He didn’t move, stretched out lazily in the sunlight as he considered the options. Had she decided to ignore their truce? He’d never known a woman with a sense of honor before; it would be unlikely that one harboring such murderous tendencies would be the first. Besides, he’d informed her point-blank that he didn’t honor his own promises. Why should she consider herself honor-bound when he didn’t?
He’d left her with a knife. A dull one, to be sure, but she’d had enough time to sharpen it. He’d been gone several hours at least, and his empty stomach told him it was getting past time to eat. Or maybe she’d had more luck in searching for the firearms than he had.
That thought gave him pause. He had no doubt about his ability to fend off a knife-wielding gamine. He was more than a foot taller and a great deal heavier, as she’d already learned in their previous encounters.
A gun was a different matter. She could blow his head off at twenty paces if she found his old shotgun. The thought was only slightly unnerving.
She would be unlikely to be able to master the intricacies of loading and preparing a gun. If she managed that, she would still be unlikely to hit even as large a target as he. And then again, he had the advantage of hearing her approach. With the most lethal intentions in the world, she would still have a hard time finding her intended victim easy to kill.
She was panting slightly from exertion—he could hear the soft little sounds of her breathing over the rustle of the grass. Which meant she must be carrying something fairly heavy. It was rough going to the edge of the river, but he’d already trod the path down, and she was a strong, resilient young woman. Maybe she’d found the rifle after all.
She was closer than he’d realized, moving in his direction with a kind of reckless determination. He’d been a fool to leave such a well-marked path, he thought lazily, not bothering to open his eyes. He’d been a fool to think he could even begin to trust her. His incipient demise was just as much the fault of his own stupidity as of her murderous intentions.
She was too close for him to hide, and somehow he didn’t fancy scurrying into the bushes to get away from her. It wasn’t that he particularly valued his dignity, he thought, sighing. He just didn’t think his life was worth the bother.
The brightness of the sun beyond his eyelids darkened, and he knew she was standing over him. He could feel her presence, smell the faint trace of flowers and lye soap. He didn’t move, waiting for the shotgun blast.
“Nicholas,” she said, after a long pause.
He opened his eyes, expecting to confront the barrel of a gun. Instead he saw Ghislaine, standing there like a shepherdess, a heavy basket in her hand, no weapon in sight.
He sat up, staring at her. She’d managed a bath. Her chestnut hair was wet and spiky around her face, just beginning to curl as it dried, and she’d done something about her clothes. She was wearing one of the day dresses they’d brought along, but she’d shortened the sleeves and hem with what he could only assume was the knife he’d left behind. The top two buttons were open at her throat, and those few inches of damp, pink skin had to be the most erotic thing he’d seen in his life.
“You try my resolve, my pet,” he said slowly. “If I’m not allowed to touch you, you might at least make an effort not to look so delectable.”
She blushed. It astonished him. He wouldn’t have thought her capable of such a thing. The color faded as quickly as it appeared, and once more she had a stern expression that subdued the piquant beauty of her face. “I brought you some luncheon.”
“Did you, indeed? How very thoughtful. What summoned up this excess of Christian charity in your bleak little soul?” He reached out his hand for the basket.
She made no move to give it to him. “I wouldn’t be passing judgment on the state of my soul if I were you. Your own isn’t in any too spotless a condition.”
“True enough. You’ve never actually killed anyone, much as you’d like to, while I managed to accomplish that act. At least this time my victim appears to have recovered.” He gave up waiting for her to pass the basket to him, pulling it from her hand and delving through it. “This is a lot of food for one man. Would I be too brashly optimistic to hope you might be planning to share it with me?”
She looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t know I had any choice in the matter. Would you trust my cooking?”
“Not in the slightest,” he said. “Are you going to continue to loom over me, or are you going to sit?”
She sat. She probably assumed she was out of his reach, and he forbore to inform her that she would never be out of his reach for long. He could move faster than she could, if he so desired. He was merely biding his time.
“I didn’t have much to work with,” she said defensively, as he pulled out warm bread and butter and cheese. She’d included one of the bottles of wine from the case Tavvy had packed, and he wondered whether she hoped to get him drunk. It would take more than one bottle to put him under the table.
