Page 15 of The Rake to Redeem Her

‘Of course. Anyone doing God’s work is welcome.’

As they fell in behind the slow-moving cortège, madame gave him a reproachful look from beneath her hood—doubtless again fearing the imminent lightning strike.

But in a sense, they were doing God’s work, he reasoned with her silently. Righting the wrong done Max and restoring to the nation the talents of a man who could do great good was a worthy endeavour.

Hauling into danger a woman who he was—grudgingly and much against his will—beginning to think might have been almost as much an innocent victim of the plot as his cousin might not, though, a stab of conscience replied.

Was that the reason, rather than a desire to wash her hands of his blasphemous deception, she’d chosen her name? he wondered.

Maybe the influence of his name was affecting his views. Though he’d never been a voluptuary, he’d committed sins enough to stay alive on the streets and to survive years of war.

A little humility and some genuine penance wouldn’t come amiss. As they travelled in this herd like docile holy sheep, he appreciated having a divine ally in resisting her allure. As last night’s attack chillingly demonstrated, he couldn’t afford to let the attraction between them diminish his vigilance.

He didn’t even want to think what might have happened, had her assailant been someone other than George. Someone who would have cut her throat without a qualm in the darkness of the hallway while he sat gaming in the taproom.

When he’d slipped from the common room up the stairs, the vision of her seized by an unknown assailant, moonlight glinting off the knife at her throat, had punched all the air from his lungs. Savage rage against her attacker and the urgent imperative to rescue her had refilled them.

George confirmed that the danger her maid feared was very real. The hasty, casual promise he’d given Clara to keep her safe was going to require all his wits and every artifice he’d learned as a young thief and perfected as a soldier. For now, he’d just have to keep a tight rein over his increasingly intense need to possess her.

But once they were safely in Paris … If she thought he’d stand aside and turn her over to some no-surname-Philippe before they settled what raged between them, she knew nothing of the iron resolve of Will Ransleigh.

As predicted, Will and Madame Lefevre had reached the monastery just after dark, were greeted by the abbot and invited to rest from their journey for as long as they liked. Billeted in a common room and eating with the group, he had little opportunity to speak privately with madame, stealing just a moment to recommend they remain several days at the monastery, and receiving her nod of agreement in reply.

Madame had mimed her willingness to work in the vegetable garden, while Will joined the monks cutting wood in the forest. Outside the walls of the monastery, he could relax a little; within them, unused to the traditions of a monastic order, he needed all his skill at mimicry to carry off the deception.

Madame, however, must have been raised a good Catholic, or was a better mimic than he, for she followed the order of worship and the prayers as if born to them. Or had she learned them after the fall of the Republic, when Napoleon made his Covenant with the Pope and religion returned to a France which for years had functioned without a church?

After five days with the brethren, who accepted their presence, respected their privacy and asked them no questions, Will approached madame to suggest they could move on. Silently she gathered her belongings, Will leaving a handsome gift with the abbot before they left the friendly gates of the abbey and made their way west through the foothills towards Switzerland.

Once they could no longer see the sheltering walls of the abbey in the distance, madame pulled down her hood and turned to Will. ‘Perhaps we should continue this disguise for the rest of the journey. It’s served us well enough thus far.’

Will clapped a hand to his chest theatrically. ‘Behold, she speaks! Does this mean you’ve forgiven me for the deception? Or did you ease your conscience by receiving absolution from the abbot?’

She grinned at him. ‘I confessed the truth the very first night. Did you never wonder why the brothers were so discreet?’

‘Because they are holy men, above the sin of gossip?’

‘They are still human and curious. Besides, that tale of being on a mission wouldn’t wash; your ignorance of the ways of holy orders would have shown the moment the abbot questioned you about it, if your performance at Compline the night of our arrival hadn’t already made everyone suspicious.’

After a moment’s annoyance, Will grinned back. ‘And here I thought they’d accepted me as an exemplary monk.’

