The Rake to Redeem Her Read online

  When had she last felt that joy? Had she ever felt it so intensely?

  Gasping, disoriented, Elodie tried to settle her agitated senses as travellers came into view on the road beyond. Soon, a group of friars with cart and cattle slowly lumbered past.

  ‘Would that I could get away with kissing my soon-to-be-former valet one last time,’ Ransleigh murmured against her ear, the warmth of his breath setting her still-acutely sensitive body pulsing again. ‘But you wished for a group to travel with and I think the Lord just answered that prayer. Given how we were engaged as they arrived, you can’t say the Almighty doesn’t have a sense of humour.’

  Trying to quell the desire still raging through him, Will concentrated on regulating his breathing as he and Madame Lefevre watched the monks plod past.

  As soon as the dust settled, she turned back to him. ‘Travelling under the protection of the good friars is tempting, but we’d be rather conspicuous, don’t you think? Unless you have robes, hoods, sandals and rope belts hidden in that bag.’

  ‘Not yet, but I will. By the quantity of cattle and the amount of goods in the wagon, this group must have been to the farmers’ market at Sonnenburg. Moving as slowly as they are, they probably spent the night at the religious guesthouse we passed at mid-morning. You stay here; I’ll ride back and obtain what we need to become “Brother Pierre” and “Brother LeClair”.’

  ‘That’s outrageous!’

  ‘What, you don’t think you can pass as a monk?’

  ‘No! Well, yes, but lying to a priest? A whole group of priests?’

  She looked so aghast, he had to laugh. ‘Ah, so you do possess some scruples! I, alas, have none. Come now, think of it as … divine intervention sent to protect you. It would be a wonderful disguise, you must admit. We could travel south to wherever they are going, spend a few days at their monastery and then head for Paris. Absolutely no one would think to look for us dressed as monks.’

  She nodded reluctantly. ‘That’s true enough.’

  ‘If it chafes your conscience so badly to dissemble to the holy brothers, you could confess the deception before we leave. Besides, even if we admit we are in disguise, have not religious houses for millennia offered sanctuary to those in danger?’

  Since she didn’t immediately lodge another protest, Will knew she was weakening. Though he thought it a brilliant plan, her concession was all he needed.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she admitted at last. ‘But how do you plan to obtain the supplies? The guesthouse isn’t a clothing shop.’

  ‘I’m sure the friars have a few robes and vestments they can spare. I’ll tell the abbot there was a fire at my monastery that destroyed some of the brothers’ robes and, as penance for some misdeed, I pledged to replace them. If I let him charge twice what they are worth, I’m sure I can persuade him to sell me a few.’

  Frowning, madame wrapped her arms around her head. At Will’s raised eyebrow, she said, ‘I shield myself from the lightning bolt the bon Dieu will surely send to punish your sacrilege.’

  Will chuckled. ‘Never mind the good Lord, just protect yourself from view by passing travellers. It shouldn’t take me more than an hour to reach the guesthouse. I’ll have us outfitted and on our way to catch up with the friars before nightfall.’

  As promised, after a glib explanation and a generous donation, Will returned to madame’s hiding place two hours later with the necessary robes, hoods, belts and shoes. After giving her some privacy to change into the latest disguise—and trying very hard to avoid the further sacrilege of imagining her naked—he stowed the rest of their provisions and clothing in the saddlebags.

  A few moments later, she returned, face lowered beneath the shadowing hood, hands clasped together in her sleeves in a prayerful attitude, looking the very picture of a humble friar.

  ‘What an excellent Brother Pierre you make!’ he marvelled. ‘If I didn’t know your identity, I would absolutely believe you a man of God.’

  She shuddered. ‘Please, don’t tempt the Lord’s wrath again by claiming that! Since Armitage knows our current aliases, we should complete the blasphemy by changing names. Shall I be “Brother Innocent” and you, “Brother Francis”?’

  ‘Of Assisi?’ he asked with a grin, following her thoughts.

