The Misguided Matchmaker (6 page)

Tristan
paid but token heed to Madelaine Harcourt’s dire warning. In truth, he felt
almost giddy with relief that he’d managed to keep from turning into a babbling
idiot back in those beastly
traboules,
and even more relieved that the
balance of their journey could be accomplished under the open sky.

Shifting
the knapsack to a more comfortable position, he prepared to follow her down the
shadowed alleyway, but not before he caught a glimpse of the first candlelit
loom and the nocturnal weaver who labored at it.

Click,
clack, bang…click,
clack
, bang. Over and over the
white-haired
canut
threw his shuttle—as intent on his work as
Rumpelstilskin, the evil dwarf of the German folktale Tristan had learned as a
child at Lady Ursula’s knee. Never again would he wear a silk shirt without
remembering the eerie sight.

Past
one open doorway after another, his slender, boyish-looking guide slipped, as
silent as the shadows that concealed her. Past one open doorway after another,
Tristan followed her, careful to keep the flickering candle within the lantern
hidden from view beneath her jacket.

He
had just begun to congratulate himself on making it through this den of
Bonapartists without mishap when they came to an area where two huge rolling
carts laden with hundreds of ells of silk fabric blocked the passageway outside
one of the apartments.

There
was nothing for it but to move one of the carts enough to give them room to
squeeze past the doorway. Handing over the lantern, Tristan bent his shoulder
to the task. Fortunately, the cart rolled easily despite its size;
unfortunately the ancient wood wheels creaked loudly in protest.

The
stocky, middle-aged
canut
instantly stilled his spindle and looked up
from his loom, staring mole-like into the darkened alley. Madelaine Harcourt
flattened herself against the stone wall, her eyes wide with terror in the
shifting shadows, and Tristan drew his pistol, fervently praying he wouldn’t be
forced to use it.

A
terrible, waiting silence ensued. Tristan could see the horror etched on his
young companion’s face as she stared at the lethal weapon in his hand, could
sense her quick intake of breath when he cocked it and raised it to the ready.
Then, just when his nerves were stretched to the breaking point, the weaver
gave a typical Gallic shrug and returned to his work—and the two fugitives
slipped silently past his doorway and continued their flight to safety.

“One
more potential disaster circumvented,” Tristan whispered, returning the
pepperbox pistol to the pocket of his cassock. Madelaine Harcourt didn’t answer
him—didn’t so much as glance his way—and a new weariness engulfed Tristan, born
of the knowledge that she now found him more fearful than the enemy they were
trying to elude.

He
was in no mood to pacify a squeamish female. He had been awake since dawn and
it must be near that hour again. His head was pounding, his feet dragging, and
the hellish trip through the
traboules
had sorely tested his belief in
his own manhood.

To
add to his dilemma, much as he hated to admit it, his admiration for the young
woman in his care was growing by leaps and bounds. In the past few hours, she
had lost everything in life she held dear. Any other female he knew would have
been utterly devastated by the tragedies she had faced. Instead she seemed to
gain in courage and stamina with every passing minute—two qualities he himself
had been hard put to equal. In truth, he was beginning wonder who was rescuing
whom in this bizarre partnership they’d formed.

At
long last they left the lofts of the silk weavers behind and found themselves
standing on the bank of the Saône River just as the first pink-hued rays of the
rising sun tinged the horizon. The acrid smell of smoke filled Tristan’s
nostrils. Behind him, the sky glowed red from the fires consuming the homes of
Lyon’s few remaining Royalists; before him lay the grove of trees, just as
Forli had described it.

As
he listened, a cheer rose from hundreds of throats. He heard snatches of the
Marseillaise and the voices of men chanting names like Friedland, Marengo,
Austerlitz, and other battles fought in the name of the emperor, and he knew
that, as predicted, Lyon had fallen to General Cambronne’s
grognards
.

Madelaine
Harcourt covered her eyes in a gesture of despair. Instinctively, he reached
out to her, offering the meager comfort of one stranger to another. “Unless my
eyes deceive me, Forli’s horse and carriage awaits us in the grove yonder,” he
said to divert her attention from the happenings in the city.

She
lowered her hands and raised her head to gaze where he directed. At the same
moment, a lone figure detached itself from a stand of trees across the river
and waved in their direction. Tristan pointed him out to the woman beside him.
“It’s Forli, and devil take it, what is that he’s leading? A donkey? A cow?”

