The Outlaw and the Runaway

by Tatiana March

  She’d been caught between them and had paid a heavy price for it, like a cue ball battered by the solids and stripes into whichever corner might possibly allow a triumph over the other. Well, no one had won the game and least of all her. Her father lay in an unmarked grave on the outskirts of Paris and her mother in unconsecrated ground in Sussex. As far apart in death as they had been in life. She supposed that there at least was some sort of celestial justice in such a fact.

  * * *

  That evening she watched Shayborne’s rooms, watched the light at the window and the shadow on the curtains. He was not alone and she wondered who would visit him this late, a puzzlement that was answered a few minutes after as the door opened and a man dressed in the sombre clothes of a priest stepped out.

  The Englishman watched him depart, though he did so carefully. It was only the tiniest twitch from the curtains above that gave him away, the candlelight behind blown out now to be replaced by darkness. She wondered if she should follow him, but as the man looked neither remarkable nor familiar she stayed hidden under the protection of a plane tree, the moon filtering little light through leaves on to the street.

  Just as she was about to go she saw another figure, his shadow eating up the glow from a lamp above him and with a shock she knew it to be Guy Bernard. He did not hide or melt into the darkness as she did, but stood there like a threat.

  An impasse, then, between the three of them. Guy could not know for certain that the English major was anywhere near, otherwise Celeste knew he would have acted brutally and without hesitation.

  A suspicion, then. A rumour. The first of all the truths that would come. There were fifty apartments in this block and another hundred in the one opposite. People lived close here and it would protect him. It was why Shayborne had chosen it, she supposed, with its heaving, teeming population and its high percentages of itinerant tenants. Nobody would look twice at a newcomer here for they arrived in Paris all the time, especially those in uniform.

  Laying her head back against the dappled trunk, she closed her eyes, her body melting into the shadows inseparable from the tree, and when the first light of dawn rose in the east she saw that she was alone.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes after the bells of Saint Leu rang out the hour of seven, she followed Shayborne, far behind and away from his sight. She wanted to see who he met and where he went. She wanted to understand his purpose.

  She had always shadowed people. It was a big part of her job and she was good at it. No one ever looked back and neither did he. Shayborne strode the city streets as if there was no doubt in his mind that he was safe. He did not act like a man on the run or one who sought the protection of invisibility. He stood so far out that he simply fitted in, a soldier returned from the ghastliness of war and wanting to exist here in the small peace of what was left. He had changed his uniform and she was glad of it, for he wore a dark blue jacket over the grey trousers now.

  * * *

  It was only later Celeste discovered that he had known she was there from the start. He’d left markers and doubled back and then under the canopy of the café, Les Trois Garçons, a hand snaked out and caught at her wrist, dragging her in. Behind striped canvas. Completely out of sight. In a pocket of warm air that held only the two of them.

  She did not scream or fight. Her knife was close and her knee was ready, but she’d known it was him from the very first touch.

  ‘Your disguise is hard to fault, Mademoiselle Fournier.’

  She smiled because to do anything else would be churlish and small.

  ‘But a bread vendor with the luxury of wasting time is noteworthy and the moon last night was bright.’

  ‘When did you know it was me?’

  ‘A minute after you gave me your warning in my rooms under your wig of whiteness. If you hadn’t wanted me to know you, you would not have come.’

  She looked at him then directly. In the daylight, his golden eyes were still beautiful, but they were now every bit as distrustful as her own. No longer a boy but a man, hard, hewed by war and suffering.

  ‘There is not much time left for you in Paris, monsieur, for your friend the jeweller will have a visit before the morrow’s end and it will be much easier for them to find you after that. They already have the arrondissement your apartment is in under surveillance.’

  ‘Do you work for Savary or Clarke?’

  ‘A disappointing question, Major. Try again.’

  ‘You are a lone player trading off the secrets of war to the highest bidders.’

  ‘Warmer.’ She did not look away at all.

