“That’s what I thought.” Pax tilted his head back to look up at her. He looked natural and at home, standing on a bit of roofing in the night. He was, maybe, being the Gray Cat right now.
She leaned out the window and reached her hand out to him. He reached up to take it. They could just clasp hands.
He said, “You’re beautiful.”
“You can’t see me.”
“I don’t have to see you to know you’re beautiful. Moonlight become woman. Light and darkness. Chiaroscuro, painted on the night.”
She wasn’t certain what “chiaroscuro” meant. With luck, a month from now she would be living with him in a studio in Florence, pretending to be his model and his lover, spying upon the French and the Austrians. She’d best acquire the language of artists.
But not tonight.
The kitchen rumbled with voices and rattled with the clanking of pots. The women of the house—the men, too—were cooking for tomorrow. Every spy and swindler in London and a surprising number of quite respectable folks would be in this house to witness her wedding.
Everyone acted as if a solemn and significant merger of great houses was going forward. Perhaps it was. Uncle Bernardo had explained matters to her at length, involving at least a dozen families and much of the north of Italy.
Aunt Lily had been more succinct. “You have an obscene amount of money. I’ll put my man of business on it. He’s used to dealing with obscene amounts of money.”
She’d signed a marriage contract two inches thick, in English and Tuscan. Frankly, she’d rather not think about it.
As he sometimes did, Pax followed thoughts she hadn’t spoken. He said, “When I asked you to marry me, I didn’t know you were rich.”
“I didn’t know you would be an earl, so we’re even.”
“I’m not going to be an earl.” Flat words, holding a heavy cargo of annoyance.
“A dozen men heard the Merchant say you were legitimate. Eventually it’ll get back to your grandfather.”
She felt a little nerve in his hand twitch. “Who will ignore it, the way I do. Just lies. The Merchant spitting a last drop of venom. There’s no proof, in Amsterdam or anywhere else.”
But most likely there was. That would be the Merchant’s long, subtle vengeance—to give his family a French spy as the next heir. The proof, when it turned up, would be watertight. Pax would find it difficult to escape the Royal College of Heralds.
“In any case,” she said, being tactful, “we won’t be around to argue the succession to minor English earldoms. We’ll be in Florence, living in a garret, spying on all and sundry.”
“A garret with good light and a big bed.”
If they were going to talk about beds, she was too far away from him. She couldn’t see his face in this romantical dimness. She hooked her hands onto the windowsill and spilled forward into the dark, making her careful way down the slope of the roof. Soon, he would be holding her.
He stood before her. His big, warm hands cradled her at her hips as she slid close. He stretched out, long and easy under her hands, taking his coat off. He held it so she could get her arms in. The sleeves ran long and she had to fold them back twice.
“This marriage won’t be legal.” He found her hands and took them in both of his and settled the two pairs in the space between them. “We’ll get married again somewhere in France. A dull civil ceremony.”
“And once more when we get to Italy. I think my grandfather will insist on it, and another huge celebration. We’ll be very thoroughly married before we’re through.”
“I don’t know why they’re letting me have you. Your family.” His thumb indicated the voices in the kitchen. She felt it where their hands were locked tight. “Maybe it’s about making you Danish. The French will leave Danish property alone.”
“So will the Austrians, when they next invade. Denmark is a small but useful neutral country. But this has nothing to do with Denmark. My cousins approve of you.”
The angular planes of his face were sharp and dark. Slowly, he freed his hands from her hold and took them to lie heavy on her shoulders. “They think I shot my own father to save your life.”
“You did. They are shocked, but approving. This is the meat of tragedy and romance to the Baldoni. Fifty years from now, grandmothers and aged aunts will tell stories about you and pity you and praise you for a grand heroic gesture. If there were an initiation to be a Baldoni, you passed it this morning.”
“You know it wasn’t like that.”
“Nonetheless, they believe it. You are one of us now. They like the scent of vengeance about this, too. It consolidates your reputation among the young men. We’re a ruthless lot, we Baldoni.”
“Not vengeance.” Pax’s eyes, which saw the world with such pitiless clarity, were turned inward. “All the evil that old man had done, all his schemes and plots . . . but all I thought about when I pulled the trigger was keeping you alive. There’s no meat for the Harpies to sink their claws into. No unclean horror. No sacrilege. Now all I feel is relief that you’re here, alive, under the sky with me.”
She had to smile. “I’m relieved, too.”
“It felt inevitable,” he said. “When I took off after him on Semple Street, I think I already knew I’d kill him.”
