The sun wasn’t up, but he had overslept by at least two hours. The first glimpse of pink on the horizon would appear in another two, and he wanted to conduct most of his search under cover of darkness. Not to mention, Saint Brides must be tripping over his own feet with exhaustion.
He had not a moment to lose.
Chapter 12
Céleste awoke to a painfully bright beam of light streaming in through the window. It was aggravatingly effective at dragging her out of the most restful sleep she had ever had. And it had been so long since she had rested well at all.
In a desperate effort to fall back asleep, she rolled away from the offending light, but the damage had already been done.
She stifled a groan and sat up. Her hair fell over her bare shoulders and down her equally bare back in bunches of curls. Odd. She usually wore a nightgown and plaited her hair…
“Mon Dieu,” she muttered.
It all came rushing back then: the argument, his apology, him returning her wedding band, the way he had touched her and made love to her.
She grew overwarm, and the long neglected bits of her tingled with the memory of what he had done to them, a memory she would do well to forget. It had been a good-bye after all. He was obviously gone, and she was heading straight back to Paris today.
She splashed cool water on her face before ordering up a bath and someone to help her dress. Then, once she was clean and clothed, she ate. Last night, they had never gotten to dinner, and now she was famished.
It was during breakfast in the private parlor Saint Brides had reserved for them that the innkeeper told her a carriage with three servants was waiting for her when she was ready to depart. Also, refreshments had been prepared for the journey and were loaded at the same time as her trunk.
All was ready. Nick had arranged everything for her before sun up.
The thoughtful gesture was threatening to turn her into a regretful, self-pitying watering pot, but this was no time to be missish. It wasn’t as though this outcome was any sort of a surprise. She had known what she had to do.
She nodded briskly and thanked the innkeeper for his trouble, wasting not a moment to board the carriage.
The ride was not as smooth as with Saint Brides’ carriage, but it was comfortable enough, and with the shades drawn, she found herself able to think, something she couldn’t do with Nick sitting across from her with his overwhelming masculine presence. Now she had nothing to do but think about everything. About the way he had tried to talk himself out of an imaginary slight and resorted to clumsy almost-sonnets. The way he had tried to cow her by kissing her on a balcony. The way he had hidden from her behind a plant at one of the most fashionable balls of the Parisian season. The way he had struck up her temper, or kissed her, or said something outrageous when he had wanted to avoid talking about something. The way he had always seemed to be feckless and blithely unconcerned when, actually, he was a brilliant businessman who felt deep affection and responsibly for an orphan boy, enough to raise him as his own and risk his life by chasing villains across France to save him.
Had he been what she had originally thought he was, she could easily have driven him from her mind. But no, he had to be practically faultless with the body of a Roman god.
Foolish, foolish girl. She should have never written that invitation. She should have taken Juliette’s advice and left the past where it belonged. Now she had fallen in love.
The sooner she could get back to Juliette, Béarn, and her usual milieu, the sooner she could begin the daunting task of erasing him from her memory.
Or at least dulling the pain.
Although, if she were lucky, Nick might have thought to request wine or brandy to be included in the refreshments. That would dull things nicely in the interim.
She opened the basket and drew out a small flask. There was water shoved in there, as well, but the flask was what she was after. One sniff told her it was not wine or brandy, but something much stronger. All the better.
She put it to her mouth and took down two large gulps. If that didn’t put her in a more pleasant state of mind in the next ten minutes, she would be surprised… and then try again.
Once the flask was back in the basket, Céleste pulled back the shade to glance outside. It had been hours since they had left the inn. By now, they should be about where the highwaymen had stopped them.
While they seemed to be out of Le Havre, it did not look at all familiar. She wasn’t even sure they were on a road. They were surrounded by tall grass, and she could smell the ocean.
She knocked on the ceiling with no reply. The second time, she knocked with much more force than she would have thought necessary and called for the carriage to stop. This was also met with no reply, but at least the vehicle was stopping.
The door opened, and one of the servants helped her down. The alcohol was working much faster and much better than she had anticipated, and she nearly lost her balance. She might have fallen flat on her face if not for the young man assisting her.
“Are you well, madame?”
“I am well enough,” she lied. She was feeling a bit weak-kneed and finding it difficult to get a good footing on this soggy field, for they were most definitely not on anything close to what one might call a road. “Were you not told to take me to Paris?”
“Just a detour,” the servant replied. “There has been some talk of highwaymen on the main road.”
“I understand wishing to avoid a road frequented by bandits, but is it necessary to avoid roads altogether?” Her tongue felt thick, and the words didn’t sound as clear and crisp as they ought to.
Odd that so little could affect her so quickly after eating a full breakfast this morning. It wasn’t the first time she’d had a stiff drink. She was French, after all.
“Well, madame—” The servant’s voice cut off, and he sent her a wary look.
That was when the sun went dark, and her knees buckled.
* * *
Nick met Saint Brides near the docks as they had planned. Only, he was a trifle late.
