Sherri Cobb South (2 page)

“My dear child, this is not the first time I have come home at dawn with a female in tow, and I daresay it will not be the last,” Lord Waverly informed her. “Our arrival would attract a great deal more attention were I to behave as if I had something—or someone—to hide.”

“Oh,” said Lisette, somewhat daunted by this revelation.

At the top of the stairs, Waverly withdrew a key from his pocket, unlocked a paneled door, and opened it with a flourish. Once the pair was safely inside, the earl made sure the curtains were tightly drawn, then lit a lamp. As it flared to life, Lisette examined her new surroundings. Lord Waverly’s lodgings seemed to consist of two small rooms. The chamber in which they now stood appeared to serve as sitting room and dining room combined, and a doorway led from this to a smaller chamber in which Lisette could see a mahogany wardrobe and an unmade bed. Disconcerted by this innocuous piece of furniture, Lisette darted a furtive glance at her rescuer. He was quite tall and his movements, though admittedly unsteady, bespoke the languid grace of the aristocrat. His hair gleamed black in the feeble light and his eyes, regarding her with sardonic amusement, were a startling blue.

Lisette looked away in confusion. From the moment he had agreed to aid in her escape, Lord Waverly had seemed a figure from a fairy tale, and it was unthinkable that such a being should be anything but handsome. Older and wiser heads might have pointed out that any knight-errant worthy of the name should at least be sober, but Lisette had little experience with men, and so had been happily untroubled by the earl’s shortcomings.

Now, however, she was obliged to admit that not everyone would view Lord Waverly’s actions in so heroic a light. If she were caught, the Mother Superior of Sainte-Marie would know exactly how to deal with a nun so steeped in depravity. She would be locked in a cell for the rest of her life and obliged to perform the ghastliest penance
Mamère
could contrive. Even if she were to escape capture, there could be no returning to her uncle’s house, for Oncle Didier and Tante Simone would surely harden their hearts against a niece so lost to propriety as to run away with a strange man. She only hoped that her English grandfather would not fault her for seizing upon the only means of escape available to her.

“I don’t know about you,” said Lord Waverly, interrupting these melancholy reflections, “but I’m for bed.”

This declaration was so exactly in keeping with Lisette’s belated misgivings that her dark eyes flew open wide, and she stared at her erstwhile benefactor with an expression akin to horror.

“Acquit me of having improper designs upon your person,” beseeched Waverly, torn between exasperation and amusement. “God knows I am no saint, but I am not so desperate for a woman in my bed that I am reduced to ravishing nuns!”

“Non,
milord, of course not,” Lisette said meekly.

“It is after five o’clock, and I am dead on my feet,” Waverly continued. “I daresay it behooves me to offer you the bed while I take the sofa.”

“Non, pas du tout,”
Lisette hastened to assure him. “I am sure I could not shut my eyes.”

The earl shrugged. “As you wish.”

He disappeared into the adjoining chamber, and a moment later the thump-thump of his boots hitting the floor informed Lisette that he had lost no time in seeking his bed. She glanced toward the windows that looked down onto the Rue des Saint-Pères, wishing she had the courage to peer behind the curtains. Though she dared not for fear of being seen, a pale gray light visible through the folds suggested that sunrise was imminent.   At the convent of Sainte-Marie, the sisters would be assembling for matins, and one of them would be dispatched to rouse lazy Sister Marie-Thérèse from her bed. But Sister Marie-Thérèse would not be there. Her absence would be discovered, and a hue and cry raised which would spread like wildfire throughout Paris.

Lisette stepped away from the window and glanced toward the room where reposed her sleeping rescuer.  He slumbered on, apparently oblivious to the world, but Lisette remained awake for a long time, acutely aware of having thoroughly burned her bridges behind her.

Chapter 2

The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, forever and forever!

ALEXANDER POPE,
The Rape of the Lock

Lord Waverly awoke late that afternoon with a throbbing head. Rolling over in bed, he discovered that he was fully clothed save for his boots. But greater surprises were yet in store, for the door to the sitting room was ajar, and through the open doorway could be seen a very young girl in the white habit of a novice. She was stirring sugar into a cup of steaming coffee, but upon glimpsing a movement in Waverly’s room, she looked up from this task.

“Good morning, milord,” she said cheerfully. “You would like some
café, oui?”

