Triumph in Arms (12 page)

Theodore had railed against such clandestine meetings in furious indignation. They were most unjust, he said, in that the superior skill and power was almost always on the side of the sword master. They were also beneath the notice of a gentleman, as the masters showed no regard whatever for the form and ritual that should govern such meetings. They were not duels at
all in the strict sense, but degrading punishments meted out at the discretion of the men who deemed them necessary. She had often thought, while listening to his denunciations, that fear lay behind them. And what other than suspicion that he might be targeted for such a challenge could occasion such terror?

Christien gave his opponent first choice of the pair of swords. His opponent inspected one’s length while holding it to the muted glow of the streetlamp on the far corner. Pronouncing it satisfactory, he moved to face Christien. They exchanged a slicing salute, then crossed blades with a bell-like clang. The command to begin rang out.

They were cautious in their forays at first, or so it appeared, each man testing the skill of the other as they shuffled from deep shadow to lighter darkness and back again. By degrees, the speed of their movements increased until they were striving in deadly earnest. Distant light slid along the edges of the swords, winking with starlike gleams. They attacked, grunting, recovered with swift aplomb from rigorous defense, rested a bare instant, then engaged again. They skipped forward, carrying a dazzling whirl of blades before them, and retreated while parrying with almost negligent flicks of the wrist and deep breaths from the challenged gentleman, which took on a harsh sound in the night.

Christien was magnificent. His lunges were clean and fast, his recoveries incredibly swift. His concentration was on the tip of his opponent’s sword; it seemed he had none for anything else, certainly none
for Reine’s presence. Perspiration turned his shirt dark across the shoulders and down his back, and made his pantaloons cling to the well-developed muscles of his thighs. The look on his features, seen in glimmers of lamplight and lightning, was one of intent and driven intelligence. There was no anger or even dislike in it, but equally there was no relenting.

The impression sent horror and excitement down her back. Her pulse throbbed in her throat, and it was so difficult to breathe that she felt close to suffocation. Her eyes burned yet she could not look away.

What had the man who faced Christien done? How had he brought this retribution down upon himself? Would the sword master be so grim and without remorse toward all who required chastisement?

These questions had barely surfaced in her head when Christien drove forward in a lightning attack and the sudden shriek of steel on steel. His opponent gave a harsh gasp and staggered back. For an instant he hung with a sword tip, wetly gleaming, protruding from his shoulder. He dropped his weapon, brought up his left hand toward the dark gash that appeared on his shirtfront.

The
maître d’armes
stepped back with a hard pull, retrieving his blade. His opponent sagged at the knees.

Reine did not see him fall. With her eyes squeezed shut and hands clamped to her mouth to stifle her cry, she spun away from the dark garden. Sickness rose inside her, and she leaned her back against the rough stone of the cathedral wall, breathing in deep, silent gasps.

Even so, the outcome of this affair loomed large in her mind. What would be done for the wounded man now that he was down? What if he was so badly injured that he died? Yes, and what if the watch appeared to arrest Christien?

It could happen, as duels of any sort were forbidden by law. They were winked at, yes, but only if the men involved had social standing and were known to the judge. Public outcry had been strong of late concerning these summary punishments meted out by faceless sword masters.

At least one of them was faceless no more. She had seen Christien thrust a sword through warm flesh as if it was of no more concern than swatting a mosquito. She had seen and would never forget it.

It would be as well if no one knew she had been a witness. She was reluctant to have Christien learn of it, but had no wish whatever to be questioned by the authorities. There was nothing she could do by remaining that could not be taken care of with greater skill by a doctor. One would arrive soon, for she heard Christien tell the fallen man so. As she chanced a last quick glance, she saw Christien kneeling above him, using what appeared to be their discarded cravats to stanch the flow of blood.

Moving with the greatest of care, she eased backward a step, another, a half dozen. Turning then, she sped down the alley away from the rue Royale and St. Anthony’s Garden. Scant seconds later, she emerged in the Place d’Armes. It lay empty and quiet, as did the streets around it. She looped her habit skirt higher
over her arm and set off at a fast pace for the street where her mount was hitched.

