And then he left, carefully rearranging the “door” after himself.
Chapter Thirteen
Promising to return before nightfall, Isabelle and Dain left the cave at first light and trudged back up to the path. A rather desolate stretch of land greeted them. A few goats chomped on dead leaves and sticks. On the other side of it was a decent road, and just as Georges had promised, a carriage and two horses waited there.
It could not, surely, be waiting for anyone else, and yet Isabelle’s feet were reluctant to climb in before confirmation. Dain however, almost hustled her inside and the carriage began to move before he had even closed the door behind them both.
It was not a long journey to St. Sebastian—easily walkable if one did not have to carry a sick and wounded man. The town was just stirring, shutters being thrown open, the odd cart trundling buy delivering milk or eggs to yawning maids and housewives.
The carriage stopped in a pleasant square with a fountain at its center. A large flag hung like a banner over an important building that might have been the town hall, taking up most of one side of the square. On the others were houses and shops, including a baker and a butcher.
This time, the coachman did get down from his box to open the door and let down the steps. Then he retrieved two trunks that had been strapped to the back of the carriage and set them at Dain’s feet.
Scowling, Dain was clearly about to deny ownership of the trunks.
“Thank you,” Isabelle said hastily. “Pay the man, my dear.”
While Dain did so, Isabelle looked about her. The baker’s shop threw open its shutters. A woman was washing the windows of a coffee house. Isabelle turned and saw that they had been dropped helpfully at a solicitor’s office. Antoine le Clerque, Notaire, proclaimed a brass plate beside the door.
“You are right,” Dain murmured. “A couple moving from Paris would have more than two carpet bags with them. In fact, we might say we are waiting for the rest of our things to be delivered.”
“Do you suppose we have Georges to thank for the trunks?” Isabelle wondered. “Or Torbridge?”
“Let it remain one of the mysteries of life,” Dain said sardonically. “And look, here is a useful bench, where we can wait for Monsieur le Clerque’s office to open.
Although last night’s drizzle had stopped and the sunrise promised a pleasant day, it was still bitterly cold. Dain strolled across to the baker’s shop and returned with a warm loaf from which they tore chunks like peasants. It tasted delicious.
Fortunately, the solicitor arrived early, greeted them jovially when accosted by Dain, and had his boy bring the trunks inside his office.
“Of course, of course,” he said. “I am delighted to meet you, Monsieur Renard. I had your man’s instructions, and I have found you two possible residences—both, sadly, of a temporary nature.”
“How temporary?” Dain asked.
“Three months for the first, which you can lease fully staffed.” Le Clerque shrugged. “The other for just one month, unstaffed, though there may be the possibility to renew. Also, you may hire the carriage with this house.”
“A carriage you say?” Dain pounced. “My wife and I like to go out and about a good deal, so a carriage at our disposal would be ideal. Are there coachmen and grooms?”
“Included in the price of the carriage hire is a coachman, a groom, and a stable lad.”
“How large is the house?” Isabelle inquired to dilute Dain’s obvious interest in the carriage.
“This one has four bedchambers, two public apartments, and space for three servants in the roof space. Plus the carriage house, of course, where the outdoor servants live. The other house I mentioned has five more spacious bedchambers and three public rooms.”
“Let us begin with the smaller,” Isabelle said decisively. “For even with the carriage, it is bound to be less expensive.”
“It is,” le Clerque agreed, standing and reaching for his hat. “We can walk, for it is not far.”
*
There was never really any doubt that they would take the smaller house, with its carriage all set up, for this would be the quickest, easiest way to bring Major Dain to the house. To make it seem more natural, Isabelle flitted about “the dear little house” gushing her delight with everything.
“Oh, Marc, I have quite fallen in love with this one,” she pleaded, clasping Dain’s arm. “Please, let us just take it at once! There is no need even to look at the other house. This is our new home.”