“Stolen
no doubt,” Madelaine Harcourt managed a ghost of a smile. “You were right,
monsieur. I need not have worried about your little friend. But how will he
join us when he is on the other side of the river?”

“He
won’t. We are heading north to Paris and eventually Calais. He is going south
to Tuscany.”

“There
will just be the two of us from now on?”

Tristan
nodded. “Just the two of us. And an actual horse, I see now, that looks like a
farmer’s nightmare.”

She
stared at him with wary, amber eyes that dominated her pale, exhausted face. As
he watched, she swayed on her feet like a willow caught in a high wind.

“Hold
on, Maddy,” he exclaimed, slipping his arm around her waist. Half lifting, half
dragging her, he strode forward into the trees to the waiting cabriolet.

“Maddy,”
she echoed, rubbing her eyes like a sleepy child. “You called me Maddy. No one
has called me that in fifteen years. No one except father has ever called me
that.”

Tristan
smiled. “It is what I shall call you from now on. Since it is not a name any
Frenchman would have heard, it could just as well be that of a boy as a girl.”
He busied himself blowing out the candle and stowing the lantern behind the
seat. “And much as it may gall you, you’d best begin call me Father Tristan if
we’re to carry off the disguise.”

She
leaned against the side of the carriage. “I should call you what?” Her voice
slurred and her head dropped forward as if her neck was too fragile to hold it
up.

Tristan
caught her before she could fall. She felt boneless and fragile in his arms and
not at all like the young boy
she was
pretending to
be.

“Father
Tristan,” he repeated, placing her gently on the seat of the cabriolet. He
watched her curl her long legs beneath her and rest her pale cheek against the
black leather seat cushion. “Did you hear me, Maddy?”

She
didn’t answer. Her eyes were closed, her mouth softly open, her breath slow and
deep. His stalwart young traveling companion was sound asleep.

Maddy
dreamed of running through endless dark
traboules
, chased by a
black-haired man with strange, pale eyes who threatened her with a shining
silver pistol…and woke to find herself curled up on the seat of a carriage
which was lumbering along a country road.
The top was down; the sun warm on her face, and, good heavens, her head was on
the shoulder of the very man who had dominated her nightmare.

She
sat up abruptly, planted her feet firmly on the floorboard, and looked about
her. “
Nom de Dieu
, where are we?”

“On
the road to Roanne. Well on the road, I might add. You have been sleeping for
hours.” The Englishman looked more than ever a minion of the devil with his
unruly black hair tossed by the wind and a day’s growth of beard darkening his
lean face.

He
turned his head and studied her with eyes that made a mockery of the priest’s
cassock covering his powerful body. “Tell me, Maddy, how are you as a whip?”

“A
whip? I do not know the term, monsieur.”

“Can
you handle the reins? We are still too close to Lyon to risk stopping, but I am
badly in need of sleep.”

Madelaine
stared at him, aghast? “I have never ‘handled the reins,’ monsieur. It is not a
skill a lady of my station would be expected to learn.”

“Maybe
not in Lyon, but it’s all the crack in London.” He shrugged. “Well, no time
like the present to learn. This old dobbin Forli provided us with is docile as
a milk cow.”

He
passed her the reins. “It’s simple really. Pull on the right rein if you want
him to go right; pull on the left if you want him to go left. Pull on both and
say ‘whoa’ if you want him to stop.”

Without
further ado, he slumped down in the seat beside her, closed his eyes and
promptly fell asleep.

Heart
pounding, Maddy grasped the reins. Fortunately, the road ahead was straight as
a lance, and the horse plodded forward down the center of it with little or no
guidance from her.

By
the end of the first mile, she’d come to the conclusion Monsieur Thibault had
spoken the truth; handling the reins for the old dobbin required nothing more
than a firm hand and a bit of common sense. By the end of the next mile, she
even felt confident enough to relax her hold and let the blood flow back into
her cramped fingers.

A
serious mistake. A small brown hare chose that very instant to hop onto the
road directly in the path of the dobbin’s hooves. With a startled cry,
Madelaine yanked on the reins. The old horse stopped dead in its tracks, and
Monsieur
le Lapin
, having safely reached his destination, wriggled his nose
indignantly, has if to say, “Did you think a strong, young hare could not
outrun a plodding old dobbin?” Then, with a final twitch of his floppy ears, he
disappeared into the hedgerow.