Never had the road from town to River’s Edge seemed so long or so dark and deserted. Reine rode what seemed like hours. She started at shadows, twisted in the saddle to identify strange sounds, flinched at the rumble of thunder overhead. The houses she passed slumbered with the closed eyes of barred shutters. Sounds were muffled, deadened by hot, too-still air. The thudding of her mare’s hooves kept pace with her hammering pulse and racing thoughts.

She wished most fervently that she had never followed Christien, never seen the grim retribution he had meted out. He had been so implacable, so without pity. The man he had faced might deserve none, yet she was profoundly disturbed by that hardness.

She was also exalted by it. What manner of woman was she that his merciless prowess sent a secret thrill through her? If she had been a primitive creature living in the wilds, it might have made some small sense, but what use did a lady in civilized surroundings have for such attributes in a man? It must be a flaw in her nature, one part and parcel of her excess desires. At least she was now on her guard so could find a way to control it.

From behind her came hoofbeats at a fast gallop. She did not care to be overtaken on the road, for safety’s sake if nothing else. Turning her mare’s head, she left the shell-covered track, easing behind a growth of scrub oak and palmetto.

The riders came even with her place of concealment
and passed quickly down the river road. They were two in number. One sat his mount like a horseman, but the other was unused to the saddle if the wagging of his elbows and flopping of his feet in the stirrups was any indication. They spoke not a word, but appeared intent on reaching their destination with all possible speed. She could tell little more than that in the darkness, but was just as glad to avoid closer inspection.

Fearful the pair might notice her behind them if she took to the road again too soon, she waited until their hoofbeats had faded into the night and all was still once more, then waited some minutes more. Finally, she gathered her reins.

Before she could leave her concealment, the sound of hooves came once more. Her mare threw up her head as if to whinny.

Reine flung herself forward, covering the flaring nostrils with her gloved fingers. Lying along the horse’s neck with its mane in her face, she could not tell what manner of traveler moved past this time. It seemed likely it was Christien, however, as the mare had attempted to signal a stable mate. She hoped so. It would be as well if he had not lingered at the scene of the duel. To aid the man he’d injured was a fine gesture, but not if he courted arrest.

A few more seconds of strain, then she was able to release her hold and sit up. Christien—it was him—had passed on out of sight. She gave a sigh of relief and urged the mare back onto the road.

The thunder that had threatened all evening seemed more ominous, the flickering lightning brighter. Mosquitoes
seemed determined to eat her alive. Tension tied her shoulder muscles in knots, and she developed a cramp in the leg that gripped her sidesaddle’s pommel.

Beyond her physical discomfort was the goad of her thoughts, which turned in endless, stinging circles. Was she doing the right thing with her alliance to the
maître d’armes?
If he meted out punishment so casually to a man for impersonal offenses, what might he not do to a woman who crossed him? Could she make it inside the main house without him discovering that she had followed him tonight? What could she possibly say if she were caught?

She could not wait to reach River’s Edge and the safety of her bed.

At last she began to see the landmarks that told her the plantation was near: a dead tree where buzzards liked to roost, the ghostly shape of Bonne Espèrance, Theodore’s family home, at the end of its overgrown drive. Relaxing a little, she began to think longingly of a restorative sherry and a bath for coolness and to rid herself of the smell of horse.

The muffled crack of a pistol shot shattered the night air. Reine’s mount sidled and reared so she was nearly unseated. Holding the mare in, keeping her place with difficulty, she calmed the horse and brought her to a stand. Head up, then, she listened.

A dog barked somewhere in the distance. That was all.

The road curved ahead of her as it followed the river’s winding embankment. Just beyond that bend was River’s Edge. Reine rode forward with caution.

The dark form of a man lay across the road. His horse stood over him, tethered by reins that were still clutched in the rider’s hand. She recognized the black stallion before she did its master.

Urging the mare to one side, she unhooked her knee from the pommel and half slid, half leaped to the ground. She ran forward, her long skirt almost tripping her so she stumbled to her knees beside the man stretched out on the crushed-shell roadway. He lay facedown. She reached to slip both hands beneath his chest and one shoulder, lifting with all her strength, then rolling him to his back.

