Almost a Lady (28 page)

Meg shook her head in disgust. “Empty words. He has no authority over me and he knows it.”

Devereux sipped his wine and refilled their glasses. “Forgive me if this is impertinent, but why do you travel with him?”

“He’s the only family escort I have.” She grimaced a little over the lip of her glass. “A respectable single woman cannot travel alone, under any circumstances, and most particularly not at this time. There are dangers aplenty for any traveler.” She set down her glass. “My cousin has his faults certainly, but he
is
capable of protecting me.”

“And when you arrive in Venice?”

She thought she could sense a sharpness beneath the question, as if this interested him more than any previous tidbits of personal information she’d dropped. “I shall give him his congé,” she said with a shrug. “Once I am under my mother and stepfather’s protection, I will have no need of my cousin’s.” She made her voice coldly practical.

Devereux absorbed this in silence as he peeled a pear, quartered it, and placed it on her plate. “May I?”

“Why, thank you,” she returned, nibbling a piece. “I would like to take a walk along the riverbank when we’ve finished. It’s such a perfect evening.”

“Delightful,” he agreed. “I trust you’ll accept my escort?”

She batted her lashes at him, saying softly, “That was my suggestion, Monsieur Devereux . . . Daniel.”

He looked distinctly complacent as he raised her hand to his lips. “Nathalie . . . may I?”

“But of course,” she said.

“Such a delightful name,” he observed. “Are you ready for our stroll, Nathalie?”

Meg pushed back her chair at once and took the hand he held out to assist her in rising. His fingers closed over hers in an intimate squeeze and immediately she gently withdrew her hand. She was happy to lead him on up to a point, but he must not be permitted to take the initiative or push things too fast. That was not how the game was played.

His smile faded for a second, then returned as if nothing had occurred. He offered his arm and she took it with a murmur of thanks, wished their table companions a pleasant evening, and walked with Devereux into the soft air.

“I trust you’ll find your cousin easy to dismiss when you reach your mother’s home,” he said, as they strolled down the path towards the river.

“I’m sure I won’t,” she stated bluntly. “The situation is a little difficult, Daniel.” She gave a tiny but eloquent sigh.

“I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to pry. Please forget I asked.” He was all concern, drawing her hand through his arm, then saying cheerfully, “So tomorrow we shall visit Petrach’s grotto.”

“Yes, that will be lovely,” she said. “As long as I can slip away from my cousin. But after a night like this, he’ll be inclined to sleep late.”

“It seems such a pity that you should have to subject yourself to such an escort,” he said, guiding her steps to the seat where he’d found her that afternoon.

She gave another very eloquent sigh. “As long as I don’t have to subject myself to a lifetime of it.”

“Oh, my dear madame, how should you?” He sounded horrified, stopping just short of the seat.

“He’s determined we shall marry. I have a substantial income . . . my late husband . . . you understand,” she said hesitantly, playing with the end of her shawl, and keeping her eyes on the dark river. “And on my mother’s death, there will be more.” Another sigh, a little shrug. “I am hoping that my mother and stepfather will support me in my refusal to marry my cousin.” She turned her eyes from the river and smiled a little sadly at her companion. “A woman alone is so vulnerable, Daniel.” She wanted to laugh aloud at the sudden gleam in his eye.

He took her hand and this time she did not withdraw it. “You must know that you can call upon me, my dear Nathalie. In any way that I can be of service.”

“You are too kind,” she said softly, lifting her face in an invitation that no man could refuse under the silver light of the moon on the banks of a softly flowing river.

He kissed her cheek, then when she didn’t move her head aside, her lips. She allowed herself to lean into him for a bare instant, then straightened. “We must not,” she protested. “But you have been so kind.”

At that he looked somewhat nonplussed. “Kindness is hardly the issue, Nathalie. I do not ask for gratitude.”

“No, no, of course not,” she said hastily. “I didn’t mean to imply any such thing.” Now her mind was working fast. Her task was completed. If he had had any suspicions that she and Cosimo were not what they seemed, she could see that they were now at rest. Now she needed to find a way to bring this to an end without jeopardizing his state of mind. Even if his state of health was somewhat compromised by an abrupt conclusion to this stroll, she reflected with a stab of guilt. True, she enjoyed the pas de deux of flirtation, but her partner in the dance usually had his eyes open. She took no pleasure in leaving a man in all the discomfort of unsatisfied arousal.

