The Tide Watchers (4 page)

What had she done to make Alain hate her so? She'd told him Papa didn't love her, yet Alain had been furious when Sir Edward Sunderland refused to allow either of them in the door after she'd eloped. By the time she'd discovered the reason Papa would never allow his new son-in-law into his home, it was far too late.

“That's it,
chérie,
” LeClerc said in an exulting tone, far too close. She must have slowed. Like a fox with hounds on her scent, she hitched up her skirts and bolted.

Booted feet pounded behind her. Jerked back by the hem of her cloak, she fell on the cobblestoned road. A jolt of pain shot up her spine. She couldn't breathe.

In the muted light of his lantern, LeClerc's thin, ordinary face came into view, his eyes red rimmed with drink and blazing with excitement. “Come,
chérie,
it's over now. Be sweet to us, and you'll see how good we'll be in return.”

Oh, yes, Alain had taught her all about the
goodness
of men. She screamed as loud as she could. Not one light went up in response. When LeClerc reached for her, she head-butted him.

“
Salope!
” LeClerc hauled her over his shoulder and carried her, kicking and screaming, to a mossy mound between the cemetery and the church wall. “Arrogant
chatte,
you'll pay for that, and the ale you threw on me. So you think you're above us? Here you're the same as any other girl in the tavern.
Liberté, egalité, fraternité. Vive le France!
”

The bitter irony tasted like gall. Yes, in post-revolutionary France there was equality and fraternity if you were rich, talented, or French. Liberty was yours if your neighbors didn't report you to the latest committee or paranoid leader, if you didn't work with whores by necessity, or—

LeClerc pushed her on her back, and the memory of her last birthday flashed into her brain.
Not again, never again!
She twisted and kicked, arms flailing. “Help me! Rape!”

No candle lit in all the row houses across the road. No sound from the presbytery she'd just passed. Echoes of the night at The White Goose were screaming from the abyss of memory.

She'd known all along these idiots worked for Alain, but this was cruel, even for him.

The knife!
She pulled it from her cloak, but with a blow to her wrist, LeClerc sent it spinning. With an exasperated huff, he put a cupped hand over her mouth, the other hand pressing his fingers into her throat until she choked, fighting for air. “No more tricks, or I'll really hurt you.”

She bunched her hand into a fist, gathering dirt and grass, and threw it in his face.

LeClerc's blow to her temple sent broken gravestones spinning behind her eyes. “Hold her.” Tolbert grabbed her arms. LeClerc hitched up her skirts and loosened the tie at his breeches.

“Release the lady if you want to live.”

Abbeville, France

August 18, 1802

T
HE GROWLING VOICE CAME
from the darkness close by. The unmistakable noise of pistols cocking followed. Tolbert and LeClerc gasped and released their grip on her.

Lisbeth's eyes snapped open. Was he a figment of her desperate imagining? But Tolbert's low-lit lantern and the uncertain moonlight illuminated a tall man swathed in a cloak, aiming two pistols at her attackers.

“I shoot with both hands equally well.” With a subtle Spanish accent, he made her think of the
banditti,
professional killers. “But I don't have a shovel to bury you. So start running.”

Tolbert bolted, tripping over crumbled gravestones, taking the low outer wall at a leap, arms windmilling in an attempt to go faster. LeClerc ran after him, holding his undone breeches with one hand while the other flapped, like a one-winged bird.

The stranger returned his pistols to his cloak pockets. “Did they hurt you, madame?”

The words barely penetrated the fog in her mind. She couldn't stop shaking. All she knew was that her bunched-up clothes exposed her to the waist like a harlot. If she still had her pantalets, as a lady of breeding . . .

Pull down your skirts!
But her arms remained above her head, refusing to obey her will.

He stooped down. Energized by panic she scrambled back, but he only pulled her dress and her cloak over her. “May I see you home?”

She stared at him.
Beautiful manners.
Pure Picardy-Norman French now, with no accent.

Looming over her in the darkest hour of night, he was so
big
. With the hood pulled down, she couldn't see his face.

“Please tell me you're not hurt, madame.”

Strange concern in his low murmur.
Faceless, anonymous, a stranger. I don't even know his voice, but he called me Madame. Does he know me?

Stupid! Everyone knows you. You're the only British whore in Abbeville.

The random observations felt like a ship's log being filled, coming one after the other, adding to her confusion.

“Will you let me help you, madame?”

That he asked her permission felt like cement slapped over broken bricks: it smoothed the shards of her dignity, yet the cracks remained beneath. All she could manage was jagged breathing, and staring at that faceless space inside the hood.

“You're shivering.” Gloved hands divided from his voluminous cloak, reaching to her.

She jerked up and pointed a shaking finger at him. “Don't touch me.” She hardly expected obedience. Men never allowed women control: not fathers, brothers, husbands, or even chivalrous, hooded strangers.

