Lady Scandal (4 page)

Jumping down, Pierre joined the others to
paw through the delicate gowns, ignoring the young woman's cries,
enjoying himself now.
True enough that a man might hide in one of
the larger trunks, but only a dwarf could fit in these little ones.
He liked the smell of the dainty silks, though.
It put him thinking
about pawing other things.

A sharp voice cut though the night, snapping
Pierre and the others to stiff attention.
"What is this?"

Sullen now, his enjoyment gone, Pierre did
not look up to meet Captain Taliaris's stare—he knew too well the
sound of his captain's displeasure.

The girl's shrill voice carried to him in
the breath of a cold north wind as good as any alarm, and Paxten
pulled hard on the reins to stop the plodding gray.
He straightened
in the saddle, trying to focus his dizzy mind.

Standing in the stirrups, he winced as the
pain throbbed in his side, but he glimpsed light flickering in the
darkness.
From a village?
Some sort of local celebration?
Only that
had not sounded like a woman's cry of delight.

Had someone sprung a trap set for him?

The back of his neck had
started to tingle after finding the
Porte
de Clichy
and the
Porte de St.
Ouen
well guarded, but
the
Porte Montmatre
had only a pair of half-asleep sentries.
Why should that gate
be so easy and the others wrapped tight as a noose?
Damn that city
for its walls and confounded gates.
And damn him for not paying
more heed to his instincts.

The same sense that had saved his life
during the few months he had tried his hand at being a soldier of
fortune, and which had served him equally well during his recent
life at the gaming tables, had blared an alarm.
Now he glanced
again at the countryside.
Should he leave the road?
His father had
grown up not far from here, but Paxten had spent his youth in
England, so what chance did he have in the darkness?
Might he run
smack into a patrol on the hunt for him?

He settled into the saddle and urged the
gray forward, thumping its fat sides with his legs to make it move.
He guided the horse off the main road, cutting across a recently
ploughed field.
The gray slogged through the mud.

As he neared the village, the flickering
light resolved into torchlight.
Within its glow, he could make out
what looked to be a few cottages.
And a carriage?
Yes, a
carriage—he could see the horses shift uneasy in their harness.
He
glimpsed a flash of fire on metal and reined in the gray.
His
service for the King of Naples had taught him to recognize the
glint of a bayonet.

Soldiers.

A number of them, he judged by the thump of
boots he could now hear and the clipped tone of orders being
issued.
He glanced at the darkness around him.
Did others wait
nearby, spread out across the countryside?

Merde!

Instinct urged him to turn the gray and find
out if the beast had a gallop in it, to leave the road and this
village far behind.
But he forced himself to take a breath and
calculate the odds of this nag being able to outpace mounted
cavalry.

Not a bet he wanted to take, he decided.

He might have risked it, if he weren't
bleeding and already swaying in the saddle.

An idea formed and he grinned in the
darkness.
If he could not run, why not see if he could find a safer
route?
One that might take him under their noses.
He had the
advantage, after all, in that he knew where they were.
But they had
not seen him.
Could he keep it so?

Swinging out of the saddle, his boots hit
the mud with a soft squelch.
The world spun and his knees buckled.
Pressing his hand to his side, he leaned against the horse to catch
his breath.
Mother of mercy but he needed to get someplace where he
could rest and tend his wound.
He would just have to hope his
instincts were right about this.

Straightening, he stepped away from the
gray.
It stood there a moment, staring at him, so he turned its
head and slapped its rump to set it ambling back to Paris.
Stepping
as silently as he could with mud sucking at his boots, he moved
towards the village.

#

Furious now, Diana shrieked at the soldiers
to stop vandalizing their property.
She grabbed her chemise from
one thick-set lout and spun to snatch her aunt's jewelry box from
another.
A sharp voice had the soldiers dropping anything they
held—gowns, shawls, bonnets—and snapping to stiff attention.

Rather than stepping
forward to pick up their garments, Marie-Jeanne huddled in the
background, but Diana caught a muttered word from her aunt.
"
Ordure!
"

Diana almost smiled.
Trash.
The word could be
applied to the clothes now strewn in the mud, or to these idiots
who had ruined their garments.
She suspected her aunt intended the
latter.

The soldiers stepped back to allow another
man to step forward, and Diana turned to him, her anger hot and
leaving her French stuttering.
"Who is in charge here?
Why have we
been stopped?
This is an outrage—I assure you that my aunt's
friend, the Duke of Laval, shall hear about..."

Her words faded as the man stepped fully
into the circle of flickering torchlight.

The light turned sun-darkened skin into
shadows of bronze.
Tall, square faced and broad, he looked the
perfect military man.
His dark blue uniform emphasized his wide
shoulders.
Tall black boots gleamed in the firelight, and the gold
braid on his chest flashed.
A red dolman swung from his
shoulders.

She stared at him.
Dark brows angled over
deep set eyes.
A saber rattled at his side, and he stood with one
hand braced on the silver hilt as he glanced around at his men and
the disorder they had created.

He glanced at her at last, his stare
sharpening.
Diana realized she must look ridiculous with her mouth
partly open, her bonnet askew, her chemise caught up to her chest,
and clutching her aunt's jewel box.

She hid her silk chemise behind her.
"Are
you in charge of this rabble?"

