Trapped by Scandal (5 page)

“Stephen. Is all well?” William greeted the new arrival by filling a pewter cup with wine.

“Aye, we all made it through the gates before curfew,” the man said. “We split up as usual through the
city . . . the rest'll be here in their own time.” He took the cup with a nod of thanks and sprawled with a sigh of exhaustion onto the bench at the table. He frowned at Hero. “Who do we have here?”

“Alec's sister,” Marcus supplied. “The Lady Hermione Fanshawe.”

“Good God,” Stephen said simply, and drank deeply from his cup.

William chuckled. “That was rather my reaction. Food?”

“If there is any.” Stephen regarded Hermione with frank astonishment. “Alec said nothing about a sister.”

“He didn't know I was coming,” Hero told him, bristling a little at the sense of being discussed as if she were some exhibit in a museum.

Marcus set a bowl of stew on the table in front of Stephen. “Hero, let me introduce Stephen Baynard, one of our little band of brothers.”

“Hero . . . welcome.” Stephen nodded matter-of-factly as he took a spoon to his stew. “A woman might be useful to us, William.”

“Certainly,” William agreed.

“What's Alec going to say to that?” Marcus asked, refilling tankards from the flagon. “I doubt—”

“Just a minute.” Hero interrupted him sharply. “Alec has nothing to do with what I choose to do or how I choose to do it.”

William smiled. Hero's reaction didn't surprise him in the least. “Which of you is the elder?”

“Alec, by two minutes,” Hero replied.

“I thought there was rather more than an ordinary family resemblance between you,” William observed.

Another alerting rap at the door brought another figure slipping stealthily into the kitchen, and the introductions began again. Despite her irritation at being discussed sometimes as if she weren't there, Hero was pleasantly surprised to find that none of the men actually seemed shocked at her presence or her disguise. Their London selves would have been horrified at the very idea of Lady Hermione in such a place and in such dress, but then, she reflected, in their present incarnations, they were hardly recognizable themselves. And they'd seen and experienced more than enough horrors to find nothing shocking. She settled quietly on a corner of the bench, listening to the account of the rescue of the Latour family as men continued to slip in from the dark beyond the kitchen door.

It was close to midnight when the door finally opened to admit the Marquis of Bruton. He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment leaning wearily against it as his eyes ran across the gathering, counting his fellow conspirators. “Good, we all made it,” he said with a sigh, his shoulders relaxing as he pushed himself off the door. Then his green gaze fell upon the figure at the end of the bench.

“
Hero
. What the
hell
are you doing here?”

The intensity of relief at the sight of her brother had stunned Hero into immobility at first, but now she jumped up from the bench and ran to him, flinging her arms around him. “Thank God you're safe, Alec. I've been looking everywhere for you. I went to the St. Juliens'
h
ô
tel
on Rue St. Honoré, but it had been ransacked. The mob were burning and looting in the courtyard. I was so afraid you had been caught up in it.” She leaned back in his arms, looking at him as if she would devour him whole. “How could you leave me all these weeks without a word? Didn't you know how frantic I'd be?”

“There was no way to get word to you,” her brother said, his hands on her shoulders, gripping tightly. “It never occurred to me you'd come into this pit of hell after me.” He gave her a little shake.

“Perhaps it should have done,” William remarked. “From what little I've seen of your sister, Alec, I would have expected nothing less.”

Alec took his eyes from his sister at last and blinked rapidly, as if to dispel a dream. “How . . . how did you find her? Or, I mean, how did you get here, Hero?”

“It's a long story. Why don't you sit down? You're dead on your feet.” Hero pushed him towards the table, once again in charge of the situation. Her brother made no demur. Since early childhood, he had relied on his sister's strength as she had relied upon his. Quarreling was something quite foreign to them both.

He sat down and drank deeply from the wine cup someone passed him. “Tell me this story.”

FIVE

W
illiam sat at his ease, one hand curled around his wine cup on the table, one leg crossed casually over the other, watching the twins as Hero told her brother the story of her journey and the last few days in Paris. He noted almost absently that while the family resemblance was powerful, Hero's hair, escaping now from its pins as she talked animatedly, was of a much richer and more complex hue than her brother's, and her eyes seemed larger, wider apart, and a more vivid green.

