Page 21 of The Captive
She wrinkled her nose, as if a foul scent had wafted in through the open window, which was silly when the window looked out on the gardens where honeysuckle bloomed in riot. “You can’t blame them, really, but I told Meems you were needed at Severn, which you are. Butter?”
“Countess.”
She wound down, as he’d hoped she would, and sat with the scone on the plate in her lap, the butter knife balanced beside it.
“I apologize for what you saw yesterday.”
Before he’d fallen asleep eighteen hours earlier—and before he’d nearly held the lady at knifepoint—he’d come at the problem a dozen different ways in his head. To apologize or express regrets? To apologize deeply, profoundly, sincerely? To be heartily sorry, most sorry, most heartily sorry… Endless words, and none of them sounded quite the note he wanted.
He was not sorry to be alive—only living men could achieve revenge—but he was sorry his misadventures had visited themselves on her in even a minor, indirect, visual way.
“I was married for some years, Your Grace, and to a man who thought a wife’s first responsibility was to valet her husband on all but formal occasions. I would not have taken your shirt from you had I not been prepared to see youendéshabille. Any apologies are due you from me, and you have them.”
He considered forcing the point, but she was passing him his scone, the butter having been liberally applied.
“Might I have a bite of your orange?” She didn’t meet his eyes, and Christian had the sense her question was some kind of test.
Women were the subject of many a campfire discussion among Wellington’s soldiers, and a point of rare agreement among men who drank, fought, swived, and killed daily: there was no understanding women. Not their minds, not their moods, not their passions or lack thereof. Christian was confident the French soldiers, the Dutch, the Russians, the Hessians, they all had the same discussions, and all came to the same conclusion.
“I am happy to share.” He held up a section, and she leaned over and took it between her teeth, as he had previously.
And she chewed tidily, sparing him a small, smug smile.
She was staying. That’s what her little demonstration was about. She wasn’t running off because of an awkward moment, wasn’t succumbing to matronly vapors, wasn’t flinching at the sound of distant cannon.
He offered her another section.
Five
The last night before Christian and Devlin St. Just had arrived in Paris, they’d camped beside yet another farm pond, and St. Just had bluntly asked Christian when he planned to bathe properly.
“My scent offends you?”
“You’re as tidy as a man can be when he bathes regularly in a bucket,” St. Just said. “But you face the generals tomorrow, and you’ll want to look your best for them.”
A great deal went unsaid around Devlin St. Just:you’ll want to look your sanest for them, for example.
“I was accosted at my bath,” Christian said, unrolling his blankets. “One moment I was in that frigid, clean water, scrubbing away, thinking dirt was the worst part of soldiering, the next I was surrounded by grinning Frenchmen, a half-dozen rifles aimed at my naked backside.”
St. Just rummaged in his saddlebags. “And that was the start of it. Thereafter you were probably denied the opportunity to be clean, or it was forced upon you. Shall I throw you into yonder pond?”
The offer was as sincere as it was insightful. St. Just was an inch or two taller than Christian’s six feet and two inches; he was as fit as the devil and damned quick.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Fine, then.” St. Just pitched a bar of hard-milled French soap at Christian’s chest, but Christian’s right hand wasn’t up to the challenge of catching it. The soap smelled of roses and mint. “In you go. I’ll just clean my weapons here while you scrub up.”
St. Just offered one of his rare, charming smiles, this one with a bit of devilment in it. And then he extracted a knife case from the same saddlebag and opened it to reveal six gleaming throwing knifes. A brace of elegant pistols that looked to be Manton’s work followed, a short sword, and of course, his cavalry saber as well.
“Point taken.”
Christian would be well and thoroughly guarded while he bathed, and still, he dreaded the necessity to strip down before another human being.
“I can’t guard you if I don’t watch what you’re about,” St. Just said, unsheathing his saber. “Else I’d politely turn my back.”
“You aren’t guarding me. The only threats I see are a lot of bleating sheep and two brindle heifers. You’re playing with your toys.”
“Right. You could also wait until dark, but then the sea monsters might come out and gobble you up.”