Yet without a word he stood, pulled off his cloak, and laid it over her, shrouding her in its warmth. He laid his pistols by her and returned to sit at her feet.

He'd handed her his pistols? Why? She blinked and waited for him to speak, but he seemed content on the ground, waiting for her word to move. With the thin moon fallen behind the Channel, his face was a black silhouette in the dearth of light. Was he the phantom imagining of a desperate girl, an uncertain resemblance of what a gentleman ought to be?

The minutes ticked past while she shivered and he remained silent, waiting.

At last she whispered, “Help me.”

He got to his feet. “I'm coming behind you. Now I'll put my hands under your arms, so. Are you ready?”

Overwhelmed, she could only nod. It hurt her throat, made it hard to breathe.

Touching only her underarms, he lifted her to her feet. When her legs trembled, he murmured, “May I carry you to the bench?”

After a long moment, tossing up whether speaking would hurt less, she nodded.

He set her on the bench in the belfry's shadow and wrapped his cloak around her once more. He retrieved his pistols and left them beside her. “Are you feeling warmer? If you take a chill, you won't be able to work tomorrow.”

Lisbeth started. He'd been at the tavern? The man in the corner who'd turned from her whenever she approached him?

Why was he treating her as a lady when he'd seen her at work, and had just seen more of her than any stranger ought? How could he expect her trust when he wouldn't show her his face? Unwanted intimacy, respect, and concern coming from blackness. She wanted to pull her own hood over her face, run away. If she could make her legs obey her.

If only she could be sure LeClerc and Tolbert weren't waiting for the opportunity.

The stranger sat still, lost in the night. It seemed deliberate. He'd put her in the light while he remained in darkness and silence. She refused to speak first, or play the helpless damsel to this odd Galahad . . . but the silence grew and her curiosity hurt.

“Who are you? Do you know me?” she whispered at last.

She felt rather than saw his smile: a tiny hummingbird of satisfaction fluttering in the air. “You may call me Gaston.”

Her mouth turned down as a cold sliver touched her bone. “No, I may not, monsieur. Not without ruining what reputation I have.”

After a moment, a slow nod came. “Then you may call me Monsieur Borchonne.”

She frowned at him, doubting. Somehow, despite his perfect accent, he didn't look French. Or maybe it was the lost Spanish accent? “It's not your real name, is it?”

He didn't answer. Knowing herself to be in the right, she didn't lower her gaze, but lifted her chin and waited.

Eventually he spoke. “You're still shivering. This may help.” He held something out. Squinting, she caught the dull glint of a flask. “Brandy's good for shock.”

“So is tea,” she replied, feeling foolish.

Again she heard the smile in his voice. “I know tea is preferable to ladies, but I'm afraid this is all I have.”

There was something in his voice, an expectation of obedience. Almost resenting it, she lifted the flask to her mouth. In seconds she spluttered and choked.

A low chuckle. “It always happens the first time. Sip slowly, and count to ten.”

Saying that—understanding that she hadn't drunk brandy before when he knew she worked at a tavern—insensibly soothed her. By the time she reached nine, the pain in her throat eased a little. “
Merci,
monsieur.” It was deliberate, leaving out the
Borchonne
.

She felt his disapproval in the long time it took to say, “I have a horse over there.” His half-turned face indicated the street. “Do you think you could sit astride?”

The times she'd been in Mama's black books for wearing a pair of Leo's or Andrew's jodhpurs, and riding astride . . . she forced down a second bubble of laughter, lest he think she'd lost her mind. “Yes.”

The stranger stood. “I'll fetch him.”

She grabbed his jacket. “Don't leave me.”
Thick broadcloth, warm and functional, a working man's jacket on a gentleman
. The understanding only added to the enigma.

The moment the silence grew painful, he spoke. “May I carry you to the horse?”

She couldn't walk, couldn't bear to be alone, and LeClerc and Tolbert could return with weapons—or God help her, with Alain, given her new suspicions—at any moment. “Yes.”

He carried her through shadows in the darkest part of night. In the blackness there was only the faint silver of fading stars. When she squeezed her eyes shut, her other senses took over. Warmth and security and her pounding heart, too many impressions too fast, overwhelming.

She was tall, but he dwarfed her. His clothes smelled clean, his skin fresh. No reek from beneath his arms. His breath smelled of peppermint water and hazelnut wood. She knew both scents from Mama's obsession with avoiding the dentist to have her teeth drawn. He'd probably rinsed his mouth and used a twig to clean his teeth.

The information clicked like a cog into a wheel.
Rough clothes, but newly washed. Clean teeth, sweet breath.

Her arm around his neck, she felt the unevenness to his shoulders. It felt unnatural. An injury? Was he a soldier? Naval officer?

A horse nickered nearby. “The stirrup is by your left foot, madame.”

All by feel, she slid her foot into the stirrup, found the pommel, twisted her body around, and swung up. When he untied his horse, she took the reins and covered her bare legs with her cloak.

