The friend ofJulie; ou, la nouvelle Héloïse?
“I have some writing to briefly attend first. If you wish to refresh yourself, there is water in the basin.” Nathaniel collected paper, pen, ink, and blotter from a drawer and reseated himself.His posture was casual and he’d seemingly dismissed her from his attention, but she doubted he missed anything.
She slipped behind the privacy screen to see to her needs and then returned to the basin, dampening her handkerchief and loosening the neck of her blouse. Behind the screen once more, she washed what she could without fully stripping to the waist. Nathaniel’s pen was audibly at work, but she still felt vulnerable with blouse unlaced and chemise pulled aside.
Such a strange situation.Yet she was tentatively more hopeful than she’d been in some time. Perhaps it was unwise to have faith in Nathaniel’s words.
I know little of him beyond his investigation of Mr. Compton. He’s some sort of intelligence officer or agent, perhaps, and cannot speak of his own work.Such would not make him inherently untrustworthy, merely secretive. Understandably so. But she didn’t think he meant her harm, and she believed him that he would help her.
For the first time since Da’s death, she did not feel soalonewith the burden of finding Lucy.
Putting her clothing to rights, she emerged and moved to the mirror to attempt arranging her hair into something neater. She’d lost some of the pins in their struggle and more in the fiacre; the remainder had come free in the course of the night. She’d twisted her hair off her face into something practical when she woke, but her hair was too heavy to stay so for long on its own.
The pen ceased scratching. Nathaniel’s eyes in the mirror arrested her hands: He was watching her.
He looked back to his note, and she returned to the task of untangling her hair. Conscious of his gaze on her periodically, she determinedly ignored his reflection as she tugged at a particularly knotted strand.
“You have a hairbrush.” His voice was low as he again met her eyes. “Would you like it now?”
“Please.” She didn’t mean for her voice to be so thready as she stepped aside.
He relocked the drawer immediately after removing her valise. Her garments were folded as neatly as she’d left them, but the pistol was gone, no doubt wherever the dirk and boot knife now resided.
She drew the brush through her hair, her eyes returning to Nathaniel. He was watching her again. She looked away, flustered.
“Your hairbrush is inscribed with the letter B,” he remarked. “Blanchet, for your mother’s family?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. Her hand was not trembling, but she felt oddly shaky. “One of the only possessions Maman brought with her from France. A gift from her father, François Blanchet.”
Nathaniel watched her a moment longer before bending his head back to his paper. As she finished brushing her hair and began to arrange it with a few of the pins, he paused only once, without looking up, to ask her the spelling of her mother’s birth name and her own. She finished with her hair before he completed his note.
He sanded the paper and folded it carefully once dry; into one of his waistcoat pockets it went. He began a second note, far shorter than the first and completed quickly.
For a former soldier, his hands were deceptively elegant, long fingered and well proportioned.
Her cap was lying on top of the dresser, still damp and the worse for wear after the rain and the struggle last night. She discarded the idea of wearing it and reached for her bonnet instead.
“You will not need that,” Nathaniel said. “You shouldn’t wear it again in any case.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I recognized it, having seen it more than once. Someone else might as well.”
Someone like Compton. Her skin crawled. She had tried to be careful, but the fact was that she wasnotused to intrigue, and she’d fallen so easily into Nathaniel’s hands, evidence that she’d not been nearly as discreet as she’d hoped.
She left the bonnet where it was. “I do not know where we are.” If he trusted her now, a little, perhaps he’d tell her.
“Very near the Porte Saint-Denis.”
One of the gated entrances to the city. She cast about in her mind for a mental map but could not recall the location of the Porte Saint-Denis.
“The northern edge of the city,” he added. It was unnerving that he should read her so easily. She wished he were half so transparent as she evidently was.
“Where are we walking?”
“Not far. Just down the stairs, in fact. My friend runs an establishment in this building, and I on occasion use these rooms above. You will be safest staying with her while I make some inquiries and attend to other business.”
No doubt some of those inquiries directly concerned her. He did trust her a little—but only a little. “What sort of establishment?”