Dain tolerated her raptures very well, exchanging speaking shrugs with the solicitor. “Neither of us can refuse my wife,” he said. “This house, if you please, monsieur. With the carriage.”
“And would you like me to send staff to be interviewed?” le Clerque asked.
“If you could find us one housekeeper who does not mind getting her hands dirty. And can cook a little,” Isabelle said apologetically. “And perhaps a scullery maid?”
Monsieur le Clerque departed with his limited instructions. Dain carried the trunks upstairs, and they opened them to discover a few “personal” belongings. A portrait of a lady from the previous century—“your mother,” Isabelle proclaimed, shoving it into his arms—a couple of other pictures of Paris, a few French books including Voltaire and Rousseau and a translation of Payne’s Rights of Man. There was also extra male and female clothing.
“Thank God,” Dain observed. “I left my spare suit of clothes for Stephen.” Of course, the officer could not be seen by anyone in his British army uniform.
While Dain stepped around to the attached coach house to make the acquaintance of the staff and horses, Isabelle busied herself with wifely duties, unpacking and putting away their meagre belongings.
An hour later, an urchin delivered a note from the solicitor. The note informed Isabelle that two women would call this afternoon about the housekeeping position. But more importantly, the messenger’s arrival gave her the excuse she needed to flit around to the coach house, calling to her “husband” in apparent panic that his brother had been injured climbing the rocks and he must bring him home immediately.
Even Dain looked impressed by that performance. At her clearly over-alarmed demands, he and the bewildered groom constructed a stretcher, and she insisted they all go to retrieve her injured brother-in-law.
As she waved them away, her handkerchief to her mouth, she acknowledged it was going to be wretchedly difficult to maintain this really annoying character if they had to stay in St. Sebastien for very long.
But her heart was in her mouth when she returned inside. She made sure one of the bedchambers was ready to receive him and went down to the kitchen to set water on to boil. They had decided that between them, Dain and Mrs. Dain would carry the major—in his new clothes, his uniform hidden—out of the cave and along to the path. Mrs. Dain had protested vehemently until her brother-in-law had explained the alternative quite brutally. White-faced, she had given in.
From the path, the servants and the stretcher would be summoned, and the major would lie on it inside the carriage to make it easier to bring him indoors.
Isabelle had no idea how long it would take, or even if the major would still be alive when they got to the house. Her concern was genuine when, blessedly sooner than she had dared to hope, the carriage returned and stopped right at the front gate.
She flew out to meet it and was relieved to see the major, muffled in blankets almost to his eyes, being extracted from the carriage on his stretcher. His wife followed, white faced, grubby, and smelling none too sweet. The smoke in the cave must have disguised her fragrance last night, along with her appearance. Now, Isabelle simply flung a cloak around her supposed sister-in-law’s shoulders and swept her inside and upstairs to the fourth bedchamber.
“You need a hot bath and a change of clothes,” she said briskly.
“I have no time for primping and nonsense!” Mrs. Dain almost exploded. “I have to see to my sick husband.”
She almost flounced pas
t Isabelle who caught her arm. “Madam, if you don’t play your part, you will have an imprisoned husband or even a dead one, and you will both have endured the last hellish week for nothing.”
Mrs. Dain stared at her. If anything, her face grew whiter. But anger still spat from her eyes. Her every instinct, clearly, was to get to her husband. “Who exactly do you think you are?” she demanded intensely.
“I think I am the woman who left her comfortable home to help your brother-in-law save your lives.”
Although not quite true—that house had never been comfortable—her words had the desired effect. Mrs. Dain blinked. Her eyes fell. One shaking hand came up to touch her forehead, which probably ached. The woman was held together by a very thin thread.
“It’s time to let us help,” Isabelle said gently. “You have done so much, you can do no more without proper rest. Let Marcus—Marc—make him comfortable for the doctor, while I send up some water for you. And when you’re clean and fresh, you can see him before you sleep.”
“I will sleep in his chamber!”
