by Sophia James
‘I have had a trying day,’ he said as he handed one to her, ‘and as you are the reason for it I hope you will join me in a drink.’
‘A celebration of your notoriety?’ Even as she gave the reply she wished she had not, but he only smiled.
‘Yesterday the débutantes and their mothers were pursuing me with all the wiles in the world. Today they are...fleeing.’
‘Sexual deviance may appear rather daunting to any woman, no matter the size of the purse an ancient family brings.’
At that he did laugh.
‘How did you know the man who was murdered?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Then why were you there?’
‘I had word of young girls being brought in from the country.’
‘And you were attempting to locate them?’ Lifting his glass, he held it up and waited for her to take a sip. Cassandra hated strong drink, but, not wishing to annoy him further, she took a mouthful and swallowed. The burning bitterness reminded her of Nay and of all that she longed to forget.
‘The information I received gave a location, a time and a date, but when I got there the man was already dead.’
‘With a knife in the back of his neck?’
‘Yes.’ She did not blink.
‘What else did you see?’
‘A briefcase that was empty of papers.’
‘Papers like this one I found in the corridor outside the murdered man’s room.’
He brought out a sheet of tightly written words. He knew she recognised it by her sudden stillness. ‘Your father pens articles for a science journal. The editor is a friend of mine and I spent a few hours this afternoon with him. When, by chance, he showed me Lord Cowper’s latest offering the two hands appeared identical.’
‘That is what the person who put this there wanted you to think, wanted the constabulary to think. My father is the one person who can stop them.’
‘How?’
‘He funds the Daughters of the Poor, and we are making good progress in catching those who trade the lives of young girls for work in the factories and the brothels.’
‘We, meaning you. You in your boy’s clothes in the dead of night risking life, limb and reputation.’
‘Gone.’
‘Pardon?’
‘My reputation is gone. You of all people should know that.’
‘The redemption of a sinner then, brazen and unmindful. I expected more of you.’
‘Oh, I have ceased trying to live up to any expectations save that of my own, my lord. Now prudence rules over heroics, which in itself is a timely lesson for all who might rally against injustice.’
‘Society holds you up as a saint?’
‘Hardly that.’
‘But not as a whore?’
The quick punch of hurt and then nothing. By the time she had come out from that hovel of a building in Perpignan Nathanael Colbert had long been gone and she had wiped all trace of sacrifice from her conscience since.
Just a small space of hours, blurred by pain.
She was glad he had not insisted on the removal of her chemise last night for even in that darkened room he would have seen and known. Her shame. She glanced away, knowing the black anger of it would be showing in her eyes and she did not wish for him to see.
The mark on his jaw shone opaque against the firelight, lost slightly in the growth of stubble. If he grew a beard, it would be gone entirely. She was glad he had not. Had he wanted to he could have erased all memory of her for ever. As it was he must look every day into his reflection and be reminded.
The futility of everything blended with the brandy, a melancholy covering all she had hoped for once. He was as beautiful as he had been then, in every way, strong and self-assured, although the mantle of aristocracy gave him an added allure.
Shallow, she knew, but it was a fact. With a man like this she could be safe.
Sense reined in fantasy. He was all but promised to the beautiful and clever Lady Acacia Bellowes-Browne, a woman who would suit him exactly and in every way. She wondered if he ever thought of the hurried marriage in the village by the river where Mademoiselle Sandrine Mercier had married Monsieur Nathanael Colbert, two names plucked from a half-truth and settled in the register like impostors.
At this very moment all he looked was angry.
‘Every time you come into my life, Sandrine, it seems chaos follows.’
‘I am no longer Sandrine.’
‘Are you not?’ He came closer, the largeness of him disconcerting. England seemed full of small men with the smell of a woman about them, the indolence of life written upon their skin in softness, the bloom of ease apparent. Nathaniel Lindsay had none of these qualities. He could have been transported here from an earlier time, the menace and threat of him magnified in a room filled with books and quiet pursuits. She would be most unwise to ever think that a lord like this could offer safety after all that she had done to him.
‘What other woman of the ton would dress as a lad and walk the back streets of hopelessness in the midnight hours? Your father must be demented to allow it.’
At that she laughed. ‘The days of a man’s ordinance over me are long gone, Lord Lindsay.’
‘Even a husband’s?’
She had wondered when he would mention it, had been expecting him to from the very outset, but the word still made her blanch, the beat of her heart hurrying with the reference.
‘If our marriage was deemed to be a binding agreement, then our years apart must allow grounds for question. But given the circumstances, I should imagine it was not.’
He smiled, but the steel in his eyes hardened.
‘Why were you there, at the brothel?’ She needed to know if he was friend or foe.
‘Two women were killed a month ago beside the Thames in Whitechapel. I was following up a lead to find the man who did it.’
