So in Love (19 page)

He never underestimated the situations in which he found himself. Neither did he believe in the goodness of his fellow man. His cynicism had kept him alive these last few years when the society he’d known had disintegrated around him, leaving only anarchy and mob rule.

Several men hunched over the bar with elbows planted firmly on the wood and hands cupped protectively around chipped tankards. One man was attired in a low-slung cap, and boasted a few days’ worth of beard. But it was his foul-smelling clothes that had Nicholas pressing his handkerchief to his nose again and wishing he’d brought his lavender water with him.

Talbot whispered something to the tavern owner and the man responded with a jerk of his chin. Nicholas followed
as Talbot wended his way through the smoke-filled room toward a table in the rear. A single man was seated there and at Talbot’s appearance he kicked out a low-slung stool to his left and gestured toward it with his hand.

Talbot sat and a moment later Nicholas did as well. Folding his hands over the top of his walking stick, he studied the man to his right.

His face was round, marked with scars and small pustules. The flesh hung in folds to his chin, as if he’d recently lost a great deal of weight. His eyes were brown and badly bloodshot, either from the liquor, smoke, or illness. The hands that clutched his tankard were large, fleshy, but his nails were surprisingly clean. Most of his teeth were missing but those that remained were brown stubs.

He looked exactly like what he was—a man who would kidnap or kill, depending upon the amount paid him.

“I hear you want an errand done,” the man said, his burr of accent so thick that Nicholas could barely understand his words.

“Yes,” Nicholas said, leaning forward. He told the man exactly what he needed.

When he finished, the man stared into his tankard, and then slowly nodded. “I’ll do it.”

“How much?”

When the man answered, it was Nicholas’s turn to remain silent. He was running out of money, but it seemed as if he had no other choice. If only his daughter had been the biddable girl she’d once been, he would not have had to resort to such tactics. Finally, he nodded in agreement.

The price decided upon, Talbot ordered them each a tankard. Nicholas was wise enough not to refuse, but at the same time he wasn’t going to drink anything in this foul place.

A few minutes later, he gave the man the information to
carry out his assignment, and then stood, carefully hiding his disgust. It would never do to alienate those he needed.

Turning, he made his way from the tavern, leaving the haze and smoke behind. As he began to climb the steps he had the unwelcome feeling that he had just left the pits of hell.

“M
y father thinks you’re very beautiful, Miss du Marchand,” Margaret said one day.

A proper governess would chastise Margaret for her comment, or explain that it was not polite to offer an opinion about a person’s appearance. After all, it was character that counted more than beauty. But she didn’t say those words. Instead, she only stared at the child. “What makes you think that?”

“He said it,” Margaret said, concentrating on the book in front of her. A small smile tilted her lips and Jeanne studied her for some moments in order to ascertain whether or not Margaret was being mischievous. But it seemed as if she wasn’t, after all, because a moment later she spoke again and the topic was different.

“The dressmaker’s coming tomorrow, Miss du Marchand. I’m to tell you that I need the afternoon free.” She glanced over at Jeanne, an earnest expression on her face. “Would you please tell Papa that I really shouldn’t be taken from my studies?”

“Why?” Jeanne asked, confused. It was not the first time
she’d been relegated to monosyllabic replies around the child. Jeanne shook herself mentally. “Why, Margaret? Do you not like the dressmaker?”

“I like her as a person well enough, Miss du Marchand. It’s just that I have no patience for new clothes.” Margaret sighed heavily. “I would very much like to be able to click my fingers together and have my clothes be ready for me. Instead, I must stand there for hours and hours and be fitted. They measure and they poke, and they take so long, Miss du Marchand.”

“You should be grateful that you have a father who is wealthy enough to provide lovely dresses for you.” Jeanne looked over her spectacles at Margaret and tried not to remember when she’d felt the same as a child being pinned into her court dresses. Hours had seemed like years. But time had a way of speeding up the older one became. Months now felt like weeks, and a day only an hour.

“Is that why you only have three dresses, Miss du Marchand? Were you poor as a child?”

She really should do something about the child’s ability to render her speechless so often.

“No,” Jeanne said. “My father was quite wealthy. But circumstances change, Margaret. One should always be grateful for what one has at the time.”

Margaret nodded. “Perhaps it would be bearable if you would go with me,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like a few new dresses? Papa wouldn’t mind.”

“But I would,” Jeanne said, frowning at her charge. “I could not accept them.”

“It could be part of your salary,” she said, her smile so beatific that Jeanne studied her for a moment.

“You haven’t said anything to him, have you?”

Margaret shrugged.

“Margaret MacRae,” Jeanne said, irritated.

“He said you were beautiful, Miss du Marchand. Beautiful.” Margaret sighed heavily, such a dramatic and overwrought performance that Jeanne almost smiled.

“That was very nice of him, Margaret, but it still does not change the fact that he should not be buying me dresses. I can afford them well enough on my own.”

