Wicked Loving Lies
Rosemary Rogers
Born of scandal and denied his birthright, Dominic Challenger took to the sea, charting his own future. A true rogue, Dominic answers to no one, trusting only himself. Until Marisa.Born of wealth and privilege, Marisa is a prisoner to her father's expectations. When the sanctuary she has found behind the walls of a convent is threatened by the news that her father has arranged for her to marry, Marisa flees…right into the arms of a pirate.From the safety of a sheltered convent to a sultan's harem, from the opulence of Napoleon's court to the wilds of the new frontier, Marisa and Dominic brave all that they encounter in this thrilling age: intrigue, captivity and danger. And above all, an enduring passion that ignites into an infinite love.
Her golden eyes stared mesmerized into his sleepy gray ones with dark pupils that seemed to contract as recognition flared in them.
“You!” Suddenly he held her pinned down by the shoulders, his face staring down into hers. “How did you contrive it? Did you put one of your gypsy spells on poor Donald and my ship, as well? No wonder we’ve had such a bad voyage—a woman aboard ship always brings bad luck! What are you doing here?”
There was a cruel, dangerous look on his face, and sheer desperation made Marisa shout back at him.
“You—you threw me in here last night! And if I’m such bad luck, why don’t you just throw me overboard and have done with it? You’re such a rotten bully, no wonder all your men are so afraid of you! Well, I’m not. You can’t do anything worse to me than you have already—”
She was appalled at her own boldness.
He shook her, his fingers digging in to her bare shoulders.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” he muttered.
“This is exactly what her many fans crave, and Rogers serves it up with a polished flair.”
—Booklist on A Reckless Encounter
Also available from MIRA Books and ROSEMARY ROGERS
A RECKLESS ENCOUNTER
SWEET SAVAGE LOVE
SAVAGE DESIRE
Wicked Loving Lies
Rosemary Rogers
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
To Bet with love
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE (#u082810c0-242f-563b-8ef8-1b680506c4e3)
PART ONE: A WALLED GARDEN (#ud4e4d227-7c6d-50c6-b7be-55e7962acd74)
CHAPTER 1 (#uf9762c87-274e-55b9-a9ff-9bf0585fd374)
CHAPTER 2 (#u33399655-f312-5190-8ab2-119442cd40c0)
CHAPTER 3 (#u3ac789f2-c1fe-59b9-8c4d-51cce385c86a)
CHAPTER 4 (#u9a9505cf-d962-5355-91ca-aa40478594dd)
CHAPTER 5 (#u350115a5-0790-5486-ae52-03ef4b8e7031)
CHAPTER 6 (#uf85babeb-e499-5b69-a4c9-c6a9edce735c)
CHAPTER 7 (#u29fd526f-82bc-5ca5-88c6-7b0a1d0bb15b)
CHAPTER 8 (#u51438c75-8205-50a1-b687-804134415a7c)
CHAPTER 9 (#ue710a86b-e8e9-5eb6-a7df-b49d25beefdc)
CHAPTER 10 (#u892f0b9e-251d-5826-9c0d-412e0b200f78)
CHAPTER 11 (#u9cc944be-5412-5c00-aba8-a6367d80db5f)
CHAPTER 12 (#ub072629c-dddb-5191-9133-9b25b84eaf7a)
CHAPTER 13 (#ude00fe38-bbb7-504f-8e2f-5183a49e799e)
CHAPTER 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
PART TWO: DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
PART THREE: THE PERFUMED DAYS (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
PART FOUR: THE SURGING TORRENT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
PART FIVE: THE ANGER AND THE PASSION (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
The Rebels
As soon as the light began to fade, the mist crept in from the forest that bounded the far end of the great park. It was just as if it had lain hidden there crouched among the densely growing trees until the approach of nightfall sent it moving towards the huge house that dominated a rise in the gently sloping ground—sending long, exploratory grey streamers out at first to curl insidiously around the stone walls; and then, growing bolder, advancing like a gauzy cloud until soon the forest was quite cut off from view, and there was only the grey-white mass pressing against the windowpanes. It almost seemed to be waiting—angry because it could not penetrate stone and glass and wood, but patient, too….
Mrs. Sitwell hurried to pull the heavy velvet drapes together, shivering as she did so despite a roaring fire in the fireplace.
“Never did like the country very much! It’s almost like it was too quiet, you know? And then the fogs here—ain’t like the London fogs—at least you can see the street lights shining, all yellow and cheerful-like. But out here—” She lowered her voice as she glanced towards the vast, canopied bed that stood in one corner of the room. “Tell me, Mrs. Parsons, how is it that he—” a jerk of her head “—His Grace, I mean—well, it just don’t seem natural for him to be down there in his study, writing letters, with his own wife dying up here.”
Mrs. Parsons’s thin lips seemed to disappear into her seamed face as she pursed them. “His Grace has his own ways—and his own reasons. You couldn’t know, of course, you’ve only been here three weeks. But I could tell you—” The woman hesitated for a moment, her fingers tightening over themselves; but then, as the desire to talk to someone after all the lonely months proved too much for her, she burst out, “I could tell you—it’s a great deal stranger, all this, than anyone could guess! And of course I’ve been with the family—His Grace’s family that is—for years. I was here when he brought her here as his bride, and I was still here when he brought her back from the Americas. I could have told, even when I was a mere slip of a girl myself, that there was something wrong….”
The woman who lay so still in the depths of the big, dark bed heard them whispering by the fire. Over the sound of her own breathing—each breath more difficult to draw than the last—she heard words:
“Brought her here from Ireland, he did. He was only Lord Leo then, and no one ever dreaming he’d ever come into the title like he did….”
She was in that half-world that lies between coma and reality, and when she heard the woman say something about Ireland, her mind slipped back easily through time; reliving the beginning was so much more pleasant than waiting for the end. Whirling pictures slid through her mind, some of them all too clear, others seeming to curl and blur about the edges like old letters.
Ireland, and her girlhood, when no one had called her Lady Margaret or Your Grace. It had been Peggy or Peg then. Pretty Peggy, the young men had named her, bringing blushes to her cheeks. And after all, in spite of what all Irishmen referred to as “the troubles,” life had not been too unpleasant.
What did anything matter as long as she was young and pretty with all of her life still stretching endlessly and excitingly ahead of her? Even her brother Conal’s frowns and carping didn’t matter too much as long as she could escape from him to go down to the village for her stolen, secret confessions to Father MacManus or to visit some of her father’s old tenants. Things were different since her father, the earl of Morey, had taken sick and finally died—without, thankfully, knowing what Conal had done to keep the lands for himself. Turned Protestant, renouncing his own true faith—how could he?
“I have to think of myself now—don’t you see that? And of you too, sister, although you do not seem to appreciate that fact. Catholics cannot inherit land. Would you rather see all that is ours and has been ours for generations pass to the English Crown? Someone has to be sensible!”
And she tried not to dwell on the fact that Conal took to going up to Dublin Castle, the seat of the English Government in Ireland, spending far too much time with the English officers who were their age-old enemies and oppressors. She hated the English! They were cold, cruel and arrogant, and they acted as if they owned even the lush green Irish earth they walked on. Conal’s mother had been English, which perhaps accounted for his predilection for that hated race, but her mother had been French—a pretty, small, dark-haired woman who had always smelled faintly of lavender or verbena water.
Peggy had been thinking of her mother that afternoon when Conal surprised her crossing the brook barefoot, her faded skirts kilted up around her calves.
Why couldn’t maman have lived? It was lonely, sometimes , without another woman to talk to, with only the sound of the chill to keep her company at night. If only—
Conal’s harsh, angry voice had cut rudely across her thoughts then.
“It seems I must forever be apologizing for my little sister! You see, my lord, she lacks not only discipline but also the care of a gently bred woman to instruct her in the manners and deportment of a lady.”
And looking up, with her face flushed with embarrassment, she had encountered those pale blue eyes for the first time. Eyes set deeply under blond brows in a face of chiseled perfection that was almost too beautiful to belong to a man.
“No use trying to run off like some startled wood-nymph, sister. We’ve caught you.”
The young Englishman’s arm, thrown in comradely fashion about her brother’s broad shoulders, dropped as he stared at her measuringly.
“Leo, may I present my sister, Lady Margaret Galvan? Lord Leofric Sinclair.”
Two months later, she and Leo had been married. And within three months, she had left Ireland, never to return to it again.
Her shallow breathing quickened as the shell of the woman who had once been “Pretty Peggy” moved one thin, bloodless hand as if to ward off memories that now came thick and fast, flooding her tired mind with scenes that, like watercolors, ran one into the other: Conal’s loud, blustering voice, shouting at her, threatening her; the feel of his heavy hands as he beat her into shivering, resigned submission; Leo’s white, soft hands, the heavy rings glinting on long fingers—his voice thick with the liquor he had consumed so heavily before he could bring himself to come to her; she herself lying trembling in bed, her thin lawn nightshift feeling clammy against her perspiring, shrinking flesh.
How long—how many months (or had it been years?)—before she was woman enough to understand that their relationship was not a normal one?
Fashionable husbands and wives did not seek each other’s company too much. And if she slept alone more often than not, this, too, was nothing out of the ordinary.
She had no one to talk to—no older woman to warn her or give her advice as to what she should expect from marriage. All Conal had said, gruffly, was, “You remember your promise to obey your husband and to submit to him in everything. That’s all you need to know, little sister.” And he and Leo had exchanged a look over her head that she hadn’t understood—not then.
After they had left Ireland, Peggy’s life was too full of new things, and far too confusing, for her to want to think too closely about her sudden marriage and the cold, remote man who was her husband.
There was the big house in the country near Cornwall where Leo took her first, to meet his family. His father, the duke of Royse, was an ailing, irascible old man, who had merely raised one bushy eyebrow as he nodded and growled, “That’s right—and high time, too! Told you marriage was the only thing.”
Leo’s older brother, the Viscount Stanbury, was off in Europe somewhere, but his younger brother, Anthony, was kind to her, shaking her hand vigorously as he stammered his good wishes.
After Cornwall, they traveled about a great deal so that she was always tired. Visits to relatives and friends and Leo leaving her alone with them most of the time. Finally, the months in London—a giddy whirl of fittings for dazzling new gowns and one activity after another until she felt that she never got enough sleep and was relieved that Leo left her alone so much. Leo’s sister, Lady Hester Beaumont, took her everywhere and saw that she met everyone and wore exactly the right clothes and jewels for every occasion. They had the use of the duke’s magnificent house in London, and Peggy learned to keep household accounts and manage a large staff of servants.
But she had barely had time to become used to the routine of life in London when they were on the move again, this time a journey that meant crossing the ocean, for Leo’s father had deeded him a large plantation in the colony of North Carolina, in America.
Leo was handsomer than ever in those days despite the faint lines of dissipation that were beginning to show in his face. Peggy had grown used to the fact that he was always cold and punctiliously formal to her. She was aware that there were other women who looked at her enviously and whispered that she had one of the few faithful husbands in town. But they could not know that her husband found her so unattractive that he seldom came to her, and then only when he was very drunk; or that he had never once undressed her completely, but fumbled clumsily and hurtfully for her body in the dark as if he could not bear to look upon her face or her nakedness. She had no idea what was supposed to take place between a man and a woman; and when he cursed and swore and hurt her with his groping fumblings, she blamed herself for being inexperienced. Leo was such a perfect, beautiful specimen of a man that the fault had to lie with her. The fact that he preferred the company of his cronies she also accepted passively. It was not until much, much later that she really understood what kind of devils drove her husband and the kind of debauchery his twisted nature craved….
In Carolina, Leo had his duties with the army that kept him away for weeks and months at a time. There was an overseer to tend the crops, and slaves to perform every task that needed doing, even to the brushing of Peggy’s long dark hair. She began to read, from sheer loneliness and boredom at first, choosing books at random and with a kind of diffidence (how limited her formal education had been) from the enormous library. And then, caught up and taken beyond herself by the sudden treasure-trove of knowledge that lay at her fingertips, she began to read quite avidly. Books on art, on history, on philosophy and even music opened a whole new world to her starved, seeking mind. She was never lonely now, with her secret world to retire to; and with some of her earlier agonizing shyness and anxiety disappearing, she began to make friends with the families of neighboring plantation owners, finding that making conversation was not so difficult after all if one had something to talk about.
Leo, when he was home, expressed himself pleased at her emergence from her “dull little shell,” and Peggy herself, as she became used to the lazy, leisurely life, was almost content.
Until…
She was to agonize over it later. To ask herself over and over if it had been worth it, being brought to sudden awareness of her womanhood and deeply hidden passions only to have everything taken away from her again. She could never even regain that fleeting sense of contentment that had come with her very ignorance of what living meant.
But at first, when it happened, she felt only stark, unreasoning terror, and a sense of unreality that kept her alive for she did not fall into screaming hysterics or try to flee in useless panic as some of the other women did, to be brought down bleeding and staring-eyed, her skull split open by a tomahawk.
To be taken by Indians! Such a thing only happened to other people—to the wives and families of small settlers—not to her, not to the Lady Margaret Sinclair, chatelaine of one of the largest plantations in the Carolinas.
“Leo will tell me it was all my own fault,” she caught herself thinking stupidly once during the long, forced march that led her and the other captives deeper and deeper into impenetrable forest and swamps. “If I had not felt it my duty to visit that poor little Mrs. Rutherford because she was having her first child and I thought there was no other woman for miles around. And then, after all, there were, and I need not have—”
But what was the point of thinking? After a while she concentrated only upon keeping on her feet, for if she fell she would be killed, and she had found, already, that she did not want to die.
Thankfully, her memory blurred—a series of pictures moving faster and faster in her tired mind until abruptly they stopped, focusing on one particular scene, growing brighter and larger, until all she could see was Jean’s face, as she had seen it first.
Dark-haired like herself, his eyes were a strange green-grey, like the surface of a lake on a cloudy day. Surprisingly, he had spoken to her first in French.
“Sacre—” And then, biting the next word off with an effort, “What were you doing among those unfortunate wretches? Had no one warned you of the dangers you might encounter?”
She was too tired, too numb to respond to his anger, except to wonder dully why he seemed so angry. She said the very first thing that came into her mind.
“You—you are not one of them! But who are you?”
“Nom de Dieu! Questions! And it is I who should be asking them. Do you realize in what kind of position you are, madame?”
“I am safe now, though, am I not?” Again she spoke without conscious thought, mesmerized by the angry, intent look in those ice-bright eyes.
Even as she spoke his eyes seemed to change, and something made her start to blush, even though she still could not tear her gaze from his sun-dark face.
“I am blood brother to the Iroquois,” he said. And then, more softly, almost to himself, he added, “Safe? My soul is as wild as theirs. I would not be too sure of it, madame.”
She found out later that she had been a gift from the Shoshone to their Iroquois brother. But by then it did not matter, for he had made her his, in more ways than one.
The women whispered by the fire, never noticing when the shallow breathing came faster, and more convulsively and finally stopped. Their conversation had followed the same pattern as Lady Margaret’s thoughts.
“But what happened then? I mean, it wasn’t hardly the poor creature’s fault, was it? Being carried off by savages and all—”
“It wasn’t that! And mind you, you promised not to tell another living soul! No, he took her back, all right, my lord did—paid a princely sum of money for her return, too. And then, just nine months later, the boy was born. You mind how my lord must have felt? Never being quite certain….” But the boy had his name, and she had the bringing up of him. Let him run wild, too, going off to hunt with the Indians and even live with them for weeks on end.”
“But Lord Leo? His Grace, I mean. Surely he—”
“Ah, but he had his duties with the army, you see. And surely you can understand his feelings about the lad? Those were trying times there with riots, and hotheads preaching all kinds of crazy ideas about self-government and all. And you know what it all came to in the end! Revolution. And Lady Margaret, a British Tory’s wife, entertaining the army officers and their Tory friends in their home—when all the time, she was a spy for them, for those rebels! Yes, and her son, too—for all that he was a mere lad at the time. Only ten or eleven he was, but he would carry them messages. It all came out in the end, of course.”
“I never!” Nurse Sitwell breathed the words, licking her lips almost hungrily.
“Oh, it would have been a rare scandal, I assure you, if Lord Leo’s father—my lord was the Viscount Stanbury by then for his older brother died in Italy of some fever—well, the duke hushed it all up, and only the family knew the whole story.”
“The Frenchman. He—?”
“Ah, that one! It’s my guess she’d have stayed with him or run off with him after he’d got the ransom money if he hadn’t had a wife and family of his own somewhere. But he came back when they had the revolution. I heard them say she hid him when he was wounded and the soldiers were looking for him everywhere. And that was how it started up again. Him and her and the spying. But Lord Leo caught on when the boy was captured along with some other rebels. And then, of course, to save him, she came back to England, meek as you please; and the family put it about she was suffering from some nervous disorder.”
“But you mean she wasn’t really touched in the head then? She—”
As if suddenly aware that she had said too much, Mrs. Parsons pursed her thin lips.
“Don’t you be saying anything like that. She couldn’t have been right in the head at the beginning to do what she done, and well you know it! Those Irish. They say she was a papist, too, and never really changed, although she pretended to, just to get herself married to a catch like Lord Leo.” She added darkly, “And I’ve no doubt that son of hers is going the same way, living up in Ireland all these years! He was incorrigible like one of them savages, and well I remember! They wouldn’t keep him in Eton, and when my lord found him a tutor here for him and Mr. Philip, his nephew, why—one day he almost killed Mr. Philip with his bare hands! And only because Mr. Philip teased him about being a colonial. It took Mr. Grimes and two of the footmen to drag him off. And after that my lord sent him off to live with his uncle in Ireland. Said he didn’t want to set eyes on Master Dominic again, and I can’t blame him! It’s been years now, and no one’s seen or heard of him—and a good thing, too, if you want my opinion. I doubt that he’s changed and I used to be frightened to be around him even when he wasn’t no more than a boy. Those eyes of his, like grey ice, fair startling they were, taken with his black hair—”
Mrs. Sitwell said suddenly and surprisingly, “Well, but all the same I cannot help feeling sorry for the poor lady. Fancy not setting eyes on your own flesh and blood for years and years, and not knowing what kind of a man he’s grown into! He’d be the Viscount Stanbury now, I take it?”
Mrs. Parsons frowned.
“That’s right. And the more’s the pity, for the title ought to be Mr. Philip’s by rights. And I’ve heard even His Grace say so! Ah, now there’s a handsome, charming young gentleman if there ever was one. You’ll see for yourself, I’m sure. But mind you—not a word of what I’ve been telling you. Family secrets—”
“Ah, well, I’ve heard a great deal of those in all the years I’ve been a nurse,” Mrs. Sitwell said comfortably. “And the reason Dr. Elphinstone recommends me to all the lords and ladies that are his patients is that he knows I can hold my tongue.”
Settling deeper into her chair, she encouraged Mrs. Parsons to go on with her reminiscing.
The duke of Royse was also remembering, the old, implacable rage hardening his still handsome features.
Damn it, why did the bitch take so long to die? Why had he let his passing lust for Conal make him choose his sister for a bride? Shy, innocent Peggy, with her great, wondering eyes. Demure Lady Margaret, who would never question nor make any demands of him. And to think that for years he had congratulated himself on his choice of a wife. She was stupid and country-bred, and slim-flanked and small-bosomed enough so as not to disgust him too much when he forced himself to go to her.
“Take a wife, dammit! I’ll not have any ugly scandal attached to our name!” his father had warned him after the episode with a certain young groom. And so he had gone to Ireland and met Conal, and through Conal, his black-haired sister.
“If I had not let her taunt me—if I had not been so damned blind drunk and angry that night….”
But he’d had to teach her a lesson, to make her remember who she was and who he was. That bold-faced little strumpet sitting up in bed without a stitch to cover her as she said softly and innocently, “But Leo, I’ve become used to sleeping naked. The Indians wear very little, you know.”
Instead of being grateful and relieved that he had ransomed her and taken her back, she had spent most of her time crying or mooning around with swollen eyes. She’d tricked him, curse her, damn her! And all the punishment he’d inflicted on her since then could not wipe that out.
After he’d left her that night, bruised and bleeding from the force of his assault on her body, he thought he had cowed her forever. And then, a scant month later, she had announced to him quite calmly across the breakfast table, “I think you’ll be happy to know, my lord, that I am expecting a child.” Then, as he half rose, she must have read the ugly resolve in his eyes for she continued in the same even voice, “I could not bear not to confide our happy news to Mrs. Gordon and some of the other ladies whose husbands are your closest friends. They all wish us well, of course.”
At least the child she bore was no progeny of an Indian savage—but he could not be thankful for that; for if it had been, he would have had the excuse and a reason to strangle it. No, she had produced a grey-eyed, black-haired brat who looked like her and might, by the slimmest margin of possibility, be his. And she had never, no matter how he threatened or bullied her, confessed to having been the mistress of that half-French American, even after he came back into her life.
“Why does she cling to her miserable existence? By God, that fool of a doctor said it would be only a matter of hours.” And then on the heels of his wish he received its fulfillment with the panted cries of the women upstairs and the scurrying of feet.
For the first time that evening the duke smiled and leaned back in his padded velvet chair. So it was over at last! He had everything prepared—all the necessary papers drawn up and signed and the doctor on his way. If all went well, he would be back in London by morning—no need to spend another night in the country with a corpse and whispering servants for company.
“Well, Leo? ’Pon my soul! I’d hardly expected to find you back in town so soon, after—” Lord Anthony Sinclair, Baron Lydon, let his words trail away into an awkward cough as he lowered his ponderous bulk into the padded leather chair next to his brother in the Select Room at Whites Club.
The duke raised an eyebrow as he studied Lord Anthony’s red, perspiring face.
“Indeed, Tony? I would have thought that you of all people would be the least surprised to find me back in town.” A certain dryness crept into his voice. “Well? Did you tear yourself away from Prinny’s company merely to offer me your condolences?”
Lord Anthony cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“Dammit, Leo! Why will you always put a man so deucedly ill at ease? To tell the truth, I had half-expected to discover you here tonight. Saves me a trip into the country, y’know, although I daresay, with the funeral—”
“The funeral, my dear brother, took place very quietly this morning as you very well know. And, to forestall any further questions on the matter, I did not feel the need to be present. So, now that that is out of the way perhaps you will put me out of my suspense and tell me why you found it necessary to come looking for me.”
“Last thing I wanted to do, actually!” Lord Anthony confessed with a sudden burst of frankness. “Why does everything have to happen all at once, eh? But dash it, there was no one else to be the one to tell you, and you know the Prince of Wales thinks a great deal of you—reminded me that you have Chatham’s ear—”
Languidly, the duke raised one white, be-ringed hand, causing his brother’s words to stumble into silence.
“Peace, my dear brother, peace! I am afraid that I can make no sense at all of whatever you’re trying to convey to me. I presume you did come here to bring me bad news of some kind? Well, I have found that news of any sort is best delivered quite directly without any frills or evasions.” He paused deliberately to take a pinch of snuff and heard his brother sigh heavily.
“You’re a devilish cold fish, Leo. Damned if you aren’t. Never quite understood—but very well then, no need to give me that cold-eyed stare, I’ll come directly to the point. It’s your—it’s Dominic.”
This time he thought he saw a reaction in the duke’s cold, composed face, a certain strange gleam in his eyes, making them grow suddenly more brilliant for an instant. But the next moment, the duke had raised one eyebrow as he said calmly, “Indeed? But now you have truly surprised me, Tony. I was told some months ago that the young man had suddenly decided to take off for France in spite of the somewhat turbulent turn of events there. So? What of him?”
This time Lord Anthony was quite blunt, his face flushing.
“He’s here. In England. In Newgate Prison, to be exact, facing a charge of treason along with five other Irish rebels. And if you can’t do something about it, Leo, there’s going to be the very devil of an ugly scandal when he comes up for trial within the next fortnight.”
The duke’s snuffbox closed with a snap—his only show of emotion. He said softly, “So? And do they know who he is? Has anything been noised abroad yet?”
“He would have been summarily executed after a public flogging, along with some ten or fifteen others, if not for the intervention of a certain Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who informed the major in charge that the man known as ‘Captain Challenger’ was none other than the Viscount Stanbury and the heir to an English dukedom. Damn it, Leo—no need to look at me that way, I can’t help the way matters turned out! Fortunately, this Major Sirr proved to be an exceptionally intelligent and discreet man. He had five of the rebel leaders sent here to Newgate, under heavy guard, of course. And they’ve been permitted to speak to no one, not even to the prison doctor. No exercising in the prison yard, and their meals are pushed in to them through a grating under the door—”
“You may spare me the trivial details, Tony, and relate to me only the facts, if you please.”
The duke’s voice remained unaccented by any overt feeling, but his fingers had clenched themselves over the head of the slim sword cane he habitually carried. “How many persons, outside of yourself and the Prince of Wales, and this major fellow in Ireland, of course—how many others know?”
Lord Anthony, feeling himself reprimanded as if he had been a schoolboy, sounded a trifle sullen. “I told you—no one. Not even the warden of the prison himself. They are being kept incommunicado; that’s not unusual, you know, for those accused of treasonable acts! But the question is, dammit, for how long can the secret be kept? There will have to be a trial, and then—can’t you see what the results would be? I’m known to be one of Prinny’s closest intimates and you—I’ve heard rumors you’re likely to follow Chatham as prime minister if he ever decides to step down. I tell you, Leo, you cannot—”
“And I will not, my brother. But this, you must admit, is too public a place to discuss such matters. I will order my carriage, and we will go together to the earl of Chatham’s house. I think he will still be up. And then, on our—unnoticed, I hope—way to Newgate Prison we will talk further.”
“You are going to tell Chatham then? But—”
Lord Anthony was forced to cut short his expostulation as his brother, summoning a servant, gave the man instructions to have his carriage brought around to the door.
“With a personally signed order from the prime minister himself, I think we will be allowed access to these treasonable Irishmen. And then—we will see.”
The duke smoothed one long finger against the line of his jaw, and his voice grew thoughtful. “It will be interesting to see if the young savage I remember has changed very much since he’s grown into a man.”
In the beginning the duke, his fastidious senses already offended by the prison stench and the tiny, windowless cell to which he had been escorted, found it hard to recognize any resemblance to a man at all in the emaciated, heavily chained wretch who was half-pushed, half-carried through the iron-studded door.
The light shed by a single, flickering lantern was dim, and it took His Grace some moments to realize that the scarecrowlike, raggedly clad creature who fell back against the door as soon as it had closed was not only manacled hand and foot so that he could hardly stand, let alone move, but gagged as well. So the warden was following his strict instructions to the letter, it seemed! A conscientious man.
The duke had preferred to stand rather than take the single rush-bottomed chair that had been hastily brought in for his comfort. And now, moving leisurely, he permitted himself to take a small pinch of snuff before he reached with his other hand, still gloved, for the lantern.
Still moving slowly and deliberately, he crossed the small space between them, his polished boots rustling the dirty straw. There was no sign of movement, not even a flinching away, from the chained man, even when the duke suddenly held the lantern high, barely inches away from the bearded, bruised face. Or what he could see of a face behind leather straps that held the gag in place.
Was it possible that they had made a mistake, after all? That this was some other rascally rebel who hoped to save his own skin by pretending to be an English viscount?
The duke’s thin nostrils wrinkled with distaste. They should have thrown a few buckets of cold water over him before bringing him in here! His eyes, moving over the ragged figure, noticed without surprise the collection of cuts and weals that decorated both his torso and arms.
He said aloud, letting a sneer creep into his voice, “I see that our soldiers are as efficient as usual when it comes to putting down rebellions against the crown! I take it you were persuaded to confess to your part in it?”
There was no answer, nor had he expected any, but the man’s head went up at last, and slitted eyes that reflected the lantern light like silver looked into the duke’s appraising ones.
“So it is you, after all. You should have stayed in France, after all—or did you go there to drum up help for your ridiculous cause?”
The eyes were the same, although the boy of sixteen he remembered had grown taller. They glared defiance and hate at him, precisely as they had done so many years ago when Dominic had said, his voice flat and hard, “And someday I will come back here and kill you, for what you have done to my mother and to me.”
But as long as his mother lived, and the threat remained that the duke her husband might send her to Bedlam, Dominic had not dared to return to England.
The duke saw the corded muscles stand out in the young man’s throat as if he ached to speak—to cry his defiance aloud, perhaps? Or to beg for mercy? But there would be time enough to remove the gag if he wished it; and for the moment there were things he wished to say first.
“Your mother died last night—a pity there was no time to send for you or that I had no idea you were already on your way here. You’ll agree with me that it was a merciful release?”
This time there was a sound from behind the gag that sounded like an animal growl, and the duke smiled.
