She turned. Saw him. The instant stretched tight.
He’d put himself between her and the back door. She hadn’t thought of keeping two lines of retreat. One for your enemy to block off. One so you can run like hell.
Skirt and apron whirled. She exploded into flight, down the stalls, long braid trailed out behind her. He caught her halfway to the door. Wrapped his arms around her and held on.
She twisted and tried to rake her nails at his face. When he caught her wrists, she curled like an eel and bit the hand that held her, digging her teeth deep.
Well, that hurt. “I’m not going to—” A sabot hit his shin. “God’s . . . tortoises. Will you hold still? I’m trying not to damage you.” He shifted his grip and she broke a hand free and pulled out a knife.
Enough. He kicked her legs out from under her. The knife bounced away. He flopped her down on her back into the piled straw.
That was the end of it, to all intents and purposes, except she was going to keep fighting for a while.
She was light for her size and panicked and dead ignorant of fighting. He’d make short work of a man her size. This girl had no chance at all. She kneed him in the belly, missing the vital goods by a margin narrower than he liked. That seemed to be sheer luck. None of the men in her life had taught her how to do damage to the male of the species. That was a pity because she was approaching this business of hurting him with lots of enthusiasm.
He didn’t blame her for trying. He’d do the same himself. He climbed on top and held her down. “Biting everything in sight don’t do you any noticeable good, and it’s annoying the hell out of me.”
The ending was abrupt. She gave up, all at once, all over. She lay under him, looking up. They were wrapped together like lovers. But this wasn’t even the distant cousin of lovemaking.
I am scaring her to death.
Then she got a good look at the scar on his cheek and stopped breathing.
That scar was a work of art, seven inches of grotesque, running from his eyebrow to his chin. The major geographic feature of his face. It made him look fairly depraved.
“This face of mine’s always been a great trial. I’m lucky I don’t have to look at it.” He stayed as he was, still and heavy, on top of her.
Her eyes were the color of coffee pouring from the pot—intensely brown, translucent. She was pale under the sunburn, and scratched and dirty. Her muscles, hard with fear, vibrated in his hands where he had her pinned down.
“Let me go.” Her throat clenched and unclenched.
The fichu kerchief around her neck had got itself pulled loose. Her breasts were nudging out of her bodice. And . . . he had his hand on one of them. When did that happen? God. He jerked away fast and took hold of her shoulder instead. That was neutral ground up there. “Sorry. Don’t mean anything by that. An accident.”
Fine pair of breasts she had. White as split almonds. Round as peaches. The nipples peeked out, since the fichu wasn’t doing its job. A pair of dark little roses, pulled up into buds. Tasty looking. And if he got any closer he could put his mouth down and lick them.
That’s going to reassure her—you slavering at her tits.
He levered himself up some, so he wasn’t crushing her. “I wanted to know who’s spying on me. That’s all. I’m not going to hurt you. See. I’m letting you go. What you do is, you don’t hit me. You might hold off on that biting, too.”
He watched a bit of rational thought come tiptoeing into her mind. Watched her turn his words over, considering them from all sides. She unfroze, muscle by muscle.
He shifted back farther. “I didn’t expect to find anyone. In the village, they say it’s deserted. What are you doing here?”
“That is not letting me go.” She looked at the scar on his face and away, quickly. “If you are going to not hurt me, you may do it at a greater distance. You are very heavy.”
He could get to like this woman.
He rolled to the side and got up to his knees. He didn’t need to keep hold of her. He could snag her if she tried to run.
“That is somewhat better.” Her voice shook. “Nonetheless, I would prefer more space between us. The space of an entire stable perhaps.”
Oh yes, he could like her very much. “Sit up and talk to me. Who are you? Why were you spying on me?”
She pushed herself upward and began tucking her fichu in at her neckline, covering up. “I was not spying. I was avoiding you. There is a significant difference.”
