Scandal's Daughter (23 page)

“Who knows?” He gave her a crooked grin. “Try Polish. And we’re husband and wife.”

She had no time to object. Ahead of them, Pero approached the first sentry, speaking volubly and waving his hand northward.

The soldier, his nose wrinkled, turned to his fellow and said, “
La Slovénie, c’est l’une des nôtres?”

“
Je crois.”
The other shrugged, apparently not merely unsure but uninterested in whether Slovenia was now part of the French Empire. His nose, too, wrinkled as James and Cordelia led the animals towards him. “
Slovénie, Slavonie, parbleu, j’en sais rien, sauf que ça pue comme le diable, ces montagnards!
Laisse aller, mon vieux.”

Cordelia had never expected to be glad she stank like the devil. Her own nose was inured to the accumulated dirt of bathless weeks, but the two soldiers hastily waved them on, drawing back fastidiously as they passed. She exchanged a wry smile with James as the second pair of sentries also stepped back without attempting to stop them.

Across the bridge, through the arch, at last they reached the goal of so many weary miles. They were inside Dubrovnik. The limestone-paved streets, polished to a marblelike shine by centuries of feet, rang to the hooves of Dido, Aeneas, and Achates. On either side, three-story buildings of the same pale stone crowded upon each other, shops and taverns below, dwellings above, varied here and there by a clock-tower or a church.

French uniforms were few and far between. Not heeding their presence, people went about their business in a leisurely way, stopping to chat or to stare at the strangers. Most were dressed in local costume. The women wore long white dresses with embroidered bodices, the skirts covered by bright coloured aprons, spotted or striped. On their heads they had elaborately starched white kerchiefs. Cordelia envied them, until she noticed one in Western European clothes.

The lady in question strolled up the street on the arm of a French officer. She wore a charming high-waisted gown of apricot sarcenet, with ruffles around the hem and lace at the neck and the cuffs of the long, full, gauze sleeves. But it was her hat Cordelia most coveted. A wide-brimmed Leghorn, it sported apricot silk roses around the brim and a curly ostrich feather dyed to match, which bobbed enticingly with every step.

After the sheepskin cap she had worn so long, it was a bit of delectable, irresistible, feminine frippery.

“James, I must buy a hat!”

Following her gaze, he laughed. “So you shall, after a bath and a meal and a visit to the jeweller’s shop I just saw back there. My pockets are pretty much to let, and I don’t imagine yours are in much better case.”

“Not much, and of course it’s all foreign coins, which they are bound to discount. I hope we have enough left between us to persuade an innkeeper to give rooms to us stinking mountain folk. You understood what the sentry said?”

“Yes, and I must say I feared worse of those soldiers than insults! Why on earth did Pero not tell us the French had taken Dubrovnik?”

“He probably assumed we knew, and Captain Hamid probably did not know himself. He said it was an independent city state, not part of the Ottoman Empire, so news of it would not be of any great interest.”

“About as much interest as those fellows at the gate had in Slovenia,” James agreed. “Where the deuce is Slovenia?”

“I haven’t the least idea, and I suspect Pero would be hard pressed to tell us, but at least he appears to have found us an inn,” Cordelia said as the guide stopped before an archway and beckoned them on.

A hurried consultation revealed that Slovenia was somewhere to the north, and that its people spoke a language similar to Serbian—which was the same as Croatian though no one would admit it. Cordelia and James decided their Serbo-Polish would serve nicely.

In fact, the landlord understood them quite well enough. His face rigid with the effort to conceal his disgust from those who might yet prove to be good customers, he listened to their explanation of goods to be sold to replenish their purses. In exchange for stabling for the animals and a single room, he took every coin they possessed, leaving nothing but promises for Pero. Fortunately the Montenegrin guide was not only willing to trust them but quite happy to bed down in the stables.

Cordelia was not at all happy at having to share a room with James. A chamber in an inn was utterly different from a tent in the wilderness, especially a bitterly cold wilderness where a great many clothes had to be worn. However, there was no choice until they had sold a diamond, and they could not visit a jeweller in their present state without arousing acute suspicion.

“I shall want a bath at once,” she told the innkeeper, “and my husband will take one when I am finished.”