“Ah yes. I had forgotten how attached you used to be to the poor, unfortunate woman. But time, as you know, has a way of changing most things, and even the strongest bonds must break someday. You should be thankful for her sake that she died before she heard what you have been up to.” He shook his head, still with the thin smile curving his lips. “No, no, I would not attempt to spring at me if I were you! For chained as you are you would only suffer the further humiliation of falling flat on your face at my feet. As I recall I once had my grooms hold you while they administered the beating you richly deserved for attacking my nephew. I am afraid, Dominic, that your unstable temper comes to you from your mother—and with such a poor inheritance, who knows? For your own sake and the sake of others you might injure, it might be that I could have you committed to Bedlam—”
His eyes studied carefully the effect of his words, but apart from that first instinctive, abortive tensing of his muscles Dominic seemed not to hear him, his eyes now staring stonily over the duke’s shoulder.
Royse now lowered his voice slightly and his tone became almost insinuating.
“Come now, I have only tried to make it plain to you what I could and would do as a last resort! But if you are prepared to be reasonable and to curb your animal rages, why—we might talk.” He watched the silver-grey eyes that seemed to reflect back the flickering of the lantern without revealing anything that was in their depths, and he continued in the same studiedly reasonable tone. “You can nod, can’t you? Well then, if you wish me to remove your gag and promise that you will not subject me to any bursts of your usual insolence, I will do so. You see? I am prepared to be reasonable. You have only to move your head.”
There was a long moment when it seemed as if Dominic was determined to be stubborn, and the duke cast about in his mind for other methods. But his face showed nothing of his thoughts, and at last he caught the grudging, almost imperceptible movement he looked for and permitted himself to smile again.
“There, you see? That was not too difficult, was it? It has been a long time since we have had a conversation, you and I. And believe me, we would have done so much earlier if I’d had any notion that your Uncle Conal was letting you run wild and associate with the scum who call themselves the United Irishmen.”
Placing the lantern on the chair, the duke went behind Dominic and deftly began to unfasten the leather straps, noticing as he did so that the young man’s back was also a mass of cuts and festering wounds. They had really done a good job on him with the “cat”—a pity in so many ways that the meddling Lord Fitzgerald had seen fit to interfere before they finished him off.
There was a certain tenseness in the figure before him that prompted the duke, as the gag loosened and came off, to give him a quick shove with his gloved hand, sending him staggering forward onto his knees.
“There is no need for you to attempt to get up, for with the weight of those chains, you cannot. And I must admit I feel safer this way. Besides—” he walked a little distance away and picked up the lantern once more “—it will do you good to do some penance. I take it that you have gone back to being a papist as your mother was?”
The voice that finally answered him was a husky whisper as Dominic forced movement into his aching jaws and swollen tongue.
“Did you want to speak to me, Your Grace? Or merely to force me into just such ungovernable outbursts of rage as you accuse me of?”
The duke of Royse arched one slim blond brow. “It seems that you have actually managed to acquire some polish, after all! Did your uncle find you tutors in Ireland?”
Dominic’s voice was carefully controlled. “My uncle tried to teach me many things, as I think you would know. But in the end I found my own tutors. Is this what you have waited to ask me?”
The duke’s face had tightened and his eyes flickered, but he managed to control his rage within him. “My time is short, Captain Rebel. Tell me—why do you Irishmen who call yourself leaders always choose such overly dramatic names? Captain this and Captain that. But in the end you will all be brought to the same state—condemned felons, on their knees to English justice!”
“But an English rebel is entitled to stand before a judge, is he not, Your Grace? And before a jury of his peers. I had not thought I would sometime find a use for the grand title that my accident of birth bestowed upon me!”
“I had thought you had some such plan in mind! But be careful. I do not take my name or my titles lightly!”
“What will you do with me then? Have me killed before I can stand trial? Or committed to Bedlam as you threatened? Will you make arrangements to send me gagged into the court? I do not think your English justice, of which we’ve seen so little in Ireland, will tolerate it.”
“You’re still defiant, then. I take it you mean to make some brave, impassioned speech about justice and liberty and equality for all before they pass sentence on you? Oh—very gallant! I can tell you’ve been absorbing all the revolutionary ideas that have unfortunately spread from America to France! But do not think that I will let you drag my name in the dust.”
Dominic’s voice sounded suddenly tired. “I intend to open the eyes of some of the people in England to the injustice and brutality their armies and corrupt officials practice in Ireland in the name of King George. And if that constitutes dragging your name in the mire, then I must tell you, Your Grace, that only the two alternatives I’ve mentioned before will stop me from doing so.”
“I think not!” was all the duke said between his clenched teeth before he strode to the door and called for the jailers.
He waited until they had come back and refastened the gag, and then, drawing off his glove, struck the man the world knew as his son across the face.
In French he said, “If we ever meet again, you are at liberty to call me out for this. But I do not think that we shall.”
Outside the night air was clean and cold as the duke of Royse climbed into his carriage where his brother sat anxiously awaiting him.
“Well, Leo? Dammit, man, you had me worried when you took so long! And it’s a deucedly cold night too—a good thing I thought to bring my flask of brandy with me. Well, what happened? You look like the devil himself.”
“And so I might be called, by some! But I have decided what must be done and left instructions with the warden.”
Lord Anthony cast his brother a doubtful, sidelong look.
“Pitt’s letter helped, eh? Thought it might. He’s the real ruler of England now the king’s health is failing. But you were saying—”
“You did not let me finish, Tony. But yes, the earl of Chatham was good enough to give me carte blanche in the handling of this unfortunate affair, along with the expression of his fullest trust.” He sat back, relaxing against comfortable velvet cushions as he pulled the fur lap robe up over his knees. “Tomorrow afternoon at precisely two o’clock our five rebels will be permitted to take one turn about the exercise yard, at a time when all the other prisoners are already locked back into their cells. And at about two minutes after the hour they will be taken and impressed into the Royal Navy—a not unusual happening in many of our prisons both here and in Ireland, as you know.”
“By George!” Lord Anthony breathed admiringly. “Damn me, Leo—I always knew you had a devilish, devious mind! So there’ll be no trial after all, eh? And no scandal, thank God!”
“And our young rebel,” the duke added silkily, “will serve His Majesty for a change.”
PART ONE
1
The small Carmelite convent, white-washed walls almost hidden by the tall trees that surrounded it, stood like a miniature oasis on the dusty, arid road to Toledo. Like the royal estate at Aranjuez, which lay nearby, it was watered by a thin artery of a stream that branched off the Rio Tajo.
Sometimes, when one of the more adventurous young females left in the care of the good sisters was daring enough to climb atop the thick stone walls, she would see around her, shimmering endlessly under the sun, the arid brown and ochre plains of the Spanish province of Castile. How hot and desolate the countryside looked! And especially from the convent walls, where one had only to turn one’s head to see everything green—the shade trees, the fruit trees, and the carefully tended vegetable gardens. A peaceful place, cut off from the world where so many unpleasant things took place. And it was quiet here, too, except for the times the nuns would raise their voices in songs of praise during the mass, or when the muted bells tolled. At this time in the afternoon, it was quiet enough to hear the droning sound of the bees as they gathered honey from the profusion of flowers that grew almost wild here, in the reverend mother’s own private garden. Walls within walls….
The young woman who sat on a stone bench beneath the shadiest tree in the garden wore the sober garb of a postulant. Her head was bowed, and she seemed to study her clasped hands, lying in her lap. From a distance, she presented a perfect image of piety and humility, but the reverend mother herself, turning back from her window with a sigh, knew better. She had sent Marisa outdoors into her own private garden to meditate and pray for guidance, but she knew the child too well to be misled by the outward meekness of that bent head. No doubt the girl was dreaming of something else—new ways to show her rebellion, perhaps. Marisa had never learned true humility; and if she accepted discipline, it was only up to a certain point, and because she chose to for her own reasons. However, the letter that Mother Angelina had forced herself to read aloud that same morning must naturally have come as a shock. The child needed time to adjust herself to the thought that she was not to become a nun after all. Her father, it seemed, had other ideas.
“She’s so young yet,” mused Mother Angelina, “she will adjust. Perhaps it will be better for her this way. I was never really certain if she had a vocation or if she chose the cloister as a form of escape from all the ugly memories…. It is not right that a child, gently brought up and protected for all of her young life, should have been exposed to such horror….”
As the older woman’s thoughts turned back, so did those of the young girl in the garden. Far from being clasped together in meek submission, her fingers twisted against each other with a passion of rage she was unable to control; and her enormous, tawny-gold eyes were stormy.
She had tried to pray, as Mother Angelina had instructed her, she had tried to cleanse her mind of rebellious thoughts. But it was no use. Perhaps, after all, the discipline of the convent had never really left its mark on her recalcitrant nature. Humility, resignation, obedience, she could feel none of these.
Unwillingly, her thoughts flashed back to the morning, the usual routine being unexpectedly broken when she was summoned to the mother superior’s study.
She had hurried along the long, cold corridor in the wake of Sor Teresa, whose brown habit seemed to rustle with sour disapproval; Marisa cast back frantically in her mind for some small misdemeanor, some infraction of the strict rules.
But everything had faded away when she saw Mother Angelina’s kind, concerned face and the pinched lines around her lips.
“Sit down, my child.” Papers rustled on the small wooden desk. “I have just received a letter from your father. A special messenger brought it all the way from Madrid.”
“He—my uncle the monsignor has talked to him then? He’s consented?”
As usual, her eagerness had carried her too far forward, and she subsided into her chair, sitting very straight as she had been taught, trying to control her excitement under the shadow of the reverend mother’s frown.
The frown she was used to, but the sigh that suddenly escaped Mother Angelina’s lips made her wary.
“I’m afraid—you have to understand that God tests us in many ways. Your father—”
Marisa had not been able to prevent herself from interrupting.
“But I do not understand! Surely my father can have no objection to my becoming a nun? Why should he? If my uncle has talked to him—”
Oh, but it had been such a shocking, unpleasant interview! Mother Angelina, as upset in her own way as Marisa was, had taken refuge in unusual sternness, reminding her of the vows of obedience she had been willing to take.
Nothing could mitigate the shock of the contents of her father’s letter. For some time, Marisa could not bring herself to believe that she had heard correctly.
“Married? He—he has arranged a marriage for me with some man I have not even seen? Oh no. It cannot be true! I don’t wish to be married. I will not be married! I only want to become a nun, just like you. I don’t—”
Her defiant outburst had only brought what she thought of as “the sad look” to the reverend mother’s face; and after several stern admonishments Marisa had been sent out here, to her favorite place, to consider her “duty.”
Duty! It was too much to ask of her. To be married. Why couldn’t she have been allowed to find peace in a convent?
The thought of marriage and everything it entailed brought all the nightmares back. That night in Paris, during the height of the “Terror” as people were beginning to call it. Fleeing through the darkness, being only half-awake and trying to make believe that it was all an unpleasant dream—and then, suddenly, the flaring torchlights and the shouts and ribald laughter.
“Well, well! And what’s all this? Some more Aristos trying to escape Madame Guillotine? Who are you, eh?”
One man, saner than the rest, or perhaps, only a little less drunk, had laughed contemptuously.
“Have done, citizens! Can’t you see they’re only a scared band of gypsies? Hey, you—why don’t you show us some of your juggling tricks? Perhaps you’ll tell our fortunes—”
“Fortunes, pah! There’s a likely-looking wench there, with golden skin. Perhaps we should tell her fortune. What do you say, citizens?”
And she remembered Delphine, the woman who had taken care of her since she was a baby, thrusting herself forward, pushing Marisa away from her as she did. “You want your fortune told, handsome gentlemen? My mother is too old and sick in her head, you understand? And you have frightened my little brother with your shouting. But me, I’ll tell all your fortunes for a few sous. We are poor, hungry people. No one has any money these days, and that is why we’re on our way back to Spain….”
After that—no, she did not want to think of what had happened after that! At the time she had not understood. She knew only that the laughter and ribald talk of the men had turned into something else, and suddenly Delphine was screaming, screaming for them to go, to run away, even while they were ripping at her clothes, pushing her down onto the dirty cobblestones. Screaming—and suddenly, there was blood everywhere, and the men, caught up by their own animal instincts, were all clustered around the prostrate form of the woman they were using so callously, like the beasts they were. And Sor Angelina, as she had been then, dressed like a gypsy herself, had forcibly pulled Marisa away, making her run, run very fast, not stopping even when she stumbled and almost fell.
“Delphine sacrificed herself for you, child. For all of us. Would you have wanted her sacrifice to be for nothing?”
Told that over and over, she had tried to accept it. Dressed as a boy for her own safety during the long months that followed, she had tried to feel herself as nothing more than a ragged gypsy urchin. No, she did not want to be a woman—never, never to be used and torn to pieces that way. Perhaps maman was better off going to the guillotine with her other gay, brave friends, dying quickly and cleanly under the knife. Poor, weak maman, who loved the gaiety of Paris and had so many gallant admirers she had almost forgotten her daughter, tucked safely away in a convent, with only Delphine remembering to visit every week.
The first upheaval in Marisa’s life had been her removal from Martinique, where she had lived with maman’s family while her father was in Cuba. He had sent for them to join him, and Marisa could still remember how her mother had cried, complaining petulantly, “It was bad enough when he dragged me away to Louisiana—I lost two children there, you remember? The heat, the swamps and the loneliness, and the fever! And now it is Cuba. Cuba! No—I won’t go! He promised me Spain, and Paris—why shouldn’t I visit our relatives there? Everyone is there—even Marie-Josephe de Pagerie, who swore she would never leave Martinique. I must see Paris just once, at least, or I will stifle and die!”
Paris had been bleak and cold and wet. And Marisa had cried for days on end, longing for her old home and her handsome golden-haired papa, who had always made such a pet of her when he was home. Paris was not home—she hated the convent to which she had been sent to learn to be a lady. And she hardly ever saw maman any longer—it would all have been too much to bear if it had not been for Delphine.
Why hadn’t papa come after them? Why had he waited so long to acknowledge her existence?
“Your father was naturally upset when your mother ran off with you that way. And then, for so many months, he believed you were dead—killed, like so many others during the Terror. Child! You must try to understand that your father is doing what he believes best for you. He loves you—”
“If he really loved me, he would have taken the trouble to try and find me before. He would let me become a nun, as I wish to be.” Recklessly, in spite of Mother Angelina’s reproachful look, she cried out, “He doesn’t wish to be bothered with me any longer. Perhaps everything maman used to say was true, after all. She said he didn’t want her after a while, because she didn’t give him a son. She used to cry all the time because of the other women he had, even slaves. She said he had an octoroon mistress he loved better than her—”
Her almost hysterical outburst checked, Marisa had been dismissed. But even now, in spite of all her efforts, she found that she could not check her own wild, resentful thoughts.
Why couldn’t she have been born a boy? Why a female—slave forever to a man’s whims? Ah, for the freedom of those runaway days with the gypsies when she had been dressed as a boy and felt as free as a boy. In retrospect, the vagrant, vagabond life didn’t seem too unpleasant at all. She had learned to ride astride and to run barefoot over the hardest ground, and even to pick pockets without being caught. A whole year of freedom—and then another convent. But after a while, the atmosphere of peace and tranquillity had dissolved some of the tension in her thin, highly-strung body, and the nightmares from which she would wake, screaming, had grown less and less frequent. Marisa, the little gypsy rebel had changed into Marisa the postulant, desiring nothing more than to spend her life behind these quiet, safe walls, which had become her refuge.
And now, without warning, the peaceful future she had hoped for was to be snatched away from her. Without being consulted or offered a choice, she was to be sold into slavery. Yes, that was what it amounted to, after all!
A soft hiss made Marisa raise her head abruptly to meet a pair of coal-dark eyes that sparkled with mischief. Blanca! Only the gypsy girl would be so bold as to wander in here, of all places.
“Hah—innocent one! Are you dreaming of your handsome caballero? So you’ve changed your mind about becoming a sister like that sour-faced Sor Teresa, eh? But I don’t blame you. Me, I would do the same thing if I was offered a novio who is both rich and handsome. Muy hombre, that one. You’re lucky!”
“I don’t know what you mean!” But Marisa’s sharp rejoinder was almost automatic. Somehow, Blanca always contrived to know everything. Taking advantage of her privileged position as a protégée of the mother superior, she alone was free to come and go from the convent as she pleased; her father, when they were not travelling, desired that his only daughter be given an education. And since his tribe had saved the nuns’ lives, guiding them safely from a turbulent France to the comparative peace of Spain, Blanca’s intermittent, giggling presence within the otherwise quiet walls was tolerated—although some of the older nuns sighed over her wild ways and prayed for her soul.
There was a time when she and Marisa had been closer than sisters, and now even while she tried to frown, Marisa could not help letting her curiosity get the better of her. She repeated, with a forced air of indifference, “I don’t know where you pick such wild stories up. And you know you should not be here. If the reverend mother sees us talking, she’ll find all kind of penances for me to perform.”
Not in the least put off, Blanca merely gave a snort, putting her hands on her hips. “Ah, bah! You speak like a child who tries too hard to be good. And as for Mother Angelina, she is far too busy entertaining two visitors to worry about us just yet! You see—you cannot hide anything from me.” Her voice dropped, and she thrust her face closer to Marisa’s, her black eyes narrowing slyly. “What do you want to wager that you’ll be sent for again? I’m sure your fine new novio will want to take a look at his little convent bride. Didn’t you hear the bell at the gate?”
“What?” Marisa’s eyes had widened, and her voice sounded faint.
Blanca giggled, pleased at the effect of her words. “You look as if you are ready to faint with fear! What’s the matter, little one—have you forgotten what a man looks like? But I do not think you will be too displeased with this one. Your padre made a good choice; you’re luckier than most, you know!”
Her self-control seemed to fall away as Marisa jumped to her feet, golden eyes narrow, hands clenched into fists at her sides.
With a pleased grin, as if her baiting had been meant to provoke just such a reaction, Blanca danced back on her bare feet, her voice still taunting. “What’s the matter? Have I made you angry at last? I thought you’d be grateful to be warned beforehand that he’s here—your new novio and a friend. He must have been impatient to catch his first glimpse of you, don’t you think?”
“No!” And then, more strongly, “No, I tell you! I won’t be married off like—like some chattel! I don’t care how rich he is, or how handsome—I detest him already. I won’t see him! I’d rather kill myself than—”
“And here I was wondering if they’d got to you, after all. The good sisters, with all their preaching of humility and obedience and—” Blanca made a grimace “—discipline. Look at you! Why, you had begun to look like one of them already, wearing those clothes, your hair hidden as if you’d already lopped it off. When I told Mario, you should have seen his face! ‘What a waste!’ he kept saying. And he was so furious that my father should have brought you here and let you leave us. ‘She was born to be a gypsy,’ he kept saying. But me—” Blanca gave her companion a considering look, her head on a side, and giggled again. “Me—I think you are stupid! I saw him, this novio of yours, and he’s handsome. Tall, and well-dressed, for all that he has a friend who’s a popinjay. Perhaps he’ll wake you up, eh? I think this is what you need, to be made aware that you are a woman, and not a—a soul!”
“Oh! My soul is lost already. I’ve tried so hard to be good and to curb my temper and my wilfulness—but what good has it done me? No wonder Mother Angelina kept asking me so solemnly if I was sure I had a true vocation! Blanca, I won’t be married off, do you hear me? Go back and tell them you couldn’t find me anywhere—that I’m sick—or—or run off somewhere. I won’t see him! I’ll not be put on exhibition like a mare up for sale at a horse fair!”
Blanca’s dark eyes were crinkled to avoid the sun so that it was hard to read any expression in them.
“We are leaving tomorrow, all of us, for the big feria in Seville. You know my father is the best horse-trader in the country—everyone says so! And after that, we might travel back to France. Things are different now, so I hear. They have become gay again. That’s what I really came to tell you. Perhaps, when you’re married, your husband will take you there.”
Gold eyes stared into black ones—the two girls were almost the same height, but Blanca’s figure was more voluptuous, her simple skirt and blouse exposing bare ankles and tanned arms—the swelling curve of her well-developed breasts rising from the low-cut bodice she wore. Marisa, covered from waist to ankle, was slim enough to pass for a boy, her only redeeming feature being the dark-lashed yellow-gold eyes that looked enormous in her pinched, taut face. Beside Blanca, whose cloud of black hair fell down past her shoulders, Marisa would always look pale and insignificant, until, as she did now, she pulled the severe white head scarf off, and her hair, the color of antique gold, reflected the sunlight.
“You’re going to France? Oh, to be so free again! Whenever I see you, I start to realize that I’m like a bird in a cage.”
“Poor little bird!” Blanca repeated mockingly, softly. “But I hadn’t noticed that you were beating your wings against the bars of late. You seemed a happy prisoner!”
“It’s different—to choose your own kind of prison. I could have given myself to the church; it’s safe and comforting not to think for oneself. But I won’t give myself to a man!”
“You’re stupid! And besides, your father has already done so. If you won’t give yourself, he’ll take you, I’m sure. He looked like the kind of man who would not let anything stand in his way. Perhaps once you’ve seen him you’ll change your mind!”
It was all the reverend mother could do to hide her anxiety and her vexation behind the smooth, disciplined mask of her face when Sor Teresa had returned from her errand and whispered in Mother Angelina’s ear. So Teresa rustled out again, careful to avert her eyes from the two gentlemen who lounged at one end of the small room. Mother Angelina had to draw in a deep breath before she spoke.
“I am afraid the child is—a trifle upset. As I’ve told you, she was hoping to join our order. You must understand—first the shock of her father’s letter, and then your arrival here on its heels. If you’ll give her a few days in which to compose herself?”
The men exchanged glances. One of them raised a quizzical eyebrow, and the other shrugged impatiently, brushing at an imaginary speck on the sleeve of his blue velvet jacket.
“Heavens! I’d no intention of frightening my future bride into the vapors! In fact I must admit I’m almost nervous myself. By all means let her have time. My friend and I are on our way to Seville; we dropped in because it’s on the way, you know. Didn’t mean to cause any confusion. There’s plenty of time. I’ll be back in a month or so and that’ll give her time, won’t it? Clothes—and all the rest of it. I understand there are some aunts in Madrid who have promised to do the right thing by her—”
In the face of Mother Angelina’s disapproving look the other gentleman, who had remained silent so far, broke in suavely.
“I am sure, Reverend Mother, that what my friend means to say is that he had no desire to rush things. And I am sure that you will do whatever is necessary to prepare the young lady for the—er—change in her life. Your pardon for the unheralded intrusion—we should have known better, of course.”
Don Pedro Arteaga cast his friend a look of gratitude and quickly followed his example in rising to his feet and bowing formally to the reverend mother, who announced in stilted tones that the sisters were always pleased to offer the hospitality of the convent to travelers.
Outside the grey walls, shaded by trees, the manner of both men became almost lighthearted, as if with relief to be let off so easily. They quickly mounted their horses.
“Thank God you decided to travel along with me!” Don Pedro said feelingly. He shuddered. “I cannot imagine why I let my sister talk me into such a peculiar situation! A postulant-bride—I wonder what she looks like? If she was scared to death about meeting a man, I’m certainly glad we were able to put off meeting her! I quite dread coming back here, I tell you.”
His companion laughed harshly.
“Cheer up, amigo. Think of the pleasures that lie ahead of you. The duchess of Alba seemed fascinated by your tales of New Spain last night, and since she just happens to be visiting Seville herself—”
Don Pedro gave a self-satisfied laugh. “Did you notice that she almost ignored that painter fellow who’s always hanging around her? But you, my friend, had better exercise some caution where Her Majesty the Queen is concerned! I understand she goes after whatever or whoever she wants—and Godoy can be a dangerous enemy.”
“Ah, well!” The other gave a careless shrug. “Manuel Godoy can hardly look on me as a rival since I’ll be leaving within the next three weeks. And Maria Luisa will find another cavalier to flirt with in order to keep her lover on his toes!”
“It must be your confounded air of indifference, I swear, that attracts the ladies to you! While the rest of us play at being gallant, there you stand, your arms folded and that damned cynical smile on your face—I can’t understand it! Even my practical, icy-hearted cousin Inez, whom we had nicknamed ‘the cold unassailable’ almost threw everything away she had so carefully planned—and I, who know her better than most, could swear you hardly paid her any attention.” Don Pedro laughed, glancing sideways at his taller companion, who merely raised an eyebrow and made no comment. He rode his restive stallion as easily as if it had been a tame gelding, guiding it with one hand on the reins and the pressure of his knees. Like a vaquero, as Don Pedro had commented before.
Now, slightly annoyed by the lack of response in his friend, Don Pedro added slyly, “I wonder how my cousin took your sudden departure! After you’d fought a duel over her, and with her husband lying wounded in bed, I’m sure she must have expected you’d stay to console her. Don Andres—”
“Don Andres is to be your father-in-law, is he not? Perhaps you’d best not let your little bride-to-be find out you came to inspect her with the man who came close to killing her father. She might wonder!”
“I doubt if the frightened little chit is capable of wondering about anything except what it might feel like to be mounted by a man!” Don Pedro said brutally, giving vent to a burst of coarse laughter. He felt angry and frustrated that his dutiful visit to the convent, which had delayed his journey to Seville by several hours, had proved so fruitless. Trust Inez and Don Andres to saddle him with a sacred nitwit who had been planning to become a nun! No doubt she was ugly. If she took after her mother’s side of the family she was probably sallow complexioned and spoke with a terrible accent as well. And that stern-faced prioress had acted as if the girl needed to be protected from him. Damn! If not for the size of the dowry involved and the connections he needed to establish himself in New Spain, he’d have told them all to find another candidate.
“Be gentle with my daughter,” Don Andres had said feebly from his bed. “She has been through a great deal in France during the terrible revolution. Her mother went to the guillotine, and if not for the fact that she was still no more than a child, my little Marisa, too, might easily have lost her life.” His face had hardened, words trailing off. Catching the look in Doña Inez’s eyes, Pedro had made haste to assure Don Andres that he need not worry about his daughter’s happiness and well-being. But now—damn it all! Since he had come to Spain, he had realized how much of life he had missed being stuck away in the wilds of Louisiana, managing a run-down plantation. Right now, he didn’t want to think about marriage. His mind was full of thoughts about the fascinatingly beautiful and sophisticated duchess of Alba, who, it was rumored, had allowed her latest lover to paint her in the nude. And he was to meet her again in Seville….
Both men had fallen silent, wrapped in their own thoughts, as they skirted the grove of trees that shielded the convent walls and emerged at last onto the dusty ribbon of highway, beaten down by the passage of many other travelers on their way to Toledo. Neither of them noticed the two pairs of eyes that had watched them ride away.
“I hate him already! Which one of them is Don Pedro?”
Marisa had scaled the convent walls before but always furtively—and only high enough to barely peek over. Now, full of her new mood of defiance, she sat barefoot astraddle the very top of the wide stone wall, shading her eyes with her hand as she squinted after the small cloud of dust the two riders left behind them.
“The taller one, in the dark clothes. At least I am almost certain, for I only heard their voices through the door, you know—and Sor Teresa almost caught me listening!” Blanca, perched comfortably beside Marisa, gave a soft giggle. “He did most of the talking. When I dared peek once, the other one merely sat there chewing his nails. He looked tremendously bored!”
“Bored! They were laughing about their latest conquests just now—didn’t you hear? What fine caballeros, so puffed up with conceit! The one in blue velvet mentioned the duchess of Alba, and—do you suppose they were really talking about the queen? Oh, I can’t bear it!”
Marisa’s small face, looking thinner than ever amid the mass of her heavy hair, was flushed with anger. “They were disgusting—both of them! How could my father?”
“High time you grew up, niña! Men will be men, you know! And if you really hate the thought of marriage that much, maybe you’ll be lucky, and he’ll spend more time with his current mistress than with you! Or—” and Blanca winked broadly and maliciously “—can it be that you are jealous already?”
“You’ll find out how jealous I am! Oh, yes, and he will too, I swear! I’ll never marry a man like that. If they won’t let me become a nun then I—I’ll choose my own husband, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll teach all of them a lesson.”
Blanca stared. “You’re talking crazy now, like the sun has gone to your head. What do you think you can do about it? Even the reverend mother can’t help you now, and in the end you’ll have to give in. Maybe they’ll beat you and lock you up and starve you until you’re ready to agree to anything! I’ve heard of things like that!”
Marisa tossed her head defiantly, impatiently pushing the hair back off her forehead.
“Now you’re the stupid one! Do you think I’m going to submit meekly?”
“No?”
“No, I tell you! I have relatives in France. My mother’s sister, who married an English lord. And my godmother, too. If my own papa is so anxious to be rid of me, they’ll take me in, I’m sure of it.” She leaned forward suddenly, grasping Blanca’s wrist, her voice dropping into a thoughtful whisper. “Didn’t you tell me a little while ago that you were headed for France?”
