Sluggish. Far too reserved. His impulse to inhibit his moves maintained him upright and inept.
He closed his eyes and lifted his arm slowly, keeping the sword extended as he raised it. At shoulder level he felt his balance going, felt the weight of his arm and the weapon rock him forward. He held, trembling, trying to find his center within the slow sensation of toppling, trying to ignore that dizzy phenomenon of pitching in endless tumbles and listen to his body instead of his mind.
Inside the reeling spin was his shape, his hand raised before him, his legs spread, his body hot, humiliatingly excited still, his feet solid on the floor and his wrist and back and shoulders accepting the weight of the sword. He lifted it higher, testing for the zenith of the arch. That was easier; he could lock his arm above him and hold his head steady until the sense of rotation settled.
He opened his eyes and lowered the rapier, assessing the same perceptions with his sight: hand there, shoulder and spine there, feet braced, the floor beneath him and the ceiling arched overhead. To think of her in the bed above made him feel raw, embarrassed and violent, perfectly happy to kill anything that came in reach. He let the sword tip rest against the stool. Then he took a breath, brought the sword flat against his chest, and spun.
Instantly, his center shattered. The world gyrated around him. He tried to stop, staggered against something, and clutched the sword while the room went past in a sickening whirl. His knees buckled and he let them, let the rapier clatter against the floor, finding the solid stone beneath his palms the only source of stability. He stayed on his hands and knees, panting and sweating, until the reeling gradually slowed.
Then he stood up and did it again.
A simple surgeon had told him once: make yourself dizzy. Force yourself to do it. Make yourself dizzy, and the spells will go away.
Another charlatan, he’d thought, except the man had refused compensation. S.T. had tried it twice, and it hadn’t worked. But neither had all the nostrums and potions pressed on him by more distinguished medical men.
He was down to this. By the third attempt, he’d lost the capacity to pull his shaking knees beneath him and haul himself to his feet. He lay flat on the cold floor, fighting dry heaves, his hand locked around the sword grip and his head aching. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to die. More than anything, he wanted to lie down in his bed and sleep the sickness away.
With a supreme effort he made it upright, using the sword as a support. He careened into the armory and fetched up against the dark stairs with the room spinning around him. He steadied himself and went up, one step at a time, reached the top and hung onto the door. He blinked through the whirling dizziness toward his candlelit bed, and remembered.
“Oh, Christ,” he said, and sank to the floor where he stood.
He closed his eyes and let the vertigo have him. She left the bed; he heard the squeak and rustle, but he couldn’t open his eyes or he was afraid he would retch.
Her cool hand touched his forehead. “I knew it,” she murmured. “The fever.”
He lifted his hand, felt her bent over him. He spread his palm against her chest and gave her a ruthless shove, heard a faint gasp and a thump. He opened his eyes and found her sprawled in front of him, struggling up onto her elbow.
“It’s not fever,” he said sullenly.
The spinning had begun to recede, but nausea floated at the back of his throat. He gripped the sword and stood, trying to breathe through the sickness. For a long moment he stood still, aware of every muscle in his body.
“Get clear,” he said, and extended the weapon, lifting it in the same painstaking exercise: out and up, focus on his shape in the space around him, turn his wrist to the side and down, concentrate, refuse the tumble in his mind, collect his attention and fix it on the motion of his limbs, level and turn, steady, watch the point and think of his own form and structure, turn, turn, turn…
“You are utterly deranged,” she said.
He came around in his slow spin and drifted to a stop facing her. . The nausea faded; she only appeared to slide past twice before her image steadied in front of him, her dark hair falling free over one of his voluminous shirts, her skin pale and delicious.
“Your eyes look peculiar.” She frowned at him. “Does your head ache?”
“It’s not fever,” he said impatiently. He came on guard and stepped into a passado, focusing on the axis between his shoulder and knee. The move seemed better, slightly faster, the dizziness a shadow of what he felt when he’d made himself spin. Perhaps this was what the surgeon had meant. Just force it on himself, until standing still was such a relief that it seemed easy in comparison.
He straightened up and took a deep breath. Then he attacked the bedpost, thrusting in quarte, opening his wrist and concentrating on how the motion felt in his forward hip when he lunged.
He stepped up and examined the post, pleased to see that he’d left not a mark on the wood.
“Is it still breathing?” she asked.
He looked toward her and gave a slight, mocking bow. “Only because I chose to let it live.”
“Fortunately, there were no bedposts lying in wait as you came up the stairs. You weren’t in such fettle then.”
“A moment of light-headedness,” he said carelessly. “I’m all right now.”
She lifted her eyebrows. S.T. made a show of examining the blade and tried not to stare at her naked legs.
“I can see that you are,” she said. The shirttail just skimmed the top of her thighs. He felt his body begin to betray him again. She added indifferently, “I’m at your disposal, if you wish to please yourself.”