Every word he said made their relationship more dangerous. ‘Do you have names?’
‘No.’
‘Other clues, then?’
‘I am looking for a tall and well-heeled man. His hair is dark.’
‘Such a one has been seen by the children we have rescued on a number of occasions.’ She wondered why she told him.
‘Which is why you were at the de Clare ball, no doubt. Scouting?’
‘You read my intentions with too much ease for comfort of mind, Lord Lindsay.’
‘Do I, Miss Northrup?’ Something had changed between them in just this single second. She felt the tension in the room shift to something less certain.
‘What happened after I last saw you with Guy Lebansart?’
‘I grew up. I paid the debts I owed and I grew up.’
‘You sacrificed others to save me? Why?’ Anger creased his brow.
She felt the breath in her hollow, felt the beat of her heart flatten into some new and risky unease, and did not speak.
‘I never asked that of you.’ Said in the manner of a man who was not comfortable with indebtedness. ‘Nor did I want it from you.’
She had had enough. ‘You think that you might control everything, my lord? You think that people should only march to your drum, the drum of the morally justified? Are you now one of those men who cannot see another side of an argument, the side where good and bad mix in together to create a new word, an in-between word, that allows life?’ Whirling around, she went to stand at the window. Part of her thought to slip through it into safety, but another part understood that without explanation she might never be free of him and he was dangerous. To the life she had built which depended to a large extent on her being accepted by those she mingled with.
‘After leaving you I stayed in Perpignan. I was shocked by all that happened, you understand. Celeste’s family needed time to k
now of the demise of their loved one and I needed a space to myself before...’ She stopped.
‘Before you returned to England?’
Jamie. Jamie. Jamie.
Under each and every word said his small and beloved face lingered and it was all she could do to hold him safe.
‘I have forged a life here. My life. Once, a very long time ago, I was someone else.’
A traitor. A wife. A victim.
A woman who had used every part of her wiles to save the father of her baby. She did not flinch as he watched her. She did not think of the marks on her breast or the weeks of fever that had followed. She thought only of Jamie.
As if Nathaniel Lindsay’s fingers had a mind of their own they went to his chin and traced the damage. ‘I thought that I knew you then, but now...’
‘Now we are strangers travelling in different directions, my lord.’
Away from each other? Away to safety.
Turn and go now. Turn and go before he touches you and before the quiet way he gives his words makes you foolish. It is the only way that Jamie can stay safe.
With a quick snatch at the curtain, she lifted her leg across the sill and was gone.
* * *
Nat stood and watched her run, her shadow barely there against the line of trees, blending in the moonlight.
Even with Acacia he had never felt this connection, this need to protect her from all and sundry. Cassandra Northrup made him crazy, witless and sad, yet the feel of her slight body against his in the warm waters of the high pool above Bagnères-de-Bigorre lingered.
Shimmering against reason.
They had gone there by chance, a traveller’s tale remembered, a small, ancient and lonely pool set amongst the mountain scrub, steam rising like God’s breath from the very bowels of a restless earth.
She had forged on ahead from the little house by the river, trying to escape him, he was to understand with time, hurrying along the mountain passes without looking back, though when he had found her a good two hours later she had given no explanation and he had not wanted to ask for one.
After that they had moved with their own thoughts across the landscape, always climbing higher. An image of Alph the sacred river running to measureless caverns and sunless seas took his imagination. Sandrine was like a sylph, light of foot and pure of heart, her hair in the grey mists the only bright and shining beacon.
His wife.
He had never been married before and the troth was surprising in its power. She was young, he knew that, but under her youth there was wisdom and discernment born from an adversity he could only wonder at.
His.
For better or for worse.
He quickened his pace. Already she was thirty feet in front of him and the slope was steepening, but to his left was the grotto he had found many years before, the steam even from this distance visible.
‘There.’ He pointed, and she shaded her eyes and looked, a smile rewarding his discovery.
‘We can take a bath?’
He nodded and took her hand because the shale was treacherous and he did not wish for her to slip.
Later, in the cold winters of London, he would think of this time and try to remember each and every moment of it. Back then the relief of another chance at life after their sickness had made him feel exhilarated.
He could smell the sulphur as they came across the last rise, the warmth of air in the wind blowing towards them. Like an invitation, and just for a moment, he imagined them as the only people upon the entire planet, lost in the universe. He wondered if the fevers had taken his reason because he seldom thought like this, the flowery rhetoric of the Romantic poets on his tongue. Perhaps it was Sandrine who made him such but he didn’t like to think of what that might mean.
Nat’s side ached, and he still felt hot, but a day out amongst the clouds had revitalised and settled him.
‘Will others come?’ Her voice was small.
‘Not now.’ Already the light was falling. Another hour and it would be gone completely.
When she smiled, he smiled back, his aching bones crying out for a warm soak in a mineral pool. She dipped in her fingers, the ruined hand swallowed by opaque water, nestled in heat.