2
The air of Seville was warm and scented with the odors of cooking, the sweet smell of flowers, and the rankness of sweat as crowds of people jostled each other on the narrow streets. It was the week of the grand fair—the feria—and from all over Spain people had traveled here to take part in the festivities. It was even rumored that the queen and some of her closest intimates were here incognito. And as if to bear out the rumors, there were smartly uniformed guardsmen everywhere, keeping an eye on the crowds.
“You notice that they are all young and handsome?” Blanca whispered to Marisa. “The queen likes good-looking young men around her. Why, Manuel Godoy was nothing but a hopeful young guardsman when Maria Luisa’s eye fell on him—and now, they say, he is the real king of Spain!” She jostled her friend with her elbow. “Hey, wake up! Don’t say you are starting to suffer from pangs of conscience at this late stage!”
“Of course not. You should know better than that! It’s just that I can hardly believe I’m free again.”
“Well then, you might show it! Stop wearing that dreaming look; you’re not locked up in that convent any longer. And try smiling. It’s not too hard, once you get used to it, you know! Look, those two men are trying to flirt with us.”
Blanca gave a high-pitched giggle and a toss of her dark head as the two girls, barefoot and brightly clad, ran past a group of men who stopped talking to stare after them, giving low, admiring whistles.
Blanca was right, Marisa told herself as, head lowered, she hurried after her friend. She had made her choice, and she was here of her own free will—in spite of the grumbling and headshaking of Blanca’s father.
But why did she find it so difficult to readjust to the free and easy gypsy way of life? Without her realizing it, the years in the convent had left their mark; and she could not help feeling curiously lost and frightened without the security of those grey-white walls to enfold her and the slow, disciplined days when her every movement had been planned for her.
What must Mother Angelina be thinking now? Would they be searching for her? She had left only a short, hurriedly scribbled note to say that she was on her way to France to stay with her mother’s relatives. And since Spain was allied with France now, and there were Frenchmen everywhere, she hoped the reverend mother would think she had found some French friend to escort her.
“I will be in safe hands,” she had written. But would the prioress believe that? What did she think?
They had reached the gypsy encampment on the outskirts of the city, and Mario came to meet them, his dark face sulky, his eyes burning Marisa’s hot, flushed face.
“You took long enough, you two! What have you been up to?”
Leaving Blanca to shout angrily at him that it wasn’t any of his business, Marisa caught back her own sigh of vexation. Mario was another of her new problems. She had been a child when she had left the gypsies, but now, he made her only too aware of the fact that she had grown into a woman. His eyes followed her constantly, and he was forever trying to catch her alone in some dark corner, caressing her bare arm with his rough hands as he whispered to her that he adored her, he always had, and would kill any other man who tried to touch her. Blanca was amused. She would laugh, shrugging casually.
“That Mario! He’s a hot-blooded one, eh? Better watch out for him, my little innocent—stick close to me!”
But how long could she continue to elude Mario? France was still a long way off. In spite of the fact that she was still far too thin and deliberately rubbed grease into her hair to darken it, he wouldn’t stop pursuing her.
Now, ignoring his sister’s screeching, he strode up to Marisa and grabbed her wrist. “You’d better not have been flirting, little skinny one! Tonight, when we dance for all the visitors, I want you to stay in the background, remember! I don’t want any other man looking at my golden beauty.”
She snatched herself from his grasp, imitating Blanca’s sharpness.
“I’m not yours—I’m not anyone’s property! And you’d better run back to Liuba before she sticks a knife between your ribs. Go on!”
“That’s right—tell him off!” Laughing, Blanca linked arms with her, sticking her tongue out at her brother as she did so. “Come on, we’ve got things to do.”
“Oh, I’m a patient man, I can wait!” he called after them, the glowering look on his face belying his light tone.
She told herself later that Mario was the cause of her mood of depression. If only he would leave her alone. But she could look after herself—of course she could! Like Blanca, she had taken to carrying a small dagger strapped to her thigh, and Mario knew she would not hesitate to use it on him. Oh, how she hated men! Beasts, all of them, with only one thing on their minds.
The gypsies were all busy preparing for the famous horse fair, which formed a climax to the Holy Week celebrations. On a piece of flat land between the Rio Guadalquivir and the city of Seville, they had set up their tents and their wagons; and when the day’s business was over, there was dancing to wild music in the flickering torchlight and the plaintive, quavering flamenco—song of love and sadness that had been bequeathed to Spain by the Moors.
At any other time, Marisa would have been caught up in the excitement of it all, just as the others were. She and Blanca had roamed freely everywhere, and they had finally slipped into the enormous cathedral to pray. Perhaps that was why she felt so strangely sad and forlorn tonight. Last year and for so many years before that, she had spent Holy Week quietly in the convent, praying in solitude. All this festivity and frantic air of gaiety seemed strange and almost sacrilegious to her.
“I’m just not used to crowds yet,” she told herself; and to please Blanca, who had been so kind to her, she forced herself to smile and laugh and even to flirt with some of the bolder young men.
“Hey, gypsy girl! Won’t you tell me my fortune?” The man who called out to her was well-dressed and handsome, but, remembering Delphine and the horror of that night, she gasped fearfully and ran away from him. Running away from the lights and the music that tugged at her she almost cannoned into a group of newcomers walking from the direction of the river.
In her headlong flight she had lost her head scarf, and her hair, newly washed that evening, slipped from the careless knot at the back of her neck, to fall in curls about her shoulders. In the faint light, she looked like a wild, tawny animal, too shy to be tamed.
“Here’s a piece of luck! A runaway gypsy wench with hair the color of the Castilian plains! Perhaps she’ll act as our guide tonight.”
There were women among them, their flimsy, high-waisted gowns only carelessly concealed by velvet cloaks. Jewels winked around white throats, and they laughed as loud as the men.
“Don’t run off, little girl! We’re here to watch the dancing. Don’t let her run away. Look at her hair, isn’t that unusual for a gypsy?”
A man caught her around the waist, holding her captive in spite of her frantic struggles.
“Hold still, you little ninny! No one’s going to hurt you. Here, perhaps this will persuade you to calm down!”
Still laughing, he slipped a coin between her breasts. One of the women, throwing the hood back from her high-piled hair, said in a wheedling, husky voice, “Really, I assure you we don’t mean you any harm. But we’re all strangers here, and we’d pay you well if you’ll act as our guide. We want to join in the dancing—do you think your people would mind?”
There was wine on the woman’s breath as she leaned close, and Marisa tried to control the shudder that shook her whole body, feeling her breath cut off by the pressure of the arm that still held her close to a hard, masculine body. These people were obviously of the nobility, out for a good time with the common folk. And she would only provide a source of further amusement for them if she continued to struggle. From the smiling looks of the women, she could sense that she could not expect any help from them.
“Come—we’ll pay you well. Very well. And if you were running from a too-ardent lover, we’ll protect you!”
The man who spoke gave a laugh that sounded strangely familiar. He added petulantly, “Por Dios, amigo, don’t be so selfish! You’ve done nothing but drink and look sullen all evening, and now you won’t share the spoils! Perhaps our little gypsy will give us a private performance later—what do you say?”
Marisa felt, rather than heard, their inane talk and laughter pass over and around her. Without quite realizing what was happening, she found herself dragged along with them, as if she had been a rag doll with no feelings and no understanding—a new toy to amuse themselves with. She felt as dazed as if she had actually turned into wood; and at the same time some deep-rooted instinct of pride held her silent. She wouldn’t cry and plead with them to let her go! At least they were moving towards the lights and the music, and sooner or later, when they tired of their sport, she would escape. Suddenly she thought of Mario, and for once felt relieved that he was so jealous. He’d rescue her! She stopped resisting and tried to ignore the laughing comments of her tormentors.
“You see? She’s quite resigned now—quite tame. It must be your charm….”
“I wonder if she’s a deaf-mute? Really—she hasn’t said one single word!”
“Don’t be afraid. You’ll find us generous—and especially if you’ll dance for us.”
“The poor child looks as if she could use a good meal!”
“Child? She must be fifteen or sixteen at least! And among the gypsies, that’s almost old! Are you married yet, menina?”
The man whose steely arm still encircled her waist said suddenly, “I think she’s frightened half to death. Perhaps she’ll learn to talk back to us after she’s had some wine.”
He spoke with a strange, drawling accent she could not place. Was he a foreigner, then?
They came at last into the flickering circle of lights, and while everyone’s attention was caught by the sudden burst of handclapping as the guitars strummed wildly bringing a dance to its climax, Marisa dared a nervous upward glance.
Her breath caught in her throat when she encountered his eyes. They were like shards of splintered, glittering glass, piercing her, and she could not prevent her instinctive, shrinking movement.
His arm tightened, and he gave a soft, mocking laugh.
“Not trying to run away again are you, golden eyes? It’s too late now that you’ve come this far with us. My companions find you fascinating, you know.”
One of the other men chuckled, overhearing. “And so do you, obviously! I vow, amigo, that I have never seen you exert yourself before to catch a woman. Perhaps it is only the thrill of a chase and a capture that you enjoy?”
Held forcibly close to him, Marisa could feel the man who held her shrug.
“You know I’m a hunter. And this one, with her golden mane and the half-shy, half-wicked look in her eyes, reminds me of a mountain lion. Would you enjoy using your claws on me, menina?”
Taunted into a fury, Marisa tilted her head to glare at him.
“I would like to do worse! To stick a knife between your ribs and watch you bleed—”
“Dios! She is a wildcat after all!”
“I don’t think so,” the other drawled infuriatingly, and through her rage-slitted eyes Marisa could see one corner of his mouth twitch in a grin. “I think she means to challenge me.”
“Ohh! You—you—” Catching the sarcastically expectant look on his dark face Marisa bit her words off short. She would not give him the satisfaction of hearing her swear at him. She would merely bide her time and run away to lose herself in the crowd that now milled around them—some still watching the dancers and others glancing curiously at the new arrivals. Ignoring her captor, she began to search frantically for the sight of a familiar face. Where was Blanca? And above all, where was Mario? The music was so loud that even if she screamed aloud no one would hear her! How dared these people treat her as if she were a new plaything to amuse their jaded appetites?
She noticed for the first time, with a sense of fearful foreboding, that their small group was far too well escorted. In the light, it became apparent that the men were all well-armed, forming a kind of phalanx about the bright-eyed, jeweled women.
One of the women, wearing a deep purple velvet cloak trimmed with fur, had kept glancing in their direction, ignoring her attentive escort; and now as they came to a stop she said in a rather petulant voice, “Surely you don’t need to hold on so tightly to our little gypsy? Give her some more money and ask her if she’ll go back with us tonight, to dance for us. But for the moment, I thought we came here to enjoy ourselves.” And now the dark-haired woman addressed Marisa directly in a patronizing tone. “Do you have any suggestions, girl? We are here to have fun. What do you do to amuse yourself when you are not running away?”
A tall man with a deep voice said smoothly, “Ah, but these gypsies never like to stay in the same place for too long, mi reina. They are a restless, free people always craving to move along—like our friend here, who plans to leave us soon.”
Had there been something significant in his tone? In spite of her own anger and discomfort, Marisa could not help giving him a puzzled look.
“My Queen,” he had said. Merely a flowery compliment or—was it possible? She had heard tales of the wild, licentious royal court of Queen Maria Luisa. And suddenly, like a blow to her midriff, she recalled the careless, laughing words that had floated to her as she sat astride the convent wall on that fateful day not long ago. The nagging familiarity of a laugh—a drawling voice—oh, no! Surely not! Fate could not play such an unpleasant trick on her as to deliver her into the hands of the very man she was running away from!
Marisa became aware that the woman, refusing to be diverted, was speaking to her again—this time impatiently.
“Surely you can speak? Where are your friends? Perhaps they can join us, too. The music makes me want to dance. Do you think we could join in?”
They had somehow pressed forward to the very fringes of the crowd that had formed around the dancers and the musicians.
Sheer desperation made speech return to her paralyzed tongue.
“I see some of my friends now. There—that is my sister who is dancing in the center now—the one with the long black hair. Her name is Blanca. And that is my novio over there, playing the guitar with the red ribbons. Alas, we had a quarrel, and that is why I ran, hoping he would follow.” Again, irresistibly, she slanted an upward look at the man who held her so firmly. What strange, frightening eyes he had! They were truly like glass, reflecting every shade of the fires and smoldering torches while revealing nothing. The black cloak he wore, gave him an alarmingly sinister appearance, as did the bulge of the weapon he wore, which was pressing into her hip. “If the señor would let me go, I will dance for you kind ladies and gentlemen. And perhaps later, if you will, Blanca will tell your fortunes. She is very good.”
“See? She can talk after all! And prettily too. Do let her dance—she’s lost her fear of us now, haven’t you my dear?”
“Oh, I was only startled,” Marisa said demurely. She let her eyes drop shyly as she shrugged. “And a little bit afraid—because my novio is very jealous, you see!”
She felt a warm hand slide up over her breast, and she squirmed away angrily.
“Little liar!” he whispered. “I’ve a good mind to see how jealous this lover of yours is.”
But the others were calling to him to let her dance for them, and he had to release her. With a mocking half-curtsy she whirled away from them, clicking her fingers in rhythm to the frenetic music.
“Aren’t you afraid she’ll get away from you?” Pedro Arteaga whispered maliciously in his friend’s ear. “She seemed only too anxious to get back to that black-browed lout there—and I’ve heard these gypsy wenches like to choose their own lovers.”
“I’ve yet to lose a prize I’ve captured. And I think she’s only playing hard to get—perhaps to put her price up!”
“My God, what a cynic you are! I’m beginning to believe you really don’t like women at all.”
“I’ve loved my share of them. Why does liking have to come into it? They’re all the same—sly, teasing bitches without an intelligent thought in their heads.”
“Well, don’t let our beautiful sovereign hear you speak that way! She’s made it very clear she’s taken a liking to you, hasn’t she? You’d better take care, my friend!”
Pedro Arteaga’s friend had folded his arms, his steely grey eyes following the gypsy girl as she made her way to the center of the crowd of dancers.
“Oh, I expect to have Señor Godoy’s aid in recapturing the elusive yellow-eyed witch if she’s really bent on escape. He’s got two of his guardsmen keeping an eye on her already, or hadn’t you noticed?”
Manuel Godoy had bent his head to whisper in the queen’s ear, and now the voluptuous duchess of Alba, sulky at being ignored, leaned against Don Pedro’s shoulder.
“What are you men whispering about? I thought we traveled all this way to have some fun and mingle with the peasants. Don’t you dance in New Spain?”
Marisa had danced her way to Blanca’s side; and now, ignoring her friend’s surprised look, she began, in a breathless, angry voice, to pour out her story, keeping a fixed smile on her face all the while.
“You cannot imagine how—how arrogantly nasty they all were! Talking about me as if I was nothing more than a block of wood, without feelings. Taking all kinds of familiarities with me!” She shuddered, recalling a warm hand cupping her breast so intimately. “And to make matters worse, I think he’s the one—look, over there. That crowd of strangers—you’d recognize him, wouldn’t you? And his friend—”
“I think you have a crazy imagination,” Blanca murmured. But her voice was doubtful, and she added, in the next breath, “Well—it might be! It’s hard to see from here. But listen, if you’re so scared, why don’t you slip away to the wagons? I’ll go up to them myself and tell them you sent me. I’m not afraid, and if they’re throwing around gold coins, I could use a few.”
“Blanca!”
“Little innocent,” Blanca mocked, showing white teeth, “when will you learn that you cannot hide yourself away from men forever? You’re not in a convent any longer, you know! And the trick is to use them while letting them think they are using you. You’d better learn—”
“Blanca, let’s both go back to the wagons. Now, when they can’t see us. I don’t trust them—and besides—”
Blanca turned her head, black eyes laughing. “And besides what? I’ve already told you that I know how to look after myself. And that handsome caballero you ran away from might need some consolation—even if he does happen to be your novio!”
“Oh, stop!” Marisa, suddenly frantic, clutched at the other girl’s bare arm. “We’d better hide somewhere before they—before he—You see, he made me so angry, the way he was pulling me about, that I—I picked his pocket!”
For a moment, in the midst of all the noise, the clapping and the gaiety that surrounded them, they seemed to be enclosed in stillness.
“You did what?” Blanca threw back her head with a wild, admiring laugh. “Oh, but you are priceless! No—you are crazy!” She grabbed Marisa’s wrist, starting to pull her away into the shadows. “What on earth possessed you? Under the very eyes of the queen herself and her chief minister. Don’t you realize what could happen to you? To them, you are nothing but a little gypsy. You could be arrested, thrown into a cell, even executed. Don’t you understand? Picking the pocket of some stranger on the street is one thing, but a friend of the queen! They’d recognize you in an instant if they come looking for you! Quick, you must throw it away. Wait—does it contain a lot of gold, this wallet you stole?”
Blanca’s eyes gleamed with a mixture of avarice and fear. In the torchlight they seemed to glow as red as coals.
“How would I know? I didn’t think about the money—I just wanted to teach him a lesson. And since you’re not afraid, why don’t you take it back to him? Tell him you found it—”
“I might do just that! What a little fool you are! Where’s that wallet?”
Already beginning to regret her defiant gesture, Marisa handed it to her friend without a word—glad to be rid of it. If only she could be rid of the memory of those bold, rude caresses as well! And if that was the man her father wanted to marry her off to, she was fortunate in having escaped such a fate.
“So, now you are taking money for your favors, eh? Is that why you kept me at arm’s length, because I was not rich enough to buy you?”
Mario had materialized out of nowhere, his dark face glowering with rage. “I saw you!” he growled. “Leaning up against that stranger, his arm about your waist. Where did you meet him? Ah, you should not have brought him here, to flaunt your unfaithfulness before my face, for I shall kill him for it!”
“Here’s another stupid one! Well, I shall leave you to explain to my dull-witted brother while I see what I can do to prevent trouble. Don’t forget to tell him you picked the pocket of your own novio because he got too fresh with you!”
Blanca danced off, and Mario, his frown growing even blacker, caught Marisa’s arm in a grip that made her wince.
“Yes. Tell me what you have been up to! What was my sister talking about just now?”
3
There was the moonlight and the firelight and the torches that flickered like live tongues; and Marisa was no longer herself but someone else. A bold-eyed, bold-tongued creature like Blanca who was afraid of nothing and no one. She had tied a brightly colored scarf over her head again; but it did not disguise the gold hair that rippled almost to her waist.
“If you are innocent still, then prove it!” Mario had hissed. “If he has not had you yet then he will be eager for you, sí? Lead him away from the others; flirt with him if you must. No more than that—I will see to the rest!”
Mario had made it sound so easy! But here he was offering to protect her when not too long ago she had felt she needed protection from him.
What did it matter? She knew Mario and felt sure of her power over him. The other man was a different proposition. Far too insolent, far too sure of himself—and her. The last man on earth she wished to marry, if he was the one.
Facing him again was harder than she had thought it might be, even though he was alone at the moment. He had been lifting a wineskin to his mouth, and when he lowered it and saw her, one black eyebrow shot up in mock surprise.
“Oh, so you’re back. I must say you put a high price on yourself, yellow-eyes. Are you worth it?”
She saw no sign of Blanca. Had she told him, or had he discovered his loss for himself?
Still acting the way Blanca would, Marisa lifted her shoulders.
“Why not find out? I wanted you to notice me for myself. I do not like crowds. They make me feel stifled, and—and trapped. And I do not like being made fun of, either.”
“Should I apologize for my friends and myself?” He swept her a mocking bow, offering her the half-empty wineskin. “Here, now that we are alone, shall we drink to an understanding? I didn’t expect to see you back of your own accord, but here you are, which proves that I am as ignorant as the next man when it comes to understanding the whims of women.” His strangely light eyes crinkled at the corners, catching her attention in spite of herself. What a time to start wondering about him—what kind of man was he?
She shook her head, refusing the wine. “No, I am not used to drinking, señor.”
“But an expert at picking pockets? You continue to surprise me, little gypsy.”
Marisa felt the hot blood rush into her face, but she refused to give ground. “Yes, certainly. But isn’t that only what you would expect from a gypsy wench? The very worst. You made that clear, all of you, when you kept talking of me as if I had no ears.”
A sudden brightness leaped into his eyes, stabbing into hers like a flash of lightning. “Olé!” He said it softly, tilting the wineskin to his lips again and then lowering it slowly. “So you are a creature of emotion after all. You breathe, you feel, and you even think, it seems. Good. We have established that much, at least. Also your price—which is high. I warn you, I shall expect a great deal in return….”
Without warning, Marisa found her waist encircled by a steely arm again. Before she could protest, she was drawn against him tasting, unwillingly, the wine on his breath as he forced her head back with his brutal kiss.
Instinctively, she struggled against him, hands pushing futilely against his shoulders. Horrible! To be kissed like any common slut, without consideration of her feelings. First he insulted her and then he kissed her.
Marisa kept her teeth tightly clenched together and kept twisting her head from side to side, trying to avoid the bruising pressure of his mouth on hers. In spite of her frantic struggles she felt herself drawn against his body. His cloak was open down the front, and she felt stifled in its folds; she was terrified by the pressure of his lean, masculine body all the way down hers. Her neck would surely break in another minute, and she could not breathe. There was a buzzing in her ears and she was no longer capable of the effort of resisting him, even when some faraway part of her mind realized that he had slipped her thin blouse off one shoulder and was fondling her breasts. Her body lay limply against his, still shivering with revulsion; and when she opened her mouth to gasp for breath his tongue forced its way between her lips, bringing a renewal of her feeble attempts to turn her face away.
Did he actually intend to force himself on her here, with everyone looking on? What a callous, unfeeling brute this man was to use her this way as if she had been some whore he had picked up for the night.
Just when she felt that she was about to faint, he lifted his head slightly, and Marisa saw that his eyes looked like silver now, like polished mirrors in which she could see her own flushed, terrified reflection. Remembering old stories about the devil coming to earth in human disguise in order to seduce women, she felt an overwhelming desire to cross herself.
She half gasped and half moaned and saw the cynical, almost sneering smile that flickered across his cleanshaven face.
“Be assured, little picarona, that you need not play the innocent virgin for my benefit. Tonight I do not feel inclined for the usual tussle—nor for the usual preliminaries. Come along now, and let’s have no more games, eh?” Her knees were so weak with shock and terror that she would have fallen if he had not seized her by the wrist. He was taking her back to his friends, and she would never escape if she did not use her wits as she had meant to do in the beginning.
“No!” She pulled back, not having to feign the breathlessness of her tone. “Please, señor, not back to those friends of yours who laugh and make fun of me because I’m only a poor gypsy girl. My wagon is not far away, and it is empty—”
“What a changeable, surprising creature you are,” he said softly, slipping his arm about her waist again. “One moment you act as if my kisses disgust you, and the next—you are as hot as fire!”
She said quickly, “Gypsy women are very independent. We like to choose our own lovers.” She prayed that her voice sounded flirtatious enough as she allowed herself to sway against him. “At least, you are not a brightly dressed parrot like the other men in your party.”
She dared not look into his eyes again as they strolled towards the outskirts of the crowd and now pressed more and more closely about the whirling dancers.
“Please—act casual. I do not want my novio to notice,” she murmured. The conceited boor! He actually believed himself irresistible. How easy it had been to trick him after all! Viciously, Marisa hoped that Mario and his friends would teach this particular caballero a lesson he would never forget.
They were being jostled by people who were eager to see what was going on. The rumors had already begun to fly around that the queen herself was here in disguise, along with the notorious duchess of Alba, who was fond of masquerading as a maja in order to pick up commoner-lovers.
Marisa’s lips felt bruised and swollen, and her breasts seemed to burn from the casual, all-too-knowing caresses she had been forced to endure. It was all she could do to lean docilely in this man’s hard embrace and pretend that he had subdued her spirit. Angry thoughts whirled around in her brain. Where was Mario? Pray God he’d rescue her soon.
No one took any notice of them, not even when Mario himself, as if conjured up by her thoughts, appeared suddenly to bar their way. His dark features were suffused with fury, and his hand lay threateningly on the dagger in his waistband. Behind him, Marisa noticed two of his cronies, carrying heavy cudgels.
“So! This is what you’ve been doing behind my back! I should not have expected a woman like you to be satisfied with just one lover. Or was it his money and fine clothes that attracted you? Bitch. I saw you kissing him as if you could not bear to tear yourself away. And as for you, señor, I think that after tonight you’ll think twice before you attempt to meddle with one of our gypsy women….”
His tirade and his rage seemed all too real, and Marisa could not help shrinking involuntarily. Through widening eyes she saw the other two men move silently to either side of Mario as he drew his dagger.
“I think I will mark up your face first,” he snarled, “before I allow my friends to beat you within an inch of your life. You aristocrats should learn to stick to your own kind!”
“I wondered when you would appear on the scene.” Marisa heard the drawling, drily sarcastic voice and tried to tear herself away, but with a quick jerk of his arm he held her before him, and she felt something cold against her side. She thought she heard a clicking sound. She saw the gypsies freeze as the drawling voice continued in a conversational manner, “This pistol is made to fire two shots without reloading—which one of you wants to get it first? And of course there’s always the chance that your little friend here might get nicked in the process. Well?”
Marisa felt the hair at the back of her neck prickle, and she stood rigidly, hardly daring to breathe. He meant it! There had been a steely undertone to his voice that made her certain he would have no compunction about shooting, as he had promised.
“You had no right to walk off with my woman,” Mario blustered uneasily, his eyes darting this way and that; and at almost the same moment a voice behind them made him jump.
“What is going on there?” Two uniformed guardsmen had come up, their sternly frowning faces taking in the whole picture. “Were these gypsy devils attempting to rob you, señor? A good thing Don Manuel ordered us to keep an eye on this little wench here. It’s a favorite trick among these people—”
“But one I had half-expected already. No, I don’t think there’s any need to arrest them. I don’t think they’ll be in a hurry to pull this kind of stunt again.”
“Get going, you three! And if you’re still around when the sun comes up, we’ll find a nice cold cell to throw you in!”
Mario’s friends had already taken to their heels, and now, with a last, frustrated backward glance, the young man himself disappeared into the crowd.
With a desperation born of sheer terror, Marisa tried to twist away.
“Let me go! You have no right to keep me here!” She raised imploring eyes to the suddenly impassive faces of the two guardsmen. “Please, señores! They were only trying to save me from the unwelcome advances of this—this lecher! And he threatened to shoot me with his pistol if I did not go with him!”
“What an accomplished little liar she is! Listen, young woman, picking pockets could get you in a lot of trouble! A public flogging, and all your pretty long hair cut off. We’ve been watching you.”
“Here—and you’d better keep a closer eye on her this time. I’ve no mind to spend the rest of the evening dodging her jealous lovers—and her nimble fingers.” Marisa felt herself shoved forward, only to have her arms grasped roughly and twisted behind her.
“Better search her for a knife, too—she threatened once to stick me with it.”
“Shall we bring her along to the boat?”
Straightening out his clothes, the gentleman shrugged, but his silver-grey eyes had gone narrow.
“Why not? I hate being made to pay in advance for favors I haven’t received yet. Maybe she’ll be more tractable in a few hours’ time.”
With a dazed feeling of disbelief, Marisa watched him walk away leaving her to these rough men, to be treated like a common prisoner. No, it could not be happening, not to her! Perhaps if she closed her eyes she would wake to find herself in her little grey cell in the convent, safe behind its strong, wide walls.
As she felt one of the men adroitly tie her wrists behind her, she began to sob helplessly.
The voice that spoke to her wasn’t too unkind. “Now, now! There’s no point in shedding tears at this point, you know! Count yourself lucky you aren’t to be marched right off to jail. You might spend the next few years of your life picking hemp, and what a waste that would be! A pity you weren’t given a different sort of upbringing—all you gypsies are thieves and sluts. I suppose it’s in your blood and you can’t help it! But if you behave yourself and do as you’re told, you might come out the richer for this evening. Now—where’s that knife hidden? Better tell us, or we’ll have to strip you.”
She had to bite her lip to keep from crying out with revulsion when a rough hand groped up her thigh.
“What a dangerous little weapon! You could kill someone with this, and then you’d hang. You ever seen a hanging? Come along now. A good thing you have enough sense not to scream, or we’d have to gag you. That’s right. And just think, you’ll have a nice boat ride—it’s a perfect night for it, too.”
The lopsided moon dropped lower and lower and the rocking motion of the pleasure barge made her feel sick. Almost as sick as the conversation of her captors, as they discussed the rest of the night that lay ahead.
“They’re really having fun this evening. It was all the duchess’s idea, you know. A pity we’re on duty, eh, Jorge?”
