Trapped by Scandal (6 page)

She sat up. He was fully dressed now, fastening the buckle of his belt. “Is there any fresh water?”

“I'll send your brother up with a jug.” He picked up the basin he'd been using and tipped its contents out of the window with an alerting shout of “
Gardez l'eau,
” in case any unwary pedestrian was passing below. “There'll be coffee in the kitchen.”

The door closed behind him, and Hero got out of bed, stretching. She felt amazingly refreshed, although she could smell her own sweat and feel the dirt ingrained in her skin. Soap and hot water and clean garments would be wonderful. She was examining the contents of the chest when Alec came in on a brisk alerting knock. He carried a steaming jug.

“How did you sleep?”

“Remarkably well. I dare swear better than you in that chair,” she replied, straightening from the chest. She saw that her brother was surveying the small chamber with a questioning eye.

“You slept on the truckle?”

“Yes, my dear. And William slept like a monk in the bed. You didn't really imagine he would ravish me, did you?”

Alec shook his head with a rueful grin. “No, he's too honorable . . . not so sure about you, though, sister dear.”
He set the jug on the washstand. “I'll see you in the kitchen.”

Hero stripped to her skin, wondering whether William was so honorable that he would refuse a little love play if it were offered him. It was a shocking reflection, she thought, surprising even herself with its lack of modesty. But then, nothing about her present circumstances could be anything but shocking. She probed the idea as delicately as if it were a nagging tooth. Perhaps just telling him about Tom had released in her some kind of pent-up need, because she certainly found the idea exciting. The thought of such love play sent little prickles of arousal across her skin and caused a familiar sinking jolt in the base of her belly. And why not? she thought defiantly, although whom she was defying she didn't know. The one thing she did know was that Tom would not mind. He had had far too generous a soul to condemn her to a life of chastity.

The hot water and harsh lye soap felt wonderful as she scrubbed her body vigorously with a scrap of toweling until her skin glowed red. She rubbed herself dry as best she could with the only dry corner of a towel she could find and then returned to the chest. She found a clean shirt of coarse linen. It swamped her as expected, but it smelled fresh. The trousers were more of a problem; the waist was too big, and they slid to her hips while the legs flapped off her feet.

The door opened on a brisk knock while she was contemplating her swamped lower limbs somewhat plaintively. William burst into laughter as he came in. “Even
worse than I thought,” he said, setting down the mug of coffee he held. “Let's see what we can do to improve matters.”

“I was using a strip of cloth before.” Hero indicated the strip she'd discarded with her old clothes. She couldn't move to get it herself without tripping over her feet or letting go of the waist of the britches.

“I think we can do better than that.” William looked through the chest. “Here.” He took out a narrow belt and wrapped it around Hero's waist, pulling it tight. “I'll put a new hole in it . . . about here, I think.” Marking the place with his finger, he drew his knife from the sheath at his waist and punctured the leather. “Now try it.” He buckled the belt and stood back.

Hero sighed with relief. “Thank you. But what do I do about this?” She flapped a leg in illustration.

“Sit on the bed, and I'll roll them up. I don't want to cut them, because you're not going to be wearing them for very long.”

Hero assumed he meant that she would have her own washed soon enough. She sat on the bed while he knelt and rolled the britches up to her mid-calves. This easy intimacy was making her feel rather strange. When his fingers brushed over her bare legs as he worked, she had to control a little jump of wholly pleasurable sensation. She recognized the feeling and knew it for what it was: a pure, simple jolt of lust. With a surge of embarrassment, she hoped that William couldn't sense it. But he looked up at her suddenly, and his tawny gold eyes held a look of startled recognition.

Then he smiled slowly, sitting back on his heels, looking at her with a quizzical gleam, his hands encircling her bare ankles. “I suspect that my lady is something of an adventuress,” he said, running his hands up her calves.

“Perhaps,” Hero replied, holding herself very still, fighting the urge to brush that errant lock of hair from his forehead. “We live in adventurous times.”

