Promise Me Heaven (30 page)

As they traveled slowly northward, the rain gave way to sleet. Buffeted on relentless winds, the wet snow churned in the air until the difference between the thick, white sky and the frost-rimed ground became negligible. The wind made conversation impossible.

Cat, wedged onto the narrow seat next to Thomas, was conscious even through the layers of wool of the press of Thomas’s leg against hers. She determined herself to adopt the casual familiarity that came so easily to him but she could not. He had come for her. He had searched until he had found her. He meant to insure her safe passage through this suddenly hostile countryside. All of his actions spoke eloquently of duty and responsibility. There were no lingering glances, no passionate declarations. The dream she’d had of his tender kisses and lover-like embrace faded in his self-possessed presence.

The occasional smile he flashed at her was sympathetic and encouraging and nothing more.

The incongruity of it! Her knowledge of this “libertine” was so utterly incommensurate with society’s. And yet an image of a woman, her hands on Thomas, his head thrown back in sensual ecstasy, was burned in Cat’s memory.

She wasn’t even certain of what she had seen, nor what “intense pleasure” Thomas had denied himself, nor even why he had ordered Daphne Bernard from his room. Cat had no reason to trust Daphne’s assurance that Thomas had rejected her. Yet she had no reason to
distrust
it. She only knew she wanted more than anything to believe the Frenchwoman.

Not that it truly mattered. Whatever Thomas had done, or chose to do, he would always be to her more than some notorious title. He was a onetime spy and a onetime libertine very likely. But, more important, he was honorable, kind, clever, and a thousand other qualities that set him apart from and above other men.

It was well past dusk. They had watched the sun breach the low hills and climb to its apex in the winter sky and then watched its slow, remorseless descent. He glanced down at Cat, snuggled against him. She shuddered in her sleep, her lips a bruised blue in her pale face. Her lashes fluttered with agitation against the ivory flesh.

“Cat!” Thomas said urgently. “Cat, wake up!”

Her eyelids opened, and she stared at him for a moment, her gaze without recognition.

He hauled the mare to a stop and lifted her from the seat to bury her in the hay, piling the blankets on top of her. Snapping the lead on the mare, he drove toward the light of a farmhouse tucked between two hills. He had to warm her up. Before she died.

In the farmyard, fear for her made him careless. He tucked another blanket around her before vaulting from the seat. Mounting the steps, he pounded his fists against the farmhouse door.

“What?” a voice called from within.

“Open, monsieur! I have a sick woman outside!”

“Go away!”

“No! She must get warm!” Thomas called, on the brink of kicking the door down.

A crack appeared in the solid portal. A small, aged man peered up at him. “Be you English?”

Thomas quickly dismissed the idea of him and Cat impersonating a Frenchman and his aged mistress. He was unsure of what Cat would say in her present condition. And also, he could not allow her to suffocate beneath those awful veils. One look at the beautiful purity of her face, and their lie would be discovered.

He threw himself on the old man’s mercy. “Yes, English. Please, you must help me. I will pay.”

The old man slammed the door shut. Thomas could hear muttered voices behind the barrier. He leaned his forehead against the wood, praying the old man would not make him use force, knowing he would if necessary, if Cat needed him to.

The door swung open. The old man stood grinning up at him. Sighing in relief, Thomas breathed a word of thanks before turning to get Cat.

He did not see the old man’s two sons appear like thick, black shadows from the corner of the house. He did not hear their footfalls over the howling wind. But he felt the blow that caught him viciously behind the ear and he felt the ground rise up to meet his collapsing form. His last despairing thought was that he had failed Cat, after all.

Cat
. Thomas shook his head. His head swam in pain-filled waves. He squinted, blinding lights streaking fireworks across his field of vision. She wasn’t in the room. Only two beefy farm lads and the wizened old man kept him company. He shifted and realized he’d been trussed up, his hands tied behind him.

“Up, are you?” the old Frenchman said. He limped forward to stand in front of Thomas. “Thought to do us, did you? Bah! Nothing in that rackety thing but a pile of blankets. What’s your game, m’lad? You’re no more English than my boys here!”

Experience had taught Thomas never to offer information, so he sat silent, waiting, every nerve straining to detect some sign of Cat.

The old man suddenly snarled, and his hand swung out, catching Thomas’s cheek in a savage backhanded blow. “Out with it! You ain’t English quality. Why, you’re as dark as a gypsy!”

The old man bent low, his face inches from Thomas’s. He lifted his hand again. This time it held a short leather strap. His sons watched impassively. Thomas struggled against the ropes binding him and the old man laughed. From outside a dog started barking. The old man’s head snapped up.

“Jacques, go and see what that fool dog is barking about.” One of the hulking, speechless men left.

A sudden intuition caused Thomas to shut his eyes. Please, God, let her not do what he thought she was doing. A moment ticked by, then two and three. The old man grew agitated, cursing as he paced the floor.

