THEY WALKED across the hard-packed sands toward the city spread out in front of them. An alert Clovis and Anguish followed a good ten paces behind, Spencer holding tight to Mariah’s hand as he pointed toward Notre Dame Church, then Fort Risban and the impressive Tour de Guet.
They could have been only two more of the several dozen recent, obviously English, arrivals, stopping only briefly in Calais before heading on to frolic in a Bonaparte-free Paris, a Bonaparte-free Europe. A carnival atmosphere filled the air, save for a few well-dressed ladies who still appeared to be feeling the effects of a choppy crossing of the Channel only to wilt even more beneath the hot Calais sun.
As they left the sands Mariah’s ears were assaulted with a dozen different languages; they all blended together, one indistinguishable from the other.
On the streets, the women of the city all seemed to wear silly high caps that covered every bit of their hair and tight, short jackets, looking far different than she did in her hard-worn cloak and bare head. Even the men were more exotic birds; a few of them wore earrings in their ears, and one remarkable fellow had a colorful tattoo decorating his face from his cheeks upward to his hairline. Happily, everyone seemed to smile as they passed by, welcoming them to Calais.
The smell of frying sausages set Mariah’s stomach to rumbling and when she saw a cart on the street she stopped to take in a deep breath.
“If you’re not opposed to taking your meal standing up in the street, we could have some of those sausages, then adjourn to the shops,” Spencer told her. “I’m finding, madam, that I cannot quite banish the knowledge of your state of undress beneath that skirt.”
“And your mind should be on the business at hand,” Mariah agreed, squeezing his hand tightly as she began pulling him toward the cart.
Ten minutes later, the roof of her mouth only slightly singed from the half-raw, half-burned sausage she’d downed more quickly than she should have, Mariah found herself inside a small bow-window fronted shop filled with shelves crowded with bolts of material that stretched from floor to ceiling. There were large pots on the floor, jammed full with tall, multi-colored feathers and open boxes spilling over with lengths of ribbon and fine lace.
“We don’t have time to commission anything, Spencer,” she said, looking longingly at a length of emerald green silk she felt certain would flatter her hair and complexion.
“True, but the shops along this street are aware that we English don’t linger in Calais, and are also prepared with goods already sewn and ready to sell. I’ll leave you to it, shall I, and return in an hour.”
He reached into his pocket and extracted a small but heavy purse as a tiny, grey-haired woman bustled out from the back of the shop. “Feel free to allow her to rob us blind. You need at least two gowns, much better shoes, a new cape—and undergarments.” He smiled down at her. “And nothing in the least bit practical, Mariah. Nor modest, if you can help it. May I suggest lace and silk for your most intimate apparel? You know the French—they are famous for their fine fashions. Montreal or wherever your wardrobe was sewn, my dear, if you’ll forgive me, is not.”
“You…you’re not going to stay here with me?” Mariah asked, feeling nervous for the first time, nervous enough to ignore his insult to what, as it happened, was her own expertise with the needle. “Where are you going?”
“As I’ve trusted Kinsey to deal with the harbormaster, it is left to me to secure our rooms, arrange for a private dining room and, hopefully, show my shining face where its appearance will be reported back to the man we wish to meet. Madame,” he then said, bowing in the old woman’s direction. “My—” he hesitated just long enough to give the woman the intended impression as to Mariah’s morals or the lack of them “—companion wishes your kind assistance. Make me smile, Madame, make me happy.”
“I could hate you,” Mariah said as the old woman frowned at Mariah as if she didn’t want her in her shop, that frown tilting upwards into a smile as Mariah, gritting her teeth, displayed the purse in her hand.
“Coming ashore was your choice, Lily,” Spencer reminded her tightly, his dark eyes hooded. He still couldn’t quite believe he had allowed her to leave the Respite. He could, however, believe what he planned for her when the summons came to the meeting Ainsley had pinned so much of his hope on. “Clovis will be standing just outside that window. Enjoy yourself.”
As the door to the shop closed behind him, Mariah turned back to see the woman still smiling, her black-bean eyes dancing in her head as she asked, “Celuilà, un tigre dans les feuilles, oui?”
The French she’d learned in Montreal differed somewhat from the woman’s speech and accent, but Mariah was fairly certain she knew what had been said. That one, a tiger in the sheets, yes?
