by Sophia James
* * *
‘What was in the document, Sandrine? The one Baudoin wanted me to see? Pierre said that he saw you reading them.’
‘I do not remember.’
‘Liar.’ There was an unexpected laughter in Lebansart’s voice as if they were playing a game that he liked. The taste of fear and panic was bitter in her throat, but there was something else again. Triumph, if she could name it. They had not mentioned Colbert at all.
Guy’s voice was close as he loosened her hair. ‘Perhaps you might tell me when we are alone, ma chérie?’ His fingers digging into her arm belied his nonchalance and around him others lingered. More than a few others. Ten or twelve, she supposed, and behind them in the shadows more would be waiting.
‘Silver-tongued Leb’, he was called back at the compound. A man who spun a web around his prey without fuss or contretemps. He had not even drawn his own knife, leaving that to those about him, their sharp blades seen against the dimness.
She had lost. She had rolled her dice and lost. But she had kept Nathanael safe and away in the arms of sleep.
The commotion started as a low roar and then a louder clatter. The sound of a neck breaking and a knife jammed into breath and he was there, beside her, reaching out, the touch of him breaking her heart.
Nathanael. Already the others were circling behind him, quiet in the early dawn, like a pack of wolves waiting for the command to attack.
She did not let him speak; one word and they would kill him. One wrong sound and it would all be over.
Instead she got in first, swinging her left hand around to his face and opening his jaw with the sharpened edge of her marriage ring at exactly the same time another hit him from behind, the sound of metal against his skull crunching.
He bent over, shaking his head as he did so, trying to find vision.
Do not speak, Nathanael. Do not claim me.
She thought quickly. Lebansart had ties with the government that he would not wish to jeopardise. ‘I have seen him before. He is a soldier of France so better to leave him alive. But do as you will, I really don’t care.’
Looking away, she tipped her head towards her captor, trying to bring forth all of her womanly powers. If they killed Nathanael she would die as well, but the threat of the might of the military seemed to have done its job.
‘We don’t need the army after us. So blindfold him and bring him along.’
Another thump against flesh and she turned back, the blood from his jaw spilling over his shirt and his lips red raw from a wallop. He looked dazed, barely conscious. No blades though, no telltale sign of an injury that he would not recover from.
She laughed in relief, the sound bringing the attention of Lebansart back to her before he had the chance to change his mind. ‘Perhaps we might find a place to speak, Guy.’
When his arm threaded round her and his hand cupped her breast she simply snuggled in.
‘Sandrine, the whore.’ She heard the voice of a man behind and knew that Nathanael would have known exactly what she allowed.
A whole lifetime of his years for a few moments of her shame. A tenable payment. She did not look back again as Lebansart led her away, his fingers closing in around the small shape of her ruined hand.
* * *
Nat came awake in a bed and a room, a priest at his side and the light of morning on his face.
‘Finally you have woken, monsieur. You were found beside the river Basse six days ago and have been in and out of consciousness ever since. In truth, we did not think that you would survive, but we prayed and God has answered us our call.’
Six days.
Sandrine would be long gone.
His head ached and his sight seemed compromised. The wound on the side of his jaw smarted, and he put up his hand to feel it.
‘We stitched it and it is healing.’
Sandrine. He remembered the look on her face as she had led the Frenchman away. Pleasure. Flirtation. Relief. She had not even glanced back at him as she allowed the enemy everything.
Sandrine the whore.
He hated her, this woman who was his wife, hated her lies and her easy betrayal. He had not known her at all in the days of their flight from Nay. A stranger. A harlot. A cheat.
‘There is someone waiting for you outside. He is an Englishman and he would like to talk with you. Do you feel up to this yet?’
When Nat nodded the priest rose and left. A moment later a tall man with sandy hair came through to stand beside the bed.
‘I am Alan Heslop,’ he said quietly, ‘from the British Service, and I have come to see what you know of the Baudoin brothers. It seems you were at their compound and a fight ensued? I ask this of you because two of our agents were targeted and killed this past week, brothers whose names were on the letters taken by the Baudoins from the overturned carriage of Christian de Gennes. Letters that were known to have been in the compound.’
Didier and Gilbert Desrosiers were dead? Sandrine would have seen the documents and told of them, then. He stayed silent.
‘My sources say there was a woman. A woman was reputed to have been there.’
He opened his mouth and then closed it. Even now, after all that had happened, he could not bring himself to betray her. If the British Service had word of her involvement they would hunt her to the ends of the earth. Garnering breath, he tried again.
‘I saw no one. I left after Anton Baudoin shot me.’ Lifting his shirt, he noticed the heightened interest of the newcomer. ‘By all accounts, de Gennes’s letters were at the compound, but I could find no trace of them.’
‘Did you speak with Baudoin?’
‘No. I was there in battle and there wasn’t a chance of conversation before I killed him.’
