by Shana Galen
He moved to Fortier’s other side. “Put your arm around me, monsieur. I’ll help you up the stairs. We can’t stay here.”
Fortier shoved him away. “I am fine. Damn damp prison air. Give me another day and I’ll be good as new. I’m not so easy to kill.” But he took a step and stumbled, and Rafe caught him.
“Monsieur, are you injured?”
He shook his head. “Just need to gather my strength again. Come, help me out of here.”
Rafe glanced at Collette. Her dark eyes were large in a face that seemed drained of any color. Slowly, she put her arm around her father’s waist, and together, they helped him up the stairs to the quay. “We have to take him to the inn,” she said when they reached the top of the stairs. “He needs rest and care.”
“I agree, but it’s a long walk. We require a carriage.”
“There aren’t likely to be any hackneys here at this time of night. You’ll have to leave us and hail one a few streets over.”
Rafe shook his head. “I’d rather not leave you alone.”
Fortier made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a wheeze. “My daughter can take care of herself.” He gulped in breath. “Give her the pistol. We’ll be fine.”
Rafe’s gaze met hers. She nodded. “I’m an assassin’s daughter. I know a few tricks.”
“Such as knife throwing?” Rafe quipped, thinking of his dagger, still lodged in the thigh of the man on the riverside.
“To begin with.”
Rafe still didn’t like it. He didn’t want to leave her. He didn’t want to admit he half worried she’d be gone when he returned and he’d never see her again. But her father wasn’t well enough to travel. They couldn’t run from him.
“Fine, but we move you out of sight in case the police arrive before I return.” He supported her father again and led him and Collette to a dark doorway of a warehouse. “I’ll be back in a quarter hour. Don’t move.”
She nodded and as he walked away, Rafe had to force himself not to look back.
* * *
A few minutes later, two policemen did arrive. The bodies of the men on the riverside drew their attention, and they never even saw Collette and her father huddled in the doorway. Collette held her father to her, much as he had held her when she was a little girl. He was weak and, except for the one moment on the riverside, seemed frail. But she would nurse him back to health at Gaines’s inn. A few days of rest and good food and he would be ready to leave for America.
More coughs wracked his body, and he tried to muffle them by covering his mouth with his arm.
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” he said, his voice paper thin.
“Nonsense, mon pére. I would never leave you, not when I could save you.”
“Better for you to save yourself, ma chère. You have your life ahead of you. I’ve lived mine.”
“You have many more years ahead of you.” She clutched him tighter as though the sheer strength of her desire could infuse him with vigor. “You need rest and fresh air.”
“I’m unlikely to receive that in a British jail. I’m no safer here than in Paris.”
“I have a plan. I’ll take you to the United States. We’ll be safe there, and I hear there are vast stretches of land. The air is clean. You’ll—”
He put his finger on her lips. “Rafe?”
“Mr. Beaumont. He went to fetch the carriage.”
“I see.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the door. His chest heaved up and down, his breaths labored and shallow. Collette held his hand, her heart pounding with terror. What would she do if she lost him? Where would she go? How was she to go on without him? He was her father. He’d always been by her side, always protected her, always kept her safe. She needed him. She wasn’t ready to let him go and to face the world without him.
The clip-clop of horses’ hooves alerted her to the approaching hackney, and when she peered around the building, she could just make out the outlines of a conveyance approaching. Fog had come in as the darkness deepened, and while it served to hide her and her father, it also gave the warehouses and the quay an eerie, otherworldly look. For a moment, Collette was tempted to hide in the shadows. The hackney looked too much like what she imagined the Grim Reaper might drive on his nightly rounds.
And then it stopped and Rafe jumped out. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew him nonetheless. She’d know that confident manner in which he moved and the easy way he walked even without seeing him clearly.
“Collette.” Her name floated by on the fog.
She considered not answering. She had her father here beside her. She couldn’t give Rafe the opportunity to take him away.
“Answer him,” her father said. She glanced at him sharply. His eyes were still closed, his head still leaning against the door. “You care for him. Your Rafe.”
“His loyalty is to England and the Foreign Office, mon père. I can’t trust him.”
“Then give me to him and run. Let the Foreign Office do their worst. It’s not as though I don’t deserve it.”
“No! I would never leave you.”
“Collette!” It was Rafe’s voice again, and he sounded more urgent.
“Then answer him. I may not know him, but any man who calls after a woman like that feels something for her. He won’t betray us.”
Collette wished she could be so certain. In any case, she was a fool to think she could stay out in the damp with her father, who was already ill and needed a bed and rest. “Here!” she called quietly. Leaning out from their little alcove, she waved her hand. The indistinct shape moved toward her and finally sharpened into Rafe. “The jarvey is skittish. We have to hurry.” He bent and hoisted her father to his feet. Collette had to help because her father seemed to go limp. He groaned when Rafe tried to move him and his head slumped forward.
“Let me get on his other side,” she said, trying to move around the small space.
“No time for that. Go on ahead. I’ll carry him.”
“You’ll what?”
