glade, over and over, the sweet release that took her making everything right again.

  It was morning when she opened her eyes, Aurelian was nowhere to be seen. The birdsong was prolific and shrill and the hundreds of small insects awakening to the new day twirled and zinged in the breaking arcs of sunrise.

  Stretching, she felt reborn and it delighted her, the dry and brittle woman she had been for all six years of her marriage softened now and receptive. She liked the scent of him and the feel of him and the taste.

  This was how God had made people, she then thought, all her senses startled into notice, every fibre of her being wanting him.

  He returned after a good quarter of an hour, three fish dangling from one hand, a man at home anywhere and well able to provide for himself.

  ‘You look like Poseidon home from the sea.’

  ‘Come to seduce a nymph with fish?’

  ‘If you can provide me with breakfast I think I shall succumb.’

  ‘Give me a moment, then.’

  He started a fire with the same ease as he had yesterday and proceeded to fillet the fish he had caught.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Two bream and a perch. Napoleon does not send money to feed his troops as they cross the lands they vanquish. One has to improvise or starve.’

  * * *

  He had starved often, Lian thought then, the humour of the day wilting. In the north of Spain and in Portugal and in the cold of the Pyrenees. But he had been lucky, too, for many others had not survived to tell the tale.

  Banishing such maudlin reflections, he reasoned that for this moment no one was near enough to be dangerous to them or a threat of any kind. It was just himself and Violet, the hat she had worn yesterday discarded this morning, the length of crimson settling across her shoulders and down her back.

  The bruises on her cheek were darker, the puffiness under one eye spreading. A battered beauty but brave. He could barely stop himself from putting the fish to one side and finding her warmth.

  But she looked both tired and hungry and they hadn’t eaten much since yesterday morning. They would reach Addington Manor some time in the afternoon and needed sustenance to see them on their way.

  ‘You were up early?’

  ‘I sleep better with you than I ever do alone.’

  He gave her these words because the truth in them was startling. He could not remember a morning in years when he had awoken so late to the sound of birdsong.

  ‘It is the same with me. Perhaps we wear each other out.’

  He laughed at that as he laid the first fillet of perch in to his small pan.

  ‘Then I shall feed you to replenish your energy, my lady.’

  ‘“If music be t
he food of love, play on.”’ She remembered the quote from boarding school.

  ‘You read Shakespeare?’ He asked this after a moment or two.

  ‘Books were like friends to me when I had none.’

  He’d liked to have met Harland Addington in life, Lian thought then, if only to place his hands about his throat and squeeze the breath from him.

  He almost said as much but then decided against it given the mystery of the Viscount’s death, which she had yet to explain. Pulling the fish from the pan, he served it on a plate taken from his saddlebag and watched as she lifted the white flesh to her mouth.

  ‘Salt might have made it better, and butter, but...’

  She shook her head. ‘It is delicious, Aurelian. The most delicious fish I have ever eaten in my life. Thank you.’

  She was not a woman to stand on ceremony. That thought warmed him considerably, for how often had he been in the company of females who did not appreciate the simple things?

  His mother had been the same, finding joy in humble treats and making the most of chance and change.

  ‘One day I shall catch you a brown trout at Compton Park, for to me it is the king of all fish.’

  ‘Compton Park is your house?’

  ‘In Sussex. An hour away from Shay and Celeste’s estate. It was a part of the reason I wanted to come to live in England.’

  ‘I have heard stories of the beauty of it.’

  ‘Yet to me it’s simply home.’

  ‘A place to stay, to settle.’

  There was a puzzlement in her words that he wondered about and yet after his dismissed marriage proposal he had no desire to mention his hopes again.

  Now was enough. This moment under this sky with fresh food to eat and good company to enjoy. Even the cold seemed lessened today.

  He’d always been someone who looked ahead. But now with Violet he only thought of stopping which was just another way that she had changed him.

  ‘I need to return to Paris to finish a few things and then I will be back.’

  ‘The gold?’ she asked and he nodded.

  ‘Nothing is easy until it is finished.’