‘I see. You will start back for England next week. The Home Office has made arrangements for you to travel by ship, though I suppose you will need to answer more questions when you return.’
‘Of course.’
‘But for now you must rest. I will have warm broth sent in from the kitchen for you have lost a good deal of weight from the beating you received. It seems you were dropped in the river to drown, but your coat snagged on a pillar as the current took you away and a group of youths found you.’
‘A lucky escape, then.’
‘Perhaps.’ The man’s glance caught his own and without another word he left the room.
When he was gone, Nathaniel began to take stock of the wounds he had incurred. A heavily bandaged head, a broken right arm and two eyes that were so swollen it was hard to see.
Sandrine Mercier had betrayed both him and England to save herself.
Closing his eyes, he shut everything out and willed himself to survive.
On returning home, Nathaniel went straight to the family seat. His grandfather, the Earl of St Auburn, stood before him, a heavy frown upon his brow.
‘A further scrape that you have no explanation for, and a newly made scar on your chin that looks like you have been in another fight. And to top it all off you have lost your grandmother’s ring. An heirloom. Irreplaceable. I am almost seventy-three years old, Nathaniel, and you have never stopped disappointing me.’
Nat stood and finished his drink. It had been a bad idea to expect that William Lindsay might have welcomed him home after hard, long and lonely months abroad. Tonight, however, with the portrait of his father upon the wall above his head, Nat had had enough of such hostility.
‘I shall be at Stephen Hawkhurst’s for the next few weeks before going back to Europe, William.’
‘Running away as usual. The St Auburn inheritance does not simply see to itself, you know. A small interest on your behalf as the one who will inherit the responsibility would not go unnoticed.’
‘I am certain you are quite competent at the helm. I am also ce
rtain that any changes I made to the estate would only incense you, after all, for we have tried that track before.’
‘Then take a wife, for God’s sake, and settle down. You are old enough to be giving the estate some assurance of longevity, some hand into the future.’
A wife.
Nat almost laughed. He had a wife already and if he could have produced Sandrine Mercier at that moment he would have dearly loved to, if just to see the look of horror and disgust in his grandfather’s eyes. But she had been lost to him in Perpignan, gone into the ether of betrayal, a woman who had not given trust a chance and who had flouted every principle of integrity.
Placing the glass carefully down on a small oak table beside him, Nathaniel tipped his head in parting and left the room.
Chapter Seven
Cassandra Northrup had come to the Forsythe town house on Chesterfield Street with her sister and Riley, just as Nathaniel had hoped she would not.
Tonight she had forsaken the colour of mourning and adorned herself in muted gold, like a flag of defiance, her eyes shining with fight. With her hair dressed and the gown complementing the sleek shades, she was the embodiment of all that Albi de Clare had once predicted.
Unmatched.
Original.
The girl in southern France only just seen through the woman she had become.
She neither fidgeted nor held on to her sister or Kenyon Riley for support, but stood there, chin up.
He doubted he had ever seen her look more beautiful than at this particular moment and when her eyes finally met his, Nathaniel knew without a shadow of doubt that the swirling rumours of a relationship between them had reached her ears.
Her sister appeared less certain, but Riley, positioned in the middle of them both, gave the impression of a cat who had just been offered a bowl of cream. Nat wanted to hit him.
‘Let the games begin.’ Hawk was hardly helping matters, and Reginald Northrup to one edge of the room was watching Cassie intently, as was Hanley.
Undercurrents and anticipation. Nat did not make any move towards the Northrup party whilst he waited to see what would transpire.
The older Forsythes reacted first, moving from Kenyon Riley to Maureen Northrup without a glance at the one beside them. Then Lady Sexton and her husband turned their backs. A cut direct from a woman who was known for her own dalliance was hardly lethal. But it was the next snub that did it.
Lydia Forsythe, the young hostess who had the most to thank Cassandra for given her recent brush with the chandelier, simply stood, right in front of her, the slender wine goblet she held tinkling to the ground, shattering into pieces.
The band ceased playing.
Silence descended, the inheld breath of a hundred guests slicing through movement, ruin taking the physical form of a woman in a glorious gown and sharp blue-green eyes. She stood very stiffly, the horror of all that was transpiring barely hidden upon her face, her mutilated fist tight wrapped in the folds of her golden skirt.
Despite trying not to, Nathaniel moved forward, the only motion in a room of stillness and those all around craned their necks to see just exactly what might happen next.
‘Unfortunately, Miss Lydia Forsythe is a woman prone to histrionics,’ he said as he reached Cassie, then he lowered his tone. ‘However, if you act as if you do not care you might be able to salvage something of the evening yet.’
Cassandra was silent, dumbfounded, he supposed, by the way things had plummeted from bad to worse. Worry had furrowed a deep frown in the space between her eyes.