Begin as you plan to go on, Mariah knew; take the upper hand away from this leering creature. She made her expression stern even as she fluffed at her hair as she had seen some of the women who followed the army do when they wished to insult another female. “Une femme regardant pour la remplir des poches maintient sa bouche fermement fermée, Madame. Tout que j’ai besoin, de la peau dehors, deux fois. Et cette soie verte. Rapidement, la Madame, la patience n’est pas l’une de mes vertus.”
Yes, it had been the right thing to say, Mariah complimented herself as she immediately was led back behind the curtain to a small dressing room in the rear of the shop. A woman looking to fill her pockets keeps her mouth firmly shut, madame. Everything I need, from the skin out, twice. And that emerald silk. Quickly, madame, patience is not one of my virtues.
It was only a pity her knowledge of the language didn’t extend to the vulgar insult. A pithy curse or two, perhaps. That would truly have been impressive….
When next she saw Spencer—he was a man of his word and had returned in an hour—it was to see an involuntary widening of his eyes, lasting less than a moment, as he took in the sight of her in one of her new gowns. He’d been correct. After she’d chosen the gowns she liked from an impressive array presented to her, a small army of giggling young women had measured and sewn up the hems and set the last stitches at the side seams.
She turned in a full circle in front of Spencer, refusing to give in to the urge to hold her hands protectively in front of her nearly exposed breasts above the peach-colored silk that fit tightly beneath those breasts, then fell nearly straight to the tops of the neat black satin slippers on her feet. Madame LeClaire had said she looked like a flame in the sun, a reference to her hair that was beginning to pale badly on Mariah, who had heard this much too often. Why was it that people were so taken by the color of her hair? She’d always envied those with brown or black hair—nobody thought to scold them that their tempers matched their hair.
Madame LeClaire settled a long peach and moss-green paisley shawl over Mariah’s shoulders, rather ruthlessly tugged it down so that it rested in the crooks of her elbows and then looked to Spencer for his approval.
“And all in the first stare of French fashion, I’m sure. How much of that purse did you give this woman?” he asked Mariah.
“Before you deserted me you said money has never been a problem,” Mariah told him, lifting her chin in defiance. “So I gave her all of it.”
“And worth every last coin,” he told her, enjoying her anger. He extended his right arm to her, elbow bent, only to have her load that arm down with two large bandboxes. Heavy bandboxes. “You are definitely a woman of my word, aren’t you, Lily? How do you propose to pay me back?” he asked as they left the shop and turned to their left to head down the flagway, a gape-jawed Clovis and Anguish falling in behind them.
“Pay you back?” Mariah shot him a searing look. She thought of the coins still in her pocket, as she had counted out only half to the shopkeeper. She wasn’t a complete fool and it was comforting to know she was no longer penniless. She also, she realized, wasn’t quite honest. But she was living with former pirates, current smugglers. There were levels of honesty and it would seem she was…adaptable.
“Yes, most assuredly,” Spencer said and a happier, luckier man had rarely strolled this flagway, he was fairly certain. And he might as well enjoy the feeling, because he knew her happy congeniality wasn’t going to last. “If my question puts you at a loss, I do have a few suggestions…”
“This is a side of you I haven’t seen before, Mr. Abbott,” Mariah told him sweetly as they turned the corner and approached a large building she assumed was their hotel. “The annoyingly obnoxious side, in case I haven’t as yet made myself quite clear on that point.”
“Have I told you that you are the most beautiful woman in this entire, clogged metropolis?”
“Oh no, Mr. Abbott, don’t think you can deflect me. You’re taking all of this entirely too lightly. We are here on an important and dangerous mission if you’ll recall. Grinning, and making absurd statements, does not lend the gravity to the exercise I believe your father would expect from you.”
She was right. But, damn, she was also glorious, gorgeous, outrageous, and he was a bastard for wanting nothing more than to take her to their rooms and bury himself deep inside her, hold her until the entire world went away.
They stepped inside the cavernous lobby of the fairly elegant hotel and Clovis brushed past them, heading for a sour-faced man standing behind the front desk. “Here now! Messages for Mr. Joseph Abbott, froggie—toot sweet.”
“He lacks a certain élan,” Spencer whispered to Mariah, who had finally given up her indignation and was beginning to think that Spencer’s lighthearted performance was a carefully cultivated act he played out very well indeed. “Ah, but you’ll notice that he is also successful. For me, Clovis? Heaven will reward you, my son,” he said, holding out his hand for the folded note the other man promptly placed in his palm.
“You play the idiot as if you’ve done it before,” Mariah told him quietly as he escorted her to a wide staircase and they climbed two floors before turning down a long hallway. “And this place is immense. Is…he here, too? In this hotel?”