“Ah well, you know they’re generous with the spoils after they’ve tired of their sport. We’ll get our share later.” One of the men gave a ribald chuckle and when Marisa shuddered, he flung a blanket over her shoulders. “Here. It wouldn’t do to have you catch a chill. And you might as well stretch out against those cushions and get comfortable while you’re at it. You’ll have plenty of exercise later on.”
She closed her eyes against the cold silver stars. Their brilliance reminded her of cruel, mocking eyes. ‘Delphine!’ she thought suddenly. But Delphine was gone a long time ago, offering herself to that pack of raving beasts to save her—and for what? ‘I’ve sinned,’ she thought dully. ‘I’ve sinned, and this is my punishment. Mother Angelina was right. She used to tell me I was wayward and headstrong and that I lacked the proper humility to become a nun. If only I’d paid attention, if only…’
She had found her own personal hell—flickering torchlights and gay, wine-slurred voices, the sound of oars swishing through moving water, the sour-sweet taste of wine forced between her lips, and the devil’s eyes which were not as red as coals after all but like silvered glass.
Her limbs were numb and aching and her wrists and arms had no more feeling than her horror-soaked mind.
‘If I stood up now and shouted who I was, they wouldn’t believe me,’ she thought, ‘or they’d think it was very funny. Oh God, help me!’
Marisa hardly heard the voices that continued to discuss her as if she weren’t present.
“The foolish little creature! What did she hope to gain?”
The sulky voice that she now knew belonged to the queen of Spain said sharply, “I can’t understand why you bothered with her! After all, one gypsy wench is very much like another, and if this little wretch is a thief into the bargain—”
“Ah, but she isn’t quite like the others. Her father must have been a Castilian—look at that hair! And she’s obviously still quite young.”
“What difference does that make? Her kind are all quite hardened by the time they are fourteen or so!”
“At any rate, our guest seems to find her intriguing, and something of a challenge, is not that so, señor? Since we’re all paired off, it’s only fair to provide him with a wench of his own choosing.”
“I would think you’d have had your fill of her kind in the New World,” Maria Luisa snapped. “Or is it the pirate in you that always looks for a capture instead of a prize that’s willingly given?”
“Alas, I’m nothing so romantic as a pirate! Merely an honest privateer—and I know better than to sail too close to an impregnable, jeweled citadel. No, I’ve learned to be satisfied with more modest prizes.”
“Like that English ship you took on your way here? I declare, captain, it is you who are too modest!” But the queen had begun to smile again. Marisa wondered dazedly what they were talking about and whether that man was really some kind of pirate.
She could believe it. He had cast aside his heavy dark cloak and unbuttoned his jacket to reveal a ruffled white shirt front. More plainly dressed than the rest of the men present, his clothes were nevertheless well-cut and form fitting. When he crossed his long legs, Marisa could see the shine of Hessian boots.
He hadn’t touched her since he had climbed easily into the boat to sit beside her, but she was all too aware of his closeness and the warmth of his body. What did he intend to do with her? No, she mustn’t think about it—not yet. She found herself wishing that the boat would somehow spring a leak and sink, drowning them all. Such an end would be infinitely preferable to what might lie ahead.
More wine was being passed around, this time in jewel-encrusted glasses, each one tinted a different color. Rather than have it forced down her throat, Marisa sipped obediently, sitting huddled in her corner. The wine made her dizzy at first and then tremendously drowsy. Her hands had been untied, and she kept chafing her sore wrists with icy-cold fingers. She had the feeling that something terrible was about to happen, but at the moment she was too tired and too overwrought to think. Like a child worn out by tears and emotion, she curled her bare feet under her and fell asleep, only half-waking when a warm cloak was wrapped around her and she was lifted up in strong arms that held her far too closely in spite of her drowsy protests.
4
Ridiculous! She was dreaming that she had been carried off by a dangerous-looking pirate, a scarf tied over his head and a black patch covering one eye. He was going to make her walk the plank, but instead of the icy shock of sea-water closing over her head she fell onto something soft. So comfortable, and she was so sleepy! She thought she could hear voices somewhere over her head, but the words slid across the fringes of her mind without really registering.
“And what is the meaning of this, if I may ask?”
“What the hell does it look like? She ran right into my arms tonight, and quite providentially as it turned out. I’ve no desire to make an enemy of the prime minister. Look after her for me, would you? They’ve got the gaming tables set up downstairs, and I don’t want her jumping out of the window before I get back.”
“So now ye’ve taken to drugging your females before ye take them?”
“Don’t come all Calvinist over me, Donald! And she’s drunk, not drugged. Give her something to eat if she wakes up, will you? And help me off with this damned coat!”
“Royalty or not, it’s no decent company that you’ve taken to keeping since we’ve been in this godforsaken, hot country. And that’s no more than a wee bit of a girl you’ve brought to your bed. What’s wrong with all those other fast females who’ve been makin’ eyes at you?”
“For God’s sake, stop your preaching and leave me to my own kind of damnation!”
The door slammed, and Marisa shivered in her sleep, murmuring incoherently. Everything that had happened during the past few weeks to change her whole life had caught up with her like a cloudburst, and now, limp with exhaustion and the effects of wine, she was dead to the world.
The pale dawn light was filtering through the windows when she woke up, feeling the chilly air on her body as the covers were pulled aside. Her eyelids were still so heavy they seemed stuck together, and her limbs felt cramped. But when she tried to move, a heavy weight pressed her down.
“So you’re still here, after all. You might at least have undressed while you were waiting. Damn. I’m too drunk and too tired to have patience with clothes, little golden butterfly.”
She heard a tearing sound, and was too paralyzed to either move or cry out. Far easier to pretend that she was still asleep, that this was not happening to her. A hand passed over her shrinking bare flesh, and she heard him say in a husky voice, “At least your skin is soft, and you’re yielding for a change.”
Her dazed, half-open eyes stared into desire-narrowed, flinty grey ones without any real comprehension of what was happening, until with a feeling of shock she found her thighs nudged apart. She writhed, gasping, as his fingers touched her intimately, exploringly; and for a moment, as his body was poised over hers, she thought he would let her go. Her lips parted, only to be covered by his hard, demanding mouth, tasting of wine and tobacco. And at the same moment there was a stabbing shaft of agony between her thighs that seemed to tear all the way into her belly, causing her body to arch up against his with shocked surprise.
She came close to fainting, feeling sure that he was killing her, that like Delphine, she was about to be ripped to pieces.
Marisa heard a whimpering, moaning sound, like that of an animal in pain, and it took her some time to realize that the sounds she heard were coming from her own throat. She fought to be free, but her movements only seemed to incite him to a further attack on her helpless flesh; he drove himself deeper and deeper inside her, holding her wrists over her head when she attempted to push him away.
It was no use. She was helpless—in the grip of a madman bent on hurting her, an animal.
And at last, surprisingly, the stabbing pain gave way to mild discomfort, and then to a kind of lethargy as she lay with her limbs sprawled out and let him have his way.
Her last thought, as she slipped into a state halfway between sleep and unconsciousness was, “And I don’t even know his name—nor he mine…how strange…” And further than that, she did not care to think just yet, for her head ached as badly as her bruised and violated body; closing her eyes against reality was much easier than being forced to face it.
“So now ye’ve taken to raping helpless virgins, have ye? And handing them over to your fine aristocratic friends after, for their sport. Well, it may be that ye’re my captain, when we’re at sea, that is, but I’ve known you too many years to keep silent, and I’ll be speaking my mind, whether ye’d be liking it or not!”
“I don’t recall that you’ve ever hesitated before, you old croaker! And as for the wench turning out to be a maid—how in hell was I to know? She played the tease very well, and there was talk of a lover. Curse your long face, anyhow, and her, too! Do you think I’ve a taste for virgins? If I had not been drunk, and in a bad mood into the bargain…”
“They want her downstairs. You heard them. And the poor wee creature still in a faint, or maybe bleeding to death from the way you used her. It’s wondering, I am, what you intend to do now. And I might add—”
The harsh voice of the younger man turned into a snarl. “Spare me, Donald! I’m in no mood to listen to more! I’ll leave it to your ingenuity to get rid of the gypsy wench. You can take her back to their encampment outside Seville and give her as much money as you think it would take to soothe her wounded sensibilities. The stupid slut! All she had to do was to tell me she hadn’t been with a man before, and I’d have let her run away. But she seemed anxious to find the kind of fate she met with. Well—get her away. I’ll tell my friends she escaped out of the window. And mind you—” still adjusting his hastily tied cravat, the captain paused to let his grey eyes bore into his manservant’s doleful brown ones “—I expect to see you aboard ship and ready to sail when I reach Cadiz three days from now. Better not let those damned gypsies spirit you away—or let her lead you into a clever little ambush!”
The voices and harsh sounds of arguing had roused Marisa out of an uneasy doze, but she was afraid to open her eyes until she heard the door slam behind him. Then, cautiously, she peeked from behind her long eyelashes, trying not to blink at the harsh sunlight that filtered through. She was lying in an enormous canopied bed, the curtains drawn back far enough to let her catch a glimpse of a large and luxuriously furnished room, its walls hung with tapestries and paintings that made her want to blush. There was a fireplace in one corner; coals still smoldered hotly in spite of the heat of the day. Beyond the widely opened windows she caught a glimpse of a stone terrace and a fountain that cast a shower of silvery droplets into the sunlit air.
She stirred uneasily, suddenly becoming aware of her nakedness under a thin sheet that felt like silk against her tingling flesh. And with that first tentative movement all the horrifying memories she had been trying to hold away rushed back. She sat up abruptly, gave a smothered gasp, and then snatched the sheet up to cover her naked breasts as the man who had been standing in the middle of the room turned to gaze at her with a worried, frowning look.
He spoke English, but with a strange, burring accent that made his words difficult to understand.
“So you’re awake, puir lassie! Now, now, there’s no need to look at me like that, I’m not out to harm you, you know. And if I’d had a true understanding of how it was, I’d not have permitted what took place. But I suppose ye don’t even understand what I’m saying, poor child, do you?”
The kind, even pitying, note in his voice, coupled with what she had overheard earlier, made Marisa want to trust him, this stocky man with short-cropped reddish-grey hair, and brown eyes that reminded her of a spaniel’s.
Mother Angelina had personally seen to her education—and the reverend mother had, at one time, been a noblewoman. “You have to know of the world, my dear child, before you can truly renounce it,” she had told Marisa, so the young woman’s knowledge of languages included English and German, as well as Spanish, Italian, and French.
She began to talk haltingly in English to this man with the kind eyes. While she was talking, she felt something hardening inside her, just like the little boy in a fairy story whose heart had turned to ice. Why, a few days before she would have been terrified at the sight of her own blood sticking to her thighs and staining these fine sheets. But last night had taught her something: she had survived the very fate she had been running away from, and she had learned to hate—both at the same time, it seemed.
Donald McGuire made clicking noises with his tongue and shook his head. Yes, he at least was sympathetic. He sounded almost like a father as he turned his head away after pointing to a door which disclosed a luxurious bathroom, the first that Marisa had ever seen.
“It’s a heathenish invention,” he warned in a grumbling voice. “Sunken tub made out of marble—just like the old Romans used to have, the captain says. But there. Ye’ll want to soak your poor bruised body in hot water, and there’s plenty of that, at least. Warmed by the sun in a cistern on the roof so they tell me. And while you’re in there, I’ll see what I can do about finding you some garments to cover yourself with. Don’t you worry now, little girl. You won’t be molested again—I’ll see to that meself.”
Once the door had closed behind him, Marisa cast aside the sheet with which she had covered herself and gazed curiously about her, managing, for a few moments at least, to forget her unpleasant predicament. She was in a blue-tiled, Moorish-style room, which was lit from above by a skylight set in the roof. Varying shades of tile, ranging from deep blue to turquoise, gave the impression that she was underwater. Steps led down into the sunken bath that Donald had talked of, and there was the golden pump-handle he had described, which would bring heated water pouring into the tub. All the appointments were made of gold, and in shelves set into the wall there were crystal bottles, stoppered with gold, which held an assortment of oils and perfumes. A wet towel, flung carelessly to one side gave mute evidence that someone else had used this chamber a short time before. Had it been Donald’s mysterious captain—the same man who had captured her last night and had, just as heartlessly, deprived her of her virtue this morning?
She remembered his irritable, brutal words before he had left. Her face flushed, and her whole body became hot with humiliation and anger. How lightly he took what he had done! He had actually blamed her for everything—and now he was only anxious to be rid of her.
Marisa became conscious for the first time of the gold-streaked mirrors that reflected her body from all angles. Averting her eyes, she began frantically to pump the gold lever and watched the streaming water gushing into the bath. As it filled, she wondered with a kind of detachment whether she would have the courage to drown herself. That was what she should do—she did not want to go back to the gypsies, to face Blanca’s knowing, malicious grin or Mario’s jealous rage. And now she could not possibly go back to the convent. No, she was cut off from everything and everyone familiar, and all because of her own foolishness.
Steam filled the room, clouding the mirrors, and with a sigh Marisa let herself sink into the water. Almost immediately, her tense muscles began to relax, freeing her mind; opening it to all kinds of thoughts that began to weave in and out of her consciousness. She was her practical father’s daughter, and her sensuous mother’s child. What was there left to lose that she had not lost already?
But Marisa didn’t drown herself, and three days later she had her first view of the ancient port of Cadiz.
Whitewashed houses and old fortresses, meant to keep off pirate attacks, leaned towards the sea. A sharp breeze had come up, and the ships lying anchored in the great harbor seemed to dance in a stately fashion over the heaving swell of the waves.
A tiny cockleshell of a boat took them to a long, sleek-hulled schooner that lay close to the harbor entrance.
“She’s sharp-ended, instead of square,” Donald explained proudly. “Baltimore Clipper type. Takes very little rigging and a small crew, but she’s fast!”
Looking up curiously, Marisa almost expected to see the vessel flying the skull and crossbones flag of a pirate, but the flag that fluttered from one mast was one she had never seen before—bold red stripes against a white background, and in one corner a blue square, clustered with silver stars. The flag of the young Republic of the United States of America.
“Captain’s not back on board yet.” There was a relieved note in Donald’s voice as he hustled her up the rope ladder that someone slung over the side. “Now, mind you lie low like I told you; and try to remember you’re a young lad now—I’ll tell the boys you don’t speak nothing but Spanish, so you’ll be spared the questions they’d ask otherwise.”
He hurried her below to a tiny cabin containing only two bunks and a tiny porthole. He told her, in a harassed tone, to stay there until he sent for her. He was obviously having second thoughts about bringing her aboard, the poor man, and Marisa told herself penitently that she should be ashamed of herself for taking advantage of his kindness to her. She had practically blackmailed him into it, ever since he had mentioned that they would be sailing for France.
To France! But she had relatives there—she had run away from the convent with the gypsies only because she wanted to get to France. Oh, if she could only go there, she wouldn’t be a trouble to anyone….
The gypsies had already left Seville, and in any case Donald had had reservations about delivering her back to them. Unlike his captain, he was a man possessed of a conscience. He couldn’t very well abandon her—the “puir lassie” needed protection. And when, in a fit of temper and contrition, Marisa had sheared off her long hair, he had reluctantly given in. Very well then. Since she was small enough and slim enough to pass off as a youth, he’d smuggle her on board the Challenger as the new cabin boy. The short voyage to France would take less than a week, and if during that time she followed orders and kept to herself, perhaps they’d both get away with the deception.
Now, remembering a pair of steely grey eyes, Marisa shivered, preferring not to think of the consequences if they were discovered. If only she could contrive to stay out of his way! She could pretend to be seasick as Donald had suggested. She suddenly recalled her dream of being made to walk the plank, and she shivered again.
She heard the sound of raised voices and activity on deck and tried to control the dangerous direction her thoughts were taking. What kind of man was he, the cold-eyed stranger who had taken his brutal pleasure of her unwilling body and then promptly wanted to be rid of her?
His name was Dominic Challenger. What conceit, to name his ship after himself! Or was it the other way around? Donald had been mysterious on that point, although he had talked freely of some of the adventures they’d shared. They had been common sailors on an English man-of-war at one time, and had deserted, sailing off with a French ship that had been taken as a prize. No doubt the English themselves would have called it mutiny! But now “the captain” as Donald called him, commanded an American privateer, a fast schooner with rakish masts, meant for preying on other vessels. A pirate ship, no matter what kind of flag she flew and in spite of the fact that this same ship had brought the new American ambassador to Spain.
“Ah, something’s up, but it’s not my place to ask,” Donald had admitted. “We’ve had conferences in Washington—once with the president himself! But now don’t you be repeating anything I’ve told you, mind, for the captain doesn’t take kindly to other folks prying into his affairs.”
Well! As if she cared for anything except getting safely to France and finding her aunt again, or maybe her godmother. France was different now under the consulate, and she’d learned that they’d just signed a peace treaty with England—the Treaty of Amiens. Paris must be as gay again as it had been before the revolution. Gay enough for her to lose herself—or find herself—if this Captain Challenger didn’t find her out first.
The thought that he might discover her made Marisa remember her instructions, and with a hurried glance around the tiny cabin, she heaved herself onto one of the narrow, uncomfortable bunks, and pulled a dirty brown blanket over herself. Her head felt light, without the heavy, familiar weight of her hair. A few moments earlier, the reflection of her own face in the porthole had given her a start. She did look like a boy, after all; her face was all eyes and her figure far too slender, without the well-defined curves that Blanca had been so proud of possessing. In the loosely fitting, raggedy garments of a peasant lad, no one would take her for a young woman unless they looked very closely.
The ship began to sway quite alarmingly, and the shouting and movement on deck seemed to have intensified. Remembering that all she’d had to eat that day was a piece of hard bread and a slice of goat cheese, Marisa swallowed convulsively and closed her eyes very tightly. Perhaps it would not be necessary to pretend that she was seasick. Already, she had begun to feel slightly nauseated and quite dizzy; and a cold sweat broke out all over her body, in spite of the hot, close atmosphere inside the cabin. Oh, she must have been mad to have forced poor Donald into agreeing to this crazy plan! She wondered vaguely if she would ever live to feel dry land beneath her feet again and drew her knees up under her chin, like a small, frightened child, willing the discomfort in her belly to go away.
5
The schooner Challenger put out to sea under full sail, with a crew of forty-eight men, instead of the fifty she was supposed to carry. Her captain, coming on board late, was in an exceptionally unpleasant mood, a thunderous frown drawing his black brows together as the first mate, Mr. Benson, bellowed orders and the men scurried to obey them without the usual joking and ribald banter.
Waiting only until she had cleared the harbor and was ploughing her way through the first rolling breakers of the Atlantic Ocean, Dominic Challenger turned and made his way to his cabin, throwing a curt word of command over his shoulder as he went that caused Mr. Benson and Donald McGuire to exchange guilty, conspiratorial looks as they followed him.
“Well?” The captain seated himself in a chair behind a desk that held an untidy collection of maps, charts, and other papers, all of which were held in place by a collection of pistols of varying sizes and shapes. “Perhaps you’ll explain why we’re short two hands—and why discipline always seems to go to hell when I’m not aboard this ship! You were to be prepared and in readiness to sail at precisely four this afternoon. Those were my orders four weeks ago.” He stared at Donald, and his grey eyes turned to a metallic steely color in the light that poured in through a large porthole.
“And you—can it be that you found some reason to dally along the way you took in getting here? I understand that I arrived in port hard on your heels.”
As his eyes went from one red face to the other, Dominic found himself wondering casually how it was that these two, who had always been each other’s enemy, had suddenly turned into allies. Or so it seemed…
Benson was a Methodist, a follower of the fiery and controversial preacher John Wesley. And Donald, as he well knew, was an uncompromising Calvinist. Usually the two men argued for hours, almost coming to blows, over various points of doctrine. Today they both seemed filled with brotherhood. He wondered if his own escapades during the time he had spent ashore had united them in the common bonds of disapproval. If so, be damned to them both, with their long faces!
He waited for them to speak, and seniority took precedence.
“Sir!” Mr. Benson said gruffly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny neck. “You did not give me time to explain the situation—sir. Begging to report that Parrish went on shore without leave a week ago, and, being in a disgustingly drunken state when he attempted to return, he fell into the water off a pier, and was discovered drowned. And as for young Ames—” here Benson’s face reddened, and he appeared on the verge of apoplexy “—he—ran away, captain. With a woman old enough to be his mother, too! She used to sell fish and fresh fruit in the market place. And then one day she wasn’t there. I sent Jenkins on shore to look for Ames, and he came back with a garbled message….”
Benson regarded fornication as a crime only slightly less serious than murder and drunkenness. For himself, he never drank and was not interested in shore leave or gambling or any of the other vices that sailors were wont to indulge in. He had planned, at one time, to become a fire-and-brimstone preacher himself, until one day a press gang had caught him. Now, he was just as single-minded in his hatred of the English Navy as he was in his attempts to convert the men under his command.
Dominic had caught himself wondering more than once if perhaps Benson did not secretly cherish a fondness for young men, but if he did, he was not overt about it, and all that mattered was that he was a good sailor and an excellent mate—cool-headed in times of danger. Young Ames had been something of a protégé of Benson’s—no wonder he was upset.
Captain Challenger had had far too much wine to drink the previous night, which had something to do with his bad mood. He had literally lost his shirt at cards and had ended up, in spite of all his stern resolutions, in the queen’s own bed. Just as well he had planned to leave Spain today! She was a savage, insatiable lover, and his back still bore the marks of her long, sharp nails.
There was a dull pounding in his temples, and he craved sleep; and so when Benson began to explain that he had personally hired a new cabin boy, a Spanish orphan who had relatives in France who would be glad to take him in, Dominic merely waved an impatient hand.
Dry-voiced, he asked, “I suppose the brat doesn’t even speak English! And why wasn’t he on deck when we sailed?”
“Well—” Looking embarrassed, Benson shuffled his feet. “To tell the truth, the lad’s seasick, sir. But he’ll be useful once he gets over it, I’ll see to that. I gave him the extra bunk in my cabin. I wouldn’t want a lad as young as he is corrupted by the dirty talk and gambling in the fo’c’s’le.”
Hell—maybe Benson was that kind after all! But as long as he did his job and the new cabin boy knew what was expected of him, what the devil did it matter?
There was still Donald to be coped with, and Dominic said harshly, “Since we’re short a man, and I don’t have to impress people on shore with the fact that I, too, have my own valet, you can go back to your usual duties, my old friend! I’m sure you’ll be relieved.”
Catching the fleeting impression of thankfulness on Donald’s face as he and Benson turned to leave, he held up one hand, staying him after the door had closed behind the first mate.
“Wait a minute. Why are you in such a deuced hurry? I haven’t heard a word out of you yet, and you must admit that’s unusual. Well? Aren’t you going to tell me I’m headed for perdition?”
Donald sounded unusually solemn.
“It’s not for me to say, as ye’ve reminded me often, captain. I reckon ye’ll be after finding your own kind of damnation, at that.”
“I reckon I will!” Dominic Challenger gave a harsh laugh that seemed torn from his throat. The thin white scar that stretched from his temple and across one cheekbone like a crescent gave him a look of the devil—or so Donald always said to himself, seeing the captain in this kind of mood.
He hoped there would be no more questions, but on the heels of that hope came the curt command to fetch a decanter of wine—since there was no cabin boy in a fit state to perform such small duties.
“By the way—how did you manage to be rid of the gypsy wench? Were the gold coins I gave you sufficient to compensate for the loss of her virginity and provide her with a dowry?”
Halfway out of the door already, Donald’s back stiffened, but he did not turn his head.
“She asked only to be taken to some distant relatives, captain, and it was the least I could promise, wasn’t it, now? She returned your gold to you, too—said she didn’t want payment for what she hadn’t sold.”
With a look of dour satisfaction on his face, Donald closed the door behind him, ignoring the angrily muttered, explosive curse that was hurled at his heels. Let Benson say what he would—he knew best how to handle the captain in one of his black moods.
The mood lasted for the whole of the week that followed, along with a spell of bad weather that was almost as ugly.
It appeared they were carrying secret dispatches to the newly arrived American minister in Paris, and so instead of looking for likely prizes, they were to avoid running into any other ships if they could help it—a highly unusual situation for a notorious privateer. All the same, there were the usual duties to be performed, just in case; the decks had to be kept clean and clear and the guns polished and cleaned for action. The Challenger’s slim, rakish lines were too well known to King George’s Navy to permit any relaxing of their vigilance; and it was well known that in spite of the so-called Peace of Amiens, there were British war frigates skulking off the coast of Portugal and in the Bay of Biscay itself. And so the Challenger kept to a slow zigzag course heading well out to sea before she turned back again to head for the French harbor of Nantes.
A series of storms plagued them after they had rounded Cape Finisterre—both sea and sky as grey as the captain’s cold eyes. At first Marisa was far too sick and miserable to care if they broke into pieces and sank to the bottom of the ocean, in fact, in her lucid moments, between spasms of sickness, she almost welcomed the thought of an end—any end—to her misery.
Except for Donald, who looked in occasionally, bringing her food she refused, and shaking his head in a helpless fashion, no one had time to wonder about her, not even Mr. Benson, whom she hardly saw.
Marisa had lost all idea of time, and when the day came that she was actually able to sit up in her bunk, craving food in spite of the constant pitching motion of the ship, she had no notion how long she had lain there.
“Ah, looks like you’ve found your sea legs at last, my girl!” Donald said with an attempt at cheerfulness as he brought her a watery broth which she gulped down voraciously. “I canna’ stay for long,” he added with a backward glance over his shoulder. “He’s in a worse mood than ever because of all the delays and having to run from a damned Britisher of only sixteen guns yesterday. Lost her in the fog, but it’s a shame we could not have stayed to fight her.”
Marisa shuddered weakly, and he gave her thin shoulder a clumsy, comforting pat.
“Ah, weel! Ye won’t be seeing any action, an’ that’s a relief. We’ll fetch into Nantes in a few days now, and I’ll get you off the ship with none being the wiser. You just stay below now and try not to worry. The captain’s an excellent good sailor, for all his hard ways—and it’s a powerful hard life he’s had, to make him that way, too. You couldna’ care for that though, could you, puir little lass? It’s like a little drowned mouse ye look now, with no one ever suspecting ye’re a lass after all. You’ll need a lot of feeding up once you’re safe with your relatives.”
When Donald had left, Marisa managed to wriggle out of her bunk and found her knees too weak to hold her. Just then the ship dipped into a deep wave-trough and rose up again, almost on its end, and she slammed against the bulkhead with a force that almost stunned her.
‘I’m surely going to die,’ she thought as she crawled across the floor. And the thought alarmed her only faintly, for she felt more than half-dead already. Tears of sheer weakness and exhaustion slipped unheeded down her pale, hollowed cheeks without her being aware of them. It didn’t matter; nothing mattered too much at this point. She could not even remember what she was doing here, being tossed from side to side like a tiny cork while she waited for the wave that would surely smash in the side of the ship and sweep her with it to oblivion.
Somehow, miraculously, it didn’t happen. Mr. Benson came back to the cabin, smothered in oilskins, and lifted her back into her bunk, ordering her gruffly to stay there, for they expected the storm to last all night. He gave her a large, worn volume of the Protestant Bible to hold on to, and told her she should pray that she’d be saved. Still, he was as kind in his own gruff way as Donald had been, and Marisa nodded solemnly before he left her again.
Huge, foamy waves smashed against the side of the ship. The porthole had been closed with a heavy wooden shutter, and Marisa had no idea whether it was night or day. As the storm gathered in intensity the timbers began to creak alarmingly, and she had to clutch desperately to the side of the bunk to prevent herself from being thrown out.
Suddenly she began to fancy that they were about to go down—that everyone else must surely have been swept overboard leaving her alone, trapped in this cramped space like the little mouse Donald had called her. Had she really heard a cry, “Abandon ship! Abandon ship!” above the thunderous roaring of the wind-torn waves?
Without quite knowing how, Marisa found herself clawing desperately at the door. She wrenched it open at last and was soaking wet in a second, buffeted by the fury of the storm that was raging all around. The door slammed shut behind her, and she slid along the suddenly sloping deck. A wall of pale-green water came to meet her, pushing her backwards, drenching her eyes and hair and face; her mouth was filled with salty water when she opened it to scream. So this was what it felt like to drown…. Her mind registered the thought in a detached fashion, even while her arms flailed desperately seeking some kind of handhold. And then, just as her feet slipped from under her, she was brought up short—an arm encircled her waist, holding her firmly as the water receded, and she heard the man she had cannoned into swear in exasperation.
“What the hell!…”
Choking and gasping, she was dragged roughly to the comparative shelter of a bulkhead on the lee side of the still-pitching vessel and shoved roughly against the wet wooden planking.
“I thought I gave orders—” a voice she recognized only too well began, and then, still holding her pinned against the wall, he lowered his head, peering furiously into her averted face. “Who in hell are you? A stowaway?”