She put a hand on his arm. “Please, Daniel, will you escort me back to the inn? The evening has fatigued me . . . forgive me . . . but when we meet in the morning I shall be refreshed.”

Daniel Devereux was a gentleman most of the time, and he could see no way to insist on her staying. He didn’t hide his disappointment, though, even as he offered his arm again. “What time will you be ready for our excursion in the morning?”

“Oh, by nine o’clock, easily,” she said with enthusiasm. By that time she and Cosimo would be long gone.

“Then I will try to control my impatience until then,” he said gallantly, raising her hand to his lips as they reached the door.

She leaned forward to kiss his cheek. “Thank you for being such delightful company, Daniel, and so understanding.”

He watched her ascend the stairs, then went to drown his lust in cognac in the taproom.

Meg whisked herself into the parlor, closing the door at her back. She stood leaning against it, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks a little flushed with the triumph of success. Where was Cosimo? She had expected him to be waiting eagerly for her return. “Cosimo?”

He came out of his bedchamber and looked at her for a moment in a way that puzzled her. If she didn’t know it was impossible, she would have said he seemed put out, and then he crossed the room swiftly. “Oh, you do have the air of a cat with the cream,” he said. “And how well you played it, my sweet.” He kissed her full on the mouth with a hard, declarative passion.

“You weren’t so bad yourself, at the drunken sot part,” she said, laughing against his mouth. “What an unpleasant man you can be.” She felt him stiffen slightly and she pulled back her face, but the moment was gone as swiftly as it came and he was grinning down at her with all the usual playfulness, and the only stiffness she could detect was exactly where she wanted it to be.

“I’m glad to see that drink doesn’t have an adverse affect,” she murmured, moving her hand down his belly. “And I find myself as much in need, love. After such an evening, my appetites are well whetted.”

His own had been sharpened too, but by the strange sensations of watching Meg,
his
Meg, take such obvious pleasure in flirting with some other man.

He had been jealous. He astonished himself with such a reaction, but watching Meg, listening to her, had aroused a primitive sense of competition that, never having experienced it before, Cosimo couldn’t begin to understand.

Chapter   20

I
think we’d be wise to bypass Marseilles in light of our encounter with your friend,” Cosimo remarked as they rode along a country lane under a hot afternoon sun. “I would hate to run into him again.”

They had left the Rhône behind them several hours earlier and the sense of the sea was now much more pronounced. The salt marshes of the Camargue were not far away to their west and the air had a pronounced salt tang.

“He wasn’t
my
friend,” Meg objected.

“He certainly believed he was,” Cosimo said with a laugh.

“Which was, after all, the object of the exercise.” It was a tart rejoinder, but his laugh had irritated her for some reason.

Cosimo glanced over at her as she rode beside him, elegant in a tawny riding habit with a high starched stock and a charming hat with a sweeping peacock feather that he’d bought for her in one of the larger towns they’d passed through. The wide brim of the hat shaded her face but he could see the set of her jaw, the firm line of her mouth. She had appeared to enjoy her part in the previous evening’s theater, but now he wondered.

Well, he would find out soon enough, he thought with grim resolution. The end game must soon be played and tonight he would finally tell her the truth. His spirit quailed at the prospect, and he knew it was because he wasn’t sure of her. He had fervently believed that by the time it became necessary to reveal all and recruit her to the mission, she would be ready to join him, if only by virtue of the bond they would by then have forged.

The bond was forged, in many ways stronger than he had ever imagined it could be. But Meg was still as independent and in parts of her being as unknowable as she had been from the first moment he’d looked at her unconscious body in his cabin and realized the potential disaster. He’d acted from that moment on impulse, making steps up as he went along. But now there were no more steps to make up.

He knew what had to be done in Toulon. And he knew how to do it all, from the earliest stage of setting Meg up in her own establishment and guiding her steps towards Napoleon, to the culmination of the mission. Even their escape route was planned to the last detail. And he trusted himself to adapt to any one of the innumerable circumstances that might crop up to force a change in direction. Except for one. If Meg refused to join him.

“I’m sure Monsieur Devereux enjoyed his evening,” he said pacifically. “He may have been balked of its continuance, but that’s so often the lot of men.” He gave a heavy sigh that brought him his reward. A peal of laughter from his companion.

“Women too,” she said. “And I’ll lay odds, Cosimo, that more women spend more hours of their lives waiting for some man to make an offer, pay a call, or even do so much as leave a visiting card.”

