Chapter 3
There were too many people in between. Lucy would never hear her at this distance.
Muscles tight, heart accelerating, she sought Lucy. Lucy was ahead, oblivious to the danger. She must warn her!
The crowd was so dense. Her legs were leaden. So long she’d been struggling forward, making no progress. No matter how she hurried, she couldn’t catch up. She tried calling Lucy’s name, but no sound emerged.
A faceless gentleman turned, extending a hand towards Lucy.
No! “Lucy.” Finally, she’d forced air enough into her lungs for sound to pass her lips. “Lucy!”
Lucy turned, fading into nothing . . .
Isobel woke gasping, mouth dry, heart pounding hard enough to split open her chest. Awash in terror, she could not make immediate sense of her surroundings. Instinctively she cringed from the dark figure in the doorway.
“A dream.”
Lieutenant Blackmore. She was in Paris, in rooms he’d brought her to after confronting her on the street. The lamp burned dimly in the outer room.
“A nightmare,” she rasped. She put a hand to her raw throat. Had she screamed aloud? There had never been anyone to tell her if it happened in the waking world too.
In Blackmore’s hand was a dish with a short candle; he set it on the small night table before returning with a glass half filled with watered wine. “This will ease your throat.” His voice was rough but not unkind.
She choked down several mouthfuls of wine before slowly finishing the remainder. “What time is it?” she asked, wiping her mouth.
“Just before first light. Rest more if you can.” He turned away, and a moment later, the oil lamp in the outer room flared brighter.
It was a small kindness and perhaps a slight measure of trust, leaving her the lit candle. And he had bid her rest more rather than resuming his questions while she was off balance from the nightmare. Of course, she had likely disturbed his own rest.
She did not precisely fear Blackmore. Or Beaumont, whichever was his true name. If either. She still found the situation overwhelming.
She had come the night before to believe that in and of herself she held no personal interest for him, that it was her possible connection to Compton that had attracted his attention.
He had not menaced her personally, other than those first few moments before she lost consciousness, and even then, he had not injured her.
It was her body’s limitations that caused the faint.
He had not treated her dishonorably despite occasion to do so.
Surreptitiously she pressed her arm alongside the pocket tied beneath her petticoat.
She could only be grateful that he had not made close enough inspection of her to find it when he confiscated the items from her coat.
Perhaps it was out of respect for her modesty, but it was just as likely that he’d not had opportunity what with needing to maneuver her to the fiacre.
Still, he might have forced the issue, and she could have done little or nothing to stop him. He had not.
She wouldn’t say that she trusted Blackmore or even that she believed herself safe, but at the moment he was less frightening than other evils.
Poor as it had been, she’d had all the sleep she would this night; more was an impossibility. She nevertheless lay down again. The pillows and blankets smelled of what must be Blackmore’s soap; it was an oddly intimate detail to note.
The bed was comfortable, not what she would predict in such a sparse garret.
Perhaps the austerity of the rooms had more to do with his personal tastes than a lack of finances.
Passage from Dover and certainly a diligence from Calais were extravagant if not outright unobtainable expenses for those without some degree of wealth.
No noises within the building hinted at what existed on the floors below.
She couldn’t remember the number of turns of the stairs on their way up earlier; she’d been in no condition to notice.
There were early-morning sounds from outside which told her they were not far distant from a grand boulevard, although she hadn’t any idea in what part of the city she was or how far they’d travelled from rue Montmartre.
Now that she had food in her system and a small amount of rest, her thoughts came more clearly. She felt equal to considering what she knew of Blackmore. Precious little more than in Dover.
She rolled to her side, facing the casing, and tracked Blackmore’s quiet movements in the outer room. Apart from a few pieces of furniture, the garret was open, framed by angled rafters that were just tall enough that he needn’t duck his head.
He unbuttoned his coat although he did not remove it.
After adjusting the lamp flame a hair brighter, he crossed briefly out of sight and returned with a leather-bound volume in hand.
He seated himself on a chair, propping his booted feet on the table.
The boots were of a style favored by military men, black calfskin ending just below the knee.
