The Rebel Bride (25 page)

“So? What has that to say to anything? It has been a great while since I’ve had a worthy opponent. I only hope I’m not to be butchered like poor Harry.”

“As long as there is a button on the tip, you have no need to worry.” She rewarded him with a dimpled smile.

Julien moved swiftly away from her to the center of the room and presented his side, his foil unwaveringly straight, in salute.

“En garde, madam!”

“En garde!” she repeated with great delight and thrust her own foil forward.

Their foils clashed in the silent room with a ring of steel. Since he wasn’t sure of her ability, he controlled the speed and power of his thrusts, at least at first. He discovered very quickly, as he parried lunge after lunge, that she was an aggressive fencer. She held herself perfectly straight, her form excellent. She appeared to have no fear whatsoever and executed the most daring of maneuvers. No wonder she had rolled up poor Harry. He smiled as he tested for areas of weakness. Her foil was like her tongue, quick, sharp, and quite spontaneous. He slipped through her guard, drew up short, and pulled back. She merely laughed and in a quick flurry skipped forward and drove him back with rapid steps to the corner of the room. Their foils locked together for a moment before Julien, with a practiced flick of his wrist, sent her foil spinning from her grasp to the floor. She looked momentarily surprised, laughed at herself, and hurried to retrieve the foil. As she bent forward, the bruise on her thigh, to this point not all that painful, sent a flash of pain through her leg. She quickly averted her head and gritted her teeth, cursing the leg and the peasant who had struck her.

Julien saw the tiny furrow of pain on her forehead and instantly drew up and dropped his foil to his side. But
then he thought he must have been mistaken, for when she straightened, her face glistening with sweat and her foil held securely once more in her hand, she shot him a dazzling smile and cried gaily, “I do believe you’re just a bit better than Harry. And now, my lord,” she added, advancing on him, “I defy you to catch me so unawares again with your paltry tricks.”

“Better than even Harry? Such praise, it surely warms my cockles. As for my tricks, let’s see just how quickly I catch you napping again.”

As Kate lunged forward, shifting her weight onto the leg, another surge of pain distorted her face, and she clamped her lips together tightly to stifle the cry that threatened to escape. She drew up and turned about. “It’s been a long day, Julien. Though you have soundly thrashed me tonight, I shall seek redress tomorrow. You’ll see that I’m not so easily vanquished.”

“That I caught you off your guard for a moment doesn’t constitute a thrashing. Redress you shall certainly have.” He added with undisguised pride in his voice, “I’ve indeed been granted a most worthy opponent, even though you’re naught but a female.” He grinned at her.

“You’re kind,” she blurted out, feeling suddenly strangely inadequate to express what she felt at his praise. She walked with great care to the desk to place her foil in the open case.

He strode to her with the express intent of placing his foil beside hers. To his chagrin, she misunderstood his motive and backed away so quickly that she stumbled into the desk chair. His jaw tightened. His open, confiding Kate was gone behind a mask of fear. He turned his back to her and began carefully to cover the foils with the velvet cloth. He said in a rigidly controlled voice, “It’s getting quite late and you have had a rather strenuous day. I will see you in the morning.”

There was no response. He turned to see her clutching the back of the chair, her face as white as her shirt.

“Go to bed, damn you!” Why the devil didn’t she move? Was she trying to taunt him?

“I
would, it’s just that, well, the fact is that just for the moment, only this particular instant, I can’t walk.” She lowered her head, near to tears with embarrassment and she didn’t want him to see it.

“Damnation, what the devil?” He was at her side in an instant and drew her up against him. She cried out, and he picked her up in his arms and deposited her gently on the sofa. She lay back against the cushions and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, just give me but a few moments and I shall be fine. It’s all the activity. I’m not used to it, and—”

“Enough falsehood. What the hell is the matter? Why can’t you walk? No, don’t you shake your head at me. I can see even more lies forming on your tongue. If you don’t tell me the truth this instant, I swear I’ll tear off your breeches and examine you.”

“All right. That wretched peasant, he struck my leg with his stick when I jumped onto Gabriella’s back. But I assure you, Julien, it’s only a bruise, a small bruise, nothing to concern you. I bumped into the chair and made it hurt, but just a little bit.”

He struck his forehead with his hand in disbelief and exasperation. “Woman, you would try the patience of my father, who wasn’t at all a saint but believed himself one. And you were foolish enough to fence with me with your leg hurt? I begin to believe your brain would fit neatly into a thimble.”

Kate eased herself into a sitting position. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d not let us fence tonight, and I wanted to so very much. Please, Julien, I’m all right.”

