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“I should murder you,” she told him, still whispering. “You want me in his bed? You’re that cruel?”
“This is no time for dramatics, Lisette,” he told her, holding back a smile. The woman was livid! She was livid, and he felt alive for the first time in months. “See if you can help boost me up to that first branch. I want to see this host of mine.”
“No! He is old, he is ugly. He is inconsiderate, coming home a day early. Bâtard. Rian, please. You promised we’d go. We must hire the coach and be gone before sunrise.”
Rian looked once more to the tree, once more to the windows.
His good mood soured. He was useless, less than useless. He couldn’t even climb a damn silly tree!
Lisette was crying softly now, and his decision was made for him.
No matter what he wondered about the man in the drawing room, Lisette was who she said she was. An innocent, frightened half out of her mind. And his savior. It was enough that he would remember the manor house, be able to guide his brothers back to it once he returned home.
He held out his hand to Lisette and, together, they began the long walk to the outskirts of Valenciennes.
CHAPTER FOUR
LISETTE COLLAPSED ONTO the thin, uncomfortable seat of the hired coach and cursed her papa. She’d been shaking inside for over three hours, and still felt none too steady.
What had he been thinking?
To add authenticity to her escape?
She could still feel the clench in her stomach as she’d heard her papa’s voice, realized he was no more than twenty feet away. And mocking her. The things he’d been saying! Hinting at filthy things, about how he would bed her, teach her how to pleasure a man the way he wanted to be pleasured. And then he’d laughed, both he and his friend Renard, that horrid, sharp-nosed man who made Lisette’s flesh crawl.
She believed she could understand why he had done what he’d done, said what he’d said. So that she would look truly appalled, and Rian would be given yet another reason to trust her. But did her papa have to say those things to the terrible Renard?
She disliked her papa’s friends, all of them. They laughed too loudly, they drank too much, and when her papa was not watching, they looked at her too hard. But she didn’t tell her papa that, because these were his crew, he’d told her, and they had been with him from the beginning, in the islands, and they were the only men he could truly trust in a world that each year found a new way to go utterly mad.
He had other friends, her papa. Important, powerful friends. Like the man, Charles Talleyrand, who had joined them for dinner one night while she had been in Paris with her papa. That man had dressed well, had spoken well, was a gentleman of privilege. But he had also looked at her too hard when Papa wasn’t watching.
Sister Marie Auguste had been right. Men were no more than a necessary evil.
“Here now, you’re shivering,” she said, turning to one of those necessary evils, frowning as she saw the perspiration on his brow, the white line around his tightly compressed lips. “I don’t understand this, Rian. You were well, yesterday.”
“I hadn’t walked for hours in a cold drizzle yesterday,” he said, pulling his cloak more fully around himself. “Two miles, Lisette? It was three miles if it was a step.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you’d come with me, if you knew it was that far. But we’re safe now, on our way to the coast, with dawn only an hour behind us. They will have missed me by now, and you as well. How soon do you think they will come looking for us?”
“I don’t understand much French, Lisette, but I heard the Comte. I heard him say your name, and I listened to the tone in his voice. He’s not going to let you go so easily.”
“Or you,” Lisette reminded him, lest he tell her they should part ways, so that he could travel home safely, without being chased all the way by her papa. After all, he was a man, and therefore probably selfish at his core. “I told you. The Comte, he does nothing without a reason. I don’t know why he wants you, but he does.”
“So much for believing in Good Samaritans,” Rian said, smiling. But his teeth were chattering, and Lisette quickly slipped out of her own damp cloak, to lay it across his chest. “Damn. Maybe I do need one of those vile draughts of yours.”
Lisette reached down to open the portmanteau and made a great business out of searching it for the bottle of medicine she knew wasn’t there. She’d had enough of Loringa’s potions, confusing him, keeping him perhaps too muddled to find his way home. “It isn’t…I…I can’t find it, Rian!” She pulled underclothing from the portmanteau and dug deeper. “It’s—no, wait, here it— C’est une tragédie! I have brought the wrong bottle! It was dark, and I was fearful of lighting a candle. Oh, Rian, no!”
