by Anne Gracie
His big, warm body pressed against the full length of her, shoulder to calf. She tried not to let it affect her as she took out the sketchbook.
He turned to a drawing of Maddy as a child. “This is you, isn’t it?”
Maddy was surprised he’d recognized her. “Yes.”
His gaze passed over her face like a touch, sending a barely perceptible shiver through her. “This is in France, is it not? And you were how old?”
“About ten. And yes, it’s France.”
“Not for a holiday, I think.”
“No, I lived there for ten years, with Grand-mère, until I was nineteen.”
He turned another page. “The old lady . . . your grandmother?”
She nodded. He placed a long finger on the picture of Grand-mère’s cottage. “And this was her home?”
Again she nodded.
“And what of this castle?”
She hesitated. Better to keep it simple. “It was burned during the Terror. The revolution. It was not far from our cottage. We went there for picnics. It’s beautiful, don’t you think?” No need to tell him the castle had one belonged to Grand-mère’s family. There was nothing worse than people who dwelt on past glories, lost possessions.
He gave her a searching look, as if he knew there was more to it than that, but all he said was, “So how did a young English girl come to be living in France for ten years?”
“It’s a long story.”
He smiled. “I’m not sleepy. Are you?”
She shivered. Far from it. With his big, warm, masculine body pressed against her, every bit of her was wide awake.
“My father met my mother in Paris just before his thirtieth birthday. She was seventeen and very beautiful and her family was rich.” She’d often wondered what had attracted Papa most.
“Papa was a good-looking man, and had inherited a moderate fortune. But he was English. My grandfather despised the English. He told Papa he would horsewhip him if he tried to see Mama again.” She sighed. “Papa was furious.”
“Any man would be.”
She nodded. “Papa was a man of great personal pride. It only made him more determined to have her.”
“Perfectly understandable.” He grinned. Clearly he saw it as a romance, and it was; at least it had started that way.
She went on, “This was at the beginning of the Terror—the revolution—and everything was in chaos. Mama’s father and brother went out one morning and were torn apart by an angry mob. Grand-mère expected the mob to come for her any moment. Terrified for Mama, she summoned my father and said if he could get her safely out of France, he could marry her. Which he did.” She should have finished the story there, with “and they lived happily ever after,” but she couldn’t bring herself to say it because they hadn’t, they surely hadn’t.
He frowned. “What about your grandmother? She didn’t go with them?”
“No, she had a higher loyalty.”
“Higher than to her own child?”
Maddy nodded. “Grand-mère served the queen, Marie Antoinette. Until she knew the fate of the queen, Grand-mère would not leave Paris.”
“She did not share the fate of poor Marie Antoinette.” His finger ran down the seam of the sketchbook. Her grandmother’s face looked out at her.
“No, she lived. She felt guilty about it for the rest of her life, poor Grand-mère. They were the same age, born in the same month, Grand-mère and the queen, and so she’d always believed they would share the same fate, that it was written in the stars. Besides, she served the queen, it was her duty. Instead, her fate was to go on living when those she’d loved had died.”
“You loved her,” he said softly, his voice very deep and quiet.
“I did. I still miss her.” Her voice cracked.
“She sounds like a remarkable woman.”
“She was. She taught me how to keep bees.” And so much more. She’d always been proud of Grand-mère, even though she recognized her eccentricities. Grand-mère living like a peasant woman in a cottage, unembarrassed and with all her airs and graces intact . . .
Cracked in the head, Papa used to say, though not within Grand-mère’s hearing.
If only Papa could see his own children now, dwelling in a run-down cottage, living off vegetables, chickens, honey, and their wits, just like Grand-mère. Would he perceive the irony? Probably not.
She opened it to another page at random. It was the portrait of baby Jean, the last of her poor little short-lived brothers . . . Her throat closed.
She took the sketchbook and closed it gently.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
With an effort she forced her mind back to the present. “What question?”
“How a gently born young English girl came to live like that”—he touched the sketchbook—“in France for ten years, while a war was raging.”
Ah, that. “There was no war when we left England.”
“No, but the wake of revolution is still a strange time for travel.”
She bit her lip, trying to think of how to explain it. “Mama . . . Mama had had difficulty giving Papa the heir he so wanted.” It was one way to describe endless miscarriages and stillbirths and misery.
“When I was nine, Mama decided to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes and pray for a boy. Papa agreed—he was desperate for a son—so we all went. They left me with Grand-mère while he and Mama went on to Lourdes, and when they returned, Mama was enceinte again.” It was too soon, she’d known. The midwife had told Mama she should wait, heal, and get stronger before trying again, but Papa was too eager for a son.
“Travel would be dangerous for the child, so Papa left Mama and me with Grand-mère to await the birth.”
“The baby in the picture.”
She nodded. “He came too soon, and was small and sickly. He only lived a few weeks. And Mama . . .” Her voice cracked. “She just . . . faded away.”
His arm slipped around her and he held her quietly against him. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded unable to speak. Those endless months when Mama would barely speak or eat. Weep endlessly over the drawing of little Jean. He should have been named John, after Papa, but Mama always called him Jean.
