Chapter 45
Forty-Five
As soon as Marcus and Andre left the room, Marguerite buried her face in a wet washcloth with a mortified groan.
Shaky as a newborn colt, she’d managed to spill most of the water in the pitcher in her attempt to wash her hair.
Sticky with soap, still redolent of the prison, she’d been eyeing the splattered pools on the floor, wondering if there was any way to use them to try and rinse at least some of the mess off, when they’d walked in on her.
She waited, breathless, for several moments, just to be certain there’d be no more unexpected interruptions.
Then she dropped the towel, picked up the soap, stepped into the washtub, which was just big enough to stand in, and began scrubbing.
She scoured and sluiced until her skin was pink and stingingly raw.
Then she inhaled deeply; with the exception of her tangled hair, the smell of the prison was almost entirely gone.
She glanced over her shoulder; Marcus had taken the clothes she’d thrown on the floor. Then back over at the trunk he’d said should have everything she might need. A night dress? A wrapper? Ordinary items that seemed like unimaginable delights.
Wrapping herself in a fresh towel from the pile he’d placed on the table, she hurried over to the trunk. She lifted the lid but found it difficult to see inside with only a single lamp on the table. Grasping a handle, she dragged it closer to the light.
“Everything all right in there? You haven’t fallen, have you?”
“I’m fine.” She lifted out a cotton nightdress, pausing to admire the fine stitching, then shrugged into it, luxuriating in the whisper of fine softness against her skin.
“Just need to find a…” She rooted around in the trunk searching for a wrapper, a shawl, another layer of coverage even though she was very much aware he’d seen nearly every inch of her already.
A fresh wave of mortification swept over her.
“Shawl,” she said, tossing a length of red and gold paisley over her shoulders.
He was being paid to help her. She was just a job to him. Why should she care what a hired man thought of her?
There was a knock at the door.
“Madame de Rouvroy? Are you ready for me?”
Her chest felt as if it was full of bees. Dragging the mass of her wet hair out from under the shawl and over her shoulder, she hurried back to the bed, skirting the chaos of pitchers, bowls, water and towels she’d left on the floor. “Enter, M’sieur Tynsdale.”
For a moment, she wasn’t sure why she’d asked the stony-faced man who entered to help her.
Because he had the face and body that haunted her dreams? Because he stirred her to fury, then surprised her with unexpected gentleness? Or simply because after everything she’d been through, he made her feel a range of emotions, none of which included mind-numbing terror or dumb resignation?
He set a lantern down on a small table. Surveyed the scattered towels, basin, pitcher, wash tub, and trunk, and began rearranging them with brisk efficiency.
Like a servant, she told herself, as silence stretched between them.
She surveyed Marcus’s silken hair, damp and loosely tied back.
Then her eyes drifted from his hair to his broad shoulders and down to his narrow waist. He was wearing a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, a striped waistcoat and buff-colored breeches.
She watched the play of muscles in his back and thighs as he bent down to empty the dirty water in the wash tub into the empty water can.
The bees in her chest buzzed louder.
He wrapped the damp towels in a bundle, poured the dirty water into the empty water can, refilled the pitcher and set it and the small basin on the table. Picking up the square of soap Andre had given her, he scowled.
“Is there something wrong with the soap?” she said, breaking the silence. “Do you dislike the scent of honeysuckle?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the scent.” He replied, hastily setting the square down. He bent to move the wash tub. Placed it against the wall. Then picked up the chair she’d noticed earlier, but had been too exhausted to try and move, and set it beside the table.
“Sit,” he commanded, pointing at the chair.
Marguerite slipped from the edge of the bed to the chair.
He studied her for several long moments, as if she were a line of soldiers on a battlefield.
“Have you done this before?” she asked.
“No.”
Of course he hadn’t. He was no more a servant than a thoroughbred was a cart horse.
“Will that,” she motioned at his bandaged hand, “be a problem?”
“It’s nothing. A scratch,” he said dismissively.
“Right.” Stepping forward, he lifted up the mass of her hair and began to work.
At first, his touch was rough, scrubbing and pulling so hard that several times she winced.
But as he continued, alternating soap and water, drawing his fingers through her tangled tresses, his touch became gentler.
He massaged her scalp and neck in soothing circles, and his fingers teased strands away from her forehead and neck, drawing them down her back in long, easy strokes.
She shivered, imagining what it would be like to have those fingers on other, more sensitive parts of her body.
“Are you still feeling unwell?”
She shook her head.
He’d rolled up his sleeves, and the lantern light glinted on the feathering of hair on his forearms, casting the lines of muscle and bone into shadow.
There was a scar across his right forearm, a wicked slashing line.
She lifted a hand to trace it, then, abruptly aware of what she was doing, drew it back.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked. “I know I was a bit rough earlier. But there were so many knots.”
“No. It feels good.” Unbelievably good. Marguerite shifted in her chair. The quiet and his touch felt so intimate that touching him back seemed the most natural thing to do. “I was just…” she gestured towards his arm, “that scar…how did you come by it?”
“Failed to dodge a blade.”
She winced in sympathetic pain. “It must have been a very large blade.”
“A cavalry saber. Do you find it ugly?” Clearly assuming that she did, he continued. “I consider it a valuable reminder to never let my guard down. Mistrust, as you’ve undoubtedly learned from your recent experiences, is the best defense.”
