Chapter 5 #2
Rafe nodded reassuringly. “I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for all of this. We’ll find the girl’s family and be on our way. You’ll be back on English soil with a good pint of ale in your hand by week’s end.”
Jervis turned back to the door and rapped lightly.
Receiving no response he tried again, knocking more loudly.
When there was still no answer, he pushed the door open.
Rafe heard him chuckle. “Here now, Captain, come look at this. I told you she was a thief. The little baggage has stolen my bed, see if she hasn’t.
” Shaking his head he said, “She’s a pretty little thing, I’ll give you that, but this is no time to be tasting the French pastries.
And you, don’t you want to be hurrying on back to Lady Anne?
” Without waiting for an answer, he went cackling off down the stairs.
Rafe frowned at the fading footsteps of his manservant, then crossed to the room to kneel beside the low rope bed.
The girl must be exhausted, he thought, as he pushed aside a damp curl that had fallen over her face.
She had been brushing her hair when she fell asleep; his silver-backed hairbrush was still tangled in her dark tresses.
He drew it out, feeling the silken strands slide free across his hand.
Her hair was as not as dark as he’d thought when he’d first seen her.
It reminded him of polished mahogany, richly threaded with russet and gold.
He studied the pale oval of her face, the dark lashes accenting the olive rings of fatigue beneath her shuttered eyes.
She flailed suddenly and as Rafe bent close to prevent her from falling off the narrow cot, she mumbled about fire and death.
She had titles for several estates sewn into her stays.
How far had she come to reach Paris? How had she gotten here and had she traveled alone? And if not, where were her people now?
Alix tossed again. “Please, Papa, please,” she begged.
He smoothed her forehead and shushed her as he’d done with Elizabeth when she’d been small and had bad dreams after their father died.
Her skin was so soft, he thought, allowing his finger to trail along the downy curve of her cheek.
She muttered incomprehensibly, flailing with her arms as if to push someone away, and the thin sheet covering her slid down exposing the upper half of a creamy breast. A feeling that was far from brotherly swept through Rafe, and he quickly pulled his hand away.
He cast a glance around the room to see if he could find something more substantial to cover her with and she flailed again, throwing her body half off the cot.
At this rate, he worried, she was going to wind up on the floor.
Telling himself it was for her own protection, he slid one arm beneath her shoulders and another beneath her knees and carried her into his room.
Her body was warm and sweet, and he tried to ignore the arousal unfurling in his belly as he tucked her into his bed.
He stood for a moment looking down at her, sleeping more calmly now, and wondered again who she was.
Her skin looked like she hadn’t spent much time in the sun, and her hands and arms, though scratched and bruised, looked too slim and smooth to have spent much time at heavy labor.
He thought of the papers Jervis had found.
Was she a thief, as Jervis had suggested—perhaps a ladies’ maid run off with her mistress’s gems and papers?
He frowned. The stays were much too elegant for a ladies’ maid; her chemise, though soiled, too fine.
Could she be some former lord’s mistress?
The furrow between his brows deepened. Or a fugitive aristocrat?
Rafe thought of the house-to-house searches the National Guard and the sans-culottes had conducted the week before.
He recalled the stories he and Jervis had heard downstairs in the inn’s tap room; people laughing over tales of aristocrats caught in outrageous disguises: a marquis discovered dressed as a fishwife; a comtesse garbed as a prostitute.
He thought of Alix’s silly hat and the imperious way she’d informed him that she didn’t kiss strangers on the street, her elegant curtsy.
He shook his head as he turned and stoked up the fire.
He should have known that his impulse to rescue the little waif would lead to trouble— impulses always did.
He lit a candle on the table and drew the curtains, casting the room into soft golden shadow.
Jervis was right. She was a pretty little baggage, but they needed to send her on her way.
As soon as he found someone to take care of her, that’s precisely what he’d do.
Pulling off his jacket and unbuttoning his waistcoat, Rafe settled back in an armchair to wait for Alix to wake.
Alix was back in the dark passageway in the chateau, watching with paralyzed horror as peasants brandishing pitchforks and torches burst through the false wall and spilled into the narrow hall.
She turned to run, but was blocked by her father who frowned down upon her.