“Then you’ll go with me?”

Jeanne shook her head.

Margaret frowned at her, obviously disappointed, and studied the book in front of her again. This time, Jeanne noticed that she was squinting.

“Are you having trouble seeing, Margaret? Are the words like little tadpoles across the page?”

Margaret looked up, her eyes sparkling. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen little tadpoles, Miss du Marchand. What are they?”

“Are the words swimming across the page?” Jeanne said instead.

“No, they don’t,” Margaret said seriously. “Occasionally it seems as if they’re very far away. But that’s only when I’m tired or the light is dim.”

Jeanne pulled off her own spectacles and handed them to the child. “Here,” she said, “try these on and see if they help.”

The frames were too large, but Margaret managed to entwine the ribbon earpiece around each ear. Balancing the book with both hands, she stared at the page. A look of utter wonder came over her face.

“I can see everything,” she said, her voice filled with awe. “Every single thing.”

She looked up at Jeanne as she removed the spectacles. “Why don’t you wear them all the time, Miss du Marchand?”

Vanity. Not a confession she’d make to the little girl. “The older I get,” Jeanne said instead, “the less it seems I
need them.” Not a large lie, in the scheme of things.

Margaret studied the frame, the gold wire that held the glass lenses together. “They seem to be a wonderful invention.”

“I thought the same when my governess discovered that I needed help reading.”

Margaret smiled up at her. “And now you’ve done the same for me, Miss du Marchand.”

There was something oddly reminiscent about Margaret’s smile. Jeanne fingered her locket, wondering why her mother came so strongly to her mind at this moment.

“Are you certain that you can spare me for the dressmakers, Miss du Marchand?” Margaret asked one last time.

“Absolutely certain,” she said, smiling and making a mental note to take the opportunity of Margaret’s fitting to discuss her vision problems with Douglas.

“Are you very, very certain? I think I should practice my tables, don’t you?”

She frowned at the little girl. “You will go.”

Margaret sighed heavily again. “If I cannot go to the warehouse, Miss du Marchand, why should I have to be fitted for dresses? The first is educational, while the second is only a bore.”

Jeanne shook her head, thinking that the child did have a point.

“We’ve done well this week,” she said. “Shall I tell your father that we’ll go and see the warehouse?”

“May we?” Margaret’s face was wreathed in a sudden, blinding smile. “Oh, yes, Miss du Marchand. I’d very much like to go.”

“Then we shall,” she said. “As a reward for enduring the dressmaker.”

Margaret sighed and rolled her eyes, but Jeanne noted that her smile didn’t fade and she didn’t protest the arrangement.

“You’ll truly enjoy it, Miss du Marchand.”

“I’m sure I shall,” Jeanne said decorously, quite capably hiding the fact that she felt as young as Margaret at that moment, and as excited.

Hamish MacRae watched his wife treat one of the men from Gilmuir and smiled as he heard her instructions.

“You’ll wash that wound every day, Peter. I’ve told Iseabal about your injury and she knows to check it.”

She wound a bandage around the man’s hand, frowning at him while she did so.

Hamish wasn’t entirely certain he believed in destiny, but he knew that he’d been given a blessing the day Mary came into his life. He had vowed, when taking her from Scotland, to give the world to her, and she surprised him by being as eager as he for adventure. Now, nearly a decade later, what he’d promised had come true. They’d seen the African continent, Egypt, and the Orient. He’d taken Mary to his boyhood home of Nova Scotia and even become embroiled in a skirmish between an English ship and an American vessel.

Hamish had watched as Mary learned medical treatments in nearly every country they’d visited. Aboard his ship was a storeroom set aside for medicines alone—jars of ginseng, Chinese herbs, and a host of remedies Mary now used to treat an impressive list of ailments. Never had he valued her talents more than in this past year, when they’d embarked on another series of voyages—across the English Channel and back again.

In the past months their rescue missions to France had increased, and it seemed to Hamish that there were always more troubled souls needing help. Mary’s talent at healing as well as her nurturing spirit were evident every time she sat at the bedside of an ill patient or anguished about a sick child.

In a few weeks they would sail for France again. Another message had come and he and Mary would sail into a secluded harbor, their potential cargo a few dozen terrified, exhausted people.

Every time Hamish looked at his reflection, the scars on his face and body brought back the recollection of his year of imprisonment. Every time he felt the twinge of a muscle ache or a bone, he remembered feeling as lost and alone as the French people they rescued. And for Mary, the fact that she couldn’t set foot on Scottish soil was an adequate reminder of her own days of terror.

They each did what they could to help, even though they each knew there was more to be done. A country was in peril, and they saw it on the faces of the men, women, and children who fled from France in desperation.

Hamish stepped forward, glancing at Peter and sending him a commiserating look. He’d been at the receiving end of Mary’s strict pronouncements himself.

“You’re better off just doing what she says,” he said in a low voice as the man passed him.