“Somebody had to. I’d have disposed of the matter myself if I’d been faster. The Fluffy Aunts were sneaking around the outer fringes of that mob with the same intention.”
He shook his head. “I’m his son. He was my problem to clean up.”
She could imagine how hard it was for him to say, “I’m his son.”
She reached up to the long-fingered, rough-skinned hands that grasped her shoulders and pressed them tighter to her. “He wanted death, you know.”
Pax looked past her, out into the night. “I know.”
“You saw it, too. He wanted death at your hands,” she said. “So he left you no choice but to kill him. There was nothing ahead for him but humiliation, trial, and execution, so he bought a quick martyrdom. And he made you suffer.”
“He tried,” Pax said.
“If you feel the Furies breathing on your neck, he’s won. If you think these”—she squeezed his hands, tight, to make perfectly clear what she meant—“are stained with blood—”
“They are.”
“With his blood. We’re not children, you and I. Our innocence was problematic at best. If you look at your hands and see unclean blood, he’s won. If you—”
“I can see what he tried to do. None of it worked.” Pax’s mouth closed over hers. He freed himself from her grip and slid his arms around her to nestle the two of them together. He set his forehead to her forehead. He whispered, as if he were telling secrets. “I’ve done worse things than rid the world of that bastard. I’m not going to lose sleep over it.”
He would, though. His Service had chosen him for terrible deeds because he was honorable to the core of his being. She’d chosen a man who would do whatever was necessary and pay for it afterward in bad dreams. The best sort of man.
In their married life, she’d try to do whatever killing became necessary, as a loyal wife should.
“I’m glad you’re untroubled,” she said, softly in his ear. “I begrudge that man even a small victory over you. Can we leave this damp and windswept roof and find better shelter in that shed? That one. Do you see? One small pony quarters there at the moment and he won’t object to our visit. A huge heap of hay was delivered this afternoon and piled into the back corner. It’s quite clean.”
“That’s coincidence, I suppose. Not connivance from your cousins and aunts.”
“Entirely coincidence,” she agreed.
Slowly, carefully, giving it all his attention, he kissed her. And kissed her. Warmth grew between them, and then heat. Clouds covered and uncovered the moon.
After a while they left their chilly perch and sought more privacy.
Keep reading for a special excerpt from Joanna Bourne’s
The F
orbidden Rose
Now available from Berkley Sensation!
“You have not been foolish,” she said. “But you have been unlucky. The results are indistinguishable.”
The rabbit said nothing. It lay on its side, panting. Terror poured from it in waves, like water going down the steps of a fountain.
Her snare circled its throat. She had caught it with a line of red silk, teased and spun from the torn strip of a dress. It could not escape. Even when it heard death coming toward it through the brush, it didn’t struggle. Being sensible, it had given up.
“The analogies to my own situation are clear. I do not like them.” Marguerite de Fleurignac sat down and pulled her skirts to lie smooth over her knees. The grass was slick and sharp-edged on the bare skin of her ankles. Behind her rose the ruins of the chateau. She did not look in that direction if she could help it. “I am starving to death, you know. Not as one starves in stories, nobly and gracefully. I starve stupidly. I scrape up oats from the bottom of the feed bins and pick berries. I pull wild carrots from the earth and gnaw on them in my cave under the bridge. None of this rests easily in my stomach. It is very sordid. I will not share the details with you.”
The rabbit’s eyes stared beyond her.
“Life is not like the fables. No magical bird alights on the rooftop, bearing messages. You do not offer me three wishes in exchange for your life. No prince rides up on his white horse to rescue me.”
Rabbit fur was a brown made of many shades, like toast. The guard hairs were darker than the down that clung close to its body. Inside its ears was a delicate velvet, pale as cream, and she could see the pink skin underneath. Its eyes were fringed on top with a row of short, thick hairs. It had eyelashes. She hadn’t known rabbits had eyelashes.
Terror terror terror.
It had been a mistake to look so closely at the rabbit. She should not have talked to it.
When she was five or six, Old Mathieu, the gamekeeper, had let her tag along behind him through this wood. He set snares and made great slaughter among the rabbits and put them in a big leather game bag to carry home.
He had been dead fifteen years. In his last illness, she’d visited him every day in his dirty, crowded hut by the river. She’d brought him the best brandy from the chateau cellars to ease the pain.
Uncle Arnault, who was marquis then, had scolded and given orders, which she had ignored. “You spoil these peasants. You make pets of them.” Papa had pointed out that spirits were not good for the humors of the body. She should take the man seawater and a mash of beets. Cousin Victor sneaked after her and pushed her down and spilled open the basket and broke everything inside.
