Chapter 7 #2
Taking the box of bulbs from her, he headed back the way they had come. “Your mother wouldn’t mind that?”
“She would be with me, of course.” She shot him a side glance. “To chaperone.”
He grimaced. “Of course.”
The grimace gave her pause. “That would not bother you, would it?”
“Certainly not.” He arched an eyebrow at her. “Although I do wonder how she thinks I’ll be able to seduce you when you’ve got a shovel in your hand.”
“Maman has an active imagination when it comes to gentlemen of your sort.”
“And you? Do you have an equally active imagination in that respect?”
She laughed lightly. “I do not need one. I have already seen what you are capable of, have I not?”
He laid his free hand in the small of her back and lowered his voice. “Oh, sweeting, you have only seen a fraction of what I’m capable of.”
A delicious heat swept up and down her from where his hand lay familiarly there.
Deftly, she removed his hand. “And I need not see any more.” She had no doubt that if she did, he would reduce her to a puddle at his feet.
And she could not afford to be quite so .
. . liquid. He would drink her down in a heartbeat, the devil.
She could feel his gaze on her, hot and intense, but she dared not meet it. Instead, she fumbled for a less dangerous topic of conversation. “By the way, I have been meaning to ask you—whatever happened to the gentleman in your circle who was supposed to escape with the four of you?”
He sighed, obviously unhappy at the change in subject. Heath always seemed to want to flirt, even when they both knew it meant nothing to him.
“His name was Sir Percy?” she prodded. “He had very blond hair, and eyes of the most beautiful blue.”
“Sir Percy Tindale, yes,” he said with a scowl. “Surely you know he was packed off to Arras for . . . er . . . an infraction.”
“I heard that, but what sort of infraction? There were many rumors about it.”
Heath looked torn. “Um . . . well . . . one night at the theater someone angered him, and he . . . er . . . lifted his coat tails, bent over, and showed his . . . bottom to the entire theater.”
“No!”
“Yes. I was there. Although he was fairly drunk at the time.”
“I knew it was a popular way of showing one’s displeasure among peasants, but for an Englishman of rank to do it—”
“Oh, trust me, I’ve seen English schoolboys of rank do it a time or two,” he drawled. “And it turns up in caricatures often. Anyway, Percy was hauled off by the gendarmes and thrown into the Citadel, then sent to Arras. That was the last we saw of him.”
“How unfair! That is hardly worth sending him to Arras for. I had heard he had cheated at cards, a much more serious infraction.”
“That would have been unlikely,” Heath said. “I mean, Percy enjoyed gambling as much as the next Englishman, but he was a gentleman. He would never have cheated.”
“Still, did not another détenu show his bottom in the theater a few years before Sir Percy did? That man got thrown in the Citadel, too, and they even closed the gates to other détenus for several days. But after a few weeks passed, he was allowed to come out. He was not sent to Arras or Bitche.”
“That was when Wirion was running the camp, and we could get forgiveness for many infractions by bribing him. But not Courcelles. As you may recall, Courcelles’s wrath burned long and hot.”
“How true.” She shook her head. “That canaille was as eager to punish the English as Napoleon himself was. How unfair that Sir Percy got into trouble before he could escape with you and your friends.”
“Unfair? He was lucky, to be honest. Or not so lucky if we are to believe the gossip. Surely you must have heard that.”
“No, I left Verdun to go home to Maman once my father and you three were captured. There was no more point in staying.”
He arched an eyebrow. “I thought you were avoiding a suitor in Paris.”
“I was when I left Paris.” She shrugged. “But that was almost seven years before, and by then he had married another. Not to mention that Maman had started asking my cousin to convince me to come home.”
“So, why did you want to know about Sir Percy, anyway?” Heath asked.
“I was merely curious. The five of you were close, as I recall.”
Sir Percy, too, had been a flirt like Heath but had been too much a gentleman to progress beyond flirting.
It was shameful to admit, but she preferred Heath’s boldness. Or at least she had before she realized he merely saw her as he probably saw all women—as a potential conquest. She did not want a man to conquer her. She wanted him to woo her. It was not the same thing.
“Anyway, what was the gossip? What happened to him in Arras?” Giselle asked. “Or do you know?”
“Supposedly, he died there.”
She gaped at him. “How awful!”
“It is . . . if it’s true. I’m not sure I believe it.” He steered her down a path that probably led to where his carriage was situated. “Sir Percy was always adept at getting out of trouble, even as a lad.”
“You knew the baronet as a lad?”
“I knew all of our group as lads. Well, except for your father and mine, of course. But Jon, Percy, and I were at Eton together, and Scovell, too . . . until he was sent off to be a midshipman. He rose through the ranks fairly swiftly—”
“Probably because he was a marquess’s son.”
“I doubt that had much to do with it. He served with Admiral Nelson, who sang his praises. He managed to rise to commander before he was captured and sent to Verdun three years before our attempt at escape. We actually had a hard time talking him into it. He didn’t want to break parole. But we made it so he didn’t have to.”