Spencer raised his eyebrows as he put a finger to his lips, waiting until they were locked inside the suite before answering her. She might be a willing accomplice but he had played this game for several long weeks. “He is, according to information I received from an old friend almost the moment I left you. I had planned for us to be elsewhere, my usual lodgings these past weeks, but a woman would be more comfortable here.”
Mariah took a turn about the large, well-appointed rooms, peering into the bedchamber with its single high tester bed, pausing in front of one of the well-appointed windows to look down at the narrow side street below. Gilt and heavy blue velvet were everywhere.
“A veritable hovel after Becket Hall, but I do suppose I’ll manage somehow,” she said, smiling at him, knowing this room was a far cry from a small cabin half buried in snow, with only a single room and a curtain to seal off an area for her to sleep, or even the three-room cottage she and her father had called their home in the Lake District. “And now?”
Spencer had already shrugged out of his cloak and jacket, exposing the leather harness encasing his right arm and shoulder. He was very careful to look at her as he spoke. Honest. Even guileless. “And now, I’m going to take a nap. I suggest you do the same.”
Nightclothes. She hadn’t purchased any nightclothes! Dressing her from the skin out—twice—hadn’t included nightclothes. Damn and blast! Mariah spied a marble-backed book on a nearby table and retrieved it. “Thank you, but I believe I’m too excited to think of sleep. Oh, look, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. One of my favorites. I’ll just sit here and read for a while, if that’s all right with you?”
Good. Just the sort of answer he’d hoped for. Spencer walked over to her and traced a single finger along the enticing skin just above the opening of her bodice. “It’s not, Mariah, but as this is neither the time nor the place for what I do want, I’ll leave you your privacy now. Clovis will have a meal sent up to us around five. Now, ask what you are longing to ask.”
Mariah stepped away from him, relieved and disappointed at the same time. “The note. What was in it?”
“A place and a time,” Spencer told her, taking the note from his pocket, crushing it into a ball and tossing it toward the small fire in the hearth. “Eight o’clock, here, in this hotel. I’ll be sent for.”
“And me? I’m coming with you.”
“Just as we’ve planned. You’ll be my small surprise.” He looked at her bodice once more. “And a considerable diversion, I believe. You know, Mariah, this might just work.”
He was being so…so nice. So adaptable, even complimentary.
Mariah immediately smelled a rat.
Once the door to the bedchamber closed behind him, Mariah raced over to the fireplace, grabbed the poker and managed to save most of the note Spencer had thrown into the hearth.
Sucking on her fingers, for she’d used them to snuff out the still-smoldering edges, she carefully spread the crumpled paper on a tabletop and read the contents of the note.
She ran to the door to the bedchamber and yanked at the latch. Locked.
She looked to the door to the hallway, then ran to it, already knowing what she’d find. The latch refused to move under her hand.
“I knew he was being too amenable.”
But she was wasting time. She ran to the table and read the message again.
Hôtel Calais. Room Eighteen. Two of the o’clock.
Spencer was already on his way to the meeting.
She didn’t have to see the inside of the bedchamber to know that it had to contain a second door to the hallway. The clock on the mantel noted the time: just lacking fifteen minutes to two o’clock.
He’d planned this from the moment she’d demanded to accompany him. He hadn’t trusted her. He’d thought she’d be in the way. He worried for her safety.
No matter what she believed his reason, she was locked in this hotel room and he was out there, somewhere, without her.
Mariah ran to the window she’d looked out of earlier, already knowing that the drop to the narrow street below would either maim her or kill her outright.
And there was no sense trying to overcome the lock to the door leading into the hallway or the one to the bedchamber, because either Clovis or Anguish undoubtedly was standing outside those doors, just waiting for her to do so. Both men were soldiers and wouldn’t succumb so easily to the sight of her holding a pistol as had Jacob Whiting. Besides, she couldn’t actually shoot either Clovis or Anguish, could she?
She was trapped, locked up tight, banished as the encumbrance Spencer obviously believed her to be. Buy the foolish woman some fancy new clothes; that will be enough. Tell her you want her in your bed, sigh with disappointment, yawn with fatigue…lie straight to her face with all the ease of a pig slipping in its own mud and then lock her up where she couldn’t cause any trouble.
“I shouldn’t care what happens to him, I simply shouldn’t,” she gritted out from between clenched teeth, then sighed. “But I do, damn him!” She returned to the first window, then moved to the next, and the next, all of them showing her a drop straight down to the flagway.