He hated to be read so easily. He hated it that she meant to drive him off by beckoning him on. His hand tightened on the sword. “Haven’t yet paid off your debts to me?” he mocked. “Perhaps we should just keep a ledger. Half crown a day for nursing. Only a livre a week for bread and garlic soup, since you don’t like it. Ten guineas for a valiant rescue from debauched nobleman. Is that fair?”
“Quite fair,” she said. “But I haven’t the money, as you know.”
He scowled at the bedpost. “I don’t want money,” he said, and then turned to glare at her before she could speak. “Or to be paid in bed, either. Last night—at the ruins—that wasn’t what I wanted.”
“No.” She met his eyes directly. “It would appear that you want more than I can ever possibly give, Monseigneur. I hope you understand that.”
He did. It was a challenge, like the fencing and the riding; he’d lost his skill for l’amour and would have to restore it. His swordplay was coming back; he could feel it already. He could make her love him if he managed everything properly. He could bring her to her knees. He’d done it a hundred times. He’d botched the thing painfully so far, of course; she’d seen him at his utter worst… but if he kept his head he could pull the fat from the fire. Recoup his losses and win in the end. A hundred times, he’d done it.
He curled his hand around he bedpost and looked at her slantwise. “You may have the bed tonight,” he said, as courteously as any ballroom gallant. “We’ll leave here at dawn.”
Chapter Seven
They left Col du Noir in the teeth of the mistral. It had sprung up in the night, wind howling down through the canyon and around the castle walls like a thousand wolves in full voice. A low rumble seemed to fill the air, a constant grinding sound that could drive a man mad if he listened long enough, sinking into his head and his heart and his bones until he would scream at his wife and thrash his children just for the sound of something human. S.T. felt it in his bad ear as well as his good one; a vibration more than an actual sound, as if some giant inside the earth hummed one constant, ominous note and would not stop.
It made everyone irritable, even on the first day, and the likelihood was that the tempest the French called vent de bis would blow for weeks this time of year. Only Miss Strachan seemed unaffected—but then, she’d never lived through it. The mistral was only wind yet to her.
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There was no such thing as comfortable transportation out of La Paire, even if they’d had the money. S.T. hoarded his twenty gold louis, only parting with his flock of ducks and thirty livres for a decent donkey that he hoped they could resell for the price of a hired chaise to Paris. The animal carried Charon’s saddle and bridle and their small stash of food, another few sous worth, enough for the four nights S.T. estimated to see them to Digne. He’d packed four shirts and a pair of black silk breeches, strapped his colichemarde to his sword belt and the spadroon in a halter across his back, and strode out at a good pace on the eastern road.
The trees and mountain flanks gave some protection from the mistral, but it came screaming with icy force down the valleys. He watched as her cheeks grew redder and redder beneath the hat crammed down on her head, but there was no pause in Miss Leigh Strachan’s stride as she walked along in the other wagon rut, tugging the donkey behind her.
He was secretly glad she’d been ill—otherwise he suspected that she’d be in far better wind than he. In spite of S.T.’s enthusiastic start, the donkey set the pace for all of them, excluding Nemo, by refusing to break into a trot. The wolf cast about ahead of the small party, stopping to wait and running ahead again, alerting them to other travelers by melting among the white rock and underbrush long before S.T. could hear the sound of approaching humans.
Once, when Nemo’s presence indicated they were safely isolated, he said with studied casualness, “I think perhaps we should get married.”
She took it rather better than he’d expected. “I beg your pardon?” she asked coolly.
“Someone’s going to recognize you for a female. ’Twould draw less comment if you’d just go ahead and dress like one.”
“I don’t believe it’s drawn any comment.”
“No. Just wholesome admirers like the marquis.”
She transferred the donkey’s rope to her other hand and tugged at the straggling beast. “I’ve thanked you for extricating me from that difficulty. I shall be warned against such things in the future.”
“If we’re a married couple, no one will bother you.”
“I see.”
He put his hand on the hilt of his rapier, shaping the cool metal. His face felt hot. He wanted to touch her instead of the sword. “I considered brother and sister,” he said, “but I’d rather we travel with some semblance of respectability. ’Twould be remarked upon that you’ve no maid with you, and we’d be expected to take separate rooms if we can get them. An unnecessary extra expense.”
“Yes,” she said calmly. “I hadn’t been intending to travel with a companion.”
He recognized that jibe for what it was, but elected to ignore it. “You needn’t worry that I’ll disturb your privacy by sharing your quarters.” He broke a branch off a bush as he passed and began stripping the leaves. “’Twill just be for the look of things. I shan’t stay there at night.”
“I see,” she said again.
He kept his eyes on the switch he was stripping. “What do you say?”
“I’ll think about it.”
He silently damned her stubbornness. He could hardly set her up for a proper flirt while she was dressed as a man. Boy, rather. Nobody could possibly take her for a man. He’d look bizarre in public, trying to romance a pretty youth. As hopelessly debauched as Sade himself.
That didn’t stop him for the moment, of course. Nemo’s actions told him there wasn’t another human being for a long way. He tried to think of something charming to say, but somehow the kind of phrases that had come easily when murmured in a rose garden at midnight seemed a bit more forced shouted into the face of a freezing wind to a girl dressed in breeches and tugging a recalcitrant donkey.
