Текст книги "I Married the Duke "

Автор книги: Katharine Ashe

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Luc?

“What is it, Ellie?”

“I have just heard an unsavory rumor—for rumor I know it to be—told to me by a woman because I think she did not know that I am your sister.”

“Tell me, please, quickly.”

“It seems that it is being said that you have been unfaithful to the comte, that you have taken a lover or perhaps several already, and are eager to make him the father of a bastard.”

The air flattened out of Arabella’s lungs and heat flushed through her body and into her cheeks.

“It is a rumor.”

“Of course it is. It is perfectly obvious to me that you adore him, and even if you did not, you have too much integrity to do such a thing.” Eleanor looked about. “But someone is telling this tale here today. Just look at that pair of women over there, staring at us like we are a curiosity at an exhibition.”

She must not allow gossip to hurt her. She had held strong against unkindnesses and cruelties her entire life. That this unkindness hurt Luc was the only source of her misery.

“The woman who told me said the news was to be believed because its source was within the family,” Eleanor said. “But not the duchess; her brother, the bishop. Isn’t it the most astounding thing you’ve heard?”

“No.” Her heart racketed. “He hates Luc. I think he would do this to hurt him.” As he would extort money from Luc’s tenants. But only to hurt him, or to ruin him entirely? Or for some other purpose?

It was all too much. Desperation snatched at her reason again, the plan that Christos and Ravenna had laid out seeming less like foolishness and more like her only hope.

As she lifted her head to search the crowd again for Luc, a hush descended over them. Oh, good heavens. Were they to go in solemn procession to the church now? With her head awhirl and nerves frayed, she doubted she could bear it.

But no one was looking at her. They had all turned to another. At the head of the gangway in a ray of sunlight cut with shadow lines from the rigging above, the Bishop of Barris stood with his hands folded over his enormous gold pectoral cross. His amethyst ring glittered.

“It is with great solemnity that I share news now that affects my family deeply,” he said with the measured confidence of a man accustomed to the pulpit. The guests went silent, all mouths closed. Even the ladies’ tiny parasols stilled. Sick heat crept from Arabella’s womb into her throat and to the tips of her fingers. He would declare her to be a Jezebel before everyone. He would shame Luc irreparably.

“My sister, the Duchess of Lycombe, has just now given birth.” He paused and Arabella’s eyes closed. “To a healthy boy.”

Chapter 17

The Strength of a Man

“My only regret is that Theodore,” Fletcher continued, “whom we all admired, and whom his wife loved deeply”—he offered a rare, rueful grin—“though it was of course shockingly unfashionable for her to do so”—titters of amusement from the crowd—“I regret that my dear friend Theodore cannot see with his living eyes his son and heir. But I have faith that his spirit rests happy knowing his wife and child are well. If you will, raise a toast with me to the new Duke of Lycombe. And to Lucien, whose wedding we honor today, who will so ably remain heir until we all attend another wedding two decades or so from now.” More laughter. The clinking of crystal.

Luc didn’t care. Arabella was nowhere to be seen. The malicious gossip circulating throughout the party must have reached her.

He lifted his glass, accepted the sympathetic nods of his actual friends, and bowed. Then everyone began talking. He set down the champagne and wove his way through the guests, searching, his limited field of vision never more frustrating.

She might be devastated. No. Not his sharp-tongued little governess. She would be more likely to throw the incivility back in a gossip’s face than accept an outright lie spoken about her.

He knew it was a lie. Rational thought fled when he was with her, but he knew her all the same.

“Looking for your stunning bride, Westfall?” A shipmaster he’d known during the war stepped into his path. “P’raps she’s flown the coop now that she’s heard she’s not to be a duchess after all, hm? Poor sod, losing your title and wife on the same day.” He laughed and clapped Luc on the back. He was drunk. Luc saw it in his reddened eyes. He was roasting him. All in fun. Tasteless and callous, but innocently so.

But accurate?

Aloof. Evasive. Unavailable. She had been all of these since coming to town. And before that . . . In France she had tried to escape him.

He could not believe it. She must know that wherever she ran, despite his blindness he would find her.

GIVEN HER RAW nerves, it was with considerable energy that Arabella descended from the carriage before the Bishop of Barris’s modest house on the edge of Richmond. It sat alone at the back of an extensive park far from the main road and another quarter mile from the next house, which seemed to be a school of some sort. The river came close behind the house, offering a natural border at the property’s rear.

