Scars of Betrayal Read online

  The scent of a man who could ruin her.

  As the skin at her neck smarted beneath the heavy silk swathe of her gown, Cassie longed to take off her clothes and walk into the shallow pool at Avalon. Her mother’s pool, Alysa’s gown still upon the hook and her beads draped across a single gold-leafed chair. Papa had insisted on them staying.

  ‘Lord Lindsay has only recently returned to the social scene, but I have heard tales about him.’ Maureen watched her sister carefully, and Cassie knew that she was curious.

  ‘Tales?’

  ‘He is said to have spent some time in France. You did not meet him there, did you? I gained the impression he knew you.’

  Cassandra shook her head, the truth too terrible to speak of, and she pulled the jacket in tighter.

  He had remembered her, she knew he had, and under the smile she wore to keep Maureen’s avid curiosity at bay she also knew she must stay as far from him as possible.

  When the lights of Avalon came into view she was pleased to see them.

  * * *

  Nathaniel Lindsay watched the house through the night, the moon upon its burnished roof outlining the gables and the attics.

  The Gothic style here in London. Even the trees had taken their cue from the stark outline of the building and dropped some of their leaves as though it were already winter.

  He should not be here, of course, but memory had made him come, the calm treachery of Sandrine’s voice in Perpignan as she had dispatched him into hell.

  ‘I barely know him, but he is a soldier of France, so better to leave him alive. But do as you will, I really don’t care.’

  Swearing, he turned away, but not before the pale outline of a figure holding a candle moved through the second floor, down the stairs and out on to the porch, peering through the black of night.

  There was no way she could have seen him, tucked into the shadow of a brick wall. But for a second before she blew out the flame the world seemed bathed in a daylight born from the candle, and she looked right into the heart of him.

  Then there was only darkness and she was gone.

  Sometimes his world disgorged ghosts from the past, but never ones as worrying as Sandrine Mercier. He’d been twenty when he had entered the heady enclave of espionage, his grandfather’s distant demeanour a catalyst for him to become part of a close group of men who worked for the British Service.

  His friend, Stephen Hawkhurst, had already been involved and when Nathaniel’s grandfather, the Earl of St Auburn, had ranted and raved about his uselessness as the only son and heir, Nathaniel had joined as well.

  Determining the likelihood of the rumoured marriages between the Spanish and French crowns had bought Nat into France, his expertise in both languages allowing him an easy access to the higher and lower echelons of its society.

  The ties that were being forged between Britain and France were becoming strained, leaving a climate of suspicion and fear in their wake. A united block would render England isolated and make the battle for the control of Europe all that much harder to fight.

  Nathaniel’s mission had been to test the waters, so to speak, and to liaise with the handful of British agents who had been assimilated into the French way of life, keeping an eye on the workings of a political ally who was hard to trust.

  Determining the likelihood of such an alliance had taken him to the court of Madrid. Returning across the Pyrenees to make his way up into Paris, he had been alarmed at the murder of one of his agents whilst on the road to Bayonne. Finding those culpable had led him into an enclave of French bandits near Lourdes.

  And it was here he had met Sandrine.

  * * *

  Cassandra knew he was there, quiet and hidden in the night. It had been the same at Nay, when in the chaos the spaces around him had been full of a certain resolve, menacing and dangerous, the last afternoon light glinting in the dark of his hair as he had taken apart the minions of Anton Baudoin.

  She shivered at the name and thought of Celeste. A week sooner and her cousin might have lived as well, might have been taken too, through the long night and back into warmth. She did not know Lord Lindsay was an Englishman then, dressed in the trousers of a peasant, skin sliced with the marks of war. The French bastards had not known it either, his accent from the warmer climate of the south and the musical lilt of a Provençal childhood masking all that he was.

  Nathanael. He had named himself such. Monsieur Nathanael Colbert. At least part of his name had been true. His hands had been harder then, marked with the calluses of a labouring man and none of the softer lord on show. He still wore the same ring though, a gold chevron against blue, on the fourth finger of his right hand.

  A movement behind made her turn.

  ‘Ma’am, Katie is crying and Elizabeth cannot make her stop.’

  One of the Northrup maids stood in the doorway, a heavy frown evident, and, forcing all the thoughts from her mind, Cassie hurried inside.

  Tonight, chaos felt close and Lord Lindsay was a large part of the reason. She understood that with a heartfelt clarity as the cries of the girl took Cassie from her revelries.

  Elizabeth, her maid, was in the annex at the rear of the house, the place used when women needed a bed for a night or two before being rehomed elsewhere. She was bathing the burns on thin legs, angry red scarring beneath the soft brush of cotton; another small casualty owing her injuries to London’s underbelly of child trading.

  ‘Did you make certain your hands were clean, Lizzie, before you touched the wounds?’

  ‘I did, ma’am.’

  ‘And you used the lime solution?’

  ‘Just as you told me, ma’am.’