  ‘Yes. A sinner and voluptuary before he came to the Lord. Perhaps the so-divine aura of the name will stick,’ she replied tartly. ‘I intend to protect what’s left of my immortal soul by swearing a vow of silence. You will have to spin this web of lies by yourself.’

  Throwing herself up on to her mount, she rode off. He was still chuckling when he caught up to her. But, true to her declaration, she ignored his attempt to converse. After a few snubs, he left her to her chosen silence.

  Watching her, bent humble and prayerful over the saddle, Will had to shake his head. Madame Lefevre adopted the role of holy brother as quickly and unquestioningly as she had transformed herself from a gentlewoman into an old man into a valet. Will wished his subordinates on his army missions had understood their roles and mastered them as quickly and completely.

  Not that she was merely a follower. Had she not astutely observed that travelling in a group offered them the best chance to evade their pursuers and reach Paris undetected, he might never have recognised the potential in that passing group of monks.

  He had to appreciate the good Lord’s sense of irony. How much better a rebuke to the raging desire that had nearly made him take her by the roadside in the full daylight, where anyone might have discovered them, than to send a band of friars?

  But, as that same good Lord knew, even in men’s garb, Elodie Lefevre posed enough temptation to break the will of a saint and he was nothing close to that.

  All those days telling stories, his gaze continually straying to her soft lips and generous mouth, while eyes blue as the lake at Swynford Court in June focused on him with complete concentration, as if he were the only being in the universe. Wisps of brown hair escaping from under the homespun cap made him itch to slide their silkiness through his fingertips, while his hands ached to cup the softness of those pale, freckled cheeks. Mesmerised by her, he rambled on, recounting by rote stories with which he’d regaled fellow soldiers at camps and billets and dinners from the barren heights of Badajoz to the ballrooms of Brussels, all his will needed to resist the ravaging hunger to taste those lips, invade that soft mouth, pull the essence of her into him, possess her and all her secrets.

  It had been worth it, worth everything, to begin the process with that kiss. She tasted of the bread and wine she’d praised, of lavender and woman. He’d hardly begun to penetrate her mystery, to discover the source of that amazing ability to block out all the world’s dangers and embrace the joy of a single moment, but he’d learned she was no sensual innocent.

  She’d kissed him back with fire and expertise, fanning his passion to an intensity he couldn’t remember ever reaching so quickly before. If not for the inextinguishable instinct for survival born of six years living on the streets, he would never have heard the travellers approach—or been able to force himself away from her.

  Just then, he spotted the dust cloud in the distance that marked the progress of the monks who’d passed them earlier. Gesturing towards it, he said, ‘Time for Act Two to begin.’ He checked a smile at the scowl ‘Brother Innocent’ threw him as he spurred his mount forwards.

  Reining in beside the group, Will slid from the saddle and greeted the monks with a nod and the sign of the cross. ‘God’s peace, good brothers! Where are you bound?’

  ‘His peace to you as well,’ replied a monk mounted on a donkey, to whom the others deferred. ‘We travel to our abbey at Leonenburg, which we should reach just after nightfall. And you?’

  ‘Returning from Vienna on a mission for our abbot. I’m Brother Francis and this is Brother Innocent—who pledged a vow of silence towards the success of our journey. May we join you?’

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

&nbs
p; 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 tha
t 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.

  Having spotted a likely resting spot under a stand of trees near a small river, he motioned her to turn her mount off the road. While she watered the horses, Will removed his saddlebag and extracted their simple meal, his thoughts returning to the conundrum of England.

  Maybe he could stash madame at some quiet place in the country; he owned several such properties. He’d journey to London alone, feel out some contacts in the Foreign Office. Maybe there was a way to clear Max’s name without incriminating Madame Lefevre.

  The idea of giving her up to the gallows was growing more and more unacceptable.

  By the time she finished with the horses, he had bread, ham, cheese and wine set out on a saddle blanket on the sun-dappled grass under the trees. This time, hoping to lure her into speaking, as they sat to consume their meal, he did not immediately launch into a story.