Uncle Arnault was long dead, having discussed politics with the guillotine. Papa was marquis now, inasmuch as anyone held the empty title. Victor had joined the most radical of the revolutionary groups, the Jacobins. The casks of brandy had exploded in a ball of blue flame when the fire fingered down to the wine cellar. It had never mattered a bean that she had given brandy to a dying man.
Old Mathieu’s sons had been in the mob that came to burn the chateau. She’d seen them with the others on the lawn in the light of torches.
A pulse rippled in the rabbit’s throat, under the fur. That fluttering beat, in a hollow the size of a copper sou, was the only sign of life.
“I make up stories in my head and I am always remarkably heroic in them. When men actually came to destroy me, I ran like a rabbit, if you will forgive the comparison.” She wiped rain from her face. Her forearm was gritty and smelled like crushed grass and sweat. And smoke. “You are doubtless stultified with boredom to hear my problems. One’s own disaster is of compelling interest. The disasters of others, less so.”
Clouds hung flat and close overhead, the color of old bruises. A few sharp tiny points of rain hit her face when she looked up. Even this far from the chateau, thin black flakes of ash had caught in the leaves of the trees. The rain fell with ash in it.
“Here is the story, if you wish to read it.” She caught drops on the palm of her hand. “This,” she lifted one speck of black onto her forefinger, “came from the destruction of curtains in the blue salon. And this,” another bit of ash, “was a page from a book in the library. A mathematics text. This . . .” She picked a fleck of ash from her forearm. “This is the period at the end of a sentence in one my notebooks. That was the only copy of an old tale of the people. It is lost now.”
She let the drops of water run away. She was very tired. She had been up all night, two nights in a row, walking the last shipment of sparrows to safety. She had taken three men, three women, and a child through the dark fields to the deserted mill that was the next waystation. She’d waited with them till Heron’s son came to take them onward. Then she had trudged the long way back. Because Crow—careful, reliable Crow who never missed a meeting—had not yet come. He was late, and she worried.
The sparrows had complained a great deal that she had no food to give them. No one had asked what had happened to her in the burning of the chateau.
They would go to London, those sparrows, and tell everyone how brave they had been and what dangers they had undergone, fleeing France. None of them would speak of the bravery of Heron’s young son who came at night, alone, to lead them onward. Or of Jeanne, who was the Wren, who risked death to smuggle them out of Paris. Or of Egret and Skylark and the others who hid them along the way. The sparrows would take it all for granted.
She shivered, which was what she deserved for sitting on the ground in this small rain, talking to a rabbit. “I will tell you what I should do. I should go deep into the woods, carrying—you will forgive me for being blunt?—carrying your dead corpse, and light a fire and put you on a spit and cook you. Then I should begin my walk to Paris in the dark of the night.” Rubbing her arms did not make them any warmer. “Crow is more than wise. I should leave him to take care of his own sparrows and go warn the others.”
The rabbit’s fear was like the whine of iron on a grindstone. Terror terror terror.
The wind coming from the chateau pushed at her back, smelling of smoke, ugly and somehow metallic. “Do not expect pity, Citoyen Rabbit. I am without a heart. It was the first thing I ate when I became hungry.”
The rabbit did not flinch when she laid hands upon it, but inside its fur, it shivered. The knife in her pocket was sharper than it had been four days ago when it lived the placid life of a letter opener. She worked a finger into the snare of silk that held the rabbit. “Instead of being sensible, I will chew on parched grains that do not agree with me and let you go free.” She cut the red thread. “You will not be grateful. I know. You will come back tonight with a hundred rabbits and burn down the bridge and me underneath.”
It did not move.
“Go. Go. You annoy me, lying there. Go, before I change my mind and eat you with wild onions and watercress.”
The rabbit shook from end to end and wobbled to its feet. It lurched off into the drab grass of the drainage ditch. The waves of terror departed with it.
It was a relief to be free of that. “It would have made me sick, I think, to eat something so afraid.”
Joanna Bourne has always loved reading and writing romance. She’s drawn to Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and Regency England because, as she puts it, “It was a time of love and sacrifice, daring deeds, clashing ideals, and really cool clothing.” She’s lived in seven different countries, including England and France, the settings of the Spymaster series.
Joanna lives on a mountaintop in the Appalachians with her family, a peculiar cat, and an old brown country dog. Visit her online at joannabourne.com and twitter.com/jobourne.
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Rogue Spy Page 31