His head lolled on the stem of his neck, turning toward her. His eyes were closed, his face unnaturally pale and marked by bloody cuts where he had struck the sharp oyster shells. His dust coat was torn along one side and marked by a dark stain. As she looked down at her gloved hands, the fingertips shone with something wet and blackish-red in the uncertain glimmer of lightning.

“Christien,” she whispered in dismay. “Oh, Christien.”

C
hristien woke with a jerk and the thudding boom of a gunshot in his ears. He lay still, staring into lamp-lit dimness while his mind grappled with where he was compared to where he should be, what he saw compared to what he remembered.

Thunder rumbled again, merging with the steady drumming of rain on the roof. Only thunder, not a gunshot at all.

He breathed deliberately, a slow rise and fall of his chest, and forced his taut muscles to relax. With care, he turned his head on his pillow, taking stock while squinting against the pain of the headache that stabbed behind his eyes.

He was in his rooms at River’s Edge. Someone had undressed him and put him to bed. The bed curtains were looped back out of the way on either side, along with the mosquito
baire.
He was wearing a nightshirt, an item not usually a part of his wardrobe. His lower chest was tightly bound, with so much bandaging on the left side that his arm was held away from his body.

It hurt like hell there just below his rib cage. The
injury seemed strange because he could not recall being touched in that area or any other during the meeting in St. Anthony’s Garden.

But no, he had been ambushed on the road back. He’d seen the flash of a pistol, heard its roar. He recalled now the wrenching blow as the ball tumbled him out of the saddle. He must have struck his head as he fell.

Frowning at the pleated yellow muslin of the tester above him, he considered who might want him dead. Friends of Barichere, the man he’d wounded during their meeting? They could have received word of the duel and decided to avenge the punishment. Lacking the nerve to make a challenge in due form, they might have taken their reprisal under cover of darkness.

To accept that explanation meant taking it for granted that someone close to Barichere knew where he was staying. It also assumed that Barichere, a man with a nasty temper and habit of beating his pregnant wife, the habit for which the Brotherhood had decreed his punishment, was capable of inspiring such loyalty. Neither seemed likely.

Two other possibilities remained. The first of them made Christien’s head throb with a fiercer beat. Surely Cassard and his fascinating daughter were not so anxious to avoid the wedding and regain their property as to attempt permanent removal of the groom? As for the second…

The creaking of the hinge on his bedchamber door ended his ruminations. The crack between the panel and its frame eased open by minute degrees. He watched
it with every muscle tensed for action, though he was by no means sure he could move. He felt as weak as a newborn pup, and had no weapon other than his fists. His sword case was not on the table beside the bed where he’d left it, nor could he spot it anywhere in the room.

The door swung wider. A small face appeared around its edge, one with bright blue eyes and a framing of fine hair that sprang in tendrils from the braid that confined it for sleep.

“Monsieur,
you are awake!” A grin tilted Marguerite’s small mouth as she saw him watching her.

“As you see.” His voice had an unaccountable husky note. It must be from disuse, for what other reason could there be?

“Maman
said I was not to wake you because you are sick. Did I wake you?”

“By no means.” He lifted his right hand to beckon. “Come in, if you like.”

“I do like,” she said, skipping forward in a long nightgown of wrinkled cotton. She did not stop at his bedside but clambered up the bed steps to perch beside him as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The jouncing of the mattress made his side throb and sent pain shafting through his head in a sickening wave, but he clamped his teeth together and endured it.

Taking the fullness of her nightgown at the edges, the child spread it as she might a skirt, then tucked the hem around her feet. The glance she turned on him narrowed. “I came to find you last night,” she said in a severe tone. “I was scared. You were gone.”

“I do apologize,” he said gravely, lying as still as he might if trying not to startle a butterfly into flight. “A gentleman sometimes has conflicting duties, you see.”

“That’s what
Grand-père
said. And you were hurted, too. But it was all right. The dream went away.”

“Was it very bad?”

Thunder rolled again outside. Marguerite looked down at the knobs of her knees where they poked against the fabric of her nightgown. “Not so bad.”

“Tell me about it,” Christien said, watching the play of remembered fear and doubt as they moved over her piquant features. She was very like her mother in that moment, so earnest and enwrapped in practical courage.

