The Corrupt Comte (17 page)

Love. He scowled. He didn’t even know the meaning of the word. Chalk it up to a lack in his education.

“You’re hurt.” She didn’t fight his too-tight grip on her wrist, instead leaning into him.

Her knees brushed the outside of his thigh, and he glanced down to see the dark contrast of his grimy breeches against her snowy satin skirts. His thumb found the pulse beneath the delicate skin of her wrist, pressed upon it. “I do not need you.”

She stood quiet for a long moment before wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue. “It f-felt like you needed m-me yesterday.” She twisted her wrist in his hand, gently, and he let her go. But instead of pulling away, she resumed her cleaning of his forehead. Then she took a deep breath. “I would g-guess you had an interesting evening t-tonight.”

His stomach clenched, and he chuckled. Her tone was so bland, her words so unassuming, as if she were making polite conversation in the middle of a ballroom. “Kitten, you cannot
begin
to guess.”

“M-my evening was s-s-similarly interesting.” Abandoning the damp cloth to the porcelain bowl on the floor, its tepid water tinted a sickly pink, she arranged herself on the footstool situated at his feet, her skirts bunching about her legs where they folded, and her chest…her chest was a masterpiece of creamy lushness that could tempt any man.

Determined not to let madness rule him as it had last night, he turned his gaze elsewhere. He noticed that her folded hands were chapped red from her time in the cold and from using the warm, wet towel. His own hand, resting casually on the arm of the chair, twitched involuntarily at the sight.

“Your engagement.” He hated saying the word aloud.

“Yes.”

“You did not know?”

Her straight, dark brows drew together in a frown. “Of c-course not. M-my p-parents arranged it. I’m t-to wed the Duke of Évoque.”

There went that sick roiling in his gut again. “I know him.” An understatement when there were so very many things he could say, and none of them kind. But he wouldn’t warn her against the man, because she was no longer part of the plan. The plan had changed, and Gaspard couldn’t afford to care about her.

“I assumed s-so.” When he shot her a questioning glance, her lips curved in a faint smile. “Or d-do you p-possess knowledge of the locations of every hidden d-door in P-Paris?”

Admittedly, he’d shown his hand with that maneuver. “So. You will be a duchess.” He tried to inject a sneer into the words and failed.

“I don’t want to b-be.”

“Forgive me if I do not believe you.”

“What d-does s-s-so grand a t-title get m-me?” Her tone was harsh, her words more halting than usual. “Only m-more people laughing when m-my back is t-turned. I’d rather b-be no one.”

Gaspard had been no one before. The first sixteen years of his life had been spent in utter anonymity, and while he’d been hungry and dirty, tired and uneducated, he now recognized his childhood for what it was—safety.

Which was what Claudia craved, wasn’t it? Her desire for safety drove her doomed pursuit of Sabien, inadvertently forcing her path to cross with Gaspard’s, who was likely the
least
safe man with whom she should keep company. “When is the wedding?”

“Tomorrow.”

“
Tomorrow?
” Surprise numbed him. This couldn’t simply be her parents’ machinations. No, for the timeline to be so compressed, a cascade of life-altering events falling into place, one after the other…this was Évoque’s handiwork. Tonight’s announcement of their engagement was an alibi, tomorrow’s hastened nuptials another.

How quickly could Claudia’s father put ten thousand pounds in the duke’s hands? What did Évoque need that money for so desperately and so soon?

There was no other explanation for rushing into such an alliance, not right now, not when Gaspard suspected the duke had more irons in the fire than any of them knew. He scrubbed a hand over his face, eyes squeezed shut as his fingers rasped over day-old beard. “You are marrying the duke. Tomorrow. And you did not know.”

Irritation briefly lit her dark eyes. “I won’t repeat m-myself.”

Of course she wouldn’t—the illogical little baggage had ceased to fear him, a fact which displeased and delighted him in equal measure. The hand attached to his injured arm clenched, fisted, a dim spike of pain shooting along the veins twisting beneath the skin from wrist to elbow. He winced.

