Chapter Seventeen
Not since she was fourteen had she spent days where she lolled about, careless of time or circumstance.
She extended her arms to whirl around in the garden, with the big house, the servants, the world faraway. The falling snowflakes came in such quick succession that her smiling husband had a white hat and broad white shoulders. “This is new to me, this…this freedom!”
He caught her to him. “As having you is glorious to me.”
His words pricked her. Would she forever be that to him every day, every hour? The longer they stayed here in seclusion, the more she thought she might be free of all her past. Of that most horrific obligation. For still, no one had appeared to ask her for news of her progress.
So she resolved not to allow that lack to ruin her day or her joy of the moment. She stood on the points of her pattens and pecked him on the lips. “I have not skated since I was a gangly girl.”
“Ha!” He put one arm around her waist and led her to glide with him over the glossy, iced pond.
“When were you ever gangly, my darling?”
“When you did not know me. When I was young and silly and believed—”
She snapped her mouth shut.
He slowed their pace. “What did you believe?”
The compassion she saw in his eyes and heard from his lips had her shaking her head and denying the terrible words she might have said.
“I believed that people lived an ordered life. They learned discipline from their parents and history from their teachers. They found someone to love and lived forever and ever in a mutual endeavor and…”
She had turned away from him as she spoke, and so he skated around to face her. “People do live an ordered life. They do learn how to behave and work and prosper. They do find love and live long lives of mutual enjoyment. Please look at me, Inès.”
She girded herself to take his argument with a grain of salt. “There. Tell me.”
“You don’t believe me,” he said with certainty.
She frowned and glanced aside.
He caught her cheek, not allowing her retreat. “I will prove it to you.”
“No, I— There is no need, Evan.”
“But there is. How can we go on together if you don’t believe that what we create is a better life for ourselves, our family, and our society?”
“You have not seen what I have. People, good people, dragged away by mobs. Anger so palpable that one look is enough to make a man tremble. Men and women hurried up steps to a scaffold where they view the brutal blade of their demise. My father gone for so-called treason to the state. My mother struck down in trembling horror for his fate. My brother gone to La Force for his beliefs. Me, here, gone from my home for fear of…”
She grabbed a shaking breath.
He wrapped her close to him. “Listen to me and believe this. No one will drag you away from here. No one will hurry you to a scaffold or show you any blade of destruction. No one will take me away from you. Not to a prison or to an early death. No one will ever take you from me. You are mine and I am yours.”
Tears now dribbled down her cheeks in a cascade she could not stop. She dashed them away. “I want to believe that. I do! But how can I?”
He took her lips in a fierce claiming. “I will show you. If you cannot believe me now, I understand. You have little proof. But I will prove it, hour by hour, day by day, year by year. I want you for all my life. Let me show you that you can trust me with all of yours.”
On a gasp, she arched up and kissed him again. Her tears cold and bitter on her skin, she shook away her terrors that she could lose him to accident or harsh circumstance. “No more skating.”
He brushed a tendril of her hair from her temple and under her hat. “What would you like to do instead?”
“Take me back to bed. To our bed. I want you, your warm skin on mine, absorbing all your kindness and your care for me. I promise you that I will summon all I have to give to you in return.”
And so he led her back across the icy pond to their sleigh. He jingled the bells on the reins and took her in his arms to kiss her with new hunger.
Their horse, good fellow, tossed his mane, instinct leading him across the meadow toward his stall, his barn, and his groom, who came out to meet them all.
On the cobbled path to the house, Evan took his wife’s hand and led her, running to the back kitchen door.
The young maid and footman in the kitchen startled at their appearance.
“Your supper, my lady.” She curtsied. “My lord.”
“Taking it up, sir, ma’am,” said the footman. “Just now.”
“Good. Do set it out,” Inès told them.
“After which you may leave,” Evan said.
Stepping into the hall, Inès giggled. “You realize that they know what we are doing.”
As she faced him on the steps, he took her hand and said, “I do hope so!”
She barked in laughter and turned for the stairs. He patted her on her derrière, and she yelped.
“Sir!”
“Go!”