Buoyed by determination, she went toward the door. “I should not be too long, Joseph. An hour, I suspect.”

“I’d like to come in there with you, milady.”

“No. This is an errand of extraordinary delicacy. If you come in with all your imposing size and glower, it will alarm the bishop’s staff.”

His brow descended over his serious eyes.

“Wait here in the carriage for me. The comte would be perfectly happy with you if he knew of it.” The comte would turn Joseph off if he knew of it, then throttle her soundly. Verbally, of course. He had never touched her violently, not even roughly when she had not begged for it.

With heat high in her cheeks, she went toward the door, tugging her cloak about her shoulders. She had not paused to change from her wedding gown; she wasn’t quite ready to discard it yet. She wanted Luc to remove it, slowly, on their wedding night. Rather, tonight. The church ceremony was supposed to have taken place an hour earlier, and she had not been present. So tonight would not be his wedding night either.

But they could pretend it was . . . if he ever spoke to her again after being abandoned at the altar just when he learned he would not be the duke.

What had she done?

But the tenant families must not continue to suffer. The bishop was now trustee to the little duke and in control of Combe. She wouldn’t have this chance again.

She banged the plain brass knocker. Despite the bishop’s elegant dress, his house lacked ostentation. An elderly thin woman in gray muslin opened the door.

“Inform his excellency that Mrs. Bradford is calling.”

“His excellency’s not in. You’ll have to come back later.” The woman made to shut the door. Arabella stopped it with her hand.

“I shan’t mind waiting.” She slipped through into the whitewashed foyer.

The housekeeper gave Arabella’s fine gown and cloak and the ruby and gold earrings peeking out from her hair a perusal. Then she gestured her toward a door. “You can wait in here, mum,” she said, opening it to a parlor. “I’ve no idea when he’ll return. His nephew’s getting married today in town.”

“Yes.” Arabella ran a fingertip along an unadorned table in the center of the room. “I think I had heard that. I shall read while I wait. What a marvelous collection of books.”

“I don’t know, mum. Not a reader myself. Will you have some tea?”

“Oh, you’re very kind. No thank you.”

The housekeeper nodded and closed the door behind her.

Arabella sprang up and went to the door. But there was no key in the lock. She searched about the room for a drawer that might hold a key, but the only furniture were the bookcase, table, and three straight-backed chairs upholstered in faded red velvet. If the bishop was siphoning money off Combe’s tenant farmers, he certainly wasn’t using it on his house.

She peered between books. It seemed the most obvious place to hide precious papers. She found nothing except dozens of tomes on religious matters marked with endless margin notes taken in an exceedingly neat hand.

She looked behind the two pictures hanging on the walls.

Nothing. But she had never imagined the parlor would offer up treasures anyway.

She opened the door as though she wished to recall the housekeeper then stood very still, listening. No footsteps sounded anywhere. The house was quiet.

Removing her shoes, she shut the door behind her. At least the hinges were well oiled. On silent feet she padded to the next door and went completely motionless again. No sound came from within. There was nothing like creeping around someone’s house in one’s stocking feet to rouse suspicion; in the event that the room was in fact occupied, she donned her shoes again.

It was a dining chamber, immaculately clean like the foyer and parlor, but likewise small and plain, without even a closed sideboard in which to hide a chamber pot. Useless. And her nerves were a quivering shambles. Skulking around had never been her forte. She preferred to meet matters head on.

Except lately. Since reading Luc’s secretary’s letters she had been in hiding, running away from what he might tell her if she allowed him opportunity.

No more. When this unwise adventure was over and she returned to London, she would beg his forgiveness and finally tell him everything.

Slipping off her shoes again, she backed out of the dining chamber and shut the door, this time with a creak in the hinge, quiet as a mouse’s squeak but it may as well be a gong banging in the silent house. She flinched and listened.

Thirty seconds became a minute. Nothing stirred. The housekeeper must have fallen asleep somewhere.

She crept toward the stair, praying they were as uncompromising as the rest of the bishop’s home. Her prayers were answered: the steps did not squeak. She mounted the landing and pressed her ear against the first door. No sound. She put her shoes on yet again and opened the panel.

Success.