“Of course, if you wish it. But not,” Isabelle said brutally, “until you are fit to be seen by the doctor, servants, or anyone else not in on the secret. He is supposed to have been injured this morning. Forgive me ma’am, but you look as if you’ve been living in a cave for a week.”
She moved aside, letting Mrs. Dain see herself in the long mirror by the window. A sound that could have been a sob or laughter broke through her lips. “Oh, dear God, so I do. Do I smell, too?”
“Yes,” Isabelle said baldly.
“Then I give in. But you will tell me instantly if he takes a turn for the worse?”
“Of course, I will,” Isabelle said gently, and went out.
By then, the major had been carried upstairs and transferred to the bed. The three servants were emerging from the bedchamber and clumping downstairs.
“Well met,” she said cheerfully. “I need you to carry water upstairs for my sister’s bath. Come!”
She directed them to carry up buckets of hot and cold water and leave them outside Mrs. Dain’s bedchamber, from where she hauled them inside and helped Mrs. Dain fill the bathtub before the fire. Isabelle gave her some lavender soap and left her to it.
“I’ll bring you fresh clothes in just a little,” she promised.
With Mrs. Dain taken care of, she knocked on the major’s now-closed door and went in. She found his brother had undressed him and was sponging every inch of his skin. She went and took the sponge from him, dipping it in the washbowl and wringing it out.
“Is the doctor sent for?”
Sir Marcus nodded.
“Then you had best shave the major before he gets here. I’ll wash him.”
Dain made no demur, and they worked together to clean him and dress him more comfortably in a nightgown. By then, he was shivering uncontrollably and tugging futilely at the coverlet. And the doctor arrived.
Dain ran downstairs to let him in.
Isabelle whisked away the bowl of dirty, bloody water and left it in her own chamber while she looked out clothing for Mrs. Dain. She had thought she might have to take up the hem of one of the new gowns, for Mrs. Dain was a few inches shorter. But to her surprise, of the two gowns that had arrived in the mysterious trunk, one was longer than the other.
Impressed, she took the shorter garment, along with some under things and a hairbrush, to Mrs. Dain, who had already climbed out of the bath and was sitting by the fire wrapped in a towel. She looked exhausted, but a lot less deathly pale.
“The doctor has arrived. And here are some things. Do you need help brushing your hair?”
Mrs. Dain shook her head, energized by mention of the doctor, so Isabelle left her to dress, sweeping up the cast-off clothes for washing. Then, her heart in her mouth, she knocked lightly on the major’s chamber and went in.
The doctor, a fair, tired-looking young man, looked up from his examination, scowling at the interruption.
“My wife,” Dain said hastily.
The doctor nodded curtly and returned to the wound. “How long has it been like this?”
“I’m afraid we don’t know,” Dain replied. “He hid it from us. Even from his wife. It had healed, as you see, when he returned from Spain.”
“Some fragment must have been left inside, either of the shrapnel or of his clothing—it has the same effect. I’ll have to cut it open again. If I don’t,” he added before Dain could even open his mouth to object, “he will certainly die. This is his only chance. Madame, if I might trouble you for hot water and towels.”
Isabelle scurried off to obey.
“And his leg?” Dain asked as she left.
“Fortunately, it has been well set and should heal without….”
In the passage, she met Mrs. Dain, looking brisk and determined as she strode to her husband’s chamber. Isabelle quickly relayed the doctor’s opinion and warned her to let her brother-in-law do the talking for them. The woman only nodded and went in.
*
It can’t have been easy for either of them, but both Sir Marcus and Mrs. Dain stayed with the major while the doctor worked. Afterward, Dain finally persuaded her to go to her own chamber and rest. When Isabelle looked in after engaging a housekeeper, she was sound asleep.