Her wits coming at long last to her rescue, Marisa tried to wriggle away. “The cabin boy, señor. I—I was afraid—” After the quantities of seawater she had swallowed, her voice came out as a choked whisper.
“Goddammit! Don’t you have sense enough to follow orders? You were to stay below because you were too sick to perform your duties!” He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Well, now that you’re recovered enough to be up and about, you can get below to the galley and fetch up some hot grog. And look lively, muchacho, or I’ll throw you overboard myself!”
He was capable of it. Oh, he mustn’t recognize her!
“Get going,” he said grimly, and Marisa ducked under his arm, not knowing in what direction she should flee. The deck tilted alarmingly again at that moment, and once more he grabbed at her, to keep her from sliding against the rail. This time, though, his arm caught her under her breasts, their slight curve unmistakable through her sopping wet shirt.
“Diablos!” He swore furiously in Spanish, and the next moment she felt herself dragged backwards, struggling helplessly against his strength until he kicked open a door and flung her bodily through it.
“You’ll stay here until I have the time to get to the bottom of this whole affair,” he snarled ominously. “Fortunately for you, I have other things to see to right now!”
The heavy door thudded shut, leaving her sprawled ignominiously on a luxurious rug. Marisa realized that she was locked in the captain’s own cabin.
She lay there for a long time, wet and trembling, partly with cold and partly from sheer terror which seemed to numb all of her senses. Finally the sound of her own teeth chattering aroused her somewhat, and she lifted her head to discover she was lying in a puddle of water, which had soaked through the rug. A furiously swaying lantern overhead cast a dim orange light that flickered like the fires of hell, casting long, leaping shadows into the corners of the room.
What would he do with her? Marisa glanced fearfully at the door, expecting him to burst through it at any moment. A pirate, a deserter from the English Navy who had used a stolen ship to turn robber, a man without scruple or conscience—a completely amoral rogue!
The abuse she heaped on him mentally gave Marisa the strength to sit up. She moaned. She must be bruised all over, after being flung this way and that. And he would probably kill her for ruining his fine Persian carpet, if she didn’t save him the trouble by perishing with a chill. Some kind of practicality oozed back into her mind, giving her the strength she needed to pull herself slowly and painfully to her feet. Turning her head, she saw a pale, frightening face staring at her. She let out a small shriek, which was fortunately drowned out by the sounds of the storm that still raged outside.
It was hard to keep her balance, as weak and unnerved as she was, but she realized it was her own face that had scared her so! Reflected in a small mirror hung on one of the walls she could hardly recognize herself. Short, straggly hair turned dark by seawater hung about a small, gaunt face that was pinched and blue with cold. She looked like a half-drowned rat—hardly the kind of appealing prey that a pirate captain might wish to gobble up! And in any case, she had never possessed any vanity about her appearance—her nose was too short, her eyes too large for her small, high-cheekboned face, and her forehead not high enough. She had always been thin, and now after a week or more of virtual starvation, she was skinnier than ever.
“Perhaps he won’t want to—to do that with me again after all!” Marisa reflected hopefully. “After all, it was only because he was drunk and angry and wanted to punish me in some way.” But in spite of all her brave efforts to comfort herself she could not escape the unpleasant thought that she was at the mercy of a man who had thought it a joke to carry off a gypsy wench for his use for the night and had taken her without a thought for her feelings or for anything but the sating of his own lust. He had wanted to be rid of her soon after—what would his reactions be now?
At that moment there was a crashing noise overhead, and the ship tossed more violently than before, pitching Marisa against a bed that was anchored to the floor.
It was just as well she had not become a nun, for she had no moral fiber at all. She had been raped and had not had the courage to kill herself afterwards. Instead, she had taken a bath! And now, almost petrified by fear, she found herself thinking that perhaps rape was preferable to death by drowning after all.
Clutching a trailing blanket around her shivering, icy body, Marisa stayed crouched where she was, one arm wrapped around a bedpost. She tried to pray, but the humble, gentle prayers of praise and invocation she had recited so glibly in the convent chapel became all garbled in her mind. She had sinned deliberately, she had no right to ask for mercy. Instead of the vision of the Virgin’s gentle face bringing her comfort, she saw another face bending over her, dark and angry looking, with a white scar and eyes like daggers, cutting her to pieces, impaling her body and battering it helplessly while she lacked even the strength to cry out.
6
Strangely enough, it was the sudden cessation of noise that woke her. That, and the pleasant feeling of warmth penetrating her chilled flesh. She must have lost consciousness during the worst of the storm, Marisa thought dazedly. At least she was still alive.
As circulation crept back into her cramped and aching limbs, the pain was almost unbearable, making her afraid to move.
Her eyes opened a fraction, and she realized that she was lying in bed, the covers drawn over her. In front of a glowing brazier which had been set in the center of the floor, a man stood stripping off his sopping wet clothing, flinging everything aside in an untidy, dripping heap. The ruddy light played over his tall, lean body and the movement of muscles beneath the skin of his shoulders and narrow flanks. His back was to her, its symmetry broken by a crisscrossed pattern of scars. Only a criminal would carry the marks of the lash. Marisa’s golden eyes widened and then squeezed shut quickly as he reached for a bottle that stood on the desk and raised it to his lips.
A few moments later she could not help cringing as the covers were rudely snatched off her cowering form.
“Whose wench are you? Donald’s? Isaac Benson’s? I can hardly believe it of the old hypocrite!” She felt his body drop over hers, taking her breath away, and then he had rolled to the other side of the bed.
“Don’t get your hopes up, scrawny one. I’m too damned tired to find out tonight. And if you want to stay in this bed you had better shed those wet clothes; you’re as clammy as a corpse!”
Numb with fear, she had obeyed him, reacting like a puppet. She fell asleep and when she next awoke, the events of the previous night seemed all jumbled up. She had half-expected to wake up in the same narrow bunk she had occupied for the last week or so, and when her senses swam back to dull awareness of the present, she felt a heavy weight over the lower half of her body and found her face pressed against a masculine shoulder smelling faintly of sweat and tasting like salt. She tried to move away but an arm scooped her closer.
“No, you don’t! You were content enough to keep me warm all night—what’s your hurry now?”
Her golden eyes stared mesmerized into his sleepy grey ones with dark pupils that seemed to contract as recognition flared into them.
“You!” Suddenly he held her pinned down by the shoulders, his face staring down into her. “How did you contrive it? Did you put one of your gypsy spells on poor Donald and on my ship as well? No wonder we’ve had such a bad voyage—a woman aboard ship always brings bad luck! What are you doing here?”
There was a cruel, dangerous look on his face, and sheer desperation made Marisa shout back at him.
“You—you threw me in here last night! And if I’m such bad luck, why don’t you just throw me overboard and have done with it? You’re such a rotten bully, no wonder all your men are so afraid of you! Well, I’m not. You can’t do anything worse to me than you have already—”
She was appalled at her own boldness.
He shook her, his fingers digging into her bare shoulders.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” he muttered threateningly between clenched teeth. “This is my ship. What are you doing aboard her? Did you offer yourself to Donald in order to persuade him to bring you here? Cabin boy—hah! I suppose you’ve been spreading yourself thin—distributing your doubtful favors to every man on board this ship. No wonder you were supposedly too sick to show your face on deck! What’s your game?”
Too overwrought by now to care about the pain he was inflicting on her, Marisa screamed, “Nothing, nothing! I have not done anything, and I’m not what you accuse me of being—you ought to know that! I only wanted to get to France, and if I hadn’t been so—so sick I would have worked my passage there! I’m not a gypsy, and I’m not a whore, although you tried to make me one! And I wish you’d have let me be swept overboard last night. That would have been best, I’m sure for all concerned!”
“What a virago! I can feel you shaking like a trapped rabbit under my hands, and yet you dare shout back at me. I’ll say this much for you—whatever you are, you’ve got courage.”
“Courage is something one finds easily enough when there’s nothing left to fear,” Marisa shot back wearily.
It came to her with a sudden shock, when she saw his eyes harden, that he had made his last statement in English, and she had answered in the same language.
“How did you discover such a cynical truth so young in life? Well, well. Maybe there’s more to you than I imagined at first. You’re beginning to intrigue me all over again, little one.”
She had no idea what he might have done next for a rapping at the cabin door made him stiffen and swear under his breath.
Suddenly embarrassed, Marisa dived under the covers like a guilty child. A wooden-faced Donald entered, bearing dry clothes over his arm.
“Beg pardon, captain. I thought you’d be needing these. And Mr. Benson has a jury mast up, all right and tight. If the wind and weather hold, we ought to fetch port with no more trouble.” In the face of an ominous silence he cleared his throat and went on awkwardly, “Thought—you dinna’ gave me a chance to explain matters last night, and—”
“If we hadn’t been shorthanded you’d be clapped in irons and making your explanations to the rats in the hold. No, I’ll have my explanations from the right party, and hear your side later, if my temper holds out! Here. You can take our erstwhile cabin boy’s clothes and have them dried. And fetch me some breakfast, while I decide what to do with her.”
“Captain, you don’t understand. The puir lassie has no friends or family to protect her in Spain, and those gypsies had vanished like the wind—”
“You’d be wise to vanish yourself, you sneaking old reprobate, before I change my mind and have you flogged for insubordination!”
With a last worried glance at the mound of covers on the bed, Donald decided on discretion instead of valor and fled, hearing the door kicked shut behind him.
Marisa could hear her own heart thudding, and the next moment the covers were yanked off her curled-up body, and, crying in pain, she found herself dragged upright by her hair.
“What the hell do you think you’re hiding from? And just a moment ago, you were so brave!”
In spite of the tears that sprang to her eyes she noticed with relief that he had pulled on a pair of closely fitting breeches, with a wide belt that snugged his flat stomach.
“Here. You might as well put this on.” A ruffled linen shirt hit her in the face. “I’ll have some answers to my questions now,” Captain Challenger’s voice continued harshly.
She blushed all over under the cold scrutiny of his eyes as she forced herself to pull on the garment he had thrown at her; but for once he seemed not so much interested in the sight of her body as in studying her face.
“I’ve told you everything—”
“Only that you’re not a gypsy and not a whore. You’ll excuse me if I reserve judgment on the last! But I must admit it’s not usual to come across a gypsy wench who speaks Castilian Spanish and English as well! Who are you?”
Marisa tried not to shrink under his look, gathering her confused, scattered thoughts together. She told him the same story she had told Donald—which was not too far from the whole truth, after all!
“My father was Spanish and my mother French. They put me in a school and forgot about me. And when I learned that they were both—gone—I ran off with the gypsies, Blanca told me they would take me to France. My mother’s sister used to live there—”
“Where?”
“In Paris. She married, and I don’t remember her last name, but she used to enjoy going to the theater, and I know that if I saw her again I would recognize her. And I’d heard that Paris is gay, and all the ladies wear pretty clothes, and I had no one in Spain—”
“I see.” His voice had become dry. “So you thought you’d sell your virginity to the highest bidder—or maybe your gypsy friends had such a plan. A pity I had to arrive on the scene and spoil everything! But then, you should not have been running off alone on a dark night unless you were hoping that young man would come after you!” His tone turned harsh. “All women are whores at heart, and for all your look of childish innocence, I’m sure you’re no different. It’s a pity you went so far as to cut off your hair. It was quite pretty as I recall.”
“I don’t care what you think about me, I could never become a whore. I’d rather be dead!”
“Spare me your theatrics, wench!” he sneered. “Once you’ve filled out a little and let your hair grow back, you might be passable—and in a better position to bargain. For now, like it or not, you’ve thrown yourself on my hands, and as little as I like it I suppose I’m stuck with you until we reach France. You could cause trouble, if the crew knew there was a female on board. I’d hate to have to hand you over to them to keep them mollified! So—” he rose, stretching “—if you know what’s good for you you’ll keep your mouth shut and do as you’re told. Who knows? You might learn a few things to prepare you for your future profession in case you don’t happen to run into this pleasure-loving aunt of yours!”
He seemed to have accepted her story, at least; but obviously her defiance had put him in a black mood again, prompting him to insult and vilify her.
When he left the cabin, he locked the door behind him, and Marisa found herself a prisoner. She did not know what passed between Donald and his captain, but when the Scotsman brought her food and dry clothing he seemed ill at ease and almost afraid to talk to her, except to warn her not to cross the captain when he was in a temper. He shook his head and murmured “Puir lassie—puir little creature,” until she thought she would go mad and was almost glad when he left her alone with her thoughts.
The rest of the voyage lasted five days, with the weather perfect, but during that time Marisa was never permitted to leave the cabin. She was more than just a prisoner—she was the helpless, unwilling captive of a pirate captain who treated her like a prize of war.
When she refused to undress for him he took her clothes away and kept her naked. When she attempted to claw at him he tied her wrists to the bedposts. Once, she tried to brain him with the heavy, double-branched candelabra that stood on his desk; he snatched it easily out of her grasp and turned her, squirming and whimpering, over his knee smacking her bare rump until all her pride and defiance left her and she screamed for mercy.
After that, she was tame—in a fashion. When he felt inclined to take her she submitted limply, without showing any reaction, keeping her eyes tightly closed and her teeth clenched against his kisses. And in this way, by her very passivity, she defeated him and gained her own small victory when, swearing, he rolled off her body.
She resisted him by not resisting, and Dominic found himself staying away from his own cabin, scowling and watching the cloudless blue skies while his crew kept their distance, eying him and shaking their heads. Even Donald had nothing to say out loud, although his reproachful eyes spoke volumes. Mr. Benson muttered under his breath and quoted passages from the Bible. ‘Damn her!’ Dominic mused. A cold, unresponsive child-woman—he must have been out of his mind or blind drunk to have felt himself attracted by her in the first place.
If he’d had any sense he would have allowed her to continue her masquerade as a cabin boy, made her work until she dropped from weariness, and let her bunk with Mr. Benson and listen to his Bible-reading all night. That would have taught her a lesson!
She was the first woman he’d had to rape—and she’d been a virgin. She had seemed acquiescent enough, curse her! And then she’d turned up again, after he’d put her out of his mind as an unpleasant memory. What a bedraggled little scarecrow she’d looked that first night when he’d discovered her stumbling across the deck, all wet and sticky with salt water. But since then he’d made her wash her hair, and, although it was still far too short, it had begun to curl in ringlets all over her head in a style that ladies of fashion were beginning to emulate all over Europe. She was a mixture of defiance and surrender, naivete and cynicism. And someone, somewhere, had given her an education, so that she spoke like a lady. No doubt that would prove useful to her later, when they got to France. She was hardly inexperienced any longer—he had seen to that; and with the right clothes she should have no difficulty finding herself a rich lover—or more than one. The best whores were women who didn’t permit themselves to feel….
And he must be out of his mind to wonder what her future might be once he was rid of her. He had never given any woman a second thought, nor exerted himself to conquer one, since Lizette. Lovely, false Lizette, who had betrayed not only him but also his friends to the cursed British one long-ago night in Ireland.
“I’ll be glad when we sail into Nantes harbor,” Donald McGuire muttered from the side of his mouth to the long-faced Isaac Benson. “Captain’s not been hisself since—”
He did not have to complete his sentence. Mr. Benson, who had thought the same, merely grunted.
“Women!” he said succinctly. Then hastily drew himself up and began bellowing unnecessary orders as their captain strode by, his face like a thundercloud.
“He’ll be wanting his dinner, I don’t doubt,” Donald muttered hastily. “I’d best see to it, or he’ll be in a worse mood than this.”
When the cabin door banged open, Marisa was sitting up in his chair, reading a battered volume of Shakespeare he’d picked up somewhere on one of his voyages. Fascinated, she hardly looked up, and her voice held more animation than he’d heard in it for a long time.
“I had no idea you would be interested in reading. And you know, I wasn’t allowed to read anything but religious literature—or geography, which I hated!”
“Get up!”
She looked up then, sighed, and rose obediently to her feet, putting the book down reluctantly. What was the matter now? He was so moody and bad-tempered!
She was naked, her small crimson-tipped breasts teasing him in the half-light. And in spite of the fact that she had not been out in the sun, her body retained a faint golden tint all over—a legacy, no doubt, of a Moorish ancestor.
She had given up trying to hide her body from him; in fact, she seemed quite unconcerned as she gazed curiously at him. How dared she?
“You look like a strumpet waiting for her first customer,” he snarled cruelly. “For God’s sake put something on or get into bed. Donald will be bringing dinner in soon—or did you hope to seduce him as well?”
“But I thought that’s what you were training me to be—a strumpet. But must I lie on my back all day just in case you might come in and want me?”
Her words acted like a glass of cold water thrown in his face. It was only when she spoke in such cynical fashion that he realized how naive and innocent she had really been at first. Until he had changed her. Controlling himself with an effort he walked behind the desk, turning up the lamp.
“Such a painful sacrifice on your part isn’t necessary, mademoiselle. Please wrap a sheet around yourself at least—improvise a Roman toga, if you can. I can assure you that a little modesty and even coyness at times can be much more appealing to a man than such a blatant display of nudity.”
“Oh!” He had managed to make her angry at last. “And what makes you think that I am interested in making myself appealing to a man? If I am to judge all men by you, it wouldn’t matter; all you think of is your own selfish pleasure even if it has to be forced on an unwilling victim!”
He looked at her consideringly, the reflection of the lamp’s light in his eyes making them appear as golden as hers for an instant.
“Am I really that selfish? Poor little victim! But then, you see, I’ve been used to taking women as they come—and go. Do you want me to make you an exception?”
“I want nothing from you except my freedom!”
Sullenly Marisa turned her back on him, snatching a sheet off the unmade bed to wrap around herself. How she detested him! And what subtle new form of torment did he plan to use on her this time? What she had flung at him was true. She only longed to be free, and especially of him!
7
An obviously disapproving Donald brought dinner, sniffing loudly as he laid the table and setting down steaming covered dishes with an unnecessary clatter that caused his captain to raise an eyebrow and inquire politely if perhaps he was getting too old for life at sea.
Marisa sulked in the farthest corner of the big bed, keeping her back stubbornly turned; but she could not help overhearing the conversation. She could almost imagine Donald’s long face, and the way his lips must be pursed. Well, at least Donald was on her side, and as soon as they reached France she’d beg him to help her….
“And why would ye be wanting both wine and champagne?” Donald was asking in a gruff voice. “I can’t recall as ye’ve ever displayed much liking for the vile, wicked stuff before. All bubbles, it is, and only meant for—”
He cast a pitying glance towards Marisa who was smothered under the bedcovers, and he was angry enough to glower at the captain. He had no right to treat a young, unprotected child as if she were some dockside trollop picked up for his pleasure!
Dominic Challenger, reading what was in the older man’s mind, gave him a sarcastic smile. “Why should I need to seduce her when both you and she keep reminding me that she’s ruined already? And I happen to have a taste for champagne tonight—and none at all for your preaching, you old reprobate!”
Donald opened his mouth to speak again and found his speech cut off by a steely, threatening look. He left without speaking again.
Suddenly a spicy aromatic scent filled the cabin, making Marisa’s mouth water in spite of all her resolutions. Dominic had taken the covers off the silver dishes that Donald had brought in, and the delicious smell was almost too much for her to bear! Marisa bit her lip, her back stiffening, and the next moment she jumped as a cork popped loudly.
‘So that’s his game. I’m supposed to crawl and beg for my food now…. Well, we’ll see!’
The odor of seafood and spices and saffron-flavored rice took her suddenly back to Martinique. Oh, why hadn’t maman left her behind on that warm, happy island with her grandparents instead of dragging her off to France?
She was so hungry that even his presence could not stop the involuntary growling of her empty stomach, and Marisa blushed with shame.
“If you’re not hungry, petite, perhaps a glass of champagne will help you cheer up. We’ll soon be in France, and you might want to celebrate the parting of our ways!”
Lately he had taken to speaking to her in French; and as usual, his sarcastic tone of voice made her grit her teeth with anger. If she didn’t eat he was just as likely to have the meal cleared away as soon as his own appetite was satisfied.
Wrapping a sheet loosely around her, she finally sat down opposite him. Captain Challenger’s shirt was open to his waist, and she could not help noticing, all over again, the strangely wrought medal he wore on a silver chain around his neck. She had asked him about it before, and he’d only shrugged, telling her it was a good-luck charm given him by an old friend.
“It looks like a heathen thing to me!” she’d said primly and saw his lip curl ironically.
“You would appear the heathen to the man who gave me this, little wildcat. Stop acting so curious.”
Well, she would not ask him any more questions. She knew all she wanted to know about him, although his behavior tonight puzzled her. He had made Donald lay the table as if for a formal dinner party; and now he instructed her on the correct implements to use, all the while keeping her glass full to the brim with champagne.
“You might as well learn to eat like a lady instead of a hungry savage! Do you want this aunt of yours to feel ashamed of you? Or your lovers—”
“I would not take any lovers! Now that you’ve taught me what men really want from a woman I think I would much rather be a nun, after all!”
“Just think what you would have missed—immured in a Spanish convent!”
His eyes crinkled at the corners—why did she have to notice that? And when she would have answered him loftily, Marisa choked on her champagne instead. She spluttered, breathing up bubbles of champagne that seemed to penetrate her very brain, making it float away from her body.
“I think it’s time for your next lesson, ma fille.”
The sheet she had wrapped herself with had somehow vanished, and she was lying backward on the bed, her head spinning alarmingly.
“Since you are so determined to become a nun, you had better learn the ways in which men can take advantage of you.”
Had she dreamed the husky whisper? Marisa gasped with shock as something cold and wet trickled over her breasts and down her belly. Her body jerked, arching involuntarily, and her eyes, as she tried to focus them, held a puzzled, confused look.
“You are pouring champagne all over me! Are you mad? Stop—”
Marisa began to giggle helplessly the next moment when Dominic, bending his dark head to hers, said severely,
“Will you hold still, vixen? It would be a shame to waste all that champagne.”
Neither of them had eaten very much, being far too occupied in arguing, and she thought for a moment that he was as drunk as she. She became aware, all of a sudden, of a strange sensation. His lips and tongue were tracing the path of the champagne, and going even further, in fact…
Marisa tried to wriggle away, but he held her pinioned, concentrating first on one quivering breast and then the other until she felt her whole body burning with embarrassment. And—and—oh, it was the strangest feeling, but although she struggled and moaned, she did not really want him to stop, not even when her nipples were achingly sensitive under his hands, and his seeking mouth moved much lower—across her taut, shrinking belly—lower still, until—
Until frightened both of herself and him, she began to fight against him in earnest, her breath sobbing in her throat, limbs writhing as she fought to close her thighs against this different kind of encroachment.
Forgetting her pride in her fear, Marisa began to plead with him, although somewhere in the back of her mind a small demon sat grinning and damned her for being a hypocrite. She had come closer than she ever had before to understanding desire—so close that when with a muttered expletive he slid himself up her body and kissed her mouth instead, she was almost sorry. She felt as if she had been on the brink of some strange and new experience, and now she had lost it.
Still, when he parted her thighs with his hands she made none of her usual protest, but let him, quivering again only very slightly when his fingers touched her. There, where his lips had brushed only moments ago.
“My poor jeune fille. Is the thought of seduction so frightening to you that you have to fight me tooth and nail?”
She realized then that she had actually clawed at his shoulders. When he leaned over her, penetrating her quickly and deeply, she tasted his blood against her lips and wondered in the back of her mind what had made him so patient with her tonight. Any other man she might have called kind, but she had learned that Dominic Challenger wasn’t. He was a man who took what he wanted, and women were a convenience, no more—she remembered that he had snarled that at her one night.
She would never understand him, why even try. It was the champagne that made this time different from all those others and made her head whirl and her breasts ache against his chest where the funny foreign medal he wore pressed into her flesh, warm from his body, like a brand.
He held her against him all night, his flesh still part of hers. And he took her again in the morning when she was still half-asleep, quickly and impatiently this time, without a kiss or a caress. But at least he pulled the covers back over her when he left; and turning over with a sigh, Marisa slept again.
When she woke it was well past noon. Donald, his eyes carefully averted, brought her a tray and informed her that they were approaching the coast of France. They should be safely berthed in the harbor of Nantes by nightfall.
When he had gone, Marisa jumped quickly out of bed, grimacing slightly at the bad taste the champagne had left in her mouth. She could see nothing out of the porthole, for the captain’s cabin was at deck level and not high enough for her to catch a glimpse of anything but the same blue, heaving ocean. Turning back with a sigh of disappointment, she discovered her “clothes”—the same patched-up garments she had worn during her short masquerade as a cabin boy. They were folded and lying neatly on a small chest at the foot of the bed.
A tacit reminder that the captain now desired her dressed for a change? Biting her lower lip, Marisa stared at the dirty-white shirt and breeches with distaste. During the time she had spent at sea, she had managed, somehow, to detach herself from reality. A ship was a world within itself, and since he had elected to keep her for his use, she had not come in contact with a single other human except Donald. She found herself wondering now if the rest of the crew even knew of her existence. The ambiguity of the situation she was placed in suddenly struck her with the force of a blow, and she flinched, snatching up the garments she had despised a moment ago.
France! But they were still quite some distance from Paris. What did he intend to do with her once they had disembarked? Surely he would allow her off the ship; he had said that women were considered bad luck. And if he did, then what?
She was given no chance to ask any questions. Some time much later in the afternoon Dominic came striding into the cabin, giving her only a cursory glance, and collected a sheaf of papers off his desk before leaving again. She heard voices, running feet on the deck, the shrill whistle of the boatswain’s pipe, and the creaking of timbers. Mr. Benson’s voice shouted orders that were unintelligible, and she guessed they were hauling down sail, for the normally swift passage of the ship seemed to have slowed so that now she could actually hear the lapping of water against her sides instead of the hiss as the sharp prow cut through the waves. It was intolerable that she should have to stay cooped up here, and especially now; but she dared not show herself on deck, either.
The rough cotton garments, washed in sea water with strong soap, chafed her skin, especially at the neck and waist. For a time Marisa paced angrily about the cabin, and then, flinging herself into a chair, she picked up the shabby, leather-bound volume of Shakespeare’s plays that had so fascinated her before. As she turned the pages, trying to find the place where she had stopped, Marisa wondered how it was that the bad-tempered Captain Challenger should come to have such a book in his possession. She could not imagine him taking the time to sit down and read, and yet it appeared well-worn, like a book of poetry by someone called Donne that she had also discovered on his desk.
Suddenly she found herself staring down at the frontispiece—why hadn’t she noticed it before? There was a scrawled Latin inscription, Inopem me copia fecit, ‘Plenty makes me poor’—not his writing, surely? The hand was feminine, the ink faded. And below it, simply a name. ‘Peggy.’ Who was Peggy? What had she been to him?
It was the first question she asked him when he finally returned to the cabin, once the ship was safely at anchor.
He looked tired and irritable and didn’t bother to speak one word to her; he merely sat on the end of the bed to take off his boots.
“Who is Peggy? Your wife?” Until the words slipped out she had not considered the possibility that he might, indeed, have a wife tucked away somewhere. She didn’t know why the thought should disturb her—except that it made her own position so much the worse. His mistress!
Still occupied in tugging off his wet boots he looked up uncomprehendingly at first; then he frowned.
“What?”
“I asked you if your wife’s name is Peggy. Or was she merely one of your mistresses?”
His face whitened, and then a look of such fury came over it that Marisa shrank back against the bulkhead.
“You damned, prying little bitch!” He said it softly, between his teeth. “What in hell do you mean by that? Where did you—”
The book she had been holding dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers, catching his eye.
There was a silence that stretched unendingly, while Marisa stayed flattened against the wall, not daring to look at him. Oh, God. Why had she spoken? He’d looked furious enough to kill her with his bare hands!
And then he said in a surprisingly quiet, controlled voice, “Peggy was my mother. And I have no wife—nor do I intend ever to saddle myself with one. Do you understand?”
At last she managed to raise her eyes to his face, and he gave a harsh, ugly laugh. “Your eyes are as big as saucers. Did I really succeed in frightening you at last?” Before she could find her voice to respond, he stood up and crossed the room with two long strides and caught her shoulders. “Don’t ever ask me questions about myself, menina. You might not like the answers you receive!”
“I—I didn’t mean—” She didn’t mean to stutter either, but she could not help it.
He pulled her against his chest and held her there as if to comfort her for having scared her half out of her wits. “Never mind. It’s not your fault, and I’m a moody devil at the best of times. It’s a good thing for you we’ll soon be going our separate ways.”
Marisa didn’t dare question him again as he swept her up into his arms and carried her over to the bed. Not then, while he undressed her with surprising gentleness and then lay beside her, his hands moving over her trembling, acquiescent body as if he wished to memorize it.