#
Their supper was stone cold by the time they went down to the dining room. But they cared not a whit.
He took the master chair and she took her husband’s lap.
He attired only in his banyan and she in a quilted silken robe, they fed each other slices of roast beef and bits of baked potatoes, sautéed turnips and carrots.
They drank red wine and shared the taste of it on each other’s lips and tongue.
A pudding of chocolate and swirled vanilla was left untouched.
Evan took his wife back upstairs to bed.
The moon and stars glistened in the black-velvet night sky when Inès rose naked to find her robe and don it.
His eyes flicked open. “Where do you go?”
“Come with me,” she told him, and he rose, eager to please her in any way at all.
“Hungry, are you?”
“Only in one way,” she said, and led him, hand in hand, down the stairs, this time to the main salon. There she put him to a large, old Tudor chair and said, “I have a gift for you. I wanted to do it before now…but then”—her eyes flashed wickedly—“we’ve had much else to do.”
She sat on the small stool before the fortepiano. Rubbing her hands together, then flexing her fingers, she readied herself to play.
Her regal golden hair curling about her cheeks and shoulders, she fixed a gaze on him in an expression he wished to remember to his dying breath. “For you, my darling. One skill I have to give. One joy I have to offer.”
She set her fingers to the long black keys and began a simple tune, a child’s nursery tune he recalled from his own days in his own nursery with his nanny singing the song. Finishing, Inès took a breath and composed herself.
Then she began a charming piece he loved. His mother, too. His sisters.
Who did not like Beethoven?
Evan closed his eyes, afloat in the melody his wife created. My God. His wife was a talented pianist, a woman of precision and training, experience and dedication. She was a mistress of the complex sonata, a woman who made the piano her instrument of delight.
He sat forward and stared at her. In profile, she was a woman in wild deshabille, her hair untamed, her body bare beneath a froth of simple cloth. A lady well loved. Satisfied. Rendering a gift to him he had no idea she could grant him.
His mouth fell open. She was perfection…and she was the lady whom he had seen and not forgotten for months, for more than a year, actually.
His wife was the lady of Boulogne.
He clamped shut his eyes, cleared his brain. Thought. Recalled. Oh, yes. It was true. He opened his eyes.
She was the pianist whom others claimed was the mistress of the French Vice Admiral Jean Rossard.
But no. No! She was not. Not that man’s mistress. Not officially. Not physically. He knew she wasn’t. He had seen the proof upon his person and hers and their bedsheets.
She played on.
He sat back, stunned, open mouthed, confused, and unable to make any sense of what he now knew.
His wife had served Scarlett Hawthorne well.
Once—for Gus or Amber—perhaps for others, she’d been a runner.
Once she’d planned events. Helped others.
But then she was placed or sent to or somehow arrived in Boulogne.
She became friends with those in the French Admiralty.
So friendly that many knew her only as Rossard’s mistress.
Why had she done that? What service had she performed for Scarlett? For all of us? How had she accomplished it? Was she safe from French agents here?
No! How could she be? Giselle had had five thousand Louis in ransom placed on her head by Vaillancourt. Would his sweet wife have the same?
He went stiff with his fear. Did the French here know who she was? What she had done?
He did not know. He might not ever learn. He could not ask her because she would have to breach her own code of conduct. But he could prevent her from harm. He—like Carlisle protecting Giselle—would hire his own guards. They would be experienced and discreet.
She was in Britain. Brought here by Scarlett. One who came here to avoid capture. One who was once a valued agent, sending information valuable to British success to her own runners and her own control agent.
Now she was here. His wife. His beloved wife. His own. To have and to hold. To cherish and to show her that life was worth living. That she could have more than she ever thought.
That her work—her good and faithful work—was done.
She ended the piece, spun on her stool, and cocked her head at him. “You enjoyed it,” she whispered. “I am so happy. I have so little to give you, my darling, and I—”
He shot from his chair and went to his knees before her. “You give me the only thing I want in this world. You give me you. All of you.”
She threaded her fingers into his hair. “As you give your all to me and make me whole.”
May it please God I can ensure you will stay here, healthy and happy.
#
December 5, 1805
Richmond upon Thames, England