She slipped into the bishop’s study and left her shoes at the door. The floors were plain wooden boards covered with an equally plain red carpet that masked the sound of her steps. A massive desk occupied at least half of the chamber. The only objects atop it were an inkwell, pen and blotter, and a single sheet of blank paper. The was another bookcase like those in the parlor, a small table, and two straight-backed chairs. The only object to disturb the drabness was a picture on the wall of an impressively austere building set on a broad park. The caption read:

WHITECHAPEL SCHOOL

READING, BRITAIN

EST. 1814

The curtains were partially drawn, the afternoon sun slanting directly into the chamber. Anyone outside would see only reflection from the pane.

She went around the desk and tried the center drawer. It opened smoothly. Within, she saw a stack of plain stationery, a letter opener shaped like a long, slender cross, a knife to sharpen pens, and a small pistol. Without pause, she grabbed up the knife and pistol and dropped them into her cloak pocket.

The drawers to either side of the chair were locked fast. Of course they were. Without locks on the doors the bishop must have some way of keeping his private matters private from prying servants. She reached up under the center drawer, her fingers searching for a hidden key but without hope of finding one. She pushed her arm deeper into the back of the drawer and her fingertips brushed metal. She drew forth a key.

The bishop was an odd man indeed. Or he had the dullest, least curious servants in England. Or servants with very short arms.

The key opened the drawers to either side easily. Her fingers sped through files as her frustration mounted. Nothing looked especially odd; it was all correspondence to church officials and records of the Whitechapel School. She had no idea what she was looking for. She had been phenomenally foolish to do this. She’d left Luc standing at the altar and would have nothing to show for it but a furious husband who had just lost his dukedom to a bastard child.

She slid the drawers shut and replaced the key in its hiding spot. Then she took a deep breath. It would be the worst sort of weakness to admit defeat so easily.

Nothing stirred in the corridor so she repeated her earlier stealth and went to the next door. It was a bedchamber, this time with a lock on the door, and sparsely furnished but not currently occupied; the surfaces were bare of personal belongings, and the small bed was not made up. The next was another bedchamber, also with a lock and likewise empty.

The third bedchamber included a shaving stand, clothes press, and dressing mannequin garbed in a complete set of richly brocaded, embroidered clerical robes. Their opulence was at thorough odds with the rest of the house. Arabella had been imagining the Bishop of Barris and Reverend Caulfield like two peas in a pod. This dashed that notion from her head. The Reverend could sermonize for a month of Sundays on the sinful excess of these robes alone.

She stood in the middle of the bishop’s bedchamber, arms folded, and thought about all the lectures on vanity that her adoptive father had given her over the years. A man who exalted personal appearance but who seemed to care nothing for domestic luxury . . . What had the Reverend always said about her vanity and pride? That she could hide her hair and pretty face, but beneath them would be the same sinful girl?

She dropped to her knees on the polished floor and looked under the bed.

It seemed too simple; like the key in the desk drawer, beneath the bed was a cedar chest. She pulled it forth, cringing at the scraping sound across the floor, and opened it.

Her shoulders dropped. More papers on Whitechapel School. Exhaling tightly, she flipped through them.

Her fingers stalled.

Last names of Combe’s tenant farmers with pound figures beside them covered one sheet, including first names, all male, certainly the heads of the households from which he was extorting their income.

She frowned. Mr. Goode’s name was Thatcher. But the name beside Goode on this list was Edward. She closed her eyes, picturing Mrs. Goode’s kitchen on her second visit to the farm, the chipped teapot, the plate of tasteless biscuits, and the smiles of the Goodes’ three sons when Arabella gave them the sweets. John, Michael, and the youngest Teddy, named after his grandfather, Edward.

“Well, well. A lady in the bishop’s bedchamber. Never thought I’d see the day.”

Arabella’s head snapped up.

The man standing in the doorway was large, thick in the chest, and somewhat heavy in the belly where the fabric of his waistcoat strained, with squinting eyes and slick, well-combed hair. With the two first fingers of his left hand he wiggled a toothpick between his lips; the thumb on that hand was missing.

Arabella released the papers, stood and brushed imaginary dust off her skirt. Her shoes dangled from her other hand. “This is not as you imagine it, sir.”

His lips pinched around the toothpick and he nodded thoughtfully. “Actually, I ’spect it’s exactly as I imagine it,” he said with an unhurried grin, “comtesse.”

THE ARCHBISHOP OF Canterbury gestured Luc to collect his lady and hasten to the church for the ceremony. Luc could not, however, tell him that his lady was nowhere to be found; it would expose her to yet more gossip.

