The Counterfeit Mistress (24 page)

“She had hidden me, and given me this little book, like a journal, to take to Papa. It had been brought to the baron secretly, and it contained Lamberte's own accounts of the money he collected in taxes. It shows his thievery. He must have learned his brother had it, and simply killed anyone who might be aware of it. I hid while he tore apart their chambers looking for it. When he left, I ran to my father, who got me out.”

“If he sacrificed himself to do so, he would not want you to come back for him and risk undoing that.”

She pushed out of his embrace, and scrambled to stand. “I knew you would say that. This is not about what he wants. It is about what
I want
.”

He grasped her arm and held her in place. “Do you think to enter the château without this man knowing? Will you walk up to him and use that dagger that you have in your pocket? It is harder to kill than you may think, Marielle.”

“If I did kill him, I would be justified. However, he is not in there now. Or he was not a few weeks ago, and I hope he has not returned but is currying favor in Paris.”

“How do you know this?”

“I ask. I speak to the new arrivals and find out what I can of the region, and of Lamberte. Why do you think I became the niece of a comte? So they will talk to me as an equal, who has suffered the same losses. They would never confide in the daughter of an engraver. Such as I filled the courts, calling for their heads.”

She jerked her arm out of his hold, stood, and brushed off her skirt. “Now you have ruined everything, Lord Kendale. Mr. Garrett is probably afraid of you, and the trouble you can make for him. It will be years before I find another like him. I can only hope you forget about me by then, and do not ruin it once more.”

He stood. “How did you plan to get your father free?”

“I have money for bribes. I have been saving since I arrived.”

Whatever she had, it would not overcome a man's fear of someone like this Lamberte.

She stepped away from him and the wall, into the sun. She eyed that high hill she had just come down. With a sigh, she walked toward it.

“I will take you there.”

She stopped, then turned. He walked over to her.

“I will take you there, Marielle, and try to rescue him. However, you must obey me, and do what I say, without argument or question. If I conclude it is hopeless, you must accept that and leave with me when I say so.”

She looked at the yacht. “Will the navy not—”

“Leave that to me. Do you understand how this must be done? Do you give your word that you will obey my commands?”

Her expression brightened. Her eyes took on the impish sparks that had entranced him from the beginning. “All your commands? I do not know, Lord Kendale. It might be improper for a lady to agree to some things.”

He hardened at once. His mind began romping through all kinds of improper commands. “Damnation, Marielle, stop that. Do you give your word?”

She stepped so closely that their bodies almost touched. She smiled coquettishly. “Of course, m'sieur le vicomte.”

Up on the top of the cove's outer crust, Garrett's man waved his arms in a signal.

He took Marielle's hand and hurried her to the water and the waiting boat. It had been a hell of a time for her to flirt with him, let alone allude to
those
kinds of commands.

And God help him, he loved her for it.

“I
t is too big for you, but it was the best I could do at the last minute.”

Marielle looked down at the yellow dress that Kendale referred to. It had been waiting on the yacht for her to put on. She sat beside him under an awning, with a neatly dressed Angus across on another chair. They might be merely three fashionable people sailing out to enjoy a fine day along the coast.

Mr. Stanton, the yacht's master, called orders to his crew to work the sails this way and that. They all kept an eye on the frigate a mile away up the coast. Presumably the frigate watched them as well. Back and forth they sailed, meandering without destination or purpose.

Kendale held his pocket watch in his hand. “Soon, Mr. Stanton,” he called.

Angus stood and gazed to the north, past the frigate. He squinted, and shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand. “Tarrington is on the move, sir.”

“Be ready, Stanton.”

“What is happening?” she asked.

“We have it on good authority that a smugglers galley will make a run right about now. The frigate will probably assume I am on the boat, and move to stop them,” Kendale explained.

Mr. Stanton peered north. Marielle did too. She could barely see a thick, dark, low line moving on the horizon. The frigate began turning toward it.