“You haven’t learned passion yet, have you?” he said softly once. “And I’m too damned impatient and selfish to be your instructor, although sometimes, when you lie here like a shivering trapped animal I find myself wondering—”
He was talking more to himself than to her, and she wondered at this different mood and its cause. Perhaps he’d be relieved to be rid of her; she knew she would be relieved to have her body belong to herself again.
Now, recognizing the signs of his desire as he pressed his lips against the vein that throbbed in her neck, Marisa expected him to take her without any further preliminaries. For the last time, perhaps. Tomorrow—hadn’t he talked of their going separate ways? But instead, he cursed softly under his breath and rolled away from her.
With disbelieving eyes she watched him get up and begin to dress.
“Where are you going?” And then she bit her lip. Hadn’t he just warned her not to question him?
He answered her in the old, hard voice she was used to.
“On deck—for some air. I let most of the crew go ashore tonight; they haven’t had the kind of sweet consolation you’ve provided me with for the past weeks, my sweet. It’s time I relieved Mr. Benson and took my turn at watch.” Pulling a heavy coat over his shoulders he turned to look at her with unreadable, slaty eyes. “Go back to sleep. You ought to rest well tonight.”
She raised herself on one elbow, puzzled by his sudden change of mood, and half-afraid too.
“And—and tomorrow?” she faltered, to be answered by his sarcastic, cutting laugh.
“Why, tomorrow I’ll smuggle you ashore, and you’ll be free of me, as you long to be. It won’t take you much time to find another protector—perhaps a kinder and more patient one. Good night, little gypsy!”
8
The next day was all bustle and confusion, and Marisa felt like a sleepwalker moving in a kind of daze.
She had hardly slept—her mind a welter of jumbled, unpleasant thoughts. She missed the usual motion of the ship riding through the ocean swells, and the bed seemed suddenly cold and far too large.
When Donald came for her, she felt as if she had barely fallen asleep, and he clucked impatiently, keeping his back turned while she bathed her swollen eyes with cold water and slipped, shivering, into the only garments she possessed. The captain had tired of his mistress, and she was the cabin boy again. In fact he had not even troubled himself enough to wish her a good-bye, and she could catch no glimpse of him when she followed Donald on deck, blinking in the sudden rush of sunlight.
Donald kept hurrying her, warning her to keep the woolen cap he had handed her pulled well down over her head. Too weary and confused to ask him any questions, she went with him unquestioningly, hardly caring where he was taking her. It could not matter; she was in France at last, safe and well, if a trifle shopworn. A slight, bitter smile that she was not aware of touched her soft mouth for an instant, causing Donald to give her a sharp look and then shake his head. ‘Poor child, poor wronged creature! What will become of her now?’ he wondered. It was not right that the captain should have treated her so harshly, unless it was to teach them all a lesson for deceiving him. ‘I should not have brought her aboard the Challenger,’ Donald reflected gloomily now. ‘The lass would have been better off in a Spanish orphanage, or even one of them papist convents.’
He blamed himself, the poor man, but he blamed his captain more and had spoken his mind frankly, risking both the black rage and the punishment that might follow.
“You should not have brought her aboard my ship, old man, if you meant to save her from me!” Dominic Challenger had said harshly. And then shrugging, as if to temper his previous outburst of anger, he said, “Besides, the chit is not important; and if it had not been me the first time it would have been someone else. Do you think she was in such a passion to get to France merely so that she could keep her virtue?”
Even Mr. Benson, after he had received his dressing down, had gone back to reading his Bible and quoting it to all. “If she was not lost before, she is now. Fallen by the wayside…”
Marisa was unaware of the thoughts in Donald’s head. Gradually she had begun to feel as if she were waking up from a dream to realize where she was and what had brought her here. France—her mother’s country. No longer living in terror and torn apart by bloody revolution, but gay and vital and bursting with all the energy of change and progress. She had been a little girl when she had fled, her mind clouded by memories of horror, but she still remembered some of the towns where the gypsies had stopped to give exhibitions of juggling and dancing—and to pick the pockets of unwary citizens. But that had been long ago, and she was back. Oh, surely there would still be some of her mother’s friends alive and still living in Paris who would remember her! Perhaps, by some lucky chance she would be able to find her Aunt Edmée. In France, where all the fashionable ladies took lovers, the little matter of her lost virginity would not brand her disgraced and unfit for marriage.
Yes, what a long way she had come, the young girl who had wanted to stay hidden behind the walls of a convent for the rest of her life! She had learned that to be raped by a man did not necessarily mean being ripped to pieces inside, and that to submit passively made it easier, if no less unpleasant. If that was all that marriage entailed, then she would much rather be a wife than a mistress, who could be too easily discarded.
With a curiously defiant gesture of pride, Marisa lifted her head, staring about her. They had left the noise and bustle of the harbor front and were now walking down a narrow street in the older part of town. Unused to walking on dry land, Marisa’s legs had already begun to ache, and the rough cobblestones stung her bare feet.
Where was Donald taking her? He turned his head to give her a worried look.
“I’m sorry to have made ye walk such a distance, lassie, but folks would think it strange to see the likes of what you look like now to be riding in a carriage. It’s no’ far now.”
He led her through a narrow, dirty alleyway where the sun seemed cut off by the buildings on either side of it, and then through a small gate into the back courtyard of what appeared to be a small inn, or posting house. There was no one about, although a few scrawny-looking chickens ran squawking out of their way. Up a rickety wooden stairway that seemed to lean against a wall for support and then from a tiny balcony into a small but clean and pleasant-looking room.
To cover his own embarrassment, Donald’s manner had become gruffly businesslike. “There’s a change of clothes for ye laid out on the bed and water in the pitcher there if you’d care for a wash. It’s a good thing they were all so busy out in front with a party of damned English stopping to change horses. They’re all over France now, I hear, since the peace was signed these few months ago. But ye’ll not be concerned with that. I’ll be going down now to find you something to eat, for you must be starved. Best lock the door behind me—you never know in these foreign places.”
Clothes, female clothes at last! How had Donald procured them for her? But before she could ask, he had disappeared, tactfully closing the door behind him, and Marisa could not bear to wait another instant before she stripped off her scratchy, disgusting boy’s garments, to try on her new attire.
How the fashions had changed! She remembered that the queen of Spain and the duquesa de Alba had worn such high-waisted, flimsy gowns, although theirs had been of expensive, transparent material covered with embroidery in silver and gold. This gown was of cloth, a dark brown color that reminded her for an instant of the Carmelite habit. But there the resemblance ended for it was bound just under the breasts with yellow-gold ribbons that fell fluttering almost to the hem, following the straight lines of the narrow skirt. The high neck and long sleeves, puffed in tiers, were also trimmed with the same color ribbon, and so was the straw bonnet which was lined with brown.
A plain dress, obviously made by a provincial dressmaker and meant for traveling, but it was still the prettiest that Marisa had owned since her childhood. She decided critically that although a trifle loose it fit her passably well, as did the kid half boots that laced with ribbon.
Peering into the small mirror, Marisa pulled at her short curls trying to make them lie in place around her face. There. That was better! And now she almost looked like a woman, or would have if her figure had been a trifle fuller.
A knock at the door made her whirl about, and when she heard Donald’s voice she ran to open it, almost throwing her arms about him in gratitude for his thoughtfulness.
While she wolfed down a slice of cold mutton pie she listened as he explained that the captain had given him orders to see that she got safely to Paris. If she had no objections, they would tell anyone that asked she was his French niece whom he had not seen since she was a baby, and that they were on their way to Paris from the province of Toulouse.
Marisa gave him a suspicious look.
“How do you know so much about France?”
“I don’t, lassie! Only some of the ports. But the captain told me what I was to say.”
She sniffed. “How considerate of him! I’m sure he’s good at making up lies.”
“Ah, well.” He shook his head at her. “He’s a hard man to understand, sometimes, an’ there’s a devil riding his shoulder that makes him the way he is. You wouldna’ understand.”
Marisa bit her lip to stop herself from asking the questions she longed to, and she told herself that she had already put him out of her mind. Once she arrived in Paris she would never see him again. No doubt he’d go back to his pirating after the broken mast was fixed and Donald had returned to Nantes, his errand completed.
And in the end, it was easy enough to occupy her mind with other things, once their journey had begun.
The crowded diligence followed the meandering course of the Loire River for a while, and, although their progress was slow and they stopped frequently to rest or change the horses, Marisa did not really mind. Donald pretended to sleep for the most part, and she was free to gaze out of the window, reacquainting herself with the familiar landscape. Her fellow passengers were peasants or minor clerks, and once she had told them she was taking her Scottish uncle to visit some friends of the family in Paris, they did not question her further. Even during these changed times there were refugees everywhere trying to find the families they had been separated from during the revolution. And spies as well, if the rumors were true. It was best not to ask too many questions.
It took them several days to reach the outskirts of Paris, and by this time Marisa felt tired and wilted. She had watched smart carriages, sometimes escorted by dashingly uniformed soldiers, rattle by them in a cloud of dust and had noticed with a pang of envy the women who rode in them. What a peasant she looked like after all!
Suddenly the whole notion of her traveling all the way to Paris on the off-chance of finding some member of her mother’s family seemed utter madness. Look at the trouble it had already brought her! She should have stayed in the convent and obediently married that detestable Don Pedro Arteaga. She should have….
But she had to collect her wandering thoughts quickly when the diligence pulled to a halt with a squeaking of wooden brakes and the passengers began to clamber over each other in their eagerness to alight.
They had stopped before an inn, but on what street and in what part of the city she had no idea. She had no bundle of clothes to cling to; she had nothing, in fact, but the garments on her back and the small purse Donald had thrust awkwardly at her before they set out. Payment for her services, she had thought, blushing angrily, but she had taken it so she wouldn’t hurt Donald’s feelings, and now she was glad she had, for the few coins gave her a feeling of independence.
She had begun to glance around, confused, almost forgetting Donald until he touched her arm gently.
“It’ll be dark soon—and a rainy night into the bargain, to judge from the looks of the sky.” He was looking around him anxiously as he spoke, as if he, too, were at a loss now that they had finally arrived. “Perhaps we’d best—” he had begun when suddenly he gave a grunt of relief as a man, unobtrusively dressed, who had been studying the faces of the passengers, came forward and spoke in English.
“You’re Donald McGuire? I’m Silas Winters, late of the brig Stella Maris out of the Carolinas. Captain Challenger sent me to look for you.”
Apart from a slight, polite inclination of his head in her direction Silas Winters, a quiet young man, was tactful enough to leave Marisa to her own confused thoughts. He helped her into the small closed carriage, but he seemed more at ease talking to Donald, explaining that his ship had been taken by a Frenchman, and he had recently been released in exchange for a French prisoner.
“I’ve signed up with Captain Challenger. It was a stroke of luck running into him at the ambassador’s house just two nights ago. It seems that we’ve settled our difference with France—for the time being, anyhow!”
All during this time, Marisa felt herself incapable of uttering a word. If she opened her mouth she might very well shriek with sheer rage and frustration. How dare he? She wouldn’t become his prisoner again! If he thought he could treat her as he had done, abandon her without a word, and then have her picked up and brought to him on some whim—what did he want with her this time?
The answer, springing into her mind, made her blush and clasp her hands tightly together in the darkness of the carriage. Oh, no, she wouldn’t! They were no longer on his ship, where as captain he had the power of life and death over everyone on board. She was free, and in Paris, and if he attempted to molest her she would not hesitate to scream as loudly as she could, to bring the gendarmes running. He’d find out….
It began to drizzle as the carriage bowled along the darkening streets, some of them already lit with sputtering oil lanterns, but Marisa was too agitated to notice anything, not even when the two men who sat opposite her fell into a low-voiced conversation that excluded her.
‘He cannot do this to me. Only a few days ago he was telling me how glad he would be when we could go our separate ways. And now, oh! It’s too much to bear.’
She gritted her teeth as the carriage came to a sudden halt before a tall, narrow house in a quiet street, and it was all she could do to murmur a few polite words of thanks to Mr. Winters, who bowed solemnly over her hand. What did he think of her being here? How would he react if she suddenly jumped back into the carriage and demanded to be taken away—taken back to the inn they had just left?
But he had turned away to unlock an iron gate set into the wall and now stood aside to allow her to precede him up a flight of steps lit by a lantern over the door that now loomed up in front of her.
An elderly servant answered a tug on the bell cord, and Marisa found herself within—looking about a small, rather shabby-looking hallway leading to a thinly carpeted stairway at one end and some closed doors to the left and right.
“Guillaume will show you to your room, miss,” Silas Winters said behind her. He coughed apologetically. “I am afraid there are no other servants, not yet. Accommodations are difficult to find in Paris at this time with the English swarming across the channel in droves trying to satisfy their curiosity.” He added quickly, as if he had said too much, “The captain will be staying over at the ambassador’s house tonight—there’s a reception there. But I was to tell you he hopes you’ll find everything you need. Guillaume has already prepared a light supper, and—” he said giving her a sudden, shy smile “—you must be very tired, I’m sure.”
He was quite young, Marisa noticed with surprise. Probably no more than twenty-two or-three at the most. And at least he had the manners of a gentleman. She gave him a tentative smile in return, uncertain now what she would do, and heard Donald say briskly, “That’s right, lass. You go upstairs and rest. And if someone would just show me to the kitchen, now, it’s something I’m needing to eat!”
Once again Marisa felt matters taken out of her hands. Mixed with a feeling of relief that he was not here she could feel her keyed-up mood vanish to be replaced by exhaustion. It wouldn’t hurt, after all, to spend one night here, and in the morning, when she felt rested, she could leave. Somehow, she didn’t feel that this polite young Mr. Winters would feign ignorance at her being kept locked up like a prisoner. Yes, there was always the morning.
How soundly she slept that night! Waking, she did not at first realize where she was. A strange room, like so many others she’d slept in as they had traveled the long road to Paris. The bed was more comfortable than most, and the room quite large but cold, for the small fire that had been lit last night had gone out.
Marisa stretched, blinking her eyes, and noticed that faint sunlight filtered through a crack in the worn velvet draperies covering the window. Somewhere in the room a clock ticked, and she remembered seeing one on the mantelpiece last night, just before she had locked the door.
Memory came flooding back, and she sat up, alarmed, but the door was still closed, and she was alone, shivering with cold and apprehension, in a sparsely furnished room. What time was it? Had he returned yet? She must get away!
Marisa leaped out of bed and ran to the door, testing it to make sure it was locked. A glance at the ormolu clock told her it was already past twelve—she had slept far too long!
Her teeth chattering now, she quickly splashed icy cold water over her face and arms, performing her ablutions as quickly and as best she could. Her crumpled clothes still lay carelessly slung over the chair she had thrown them on last night, and now she began to dress hastily, one eye on the door.
The remorseless ticking of the clock hurried her shaking, numb fingers as she fastened her gown, trying to smooth some of the wrinkles out of it by running her hands down the skirt. Now her stockings and shoes. She pushed the little purse as far down the bosom of her dress as it would go, snatched up her straw bonnet, and with a last glance around the room crept to the door and drew back the bolt, praying it would not make too much noise. Had someone locked it from the outside? No, thank God. It opened without too much squeaking, and she tiptoed out onto the narrow landing she remembered from last night, still without seeing another soul.
Marisa did not quite understand why she suddenly felt so panic-stricken. But she did not want to see him again, her instincts told her that much, and she was following them blindly, intent only upon escape.
Cautiously, she started down the worn stairs, clinging to the thin railing. One careful step at a time, testing each one to make sure it would not creak. There was still no one to be seen, but halfway down she heard the murmur of voices and froze, until she realized that they came through the half-open door of a room to the left of the stairwell.
Her heart began to pound suddenly when she recognized Dominic Challenger’s harsh, exasperated voice.
“Dammit! She’s worth a lot more than that, and you know it! If I didn’t need the money right now I’d keep her for a while longer; she’s trim and easy to handle once you’ve mastered her, but I’m in a hurry to get back home and must be rid of her.”
Still clutching at the stair rail, Marisa felt sick with horror and humiliation. She swayed, her heartbeats sounding like pounding drums in her ears, and hardly heard the other man reply. “You drive a hard bargain, my friend, but I’ll consider meeting your price after I’ve seen her and decide if she’s worth what you’re asking.”
Without waiting to hear more, she began to run, as silently as she could. No and no and no! He would not sell her off so callously as if she were a piece of merchandise to be bargained for! How could even he be so heartless and depraved? Had he planned to send the man into her bedroom while she still slept to take her by force as he had? No wonder all her instincts had warned her!
She ran down the hallway, past the room where the two men still argued, and tugged desperately at the front door. To her surprised relief, it opened without a struggle. Obviously he had forgotten to lock it behind his visitor.
In a flash, she was outside. Running down the steps, through the open iron gate, and out into the street at last where she continued to run and run until she was out of breath.
9
Philip Sinclair, trying out his new pair of matched bays behind a smart racing curricle, had to swerve sharply to avoid the young woman who came running around the corner into the street. He swore angrily as he barely managed to avert being overturned or losing a wheel. Damn the female! What was the matter with her? She had been fleeing as if pursued by all the demons of hell, and now she lay in a sobbing, crumpled heap on the cobblestones. Surely she wasn’t hurt! Although if she was, it was her own fault. Damned French! He supposed, however, that he’d better go and make sure she was all right. The Peace of Amiens was an uneasy one, and he was a visitor in Paris. He didn’t want any trouble….
Marisa was not sobbing with fear—she was past that—but with sheer exhaustion. It had not yet occurred to her how narrowly she had escaped death.
She lay there unable to move, and suddenly there was a pair of highly polished, tasseled boots standing before her eyes, and she heard a voice inquiring in stilted, accented French if she were hurt or needed any assistance.
“I must say, mademoiselle,” he continued severely, “that you should take more care to look where you are going! I almost ran you over.”
She looked up slowly, first seeing fashionable nankeen breeches of pale yellow, then a gold watch fob dangling from a striped silk waistcoat, and finally a high white cravat, intricately tied. Marisa blinked, hardly able to believe that such a handsome young man could exist. His blond hair, cut à la Brutus, fell over his forehead which was creased at the moment by a worried frown.
“Mademoiselle?” he repeated inquiringly, and when she struggled to rise, he automatically put out his gloved hand to help her up.
Philip Sinclair saw a flushed tear-stained face framed by dark gold curls that clung damply to her temples. He could feel her trembling, whether from shock or fear he could not tell, and his voice sharpened with concern. “I say—are you sure you’re all right? Can you stand?” She looked like a child, her thin figure encased in a poorly cut gown of a most unbecoming shade of brown, and he took her for some poor shopkeeper’s daughter until she spoke to him in perfect English, her voice husky with emotion.
“You—you are English, sir? Oh, then would you please, please be good enough to take me with you? You need not take me far—but I—I must leave this street before they discover me gone and come after me! Oh, please, I beg you!”
He stared at her in dismay, obviously hesitant, and then when fresh tears sprang into her eyes and began to trickle forlornly down her face he decided that a scene was to be avoided at all costs. Besides, there was something deucedly intriguing about her and the way she spoke such flawless English. What on earth could a young woman of obvious education be doing here, shabbily dressed, all alone and terrified out of her wits?
“Come on then,” he said shortly, and to her relief he asked no more questions but bundled her up beside him, driving off at a fast clip that delighted her and brought a flush to her cheeks.
Mr. Sinclair, already regretting his impulsive decision, could not help glancing doubtfully at the girl—she could really be no more than a child!—who sat beside him, leaning slightly forward. She had a delightful little profile, with a slightly retroussé nose and tiny chin, but, my God, suppose some of his friends were to see him now! He would become a laughingstock. Then a rather unpleasant thought came into his mind, causing him to frown slightly. Suppose she was not what she seemed, but a little adventuress who had deliberately run out into the street before a smart curricle so that her family could blackmail him? He had been warned to be careful in Paris, and especially now, when all Englishmen were held in suspicion. Dash it! What should he do now?
He had been driving aimlessly, still wondering what his next course of action should be when his companion, who had been silent hitherto as if trying to compose herself, suddenly clutched his arm.
“Oh, stop!” He gave her a look of surprise, and the next minute she blushed at her own boldness, saying in a softer, apologetic voice, “That is—if you would please stop for just a moment, sir? That building there, you see, I recognize it.”
The building stretched for half the length of the street. It was huge and forbidding looking, with grey turrets and a bell tower; high walls surrounded it.
Philip, obediently reining up his spirited horses, looked puzzled. What the devil did she mean? He had heard that this building had been used as a prison during the revolution, but surely she was too young to remember that?
“It—it was once a Carmelite convent,” she said softly in a strained voice, and she began again to twist her hands together in her lap. “Then, you see, not everyone believed in the danger, and those who did not flee, including 115 priests and the archbishop himself, were all hacked to death. I remember that we prayed for their souls after we had reached Spain safely.”
She gave a convulsive shudder, the thought recalling her to the present and her reason for being here, perched up beside a strange young man with bright blue eyes who had rescued her just like a knight-errant in the early days of chivalry!
“Do you really remember all that? I say, it must have been terrible for you, and of course none of us in England realized just how badly things were going until they murdered the king himself….”
She must be a royalist then, Philip was thinking. He heard that some of the former aristocrats had lost everything, and those who had survived were still forced to live in hiding, and were under constant suspicion ever since the royalist plots against Bonaparte.
The girl had turned to look up at him, and he noticed for the first time that she had really beautiful eyes, amber-gold in color, shaded by long, dark lashes that looked spiky from tears.
“Who are you?” The words slipped out without his own volition.
“Maria Antonia Catalina de Castellanos y Gallardo.” She said it all in one breath, adding simply, “But everyone calls me Marisa. It was my maman’s name for me, for she was French. They put her in prison, and she went to the guillotine with the others. She died very bravely, Delphine said.”
“Oh, God!” Philip ejaculated, quite forgetting himself.
His concern, and the sympathy in his handsome face, made Marisa want to confide everything to him—or almost everything.
Her words began to tumble over each other.
“I was in a convent in Spain, but they wanted me to marry a man I had never seen—a—a libertine! And so I ran away. I thought that if I could get to France, to Paris, then perhaps I could find my Aunt Edmée again. She was married to an Englishman, Lord—Lord—oh, I cannot remember his name!” she cried out with exasperation. “Perhaps you would know him and I should be safe again.”
“But—”
She was too overwrought to let him interrupt. “There is also my godmother. They sent her husband, the viscount Beauharnais to the guillotine, but I heard from someone that it was only a few days afterwards that the Citoyen Robespierre was executed, and they stopped sending everyone to the guillotine, so…She was very pretty and so kind! And I am quite sure that if only I could…”
Philip Sinclair’s head reeled. The girl’s story sounded too improbable to be true. And yet, could it be possible that she was talking of the same Josephine de Beauharnais who had married the upstart Corsican and was first lady of France?
“This—this godmother of yours. Perhaps you can remember her whole name?”
“Marie-Josephe-Rose de la Pagerie—before she married the viscount, of course! And she was a Creole, from Martinique, like my maman and my Aunt Edmée. Oh, monsieur!” Excited, she had slipped back into French. “Do you think you may know her? Does she still live in Paris?”
The rest of the afternoon, which had started out so badly, turned into a kind of dream, and Marisa felt that fate, which had been so unkind to her before, had surely relented at last.
Within the next four hours she had been reunited not only with her godmother, but her aunt as well. And her happiness was all due to the good offices of the handsome Englishman, Philip Sinclair, who, on hearing her story, had not wasted a moment in driving her all the way to Malmaison, where the wife of the first consul of France was in residence at the moment.
There was a long time that passed before Marisa, still slightly dazed, became aware of the full extent of her good fortune. Perhaps God had forgiven her after all!
Her godmother, her mother’s childhood friend, was married to none other than Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who had conquered more than half of Europe. And her aunt, the Countess Landrey, had taken advantage of the uneasy peace to visit France. She was, in fact, staying at Malmaison with her friend when the young Englishman, whom she remembered meeting in London, had all but forced his way past the enormous, gilded gates.
From then on, Marisa’s whole life changed. So drastically she could hardly believe it was all true and happening to her. Suddenly she was no longer a poor orphan but a young lady of fashion, her gowns designed and tailored by the great couturier Leroy and her hair arranged and styled by her own maid. Josephine’s daughter Hortense, whom she had known as a child was her friend; and Napoleon himself had noticed her, ruffling her curls as he passed.
What a transformation! Her mirror told her so, when the others did not. Why, she was no longer as ugly as she had thought herself, after all. When her hair was dressed à la Tite, a jeweled headband showing off its burnished gold splendor, and she wore a diaphanous muslin gown embroidered with gold or silver, she was the equal of any other young woman and the target for flirtatious glances and comments. Only her aunt and godmother knew the whole story behind her sudden appearance in Paris, and not even to them had she divulged the name of the man who had shamed her.
They did not press her, and Marisa, feeling petted and protected and safe, spent the next few weeks reveling in the luxury and attention that suddenly surrounded her. Her sudden arrival in France was not questioned; since she was under the protection of the chief consul himself, who would dare? Her godmother Josephine and her aunt had let only small, casual hints drop, so that soon it was generally understood she had spent most of her life in a Spanish convent and had traveled here to be reunited with her mother’s family.
She stayed at Malmaison, which had become like a home to her, and her Aunt Edmée, still beautiful and young-looking, made an amusing game of instructing her in the ways of the fashionable world.
Her time passed in a whirl of activities—flirting and dancing lessons and riding lessons, and even instructions in geography and history and philosophy. Women like Madame de Stae¨l had made it fashionable for the feminine sex to be intelligent—at least in France. In England a woman who dared to express an opinion of her own, or to argue, would be labeled a bluestocking. So her aunt told her, grimacing slightly as she said it.
“I can imagine how it must have been for you, my pet, tucked away in that convent surrounded by nuns! No wonder you wanted to run away! But there—we will not speak of that yet, not until you are ready. I myself felt that England was like another kind of prison, where women are expected to keep their place and do nothing but simper and make inane conversation. How I’ve yearned for Paris!”
Obviously Aunt Edmée was not happy in her marriage. Her husband was an old man surrounded by doctors, and there had been no children.
“Still,” Edmée admitted with a laugh, “I suppose I should count myself lucky! He allows me to go my own way, as long as I am discreet. I don’t shock you, I hope? And he’s rich….”
Marisa had already begun to learn that there was hardly a married woman among those elegantly gowned indolent ladies who frequented the highest circles, who did not have lovers—or had not had in the past. Even Josephine herself had been the mistress of Paul Barras when Napoleon had met her.
These were the people she was surrounded by, and how naive she must seem in comparison! Not at all experienced, in spite of the unpleasant past she tried to put out of her mind.
Marisa had not been formally presented in Paris yet, but she was happy in the relative seclusion of Malmaison; and there was Philip, who in spite of the fact that he was an Englishman, was permitted to visit her and came almost every day.
The recent peace notwithstanding, it was well known the first consul had no love for the English. “A nation of shopkeepers,” he called them scornfully. And already Marisa had heard whispers of countless royalist plots against the Republic, financed by the English. Their nobility flocked across the channel to visit France and sample the pleasures of the Continent again, and their spies were everywhere.
So it was surprising that Philip Sinclair was allowed beyond the golden gates of the château, with its tricolor sentry boxes outside and handsomely uniformed hussars who stood watchful guard. Marisa suspected that this concession was only due to the pleading of her godmother Josephine, who had been so kind to her since her unexpected arrival and had all but adopted her as another daughter.
Her first impression of Monsieur Sinclair had not changed since she had begun to see him so often. He was still the handsomest man she had ever set eyes on, and his manners matched his appearance. They strolled in the gardens together, down the ornamental flower-lined walks that Josephine had laid out everywhere, and sometimes paused to sit and rest by cool, tinkling fountains.
He talked to her of London and answered her questions about how ladies dressed and acted there; and he related witty anecdotes that made her laugh. They were never entirely alone together, for there was always a group of young people, including Hortense, Josephine’s daughter, who accompanied them on their walks. But all the same, they had opportunities to talk together; and if she had far more freedom than a young English gentlewoman her age, Philip never mentioned it or acted any differently.
He was intrigued by her. Not only because of the faint air of mystery that clung to her, but also because of her transformation from timid, trembling street waif to budding beauty. With her burnished, dark gold curls arranged in the Greek fashion and her clinging, fashionable muslin gowns she looked like a wood-nymph, still slightly shy and ready to run if frightened, but already showing promise of beauty.
At first it had been curiosity and an almost protective sense of responsibility that had taken Philip back to see her. But now, he admitted to himself ruefully, he was on the way to becoming completely bewitched. Who was she? The long name that she had repeated so solemnly to him on the occasion of their first meeting meant nothing to him; the fact that she was Madame Bonaparte’s goddaughter and the niece of Countess Landrey established her as wellborn, at least. But how had she turned up in Paris so suddenly, without her relatives’ knowledge? And who or what had she been running from that day? He did not dare press her for details, and her small face always clouded when he ventured a casual question.