  The smell of it was still in the air, sharp and strong, crawling into all the corners of the room. Alysa, Cassie’s French mother, had always been a vehement supporter of cleanliness when dealing with sickness, and such teachings were ingrained within Cassie.

  Soaping up her hands, she dried them and felt the child’s forehead. Fever was settling in, the flush in Katie’s cheeks ruddy and marked. Removing a clean apron from a hook by the door, Cassie put it on and went to stand beside Katie, the folds of the child’s skin weeping and swollen. Carefully Cassie took plump shards of green from her medical cabinet and squeezed the slime into a pestle and mortar before spitting into the mixture. Mama had shown her this and the procedure took her mind back unwillingly into a different time and place.

  She had been almost eighteen years old, still a girl, still hopeful, still imbued with the possibilities of life.

  Completely foolish.

  Utterly naive.

  And painfully heartsick from the guilt of her mother’s death.

  Chapter Two

  Nay, Languedoc-Roussillon, France—October 1846

  The stranger had forced himself into stillness. She could see it as he stood, his heart and breath calmed by pure will-power as he raised his blade and stepped forward.

  So many were dead or dying; such a little space of time between the living and the departed and Cassandra expected that she would be next.

  A knife she had retrieved from the ground felt solid in her fist and the wind was behind her. Left handed. Always an advantage. But the rain made steel slippery as he parried and the mud under her feet finished the job. As she fell her hat spun off into the grey and her plait unfolded into silence. She saw the disbelief in his eyes, the hesitation and the puzzlement, his knife angling to miss her slender neck, pale against all else that was not.

  The shot behind sounded loud, too loud, and she could smell the flare of powder for just a second before he fell, flesh punched with lead.

  He could have killed her easily, she thought, as she scrambled up and snatched back her cap, angry with herself for taking another look at
his face.

  Mud could not mask the beauty of him, nor could the pallor of death. She wished he might have been old and ugly, a man to forget after a second of seeing, but his lips were full and his lashes were long and in his cheek she could see the dent of a dimple.

  A man who would not bring his blade in battle through the neck of a woman? Even a fallen one such as she? The shame in her budded against the futility of his gesture and she went to turn away. Once she might have cared more, might have wept for such a loss of life and beauty and goodness. But not now.

  The movement of his hand astonished her.

  ‘He is alive.’ Even as she spoke she wished she had not.

  ‘Kill the bastard, then. Finish him off.’

  Her fingers felt for a pulse, strong against the beat of time, blood still coursing through a body marked with wounds. Raising the knife, she caught the interest of Baudoin behind and, moving to block his view, brought the blade down hard. The earth jarred her wrist through the thin woollen edge of his jacket and she almost cried out, but didn’t.

  ‘Take your chances.’ Whispered beneath her breath, beneath the wind and the rain and the grey empty nothingness. Tonight it would snow. He would not stand a hope. Cleaning the knife against her breeches, she stood.

  ‘You did well, ma chère.’ Baudoin moved forward to cradle the curve of her chest, and the same anger that had been her companion for all of the last months tasted bitter in her mouth.

  She knew what would come next by the flare in his eyes, knew it the moment he hit her, his sex hardened by death, blood and fear, but he had forgotten the knife in her palm and in his haste had left her fighting arm free.

  A mistake. She used the brutality of his ardour as he took her to the ground, the blade slipping through the space between his ribs to enter his heart and when she rolled him off her into the mud and stood, she stomped down hard upon his fingers.

  ‘For Celeste.’ She barely recognised her voice and made an effort to tether in her panic. The snow would help her, she was sure of it; tracks could be hidden beneath the white and the winter was only just beginning.

  ‘And...for you, too.’ The sound was quiet at first, almost gone in the high keening of wind, a whisper through great pain and much effort.

  Her assailant, his grey eyes bloodshot and sweat on his brow underpinning more extensive injuries. When he heaved himself up, she saw he was a big man, the muscle in his arms pressed tight against the fabric of his jacket.

  ‘You killed him too cleanly, mademoiselle.’ Not a compliment either as he glanced at Anton Baudoin. ‘I would have made him suffer.’

  He knew how much she had hated him, the prick of pity behind his eyes inflating her fury. No man would ever hold such power over her again.

  ‘Here.’ He held out a silver flask, the stopper emblazoned with a crest. ‘Drink this. It will help.’

  She meant to push it back at him, refusal a new capacity, but sense kept her quiet. Half a dozen days by foot to safety through mountainous land she held no measure of. Fools would perish and she was not a fool.

  The spirits were warm, slung as the metal had been against his skin. The crest surprised her. Had he stolen it in some other skirmish? She could feel the unfamiliar fire of the whisky burn right down into her stomach.

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘A bandit. His name was Anton Baudoin.’

  ‘And these others?’

  ‘His men.’

  ‘You were alone with them?’ Now his eyes only held the savage gleam of anger. For him or for her, she could not tell. Against the backdrop of a storm he looked far more dangerous than any man she had ever seen.