“Hazardous, certainly,” he agreed, releasing his hold and standing up in one easy movement. He leaned over her and tilted her chin with his finger, bringing his mouth to hers. It was a light touch, a promise of a kiss, but it sent her blood thrilling through her body like a bolt of lightning. He straightened. “We'll continue this later.”

Hero remained sitting on the bed after the door had closed softly behind him, wondering what exactly had just happened. It was one thing to harbor a secret impulsive attraction for the Viscount St. Aubery, quite another so shamelessly to reveal that powerful attraction to its object. But it seemed that it was not unreciprocated.

After a while, she slid off the bed and thrust her feet into her wooden clogs. The coffee he had brought her was cold. She poured it out of the window with the dirty water in the basin, shouting the customary warning cry, then slowly made her way down to the kitchen.

SIX

W
illiam and Marcus were the only men in the kitchen when Hero entered. They were sitting at the table deep in conversation but broke off as she came in. “Good morning, Marcus.” She greeted him with a smile.

“Good morning, Hero. Coffee?”

“Thank you.” A copper jug of coffee stood on the table beside the remnants of a loaf and a jar of apricot jam with a knife stuck in it. She filled her coffee mug and broke off a piece of bread, spreading it with jam before sitting down. “Did I interrupt something?”

“It concerned you,” William said. “We were trying to decide what exactly we're going to do about the situation.”

Hero bristled. “I don't think I'm a
situation
, and I don't particularly care for being discussed like some external problem. I will decide for myself what I shall do next.”

“We are accustomed to making decisions as a group,” William told her sharply. “We're all dependent for our safety on one another. There's no room for unilateral decisions or actions.”

“Should I just leave?” she inquired sweetly, reflecting
rather less sweetly that the moment in the upstairs chamber was clearly not at the forefront of his mind.

“I'm afraid that's not an option,” William stated. “You know too much, my dear girl. We value this house, and while I'm sure you would have no intention of giving it away . . .” He shrugged. “The agents of the Committee of Public Safety are everywhere, and intolerable pressure can be brought to bear, however resolute one might be.” His eyes were flinty as he held her gaze. “I trust you take my meaning.”

Hero did. And she had no illusions that she would be any stronger than anyone else when it came to resisting such pressure. Those cold eyes, gold as a cat's, were also making it very clear to her that Viscount St. Aubery would make a formidable opponent should such an unpleasant confrontation arise. She inclined her head in rueful acknowledgment, saying simply, “I came to Paris to find Alec and to help him, if possible, to find Marie Claire and her family. I still intend to do that.”

“We are all agreed that finding the St. Julien family will be our next priority,” William said, his tone no longer sharp. “We work on priorities. Those families at immediate risk of arrest are always our first focus. We had nothing to go on with the St. Juliens, and the Latour family were in the most urgent danger. Alec understood that. But we'll concentrate on them now.”

“It'll be the devil's own job,” Marcus put in somberly. “Families not yet arrested give us a better chance of getting them out of the country. And we don't even know where the St. Juliens are.”

Hero sipped her coffee, wrinkling her nose at its bitterness. “It seems hopeless.”

“Not quite. We have a contact in the Committee of Public Safety who has access to lists of the people condemned to execution,” William explained. “They aren't always complete, of course, but so far, no St. Julien has appeared on any list we've seen, so we're assuming they're in one of the prisons awaiting trial.”

Hero's spine prickled at the memory of her brief incarceration, the tumbrels, and the terrifying mob. Marie Claire was a fragile flower, sweet-natured and very pretty; it was hard to imagine how she would survive the filthy rat-ridden straw of a Parisian prison, let alone the brutality of the guards. “How do we go about finding out which prison?”

“We have sources,” Marcus explained. “A few guards in both La Force and the Conciergerie can be bribed, but it takes time. We've been waiting for something from them for several weeks.”

“And there are other smaller prisons around the city,” William said grimly. “It's impossible to get information on them all.”