Fletcher stood beneath the wedding canopy like a bridegroom, serenely accepting congratulations as though he were head of the family, and in no apparent hurry to shorten this moment of glory. Far to portside, Arabella’s sisters huddled close together, removed from the other guests. Ravenna cast Luc a quick glance then turned away abruptly.

Heart in his throat, he started toward her.

Christos stepped in his way. “La jolie brune had nothing to do with it. Eh bien, very little.”

“Nothing to do with what? Where is my wife, Christos?”

Christos turned about and headed toward the companionway. Servants rushed up the steps bearing trays laden with delicacies. He made way for them then hurried down. Luc followed along the low deck lined with cannons.

“Why the devil can’t I find my wife?” he demanded when his brother finally led him into the captain’s quarters. “And what the devil do you have to do with it?”

His brother peered at him intently. “Do you not know, then? Of the birth of the boy of our aunt?”

“Of course I know.”

“And you have no unhappiness with it?”

“Of course I have unhappi– Of course I’m unhappy about it. And disappointed. But I am rather more concerned with how Arabella has taken the news.”

His brother’s eyes lit with the smile Luc remembered from their childhood, before their father died and the world fell out from beneath them.

Then Christos’s face sobered and he lifted his palm. “Fear not. She has not abandoned you. Rather, she has gone to help you.”

“Help me? What, is she a witch that knows some sort of spell that will change a boy child to a girl?”

A fresh grin split across his brother’s face. “Ah, that you are able to jest at such a time . . .” He shook his head. “I am in great awe of you, mon frère.”

“I am immensely gratified. Now give over, Chris.”

He dipped his head and folded his hands. “She fears for the safety of the child and his patrimony.”

“What?”

“The infant’s guardian—that man—will ruin Combe. She believes he already has, and she seeks proof of it.”

“Damn it, Christos. Fletcher is not the child’s only guardian. I am as well. He will not have complete control over the boy or Combe.”

“But he will control our aunt, as he always has.”

“Then I will take Adina and her son out of his realm of influence. The house in Durham will do for distance. If that does not suffice, Rallis will. Fletcher will never cross the Channel.”

“And what if you die, mon frère?” Christos said matter-of-factly. “Who will protect the young duke from him then?”

Luc stared at his brother, his chest tight. “You do remember. Don’t you?”

“Remember what?” Christos waved it away. “Brother, la belle made me vow to withhold information from you that however you must now be told.”

“Why now?”

“Before, I knew you admired her beauty and courage. Now I know you cherish her heart.”

More than his life. “What information, Christos?”

“She has gone.”

Luc’s stomach twisted. “Where?”

“I cannot say. I made a vow. A man that breaks a promise to a lady is no man at all. But she has taken the stalwart footman with her.”

“Damn you, Christos, tell me.”

“Where would you go now if you were she?”

“As far away from Absalom Fletcher’s poison as I could.”

“Ah.” Christos lifted his forefinger. “But I said if you were she. Not you.”

No.

“Damn it. How could you allow it?”

“I have no authority over anyone, mon frère, least of all myself. And she wished to do it.”

“Why, in God’s name—”

“Pour toi, of course.”

For him.

If he had told her about Fletcher . . . If he had told her the truth . . .

Luc replaced the decorative épée in his belt with a rapier from Tony’s weapons trunk, grabbed up a pistol, and slipped a dirk in the top of his boot, where he’d had a slot sewn for a knife.

“Fletcher won’t be there.” He laid out her plan aloud as he imagined it. “He is here now. Then he will call on his sister and the infant, perhaps for the remainder of the day. It’s a clever plan.”

“Merci.”

“But it will gain her nothing. Fletcher isn’t such a fool to leave proof of his misdeeds lying about. He will have hidden it well. Have you a horse here?”

“A very good one.”

“Take me to it.”

Christos followed him across the gun deck. Arabella’s younger sister came clattering down the companionway. Her gaze darted between him and his brother.

“Did you tell him where she’s gone?” she demanded of Christos.

He slapped a hand over his heart. “I made a vow, mademoiselle.”

“Well, I didn’t, you chou.” She turned to Luc. “She went to the bishop’s house near Richmond.”

He was already mounting the stairs three at a time.

“Hurry!” she called after him.

He needed no encouragement. But he paused and looked back down at his brother.

“Christos, how might Fletcher have acquired a portrait that you drew since December?”