With a shallow bow, he said, his voice a
pleasant tenor that made her wonder if he was younger than she had
first thought, "Captain Giles Taliaris at your service,
Mademoiselle...?"

His trailing words invited an answer.
Ought
she give him own name, or did Edgcot sound too English?

Aunt Alexandria solved the problem by
stepping forward and muttering from behind a handkerchief, as if
she were ill, "I feel unwell."

The handkerchief muffled her aunt's
too-English accent, and Diana did the rest, clutching her aunt's
swaying form as if she feared an immediate collapse.
She turned her
best smile on the captain and hoped he might be more stupid than he
looked.

"I beg your pardon, Captain, but my aunt,
she is not well.
I must get her to a doctor in...in Calais."

His stare did not leave her face.
"You seem
uncertain of your destination."

She started to frown at him, caught herself,
and lowered her lashes instead.
"Yes, I am so stupid about such
things.
That is why our driver knows the direction.
And I must get
my aunt there at once." She looked up, striving for a stricken
look.
Only she was not much of an actress.
She had barely muddled
through being Juliet in her aunt's house party last year when they
had done Shakespeare's tragedy.
This looked to have an equally sad
end.

"We fear it is consumption," she said, her
voice low.

A few soldiers shuffled away, putting their
hands to their mouths, left uneasy by an illness that had no cure
and left one coughing up blood and slowly wasting.

The captain, however, only glanced at
Diana's aunt, his face expressionless.
He looked back at Diana, his
stare steady.
For a moment, the torchlight shifted and she caught a
glimpse of his eyes.
Brown eyes—a mix of warm and dark.
Shrewd
intelligence flashed in the depths.

He knew the truth.

The color drained from her
face, leaving her skin colder than the raw spring night
warranted.
How did he know they were
English?
Had he guessed?
Or had she given
them away somehow by overplaying her role?

Heart beating fast, she met
his stare, her eyes wide and the truth now in her mind, willing him
to understand.
We just want to go home.
We
are no harm to anyone.

It seemed forever that he stared at her, his
dark eyes again shadowed, his stern features revealing nothing of
his thoughts.
The pulse pounded sluggish in Diana's throat.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
She counted each beat.
Would he arrest them
now?

Turning sharp, he faced the man who had
ordered them from the coach, a short, lean man with pox scars on
his cheeks.
"The man we want is not here—pack the mademoiselle's
and the madam's trunks.
They are to go on their way at once."

Glancing at her aunt, Diana
let out a long breath.
Her aunt seemed to have caught enough of
what was said to have grasped that they were to go.
Aller.

Diana turned to the captain
again.
"Thank you," she said, putting all the feeling she could
into the words.
"
Merci
beaucoup.
"

His mouth lifted in the faintest of smiles,
and she realized he had an attractive face—and an even more
attractive mouth, with a full lower lip.

She smiled back.

His face hardened again as he said, his
voice pitched only for her and her aunt, "You may find it best for
your aunt's health to take her further than Calais.
I urge a sea
voyage.
France is not the place for two ladies who have no
protection beyond their own reckless courage."

Stiffening, Diana started to deny they had
ever been reckless about anything, but her aunt squeezed her arm
tight, silencing her.

He turned away, all brusque military bearing
as he barked orders to his men, sending some scurrying into the
darkness while the rest finished a hasty repacking of the ruined
clothes.

Diana glanced around, her brows pulled tight
and an odd hollowness in her.
An easing perhaps of the tension of a
moment ago?
Yes, partly that, she knew.
But his remark had stung—he
could have at least acknowledges her thanks!

Well, she would be glad that he had allowed
them to leave, even though he seemed to suspect they were not
French.
But considering what he had said about their carriage not
holding the man they wanted, perhaps the captain's gallantry was
nothing more than a desire not to be distracted from his duty by
mere women.

That rankled even more.

With her chemise, her aunt's jewel box as
well as her aunt's arm, she turned slowly, as if with a care for
her aunt's health.
Diana led her aunt back to the coach, leaning
close to whisper in English, "I think he knows—"

Her aunt interrupted, her tone sharp and her
French halting.
"Hush—not here."

Diana nodded, her cheeks hot.
She did not
seem to be very good at this pretending, and that endangered them
all.

At the coach, Marie-Jeanne shifted from one
foot to the next.
"May I be excused, Madam.
For a moment only.
Nature calls."

Diana stared at the maid a moment before she
realized the girl needed to visit the privy.
She could not blame
Marie-Jeanne.
Her own insides had almost gone liquid.
Her aunt
nodded to the maid, and said in her poor French, "Hurry back."

After one frightened glance at the soldiers,
Marie-Jeanne put her head down and lifted her skirt to pick a path
around the nearest house and to whatever facilities might exist
behind it.

To maintain the pretense that her aunt was
ill, Diana made a show of helping her into the coach.
After seeing
her chemise and her aunt's jewel case repacked, she got into the
coach herself.
With the driver back in his seat, the luggage
strapped to the roof again, and the footmen both shifting nervously
beside the door, Diana called out, "Marie-Jeanne?"

The soldiers seemed to have lost interest in
them, for they sauntered away, taking the torchlight with them.
The
night seemed darker.
Moonlight crept out only to vanish again;
clouds parted and thickened, pushed by the sharp wind.