The man’s face brightened and he forbore to demand further payment for the extra service.

“In the meantime,” Cordelia continued in a firm voice, avoiding James’s eye, “he will go out and see the sights of your beautiful city.”

“Don’t you want me to scrub your back?” James murmured in English. “I was counting on your scrubbing mine.”

She glared at him. “He will be gone for at least two hours,” she announced.

“I must find a barber,” he said obligingly, stroking his beard. “Time this came off.”

The tin bath came with a kindly chambermaid, Jula, to scrub her back and help her wash her hair. Her short hair and scrawny frame suggested to Jula that Cordelia had recently recovered from some dreadful illness during which the doctor had forbidden her to wash. She was all sympathy. Cordelia made no attempt to disillusion her, nor to explain why her clothes were as dirty as her person.

The water had to be changed half way through, or washing her hair would have been an exercise in futility. She heard Jula arguing with the innkeeper outside the chamber. The maid won. Fresh hot water arrived.

At last Cordelia was as clean as two tubfuls and a bar of soap could make her. Wrapped in a towel, she looked at the clothes she had taken off and those the maid had unpacked. Of them all, the only thing she could bear to put on was her Turkish shift, washed in a mountain stream since last she wore it. The strip of linen with her worldly wealth so carefully sewn up into little pockets was badly in need of laundering before she wrapped it around her again.

Jula, in her neat red and green striped apron, arms folded beneath her ample bosom, regarded the heap of clothes with a disdain quite equal to Cordelia’s. “What will you wear?” she enquired.

“I must buy new clothes, but I don’t want to wear those to the shops.”

“I’ll lend you my second best dress, dear.” The maid had evidently decided to take Cordelia under her wing. “Shall I send this stuff out to be cleaned?”

“No, will you give it to the church, for the poor?” Her thrifty soul rebelled, and she remembered James wondering whether she was an extravagant female who spent money as though it grew on trees. Of course, it was her money, but all the same... “I’ll keep one or two things,” she said quickly.

A shawl and two kerchiefs, plain but useful, her spare shift, a petticoat—she hesitated over her breeches, so comfortable when riding astride, but she was not going to play a boy’s part again, and from here on they would travel by sea. The warm, hooded cloak might come in handy on board.

Since she could not let anyone else handle the diamond cloth, she asked Jula to bring her water to wash her undergarments. While the maid was gone, she dropped the towel and looked at herself in the mirror. She groaned. The last looking-glass she had consulted had agreed with Mama that she was too plump, but now she was about as pretty as a skeleton. Hastily she pulled on the shift over the horrid sight.

Clad in Jula’s gown, Cordelia washed out her bits and pieces and draped them over a chair to dry. The cloak and shawl, well brushed, she hung up to air. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed to await James’s return.

A real featherbed, with clean sheets, a bolster and two fat pillows, and a blue quilt, it was so inviting she simply had to try it. She didn’t want to crush Jula’s second best gown, so she took it off and slipped between the sheets. After sleeping on a carpet on the ground for so long, it felt strange at first, but she rather thought she could easily reaccustomed herself to such luxury.

She yawned. Where was James? He had left a good two hours ago and he was as eager for a bath as she had been. Surely the French soldiers hadn’t... There was something about the French she must...

Cordelia awoke from a dream of filling the ponies’ water bucket at a waterfall. The splashing noise continued, and someone was humming, very softly and out of tune, a tune she did not know. Opening her eyes, she saw James’s naked back protruding from the tin tub scarce a yard away. Hurriedly she shut her eyes again.

Behind her closed eyelids, the image remained. His ribs were as prominent as her own, below the sharp bladed but muscular shoulders. His water-darkened hair, curling irrepressibly though dripping wet, had long grown out of its ragged crop though it did not quite hide the nape of his neck—why did she suddenly want to run her fingertips down that nape? She clenched her hands in denial.

Concentrating on his thinness, she sneaked another peek at his ribs and resolved to make sure he ate well before they sailed from Dubrovnik. Until he regained his sea-legs, he would starve on board. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to reach Italy.

Italy. She frowned. There was something about Italy...

A sudden whoosh made her eyes fly open. She bit back a gasp. James had stood up to reach for a towel, exposing his lean flanks to her fascin...horrified gaze. She buried her fiery face in the pillow.