“Listen to me, dammit—no, this argument is quite ridiculous.” He lifted her in his arms, ignoring her protests. As he carried her up the stairs, she asked in a small voice, “You’re just taking me to my room, aren’t you?”

“No, and just be quiet. I’m going to see just how foolish you’ve been. No, don’t argue with me. I’m going to look at your leg myself.” As she tensed perceptibly in his arms, he added, “I mean it. Just be silent for once in your life.”

“Couldn’t you simply ask Mrs. Crayton?”

“Be quiet.”

She was laid very gently on her bed. “Don’t move. I will try not to hurt you, just hold still.” He unfastened her breeches and pulled them down. “Lift your hips.”

She froze, staring at his face, but there was no lust there to be seen, no man’s desire, just determination and anger. She lifted her hips. He peeled the breeches to her knees, then looked at her leg. He cursed, long and fluently.

The bruise had swollen and turned a deep purplish black. Gently he probed around the area and slowly moved his fingers to the swollen bruise. She stiffened in pain but made no sound. He straightened and stood quietly in frowning thought. He said finally, “I don’t think a doctor is necessary, but you will have to curb your activities for a while. Damnation, I still can’t believe this. Are you in pain now?”

“Oh, no, I promise I’m not.”

“Of course, I disbelieve you. I’ll send Maria to you with some laudanum in water. If you don’t drink it, it will go badly for you.”

“Damnation, I could have pierced your heart at least five times in as many minutes. You must think constantly and observe me carefully. You aren’t fencing by yourself nor with a blind man. Never underestimate the skill of your opponent.”

She stood panting with exertion, her face glistening
with sweat. “Aye, you’re right.” It didn’t occur to her to take offense.

“Lunge, withdraw! Lunge, withdraw!” She pushed herself until her arm trembled with fatigue.

It was invariably Julien who halted their lessons, not Kate. After one day of enforced inactivity, she’d announced that she was fit as a fiddle and skipped several times in front of him to prove that her leg no longer pained her.

He’d agreed to riding, which was more than she had hoped for, which she didn’t tell him, of course.

During the next three days, their time had fallen into a comfortable pattern. They fenced in the mornings and explored the countryside surrounding the villa in the afternoons. Gabriella appeared to be favorably disposed toward Kate, her former life with the peasant forgotten.

But to Kate, evenings with Julien were a trial. Each time Mrs. Crayton helped her to dress in one of her elegant gowns, she felt a sense of wariness descend upon her. No, it was more than that. It was something menacing and black and chill with foreboding. And yet, she felt it was Julien who was different. Dressed in his severely cut black evening clothes, he became a stranger to her, a threatening personage with frightening claims on her. If only their days could have ended after riding. She came to dread the hours passed in the soft candlelight, sensing in him a growing frustration, a barely restrained urgency. She would feel his gray eyes sweep over her, hungrily resting upon her mouth, then moving lower, to her breasts, devouring her. She cursed herself for showing fear, but she couldn’t help the disjointed and hasty excuse of tiredness she made every night even as she backed away from him, backed out of the room.

As she lay in bed each night waiting for sleep to come, she would try to shut him out of her mind. But she couldn’t. He was there, stark and real within her thoughts, waiting. With him came that coldness, and strange, unexplained images that swept through her, leaving her confused and frightened. She would stare into
the darkness and whisper a simple Scottish prayer her mother had taught her.

One day over luncheon, Julien told her that he had business concerns that afternoon in the village and would be unable to accompany her on their daily riding expedition. Her face fell.

“It’s very likely I’ll be late returning this evening. Do go riding. You know the countryside quite well, and I believe Gabriella could outdistance the peasant if you happened to be so unfortunate as to cross paths with him again.”

She was frankly surprised that he didn’t order her to stray no further than the front doors, but she wasn’t about to say anything about that. “So, then, my lord, you won’t be here for dinner?”

“Were I not to be here, Kate, would you miss me?” He looked at her steadily, and although she answered him calmly enough, she wouldn’t look at him. “Of course I would miss you. If you aren’t back I’ll content myself with a tray. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine, and I promise to be careful.”

He fiddled a moment with his fork, then looked at her straightly. “How could I ever doubt that you would miss me at night?”

She tried to look at him, but she couldn’t. Even when he was on the point of leaving, she knew she was withdrawing from him, relieved, really, that he wouldn’t be here in the evening, to frighten her, to bring that blackness to her.

