The Reckless One (3 page)

“Monsieur, will you not help me? What harm have we done you? You have already enjoyed some hours of freedom, clean clothes, and will soon partake of a warm, hearty meal.” She sounded tired, as though the strain had finally caught up with her.

As if on cue, there came a thump on the door. Raine’s head slew about, looking for some way to escape. They’d only to call out and he’d be dead.

“Monsieur!” the girl pleaded on a soft whisper.

“Come, son,” Jacques urged. “What have you to lose and how much to gain?”

He could return to Scotland. How many nights had he lain on his moldy pallet and plotted his movements after his escape? Now he had the chance to fulfill those plans.

First to Scotland and Wanton’s Blush, the castle on McClairen’s Isle where his thrice-cursed father lived—but not to see his unnatural sire. No, he would go there secretly to retrieve the jewels his mother had hidden shortly before her untimely death. The jewels he’d seen her stow in the false bottom of an oriental tea chest. The jewels he’d never told anyone about. Not even Ash.

And then, with his stolen birthright hard in his pocket, he’d sail for the New World—and freedom. Real freedom. Freedom from Scotland and McClairen’s Isle and Carr and, most of all, his past.

The servant outside the door pounded again. The girl watched him anxiously, wetting the full curve of her lower lip.

And, too, there was something to recommend itself in the notion of spending several nights ensconced on a ship—as Mr. and Mrs. Lambett they might even share a cabin—with this black-browed, oddly attractive girl.

He grinned, releasing the hammer on the pistol and shoving it into his waistband. “Open the door, Jacques,” he said quite calmly. “I’d as soon eat before we head for the docks.”

True to the girl’s word, the servant at the door carried a tray loaded with food: crusty loaves of fresh baked bread; meat pies with wisps of fragrant, herb-scented steam rising from the slits in their lard crusts; a cold shoulder of mutton and a mound of hot, syrup-coated apple slices.

Whatever doubts Raine had about the pair’s candor, clearly they courted his cooperation. For the first time in years he filled himself to satiation, paying half attention to the girl as she outlined her plan. She gave him the lines he was to say, the manner in which he was to approach the “smuggler captain,” the times and place of the meeting. The other half of his attention pursued his alternatives.

But try as he might, he could not come up with any plan that promised as much as the one the girl proposed—
if
it was true. Besides, if he walked out of the room he doubted he would get far. His last experience had taught him the necessity of plans and allies.

He had no allies; he didn’t even know what lay beyond the next hill. And even if he did escape, to what? Without papers or money, he would be forced to wander until he was recaptured or had managed to accrue some wealth—if he didn’t end his life in some wretched tavern brawl first.

He wanted more than that. His years of incarceration had dared him to consider whether his life could have some value. He’d found he wanted more than that future he’d been pursuing before France: a dingy echo of his sire’s brilliant sins.

He glanced at the girl across the table from him. She’d recaptured her golden hair in a knot at the nape of her neck—a pity, as her free-flowing tresses were rare lovely. Tension marked the corners of her mouth as she endeavored to convince him to accede to her plan.

Raine suspected begging did not come easy to her. God would mark a woman with such uncompromising brows only as fair warning to the opposite sex. Raine gave a fleeting thought to her dead husband. She would have any husband on his knees, this one.

Jacques, chewing through a hunk of grizzled meat, remained silent. Wise man to let the girl do his procuring. The light of the tallow candle cupped her cheek in a warm glow. When was the last time Raine had touched anything as soft as her cheek looked to be?

He refilled his cup, trying to vanquish the spell she cast and pick out how much of what she told him was true. Not that it mattered. If all he needed to do was appear on the docks and speak in genteel accents to some English pirate, and by doing so broker a passage to Scotland … Well, was it not worth the risk of trusting this pair?

Though Dieppe’s docks were crowded, the
Le Rex Rouge Inne
was unusually deserted. But then, Raine thought, peering through the carriage window at the tavern where he was to meet the smuggler, he knew little of life in these dockyards. Dieppe was a fresh-born harbor town.

A gust of wind found its way into the carriage and beneath his newly acquired coat. More from long-forgotten habit than need, he drew the thick wool folds shut. Beside him the girl shivered, her cobalt gaze fixed outside. Since he’d agreed to her scheme she’d been quiet and preoccupied.