But the room was located at the end of the hallway, at one of the corners of the hotel. There were two more large windows cut into the other wall. Could that wall be at the front of the hotel? Hadn’t she seen a fancy wrought-iron balcony when she’d looked up at the facade?
“Please…please…” she begged as she pushed back the heavy draperies tightly shut against the early afternoon sun and her prayers—or her curses—were rewarded. Not windows this time but a pair of French doors. There was a balcony outside that ran along the entire width of the building, overlooking the wider, busier street at the front of the hotel.
She held her breath as she reached for the latch holding the door shut and it depressed easily.
“Not quite so smart as you think yourself, Spencer Becket. And I’m not so easily defeated as you’d like to believe.”
But then she dropped her hand to her side, frowning as she realized she had no idea what to do next. Escaping the room proved that she could follow him if she wanted to, if she put her mind to it. But would that even be wise? Could she be putting him in danger, just by her own obstinacy?
She could, most definitely. She could not go chasing herself up the steps to Room Eighteen. Not without putting Spencer and the entire plan in jeopardy.
But the balcony was out there. If nothing else, she could possibly knock on another set of doors along its length and ask to be allowed through to the hallway. From the hallway she could go down the stairs to the large, ornate foyer, perhaps to have someone bring her a dish of tea and an iced cake. Spencer could keep her from attending the meeting with him, but he would not get past her and onto the street without taking her wherever he went.
It was petty, bordering on willful and even stupid. But she’d do it, just to prove that she could, just to see the look on his face when he finally found her.
Somewhere, she thought with a quick smile, her father was sighing and nodding his head, telling the angel on the next cloud, “Yes, that’s my Mariah….”
She flung her ridiculous shawl over her shoulders, shrugged so that it fell into the crooks of her arms, opened the French door to the balcony, took a deep, steadying breath and stepped outside.
Nobody on the street below seemed to notice her, not that it would be all that strange to have a guest of the hotel take some afternoon air, in any case.
She turned to her left and walked down the balcony, skirting the white wicker chairs that seemed to have been placed along it willy-nilly. She and Spencer were staying in Room Four. It had two sets of French doors facing the street. She counted down and knocked at the first set of French doors that did not belong to her own suite.
There was no answer, so she moved on, counting down two more doors and knocking again. No one answered her knock. And there were only two more French doors fronting on the balcony.
Her last chance.
She raised a hand to a windowpane and knocked sharply on the glass, then stood back, hoping for the best.
Moments later she saw a hand push back the heavy draperies and a man’s face appeared at the window. He had thick, light-brown hair that was cut to reach halfway down over his ears. His eyebrows were low and straight above pale blue eyes; his nose well-formed but rather sharp and prominent; his mouth a wide slash with a full bottom lip above a square jaw that hinted of a cleft. He was dressed in pantaloons, a workman-like brown coat and a high-necked black ribbed sweater. A sailor? Perhaps. And definitely very French.
Mariah tipped her head to one side, fluffed at her hair and smiled.
The man smiled back at her, showing a fine set of straight white teeth, and opened the door before bowing her inside.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Mariah gushed as she stepped past him and into a room that looked remarkably similar to the one she had seen when she’d poked her head into the bedchamber of her suite.
Good God! She’d expected a sitting room but she’d just invited herself into a stranger’s bedchamber!
“Forgive me, please, sir,” she said quickly, belatedly attempting to look demure and maidenly, which was all but impossible in this gown, with her hair blown about her head by the breeze on the balcony. “It seems that I stepped outside for a breath of air and the door closed and latched behind me.”
She spread her arms in a gesture of feminine helplessness. “I’ve been frantically knocking on doors all up and down this balcony, hoping someone would save me. I feel so very windblown. And embarrassingly stupid, of course. Would it please be possible for me to pass through your rooms to the hallway and then hopefully someone from the staff will give me access back into my own rooms?”
“Now, now, we can’t have you tripping about the hotel hallways unaccompanied, not a lovely young lady like yourself,” the man drawled in accented English. And he was positively leering at her. “Much better that I ring for someone and order that someone to fetch a key for you. And what number would that be, Miss—?”
“Jenkins,” Mariah said, borrowing her mother’s maiden name, as well. “Lily Jenkins. Oh and what else did you ask? Ah, I remember.” She smiled at him, looked at him from beneath her lashes and continued to lie as smoothly as Spencer had lied to her. “That would be Room Six, sir. And I don’t believe we’ve been introduced?”
