Julia London 4 Book Bundle (50 page)

“And the screams! I shall never forget the screams. The trunk from London—
mon Dieu
, my head ached for days!”

An inadvertent chuckle escaped Julian. He remembered, all right. The modiste he had paid so handsomely to have his sisters properly outfitted in the finest fabrics had done splendid work. Each time a dress was pulled from the trunk, the girls screamed their approval. “I am thankful that you recovered sufficiently from your horror to beg me for Eugenie’s hand.”

“On both knees,” Louis reminded him, trying gamely to keep the grin from his face. “You forced me to crawl. Rather proud of yourself then, hmmm? Strutting around my wedding breakfast like a gamecock—as if
you
had given life to those four girls!”

He had not given Valerie life. He had taken it
. A weight suddenly settled on Julian’s chest, and with a shrug, he closed his eyes again. “I did what I could for them.”

“
Oui
, this too is obvious. It was a brilliant match you made for Ann—Viscount Boxworth rather adores her.

And Sophie has benefited greatly from the finishing school in Geneva. But they are grown now, and your restlessness surely comes from trying to fill the space they once occupied.”

“That’s absurd,” Julian snapped. “Now that they are grown, I have the luxury of time to engage in my own interests. I lecture at Cambridge and Oxford—”

“I beg your pardon, you may be quite renowned for your expertise in medieval languages, but an occasional lecture about old documents is hardly enough to fill the days of a grown man.”

Julian did not like the direction this conversation was taking, not one bit. Suddenly he sat upright, propping his forearms on his knees and swallowing past the nausea his sudden movement caused. “Good
God
this conveyance is uncomfortable!” he complained. “I should think you could afford better, Renault.”

“I warn you,
mon ami
, that a restlessness such as yours can get a man killed in France.”

“How long to Château la Claire?” Julian interrupted, lifting his head to glare at his brother-in-law.

Louis brushed a wrinkle from his trouser leg. “Our destination is not Château la Claire. We are to Dieppe.”

“Dieppe?”
He was liking this less and less. “As I don’t suppose you intend to take the healing seawaters there, might I conclude we are going on from there?”

“Not we. You. To England.”

“You are throwing me out of France.” It was not a question; it was a statement of fact.

“I am,” Louis shamelessly admitted. “Fortunately, Christian runs a rather accommodating enterprise. When I spoke with his man last week, he assured me there would be room for you on the daily packet boat.”

With a snort of indignation, Julian folded his arms across his chest. “And if I refuse?”

Louis shrugged indifferently. “His man also promised to return your gun and purse the moment you set foot on English soil.”

Instantly, Julian clutched his side, his frown deepening when he discovered his pistol and purse were missing.

“These things you will not need on the boat.”

The pulse at Julian’s temple was throbbing painfully now. “On my honor, if it weren’t for this spectacular pain in my head, I would gladly beat my purse out of you.”

“Ah, but you are hardly in any condition to do so, and I am compelled to force you from France before your sister finds that fool head of yours piked on the gate at la Claire. Do not doubt that LeBeau will make good on his threats, Kettering. He is a vicious little man who will not tolerate the humiliation you’ve caused him. You are going to England.”

Julian’s response to that declaration was a cold glare.

“Tonight you escape with your life,” Louis warned him. “Take my advice and mend your ways before someone actually succeeds in killing you.”

A rumble of bitter laughter lodged in Julian’s throat. “Perhaps my ways are best mended if someone
does
manage to kill me, have you considered that?”

Louis responded by pressing his lips firmly together and frowning at his lap. Julian slid down onto the bench. “Wake me when we arrive, will you?” he muttered.

Louis woke him, all right, just in time to push him out of the coach and toss a small bag after him. Standing on the main thoroughfare in Dieppe, Julian stared daggers at the Frenchman as he explained that the
Maiden’s Heart
would sail at midnight, and that the captain would return his pistol and his purse when they docked at Newhaven. And just before he pulled the coach door closed, Louis tossed a coin that Julian caught in mid-air. He glanced at his palm—one gold franc—and sliced a murderous gaze across Louis.