Hero pushed aside her coffee mug, leaving the last swallow, and dipped her finger into the apricot jam pot, licking off the sweetness to relieve the coffee's bitter aftertaste. “So did you come to any conclusions about the
situation
?” She couldn't help the slightly sardonic emphasis.

William chose to ignore it. “It's time you put on women's clothes,” he informed her. “Alec has gone to procure some.”

“Why?” She looked indignant. “I feel safer in this disguise on the streets.”

“Believe me, you'll fool no one for long,” he stated.

“I'll bind my breasts again.”

He shook his head. “It won't do, Hero. I'll spare Marcus the embarrassment of a detailed description of your womanly assets, but trust me, my dear, they cannot be hidden from any interested eyes. And none of us can afford to attract attention. Besides,” he added with a sudden wicked chuckle, “if you continued with your disguise, it would be necessary to cut your hair, and that would be positively criminal.”

Hero wasn't sure how to take the last comment in present circumstances. She decided that in Marcus's company, it was safer to ignore it. She was forced to admit, however, that while her disguise could probably pass muster in a crowded street, anything out of the ordinary would draw attention to her—a scuffle, a fall, an altercation with an unruly cart horse, all perfectly normal occurrances in the life of the streets—but if her disguise slipped in any way, it would be disastrous.

“Well, I can't see myself being much use as a woman,” she pointed out.

“That remains to be seen.” William stood up. “For the moment, you need to stay safely in here. Marcus and I have somewhere to go.” He pulled his red cap over his head as he spoke.

“What am I supposed to do here?” Hero demanded as the two men went to the kitchen door. “Twiddle my thumbs?”

“Well, if you have a turn for kitchen duty, there's plenty to do.” William gestured to the pile of dirty crockery on the dresser. His eyes held a gleam of teasing amusement. He could well guess how Lady Hero would greet such a suggestion.

“I thought there was a
bonne femme
for such work.” Hero eyed him with a degree of malevolence.

“Sometimes she comes, and sometimes she doesn't,” he responded blithely. “Stay off the streets.” He went out, followed by Marcus.

Hero fumed for a moment or two and then got up to deal with the dirty dishes. After that, she would wash the clothes she'd been wearing earlier and hang them in the kitchen yard to dry. Whatever opinion William held about her disguise, she would still prefer to have it at hand. Such domesticity was an anodyne activity and left her mind free to wander along whatever paths it chose. Despite the grim purpose that had brought her to this house on Rue St. André des Arts, the physical excitement she felt in William's presence was too powerful to be ignored. Just the thought of him now, as she plunged dirty mugs into a bowl of scummy, tepid water, sent shivers of anticipation along her spine and a liquid weakness to the base of her belly. She had felt like this with Tom and had desperately missed this glorious sensation of arousal. The now familiar recklessness infused her, a feeling that she had nothing to lose by indulging this lust, and that was what it was, pure and simple. Here in this dreadful place of death and horror, what could societal convention matter?

She set the clean mugs on a shelf on the dresser and
wiped her hands on her britches. It wasn't as if she had a reputation to lose. No one apart from Alec knew where she was anyway. As she had said last night, Great-aunt Emily, her companion and ostensible chaperone, thought she was visiting friends in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands. The old lady wouldn't worry for a moment about not hearing from her; indeed, knowing her great-aunt, Hero thought she would be too occupied with some new and as yet undiagnosed ailment to add to the compendium of her physical infirmities.

Hero smiled affectionately. Aunt Emily was a valetudinarian but a lovable one, and Hero was fond of her. She wouldn't cause her a moment's anxiety if she could help it, and her present journey had been meticulously planned to ensure that her aunt slept peacefully in her bed at night.

A half hour later, she was hanging her freshly washed britches and shirt on a makeshift washing line in the kitchen yard when the gate from the alley creaked open. Her heart raced for a moment, her hands stilling on the wet garments pinned to the line as she looked to the gate. Alec came into the yard, a bundle in his arms. He looked curiously at his sister. “Washerwoman, Hero? That's a strange occupation for you. Are you all alone?”