“A trifle?” Saint Brides echoed irritably. The chestnut hair under his hat was in disarray, his clothes were sadly rumpled, and he smelled decidedly of fish. “I have been waiting in this crusty corner of this confounded harbor for hours, Pembridge.”
“Imagine how poor Penelope felt,” Nick said. “Waiting two decades while Odysseus fought in war and traveled around the world, having all the adventure. I merely overslept.”
“Pembridge,” Saint Brides ground out. “I am not Penelope, and you are not Odysseus.”
“Well, I am certainly not Penelope,” Nick returned stupidly. “You were the one doing all the waiting.”
“If I weren’t so bleeding tired, I would throw you into the ocean.” Saint Brides pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes.
Nick smiled. “I can swim.”
“In chains,” Saint Brides added, still rubbing his eyes.
Nick laughed. “First, tell me what you have found out.”
Saint Brides’s countenance changed from irritable to soberly concentrating. “I have spoken with captains and crew of every ship docked. No one has seen a boy matching André’s description. Nor would they allow anyone aboard without the proper papers.”
“Then Renaud hasn’t made it to the harbor yet.”
“We moved quickly, but not quickly enough to get here first,” Saint Brides said. “Are you still sure it’s Le Havre they went for?”
“It must be,” Nick said. “If they try any other harbor, they would be apprehended, and we would be notified.”
“Unless they managed to corrupt the officials at port, which isn’t altogether out of the realm of possibility. The port officials are corrupt enough as it is, and Renaud had said the organization was bigger than we thought. How big has it gotten?”
“We may need more men,” Nick said.
Saint Brides nodded. “It’s a deuced good thing I have an army, then. Meet me at the inn when
you are finished with your search.” Then he turned on his heel and strode away.
Nick very much hoped most or all of that army was in Le Havre. Since Saint Brides had already handled the shipyard, Nick would start with the hostelries and gaming halls.
The first several were absolutely no help at all. No one had seen Renaud or Marcel. Nor had they noticed a boy they didn’t already know. Of course, not many took much notice of children unless they were elbows deep in someone’s pockets.
It was well into the afternoon when Nick stepped into Le Port Du Havre, a hotel at the edge of town. Like all the others, it was filled with easy women, pirates and smugglers, and other disreputable seamen. But it was here that he heard the first whispers of Renaud being in town while he was downing a tankard of ale.
The unfortunate scum was shushed and berated before he gave away much else. Consequently, when he left, Nick left… and promptly shoved him into an alley where he beat the rest out of him.
Nick found out Renaud had been seen the day before, gathering supplies fit for a long journey. Then she headed south where one could only assume she kept a vessel and crew.
There was no mention of Marcel or André, but that didn’t signify anything. André was the goods. They wouldn’t murder the goods.
And now Nick had a good idea where they were keeping him.
Nick had become familiar with Le Havre while fighting Napoleon. Five miles south of the harbor was a shack and a decent-sized dock. It wasn’t big enough for a large ship, but someone could take a smaller boat and meet a large ship at sea.
It was a hunch. It was a good one, but still a hunch, nonetheless. If Renaud were there, Nick would need Saint Brides’s help. If Renaud weren’t there, he would have wasted hours of time they could have spent searching. It could cost André’s life, but it could just as easily save it.
Nick rushed back to the inn to rouse Saint Brides.
* * *
“Where is Lady Dumonte?” Saint Brides asked, bleary-eyed, as he pulled on his trousers and fastened them after stuffing in his shirt. He snatched his waistcoat from where it had been laid out on the bed and put it on.
“She left.”
Saint Brides paused in the act of buttoning his waistcoat, his wary green eyes fixed on Nick. “What precisely do you mean, ‘she left’?”
“She isn’t here,” Nick explained, ignoring the deep ache expanding in his chest. “She left for Paris.”
“Paris!” Saint Brides echoed incredulously. “Why the devil did you let her go?”
“I don’t see how I could have stopped her.” Nick picked up Saint Brides’s coat and handed it to him.
“You don’t?” Saint Brides shook his head as though that would make him understand. “I do! Rope, lock and key, guards, a modiste’s shop. She is only one woman, Pembridge. What were you thinking?”
Their bout of lovemaking came to Nick’s mind in painful clarity: the sound of her, the feel of her, the scent of her, the weight of her on his chest as she slept, how quite thoroughly in love he had become, and how empty his life will be without her.
“I was thinking we know Renaud is here,” Nick said, “and Lady Dumonte plans on staying with the Duc de Béarn in Paris where Renaud is not. Not that any of that matters. If Lady Dumonte wants to do something, I can do precious little to stop her. She would defy the laws of physics if she had to.”
“She didn’t really have to, though, did she?” Saint Brides regarded Nick as he tied his cravat with frustrated tugs and manipulations. “I imagine you arranged for a comfortable carriage, food and drink, two or three footmen… or the closest to a footman one could find in this cesspool. You probably even instructed the coachman to avoid the bloody potholes.”
“Those highwaymen were harmless.” Nick picked up Saint Brides’s hat and held it out to him. “I doubt more than two or three bloody potholes lie between here and Paris.”