She’d never told the children that. John would hate knowing there were others before him who’d died, all named John.
He held her, stroking the skin of her arm gently. “I presume the war prevented you from returning to England.”
“No, it hadn’t started then.”
“Then why did you not return to England?”
She shook her head and shrugged awkwardly.
He frowned. “Your father wasn’t able to get you out of France?”
“He didn’t try.”
“Not even after the war started?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
How many times had she asked herself the same question? It had been a hollow, aching void inside her, all through her girlhood and beyond. “I don’t know,” she told him. “He never explained.” And she’d never asked. She couldn’t bear to hear the answer she knew he would give: that she was only a girl and he neither needed nor wanted a daughter. She’d heard him say it to her mother once.
Both arms tightened around her. She leaned into him, soaking up the care and the warmth and the . . . comfort.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t regret my years with Grand-mère, and I love the children and I love being part of a family again. I just wish . . .” That it had been different, that Papa had loved her, that she’d had her come-out . . . That he hadn’t lost his fortune. Too many wishes. All pointless.
The candle guttered and went out in a smoky hiss. Taking it as a sign, she gently disengaged herself from his embrace. “Time for bed, I think—to sleep, I mean. I have a lot to do in the morning.”
“You always have a lot to do.”
She shrugged. “Being busy is better than being bored.” Or starving. Being bored was a rich person’s ailment.
He didn’t move. She could just make out his silhouette in the dimness, could smell the clean freshness of his shaving soap and the deep masculine muskiness underneath.
He bent and kissed her lightly on the forehead, the way she kissed the children, a kind of blessing more than a kiss.
“Good night, Mr. Rider,” she whispered in an echo of the children’s good nights.
He cupped her cheek in his palm and stared down at her for the longest time, his expression lost in the darkness.
She waited, breathless.
The night smelled of beeswax and clean, damp straw, of soap and of man. One man. This man. The scent of his skin was part of her. Yes, she was playing with fire, but oh, how she wanted it, ached for it.
“I didn’t intend this to happen,” he murmured as if to himself and touched his lips to her mouth.
It was the lightest of caresses, a mere brush of skin across exquisitely sensitized skin. A prelude. It shivered softly through her like the sound of a violin on a still, dark night.
She was poised on a precipice of need. Wanting more.
His mouth brushed hers again, once, twice, teasing her lips apart, tasting her. Tantalizing. He nibbled on her upper lip, and it was heaven. He touched his tongue to hers and a thread of fire ran swiftly, delicately through her and she gasped, and breathed in his breath.
He kissed her again and ran the tip of his tongue over the roof of her mouth and a curl of hot pleasure tightened deep within her.
She speared her fingers into his hair and wriggled closer, moving against the hard warmth of his body, glorying in the hot, spice-salt taste of him, returning each caress instinctively, blindly, and wanting more . . . more.
“No.” He broke the kiss and pushed her gently away. His breath was ragged, coming in great gasps, as if he’d been running.
She was mute, unable to think, dizzy with pleasure and need. And loss.
He slid from the bed, still panting. “Good night, Miss Woodford. Sweet dreams.” And then he was nothing but a shadow lost in the darkness. She heard him climb into the bed on the floor.
The fire was almost dead now, nothing but ashes.
Sweet dreams?
Maddy curled into the warmth of her bed, aching, hollow. How did he expect her to sleep after that? She was wound up tight, like a spring.
What a time for him to decide to play the gentleman instead of the rake. She punched the pillow and willed her body to sleep.
Eleven
Someone was moving around outside the cottage. Maddy sat bolt upright in bed. The Bloody Abbot? She listened, straining to hear every sound, braced for moaning, banging, and scratching at the doors and windows.
Nothing. But someone, or something was definitely outside. An animal? A fox? The hens were making a noisy, but it wasn’t the demented squawking that heralded a fox’s arrival. A cow or sheep, perhaps, broken into her garden, intent on her sweet greens?
She slipped out of bed and hurried to the window.
“What’s the matter?” He sat up.
“There’s something outside.” She peered through the thick distorted glass. It was hard to see much. The moon was out, but it was cloudy and the garden was dappled with shadows. Impossible to tell if something was moving or whether it was just the clouds.
He stood beside her, pistol in one hand, the other in the small of her back. Warm. Solid. Protective. “That swine again?”
“I don’t think so. It might be an animal.”
They listened. There was certainly something there. They could hear snapping noises as if twigs were being broken.
“I’ll go out and see what it is,” he said.
“I’ll come, too,” she told him and grabbed her cloak.
But just as they opened the door, there was a whooshing sound, then another, and suddenly a row of fires blazed up along the back wall of the garden.
For a moment Maddy couldn’t think what was there to burn, but then—“My bee hives!” She ran toward them, then came to a shocked standstill. Her hives were all ablaze, the straw skeps a mass of flame, the beeswax inside fueling the fire to greater heights. Sparks and shreds of burning straw danced and twirled up into the darkness, carried on the brisk wind.