On the driver’s seat above, Jacques waited for a signal from the smuggler. As soon as he received it he would alert Raine, who would then proceed to the tavern to complete negotiations for their passage. He jingled the three gold Louies in his pocket, money he’d extorted from Jacques by claiming—not without some validity—that he might have to sweeten the pot should the smuggler prove recalcitrant.

If all went accordingly, Madame Lambert would wait within the carriage until an agreement had been made; then she and Jacques would fetch little Angus from wherever she’d secreted him. Fond mother that she was, she hadn’t wanted to bring her son to the docks before it was absolutely necessary. The thought of little Angus awoke Raine’s curiosity about the young woman’s dead husband. “How did he die?”

She turned her head. In the dim light of the carriage her eyes looked nearly black. “Monsieur?”

“Your husband, how did he die?”

“Oh. An infection of the lungs.” She averted her face once more.

“You were much attached to him?” he asked.

She remained mute.

She did not want to speak to him. He could not much resent her decision. She knew nothing of him other than that he was English and she’d found him in a prison. She hadn’t even asked his name. Of course, she needn’t fear for her safety what with Jacques only a heartbeat away.

The thought of the giant servant damped the spark of ardor still plaguing Raine—but did not altogether drown it. He could not forget the feel of her trapped between his thighs, her hands against his naked skin, her body molded to his. Even now, while his mind unraveled the next few minutes into a hundred possible ends, his body was still preoccupied with hers.

The minutes ticked by, the interior of the carriage grew warm with their shared heat. From outside came the clatter of an occasional passing vehicle, the sharp clink of shod hooves on cobbled streets, men’s voices, distant and muted.

“Why were you so crude, so rough with me?” The stiff leather seat creaked as the girl shifted.

Her sudden query surprised him. He’d been relaxed, simply enjoying her scent, her warmth, and the sight of her. She repeated her question grudgingly, her gaze anchored firmly outside. “Why were you so crude?”

“The woman you impersonated
is
crude,” he said, perplexed. Surely she knew the sort of woman her aunt was, especially since she had used her proclivities so effectively to obtain his release.

“But you touched me even when I made clear that I did not want it.”

He was unsure of what she wanted and so remained silent, waiting.

“Yet you speak well, in the accents of the aristocracy. Are you? Are you well-born? Is your crime against the well-born?”

“Madame, is it not a bit late to be asking for a letter of introduction?” Raine asked, amused by her accusing tone.

“Why were you in prison?” she blurted out, this time accompanying the question with an anxious glance. “Did you … did you assault some woman? An aristocratic lady?”

She thought him a rapist? Ah well, the mistake had been made before. Still, at one time, he would have been affronted. He would have politely damned her to hell and proceeded to spend the night proving his irresistibility to the opposite sex.

But yes, he supposed she would think that, given how he’d nearly forced himself on her earlier. He rubbed his cheek consideringly and for the first time in years he wondered what a mirror would reveal. He smiled and she misread his reaction, shrinking back against the cushions.

“No,” he said to ease her fear, “I have never taken a woman against her will.”

“Then”—she hesitated—“then why were you in prison?”

“ ‘Political reasons,’ a phrase I give you leave to interpret into meaning someone hoped to profit by my incarceration.”

“I don’t understand.”

“And you an ambassador’s wife?” he taunted lightly; but she’d turned that disconcerting gaze upon him again and he answered with a small sigh, amazed at her seeming youth and perturbed by it.

“What did you do?”

“What didn’t I do?” he muttered, and then, “I was imprisoned because I could be and I was
kept
imprisoned because of some French bureaucrat’s fantasy that someday someone might ransom me.” He leaned closer and was rewarded by her faint, heady fragrance. “ ’Twixt we two, however, I can assure you that no one other than yourself would ever have found a reason to set me free. My thanks.”

He smiled again, this time without rancor, suddenly heedful that, indeed, were it not for this woman he would not be sitting in a warm carriage, clean and clad, astonished by his unexpected freedom and fearful he might yet lose it.

But instead of reassuring her, his smile seemed to make her even more anxious. The corners of her mouth dipped unhappily and her fingers worried each other in her lap. “You hated being caged.”

He laughed this time, in spite of himself, and heard Jacques shift atop the carriage in response.

“Rest easy, friend Jacques,” Raine called out in a low voice, “your mistress would play the wit. I simply appreciate her sallies.”