‘They admired how hard you worked, if several had to keep from smiling at your ignorance of the most basic prayers.’

‘You broke that vow of silence to discuss me?’

‘No, I overheard them talking about you in the refractory. I confessed to the abbot only that I was female, fleeing in disguise under threat of my life, and that you were helping me to reach my family in France.’

‘Had you no other sins to confess?’ Will teased.

The playful look faded from her face as she stared at him. He felt her gaze roam his face, his mouth, his body and return to focus on his lips. ‘Not yet,’ she replied.

Her meaning hit him like a punch to the belly, the always-simmering need he worked hard to contain bursting free in a blast of heat that hardened his body and roared through his veins. For a moment he saw only her, felt only the pulse of desire pulling them together.

His mouth dry, his brain scrambled, he couldn’t come up with a witty reply. She broke the connection, turning away from him.

‘We’re still a long way from Paris.’ To underscore the point, she urged her mount to a trot.

He didn’t dare trust her, but there was no question about the strength of his desire for her. He urged his horse after her, wishing they could gallop all the way.

Chapter Ten

Following their former pattern of hard-riding days and short nights, for almost two weeks Will had led Madame Lefevre around the foothills of the Alps, finally descending to Nancy. Once past that city, they joined a growing stream of travellers headed north-west through the vineyards and fields of the Lorraine towards Paris.

Although in its anti-clerical zeal the Revolution had destroyed or sold off most of France’s great abbeys and monasteries, in their guise as monks, they were still able to claim shelter for the night at the re-established churches along their route. Will continued to negotiate for food and fresh horses, joking, to madame’s repeated warning about hellfire, that he was fast becoming a model priest.

Allies and collaborators by necessity, they were now an experienced team, able to communicate silently through looks and gestures. Though they’d not encountered any further need for stealth, they maintained their roles diligently. As he’d learned in Seven Dials, one never knew when rats might come pouring out of some unseen hole.

They still took their meals in the open, and Will still spun the tales, madame listening with every appearance of fascination. But she never volunteered anything about herself.

He no longer wanted to ask. Instead, foolish as it might be, Will wanted her to open to him willingly, without his having to trick or pry the information from her.

Though this woman had betrayed his cousin and brought scandal upon his name, he was having a harder and harder time reminding himself of the fact. Much as he tried to resist it, the slender sprig of camaraderie that had sprouted in Vienna had grown stouter and stronger through the intrigue and dangers of the road, entwining itself around him until it now threatened to bind him to her as powerfully as the sensual attraction that tempted him with every breath.

Each day, he’d slip into his stories some comment or observation that invited her to reciprocate with a similar experience of her own. At first, he’d wanted to tempt her into talking about herself, eager to use his wits to separate fact from deliberate falsehood.

Each day, as she had remained silent, disappointment grew sharper. He’d long since given up the suspicion that she had any intentions of feeding him false information to gain some advantage; her behaviour upon the road had been absolutely upright and above-board, just as he would have expected of a comrade-in-arms. Increasingly, it pained him that after their shared adventures, he knew nothing more about Madame Lefevre’s past than he’d learned before they left Vienna.

In many ways, he felt closer to her than to anyone else in his life save his Ransleigh cousins. He could sense he was nearing the essence of her, the soul of her that danced always just beyond his reach. But she continued to withhold herself from him, in body and in spirit.

Was that a ploy, too? To disarm him by holding herself apart?

Tactic or not, he hungered for both. He wanted her to hunger for him, too. To yield her secrets.

Before he seduced her. For in a day or so, they’d be in Paris and the game would begin again in earnest. Some time before they passed through the city gates, he intended to bind her to him with the silken ties of physical possession. Before she could try to run, or set off to search for the mysterious Philippe.

Before he took her back to England.

Despite their growing closeness, he still meant to carry her there. He just wasn’t so sure now, he admitted with a sigh, what he meant to do with her once they arrived.

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