She looked at him. He was looking down at her hands. His hair was thick and dark, tied naval style with a riband. “The trembling is much less.
Trés bien.
I see you like horses. You mounted astride perfectly.”

“A misbegotten youth,” she said with a chuckle. How could a stranger keep making her want to laugh, when he seemed so serious, and she'd barely even wanted to smile in the past year?

Without answering, the stranger steered the horse in the direction of her street. He stopped the horse on the uneven cobblestones in front of the
pension
on the rue Jeanne d'Arc.

He knows where I live.
The scales of knowledge were too one-sided, too personal. Though her hands were still cold, her palms turned sweaty.

A room above them had a candle burning by the window, too soft to see him as he came around to the other side. He didn't lift his head, showing only his dark hair, the riband. He must have been in France for some time, to understand the danger of those who watched, listened. “Can you dismount unaided?”

She scrambled off the horse on the wrong side rather than let him touch her again and hit the ground with a shock in her feet. With a gasp she leaned on the wall of the
pension,
fingers digging into the mortar. The bulging cement with globs of plaster laid over to strengthen the
painted wooden beams supporting the medieval house was cold to the touch, and she shivered.

“You need warm gloves, madame.” Barely a whisper.

“I—forgot them today.” Pot-valiant lie—but she couldn't rely on an eccentric Galahad who saw too much and gave too little. If he had gloves in his pocket, she didn't want them.

She handed him his cloak without looking at his unshielded face. Discretion was the only gift she could give in return for all he'd done tonight. “Thank you for your rescue, your cloak, and your escort, monsieur.”

“Those men won't give up.” He pulled the cloak on, the hood down. “I can teach you to use that knife to greater effect.”

So he was coming back. That meant he wanted something from her—then she sucked in a breath. “The knife isn't mine. Monsieur Marron will take it from my wages, and I can't—”

“Madame.” When she looked up, he was holding the knife's hilt out to her.

A year ago, her greatest fear was Papa's arranged betrothal of her to a rich nobleman she'd never met. Now her life was reduced to avoiding unwanted attention, and worrying over the cost of a knife. Feeling small and stupid, Lisbeth mumbled, “You've been a godsend tonight.”

“All this is unworthy of you,” he said quietly. “You're a baronet's daughter. Don't you want everything you left behind? Don't you long to go home?”

Like fog rolling in from the river, sorrow enveloped her. Her rescuer had just inflicted more pain on her than any LeClerc or Tolbert could give. How could he speak so casually of returning to England, when she'd give her life's blood to go home?

“He burned my identity papers,” she muttered, thoroughly trained in controlling every emotion around men during the past year. “A man legally owns his wife. With soldiers posted on every road, I can't even leave Abbeville without his permission.”

A moment's silence. What had she said to grab his attention? Then another whisper: hooded temptation, anonymous desire. “You can. Just say the word. I can take you home.”

Home . . .
oh, the careless wound. Her sharp-drawn breath hurt her chest, like a thin dagger thrust
.
Yearning engulfed her, the hopes and dreams she'd buried since waking from a drugged sleep to find herself in France. To ride the fields of Barton Lynch once more . . . Mama scolding lovingly, always trying to make her hoyden daughter a lady . . .

He'd said
home
as if it was his home, too. So his name and both his accents had been a lie. After the past year, she refused to put her life in the hands of any man. And there was Edmond. “No.” She pushed off the wall and headed on unsteady feet for the door of the
pension
.

“How long have those men been following you?”

Unwilling to answer, she owed him this honesty at least. She kept her back to him. “Since I began at Le Boeuf they've been propositioning me, touching me . . . following me.”

“I can end that problem, if you'll trust me.”

She almost laughed in his face.
Trust?
How
stupid
. No, he didn't know her.

Seventeen months ago she'd been an ingénue in pretty gowns and pearls, in London for the Season. With a smile and curtsy, she'd accepted dances with men she regarded as gentlemen because Mama said they were. Because they dressed the part, could speak the part, and made an elegant bow. The greatest judgment she'd made was on their looks, if they could dance, if their breath was sweet or rank, or if they'd flattered her enough. Boring fribbles that wanted her inheritance, the daughter of the wealthiest baronet in Norfolk, just as other men wanted her friend Georgy because she was a duke's daughter. The two of them had played tricks on those men, banded together against their matchmaking parents, and generally brewed mischief.

Now she was a fallen woman who'd made stupid choices she had to live with.

Turning to the door with its peeling green paint and ancient oak showing beneath, she tried to keep her voice even. “Thank you, but no. You've done more than enough.”

“I'll be outside Le Boeuf tomorrow night.”

No man could be as kind and disinterested without wanting
something. She stared into the hood, fathomless darkness where a face should be. “I'd prefer it if you were not—tomorrow or any night. I may be beholden to you, but I am not like the other women at Le Boeuf.”