James knew she was awake. Her slow, deep, even breathing had suddenly ceased and then, as he stood up, from the corner of his eye he glimpsed the sudden movement of her head. Swiftly he dried himself. Wrapping the towel around his waist, he went to sit on the edge of the bed.

She stiffened. Very gently he stroked her hair, still damp but soft as silk.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me, Cordelia.”

“I’m not afraid,” she muttered into the pillow.

He cursed himself for those drunken kisses he had forced upon her after the wild boar-inspired carousal. By the next morning he had forgotten, but when he asked her what had happened, her hesitation before she told him of the tent’s collapse had made him rack his memory. Her distaste for him was not to be wondered at.

But it was before that she had adamantly refused to marry him. No matter; when they reached England she would understand the necessity. He knew his duty as a gentleman and he had every intention of doing the honourable thing, so why not anticipate a little? His body ached for her. He had not had a woman in months.

Under his gentle, unthreatening stroking, her tautness relaxed. He moved his hand down to caress the back of her neck. A quiver ran through her, and she didn’t seem to notice when he folded back the covers.

Every bone in her spine was visible through the fine gauze of her shift. Soon—oh, in an hour or two...or three—he’d take her to find the finest food Dubrovnik could provide. In the meantime, he leaned down to drop featherlight kisses on her neck while he licensed his roving hands and let them go, one to slowly, softly smooth the gauze down her back, the other to graze the side of her breast, slowly, softly, don’t rush, don’t frighten her, though his pulse raced, his blood cried out for urgent haste.

“Oh James!” she moaned, and half turned towards him.

Rat-a-tat. He froze.

Rat-a-tat again. A pause. Thump, thump. Bang. Cordelia’s huge eyes.

“The French?”

An irritable tattoo. “You there!” Croatian, accented. A French accent? “You want go to Italy?” Fractured, shattered Croatian. “I Italian captain. Have ship. Sail tomorrow. You want?”

James sprang up, the towel falling to the floor. “Yes! I come.
Venio!”
Latin was the best he could do. Cordelia spoke Italian, but she was in no state to interview the sailor. She had pulled the covers up, nothing but a blond lock visible. “While I was out I put word about,” he explained, hurriedly pulling on breeches and a shirt. “Most of the traffic is local, coastal, so we’re lucky to get something so soon.”

Lucky? He suppressed a groan at the thought of how nearly he had tasted her sweetness. But so much time had been lost since their departure from Istanbul! However reluctantly, he must seize the chance to speed the journey.

He detoured on the way to the door to kiss the top of her head.

* * * *

When James returned to the bedchamber, Cordelia was fully dressed. In Jula’s gown, with her shawl draped protectively over her shoulders and bosom, a kerchief on her head, and her mountain boots—for want of other footwear—she felt safe from James’s temptations...attentions, she meant. Especially as they had a great deal to accomplish if they were to sail tomorrow.

She did her best to act as if the disgraceful episode in the bed behind her had not occurred. Though she could not quite meet his eye, she asked with tolerable composure what he had settled with the Italian captain.

“We sail at dawn. A deuced restless lot, these sea-captains, always weighing anchor at daybreak,” he grumbled, amazingly cheerful considering his sufferings at sea. Cordelia could not help recoiling a little from the alcohol on his breath. He grinned at her. “Never fear, just a single glass of slivovitz to seal the bargain, though it’s gone to my head a little for want of food in my belly to absorb it. Come on, we’ll eat before we approach the jeweller.”

“I have two diamonds in my purse.”

“Splendid. We’ve the ponies and Achates to sell, too.”

“Oh dear, I suppose so. I hadn’t thought, but of course we cannot take them with us, the dear, faithful creatures. I shall miss them,” she sighed.

“So shall I. Dido and Aeneas have none of the points I’ve ever required in a mount, but they have served us well. As for
fidus Achates
, I shall regard donkeys with a new eye since being honoured with his acquaintance.”

Somehow they fitted all their business and two hearty meals into the remaining hours of the day—fortunately Dubrovnik did not shut up shop for the night at dusk. Wearily they returned through the well-lit streets towards the inn, Cordelia clutching a hatbox she refused to entrust to an errand-boy.