She’d brought the knife, and he was right; it was a great deal sharper than when she’d first taken possession of it. They ate in silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the rushing river, slightly swollen after the rains, the faint breeze in the leaves overhead. It was an odd silence, Nicholas thought, watching her out of hooded eyes as he lazily consumed the best meal he’d eaten in twenty years. Considering they were mortal enemies, considering that she feared and hated him, it was surprisingly peaceful sitting by the bank of the river with her.
And then he broke that peace, not willfully but effectively nonetheless. “Why don’t you tell me how you came to be with my cousin Ellen, working belowstairs?” he said. “Since you’ve admitted a convent had no part in your life, I’d be interested in how you survived the years since the Terror.”
Her faced turned white. He’d never seen that happen, though he’d certainly heard about the phenomenon. Ghislaine had porcelain-fair skin anyway, with a faint touch of rose in her high cheekbones. Now she looked ashen.
“A day’s truce does not mean I’ll provide you with entertainment,” she managed to say in a tight little voice.
She was going to provide him with more than entertainment, but he wasn’t in the mood to point that out to her. “Do you want any wine?” he asked instead. “You forgot to bring mugs, so you’ll have to share the bottle.” He took a long drink. Sacrilege to treat a fine claret so, but it still tasted better than any served in Irish crystal in a London drawing room.
“No, thank you…” She started to rise, but he caught her wrist, holding her still.
“Have some wine,” he said in a deceptively gentle voice.
She didn’t move. “You promised you wouldn’t touch me.”
“Do as I ask, and I’ll release you.”
She glared at him, her huge eyes burning with tightly suppressed rage. The irises were small in the bright sunlight, and one could drown in the turbulent dark brown depths, if one was feeling fanciful. He wasn’t the fanciful type. “One drink, Ghislaine, and I’ll release you.”
She took the bottle in her free hand, brought it to her mouth, and took an impressively healthy gulp. He watched with mixed feelings. He’d half-hoped she would continue to defy him, enable him to prolong the confrontation.
He released her wrist, when he wanted nothing more than to pull her down against him, and his smile was cool and bland. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it? Life is a great deal simpler when you choose to cooperate.”
She scrambled to her feet, knocking over the wine. He watched the dark liquid disappear into the ground with only a trace of regret. “I will never cooperate,” she said. “I will never compromise.”
“What do you call our truce?”
She was out of reach, at least temporarily, and he chose to let her go. She smiled then, and her icy determination would have quelled a lesser man. “Lulling my victim,” she snapped. She turned and walked away, without another word.
Leaving him to stare after her in silent admiration. If all the French had her determination, it was a lucky thing Napoleon had agreed to a peace at Amiens. Otherwise England would be in a great deal of trouble.
Ghislaine’s hands were shaking as she moved through the thick growth, away from the river. Away from her smug, dangerous captor. It astonished her, his ability to enrage and disturb her. She’d had other enemies in her life; cruel, evil, implacable enemies. She’d learned the trick of turning inward, of silencing her emotions and reactions, of facing those enemies with cool determination. So why did Nicholas Blackthorne destroy her self-control?
The woods were ancient and beautiful, with the sunlight shining down through the leaves, dappling the forest. It reminded her of the woods near Sans Doute, with its ancient oaks and chestnut trees, the smell of the damp, spring-renewed earth, the lazy sound of baby birds demanding a meal. If only she could go back to that peaceful time and place. If only she had cherished it, instead of taking it for granted with the self-absorption of youth.
The woods thinned out into a clearing, and the grass was spring-green and soft. She sank to her knees, then lay down, face-first, absorbing the smell and the warmth of it into her bones. She hadn’t been that close to the earth since the Terror had first begun. Maybe she could draw her strength again from it.
She rolled over on her back, staring up into the bright sunlight of a perfect day. If only she could empty her mind, empty her soul, simply drink in the glory of nature.
But instead the memories returned, the memories she’d pushed away so assiduously during the intervening years. They attacked only at night, in her dreams, when her defenses had vanished. In daylight she was too strong to give in to them, too strong to relive the panic and grief and despair.