“My bees, oh, my bees!” But there was nothing she could do: the hives were already turning to glowing, charred lumps. White shreds of ash peeled off in the breeze. She shivered.
“What’s that smell?” Nash sniffed the air. “Deliberately set,” he said, lifting up a rag. “This is soaked in lamp oil.”
What did she care how? Her bees were dead? Cruelly destroyed. Maddy felt sick. Her precious bees . . . They were part of the family, these bees. They knew her secrets, had been her confidantes and her comfort, her link with Grand-mère and her past.
“Who would do such a terrible thing? Murder bees? And why?” she asked.
Part of the answer was obvious. The robed silhouette stood on the crest of the hill, watching. Too far away to pursue.
“Why?” Maddy whispered again. “I’ve done nothing to him. And the bees harm no one—they only sting in self defense. They just work and give honey.” Tears trickled down her cheeks unregarded.
Every hive was destroyed, every little worker, every martyred queen. All that honey, all that wax, all the work of weaving the skep . . . gone. The children running home in the summer, shrieking that they’d spotted a wild swarm in the forest, the adventure of catching the swarm and bringing home the bees, each new swarm another source of income . . . All the work of keeping the bees alive and fed through the coldest part of winter . . . ruined.
Maddy was ruined, too. The honey was a major source of income. All that stood now between her family and destitution were her chickens and the vegetable garden.
The chickens! She broke away from his comforting embrace and ran to the hen house. The door was open. The chickens were scattered throughout the garden and some in the field beyond the wall . . .
Her garden! The clouds parted, letting moonlight flood the garden . . . or what remained of it. Seedlings trampled into the ground, trellises knocked over and smashed.
The sound of breaking twigs.
Plants not simply uprooted, but broken and torn apart and ground beneath a hostile heel. Total, deliberate destruction.
She surveyed the devastation in silence, shivering. The wind sliced through her clothing, harsh and bitterly cold, chilling her to the bone.
All her work of the last year destroyed in one short night. To what purpose? So that children would starve? She felt sick.
His arm tightened around her. “Come inside, there’s nothing you can do now.”
She shook her head. “The chickens, I must get them back—”
“Leave the door open and they’ll go back in soon enough. They don’t like being out in the cold and dark, either.”
“But a fox might—”
“Give Dorothy and Mabel and the girls a little time to return to their perches. I’ll go out later and lock the hen house door. You’re frozen and in shock. You need to get in to the warmth.”
His words made sense. Her teeth were chattering and she felt sick to her stomach. Suddenly she wanted, more than anything, to return to the warmth and security of the cottage, to shut out the vileness that had happened.
She hated being out in the open with the beast, whoever he was, watching from up there, gloating over his wanton destruction. All her hard work. . . . her bees . . .
Tomorrow she’d be angry, but now she just felt ill. Devastated. Defeated. She allowed Nash to lead her back along the path that ran through neat beds of trampled vegetables, back to the cottage that she’d once thought a haven.
Nothing was a haven anymore. She might have the money for rent, and she could start a new garden, and establish new hives, but who was to say he wouldn’t come back and destroy them again?
Who was this evil creature, and why did he bear her and her little family such hatred?
Nash led Maddy straight to the fire. She
was half frozen, a product of shock as well as the cold night.
He glanced at the bed. He wanted to climb into it with her and hold her and drive the frozen look from her eyes, but he couldn’t. Despite the events of the night, he couldn’t trust himself to be in a bed with her.
He’d promised her she was safe with him. He’d failed to protect her garden and hives. He wasn’t going to make things worse by taking her innocence.
He sat her in the chair nearest the fire and piled on wood until it was a solid blaze. He wedged a couple of bricks into the coals and swung the kettle over the fire. Maddy stared into the flames, brooding on the fate of her bees.
“It would have been fast,” he told her. “They wouldn’t have felt a thing.” Did insects feel pain? He didn’t know.
He found his flask and placed it against her lips. “Drink.”
She obediently swallowed, then shuddered and gasped for breath. “What—” But she couldn’t get a sentence out for coughing. She stared at him indignantly as she gasped and spluttered.
“It’s only brandy, good quality French brandy.” He rubbed her back soothingly. “It will do you good.”
She finally stopped coughing. “It’s horrid. It burns all the way down.”
“And warms your blood. Don’t you feel better for it?”
She gave him a withering look and didn’t deign to respond, but her shivering had eased somewhat and that frozen look was gone from her eyes. A little bit of indignation was a fine, warming thing.
“I should go back out see if any of my plants can be saved—”
“You’re not moving. We’ll see what can be done in the morning,” he told her firmly.
He spooned some honey into a cup, added more brandy, and poured some hot water from the kettle. “Hot toddy,” he said, pressing it into her hands, wrapping her chilly fingers around the warm cup. “Do you the power of good.”
She accepted it gratefully and sipped its contents first with caution, then more happily. It was mostly honey, so the brandy slipped down easier this time.
Her fingers were icy to the touch. He glanced at her feet and swore silently. The hem of her nightgown and her flimsy little slippers were soaked and muddy. No wonder she was freezing.