Sophia James: Scars of Betrayal

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.