Before he mounted, he turned to her and gently touched his hand to her cheek. Startled, she drew back. She watched in numb silence as his gray eyes hardened and turned cold, so very cold, a cold she’d never seen in his eyes before when he’d looked at her. He turned quickly away from her, and without another word between them, he mounted, wheeled his horse about, and was gone. He did not look back.

She was still pondering his words and his abrupt departure as she carefully guided Gabriella through the thick
woods to the long, open meadow beyond. Freed from the restraint she felt at his nearness, she could not but feel now that his measured words, so calmly spoken, had been meant to taunt her. But how could that be? Ah, but she saw him again in her mind’s eye, the coldness in him. Even a week ago she would have known only relief that he would be gone from her, but now, today, she felt confused and uncertain. She shook her head at herself. Nothing seemed to make much sense to her anymore. Nothing.

The wind tugged at her riding hat when she gave Gabriella her head across the long expanse of meadowland. She had always thought it strange that nature had carved this open land, so at variance with the dense forest that surrounded it. She gave Gabriella a flick of the reins and the horse tossed her head, easing into a steady gallop. Kate was a good deal surprised when suddenly her horse pulled up short and reared back on her hind legs. She grabbed at the pommel to steady herself and wheeled around in the saddle in panic, expecting to see the peasant rushing at her. It wasn’t the peasant, but rather a man on horseback, enveloped in a long greatcoat, riding purposefully toward her. She drew Gabriella up, thinking that he was perhaps lost and in need of directions. She felt merely curiosity until he drew near and she saw that his face was masked. Kate dug her heels into Gabriella’s sides, her mouth suddenly gone dry with fear. The horse needed no further encouragement and shot forward. Too soon the meadow blended back into forest, and after a moment’s hesitation Kate realized that she couldn’t escape through the thick underbrush. She jerked Gabriella about, driving her in a wide circle, skirting the edge of the trees as closely as she dared. But the man was fast gaining on her, and she realized with a tingling fear up her spine that in a moment he would cut her off. The horse’s hooves pounded in her ears, and even as her mind refused to believe that this could possibly be happening to her, a man’s arms pulled her out of the saddle and she screamed in blind panic. She found herself held
tightly, unable to struggle, so close to the man that she could hear his low, steady breathing.

The man pulled his horse to a halt and dismounted easily, still holding her pinioned against him. She could struggle now, and she did, trying to strike his face, trying to get loose enough so she could kick him. But he just pulled her hard against him, grasped her hands, and fastened them against her sides. She kicked his shin. Her boot connected with bone and flesh, though, and he gave a cry of surprise and pain. In the next instant she was flat on her her back on the ground, the cloaked man out of reach of her flailing legs.

She froze when he leaned close over her and said in guttural, accented English, his voice muffled by his mask, “I won’t harm you. Hold still,
liebchen.
”

She forced her numbed mind to alertness, realizing that she must be calm, use her wits. The man had spoken to her, he’d spoken German. What did
liebchen
mean? Something about darling or beloved? Something like that, but surely that made no sense at all. She had to reason with him.

“What do you want? Please, talk to me, tell me why you’re doing this.” He said nothing at all. “Damn you, talk to me or I will hurt you very badly!”

He remained silent, faceless, now fumbling for something in one of the pockets of his black greatcoat. She tried to squirm away, but his other arm held her firmly. “Please,” she said, pleading now, so afraid she was shaking. “What do you want of me? I have no money and I have done you no injury.” Dear God, where was Julien? The thought of him brought her new hope. Perhaps this man didn’t know who she was.

“Listen to me. I have a husband, he is the earl of March. He is an English nobleman and a very powerful man. You must realize that he will miss me. He will kill you if you don’t let me go this instant. Please, I don’t speak German. Tell me you understand me.
Damn you, tell me
!”

Her voice was thin as a reed, her fright clear, but still the man didn’t say anything. She didn’t know if her
words made any impression on him, or if he even understood her, for the mask and hat covered his head completely. They made him all the more terrifying, seemingly faceless.

He withdrew a white handkerchief and with it a small vial of liquid.

“What are you going to do?” She was hollow with fear, numb with it. Before she knew what he was about, he leaned his body over her chest and wet the handkerchief with the liquid. He straightened, grasped her shoulders firmly, and brought the cloth over her face. A strong odor filled her nostrils, and she began to struggle frantically. She thrashed her head back and forth, trying to escape the cloth.

Without realizing it, she inhaled deeply and tasted the bitter liquid, felt it raw down the back of her throat. She began to feel light-headed, reason, fight, struggle, all deserting her. The man eased his arm around her head and held her still. She cried out then and fell into blackness.