Victorine’s betrayal had been shocking, painful, but she’d been at fault, too. Marguerite turned her head to look at him. “That must be exhausting.”
His hands stilled in her hair, and his eyes met hers, one skeptical brow lifting.
“Never placing your trust in anyone,” she said, “always holding people at an arm’s length.”
“Better lonely than betrayed.”
Marguerite thought of her loveless marriage and shook her head, which reminded her that his fingers were still tangled in the strands of her hair.
“Victorine wasn’t a betrayal of trust so much as an error in…
” she hesitated, searching for the right word, “assumption. I can’t say that I ever trusted her.
I simply assumed I knew her. Perhaps, if I’d taken the time to get to know her better… ”
“She’d have told you she was planning to denounce you?”
“No, no, but perhaps I’d have known her well enough to…”
“Understand she’s the kind of person who thinks people whose beliefs and ideas differ from hers should be arrested?
That a drawing mocking a power-mad politician deserves a death sentence?
Seems to me the time spent getting to know such a person— no,” he amended, “the time wasted on getting to know such a person, is far more exhausting.”
“I’m guessing you are unmarried?”
“No lovers. No wife. No family,” he said, in a tone that was clearly intended to shut down that particular line of conversation.
This man’s scars went deeper than his skin; she wanted to wrap him in her arms. “But you must have had family once?”
Silence.
“You don’t strike me as the product of immaculate conception.”
This elicited a twitch of his severe lips. “Far from it.” He dumped the water from the basin into a water can, wrapped her hair in a towel and began wringing segments of it out. “I did have a family, once. They’re gone.”
“Is that why you do this…rescuing…or whatever?”
“Whatever?” He set the wrapped coil of her hair down and looked at her.
“The fake names. Is Marcus Tyndale really your name, or just your name for now? The disguises. The I-can’t-tell-you-just-wait-for-my-instructions secrecy.”
“Ah,” he said in a tone of exaggerated understanding “You mean the whatever that saved your life?”
“For which I’m grateful. Very grateful. Though we’re not in England yet,” she couldn’t resist adding. “I heard you speaking English in the carriage. You’re English. You’re all English, are you not?”
He pressed his lips together.
“Ah,” she said waving a finger at the severe line of his mouth. “There it is. The I’ll-only-tell-you-what-I-decide-you-need-to-know whatever that enables you to neatly avoid entanglements.”
“Neatly avoid?” he repeated, his tone incredulous. “Is that why you think I rode hell for leather for three days to reach Paris, broke into your apartments, spent days finding a way in and out of the Conciergerie, stealing a uniform, smuggling it into the prison, fabricating a key…”
“Which didn’t work.” She knew she was goading him, but his anger felt better than his studied indifference, like an electric shock revitalizing them both.
“You probably turned it wrong,” he muttered. “Not to mention producing all those portraits.”
“Ah yes, the portraits. That reminds me, in the pocket of the breeches you carried away you’ll find a purse.”
“I have it. I’m not a thief.” He drew the embroidered purse from his pocket and dropped it on the table. “As well as the sketch paper you didn’t use.”
“You may keep it.”
“How gracious. Seeing as how it was mine to begin with...”
“Not the paper,” Marguerite said, surprised at the fury he infused into the words ‘sketch paper.’ “The purse.”
“The purse?” Marcus repeated, clearly confused.
“It’s your payment.” She cocked her chin at the little embroidered bag.
Looking at it felt like a punch to the stomach and she quickly turned away.
“From Marisol Auginot,” she said, her voice hardening.
Anger felt so much safer than grief. “The woman in the bed across from mine. She wanted to make certain that she paid all her debts before she went to the guillotine. Or, was she someone you decided wasn’t worth getting to know… better forgotten?”
“I…”
“Do this for the money,” She waved a hand, completing the sentence for him. She began twisting her towel-wrapped hair.
He’d been standing behind her, next to the basin on the table, and he came around to face her. Setting his hands on the arms of her chair, he knelt in front of her so that their eyes were level and said firmly, “Stop.”
“Stop what?” She didn’t know what inflamed her more, his proximity or his words. “Stop speaking? Or stop telling the truth? You don’t like it?”
“Of course I don’t like it. But not for the reasons you’re thinking.” His eyes were the color of cognac lit by a flame. His voice softened. “I’ve been where you are. In pain. Lashing out. The anger feels good, doesn’t it? Strong emotions. They remind you that you’re alive. That you’ve survived.”
Marguerite’s mouth went dry. She could only nod.
“When you get to England,” he continued.
“You can be angry all you want. “Rage against the world, if that’s what you want. Against all you’ve been through and all that you’ve lost. Rage against me, if you’d like.
” One corner of his mouth crooked up. “God and the two gentlemen downstairs know I’m far from perfect. ”
He leaned closer. Her nostrils filled with the scent of him. “But for now, you need to stop. Because until we meet the sloop that will take us to England, we have to work together. Survival isn’t easy. It takes strength, determination, and an insatiable hunger for more...”
Letting go of the twisted towel, Marguerite slid her hand up the column of his neck.
Felt Marcus shudder as she traced the line of his jaw, the unshaven stubble prickling her fingertips, the softness of his lips.
Then, rising from the chair, she wrapped her arms around his neck and fed her rising hunger for more.