Not wanting to frighten her off or destroy her growing trust in him, Philip let it be, hoping that one day she might confide in him. In the meantime, there were other matters that needed his attention, among these being the reasons he had traveled to France in such uneasy times. He said nothing of these to Marisa, leaving her to conclude that he, like all the other English aristocrats, was merely here on an extension of his grand tour. She was always transparently happy to see him, and admitted, without guile, that indeed she did miss him when he had to stay away for a few days.
It was left to the Countess Landrey, returning from a week of whirlwind activities in Paris, to warn her young niece to caution before she gave her heart away to Philip Sinclair.
10
“But why should I be, as you say, ‘careful’ with Philip? Why? What is wrong with him? He is a gentleman, you have said so yourself!”
Turning away from the window, Edmée-Amélie made a moue that was half-playful, half-dismayed.
“Ah no, chérie! I did not mean to say that there is anything wrong with this excellent young man, far from it. But you see—” she looked into her niece’s rebellious golden eyes and sighed, choosing her words carefully this time “—it is you that I worry about, Marisa. Looking at you now, so chic, so pretty, it has been difficult to remember what a sheltered life you have led all these years. This Philip is the first young man you have flirted with, is he not? Yes, he is very handsome, his manners very charming, and you look upon him as the gallant chevalier who rescued you, oui? But you must not begin to mistake gratitude for—for something else. Soon you will be meeting other young men, all just as handsome and dashing and—more suitable.”
“Suitable!” Marisa burst in, her eyes flashing, but her aunt only shook her head warningly.
“You do not like this word? Ah, I remember when I was told of this English earl, what we would call a count here, and was told how rich and suitable a match he would make for me, I, too, shook my head. However, if I had stayed in France and married the penniless young man I thought I loved, I would have gone to the guillotine. Philip Sinclair is a pleasant young man, but his father is only a baron and a gambler—a member of the Carleton House set. There is not much money there, only wildness. In fact one of the reasons Mr. Sinclair is in Paris at the moment was to pay court to a certain heiress, also English. Lady Arabella Marlowe is here with her formidable mama to see Paris and improve her French. And tout de suite, Lord Anthony scraped up the money to dispatch his son here, also. He is expected to make a rich marriage, to please not only his father but his uncle as well. You comprehend?”
Marisa’s eyes, beginning to shine with tears, looked stormy. “No! How could you expect me to? If Philip was in love with another woman, he would have told me so—he is honest and kind! And—and he spends almost all of his time here, because he wishes to see me. I cannot believe that he would be so cold-blooded as to allow himself to be forced into a loveless alliance merely because his family wants such a match. He—”
“Ah, yes, he is bedazzled by you, ma petite. That much is easy to see. But for how long? Soon he will begin to think guiltily of his duty—and you may be sure that if his uncle who is the head of the family hears what’s been going on, he will waste no time calling for his return to England, and then what? Do you think he will be brave enough to take you with him? What will he live on? Be sensible, my love; that is all I am asking of you. Flirt, yes and enjoy yourself! But don’t be foolish enough to lose your heart.”
Later, when she had retired to her room to fight back the treacherous gale of weeping that threatened to engulf her, Marisa could not help feeling as if a heavy stone had been placed over her heart.
Her aunt had meant well, she was sure of that. But oh, the humiliation of realizing that she had let her growing feelings for Philip, and her delight in his company, show so obviously! It was true; she had not learned to flirt or to hide her emotions. Did she love Philip? She didn’t know. And certainly he had never overstepped the bounds of convention in their talks together. But he did like her, he did! And it wasn’t fair that his father and this powerful uncle of his should be allowed to plan and order his whole life. As for this English heiress, this Lady Arabella….
Marisa’s hands clenched into small fists at her sides as she began to pace angrily about her room. Did she not have enough spirit to refuse a suitor who did not love her and was forced to pay his addresses to her for the dowry she would bring him?
‘I would not do it,’ Marisa thought, and then the recollection of her reckless flight and its consequences made her face burn hotly with shame and anger. Suddenly, unbidden, the image of Dominic Challenger’s dark, mocking face rose up to haunt her, and she remembered without wanting to the feeling of his hands on her body and his body driving into hers. Hateful! Philip would never treat her like that: he was gentle and tender and respectful.
But if Philip knew—would he still respect her? He was English, not French, and everyone knew the English were rigidly conventional when it came to women. She could not bear the thought of telling him and watching his face change.
Her thoughts went round and round. ‘But if he found out that I was an heiress?’ Then perhaps, if he loved her enough, it would not matter. But by now her father might be so angry that he had disowned her; her Aunt Edmée had suggested she should write to him and tell him she was safe, but guilt had made her put it off. She must do so. Perhaps he would understand and forgive her after all.
Fortunately she had no more time to think just then. Napoleon himself was expected to arrive that evening, and there would be a crowd of notables for dinner. She had to bathe and dress extra carefully, and she did not dare be late for it was well known he could not bear unpunctuality.
Trying to distract herself while her maid fussed around her, clucking impatiently, Marisa went over the guest list in her mind: The other two consuls—Sieyès and Ducos, who of course were now merely figureheads since Bonaparte had just been appointed consul for life; his foreign minister Talleyrand, prince of Benevento; Joseph Fouché, minister of police; and generals, admirals—and a sprinkling of foreign diplomats as well. It had even been whispered that the new tsar of Russia, Alexander I, might be present.
It was to be a glittering, grand assembly, and in spite of herself Marisa began to feel a nervous fluttering in her stomach as she fervently hoped she would not disgrace herself.
Thank goodness for the current simplicity in fashion! Her sheer white muslin gown was embroidered with tiny gold flowers and ended in a train. A crisscrossed gold velvet sash was belted under her breasts and matched her velvet slippers, and her hair was caught up in a mass of curls, artful tendrils falling over her forehead and temples.
“Ravissante!” her maid sighed, quickly twisting a gold chain several times around Marisa’s neck then standing back to admire the effect before handing Marisa a fine silk fan, spangled with gold, that matched her shawl. A touch of rouge next on her lips and high on her cheekbones.
‘Is that really me?’ she wondered, staring at her reflection in the long mirror.
Her aunt came quickly into the room, smiling with satisfaction.
“You look quite charming, my love! But come along now, we must hurry. They are starting to receive already.”
“I feel half-naked!” Marisa whispered, feeling sure that everyone could see right through her thin taffeta petticoat.
Edmée, resplendently dressed in silver-spangled gauze, gave a gurgle of laughter.
“Wait till you see Pauline! She is naked under her silk gown, I’d swear! She doesn’t look at all like a mourning widow, and he will be furious with her, but then, Pauline doesn’t care for anything but her own pleasure.”
‘Neither do I!’ Marisa thought recklessly as she went downstairs with her aunt.
Usually, she never touched champagne, for its taste reminded her unpleasantly of the first time she had tried it. But tonight she consumed several glasses of it, and that and the knowledge that she looked as beautiful and sophisticated as any of the women present gave her the courage that she needed to go through the evening.
The rooms were overheated for Napoleon, who felt the cold, always ordered fires lit, even on the hottest summer days. A film of perspiration beaded her face, giving it a glow, and her thin gown clung to her figure, outlining her small breasts and slim thighs.
The château gleamed brilliantly; even the gardens were lit up, to accommodate the overflow of guests who wished to stroll outside in the cool air and engage in whispered flirtations in dark corners.
Only the most important guests had been asked to come earlier, for dinner; the others would arrive later for the dancing and a late supper served buffet-style. Princes, dukes, and the highest ranking diplomats. Even the blond, handsome Tsar Alexander himself, who was given the place of honor beside Josephine.
Following the example of the other women present, Marisa found that flirting was not too hard after all, if one used one’s fan and one’s eyelashes to advantage. She was seated next to a Russian prince, one of the tsar’s entourage, and in spite of his outrageous compliments in a heavy accent that made them difficult to understand, she managed to keep him at bay. On her other side, Joseph Fouché, the minister of police, who had recently been appointed the duke of Otranto, smiled his thin-lipped smile and toyed with the stem of his wineglass, drinking only sparingly and seeming to observe everything through his dark, heavy-lidded eyes. Marisa decided that she did not like him very much. And how was it that he had not brought his wife?
The Russian begged her to show him the gardens when dinner was over, and Marisa lowered her lashes demurely, neither refusing nor agreeing. Under the tablecloth, he put his hand on her thigh, and she tapped it with her fan, as she had seen her aunt do.
“You are far too bold, monsieur!”
“And you—can you possibly be as innocent as you seem, my golden beauty? I would like to find out.”
“And if I let you, I would no longer be innocent, would I?”
She wanted to giggle then, delighted with herself for being so quick to answer him. Flirting was easy, after all, and especially in the midst of a crowd like this where she felt quite safe. All the same, she must try to avoid this persistent Russian after dinner, she thought, picking at her food as course after course was served and then whisked away. If only she didn’t have the uncomfortable feeling that Fouché was listening to every single word that was said! But then, why should she care?
All the same, Marisa was relieved when Josephine gave the signal that the ladies should retire. “I will see you later,” the prince whispered when she rose with a polite, murmured excuse. Fouché said nothing, but she thought she could feel his eyes following her, and the thought made her strangely uneasy.
Listening to the high-pitched babbling that went on all around her, she managed to put him out of her mind.
“You are quite a success tonight, my love!” Aunt Edmée whispered to her. “And when we all return to Paris tomorrow, you are to go with us. You cannot imagine how exciting it is—but then, you will quite soon grow as blasé as the rest of us!”
Would she? Glancing around her, Marisa did not think it possible. But then look at Hortense—so recently married to Louis Bonaparte and looking pale and withdrawn instead of radiant as a new bride should be. And Pauline le Clerc, so recently widowed and excitedly talking of her latest lovers. Even Aunt Edmée had a dreamy look in her eyes when one of the other women teased her about a certain dark-haired man who had paid her so much attention at the last ball they had attended. Marisa thought perhaps what she, too, needed was a lover, to make her one of them, and wipe away all the unpleasant memories. Even the memory of Philip…. And then she thought boldly, her mind overexcited and floating with the effects of too much champagne, ‘Why not him? If I can’t have him as a husband, then perhaps I should give him something to regret! Yes—and I’d like her, that Lady Arabella, to know, too, that she was only his second choice!’
Gleaming with mischief and defiance, her golden eyes seemed larger than ever. And when the ladies emerged from the drawing room, the first person she set eyes on was Philip!
In formal evening dress, he looked more handsome than ever. His high-collared blue velvet coat, worn with a white silk cravat, matched his eyes; the frilled ruffles of his shirt showed at the wrists, and he wore black satin knee breeches and a sword with a ribbon rosette at its hilt. Even the powdered tie wig that went with full dress could not detract from his good looks, and the smile he gave her, lighting up his whole face, made her heart begin to pound.
He came forward to meet her, and she offered him both her hands without thinking to control her emotions. Nothing could spoil her happiness at this moment, not even the fact that out of the corner of her eye she had noticed the duke of Otranto, in his dark coat, leaning up against a wall and watching them with a guarded, sardonic expression.
“Philip!”
He bowed to her in a ridiculously formal fashion, responding in French, “A votre service, mademoiselle!” And then, in a husky undertone, “You are so beautiful tonight! I can hardly believe that I am lucky enough to be here and to see you smiling at me.”
“I am glad that you are here, too! Will you not ask me to dance, and quickly, before that fierce Russian approaches too near?”
The dance happened to be a waltz, newly imported from Vienna, and by the time they had made a few turns about the floor Marisa had recovered enough control over her senses to remember her resolution of a few moments before. It helped her to realize that Philip appeared suddenly to have become tongue-tied, gazing down into her flushed, smiling face as if he could not tear his eyes away.
“Is it true that in this club they call Almacks, in London, a young woman is not permitted to dance the waltz without permission?”
“The patronesses are very strict,” he murmured in a bemused fashion, watching her mouth—the arched upper lip and softly curved lower lip. Why hadn’t he noticed what a red, kissable mouth she had before?
“Then perhaps it is not proper that I should dance the waltz with you?”
“This is France, and it is quite all right. And you—you are so light in my arms, like a feather. I could dance with you forever.”
“I have been taking lessons,” she said demurely, enjoying the slight trembling of the arms that held her. Oh, yes, he wanted her—and she was surprised at herself for thinking in such a fashion.
The rest of the evening seemed to pass far too quickly. She drank more champagne, and it seemed to impart a golden glow to everything.
Marisa had chosen to forget her aunt’s warnings of the afternoon; she was a night-blooming flower, coming into her own in the glow of the chandeliers and the flame in Philip’s eyes. Duty and obligation were words tossed in the teeth of the wind, to be blown away like all her old fears and self-doubts. Tonight she was beautiful and just as sure of herself as any of the other lovely, bejeweled women who flirted behind their ivory fans.
Philip was falling in love with her; she knew it, sensed it, and hugged the thought to her as a talisman against the past. There was nothing violent about him, nothing fierce or savage that would turn on her to use her and hurt her. Tonight she found it easy to banish the memory of storm-grey eyes alternately mocking and angry, bending her to their will in spite of herself.
The first subtle beginnings of dawn had begun to silver the sky before Marisa found herself in her bedroom again, hardly able to stand for weariness. Her maid, grumbling her disapproval all the while, helped her undress. Her last conscious thought before she slept was of Philip—his golden hair shining in the lantern light as he bent his head to kiss her very gently and tenderly on the lips….
She was far too tired to dream, and waking was an effort for she had an unpleasant throbbing in her temples.
“Come on, sleepy head! This is no time to lie abed dreaming of your handsome Englishman! Wake up. Arlene is already packing for you, and we are to leave for Paris this very afternoon!” Edmée’s voice held soft gurgles of amusement as she watched Marisa struggle to sit upright, pressing her fingers against her forehead as she did.
“That’s better! There’s a lot to be done, you know. Some coffee with your breakfast will send away the headache. You drank far too much champagne, petite, but you will have to get accustomed to it, if you are to be introduced to society. And you shall be. Even he was impressed by the way our little sparrow has turned into a bird of paradise. So you are to go to Paris with us and meet everybody. But only if you hurry up and are ready in time!”
Like everything that had happened to her since she had arrived here at Malmaison to be enfolded in affectionate, warmly comforting arms, this, too, seemed like a dream, a rainbow-colored, fragile bubble that might burst at any time, dragging her back to reality. But here was Aunt Edmée reminding her that it was actually happening after all and that she would be staying at the palace of the Tuileries, former home of the kings of France and now the official state apartments of the first consul of France.
Marisa was far too dazed to question anything, and even the wan-faced Hortense smiled to see her pent-up excitement.
She whispered when they were finally in one of the carriages together, “I’m sure you’ll see your Englishman again. Do you think you really love him? He did not look at any other woman all evening. Perhaps, oh, perhaps you’ll be allowed to be happy and choose for yourself!”
Remembering her companion’s own forced marriage, Marisa felt almost guilty at her own feeling of happiness, which threatened to overwhelm her. She gave Hortense’s cold hand a little squeeze.
“Of course I will be! After all, I am no one important, so they won’t care!”
And at that moment, with the past behind her and the future stretching out ahead, she believed her own confident words.
11
Paris—the new side of Paris that she was seeing now was everything she had once dreamed it would be. Escorted by magnificently uniformed hussars, the entourage of carriages with gold-crested doors swept through the broad avenues, while people thronged the streets to stare and cheer.
Marisa became aware of the power that Napoleon Bonaparte wielded, and his tremendous popularity with the people. She almost felt herself part of a royal party, and her feeling was heightened when she noticed the obsequious ceremony with which they were greeted when they arrived at the palace.
Uniformed footmen took care of everything, and rooms had already been prepared with fires burning and fresh-cut flowers to perfume them. There was nothing to do except rest and recover from the effects of their journey here, and Marisa did so obediently for that very evening they were to visit the theater—the famous Comédie Française. And after that there was to be a late supper at the hotel of the Russian ambassador. She would just have to get used to late nights, that was all! She fell unexpectedly asleep then, while thinking blissfully of the crowded days and nights that lay so excitingly ahead.
“Tomorrow, we’ll have Leroy, the great couturier, come by and measure you for all the new gowns you’ll be needing,” the Countess Landrey announced when she swept into Marisa’s room later that evening. She added, with a twinkle, “And there’s no need to look so worried, love! You are my niece—and Landrey gives me an enormous allowance that I may do with as I wish. Later on, after we have written to your papa and he has forgiven you, and I am positive he will when he understands everything—don’t look afraid—well, then you will have your own pin money. But for tonight, you will wear one of my gowns. See. It is what they call here à l’anglais, very plain but cut by an expert, and it is the color that is everything. It was always a trifle too tight on me, but I have had Arlene alter it for you. Do put it on quickly; I feel sure it will suit you.”
Still protesting weakly, Marisa allowed herself to be dressed and turned this way and that as if she were a doll. She was still drowsy and far too dazed to do more than gasp when she saw herself reflected in the mirror.
Cut very low, and tightly banded beneath her breasts, the shimmering thin silk seemed to cling like a second skin as it fell in artful folds to her ankles. She looked like a golden statue, from her flat-heeled gold slippers to the crown of her high-piled hair.
Crimson rose petals, ruthlessly rubbed on her cheekbones and lips gave her pointed face the color it needed; and at last her aunt stepped back with a sigh of satisfaction.
“There! And now you will catch all the eyes tonight. They will all be asking who you are, and there will be many handsome young men begging for the honor of an introduction. And you must try and remember, petite, not to show a decided preference for any one of them. All men like the excitement of the chase—la poursuit, tu comprends?”
She was talking of Philip, of course. Had he thought her too forward, her feelings far too transparent?
‘But I don’t care—and Philip is not at all like that!’ Marisa thought mutinously. And once they had arrived at the theater and were seated in their magnificent box, she could not help letting her eyes wander over the throng in search of him.
She sat back almost immediately, realizing with an uncomfortable feeling that she was being stared at. Ever since the first consul had made his entrance, seating himself to the front of the box next to a magnificently attired Josephine, there had been more eyes on them than on the stage.
The play was an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, one of those she had dutifully read during the past few weeks, but Marisa found it hard to concentrate. Wait until the intermission, she told herself. Surely if he’s here he’s seen us and will come to our box then. She noticed almost absently that her aunt, too, seemed restless, playing with her fan and letting her attention wander from the stage far too often. So she, too, was looking for someone. A new lover? Marisa’s mind went back to the teasing conversation she had overheard the night of the ball at Malmaison, and she wondered casually who her aunt’s latest lover was. Poor, lovely, gay Aunt Edmée—married so young to a man so much older than she was! In an age where marriages were arranged with no thought for the feelings of the woman involved, Marisa suddenly realized how lucky she was to have escaped such a fate. No matter what it had cost….
She had been dreaming, paying scarcely any attention to the play they had come to watch. Suddenly the lights seemed to have become brighter. She realized with a start that the heavy velvet and damask curtains had closed for the end of the first act.
The slight buzz of talk which had been going on all through the performance now seemed to intensify in volume. Heads were turned and lorgnettes raised as the occupants of the various boxes scanned each other. Now was the time for visiting back and forth, but if Philip were here would he dare, with Bonaparte himself present? Bonaparte was scowling in the direction of his sister Pauline, who, as usual, did not lack for male attention. But unlike Josephine, who had begun to chew at her lip nervously, Pauline paid no attention whatsoever to her brother’s displeasure.
Seated towards the rear of the box, Marisa began to look around again, trying not to make herself conspicuous. Perhaps Philip was not at the theater tonight. She had not known yesterday that she would be here herself.
There was a slight flurry as Napoleon Bonaparte, accompanied by his brother Louis, left the box. Josephine had a fixed smile on her face, but her fingers were pressed against her temples. Marisa felt sorry for her as she remembered the gossip she had heard that the first consul was enamored of a certain actress who was in this very play.
She heard Pauline’s shrill laughter as one of her admirers put his hand on her bare shoulder, and she leaned forward a little so that she could see better. Doing so, she encountered, with a disagreeable shock, the enigmatic eyes of Joseph Fouché, duke of Otranto. He bowed and his thin lips curled slightly in what passed for a smile. Marisa looked hastily to the next box, and her own smile froze on her face.
She recognized Philip at last; he looked just as handsome and magnificently clad as ever, but ill at ease for all that. He was flanked by two women, one much older than the other, wearing a flowered turban and holding up a diamond-encrusted lorgnette. The younger one, an insipid, mousy-haired young miss wearing white muslin and pearls, had to be Lady Arabella Marlowe. How dared he? After kissing her last night, murmuring in a shaken voice the next minute that he was sorry to have been so bold but that her eyes in the moonlight had bewitched him completely.
And then, to add to her mortification, Marisa heard her aunt’s laughing voice saying, “Darling, do turn around and give us some of your attention! Here’s the Prince Benevento come to pay us his respects, and you’re wrapped up in some girlish dream!”
Flushing hotly, Marisa turned her head, and the shock she received rendered her speechless.
Her eyes, widening involuntarily, met and clashed with a pair of furious, steely grey eyes; and over the buzzing in her ears Talleyrand murmured urbanely, “May I present an American friend of mine, who is, I believe, already acquainted with the Countess Landrey? Captain Dominic Challenger—and this, of course, monsieur, is the pretty young niece of our lovely countess….”
Marisa hardly heard what he said. He bowed, without a word, his mouth hard and contemptuous. And she barely retained the presence of mind to incline her head stiffly.
Marisa felt as if she had been turned to stone. It was her aunt who saved the situation by putting her hand up to touch Captain Challenger’s sleeve as she murmured teasingly, “Shame on you, sir! After all your avowals last week, I had expected you to join us earlier.”
So he was the new admirer her aunt’s friends had referred to as her “dark-haired cavalier.” The last man on earth she had expected to turn up here—and just when she had begun to forget and feel secure.
Her knees had begun to tremble and turn weak, but thank heaven his eyes had transferred themselves from her to her aunt, who was smiling at something he had just said.
Marisa felt that she was not capable of coherent thought, and she felt vaguely grateful to the limping Talleyrand, prince of Benevento, who was tactful enough to engage her in casual conversation while the other two carried on their blatant flirtation.
“And how are you enjoying your first evening in Paris, mademoiselle? Or do you still miss the quietness of Malmaison?”
She answered mechanically, wondering all the while when the painful, angry thudding of her heart would grow less violent, allowing her to think.
Why was he still in Paris? She had wished—hoped—him halfway across the seas by now! And was it possible that he was actually her aunt’s lover? What a strange situation she found herself thrown into! She daren’t say anything—but then, neither did he.
Their box was suddenly crowded with people who came to pay their respects to the wife of the first consul and her friend, the vivacious, sparkling Countess Landrey. Marisa watched Dominic Challenger leave, without so much as a polite bow in her direction, with mixed feelings. She was relieved that everything had passed off so easily—and filled with rage at the same time, because she could not have denounced him in front of them all.
‘I acted like a frightened ninny! After all, I have nothing to be ashamed of. I should have been able to show him that his sudden appearance meant less than nothing to me, that he is the one who should be afraid in case I tell them all what really happened!’ Where had he gone? Would he be back?
Marisa’s thoughts were still confused when the next act began and all the visitors had left their box. She was still slightly stunned and quite unable to take any interest in what was happening on the stage.
“Darling, whatever is the matter? You haven’t been paying attention to anyone or anything! It wasn’t seeing your young Englishman with his bride-to-be, was it? If you remember, I tried to warn you….”
Edmée seemed unusually flushed as she leaned over to whisper to Marisa, and an unreasoning wave of hostility stiffened Marisa’s spine, forcing an unconcerned smile to her lips.
“You must remember that this is all so new to me! And as for Philip, he is merely fulfilling his obligations. Why should that matter to me?”
Edmée’s eyes widened at hearing her niece almost snap back in such a cynical, offhand tone. But she caught a frowning glance from the first consul and subsided into silence, her mind soon filled with other thoughts. The American—Dominic Challenger. It had been a long time since a man had intrigued and provoked her so. What had started out as a game to alleviate her boredom at the dull soirée where she had first been introduced to him had turned into something else since.
He had been plainly dressed and aloof, and it had amused her to flirt with him deliberately; she expected him to be dazzled—an easy, casual conquest. Instead, he had managed to turn the tables on her by living up to his name and remaining detached, even while he responded to her show of interest with all the proper gallantries. She had almost despaired of bringing him to heel until tonight when he had abruptly and almost bluntly asked her for an assignation.
Perhaps she should not have acceded so eagerly? Edmée’s fan fluttered vigorously, cooling her hot cheeks. There was something primitively male about him that made her shiver at the thought of having him make love to her. Those diamond-hard, silver-grey eyes that seemed to see right through her defenses, sensing her surrender before she had realized it herself. And that wicked-looking scar that added to the illusion of savagery barely held in check. She was almost frightened—but pleasurably so. She must remember to ask Talleyrand about him since the prince had introduced Monsieur Challenger as a friend.
Fortunately unaware of her aunt’s thoughts, Marisa was trying to compose her own emotions. She did not want to remember—anything! All those unpleasant events of the past had happened to someone else, not to her. Without quite realizing it, she kept her eyes on Philip. Had he seen her yet? Surely he must have! He looked awkward and ill at ease—in fact his face wore a strangely hard expression she had never seen on it before.
The plain young woman at Philip’s side kept fidgeting in her seat, fingers playing with her fan as she now and then cast shy, wondering glances at him. On his other side, the forbidding-looking dowager leaned over to say something—and to her he listened with every appearance of attentiveness.
Marisa found herself biting her lip. Oh, if only Philip had been sitting here, beside her! She would have liked to show Dominic Challenger that she had a young and handsome escort of her own. At least now that he knew she wasn’t the gypsy wench he’d thought her, and now that she was under the protection of the first consul himself, he would surely take pains to stay out of her way! ‘For all he knows, I could have told them everything—the way he treated me and then planned to sell me off to another man. Oh, but I would like to see him punished!’
Marisa’s cheeks were flushed, and her golden eyes held a brilliance they usually lacked, making them appear larger than ever in her small face. Had she but known it, she herself was the target for many admiring glances that evening. There were many questions asked. Who was she? Where did she appear from? And some of the glances shot her by other women were far from friendly. Her aunt’s gown, so daringly cut, gave her an appearance of sophistication. Tonight she was undeniably a woman, a very attractive woman.
Making his way to the American ambassador’s box, Dominic Challenger, his face a hard, cold mask that hid his fury and his feeling of being somehow made a fool of, heard comments that made his lips tighten.
“She’s probably Bonaparte’s latest flirt. Poor Josephine, no wonder she’s wearing a sad look of late. They say he forces her to keep his mistresses about her….”
What a transformation she had undergone! From gypsy pickpocket to drenched cabin boy, and now, in the space of the few weeks that had elapsed since she had run away without a word of explanation, Bonaparte’s mistress. Was she really the lovely Edmée’s niece?
Mr. Livingston, United States Ambassador to France, cast a quizzical glance at the scowling face of his fellow American, who lowered himself into his seat without a word. Captain Dominic Challenger was something of a mystery, and in spite of his preoccupation with other affairs, the American minister could not help but wonder, as he had done before, how many of the stories about this particular man were true. Less than a hundred years ago, he would have been labeled a pirate and would probably have been hanged for his crimes. Today he was a privateer—when it suited his inclinations, and when he needed the money. Livingston had heard the tale of how Captain Challenger had sailed into the port of Charleston in a captured English ship—renamed and flying the American flag. He’d stirred up a lot of old scandals since then, besides creating new ones of his own. Was it really true, for instance, that he had arrived uninvited at Monticello when Mr. Jefferson was entertaining certain prominent gentlemen from the state of Tennessee, to ascertain, he’d said quite bluntly, whether one of them happened to be his real father?
Challenger wasn’t his real name of course. His legal father had been an Englishman, a Tory whose estates had been confiscated after the Revolutionary War. But whoever or whatever he was, Captain Challenger had the advantage of friends and unofficial backers in high places. Hard faced and closemouthed, he had the look and manner of a born adventurer—not the kind of man that Robert Livingston would normally have cultivated, but in this case—
Livingston sighed to himself, recalling the subtle and not so subtle diplomatic negotiations that were taking place at that very time. They involved the question of the possible purchase from France of the port of New Orleans since it had been confirmed that Spain had indeed ceded the whole territory of Louisiana back to France. After the scandal of the X-Y-Z Affair and the ensuing strained relations between France and the United States of America, it seemed as if at last Bonaparte seemed willing to negotiate. Thank goodness the sole responsibility would no longer be his for he’d learned that the president was sending one of his most trusted advisors, Mr. Monroe, to help finalize matters.
