Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Something painful and sharp was clogging Giselle’s lungs as she run – something like panic, but hotter that seemed to scald her very insides.
Her breathing became tighter and blossomed out in front of her in the cold air as her feet hit the cobbles of the street, and she pushed past a woman almost knocking her to the ground in her desire to get away.
“Stop!”
Damn these skirts! She had always known that running in the long dresses so popular in the ton would one day be her downfall, and as she tried desperately to keep ahead of the strange man shouting at her, Giselle could not help but wince as her injured arm banged against her side.
“Stop, spy!”
She chanced a look back and wished she hadn’t. The tall man from the inn was still on her tail, and gaining on her, his long legs pulling forward in strides that she simply couldn’t beat.
Her foot slipped and she almost fell. The ground had changed; instead of running on wet cobbles, which had been difficult enough to balance on, she was now beating her feet against … sand?
“Merde,” she muttered. She had hit the beach, so frantic had her thoughts been, so desperate was she to just be away, as far away as possible, that she had barely noticed where her feet had been taking her.
“Stop, Great Whisperer – I know ‘tis you!” The man was still shouting, and Giselle felt her stomach contract with panic. This was it, then. This was to be her downfall, and all that she had done for Pierre, everything that she had tried to do to protect him, it was all lost.
“Do not slow down,” wheezed Jean, her contact who had outstripped her but now waited for her to catch up. “Imbécile, do you think they will care you are a woman if they catch you?”
The panic was back.
“Do you have a better suggestion than run?” Giselle panted, her injured arm clutched against her side which was screaming in agony.
Jean looked around wildly, and saw something that made him smile.
She glanced where he was looking, and joined him in his smile.
A horse: large enough to carry two, healthy and well-bred enough to outrun any other horse in the area.
It was loose, probably waiting for a fisherman to return and use it to drag back that day’s catch. It was there for the taking.
“Excellente,” she panted, rushing towards it. “Jean, quickly, you need to – ”
But he was not listening as the man from the inn spotted them, and cried, “Stop in the name of – ”
“Je suis désolé, mademoiselle,” Jean said sharply, and swung his leg over the horse in a swift movement that was complete before Giselle had a moment to think.
“No – no, wait!” Giselle tried to reach up and grab the reins but it was too late – the horse felt the jab of ankles around it, and whinnied as it galloped into the night.
Giselle’s heart thumped wildly as she looked around for another horse, but she was alone … alone save for the man running towards her, spelling out her doom.
“Mon Dieu, help me!” She did not know what she expected to happen as she cried out in fear, but it did give her an extra second to look around her, and her eyes fell on a little rowing boat.
“Stop!”
Pulling her cloak around her and ignoring the shout of the man, Giselle tried to push aside her anger at Jean, her frustration that he had taken the horse without her, her irritation that after all this, he had got away with the papers too – and concentrated on putting all her strength into pushing the boat out into the freezing December water, her long skirts heavy and damp.
Her right arm protested, the slowly healing scar on fire as she heaved, but she couldn’t think about that now.
She had to focus on getting away from this man, whoever he was.
If he was against her, then he was a revolutionary, and the last thing she needed to do was think about what revolutionaries did to people like her.
With a sudden shift, the boat was afloat, and Giselle jumped into it, her thighs forcing the movement despite the heavy ocean sodden skirts, throwing her dagger into the bottom of the boat and pulling up the oars, ignoring the pain in her chest as she fought for breath, ignoring the strain on her arms as she pushed off.
Facing the shore as she was, there was no element of surprise. The gentleman who had been chasing her reached the edge of the water and without even thinking, without having the time to cry out, without the ability to raise a hand and stop him, he leaped into the boat.
“Stop, you – ” was what he started to say, but Giselle shouted in her turn.
“No – no, what are you doing?”
The boat rocked, unprepared for the sudden increase of weight on one side, and Giselle scrabbled with the oars, trying to keep it steady.
“Get out of my boat!” She screamed, hearing the ridiculousness of her words but unable to think of anything else to say. “Imbécile, get out!”
His arms reached for the oars and she tried to keep them out of his reach while maintaining control of the little boat, but it was impossible.
He was stronger than her, with longer arms, and yet she fought wildly, twisting and turning and screaming, partly in anger, partly in agony as she felt her right arm start to bleed once more.
“This is not what I wanted!” Giselle found herself shouting, unable to hold in the panic any longer as she fought in the dark in a boat in the ocean with a man who she had never met and wanted her dead. “Je promets, all I wished for was to help people!”
Months of passing information and never laying a finger on anyone, and this is what it came down to: wrestling with a strange man for her very life.
“Just give me the oars, mademoiselle,” the man was shouting, trying to tug them out of her hands unsuccessfully. “No harm will come to you, just – ahhh!”
Giselle had not meant to whack him around the ear with the oar, but as it swung round in their struggle, it seemed madness not to take advantage of it, and she saw with unusual relish the man clutch at his head in pain – and that’s when she saw it.
An island, or something, some sort of land in the distance. As the gentleman sat back for a moment, temporarily stunned, Giselle swallowed and tried to turn the boat around to make for it.
And that was when she spotted the dagger that she had dropped onto the bottom of the boat.
Head ringing, legs aching, éduard tried his best to pin down the arms of the struggling woman – but it is impossible.
“Stay still!” He found himself saying foolishly, trying to blink through the pain of his ear. “Dieu au paradis, will you not stop!”
éduard could almost taste the irritation in his voice – but to be so close, so painfully close to catching the Great Whisperer and then to watch him ride off on a horse once again, slipping from his clutches after four full days of planning …
And to see him escape on his own horse, he shook his head ruefully as his foot knocked against a dagger in the bottom of the boat, pushing it behind him accidentally. It was enough to make you sick.
