Chapter 4
T he girl—for certainly she was not much more than that—wrenched away, his surprise aiding her escape. She wheeled to face him and her hair came further undone, spilling about her shoulders and tangling with the jet beads decorating her bodice, the black silk a foil for the gleaming gold strands.
Black, too, were her brows. Or so nearly black as to make no difference. The contrast between them and her red-gold hair was startling. Straight, slender and severe, they lowered over the bridge of her nose. Wide, passionately full lips curled back over her pearly teeth, exposing the slight unevenness of the front pair.
“Who are you?” he demanded again.
“I have been trying to tell you!” she said. “But you … you idiot! Imbecile! You would not listen. You must grab and hurt and fight before you even know what you are doing. Thrice I asked for your patience!” She pointed a gloved finger at him accusingly. “Thrice! Could you not wait? Must you try to kill me?”
“Mademoiselle,” he ground out, anger quickly supplanting his astonishment at finding himself harangued by a small, spitting she-cat, “if I’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”
In answer to this, his most threatening voice, she flung up her arms in disgust “Bah!” she spat. “You English are all alike. Push! Bully! Reckless. Fine, Monsieur. If you must be reckless be reckless with your own life, not mine and not Jacques’s.”
To claim astonishment would have been understating Raine’s reaction. The girl quivered with indignation. Or, fear. Raine’s gaze sharpened. He knew she’d grown pale because of the color slowly returning to her cheeks and the breath, which stirred a few strands of gold, came in pants.
He had frightened her. From the very beginning. What he’d read as a jade’s deviant role-playing had been real. She probably wasn’t even cognizant of the degradation he’d been willing to embrace in order to escape. Hell, he thought, she probably hadn’t understood half of what had gone on during that carriage ride.
“Pray, speak, Mademoiselle. I’m a captive audience,” he said, mindful of the pistol sticking comfortingly into the small of his back.
He crossed his arms over his chest, noting her gaze drop to his bare skin and skitter away as she blushed. Dear Lord, she looked like a novitiate, Raine thought, and thus was reminded of another novitiate, a lass whose gaze burned with a far more secular fire than this one’s. But Merry’s dark beauty had been earthy while this girl—well, she was no beauty.
Those brows, for one thing, too boldly, defiantly straight. And her jaw was too square. And her nose too aggressive. Though, ’struth, she’d gorgeous hair. And a lower lip he’d greatly like to sink his teeth into, it was that rich and full. Her eyes—no one would fault them if they could but be appreciated beneath the dark slashes of those condemning brows.
“Stop staring at me!” she said, scowling even more fiercely.
“I’m not to speak, grab, or bully as well as not look? Well, now that you’ve finished looking your fill,” he said, noting in satisfaction that her cheeks grew rosy once again, “do you think you might enlighten me as to what in God’s blood is going on?”
She flew the few feet separating them and reached up, smothering his mouth behind her fingertips, hushing him urgently.
“Quiet, you … you blasphemer!” she hissed. Dear God, she even spoke like a convent—
The door slammed open with such force that it bounced against the wall and slammed shut again, giving Raine a glimpse of Jacques’s beet-red countenance. Raine grabbed the girl and yanked the pistol from his waistband, pointing it at her head just as the door flew open once more and Jacques surged through it.
“Carefully, mon ami,” Raine advised. Jacques came up short, the sight of the pistol barrel a few inches from the girl’s temple stopping him as effectively as a brick wall.
“We should have taken the younger one,” the girl said.
“Bah!” Jacques spat contemptuously, his gaze trained on the pistol. “That quaking aspen leaf? No one would mistake him for La Bête.”
“La Bête?” Raine echoed. “Who is The Beast?”
The girl’s attention swung to him. “You misheard,” she said quickly. “Not La Bête , Monsieur. Lambett . My husband.”
She could not have surprised him more had she announced she had a tail. He could not say why. She simply didn’t look like a wife.
“Monsieur. Lower the pistol,” Jacques urged, making a broad, pacifying Gaelic gesture. The plea in his voice in no manner reached his eyes. “I’ll shut this door. You lower the gun. We will explain. Everything.”
“And if I choose not to lower the gun?”
Jacques’s countenance turned dusky. “Then we sit here until it falls from your numb fingers. Because if you try to leave we will simply call the alarm.” Apparently, his conciliatory mood had evaporated.
