The Return of the Prodigal

The two men behind Thibaud laughed as Lisette struggled wildly to be free of him.

At last he let her go, pushing her to the ground, where she remained, struggling to breathe. Was it monsters like this that Geoffrey Baskin had handed her poor mother over to that day?

Thibaud stood over her, his huge fists jammed into his hips, his smile gone. “We do what we do, mam’selle whore. We do what your papa has ordered, and take no orders from women. A woman once cost us much, didn’t she, my good friends, and that will not happen again.”

The other two men mumbled their agreement as Lisette finally dared to get to her feet, careful now to keep her distance.

“My…my maman? That’s who you mean, don’t you? Because Geoffrey Baskin coveted her?”

Again, Thibaud laughed, the roar of that raucous laughter causing more than a few of the slumbering birds above them to stir, fly away. “Is that the story he tells? Ha! Then, yes, that’s how it was. Yes, little whore, the gospel according to your so holy papa.”

Before Lisette could react, Thibaud had hold of her wrist again, painful now from how tightly he had held it the first time. But she was so angry; she didn’t care about the pain. “Don’t you dare mock my father and his love of my mother!”

“I mock nothing. But I don’t die twice for the same mistake.” Thibaud leered down at her. “Bah! I am too old for this! The past is gone. Is it not enough to be fat and happy now, my friends, to die in our beds, with two pretty young trollops tucked in beside us? But enough! Go! We will follow as we were ordered. God curse us for it, we always follow.”

Lisette wanted to stay, insist Thibaud explain his words, but she had already said too much, perhaps heard too much. Enough to reinforce her growing misgivings about what she had already been told this past year since her papa had taken her from the convent, enough to cause her nervous concern over what she had already done.

Because, somewhere between the plan and the execution, Lisette had decided that she would do this her own way, send Thibaud to Calais, and proceed to Ostend with Rian Becket, without these three men dogging her steps.

But none of it because she had begun to question her papa. No, most certainly not!

And, please God, not because, as she was sure the lout, Thibaud, would declare, she was a stupid woman who had begun to care too much for the sad and injured and so beautiful Rian Becket.

CHAPTER FIVE

RIAN WOKE SLOWLY at first, and then all at once, as he realized he was somehow lying in a bed, not riding in that damned, badly sprung coach. He sat up, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the fading light of the small, dying fire in the grate slowly separating that darkness into light and shadow.

How had he gotten here? The obvious answer was that he’d been carried, like some sleeping infant.

“That settles the thing,” he muttered, squeezing hard at the bridge of his nose. “No more laudanum. My head feels like I spent the night living in a bottle.”

He climbed out of the bed, but not before realizing that Lisette was not sleeping beside him. Where, exactly, were they, he wondered. Where were his clothes? More importantly, where was Lisette?

“Lisette?”

“Here, Rian Becket, at the window,” he heard her say, and he turned toward the sound, barely able to make out the heavy draperies that were closed tight.

“Hiding?” he asked, pulling back one side of the drape, to see her fully dressed in her plain gray gown, and perched on the window seat, her knees drawn up to her chin. “Or did my inconsiderate snores chase you?”

She had her arms wrapped about her legs, her chin on her knees, and was looking out into the darkness rather than at him. “I thought someone should stand watch,” she told him, at last unbending herself and lowering her bare feet to the floor. “The Comte’s men could still find us, for all your clever maneuverings. Which, by the way, have maneuvered us into this sorry inn and to its damp sheets. And the mutton at dinner was tough and stringy.”

“Then I’m happy I missed it, even though I’m starving. A thousand apologies, your grace. I had no idea you were more accustomed to luxury.”

“You mock me,” she said, brushing past him, having gathered up her half boots from the window seat.

Her mud-crusted half boots. Not the dried mud he would expect from their walk to the stable yard, but mud still fresh, wet. He could smell it.

He took the half boots from her hand. “You’ve been out walking?”

“I believe it is called patrolling,” she said, snatching the half boots from him and moving across the small room, to the bed. She pushed herself up onto it and pulled first one boot, then the other, over her feet. “We can not all rest like innocent children, unaware, when the world can come tumbling down on our heads at any time.”

She was so suddenly indignant, he held back his laughter at her expense. “Ah, not your grace, but my little General Lisette, patrolling our perimeter. And so, General, as you mention time, isn’t it still the middle of the night? Where do you think you’re going now?”

“Not me, Rian Becket. Us. And we are leaving. There is a man downstairs, in the tavern, who seems suspicious. I am not sure, but I may have seen him before, although I was careful not to let him see me. We must not linger here. I was waiting only for you to wake.”

“Bloody hell, Lisette,” Rian said, reaching for his boots, knowing he couldn’t pull them on by himself. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

She shrugged. “I told you a sip, only. The laudanum lets go in its own time. It would have been fruitless to even attempt to wake you.”

Considering the fact that she’d managed to have him carried to this room without awakening him, he supposed she was right. “No more laudanum, Lisette. Even if I ask for it. Even if I beg for it. You understand?”

“But you need your rest, Rian,” she told him as she took one of his boots and motioned for him to take his own turn sitting on the edge of the bed, which was the only place to sit in this small room under the eaves. “What do I do with a man dead from fever?”

“We’re back to that, are we? You say a quick prayer if the spirit so moves you, and leave his body in a ditch after withdrawing the bag of coins from his pocket—you might also be able to sell these boots for a good price—and strike out again for the coast. Damn, I hate needing your help this way.”

She knelt before him on the floorboards and struggled to push on the boot that had been fashioned especially for him by the talented Ollie in Becket Village, and fit like a second skin. “And then what, Rian Becket? I take myself to your home and tell them I had been bringing their son back to them—before I left him dead and barefoot in a ditch? Do you think they’d slay the fatted calf for me then, hmm? And I don’t even know where to go, do I, to deliver this so sad news? Where are we going?”

“Home,” Rian said shortly, pushing his foot deeper into the boot.

She glared up at him even as she picked up the other boot. “Maybe I don’t believe you, Rian Becket. Perhaps you are taking me to London, to sell me to some low brothel.”

Now Rian did laugh. “Where on earth do you get an idea like that?”

She tugged and tugged on the second boot. “Sometimes ladies would come to the convent, sent there by their husbands who wanted them to learn to be more obedient. They would bring novels with them and share them with me.”

“The convent, Lisette?”

She gave one last pull on the leather straps, and the boot slid up and over his calf. “My papa, he would sometimes teach the nuns English. I told you that. You remember nothing, Rian. How can I trust you to know how to get home?”

Rian looked down at her, trying to engage her gaze, but she was already getting to her feet once more, moving away from him. What a pretty girl. How little he really knew about her. “I don’t remember you saying anything about a convent.”

“Men never listen to women, when they speak of themselves. Only when the woman speaks of the man. It’s the way of men, to listen only when they are the subject of the conversation.”