“The
loup-garou
came again. He looked at me while I was asleep. He was scary and had marks on his face that were all ugly in the dark. I wanted to run but nothing would move. I only—only opened my eyes a little bit.”

“He didn’t touch you, didn’t hurt you?” Christien asked, his tone as neutral as he could manage.

Her rumpled braid swung over her shoulder as she shook her head.

“He didn’t say anything?”

She gave a small, nervous giggle. “No, silly.
Loup-garous
can’t talk. They only come to bite you.”

“Oh, is that right? And who told you that?”

“Babette.”

This was, as he recalled, the name of her nurse. “Did she, now?”

“Demeter said it, too. She’s a witch and lives in the woods.
Grand-père
said I would not be a mouthful so
the
loup-garou
wouldn’t bother with me. But I don’t think he cares how little I am.”

Christien had heard Cassard say that himself, though neither of them had considered the construction Marguerite might put upon it. “Has Babette or Demeter or your
grand-père
seen the
loup-garou?”

“He goes away before anyone can wake up. I don’t think he wants to see
them.
”

“Why do you think you’re the only one he visits?” Though he refused to give credence to legends of
loup-garous,
it might be useful to discover the nature of Marguerite’s fears.

Her voice dropped to a whisper and her eyes grew wide again. “He is like the wolf that follows Little Red Riding Hood in the story. He knows I’m little and have no sword.”

The dread that shadowed Marguerite’s eyes ignited rage in Christien’s chest like nothing he’d ever known. He wanted to kill whoever was playing games with her, and annihilate the idiots who had planted such superstition in her mind. He was consumed with regret that he had failed her the night before, also that he might fail her again.

Clearing his throat, he asked, “What would happen if he came to the wrong person, someone who was not little? What if they chased him away?”

“He won’t do that. He only comes to me.”

The fatalism of that was telling, Christien thought. The
loup-garou
was singling her out in Marguerite’s view, so she was the only one in danger. How lonely she must feel, and how hopeless.

For all the attention given her fear of this bogeyman, no one took it seriously enough to provide protection for her, such as assigning someone to sleep in the same room, allowing her to occupy a trundle or taking her into their bed. No wonder she had such dark shadows under her eyes and was so difficult to convince that it was bedtime.

“You have marks on your face,” she said in a small voice.

“Do I?”

She nodded. “They look bad, but not like the
loup-garou’s.
Do they hurt?”

“Not exactly.” They were nothing compared to the pounding in his head, though he was aware of a bruised soreness across his cheekbone.

“I could put salve on them the way
Maman
does for me,” she offered.

“You would do that?” It gave him an odd sensation in the region of his heart that she would touch his injuries when she was so obviously repelled by what seemed to be
loup-garou’s
facial disfigurement.

She gave a nod that set her braid to bouncing. “It’s over there, on the table. It won’t hurt.”

“I’m sure it won’t.” He watched with a suspended feeling in his chest as she crawled over the bedcovers, straddling his ankles to reach the bedside table. He caught a fold of her nightgown in his fist to prevent any chance of falling while she leaned to grasp the small glass jar of salve, but released it at once as she scooted closer to him.

Her touch was featherlight, like a spider crawling
over his face. It tickled and itched so mercilessly that he had to steel himself against pulling away, concentrating instead on the rain that poured down beyond the shuttered window. Yet he was entranced by the concentration in her small face, the way she held her bottom lip between her teeth as she worked, the thoroughness with which she searched out every small injury and the care she took not to hurt him.

Reine had bitten her lip in just that way as she measured him for his bridal shirt, he thought in distraction. Such mistreatment for so sweet and tender a surface; to see it had given him a hollow, hungry feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had been driven to kiss her or die from the need. Yes, and there in the smoking room while he played cards with her father, he’d watched her through the open sitting room door. She’d bit her lip as she sewed each careful stitch then. To soothe it later had been not just a yearning but a necessity.

“Where is your
maman
this morning?” he asked abruptly.

“It’s not morning,” Marguerite corrected him, still intent on her ticklish work. “That was a long time ago. Now it’s night.
Maman
is getting ready for bed.”