“God’s teeth, I have not the strength to battle with you!” He said finally, dropped his arms and glaring malevolently at the woman who was panting with the effort of fighting him off. “I need to start preparing, once again, mark you.”
“What the devil, monsieur, are you doing in my boat?” The woman panted, her eyes staring at him warily as though waiting for him to at any moment start the fight again.
éduard caught the French accent in surprise, and found himself a little embarrassed. He leaned back slightly in the boat, trying to ignore the rocking sensation that was doing nothing for his hunger, and looked at her.
Really looking at her made his eyes widen.
Her long hair, once carefully knotted and pinned at the top of her head, was now partly loose and looked a little worse for wear, with a little sand in places from the beach.
A bruise was coming on her left cheek, and her eyes, though feisty, were clearly terrified.
éduard swallowed, and for the first time that day, felt a little ashamed.
He had never laid a hand on a woman in his life, save for the act of love, and the idea that he had been the one to bring such harm to her; it was a little disconcerting.
So too was her beauty, which now that he was mere feet away from her, he could see in all its glory.
The boat hit the shore, rocking them both. éduard glanced around quickly and the spell between them, whatever it was, broke.
The woman rose shakily, but her legs were still moving.
She managed to get out of the boat after grabbing what looked like a small dagger from the bottom of the boat without a second glance at éduard, staggering through the shallows and dragging her skirts threw the water until she reached the stony sandy shore.
She was still ignoring him, which he found slightly irritating, as though he had suddenly vanished before her eyes.
He looked at her more carefully. If he was not mistaken, she was holding her right arm awkwardly, almost as though it was sore.
“Mademoiselle, your arm,” he said, moving without thinking and stepping out of the boat towards her. “It looks as though it is – ”
“Why have you followed me, huh?” She berated him, turning around so suddenly that he almost took a step back into the boat. The moonlight flashed in her diamond earrings. “I had done nothing wrong, vraiment, except to run which I do not think is a crime here in England.”
She had raised an eyebrow at him with such ferocity that éduard felt compelled to splutter, “No, no ‘tis not a crime, but – ”
“And yet you follow me?” She cut across him, and rolled her eyes to the heavens. “Ah, mon dieu, that I cannot even visit an English inn without this nonsense!”
She turned away from him, raising her left arm to the heavens as though berating God himself.
éduard swallowed. He could not let this conversation run away from him, and at the moment, that is exactly what was happening.
Taking two steps forward to follow her, he asked quietly, “Where is the Great Whisperer going next?”
If he had expected his expert questioning to work, then he was sadly mistaken.
“Great who?” She said, twisting to face him with a confused look on her face. “Qui?”
éduard took another step forward, telling himself that it was to see into her eyes to tell if she was telling the truth, rather than admitting to himself that every part of him was begging just to be closer to her.
He had been right, in the inn: she was tall and lithe, willowy, but with a strength that –
“Hello?” The woman laughed mirthlessly in his face, and éduard jerked back to attention. “Please, monsieur, do tell me if I am interrupting anything!”
éduard tried to keep the colour from his cheeks as he repeated, “The Great Whisperer. You know him, I just saw you with him. Where is he going?”
The confused look returned onto her face, and after a full minute of silence, éduard suffered a terrible realisation.
This woman had no idea what he was talking about. The poor thing was probably just a pawn of the Great Whisperer, treated carefully and trusted with no secrets of import. She probably had no idea at all who she was even meeting that evening.
His shoulders slumped, and he gave out a great sigh. That he should be so unfortunate.
“I…” He managed, and then dropping his eyes, “I should not have run after you.”
“Je suis d’accord,” she said firmly. “We are finally in agreement over something, but that is nothing for you to be proud of, enfant.”
“I should not have run after you,” éduard muttered to himself, trying to think. “I should have followed him with everything I had, everything I could have thought of. There would have been another horse in that village…”
His mind was racing, trying to play back each and every moment that had brought him to here. He should have looked for another horse – there was bound to be one somewhere in the village, and there was nothing that good English coin could not procure.
And now instead of being hot on the tail of the Great Whisperer, he was out here with a poor frightened woman on an island in the Channel, like the idiot he was.
But there was nothing for it now, but to apologise and get back to the mainland.
éduard looked up and saw that the woman had barely moved, having taken maybe one to two more steps away from him – and who could blame her? She had been chased, set upon, and dragged out here. All for nothing.
“You must accept my profuse apologies, mademoiselle,” he said smoothly, turning on the charm that had worked time and time again, and smiling graciously at her.
“My rudeness in running after you and upsetting you is quite beyond acceptance, but I hope that you will find it within your heart to forgive a confused gentleman who was so bewitched by your beauty that he found it impossible to think clearly. I am, of course, your humble servant, éduard.”
Finishing that speech off with a bow may have been too much, éduard considered as he straightened up, but it had never failed before.
And it did not fail now. The woman stared at him for a moment, before grudgingly saying, “Apology accepted, monsieur.”
éduard breathed a little easier. The last thing he needed while in England was to draw attention to himself by upsetting the locals, and now he could rid this woman from his conscience, and get back to the plan at hand.
“Now then,” he said wryly with a slight laugh, “now we have cleared up that particular misunderstanding, let us get back to the boat and return to England, where we can each go our separate ways.”
The woman raised her eyebrow once more. “With pleasure,” she said quietly, “but in what boat?”
éduard’s heart froze. He spun around and stared wildly at the place where the boat had been.
Had been. There was now an empty space on the beach with just a few marks in the sand that demarked the place where a boat had once been – and as he raised his eyes to heaven in desperation, his eyes caught sight of a dark shape out on the ocean.
“Je suppose that we are stuck here,” said the woman, lightly. “Or do you have another plan, monsieur?”