Dominic Challenger had delivered certain secret dispatches from President Jefferson himself, along with others from Mr. Pinckney in Spain. Obviously, the president trusted him, and he also had contacts in the territory of Louisiana itself, not to mention New Spain, which made him knowledgeable enough to help in the negotiations that were going on. It was for this reason that Captain Challenger stayed on in France.
He’d managed to find himself certain sweet forms of consolation, however. The American minister let his hooded eyes wander from the stage to the first consul’s box, where the vivacious Countess Landrey sat leaning forward slightly, her full lips curved in an enigmatic smile. Was she the reason for the angry scowl that still darkened his companion’s features?
The drama that was being enacted on the brightly lighted stage went unremarked by far too many people although at its end there would be the usual storm of enthusiastic applause.
Marisa, trying to curb her disturbing thoughts, kept her eyes fixed on Philip Sinclair, willing him to look in her direction. She did not notice, as her aunt and godmother belatedly did, that Napoleon, who had returned to them in an angry mood, had begun to glance at her far too often, a thoughtful look on his face.
Philip Sinclair, for his part, made a conscious attempt to keep his eyes from straying towards a certain other box and its occupants. He realized that he still held his shoulders far too rigidly, but he could do nothing about it. The shock he had received upon recognizing a certain tall figure had made him go white, and even Lady Marlowe had remarked on it. Still stunned, almost disbelieving his own eyes, he had said more than he should, to be bombarded with eager questions from the old gossip.
God! He should have had more control over himself. But the sight of the last man in the world he had expected or wanted to see again, and here, of all places, had almost numbed his mind. Dominic—who should have been dead, or rotting away in a Spanish prison in Santo Domingo. Did his uncle know he was still alive, and not only that but on apparently good terms with the American ambassador in Paris as well? What was he up to? And—although he told himself grimly that he must not let the thought frighten him—had Dominic seem him? It was all he could do to remain seated, pretending that nothing was wrong and that his whole future and prospects hadn’t begun to crumble around him. A few more years—with his uncle’s legal heir presumed dead, he would have inherited everything. Damn those lazy, lethargic Spaniards anyhow! They had been paid enough, through obscure, secret sources, to make sure he died, working alongside their black slaves under the broiling Caribbean sun. And then, a few years later, when the proof was delivered—what had gone wrong?
Philip waited impatiently for the performance to be over; he wished he could have been seated in a less conspicuous place. He must see Whitworth, the British minister, and ask him to deliver a message to his father, who would know what to do. Thank God Whitworth was an old family friend! And he must see Marisa. Why hadn’t she mentioned she was coming to Paris? He had not seen her until the intermission and then, soon after, he’d received his second shock of the evening when Dominic had followed Talleyrand into Napoleon Bonaparte’s box. ‘Perhaps Marisa will be able to tell me what he’s doing here, and what name he is using,’ Philip thought feverishly. God, but she looked lovely tonight! If things had been different, he would have thought of nothing else.
Joseph Fouché, duke of Otranto, had also been watching but for different reasons. It was his duty to watch all that was going on, and make his own deductions—helped, in part, by the efforts of his agents. Tonight had proved exceptionally interesting, and a chilling smile curled his thin lips as in his mind he began painstakingly to fit tiny pieces together that would eventually form a whole picture. All visitors to France during these tense times came under the surveillance of his men, and especially since there were more rumors of royalist plots in the offing.
Loyal to no one but the first consul himself, he trusted no one, not even Napoleon’s own wife and her friends—especially those out of the past. Now he allowed his eyes to rest again on the young girl in the golden gown who sat just behind her aunt. Such a strange reappearance, that! Her mother had been executed as an enemy of the Republic, and the girl had fled France as a child, only to return unexpectedly and mysteriously as a young woman. But how had she got here? With whom—and why? He had burned to question her from the beginning and had been put off; but now, at last, he had been given his instructions. Napoleon, his master, was inexplicably interested in the chit, and like any one of his prospective mistresses, her background was open to investigation.
He would enjoy questioning her, Fouché thought slyly. Was she really as innocent as she seemed or merely a pawn in someone else’s game? He would find out.
12
Unaware of all the intrigue swirling around her, Marisa tried to force some semblance of gaiety into her manner when at last they left the theater to drive to the magnificent hotel of the Russian ambassador. Far from being ended, the evening was only just beginning!
Josephine was silent, suffering from one of the migraines that made her husband so impatient with her of late, and Hortense was her usual quiet self. But the Countess Landrey seemed exhilarated as she teased her niece softly, “You seem very quiet, all of a sudden, my love. Surely one night in Paris cannot have left you bored? That dull performance at the theater tonight was only a prelude—I’ve heard that the Russians are lavish entertainers!”
Edmée’s high-strung mood drove Marisa to ask herself whether perhaps her aunt was expecting to meet her latest lover again here. Marisa drew in her breath sharply, in order to dispel the angry thoughts that flooded her mind. No, she couldn’t tell her aunt, not yet. And having seen her and learned of her true status, she hoped that Captain Challenger would not dare intrude his presence upon her again. If only she could forget and force herself to act as if nothing had ever happened between them! If only…
Her preoccupation with her own problems led Marisa, who was usually sensitive to the moods of those about her, to be impervious to the subtle difference in the atmosphere since they had left the theater. She was not to know that Napoleon had had a quarrel with his latest mistress, the actress in the play they had seen, and that when he had returned to their box in a rage, he had suddenly noticed her, as if for the first time.
It took her some time to realize that she was being singled out—and even that realization came only when the dark-visaged Lucien Bonaparte, the one brother-in-law whom Josephine disliked excessively, had drawn her away from under the very nose of the Russian prince who had paid her so much attention at Malmaison.
“The Russians are our allies for the moment, but there’s no reason why they should be allowed to get too friendly! Do you regret losing such a determined admirer, mademoiselle?”
Both relieved and puzzled at the same time, Marisa held herself stiffly in his arms, finding herself unable to either trust or like him. However, she shook her head as she answered mechanically, “No. As a matter of fact I don’t like the prince at all. He’s far too bold.”
“And you don’t like boldness in a man?”
While she sought for a light answer to his forward question, she wondered why he suddenly spoke to her so familiarly.
“I don’t like men who presume too much on the strength of a slight acquaintance. I suppose I am not worldly enough by your standards!”
He gave her a rather cynical smile. “Why, my standards are broad enough to embrace the whole world, mademoiselle ! However, my brother is surprisingly old-fashioned, and—shall we say conventional? Especially when it comes to women—of late, that is.”
‘What is he talking about?’ Marisa wondered, while at the same time she decided she did not blame her godmother for disliking this particular Bonaparte.
She was even more confused when after a few turns across the crowded ballroom floor, Lucien brought her to a halt before his brother, who had been engaged in a low-voiced conversation with Tsar Alexander.
Not knowing what to do or how to act, Marisa dropped into a low curtsy, hoping that the embarrassed flush that had spread across her face would go unnoticed. She kept her head bent, wishing that she did not have to rise, and it was Napoleon whose extended hand helped her erect again.
“And this is my charming little guest, the Señorita de Castellanos, who is goddaughter to my wife. You see, she is still young enough not to have forgotten how to blush!”
Finding herself presented to the tsar, Marisa’s tongue stumbled over her words, but he seemed flattered at her obvious confusion and gave her a gracious smile. She was all too conscious of Lucien Bonaparte’s dark, enigmatic presence at her side, and the fact that the eyes of all the gathering must be fixed on her at this moment. What did it all mean? Why had Lucien suddenly asked her to dance with him and then brought her here?
Napoleon Bonaparte’s blue, deep-set eyes seemed to hold her gaze against her will as he said softly in his accented French, “You are looking exceptionally lovely tonight, señorita.” Did she only imagine that his hand squeezed her nerveless fingers slightly before he released them? In his resplendent white full-dress uniform, laced with gold and decorated with glittering decorations, he seemed so imposing and quite frightening as well! It was hard to believe he was the same man who at Malmaison, would join the younger set in their games and had treated her as if he were a fond, but absentminded uncle. Why was he looking at her so strangely and consideringly tonight?
“You little innocent!” the countess of Landrey scolded Marisa some twenty minutes later when they had retired to one of the smaller salons leading out into the magnificent gardens. “Don’t you understand that he’s quite taken with you? Chérie, you are a success! And even more so than I had hoped. And now, you understand, you must be very discreet—never more than two dances with the same man. And do not flirt too obviously, he can be jealous once he’s fixed his interest on a particular woman. We must—”
“Stop, please! I do not understand.” Marisa pressed her fingers to her temples, staring at her aunt as if she had taken leave of her senses. She said, “What are you trying to say? That General Bonaparte—that he—but no, you are mistaken. You know he’s always been kind to me and my godmother….”
Edmée sighed, one small silk-sandaled foot tapping impatiently on the carpet. Why must Marisa be so deliberately obtuse? After all, for all her youth and rather touching naivete, the child had been through certain experiences that should have made a woman of her. And, as a result, she had made sure with the broths and bitter tisanes her niece had swallowed so obediently that there were to be no unpleasant reminders of the past. And she had hoped—but this was even more fortunate, if only Marisa could be made to see reason and to think practically.
She said, in a coaxing voice, “Haven’t you seen for yourself that Josephine is used to his occasional straying? She understands him—and besides, she’s had lovers of her own; there almost was a terrible scandal over that young Lieutenant Denis, not too many months ago! She won’t blame you, you may be sure of that. Just as long as you are discreet—and of course, you mustn’t give in too easily, either! All you have to do is blush the way you are doing now and open those innocent eyes very wide as if you don’t quite understand….”
Edmée went on talking quickly and excitedly, giving her bewildered niece no more chances to protest. It was high time the girl awakened to the realities of life as she herself had been forced to do at about the same age. Usually marriage came first and then lovers, discreetly taken. But in this case—why, there was talk that Bonaparte would soon make himself an emperor! And it was well known, besides, that he always provided generously for his mistresses, usually marrying them off to his generals or newly created nobility. Marisa must be made to see how foolish she was being, and what advantages there were to be had for all of them.
“Surely, darling, you don’t want to be packed off to the wilds of New Spain, to your papa who might be extremely angry with you? And this Pedro Arteaga from whom you ran away—he’d hardly want to marry you now, you know! Nor, I’m afraid and I hate to be so blunt, would any other Spaniard offer you marriage; you know how stuffy and conventional they are! You could be rich and independent—how I envy you! And when you do marry…. You know that I am speaking so sternly to you for your own good, don’t you, petite? I only want your happiness, as your dear maman would have wanted if she had lived. Come,” Edmée continued with an appealing smile, “don’t look so wan-faced! You are a woman now, and you must learn to act like one instead of a frightened child who can only think of running away and hiding. Pinch your cheeks, love, you need some color in them. And now we must return to the dancing and all your eager partners before he starts to wonder where you are!”
Unbelievable. As she followed her aunt, Marisa’s head was whirling with thoughts she did not want to face. She felt like a snared rabbit awaiting the hunter. She might not be worldly wise, but she was not stupid, and her innocence, if such a thing really existed, had been taken away from her by a steely-eyed corsair. She was just as helpless and just as much a pawn now as she had been then. And now that she had been catapulted into the limelight, there could be no escape for her unless…. She thought suddenly of Philip, and resolve stiffened her spine. If only Philip would understand and help her again! Somehow she must contrive to meet him.
The rest of the night passed in a kind of haze as Marisa danced and smiled and even managed to respond intelligently to the brilliant conversation that swirled about her. She knew now why she had suddenly become so popular and sought after, and she was all too aware of how often the first consul’s eyes rested on her, although he did not ask her to dance. Now that she understood, there was surely something she could do. But there was no point in worrying about it tonight.
Marisa was fortunately too tired to think by the time she had stumbled upstairs to her room, allowing her maid to undress her as if she had been a doll. She slept heavily and woke late to find that breakfast was to be served to her in bed since she had a busy afternoon ahead of her.
Through all of the fittings for the new gowns she must have, she tried to keep her mind a careful blank. There was to be a reception at the prince of Benevento’s palace that very evening, and everyone would be there. She must look her best.
Consoling her, flowers were delivered to her with a card from Philip, telling her how much he looked forward to seeing her again. She felt consoled by the flowers. But she felt frightened when she opened a flat box containing an exquisite shawl, all shimmering colors, accompanied only by the boldly scrawled signature, “Napoleon.”
“You see?” her aunt said triumphantly as she draped the shawl about Marisa’s stiff shoulders. “It wasn’t all a dream, my little Cinderella! And now you must hurry, for Monsieur Leroy is here already, and we must persuade him that your new ball gown positively has to be delivered this very evening!”
Marisa felt herself pushed this way and that, hardly realizing what was happening. Under any other circumstances she would have been beside herself with excitement, but now she was unusually quiet and docile, and the designer, who had already heard the latest gossip, wondered rather contemptuously what Bonaparte had found so intriguing about this silent slip of a girl who had only her great golden eyes and her hair to commend her. Tiens! She was so thin! And one wondered whether she had any conversation to offer. He decided that she must be dressed in white—a simple muslin with, perhaps, some artful Grecian drapery to hide the lack of curves, and a small ruff, which he had made so fashionable, around her neck, to hide her collarbones and heighten the illusion of a child playing at being a woman. Or was it really an illusion?
The high, tightly cut bodice of her gown was embroidered with tiny seed pearls, and a rope of pearls bound her hair, its dark gold ringlets escaping to lie riotously against her forehead and temples.
“I shall call this creation ‘Andromeda,”’ Leroy had said proudly, and Marisa wondered if she were meant to recreate the ancient Greek legend of the maiden sacrifice, for that was exactly how she felt tonight.
Josephine’s dark eyes rested on her sadly, but her manner was just as affectionate as it had always been. Was it really true that she didn’t mind? To make his gift to Marisa less obvious, Napoleon had also presented gifts to his wife and stepdaughter: a ruby necklace for Josephine and a pretty ivory fan to Hortense. He was nowhere in evidence when they left for the reception; affairs of state kept him busy, but he would arrive later as was his usual custom.
Marisa’s hands were cold in spite of her silk gloves. She almost dreaded the thought of appearing in public again, knowing how people would be speculating about her.
Almost unconsciously, she squared her shoulders. There had to be a way out of her present dilemma, and she would find it. Philip would help her—she felt it. And in the meantime, she must pretend to her aunt that she accepted everything she had been told and that she was quite resigned.
Had Marisa but known it, Edmée was not even thinking about her niece just then. She had other things to think about. In the darkness of the carriage, Edmée bit her full lower lip, feeling the blood start to course faster in her veins. Tonight—after the reception—but how was she going to manage it? Dominic had told her that he would somehow contrive everything; he was so masterful and so—so arrogantly sure of himself! She ought to have refused him, but there was something about him…. Even the lightest brush of his fingers on her bare arm made her weak when he touched her. He was an American savage—the kind of man who had no time for whispered flattery and flirtation, preferring to seize what he wanted by force if he had to. It had been a long time since any man had excited her so, and she felt like a fluttering moth drawn to the flame of a candle, knowing the danger but unable to resist it. If he got her alone, there would be no opportunity allowed her for coyness or holding back—she was sure of it. He was capable of raping her without a qualm, of tearing the clothes off her body if she resisted him.
Edmée’s tongue moistened her lips as she tried to suppress a shudder of pleasure mixed with fear. But could she resist? Did she want to? He was a primitive jungle animal among the civilized men she was accustomed to, and like any woman she wondered if perhaps she could be the one to tame him. Her heart was still beating quickly as their carriage stopped at last before the imposing marble steps that led up to Talleyrand’s palace.
Thousands of candles illuminated the crystal and silver and gold surroundings and enhanced the equally brilliant gathering that thronged the many rooms of the palace. Jeweled decorations glittered on almost every male jacket, while the women sought to outshine each other with their magnificent ball gowns and sparkling gems.
Marisa was dazzled. To think that she was here and actually a part of such a grand assembly! There were diplomats and noblemen from all over the world; she had never heard so many foreign languages spoken under one roof. The walls were hung with silk in the colors of the Republic and interspersed with garlands of freshly cut flowers whose cloying scent mingled with the odors of food and the perfume worn by the women. It was a warm night and an enormous pavilion had been set up in the magnificent walled garden for dancing. The musicians were playing already. The crush was so great that Marisa began to wonder despairingly if she would ever catch sight of Philip. In the meantime Edmée kept her close to her side even though her eyes too seemed to wander sharply from one face to another.
They had passed through the reception line at last. As honored guests they were escorted by Talleyrand himself, dressed in his usual somber black, to a group of gilt chairs placed a little apart from the others on the terrace.
Immediately Josephine and Edmée were surrounded by friends and admirers, leaving Marisa a little space to look around. She saw a few faces that were familiar to her, and she bowed and smiled politely. But heavens, how conspicuous she felt! ‘It’s almost as if we were royalty,’ she thought wryly. At least Philip surely could not fail to notice her.
She was so occupied studying the crowd that she could not help the start she gave when a soft voice addressed her.
“Ah, mademoiselle, what good fortune to see you here. You look charming, as usual, and I’m your servant.”
Joseph Fouché, duke of Otranto, bowed over her unwillingly extended hand, his cold lips brushing it lightly.
Fouché. She did not, could not like him, Marisa had already decided. He reminded her of an ugly black bird of prey, hovering lazily before it struck. Always present—watching—his cold eyes hooded and unreadable. And she remembered that he was one of the original revolutionaries, a friend of Robespierre and one of those who had voted to guillotine all the “aristos” who could be rounded up. Why did she have the impression that he was always watching her? Even when he paid her meaningless compliments his cold eyes remained remote, almost assessing.
‘The Terror is over—and in any case there’s no reason why I should fear him,’ Marisa reminded herself.
Marisa wished he would leave, but he surprised and angered her by lingering, his urbane voice murmuring polite civilities all the while. She must try to remember that he was here tonight as the duke of Otranto and not in his capacity as chief of police. What a ridiculous thought; what did she have to feel guilty about? Funny—now she almost found herself wishing that Napoleon would arrive and “rescue” her!
“I wonder, mademoiselle, if I might have the honor of taking you in to supper? If you have not already promised it to someone else, that is.”
Taken aback, she could not find anything to say. Looking at her aunt for support she found that Edmée’s attention was elsewhere. Her heart sinking, Marisa saw a satisfied smile cross Fouché’s thin lips as he drew up a chair to seat himself beside her.
“I am excessively flattered and grateful that you should be kind enough to spare me a little of your time. Do you know, mademoiselle, that you are a fascinating enigma? I am sure I cannot be the only admirer to be curious about you! Yes, I must confess that I am intrigued….”
Growing hot and cold by turns, Marisa was forced to listen as his soft voice went on and on, his eyes holding her pinned in place like a helpless butterfly against a wall.
13
A series of shocks, delivered one after the other, had rendered Marisa almost numb by the time they sat down to a late supper.
First there had been Fouché with his probing, relentless questions that seemed to want to rip away all the veils she had thrown up between herself and the past. He had acted as if she were a criminal with something to hide!
“Come, mademoiselle, I know how painful it must be for you to recall certain unpleasant happenings, but I assure you that I shall be discreet. Surely you realize it’s better this way, under the cover of a gathering such as this? Do continue to smile, I beg you. I am merely fulfilling my duty and attempting to spare you the embarrassment of formal questioning in my office. Please trust me. I am a father, and I understand something of your scruples.”
He wanted to know how she had arrived in France, when and with whom. And her relationship with Philip—how she had met him and how well did they know each other?
Angrily she tried to evade him, but he had merely smiled.
“If you are sensible, mademoiselle, you will tell me everything. Be assured it will not go further.”
It sounded as if he were threatening her—his manner fatherly and bullying by turns. And then, like a fisherman content to play out his line for the sport of reeling in a spent quarry afterwards, he let her go with the promise that he would speak to her later, after she had had time to think.
Soon afterwards she saw Philip making his way to her side through the crowd. An unwonted frown creased his forehead. She was reminded suddenly and forcibly of the fact that Philip was English. Dear God, did Fouché think she was a spy? Part of some royalist plot?
This evening even Philip seemed changed in some way, his manner almost abrupt. “Marisa, I have to speak to you. Forgive me, but if there’s some chance that we could converse alone—”
Marisa forced a smile as she tried to warn Philip with her eyes. “Later, perhaps. I hope you will ask me to dance.”
“It seems as if you are always surrounded by chaperones now—and admirers!” His voice sounded almost bitter, and she longed to be able to put her hand in his and run away with him, away from all the gossip and the speculation and the staring eyes that watched her, she was sure, even now.
“Philip—” she began pleadingly. She noticed how his face seemed to close up, becoming a polite, handsome mask as her aunt came fluttering up, a teasing smile on her full red lips.
“Monsieur Sinclair! But how nice to see you again. Did your friends come with you this evening? I have been wishing to meet Lady Marlowe again ever since I learned she was in Paris with her dear little Arabella. Marisa, you must meet her—such a sweet, typical young English lady, and you must be almost at the same age, too. You must be introduced, and especially if you are to go back to England with me. Lady Marlowe knows all the patronesses of Almacks, isn’t that so, monsieur?”
“Lady Marlowe knows everybody,” Philip said in a low, controlled tone as he bowed over Edmée’s white fingers. “I will be sure to tell her that you were asking about her, of course.”
“Please do!” Edmée responded sweetly, sinking into the vacant chair by Marisa’s side; and after a few murmured polite remarks Philip was forced to leave.
“How could you!” Marisa burst out in a low, suppressed voice as soon as he was out of earshot. Her aunt raised one arched brow.
“How could I—what? Chérie, you ought to be grateful that I rescued you from being far too indiscreet. It’s an open secret that his engagement to Arabella Marlowe will be announced as soon as they return to London; and yet, the look on your face as you gazed up at him! You really must learn to mask your feelings, darling child, for your own sake!”
Too angry to control herself Marisa burst out, “And for whose sake, I wonder, has the odious duke of Otranto been plaguing me with questions? While you were occupied with your friends he hardly left my side; he wants to know everything about my past, every sordid detail! What am I to tell him?”
“Oh—Fouché!” Edmée gave a shrug, but her brilliant eyes seemed to avoid her niece’s for a moment. “It’s his business to know everything about everybody, but he’s closemouthed, at least. And better to have as a friend than an enemy, believe me. Why don’t you tell him what he wants to know, and then he’ll leave you alone! Really, my pet, there’s no point in being so mysterious, although I do understand how you must feel. Tell him the truth and then forget about it. He can’t hurt you, not now.”
At that moment the whole gathering seemed galvanized to attention as Napoleon Bonaparte, surrounded by his aides, made his late entrance.
It was almost as if he were an emperor already. There was a sudden hush; the men bowed, and the women curtsied low. He walked across the room with Talleyrand at his side, his pale-complexioned face remote and unsmiling unless he recognized someone he knew, and then he would stop to speak for a few moments.
He was dressed, as usual, in his general’s uniform, and in spite of his slight stature there was something dynamic and powerful about him. Even Marisa, as overwrought as she was, could not help noticing it. He approached their small group—and, oh, God, why did Josephine happen to be dancing at that moment with a young Polish officer?
Marisa had dropped into a curtsy with the others, but suddenly she felt a hand on her wrist, drawing her upward. Napoleon said, “Come—let us dance, señorita. It’s a pleasure I have long looked forward to.”
There was nothing to do but to obey what amounted to a royal command even though Marisa realized, with a sinking heart, what this unprecedented honor meant. Like any good general, Napoleon never wasted his time, believing in making straight for his objective. How in the world was she to deny him?
They waltzed, and he was surprisingly light on his feet. She noticed that and was relieved that he did not try to engage her in conversation. Marisa tried to keep her mind on the music but could not. ‘He is only being kind—no more than that. They cannot force me into being his mistress. With all the women of Paris, of all France for that matter, at his feet, he could not possibly want me! It’s only a game, to make Josephine jealous….’
They circled the floor once, twice, and then he led her back to the gilt chairs. He smiled and there was a searching look in his deep blue eyes.
“You dance very well, little Marisa. And I enjoyed the fact that you do not chatter while you dance.”
Bowing stiffly, he left her and went to Josephine; but by then there was not a single person in the whole brilliant assembly who had not noticed her. The whispers of those who had attended the Russian ambassador’s reception the previous night had swelled into outright gossip by now.
“They say, my dear, that he’s actually installed her under his very roof! And passes her off as his poor wife’s goddaughter.”
“Who is she? A Spanish last name, I’ve heard, but is it really true her mother was French? Where does she come from?”
“I cannot remember that the Countess Landrey ever mentioned a niece before,” Lady Marlowe sniffed. “And I really cannot say that the girl has much to recommend her! I noticed her at the theater last night—such a very unsuitable gown for a child her age!” She lowered her voice so that her daughter could not hear. Tapping the British minister’s arm with her folded fan, she said, “Fast! But then what can one expect…”
Whitworth, who had noticed young Sinclair go up to speak to the same young woman earlier, merely frowned and held his peace. Strange that he hadn’t mentioned being acquainted in those circles. And yet, understandably, he’d had other things on his mind last night. While Whitworth pretended to pay polite attention to Lady Marlowe’s chatter, his rather protuberant eyes were searching the room for his American counterpart. Livingston was a civilized fellow, for all that he was an American. Perhaps, if he were approached in a casual, roundabout fashion he might shed some light on the mystery that had Philip Sinclair so perturbed. A damnably awkward thing, if Sinclair were right and this American privateer with the improbable name was really an English viscount, long presumed dead. Royse’s heir? It did not seem possible! He would have spoken to Talleyrand, but it really wasn’t advisable to let that wily statesman suspect the reasons for his sudden interest in an obscure American captain. Being a diplomat was by no means easy when one had to cope with so many sly intrigues! And speaking of intrigues—where the devil was Sinclair? High time he asked Arabella Marlowe to dance.
Philip Sinclair, rendered bold by the unusual amounts of wine he had consumed, and in despair by what he had just witnessed, had just bowed before a still-flushed Marisa, asking her to dance with him. At this point he didn’t care if Arabella, her formidable mother, or even Napoleon himself were watching. Damn it, she didn’t belong here! She was too innocent to realize what was happening—what people were whispering about her! It was all the fault of that accursed aunt of hers, a married woman notorious for her many and varied lovers. He had almost forgotten his original purpose in coming here and his intention to ask her questions.
Everyone else was dancing, even the pregnant Hortense, and Marisa had begun to feel herself isolated when thankfully, Philip appeared out of nowhere. She had just glimpsed the duke of Otranto begin to make his way towards her, and her aunt Edmée was nowhere in sight, so it was with an unfeigned exclamation of gladness that she smiled up at Philip and took his hand without hesitation. He had sensed her distress and had come to her. Here at last was someone she could trust!
Unfortunately, the musicians had just begun to play a quadrille, and the dancers formed sets and faced each other, giving them hardly any opportunity to talk privately.
“I must speak to you!” Philip said again, doggedly, and Marisa gave him a worried inclination of her head. The dance led them apart and then together again, and in response to the pleading in his eyes she murmured breathlessly, “Soon—I shall contrive to be very tired and in need of a drink and some fresh air. On the terrace outside?”
“I’ll look for you there. I’ll wait, if I have to.”
The urgency in his voice and the almost desperate pleading in his eyes made Marisa’s pulses begin to race. Philip was in love with her! He was jealous, of course, but tonight he meant to ask her to elope with him, and she would—she would!
What did it matter if he had little money of his own? They would be happy. Perhaps her papa would relent and give her a dowry, and Philip would go to New Spain with her, and there would be a touching reconciliation with papa, and everything would end happily. They would make it so!
Lost in her suddenly happy visions of the future, Marisa did not notice that her manner had regained the sparkle and vivacity it had lacked earlier, and that she was actually smiling in a dreamy fashion. But there were others who noticed—and reacted according to their respective natures.
Joseph Fouché grinned in an ugly, narrow-lipped way, and the prince of Benevento raised an eyebrow in mock dismay, even while his cunning mind raced. Napoleon’s face grew cold and forbidding, and Edmée, stepping in breathless and flushed from the coolness of the gardens, gave a smothered exclamation of annoyance.
“Oh, no! How could she—the very minute my back was turned. The little fool, what does she think she’s about?”
In her anger and irritation she had said more than she would have wished to, but the tall man who stood beside her merely gave a sardonic grunt.
“So, chère amie, your so-called ‘little’ niece has more than one admirer?” His voice was a hard drawl, but his face, if Edmée could only have seen it then, had become a mask carved out of granite, betraying no emotion save contempt.
“Don’t talk that way!” Edmée responded distractedly. “The young Englishman is merely a friend, of course, but she should not be so indiscreet as to dance with him, and especially not now!”
“So Caesar’s mistress is very much in the same position as Caesar’s wife? You ought to have schooled her not to wear her feelings so openly.”
Dominic Challenger’s voice was lazily indolent, but there was a certain tone underlying his sarcastically uttered words that made Edmée cast him a reproachful look over one white shoulder.
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