He caught them, glad of the excuse to touch her, glad of the excuse to feel her jerk nervously at the feel of his hands on her, knowing it wasn’t as simple as fear or hatred. “I suppose it would be a waste of time to ask you for your word of honor.”
“It depends on what you ask.”
“That you not try to murder me tonight? A small request, surely. Even a bloodthirsty creature like yourself must long for dinner and a decent night’s sleep.”
“Am I going to be allowed a decent night’s sleep?” she asked, glancing pointedly at the single bed.
“Of course,” he said, not hesitating. She would sleep, all right. He would tire her out so much she would sleep for days.
She didn’t believe him, of course, but she nodded. “Very well, then. I give you my word.”
He was still holding her bound wrists. Her hands were like ice against his, but they remained motionless in his grip. “Why should I believe you?” he said, not wanting to release her.
“Because, unlike you, I have a sense of honor. If I give my word, I do not break it.”
He believed her. Most women of his acquaintance had scant appreciation for honor or truthfulness, but he already knew that Ghislaine had little in common with the dashing widows and muslin company he spent his time with. Even at fifteen, she’d been something quite out of the ordinary. He should have guessed she’d turn out to be astonishing.
He unfastened the rumpled neckcloth, tucking it in his pocket for further use. “See what you can find for us to eat,” he said, “and I’ll start a fire.”
Her expression was frankly disbelieving. She turned from him, and he had to admire her unconscious grace, hampered as she was by his cousin Ellen’s oversized clothes. She would probably be a great deal more graceful without them, he thought for a brief, dreamy moment. He had every intention of finding out. He’d put off that particular pleasure for too long as it was, and the wench at the last inn hadn’t sated his appetite, merely increased it.
In the meantime, he needed to concentrate on getting some warmth in the room. If he was going to divest Ghislaine de Lorgny of her clothes, and he planned to do just that, he wanted it to be warm enough for her to enjoy it. And for him to enjoy her.
The heat of the fire managed to penetrate to the center of the large room, but not much beyond that. It had astonished Ghislaine that a dissolute wastrel like Nicholas Blackthorne could accomplish something as profoundly practical as starting a fire, but accomplish it he had, including removing the old bird’s nest that had clogged the chimney and sent billows of smoke out into the room. He’d also dragged the bed closer to the center of the room, disturbing a nest of field mice from the aging mattress. There were no linens, but he’d brought in the lap robes from the carriage and spread them across the ticking. He’d used all the lap robes, she noticed, leaving only one bed equipped. And she wondered again who was going to sleep where. Surely he didn’t intend the three of them to bundle together on that sagging mattress. Though it might be the warmest, safest alternative. Or perhaps not, she thought belatedly, remembering things she’d been told by the more experienced women she’d met in Paris.
It had taken all her considerable self-control not to bolt when he’d left her alone in the room, surrounded by the most depressing assortment of foodstuffs. But she’d given her word, and even if he didn’t expect honor from her, she expected it from herself. Even more so now that she knew how devoid he was of that particular trait.
Blackthorne had even managed to unearth a broom from some part of the ruined house, but when he took to stirring the dust up into swirling clouds that settled in the food she was trying to assemble, she took it from him with wifely hands and banished him to sit by the fire. The act gave her a belated feeling of despair. How easy it was to give in, to fall into pleasant ways, forgetting her determination, forgetting his villainy.
Taverner was better than she would have thought, returning with butter, eggs, thick cream, and a slab of sharp aged cheese. While the two men busied themselves in the other room she managed wonders—a sweet custard spiced with a few withered apples from last fall’s harvest, a hearty peasant omelet with potatoes and the last of an aging slab of bacon, and coffee, wonderful coffee. If it were up to her she would have coffee with every meal. It had become the one pure pleasures left to her, and she savored the scent and flavor of it as it brewed over her makeshift cooking fire.
The table had only three working legs—she’d had to prop it against a wall. She filled the plates evenly, filled the mugs with coffee, and sat down, waiting.
She didn’t expect praise, and she didn’t receive it. Nicholas threw himself down in a chair that was far too decrepit to make such behavior wise, reached over, and took her plate, exchanging it with his. “You have no objections, I assume?” he asked with false politeness.