His brow creased. “In March I found myself without funds. I sold all my work on the street in Paris to a Sicilian and his English companion. After, I drew a picture of the Englishman. That man, he was a beast, but he was an interesting study: he had only one thumb.”

The Sicilian assassins from Saint-Nazaire had been with Fletcher’s coachman in Paris.

“Did the work they purchased include a portrait of me?”

“Mais oui. I liked that picture. You looked fierce. Comme un pirate.” He shrugged. “But I can draw another.”

“First you will do that portrait of my wife.” Luc went swiftly up the steps. “As a princess.” As she deserved.

“YOU ARE MISTAKING me for somebody else,” Arabella said. “My name is Mrs. Bradford. I have called on his excellency to—”

“Your name is Westfall. And you called to poke into his excellency’s private matters.” The man slid the toothpick from between his lips and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. “Can’t be having that.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I was simply very tired after waiting at such length for his return and the housekeeper told me I could rest here.” She dropped her pretty pink and ridiculously impractical wedding slippers to the floor, slipped her feet into them and started toward him. “Now that I know this is the bishop’s personal chamber, however, I don’t think that is a good idea after all.” She halted before him. “I should like to return to the parlor now.”

“I don’t think you’ll be doing that.” He stood before her like a great big rock of malice. Joseph was at least as tall and less round. But Joseph was in the carriage.

She had failed. She had now effectively shamed Luc twice, heaping scandal upon scandal, this one by her own volition. Even if he had not been planning to throw her off, it was entirely possible he would now. But what a feast for the gossips! Governess-turned-comtesse is accused by bishop of infidelity to her comte then found in said bishop’s bedchamber with her shoes off. Ravenna’s lending library novels could not invent better.

The squinting rock clamped his fleshy hand about her arm and dragged her across the corridor to another bedchamber and locked her in, and her amused musings fled.

She banged on the door. “Let me out of here this instant,” she demanded in her grandest voice. “This instant!”

“We’ll wait for his excellency to decide that,” he said through the door.

“But the housekeeper said he would not be home for some time. You cannot leave me locked in this chamber until then. It is outrageous.” And terrifying in a manner she had never before considered. The room was small, and now she saw the bars across the window, quite like the sort one saw on houses in certain neighborhoods of London. But the bishop’s house sat on a private park. Thieves could not be plentiful here.

Unless the bars were intended not to keep thieves out but to keep guests in.

She backed away from the door.

“This is kidnapping.” she called. “You will be jailed for it. Or hung.”

“Only if you live to tell about it.” Heavy footsteps receded along the bare boards of the corridor and down the stairs.

Arabella sank down onto the bed and began trembling.

A QUARTER HOUR later, after having lifted the window sash and tested the width of her body against the bars, and found them far too narrow, she started banging on the door and shouting. The housekeeper might hear, or even Joseph.

Her jailer returned quickly, so she guessed he had not gone far.

“Be quiet or I’ll tie your hands and mouth,” he grunted through the closed door.

“All right. But first I would like to ask you something.”

No sound came from the other side of the panel.

“Does the bishop pay you well?” she said. “That is to say, are your wages from him commensurate to the income he illegally culls from my husband’s family’s estate?”

“My wages are my own business,” he said like a surly cur. But he didn’t walk away. Arabella did a silent little leap of victory.

“I wondered,” she said, “because those papers under his bed, the ones that I was poking through, they make it quite clear that your master is now a wealthy man. Much wealthier than this house suggests. Why, with his annual income now,” she fabricated, “he could have a house four times this size if he wished. Go see for yourself. It’s all in the papers he hides.”

Silence.

Then the man said: “Must use it on that school he’s got over there in Reading.”

“Yes. The Whitechapel School,” she gambled.

“Poor brats’ families can’t pay, and they’ve got to eat, I suppose.”

Poor children?

“Mm. I daresay.” She worried the inside of her lip between her teeth, her nerves frayed. “But one would suppose he could share at least a little of the surplus with you and his other servants, wouldn’t one?”

“There’s nobody but me and Mrs. Biggs,” he said. “And I ain’t no servant. I drive the coach, is all, when there’s a job.”

“If you drive a coach for him, I am afraid you are his servant,” she said, tiptoeing the fine line between instigating rebellion against his master and inspiring antagonism toward her.

“He says I’m his partner.”

He sounded angry. Not ideal.

“He is not your partner if he is not paying you a fair wage according to the work you do.” She paused for a moment. “But I can.”

