Millot grinned painfully. "So it is you! Thank God! For a moment there, I wondered."
Adam sliced his companion a warning stare before moving to the door. He closed it gently. "What's going on?" he asked. "What on earth made you desert your post at such a time? Captain Domfrey said something about a woman."
"Claire Michelet. Have you met her?"
"What?"
"Claire Michelet. You must have met her."
"Is she the girl with the mane of red-gold hair?" Adam lounged against the desk in a posture of indolence. Only his eyes betrayed his alertness.
Millot pressed a hand to his temples. At length he murmured, "Yes. That's her. Oh God. What am I going to tell her?"
"Look," said Adam, searching for his patience, "why don't you begin at the beginning. For God's sake, tell me what's going on! How did you come to sustain those injuries?"
"I was set upon by common footpads," answered Millot, grimacing in self-disgust. "Can you believe it? Don't alarm yourself, I've taken only a few bumps and scratches."
Adam curbed the string of questions that were gathering on his tongue, and Millot, making an effort to pull himself together, embarked on a recitation of the events which had led to the attack upon him.
The girl, he told Adam, had struck a bargain with Philippe Duhet. He explained about the passports and his own intervention to ensure that her young friends got safely away. The boy, he said, had other plans, as he had discovered when he'd gone to the school to fetch him. The boy had run away.
Late of the afternoon, he'd picked up his trail in a local hostelry. As he left the building, he was attacked by two footpads. When he'd come to himself, he was in a quarry, outside the city, and minus his horse and purse.
Adam heard him out in silence, except for the odd question to clarify some point or other.
"I suppose," he struck in at length, "that these so- called 'friends' for whom the girl bartered herself are related to her?"
"It's my guess that they are her brother and sister, though, to be sure, there's no family resemblance. They are as dark as she is fair."
Adam was remembering the youth he'd seen with the girl outside the cathedral. "I wonder what happened to the boy?"
"To be perfectly frank, I have a suspicion that it was the boy, himself, who arranged to have me waylaid."
"What makes you say so?"
"Mmm? Oh, those footpadsthey had knives and pistols. They might easily have killed me. They merely mishandled me a little, and before I lost consciousness I heard a voice ordering them to stop a young voice."
"Strange, that the boy doesn't wish to leave France. There are thousands who would do anything to have the chance he was offered."
"God knows what he hopes to accomplish!"
"You've no idea?"
"None whatsoever. I don't like to think how Claire will take the news of the boy's disappearance."
Adam's eyebrows rose. "Put your fears to rest, Nicholas. The girl . . . Claire . . . must know nothing about the boy's disappearance." He knew that the news would devastate her, and he wasn't going to permit it. One way or another he would find the boy for her.
"Then what are we going to tell her?"
"We shall tell her what she wishes to hear, namely, that you found her young friend and saw him safely on board the coach."
"In the long run, I don't think that's a kindness," objected Millot. "When she gets to England, she's bound to find out. Then think of the agonies she will endure wondering why I concealed the truth from her."
"When . . . she gets . . . to England?" repeated Adam cautiously. "I understood from what you said that she struck a bargain with the commissioner her person for safe-conduct passes for her young friends?"
"That's true. But under the circumstances, with you now acting as commissioner, there's no point in her remaining here." A thought struck him. "Good God! You don't suppose that I permitted her to go through with the bargain?" He laughed. "No, no! There has not been the opportunity. I made sure of it."
Adam came away from the desk. Millot's expression became arrested as he sensed something new, something unexpected in his companion's stance.
"You're enamored of the chit," said Adam, so softly, so quietly, that Millot felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to rise.
He cleared his throat. "No . . . I mean to say . . . what difference does it make?"
Adam deliberately returned to his relaxed pose. "Only this," he said. "The girl stays here in her role as Duhet's mistress." With an impatient gesture of one hand, he stayed the spate of his companion's objections. "Don't let your feelings for the girl run away with you. Duhet wanted the woman for his mistress. To send her away now would be totally out of character for the commissioner."
