Scars of Betrayal

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 effortlessly 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.’

Each of them had laughed.

‘Frank Booth is reported to be a member. I will ask him to sponsor us.’

A week later they were given a date, a time and a place, a small break in a case that was baffling. Girls were ruined all the time in London, for reasons of economics, for the want of food, for a roof over the head of a child born out of wedlock. But they were seldom so brutally hurt.

Sandrine. He remembered her ruined hand and the fear in her face when he had first met her.

The rage inside him began to build. Back then Cassandra Northrup had never given him any glimpse of an identity, though with each and every day in her company questions had woven their way into the little that she told him.

The first night had been the worst. She had cried behind him in small sobs, unstoppable over miles of walking in the dark. He had not helped her because he couldn’t. The wound in his side had ached like the devil, fiery-hot and prickling, and by midnight he knew that he would have to rest.

Throwing down the few things he had taken from the cart after abandoning it many miles back, he leaned against a tree, the bark of its trunk firm behind him. Already the whirling circles of giddiness threatened, the ache at his hip sending pins and needles into his chest.

The girl sat on the other side of the small clearing, tucked into a stiff and inconsolable shape.

‘You are safer than you were before. I said I would not hurt you.’ He couldn’t understand her weeping.

‘I killed a man.’

‘He was about to rape you.’ Nat’s heart sank at the implications of her guilt. God, how long had it been since he had felt anything remotely similar? He wished he had been the one to slide a knife into the French miscreant, for he would have gutted him and enjoyed watching him die. Slowly.

Her hands crossed her heart and her lips moved as if reciting a prayer.

Had the bullet wound not hurt as much he might have laughed, might have crossed the space between them and shaken her into sense. But he could only sit and watch and try to mitigate his pain.

‘I am sure that the wrath of God takes intent into account.’

‘Oh, I intended to kill him.’ Honestly said. Given back in a second and no hesitation in it.

‘I was thinking more of your assailant’s purpose. I do not think Monsieur Baudoin would have been gentle with you.’

‘Yet two wrongs do not make a right?’

He closed his eyes and felt the bloom of fatigue, irritation rising at her unreasonableness. ‘If you had not killed him, I would have. One way or another he would have been dead. If it helps, pretend I did it.’

‘Who are you?’ The green in her eyes under moonlight matched the dark of the trees. In the daylight they were bluer, changeable.

‘Nathanael Colbert. A friend.’ Barked out, none of the empathy he knew she wanted held within the word. She remained silent, a small broken shape in the gloom, tucked up against bracken, the holes in the leather soles of her shoes easily seen from this angle. ‘Why the hell were you there in the first place?’

He did not think she would answer as the wind came through into the hollow, its keening sound as plaintive as her voice.

‘They caught us a long time ago.’ He saw her counting on her fingertips as she said it, the frown upon her brow deepening. Months? Years?

‘Us?’

He had seen no other sign of captives.

‘Celeste and I.’

Hell. Another girl. ‘Where is she?’

‘Dead.’ The flat anger in her voice was cold.

‘Recently?’

She nodded, her expression gleamed in sadness. She had old bruises across her cheek and new ones on her hand. In the parting of her hair when her cap had been dislodged he had seen the opaque scar of a wound that could have so easily killed her.

As damaged as he was.

Tonight he did not have the energy to know more of her story and the thin wanness was dispiriting. If they could have a drink things would be better, but the flask he had brought with him was long since empty.

‘Can you hear that stream?’

She nodded.

‘We need water...?’

He left the words as a question. No amount of want in the world could get him standing. He had lost too much blood and he knew it.

‘Do you have the flask?’

‘Here.’

When she took it and left he closed his eyes and tried to find some balance in the silence. He wanted to tend to himself, but he would need water to do that. And fire. He wondered if the young French captive would be able to follow his instructions when she returned.

He also wondered just exactly how those at Nay had gained their information on the identity and movements of a British agent who had long been a part of the fabric of French country life.

* * *

It was quiet in the trees and all the grief of losing Celeste flooded back. Her cousin’s body rounded with child. Her eyes lifeless. The pain of it surged into Cassie’s throat, blocking breath, and she stopped to lean against a tree. The anguish of life and death. What was it the man who sat in the clearing wrapped in bandages had said?

Killing is easy. It’s the living that is difficult.

Perhaps, after all, he was right. Perhaps Celeste had known that, too, and put an end to all that she had loathed, taking the child to a place that was better but leaving her here alone.

Alone in a world where everything looked bleak. Bleaker than bleak even under the light of a small moon, the trickle of water at her feet running into the tattered remains of her boots and wetting her toes. The cold revived a little of her fight, reminded her how in the whole of those eight terrible months she had not given up, had not surrendered. She wished the stream might have been deeper so that she could have simply stripped off and washed away sin. A baptism. A renewal. A place to begin yet again and survive.

The flask in hand reminded her of purpose and she knelt to the water.

Her companion looked sick, the crusted blood beneath his nails reflected in the red upon his clothes, sodden through the layers of bandage. Without proper medicine how could he live? Water would clean the wound, but what could be done for any badness that might follow? The shape of leaves in the moonlight on the other side of the river suddenly caught her attention. Maudeline. Her mother had used this very plant in her concoctions. An astringent, she had said. A cleanser. A natural gift from the hands of a God who placed his medicines where they were most needed.

