The Corrupt Comte (23 page)

“What do you m-mean,
we
?” Her expression was almost surly, and under other circumstances he might have been charmed by it.

These were not the circumstances. “You will leave, and I will leave with you, as your betrothed.” A packet would leave from Calais this evening—he and Claudia needed to be on it. “I am marrying you, kitten.”

But she shook her head. “Why did you k-kill him, Gaspard?” Then, glancing around as if fearful of being overheard, she whispered, “Why did you k-kill the d-duke?”

“Because I had to.” If she couldn’t accept that…

Understanding flashed across her features, her gaze suddenly narrowing. “Of c-course.”

Of course?
He watched her, warily, waiting.

“You’re a s-s-spy.” A bark of irony-laced laughter. “You’re a s-spy, and we have to leave F-France. Tonight?”

“Tonight.”

For a long moment, she stared at the ground, at the wrist he clasped between them. When she lifted her chin, the sadness in her eyes stole his breath. She stepped backward once, then again. “T-tonight,” she echoed. “I…I must p-pack.” Then he was forced to release her, and she didn’t spare him another glance as she began her trek up the stairs, halted momentarily by her solemn-faced parents.

Tearing his gaze from her retreating form, he saw movement from the corner of his eye. Évoque beckoned, but as Gaspard turned, Sabien stopped him with a hand to his arm. “Don’t do this,” he muttered in sharp, staccato French. “Don’t marry her.”

“Because you want her?” he snapped, yanking his arm away and not bothering to hide his wince as he felt his wound open beneath the bandage. The question was utterly irrational, fueled by the latent jealousy that had never quite left him. Claudia had wanted Sabien first, and soon she would realize that Sabien was whom she ought to have chosen in Maxence’s ballroom that night.

Sabien who should have taught her those lessons in lust, and Sabien who should have ridden her writhing body into orgasm last night.

The need for violence roiled within him, the urge to maim his friend and turn him ugly in the eyes of his fiancée—

Fiancée.
Gaspard’s fists clenched. He had a fiancée now. Without giving Sabien a chance to respond, he strode away until he reached Évoque. “We’re done.”

“You and I?” The duke’s mouth tightened. “We’ll never be done. But excellent work.” He tipped his head toward where a pale Claudia was slowly climbing the steps to the second floor, arms wrapped protectively around her middle and head bowed. “Her dowry will more than pay the debt on your title. Looks like you get to stay a peer.”

“A peer, but not a spy.”

But the duke shook his head. “I don’t think so. You, my dear
comte
, know far too many of my secrets. I think I’ll keep you.”

It was too close an echo of the captain’s possessive words, time and time again, and his stomach turned. “
Keep
me?”

I’m keeping you,
Courreaux had said after the third time Gaspard had attempted desertion.
I’m keeping you right here next to me, my pet.

“You’re heading off to London with your bride-to-be, I assume.” Évoque’s tone was mocking. “I need an agent there.”

“I said I’m done.”

“And I said I need an agent in London.” Évoque flashed his teeth, a show of civility for the sets of eyes certainly still watching them. “You made a fool of me, in my home. You’re lucky you’re still breathing.”

The threat didn’t faze him. “You can’t do anything to me now.” Money, scads of it, would soon fill his barren coffers. He’d keep the title, the bribe he’d bled for.

Most importantly, he would have Claudia. Because
she was his fiancée.

“No? I can rip your world apart, Toussaint.” The duke stood toe-to-toe with him, then leaned in to whisper, “I can shred your very existence, and hers too. Cross me again and you’ll see.”

A twist of his wrist, and Gaspard’s blade slid free from the makeshift sheath he’d fashioned to his uninjured forearm, pressing into Évoque’s midsection with deadly intent. Hidden from view between their bodies, Gaspard shifted the knifepoint, digging until the tip found giving flesh through layers of sliced threads.

Threats to himself, he could handle. But a threat to Claudia…

Protect.
At all costs. He kept his tone neutral as the duke hissed at the knife’s sting. “A
détente
, Your Grace? I keep your secrets—all of them—and you leave her be.”

