LITMIR.BIZ

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for a few seconds,’ Nat answered. ‘As soon as I picked her up she seemed to regain her mind.’ Plain and simple. Everything complex and twisted would come later.

      Sitting, the physician held up two fingers.

      ‘How many do you see, my dear?’

      ‘Four.’

      The woman beside Sandrine shook her head and worried eyes went quickly to her.

      ‘Three. Two.’ Guessing for all her heart’s worth.

      ‘Do you have a headache?’

      ‘Just a small one.’

      ‘Is your right arm numb?’

      She did not answer as she dug her nails into the flesh above her elbow. So numb she did not feel it at all?

      At the doorway a group of interested onlookers had gathered, though Sandrine, marked by the blood of the other victim, looked bewildered and vulnerable. She had also begun to shake. Badly. Taking off his jacket, Nathaniel tucked it about her, for shock could be as much of an enemy as injury. He hated himself for bothering.

      ‘Warmth will help.’

      For the first time he noticed the pendant at her throat, the one he had given her in Saint Estelle before she had betrayed him. The grey fabric of her bodice had drooped to reveal the roundness of one breast and the tall woman who had followed them in knelt down to pull the gown back into place, the skin on her cheeks flaming.

      ‘Keep still, Cassie.’

      Cassie? The anger in Sandrine’s eyes was magnified by a deep and startling verdant green.

      Albi’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘If you bring Miss Cassandra this way, Nathaniel, a carriage is waiting. Miss Northrup, if you would collect her reticule and follow us?’

      Northrup? Maureen and Cassandra Northrup? These were two of Lord Cowper’s daughters? Hell.

      A shutter had fallen across her averted eyes at the mention of her name, wariness and the cold surge of alarm evident.

      ‘I need no extra assistance, my lords. My s...sister can help me to our conveyance.’

      At that the other moved forward, pleased to be able to do something in the room with all its onlookers and the stark awkward silence.

      Within a moment they were gone, both of them, only the scent of some flower he could not name left behind.

      Hemlock? Foxgloves? Lily of the Valley? All poisonous and lethal.

      Albi watched them go, a frown across his brow. ‘The Northrup sisters may have their detractors, but it is my reasoning that with just a little time and effort they could knock the Originals from their perches. They seldom come out into society, but by all accounts their mother was beautiful, too. I think there’s a third sister, married and living in Scotland. You will need to get your jacket back.’

      ‘Perhaps.’ Nat’s tone was flat.

      ‘They live in Upper Brook Street and you can’t miss Avalon, the Northrup monstrosity.’ Nathaniel did not wait to hear more, walking out instead to the ballroom and being instantly surrounded by the newest and most beautiful débutantes of the season.

      Young women of impeccable taste and good breeding, their pasts unblemished and flawless. He smiled as he moved into their midst.

      * * *

      Cassie’s head ached and her neck stung. She knew the wax from the candle globes had burnt her, but there had been too much to ascertain about the health of the young woman to spend time thinking about her own injuries.

      Lord Lindsay.

      The physician had called him that and de Clare had named him Nathaniel. Lord Nathaniel Lindsay, the heir apparent to the earldom of St Auburn. She could not believe it, could not quite take in that her dangerous rescuer in Nay with his scarred body and quick reflexes was now a dandified lord, known across all of England for his wealth and his power, with family lineage stretching back across the centuries.

      Away from the stares, Cassie was feeling a lot better. The borrowed coat was warm, her shivers lessened by the touch of wool. She could smell him, too, here in the carriage, the depth of him and the strength and if her sister had not been right there beside her she might have breathed in further, allowing the colours of his beauty to explode inside, tantalising and teasing.

      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

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