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Now, for the first time, he was beginning to envision a bond that might last not just a handful of nights, but weeks, months … into the hazy future.
As he stretched languorously, savouring the prospect, suddenly Will realised he was alone in the bed.
He sat bolt upright, his heart hammering. Not the faintest glimmer of dawn showed yet under the curtained windows. Probably she’d gone to the necessary, he thought, trying to force down the alarm and foreboding welling up in his gut.
She’d given him all of her freely, everything, as honestly as he had given it back to her. Stripped bare, with no defences, holding nothing back, they’d created a union of souls as well as bodies. She wouldn’t just … leave him without a word.
His anxious, clumsy fingers struggled with flint and candle on the bedside table, but the additional flare of light just confirmed she wasn’t in the chamber.
He jumped out of bed. Although the saddlebags he’d given her in exchange for the bandbox she’d packed in Vienna sat against the wall, they were empty; the gown, shift, chemise, stockings and shoes she’d donned after giving him back the monk’s robe were gone.
Emptiness chilled him bone-deep as he admitted the unpalatable truth.
Damn her, she’d reduced him to a pudding-like state of completion, not out of tenderness, but so she could escape.
Escape him—and run off to her Philippe.
Nausea climbed up his throat and for a moment, he thought he’d be sick.
Betrayed. Abandoned. An agonising pain, worse than he’d felt after being shot by Spanish banditos, lanced his chest.
He dammed a rising flood of desolation behind a shield of anger. With iron will, he forced back deep within him an anguish and despair he’d not felt since he’d been a small boy sitting beside his dying mother.
It was ridiculous, he told himself furiously, carrying on like a spinster abandoned by the wastrel who had deceived her out of her virtue. The circumstances were nowhere near the same as the tragedy suffered by that five-year-old. He hadn’t lost his only love, he’d merely been tricked by a lying jade.
But she’d not got the better of him yet.
Stupid of him to forget one rogue should know another. He’d forced this journey on her, giving her no real choice. Their adventure had been based on a bargain, each of them getting something they wanted.
She was trying to cheat him out of doing her part.
The sound that had roused him moments ago must have been Elodie, sneaking away. Without the instincts for survival Seven Dials had honed so well, he might never have heard her. It had already been nearing dawn the last time they’d coupled, so she couldn’t have got far.
If Elodie Lefevre thought she’d seen the last of him, she was about to discover just how hard it was to dupe Will Ransleigh.
Chapter Thirteen
Her few remaining worldly goods concealed beneath the chickens in one of the baskets she carried on each arm, Elodie hurried in the dim pre-dawn with the press of other farmers heading into Paris. Too impatient to stroll at the crowd’s pace, docile as the birds in the dovecote on the pushcart in front of her, she darted around the vehicle, causing the startled doves to flutter. Driven by an irresistible urgency, she only wished their wings beating at the air could fly her into Paris faster.
She had to escape Will, before he woke to find her gone. As skilled as he was at tracking, she must lose herself in the safety of the great rabbit warren of Parisian streets well before he set out after her.
There, as she began her quest, she’d also lose this nagging temptation to go back to him, she reassured herself.
It didn’t matter how energised and alive he made her feel. Their time together had been an idyll and, like all idylls, must end. Besides, what they shared was only the bliss of the night, no more permanent or substantial than the lies a man whispered in the ear of a maid he wanted to bed.
A dangerous bliss, though, for it made her wish for things that life had already taught her didn’t exist. A world of justice not ruled by cruel and depraved men. A sense of belonging with friends, family … a lover who cherished her. Safety, like she’d felt in Lord Somerville’s garden. Illusions that should have vanished long ago with her childhood.
It ought to have been easy to leave him. She knew what he planned for her. She’d allowed herself the reward she’d promised, a spectacular night of passion more fulfilling than any she’d ever experienced.
Up until that very last night, she’d been successful in keeping her emotions, like tiny seeds that might sprout into something deeper than friendship if dropped into the fertile soil of his watchful care, clutched tightly in hand.