Peter grimaced, glanced at his bandaged hand and then back at Mary, evidently having already come to that conclusion on his own.

Hamish grinned as he reached Mary’s side. “You should let the man leave with his dignity, my love. Don’t chastise him so well that he crawls away.”

“I’ll leave him his hand, instead,” she said angrily, staring after Peter. “He almost let the wound putrefy, Hamish.”

Before she could continue with a gruesome litany of the man’s symptoms, Hamish grabbed her and kissed her soundly. A few minutes later, he pulled away, whispering a thoroughly decadent remedy for a wound of his own.

“It’s very swollen,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “And needs some tender care.”

“What kind of ministrations did you have in mind?” she asked, her face turning a delightful shade of pink.

“A touch of a hand, perhaps? A tender kiss?”

“I’ll have to see this grievous injury,” she said, taking his hand.

“And I’m more than willing to show it to you,” he said, grinning, letting her precede him to their cabin.

While Margaret was occupied with the dressmakers, Jeanne visited Douglas. She entered the library after receiving a summons to her knock.

“I believe Margaret needs some spectacles,” she said without preamble.

Douglas looked up from the papers he was signing and frowned at her. “What do you mean, she needs spectacles? She sees perfectly well.”

She wondered if he was going to be as obtuse about the subject as her own father. A du Marchand had no flaws, according to him; therefore she had no need for any device to assist her.

“She can’t see as well as you think,” she said firmly.

He put his quill down and sat back in the chair, surveying her. Instead of arguing further, he surprised her by remaining silent.

“I believe that I could contact someone who might be able to make her a pair. I’ve heard that there is a very good firm in London, but I’m certain that Edinburgh must have a company who can provide spectacles for her as well.”

“Why do you care?”

Taken aback, she could only stare at him. “She’s my charge. You’ve hired me to be her governess. Should I not care for her?”

Again he startled her by not doing what she expected. Instead of answering her, he asked another question, one
even more disturbing than the first. “Who was here when I was at Gilmuir?”

“Who was here?” she repeated. Of course someone had told him. Some member of his loyal staff must have mentioned her visitor. “Why didn’t you ask before now?”

He smiled. “I told myself that you would volunteer the information. But you didn’t. Then I told myself it didn’t matter, but I find that it does. Who was it, Jeanne?”

“My father,” she said and had the unique pleasure of seeing Douglas MacRae at a loss for words.

“I thought he was dead,” he said finally.

“He did a credible imitation of being alive,” she said, her hand closing so tightly over the spectacles in her pocket that she nearly broke them. Carefully, she loosened her grip and withdrew her hand.

“What did he want? Shall I offer to employ another French émigré?”

“I doubt my father would take advantage of your offer, Douglas. He has yet to understand that France has changed, and with it, the world. He still sees himself as a grand man.”

“But you see it differently. Why is that?”

“My father would tell you it’s because I’m half English.”

“I don’t care what your father would say. What do you say?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps nine years in a convent altered my thinking, Douglas.”

“Then what did he want with you, Jeanne?”

She gave him the truth and wondered what he might do with it. “I don’t believe that my father cares anything about me. I ceased to be a true du Marchand many years ago.” She fingered the locket and smiled. “He wanted my mother’s necklace.”

“Why?”

Her smile broadened. “Not for any sentimental value. I
thought at first that he might want to show it to the Somerville family, to prove his relationship to them. But they are as decimated as the du Marchands. A distant cousin to my mother has inherited the title.”

He frowned. “Still, you could have sought a home with him.”

“Perhaps,” she said, agreeing. “But I decided that it would better to seek my own life than to be indebted to anyone else. I’ve developed a certain obstinacy of will from the convent. No doubt the nuns would be horrified.”

He stood and rounded the desk and walked toward her. “As they would by your conduct, no doubt.”

Her smile was rueful agreement.

“You’re more beautiful now than you ever were as a girl,” he said softly, startling her. “Sometimes I can’t believe how truly beautiful you are and I tell myself that my eyes are playing tricks on me. Until I see you again and I’m captivated once more.”

He reached out and brushed the back of his hand against her heated cheek. “There is no one who has such creamy skin as yours, Jeanne. Or that faint flush that looks like the most delicate rose at dawn.”

He traced a finger over her upper lip and then her lower, as if he were memorizing the shape of her mouth. “Your lips are made for kissing. Every time you speak I have to force myself to listen to the words and not concentrate on the way your mouth moves.”

Bending down, he breathed against her lips. “As if you’re hinting for a kiss,” he said softly before he placed his lips on hers.

Her arms reached up and entwined around his neck. She was lost in the kiss for long moments before she deliberately stepped back and turned, walking to the window. Her composure had been destroyed with a kiss. Did he know how easily he had done it? Or how charmed she was by
him? If he crooked his finger at her and bade her lie on the carpet and await him, she’d no doubt do it, and feel a thrill of anticipation.