“What are you going to do with that knife, Toussaint? Carve your name in my gut?” But bravado couldn’t conceal the trace of nerves in the duke’s murmur. “That’s
my
trick.”

How well he knew. Gaspard prodded harder, noting his enemy’s grimace. “Leave her be. Swear it.” When the duke said nothing, Gaspard dipped his head to whisper, “Sliding this dagger between your ribs would be the easiest thing in the world. And if you think I couldn’t escape before you set your
mastiffs
on me…” A wry smile. “I’m a spy, remember?” A damn good one.

“I’ll get to Amaury Pascale eventually, one way or another.”

Gaspard shrugged. “I don’t care. But you won’t use Claudia to do it.” He already knew he would fail her as a husband in so many ways, but in one area he was certain: She would never find herself without protection. Any danger or threat, he would keep her safe.

It was all he had to offer.

Évoque nodded abruptly. “I swear.” But when Gaspard’s knife relaxed a fraction, he amended, “On one condition.”

“What condition?”

“If you disappear, with or without her, I come after
her
. So you’d better guard your prize like the good little terrier you are.” The duke’s eyes carried the faint gleam of victory again, as they had in his study. “I’ll be watching, Toussaint.”

Aware they were drawing too many curious stares, Gaspard stepped away, sheathing the knife as he growled, “Agreed.”

Évoque straightened, and Gaspard could see it, all of a sudden—the kingmaker. God’s chess-master. It was apparent in every faint line marring the duke’s handsome face, in the dashing gray at his temples, in the thin lips and cold eyes and severely straight nose, and Gaspard knew Évoque had
allowed
him to win this skirmish.

Which became all the more evident as the duke flicked something from his coat sleeve—no doubt lint fallen from Gaspard’s cheap clothing—and locked gazes with him, a chilling smile lurking on his cruel mouth. “I’ll have you again someday,” and Gaspard couldn’t tell if Évoque meant as a spy or as a whore.

He got his answer with the duke’s next words. “And then you’ll wear my brand. Forever.”

Chapter Thirteen

The English Channel

The crossing was torturous.

Oh, not for Claudia, whose constitution was iron forged, but for her new fiancé. As soon as it became apparent that staying on deck didn’t soothe his nausea any better than remaining below, the
comte
had retreated to one of the cabins to empty his stomach in solitude.

Trapped in her own cabin for the sake of propriety—it being the dead of night—Claudia was torn between conflicting desires. She wanted to check on Gaspard’s well-being, perhaps freshen the bandage she’d wrapped around his forearm last night.

Conversely, she hoped he was suffering but good, because he had played her like a puppet from the moment he’d dragged her into that linen closet.

She fell back on the bunk with a weary sigh, enjoying the rock and roll of the ship atop the Channel’s choppy waves as she stared up at the low cabin ceiling. It had always been her dowry for him, her dowry and what pithy protection a life in England could provide him, now that he’d assassinated a member of the French royal family. He’d never wanted Claudia for herself, but that shouldn’t surprise her. She had learned long ago that her condition might as well be a scar across her face, so undesirable did it make her. There was a reason her dowry was so large, and it certainly wasn’t because her parents thought her worth such a high price.

Her lip curled. The stutter or her merchant-class heritage—which one was worse? She draped a hand over her abdomen as her scowl deepened. For a while, it had seemed as though Gaspard didn’t care about her stutter, at all. He had demanded she speak, constantly testing her, and had listened to her when she
did
speak as though she were any other woman whose tongue didn’t trip. He acted as though she were clever and witty, which Claudia had always thought herself to be…except for the teeny, tiny fact that she’d never been able to share that wit with the world. Nearly everyone who’d met her—and subsequently become frustrated with her slow, uneven speech—believed she was dumb, but not Gaspard. So Claudia had begun to hope.

She hated him for that hope. Not for the first time that day, she wondered if she wouldn’t have been better off marrying the duke, even if she was little more than an acquisition to him.