“Who the devil are you?” demanded the earl. The little nun laid aside her cup and regarded him in some surprise. “But do not you remember me? I am called Lisette. You promised to take me to England.”

Lord Waverly raked his fingers through his hair, further disarranging his raven locks. “Couldn’t you see I was drunk?”

“Oui,
so you said at the time,” Lisette said placidly, retrieving her cup and sipping the warm liquid.

Waverly leaped to his feet, and instantly regretted it. The room spun crazily around him, forcing him to sit down on the edge of the bed. “And you came with me anyway? Good God, girl, have you run mad?”

“Mais non,
milord, you were in every way the gentleman. You even offered me the bed.”

“Well, that was certainly generous of me,” muttered the earl. “Thank God you had the sense to refuse that offer, at any rate.”

“Oh, but you assured me you were not so desperate for, ah,
la société de la femme
that you would stoop to ravishing
les religieuses”

Waverly groaned and covered his bloodshot eyes with his hand. “I must have been even drunker than I imagined!”

“Now you would like some
café, oui?
Will you take sugar?”

“No, make it straight black,” said Lord Waverly, accepting a cup from her hand. Having drunk two cups of this reviving brew, he washed, shaved, and dressed, after which he felt more capable of facing the situation in which he now found himself.

“So I promised to take you to England,” he remarked to his companion. “Did I, by any chance, happen to mention what I intended to do with you when we arrived there?”

“Mais oui,
milord. You agreed to take me to
mon grand-père,
who will give you a reward of the most generous for your trouble.”

“So this shatter-brained scheme was your idea? You relieve my mind! Now it remains only to decide how we are to smuggle you out of Paris.” Lord Waverly studied Lisette for a long moment. No womanly curves were discernable beneath her shapeless habit, leading the earl to deduce that her figure was as yet undeveloped. “I think our best bet is to disguise you as a boy, and let it be known that you are my ward,” he declared at the end of this inspection.

Lisette was not best pleased with this plan. “A boy, milord?
Pourquoi?
Why should your ward not be a girl?”

“Because no one in his right mind would name me ward to a girl of seventeen!”

“Très bien,
then I will be your sister,” pronounced Lisette.

“My dear child, I am thirty-five years old! You might well be my daughter!”

Lisette could not agree.
“C’est absurd!
If I were your daughter, I must have been sired when you were but seventeen!”

“Just so,” the earl said darkly.

He left Lisette alone to ponder the significance of this cryptic utterance while he undertook to procure a suit of clothes befitting a boy of, he thought, about thirteen. It was while he went about this task that he first heard the rumors of a wicked girl who had escaped from the convent of Sainte-Marie on the very morning she was to have taken her vows.

Being nominally Anglican, Lord Waverly had not given much thought to what might happen to Lisette if she were captured, and he was disturbed by the whispered horrors of hair shirt and scourge. His rôle in Lisette’s flight underwent a metamorphosis from the capricious lark of an inebriate to a mission which must succeed.

Having purchased a shirt, coat, trousers, shoes, and stockings, Lord Waverly stopped at the frame shop below his lodgings and requested of its proprietor the loan of a pair of shears. Lisette, fully cognizant of the need for disguise, received her new wardrobe with resignation, but questioned the necessity of the scissors.

“What do you intend to cut, milord? Are the shirtsleeves too long, perhaps?”

“Take off your headdress, Lisette,” said Lord Waverly, not quite meeting her trusting gaze.

Lisette obeyed and the headdress was removed, revealing a cloud of dusky curls.

“Unpin your hair.”

As realization dawned, Lisette’s dark eyes grew wide with horror.
“Non,
milord, do not cut my hair! I will cover it with a hat, and no one will ever suspect!”

“They are already searching for you,” Waverly informed her. “Your escape is already the talk of Paris, and God help me, I didn’t know until I heard it in the streets what a price you will pay if you are caught. We cannot take foolish chances.”

“But, milord—”

“No buts, my child. If you expect to reach England safely, you must do as I say.”

Reluctantly, Lisette removed the pins from her hair, and the dark locks tumbled over her shoulders and down her back. Without a word, Waverly set to with the scissors, and for a long time there was no sound in the tiny room save the metallic snip of the blades and the hushed whisper of Lisette’s long hair sliding down the back other habit to land at Waverly’s feet.

