by Darcy Burke
Thomas emitted a heavy sigh. “You are going to be looked at twice. Do you have any idea how…” he paused, searching for a French word other than the one that popped into his head, which was belle, and which would have been highly inappropriate under the circumstances, “…extraordinary you are?”
Her cheeks pinkened—though whether with pleasure or embarrassment, he couldn’t guess—and she patted her flaming hair. “This, you mean? I can put it up and cover it with a bonnet.”
If she thought the only thing that was extraordinary about her appearance was her hair color, she was sorely mistaken. With her blazing blue eyes, glowing complexion, and lovely face, she would be noticed even if her hair were the most ordinary shade of brown imaginable. But she was probably right that it was the characteristic anyone looking for her would be most likely to mention and that she would be less identifiable if it went unseen. Until it was seen, and then the game would be up, likely with very unpleasant consequences for both of them.
“Even if that would work—and believe me, it will not if your uncle’s men catch up to us—there is still the problem of travel time. If we do it my way, we should make it to Le Havre in less than four days. If we take your horses and cover only thirty miles on a good day, it will take twelve or more. Whoever your uncle sends to fetch you will be covering a lot more than that each day, which means they will have ample time to run us down, even if they try to follow us to Lyon first. As soon as they realize it is a wild goose chase, they will fan out in other directions, and that is assuming your uncle isn’t smart enough to try that from the outset.”
“He is not,” she insisted, but the rapid blinking of her eyes and the thinning of her lips betrayed her weakening certainty. “He cannot be.”
God, Thomas felt like a cad. The fact that he was right didn’t assuage his guilt one iota. Gently, he set his hands on her upper arms in an attempt to offer what little comfort he could. “We cannot take the risk that he is.”
She straightened her shoulders and met his eyes again. “Then I cannot go with you. You do not understand what Gaston and Copine mean to me.”
“I know they are important to you, especially because your father left them to you, but are they more important than your freedom? Than your life?” Than my life?
“You see?” she said with a slightly watery chuckle. “You do not understand. To you, they are just property, albeit property with sentimental value, but to me, they are everything: my future, my freedom, my very life. They are the difference between being beholden to some man forever—whether it’s my uncle, your premiere, or a husband—and being able to take care of myself. If I have them, wherever I go, whatever happens, I can survive. Prosper, even. Without them, I have no other skills and nothing of value except my body, and that is not for sale.”
Thomas wanted to tell her that of course she had value beyond her body, but he couldn’t deny that a woman without her own means of support was vulnerable. Hadn’t he seen it for himself in the women who worked in the brothels or on the docks, and those who begged in the streets of every town from Lancashire to London, and even the handful of women he’d taken to his bed since he’d reached adulthood? A young woman with no marketable skills and no man to care for her was in a perilous position, and women with men to care for them often weren’t much better off, since their well-being was determined entirely by the type of man they happened to be with.
How could he blame her for wanting what he wanted—the freedom to make his own way in life, to earn a living that was his and his alone? How could he ask her to give that up when he was already asking her to give up everything else?
Answer: he couldn’t.
He was absolutely certain their best chance of escape lay in traveling as quickly as possible. He was even more certain that if they were caught, both of them would lose everything.
But a hasty journey wouldn’t guarantee safety, and a more sedate one would not guarantee failure. Misdirecting her uncle to Lyon with the tale of an elopement might be enough to allow them to reach Le Havre without incident. And if the man fanned out the search from the beginning, he had no way of knowing their true destination, because he most certainly had no reason to suspect that Thomas was a British agent. Etienne Rousseau had accepted Thomas’s autobiography hook, line, and sinker, which meant his resources would be spread thin in the search for a young couple headed in any number of directions toward almost any city in France.
They had a chance.
“Very well,” he said. “We will bring them.”
With a wordless exclamation of surprise and delight, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips.
Chapter 7
Sabine knew he was right. The faster they got out of France, the better their chances of getting out at all.
That said, she was stubborn, not stupid. The risks were obvious, but to her, they were worth taking. What she had not expected was for him to agree with her. Up until this very moment, she had been convinced that Mr. Pearce would simply leave her to face the consequences of her intransigence. She did not want to leave her home, to leave France and everything she had known all her life, but neither could she go on as she had been. Not when she knew how very much her uncle despised her. Not when she knew there was someone out there who cared enough to send someone to rescue her, even if that rescue was into exile.
So when Mr. Pearce acquiesced, she responded without thinking. By flinging her arms around him and kissing him. And perhaps not entirely because she was grateful. The kissing part, in particular, might have been motivated less by gratitude and more by the fact that that it was what she had wanted to do from the moment she laid eyes on him this morning.
His lips felt as good as they looked—firm yet supple, like a perfectly tree-ripened peach—and tasted even better, of mint and cloves sprinkled with honey and a hint of brandy. She only meant to steal a quick sip, a mere brush of mouth against mouth that she could later dismiss as an insignificant gesture entered in the heat of the moment, but instead of breaking away immediately, she lingered an extra few seconds, just to be sure she catalogued every texture, every flavor for future reference. This was, after all, the first kiss she’d ever desired, and she wanted to be able to remember it clearly.