His bore no tassels or other ornamentation. Utilitarian, not fashionable.
Blackmore held the book open on his lap but his eyes were not on it; he appeared deep in thought. Despite his apparent abstraction, he was undoubtedly keenly attuned to any sound or movement on her part.
She had observed him in Dover, covertly; she made a more careful study now from behind half-closed eyes.
His nose was slightly imperfect on the bridge.
Broken in the past, perhaps. Dark hair, just brushing his collar and ink dark in the dimness, was swept back from his forehead; a few strands fell over his temples and, along with short side whiskers, softened what otherwise verged on a harsh profile.
It had been a few days since his last shave.
He was a little above average height, perhaps an inch or two less than six feet, but there was no mistaking the strength in his frame, although he was not in any way burly.
He could easily overpower her if he so chose and had in fact already done so once outside the église Saint-Eustache.
She had felt for herself the unyielding power in his upper body.
Undoubtedly a man one crossed at one’s own peril. Even so, she was coming to believe he meant her no harm so long as she complied with his questioning. She was still frightened, yes, but not nearly so much as she had been.
She pulled Da’s greatcoat more closely around her. She could still smell faintly in the fabric the tobacco he’d favored. Sudden tears stung; she blinked them back.
Thin dawn light painted the outer room in shades of grey. Blackmore’s gaze shifted to the volume on his lap as though he read in earnest. When he glanced her way after several minutes, she made no attempt to disguise that she was watching him. His heavy, dark brows lifted in silent question.
“I will not sleep further.” She pushed herself upright. “You may as well resume your questioning.”
“As you like.”
She eyed the unpadded settle of the previous night and opted instead for the unoccupied wooden chair at the table.
He brought his chair opposite and reseated himself, regarding her silently.
She raised an eyebrow, waiting. This interview was of his choosing, after all, not hers.
It was in its own way surprising that he was not immediately ready with something.
“I looked through your valise,” he finally stated.
She had presumed as much. “I should have been surprised had you not.”
“Why have you brought the pistol with you to France?”
She sidestepped the question. “My husband trained me to use it.”
“Have you had occasion to use it?”
“Ever? Or here?”
His brows drew together. “Let us start with here.”
“No,” she replied, clarifying after a pause, “I have not used it.”
“Ever? Or here?”
She smiled faintly in acknowledgment at her own words lobbed back at her. “I have not fired it recently and never at a living creature. Although various assorted tree branches and rocks gave up their lives to it as I learned to use it.”
His mouth twitched. “But you had some thought of using it here?”
“Perhaps. Although I confess that even now I am in France, I do not know if I have the nerve to use it for anything more than defense of my own person.”
“Not even on Jeremiah Compton?”
“I cannot know.” She traced around a stain on the table where an oil lamp had splashed, not recently. “You’ve been a soldier. Tell me, can anyone know with certainty how they will react in a given moment until that moment is fully upon them?”
Blackmore made a sound in his throat she took for acknowledgment. She again traced the stain, waiting for whatever he might next ask.
“Lucy is your sister?”
She looked sharply at him. She had carefully held back Lucy’s name the previous night among other details she was unwilling to reveal. He would not have found it in the valise.
“You called out the name just before you woke.”
So she had spoken aloud—or screamed. She relaxed marginally. “Yes, Lucy is my sister. Lucinda, properly. She is nearly six years my junior.”
“What is your sister’s relationship to Jeremiah Compton?”
He had leaned against the chair’s back, casual with chin rested on first and second fingers of one hand, thumb up along his jaw.
His other hand was relaxed on the table in front of him.
Nothing was threatening about his posture, but he was very intent.
A predator, watching something small and deciding if it was worth its while to pounce.
She had anticipated he would ask about Lucy; she had, after all, framed a tiny portion of the story for him last night.
And yet she was suddenly . . . Frustrated was the proper word, that he felt entitled to the story when he had given her nothing.
That he expected her to lay bare what so harrowed her.
If he was not a genuine threat to her, she wanted more reason to trust him than a lit candle after a bad dream.
He held all the cards, but why should he?