Millot shook his head. "You're mistaken. It's not generally known that the girl means anything to Duhet. There's still. . ."
"Think man, think!" Adam interrupted. "Who's to say with any confidence how many people know about the girl? Who's to say what transpired between my half-brother and Claire, or what promises he made to her? Just for argument's sake, let's suppose we arrange for the girl to get to England. Can you swear to me that she won't jeopardize our enterprise here by revealing something only she knows?"
There was an obstinate set to Millot's features. "What can she know?"
"That's what I mean to find out. And that takes time. If she proves to be harmless, we'll soon convey her to a place of safety, and that's a promise."
Adam believed every word he uttered. He was involved in a dangerous game. The stakes were too high to take needless chances. As a soldier on active service, his judgment must not be impaired by sentiment or emotion, and least of all, by the leap of his senses for one slip of a girl.
Millot's reflections ran on similar lines. He had known Adam Dillon for a very short while, but in that time they had become friends. He admired the American. He handled himself well. His military training stood him in good stead, as had his subsequent career as a man of business. The mantle of authority rested easily on his shoulders. He made decisions quickly, but not without forethought. The risks he took were never ill-advised.
There were other aspects to Adam Dillon, however, which the young Frenchman remembered with unease. Though he himself never suffered from a lack of female companionship, the American attracted women in droves. He had a way with him to which few women were indifferent. Belatedly, Millot remembered something else. In his dealings with women, Adam Dillon tended to be unscrupulous.
Ignoring the pain from the wound in his arm, he leaned forward in his chair. "Where is Claire now?" he demanded. "What happened last night when you met her?"
Adam had been expecting the question. Though he might have lied to spare Millot's feelings, he chose not to do so. If there was one thing he meant to nip in the bud, it was Millot's obvious tendresse for the girl. His green eyes blazing dangerously, he said, "What a singularly stupid thing to ask! She is a beautiful woman. I am a man. What do you think happened? Nature took its course."
The blood rushed out of Millot's face. He tried to rise to his feet, but Adam forestalled him, pressing him back with both hands on his shoulders.
"I'll get you a brandy," said Adam, and began to rifle the drawers in the commissioner's desk. A moment later, he curled Millot's fingers around a small glass and ordered him to down the contents.
When Millot could find his voice, he gritted, "I shall kill you for this."
"It's I who should be saying those words to you," retorted Adam, and he began to pace furiously about the room.
"What?"
Pausing to pin his companion with a look, Adam went on, "You deserted your post. No, don't interrupt me. Who gave you permission to involve yourself in the affairs of this girland at such a time, for God's sake? You allowed sentiment to cloud your judgment. Your thoughtless actions might have proved catastrophic for our mission. Our lives were in your hands. Didn't you know that, man? Didn't you care?"
Adam came to tower over
Millot, and the younger man shrank into himself. "So," said Adam, a faint sneer in his inflection, "who was here to warn me about the girl? I was playing a role. I was Philippe Duhet. What would you have had me do?"
By degrees, the belligerence faded from Millot's ashen face. He closed his eyes momentarily, and let out a groan. To some extent, he knew himself to be culpable. But he wasn't willing to shoulder all the blame. If it were only that! He felt as though he had sustained a mortal injury. The wounds in his flesh were far less real to him than the wound he had taken to his heart.
Painfully, his throat working, he got out, "But you must have known that she was different from your other women? Who could see her, converse with her, and not know what she is? You could have spared her."
"I didn't know," said Adam, and he knew, as soon as the words were out, that he wasn't being completely honest. The truth was that he had been in such a fever of impatience to make the woman his that he hadn't given more than a cursory thought to who and what she was. And later, when he'd known better, he hadn't wanted to pursue the matter.
