The Disdainful Marquis (27 page)

With an exclamation of impatience at himself and the world which sent poor half-wits out into it with no protection, he approached the boy.

“Here,” he said gruffly in the local argot, “let me do it.”

He had expected the boy to be surprised, but not to the extent that he was. For he jerked up to a sitting position and cowered away.

“Come,” Sinjun demanded in the same dialect, “I will help you. Do not be afraid.”

And without waiting any longer, he made a gesture of impatience and reached down to grasp the boy's boot. He held it firmly and began to wrench it off. As he gave it a twist and the final tug to free it, three things happened almost simultaneously.

The boot, freed from its grip on the boy's foot, came off in his hand. A small packet flew from it and landed on the floor with a damp thud beside him. And the boy cried out in English in a high, clear woman's voice, “No. Do not touch me. Please, don't.”

And then as he stood dumbfounded, the boy flung his hands to his head and fainted away.

Sinjun bent over the boy and stared at him. Then, still shaking his head, as if to clear his sight, he gathered the boy in his arms and carried the insubstantial weight to his bed. Once he had lain the lad there, he gently removed the ridiculous hat and stared long at the still white face. He pushed back one dark curl from where it had fallen onto the forehead and continued to stare, genuinely staggered at the sight of the unconscious form.

“Well,” said Jenkins slowly from behind him, as he sheathed his knife carefully, “it looks as though you've finally gotten her where you wanted her, lad. In your bed.”

For once the marquis did not return Jenkins' sally with another. He only stood and watched the closed face beneath his.

“Here's a pretty sight,” Jenkins grunted.

Sinjun wheeled around to see Jenkins holding up the bootless leg. The small white high-arched foot was blood-smeared and torn.

“This,” Jenkins snorted, holding up the small bloody linen-wrapped packet, “is what did the trick. A boot's a good place for treasure, as you well know, but not when there's scarcely room for a foot there as well.”

“At least,” said a small frightened voice from the bed, “it was safe till I disturbed it.”

Sinjun turned and looked down into a pair of wide terrified eyes.

“That,” he said, with a slow smile, “is more than I can say for you, child.”

He let his eyes linger on her as he lowered himself to sit beside her, and trailed one finger slowly across her jawline,

“A great deal more than I can say for you,” he smiled.

Chapter XIV

Catherine's voice faltered as she brought her story to a close. The marquis had sat beside her silently as she had told it. She had no idea what expression he wore, as she had been afraid to chance a look at him. Instead, she had watched the far less threatening, more sympathetic play of expressions on Jenkins' concerned countenance. And it had been Jenkins who had insisted that she tell all in such a gentle fatherly manner that she had complied. If she had been alone with the marquis, there was every possibility that she could not have uttered a word, for when she had woken from her pain-induced swoon, his face had held menace, and his voice had implied further distress for her at his hands. But she had taken heart from Jenkins' presence. For no matter what the marquis' intentions, she doubted he would initiate any ploy against her with Jenkins in the room. Now, risking a glance at the marquis from under her lashes and seeing the unblinking gray gaze fixed upon her, she did not know which she feared more—his anger, his disdain, or his easy seductive acceptance of her.

But there was nothing seductive in the look which he now bent upon her. There was only outraged incredulity. He rose and paced a step and then wheeled back to her.

“Do you mean to tell us that you actually believed you were to be no more than a companion for the duchess? That your duties were only to be to hold her knitting or sit and have pleasant little cozes with her about her grandchildren or her rheumatics?” he asked.

She shrank back from the force of his voice, but then found herself growing angry at the tenor of his words.

“How should I have thought otherwise?” she argued, “for she was a duchess and she seemed to live at the height of respectability. Even Arthur—he's my brother-in-law, you know, and he is a stickler for propriety—could not claim otherwise. Indeed, he would have been glad to have thrown an obstacle in my path, for he did not want me to earn my own way at all. If he had had even an inkling of anything amiss, he would have thrown it up to me.”

Seeing the patent disbelief upon the marquis' face, she went on with more spirit and a genuine sense of outrage, “Women such as the duchess may be common coin in your set, Your Lordship, but I assure you we have none such in Kendal. Why, if any woman behaved so, her relatives would have her clapped up somewhere to protect her from herself. Mrs. Blake is the only true eccentric we have,” she mused, “and that is because she is so overfond of cats. And even so,” she added triumphantly, “her children have told her if she adopts one more, they'll have the whole lot out on the streets, for people will begin to talk.” Sinjun ran a hand through his hair while Catherine could hear Jenkins' low chortling. But then the marquis turned again and said with a certain slyness, Catherine thought, “And yet, even you must have realized what her game was by the time we met upon the packet to France. For both Rose and Violet were in the duchess's trail then. Never say you thought those two particular prime bits were there to complete a cozy sewing circle? Or that they were too reticent to tell you the whole of it?”

“No,” Catherine admitted in a little voice, hanging her head, “by then I did know. “

“Then, in the fiend's name, why didn't you just throw up the whole bad business and hie yourself home to Kendal and rejoin your eccentric cat-loving old ladies?”

“I hadn't the funds,” Catherine answered softly.

“Why didn't you appeal to someone you knew? Or tell the duchess the whole game was off?”

“She wouldn't have paid me,” Catherine said sadly, “for she had already advanced me my wages for the first months and told me the rest would only come quarterly. And I did not think she would take kindly to my denouncing her and demanding unearned money for my return home before her journey had truly begun. And I knew no one else.”

Sinjun stood still and then said with a softer voice and an expression she found hard to read in the dim light, “But you did know me. And I'm not known to be pinch-pursed, and, certainly, I had not been distant with you.”