“Don’t be a coward, Alix; treat with the fellows. ”
“Treat with them?” she screamed in frustration. “You tried to treat with them and look what happened. They killed you.”
“You think you know better than a man how to handle these things?” He shook his head disapprovingly.
Alix glanced back at the mob, so close now she could reach out and touch their weapons, then back at her father, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes dark with disapproval.
“Alexandre Charlotte, you’re just going to get yourself into trouble. Women always do.”
Alix turned to face him. “I won’t get myself into trouble, I won’t.”
“Look at the mess you’ve gotten yourself into already. You need a man to take care of you.”
She felt the mob lifting her, carrying her away from the figure of her father, and she twisted back to see him. “I’ll save myself and the titles, you’ll see.”
She was still screaming, or so it seemed, when she woke.
Clutching the sheet to her chest, her heart pounding and her breath coming in gasps, she tried to make out where she was.
She didn’t remember the room or the bed. She remembered being so tired after her bath, stumbling to the low cot, wrapping herself in a sheet and … Alix glanced down. It was the same sheet but a different bed. A four-poster bed.
His bed.
She surveyed the room, the fear and frustration she felt from her dream roiling and melding with shock and anger, finding focus on the tall figure reading in the chair by the fire.
He’d looked up, marking his place with his finger when he’d heard her stir.
“You filthy degenerate, you couldn’t even wait until I woke to put your hands on me.... You’re worse than those men in the streets.... You’re...” She paused, desperately seeking the words to describe his outrageous behavior. “A beast.”
Rafe interrupted her tirade. “I suppose I could have left you to thrash about in Jervis’s bed. You were half-naked and half on the floor when I found you. He’d have appreciated it, but I’ve quite a lot of things for him to do before we leave Paris, and I’d rather he not be distracted.”
He rose. “As for your clothes, well, perhaps you should pack better when you run away from home, Madame la Comtesse.”
“Madame la Comtesse is my mother,” Alix snapped, then hastily covered her mouth as if to recapture the words.
Rafe raised an eyebrow. “That answers my first question, Mademoiselle de La Brou.” Feeling oddly pleased to discover Alix was unmarried, he rummaged in a trunk near the bed and pulled out one of his nightshirts and a shawl he’d purchased for Elizabeth.
Tossing them on the bed he said, “I’ll turn my back so you can put those on. ”
Alix eyed his broad shoulders balefully. “You won’t turn around?”
“On my honor as a gentleman.”
“Who knows what that’s worth?” she muttered.
“A very ungracious response to a man who saved your life,” he chuckled.
Alix scrambled into the shirt, her mind working as furiously as her fingers.
How much did this man know, how did he know?
God, she thought as she pulled her hair free from the shirt’s collar and reached for the shawl, she knew nothing about him and here she was trapped in his bedchamber, clad in little more than his nightclothes.
What had he done? Had he touched her? She shook her head.
Grow up Alexandre, she told herself, at this point your virtue is the least of your worries.
Folding the cuffs over her hands, she decided frankness was the best approach.
Straightening the shawl over her shoulders and folding her hands in her lap, she said, “You may turn around now.”
Rafe, who’d been leaning against the mantle, turned and cast an appreciative eye over her. “You do clean up nicely,” he said, thinking that she looked most appealing in his nightshirt, her small frame lost in its loose folds, her tousled hair tumbling about her shoulders.
She met his eyes with a piercing stare. “So, Monsieur Harcrest, what do you think you know about me?”
Rafe considered her for a moment then lifted the papers that had been sewn into her stays off the table. He tossed them into her lap along with the jewels and money.
Alix’s eyes grew large. “What kind of man searches a lady’s unmentionables?” she demanded in an outraged voice.
“Jervis,” he replied helpfully. “Jervis thought you might have sticky fingers, but I thought your hands looked a bit too smooth. Have you been denounced?” he asked with studied casualness.
The room was silent for a long moment.
“I don’t know. My mother is missing, so maybe she...” Alix let the words trail off. “My father is dead. Killed. I took his papers because I thought... someday... someday...”
“Someday you might come back for your land,” he said softly. She nodded.
“Is there anyone who can help you? How did you get this far? And why, in heaven’s name, are you traveling alone?”