She held up the dark blue bottle with its cork seal.
He looked at it owlishly. “What is it?”
“Not the medicine for your fever,” Lisette said, sighing. “It is laudanum, to make you sleep. For the headache, for the pain from your wounds. It will do nothing for your fever. Rian, I am so sorry. You will die now.”
He looked at her, one eyebrow raised, and then laughed. “My loyal nurse cheers me no end. I won’t die, Lisette. I’m weeks past dying. But I will avail myself of some of that laudanum, once we’ve stopped for the night.”
“Because you’re in pain? Where? Tell me. Where is the pain?”
“In my ears. I keep hearing silly chattering in my ears.”
“You are not amusing, Rian Becket. Not at all.” Lisette replaced the bottle and threw the underclothes back in on top of it. But this was good. He would take the laudanum instead, as she had hoped, and he would sleep. She needed no more of the confusion she found when he held her in his arms at night, as he made love to her. “I liked you better when you were sleeping. My pretty poet, with the face of an angel. I will mix some with water for you when we reach Petit Rume.”
She felt his heated fingers against her nape as he took hold of her collar and pulled her back up straight on the seat.
“We’re not heading toward Petit Rume, Lisette,” he told her, and she looked at him in very real shock. “I begged a rude map from the fellow back at the stables, and he drew me the most direct route to the Channel.”
Lisette nodded furiously. “Yes, yes. And Petit Rume is a logical step in that journey.”
“Exactly. Think, Lisette. We’re fleeing the Comte, a man you believe will follow you, try to bring you back to the manor house. He would expect you to head for the Channel, and England. After all, you are English, and you say you have no one in France to care for you. It’s only, as you said, logical. So, instead of traveling west, as I assured the stable owner we would do, we are heading directly north.”
“North?” Lisette fought an urge to pull down the side window, stick out her head, look for the men who were following after them. “But what is north?”
“Belgium.”
“But…but—”
“We are no more than forty miles distant from Brussels, although there is no reason to travel that far before heading to the west once more. I’ve studied maps of Belgium, Lisette, so much so that I can very nearly see them in my mind. I’ve ridden the miles between Brussels and Nivelles to the south, and Tubize to the east, reconnoitering for Wellington. The land is easy to travel, and the people friendly to the English. We’ll make our way to Ostend, where I first landed, and take ship there.”
“But…but wouldn’t the Comte think you would do that?” Lisette asked him, racking her brains for a way out of this unexpected disaster. “He has to know you might take us to more familiar…territory?” She crossed her arms in front of her. “So my way is better, yes?”
“No way is better, Lisette,” he said, rubbing at his forehead as if his head ached. “Yours is one way, mine is another. I chose mine.”
Lisette wasn’t ready to give up. “But mine is probably faster.”
“Yes, and if I were to leave you when we next stop to rest the horses, and used some of the Comte’s lovely English gold to buy myself a mount, I could be in Ostend tomorrow night. Now let me rest, all right? Either I rest, or I’ll soon be casting up my accounts all over your shoe tops.”
“Your stomach is sick? Then perhaps I should give you some of the laudanum now?”
He shook his head, and then winced, clearly having caused himself pain. “I need my wits about me, Lisette. And, when next we stop, I need to search out a pistol, a sword. I feel naked, and I’m supposed to be defending you.”
“That’s very nice of you, Rian Becket,” Lisette grumbled, settling against the back of the seat, knowing she had lost the battle. “When we are finally safe with your family, and if you have not had occasion to throw up on my shoes, I will tell them all how brave you were.”
How brave you were…
Rian squeezed his eyes more firmly shut, his body swaying slightly with the movement of the coach, wishing away the words that kept repeating, repeating, inside his head as he floated in and out of a dream.
Brave? Had he been brave? He didn’t remember, couldn’t remember. God only knew how hard he’d been trying to recall what had happened that day, how he had come to be wounded, how he had been brought to the Comte’s manor house.
A residence approximately three miles outside of Valenciennes. He knew that now, too. And after seeing it drawn on the stable owner’s crude map, he knew that Valenciennes was more than forty miles away from the battlefield now spoken of as the battle of Waterloo.