“I could always kill you,” Raine suggested.
“If you shoot, the sound of gunfire is its own alarm,” Jacques said with no small satisfaction. “So drop the pistol, eh?”
So Jacques disliked being threatened. So had Raine at one time. It was amazing what one could get used to if the need arose.
“I have a better idea,” Raine said. “I keep the gun where it is and you tell me everything anyway.”
“You merde!” Jacques burst out. “You gallows offal! How dare—”
“Jacques!” the girl broke in. “Please! This is getting us nowhere. Explain to him or I will.”
Raine studied her. A sheen of perspiration covered her face, shimmered above her luscious lips. A lie from her would be easy to discern.
“An even better idea,” Raine said. “You explain, Mademoi—Madame Lambett. And you, Jacques, remain very, very quiet. Or I will shoot you and then I will …” He smiled tellingly at the girl. “Well, you won’t be around to discover that, will you?”
“You were right,” Jacques said to the girl, his eyes on Raine. “We should have taken the aspen leaf.”
“Now, one last time, explain.”
The girl nodded slowly. “As you will, Monsieur. My husband, Richard Lambett, died a month ago from the fever. He was English.”
Raine’s interest was piqued yet he remained mute.
“I see you have some appreciation of how unlikely such a marriage is … was. But the heart is not always so wise, is it?”
“I wouldn’t know, would I? Having spent the years in prison most men are bedding wenches.” Raine sneered at her sentiment, causing her indigo gaze to drop.
“Oh! Pardon , Monsieur. I have been most callous.”
Dear Lord, she was apologizing to him for a breach of etiquette. He could not hold back a snort of laughter and just caught her quick sidelong glance of satisfaction. Damned, if she hadn’t fashioned that ingenuous statement to disarm him. She was cannier than he would have suspected—a worthy adversary.
“I now know you own an unwise heart,” he said. “Unfortunate for you but having little to do with me. And now pray excuse me, Madame, for my callousness.”
She delivered him a sharp, assessing gaze. Good.
“Continue,” he said.
“My husband, he was a diplomat,” she said.
“Apparently not a very good one,” Raine said. This time the glance came with a scowl. “Pray, correct me if I err, but England and France are still enemies, are they not?”
Behind her Jacques shifted uncomfortably on his feet.
“Oui , Monsieur.” Her voice was tight, her eyes bright. Ire or pain? He could not tell. “Still, I would not have you speak unkindly of him. Perhaps if we had not fallen in love, if his attentions had remained on political matters—”
“Dear lady, such catholic willingness to accept blame speaks volumes about the Sisters who had you in their care,”—this won a startled glance from the wench. He’d been right; she was convent-raised—“but even nuns might balk at blaming a war on a minor diplomat’s amorous daydreams.”
The scowl became pronounced and Raine quelled an inappropriate desire to laugh. Regardless of the diversion this wordplay afforded, his life was still held in the balance. And unless Raine’s eyesight had suffered during his incarceration, big silent Jacques had edged closer while she’d distracted him. Raine swung the gun toward the giant.
“Come, mon homme . Practice the patience your lady upbraids me for lacking. Be still, Jacques, or be dead.”
Her lush mouth pursed. Yes, she was definitely piqued.
“Enough background. What do you want of me?”
Jacques nodded unhappily. She took a deep breath.
“A half year ago my husband received word that his uncle in Scotland had died leaving him heir to a great estate. He set about trying to make arrangements for me and little Angus to travel to Scotland.”
“Little Angus?”
Her gaze dropped demurely. “Our son.”
Son . Raine’s gaze traveled down her slender figure to her waist. The necklace she wore could encompass it. Still, a corset could account for its narrow span.
“As you might well imagine, securing passage to Scotland for a French lady and her son is a difficult matter. Particularly for a French lady of some preeminence—albeit diminished. I am an orphan, Monsieur, fostered in my aunt’s household, the same household where I have been living since my husband’s death.
“Happily, after much searching my husband was able to contact a privateer and make arrangements for our travel. We were—we are—to follow the tide out tonight.”
“So why,” Raine asked, “are you instead here with me, masquerading as a notorious jade, rather than bustling little Angus through Dieppe’s shipyard? Not a word, Jacques,” he cautioned the other man.