  ‘Then you play a dangerous game and one that will kill you in the end.’

  ‘And you think I would care?’

  There was darkness in his glance. ‘Your father might?’

  ‘He is long dead.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘War carries many casualties.’ She did not like the waver in her tone so she coughed to hide it. But Shayborne had heard it, she could tell that he had.

  ‘Your father should not have brought you back to France in the first place.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I told him it was suicide, but he did not listen. Europe was descending into chaos and there was no safe road for any traveller. A simpleton could have worked that out.’

  ‘We are French, Major, and our time in England was at an end. We came home.’ The hardness in her words covered over the anger.

  * * *

  ‘Home to danger and tumult? Home to a rising political anarchy?’

  Hell, Shay thought, could the English girl he had known been entirely lost under the cold French woman she’d become? The black scrawny wig of a baker boy shouldn’t suit her, but it did and her whole demeanour was more than convincing. Celeste Fournier had always been good at hiding who she was, even as a seventeen-year-old.

  ‘Perhaps such travel was as dangerous as your choice of work, Major? You broke a parole to General Marmont in Bayonne and nobody was pleased. Is the word given by a gentleman such a trifling thing, then?’

  ‘The French were going to hang me.’

  ‘In uniform?’ Disbelief lay in her query.

  ‘Not everyone adheres to the rules of warfare. Those soldiers who accompanied me across Spain might not have done the deed themselves, but on the border I was to be handed over to Savary’s thugs on Marmont’s orders. I had heard it said there were instructions to see that I did not live to cause another problem.’ He looked across the street. ‘That man over there reading the paper. Do you know him? I have seen him before.’

  ‘At a guess, I would say he is one of the Minister of Police’s. I recognise the arrogance and the incompetence. You are right before his eyes and he does not see you because it is me he has in his sights.’

  ‘Why you?’

  The sharpness of his observations made her give him the truth. ‘A few days ago I tried to help a French family who had strong ties with England and it did not go well at all.’

  The crouching danger of Paris at war, Shay thought, and no end in sight. ‘So you are under scrutiny for it?’

  ‘Any mistake can be your last here, now that trust has gone.’

  ‘Trust.’

  ‘Everyone says that Napoleon will triumph, but nobody truly believes it any more. By my calculations his empire will be diminishing by the end of next year. I am sure you have heard of his pretensions to capture Moscow.’

  He smiled and tipped his head. ‘Come to Spain with me, then. We could leave tonight.’

  ‘I’m no longer the Celeste Fournier you once knew, Major, and I’d be safer alone.’

  ‘How can it be safer to be taken to the Military Police and named as a spy?’

  ‘There are worse things than an honourable death in this life.’

  ‘And would it be such an honourable death when they find ou
t you have warned me and allowed me to escape? Such a person could not hope for lenience.’

  ‘And I would not expect it.’

  His finger ran across the soft flesh at her throat. ‘Your heart is beating too fast to plead indifference, though your father’s tutelage in the art of theatre adds a certain truth to your charade. It must fool many.’

  ‘I am not like you, Major Shayborne. My morality is questionable at the best of times and if you believe otherwise you will be disappointed. Meet me tomorrow under the front arch of Les Halles if you want my help to leave the city. At five in the morning. Do not bring luggage. It is your last and final choice. If you aren’t there, I shall not see you again. Bonne chance.’

  Anger sliced through him and he bit down on a reply, but she’d pulled away and was already gone.

  Like smoke. There one moment and gone the next. He wondered how she did that, but reasoned the street was suddenly full of pedestrians and she had only been waiting for them to draw near so that she might depart unnoticed. His eyes scanned the road.

  Yes, there she was a good hundred yards away, sliding into the alley behind a cart selling fish. His gaze didn’t linger, though, because other eyes might well be watching and even a little security was better than nothing.