Rafe gestured with his arm and she moved ahead, toward the boxlike shape of the hackney and the more sinewy shape of the horse. She looked back and saw Rafe moving, her father cradled in his arms like a limp child. “Are you certain you have him?” she asked. She had not thought Rafe weak—after all, she’d seen him without his shirt and his chest was impressively muscled—but her father was not a small man.
“I have him.” The slightest strain tinged Rafe’s voice. “He’s not as heavy as he looks.”
Collette did not want to think what those words might have meant. And then they were at the hackney, and Rafe and her father were inside with her, and she needn’t think any longer.
Hours later, when dawn broke, she rose from her father’s bedside, wincing at the ache in her back. She’d nursed him all night, urging broth on him, mopping his brow, moving his pillow so his head might be supported and his coughing lessened. But nothing had seemed to help. What had they done to him in prison? A younger man might have withstood the lack of food and light, the foul air and absence of exercise, but her father’s health had paid the price. She’d given what little money they had so he might be able to buy bedding and food, but she had been in England longer than she’d wanted. He had run out of funds and been forced to sleep on the floor and subsist on meager crusts of bread and stale water.
He slept, and she hoped his rest would last. Sleep would heal him—peaceful sleep—that and a new start. The ocean breeze would revive him when he was strong enough to travel. She moved to the window and parted the curtains. In the early-morning light, the world looked new. Carriages passed, men and women went about their shopping, dogs snatched at dropped food, birds sang, and, in the distance, the ships’ white sails waved on the Thames. Everyone went on about their lives as though the world was not in turmoil, as though everything was the same
as it had always been when, for her, nothing would ever be the same again. She had gained her father, but she would lose Rafe. How was it possible her heart should be so full and yet she felt as though her chest were being ripped in two?
She looked at her father. He was so pale, his hair so white, that he seemed part of the pillow. Under his eyes, dark shadows looked like bruises blossoming and his cheekbones were sharp and stark. She was encouraged by his quiet breathing and his lips were no longer blue. At least the broth and rest had begun the healing process.
“Oh, Papa,” she murmured. Now that he was asleep, she could allow the tears to fall that had pricked her eyes since she had seen him the night before. She swiped at the moisture on her cheeks and closed her eyes, closing her hand on the drapes to keep her knees from buckling. She had to be strong. For him. All of the sacrifices they had made could not be for nothing. She had to leave London. Her father had wanted more for her than a prison cell. He’d wanted peace and happiness, and perhaps they could find that in the United States.
A quiet tap on the door interrupted her thoughts and she crossed to it quickly. Mr. Gaines stood in the hallway, and not wanting to wake her father, Collette stepped outside and closed the door behind her.
Gaines took in her face. “How is he? Or should I not ask?”
“Better. A little better.” She tried to smile and look as though she believed it.
“I spoke to another captain I know, and he has agreed to take you to the United States. He’s sailing for a place called Pennsylvania. I haven’t been there myself, but I’ve heard of it. Large cities there, so a person might easily lose herself. Society too, if you have a yearning to see the theater or a museum.”
“When does he leave?”
“Tomorrow at the earliest, but if his cargo is not all loaded, then the day after.”
“Thank you.” Collette swallowed. “I cannot accept. My father isn’t well enough to travel. I must stay with him until he improves or…” She trailed off. She did not want to add or we are put in prison.
“I understand. Nevertheless, the captain will hold the cabin for you. If circumstances change, you go aboard. In a few months, all of this will be a distant memory.”
That was what she wanted. She wanted Rafe’s smile, his violet eyes, his soft lips—all of it—to be a distant memory. She wanted to stop hurting, to stop feeling the pressure in her chest and the sting of tears behind her eyes. In the room behind her, she heard her father cough. “I have to go to him.”
Gaines nodded. “You let me know if there’s anything else you need. More of that medicine I sent? More broth?”
“Yes, thank you.” She would take all of the help she could.
Gaines turned to go, and Collette grasped his hand in hers. His was large and dark and the fingers roughly callused. But they were strong hands, good hands, honest hands. He squeezed her hand back. “Thank you, sir,” she said. “Thank you for your kindness.”
“It’s my pleasure, miss.”
Her father coughed again and she released Gaines, turning to go back into the room.
* * *
Gaines stood outside her door for a long moment, then looked at Rafe’s door. “You hear all of that?” he asked.
Rafe pushed his door open. There was no point in pretending he hadn’t had it cracked, hadn’t been eavesdropping. “Enough.”
Gaines crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Seems to me the lady is eager to be rid of you. Will you let her go, or will we have a problem?”
Rafe narrowed his eyes. “If there’s a problem, it’s mine. And you can mind your own business, Gaines.”
Gaines shook his head. “She’s in my establishment. That makes her my business.”
Rafe didn’t have a quick retort ready.
“I may be wrong—never have been before—but I think it’s the father you’re after.” Gaines waited. When Rafe didn’t argue, Gaines rocked back on his heels. “The father is no threat to you. He’s weak as a kitten. When I was a slave in Georgia and one of ours got to this point, we dug the grave. Of course, she’s strong enough to fight for him. He may yet pull through. Either way, she’ll be on that ship to Pennsylvania, and if you try to stand in her way—their way—you’ll be sorry for it.”