But today was different. Today, lying on the soft grass with the sweet-smelling woods all around her, she would let the memories return. Because if she didn’t, she might forget. Her resolution would fail. And when Nicholas put his hands on her, his mouth on her, she might make the foolish mistake of wanting it. And then there’d be no help for her at all.
There was probably a simple enough explanation for her current weakness. Life had grown comparatively easy during the last few years. The time she had spent at the Red Hen, learning to cook, had had its own timeless tranquility, a kind of numbness that had made nine years pass almost without her noticing. The shabby inn had become a home of sorts, even within the hated confines of Paris.
Much as she wanted to, she would never forget the terrible night she had first stumbled in there, bone-weary, the last tears drained from her body, the last ounce of hope gone. She had been standing on the bridge for hours in the pouring rain, staring down into the muddy, fast-moving depths of the Seine, waiting. Waiting for the final burst of energy that would have sent her over, tumbling to her death in the water.
The rain had washed the blood from her hands, Malviver’s blood. It had soaked her clothes and run down her back in icy rivulets. She had gone as far as she could go, and now there was no hope. She had become one of them. And that knowledge had been the death knell for her soul.
There had been so many nights. So many horrible nights. The night she and Charles-Louis had finally arrived in Paris, only to find the bloated corpse of their uncle swinging gently above the streets. The night Malviver had sold her to Madame Claude. Who in turn had auctioned her off to the highest bidder, a raddled old British nobleman with a corpulent body and a taste for cruelty.
At first she’d been drugged into submission, and she’d watched it all from a distance, almost as if it were happening to someone else. At the time she’d been grateful, absurdly grateful that she had that buffer. Until she’d seen
him.
They were leading her upstairs, to await the high bidder’s eager visit, when she glanced blankly into one of the side rooms. Two of the younger girls were there, with a fully dressed man, and they were laughing, the three of them, looking curiously young and carefree. The sound of their laughter had broken through her stupor and she’d made a strangled sound of protest.
They must have heard her. The man turned to look, and he wasn’t a man, he was a boy, one of almost angelic beauty. Nicholas Blackthorne. He was drunk, and he stared at her without recognition as they hauled her away, but beneath the rough hands that gagged her she’d screamed his name. And then he’d turned back to the two girls, and the laughter had sounded again.
The dissolute British nobleman not only had a taste for virgins, he also preferred that they fight him. She lay tied to the bed, awaiting him, until the drug wore off. She lay long enough to still hear the laughter, and the sounds that followed that laughter, the groans and thumps and rhythmic sounds that were foreign to her, and the pain in her heart solidified into a knot of hatred so intense it burned through her. It wasn’t the fat, foul-breathed monster who took her maidenhead a few hours later who earned that hatred. Instead she focused on Nicholas Blackthorne, who disported in a Paris brothel while she was being debauched.
If she hadn’t forgotten him, at least she’d kept herself from thinking of him during the intervening years. His betrayal had run deep, but her need to care for Charles-Louis, to try to find her parents, had been too overwhelming for her to indulge in her own heartbroken anger.
She no longer had that luxury. As she lay in that soft bed, bleeding and defiled, she had no one to think of but herself. And no one to blame but Nicholas Blackthorne.
Madame Claude had underestimated her. “The earl was most pleased with you last night,
cherie,”
she crooned as she unfastened her wrists. “Even though your maidenhead is gone, he still considers you a valuable commodity. He can be very generous to us both,
cherie.
You will find this life much more to your fancy than you ever imagined.”
Ghislaine hadn’t said a word; she’d simply stared at the old harridan with dark hatred in her eyes. Madame Claude was unimpressed. “Of course, you mustn’t be too enthusiastic about the comforts. One of the things the earl found most appealing about you was the way you struggled against him. I doubt he’d appreciate compliance. Unless, of course, he was able to properly train you into it. And you needn’t fear that the rest of your working life will involve only people like the earl. To be sure, they make up the bulk of our guests, but we entertain all ages, all sexes. If you prefer women, I know the wife of a high-ranking government official who would find you absolutely delightful. And the young man last night was asking about you.”