Her devotion to Philippe was a mature growth, a sturdy oak planted firmly in the centre of her heart. He was her love, her life, her duty. Returning to him should have shaded out any stray, straggly seedlings of affection germinated by Will Ransleigh.
But it hadn’t. Even as she hurried to fulfil the mission that had sustained her for the last year and a half, she ached. A little voice whispered that the wrenching sense of loss hollowing her out inside came from leaving a piece of her soul back in Will Ransleigh’s keeping.
Very well, so passion had forged a stronger bond than she’d anticipated. She’d been privileged for one brief night to possess her magnificent Zeus-come-to-earth. But she could no more cling to him than had the maidens in the myths. She’d not been transformed into a cow or a tree; she mustn’t let leaving him turn her into a weakling.
She’d just have to blot out the memory of their partnership on the road, forget the sparkle in his eyes and warmth in his smile as he spun tales for her. Obliterate all trace of the feel of him buried in her, catapulting her into ecstasy with skill and tenderness.
She wouldn’t have to worry about him pining over her. When he woke to find her gone, he’d stomp the life out of any tendrils of affection that might have sprouted in his heart.
Time to put Will Ransleigh and the last month out of mind, as she always put away troubles about which she could do nothing. Time to look forwards.
The sun just rising in a clear sky promised a lovely summer day. She should be excited, filled with anticipation and purpose. She suppressed, before it could escape from the anxious knot in her gut, the fear that, despite all her scheming, she would not find Philippe.
Losing him was simply unthinkable.
Her agitation stemmed from fatigue, she decided. Certainly it couldn’t be pangs of conscience at deceiving Will, she who wouldn’t have survived without honing deception to a high art.
Besides, she had given him passion—the only honest gift within her keeping. She had no regrets about that.
As she rounded a bend in the road, the walls of Paris towered in the distance, casting an imposing shadow over the west-bound travellers. She forced her spirits to rise upwards like her gaze.
No more time for fear, regret or repining. The most important game of her life was about to begin. After waiting so long and being so close, she was not about to fail now.
Fury and contempt for his own stupidity fuelled Will’s flight from the inn, which he quit within minutes of discovering Elodie’s deception. Since they’d be entering the city separately, he’d no need to play the farmer. Let the innkeeper roast the fowl for dinner and chop the gig into firewood, he thought, his anger at fever pitch.
Unencumbered by cart and poultry, he was able to move swiftly.
Just a half-hour later, he spotted Elodie as she entered the city gates—his first bit of luck that day, for, once inside, despite her farm-girl disguise, there was no guarantee she’d actually make for Paris’s largest market.
Walking quickly, two baskets of squawking chickens on her arm, she did in fact continue towards Les Halles. Camouflaged by the usual early-morning bustle of working men, vendors, cooks, housemaids, farmers, tradesmen, soldiers and rogues returning from their night’s revels, he was able to follow her rather closely.
If he hadn’t been in such a tearing rage, he might have enjoyed making a game of seeing how close he could approach without being observed. Though anger made him less cautious than he would have normally been, he was still surprised he was able to get so near, once reaching her very elbow as she crossed a crowded alleyway.
Hovering there had been foolish, as if he were almost daring her to discover him.
Maybe he was. With every nerve and sinew, he wanted to take her, shake her, ask her why.
Which was more stupidity. He knew why she’d fled, had been expecting it, even. He accepted that she’d outplayed him in the first hand of this game, and in the one tiny objective corner remaining within his incensed mind, he realised it was unusual of him to be so angry about being outmanoeuvred. Normally he would allow himself a moment to admire her skill, learn from the loss and move on.
He would not—could not—examine the raw and bleeding emotions just below the surface that contributed to his unprecedented sense of urgency and outrage.
He paused on the edge of the market square, watching as she sold off the chickens and one basket, then moved on to purchase enough oranges to fill the other. He could corner her immediately, but it was probably wiser to wait until he could catch her where there were fewer witnesses who might take her part in the struggle that was sure to follow.
After Elodie left the market area, Will dropped back further, though he was still able to follow much closer than he would have expected, based on how alert and careful she’d been during their escape from Vienna. As consumed as he was by fury, he still wondered why.