There it was—a flare of heat, a tingle of anticipation, a shudder of pleasure. Hers and his.
Before she could deconstruct the sensations, his big hands settled on her hips and dragged her to him until the length of her body was pressed along the warm, solid length of his. She emitted a startled gasp and then a whimper as he slanted his head, coaxed her lips open, and showed her what a lover’s kiss truly was.
And what it was…was magnificent.
The pressure of his mouth was subtle, yet commanding, urging her both to yield to his demands and to make demands of her own. When his tongue teased her lips and then swept into the hollow of her mouth, she grabbed frantically at the fabric of his coat in a desperate attempt to maintain her balance. As if sensing her sudden loss of equilibrium, he moved his hands from his hips to her buttocks, a liberty that should have appalled her but instead made her squirm against him as a terrible, beautiful ache flooded her loins.
He groaned in response to her movements and gripped her even more tightly. The ridge of his arousal rested against her abdomen, and she savored the knowledge that he was as affected by their embrace as she was.
Their tongues touched in a dance she was dimly aware she knew how to perform without ever having been taught to the steps. Her heart thudded in her ears, escalating in proportion to the rising tension that coalesced between her legs. She bred horses; she knew what she wanted. What she needed.
Breathing hard, he dragged his lips from hers with a muffled curse and buried his face in the curve of her neck. He loosened his grip on her, keeping her steady as they both wound down from the intensity of the kiss. At long last, he raised his head and set her gently away. “Sweet Jesu,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair as he looked
at her with eyes that were still dark and hot, “that was poorly done of me.”
She let out a strangled laugh. “You mean you can kiss better than that?”
“No.” He was obviously aiming for a stern expression, but it failed, because his hair was sticking up in several places and his breathing was still uneven. “I mean I should not have kissed you at all. No matter how much I wanted to.”
Something warm that was not desire but a close cousin spread in her chest at the admission. She was perfectly aware he had relished the kiss every bit as much as she had, but hearing him say so filled her with…not pride, exactly, but satisfaction.
He seemed to read her thoughts, because he went on, “We cannot let this happen again. No matter how much either of us wants it. I am here to get you safely to England, to your father, who happens to be both the leader of my country and my employer. I do not think he would look kindly on me if I seduced you in the process.”
“And if I were to seduce you?” She reached out and placed her palm in the center of his chest. His heart was still beating at double time.
Shaking his head, he stepped away from her touch. “That is not going to happen. I will not permit it.”
The rejection hurt, even though she knew he was only trying to protect her. But then, perhaps she did not want to be protected anymore. The thought made her churlish. “Why not? You are the first man I have ever wanted. My uncle has terrible taste in potential husbands, you know.”
“All the more reason not to let anything come of this…” he gestured toward her and then back at himself, “…attraction between us. There are plenty of men in the world you may prefer to me. You should not settle for me just because I am the first man you happened to find desirable. And believe me, if we give into infatuation, that is exactly what will happen.”
She stared at him in disbelief. Did he honestly believe any woman would feel she was merely settling for him? Good Lord, not only was he devastatingly handsome, he was also everything else a man ought to be: intelligent, brave, honest, and kind. Also, he kissed like a fertility god. There must be literal legions of women waiting for him back in Britain, each of them nursing the hope that she might one day be forced to “settle” for Thomas Chadwick Pearce.
But that explained everything, did it not? His concern that she not be forced into a marriage she would regret was not rendered false simply because he was equally unwilling to suffer the same fate. They had not even known each other a day! Of course he did not want to be compromised into marrying her. In fact, for all she knew, he had already chosen someone to be his wife—some young woman more conventional in both appearance and demeanor than Sabine, who knew she was too brash and too bold on both scores to be considered either beautiful or ladylike—and that woman was waiting for him to return from this dangerous mission, her sleep plagued by nightmares and cold sweats. If Thomas Pearce were her man, Sabine would fear and despise herself for even considering the notion of kissing him, much less actually doing it.
Truly, she was a fool and a terrible person, both for what she had done and what she wanted to do.
She bowed her head. “You are right, of course. I shall endeavor to keep my lips and other body parts to myself henceforth. I shall have a trunk packed and ready by midnight. You can send your footman and valet to my room to fetch it and load it into your coach. Fabron will tell you where to meet me in Igny in the morning.”
Then she brushed past him on the way to the door that led out of the stables, praying she wouldn’t burst into silly, stupid tears before she got there.
To Sabine’s great relief, she did not see Mr. Pearce again that night. The longer she was parted from him, the more humiliating their entire exchange became. She had all but thrown herself at him, and she had interpreted his response as something between permission and encouragement when, in fact, it might have been nothing more than reflex. Yes, he had shown every sign of being aroused. Yes, he had said he wanted to kiss her. But how else did she expect a healthy man in his prime to behave under the circumstances? She might not be conventionally pretty or demure, but she was young and healthy and had all the appropriate female parts in all the expected places. It was hardly surprising that he had acted as he had.
