Chapter 16
Hawk’s gaze followed the sway of her skirts as she bolted away from him. The door groaned on its hinges as she pushed it wide, a slice of light spilling in before she vanished.
The silence was too loud, and the ballroom too still. What in God’s name had just happened? One moment, she was sparring, teasing, full of fire, and the next, she slipped from his grasp like water.
“What did you just say?” Hawk turned to the ballet master.
“Bah, my lord. I’ve known those girls for years—called themselves the Swans of Paris. But that little redhead? She never danced with a partner. She could’ve been great. They coddled her—that’s what they did. Langley and Katherina. Had something to do with an attack she suffered as a child.”
Hawk’s breath shortened, and a violent edge cut through his line of reason.
Before the master could finish his diatribe, Hawk strode from the ballroom. He spotted her walking toward the guest wing. Her shoulders were stiff, her steps quick as if she could out-walk what had transpired between them.
“Celeste.”
She froze. Then, she turned, enough for him to catch the rawness clouding her gaze. Her lips parted, but no sound emerged. Instead, she increased her pace.
Damn it.
His boots struck the floor in pursuit, the corridor narrowing. Just as he was catching up with her, pain burst through his left knee. His leg became stiff and useless. A curse tore from his lips, and he braced against the wall.
He could only watch as she entered her room. Panting, he limped to the chaise across from her door and sank onto it with a grunt. Pain shot from the joint up to his thigh and down to the soles of his feet.
He was cursing the damned French hussar who had speared him all those years past, when the door of her bedchamber clicked open. Her face appeared.
He shifted to stand, but groaned in pain.
“Are you alright?” she whispered.
“Nothing. Just an old battle wound.”
She vanished back inside.
Hawk sighed. What game are we playing now, Little Tulle?
The door opened again. This time, his runaway ballerina stepped out of the bedchamber, carrying something in her fair hands.
“A gun to shoot me out of my misery? The pain is not that hard.”
“It is a salve. I have weak calves. In winter, I can’t move from my bed after a performance unless I massage the muscles first.”
Hawk held his silence. If anyone had ever told him he would be sitting in a frilly chair discussing the woes of trade with his ward, he would have court-martialed the bastard.
She gazed at his knee. “May I?”
He was not sure what she intended. Strap him to a cart and parade him through town in chains? Flog him bloody before a jeering crowd? Shove him into some lice-ridden prison where men rotted for years waiting on an exchange?
He would rather face any of those. Because none of them were half as dangerous as her pretty hands pressing against his battle-hardened flesh.
In the end, he had no real choice. When she dropped to her knees before him and proceeded to roll up his breeches, he was her prisoner in all but name.
He held his breath until he couldn’t anymore, and then her scent of lilac invaded him. Her hands hovered over his knee. This was the part where he should refuse. He couldn’t. He didn’t.
The servants would find dents in the dainty chaise, so hard he gripped the armrests.
He had to. Otherwise, his fingers would have sifted through her hair, wanting to touch her color so it could banish life’s grays.
He’d studied the classics enough to know how empires fell—not from the outside, but from a gift too lovely to refuse.
A horse rolled through the gates of Troy, a ballerina stepped through his.
He told himself that just because his pulse was thundering didn’t mean he was conquered.
But on the first contact of her smooth palms, liquid heat traveled through his veins, coiling around his spine.
It wasn’t desire that unmade him. That was there too, a seditious current coursing under the surface.
No, what undid him was her gentleness. The kind that slipped past armor.
A color that was all the brighter because he could not see it, but it shimmered inside his chest.
While she kneaded through the old wound with her deadly tenderness, she hummed. The sound vibrated through her hands, through him. He forced his shoulders to be stiff and locked his jaw, but his treacherous knee had already surrendered, melting under her touch like snow in the sun.
“Tell me why you never danced with a partner.”
She touched his calf, her eyes intent on his battle-scarred skin. “Must I?”
“I’m your guardian, I need to know. If I’m to help, then I have to—”
“I don’t think you will like this story. It is not a tale of bravery.”
He knew he wouldn’t. And yet, he had to hear it regardless. Hawk lifted his hand. When his palm settled on her crown, the touch was clumsy, almost gruff, but steady. He was more used to holding swords and spears, but he hoped—God help him—it could carry a fraction of the tenderness he felt for her.
He bent forward until their brows nearly touched. She didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away. “Tell me anyway.”
She closed her eyes. The waning sunlight cast long, unsteady shadows across her face, her features too pale, too still.
