Joanna Bourne: The Forbidden Rose

He shifted back farther. “I didn’t expect to find anyone. In the village, they say it’s deserted. What are you doing here?”

“That is not letting me go.” She looked at the scar on his face and away, quickly. “If you are going to not hurt me, you may do it at a greater distance. You are very heavy.”

He could get to like this woman.

He rolled to the side and got up to his knees. He didn’t need to keep hold of her. He could snag her if she tried to run.

“That is somewhat better.” Her voice shook. “Nonetheless, I would prefer more space between us. The space of an entire stable perhaps.”

Oh yes, he could like her very much. “Sit up and talk to me. Who are you? Why were you spying on me?”

She pushed herself upward and began tucking her fichu in at her neckline, covering up. “I was not spying. I was avoiding you. There is a significant difference.”

Her accent was the Paris of coffeehouses and boulevards and salons. No trace of the Normandy patois. This wasn’t a fancy lady’s maid or the bailiff’s wife. He’d netted himself the daughter of the house. De Fleurignac’s daughter.

“You’re being cautious.” She was going to lead him to her father. All he had to do was hold on to her.

Maybe what he was thinking showed. Her eyes skittered away from him. “I am wary of strangers lately.”

“And I don’t look particularly benign.” He ran his thumbnail down the scar on his cheek. His masterpiece of a scar. He’d be a nightmare to a woman, alone, in a deserted stable. “Not pretty, is it?”

Fear shifted behind her eyes. That would be one more affront to this woman’s dignity, that she couldn’t keep herself from being afraid of him.

“It is not pretty.” This time, she looked steadily at his face. “But also not a countenance to stop the hens from laying. One sees worse in any village. You need not feel slighted because you lack beauty. I hid from you before I saw your face.”

“That’s putting me in my place.” He leaned back on his heels. “I don’t look like much, but I’m respectable, back at home.”

“When you are at home, perhaps you do not chase women and fling them to the ground like so many sacks of meal.” She pulled her knees up and twitched at her skirt to cover her ankles. A graceful, lovely little gesture. The muddy dress could have been silk brocade at Versailles. “At home, perhaps, you introduce yourself before you assault women.”

“I don’t assault women at all, generally speaking. I’m Guillaume LeBreton, once of Brittany, living in Paris now. I’m not the one sneaking around, spying and biting all and sundry, now am I? Who are you?”

She drew a deep breath. Everybody drew in a deep breath before they started telling lies. “I am Margaret Duncan, dame de compagnie to Mademoiselle de Fleurignac.”

“You’re English, then.”

“Scots.”

If she was Scots, he was Robert the Bruce. “You’re a long way from home, Maggie Duncan.”

“On the contrary. France is my home. My family lives in Arles. My father is a colonel of infantry.”

France was full of the red-headed grandchildren of men who’d followed the Stuart king into exile. A good many of them were in the French army. But that wide and witchy mouth didn’t come from Scotland. She was pure French.

She looked to the window of the stable and beyond, to the shell of the chateau. “Mademoiselle escaped. I was left behind to hold this delightful conversation with you.”

Just a dish full of cleverness, this Maggie.

IT WOULD BE POINTLESS BEYOND MEASURE TO KICK at this walking monolith, so Marguerite did not. She would find a way to checkmate him, eventually.

Or he would kill her. He could do that at any time. He need only choose among several methods and get on with it.

Monsieur LeBreton pulled her to her feet. He took the letter opener from the straw and studied it on both sides before he slipped it into a place inside his jacket. He then suggested, by his hand upon her arm, that she accompany him out the door of the stable, into the wide-spaced drops of rain. He was not cruel or hurtful about it, but he was very determined. It was like being carried off by a huge bird of prey that was on its best behavior. A roc perhaps, as in the fable of Sinbad. One does not discuss alternatives with a roc.

She was not to be abused and strangled in the open air of the garden, it seemed. He dragged her to the greater discretion of the orangerie.

Her journey across the courtyard concerned itself with small practicalities. She hooked her toes into the sabots so she wouldn’t lose them. If she was not to be killed, she would need her shoes.

“Adrian,” LeBreton called. “We have a guest.”

The servant boy stepped from between white planters and disheveled palm trees. He was dark and lithe and sullen, grumpy as a genie called forth by an impatient magician. He looked unsurprised to see his master with an unwilling woman in tow. This was probably not a good sign.

LeBreton remained a pace behind her while the boy swept glass from the tiles with a bundle of palm fronds, limping a little as he went about the work. He was a handsome boy, unlike his master who was ugly as several sorts of sin, in all of which he was doubtless proficient.

When a space was clear, LeBreton took his coat off and swirled it down on the tiles at her feet. There was a story . . . One of the courtiers of the old English queen had spread his cloak upon the dirt of the street for the queen to walk upon, a century and more ago. The queen was Elizabeth. She did not remember the name of the courtier.

“Sit. Don’t faint.” LeBreton pushed at her shoulders and she sat with a thump. She did not know why he bothered to give orders, if he was going to shove at her anyway.

Fear sustains one for a time, but it is a false friend. It departs, taking all strength with it. A chill spread along her skin. The edges of her sight darkened. The shush of the makeshift broom and the scratch of tumbling glass became distant. She felt as if she were falling into a dream. Not a good dream.

She had sent men and women of La Flèche into infinite risk, telling them to be strong and clever. She had promised that one may endure anything.

Now it was her turn to discover the truth of this.

LeBreton’s coat was large, as one would expect. It was a brown so dark it became black in this dim light, lined with the reddish brown of fallen oak leaves. She sat in the middle of it like a frog on a lily pad, surrounded by a desolation that had once been a garden, and shivered.

“There’s no use being afraid,” he said. “No need for it either. I told you that.” His hand opened, as if he might reach out and touch her.

She flinched. Just a little, but he’d seen it. “I would like to leave now.”

“You been hiding here since they burned the house, haven’t you? I don’t blame you for being scared. There’s packs of scavengers loose these days. Deserters. Outright bandits. You’re damned lucky it was me that came along.”

“I am properly grateful.”

“No. You’re terrified of me. I’ll fix that in a while. Stay where you are.” Perhaps his words were meant to be reassuring. If so, they did not work.

She was left alone to consider the matter of who Monsieur LeBreton was, who spoke like a villager of Brittany and pretended to be a simple man when he was not in the least simple, and why he had come to peer and poke around her chateau, not looting, and what she should do about all this.

If she tried to run, there’d be another demonstration that he was larger than she was, and faster. She would sneak away when it was dark. Not now. Not yet.

Wind, heavy with mist, blew in steadily from the west. Her skin prickled into little bumps. Hunger twisted in her stomach like a live thing. If she had killed the rabbit, like a sensible woman, and taken it into the woods to cook, she would not have met Monsieur LeBreton and she would not be in this situation. Jean-Paul always says I would get us all killed, being impractical.