‘You have been here before?’
‘A long while ago.’
‘Is your home near?’
This time he merely shook his head and sat down, taking off his boots and placing his socks carefully within the leather so that they did not get damp.
She was watching him, her eyes filled with delight. A joyous Sandrine was so different from the one he more usually saw, the dimples in her cheeks deep and the quiet creases of laughter charming.
‘Put your clothes under mine when you have them off. That way they will stay dry.’
Within a moment he was naked, wading into the water and dipping down. She had turned away, allowing for privacy, but he did not care. Closing his eyes, he waited till she joined him.
‘I cannot ever remember feeling so good.’ Her words were quiet as she lay back, spreading her hair across the surface, like a mermaid or an enchantress, the colour in each strand darkened by the water. She had not pushed off from the bottom for every other part of her body save her face and neck was hidden from him.
Most women of his acquaintance would have simpered and hesitated, a lack of clothes precluding all enjoyment. But not her. She simply took what was offered with a brave determination, the mist beading her eyelashes and small drops settling on her cheeks and lips.
‘It is said in these parts that this pool contains the soul of a sea sprite who lost her lover.’ Another flight of ridiculous fancy. He grimaced.
‘How?’
‘The sprite changed him into a merman so that they might always be together, but his jealous wife threw flames upon his form and he dissolved into steam.’
‘Water and steam. They still live together?’
Sandrine’s hand came up from the pool and she cradled both elements. ‘Legends and science. My mother would have peered into this pool to see what lived inside of each drop.’
‘The new and unseen frontier of science?’
‘You know of this? She looked puzzled and faintly incredulous.
‘When I am not killing people I can be found reading.’
Her laughter rang across the quiet, echoing back. ‘A warrior and a scholar. If you were to go to the salons of the wealthy, Nathanael Colbert, you would be besieged by women. Celeste would have been one of those had she lived.’
‘How did your cousin die?’
‘By her own hand. Baudoin’s brother Louis was her first lover and when he was killed she had no more heart for life.’
‘Difficult for you. The one left.’
She did not answer, but in her eyes there was such grief that he moved closer and took her hand, waiting till she regained composure. All the things that she did not say were written in hard anger upon her face.
‘How did this happen?’ His thumb traced the line of her ruined finger because he knew that to speak of such travesty would be a balm.
‘Baudoin and his brother were always at odds with one another over my cousin. Once, when we first came to Nay, I tried to drag Celeste back from getting involved in an argument and Anton slashed out at me.’
Anguish solidified inside of him, and he attempted for her sake to push it down. ‘I see you holding it now and then, rubbing at the finger that is missing?’
She smiled. ‘It hurts sometimes, a phantom pain as if it is still there.’
The small fragility of her hand made the wound seem even more mindless. The ring of his mother’s that she wore was far too big and he touched it.
‘I will have it resized, Sandrine. So you do not lose it.’
Puzzlement in her e
yes was tinged with surprise. ‘I should not expect you to honour a marriage that was forced upon you when you were too sick to resist.’
‘The church may disagree.’
Their world stood still, steam the only thing moving between them, up into the growing blackness. Their shared night-time kiss also shimmered in the promise.
‘A poor reward, no doubt, for all your endeavours to save me.’ The grasp of her fingers slid about his own.
‘Ah, but it could have been worse. You might have been old or ugly or had the tongue of a shrew.’
She laughed.
‘No. I think on balance I was not at all hard done by.’
The lustrous colour of her hair caught at them, claiming him, binding them as one.
* * *
Alive.
She was still alive and so was he and she was pleased her attempt to escape him had come to nothing. In the silence above the world she allowed her head to rest upon his chest, listening to his heart.
The beat of vitality against her ear, the course of blood and hope and energy. It had been so long since she had been held this way, with care, like a porcelain doll shimmering in the wind. With only a small nudge she might shatter apart completely and she did not want to move. No, here she wanted to know what it felt like to breathe in the sensual and be rewarded by its promise. The lump in her throat thickened. She did not love Nathanael Colbert and he did not love her back but they were man and wife, a pair beneath the gentle hand of God, and in this, His place, a natural pool of light and water and warmth.
For so long she had been fighting alone. For all the months of Nay and then the year before that, her mother’s death embedded in her sadness.
Could she not let it go for one moment on a hillside in the wilds of the Pyrenees and in the company of a man who looked at her as if she was truly beautiful?
No ties save that of a marriage that would never be real. If she survived this flight to Perpignan she would return to England, ruined by all the accounts that would follow her, she was sure of it. But would she ever again be offered the chance of this?
The skin across his arms was brown and hard, the indigo of his tattoo strangely distorted in the water. She touched it now, traced the curl of serpent with one finger and then leant her mouth to the task.