  She’d looked smaller than he remembered and a hell of a lot thinner. And there had been a line of scars circling the sensitive skin above her left wrist. He wondered why.

  * * *

  He had ruffled her calm, she thought, and left her on edge. No one had spoken to her so honestly since her father had died, and the pull to return to England was stronger than she had imagined it might have been.

  A safe place. A quiet and beautiful sanctuary. Shaking her head, she turned away into the shadows, causing her to miss the telltale sign of someone hiding.

  More than one, she corrected a few seconds later when Guy Bernard and Pierre Alan held her between them, arms splayed across the uneven stone of the wall, the black wig tugged off and thrown down, trampled into the dust.

  ‘Benet has reconsidered your part in the Dubois debacle and has sent us to deliver both a warning and a counsel.’ Guy spoke, his voice softly furious, even as his fist slammed into her unprotected stomach, the air viciously expelled from her windpipe, leaving her retching for breath.

  ‘Your other interests are to desist immediately and any further contact with the English shall be taken as treason on your behalf and you will be accorded the appropriate treatment. You are to be made an example of as a message to others, let it be known that there can be no question of loyalty in these difficult times. A tutelage in humility, if you like, and one that reinforces that even the best of us are not immune to answering to the might of France.’ Her face was next, the careful punch of a fist bruising her mouth and shaking her front teeth.

  For a moment, she saw stars about her, the earth tilting and the warmth of blood running down her chin to drip unheeded on to the rough homespun of her trousers.

  ‘Benet wants to make sure that you realise if there is another incident of such a nature, you will be dead. Do you understand? There will be no further clemency.’

  Alan’s knife was out now and the slice across the skin on her right hand cut deep into the flesh between her thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Do you understand?’ Pierre Alan repeated, menace clearly audible.

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed out, feeling the spin of terror. Another few moments of this and she would not make it home, the weakness of shock consuming her former bravado.

  ‘Look at me.’ It was Guy’s voice now, its personal intonation alerting her to a new degradation on its way even as his lips came down hard across her own. One hand curled about her throat, holding her there as the other wormed under her shirt and squeezed her left breast.

  She saw his intent and the horror of her past resurfaced, moving like wraiths under her skin before the world blackened about the edges and she was falling, her blood slick on the coping stones as her feet went from beneath her.

  * * *

  When she woke she still wore all her clothes and was relieved that he had not followed through on the threat implicit in his assault. Leaning over to one side, she was tidily sick, the contents of her stomach soaking her trousers and running across the bleached stone.

  Her nose streamed, her hand smarted and one of her front teeth felt loosened. A lucky escape. A fortunate evasion. The ache in her breast left her dizzy as she fumbled with the buttons on her shirt. He had pinched her there, next to the nipple, pinched her so hard the skin had dimpled and left a red mark.

  But nothing was broken. Nothing would be permanent save for the scars inside. Benet knew his business and Guy was a competent servant. If not for her hope of helping Shayborne, she would have been well bent into submission now, too scared to think for herself, let alone act.

  They could find her whenever and wherever they wanted and next time she would die. Less cleanly than Benet had directed, she imagined, the rush of lust in Guy’s face unhidden. If he had been there alone without Pierre Alan looking on, she wondered if he could have controlled himself. She was certain he would not have.

  A crossroad dressed as a warning. The play of men against a woman. No one knew the true and personal ramifications of what had been threatened, save her.

  She sat back and took her hat in her hand, hiding the injuries with it as others hurried past. For this moment she could not walk, fright having frozen her into incapacity. Passers-by would see a drunk perhaps, a youth who could not hold his liquor, a working boy with little sense or intellect and no hope.

  Breathe, she instructed herself firmly and began to find air, small gulps at first and then greater ones. The tight alarm in her chest loosened and her teeth let go of the soft flesh inside her mouth.

  ‘Papa,’ she whispered when her voice was back, hating the need she could hear in the single word and the tears that stung the cut across one edge of her cheek.

