A Matter of Indiscretion

by Jackie Barbosa

  God help him, he hoped it was true.

  11

  For the first hour of the journey, Thomas managed to keep himself occupied by reading. Sabine, who had borrowed several volumes from Duval’s extensive library, did the same. But even as he tried to immerse himself in the story, he could feel the air between them crackle with the rising tension. He had wanted to keep things between them platonic, but he had only succeeded in making them more volatile. The silence stretched out between them like an invisible but very palpable chain. Any more stress, and one of the links would break, and they’d both be struck by the recoil.

  They couldn’t go on like this for a day, much less ten.

  “We will never get through the day if we do not talk to each other,” he said, setting his book face-down on the seat beside him. His grandmother would have had his hide for subjecting the spine to such abuse.

  Sabine closed her book with a snap and gave him a blank look. “What is it you would like to talk about?”

  Having opened the door to conversation, Thomas was now in a bind of his own making. Perhaps he should have considered some safe topics before he’d gone down this road.

  Instead, he started with a question that probably wasn’t safe at all, but one that had been plaguing him since the night he had told her she was William Pitt’s daughter. He had expected convincing her that her father was someone other than the man who had raised her would be the most difficult part of the mission. Instead, the issue had been of no consequence at all, and that puzzled him. “How long have you known that Claude Rousseau was not your natural father?”

  Sabine pursed her lips in thought and then shook her head. “Honestly, I cannot think of a time when I did not know. I am sure there must have been a first time my mother told me, but I do not remember specifically. It is odd, as I am not even sure how she could have explained it when I was very young, but she must have done it in a way that made sense to me, because I never questioned it. I always knew that my Papa loved me because he chose to raise me as his child even though we weren’t related by blood.”

  “He must have been a very special man,” Thomas said with sincerity. “Especially since, if you had been a boy, his property would have passed to you on his death instead of to his brother.” He could not imagine his own father allowing such a thing to happen. In fact, he felt relatively certain his father would have preferred his property and title revert to the crown than to have it fall into the hands of anyone not related to him by blood.

  “Oh!” Sabine let out a huff of laughter. “I think he actually hoped I would be a boy. In case you hadn’t guessed, Papa and Uncle Etienne never had much in common, but then, they were only half-siblings. Papa’s mother died when he was nine, and his father remarried about a year later. Etienne is my grandfather’s son by his second wife, and from what little I remember of her, she was every bit as mean and selfish as he is. If I had been a boy and thereby denied Etienne the opportunity to inherit the family estate, I imagine Papa would have been thrilled.

  “Except,” she continued with a grimace, “that makes it sound as though he might have been disappointed by the fact that I wasn’t a boy, and I never, ever had that impression. What he wanted more than anything else—and the primary reason he married my mother—was a family, not just a wife, but also a child. He was married twice before he met my mother, you see, and both women died without ever conceiving. He must have been fairly certain he could not sire children himself, so marrying a woman who was already with child made sense. And they were never able to have any other children together, in spite of the fact that they were obviously devoted to one another until Papa’s death, so he may have been correct in his assessment.”

  Thomas recognized the stab of pain in his chest as envy. Her childhood must have been idyllic.

  For all that his grandmother had tried to make up for his parents’ coldness—both toward him and his older brother, Conrad, and toward each other—she had not been able to compensate completely for the chill that set in whenever the pair were in the same room together. Since his grandmother had raised his father and had apparently been wildly in love with her husband, Thomas’s grandfather, he had never understood how his father had turned out to be such a remote, unfeeling man. And whatever lay between his mother and father was more than he could fathom, but he thought their mutual animosities were mostly to blame for their inability to show either of their sons more than the most glancing affection. It was as if they disliked one another so intensely, they could not recognize any part of themselves in their sons. His mother tried harder than his father to show some semblance of parental warmth, but Thomas was always aware that it was an effort for her, which made it seem less like something she genuinely felt and more like something she felt she ought to feel.

  “You were very lucky,” he said, his throat a little thick. “I suspect if my father thought either my brother or I were not his issue, he would have us killed.”

  Sabine’s beautiful blue eyes rounded with a mixture of disbelief and dismay. “Oh, surely you are exaggerating.”

  “He barely tolerates us as it is. Blood is the only thing that matters to him, and having sired a legitimate heir and spare with my mother, he did not feel obliged to do any more. I suppose it is overly dramatic to say he would out-and-out murder me or my brother if he found out we weren’t his offspring, but he would certainly do everything in his power to disinherit us. And under English law, I do not see how he could do that other than to see us dead…or make it appear as if we were.”

  “That is…” she paused and drew a long breath, “…awful. Your childhood must have been miserable. I am sorry.” Je suis désolée, she said. And she sounded genuinely desolate on his behalf. So much so that he felt he had to reverse course. His upbringing hadn’t been that dire, after all.

