Midnight Pleasures (24 page)

Sophie’s eyes gleamed. “What on earth do you suppose he’s doing up there?”

Patrick looked at the happy curiosity in her eyes and inwardly groaned. His wife was definitely addicted to French romances. Hell, she probably thought they were heading into a haunted monastery or some such nonsense.

“I expect he’s smuggling.” His tone was dismissive as he turned to Simone. The girl was shivering, clearly about to have hysterics and refuse to climb the cliffs. “It’s the monastery or the
Lark
,” he said to the girl, not unkindly.

Simone looked uncertainly at the dark greenish storm clouds above them.

“The gun he’s brandishing about is a little-used antique,” Patrick pointed out. “And Hankford does not look handy with firearms.”

Suddenly Simone realized that Sophie had started to climb the steps and was already a distance above them. “Don’t you let the mistress go into that den of thieves by herself, sir!”

Before Patrick could open his mouth, she brushed indignantly past him and started after Sophie.

Patrick sighed and took after her. When the little group reached the top of the stairs, a great oak door stood open before them. Patrick stepped in. The room didn’t seem to be the lair of a group of thieves. In fact, it was as empty as a tomb, and about as furnished. The pudgy Welshman had shucked off his monk’s robe and was standing by the great stone fire-place.

Patrick strode over to him, irritation riding in his tone. “Well? Aren’t you going to reveal your dark secret?”

John Hankford looked at him, a trifle uncertain. Foakes appeared to be a little black-hearted, he did. “There’s nothing bad about the place. Nothing a’tall. This is naught but a ‘ospital,” John said.

Patrick sneered. “Now why would we have to promise not to tell about a hospital!”

But in a flash of an eye, he knew. “God forbid, we’ve found our way into a nest of Bony sympathizers!”

John glared at him defensively. “We’re not for them French, we’re not. But we’re not for you English, neither. All we’ve been doing is mending a few of the boys who got torn up in their wars, and fled the place.”

“Deserters.” Patrick’s entire body was stiff and still. “How did they get here?”

“They were left in a hospital with a drunken surgeon, and they were dying like flies. So the youngest of ‘em put as many as he could in a boat and pushed off. They’re naught but poor foot soldiers. Two of ‘em are just fourteen years old. The French was letting ‘em die.”

“How terrible!” Sophie exclaimed. “And how good of you to take care of them.” She smiled warmly at John Hankford.

“They’re
deserters
, Sophie.” Patrick’s voice was strained. Perhaps the men were deserters—and perhaps they were able-bodied French soldiers pretending to be injured.

Sophie shrugged. “They are boys who are hurt. Who would possibly care that Mr. Hankford is taking care of their wounds?”

Off the top of his head, Patrick could think of a half-dozen gentlemen who would be remarkably interested in the existence of a Welsh group of Bonaparte sympathizers—and first in line would be Lord Breksby. In fact, this was precisely the kind of situation that had worried the English government enough that they had ordered fortifications built on the Welsh coast. But what was the good of fortifications if a group of crazy Welshmen simply invited French troops to land?

“You know, Sophie dearest,” Patrick drawled with just a hint of condescension, “England did declare war on Napoleon last May.”

“Well, of course we did,” Sophie said, looking up at him with an adorable little frown between her brows. “We had no choice once Addington decided to hold on to Malta. That broke the peace treaty.”

An ironic grin touched Patrick’s lips. His wife was a constant surprise to him.

But Sophie had already turned back to John. “Would you be so kind as to allow us to visit your hospital facilities? I have no knowledge of nursing,” she added hastily, “but I do speak French.”

John’s eyes brightened. “You do? That’s grand, missus. Mind you, I can make out a bit of French, and so can the parson, and so can my mother. And the boy who got them over here—his name’s Henry—he speaks some English, but even so we haven’t figured out what some of the lads are saying. No indeed.”

Patrick snorted. The
parson
? A parson was involved in this unpatriotic mess. Still, if Hankford and his mother were tending a lot of French soldiers without speaking the language, likely they weren’t true sympathizers with Bonaparte.

Sophie placed her hand on Mr. Hankford’s arm as he turned toward a side door. “I would be very pleased to speak to your patients,” she said.

John looked at her doubtfully. “I’m a bit worried as how I shouldn’t let you in the nursing side, ma’am, begging your pardon. Because what if your gentleman takes it in his head to tell the great men in London, and then my boys have their heads cut off?”