"Recriminations are useless, as is this conversation," he said abruptly. Seating himself behind the large leather-topped desk, he leaned his weight on the palms of both hands. "We have a job to do. Shall we get on with it?"
Millot looked at him blankly.
"Your report," said Adam. He seemed to be completely relaxed and quite unmoved by what he had done to the girl. Millot's blood began to boil.
"What happens to Claire now?" he asked, trying to appear as calm as Adam.
Adam toyed with a pencil he had absently picked up. At length, he said mildly, "I've already told you what will happen to the girl. If she knows nothing, she will be free to go."
"Yes, yes! But in the meantime, what do you propose to do with her?" And to make sure that the other man got his point, Millot added for good measure, "I want some assurance that there will be no repetition of what took place last night."
Green eyes locked on brown, and it seemed as if a silent battle of wills was fought in that small room. The pencil in Adam's hands suddenly snapped. His eyes dropped to the two halves.
Millot looked away, and let out the breath he had been holding. Quietly, doggedly, he continued, "Let her go, Adam. Claire is not for you. She's led a sheltered lifedon't ask me how I know, I just do. You can't know what it did to her to sell herself to someone like Duhet for the sake of the people she loves. She has no experience of men of your stamp. She is an innocent. She's . . . sensitive, fragile. She doesn't stand a chance. You'll only destroy her."
The aggression that had been building in Adam from the moment he'd deduced that Millot had a proprietary interest in the girl, suddenly disintegrated. He saw the whole situation as ludicrous. He'd never felt this sense of possession for any woman and this woman he did not even know.
But some things he should have known. Millot was right about that. Though she was an innocent, he had persuaded himself that she had come to him willingly, because it suited him to think so. He must have been mad to force her to experience passion in his arms. Thankfully, he'd recovered his sanity. Henceforth, he determined, he would keep his distance from the girl.
And as for Mother Nature . . . His lips curved slightly, cynically. He was giving that Old Harridan fair warning that the battle was joined. He'd fight the girl's attraction with every weapon in his arsenal.
As Millot watched the play of emotions on Adam's face, he found himself beginning to relax. Intuitively, he grasped that his companion had found his control. The menace which had seemed to radiate from Adam since the girl had become a bone of contention was no longer apparent.
"Well?" ventured Millot cautiously.
Returning his companion's steady regard, coolly, casually, Adam said, "The girl is beautiful, certainly. But as we both know, the world is full of beautiful women." He paused, and when next he spoke the amusement in his tone was edged with acid. "And from this day forward, I promise you, I'm making it a rule to steer clear of innocent young girls."
In other circumstances, if the woman in question were not Claire, Millot might have laughed. But he was still laboring under the blow he had received when he'd discovered that Adam had taken Claire to his bed. His emotions were cut to ribbons. He wanted to do someone a violence, himself most of all. In all conscience, he could not lay the en tire blame for what had happened at Adam's door. He might as well rage at a tiger for pouncing on an antelope that had blundered into its lair. He knew this, but it could not relieve the storm that raged inside him.
More than anything, he wanted to see Claire, question her, if only to assure himself that she was all right. He half toyed with the idea of putting his questions to Adam, He gave him a searching look and decided against it. But there was one question that must be resolved if he was to have any peace of mind.
"What I don't understand is this. If you are determined to keep Claire with you until you discover whether or not she poses some kind of threat to our mission," (and Millot's tone demonstrated how farfetched he judged that piece of logic) "how can you possibly . . . ?" He frowned as he groped for words.
"Yes?"
". . . how can you possibly maintain the fiction that she is your mistress?"
"I don't think I follow you."
"By your own admission, she won't be your mistress. Then how are you going to explain to Claire the necessity for her to remain here? Won't that arouse her suspicions?"
Adam's smile was anything but pleasant. "I am Philippe Duhet," he said. "I don't have to explain myself to anyone, least of all to a neglected mistress."
"Neglected?"