Mr. Stanton called orders and a burst of activity bustled on the yacht. Sails moved. The yacht took a decided turn, so abrupt that the entire vessel dipped sideways.

“While the frigate is busy chasing the galley up there, we will sail east down here,” Kendale said.

“Will the galley be caught?”

“After giving a good chase, it will be. The naval captain will find he has taken a boat of suspicious use with fifteen men aboard, but no contraband, and no trained fighters.”

“And no you.” Those trained fighters lounged in the hold of the yacht, out of sight. It would be close quarters for everyone the next few days.

Wind caught the sails smartly. The yacht sped forward through the sea. Mr. Stanton kept his gaze on that frigate. “Mr. Tarrington is providing excellent diversion, Lord Kendale. I do not think anyone on His Majesty's Ship has noticed what we are doing yet.”

“Can we outrun them if we have to?” Marielle asked.

“That is questionable. Frigates are fast, as is this yacht. It need not catch us to matter. It only has to get within firing range, and Mr. Stanton will be forced to lower the sails. The real danger is when we turn south. If it follows, the frigate can cut across at an angle. Do not worry, however. The men on that galley will dodge it for at least a half hour.”

She did worry, however. She could not take her eyes off the sails of the frigate, no matter how small they became in the distance.

“You knew last night that you were going to take me over,” she said while staring north. “This dress says you did. Why did you not say so at once when I saw you?”

“I only knew I
might
take you over. I needed to know the goal, and the reasons. And I had to obtain your agreement to my rules.”

Rules. Command. Obedience. Kendale was acting and thinking like an officer. Perhaps he always did, at least with these men he now led. He appeared to consider her one of them on this mission. There had been little warmth from him since they left the beach. Not even a stolen kiss or secret embrace. Instead he had explained the yacht's organization and hierarchy, as if she had signed on as cabin boy.

They lost sight of land, and even the sails of the frigate. Nothing but water surrounded them. The yacht turned south and began a long, slow curve.

Kendale stood and offered his hand to help her rise. “Come with me.”

He led her into the owner's cabin. The privacy delighted her. It had been hard to spend hours pretending that he only saw her as a lady in distress whom he was helping.

She waited for him to embrace her. Instead he sat her down at the small table, and placed a sheet of paper and an inkwell before her. He took a small knife and sharpened a quill. “I want you to draw out the plan of the château, as best you can remember. I'll not have these men going in blind and caught in a maze if one of them becomes separated from the rest.”

“You can't think to bring them all, surely. Twenty Englishmen filing through the countryside will be noticed. We must go alone, with perhaps one or two others at most.”

“I promise that I will give your advice on military tactics all the weight it deserves, Marielle.” He handed her the quill. “Now, please draw the plan.”

She grabbed the quill, dipped, and pictured the château's ground floor in her head. Her concentration did not entirely obliterate her annoyance that he would assume her advice deserved no consideration at all. Nor did his manner make her happy. They were alone now, and he might show her at least a little affection.

She outlined the building, then divided out the public rooms. She took some time and great care in placing the stairwells correctly. “Have I offended you in some way?” she asked while she pictured the back servant stairs in her head, and the kitchen and services rooms to which they led. “Or does being a soldier just naturally bring out the coldness in you?”

He stood beside her and leaned over her shoulder to watch the plan take form. “You are already a distraction. If I gave into my inclinations, it would only be worse. Should I do that anyway, and take you here? If I do, every man on the deck will hear it, and every one below.”

“I was thinking more in terms of a kiss, so that I know you are not so angry with my deceptions that you have grown indifferent.”

She felt the warmth of his lips on her temple. “I could never be indifferent, Marielle. Do not pretend that you are ignorant of the way you have thoroughly entangled me. As for your deceptions, both those revealed and perhaps those still to be known, that is for another day. Unless it bears directly on our chances for success, leave any surprises for then.”