“It appears I'm considered a liability on the streets,” she said tartly, turning away from the washing line. “Or so William seems to think.”

“He's probably right,” her brother said with a careless shrug. “He usually is. See what I've found.” He went into the kitchen and set his bundle on the table.

Hero approached cautiously, wondering what her
brother had obtained in the way of suitable female wear. He himself was dressed, as they all were, in the uniform of the sansculottes, his red cap tilted at an angle. She fingered the pile of coarse homespun. “Where did you find this?”

“Bought it all off a woman in the market in the Marais. I think it will all fit you well enough, but you don't want to look too smart.” He laughed as he shook out a striped kirtle and holland apron. “They're not new, of course, but clean and well darned in places.”

Hero examined the petticoat and laced bodice, which would go over her own chemise. There were no stockings, but then, most of the peasant women went bare-legged, and her wooden sabots would be fine, as would her red bonnet. “I'd better go and put them on.” She gathered up the garments and hurried upstairs to the little bedchamber. When she came down the stairs again, she could hear voices from the kitchen. It sounded as if most of the men were back, judging by the level of noise. She pushed open the door, feeling suddenly shy.

“Ah, there you are.” William turned from the dresser with a foaming ale tankard. He took in her appearance with an assessing frown before pronouncing, “That should do well enough . . . much more suitable.”

“It feels strange after all this time in britches,” she observed, smoothing down the apron. “Rather restrictive.”

“You'll become accustomed soon enough.” He tipped his head back and drained his tankard. Hero found her eyes riveted to his sun-browned throat, the steady movement of his Adam's apple as he drank. Everything about the man set her skin on fire. And it was beginning to be
inconvenient, she decided. It was getting in the way of clear thinking.

“Let's go and test the new Hero on the street.” William set down his empty tankard. “Fetch your bonnet, and we'll go to market.”

“Market?” she exclaimed. It seemed such a mundane activity in the circumstances.

“We have to eat,” he said matter-of-factly. “Let's see how you fare as a Parisian
femme de ménage
.” He unhooked a shopping basket from behind the door and, with an exaggerated bow, offered his arm. “
Citoyenne, allons-y
.”

There seemed no help for it. The man appeared to sweep all before him. Hero shook her head, laughing, and put her hand on his arm. “My thanks for your escort, sir.”

They went out into the street, walking briskly to the food market in the square at the bottom of the steep street. The farmers and peasants had driven their laden carts into the city from the countryside at dawn and would leave before the city gates closed at curfew, but for now, the stalls, although depleted, still had produce, and Hero found to her surprise that she was enjoying herself. The sense of threat she had lived with for so many days was no longer with her. Was it because she was not in such an extreme disguise and so had little to hide? Or was it just the reassuring presence of her companion? She was aware that he was on guard; she could feel it in the tension of his supple frame as he walked close beside her. He had his hand resting casually on the hilt of the knife in his belt, and his eyes were everywhere.

“Meat?” he suggested, pausing in front of a butcher's stall.

“Does anyone know how to cook it?” she asked, looking in bemusement at the bloody piles of flesh. “I don't even know what any of it is. I could recognize a chicken, but what's the rest of it?”

“Then it had best be chicken.” He steered her in the direction of a poultry stall, where chickens clucked mournfully from baskets piled high.

“But we have to kill them.” Hero was aghast. She hadn't the faintest idea how to kill a chicken, let alone pluck it. In her experience, chickens came to the table carved and lapped with some delicate sauce.

“If the poulterer won't do it for us, I can wring a chicken's neck,” William said firmly. “We can roast it on a spit over the fire.”

Tentatively, Hero asked the poulterer for three chickens. The man looked astounded and then suspicious, and she realized belatedly that peasant women did not buy chickens in bulk. One bird would have to go a long way to feed a large family. “It's a celebration feast,” she offered hastily, reaching into the pocket of her apron for a handful of sous. “A new baby in the family.”