Her accent was the Paris of coffeehouses and boulevards and salons. No trace of the Normandy patois. This wasn’t a fancy lady’s maid or the bailiff’s wife. He’d netted himself the daughter of the house. De Fleurignac’s daughter.
“You’re being cautious.” She was going to lead him to her father. All he had to do was hold on to her.
Maybe what he was thinking showed. Her eyes skittered away from him. “I am wary of strangers lately.”
“And I don’t look particularly benign.” He ran his thumbnail down the scar on his cheek. His masterpiece of a scar. He’d be a nightmare to a woman, alone, in a deserted stable. “Not pretty, is it?”
Fear shifted behind her eyes. That would be one more affront to this woman’s dignity, that she couldn’t keep herself from being afraid of him.
“It is not pretty.” This time, she looked steadily at his face. “But also not a countenance to stop the hens from laying. One sees worse in any village. You need not feel slighted because you lack beauty. I hid from you before I saw your face.”
“That’s putting me in my place.” He leaned back on his heels. “I don’t look like much, but I’m respectable, back at home.”
“When you are at home, perhaps you do not chase women and fling them to the ground like so many sacks of meal.” She pulled her knees up and twitched at her skirt to cover her ankles. A graceful, lovely little gesture. The muddy dress could have been silk brocade at Versailles. “At home, perhaps, you introduce yourself before you assault women.”
“I don’t assault women at all, generally speaking. I’m Guillaume LeBreton, once of Brittany, living in Paris now. I’m not the one sneaking around, spying and biting all and sundry, now am I? Who are you?”
She drew a deep breath. Everybody drew in a deep breath before they started telling lies. “I am Margaret Duncan, dame de compagnie to Mademoiselle de Fleurignac.”
“You’re English, then.”
“Scots.”
If she was Scots, he was Robert the Bruce. “You’re a long way from home, Maggie Duncan.”
“On the contrary. France is my home. My family lives in Arles. My father is a colonel of infantry.”
France was full of the red-headed grandchildren of men who’d followed the Stuart king into exile. A good many of them were in the French army. But that wide and witchy mouth didn’t come from Scotland. She was pure French.
She looked to the window of the stable and beyond, to the shell of the chateau. “Mademoiselle escaped. I was left behind to hold this delightful conversation with you.”
Just a dish full of cleverness, this Maggie.
Four
IT WOULD BE POINTLESS BEYOND MEASURE TO KICK at this walking monolith, so Marguerite did not. She would find a way to checkmate him, eventually.
Or he would kill her. He could do that at any time. He need only choose among several methods and get on with it.
Monsieur LeBreton pulled her to her feet. He took the letter opener from the straw and studied it on both sides before he slipped it into a place inside his jacket. He then suggested, by his hand upon her arm, that she accompany him out the door of the stable, into the wide-spaced drops of rain. He was not cruel or hurtful about it, but he was very determined. It was like being carried off by a huge bird of prey that was on its best behavior. A roc perhaps, as in the fable of Sinbad. One does not discuss alternatives with a roc.
She was not to be abused and strangled in the open air of the garden, it seemed. He dragged her to the greater discretion o
f the orangerie.
Her journey across the courtyard concerned itself with small practicalities. She hooked her toes into the sabots so she wouldn’t lose them. If she was not to be killed, she would need her shoes.
“Adrian,” LeBreton called. “We have a guest.”
The servant boy stepped from between white planters and disheveled palm trees. He was dark and lithe and sullen, grumpy as a genie called forth by an impatient magician. He looked unsurprised to see his master with an unwilling woman in tow. This was probably not a good sign.
LeBreton remained a pace behind her while the boy swept glass from the tiles with a bundle of palm fronds, limping a little as he went about the work. He was a handsome boy, unlike his master who was ugly as several sorts of sin, in all of which he was doubtless proficient.
When a space was clear, LeBreton took his coat off and swirled it down on the tiles at her feet. There was a story . . . One of the courtiers of the old English queen had spread his cloak upon the dirt of the street for the queen to walk upon, a century and more ago. The queen was Elizabeth. She did not remember the name of the courtier.