He left her to finish her drawing. She wished he had not. Better if he had thrown her on the berth even if it meant the whole ship heard and knew. Now, with him gone, she could not avoid the rest of this duty he had given her.

Steeling her composure, she turned the paper, and dipped the quill. Then she outlined yet another level of the château, and filled in the one chamber up there that she remembered—the baron's bedchamber, where her mother had died.

W
ith its sails down, the yacht did not call much attention to itself. Low and long, and obscured by the inlet's reeds and overhanging tree branches, its profile would be missed by passing boats unless they deliberately looked for it. Kendale counted on no one doing that.

He paced its deck, waiting. He had been here since the hour before dawn and every passing minute increased his concern. It had perhaps been a mistake to put Mr. Travis in charge of the scouting party. Once on French soil, he might abandon them to go off on his own again, to seek his own justice. He had the most experience, however, and he had given his word as a gentleman to fulfill this mission. Since he still bore the signs of that thrashing he had received, and since he had not left them after regaining consciousness, Kendale believed him.

Shutters were drawn on the two cabins above deck, one fore and one aft. Stanton slept in one, but would be up very soon. Marielle slept in the other.

He had resisted the urge to go to her there. He stayed below with the men, spending the nights on a hammock strung below the floor of her cabin. He judged his nose to be no more than four feet from her back and he could hear her turn in her sleep. On two nights he had listened to her soft footfalls as she paced the boards.

She had not upbraided him again for lack of affection. If she chafed at there being no more than the rare embrace or kiss, she did not display resentment. He did it in the name of discretion and because he needed to concentrate on the task at hand, but he admitted that he also did not need any of these men accusing him of having his judgment twisted by the kind of intense lust that turned many men into idiots.

So he suffered it. She knew he did. She would catch him watching her while she looked at the sea, and her eyes said she knew what he had been thinking. He hoped that she suffered too. It would be a hell of a thing if denial only affected him.

Morning desire was always the worst, and now it taunted him, urging him to stride to that cabin even though it was already too late to do so. He had no choice except to burn with hunger while he looked at the trees into which Travis and the others had disappeared the last evening.

It appeared the lowest tree branches moved. Either that or the fading night created an illusion. He moved and looked harder. While he did a blond head charged into view, followed by four more men at a run. Travis came last.

They waded into the water with muskets and pistols held high and sloshed toward the rowboat that had brought them to the shore. While they climbed in and began rowing, Mr. Stanton emerged from his cabin as if he sensed their arrival. He lowered a rope ladder. He called other men, who came to help the party board.

Travis handed up his pistol, then climbed the ropes. He drank some of the ale being passed, then presented himself to Kendale.

“Was farther than she said,” he explained. “That manor is a good three miles north of the town, not one. We circled through the country coming back. There's army on the roads. We were hugging ditches twice as they passed.”

“Could you find your way back without using the roads?”

Travis shrugged. “Young Angus there stayed alert to landmarks. Maybe we could do it.”

Maybe was not what he wanted to hear. “And the château itself. How many soldiers guard it?”

“There are guards, but not army as such, and not many that we saw. Two at the entrance. None on the roof. There's a walk up there and if an army was lodged there I'd expect to see some on watch up there, armies liking to keep men busy and all. It appears to be a private residence, though. The army is in the town.”

This part of the report was better than he had hoped. This château served as the home of a tax collector, not an army colonel. It could be hard to bribe soldiers. Servants were another matter.

“Get some food and some rest. We will leave at five, and take our positions before sundown.”

Travis left him. Angus sidled over and looked at the cabin at the other end of the deck. “Have you told her yet?”

Kendale looked over his shoulder. The shutters of one small window had opened. Marielle's pale face looked out. “I will now.”

“She is not going to like it.”

“She will obey me anyway. I hope you are not doubting my ability to command one small woman.”

“Not at all, sir.”