She noticed. “What’s wrong?”

Wordlessly, he drew his shirtsleeve up to reveal the bloody gash sliced into the length of his forearm. Her eyes widened, taking in the extent of the wound.

Reaching for the bowl and cloth, Claudia slid from the stool onto her knees. “I sh-shouldn’t ask,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

“No,” he agreed, gritting his teeth when the newly dampened towel began to tug on the edges of the gash, slowly cleaning the blood away. If she asked how he came to be injured, Gaspard would need to lie to her. No matter how much he might desire to unburden his many, many sins—and, surprisingly, he found he wanted to do just that—a spy was only as good as his silence, and Gaspard was still very much a spy, one who’d prefer to remain among the living.

He was neither invaluable to his employer nor was he dispensable. A precarious position for any man, but especially for a man who’d lied to so many, for so long, about something so vital as the very core of his identity.

The molly
comte
…not a molly.

The molly
comte
…traitor, murderer. Animal.

He pulled his arm off the chair’s armrest, away from her ministrations. “No more.”

“But—”

“No more, Claudia!” Wanting to rise and pace and run but unable to force himself to leave her where she knelt, he shifted in the chair, restless, sweat beginning to bead his temples from the warmth of the hearth.

She had stilled at his outburst, a statue on her knees before him, dark eyes momentarily stricken before she could bank the emotion within. “Do. Not. Yell. At me.” The words were precise, tight snaps of teeth and tongue, flaying him open like a cat-o’-nine-tails. “I’ve d-done nothing b-but…but c-care for you this evening. I d-d-d—” Her jaw clamped shut, her knuckles whitening around the balled cloth.

It was when her eyes squeezed shut momentarily, frustration coming off her in waves, that he folded and reached for her. His fingers wrapped gently around the fist holding the now-stained rag, drawing it, and her, back to the wound that oozed fresh blood, ripped through the congealed crevices due to the stretch and tug of cleaning. “
Sîl-vous plait, mon ange.
”

Gaze wary, she nevertheless cupped the back of his upturned wrist in one hand, leaning down to the bowl to rewet the cloth before resuming her tending. When it became apparent he wasn’t going to stop her this time, her head bent over her work, and soon she was poking lightly at the tender edges of the long gash. “D-does it need s-st-stitching? I c-can’t tell.”

His breathing had evened some while she worked, but as soon as he leaned in and caught the faint scent of fine soap, tangled into the intricate coils of recently shampooed hair that hovered right in front of him, his pulse sped and his breath hitched. But he studied his wound with an appraising eye, noting the overall neat incision made by the blade he’d later plunged into the Duke of Berry’s chest. The lack of jagged, torn flesh, as well as the relatively shallow depth of the cut and the lucky fact that it missed all vital arteries, had him saying, “Only bandages. Do you have clean toweling?”

Not looking at him, she nodded, accidentally bumping his chin. The contact sent her scurrying backward as though scalded, stumbling over the footstool as she jolted into an awkward stand. Biting her lower lip and still avoiding his gaze, she collected the bowl from beside his chair, dropped the dirty rag into it with a
plop
, and hurried to the far side of the bedchamber, where stood the washstand, armoire and painted dressing screen.

Gaspard stared into the leaping flames of the hearth, listening to the hushed crackle and pop of burning wood as a veritable war waged within him.

He needed to leave.

I don’t want to leave.

He was putting her in danger.

I can protect her better by her side.

She was getting married tomorrow.

Fuck that.

He lifted his uninjured arm to shove tense fingers through his windblown hair. The decision he’d made last night in Maxence’s study was the right one—to leave her be. He wasn’t meant to play the white knight for a woman like Claudia. He’d stay in France and pledge lifelong servitude to Évoque, a man he hated, in exchange for the revocation of his debts, or—

No. No, he couldn’t do that, because Claudia would be the duchess, Évoque’s duchess. What if he saw her, in this house, at society parties? What if he had to watch her grow round with child, his enemy’s child?