He studied the girl. She looked fresh and vulnerable and, he allowed, a bit piqued that he’d laughed at her. Jacques was right to worry about her. Raine had once known a hundred men who would have feasted on such innocence as hers. They’d once been his boon companions.

“Aye, Madame. I hated it. But never so much as now.”

“Why is that?” She moved forward, her curiosity momentarily making her forget her fear. The carriage window framed her head and shoulders, the light outside glinting off her hair and spinning a bright nimbus about her silhouette. She would, indeed, be unsafe traveling unescorted. She was, he thought distantly, unsafe with him.

“Because I’d forgotten what freedom was like,” he said, “and now I remember and the comparison is … keen.”

Backlit as she was, it was impossible to read her expression.

“Why did your family not—”

“My turn,” he cut across her query. Ash was gone, Fia probably bartered off to the wealthiest suitor by now, and he did not want to think of Carr. He had no interest in his sire, nor any desire to ever again behold him. Though he supposed it might prove inevitable once he’d reached Wanton’s Blush.

Wanton’s Blush.

Once again his future held choices, options, and prospects beyond the simple ambition not to be killed in the next prison brawl. The realization rushed in on him with heady force.

“Monsieur?”

He blinked like a man coming into the sun after too long in the dark, overwhelmingly aware of the debt he owed this young woman. Even if, as he suspected, there was more to this girl’s scheme than she was letting on, at least tonight possibility existed where yesterday there had been none.

“I owe you a debt,” he said.

“Please, Monsieur. You owe me nothing. You are aiding me.” She dipped her head, studying her gloved hands. A long tendril slipped over her shoulder. She looked fresh, soft, and tantalizingly vernal with a youth he’d never experienced himself. “I am in
your
debt,” she murmured.

Now, to ask the heavens for
that
boon would take even more audacity than even he had ever owned. But she’d made the declaration and he had never denied being an opportunist. “It would seem we are mutually indebted, eh
ma petite
Madame?” He paused. “Can I … May I touch your hair?”

It hadn’t been what he’d meant to say and he heard in the stumbling hesitation of his voice a yearning controlled only by some remnant of pride.
Oafish bore,
he berated himself,
blathering fool. How polished, how urbane. ‘May I touch your hair …’

Yet he awaited her answer.

He saw the slight dip of her chin, the barest of assents. Slowly he reached out, as careful of alarming her as if she’d been a Highland colt seeing a man for the first time. She held herself just as still, just as cautiously. His fingers hovered above the gleaming tresses, moved. Felt.

Silk. Cold silk. So polished as to seem crisp, so slickery cold. He rubbed the lock between thumb and forefinger, closing his eyes, intently cataloguing its texture and richness. His fingers worked higher, moving up, identifying the point where the strands lost their metallic coolness and grew warm with proximity to her skin. He opened his hand wide, letting the strands flow between his fingers, crushing the silky mass in his fist and releasing it and the faint fragrance of soap. He sighed.

“How old are you, Monsieur?” he heard her ask wonderingly. He opened his eyes.

“I am a few years into my third decade, Madame.”

“So young?
Mon Dieu,”
she breathed. “How many years were you in prison?”

“What matter—”

“How many?” she insisted.

“Four.”

“You were just a youth …” He barely heard her and the horror in her voice made him uncomfortable. Disconcerted he looked away and then immediately back again because he’d not feasted his eyes on a woman like her in years.

“It is unfair,” she murmured. “This is not right.”

Once more her naivete goaded awake the long-dormant devil within, a misplaced part of himself that could still be amused by such things as a girl’s innocence. “ ‘Right,’
ma petite?
What has
right
to do with my fate … or yours?”

His hand was still in her hair. Slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, he wound a handful about his fist. She resisted, but not adamantly. With each light tug, the stiffness of her body melted like warm wax before a brassier. Her lips—as full of voluptuous promise as her brows were of stern disapproval—parted slightly in astonishment. He saw the glint of her white teeth, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. Sweet clove-scented breath fanned his—

“There he is!” The small, driver’s hatch flew open and Jacques looked down at them.

The girl jerked back, wincing as she came to the end of her tethered tresses. Raine freed her. Damn Jacques.

“Remember, speak only English,” Jacques hissed. “Wait until he is very near. He won’t want you to draw mention to him and I daresay his French is abominable.”