‘The trick in it is to converse as if you have all the time in the world or at least smile. Your face at the moment suggests you believe in the ruin of your name and this is exactly what others here have come to see.’
To give Cassie her due, she did try, the glimmer of humour showing where before only a frown had etched her brow.
Her sister, however, picking up the undercurrents, began to help, droning on about the seasonal changes and the new buildings in Kew Gardens. Riley stood silent, the grin on his face infuriating.
‘I always love the Palm House, of course, but I think the Water Lily House will be every bit as beautiful. They say when it is finished the giant Amazonian lily will flourish within it and that a child might sit on a leaf like a boat and not get wet at all. Imagine how huge it will be.’
Amazonian must have been a difficult word to say for someone who could not hear properly, Nat determined, though Maureen’s unusual pronunciation did have the effect of making Cassandra’s lips turn upwards.
Around them the silence was beginning to change into chatter, the terrible scene that some might have hoped for fading into something unremarkable. Even Lydia Forsythe had pulled herself together, her mother signalling to the band to begin to play again and the young hostess making an overture of civility towards the Northrups in the form of a genuine smile.
A waltz. Without waiting for another moment, Nat asked Cassie for the dance and they stepped on to the floor.
‘Thank you.’ She held him away as they moved, a large space between them, circumspect and prudent. They did not dance as lovers might, though beneath his palms the warmth of the old Sandrine lingered. He tried to ignore it.
‘Your uncle appears to welcome the demise of your name.’
‘I think his enmity has something to do with his relationship with my mother.’
‘It was his friend Hanley who told the world he saw us together.’
Her direct glance faltered. ‘I have heard.’
‘What would Reginald Northrup have to gain by discrediting you?’
She shook her head. ‘Not the title, for Rodney is the heir apparent.’
He might have asked of her movements after Perpignan then, just to see what she might tell him, but the colour in her cheeks was returning. Besides, the middle of a crowded dance floor was not a place he wanted to hear an answer in.
‘He is far more wealthy than my father, so money cannot be a factor.’
‘A man with no obvious motive is more dangerous than those who have one, and if your nocturnal wanderings are known to him then it would be wise to be careful. Or cease altogether.’
She tipped her head, her expression puzzled, and his fingers tightened around hers in a will all of their own.
* * *
He was so beautiful and so known.
The corners of Cassie’s heart squeezed into pain as he watched her, grey ringed with just a touch of dark blue. In his arms, here in the middle of a crowded ballroom, she felt completely safeguarded, even given the poor start to the evening. No one could touch her. No one dared. The exhilaration was surprising.
‘Come with me next time, Nathaniel. Come and see just what it is that the Daughters of the Poor do.’
His lazy smile was lethal. ‘I have already discovered some part of it in the bawd house off Whitechapel Road.’
‘No. Not that. It’s the successes you need to see.’ She thought of the toddler Katie, her injuries fading and her smile blooming again. It was these things that she wanted him to know of. A new beginning. Another finer path away from the chaos that had once consumed them.
‘Please.’ She did not wish to beg, but this moment might be her only chance to make him understand that sometimes with endeavour honour could be reinstated.
‘When?’
The anger in the room and all her problems melted away with that one small question. He would allow her a chance? For the first time that night her breath was not tight and the beat of her heart quickened from something other than fear.
‘As soon as I know I shall send you word.’
‘Very well.’
‘Wear black.’
Nothing now was the same between them as it had once been, but inside of her a bright warmth bloomed. The papers th
at held them together had probably long been lost and she no longer had his ring, but there it was, that same feeling from France that pulsed in every part of her body.
Love me. Love me. Love me.
Just a little. Just a bit. Just enough to allow the possibility of an understanding and forgiveness.
‘How long has your charity been running for?’ His question cut through all her fantasies.
‘Two years now. I found two young girls wandering in Regent Street and on enquiry discovered they had been brought in from the country and then lost.’
‘So you took them home?’
‘Actually, no. I found out the place they had been stolen from and returned them. That was how it all began. Sometimes, though, it is not so easy. Sometimes young women are lost to us or put to work in the seedy houses of London and it is hard to recover them again. The only real chance of saving anyone is finding them before they are sold.’
‘That sounds difficult.’
‘It is. People do not want to know that this is happening. Here in the grand salons of London they turn the other cheek because looking would be too harsh upon their sensibilities, and if Lydia Forsythe almost swoons away on seeing me, imagine what might happen if she were to confront such a truth. It is my belief that the Victorian model of virtue strips females of the things they should be capable of knowing.’
‘A fierce criticism?’
‘But a true one.’
‘I heard that you were in Paris after...us.’
Had he not been holding her she might have tripped, the danger of letting her guard down so very real. It was the seeing him again and gaining his help in a moment when she might have been crucified without him. Everything they had been to each other imperilled all she had become alone, and the decisions she had made after he had been dragged away by Lebansart’s men influenced things again.