“I gave my word, man.” Patrick leveled a glare at the impertinent Welshman.

“That’s as may be,” John replied obscurely. But he seemed to have given in, for he opened the side door and held it as Patrick and Sophie walked through, Simone trailing behind.

They turned at an archway leading to a large room. Patrick pushed through the blanket hanging in the doorway and stopped at Sophie’s shoulder. The room was lined with cots, and flung down on each one was a wounded man. Some had bandages wound around their heads and some had bandages around their legs; several seemed to be missing limbs. Most of the men didn’t look over at the door when they entered. A plump woman did glance up, then went back to changing the bandage on a soldier’s chest.

Patrick looked down at Sophie. Her face was utterly bloodless. He put a comforting arm around her shoulder.

“Oh God, Patrick, they
are
just boys, do you see?”

“They look younger because they are wounded,” he said gently.

“No.” Sophie drew in a shuddering breath. “That one can’t be older than fourteen.” Patrick looked where she was pointing. He’d seen head wounds like that in India, and he didn’t think much of the boy’s chance for survival.

Suddenly a small lad popped up in front of them. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was wearing the remains of a ragged French uniform.

“Why are you here?” he demanded. His English was accented but clear—and his gray eyes were fierce. The boy was, in fact, more dangerous-looking than John Hankford had been, rifle and all. He slanted his eyes over to Hankford. “Why did you let them in?”

John cleared his throat apologetically. “Their clipper blew into the harbor and so they will stay the night here, Henry. I had to tell them.”

Patrick looked at the Welshman in amusement, giving up the last remnants of his suspicion that Hankford was part of a Napoleonic plot. Clearly, this French guttersnipe had him over a barrel.

Sophie curtsied. “You must be the man who was brave enough to save your companions,” she said, her soft voice full of admiration.

Henry looked at the beautiful lady before him assessingly. “I only put them in a boat,” he said. “They were lying about dying, with flies all over them. I couldn’t … I couldn’t get them all in the boat, either.”

Patrick looked about the room. “You saved ten men,” he said.

Henry looked up at the tall Englishman.

And then Patrick bowed. “You are to be congratulated, Henry. You did a very brave thing.”

For the first time since they had entered the room, Henry looked a bit confused. “My name is
Henri
,” he said. Suddenly he swept a miniature, but exact, court bow.

Patrick’s eyebrow raised and he involuntarily looked at his wife. There was more here than met the eye. Henri was no common French lad, that was certain.

“How old are you, Henri?” Patrick asked.

“I’m almost thirteen.”

“Hell,” Patrick exclaimed in disgust, “a twelve-year-old foot soldier?”

“No, I was … I don’t know the word in English,” Henri said. “I carried about the flag. I was going to be a soldier, just as soon as I turned fourteen.”

Sophie swallowed and her grip on Patrick’s arm tightened.

Henri, who was clearly ripe for a case of puppy love, looked rather shyly at Sophie. “Would you like to meet them?” He gestured toward the beds.

Sophie replied in French, and that broke the last of Henri’s resistance. He beamed, and led her about the room, whispering the name of each of the injured boys.

Patrick watched Henri for a moment. The lad must have been three or four when the French began guillotining their nobility—and he hadn’t learned that bow from a peasant.

“How did you end up in this monastery?” Patrick asked Hankford.

Hankford looked about the room, rather pitifully. “Mum here and I are members of the Family of Love. Have you heard of it?”

Patrick nodded. Who hadn’t heard of the Family of Love? They were a Dutch religious group that had been variously accused of adultery and nudism, ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth. He looked at the plump nurse, who had finished changing the bandage and was now straightening the covers on a different cot. She certainly didn’t look like the adulterous type.

“I didn’t think the Family was still in operation,” Patrick observed carefully. No point in getting Hankford riled up, at least not until after dinner.

“Oh yes, oh yes, they are, at least in Wales,” Hankford said dispiritedly. “My grandfather became a member way back in 1731. He bought this monastery, thinking as he’d get a proper ‘family’ established here. But when he married my grandmother, she didn’t cotton to the Family of Love, and so she threw all the members out. But later my mother became a member, and so did I. Well, my grandfather’s dead now, but we’re still part of the Family. We couldn’t turn those French boys away when the boat washed up here.”

Patrick was starting to piece together the story. “Henri put the lads in a boat and it came ashore here.”