“I don’t think we’ll argue the differing frustrations of the sexes,” he said with a chuckle. “I have it in mind to stop for the night in a small village close to Miramas. There’s a passable inn there. Tomorrow we’ll have to make a detour into the mountains to avoid Marseilles, but it’s a much better traveled road than the one through the Laucune, and not at such an altitude.”

“Whatever you say,” Meg responded. She was fascinated by Cosimo’s intimate knowledge of the terrain they had crossed in the last few weeks. He had known almost every inn they’d stayed at, and not once had they taken a wrong turn. She’d asked him early on how many times he’d taken the journey, and he’d given a less-than-concrete answer. It had satisfied her at the time, and then the rigors of the journey had made the issue irrelevant. But now that they were nearing its end, they became relevant again. So she asked him again.

He drew back on his reins as a rabbit darted across the lane almost beneath his horse’s hooves. The gelding danced back, shaking its head, the harness jingling. “I have not always taken the same route,” Cosimo said, leaning forward to gentle the horse with a hand on its neck.

“But you know where all the inns are?” she persisted.

“Not all,” he qualified.

Meg sucked in her lower lip. “I know you’re a spy, Cosimo. I know you’re a courier. I know you’re a privateer. Why won’t you give a straight answer to a straight question? You were not expecting to take these dispatches across country from Bordeaux to Toulon. And yet you know exactly what route to take.
How?
”

Cosimo recognized the inevitability of disclosure. He had been preparing himself to make it tonight, but in the face of that question, it had to be now. Here in the open without any props to assist him, nothing to divert attention. And perhaps it was better that way. Dirty secrets laid out in the fresh air, without artifice.

“I will tell you. But not on horseback.” He raised his whip and gestured across a field to where a wisp of smoke hung against the deep blue of the sky. “We’ll go over there, find water for the horses, and rest for a while before we continue.”

“I wouldn’t mind the opportunity to stretch my legs,” Meg said, swallowing the surge of unease that rose like bile in her throat. Why was she so certain something bad was about to happen?

They struck out across the field, Meg’s mare, never one to toe the line, for once keeping nose to tail with Cosimo’s gelding. At the edge of the field that bordered on a tiny hamlet, they came to a narrow stream that was no more than a water-filled ditch. Cosimo dismounted and dipped a finger into the ditch. He touched the fingertip to his tongue. “It’s brackish,” he said. “Probably has its source somewhere in the Camargue.” He remounted. “We’ll go into the hamlet. They’ll have a horse trough and we can water the animals.”

Meg followed him, her sense of unease increasing. Cosimo had never veered voluntarily from their route before.

They broke through the hedgerow into a narrow dusty lane. On either side were small stone cottages, some with kitchen gardens, the soil baked hard in the hot sun of the South. They encountered few people: an old man resting on a hoe, a little girl chasing a scrawny chicken.

Cosimo leaned over the gelding’s neck and asked the man where he would find the horse trough. The man gestured down the lane, and said something that was incomprehensible to Meg, but Cosimo seemed to understand. He held out a coin with a word of thanks, then nudged the gelding.

They found the well and the long horse trough in a tiny courtyard just off the lane. Cosimo dismounted and led his horse to the trough. This barren spot was not the place to make his disclosure. It was too public, and there was nowhere to sit. He saw Meg dismount and lead her mare to water.

“Hold the horses, Meg. I’ll return in a few minutes.” He gave her his horse’s reins and those of the packhorse that he’d been leading, and loped off towards the source of a certain scent coming from one of the narrow alleys that led off the courtyard.

When he returned with a rush basket, Meg was drawing the horses away from the trough. “They’ve had sufficient,” she said. “What’s that you have?” She indicated the basket.

“Something to refresh
ourselves
with,” Cosimo responded. “I followed my nose and it led me to the Holy Grail.” He took the reins of his own horse and those of the packhorse. “We’ll walk the horses just a few yards. There’s a perfect place for a picnic.”

Despite her unease, Meg was hungry enough to be intrigued by the contents of the basket. She took the mare and followed. Cosimo led them to an open space along a stream into which the ditch opened. Weeping willows along the stream offered shade, and a grove of pine trees clustered at the edge of the clearing. She followed suit as Cosimo tethered his horses in a patch of lush grass.

“Are we dining?” she inquired, trying for a playful note as she sat on a mossy root and unpinned her hat, setting it on the grass beside her before reaching for the rush basket.

“Not exactly,” Cosimo said, sitting down beside her. “I’m hoping that we’ll do that when we stop for the night. But we haven’t eaten much thus far today, so a little bread and cheese, a ham-and-egg pie, still warm from the oven, and a flagon of wine might be welcome.”