He had to settle for quizzing her. She wasn’t overly cooperative with that, either. After getting a few brief replies on the exact location of her home, he dropped back a pace and gave the lagging donkey a light swat with the birch. The creature jogged forward.
“Tell me this—just how did you find me?” he asked.
“I looked,” she said briefly. “You’re not so difficult to recognize as you may think.”
“What, then—did you just start out in the north of England with a thieftaker’s handbill, asking for some fellow with outlandish eyebrows?”
“Everyone knows you went to France,” she said. “I started asking for a man with green eyes and gold-favored hair in Paris.”
“Everyone knows—” He broke off, nonplussed. “Of all the… you mean to say I’m no more private than that?”
“’Twas only gossip. In France they know nothing of the Seigneur du Minuit, but they know you if they’ve seen you. You really are most unusual in your appearance, monsieur—I think perhaps you underestimate it. I kept asking among the hôtels and auberges, and it led me to Lyon, and then La Paire.”
S.T. shook his head. “Good God, you shouldn’t have been straying alone in such places. Haven’t you any family left?”
“Some cousins. I’ve written to them.”
“And they approve of this expedition of yours?”
“I told them I must have a change of scenery. That I’ve gone traveling on the continent with a friend of my mother’s.”
“Hmmph,” he muttered sourly, and swatted the donkey again. “So what is his name?” he asked. “This man we’re going to kill?”
She glanced back, and then lengthened her stride to match the animal’s new speed. “Chilton. The Right Reverend James Chilton.”
He stared at her. “You’re joking.”
She merely walked ahead.
“A reverend,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “You want to murder a reverend.”
The mistral blew cold silence back at him. It wasn’t amusing. He was a tactless oaf.
“’Tis not murder.” Her voice was a hissing whisper that matched the wind. “It is justice.”
“Tell me why you can’t go to the magistrate for justice.”
“My father was the magistrate. Mr. Chilton holds his place now.”
S.T. looked up sharply. “And what of the other commissioners of the peace? They let a murderer be entered as one of their number?”
“The others are frightened.”
“Such cowards as that?”
“No.” She shook her head, watching the ground ahead of her. “Not cowards. Frightened.”
He considered that. It was a telling point, a subtle, crucial difference. Miss Leigh Strachan was no fool.
“Of what are they frightened?”
“Of what happened to my sisters,” she said. “They have daughters, too.”
S.T. put his hand on the donkey’s croup. He watched her back. She walked without faltering in her stride. The wind blew her hair in tangled strands that escaped her queue and whipped against her head.
“Are you afraid to ask?” she said, still not looking back at him. “Do you think I can’t bear to speak of it?”
“Sunshine—” he said softly.
“Don’t call me that.” She turned on him, bringing the donkey to a tripping halt. “I despise you when you call me that. Ask me what happened to my sisters.”
He reached for her, but she stepped back, jerking at the donkey’s head to avoid the touch.
“Ask me!” she shouted.
The wind blew the words away. She stood glaring at him, gripping the animal’s halter with white fingers.
“What happened?” He kept his voice brief and toneless.
“They found Anna at the tarn on Watch Hill, where the lovers go. She was strangled. Her dress was all open and pulled up to her waist, like a harlot.” She stared at him, unblinking. “Emily was gone all night. When she came back, she wouldn’t speak. Not for weeks. Then she began to be sick, and the doctor came and said she was going to have a child. The next morning she was dead. In the barn. She hanged herself.”
He avoided her eyes, looked down at the ground.
“I found her,” she said. “I’m glad I found her, do you understand?”
r /> He stroked the little donkey’s rough flank, watching the wind ruffle the gray coat between his fingers. Then he nodded:
She made a sound; a wordless syllable of derision—against himself or her memories or what, he didn’t know. Perhaps she didn’t think he could possibly understand.
There was nothing he could say in answer. So he only swatted the little donkey and made it go on, with a pointless comment on the way they still had to travel.
Without bothering to ask if she wanted it, he brought her water when they stopped at the base of a limestone cliff. The mistral roared in the bushes above their heads, tearing at the clumps of wildflowers that grew high up in the vertical crevices. When he took off his tricorne, his hair stung his cheek. He knelt in front of her as she sat on a chunk of pale rock, offering the cup. “The wind’s burning your face.”
She looked at him, faintly cynical. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Would you wear a kerchief?”
She shrugged and drank. He still wanted to touch her, to brush his fingers over the flushed skin and cool it.
“Are you tired?” he asked instead. “I can lead the donkey if it’s wearing at you.”
“That’s not necessary.” The cool tone informed him that she knew this game and it wasn’t getting him anywhere.
He held on to his patience. His own motives for what he was doing were somewhat confused. He wanted to shield her, to comfort her, but it wasn’t an altogether saintly impulse. Mostly he wanted to hold her body against his own.
They ate in silence.
“I should tell you everything,” she said suddenly. “I can see you would be reluctant to ask more questions.”