Shallow, she knew, but it was a fact. With a man like this she could be safe.
Sense reined in fantasy. He was all but promised to the beautiful and clever Lady Acacia Bellowes-Browne, a woman who would suit him exactly and in every way. She wondered if he ever thought of the hurried marriage in the village by the river where Mademoiselle Sandrine Mercier had married Monsieur Nathanael Colbert, two names plucked from a half-truth and settled in the register like impostors.
At this very moment all he looked was angry.
‘Every time you come into my life, Sandrine, it seems chaos follows.’
‘I am no longer Sandrine.’
‘Are you not?’ He came closer, the largeness of him disconcerting. England seemed full of small men with the smell of a woman about them, the indolence of life written upon their skin in softness, the bloom of ease apparent. Nathaniel Lindsay had none of these qualities. He could have been transported here from an earlier time, the menace and threat of him magnified in a room filled with books and quiet pursuits. She would be most unwise to ever think that a lord like this could offer safety after all that she had done to him.
‘What other woman of the ton would dress as a lad and walk the back streets of hopelessness in the midnight hours? Your father must be demented to allow it.’
At that she laughed. ‘The days of a man’s ordinance over me are long gone, Lord Lindsay.’
‘Even a husband’s?’
She had wondered when he would mention it, had been expecting him to from the very outset, but the word still made her blanch, the beat of her heart hurrying with the reference.
‘If our marriage was deemed to be a binding agreement, then our years apart must allow grounds for question. But given the circumstances, I should imagine it was not.’
He smiled, but the steel in his eyes hardened.
‘Why were you there, at the brothel?’ She needed to know if he was friend or foe.
‘Two women were killed a month ago beside the Thames in Whitechapel. I was following up a lead to find the man who did it.’
Every word he said made their relationship more dangerous. ‘Do you have names?’
‘No.’
‘Other clues, then?’
‘I am looking for a tall and well-heeled man. His hair is dark.’
‘Such a one has been seen by the children we have rescued on a number of occasions.’ She wondered why she told him.
‘Which is why you were at the de Clare ball, no doubt. Scouting?’
‘You read my intentions with too much ease for comfort of mind, Lord Lindsay.’
‘Do I, Miss Northrup?’ Something had changed between them in just this single second. She felt the tension in the room shift to something less certain.
‘What happened after I last saw you with Guy Lebansart?’
‘I grew up. I paid the debts I owed and I grew up.’
‘You sacrificed others to save me? Why?’ Anger creased his brow.
She felt the breath in her hollow, felt the beat of her heart flatten into some new and risky unease, and did not speak.
‘I never asked that of you.’ Said in the manner of a man who was not comfortable with indebtedness. ‘Nor did I want it from you.’
She had had enough. ‘You think that you might control everything, my lord? You think that people should only march to your drum, the drum of the morally justified? Are you now one of those men who cannot see another side of an argument, the side where good and bad mix in together to create a new word, an in-between word, that allows life?’ Whirling around, she went to stand at the window. Part of her thought to slip through it into safety, but another part understood that without explanation she might never be free of him and he was dangerous. To the life she had built which depended to a large extent on her being accepted by those she mingled with.
‘After leaving you I stayed in Perpignan. I was shocked by all that happened, you understand. Celeste’s family needed time to know of the demise of their loved one and I needed a space to myself before...’ She stopped.
‘Before you returned to England?’
Jamie. Jamie. Jamie.
Under each and every word said his small and beloved face lingered and it was all she could do to hold him safe.
‘I have forged a life here. My life. Once, a very long time ago, I was someone else.’
A traitor. A wife. A victim.
A woman who had used every part of her wiles to save the father of her baby. She did not flinch as he watched her. She did not think of the marks on her breast or the weeks of fever that had followed. She thought only of Jamie.
As if Nathaniel Lindsay’s fingers had a mind of their own they went to his chin and traced the damage. ‘I thought that I knew you then, but now...’
‘Now we are strangers travelling in different directions, my lord.’
Away from each other? Away to safety.
Turn and go now. Turn and go before he touches you and before the quiet way he gives his words makes you foolish. It is the only way that Jamie can stay safe.
With a quick snatch at the curtain, she lifted her leg across the sill and was gone.
* * *
Nat stood and watched her run, her shadow barely there against the line of trees, blending in the moonlight.
Even with Acacia he had never felt this connection, this need to protect her from all and sundry. Cassandra Northrup made him crazy, witless and sad, yet the feel of her slight body against his in the warm waters of the high pool above Bagnères-de-Bigorre lingered.
Shimmering against reason.
They had gone there by chance, a traveller’s tale remembered, a small, ancient and lonely pool set amongst the mountain scrub, steam rising like God’s breath from the very bowels of a restless earth.
She had forged on ahead from the little house by the river, trying to escape him, he was to understand with time, hurrying along the mountain passes without looking back, though when he had found her a good two hours later she had given no explanation and he had not wanted to ask for one.
After that they had moved with their own thoughts across the landscape, always climbing higher. An image of Alph the sacred river running to measureless caverns and sunless seas took his imagination. Sandrine was like a sylph, light of foot and pure of heart, her hair in the grey mists the only bright and shining beacon.
His wife.
He had never been married before and the troth was surprising in its power. She was young, he knew that, but under her youth there was wisdom and discernment born from an adversity he could only wonder at.
His.
For better or for worse.
He quickened his pace. Already she was thirty feet in front of him and the slope was steepening, but to his left was the grotto he had found many years before, the steam even from this distance visible.
‘There.’ He pointed, and she shaded her eyes and looked, a smile rewarding his discovery.
‘We can take a bath?’
He nodded and took her hand because the shale was treacherous and he did not wish for her to slip.
Later, in the cold winters of London, he would think of this time and try to remember each and every moment of it. Back then the relief of another chance at life after their sickness had made him feel exhilarated.
He could smell the sulphur as they came across