“Yup. They washed clear around the promontory and then came into the cove. As I said, we couldn’t turn them away, because they’d just be shot by the government. And the Family of Love doesn’t think much of government executions.”

As well they might not, Patrick thought to himself. Quite a few members of the so-called Family had been executed by the British government over the last hundred years. Still, he could dismiss the danger of Napoleon spearheading an invasion through this particular monastery.

Dinner was served in the monastery kitchen, at a long, scrubbed table. Having been rescued from the boat, Floret was hunched condescendingly at one end of the table, seated across from Simone. Sophie slid onto the bench, followed by Henri, who appeared to have transformed into her shadow. He hadn’t left her side since they met.

“Isn’t this splendid?”

Patrick looked at his wife measuringly. If only London society could see its reigning beauty now! Sophie’s hair was topsy-turvy, since she had pulled off her bonnet and tossed it somewhere. Her eyes were shining with excitement at the idea of sitting down to supper with her own servants in a thirteenth-century monastery.

“Yes,” he answered, trampling down a sensation of warmth that threatened to make him dizzy. He deliberately put on the airs of a callous aristocrat. “Oh yes, this is an inimitable pleasure.”

Sophie wrinkled her nose at him. “You are funning, sir,” she said. “I can think of nowhere I would rather be than taking supper with Master Henri here.”

Her husband, on the other hand, could think of many things he would rather be doing. But they were all too heady for the ears of a young boy, and so he kept them to himself.

Chapter 16

T
he next morning Sophie woke early and crept out of bed. Patrick lay in a tangle of faintly musty sheets, only the tip of one ear showing in his mop of black curls. For a moment Sophie paused, curling her bare toes against the cool stone floor. Then she quietly pulled on the gown she’d worn yesterday and struggled to fasten the back without Simone’s help. She slipped on her pelisse and her half-boots and crept out of the room.

As soon as she left, Patrick turned over and stared rather grimly at the cobwebby planks some twelve feet over his head. Something was happening that was beyond his personal experience. Seduce her no matter how expertly, his little wife had never succumbed. While he wasn’t quite the libertine she presumed, it was true that his previous lovers had invariably vowed eternal love by this point in the relationship.

Patrick frowned. What an arrogant popinjay he was! He had simply assumed that Sophie would forget all about Braddon, the man she was supposed to marry. The worst of it was that he had never wanted all those protestations of love so freely given by other women, but now … things were different.

Patrick groaned out loud. He needed to hear those words from Sophie. Oh God, trapped in the parson’s mousetrap. The words took on new meaning. He wasn’t trapped by the archaic words of the marriage ceremony. No, he was trapped by his own distracting, ignominious need for his wife.

A glimmer of a smile appeared on Patrick’s lips. After all, Sophie was his wife. If he was caught, so was she. So what if she didn’t murmur sweet words? Maybe she didn’t feel them. Perhaps those other women had simply told him what they thought he wanted.

Then a memory of Sophie, gasping as she frantically arched against his body, spilled into Patrick’s mind. In fact, Sophie did tell him what she felt, if not in words. So what if those feelings didn’t include frantic protestations of empty love? So much the better. They had an honest relationship. No empty bibble-babble between them.

Slowly Patrick sat up. A grim determination was growing in his heart. Somehow, some way, he was going to wrench those words from Sophie’s lips. Because even if they were just empty embellishments, he wanted to hear them from her. No, he
needed
to hear them. Because …

But he pulled on his clothes and left the room rather than face the answer to that “because.” Why would he, who had never needed anything from anyone, need to hear words of love from a woman?

Patrick ate breakfast alone in the kitchen. Floret was holding court, surrounded by a bemused group of Welsh women who likely couldn’t understand a word he said but looked fascinated by one of Floret’s greatest accomplishments—breaking an egg with one hand.

The sky, visible behind a stained oilcloth that intermittently blew open over the kitchen window, was clear again. The storm had blown over. Patrick was anxious to get back to the
Lark
and see if she had suffered any damage.

He found Sophie in the sickroom. She was talking to Hankford’s mother, over on the other side of the room. Patrick noticed immediately that Henri was still glued to her side.

“Young Henry has taken quite a shine to your wife,” said a voice at Patrick’s elbow. Hankford stood there, looking in the same direction. “He’s been talking to her nineteen to the dozen, about his mum and such.”

Patrick looked down at the cherubic young man beside him. “What will you do with Henri and the other boys when they are well?”