Meg propped her back against the willow tree. “They might,” she agreed as she drew out the flagon of red wine. She passed it to him and carefully lifted out of the basket a golden-crusted, richly fragrant pie. She sniffed appreciatively, then rummaged some more, coming up with a long loaf of crusty bread and a hefty wedge of ripe, creamy cheese.

Cosimo drew the cork on the flagon with his teeth and took a deep swallow, then passed it to Meg.

She took it, swallowed a draught herself, then looked at him. “Are you going to tell me something I won’t wish to hear, Cosimo?”

He returned the look quietly for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. I own I would have preferred a different setting for this, but I must use what I have.”

Meg set the flagon on the grass and drew up her knees beneath the skirt of her riding habit. The leather britches, which in female riding dress were disguised by the skirt, had become so much second nature in the last weeks that she tended to forget about the skirt altogether.

She clasped her knees and rested her chin on them. “Perhaps you should begin.”

“Perhaps I should.” But he didn’t begin immediately. He drew out the folding knife that was always sheathed at his belt and sliced the pie into four quarters. “Shall we eat first?” He lifted one quarter on the flat blade of the knife and held it out to her.

“Will I need sustaining?” she inquired with a rather unconvincing smile as she took the slice and bit into it.

He shook his head, saying only, “Eat, Meg.” He took up the loaf and broke it, then sliced into the cheese, spreading it on a crusty chunk of bread.

Meg was surprised that despite the nagging unease her appetite was as sharp as always. However, they ate in silence, passing the flagon between them, until finally Cosimo brushed off his hands, replaced the empty pie dish and flagon in the rush basket, and stood up.

“I’m going to take this back to its home,” he said. “We’ll talk when I return.” He set off at a fast stride.

Meg stood up and went to the stream. She knelt to wash her hands and splashed water on her face, then sat back on her heels, staring down into the clear bubbling surface of the stream, absently noticing the darting silver flashes of tiny fish caught by the glancing sunlight. Nagging unease had become outright dread, and her picnic now sat like lead in her belly.

She felt rather than heard Cosimo’s return and slowly rose to her feet, turning as slowly. He stood beneath a willow tree, hands thrust into his pockets, and met her intent gaze. They were separated by about five feet. She clasped her hands against her skirt and gave an imperceptible nod as if telling him she was ready.

His voice was low and even as he told her. He told her what he was, what he was going to do, how he had deceived her, and what he wanted of her. And throughout she was as still as stone, her eyes never leaving his face, watching so intently it was as if she was seeing the words as they came out of his mouth, until finally there was nothing left to tell, and he was silent.

He was going to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte.

Meg stared at him, stupefied by the grandeur of such an endeavor . . . the grandeur and the
enormity
of it. And as she stood there, staring, the implications of everything he’d said finally became concrete.

From the first moment of seeing her he had used her, manipulated her, deceived her.
I don’t risk failure, my dear.
His words came back to her with renewed resonance. He’d been grooming her from the first moment of seeing her.

“No,” she declared. “I will not help you kill a man.”

The rest could wait, her outrage, her disgust, the bitter blow to her sense of self, all that could wait until he understood that every despicable thing he had done to her had been worthless.

It was worse than he’d expected, and Cosimo thought he had been prepared for the worst. But her extreme pallor, the deadness in those always lively green eyes, the death mask set of her features filled him with alarm.

“Meg . . .” He took a step towards her.

She threw up her hands palms outward. “Don’t come near me.”

Unwisely he ignored her. He came close, reaching for her hands. “Meg . . . sweetheart, listen—”

She hit him with all the force she had in her. Her swinging palms cracked against his face, one side and then the other, making a sound in the afternoon quiet that brought an alarmed whinny from the tethered horses.

His nostrils flared, but he didn’t move. His hands were still and loose at his sides as the scarlet prints flamed on his cheeks. “You have the right,” he said softly.

“I abhor violence,” Meg said, spinning away from him. “And I detest you for making me do such a thing.” She walked away into the grove of pine trees.

Cosimo touched his stinging cheeks. For a moment he had been reassured by her attack, action rather than that dreadful deadness, but now he was unsure. An action so out of character would only make Meg feel worse than she did, and would set her even more strongly against him.

He stood irresolute for a few minutes, then shook himself out of his wretched reverie. They couldn’t stay here, however ghastly the situation. He followed her path into the trees and called her.