Kendale left the men to their business and strode to the cabin. As he let himself in, he heard the shutters closing.

Marielle stood, wrapped in a blanket. The commotion of the party's return had woken her and pulled her out of bed.

He told her the information that the scouting party had brought back, while he tried to ignore how that blanket conjured up memories, many of them erotic.

“So, we will go soon?” she asked. “We will do this today?”

“This evening.”

She sat on the edge of the narrow bed. “It is hard for me to believe that finally—it feels odd, and unreal. To know it will happen, but to have to wait all day—I will go mad.”

“We will need to prepare most of that time.” Most of the preparation would be so the men did not go mad too. Waiting for action affected one's nerves. It was best to keep busy.

“So you will be with the men, and I will be pacing these boards. I have no guns to clean. Perhaps I will sharpen my knife, then decide which of my clothes makes me look most like a woman of the Vendée.”

“Do you mean a blanket will not do?”

She looked down at her current garment and laughed. “Perhaps I should spend the day washing clothes. I did not bring enough.”

Relieved to see her humor improve, he took his leave and went to the door. He had other things to explain to her, but decided it would not hurt to wait until later in the day.

“Do not go yet.”

Her words reached him as he pressed the latch. He looked back at her.

“Lock the door.” She opened the blanket and let it fall around her hips. Her nakedness glowed in the pale light finding its way into the cabin. “We will have no time before this danger today. Lock the door and come here. Please. I won't make a sound. If they know what we are doing anyway, I do not care.”

Her outstretched hand coaxed him. He secured the door and went to her.

She wrapped him with her arms and pressed her cheek against his stomach. Then she looked up at him with a naughty smile. “If anyone suspects, they will think Mademoiselle Lyon is showing her gratitude to Lord Kendale. They will not be wrong.”

When her fingers went to work on the buttons of his pantaloons, any lingering considerations of discretion vanished. The day was long. There would be enough time to prepare for evening.

She took his cock in her hands, surrounding him in warmth. She stroked with her fingertips and his arousal roared in his head. He watched her hands move, then closed his eyes and let the sensations do their worst. Moist heat surrounded him. He looked down while she used her mouth to create unbearable pleasure.

“No.” He did not know how he managed to say it. His body already felt release within reach.

She looked up, confused and surprised. He pushed her back and lifted her legs. “Not this time. Not now.”

Her back barely fit across the narrow bed. Her shoulders and head rested on the wall. He bent her legs so her feet were on the bed too, and pushed her knees apart.

She was beautiful. All of her, but especially the soft, delicate part of her that only he knew. He caressed carefully, watching how her whole body reacted. She struggled to swallow her cries, and finally covered her mouth with her hand. He lifted her hips, bent, and used his tongue along the soft folds, and finally circling the sensitive nub.

She became frantic. Tremors shook her and wetness flowed. She clawed at the bedclothes, the mattress, his hair. His mind narrowed to a single, sharp awareness of only wanting to claim her.

He flipped her so she knelt. She raised her bottom high and parted her legs. Barely audible pleas floated on her short breaths. He entered her slowly and somehow found the control not to come at once.

Sensations more profound than mere pleasure owned him. A primitive contentment with utter possession joined the sublime pleasure. He brought her to a convulsive climax, then found his own while he ravished her.

V
oices. Bootsteps. Men moved all around the outside of the cabin. Marielle lay on her side, sated and dazed. Kendale sat beside her with his back against the wall. He looked to be sleeping.

An argument of some kind broke out down the deck. His eyes opened and he listened. He swung off the bed, fixed his garments, and raked his hair with his fingers. He looked down at her with a warmth that meant more to her than any pleasure or any words. He hooked his finger into the blanket and dragged it over her nakedness.

“I must go. There are things to do.”

“Of course. I need to prepare too.”

He sat again, and leaned on one arm, hovering over her. “You do not have to do anything. It might be best if you stayed here, out of the way.”

