‘I think so.’
‘Then it was her choice.’
‘But I ruined our family. Papa told me so.’
‘No. I think if your father blamed you, it was he who did that completely by himself.’
Perception. Skewered into truth. It was all she could do to stop the tears of a relief that felt indescribable. Someone else believed that she was not responsible even with all the facts at hand. More of the inheld tension that she always felt melted away.
Colbert had saved her in the river, she knew, the water in her throat and in her eyes, the heavy panic of exhaustion pulling her down. He had saved her, too, when he had insisted on the hole covered in leaves and branches being made on the leeward side of the bush, tucked into calm. How would she have found shelter otherwise without his knowledge of survival?
Survival was marked on his skin, in the scars of bullet and knife. On the upper side of his fighting arm she saw the blue mark of indigo. A serpent curled about a stake.
A man who had lived a hundred hard lives and come through each one. She needed this certainty and this prowess because for the first time in years hope inside began to beat again.
Not all ruined. Not all lost.
A small refrain of promise.
When she smiled at him he smiled back and Cassie felt, quite suddenly, reborn. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-three.’ He added the word ancient in a whisper.
‘Yet you haven’t married?’
‘I’ve been busy.’
The stillness in him magnified. He never fussed, she thought, or used up energy in movements that were surplus. For a big man there was a sense of grace about him that made one look again and wonder. The danger of a panther about to strike, the liquid stretch of muscle honed with a precision that was undeniable, jeopardy tethered to a strict and unrelenting accuracy.
She had seen it in Nay in the way he fought and again at the barn by the river. Someone had trained him well. The government or an army? No amateur could have forged such expertise, but a political mercenary might have managed it. Once a man similar to Colbert had come to Baudoin’s compound in the company of a French General, and had been accorded much respect and esteem.
This was Nathanael Colbert’s legacy, too. No one could look at him and fail to see the menace, even when he was sick almost to death and the fever burned. Glancing away, she felt her stomach clench. To have someone like this on her side...
She shook the thought gone. One day if she was lucky she would remember back at this moment and know that just for a small time he had been hers, her husband, a ring on her finger and the simmering potential of more. She wished her body had had the curves of Celeste and that she might have met him in Paris as a woman of an impeccable reputation and virtue. They could have danced then to a waltz perhaps, her dress of spun gold matching her hair and at her throat her mother’s diamonds. She could have flirted with him, held her fan in that particular way of a coquette and watched him through smoky eyes, the promise of all that might happen between them so very possible.
And instead? Her ruined hand on the counterpane caught her attention, the missing part of her forefinger and the long red scar easy to see in the moonlight.
‘Could you kiss me?’
Her words were out, an entreaty in them that she had tried so hard to hide. But the emotion of the day was thrumming underneath everything they said and if she parted company with him, as she knew she would, she did not want to be left forever wondering. Or wishing.
For a moment she thought he had not heard or had not wanted to hear and her fists clenched by her side. But then he moved, balancing on his arm and leaning across her, his eyes the grey of the sea at dawn just after the sunrise.
Nathanael’s lips were as she had imagined they might be, soft at first and then harder, searching for things that held a promise. Gentle and strong, harnessed by both power and care, his free hand caressing the line of her neck and bringing her closer.
Only them in the world, only this, she thought, as she rose up to him, her tongue meeting his and tasting. She allowed him to force her back against the pillow, the darkness behind her closed eyes calling for more. She felt him turn and come across her body, the outline of his chest meeting her breasts, though his elbows kept the bulk of his body away. The shiver of passion, the heat of want, the memory of this day quickening as he covered her mouth and kept her breath as his own.
A wife and her husband.
Then he broke away. ‘When I am not so sick, Sandrine, I promise to take the kiss much, much further.’
Under the cover of darkness Cassie smiled because his heart was racing every bit as much as hers and when he turned away as if to quell all the thoughts his body was consumed by, she simply curled up into his warmth.
But it was a long, long while until she finally went to sleep.
* * *
They woke to the crow of a rooster outside, and inside Cassie could hear the movements of the Dortignacs preparing for a new day, the dawn only a little while off.
‘We will leave with the first light,’ he said as if he had been listening too. ‘If Baudoin’s henchmen following us find these people have been sheltering us...’ There was no need for him to finish.
To the south, the mountains of the Pyrenees seemed to hold their breath, dark with the presage of rain. Another cold day. A further freezing trek towards Perpignan, many long and difficult miles to the east.
When Nathanael sat up on the side of the bed she saw the bandage across his wound was sagging. She should change it, she knew, but she did not think he would allow it and so she did not say. When he put on his clothes she understood he was in a hurry to leave and that the quiet moments of honesty between them had come to an end.
He looked healthier today. She could see it in the way he stood, no longer favouring his right side in the way he was yesterday. She also saw in his expression a hint of the promise he had made after kissing her.
In the new day, Cassie suddenly understood the danger of a relationship. She needed to go on alone from here because she was certain Lebansart and his men could not be far behind, and if Nathanael died for her...
She shook her head.
If she struck out early across the hills, she could find a pathway and other travellers and make her way to any larger town in the vicinity.
Monsieur and Madam Colbert.
For one night of marriage only.
He had saved her so many times it was only right that she must now protect him.
Cassandra came across the rooftops in darkness and down into the interior of the brothel on Brown Street without being seen by anybody. An easy climb given the footholds and the balconies, but on gaining the room the note had instructed her to come to she could tell that something was wrong. Very wrong.
The chamber door was wide open and the man Cassandra had been looking for was already dead on the floor by the window. Crossing to the glass, she tested the locks, but rust inside the catches told her nobody had come this way. With care, she dropped to her knees and checked beneath the bed, knife in hand and ready to strike. Only the empty space of blackness.
She was glad for the silence in the room for it gave her a moment to think. He had not taken off any of his clothes. There had been no struggle at all and he was unmarked save for the wound at his neck. Money still