A Rose at Midnight (12 page)

The maid who entered the front parlor was ripe, buxom, and cheerful, and the tray she carried reeked of grease and mutton. Ghislaine had to stop herself from sending it away. If she were to prevail she needed to keep up her strength. She hadn’t eaten in what seemed like days—ever since Nicholas had arrived at Ainsley Hall, her meager appetite had fled in the face of more devouring concerns.

“Yer husband said as how I was to bring you up a tray, missus,” she said, her eyes bright with curiosity. “He said you were particularly fond of mutton.”

Yes, Nicholas had read her queasiness at the very word. Ghislaine managed a faint smile. “Particularly,” she said, sitting down at the table.

“I’m Gert,” the girl said, bustling around. “You’re to call me if you need any help. They’ll be bringing yer trunks up in a moment, and then I could bring you some fresh water…”

“I don’t suppose I could have a bath?” she asked, schooling herself to expect disappointment.

Gert scratched her head, not a propitious sign in the possibly lice-infested inn. “I don’t see why not.”

“And fresh bedding?”

If she was afraid she’d offended Gert, she needn’t have worried. The girl simply looked impressed. “I’ve heard quality’s different than the rest of us,” she said, scratching her head again. “Or then, maybe it’s because you’re a Frenchie. They like things extra clean.”

The dirt under Gert’s fingernails looked as if it had been there at least a fortnight. “We’re silly that way,” Ghislaine said faintly.

“Well, then, that’s all right. I’ll just take care of things, tidy up a bit, and heat the water for you. I don’t think there’s much of a need to hurry if you’re wanting yer privacy. Yer husband seems settled in the taproom for a good long time. Mr. Hoskins makes the best rum punch in this county, he does, and yer husband looks like a man what appreciates a good rum punch.”

“I’m sure he does,” Ghislaine said faintly, staring down at the congealed grease on her plate.

“He’s a handsome man, yer husband is. Been married long?”

Gert might be a cheerful slattern, but she knew where a wedding ring ought to reside, and Ghislaine’s long, bare fingers were in plain sight.

“Not long,” she said, picking up the fork.

“Just my luck. We finally have a good-looking rich man come to the inn and he’s already taken,” Gert said with a sigh.

Ghislaine looked up, and her eyes met Gert’s with the age-old knowledge of women. “Feel free to distract him,” she said evenly. “I’d appreciate a night alone.”

Gert didn’t find the suggestion more than slightly surprising. “He’s a good-looking man,” she said again with a lusty sigh.

“Pretty is as pretty does,” Ghislaine murmured. And she applied herself to the fat-encased mutton with stalwart determination.

The bath was no more than lukewarm, the water cloudy, the soap a rough lye concoction that turned her skin raw and red. The towels were rough, the fire continued to smoke, and Ghislaine knew her first moments of real happiness in longer than she could remember. It took desperation to make one appreciate life, she thought. The finest meal she’d ever had was a thin, tasteless stew, days old, and a cup of rancid coffee on an ice-coated street in Paris. She hadn’t eaten in more than a week at the time, and she’d devoured the stew without pausing to consider the origin of the meat or the length of time it had been sitting in the kettle; eaten it so quickly she’d thrown it all up minutes later. And then she’d wept hot, bitter tears for wasting the first bite of solid food she’d seen in ages.

She’d been seventeen years old at the time. That was the day she’d agreed to sell her body on the streets of Paris. And that was the last day she’d cried.

Draping the reasonably clean blanket around her, she opened the valise Gert had carried up, staring at the jumbled interior in dismay. She knew those colors. The puce, the purple, the lime-green and the startling canary-yellow. Her own wardrobe had consisted of somber blacks and browns and grays, as befitted an upper servant. The totally unsuitable clothes belonged to Ellen, whose taste ran to the flamboyant. The colors were entirely unsuited to Ellen’s pale pink English loveliness, and they’d probably make Ghislaine look like a parrot.

Even worse was the fact that Ellen was tall and robust, a sturdy English flower. Ghislaine was tiny, half a foot shorter. She’d swim in Ellen’s clothes.

It was hardly her problem, unless the excessive length of her skirts hampered her getaway. Since Nicholas was unlikely to let her escape easily, she’d have more than enough time to cobble up the hems.