Hankford looked a bit anxious. “I don’t rightly know. A few of ‘em are good enough to leave now, but I don’t know where to send ‘em. There’s precious few Frenchies in these parts, and they’ll stand out, that’s for sure and certain. And they can’t go back, or they’ll just become cannon fodder again.”

Patrick sighed. “Send them to London,” he said.

Hankford looked at him cautiously. “What do ye mean, sir?”

“Send them to London and we’ll find them work somewhere. London is full of Frenchmen and they won’t be conspicuous.”

Blue eyes smiled up at Patrick as if he had suddenly turned into a gold statue. “It’s right kind of you, sir, right kind indeed. Do you know, your lady suggested the same thing, but I told her no, because you might not agree. As the Good Book says, a man’s the head of the household. That’s right kind of you.”

Patrick strolled across the large room, conscious of something odd. Hadn’t John said that his mother spoke no English? And little French? So what language were she and Sophie speaking? But by the time he reached them, Mrs. Hankford had returned to her patient, and Sophie turned to him, smiling.

“Good morning, Patrick. I have been telling Henri that we would be very pleased if he could make us a visit—”

But Henri broke in. “Sir, I told her that you won’t want me to make a visit, as if I were a true
personage
. I thought perhaps you might give me a position in your stables.”

Patrick glanced down at Henri. His little face had fallen into anxious lines, and his body was hunched as if to ward off disappointment. But his gray eyes were fiercely proud.

“I was looking forward to making your acquaintance,” Patrick said gravely. “As a guest, not a stableboy.”

Henri shook his head. “I’m not a
cas de charité
. I must earn money to keep myself.”

“Who was your father, Henri?”

Henri stood straighter. “That is unimportant, because he died when I was very young, and I was brought up by Monsieur Paire, who was a fisherman.” Henri had clearly absorbed Republican principles as he grew.

“Who taught you to make a bow?” Sophie asked. “And to speak English?”

“Before, I had an English nanny,” Henri said. “But she and
Maman
died too.” He stopped there.

Henri was a gentleman’s son, no question about it, Patrick thought. Perhaps they could locate some of his relatives, if any survived.

“Do you know your father’s name, Henri?” Patrick asked gently, but there was an implicit command there too.

“Monsieur Leigh Latour,” Henri said reluctantly. And then, after Patrick met his eyes, he added, “the Count of Savoyard.”

Sophie knelt down and took Henri’s hands. “I would like you to come to London as my guest,” she said. “I become lonely sometimes, and you would be very good company.”

Patrick suppressed a smile with difficulty. Sophie—lonely?

Henri glanced at her briefly from under a thick fringe of dark lashes, then stared back at the floor. “I think … I don’t belong in a fine house,” he said. His voice was perilously close to tears. “My parents cannot return the honor.”

“You would be doing me a great favor,” Patrick said. “I am away from the house a great deal of the time and, as my wife has explained, she grows lonely. You could be her—her aide-de-camp when I am gone.”

Henri chewed on his lip.

“You cannot return to France,” Sophie pointed out, “and you cannot stay here in this monastery forever.”

The boy still looked unconvinced, so Patrick intervened. “Your father would have wished it,” he stated firmly.

“I don’t remember my father,” Henri replied.

Damme, but the boy was as obstinate as a mule! “Then you will have to accept that I am right,” Patrick announced, in the most stiff-rumped tone he could summon. “Your father would want you to live in a gentleman’s house, not in a Welsh monastery, and certainly not in the stables.”

Sophie stood up and shook out her skirts. “There, that’s settled,” she said briskly. “Henri, will you find Simone and Floret and inform them that we are ready to return to the
Lark
?”

As Henri trotted off to the kitchens, John Hankford stepped forward. He had been listening silently. “I was that sorry when your servant said you had to take shelter here,” he said. “I thought as Lunnonfolk would certainly have black hearts. But I’m happy to say, and say I will, that it’s not the case. All Lunnonfolk do na’ have black hearts.”

Sophie began to respond, but John broke in. “An’ another thing … I never thought you’d be so well to speak, either, ma’am. Not in our tongue. I’m mov’d, that’s what I am, mov’d. And so I’ll tell m’friends at the pub tonight. Lunnoners who speak Welsh! It’s enough to make one believe that the English aren’t all bad.”

Sophie cast Patrick a nervous glance. He was clearly lost by the turn in the conversation.

Oh well. The jig was up, so why not be polite? Ignoring Patrick, she smoothly switched into rolling Welsh and said a proper good-bye to John’s mother. Then she turned to her husband, giving him a sweet smile.