“None at all,” she murmured.
Taverner watched this byplay from his shifty eyes. “Maybe you’d better take mine,” he said, reaching across the table and exchanging plates with his master. “She’s a downy one, the Mamzelle is.”
“If you like, I’ll eat everyone’s dinner,” Ghislaine offered with false sweetness. “I’m famished, and the food is getting cold while you two argue. Choose your plate and let me eat in peace.”
Nicholas leaned back in the chair. “Now there’s a challenge if ever I’ve heard one. Can’t let the girl think we’re cowards, Tavvy. We’ve at least a one in three chance of surviving. Unless she’s decided to put a period to all three of us at once, like some damned Shakespeare tragedy.”
“Trust me,” she said, “I’m no longer willing to die in order for you to meet your just reward.”
He and Tavvy had been depleting the bottle of brandy in the back room, and now he took it and tipped a generous amount into Ghislaine’s mug of coffee. “No martyr, is that it? Just as well. Martyrdom is unbelievably tiresome.”
“I gather you speak from experience,” she said.
“Only from having to suffer from exposure to them. Saints are very tedious, my pet. I much prefer sinners.”
“I imagine you do.” The omelet was delicious, even though she mourned the absence of any herbs. It was just as well, though. Blackthorne would have probably decided thyme was an arcane form of arsenic, and consigned her lovely omelet to the fire.
Once he decided to risk it he ate well, more than she’d seen him eat in their days together. There was an odd light to his eyes, one that made her uneasy. As if he’d been biding his time since he’d taken her away from Ainsley Hall, but now that time of waiting was over. She didn’t now whether she was frightened or relieved.
His next words proved her right. “I’ll want you to go into town, Tavvy,” he said casually, leaning back with his own mug of brandy. He’d finished the coffee, following it with straight liquor, and he looked calm, relaxed, and very dangerous. “There was an inn we passed not more than five miles away where you can bespeak a room. See if they’ve any word from London. I imagine Jason Hargrove is well on his way to good health, otherwise we would have heard. See if you can find some laborers to do something about the roof. Perhaps you might see if there are any young ladies closer in size to Mamzelle. She must be tired of dressing in a giant’s clothes.”
“Ellen’s not a giant,” she said indignantly, attack in this unexpected quarter slicing through her defenses.
“So there is someone or something you care about,” Nicholas said. “I thought your emotions had vanished. Don’t think there’s anything Ellen can do to save you. She might be equally fond of you, but she can hardly come haring after us all over the country. You’ve seen the last of her, my pet. Accept it.”
“I accepted it three days ago, when you dragged me away from Ainsley Hall.”
“It was four days ago,
ma mie.
I’m glad to know the time has flown for you. I know I’ve been unspeakably cruel, when all you wanted to do was murder me. I do tend to lose my temper in the face of such minor inconveniences—it’s one of my besetting sins.” He took another sip. Tavvy had risen, moving toward the door.
“When do you want me back?” he asked, and for the first time Ghislaine noticed that Tavvy seldom referred to his employer by a title or a name.
Nicholas didn’t bother to glance at him—his dreamy, contemplative smile was all for Ghislaine’s wary figure. “Late tomorrow,” he said. “Take your time.”
That solved the question of sleeping arrangements, she thought, not moving, not letting her face betray her. She rose slowly, clearing the table, as she let her mind run riot. There was no need for panic, she reminded herself. She had survived far worse than the man lounging negligently at the table, watching her. She had survived, stronger and more determined than ever. She would survive Nicholas Blackthorne.
The weeks after she and Charles-Louis had arrived in Paris had been a horrific blur. The days they spent hiding—because even rough clothes and dirt couldn’t disguise their patrician origins from a bloodthirsty mob. The nights they spent foraging for food and fighting off the creatures that ruled the night. Creatures that at times had more interest in her beautiful, innocent young brother than in her.
She knew the day it had happened, far too well. Twenty-three Thermidor on the new French calendar. They’d been two days without eating, and Charles-Louis had been crying incessantly, the rivulets of tears washing the filth from his face. She’d left him in the alleyway behind the wine shop, a safe enough place, while she’d gone to find a scrap of food. She’d found far more than she’d bargained for.
