Promise Me Heaven (31 page)

His long, dark hair was tied back in an old-fashioned queue, but he had brushed some of it forward à la Byron. Rings, set with huge, semiprecious stones, bedecked most of the fingers he was waving in agitation at the innkeeper.

There was no way of disguising Thomas’s size, but every other aspect of him was alien to her. He languished and pouted as he talked to the innkeeper; he slouched and tapped his toe; he patted his curls. He looked like a great, vulgar imitation of an English fop.

He turned as though he felt her amazed gaze, and his eyes lit up. Grabbing her gloved hand, he pulled her forward.

“Ah, this is she!
Ma petite chatte
! You would be so unkind as to endanger her so enchanting life?” he said in loud, fractured English and then, lowering his voice, added in French, “The old hen doesn’t hear very well. And she isn’t in the best of health. I have got to get her back to England quickly before she bellies up on me and I’m left without even coach fare back to Lyons. We get on that boat and I am in gravy for the rest of… well,
her
life.”

Cat, though not conversant in the patois Thomas spoke, understood the gist of what he said and, accordingly, gasped.

The innkeeper shot her a sharp look. “She speaks French?”

Thomas shrugged. “What French she speaks is the schoolroom French of the English bourgeois, but I doubt she can even hear what we say without her horn. She says she is a rich merchant’s widow. Humph! I think she was likely a rich merchant’s trollop from some decades past. She has the appetites of a brothel-bred cyprian! But what matter to me, eh? The coin, from any hand, buys the same bread.”

Again, Cat could not refrain from making a choking sound. The innkeeper watched her suspiciously.

“I think she understands us better than you suppose.”

“Nonsense!” Thomas grabbed Cat around the waist and dragged her forward, pressing her close against his side. “She just wants attention, don’t you, my precious cat?”

Thomas eloquently rolled his eyes at the innkeeper before turning Cat and lifting her veil. “Now, now,” he said in heavily accented English, “there is no need to be so eager,
ma petite chatte
! Tomas, he will kiss you.”

Bending his head, he captured her mouth with his. His breath hissed warmly against her lips. “For God’s sake, behave!”

He abruptly lifted his head and flipped down her veil, casually patting her rump as he turned her back around. She went rigid with indignation.

“Insatiable, these old cats. About that room?”

The innkeeper snickered. “And why should I rent you a room for half the price that some others would be willing to pay?”

“Come now,” Thomas said, reverting once more to the coarse French dialect, “you have made yourself a handsome profit on the English
putin
. Would you deny your countryman a few of the same coin? Look at her! She is an aging hag with nothing more to do than buy herself a slap and tickle. Now she wants to be slapped and tickled in England. Voilà! We go back. You would deny her? You would deny me? Do not be selfish.”

The innkeeper wavered.

“Tomas! Tomas, I’m hungry,” she complained.

He patted her hand. “Yes, my sweetings, my adored,
ma chatte
.”

“And I want more kisses! Not that puny little peck you just gave me. You’ll have to earn your keep with more heat than that, m’lad! You pretty Frenchmen, always bragging about
l’amour
… pish! Thin-lipped lot of bandy roosters. More strut than stuff!”

Thomas stared at her.

“All those boasts you made,” Cat continued, warming to her role, “I should have realized with that much smoke, there would only be ashes! Ha! If last night is any example of what I can expect tonight, I’d be better off with a randy sailor. Something with a bit of bottom, and not all wind.”

The innkeeper sputtered, his eyes bulging from his round face.

“Yes, my little dove, my lamb. My cat.” Thomas reached out to tweak her cheek through the veil. It was just a little bit too much like a pinch to be affectionate.

“And I don’t want to stand here anymore,” Cat whined. “My legs are tired. I want a cup of chocolate. I want a nice pillow to sit on. You arrange it. Do it now! I don’t wish to stand here all day while you mumble with this fat man! Might as well make yourself useful in
some
capacity! I want you to—”

Suddenly the innkeeper snorted, clapping Thomas on the back. “Take the room, my friend. Whatever you make off this old witch, you will more than earn!”

“I don’t know whether to applaud or blush for you,” Thomas said as soon as they were safely closeted in the small chamber the innkeeper rented them.

“Blush? If you even have a memory of embarrassment, it would come as a shock. How could you tell him such—”

“As easily as you. ‘A bit of bottom,’ indeed.”

“I overheard the phrase on the Paris streets,” Cat said disingenuously.

“I should hope so.”

“You needn’t sound so self-righteous. I may just as easily have heard the term from you,
Monsieur Ruin
. You aren’t very good company for a virtuous woman to keep.” She tapped his chest with her forefinger.

The teasing light dimmed in his eyes.

Something had gone badly awry. Her attempts to draw him into a bit of wordplay had failed.

“You are, as always, correct. It was a bit of a farce I was attempting to divert you with. Lessons in unimpeachable behavior given by the crown prince of degeneracy.”

She had not realized that her careless words could wound him. But it was there, a shadow of pain hidden in his smile. She reached out a hand.

“Thomas, I did not mean what you think. You aren’t like that. You are so much more than that. So much better.”

He stared at her, his mind finally seeing what should have been blindingly apparent. And understanding was like a curse. Cat’s near miraculous acceptance of his debauched past, the way she ignored that despicable scene with Daphne, the blushing allusion to his foreign intrigues and his “necessary role”; it all made a sort of bitter sense. She had made him into some sort of hero! She had sanitized his past, carefully constructing illusions to account for the depravity.