Her touch became lighter, almost a caress. “She was thirteen years old. Katherina and Langley had formed this new company made entirely of children. We—they were touring the coast for the summer. A wondrous ballet called The Papillon.”
The weight of her words and the suspense were unbearable. He knew this was not one of her romantic comedies, but her voice was soft and moving, as if charging headlong into the enemy line without a hope of defense.
“The Butterfly,” he said, and his voice came hoarse.
“Yes. She, this girl. She was the butterfly. And she was a success. Everybody loved her.” Her fingers stilled.
“Until he appeared. At first, he offered sweets and ribbons. The older girls whispered that he wanted to buy the Papillon. To make her his mistress. But Langley refused. He told the man he was in the business of selling entertainment, not children. The man went away for a while.”
Her fingers paused at the joint, her forehead furrowed. “One day, he returned. The Papillon was alone in the dressing room. That foolish girl. She was just so delicate, so breakable that with one blow, he was atop her.”
It took everything in him to stay still.
To hear her words and not throw up. Her eyes shimmered with tears.
Her chin trembled. She had been a child.
A child. And someone had dared—where was Hawk at that time?
Had he not promised to find her? A surge of raw, helpless rage smashed through him, but what use was anger now?
His chest tightened, as if a fist had wrapped around his heart and squeezed. “Did he hurt her?”
“Not her body. No.” She swallowed as if she were pushing down something heavy. “Louise crashed into the dressing room and wrestled him under a knife point.”
He made a mental note to grant this Louise anything she wished for.
Celeste lifted her eyes to him. As if waiting for his verdict. Fearing judgment? Good God, didn’t she know he was holding himself still by years of facing the enemy? That if he didn’t fear breaking her, he would hunt that bastard and rip his throat before her?
His jaw locked, teeth grinding. “Who was he? Tell me his name.”
The softest tremor rippled through her fingertips. “Does it matter?”
If it mattered? He wanted to find him, and once he did, he would kill him. But not before the monster returned the tears he had stolen from her.
“He was an Austrian diplomat. He is no longer in England. Please don’t make me say his name.”
Hawk didn’t have to. He could discover who had worked for the embassy in that year. And then crush him. Borders could not hold his wrath.
Her grip on his leg tightened, and he felt the tension in her palm. “Papillon is afraid. Papillon can’t be near any man that she panics…”
She feared men. Of course she did, and how could it be any different? Had she not escaped from him that first day in London? Now he understood the stricken look on her face.
She sighed and looked at him, her chin trembling, her eyes moist. “You don’t need to worry. Papillon is a coward and will never marry, but Lady Cecilia won’t be, I—”
Hawk found her waist, hands sure against the soft fabric of her white dress, and with one motion, he lifted her. She gasped, her eyes widening. Her limbs folded into him like a lost kitten.
He settled her onto his lap and cradled her face, his battle-worn hands engulfing her glowing skin.
For what would come next, he needed her looking at him.
“Lady Cecilia has nothing to fear because if any man even looks at her in the wrong, I will put his head on a pike and expose it on London’s gates.
Are you listening, Little Tulle? You will never experience fear in your lifetime again. ”
Her breathing quickened, and she searched his eyes. “Do you promise?”
He opened his eyes wide so she could see how earnest he was. “A promise is not enough. I vow it.”
She must have seen the fierce certainty in his expression, because she nodded.
And something in her gave out. She started to cry.
A torrent of tears. He never saw so many.
One didn’t learn how to deal with tears in the army, but some instinct told him to bring her close.
When she was flush against his chest, she buried her face in his neck.
He caressed her hair, weaving his fingers through the coppery strands, knowing the lock he stored all those years was a poor substitute.
What in heaven would he do with her? He had determined to strip the layers of tulle and ribbon to form an English lady, but what if Celeste disappeared in the process?
A sob shook her slight frame, and she spoke in his ear. “I am the Papillon.”
“I know, Little Tulle. I know.”
His chest tore open as if an invisible blade had ripped straight through the breastplate he had worn all his life. The ache rushed in hot and brutal, stealing the air from his lungs.
Yet, he welcomed the pain. She was so small, so breakable, trembling in his arms, that if it meant shielding her from hurt, he would open his breast with his bare hands.
He stroked her back in long, rough sweeps and pressed his lips to the crown of her head. She was indeed a Trojan horse, the most dangerous enemy a general could face. She had battered all his defenses, and now, she had just laid siege to his heart.