“Oh yes,” Catherine flared suddenly, “you have not been. But you took no pains to conceal your opinion of me. And I was going to tell you twice, in fact. But that first time aboard ship you only began to give me advice about which gentlemen I should attach myself to for profit. Wouldn't I have presented a pretty picture if I had asked you for money after that recitation?”

The marquis, Catherine noted, looked abashed for the first time since she had met him. A brief uneasy silence fell over the room which was at length broken by Jenkins' query. “And the second time?”

Catherine, remembering the moment in the marquis' close embrace, only flushed. And the marquis, instantly remembering the same scene, for once was speechless. He only gave a low muttered curse and walked to the fire to stare at its dying embers.

“Well then,” Jenkins said with suppressed laughter in his voice, “we should see about binding up that limb of yours, Miss Catherine. For one-legged companions are not in too much demand this season. Just sit back. I'll go to fetch some clean water. No need to worry, for His Lordship can tell you I've some experience in that line, and I'll have you up and ready to travel by first light.”

Jenkins went quietly out into the passage. Finding herself alone in the room with the marquis, Catherine sat very still, not daring to break into his seeming reverie. But before long he was back, standing beside the bed and looking down at her. She did not dare to even look up at him this time, being too aware of his proximity and of her embarrassing position, occupying his bed.

“And how,” he asked finally, “did you think to come through the whole of your adventures with your reputation intact?”

“Oh,” she said slowly, “as to that, it hardly mattered, for I intended to go home to Jane and Arthur immediately upon my return. One's reputation in Paris and London wouldn't count for much there. For no one I know travels further than to market most of the time.”

“And how,” he persisted, “did you think to return with your person intact?”

She looked up at him in anger when the meaning behind his words became clear to her.

“As to that,” she said with some heat, “I felt that I could rub on well enough if I remained alert and circumspect in my dealings with the gentlemen in the duchess's set. And so I did. Except, of course, in your case. For you were the only one who attempted liberties. The others were content to accept “No” and look around for easier game.”

“Liberties!” he exploded, shouting loudly enough to make her wince. “Do you consider a few brief embraces liberties? When you were prancing about Paris, painted and half clothed in the company of acknowledged tarts? I think,” he said, sitting down abruptly beside her again and taking her chin in one hand and forcing her head up to meet his blazing eyes, “that you should know more of ‘liberties' by now. Didn't those two expensive bits of muslin you were cloistered with all these weeks tell you more about liberties?”

“No,” Catherine protested, drawing back from him and his touch. “No, they didn't. They were actually very prim with me. They said that they did not think they should tell me anything I didn't already know.”

The marquis dropped his hand and shook his head, as if to clear it. He gazed at her steadily till she shrank with embarrassment. She could see belief and disbelief battling in his expression. Then he smiled a slow easy smile that curiously both melted and chilled her, and went on in a low sweet voice, “But there was nothing you did not know about embraces, was there, little Catherine?” He took a curl of her hair in his hand and toyed with it as he spoke. “I do not remember that there was need of too much further instruction in your kisses. You are not totally inexperienced then, are you? Mine was certainly not your first kiss, was it?”

“Of course not,” Catherine blazed, striking his hand away, “yours was the fourth. I did not grow up in a clam shell. And if you count Roger Scott's, it is five. But,” she admitted carefully, “I do not usually count Roger Scott's for that was only upon my cheek, and I have never been sure if that was his intention or if he missed. But it makes no matter, for I was
very
angry with him anyway and did not speak to him again.”

The marquis looked at her speechlessly, but any reply of his was cut off by Jenkins, who had appeared by the foot of the bed and who shooed him away by saying briskly, “I have to do up the lady's foot now. And if you two persist in quarreling at midnight, you'll call the whole inn's attention to the presence of a female in your rooms. Here now, My Lord, do you hold her hand. For I have to put some medication upon the wounds and I think she'll be glad of something to hold on to, for it will smart a bit.”

“No thank you,” Catherine said loftily, snatching her hand from the marquis' grip.

But when Jenkins poured some of the fine French cognac he had produced from his bags over her aching foot, she involuntarily grasped the marquis' hand again and bit her lip to keep from crying out.

“That's the worst of it,” Jenkins said cheerily as he began to spread some unguent and then carefully wrapped her foot in strips of linen. “It will hurt like the devil for a few more moments, but then it will ease off enough for you to sleep.”

True to his words, by the time Jenkins had straightened and begun to pack away his medicants and remove the ewer of water, Catherine's pain had subsided to only a low cranky aching.

Jenkins retreated to his room after bidding her a pleasant good night, and Catherine had a moment of alarm as the marquis straightened but still stood looking at her. She was about to rise and hobble back to the hearthside when he said curtly, “I'll retire to Jenkins' room. I hope you're an early riser. For we have to be off by first light.”

“You may be off wherever you choose,” Catherine said sleepily. “I shall wake early and go from here and bother you no more.”

“Don't be absurd,” he snapped. “As a woman traveling alone you'll never get past the door by yourself.”

“But I shan't be a woman traveling alone,” she said, smiling. “I shall be a poor zany French lad.”

“In the night, you might have gotten away with it for a few hours,” he said sternly, “but never in the day.” He cut off her next words by saying swiftly, “And if you think you can, I beg you to remember what might have befallen you if we had not interceded with that pack of mercenary curs below stairs this evening. So you shall travel with us, unless you really do desire Pierre Richard's fevered embrace and are only trying to up your price by being a little inaccessible when M. Beaumont comes to call.”

“I shall not travel with you,” Catherine whispered fiercely. “And, at any rate, it is not Pierre Richard, it is Hervé, that M. Beaumont intended me for. And I would rather face a horde such as I met this evening than—”