He had lost a day, Christien realized. The lamp burning on the bedside table was not left from the night’s vigil, but had been brought to light the rainy evening as it closed in on them. The nightgown Marguerite wore indicated that she was on her way to bed, not that she had just come from there. Even now, Reine could be half-naked with her hair tumbling down her back in her bedchamber not far from where he lay.

He closed his eyes, the better to savor the image. Yes, and to prevent any hint of his inevitable reaction to it from reaching his small nurse.

In the quiet that fell, Christien became aware of voices calling back and forth elsewhere in the house. He could pick out an occasional word. Guessing the import of them presented no great difficulty.

They were coming closer. One in particular rang out clearer than the rest. Marguerite glanced over her shoulder, listening.

“Yes,
ma petite”
he said with wry humor in his voice. “Your
maman
is looking for you. You had best answer, for I expect she will check in here soon.”

The result of that sally was not what he expected. Marguerite launched herself across the bed to return the jar of salve to the bedside table. Scrambling back again, she caught the sheet that covered him, lifted it and dove underneath.

Christien stifled a groan as the mattress bounced on its supporting ropes once more, but grinned at the same time. Reaching with one hand, he twitched the sheet over a small exposed foot, then lay back on his pillow. He let his eyelids drift almost shut, watching the door through the barest of slits between his lashes.

Rapid footsteps sounded in the hall outside. They paused. The knob turned in a slow revolution and the door panel swung open. Reine put her head inside in a move so like her daughter’s that Christien’s lips twitched.

She was coming in. He let his eyes close completely and lay unmoving, controlling his breathing to a steady
cadence. Beside him, Marguerite breathed with quick and shallow movements, jerking a little as she stifled a giggle brought on by nervous excitement.

Skirts rustled softly as Reine came deeper into the room and stopped beside the bed. For long seconds, there was no movement, nothing, as if she was studying him. Then Christien felt the cool touch of her palm against his forehead. It was a delicious balm, but lingered only a second before she sighed and turned away.

She was leaving. That was not what he wanted.

Dredging up an artful sigh, he opened his eyes. “Reine? Don’t go,” he said in husky appeal. “Could I…Might I have a sip of water?”

Marguerite erupted from under the sheet, struggling up on her knees beside him. “I’ll get it! Let me get it!”

Her foot tangled in the bedcovers as she reached toward the bedside table. She fell across his chest. He drew a hissing breath between set teeth as pain struck into his side like a burning lance.

Reine whirled with a wordless exclamation, sending the white batiste of her night robe and matching nightgown billowing around her along with the thick curtain of her unbound hair. She reached to pluck her daughter from the mattress, swinging her free in the same fluid movement.

Marguerite screamed and began to kick and flail in a frenzy. Reine, grim of face, took a firmer grip and turned toward the door.

“Don’t take her away,” Christien said through set teeth.

“What?” She swung back to face him.

Keeping his gaze rigorously above Reine’s neck, away from the soft globes of her breasts outlined under her nightclothes where Marguerite was pressed against her, he tried again. “She didn’t mean—didn’t know…”

“She should not be here,” Reine said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for her, we all have. I can’t believe she was hiding from me. Yes, or that you were aiding her in it.”

Christien could barely hear her above the child’s heart-rending cries. His side ached, his head was pounding and he was laid up in bed when he should be at his strongest. It was suddenly too much. Unclenching his jaws, he spoke in firm reproof.

“Marguerite, enough!”

The girl fell instantly silent. She ceased struggling. Hanging in her mother’s arms, she gave him a look of wide-eyed shock that turned slowly to misery. Above her head, Reine’s face was set, her gaze watchful and without warmth.

Despite the strained atmosphere between them, it was a curiously intimate tableau there in the lamp-lit room with the rain falling beyond the windows. They might have been a family already, man, woman and child, all ready for a night of sleep in one another’s arms. The rightness of it was like a blow to the chest for Christien, one far more agonizing than any mere gunshot wound. He wanted it, needed it to be real. What it took to make it so he would do, he swore in silent resolve, whether it meant courting Reine’s father, mother, brother, daughter or, especially, the
lady herself. He had lost his family once. This one, he would keep.