“I need to at least dress properly. We will be walking some distance. I brought some low boots, and a warm wrap. The nights are cool near the coast here even now.”

He watched his hand as he pushed some errant strands of hair away from her face. “You will not be walking. You are not coming.”

She peered at him, to see if he meant it. He met her gaze. He did mean it.

She sat up. “I have to come. You will not know where to go. What if you are stopped? None of you speaks French well enough to fool anyone. You all sound like the Englishmen you are.”

“All that will save us in not being stopped in the first place. That will be easier if you do not come.”

She scrambled off the bed. “This is a bad decision and I do not accept it. You are being sentimental. I am not one of your delicate ladies. I crawled my way out and I can find my way back, and I have planned and saved for this for years, and
I am going
.”

“No, Marielle, you are not.”

He said it so calmly. So confidently. He had decided, and that was that. She wanted to hit him. She turned away while she lined up her furious thoughts, looking for one that would sway him.

“Marielle, all that you remember of the château is in your drawings. You are not needed. We will do it without you. I will find him, I will bring him back, we will sail away, and you will not be endangered unnecessarily.” He embraced her from behind. “You gave your word to obey me and now you must.”

“And if I do not?”

“I will see that you do.”

She glared at him over her shoulder. She thought her head would burst from the rage building in it.

“The drawing I made is rough and incomplete. When I enter that château, I will remember more than I do now. I will remember all of it.”

“The drawing will be sufficient.”

“You are impossible! Without me to speak the local language, those who guard it will kill some of you as soon as you utter one word. Is protecting me worth that blood, if it might be done another way if I am there?”

“At least if someone dies, it will be a man and a soldier.”

“They are not real soldiers. They are a private army and this is a private war. Only you forget that it is
my
war.” She turned and faced him. “You were willing to have a woman guide you once before, and if it were anyone but me, you would be again. You must forget I am your lover when you consider which way has the better chance of success.”

He released her and walked to the door. “I have already considered and decided. I will let you know when we are leaving. Stay here until then.”

A thought came to her in a rush, slicing through her frustration and anger, stunning her. “This is not only about protecting me, is it? It is also about her.”

He turned, exasperated. “You are not making sense.”

“Aren't I? You let a woman guide you before and she led you into a trap.” Astonished and hurt, she walked over to him and looked in his eyes, searching for signs that she was wrong. “You are not really sure that I will not do the same thing, are you? You are still not completely sure of me at all.”

He cupped her face with his hands. “That is not true. I trust you totally.”

“Then let me come. I have a right to. You know I do. And you know that you need me there. Gavin Norwood, the army officer, knows it, even if Viscount Kendale, the protector of Marielle Lyon, does not.”

His expression hardened. His eyes burned. He walked away and left, the door crashing open and closed with his departure.

She pulled out her valise, to find her half boots.

M
r. Stanton had the crew lower the small rowboat into the water again. One by one, the men went down the rope ladder. Kendale watched Travis descend, then four others. The rest would stay here. There was no point in having a dozen walk into trouble if it was waiting.

They were as ready as they would ever be. He doubted that anything mattered more than the gold coins he had on him. Gold spoke to men as nothing else did. Despite what Marielle said, it was the only language that might make a difference tonight.

Marielle emerged from her cabin, wearing boots and her faded fawn dress and a long knit shawl. She had braided her hair into a long plait and donned a white cap edged in a frill.

Angus stood beside him, and watched her approach them. “You will have to explain to me again how easy it is to command a small woman, sir. I am trying to learn all I can from you, see, and you went into that cabin of one mind, with orders to give her, and emerged of another and with no such orders given.”

“I explained all of that to all of you an hour ago, Angus.”

“You did, sir. The change in strategy part at least. Even Mr. Travis came around on that. What I am longing to learn, in a student sort of way, is how one small woman changed your thinking so fast.”

“The clarity of her argument could not be dismissed.”