For a split second, Gaspard feared he’d vomit on the expensive rug beneath his dirty boots.

So he would run, and running with Claudia was simply not an option. While he suspected she’d welcome the escape from her family’s clutches, she wasn’t made to live a life of wretched poverty, which was exactly the sort of life Gaspard was sure to face once he left Paris behind. Faron could direct him to a safe Russian village, or he could flee to Spain, where Maxence had been sent some years ago. It would be easy enough to disappear into the Scottish highlands, though he thought Sabien might be headed there eventually, to the home of some distant cousin. Perhaps the safest choice was to hop a ship to America, where it would be nigh impossible for anyone to recognize him—or report his presence back to those who’d execute him for his crimes.

Regardless of where he went, one element would remain constant: no more whoring. No more men. Dressed as he was now, utilizing the trade he’d learned as a youth, he’d be common. A commoner. One who perhaps spent too many nights in a tavern, or brawled for sport and winnings, or bedded a lithe-limbed redheaded prostitute twice a week, all in reward for breaking his back and blistering his palms at a forge for a day’s honest wage.

Was that life worth sacrificing the title he’d bled for? The title he’d killed to keep?

Claudia carrying an armful of white linen caught his eye, and the horrible tightness in his chest returned full force. Lovely, soft, angry, damaged Claudia, who glanced over at him with a tentative smile curving lips he’d teased open with his own on more than one occasion.

Again, she knelt at his feet, situating herself between his spread knees and setting the linens on his lap. She lightly gripped his injured arm, her slender fingers warm against his skin, and looked up at him. “I’ve never d-doctored anyone b-before. What sh-should I do?”

He handed her one of the lightweight strips of cloth. “Start here,” he said, pointing to the highest part of the wound, starting near his inner elbow. “Then…down the arm.” He gestured, imitating the motion of wrapping bandages. “It must be tight.”

To help, he held the end of the linen at the top of the wound, and she quickly began to wind the fabric down his arm. The edges of the gash pushed together, which would allow it to heal, but a third of the way to his wrist, she ran out of cloth.

Without any direction from him, she picked up a fresh strip and, holding it gently in place with her thumb, wrapped it over the loose end, the layering keeping the bandage where it was. She repeated the effort once more until there was a length of linen dangling at his wrist. “Too t-tight?”

“
Non.
” Taking his arm from her, he efficiently looped and knotted the spare fabric around his wrist, fingers practiced from years of knotting the leather ties of his knife’s sheath one-handed. He studied their combined handiwork, the bandages a compressed white sleeve covering his entire forearm, and nodded. “This is good.” He paused. “Thank you, Claudia.”

She dropped her gaze to her lap, fingers restless as they linked and unlinked from each other. “How d-did it happen?”

He sighed, suddenly weary. “I cannot say.”

“C-cannot, or will not?” Brown eyes clashed with his. “S-s-so many s-secrets, G-Gaspard. From m-me, from the world. D-don’t you tire of c-c-carrying them around?”

“Yes.”

She blinked, obviously surprised at his honesty. “Then…then unburden yourself.” Her hand lifted to settle on his knee, squeezing encouragingly. “I’ll k-keep your s-s-secrets,” she said, and he believed her.

But where would he even begin? Approximately ten years’ worth of lies and deceptions, criminal behavior and his country’s darkest deeds, and she wanted him to find the hairline fracture in the dike and take a hammer to it until the sea rushed through.

He’d drown in those floods before he could escape to higher ground. “No.”

Disappointment flitted over her features. “N-not even one thing? J-just one s-s-secret?”

“Why do you want this?” He kept his tone brusque as he rolled down his shirtsleeve to cover the bandages, buttoning the cuff before lowering it to the chair arm again. The madness was creeping in once more, the same that had affected him last night in the ballroom when he’d found her standing in front of him, preferring him,
choosing
him. He couldn’t afford to succumb to it. “Secrets…they never belong to only one person. Thought or word or action, there is always another, someone who might be harmed in the sharing. So I will not share, kitten. Do not ask again.”