Saint Brides put on his hat and strode out the door. Nick figured it was that or be prepared to throw punches.
Nick smiled as he tossed on his hat and followed Saint Brides to the stables.
* * *
Céleste slowly opened her eyes. Her stomach felt like a dingy in a hurricane, her head was pounding like the dickens, and her arms ached something fierce. She would have rubbed them, but her hands had been firmly tied behind her back.
Laudanum. She tasted it now that her stomach was intent on pushing it back out the way it had come in. If the way she felt was any indication, she’d had nearly enough to kill her. They must have assumed she wouldn’t drink much from the flask. Half a sip would have made her lethargic enough to be completely helpless instead of plunging into unconsciousness.
She glanced around her, noting she was in a small one-room shack. The only furniture was a small table and a few chairs where Madame Renaud and Marcel sat with a stack of playing cards and a half-empty bottle.
“I am almost sorry we shall not be seeing him,” Renaud said as she put down a card. “Having that pretty Englishman would have been a delight.”
Marcel audibly ground his teeth. “I ought to have smashed his head in. He wouldn’t be so pretty then, now would he?”
“Oh, I am sure I would find the rest of him just as pleasurable as his face,” Renaud said, eyeing the cards in her hand critically.
Marcel snorted and slapped down two cards. “His is the soft body of an aristocrat.”
“You imbecile,” Renaud drawled casually, still studying her cards. “He isn’t just an aristocrat. He is a soldier and a spy. His body is a weapon, a big, hard, dangerous weapon I would love to have under my knife.”
One side of Marcel’s lips curled up in morbid satisfaction.
“What a pleasure it would be to cut into that solid mass of muscle,” Renaud added.
Just then, the door flew open, and a man in dirt-caked attire popped his head inside. “We spotted two riders near the trees.”
“The Englishman?” Renaud’s eyes lit up.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Damn,” she muttered. “Kill them, then.”
The man in the doorway frowned. “But, madame, they may be connected with the gendarmerie.”
Renaud lifted her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Why should I care? We do not have time to bother with them.”
“Of course, madame.” The man nodded, then disappeared back outside, closing the door behind him.
A bundle of soiled laundry on the floor next to Céleste grunted. She looked at it for the first time and realized those clothes had an outcropping of black mussed hair and a dirty face.
André!
Céleste had to stop herself from crying out, from both relief and outrage. The boy was alive, yes, but he had obviously been given a heaping dose of laudanum, as well. If they kept this up, he might not be alive for long.
She shifted slightly to nudge him, but he didn’t move.
Please wake up! Please wake up! Don’t die! Don’t die!
She nudged him again. Still, he didn’t move. She knew he was breathing. He had grunted, had he not? But he was so still.
“Go look at the boy, Marcel.” Renaud laid down the rest of her cards and picked up the bottle. “It sounds like he might be coming to.”
Céleste pretended she was still unconscious as Marcel moved to crouch in front of André.
“Wake up.” He shook André with all the delicacy of a stampede of elephants.
André groaned and shook his head.
“Up, I said.” Marcel shook him again.
This time, André sat straight up, swaying from side to side before he turned decidedly green and covered his mouth with both hands.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Marcel grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up. “Not again.”
André was dragged outside just in time, gagging and casting up his accounts all over the ground. The sound of it nearly had Céleste following suit.
A few minutes later, he was dragged back inside and plopped down where he had been b
efore.
It took all her self-control not to jump up and slap the brute stupid for handling the boy so abominably. The temptation was monstrous, but those two not knowing she was awake was the only advantage she had over them. Still, she couldn’t sit there limply all night. André required medical attention and quickly.
She needed a plan.
“He stinks something terrible,” Renaud said, getting up from the table and moving to stand by the open door. “The sun is going down. Someone should arrive within an hour to take us to the ship.”
“Aye,” Marcel said, joining her just outside the door.
“I want to stretch my legs,” Renaud said. “Stay here and stand guard.” Her footsteps faded as she moved farther from the shack.
Marcel stood outside, taking a long gulp from the bottle he had taken off the table.
Céleste took the opportunity to nudge André very, very gently. She wanted his attention without him getting sick all over her.
When he turned to her, his eyes grew wide with recognition.
“Are you all right?” she mouthed.
He nodded.
“We shall get out of this. I promise,” Céleste whispered, ignoring the tightening in her chest. Nick had said the same thing only yesterday, and he had been good on his word.
If only he were here…
“I have tried, but they keep a close eye on me. They are selling me as a slave.” His brow furrowed as his lips pursed. “The crazy woman wants you for something else. I hear her talk about it. She will never let you get away.”
Céleste could guess what Renaud wanted her for, and it wasn’t pretty. The way she had looked when she had spoken about her knife was both disturbing and enlightening in a macabre sort of way.
She took a deep, steadying breath. “We have to, André. Can you get out of your bindings?”
He nodded.
“Do that. Then untie me.”
André proved adept at freeing himself, and within a minute, he was working on untying her. Once they were both unbound, André sat back against the wall.
To Win a Scoundrel's Heart (The Lords of Whitehall Book 2) Page 20