Chapter 10
Ten
Shit shacker. Bastard. Pox-ridden son of a whore.
Marcus’s steady string of epithets, aimed at the comte and at himself, took on the rhythm of the horse’s hooves as he rode towards Paris.
He’d sworn. Despite the nagging suspicion he’d been manipulated into doing something he didn’t fully understand and that he’d very likely regret. Again.
As the sky darkened from glaucous to Persian blue, he debated whether to ride through the night. The urge to reach Paris, to get the deed done as quickly as possible, was nearly overwhelming. But the last thing he needed was for the mare to stumble in the dark and go lame.
Which was why, a short time later, he found himself seated at a table in the dining room of a small inn.
The room had a low beamed ceiling and yellowed plaster walls dotted here and there with empty hooks, where he suspected prints of the King and Queen, or perhaps crosses, had once hung.
The far end of the room was dominated by a smoke-stained fireplace, its hearth blessedly bare given the humid night.
The windows had been left open, more in hope than expectation of a breeze.
Most of the tables were empty. But still, he’d chosen a corner one, farthest from a small group of older men playing cards amidst a clutter of bottles, olive pits, long-stemmed pipes, and ash.
He’d committed to memory the location of windows (three), doors (two), and a staircase (left, one flight).
“Will anyone be joining you, citizen?” A serving maid asked, setting down a wine bottle and glass. She lit the lantern on his table, filled the wine glass nearly to the brim and slid it towards him, her fingers grazing the side of his hand.
“No.”
She straightened, her hand rising to where her sweat-dampened fichu clung to her neck and traced the line of it with her finger down to the rise of her breasts. “A handsome man like you. Alone. Seems so…sad. Perhaps you would like a bit of company?”
Sad? His lip curled derisively. He judged the girl to be about seventeen years old, 1.
55 meters, 7.9 stone. Marcus surveyed her curves and angles with the same swift, technical detachment he’d used for the room.
A curl of hair (yellow ochre) escaping from beneath her cap.
A rounded cheek and even rounder breasts rising above a neat triangle of waist. “Thank you, no. I find my own company sufficient.”
Her lips, a rosy shade he’d have painted with a mix of zinc white and cadmium red, tightened into an offended line, and her cheeks flushed a shade that was almost entirely cadmium red. “Very good, citizen,” she said stiffly.
He watched as she swept away, skirts swaying in a manner that accented her hips. He mentally rattled the apothecary drawer in his chest labeled ‘desire,’ and found it satisfyingly closed.
With nothing to do for the moment but await his meal, Marcus slid the gilt-framed miniature from his pocket and studied the image of the dark-eyed girl.
Not that he needed to see it again; it was already imprinted in his mind.
The brushwork on the strands of the girl’s hair and the lace of her dress were particularly fine.
But there was something about her that unsettled him. Was it her eyes? The curve of her lips?
She looked like she’d been trained to dance the exacting steps of the minuet but dreamed of spinning in the rain.
Romantic rubbish. He needed something to eat and a good night’s sleep.
He turned the miniature in his hands, tilting it so that he could see it more clearly in the spill of the lantern’s light.
The impression was merely the effect of some artist’s trick and his own fatigue.
He’d been up since dawn. Had killed men.
Laid their bodies out in a field. It was only a matter of time before they were discovered.
How much time? If only it was dawn, so he could mount up again and ride.
“Your daughter, citizen?” the serving maid asked, her voice purposely conversational, as she set down a platter of chicken stewed in a white wine sauce, a dish of snails in garlic butter, and another of green beans sprinkled with dill.
He slipped the miniature back into his pocket and picked up the three-pronged fork beside his plate.
“I did not mean to pry, citizen, but I could not help noticing how intently you’ve been staring at it.”
Marcus regarded her with a look that made it clear that her question was the very definition of prying and allowed the silence to stretch between them.
He’d found this tended to make people extremely uncomfortable.
Either they began babbling to fill the silence or removed themselves from his presence post haste.
In this instance, the serving maid did the latter.
Spearing a piece of chicken with his fork, Marcus thought of how the comte had stood with his hands outstretched, making his plea for his daughter’s rescue to James and Elizabeth. Like a scene from a Drury Lane performance.
He put the chicken in his mouth and chewed, recalling how Joley had grabbed his sketchbook.
His sketchbook. Not some costume prop supplied by Andre, nor some curious invention of David’s.
He’d specially commissioned it, carefully selecting the quality of the paper and leather of the cover—soft yet durable, sized to fit perfectly in the pocket of his jackets.
He was rarely without it. Had covered the first half of its pages with whatever images caught his eye, captured his imagination, or kept his restless demons at bay.
Joley had scrawled ‘twenty thousand pounds for her safe return’ in the middle of a blank page, then initialed it as if his sketchbook were nothing more than a grubby account book.
Marcus speared a piece of chicken so sharply the tines of his fork scraped the earthenware plate.
What kind of man puts a price on his child? Then insults her would-be rescuer?
He set down his fork. Redemption was the reason he’d given Dinsmore for his decision to rescue Marguerite de Rouvroy, but Marcus did not believe his past mistakes could ever be redeemed. He picked up his glass of wine and drank deeply.
Indeed, he was having the devil’s own time not racking up more.