It made no sense. None of it. Who rescued a wounded soldier from the field and then moved him to a place more than two days’ travel away?
Why hadn’t he thought of all of this sooner, as he’d begun to recover from his wounds? He’d tried to rouse himself, he really had, but then he’d fade away again, become interested in a sunset, the way light played across Lisette’s hair, the smoothness and sweet smell of his sheets, even the texture of the meat in his mouth as he chewed it. He could stare for hours at the trees outside his window, fascinated by the way the passing breeze stirred the leaves into pictures for him…houses, boats, even prettily spotted cows.
Cows in trees. How asinine.
Yet it had been so easy to keep drifting away, to be enthralled by pretty pictures, pretty colors, almost able to forget that he was no longer a whole man, even stop feeling tingles and itches in a hand that was no longer there.
It damn well had been easier without the fever.
But no. No more medicine, and at least now he wouldn’t have to find ways to pour it away rather than drink it. Because he had to concentrate his mind. Lisette depended on him. And he might have put her in more danger than she could possibly comprehend.
So he let his new, waking dream take him back to that day, the morning of the battle. Pushed himself to remember.
He’d spent the morning riding out, relaying Wellington’s orders, carrying messages back to the Duke as he and Bonaparte waited for the mud to dry on the field between them, waited for the first man to give the order to begin the battle.
Yes, he remembered that. Jupiter had been magnificent. Never tiring, always ready to give his all for his master, even as the long day wore on and there were more messages, requiring more riding. Dodging French patrols, galloping over rough terrain, never shying at the crash of the cannons, the sharp barks of the rifle volleys.
One last command, one last mission, even as dusk came early with the smoke from the cannons, the rifles. One more, and he would be done. They would take the day, he was almost sure of it, and it was a message of a small victory that he carried back to Wellington with him, tucked up inside his jacket.
Rian’s breath came faster in his half sleep. Because he was remembering things he had not been able to remember until this point. He imagined he could even see himself, as he stood to one side, an observer. Watching himself as he would a character in a play.
The shot had come out of nowhere, only a half mile from Wellington’s headquarters, an area he’d supposed safe. Jupiter had immediately stumbled, but not gone down. When Rian urged the horse forward, the animal responded, even as Rian could see blood running down the bay’s flank.
A shelter, just ahead. A bloody cowshed. Get Jupiter inside. Hide him as you draw your sword, cock your pistol, pray there is no pursuit.
No, Jupiter, don’t go down. Stay on your feet. Don’t give up.
Damn! They’re coming. Too late to steal Jupiter, you bastards. You’ve shot him. How many out there? Three? Five? Leave Jupiter for a moment, step carefully outside the cowshed, listen for the enemy.
The sharp crack of a rifle.
God! My leg! I can’t stand.
I’d so wanted to see Becket Hall again….
Rian sat forward with a start, his eyes open wide, seeing the men advancing toward him, speaking a mix of English and French, gesturing to the one holding his shoulder, wounded by the single shot of Rian’s lone pistol. They put their own pistols away, advancing only with their swords drawn. Smiling. Hands, reaching for him as he propped himself up on one knee, swinging his sword in a wide arc…
“It makes no sense!”
“What? Rian? Rian! Wake up, you’re dreaming!”
He blinked, shook his head, fell back against the seat as Lisette produced a handkerchief from somewhere and began wiping at his perspiration-drenched face.
“You’re awake now? You said it makes no sense. What makes no sense, Rian Becket?”
He swallowed, his mouth dry, so that the sides of his throat seemed to stick together, so that he coughed. “Nothing…nothing. You said it, Lisette. A dream. I was having a dream.”
“Not a pretty one,” she said, tucking the handkerchief back into her pocket. “We must stop for the day, Rian. I’ll tell the coachman.”
He held her back as she went to reach up to the small door that opened to the base of the coachman’s box. “No. We need to be as well out of France as possible before we stop. And then I’ll give you at least half the money in the purse, so that you can travel on your own. You’re not safe with me.”