“Sit. Don’t faint.” LeBreton pushed at her shoulders and she sat with a thump. She did not know why he bothered to give orders, if he was going to shove at her anyway.
Fear sustains one for a time, but it is a false friend. It departs, taking all strength with it. A chill spread along her skin. The edges of her sight darkened. The shush of the makeshift broom and the scratch of tumbling glass became distant. She felt as if she were falling into a dream. Not a good dream.
She had sent men and women of La Flèche into infinite risk, telling them to be strong and clever. She had promised that one may endure anything.
Now it was her turn to discover the truth of this.
LeBreton’s coat was large, as one would expect. It was a brown so dark it became black in this dim light, lined with the reddish brown of fallen oak leaves. She sat in the middle of it like a frog on a lily pad, surrounded by a desolation that had once been a garden, and shivered.
“There’s no use being afraid,” he said. “No need for it either. I told you that.” His hand opened, as if he might reach out and touch her.
She flinched. Just a little, but he’d seen it. “I would like to leave now.”
“You been hiding here since they burned the house, haven’t you? I don’t blame you for being scared. There’s packs of scavengers loose these days. Deserters. Outright bandits. You’re damned lucky it was me that came along.”
“I am properly grateful.”
“No. You’re terrified of me. I’ll fix that in a while. Stay where you are.” Perhaps his words were meant to be reassuring. If so, they did not work.
She was left alone to consider the matter of who Monsieur LeBreton was, who spoke like a villager of Brittany and pretended to be a simple man when he was not in the least simple, and why he had come to peer and poke around her chateau, not looting, and what she should do about all this.
If she tried to run, there’d be another demonstration that he was larger than she was, and faster. She would sneak away when it was dark. Not now. Not yet.
Wind, heavy with mist, blew in steadily from the west. Her skin prickled into little bumps. Hunger twisted in her stomach like a live thing. If she had killed the rabbit, like a sensible woman, and taken it into the woods to cook, she would not have met Monsieur LeBreton and she would not be in this situation. Jean-Paul always says I would get us all killed, being impractical.
She pulled herself into a tight ball and laid her cheek upon her knees and closed her eyes. Perhaps when she opened them she would be somewhere else—Cloud Cuckoo Land or the island of Tír na nÓg or the Atlantis of Plato. One of the mythic places of the old stories. It was not likely, but it was not impossible.
LeBreton sent the boy to fetch baskets from the donkeys and took over the task of sweeping the floor. She heard him grunting and dragging big copper planters from one place to another. She could not imagine why he did that and did not waste her energy in pointless speculation.
When the chateau burned, they came here to throw stones again and again. It was as if the orangerie were an adulterous woman, crouching in fear, and they destroyed her. How strange that it should be so cold. It was always warm here.
When she was a child, this had been her playhouse, her secret kingdom, with flowers like spears of sunlight, flowers like fans and feathers, like waxy red swords. The stoves ran night and day all winter long, keeping oranges and cyclamens and the ferocious, stubby pineapples alive.
Jean-Paul was the son of Maître Béclard, botanist of the Royal Gardens, who had come with a shipment of orchids and bromeliads and stayed to tend them. Jean-Paul told her the story of every plant in the glasshouse, invincible in his belief she wanted to know.
One day when she was fifteen he had plucked down an orange blossom for her and tucked it into her hair. “That’s one less orange for your dinner, Marguerite.” He had kissed her.
Boots scraped beside her. LeBreton towered over her, perhaps a mile high. He’d come carrying a donkey blanket. He flapped it out and let it fall softly over her shoulders, doing this all in one motion, without touching her. She was circled in it now, like an Arab in his tent.
If he is going to hurt me, what is he waiting for? She did not wish to imagine what complex villainies a man might approach in this leisurely fashion.
He said, “You go right on being afraid of me, if you want to. But stop shivering. Makes me chilly just looking at you.”
“No one would wish you to be uncomfortable.”