  Copyright © 2018 by Sophia James

  Loyalty to the Brotherhood comes before all. Including women.

  Formidable Viking leader Rurik knows the law. His loyalty to the Forgotten Sons is his bond, and he’ll allow no woman—not even the sultry Parisian thrall he finds in his bed—to threaten what he’s built from the ground up...

  Keep reading for an excerpt from KEPT BY THE VIKING by Gina Conkle.

  Kept by the Viking

  by Gina Conkle

  AD 930

  A Saxon outpost on the northern border of Nor’man land

  Smiling grimly at the darkness, Rurik tucked a bone-handled blade in his boot. Norns had spun his life with stingy threads, but his days of hardship were over. Rouen’s overlord, Will Longsword, promised to make him a landsman, a plum prize for a low-born Viking.

  If he got to Rouen by the midsummer feast.

  Door hinges whined in the quiet, and a shrouded figure crept through the outbuilding. Skin prickling with alertness, Rurik’s hand hovered over the knife. Firelight limned the form slipping past loose-weave curtains into his bed box. A bent knee sank into fur. The bed creaked, and a black cloak parted, revealing enticing curves pressed against a thrall’s grey wool tunic.

  A woman to ease his loins. She should’ve come last night.

  “Didn’t expect a companion this morning.” He caressed her smooth-skinned arm. “I don’t have time—”

  She slapped his hand. “Keep your hands to yourself, Viking. I am not here to be your, your...how do you say comfort woman?”

  A lilting accent melted over sharp Norse. It teased his ear, intriguing him the same as her knocking away his hand. Slaves, thralls, the lowest of laborers knew better than to strike a warrior.

  He sat back, amused. “Frilla. That is a Viking comfort woman.”

  Her chin tipped proudly. “I am not a frilla. I bring you urgent news.”

  The folds o
f her cloak rippled. Did she hide a weapon?

  Familiar, battle-ready tension heated his veins. His eyes narrowed on shadows hiding her face. “Who are you?”

  She scooted closer. “That doesn’t matter. I—”

  He yanked the knife from his boot and sprang at her. It was quick work, wrestling the woman into the pelts. Whatever she’d meant to say was lost in shocked yelps. Her hood fell back. The bed box squeaked in the scuffle, and heavy furs jumbled around his morning visitor. Jamming his forearm high on her chest, he squinted at the woman, but he couldn’t make out her features in scant light.

  “I’ll ask again. Who are you?”

  Shorn fingernails scratched his arm brace. “Stop!”

  The thrall scrabbled beneath him like a doused cat. He jerked his hips back, narrowly missing a knee to his ballocks. Blood thrumming, he swung his leg over thrashing limbs and pinned her with his thigh.

  “I am Sothram’s slave. He is your enemy,” she gasped. “Not me.”

  He held the blade high. “Did he send you to attack me?”

  “No! I detest the man. Put the knife away...if you want to know how the Saxon cheats you.”

  “The blade stays,” he said, nose to nose with her. “And you will tell me Sothram’s plans.”

  Eyes glimmered through tangled black hair. Anger stiffened her limbs. He would feed off it and stay vigilant. A man could never be too careful with the gentler sex. In his travels, he’d heard of fair-faced women plying a deathly trade by luring the hapless traveler into a private place. The end of that tale was always cruel. Thieves robbed the man and beat him unconscious or worse—killed him.

  It had happened to Leif, one of the Forgotten Sons. His loss was a wound that wouldn’t heal.

  Glowering up at him, she jammed the heels of her hands against his shoulders. “I know you won’t hurt an unarmed woman, Rurik of Birka. Your reputation says otherwise.”

  A slow smile formed. The she-cat had spirit, he’d give her that. She wriggled hard, the cradle of her body bumping him. The outbuilding was quiet save the squeaking bed and her feet battering the pelts. One glance proved no one lurked beyond the coarse curtains.