She closed her eyes as resentful tears threatened at the corners. She was strong, she reminded herself. She had grown up in a veritable wasteland of familial affection, with only her growly grandfather for company—and the moment
Grandpére
’s mind began to erode, Claudia’s parents bundled him off to a cottage in Hampshire, where she imagined he spent his days with a nursemaid and his gardens. It had been a decade since she’d seen him, a decade since anyone had spoken to her with any kind of gentleness, but she’d still nurtured the belief that someday someone would see past the stutter to the woman beneath.

It was just that she…she
hurt
. Gaspard had deceived her so utterly, and yet she’d assumed she was the one who saw through all his lies. She felt the fool, twice over again for loving him regardless.

Look, ladies and gentlemen,
Claudia thought bitterly.
She really is as stupid as she sounds.

Turning to her side, she waited in silence for the rhythmic rollicking of the ship to lull her to sleep. After the demands Gaspard had made on her body the night before and the rush with which they’d departed Paris today, she was exhausted.

And yet.

Stifling another sigh, Claudia swung her legs over the side of the bunk and stood, waiting for her balance to adjust to the boat’s sway. Though still laced into her traveling gown and its matching velvet jacket, she’d already toed off her boots and didn’t relish putting them back on.

Her decision made, less than a minute later she closed the door to Gaspard’s cabin behind her, leaning back against the portal. The air in the room was stifling and hot, and it smelled strongly of bile. Wrinkling her nose, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the unrelenting blackness of the small chamber.

A particularly violent jolt against the waves elicited a pained groan from across the cabin, where a low bunk attached to the far wall. A large, shadowed form lurched upward as the scrape of a metal pail on varnished wood and the unpleasant sound of uncontrollable retching hit her ears. In that moment, sympathy won out, and she hurried over to perch on the side of the bunk.

He dropped as if boneless to lie on his stomach, one arm flung carelessly over the edge of the mattress, fingers still curled around the handle of the sick pail. “
Va-t’en,
” he mumbled hoarsely. Go away
.

“No.” Disentangling his hand from the pail, she gingerly settled it next to her stockinged foot to prevent it from sliding away with the rocking of the ship. She ran a hand down his back, the fine lawn of his shirt clinging sweatily to the planes beneath.

“Leave me.” His voice no more than a croak, he shifted agitatedly under the stroking of her palm, a feeble attempt to dislodge her.

She ignored his faint protests, continuing to rub his back. “You w-would feel b-better without your shirt. Let me help,” she murmured quietly as she tugged the damp material up his resisting torso, helping him to lift his head, pulling the garment free when it caught around his neck. He breathed a shaky sigh of relief when he relaxed into the bunk once more. “There.”

He shuddered as the ship canted again. “Why are you here?” Evidently having stopped fighting the soothing caresses she forced on him, he lay unmoving as her hand drifted slowly over his cool, sweat-slicked skin. There was a give to his lax muscles that hadn’t been there the night before, she noted with detached curiosity.

Her body, however, wasn’t quite so detached, and the mere whispered remembrance of his body joining intimately with hers sent a sharp pang of longing through her abdomen—and lower—until she squirmed where she sat on the edge of the tick mattress. She shouldn’t desire him now, not when he was ill and weak and malodorous, so she answered his question to staunch the lingering, unwanted lust that plagued her. “I wanted to make certain my new fiancé hadn’t died b-before he could get his greedy hands on my m-money.” The words slipped out nearly free of stutter and far more vicious than any she’d intended to say.

His laugh was a cross between a groan and a wheeze. “Angry with me, kitten?”

Her hand stilled at his nape, fingers tightening briefly in the damp strands plastered to the back of his neck. “Yes.”

“As you should be.”

He turned his face into the thin pillow, his breathing growing labored as he struggled to control his gorge. He was panting when he let his head fall to the side again, and her hand slipped down to settle in the shallow divot of his spine between the firm contours of his shoulder blades.