“That’s good. That was a bit of a smile. You keep doing that.” And he left her alone.
The servant boy carried in the last of the donkey baskets. His gaze upon her was neither friendly nor unfriendly, merely assessing. It did not surprise her that a man like LeBreton would employ such an unsettling servant.
LeBreton started a fire with dry palm fronds, then laid on small lengths of charred timber. The boy took the canvas off the donkey panniers and lifted out smaller baskets with lids and leather bags, cooking pans and a coffeepot. He set everything out without hesitation, having a pattern to it, as if he’d done this many times. He put water to boil in a black kettle, exactly like the kettle in every cottage in Normandy, but his firewood was table legs and broken curio cabinets.
LeBreton finished his own unpacking and came over to her. He sat beside her, tailor fashion, so close his knee almost touched her. He’d pulled his hat off and left it somewhere so she had a clear view of his scar and his various other brutal features. His dense, weighing regard rested on her. “Let’s give you some coffee before I start asking questions.” Probably he had no expression that did not look menacing.
The boy, Adrian, came up carrying a blue and white china cup full of black coffee. Its handle was broken off and the rim was cracked. It was from the set the upper servants used. Had used. LeBreton wrapped her fingers around it till she had it steady.
“Drink this. Then we’ll talk.” He had the hands of a laborer. Blunt-fingered, calloused, capable, broad of palm. Hands like well-forged steel tools that had seen a lot of use. Hands like a treatise on engineering. “I’m not a villain, Maggie.”
A man like you is anything he chooses to be. “I am Citoyenne Duncan. Or Miss Duncan. Not Maggie.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He took the corner of her blanket, where it was slipping away off her shoulder, and pulled it higher. “You didn’t jump out of your skin that time. We’re making progress.”
There was no progress. She was exhausted, and she did not wish to spill coffee upon herself. She did not feel it necessary to explain this to him.
The coffee was hot and very sweet. True coffee, from Haiti, not the brew of roots and barley that filled the markets these days. “You do not make me less frightened of you by crowding in upon me like an overgrown bush.”
“Of course not. I do it by showing you how harmless I am. Look over there, Citoyenne M
aggie.” Over there were the four donkey baskets. “That’s my stock in trade—Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Lalumière—the approved instruction list from the Committee of Education. Some children’s books with proper sentiments in them . . . ‘C is for counter-revolutionary. May they all die. D is for duty to France. Let us all try.’ That sort of thing. I got packs of playing cards. Those have fine revolutionary pictures on them. The single pip is a guillotine, which is just going to liven up a game, ain’t it? And I got me some nicely illustrated copies of the Rights of Man, suitable for framing and hanging over the fireplace. You see before you Guillaume LeBreton, seller of fine books.”
There was no slight possibility this man traveled with donkeys and sold books for his living. It was nonsense. This was the wolf who claimed he cobbled shoes. He did not fool her for even the tiniest moment. “That is a respectable trade, certainly.”
“Bringing revolutionary thought to the provinces. That’s my job. When I see the schoolmasters using the old books full of superstition and lies, I haul them out and burn them. The books, not the schoolmasters. That’s my little joke there.”
“It is very amusing.”
“Then I take orders for the approved books, which they’re eager to buy at that point for some reason. With luck, the books are still approved when I get back to Paris.”
“Yours is an uncertain life, citoyen.”
The fire snapped and shot out sparks. The servant boy went out into the rain and came back with armloads of straw from the stable.
LeBreton shifted, so the light of the fire was strong upon the ruined side of his face. That was deliberate. He was showing her the worst of him so that she would become accustomed. It worked better than it should have. Already she was less afraid of him.
He had been unlovely even before he acquired that scar, a man of blunt eyebrows, emphatic nose, and stern jaw. She decided now that he did not look evil, only hard and filled with grim resolve. He was like one of the stone warriors laid in the vault of an old cathedral, holding the hilt of a stone sword, waiting to be called back into battle at the Apocalypse.
The Forbidden Rose Page 3