God
, he thought humorlessly,
such an imagination might even be able to account for Mariette Leons’s little son.
It was a pity he had to punish such an achievement.

He did not want her sympathy, or the ridiculous, maddening fantasy she was trying to erect about him. He wanted her to see him as he was. He did not want her to make him into some misunderstood paragon on a pedestal. He had no head for heights.

And so, his gaze locked on hers, his arms held rigidly at his sides so they mightn’t betray him by gathering her to him, he said, “You are correct. I am unfit company for young girls. Happily, I favor women. The titter of untried chits is quaint, but I appreciate a great deal more variety, especially amongst those intimate sounds women make.”

Each word was enunciated calmly, his casual tone at variance with his erect stance as he awaited her inevitable reaction.

“Thomas, no,” she said, so softly he could just hear the denial. A denial of his past. Of him. She would detest him if she fully understood. Darkness flowered inside him.

“Oh, yes, Cat. Yes. Did you think because I played at being a rustic, all the stories were just rumors? Society might embellish a few details, but embellishments do not negate fact.”

“Don’t,” she said.

He drew his breath in deeply through his nostrils. She didn’t even want to hear that small truth about him. The darkness expanded.

Each “no” she said was a toll, knelling the death of his too fervent hopes, his too impossible dreams, goading the blackness, forcing him to continue. Each “no” built higher the already unscalable wall that separated them, the wall he had been futilely hammering against. Better to kill his hope now, even if it meant destroying her pretty little illusion. At least, if nothing else, they would have honesty between them.

“Do you know why I was recruited to serve His Majesty in France? It really is an amusing, if naughty, anecdote. But you have chosen to embrace the slightly outré in your role as temptress and should hear it. No, I insist. It will further your instruction.

“I didn’t quit society, Cat. Nor were any doors closed to me. I am, for all my sins, discreet. No, Cat. I chose to leave London society because it did not allow me to—how shall I put this?—explore my most base impulses. ’Twas too restrictive by half. Yes, Cat, the netherworld of the ton did not offer me the recreation I sought.” The words were choked from him. His voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper.

“Thomas, don’t—”

“Don’t? But, Cat!” A horrible parody of amusement issued from his mouth. “My dearest! Best beloved! That’s just it. I
did
. I was bored. Don’t stop me, Cat; the story is just getting good.”

Cat had reached out a hand to arrest Thomas’s recitation. He shook it off. He didn’t have to do this; to try and shock her, repulse her, warn her. She loved him just as fervently as she hated his past. Hated everything he’d done, every horror he had witnessed. But only because it had wounded him so deeply and had injured his soul so grievously.

She had to make him understand, make him stop hurting himself so much. Proud Thomas. Worldly, sophisticated Thomas, wanting forgiveness and unable to receive it. He would laugh at her if she were to suggest he was his harshest judge. His only judge.

He fixed his gaze over her head, taking her silence for shock. “I went to France. I had spent enough time in so many, varied beds in France that, coupled with a natural aptitude for languages, I had grown more than proficient with any number of dialects. I had great fun eluding Napoleon’s agents. That’s when Colonel Seward approached me. Such God-given talents mustn’t be allowed to go to waste.

“Isn’t it a quiz, Cat, my angel? It appears that uncurbed promiscuity recommends one as a spy. That’s what I was, a spy. What, nothing to say? Let me finish. Do you know what a spy does, Cat? He uses people. He wheedles information from them. He works on their weaknesses and their secret vices and gets information from them. He exploits them. I was very good at it.”

He was talking about Daphne Bernard. He had to be. Cat seized on the memory of Daphne’s avaricious eyes, her hand grabbing the paste pendant. Desperately she sought a way to combat his self-loathing.

“Women like Daphne Bernard are not innocent victims. They make choices. They know what they are doing.”

“Daphne Bernard?” Thomas frowned, looking befuddled for a second. “Ah, yes, Daphne. True, she knows what she’s about. But what about women like Mariette Leons?”

“Who?” Cat whispered.

“Mariette Leons. The pretty young wife of a deputy in Napoleon’s cabinet. An ambitious man, André Leons. Ambitious and stupid. He neglected his wife and little son. He never paid attention to them unless it was to boast of his wife’s pedigree. The rest of his time he spent currying favor with his superiors.”

Thomas stared at her, haunted. Cat knew he wasn’t seeing her then. He was seeing another woman, a specter from his past. She held her breath.

“I saw I could make use of this most fortuitous situation. I paid her court. She was so young, Cat. Not much older than you. She tried so hard to be a respectable, virtuous wife. But I couldn’t have that now, could I? I hounded her. I pursued her. I pushed, and pleaded, and pressed until I finally wore her down.

“She agreed to meet me at a park, early in the morning. To avert any suspicions, she brought her son, Emile. I was angry she’d brought the lad. He was young. Three, I believe.” Thomas’s voice was soft. He lifted his hand to brush a lock of hair from Cat’s face. The gesture was distracted, automatic. His hand shook.

“We sat on a bench surrounded by a nice, thick screen of bushes, and I proceeded to seduce her. She was excited, nervous, and I was determined to win a pledge from her that she would meet me in my rooms later. Then I heard horses on the bridle path. An early morning race. I looked around and noticed the boy was gone. And I knew.

“I tore through the hedge. I ran faster than I had ever run and I was still too late. But not too late to see him. He was playing in the path where it curved sharply around a bend. I would like to blame the riders, but I can’t. There is no way they could possibly have seen him. He died instantly.”