Rafe wanted to tell Gaines that he was the one who would be sorry, that he had powerful, even dangerous friends. But he wouldn’t ask Ewan or Jasper to bring Collette back to London so the Foreign Office could throw her in prison. She wasn’t any threat to king or country, and Rafe wasn’t about to stand back and watch as she was hung as an example. The best place for her really was far away—far away from England and from him.
Once the Fortiers were gone, Rafe would return to Draven and report that Fortier was dead and his daughter had disappeared. And what did it matter if he lied as long as Fortier was no longer a threat? Rafe would be reprimanded for losing her, and Draven probably wouldn’t give him any more assignments. That was fine with Rafe. He’d go back to his life before Collette. He’d spend his days at the club and his nights surrounded by beautiful women. He could take his pick from the bevy of widows and courtesans, and maybe with a woman on either arm and too much wine, he’d forget Collette’s smile, her scent, the sound of her voice.
Rafe looked back at Gaines. “I won’t stand in her way.”
Gaines studied him. “You look like a man who just lost his life savings at the tables. Do you want some advice?”
“No.” Rafe slid back into his room and closed the door. Gaines’s foot caught in the opening just before it closed. “Move your foot or lose it.” Rafe shoved the door hard. If the pressure pained Gaines, his face didn’t show it.
“You could go with her,” Gaines said.
“To America?” Rafe laughed. “It’s barely civilized.”
Gaines shrugged. “You might be surprised.”
“Besides, if I went to the Americas, which I have no intention of doing, I’d have to marry her.”
Gaines kept his gaze steady.
“I am never marrying. I have two elder brothers and a handful of nephews. I have no need to marry.” Nor did he want to marry. Wives were notoriously unreliable. Look at his own mother. She’d left his father without a word. Rafe preferred to be the one leaving, not the other way around.
“Men have committed deeds far more foolish for love,” Gaines said quietly.
Rafe felt the words like a punch to the sternum. “Undoubtedly, but I’m not in love.”
“No? Then you wouldn’t mind if I tried to persuade Miss Fortier to stay. I’m not married, and she’s brave, beautiful, and intelligent. I wouldn’t want a woman like that to slip through my fingers.”
Rafe’s hands were around Gaines’s neck so fast that he couldn’t remember moving. He slammed the man against the wall across from his room and put his face a fraction of an inch from Gaines’s. “If you so much as look at her—”
Gaines raised his brows. Behind him, Collette’s door opened. Rafe released Gaines immediately and stepped away, straightening his coat.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, her gaze darting from one to the other.
“Nothing,” Gaines said.
“Why do you ask?” Rafe inquired.
She frowned. “Perhaps because your hands were around his neck.” She nodded at Gaines.
“Just a discussion. I’ll fetch the medicine for you, miss, and be right back.”
“Thank you.”
When he was gone, Rafe looked past her and into the bedchamber. “How is he?” He immediately regretted asking.
Her eyes filled with tears. “Not well enough to travel, so if you were hoping to drag him to London so you might collect your reward, you will have to wait.”
Rafe took a breath. He deserved that, he supposed. He had been ordered to find out what he could about Fortier. If he brought the assassin in, Rafe would have be
en praised and rewarded. Perhaps given a knighthood.
And he would have never forgiven himself for losing Collette’s affection.
The war was over. Ewan and Neil and Jasper had killed plenty of Frenchmen. Hero or traitor was a point of view, and Rafe couldn’t see one side clearly any longer.
“I have no intention of taking him or you anywhere,” he said. “I’m not your enemy.”
“You’ll forgive me if I’m not always certain.”
“No, I won’t.”
Her lips pressed together in annoyance.
“May I come in? Perhaps there’s something I can do to help.”
“You have experience in sickrooms?”
Rafe thought of the men who hadn’t made it back from France and the men of his troop who’d been wounded but didn’t die immediately. Then there were the men like Jasper and Nash. Men who had been wounded so badly that he hadn’t known if they would survive. “I know something of them.” And without waiting for more permission, Rafe pushed past her.
Fortier lay on the bed, a small form under the counterpane. His white hair was almost the same color as the pillow, and his skin was pale and sunken. But Rafe had seen men on the precipice of death more times than he liked to remember, and Fortier still had life in him. As Rafe stood at the foot of the bed, Fortier coughed, raising a handkerchief to his mouth reflexively as he did so.
Collette went to her father’s side immediately, dipping a cloth into the basin of water beside the bed, wringing it out, and then placing it on his forehead. Fortier’s eyes fluttered, but otherwise, there was little response.
“You see,” she said quietly, “he is too weak to travel.”
But she would heal him. She was a determined woman, and she’d decided her father would live. The old man had little to say on the matter. The problem was that she could not wait for him to recover. If she waited, the matter of Fortier’s life might be taken out of Rafe’s hands.