The small bank was easy to climb and, taking a handful of the plant, she stripped away the woody stems, the minty scent adding certainty to her discovery. She remembered this fresh sweet smell from Alysa’s rooms and was heartened by the fact. The work of finding enough leaves and tucking them into her pocket took all her concentration, purpose giving energy. A small absolution. A task she had done many hundreds of times under the guidance of her mother.

An anchor to the familiar amidst all that was foreign. She needed this stranger in a land she held no measure of and he needed her. An equal support. It had been so long since she had felt any such worthiness.

He was asleep when she returned, though the quiet fall of her feet woke him.

‘I have maudeline for your injury.’ Bringing out the leaves, she began to crush them between her fingers, mixing them to a paste with the water on a smooth rock she had wiped down before using. She saw how he watched her, his grey eyes never leaving the movement of her hands.

‘Are you a witch, then?’

She laughed, the sound hoarse and rough after so many months of disuse. ‘No, but Mama was often thought to be.’

Again she saw the dimple in his right cheek, the deep pucker of mirth making her smile.

‘Maudeline? I have not heard of it.’

‘Another name for it is camphor.’

He nodded and came up on to his knees, holding his head in his hands as though a headache had suddenly blossomed.

‘It hurts you?’

‘No.’ Squeezed out through pain.

When he stood she thought he looked unsteady, but she simply watched as he gathered sticks and set to making a fire. The tinder easily caught, the snake of smoke and then flame. Using the bigger pieces of branch he built it up until even from a distance she could feel the radiating warmth.

‘The tree canopy will dissipate the smoke,’ he said after a few moments. ‘The low cloud will take care of the rest.’

* * *

Half an hour later flame shadow caught at his torso as he removed his shirt, the bandages following. His wound showed shattered skin, the tell-tale red lines of inflammation already radiating.

‘Don’t touch.’ Her directive came as she saw he was about to sear the edges of skin together with a glowing stick. ‘It is my belief that dirt kills a man with more certainty than a bullet and I can tell it is infected.’

Crossing to him, she wiped her hands with the spare leaves and poured water across the sap. When she touched him she knew he had the fever. Another complication. A further problem.

‘I have been ill like this before and lived.’ He had seen her frown.

Lots of ‘befores’, she mused, lines of crossed white opaque scars all over his body. The thought made her careful.

‘You are a soldier?’

He only laughed.

Or a criminal, she thought, for what manner of man looked as he did? When he handed over the flask of water, she did not take a drink.

‘I will heat it to clean the wound. It might hurt for it has been left a while. If you had some leather to bite down upon...?’’

He broke into her offered advice. ‘I will cope.’

* * *

Stephen Hawkhurst’s voice made Nathaniel start, the echo around the marbled lobby disconcerting as all the years past rolled back into the present.

‘You look as though you have the problems of the world upon your shoulders, Nat. Still thinking of the Northrup chit, I’d be guessing: fine eyes, a fine figure and a sense of mystery. Her uncle, Reginald Northrup, will be at the Venus Club tonight. Perhaps you can find out more about her from him.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘A few years ago when I was in Paris I heard a rumour about a woman who sounded remarkably like Cassandra Northrup.’

‘What did it say?’

‘That she was kept a prisoner in southern France and that she was not released for quite some time.’

‘I see.’

‘Her rescuer was also mentioned in detail.’ The flint of gold in his friend’s eyes was telling and there was a certain question there.

‘It was you, Nat, wasn’t it? And she was one of theirs?

‘Whose?’

‘The French. One of their agents.’

Anger sliced in a quick rod of pain. ‘No, Cassandra Northrup never held loyalty to any cause save that of her own.’

‘Others here might disagree with you. She is the chairwoman of the charity Daughters of the Poor.’

‘Prostitutes?’

Hawk nodded, leaving Nat to ponder on how the circles of life turned around in strange patterns.

‘She must have been a child then, and scared. God, even now she looks young. And you got home in one piece, after all.’

One piece? How little Stephen truly knew.

Taking his hat and cloak from the doorman, Nat forced away his recollections and walked out into a cold and windy London night.

* * *

They were all there, myriad affluent men gathered in a room that looked much like a law chamber or a place of business. Nat was glad that Stephen stood beside him because he still felt dislocated and detached, thrown by the reappearance of a woman he had thought never to see again.

He recalled Cassandra Northrup’s eyes were exactly the same as they had been, guarded in their turquoise, shuttered by care and secrets. But her hair had changed from the wild curls she had once favoured and she was far more curvaceous.

If her eyes had not given her away her left hand would have, of course, with the half-finger and the deep scar across the rest of her knuckles.

It had been a newer wound back then in the clearing, when she had reached forward and laid one cool palm across his back. He had flinched as she brought the knife she carried upwards to cut away the badness.

The pain had made him sweat, hot incandescence in the cool of night as she simply tipped the heated flask up and covered ragged open flesh.

The camphor helped, as did her hands threading through places on his spine that seemed to transfer the pain. Surprise warred with agony under her adept caresses.

The poultice was sticky and the new bandages she bound the ointment with were from the bottom of her shirt. Cleaner. Softer. He could smell her on them.

He wished that he had the whisky to dull the pain. He wished for a bed that was not on a forest floor, but some place warmer, more comfortable, some place where his heartbeat did not rattle against the cold hard of earth.

‘If you sit, it should help with the drainage.’

He was shivering now, substantially, and went to drape his jacket around himself to find warmth, but she held it away and shook her head.

‘You are burning up. The mind plays tricks when the fever rages and as I cannot shift you to the stream we will have to make do with the cold night air instead. I had hoped it would snow.’