William had spent little time in the land of his mother's birth and was not well versed in the intricacies of the aristocratic families that made up England's elite Society. He knew almost nothing about the Bruton family, except that the Marquis possessed vast estates in Hampshire and vast wealth as a result. He himself had a more modest estate in Norfolk, inherited from his mother, and he kept lodgings in Half Moon Street in London for his occasional visits to the city, but his heart lay in France. He had grown up on his father's country estate in Bordeaux and spent most of his young adulthood in Paris in the grand mansion of the
St. Aubery family on Rue Varennes, from where he had entered the closed circles of the French court. When the first rumblings of trouble among the people of France had been heard and they had demanded that the King call the Estates General for the first time in generations, William's sympathy had been with the people and their grievances. He had joined with two other aristocrats, members of the First Estate, the Comte de Mirabeau and the Duc d'Orleans, in voting with the people's Third Estate when it declared itself the National Assembly.

But how quickly that early promise of rational, legal redressing of ancient inequalities had degenerated into the terror that now ruled the country. Disgusted by the violence, the indiscriminate brutality that followed the orderly beginnings of the revolution, William had devoted himself to getting his threatened compatriots to safety. And now he found himself questioning his French self. This country could never feel like his home again, and he had learned over the last months to appreciate the selfless bravery of these English gentlemen who fought by his side.

And not just gentlemen, he thought with an inner smile, listening to Hero tell her story. She was a lively narrator, her hands moving rapidly in illustration of her experiences. She didn't dwell on the fear she must have felt so often, the threat of danger that must have accompanied her every step, but her audience had no difficulty imagining it. Occasionally, she brushed strands of falling hair from her cheeks and once or twice muttered a curse as she tried to refasten the pins in what was rapidly becoming an
unruly tumble of rich color. It aroused in William an urge to run his fingers through it, tangling them deep amidst the thick, loosely curling locks.

“And so here I am,” Hero finished, spreading her hands wide. “And thank God I've found you safe, brother.”

“Aye,” Alec said, frowning grimly. “How could you have risked your life on such a quest, Hero? We have to get you out of here with the next group.” He glanced interrogatively at William.

“Why?” Hero demanded before William could say anything. “No one knows I'm here.”

“Well, where does Aunt Emily think you are?” Alec demanded. Their father's distant elderly dowager cousin had lived with them as nominal chaperone for the unmarried Hero since the death of their parents.

“As far as Aunt Emily is concerned, I'm in the wilds of Inverness staying with relatives of the Camerons. No one knows I'm here,” Hero repeated with emphasis.

“I wouldn't be so sure about that,” William said thoughtfully. “You came over on a clandestine fishing boat, most likely in the company of the Lizard. He's going to be wondering who you are and what brought you to France. Even if you exchanged no words with him, he's still going to be curious. That's his business, and,” he added, “it's one he's very good at.”

Hero frowned. “But he couldn't possibly know where I am now. It took me over a week to get from Calais to Paris, but I saw him get into a hired coach at the quay. He didn't give me a second glance, I'm sure of it.”

“I doubt you would have known what to look for,”
William stated. “However, you're here now, and we might have a use for you.”

“I don't want Hero involved in anything,” Alec declared. “It's too dangerous.”

“Nonsense,” Hero stated. “It's no more dangerous for me than it is for you, and if William thinks I can be useful, then of course, I'm staying. I'll leave when we've found Marie Claire and her family. And I daresay,” she added, “Marie Claire will want you to accompany her, Alec, so we'll go home together.”

Alec didn't attempt an argument that he knew he would lose anyway. Hero had always been her own person, with her own very strong opinions, and since the death of her fiancé, she had become even more so. The natural reckless streak in her personality had become stronger and she seemed sometimes deliberately heedless of consequences. It troubled her brother deeply, but he didn't know how to intervene. He knew she was still struggling with her grief at Tom's loss, at the loss of a future she had been so certain of, and Alec didn't know how to help her through it, except to support her need to find a renewed purpose in her life. He accepted her statement with a mental shrug, saying instead, “We have to find them first.”

His mouth twisted as he thought of his delicate fiancée somewhere in the bloody madhouse of the city, probably rotting in some filthy prison. Marie Claire had none of Hero's strength. How should she have, sheltered and cosseted as she had been all her life? His eyes seemed to glaze, and he shook his head like a drunken man, before hauling himself up and falling in a sprawl of limbs into
a rocking chair by the range. “I'll just shut my eyes for a few minutes.”

“Me, too,” Stephen announced abruptly, yawning deeply as he swung himself off the bench. There was a chorus of agreement, and the men around the table rose wearily to their feet, moving to the door that opened into the interior of the house.

Hero glanced at her brother. He was sleeping like the dead. “Is there a quilt, anything I can cover him with?”

“In the top drawer of the dresser over there. You should find something.” William gestured to the dresser.

Hero found a rather grubby blanket. She draped it over her sleeping brother and then swallowed a yawn of her own. The wine and the food were taking their toll after the exigencies of the day.

“It's time we were all in bed,” William observed, taking up a candle. “Come.”