She
could tell by the way the old dobbin snorted, he was not the least bit happy
about the rough way she’d handled his reins. “I am sorry,
Monsieur le Cheval
,”
she said contritely. “I am new at this business. I did not mean to yank your
teeth from your mouth, and I swear it will never happen again. You may proceed
on your way now.”

The
horse stood rooted to the spot.

Madelaine
tried coaxing in the sweetest voice she could manage, “
S’il vous plaît,
Monsieur le Cheval
, it would be wise to keep moving with the Corsican so
close behind us.”

The
horse snorted and flicked his ears, but his hooves remained firmly planted.

Though
she felt certain the old dobbin was of French origin, she tried coaxing in
English and Italian, even German, just in case.

Nothing
happened.

It
was obvious the stubborn nag would never move a muscle until she gave him the
proper signal. But the stupid Englishman had only told her how to stop a horse,
not how to make it start again.

Finally,
in desperation, she shook the shoulder of the man who dozed so peacefully
beside her. “Wake up, monsieur,” she cried. “I have need of you.”

His
eyes remained closed. But to her surprise, he reach up, caught her fingers and
brought them to his lips, then turned her hand and flicked his tongue across
the soft flesh of her palm, sending frissons of heat racing clear to her toes.
“Go back to sleep,
cherié
,” he purred deep in his throat. “I will
satisfy your need in the morning.”

Madelaine
snatched her hand from his. He was dreaming about a woman. Undoubtedly his
wife, since he thought they were sleeping together. Her face flamed. And even
an innocent could guess what need it was he thought she was asking him to fill.

Unconsciously,
she rubbed the spot on her palm, which still tingled from the touch of his
tongue. It had never occurred to her that this Englishman with his devil eyes
and temper to match might have a wife waiting for him back in London.

She
wondered what kind of woman would put up with the miserable crosspatch.

She
wondered what kind of woman such a care-for-nothing man would find so
desirable, he would take her to wife.

She
wondered what kind of magic that woman must know to turn the snarling tiger
into a purring pussycat.

W
ith maddening persistence, the
ceaseless clip-clop of the dobbin’s hooves punctured Tristan’s haze of
exhaustion. Even half asleep, he could tell the carriage was moving much too
slowly. What was the fool woman thinking of, meandering along this French
country road at such a place with Bonaparte and his
gronards
but a few
miles behind?

He
turned his head and tentatively opened one eye. The seat beside him was empty,
the reins looped over the frame of the carriage. Then why was the carriage
moving? Instantly alert, he shot upright and found himself staring at the back
of Maddy’s cropped curls as she walked beside the plodding horse, her hand on
the bit.

“Hell
and damnation, what are you doing?” he shouted.

She
stopped in her tracks. “I should think that would be obvious,” she said, her
voice sharp with indignation. “I am leading this miserable beast because once
he stopped, he refused to start again unless I gave him the magic signal—which
you neglected to tell me.”

“You
couldn’t figure out how to flick the reins and say ‘giddyap’?” He raised a hand
to forestall the angry reply he could see forming on her lips. “I know. I know.
A woman of your station is not expected to learn the language of a coachman.

“Get
back in the carriage,” he ordered impatiently. “We need to put some distance
between the Corsican and ourselves before the day grows any older.” He watched
her settle onto the seat and unconsciously smooth the rough fabric of her trousers
over her knees as if it were the skirt she usually wore. It would take more
than short hair and long trousers to conceal Madelaine Harcourt’s femininity.
When she was in a better mood, he would remind her of that fact.

“I
don’t suppose you’d care to explain why you issued the ‘magic signal’ that
brought the horse to stop in the first place?” He flicked the reins to start
the old dobbin off at a brisk trot.

“No.”

He
could see she was embarrassed, and in spite of himself, he felt a smile crease
his lips. “I thought not. It would be interesting, however, to learn why you
considered walking preferable to waking me.”

Two
bright spots of color bloomed in her pale cheeks. “I tried, but you would not
wake. You were dreaming.” She glanced about as if to ascertain she could not be
overheard. “Apparently about your wife.”

“My
wife?” Tristan’s normal baritone voice rose to a stunned terror. “What in God’s
name made you think I had a wife?”

Now
it was Tristan’s turn to be chagrined. He wondered what he’d been dreaming and
of whom—and what he could have said that she found so shocking. With a sinking
feeling, he recalled some of the erotic pillow talk that Minette, his longtime
mistress in Paris, had found so stimulating. Surely he hadn’t jabbered that
sort of foolishness.