“Shall we return to the
Lark
?” Her heart was pounding. Was Patrick angry? He didn’t look angry. If anything he looked mildly bemused.

The minute they were out in the corridor, Patrick said, “Welsh? Welsh? Is your mother Welsh-French, if there is such a combination?”

“Oh no,” Sophie replied. “It was the laundry woman who was Welsh.”

“The laundry woman!” Her husband was clearly astounded. “What contact had you with the laundry or the person who washed it?”

“Her name was Mary. I used to spend a good deal of time with the maids,” Sophie explained, “because my governesses kept leaving—or being dismissed. Finally, Mary taught me Welsh.”

Patrick looked at her speculatively. “What were you doing to drive off governesses, hiding mice in their beds?”

Sophie choked back a giggle. “No! No, I was a most biddable child. It was my father, actually,” she added uncomfortably.

“Oh.” Patrick handed Sophie her muff. Henri—who was obviously taking his role as aide-de-camp very seriously—herded Simone and Floret down the winding cliff steps before them. The sun had risen on a clear, cold-hearted day. Far above, two hawks swooped and circled around the tumbling chimneys of the monastery.

“Look,” Sophie cried, trying to change the subject. “My nanny used to say that hawks swept the cobwebs from the sky.”

“Your nanny,” Patrick repeated. “Where
was
your nanny while you were consorting with the laundry woman?”

“She was married to Mary’s brother,” Sophie explained. “That’s how Mary found a position in our house. Normally my father didn’t allow any servants in the house who weren’t French.”

Patrick was starting to get a very odd feeling about Sophie’s childhood. “So all the servants were French, including the governesses—whom your father freely wooed?”

“ ‘Wooed’ isn’t precisely the word,” Sophie said. “I wouldn’t call it wooing, because he always pulled them into his arms just when Mama was going to pass by. He was quite obvious about it. Even as a child I realized that his behavior had more to do with vexing Mama than with the governesses themselves.”

“Well, I’m sure they disliked that,” Patrick observed.

“Yes,” Sophie replied. “Perhaps they would have objected less had he expressed genuine admiration. However, I think even my father would have had trouble
wooing
some of my governesses. Mademoiselle Derrida, for example, had a bosom like the prow of a ship. She stayed with us for quite a long time.”

“Then what happened?”

“Oh, Papa was discarded by his latest
amour
, which left him no way to provoke my mother in the ballroom. So he fell back on the household. But by this point Mama had replaced all the household servants with rather elderly and extremely unattractive women, so Papa was forced to resort to Mademoiselle Derrida.”

Fascinated and revulsed, Patrick prompted, “What did he do?”

“Well, as I recall, he embraced Mademoiselle fervently in the Blue Parlor.”

“And?”

“She struck him on the head with a brandy decanter.”

Patrick winced involuntarily.

“It wasn’t really her fault; it was the first thing that came to hand. But it was also the first time that my father rather than my mother dismissed a governess. He had a bump over his eye for days. I remember being quite happy because he stayed home every night for a week. After Mademoiselle Derrida left, I was sent to Cheltham Ladies’ School. I think my mother despaired of finding another suitable governess.”

Patrick gave Sophie a rather grim smile. No wonder she thought he’d be out buying negligees for other women the moment she turned her back. Life with the marquis sounded like Bedlam.

By this point they had reached the pier and the waiting skiff. Even Simone climbed the rope ladder back up to the
Lark
without complaint, eager to get out of the wind that was blowing the last of the storm clouds out to sea.

Patrick saw his wife off to her bedroom, placed Henri under the watchful eye of a dependable crew member, then went to find Captain Hibbert. The storm had caused no apparent damage to the
Lark
, and he preferred to round the point to Milford Haven without delay.

For some reason he didn’t feel eager to bound down to the cabin and join Sophie, the way he usually did. In fact, he sent a message downstairs informing his wife that he would eat above, rather than join her for dinner, as was their habit.

It was only when he was standing at the wheel, rounding the point, that Patrick pinned down the source of his dissatisfaction. Damme it, would his wife ever fall in love with him when she was convinced that all men followed the pattern of her father? Sophie seemed to accept without question that he, Patrick, was a rake of the same cut. Patrick’s heart sank. Who but a rake would seduce a maiden in her own bedroom? Who but a rake of the worst caliber would steal his school friend’s betrothed?