“I can sleep on the bench,” Hero said as he moved to the door. “It's warm enough with the fire.”

“But hard and narrow,” he pointed out, turning back to her, beckoning imperatively. “Come.”

Hero had little strength to resist, as the idea of lying full-length somewhere and allowing herself to sleep properly for the first time in days offered a siren's call. She followed him out of the kitchen and up the narrow flight of stairs that led to the dark hallway beyond. Several doors opened off the square landing, and faint snuffles and snores came from behind them.

William led the way up a second, even narrower stairway, shielding the candle flame with one hand, and opened
a door at the top. It led into a small eaved chamber with a low, unshuttered window. The air was chill, although the early September day had been quite warm, but the bed, which took up most of the floor space, appeared to be well supplied with covers, and Hero looked longingly at it.

William set the candle on the shelf above the empty grate, then bent and pulled out a truckle bed from beneath the bigger bed. “You should find this comfortable enough. It's too short for me.” He threw several quilts from the bed onto the smaller one and sat down to pull off his wooden sabots.

Hero perched on the low windowsill to kick off her own rough clogs. Her companion snuffed the candle and climbed into the bed, pulling a cover over him. The room was dimly lit by the moon shining in the unglazed window, and Hero could make out enough to get herself onto the truckle bed without stubbing a toe. She hesitated a moment, then resolutely untied the strip of cloth at her waist that kept up her grimy britches and shook them off her feet with a sigh of relief. She'd been sleeping in her clothes for days. She tugged her coarse linen shirt down her hips, deciding it made a decent enough covering while she was in bed, and gingerly settled onto the straw mattress of the truckle bed. A coarse sheet covered the mattress, and there was a flat pillow of sorts. The quilts were thick, and her limbs slowly relaxed into the growing warmth. She could hear her companion's deep, rhythmic breathing above her, and a feeling of security washed over her. Her eyes closed.

She awoke bewildered in full daylight and lay for a moment with her eyes still closed, trying to remember where she was. She was snug and warm in her nest, her limbs feeling deliciously leaden, and she could hear sounds like water splashing, the scuffle of bare feet on wooden floorboards. Memory returned in full flood, and she opened her eyes slowly. A naked man stood shaving with his back to her in front of a washstand against the wall. He dipped the cutthroat razor into a basin and tilted his head back, drawing the sharp blade up under his chin.

Hero gazed sleepily at the long, muscled back, the tight buttocks, the length of his thighs and powerfully muscled calves. His short chestnut hair was wet as if he'd just washed it, and drops of water glistened on his shoulders.

“I thought you still asleep.” William spoke into the silence. “Forgive me if I've shocked your maidenly modesty, my lady.”

Hero propped herself on an elbow and heard herself say, “I haven't had any to shock for two years.” Why on earth was she confiding such an intimate detail to this naked man?

“Ah,” he responded, wiping his face with a towel. He wrapped a second towel around his loins as he turned to face her. “You have a paramour?”

“I had a fiancé,” she returned. It didn't seem either possible or pointful to stop sharing her intimate past at this point. “He was killed last year at sea.” She tried to keep her eyes from following the line of dark hair that curled down his belly, disappearing into the skimpy towel.

“I'm sorry.” He leaned back against the washstand, rub
bing his wet head with the hand towel. “You anticipated the marital bed?”

Hero smiled in reminiscence. “Many times.”

William chuckled. “I can't say it surprises me. I gather you found it pleasurable.”

“Oh, yes,” she responded with a grin. “Very.” Then her smile dimmed as the old sorrow flooded her again. She had almost mastered her grief after all these months, but at times, the thought of Tom's life cut so short, of the life they had planned together now merely a dream, threatened to overwhelm her anew.

“How was he killed?” William asked. He could almost see the black shadow of her sadness hovering around her and was prepared for her to rebuff his questions if she felt them intrusive.

“He was a lieutenant in the navy. His ship had a skirmish with pirates off the coast of Spain, or at least that was what I was told. He was wounded, and the wound festered.” She blinked back tears. “It was such a waste. Tom was so young, so vital. We were to be married when that tour ended. He would have made captain on his next voyage, and I would have gone with him.” It was almost a relief to speak of it to this man, who to all intents and purposes was a complete stranger . . . except that they had shared a prison cell and he was standing there naked but for a skimpy towel as casually as if they were in full dress in a London salon. He didn't feel in the least like a stranger.

William made no further comment. He went to a chest and began to rummage through its contents, pulling out various garments. “Turn your back,” he instructed.

Obediently, Hero rolled onto her other side.

After a few minutes, he said, “If you want clean clothes, you can see what's in there. You'll have to roll the britches up, and the shirt will swamp you, but at least they're clean.”