Christian Seaton: Duke Of Danger

Helene sighed wearily. ‘Lisette...’

‘Did you even bother to name me yourself before handing me over to the Duprées?’ Lisette challenged derisively. ‘Or did you leave even the naming of your child to strangers?’ She knew by the angry flush that appeared in the older woman’s cheeks that it had been the latter.

‘Surely you realise I could not have kept you here with me, Lisette—’

‘Could not? Or maybe you did not want to tarnish what is left of your own reputation by acknowledging me as your bastard child?’

Helene sighed heavily. ‘It is far too late at night for this conversation—’

‘It is too late altogether, madame.’ Lisette gave a disgusted shake of her head. ‘Would that you had left me in ignorance in the country.’

‘To do what? Live off turnips and marry a local peasant?’ The older woman’s lip curled.

‘Far better I had done that than live in this place!’ Lisette retorted. ‘I will leave here as soon as I am able,’ she repeated wearily as she brushed past the other woman to gather up a candle and light it before walking proudly down the hallway and going up the stairs.

She made it all the way to her bedchamber before giving in to the tears that had been threatening to fall since she had received that slap on her face.

Tears that were long overdue, as she placed the candle carefully on the bedside table before throwing herself down on the bed and sobbing in earnest; for the loss of the Duprées and the life she had known with them, for the shock of discovering Helene Rousseau was her mother, for her unhappiness since coming to Paris, for the lack of prospects ahead of her once she had left this place.

For the knowledge that the lavender-eyed Comte had in all probability already forgotten her existence.

* * *

Christian had instructed his coachman to drive around and park the carriage a short distance from the front entrance of the Fleur de Lis, once he was assured Lisette had climbed safely into one of the downstairs windows of the tavern. He was determined, before leaving the area completely, to see that Lisette reached her bedchamber safely.

He had been lying, of course, when he told Lisette he intended to go on to further entertainment. Helene Rousseau, and the clandestine comings and goings to her tavern, was his only reason for being in Paris.

At least it had been.

The puzzle that was Lisette Duprée had changed that somewhat.

There was a mystery there he did not understand. Helene Rousseau had been so overprotective of Lisette earlier in the tavern when she held a gun to his back, and yet at the same time there was an obvious lack of familial feeling between the two women. A disconnection that surely should not have been there—

Ah, he had just seen candlelight behind the curtains in the bedchamber he believed to be Lisette’s, instantly reassuring him as to her safe return.

‘Drive on,’ Christian instructed his coachman before settling back against the plush upholstery, his mind still occupied with the relationship between Helene Rousseau and Lisette.

There had never been mention of André Rousseau having a daughter, and surely the other man could not have been old enough to have a daughter of Lisette’s age? And yet, to Christian’s knowledge, Helene Rousseau had no other siblings.

In any case, the discovery of Lisette was an unexpected vulnerability in regard to Helene Rousseau. One that Christian felt sure Aubrey Maystone would not hesitate to use against that lady. As the Frenchwoman had been involved in using other innocents as pawns in her own wicked games.

Christian frowned at the very idea of using Lisette in that way.

Another reason for not taking her back to England with him?

He found the whole concept of using her as a pawn in a game to be totally repugnant. Complete anathema to his code as a gentleman.

And yet there was no place for a gentlemanly code when it came to the defence of the Crown.

But to use Lisette in that way, no matter whether she was the innocent she appeared to be or something more, did not sit well with Christian—

‘We have company, milord!’ his coachman had time to call out grimly seconds before the carriage came to a lurching halt and the door beside Christian was wrenched open, a masked man appearing in that open doorway, a raised pistol in his hand.

Lisette’s earlier warning barely had time to register before there was a flash in the darkness and the sound of a pistol being fired.

* * *

Lisette sat up with a start, her tears ceasing as she heard the sound of an explosion of some kind ringing through the stillness of the night, followed by the sound of raised voices.

She rose quickly to her feet before hurrying across the bedchamber to look out of the window.

The street was poorly lit, of course, but she could see a carriage a short way down, and it appeared to be surrounded by a group of darkly clothed men. A carriage that seemed all too familiar to her, considering she had been driven back to the tavern in it just a short time ago.

The Comte de Saint-Cloud’s carriage!

Lisette gave no thought to her own safety as she ran across the bedchamber and threw open the door before running down the hallway to descend the stairs. She heard the sound of a second shot being fired and then a third, causing her fingers to fumble with the bolts and key as she quickly unlocked the front door of the tavern before throwing it open and running out into the street.

The carriage was still parked a short distance away, but there were no longer any dark-clothed men surrounding it, the street quiet apart from the horses snorting and stamping their shod feet on the cobbled road in their obvious distress.

Lisette stilled her mad flight at the sound of that deathly silence, her steps becoming hesitant as she approached the carriage, its door flung open and swinging slightly in the breeze.

In keeping with this lowly neighbourhood, no one else had emerged from any of the buildings in response to hearing those three shots being fired, and Lisette herself feared what she might find once she had reached and looked inside that eerily silent carriage.

She raised a shocked hand to her mouth as she drew nearer and saw a body lying on the cobbles beside the carriage, recognising the groom who had opened the door for her earlier tonight lying so still and unmoving, a bloom of red having appeared on the chest of his grey livery.

Which surely meant that the Comte de Saint-Cloud was inside the carriage still; otherwise Lisette had no doubt he would be out here now tending to his groom. Or perhaps, having discovered the man dead, he was off chasing the men who had attacked them.

She ceased breathing and her heart seemed to stop beating altogether as she apprehensively approached the open door of the carriage, so very afraid of what she was going to find when she looked inside.

In all possibility, the Comte, as dead as his groom appeared to be?

Her heart stuttered and then stopped again as she heard the sound of a groan from inside the depths of the carriage. Indication that at least the Comte was alive, if obviously injured?

‘Christian!’ Lisette called out frantically as she no longer hesitated but hurriedly ascended the steps.

‘Lisette?’ The Comte groaned uncomprehendingly, the lantern inside the carriage showing him lying back against the cushions, his face deathly white, a bloom of red showing, and growing larger by the second, on the left thigh of his pale-coloured pantaloons. ‘You should not be here,’ he protested as he attempted to sit up.

‘Do not move!’ Lisette instructed sternly as she stepped fully into the carriage to fall to her knees beside him and began to inspect the wound to his thigh.

‘They might come back—’

‘I doubt it,’ she snorted disgustedly. ‘Cowards. Half a dozen men against two—’

‘You saw them?’ Christian, grateful that he had the foresight to speak to Lisette in French, had now managed to ease himself back into an upright position, although his thigh hurt like the very devil with every movement.

Lisette nodded distractedly, her face a pale oval in the lamplight. ‘From the window of my bedchamber. At least half a dozen men. Are you hurt very badly?’ She looked at his thigh but did not attempt to touch him.

Christian’s jaw was clenched against the pain. ‘I believe the bullet has gone through the soft tissue and out the other side.’