“Go and find your brother,” he finally spat. The other son rose and lumbered from the room and Thomas’s prayers grew more fervent.

The old man stomped to stand before Thomas. “Who is out there? What have you done?” The leather strap cut across Thomas’s cheek. He gasped as the old man drew his hand back again.

The door swung open. The old man’s two sons filled the frame. As silently as they had left, they entered, their eyes shifting uneasily in their slab-like faces. A pitch-colored figure detached itself from the blackness, gliding into the room. From head to toe, the feminine figure was cloaked in inky darkness, even down to the black gun muzzle projecting from the wide folds of her skirts and trained on the old man.

“Untie him.” No one moved. “Untie him, old man, or I will shoot you.” If the words had been a demand, loud and anxious, the elderly farmer might have called the black-shrouded woman’s bluff. But the very colorlessness of the words made them all the more credible. With a curse, he complied.

Thomas rose unsteadily. The black muzzle of the gun remained fixed steadily on the old man. Taking up his former bonds, Thomas jerked the hands of his captors behind them and, one by one, secured them.

Cat sank to her knees and Thomas caught her just in time, settling her in a chair before hurrying into the mean building’s back room, obviously a sleeping quarters. He snatched a heavy eiderdown blanket from a bed then headed for the only other room in the farmhouse, a tiny kitchen where a thin broth bubbled on the hearth. He dipped a cup into the kettle and returned to Cat, pressing it into her hands. “Drink.” He wrapped the warm, thick blanket about her while his captives watched impassively.

They dared not stay. This was a farm and other hands might arrive any time to begin their predawn work.

As soon as she was finished with the soup, he lifted her tenderly and carried her outside, still wrapped in the eiderdown blanket. He settled her on the wagon seat and swung up next to her, clucking his tongue at the mare.

When they were well away, Thomas cast a worried glance at Cat and was relieved to see her face did not look nearly so waxen as it had before.

“You scared the bloody hell out of me!” Thomas exploded, the terror of the long minutes when he had seen Cat appear in the doorway returning to him in full force.

“
I
scared
you
!” Cat shouted back, her fatigue apparently forgotten in her indignation. “I am sound to sleep when I hear you yelling my name. When I manage to rouse myself it is to discover you lying on the ground with two hulking monsters standing over you. And
you
were scared!”

“I thought you were going to try and hit them as they came out.”

“Now, that would have been stupid. Whatever have I done to give you such little respect of my intelligence? Those lads outweighed me by twelve stone. I believe they even outweighed you.”

Thomas realized a teasing smile had formed a dimple in one flawless cheek. Covering her hand, he dragged it up to his lips. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I was so damned worried. Wonderful, intelligent, resourceful Cat, wherever did you find a firearm?”

“I didn’t.”

“All right then, a pistol or whatever you want to call it.”

“It wasn’t any sort of weapon at all. It was a piece of pipe I found in the shed. Honestly, Thomas, however do you think I would conjure up an expensive firearm?”

“You didn’t have
any weapon at all
?” Thomas roared.

Cat decided any further attempt at conversation was pointless.

Chapter 25

T
he sky above was a pitch-colored canvas. The small coastal town of Dieppe, however, was ablaze with lights. Englishmen and women crowded the village waiting for some transport to cross the Channel.

On entering the town, Thomas had hailed a workman and after engaging in a short conversation had whistled up the exhausted mare, guiding her through the streets to this unlikely address. He halted the cart in an alley behind the inn where he planned to stop.

Cat’s clothes had dried for the most part, but the padding around her waist was still damp and uncomfortable. After rummaging in her bag, she carefully applied powders and greasepaint by the weak light coming from the inn’s back window. Satisfied, she covered her face with a light veil and donned every piece of paste jewelry she’d brought. She rechecked the mirror. With all of the fake gems winking from wrists, ears, and throat, she was certain she looked every inch a wealthy, crude old woman.

Thomas handed her down from the cart and bid her to follow him closely, saying nothing. She was more than happy to oblige. Inside, the heat from the crowded public room’s fire worked its way through the stiff, cold bombazine. She slumped against the wall, holding her freezing fingers to her mouth and blowing on them while Thomas spoke to a fat, swarthy man, presumably the manager.

Thomas did not look as though he had spent hours in a freezing, open cart. He radiated Gaelic goodwill. His teeth flashed in overt bonhomie, and his laughter was loud, nay, booming.

He swung the heavy greatcoat from his shoulders and Cat felt her lower lip go slack with surprise. She would never have thought it possible for Thomas to look as he did. His long, muscular legs were gloved in obscenely form-fitting black pantaloons. He sported a ridiculously tight, wasp-waisted black coat with monstrous padding that augmented Thomas’s own broad shoulders; the silhouette he made was bizarre. Lace appeared at every conceivable point of exit from the atrocious garment; it dripped from collar and cuffs; it sprouted above the snug, garishly embroidered waistcoat; it erupted from pockets.