  “Oh, it was not so bad as all that. Conrad and I had my grandmother—who actually is an Allard from Tarare, by the way—to show us the affection our parents did not. I think something must have gone very wrong early in their marriage, before I was born if not before Conrad was, and it soured their ability to demonstrate that they love us, but I do not truly believe they do not love us, if that makes sense.” He paused for confirmation that she understood what he was getting at.

  “I suppose,” she said, but her tone was so dubious that he couldn’t help smiling.

  “I had plenty of people to care about me anyway. My grandmother, my brother, and my best friends, Walter and Freddie.” The thought of the Langston twins—and of Freddie in particular—made his smile broaden. “I think you and Freddie would get along famously.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “Freddie?”

  “Ah,” he breathed, understanding her confusion. “A nickname for Winifred. She and Walter are twins, and the three of us were thick as thieves when we were young. Half the trouble we got into was trouble she dreamed up, and the other half she made sure we could not easily get out of.”

  “What sorts of things did you do?”

  “Oh, the usual things children get up to: climbing and falling out of trees, skipping lessons to go fishing or swimming, pulling pranks on the tutors we disliked…and also on Conrad, who was—and still is—a bit stuffy.”

  “That sounds like fun. I had a few friends when I was a girl—the daughters of neighboring families my parents got on well with—but if I wanted to climb trees or fish or swim…those were things I did with my Papa. I would not change those moments with him, but I think I would have liked having friends like your Walter and Freddie.” She sighed a bit wistfully. “All of the girls I grew up with are married now and live hours away. What are your friends doing now?”

  “Walter is a vicar in a small village in Cumbria, and Freddie is married to my brother.” Thomas huffed a small laugh. “I still cannot believe either one of those things is true. Walter is the last person I would have expected to become a man of the cloth, but he actually seems to be quite good at it and is happily married, to boot. And Freddie mar
ried to Conrad?” He shook his head. The incongruity of it still stunned him when he stopped to think about it. “She is the most improper countess in England, and he not only allows it but enjoys it because, despite being terribly uptight and proper himself, he loves her to distraction.”

  “All right. Perhaps I am not so very sorry for you after all,” she said. “And I do think I would like to meet this Freddie. She sounds…” She trailed off, obviously at a loss for words.

  “A bit like you?” Thomas supplied.

  “A bit like someone I would have something more than gender in common with.”

  “It was not because you are a woman, you know.” The words leapt out of Thomas’s mouth before he could stop them.

  She squinted her eyes and quirked her mouth in a way that reminded him so forcibly of her true father, the premiere, when he was trying to parse something he found unintelligible, that he found himself wanting to genuflect to her…just for a second. “What was not because I am a woman?”

  He hadn’t planned on making this confession, but now that he’d begun, he couldn’t very well stop. “The reason I would have abducted you if you had not come willingly. I would have had to do the same thing if you were a man. I was sent to get the premiere’s child out of France. If you had been Mr. Pitt’s son, my orders—and my actions—would have been no different.”

  She was silent for a few, long moments before she said, “But if I had been Mr. Pitt’s son instead of his daughter, would you have kissed me back?”

  The air between them crackled again with an entirely different sort of tension than before the conversation began. Everything he had been trying to accomplish had been undone in minutes. Arousal prickled under his skin and thrummed through his veins. “Probably not,” he admitted softly. “But then, I did not kiss you back to convince you to come to England. I kissed you because I wanted to.”

  Her lips parted, and her tongue darted out to dampen them. The gesture pulled him like a magnet. He leaned toward her, the need to taste and feel her mouth beneath his both primal and instinctive. She swayed closer to him, as though she were being tugged by the same invisible force. Their eyes met, and breathing became nearly impossible. Mere inches separated them.

  The carriage rocked and jolted, jerking them apart and out of the moment. Joubert rapped several times on the roof, indicating they’d reached a stopping point in their journey.

  Thomas blinked, backed away, and caught his breath, while Sabine reached for her bonnet, put it on, and tied it with trembling fingers.

  He had almost kissed her. What a terrible mistake.

  No. The mistake was that he had only almost kissed her.

  12

  By the time they reached the coaching inn at the north end of Bourges that night, Sabine was wretchedly stiff and sore and utterly exhausted. Despite the fact that they had stopped every few hours to water the horses and take care of human bodily needs, her knees refused to bend properly, and her bottom ached.

  Monsieur Pearce registered them under the name Martin and procured two rooms, one for Bernard—who was so young that she simply could not think of him as Monsieur Joubert—and one she and Monsieur Pearce would share. Bernard scowled all the way up to their respective bedchambers. He had been none too pleased this morning when he had been informed of their planned sleeping arrangements, but given his uncle’s clear directive that he was not to interfere in any way that might lead to Sabine’s identity being discovered, he had little choice but to tolerate it.

  But Sabine couldn’t shake the certainty that Bernard was going to become a problem. She also did not see any way to broach the subject with Monsieur Pearce without casting aspersions on his judgment or Monsieur Duval’s. Besides, the boy was so obviously infatuated with her—a sentiment she sadly could not return, as her infatuation had already settled elsewhere—that she had a hard time believing he would do anything to put her at risk. So, she kept her counsel and hoped she would be able to intervene before matters reached a tipping point.