Jean-Luc Malviver. She could still see him, his ferret-like face with its long, ugly blade of a nose, his thin lips and dark, stained teeth. He’d been young that night, she realized, though to her seventeen years he’d seemed very grown-up. He probably wasn’t much more than thirty, but his face was ageless. Evil, though she hadn’t known it then.
He’d found her on her knees next to a man who’d just left the wine shop. The man had been too drunk to stagger more than a few paces before he’d collapsed on the pavement, passed out.
She’d been watching him from her corner of the shadows, and she’d moved quickly, kneeling to relieve the corpulent bourgeoisie of his purse, when a cruel hand had clamped down on her shoulder and hauled her upright.
He swore when the light caught her face. “There are better ways to make a living, my beauty,” he said, pushing her hair from her face with a filthy hand. She was equally filthy from her weeks of living on the street, but she recoiled anyway.
“What’s your name,
hein?”
he demanded. “You mustn’t have been in town long, to still be making ends meet. I can take you someplace where you’ll have pretty clothes, a bath if you so desire, and good food. Lots and lots of food.”
She stared at him, mute, defiant. She was still innocent enough, despite their weeks in Paris, not to understand what he was talking about, but she knew if she spoke he’d recognize the difference in their voices, in their accents. And she’d been an unwilling witness to too much violence against anyone with pretensions to gentility.
She tried to pull away from him, but it was useless. She considered calling out for help, but she knew with crushing certainty that she would be trading one devil for the next. She had no choice but to stumble after him as he dragged her along the streets, her puny struggles making no inroad on his determination.
“You’ll like Madame Claude’s,” Malviver had said. “All you have to do is be agreeable, and you’ll have a better life than most of your sort. Be glad you were lucky enough to be born with a pretty face. It’s better than the streets, my girl.”
The house had been too warm, filled with girls with young faces and old eyes, clean hands and soiled bodies. When she’d fought they’d hurt her; when she’d refused to cooperate they’d forced her. Madame Claude had surveyed her, satisfaction on her grim face as she offered Malviver a handful of coins. Her satisfaction had increased when the rough brute of a woman who’d bathed Ghislaine and clothed her and poked her unmercifully announced that she was the last living virgin in the decadent city of Paris.
“She’ll be worth a fortune,” Madame Claude had chortled gleefully. “I might find it in my heart to give Malviver an extra sou for the treasure he brought me.”
That was the first time she’d heard his name, the man who’d sold her into whoredom for a handful of coins. It had taken time, endless time, but she’d killed him for what he’d done to her. Just as she would kill Nicholas Blackthorne.
Tavvy had brought her water before he took himself off. While she had no desire to act as Blackthorne’s scullery maid, washing the dishes at least delayed the reckoning she knew was coming. And with his dark, fathomless eyes watching her from beyond the fire, Ghislaine suddenly experienced the first strains of cowardice she’d felt in many, many years.
She scrubbed. As a Frenchwoman, she knew how to scrub, and the three-legged table was spotless. Nicholas simply sat there, his legs stretched out in front of him, his neckcloth long since discarded, and watched her as she bustled around the room.
“Are you ready to alight,
ma mie
?” he inquired lazily, when she was trying to decide whether she could get away with washing the floor. “Or are you still planning to put off the inevitable?”
She stood very still, watching him. She wasn’t going to fight him—he’d already proven it would do no good. There was no knife within reach—Taverner had seen to that—and there was nothing else she could do, nothing short of trying to shove him into the fire. It was inevitable.
“I am hardly going to assist at my own rape,” she said flatly. “If you want me, you’ll have to make me.”
He smiled then, and his decadent beauty was remarkable in the flickering firelight. She wondered stonily how she could resist him. And realized with sudden dawning horror that she was not sure if she could.
“I’m very good at making people do what I want,” he said softly, rising from his seat. The fitful light cast a large shadow behind him, so that he looked even taller than his formidable height, and quite dangerous. It wasn’t an illusion, Ghislaine told herself. He was the greatest danger she had ever known. And for reasons she didn’t want to contemplate.