“Eat something, won’t you? You look as if you could use it. May I recommend the
Hôtel la Diligence
? Seems rather the perfect place for a Rogue.”

Lifting two fingers to his temple, Julian bowed.

“You’ve been a most gracious host, Monsieur Renault. I look forward to treating you in kind,” he mocked.

Louis laughed. “I don’t doubt it for a moment. Until then,
au revoir!
” Grinning, he signaled the driver and pulled the coach door shut, leaving Julian standing with a satchel at his feet, a waistcoat buttoned unevenly, and a heavy shadow of a beard chafing his face.

“Bloody Frog,”
Julian muttered irritably as the coach disappeared around a corner. He adjusted his clothing as best he could, quickly tying the neckcloth into something barely resembling a knot, slapping the dust from his trouser legs, and thrusting both hands through his hair in an attempt to comb it. He rather imagined he looked like hell, but he hardly cared. There was nothing to be done for it, so picking up the satchel, he dragged himself to the
Hôtel la Diligence.

D
IEPPE
, F
RANCE

S
LOGGING
A
LONG
a rutted French road in a carriage that had seen better days, Claudia Whitney frowned at the man sitting beside her. “I tried to warn you, Herbert, you know I did. I told you I was hardly in need of a driver, and I distinctly recall saying
non
when you started running after me.”

Herbert peered so intently at her she could almost see the rusty wheels turning in his feeble brain. “
Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire
?”

“Oh
Lord
,” Claudia moaned, and impatiently snapped the reins against the back of the hapless mare, urging her to please go faster than a stroll. This drive was quickly approaching the longest of her life. Unfortunately, she knew very little French—all right, she had never been particularly studious, but she would pay a grand sum to know it now. When she had accidentally run over the footman’s foot and therefore had been forced to bring him along—she could hardly leave him hobbled in the road like that—he had been polite enough to pretend he knew some English. So she had talked for the sake of it, filling the space and time, until the last fifteen miles or so when Herbert had begun his wild gesticulating to the ankle and the horse and the reins all over again.

She stole a glance at his swollen ankle. Blasted foot-man
shouldn’t have tried to stop the mare anyway! “If I wasn’t exactly clear when I said I did not want a driver and to please not follow me, I was most decidedly clear when I asked you to
move
” she reminded him. “Honestly, what sort of man stands in the middle of the road when a carriage is bearing down on him?”

“
Madame, parlez un peu plus lentement, s’il vous plaît
!”

“Don’t blame me for your predicament, sir!” she said sharply. “Oh, look! There is Dieppe just ahead! You see? We’ll get that foot looked after in a trice now.” She smiled brightly at him.

With a shake of his head, Herbert tossed his hands in the air and looked off into the distance. “
Je ne comprends rien
,” he muttered.

In spite of the fact that they could actually
see
Dieppe, Claudia had no hope they would ever reach it. Not at this rate, anyway. One would think a man of Renault’s considerable fortune would have more than an old nag in his stables, and she spent the remaining half-hour silently cursing him.

When they coasted onto the main thoroughfare in Dieppe, Claudia reined the mare to a stop and helped herself down from the carriage—over the loud French protests of Herbert—and stood, hands on hips, surveying him, his ankle, and the drop to the ground. “Rather a long way down, sir,” she informed him. “I think you’ll have to put your hands on my shoulder, whilst I put my hands on your waist,” she said, reaching for him. “And then, we might—”

Herbert shrieked when she touched his waist, then followed it up by bellowing in French like a madman. With a quick, mortified look around, Claudia opened her mouth to tell him to stop it at once, but two rather large men actually paused and exchanged words with Herbert. The footman gestured wildly, pointing frequently to his ankle and making all sorts of expressions of agony. A heat began to creep up Claudia’s neck; she glared at the ridiculous footman.

“Pardon, madame,”
one of the men said, motioning her away. When Claudia did not move, he gave her a gentle bump and moved to help Herbert down. Swinging his arm under Herbert’s shoulders, he bowed to Claudia and gestured toward the
Hôtel la Diligence
as his companion fetched her bags.