“Finished,” the earl pronounced at last. “It is a comfort to know that, should my skill at cards ever desert me, I can support myself as a valet.”

Receiving no reply to this admittedly lame attempt at humor, he laid aside the scissors, took Lisette’s chin in his hand, and tipped it up, the better to survey his handiwork. Freed of its weight, Lisette’s remaining hair curled riotously about her head in a manner many a dandy required the use of curling tongs to achieve. But the earl’s admiration of his
chef d’oeuvre
was cut short by the sight of Lisette’s brimming eyes and tear-stained cheeks. Lord Waverly, who would have hardened his heart against hysterics, stroked her damp cheek with one finger.

“It will grow again,
ma petite,”
he said gently.

“Oui,
milord,” agreed Lisette, her voice little more than a whisper.

* * * *

They remained in Paris for three days, waiting for the hue and cry surrounding Lisette’s disappearance to die down. Lisette, in her boy’s clothes, chafed under this forced inactivity, but Lord Waverly, while not unsympathetic, remained adamant. By day, he did his best to enliven his ward’s confinement by recounting highly expurgated tales of his life in London; by night, he presented himself without fail at the Salon des Étrangers, where his skill at hazard soon won him the wherewithal to hire a post-chaise to convey them to Calais, where they might board a packet for Dover.

In exchange for one of his livelier (and more heavily edited) stories, Lord Waverly required an accounting of how she came to escape from the convent of Sainte-Marie.

“I never wished to enter the convent at all,” Lisette replied candidly, “but Maman and Papa died when I was still quite young—” Waverly’s lips twitched slightly at the implication that Lisette’s youth lay in the distant past. “—and Oncle Didier and Tante Simone, who had taken me in, they wish me to marry
mon cousin
Raoul, who has a face like a weasel.
Quel horreur!”

“Unthinkable!” agreed Lord Waverly, and although he shuddered visibly, his blue eyes gleamed with amusement.

“You tease me, milord, but it is quite true,” Lisette chided him.
“Alors,
when I tell Raoul I will not marry him, Oncle Didier and Tante Simone say I must take the veil, for they have not the means to support me any longer. For Papa was cut off by his papa for marrying Maman, and so I have no expectations.”

Waverly raised a hand to interrupt this rambling monologue. “A moment, please. I thought you said your paternal grandfather would reward me handsomely for bringing you safely to England.”

Lisette’s black-eyed gaze fell to her lap, and she looked the picture of guilt. “As to that, I have never met
mon grand-père,
although I know he is very rich. And,” she added hopefully, looking eagerly up at the earl, “I should think that by this time he must regret most bitterly that he cast off his only son,
oui?
And be pleased to discover he has
une petite-fille?”

Lord Waverly tried to look stem, and failed. “I see it all now! You did not escape from the convent at all. The Mother Superior undoubtedly tossed you willy-nilly over the wall!”

Lisette looked up hopefully. “Then milord is not angry?”

“On the contrary, I consider it a judgment upon me for over-imbibing.”

Lisette snatched up his hand and pressed it to her lips. “Oh, I am so glad, for I have suffered agonies of guilt!”

“You will pardon me for observing that you kept your sufferings remarkably well-hidden,” remarked Lord Waverly, gently withdrawing his hand from Lisette’s grasp. “You are a designing minx, and I can only wonder that you went so meekly to Saint-Marie.”

“Oh, but Tante Simone assured me that I did not have to stay if I did not like it.
Moi,
I know I will not like it, but Tante is sad because I will not marry her son, so I do as she wishes and go to Sainte-Marie. And I am
très misérable,
just as I expected.”

“And your uncle and aunt?”

“I write to them many letters, telling them I am unhappy, but they never come for me. So the night before I am to make my vows, I stay awake all night. I tell Mamére I wish to spend the night in prayer, and she allows me to keep a candle burning in my chamber. And I do pray, but my prayers are for deliverance. Also I tear my bed sheets into strips and make for myself a rope. Then, much later, I climb up to the roof, tie my rope to the gutter, and lower myself down over the wall. That is when you came along.” She paused here and regarded Lord Waverly seriously. “Do you think I am very wicked, running away from the convent when it was what my uncle and aunt particularly wished?”