His smile faded slightly and his eyes went cold, hard. But then he smiled again. “No, we haven’t, have we. Nicolette!”
Mariah’s eyes widened in surprise as the covers on the unmade bed shifted and a woman’s head and thin shoulders appeared, her long, almost white-blond hair a tangle around her narrow face, her bare breasts small and pink-tipped. Her voice was low, husky, heavy with sleep. She spoke in French. “Jesus. You’re still here? You said you had an appointment to attend to. Not now, Renard. I’m exhausted and I feel as if I’ve had a nettle rubbed between my legs. Go rut with someone else and bloody well leave me a—” She blinked twice, pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Ah, so that’s the way of it? This is your so important appointment? Very well, bring her here. But this time I only watch….”
The blonde head subsided once more into the mass of pillows and rumpled coverlet.
“I…I’m so prodigiously sorry, sir. I don’t speak French, but it’s obvious I’ve disturbed your lady wife. Please give her my apologies. I’ll go now,” Mariah stammered, backing toward the balcony. Nicolette was a real doxy! Damn! This wasn’t working out at all the way she’d supposed.
“No matter, Miss Jenkins,” he said as she stepped outside the room. “And please pardon my…wife. She’s never at her best before nightfall. I’d escort you downstairs, but Nicolette has just reminded me that, alas, I have an important meeting to attend to in just a few moments. I will, however, send someone to unlock your doors for you. Good day, miss.”
Mariah’s cheeks were burning, she was sure of that, as she ran back down the length of the balcony, looking back to make sure he wasn’t watching her and then quickly stepping inside her own suite, locking the French doors behind her. Her back to the doors, she took several deep breaths, trying to slow her rapidly beating heart, and then opened her eyes wide.
What was she doing here? Nicolette said the man had an appointment. Had she just come face-to-face with the man Spencer was to meet in a few minutes?
She had to go back, take another look.
“I’m ripe for an asylum,” Mariah muttered as she stepped out onto the balcony, tiptoeing her way down its length once more, relieved to see that the man named Renard hadn’t bothered to pull the drapes shut again. Even better, the door was slightly ajar. How could she be so lucky?
She stayed close to the wall of the building, hoping Renard and Nicolette would speak some more, say anything of importance, but all she heard was the startling, sickening sound of flesh connecting with flesh and Nicolette’s squeals of pain.
“Quiet! Never question me again, you ditchwater drab,” Renard ordered in harsh, guttural French. “Never.”
Nicolette’s answer was barely a whimper. “But, Renard, I only asked—”
“You only asked, Nicolette?” His voice lowered even more but now he seemed amused, making him truly frightening. “No, my cabbage. You only ask do you like this, Renard? Do you want me to turn onto my belly like the bitch I am and wriggle my pasty white buttocks for you, Renard? Do I please you enough that you’ll let me live another day, Renard?” And with each filthy suggestion accompanied by the sound of yet another open-handed blow landing on bare flesh.
“Renard, no. Stop. Anything—I’ll do anything, you know I will. Here, let me show you. Look, look. See? I’m all wet for you. Ready for you. You’re excited now? Please, Renard, let me—no, Christ, don’t hurt me. Don’t do that. God, no, don’t do—”
Mariah bit her bottom lip between her teeth, part of her wanting to rush inside the bedchamber and rescue the hapless Nicolette and the other part of her knowing that would be madness.
And then all was quiet inside the room.
Mariah chanced another quick look through the glass doors, just in time to see Renard position himself in front of a mirror, adjust the collar of his strange coat and then pull a black silk hood over his thatch of light brown hair before leaning forward to peer more closely into the mirror. Satisfied, she assumed, he removed the hood and stuffed it into his pocket and then exited the room.
He was the man. The man who was on his way to meet Spencer—she was sure of it.
Moments later, she heard Nicolette begin to cry. Thank God; at least the unfortunate creature was still alive to cry.
Mariah whispered a silent I’m sorry to the woman and then headed back down the balcony once more.
There hadn’t even been holes cut in the hood for the man’s eyes, so she imagined he could see through the material, although anyone looking at him, anyone like Spencer Becket, couldn’t possibly see his features well enough to identify him if Renard passed him in the hallway an hour later, dressed in other clothes.
Nobody, that was, except her.
Which comforted her not at all as, realizing how foolish she’d been, how lucky she’d been, she hurriedly tossed a bouquet of lovely white roses onto the floor, dropped to her knees and vomited into the vase.