“Oh!” Claudia exclaimed, realizing they meant to help them inside. “
Merci beaucoup
!” she chirped, and marched forward, leaving the hobbling Herbert to the two Frenchmen.

Nursing his second ale instead of the fourth of five he would have liked—no thanks to Louis—Julian turned apathetically toward the sound of a commotion. Two men pushed through the small door of the inn assisting a hobbled footman between them. Julian instantly recognized the livery of Château la Claire and fumbled in his coat for his spectacles. As he donned them, he slowly came up from his slouch, his eyes narrowing on the woman who followed behind. He abruptly lurched backward, snatching the eyeglasses from the bridge of his nose.

Bloody hell, was this some sort of nightmare, some horrid dream from which he would never awake? He jerked forward again just to be sure he wasn’t seeing things, but oh no, he wasn’t imagining it.
That
was the wench, all right—the impossible, willful, extraordinarily difficult Lady Claudia Whitney! Was he being punished? Did God find his sins so great that He should put her in his path to torment him for eternity? Or was this God’s idea of a jest?

He watched as the innkeeper hurried forward to greet her. Absently smoothing a strand of the impossibly thick auburn hair gathered at her nape, she smiled and motioned toward the footman. The innkeeper spoke; she shrugged faintly and gestured again toward the footman. The footman frantically waved both hands at the innkeeper, his cries of “
non, non
!” audible even to Julian.

Claudia fell gracefully in a cloud of dark green silk
onto the chair across from the nervous footman and leaned across the table, looking earnestly at him. After a moment of animated conversation between the footman and the innkeeper, the innkeeper hurried away. She smiled fully at the footman then, and Julian felt the force of it from clear across the room.
She had smiled at Phillip like that once, across the table at a Christian family fete
.

He shook his head, jerking at his collar as it had gotten incredibly warm all of a sudden, and decided that he was hardly in a mood to suffer the Demon’s Spawn just now, particularly after she had made it quite clear at Château la Claire that she despised him. Well good
God
, when he had come to France to surprise his sister Eugenie with an impromptu visit, he had no idea
she
would be at Château la Claire. With the exception of an occasional glimpse of her from across a crowded ballroom, he had not seen her since Phillip’s death almost eighteen months ago. He would never have even ventured across the Channel if he thought it
remotely
possible she would be here!

And just how in the hell was it that she could look even more luminous now than she had a fortnight ago when he had encountered her so unexpectedly?

Sighing heavily, Julian pinched the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t possible for her to look any more beautiful than she had that day when she had appeared as if walking out of his dreams, gliding barefoot across that wide green lawn with his two nieces, who were dressed in little medieval costumes. The whole scene had been so surprising that it had literally taken his breath away. His heart had begun to pound like a drum, his palms had gone all sweaty, and he had stood there like a dolt, completely mesmerized as she came to the fountain terrace where he was standing.

He had smiled at her—at least he thought he had. Her blue-gray eyes had warily assessed him, a probing gaze that unexpectedly unnerved him, and he had quickly leaned down to hide his discomfort behind a kiss for little
Jeannine. “You look like a princess, my love,” he had remarked.

“I’m a knight.”

“Me, too,” chirped Dierdre, lifting a child’s wooden sword for his inspection.

“Ah, I see,” Julian drawled, and flicked his gaze to Claudia. “And you are …?”

The girls giggled; the briefest hint of a smile graced Claudia’s lips. “Merlin, of course. This is Sir Lancelot,” she said, motioning to Jeannine, “and Sir Gawain.”

Dierdre suddenly smacked his shin with her sword; the two girls looked at him, their faces turned up like daisies as they waited for his reaction. Julian grimaced. “Slaying dragons, I take it.”

Claudia smiled then, and Julian felt his fool heart plunge to his toes. “You might say that,” she said, laughing when Dierdre whacked him again. Only harder.

“Darling, I am not a dragon,” he kindly informed his niece, restraining the urge to snatch the wooden sword from her chubby little hand and break it over his knee.

“In France you are,” Claudia blithely informed him, and Jeannine walloped him with her sword, mimicking her sister. Julian hastily stepped out of their reach as Claudia asked, “What brings you to Château la Claire?”