“I
am not married,” he said tersely, and let her draw her own conclusions—which he
could see she did, from the stiff, disapproving set of her mouth. Devil take
it, let the prissy creature make of it what she wished. He was used to dealing
with women of experience, not innocent young females who took umbrage at
everything a man said, even if he was asleep when he said it.

They
rode in strained silence for the next hour, neither willing to be the first to
speak, until Tristan belatedly realized the dobbin was long overdue for a rest.
“This old fellow needs water and sustenance, and so do we,” he said curtly. “I,
for one, cannot remember my last meal.”

He
brought the carriage to a stop at the edge of a small apple orchard bordering a
shallow stream. Quickly, he stepped down, adjusted the annoying cassock that
had twisted around his long legs, and released the horse from its harness.
“I’ll lead him down to the water if you’ll be good enough to carry the
knapsack,” he called over his shoulder.

Maddy
didn’t deign to answer him, but by the time he’d finished watering the horse,
she had spread out the carriage blanket on the bank of the stream and laid out
a loaf of bread and two wedges of cheese.

The
warm spring sun was at its zenith and a gentle, blossom-scented breeze rippled
the shallow, crystalline water of the stream. It was a perfect day for a
picnic—a day that brought back to Tristan memories of similar outings at
Winterhaven in years past. But then there had been laughter and chatter,
sometimes even a song or two, with Lady Sarah accompanying them on her guitar.

He
and Maddy ate in absolute silence, the only sound the whisper of the breeze
through the branches above them and the scolding of a pair of robins diverted
from the construction of their nest by the intruding humans. The peace of this
lovely spot seemed so removed from the tumult and chaos of Lyon, Tristan had to
remind himself they dared not dawdle any longer than the time it took the
ancient dobbin to recuperate.

Replete,
he stretched out on the damp, sweet-smelling grass, his hands behind his head.
His companion remained as she was, her back ramrod-straight, her face averted,
gazing across the open stretch of meadow.

Wearily,
he studied her unyielding profile. “If there is something bothering you, Maddy,
we’d best talk about it now when there’s no one to hear a conversation
ill-suited to a priest and his assistant. We have a long journey ahead of us.
It will be difficult enough without the added problem of a misunderstanding
based on something as silly as a dream I cannot even remember.”

She
turned her head and regarded him through narrowed eyes. “Your erotic dreams are
of no consequence to me,
Father Tristan
, regardless of whom they may be
about. They merely reinforce my opinion of men in general.”

“Which
apparently is rather low.” Tristan plucked a blade of grass and chewed it
thoughtfully. “How can I defend myself when I have no idea what I said that so
offended your innocent ears? I can only say that while I have never purported
to be a saint, neither am I the devil I’ve been told I so closely resemble. I
pose no threat to your virtue, Maddy, if that is what worries you.”

“What
worries me, monsieur, is that all men are such devious creatures. The only
thing I know for certain about them is that they are never what they appear to
be.” Her voice held an unmistakable bitterness. “How can I trust what you or
any other man tells me when it turns out my own grandfather has been lying to
me about my father for the past fifteen years!”

So
that was what had started all this. Tristan felt a twinge of annoyance. Why was
it women always circled an issue like hawks before they finally got around to
the crux of the problem? She had brushed off the old man’s deathbed confession
with such apparent ease. Tristan had been fooled into thinking it scarcely
registered with her. He could see now her grandfather’s perfidy had wounded her
deeply.

“Even
a total stranger could see le Comte de Navareil was a frightened old man who
held on to the one person he loved in the only way he knew how,” he said
gently. “That does not make what he did right. But frightened men and I dare
say women, too, are often driven to things they are not proud of.”

She
raised her chin in that arrogant manner he’d begun to suspect was her way of concealing
her inner feelings. “So now, after fifteen years without a single word from
him, I am to believe my father has cared about me all this time? That is asking
a great deal, monsieur.”

“I
have met Caleb Harcourt but once, when my brother, the Fifth Earl of Rand, and
I called on him at his office on the London docks. I can tell you little about
him except that he appeared genuinely anxious to have your returned to him—so
much so he was willing to go to unbelievable lengths to accomplish it.” Tristan
felt a stab of guilt at neglecting to mention the most important part of that
fateful meeting, but a promise was a promise, and Harcourt had sworn him to
secrecy about his plan to marry her to Garth as soon as she set foot in London.

“What
unbelievable lengths, mon…Father Tristan?”

“Tristan
will do when we’re alone—and that is a question only your father can answer.”

