Shocking. Wonderful. She did not wish him to see the remnants of all she thought so she turned away, pleased when he did not demand her attention or reach out again.
An impasse in a cold and wind-filled night, the mountains of the Pyrenees filling a darkened sky and a fire measuring out the passing moments in warmth.
One and then two. Enough to regain composure and push away the thoughts of what might have been between them should they have given it a chance. An ache wormed its way across her throat and heart before settling lower. Loss could be a physical hurt, she would think much later, but right now it was a wondrous and startling surprise.
Chancing a look at him, she saw he lay back against the pillows, the sheet pulled away from the dark nakedness of his skin, muscle sculptured under the flame light. Still sick, she realised, by the sheen of sweat across his brow and the high colour in his cheeks. She wondered how the wound at his side had fared from such exertion, but did not dare to ask him, given the state of her racing heart.
‘I will protect you, Sandrine. Do not worry.’
The words were quietly said.
‘From everyone?’
His lips turned up, the dimple in his right cheek deepening.
‘Yes.’
She did not wipe away the tear that traced down her face, but waited to feel the cold run of its passage, the blot of moisture darkening the yellowed counterpane as it fell. As his breathing evened out she knew he was asleep, his body needing the balm of rest. Turning with as little noise as possible, she watched him, his breathing shallow and fast and his dark eyelashes surprisingly long.
The past few days rushed up at her, the chaos and the hope. Baudoin and his brother had been bandits whose livelihood was made by taking the riches from aristocrats travelling the roads towards the north and west, but Guy Lebansart was a different story altogether. He boasted about working for the French Government, though Sandrine knew enough about the houses and land that he had accrued to know that more lucrative pickings had taken his fancy.
Lebansart blackmailed people and he hurt anyone who got in his way—even Anton Baudoin had been scared of him. He had been due to arrive at the compound with a good deal of gold in exchange for information found on a man Baudoin’s men had killed on the highway. But Nathaniel Colbert had arrived first.
A coincidence.
Sandrine thought not.
Glancing again at the stranger, she frowned. What were his secrets? Closing her eyes, she fervently prayed that Lebansart and those who worked for him would never catch up with them.
Cassandra smoothed down the wool of her pantaloons and pulled up the generous collar of her jacket. It was cold in the London wind and it had already begun to spit.
Damn, she cursed, for the sound of the rain would dull her hearing and she knew that dawn wasn’t far off.
Lord Nathaniel Lindsay had returned to his town house a quarter of an hour ago, and by his gait as he descended from the carriage she knew he had been drinking.
Perfect.
The thick line of trees in the garden surprised her. She would not have imagined him to sanction such a shelter, for intruders could easily use the screen to hide behind. Making her way through the green-tinged darkness, she sidled along the undergrowth until she came to the windows.
The first sash was rock solid. The next one moved. Unsheathing her knife, she pressed it into the crack and shifted the lock. One second and it was rendered useless, clicking into access. With an intake of breath she lifted the wood, and when she perceived no threat she raised it farther.
Waiting, she listened to the sounds of the room. A single last fall of wood in the grate as the warm air greeted her, a clock in the corner marking out the hour.
She was over the barrier in a whisper, turning to the chamber and waiting as her eyes accustomed themselves.
* * *
‘Shut the window and join me.’
He knew she would come for he had seen a shadow that was not normally there against the stone wall on the opposite side of the street. This window had always been loose, a trick of wet wood or poor craftsmanship, he knew not which.
To give her credit she barely acknowledged the shock. A slight hesitation, one less certain step. He wondered if she held a knife in her hand and thought perhaps he should have bothered to arm himself. But he would not have harmed her. He knew that without a doubt.
‘Lord Nathaniel Lindsay, the heir to the title of St Auburn?’ Her voice was tight, tinged with more than a hint of question.
‘At your service, Mademoiselle Mercier. And now you are all grown up.’
‘A fact that you hate?’
He laughed at that because her surprising honesty had always appealed to him, though the sound held little humour. ‘I survived, but others did not. The names I presume you gave to Lebansart made it easy for him to mark them off as English agents. Didier and Gilbert Desrosiers were like lambs to the slaughter. Good men. Men who had never wronged you in any way. Men with allegiances to England and who had only ever wanted to serve this country.’
The blood seemed to disappear from her face. One moment her cheeks were rosy from the outside cold and in the next second they were as pale as snow.
‘You were a spy, too? My God, that explains why you were there in France and in Nay in particular.’
‘They call them intelligence officers now.’
‘You were a spy for the English army?’
‘The British Service.’
‘Not just the army then, but the quiet and hidden corridors of a clandestine and covert agency. Are you still?’
He did not answer.
‘I will take that as a yes, then.’ The blood had returned to her face, and she did not waver as she went on. ‘I didn’t come to offer excuses for what I did at Perpignan, my lord, nor for exoneration.’
‘Then why did you come?’
‘To give you this.’
She took a ring from her pocket and he recognised it immediately. His mother’s, the emerald as green as it had been all those years before.
‘I took it and I should not have. For all the other things that I was, I was never a thief.’
‘God.’ Thief of hearts, he thought. Thief of lives. Thief of the futures of two good Englishmen caught in the crossfire of politics.
‘Celeste died for nothing. At least those agents of England that you speak of perished for a cause they believed in. A righteous cause. A cause to take them into Heaven and be pardoned by our Lord for it.’
‘You came tonight to tell me this?’ His voice shook with bitterness.
‘No. I came to say that nothing is as black and as white as it seems, and the documents I saw were there for others to see as well.’
‘Yet you memorised them and gave the information back to the one person you should not have.’
‘Guy Lebansart was only one man who might have wanted them dead. France was seething with those who would harm anyone with loyalties to England. Perhaps they held your name, too?’
‘I doubt I was on any index of names.’
‘Then you doubt wrong,’ she said and turned to the window. ‘From the moment you rescued me there was danger.’
And then he