She pressed her palm to his brow. “It’s the fever. You’re out of your head, Rian Becket. I won’t leave you. You’re ill. I’ve heard of this, of soldiers wounded in the stomach lasting through the hot months, only to succumb when all thought the danger had passed. Do you have pain? In the stomach?”
“No, not right now,” he told her, refusing to shake his head, because it might explode. “Only another damnable headache.”
“Then it is settled,” Lisette said, reaching once more for her portmanteau on the floor of the coach. “We have no water to mix it with, so you take just a sip from the bottle. It will ease the pain. Cook is always sipping it straight from the bottle, when her tooth hurts. It won’t harm you.”
Rian eyed the bottle warily. He’d told himself he’d had enough of medicines, and thought more clearly without them. Had begun to remember that last day. But was that better or worse than not remembering?
He knew at least enough now to keep him moving. He had to get home, back to Becket Hall. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
He’d been so busy bemoaning the loss of his arm, he’d allowed himself to wallow in self-pity; to drift, to dream, never once thinking of his family, of the danger he knew always existed for those at Becket Hall.
But he wanted the medicine, any medicine that would rid him of this terrible headache, this feeling that his body was both hot and cold, and that, although he knew better, he could swear small insects were running up and down his flesh, burrowing beneath his skin.
Once he was home, had spoken with his father and the others, told them about the mysterious Comte, then they could sort it all out and he could forego the medicines, put himself in Odette’s care. She’d know a better way to rid him of these damn fevers.
“Trust me, Rian Becket,” Lisette said, uncorking the bottle, holding it in front of him. “You’ve just to tell me where we are going. I will get you safely home.”
He reached for the bottle with his shaking hand, silently cursed himself for being weak, and took a deep swallow.
WITH THE THANKFULLY once again compliant Rian settled in his bed and sleeping soundly, Lisette wrapped her cloak more firmly about her and walked across the cleared area around the small country inn, heading for the cover of the trees. She didn’t look left or right, but only kept up her measured pace, her heart beating quickly as she rehearsed what she would say.
If the men were here, if the increasingly difficult to manage Rian Becket had not succeeded in losing them.
“Mam’selle? Mam’selle Beatty?”
She glanced behind her, to make sure no one could see her from the inn windows, and then stepped to her right, deeper into the stand of trees.
“I feared you may have lost us,” she said, looking at the three men in her papa’s employ.
“We do not become lost so easily. But it was to be Petit Rume, mam’selle,” Thibaud, the tallest of the three, said. Scolded.
Lisette looked at him levelly as she lied. She was, alas, becoming a very accomplished liar. If she wasn’t already well on the path to Hell for sleeping with Rian Becket without benefit of vows, she would say an extra rosary for this new sin. “The Englisher changed the route,” she told Thibaud. “He takes us to Calais, where he says he has friends.”
“Christ’s teeth! Friends? Our man is in Calais? It was thought the coast of England, for certain. This makes things easier for us. I have no taste for the Channel in an October storm.”
“You stupid man. How easy to cross from Calais to the English coast! Dover, this place called Folkestone—so many more. Praise God the nuns forced geography on me, yes? If I am to be followed by fools.”
“Fools, is it?” The man took a step forward, his hands drawn up into fists. “I have followed the man since before he spilled his seed into your mother. But women are good for that one thing only. If you were not your father’s daughter…”
“But I am, and he would tie your guts in a bow around your filthy neck if any harm were to come to me,” Lisette reminded him, her chin high even as her insides quaked in fear. “You’d be wise to remember that. Wiser still to get yourselves to Calais ahead of us, rather than to continue to follow, and perhaps be seen.”
“You keep him drugged with Loringa’s potions. He looks nowhere other than beneath the skirts you lift for him so he can poke you like some cheap whore.”
Before she could consider the consequences, Lisette slapped the man, hard, across the face. “You are a dead man speaking to me, Thibaud.”
Thibaud grabbed her wrist and squeezed, hard, as he brought his face, and his foul breath, to an inch away from her nose. “I would be so much better, you know. With two hands to stroke you, to tease you until you cry out in your great pleasure. Listen! I can already hear you. Thibaud, Thibaud, my magnificent prince!”