Dain and Isabelle took turns to sit with the patient, bathe his tight, hot skin, and tip water and the doctor’s medicine down his throat. They left him alone only to eat Madame Vosges’s first dinner, which was delicious, although Isabelle felt too tired to do it justice. At Dain’s bidding, she tumbled into bed and slept until he woke her at about four in the morning.
“I keep falling asleep,” he said, clearly angry with himself. “And I’m afraid of missing some change, or the time for his medicine.”
“You have to sleep some time. I feel quite rested now and will stay with him.”
Obligingly, Dain lit her candle from his own and departed. Since she had no robe with her, she dressed hastily, throwing two shawls about her shoulders and went to the sick man’s chamber.
And there, just before nine o’clock, Mrs. Dain found her. The woman was dressed, but only just. Her straw-colored hair hung around her face and shoulders in a mad tangle. “You should have woken me! How is he?”
“You needed the sleep. Marc or I have been with him all night. What do you think? It seems to me he sleeps just a little easier, and his skin is not quite so hot to the touch. Or am I deluding myself?”
“I hope not.” Mrs. Dain caressed her husband’s forehead and took his hand. He didn’t pull it free. His fingers might even have closed around hers, although that could have been an accident. Slowly, she raised her eyes to Isabelle’s. “Thank you,” she said with difficulty. “I did not say what I ought to have yesterday. Without you and Marcus, I think he would be dead by now.”
“Without you, he would assuredly be dead,” Isabelle returned. “I don’t know how you managed for so long alone.” She stood. “If you sit with him, I’ll bring you some breakfast.”
*
The doctor returned in the afternoon and inspected the neatly resewn wound. He gave a grunt of what sounded like satisfaction and applied a clean dressing.
“Carry on,” he said in his abrupt way. “I’ll return tomorrow.”
By then, there really did seem to be some improvement, and they looked at each other in some relief.
Mrs. Dain took her husband’s hand and squeezed it. His fingers moved, and he opened eyes that looked almost clear.
“Louisa,” he said hoarsely.
Isabelle wanted to weep. Instead, leaving the couple together, she suggested to Dain that they take a walk around the town, both to get some much-needed fresh air and exercise, and to allay the suspicions of the curious.
“I can’t believe it is all going so well,” she murmured as she took Dain’s arm outside their little house.
“Neither can I,” he said in obvious relief. “But by God, I am grateful.”
After that
, perhaps it was inevitable that it should all go wrong.
As they walked around the square looking in the shop windows as any couple new to the town might do, Isabelle noticed a few soldiers lounging outside the coffee house, presumably enjoying the brief blink of sunshine.
She tensed, making sure not to look at them directly, but it was an effort not to spin around and drag Dain in the opposite direction. Instead, following Dain’s lead, she helped make trivial conversation in the quiet, intimate way of couples, their heads close together as they approached the coffee house.
She wasn’t sure what made her do it. Sheer nerves, perhaps, or fate. But as they passed the soldiers, she allowed her gaze to flicker just once in their direction. They were officers, and one was staring at her in shock.
Armand le Noir.
Chapter Fourteen
When she wrenched her gaze free, Dain was murmuring. “Be easy. He will just be admiring your beauty.”
“He knows me,” Isabelle whispered. “He knows who I am.” Every instinct she possessed was urging her to turn back to him. Fatal. She allowed Dain to guide her onward, away from him.
“Is he a danger to us?” Dain demanded urgently. “How do you know each other?”
Hastily, stumbling over her words, she blurted out the bare bones of the strange French raid on the Hart Inn to rescue escaped prisoners.
“Then he knows you are a French émigrée. He will, hopefully, just assume that you have come home. Or even that he was mistaken. After all, this is a large country, a large empire. What are the odds of meeting that one man, here in St. Sebastien?”
She stared at him. “Torbridge. Torbridge knew he was here.” And he still hadn’t given up on his idea of recruiting Armand. And he hadn’t even told her, just let them meet to see what would happen. “He manipulated me. Manipulated us all…”
The Broken Heart Page 13