“Because,” the girl said with a sudden flash of ire, “my husband died a few months ago and the man we were to meet on the docks expects to deal with a man, an Englishman. He wrote yesterday. In his note he ranted against having agreed to take a woman onto his ship. He says it is bad luck. That his men will rebel. He even goes so far as to suggest that we find other passage but ends his letter by saying he will grudgingly honor his agreement.”
Raine waited. She held out her hand, palm open in a gesture of impatience. “Do you not comprehend? I am alone. The passage has already been paid and I have no more money. There is no reason this smuggler, this … pirate should honor his obligation. I needed an Englishman and Jacques knew where to find one.”
“And how is Jacques so savvy?”
“My aunt … she is Madame Noir. Jacques is her steward. He always had an affection for me, even as a child and when he discovered my difficulty he … he presented a solution.” For the first time since he’d dragged the veil from her golden head, she looked self-conscious and abashed.
Raine’s gaze swung toward Jacques. He didn’t look much like an aristocrat’s steward, but admittedly Raine had had little experience with that breed and so withheld judgment. “So ’twas your idea to pluck an Englishman from prison to masquerade as Monsieur Lambett.”
“Oui ,” Jacques agreed. “I knew the arrangements Madame Noir made, the pattern, the names of those with whom she dealt. I knew that at so short a notice, the prison was Mademoiselle’s only hope of finding an Englishman willing to act as her husband.”
Every bit of Raine’s instincts for survival urged caution. He didn’t like this story. He mistrusted it.
“But”—Raine backed up a few feet, angling toward the door, his pistol still aimed in Jacques’s direction—“your plan hinges on finding a willing Englishman.”
“Monsieur,” the girl said, her brows dipping into a V of consternation, “why would you refuse to aid me when you can only benefit from my offer?”
“What exactly is your offer?”
“You go to the docks tonight, pretending to be my husband. You meet with the smuggler captain, then …”
“Then?”
“I arrive, we board and sail for Scotland. Once we are on land, we go our separate ways.”
“What about little Angus?”
“Angus? He will be with me, of course.”
“And once in Scotland you’ll walk to this great estate of your husband’s?”
“Non!” she said impatiently. “Do not be foolish. My husband’s people, they await me … us.” A shadow dimmed the bright night sky of her eyes. She released a barely audible sigh and, catching his eye, smiled wanly. “Little Angus will be the new laird, n’est-ce pas? The point upon which all their plans and strategies and hopes hinge.”
An odd way of putting it, but Raine supposed that in some families a son might be looked upon with such concentration of pride and hope. Just because it hadn’t been so in his family didn’t mean it was a lie.
For the first time, Raine found himself believing her. Not all of it to be sure, but that last part perhaps, because of the sadness in her eyes. She looked as he imagined a fond mother might look upon realizing the burden of expectation being placed upon her child: resigned, troubled, a shade resentful.
“Monsieur, will you not help me? What harm have we done you? You have already enjoyed some hours of freedom, clean clothes, and will soon partake of a warm, hearty meal.” She sounded tired, as though the strain had finally caught up with her.
As if on cue, there came a thump on the door. Raine’s head slew about, looking for some way to escape. They’d only to call out and he’d be dead.
“Monsieur!” the girl pleaded on a soft whisper.
“Come, son,” Jacques urged. “What have you to lose and how much to gain?”
He could return to Scotland. How many nights had he lain on his moldy pallet and plotted his movements after his escape? Now he had the chance to fulfill those plans.
First to Scotland and Wanton’s Blush, the castle on McClairen’s Isle where his thrice-cursed father lived—but not to see his unnatural sire. No, he would go there secretly to retrieve the jewels his mother had hidden shortly before her untimely death. The jewels he’d seen her stow in the false bottom of an oriental tea chest. The jewels he’d never told anyone about. Not even Ash.
And then, with his stolen birthright hard in his pocket, he’d sail for the New World—and freedom. Real freedom. Freedom from Scotland and McClairen’s Isle and Carr and, most of all, his past.
The servant outside the door pounded again. The girl watched him anxiously, wetting the full curve of her lower lip.
And, too, there was something to recommend itself in the notion of spending several nights ensconced on a ship—as Mr. and Mrs. Lambett they might even share a cabin—with this black-browed, oddly attractive girl.
He grinned, releasing the hammer on the pistol and shoving it into his waistband. “Open the door, Jacques,” he said quite calmly. “I’d as soon eat before we head for the docks.”