“Very
well, then answer me this, if you will. Why would an English lord be willing to
risk his life to return a merchant’s daughter to him? My mother told me in what
vast contempt the titled aristocrats of
Angleterre
hold the men of the
merchant class.”

He
had not meant to divulge anything about himself or about why he had been sent
to retrieve her. She would learn such truths soon enough once they reached
London. But with those solemn amber eyes fixed on him, he couldn’t bring
himself to lie to her.

He
pushed himself to a sitting position facing her. “To begin with, your father is
not an ordinary merchant; he is one of the wealthiest men in all of England.”

“My
father is paying you then.” She stared down her nose at him in the arrogant way
of hers. “I hope, for your sake, he is paying you well.”

“I
am not being paid,” Tristan said, barely managing to suppress his anger at her
sarcasm. “I undertook the task of delivering you to your father because he
helped my brother out of a difficult situation.”

“Your
brother, the Fifth Earl of Rand, I take it. He must have gotten himself into a
very difficult situation indeed for an English lord to risk traveling across
France in such troubled times as these simply to repay the debt owned a wealthy
merchant.”

Damn
the woman. Why couldn’t she leave well enough alone? “I am not a lord of the
realm,” he said in frozen accents. “I am merely the bastard son of the Fourth
Earl of Rand. But the countess is a generous-hearted woman who raised me as her
own, and my half-brother and sister accepted me without question—a rare thing
in the environs of the British
ton
. There is nothing I would not do for
them. Does that answer your question?”

She
shook her head. “Not entirely. You have told me your reasons for undertaking
the mission, but you have not explained why my father felt you were qualified
to do so.”

The
lady was too astute for comfort. She was not to be fobbed off with half-truths.
Hell and damnation! He might as well be honest with her. It was obvious she had
no intention of giving up until she’d pestered it out of him. With a muttered
curse, he threw caution to the winds. “Who better than an agent of the British
Foreign Office who has lived the last six years in Paris posing as a
Frenchman?”

“You
spied against France during the war?”

“Not
against France. Against the greedy Corsican who threatened to destroy all of
Europe. Surely, as a loyal Royalist, you can see the difference.”

“I
fear the distinction would have been more apparent to my grandfather,” she said
coldly. “He could condone anything that furthered the cause of the Bourbons.”

“But
I take it you cannot.” A hot spurt of anger surged through Tristan at being judged
by this prissy French baggage. “I thought all you Royalists were loyal
followers if the king,” he sneered.

She
shrugged. “I very much doubt that King Louis cares any less about his own
welfare or any more about that of his subjects than does the emperor.”

“Well,
at least we agree on one thing.” He found himself amazed that a young woman
with her restrictive upbringing should be such an independent thinker.

Maddy
leaned back against the trunk of the tree beneath which she sat and studied him
with unnerving intensity. “Then why did you spy against Bonaparte?”

“Certainly
not to put Louis the Eighteenth on the throne of France. I have great respect
for both Wellington and Castlereagh, but we part company when it comes to who
should govern France. After six years of living among ordinary hard-working
Frenchmen, I am painfully aware of their deep and abiding hatred of the
Bourbons.”

“Which
is all well and good, but you still have not answered my question. Why did you
become a spy?”

Tristan
fixed his gaze on the bank of dirty gray clouds gathering on the horizon and
pondered how to answer her question without giving her an even greater disgust
of him than she already had. He did, after all, have to spend the next
fortnight as her traveling companion—and barring a miracle, the rest of his
life as her brother-in-law.

“The
fate of England was at stake,” he said finally. “It was the only way I could
use the brains God gave me to serve my country. My brother, Garth, bought his
colors in the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. That option was closed to me; the
British officer corps does not look kindly on bastards. Had I chosen the
military, I would have been relegated to the ranks of the common foot soldier,
and my patriotism did not extend to providing mindless fodder for French
cannons.”

Maddy
sensed the barely leashed anger inside this dark, intense man—anger at the
injustices heaped upon him because he was born on the wrong side of the
blanket. Logic warned her that an angry man was a dangerous man. By the same
logic, she should be trembling with fear at the thought of spending an hour
alone with Tristan Thibault, much less twenty-four hours a day for the next
fortnight. Instead, she felt a strange, inexplicable exhilaration.

She
had never before met a man who admitted to being a spy, and she was bursting
with questions she longed to ask him. “So that is why Monsieur Forli called you
the British Fox. It is your code name.”