The only problem was she couldn’t sew. She could bake anything, from brioches to croissants to the most succulent
boeuf en daube.
But she couldn’t manage to set a straight stitch. She could remember her mother’s mock despair as she surveyed her daughter’s needlework…

She slammed the door down on the memory, shocked at the freshness of the pain, the rawness of a decade-old loss. Damn Nicholas Blackthorne! As if she didn’t owe him enough, his presence had set things in motion, memories and feelings that she thought she’d managed to bury long ago. If she hadn’t wanted to kill him before, she wanted to now.

There were no nightgowns in the valise. She could always consider it a simple oversight, but she knew she was being optimistic. Whoever had packed the bag, whether it was the evil-eyed Taverner or Nicholas himself, hadn’t thought she needed to be troubled by a night rail.

Nicholas’s valise had made an appearance as well. Feeling no compunctions whatsoever, she opened it, pulling out one of his beautiful cambric shirts and putting it on, letting the blanket drop to the floor. It hung to her knees; the sleeves dangled well below her fingertips; and it was the softest, most elegant thing she’d worn in years. She was half-tempted to rip it off her body, but her choices were not appealing. Ellen’s clothes were fancy, scratchy, hardly fit for sleeping. Her own dress was sticky and stiff from the spilled brandy, and she couldn’t stand the thought of putting it back on. And Ellen’s fine lawn undergarments were too revealing.

No, Nicholas’s shirt would have to do. If she was going to end the night in a battle, it would provide as much protection as anything she had with her.

The hours passed; long, empty hours. Gert returned and had the hip bath removed, took the tray with its half-eaten meal, and wished her a good evening. Ghislaine almost wished her good hunting in return. If only Nicholas were drunk enough to fall for Gert’s abundant, obvious charms, she could have a decent night’s sleep to gather her strength back around her. She wasn’t in any condition to fight him off. And she had no doubt whatsoever that that was what Nicholas had in mind.

She could always submit. In the end, it was probably what she’d have to do. She’d learned the trick of closing her mind and ears, and letting her dreams soar out into the clouds, while some man hunched and panted and sweated over her body. She’d distanced herself and survived.

But a small, nagging little part of her wondered whether she could be just as efficient distancing herself from the devil incarnate who’d abducted her. The man who looked like an angel from hell.

Nicholas was getting very drunk. He considered stopping. The landlord’s punch was a fine one, redolent of cinnamon and nutmeg and rum, but he’d never been excessively fond of rum punch. The serving girl was well-rounded and obviously willing, brushing her quite impressive breasts against him every chance she got. Tavvy had already closed his eyes and sunk back against the settee, and would probably awake six hours from now stiff and sore and blessed with a colossal headache.

The landlord would provide an alternate bed that he could share with the girl, if he gave any sign that he was interested. Indeed, he was mad not to be. The creature upstairs was a murderous harridan, doubtless a virgin, blessed with a skinny body and a wasp’s tongue. Besides which, she wanted to kill him. That sort of thing had never done wonders for his ardor, and he’d be much better off sampling the serving girl’s more obvious wares.

But he couldn’t keep his mind off the woman upstairs. He had to force himself to remember that she was a woman, not a girl. She reminded him of that innocent child he’d half-fallen in love with so long ago, and yet she was different enough that he knew there was absolutely no danger of his succumbing once more to that unexpected weakness.

She’d had no idea, of course. All she remembered was his flat rejection of her, convinced that that rejection had cost her her family. She didn’t know the yearning that had burned behind his dismissal of her, the cynical denial that had eaten away at his soul.

All the rum punch in the world couldn’t make him forget her. It never had, over the long intervening years, though it and claret and brandy had come close. He’d gone days, weeks, even months without thinking about her, so that she’d finally become a distant memory, a faded dream that somehow no longer seemed quite real. Until she returned to his life like a flaming fury, ready to take her revenge for his transgressions, both real and imagined.

He supposed he ought to be understanding enough to allow her her illusions. It was easier to hate a person than a system of government, a bloodthirsty mob, a smug old man who was so busy trying to take his fortune with him that he waited until it was too late. If he were nobler he’d shoulder that burden of guilt, let her hate him and despise him and blame him if it made her feel better.

