AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, but what I give you won’t have bloodstains.” She started for the door, then turned back to him. “It’s true.”
He arched a dark brow, the same color as his rich hair.
“You did not deserve to be rescued.” She turned on her heel and marched out of the room. She’d taken no more than three steps when she was seized with guilt. What an awful thing of her to say. She should go back and apologize.
That was when she heard it.
He was laughing.
Three
Laurent pushed himselfto a sitting position and wiped his face with the rag. Then he stripped off his coat, loosened his cravat, and undid the buttons at the neck of his linen shirt. The water felt good on his skin—cool and clean. He’d paid for water in La Force, but he wasn’t convinced it had been all that clean.
He liked the woman and chuckled again thinking about her pink cheeks and her nose in the air. As a rule, he didn’t like English women. They bored him in the salons and even more so in bed. But Laurent had to admit he had never seen a beauty—French or English—like this one. She was quite striking. When she’d opened the door, he thought he must have lost consciousness and been dreaming. Until he realized that with his debauched mind, he would never have been able to conjure an image of such pure loveliness. Raven hair, skin so pale and delicate it looked as though it had been fashioned with opals, and surely her body had been carved by the gods. And then there were her eyes. They were such a striking shade of blue as to be almost violet. He’d never seen their like.
Laurent feared he had said more than one unnecessary remark just to force her to look at him with those amazing eyes.
After a few moments, Bernadette—and if that was her name he was Robespierre himself—returned with a simple coat of wool and a shirt of coarse linen. Laurent tried not to look at them with too much distaste. His old life was over. He knew that. But did the new life have to be so completely unfashionable?
He took the garments with a mutteredmerciand vowed to wear them for Marie-Thérèse. When he had freed her, he’d burn them and happily go to hell with the rest of the world.
But he wouldn’t be of any use to Madame Royale if he didn’t rest and recover from this blow to the head. He’d promised the princess and the dauphin, children as dear to him as any sibling of his own, he would never leave them. He hadn’t forgotten that promise. As much as he hated to don this plain garb, he would not go far if he was recognized as the Marquis de Montagne, friend of Marie Antoinette and a familiar presence at Versailles. “Where is the rest of your League?” he asked the Englishwoman before standing, stripping off his shirt, and tossing it on the floor.
She inhaled sharply and gave him her back. She was a modest woman. Interesting. He had not known one of those in a long time. He pulled the scratchy shirt on, but made no move to dress in the coat.
“I imagine you would know more about their whereabouts than I do. They freed you from La Force.”
Laurent thought back to the men at the courtyard wall outside La Force. “You may turn around,” he said. With a peek over her shoulder, she did so.
“Does the coat not fit?”
“I don’t know. I thought to put it on after I have rested. My head is throbbing like a...” Perhaps it was best if he did not finish that simile. “I need rest. May I?” He indicated the bed where she’d cleaned his wound.
“Of course.” Hurrying forward, she removed the soiled shirt from the floor and fluffed the pillow for him. Her bed? he wondered. It was too small to fit two comfortably, so perhaps she slept alone. There was also another small bed in the chamber. He would have gambled a hundred livres that the other bed was hers. Miss Modest would not have wanted a man to soil her sheets.
He sat on the bed and waited for the spinning to stop.