As she’d never traveled farther than Igny, she had never had need of a trunk of her own, but she had inherited the one her mother had brought with her when she married Papa. Before Sabine could pack her things, she had to unload the items Maman had stored within it, beginning with five pillows decorated in childish embroidery. Two of these, Sabine remembered stitching herself, but the other three must have been her mother’s work when she had been a girl. Impulsively, Sabine chose the most elementary of the three—an alphabet in both upper- and lower-case letters with a different flower decorating each corner, recognizably a sunflower, a violet, a lily, and what was probably meant to be a rose but looked more like a red blob—to bring with her, even if it meant forgoing an extra gown. She could buy more dresses. She could not buy memories of her mother.
Underneath a layer of blankets, she found additional treasures: a christening gown she thought must have been hers as well as her mother’s; a Bible in which Sabine found inscribed the names of her mother’s parents, siblings, grandparents, and great grandparents; and a locket containing two miniatures—one of a dark-haired young woman and the other of a paler-haired girl about five years of age who could only be Maman. The woman in the other panel must be Sabine’s grandmother, whom Sabine had never met and whose name her mother had never spoken. The rift between Isabelle Rousseau and her parents had run deep, indeed, so deep that Sabine had never known their names or anything else about them. Yet her mother had kept these mementos, perhaps hoping that one day, Sabine would find them and seek out her family. Or perhaps Maman had hoped no such thing. There was no way to know what her mother, secretive to the end, had intended.
And now, it was too late. She would never have the opportunity to meet them.
Once the trunk was empty, Sabine put the pillow, the christening gown, the Bible, and the locket back at the bottom, then began adding the items she would need for the journey. Several changes of underthings. The one woolen work dress she had that was currently clean. Two additional plain, practical gowns that she could get into and out of without help. Her only pelisse, which unfortunately was lined with fur and far too fine not to call attention to itself, but it was that or freeze if the weather turned frosty. There was room enough for one more dress when she was done, and she gazed long and hard at the blue silk gown she’d worn to dinner with the intention of impressing Mr. Pearce. It was the very best of her dresses and she knew the color suited her, but in the end, she knew bringing it was impractical. She chose instead a much more sensible gown made of dark green cotton, along with a bonnet trimmed with matching fabric.
Atop her clothing, she placed the letters Mr. Pearce had given her, the box in which she kept the money she’d squirrelled away since Papa’s death, and the small portrait of him and her mother that hung on her bedroom wall.
Finally, she retrieved her journal with its embarrassing, if not strictly incriminating, passages from the drawer in her desk. She frowned. Was it her imagination, or was the leather-bound volume in a slightly different position than she had left it? Should she bring it or dispose of it entirely? On the one hand, she had been keeping the journal for nearly ten years. She did not make entries often, but the journal was nonetheless her only written record of the life she was leaving behind. On the other hand, if she and Mr. Pearce were apprehended at some point along their journey, the journal would undoubtedly be discovered and its contents possibly used against her. She honestly could not see how anything she had written in its pages could be taken to support her uncle’s allegations with regard to her conspiring with British spies, but who knew what other “evidence” her uncle might have trumped up against her?
In the end, she settled for tearing out the potentially harmful pages and throwing them on the hearth to burn, then tu
cked the journal into the trunk and latched it shut. Hard to imagine that her entire life must now fit into such a small space.
Mr. Pearce’s valet and footman—who were probably not a valet and footman at all, but agents of the British crown like him—arrived at her bedroom door promptly at midnight to cart away her belongings. When no uproar to indicate that they had been intercepted in their task ensued, she stripped down to her shift and climbed into bed.
This would be the last time she would ever sleep in this bed, in this room, in this house. Tomorrow, she would travel farther away in a single day from the place she had been born in a single day than she had ever gone in her entire life.
Now that her departure was a certainty, she realized there were things she would miss when she left: the view of the garden from her bedroom window; the comfort of reading a book in the library while in her father’s chair, which still smelled faintly of his pipe tobacco; Maman’s lace doilies and drapes, which were so delicate and lovely that Aunt Marguerite had been unable to dispose of them in spite of her dislike of her late sister-in-law; Fabron and the other stable hands, who had always treated her with the same respect as they had her Papa; the horses she would have to leave behind; and finally, Madame Charney’s many small kindnesses, especially in the last few years…and, of course, her cooking. The food in England was rumored to be atrocious, after all.
And yet, she was excited, too. She was about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. Some of her excitement was due to nerves. What if they were caught? What if they drowned crossing the channel? What if she got to England and hated it? What if she met her father and hated him? But some of it was also pure anticipation—of seeing new sights, of meeting new people, of having an entirely fresh start in life.