He drew the line at letting her murder him, however.

He could always go upstairs and bed her. Then she’d have no doubts at all about what an unregenerate monster he was. He’d tied her up, abducted her, taunted her. Surely there was no need to stop there. He’d never hesitated in the single-minded pursuit of his sensual pleasures before.

But he’d never taken a woman by force either, and he had no doubts at all that with Ghislaine it would be force. For some oddly quixotic reason he didn’t want to brutalize her. At least, he told himself coolly, not tonight.

And for some equally absurd reason he didn’t want to avail himself of the serving girl either. She smelled of the mutton she’d served, and while he had no doubts at all that he’d enjoy her enthusiasm, he simply didn’t want her. An unsettling state of affairs, and one he could thank Ghislaine de Lorgny for.

He rose on surprisingly steady feet, picking up the half-empty brandy bottle. “Time to join m’wife,” he announced.

The girl pouted. “She’s probably asleep by now,” she said boldly. “And didn’t you say it was her time of the month?”

Had he really been crass enough to announce that? Probably. He smiled with sweet drunkenness. “We don’t let such things bother us,” he confided. “She’s French, you know.”

That seemed to say enough. The serving girl disappeared into the kitchen with a sullen set to her plump shoulders, but he’d be surprised if she didn’t decide to wake Tavvy up for a bit of fun.

The stairs were too damned dark and narrow, but he managed to make it up there without spilling a drop of his precious brandy. The fire in the front room had burned down low, and there was no sign of Ghislaine. She had to be in the bedroom beyond. Was she waiting for him, lying in the bed, nude and ready? Was she standing behind the door with a knife, prepared to unman him?

He pushed open the door cautiously. The firelight illuminated her pale face, and he had no doubt whatsoever that she was sound asleep. She looked no more than fifteen years old, lying in the middle of that big bed, the covers drawn up to her chin. He’d felt like a satyr then; he felt like a rutting stag now.

He backed out of the room, leaving the door open, and went to sit by the fire. From his vantage point he could still see her, lying in the bed, and he told himself he had to keep an eye on her in case she woke up and decided to push him into the fireplace or something equally nasty.

He drank out of the bottle, letting the fiery stuff burn its way down his throat. And he knew he was lying. He wanted to watch her as she slept. Because he wanted to pretend it was thirteen years ago, before the world had gone mad.

Before he had lost his soul completely.

Chapter 8

Sir Antony Wilton-Greening didn’t sleep well. The Crown and Boar provided a decent enough repast, the beds were clean and well-aired, the cellar tolerable. Normally he would sleep like the dead, waking up at his customary eleven o’clock to start his day.

He knew he didn’t possess that luxury. He needed to be off by dawn if he was going to escape without Ellen joining him. Not that there weren’t decided advantages to having her along. For one thing, he had no guarantee that the mysterious Ghislaine would prefer his protection to that of an attractive bad ‘un like Nicholas Blackthorne. Even assuming she had gone unwillingly, and he was by no means convinced of that, she might have come to terms with her abductor. Particularly since Nicholas would probably attempt to keep her in a style to which she could easily grow accustomed, and Tony had no interest in her dubious charms at all. He found he had no taste for French gamines—he preferred English roses. He’d been completely truthful when he’d told Ellen that no one would find out if she accompanied him if he didn’t want them to know. If he had been forced to take her with him, he would have made sure exactly those people necessary had found out—those people necessary to enforce a speedy marriage. It would cut through a great deal of bother. Ellen, for all her matter-of-fact good nature, was a dreamy romantic at heart. If he wanted to marry her, and he most definitely did, he’d be forced to go through some ridiculous sham of a courtship, and he simply didn’t have the energy for it. He wanted his nice, comfortable life, with an affectionate, undemanding spouse like Ellen to make sure his home was run properly, his estates were crawling with heirs, and his marital duty wasn’t impossibly onerous. It had taken him a while to come to the decision that Ellen would suit him, but once that decision had been taken, there was no swaying him from his purpose. He just didn’t want to have to exert himself more than necessary.

No, a forced marriage had definite advantages, not the least of which would be Ellen’s feelings of guilt and gratitude. It would keep her from making impossible demands if she felt she’d forced him into it.