  As if he could read her mind, he spoke. ‘Stop shaking. I don’t rape young girls.’

  ‘But you often kill men?’

  At that, he smiled. ‘Killing is easy. It’s the living that’s difficult.’

  Shock overtook her, all the horror of the past minutes and months robbing her of breath and sense. She was a murderer. She was a murderer with no place to run to and no hope at safety.

  He was wrong. Everything was difficult. Life was humiliating, exhausting and shameful. And now she was bound for hell.

  The tall stranger took a deep swallow from the flask before replacing the lid. Then he laid his jacket on the ground, raising his shirt to see the damage. Blood dripped through a tear in the flesh above his hipbone. Baudoin’s shot, she thought. It had only just missed killing him. With much care he stooped and cut a wide swathe of fabric from the shirttails of one of the dead men, slicing it into long ribbons of white.

  Bandages. He had tied them together with intricate knots in seconds and without pausing began to wind the length tightly around his middle. She knew it must have hurt him to do so, but not in an expression, word or gesture did he allow her the knowledge of that, simply collecting his clothes on finishing and shrugging back into them.

  Then he disappeared into the house behind, and she could hear things being pulled this way and that, the sound of crashing furniture and upturned drawers. He was looking for something, she was sure of it, though for the life of her she could not imagine what it might be. Money? Weapons?

  A few moments later and he was back again, empty-handed.

  ‘I am heading for Perpignan if you want to come.’ Tucking a gun and powders into his belt, he repositioned his knife into a sheath of leather. Already the night was coming down upon them and the trees around the clearing seemed darker and more forbidding. The cart he had used to inveigle his way into the compound stood a little way off, the wares he plied meagre: pots, pans and rolls of fabric amidst sacks of flour and sugar.

  She had no idea as to who he was or what he was or why he was in Nay. He could be worse than any man here ever had been or he could be like her uncle and father, honourable and decent.

  A leaf fell before her, twirling in the breeze.

  If it rests on its top, I will not go with him, she thought, even as the veins of the underside stilled in the mud. And if he insists that I accompany him, I will strike out the other way.

  But he only turned into the line of bushes behind and melted into green, his cart gouging trails in the mud.

  A solid indication of direction, she thought, like a sign or a portent or an omen of safety. Gathering up her small bundle of things, she followed him into the gloom.

  * * *

  There was no simple way to tie a neckcloth, Nathaniel thought, no easy shortcut that might allow him the time for another drink before he went out. Already the clock showed ten, and Hawk would be waiting. Catching sight of his reflection in the mirror, he frowned.

  His valet had outdone himself with tonight’s dress, the dizzying hues of his waistcoat clashing with the coloured silk of his cravat; a fashionable man with nothing else to occupy his mind save entertainment. People dropped their guards around men such as this. His fingers tightened against the ebony of his cane and he felt for the catch hidden beneath the rim at the back as he walked downstairs.

  He had returned from France in the early months of 1847 more damaged than he allowed others to know and had subsequently been attached to the London office. For a while the change had been just what he needed, the small problems of wayward politicians or corrupt businessmen an easy task to deal with after the mayhem of Europe.

  Such work barely touched him. It was simple to shadow the unscrupulous and bring them to the notice of the law, the degenerate fraudsters and those who operated outside justice eff
ortlessly discovered.

  Aye, he thought. He could have done the work with his hands tied and a blindfold on until a month ago when two women had been dragged from the Thames with their throats cut. Young women and both dressed well.

  No one had known them. No one had missed them. No anxious family member had contacted the police. It was as though they had come into the river without a past and through the teeming throng of humanity around the docklands without a footprint.

  The only clue Nat had been able to garner was from an urchin who had sworn he had seen a toff wiping blood from a blade beside the St Katharine Docks. A tall and well-dressed man, the boy had said, before scurrying off into the narrow backstreets.

  Stephen Hawkhurst had been asked to look into the case as well, and the Venus Club rooms five roads away towards the city had caught their attention.

  ‘The members meet here every few weeks. They are gentlemen mostly with a great appetite for the opposite sex. By all accounts they pay for dancers and singers and other women who think nothing of shedding their clothes for entertainment.’

  ‘So it could be one of them is using the club for more dubious pursuits,’ Nat expanded. ‘There are a number of men whose names and faces I recognise.’

  He had kept a close eye on the comings and goings from the club across the past weeks, astonished at the numerous alliances taking place. ‘Any accusations would need to be carefully handled, though, for some there have genuine political and social standing.’

  ‘Hard to get closer without causing comment, you mean?’ Stephen questioned.

  ‘Exactly. But if we joined we could blend in.’

  Stephen had not believed him serious. ‘I don’t think belonging to the ranks of the Venus Club is the sort of distinction one would want to be known for.’

  ‘It’s a place hiding secrets, Hawk, and privacy is highly valued.’

  ‘Well, I’m not taking part in any initiation or rites of passage.’