There was another silent interval, this time lengthy.

“What’re you offering?”

She took a deep, fast breath and closed her eyes tight. “A ring of ruby and gold.” Her heart thudded. “A ring of inestimable value. The ruby is very large. You could remove it, melt down the gold, and sell it, and no one would be able to trace you,” she said quickly. “And if you agree to the trade, I won’t tell a soul. It isn’t in my interests for anyone to know I have been here, and I could never explain how you had gotten it otherwise, could I? Imagine: you could buy a new waistcoat to replace the one you wear now that does not fit. You could buy ten new waistcoats and a house of your own too. You would never have to work for another man again. That is how valuable this ring is.”

By the time she completed this speech her hands were damp and shaky. One of them slipped to her pocket and the only thing of value she had ever owned . . . until she became a comtesse and the lord who had stolen her heart tried to give her a tiara fit for a duchess. She’d taken the ring from the house before her hasty departure for Richmond. She didn’t know why at the time she had done it.

She knew now. Destiny.

She waited for his response with a sick stomach.

“What d’you want to trade it for?”

“My freedom and the documents. Let me go, and let me take those papers with me, and I will give you that ring.”

“How do I know you’d pay your side of the bargain?”

“You would have to trust me.”

From very far off she heard knocking on the front door.

Her captor grumbled and clomped down the steps. Arabella pressed her ear to the door, but the panel was thick and she could catch no sounds. Perhaps Joseph had gotten impatient. Good Lord, let him not be injured because of her naïveté. But she had not been prepared. Her mistrust of men had never extended to this sort of villainy.

Finally, footsteps sounded on the stairs, not the heavy tread of her captor, but another man’s booted steps, confident and clean. Behind those came the thunderous clomp of her captor.

She backed away from the door, her hands tight about her cloak.

The door opened. Her heart stopped.

Hands bound at his back, Luc entered. Behind him was both her captor and the old housekeeper.

“Unbind me now,” he said as calmly as though he were instructing his butler to serve dinner.

Her captor nudged him forward. A pistol glimmered in his fist. “She can do it.”

Luc walked to her and turned his back. “If you please, duchess.”

Her hands shook as she freed him. He drew his arms forward and rubbed his wrists.

“Toss the rope here,” her captor said.

She looked at Luc. He nodded. She tossed the bindings to the threshold.

“Now I’ll take that ring, milady,” he said to her with a squint.

“I—” She shook her head. “I don’t have it.”

He cocked the pistol with an ominous click. “The ring now. Or do you think his lordship would prefer if I tied him up again while I looked for that ring on you at my leisure?” He grinned. “Fine wedding present that would be, now wouldn’t it?”

Luc’s face was white.

She reached into her pocket, pulled out the ring, and crouched to roll it across the floor. It made a soft clattering sound as it rolled, coming to a stop by his feet. The housekeeper picked it up and dropped it into her pocket.

Her captor stepped back, closed the door, and the key clicked in the lock.

Beside her Luc was shaking, his jaw hard.

“I cannot begin– I don’t know how—” she stuttered. “I am so sorry. I never imagined a bishop would do this sort of thing. Why are you here? Why did you allow him to—”

He gripped her wrist. His palm was icy. “No,” he said in a peculiar rasp. He released her and went to the door. Slowly, his hand moved to the handle. He turned it and the door remained fast.

“He locked it,” she said stupidly. “I would have shouted to warn you off, but I heard nothing until you were at the top of the stairs. It is a very thick door—”

“I know,” he said in that scratchy voice. “I allowed it.” He heaved in breaths and leaned his brow against the door, his hands flattening against the panel.

She stepped forward. “What—”

He turned his head. His eye was closed, his face taut from brow to jaw. A hard shiver shook his entire frame.

“Luc?”

“I fear, little governess,” he said on another convulsive shake, “that I may shortly disgrace myself in a manner in which your former charges—the especially tiny ones—probably did quite often.”

“Luc?”

“I may be sick.”

She went around him and touched his face. His skin was cold and damp.

“You were not ill this morning. Have they– Oh, God! Have they poisoned you?”

“No,” he said tightly. “Though that might have been preferable.”

“Then what—”

“When I was ten—” He breathed hard through his nostrils, his entire body rigid.

She had never seen him ill, never anything but strong and vital. Except when he was dying.

She stroked his face, curving her hands around his cheeks. “When you were ten, after your father’s death?”