"As I said, the world is full of beautiful women. The girl will know what to think. And now, if you please, Nicholas, I should like that report before the hotel comes to life. As you may understand, I've no wish to stumble into another little drama without knowing my lines."
"What about Claire?" persisted Millot. He observed his friend's mouth harden and hastily elaborated, "She'll wish to know the fate of her young friend."
Coolly, Adam answered, "I'm in command here. Anything that touches upon the girl is my business. Do I make myself clear?"
Absently, Millot nodded his assent before it occurred to him that there was a wealth of meaning in those few terse words.
"I shall tell her the story we agreed upon," said Adam in a more softened tone. "All right?"
"All right," answered Millot. But he knew in his heart of hearts that things would never be right again.
Chapter Five
It was midmorning before Claire came to herself, slowly at first, and then with a start. She closed her eyes tightly, hardly daring to draw breath. The muted sounds from the courtyard below and from other parts of the building gradually reassured her. She was alone.
With a sudden sob, she pulled herself to a sitting position and looked about her. She noted the fire in the grate and the closed windows. Not unnaturally, the room was stifling hot. Worst of all, however, was the scent of the man on her skin, forcing her to remember what she wished fervently to forget.
Oh God, how could she have been so naive! In her ignorance, she had thought that when he possessed her she would suffer him in silence, and that it would be soon finished. How could she have known that he would take her again and again, that he would prolong the agony and force her to meet his passion till she thought that she could die from pleasure?
For just a moment, her head swam, and she could no longer hold back the succession of images that swamped her sensesthose powerful masculine muscles clenching under the sensitive pads of her fingertips, that smooth warm skin, those burning kisses and demanding, intimate caresses. He had made her weak with wanting him.
She hated him. But not half as much as she hated herself. She had thought herself immune to the frailties of the flesh. To give her body coldly, as a calculated act, was one thing. To find pleasure in the experience was intolerable. For the first time in her life she had met a man who had made her give in to him. Only a
woman of the streets would succumb to a man for whom she felt nothing but contempt. Philippe Duhet made her skin crawl! Hadn't she known it from the moment she had first set eyes on him? Then why, in the name of heaven, had everything changed last night?
Like a drowning man clutches at straws, she thought of the two small glasses of brandy she had consumed before Philippe Duhet had walked into her room. She'd been inebriated. She must have been. There was no other explanation to account for her subsequent behavior.
Another reason instantly came to mind. Claire tried to suppress it, but the thought was tenacious, defying her will to set it aside. Her worst fears had been realized. There was a fatal flaw in her character. She was no better than that poor, weak-willed creature who had been her mother, Juliette Devereux.
She closed her eyes against the remembered shock of that day when she had discovered the truth about her parentage. Her grandmother had told her, not deliberately, not maliciously, but when she was in the last stages of the illness that had taken her life. Grandmère's mind was confused, Maman had told her. But Claire was not convinced. Grandmère's words stirred a host of half-remembered conversations between her parents that had faltered in midsentence as soon as they had become aware of her presence. She had worried at it like a dog with a bone until she had the truth. And the truth had destroyed her safe world.
At fifteen she had learned that Zoë and Leon were not her sister and brother, but her cousins. The man she had always regarded as her father was, in point of fact, her uncle. And Maman was no relation at all, except through marriage.
At first, she was shocked, and then she was bitter. She hated the woman who had given her birth. Papa had tried to soothe her. Her natural mother was to be pitied, he'd told her. Juliette Devereux had been a good girl and too young to know what she was doing. The scoundrel who had seduced her was older and more experienced. He had a wife and children waiting for him in America.
On her natural father's identity, Leon Devereux was adamantly silent. No good could be served, so he had told Claire, by revealing the man's name. It was enough for her to know that he was an adventurer and completely without scruples. Claire did not doubt it. Only a black-hearted knave would stoop to seducing an innocent girl.
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