She nodded. “I remember. The three of you and my father arrived fifteen minutes late for appel—what is it called in English?— ah, yes, ‘roll call,’ and were thrown into the Citadel.”
“Exactly. It was considered an infraction of the rules more than a breaking of parole. And we’d discovered it might be easier to escape from the Citadel than from the town when the gates were closed at night, anyway.”
“How clever of you.”
Heath halted just shy of his carriage to stare at her, remorse in his eyes. “Not so clever. That’s how your father was injured—trying to escape with us.”
She forced back tears. “I know. Tory told me. She also told me that Jon blames himself for it.”
“We all regret what happened to Morris.” He searched her face. “You realize that, right?”
“I do. But I told Tory as I shall tell you—my father wanted to escape. I tried to talk him out of it, but he missed Tory and his wife. And I understood that. I had begun to miss Maman by then, myself.” She glanced over to where her mother was watching them out of the carriage window.
“As we grow older, we start to appreciate our family more.”
“That is certainly true,” he said wearily. “I only wish I could have seen my own mother again before she died. And even with Father, I . . . It doesn’t matter. The past is past now.”
She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat.
Sometimes she forgot he had lost both his parents in a relatively short period of time.
It had been hard enough to lose her papa and then years later, her real father.
She could not imagine how hard it must have been for him to lose both parents so close together.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I hope Percy did not die in Arras. He had his troubles, but he was a good fellow. We spent many an hour playing cards together. Although honestly, he was pretty bad at it. Another reason I could never see him as a card cheat. Card cheats do it to win. Percy was always too busy romancing the ladies to concentrate on cards.”
“So, like you, then,” she quipped, although she was still distracted by thoughts of her real father’s death.
Her mother lowered the window. “Are you coming? It is chilly.”
“Of course, Maman,” she said in a voice of forced cheer.
She did not like to dwell on how Morris had died in Bitche prison.
He had broken his thigh bone during the escape, and it had never healed right.
Eventually, a piece of bone started working its way loose and got infected, so the leg became gangrenous.
He had suffered greatly, which was too unbearably sad to imagine.
She and Heath exchanged a glance, then headed to the carriage to climb inside. This time, when he held her hand to help her in, she did not mind so much. That was one thing they would always share—her fondness for the father she could never acknowledge publicly and his for the friend he admired.
As she settled into the seat next to Maman, Heath said in French, “Madame Bernard, you know that the Lord Mayor’s Show begins tomorrow morning.”
“Yes.” A troubled frown crossed her brow. “But I am not sure if I can stand long enough to see the procession.”
“It is a concern,” Giselle said to Heath.
“Don’t worry. I’ve taken care of everything.
The party we’re attending is being thrown by the Earl of Thanet and his family.
You may recall that two of his brothers were in Verdun.
They have invited as many détenus as they could find addresses for.
Their London mansion lies along the route of the return procession.
We shall go there late in the morning, eat some breakfast, and watch as the procession goes by a while later. ”
“But the standing—” Maman began.
“No standing unless you wish it,” he said gently.
“The hosts have agreed to give you a comfortable chair on the long balcony next to a brazier, so you can keep warm. Most of the time, however, you may stay inside. If you don’t care to see the procession, you can stay inside the whole time.
There will be numerous servants to look after you when we are outside, and I’m told there will be plenty of food and drink provided as well. ”
He smiled at Giselle. “There will even be dancing if we choose to stay until evening. It will be fun, I promise.”
Giselle certainly hoped so. She could use a bit of fun these days. Besides, if the guests included many détenus . . . “I will get to see people I have not seen in over three years! Oh, do you know if Mr. and Mrs. Witchell will be there? They were so kind to me at the lodging house.”
“I’m sorry, sweeting, I’m not sure who exactly was invited, or which ones accepted the invitation.”
Sweeting. Now he had called her that twice. Until today, he had refrained from using the lovely endearments for her that he’d used before that day in the park. Though she hated herself for being so weak, it did warm her toward him.
“It will be a rather large affair,” he went on in English, “given the size of their mansion. In fact, we may wish to spend more time on the balcony if we can, if only to avoid all the people.”
“I do not wish to avoid all the people,” she said in English, too.
“I know so few people here in England that to have a chance of seeing those I knew in Verdun would be delightful. And some of the détenus took French wives, too, so I might even encounter some of my fellow countrywomen.” She gave a happy sigh. “You are right. This will be fun.”
“You see?” he said in that rough voice of his that never failed to set her heart thumping. “I told you there would be benefits to being my fiancée.”
Feeling heat rise in her cheeks, she glanced at her mother, who was listening avidly. Not that Maman could probably make out much, but she had definitely become interested when she had heard the French word fiancée.
Ah, well. Let Maman enjoy Giselle’s engagement while it lasted. Lord knows Giselle meant to do so.