  The room she was to share with Monsieur Pearce was small, poorly lit, and smelled faintly of damp. The furnishings in the cramped space consisted of a bed pushed up against the left wall, a privacy screen in opposite corner adjacent to a basin stand and wall-mounted mirror, and a rectangular table with two chairs positioned between them. A small window framed with heavy brown curtains looked out over the street, and a low fire burned in the grate to its right. The bed was piled high with plain white linens, slightly yellowed from use but otherwise clean and serviceable.

  Also, the bed was about the size of the one in her room at home, which meant it was spacious for one person but decidedly not spacious for two. There was no way they could both sleep in that bed without touching each other. The idea should have made her nervous, but the sensation simmering in her belly felt more like anticipation.

  Her trunk and both of their valises had already been brought up for them and sat at the end of the bed. Cheered by the prospect of washing up, she reached up to remove her bonnet, but Monsieur Pearce caught her wrist gently to arrest the movement.

  “Not yet,” he cautioned, pushing the door shut behind him with the heel of his boot. “They still have to bring up our dinner, and I do not want to risk anyone seeing your hair, even a single servant.”

  “Oh.” She nodded, then sighed, looking around the room for some way to occupy herself until the food arrived. “How is it possible that I can be so tired when all I have done all day is sit? The last thing I want to do is sit for even one minute longer, but I am so weary, I am not sure I can stand for long, either.”

  Monsieur Pearce smiled sympathetically. “I have never understood the phenomenon, either. All I can do is assure is that you will grow accustomed to it as the days wear on, and you will not feel quite so wretched at the end of each day as you do now.”

  “I hope not.” She rubbed absently at her lower back. The flare of heat in his eyes at the motion was so brief, she almost missed it, but it brought a flush to her cheeks. Self-consciously, she moved her hand to knead the back of her neck. “How soon do you think dinner will be delivered?”

  “Not soon enough,” he muttered, averting his gaze. He strode toward the fire grate and grabbed the poker, although the fire did not need stirring.

  This was going to be a very long night.

  Maybe, after they had done this a few times, they would be able to be alone in a room together without this…awkwardness. It was not as if they were not both well aware that, under other circumstances, they would likely be sharing this room—and the bed—in a decidedly different way than the situation demanded. It was not as if the strain of not doing what they both wanted was not apparent. But acknowledging it, giving voice to the longing that stretched between them, might be too much temptation to resist. So instead, it simmered underneath every action and interaction, threatening to boil over at the slightest provocation.

  The knock on the door made her jump. At Pearce’s nod, she turned and opened it, tilting her face toward the floor so that the serving woman who had brought up the tray could not get a good look at her face.

  “Here is your dinner, Madam. You want it on the table?”

  “Yes, please,” Pearce answered. “We will put the dishes outside the door when we are finished so you need not come back for them.”

  “As you wish, sir.” She shuffled from the door to the table and set down the tray, from which she removed two large bowls of what Sabine’s nose told her was beef stew and a basket likely filled with bread. There was also a bottle of wine, two glasses, utensils, and serviettes. When the woman finished placing items on her table, she dropped a curtsey in Monsieur Pearce’s direction. “Will there be aught else?”

  He shook his head. “No, thank you.”

  Once the serving woman departed, Sabine finally removed her bonnet with a sigh of relief, and the two of them sat down to eat. The food could not hold a tithe to Madame Charney’s cooking—oh, how Sabine was going to miss her!—but it was not
terrible, either, and the wine was actually quite good. So good, in fact, that Sabine drank rather more than she should have and was a little tipsy by the end of the meal. Perhaps that was why the next words fell out of her mouth. “What would we be doing now if we were really married?”

  Monsieur Pearce reached across the table and set his palm on her right shoulder. At first, she didn’t understand the meaning of the gesture, but then he pushed her gently back to the left, and she realized she had been listing out of the chair. Perhaps she was a little drunker than she thought.

  His brown eyes sparkled in the low light, his expression wistful. He moved his hand to cup her cheek and brushed his thumb across her lips, sending tingles of anticipation along her nerve endings. This was what she had been desperately waiting for, longing for. “If we were married,” he said, his hand dropping from her cheek, “I would do the very same thing I am going to do now. You are foxed, Sabine Rousseau, and so tired you can barely keep from slipping out of your chair. Even if you were my wife, I would be making sure you got into bed and went to sleep. Whatever it is you think you want now, you might regret it in the morning, and I will not take advantage of you—or any woman—when you are vulnerable.”

  “I am not—” she began. There he went again, assuming he knew what she wanted better than she did! But when she tried to stand up, thinking to close the space between them and insist that she knew very well what she was doing, her head spun, and she wobbled precariously.

  Very well then; perhaps in this one instance, he was right. She would not regret touching him or letting him touch her, but she would regret not being fully present for the moment, for every sensation, every emotion.